Does NPR’s Nina Totenberg have advanced knowledge that Justice Samuel Alito is about to retire?

NPR reporter Nina Totenberg on Tuesday published an article claiming Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring.

Totenberg claimed that the Supreme Court made the announcement that Alito was retiring.

Nina Totenberg wrote: “Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Supreme Court’s opinion reversing Roe v. Wade is retiring, the court announced on Tuesday.”

However, 10 minutes later, the NPR article was scrubbed and left with an editor’s note.

The original article is archived here.

“This story has been taken down. It was published in error,” the note read.

NPR staff published a separate article claiming the Alito article was “erroneously published.”

NPR said that Totenberg already had a draft article on Alito’s retirement ready in advance of the announcement.

The outlet claimed that Totenberg assumed that Alito was retiring after she heard a bystander say that Chief Justice Roberts made a retirement announcement.

“Totenberg was reporting on the final day of the Supreme Court session on Tuesday. As she was leaving the court, Chief Justice John Roberts was announcing upcoming retirements. Totenberg wondered why everyone else wasn’t leaving and asked someone outside the court. According to her interview that same day on All Things Considered, Totenberg asked a bystander what was going on, and the person replied “retirement announcements.” But Totenberg heard the reply in the singular, “announcement, ” and assumed it was the notice that Alito was retiring,’ NPR reported.

Nina Totenberg revealed on “All Things Considered” that she made a “rookie mistake.”

“I scared everybody half to death for about five minutes,” Totenberg said on the show. “It’s entirely on me. It’s not anybody else’s fault.”

Totenberg read the text of her apology to Alito on Tuesday’s show:

“Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today’s error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault. I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announcements, and when I realized that the usual rush of folks after a few minutes had not happened, I asked somebody was going on inside, to which the answer was, ‘retirement announcements.’ I didn’t hear the ‘s’ on ‘announcements,’ and I assumed something no reporter should ever do, that you were retiring. It was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism. I could go on, but I don’t know what else to say, except that I am so so sorry.”

NPR claimed that Nina Totenberg’s status as one of the most experienced reporters covering the Supreme Court contributed to the error.

“Totenberg is one of the most experienced reporters covering the Supreme Court. She’s done so for NPR since 1975. Her status contributed to the error,” NPR said.

“She’s the preeminent Supreme Court reporter in the courtroom,” NPR Executive Editor Krishnadev Calamur said. “So I’m assuming that’s what she heard. … She’s in the room. It’s like when we report opinions. I’m not waiting to see what the Times is reporting. It’s when Nina says, here’s what happened, and we do it. That’s the trust you build up.”

The post NPR’s Nina Totenberg Reveals Why She Posted a Story Claiming Alito Was Retiring – Then Quickly Retracted appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Critics of the U.S., along with mainstream media and Democratic lawmakers, have claimed that Elon Musk’s cuts to USAID have killed 14 million people. This claim fails on multiple levels. Musk did not cut USAID. As head of DOGE, he held no formal legal authority to cancel contracts or eliminate programs, and the formal cancellations were executed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The death toll figures circulating in the press are not confirmed counts but forward projections spanning up to five years, derived from economic models that assume no alternative funding was found, no internal reallocation of funds occurred, and no recipient government, third-country government, or global aid organization stepped in to fill gaps, assumptions the evidence does not support. An examination of the countries most dependent on USAID funding finds no verified excess mortality data for 2025 or 2026 attributable to the cuts; what exists are modeled estimates, not death registries.

The White House stated in court that Musk was a senior presidential adviser with no formal decision-making authority. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed that DOGE played a role in the dismantling of USAID. However, the court found that the cuts were approved by government officials. It also ruled that Musk’s social media statement claiming he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper” did not legally constitute evidence that he made those decisions.

Legal scholars noted that so long as a confirmed government official pressed the cancel button, Musk held no actionable authority. Rubio executed the cancellations, eliminating 83% of USAID’s contracts and transferring the agency to the State Department.

The Trump administration cut USAID as part of the America First foreign policy agenda. The agency had become a vehicle for ideological priorities, waste, fraud, and abuse rather than advancing U.S. national interests. The administration argued that much of USAID’s funding went to left-wing NGOs, diversity initiatives, and global governance projects instead of life-saving programs or activities with strategic value to the United States.

Decades of USAID dependency had failed to produce self-sufficient economies. Rubio framed the restructuring as a realignment of foreign aid toward programs that directly advance U.S. diplomatic and security objectives.

The reasons for dismantling USAID are well documented, while all of the death figures in circulation are based on questionable models. The figures are generated by taking historical effectiveness rates, estimating how many lives each dollar of USAID spending saved, and then applying that ratio to the size of the funding cuts to project excess deaths. Widely divergent figures are circulating in international media because the projections differ enormously depending on methodology.

A Lancet microsimulation estimated approximately 1.77 million excess deaths in 2025 under an 83% cuts scenario, with a 95% uncertainty interval of 967,604 to 2,496,308. The Center for Global Development placed its 2025 midrange estimate at 500,000 to 1,000,000.

The headline “14 million deaths” figure is a cumulative projection through 2030, not a present death count. All of these models share a common flaw. They assume that funding disappears entirely, recipient governments do nothing, no internal reallocation from non-essential to life-saving programs occurs, and no substitute funding becomes available. The Lancet authors themselves acknowledged that future outcomes would vary depending on how governments and institutions respond.

The record shows that in some cases they already have. The most concrete example is PEPFAR, the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the largest U.S. global health program and the primary vehicle through which USAID delivered HIV treatment across more than 50 countries.

In 2025, overall PEPFAR spending was cut by 30%. The U.S. preserved frontline HIV treatment while eliminating non-essential programs. Antiretroviral therapy, the daily medication that keeps HIV patients alive, continued reaching 20.6 million people, matching the FY2024 total.

The gap left by reduced U.S. funding was partially filled by recipient governments assuming direct responsibility for their own citizens. By the end of FY2025, HIV treatment coverage had broadly returned to FY2024 levels, with three million people now receiving treatment funded by their national governments rather than the U.S., more than two million of whom completed that transition between July and September 2025 alone.

The projection methodology carries a further structural problem. It treats USAID as the only possible input into a fixed, non-adaptive system and uses historical USAID effectiveness data to project deaths. It does not account for the counterfactual that long-term USAID dependency may have suppressed domestic investment in healthcare. Nigeria’s emergency supplemental provides a direct illustration. The fiscal capacity existed but went unexercised while USAID funding was available.

Yemen, the DRC, South Sudan, and Somalia each saw spending cuts exceeding 40% and obligation cuts above 60%. Despite these dramatic reductions, no verified country-level excess mortality figures for 2025 or 2026 have been attributed specifically to USAID cuts.

The models producing death projections acknowledge that outcomes depend on how governments and institutions respond. Governments remain free to feed their own people. Likewise, the United Nations, the European Union, China, and any other government or institution criticizing the U.S. funding cuts are free to provide replacement funding.

The post Despite Media Claims, USAID Cuts DID NOT Kill 14 Million People appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The Epstein curse continues to plague Gates.

We have been reporting here on TGP on how Bill Gates’ ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are causing him problems that go beyond the mere reputational damage and family breakdown.

Today, it arises that billionaire investor Warren Buffett will not make his usual mid-year donation to the Gates Foundation for the first time in 20 years.

Buffet reportedly awaits more details about the charity’s links to Epstein.

NEW: Warren Buffett to skip his usual multibillion-dollar donation to the Gates Foundation amid a review on Bill Gates’ Epstein ties.

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) June 30, 2026

BUFFETT SKIPS GATES FOUNDATION DONATION FOR FIRST TIME IN 20 YEARS AMID EPSTEIN REVIEW

Warren Buffett reportedly skipped his usual June donation to the Gates Foundation for the first time in two decades.

The pause comes as he waits for a review into the foundation’s past… pic.twitter.com/dEVyXxfB9w

— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) June 30, 2026

Forbes reported:

“Citing unnamed sources with knowledge of Buffett’s plans, the Wall Street Journal reported that the billionaire investor is delaying his donation plans until later this year and may wait until his annual Thanksgiving letter.

Last June, Buffet made a record donation of $6 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares to five charities—his biggest ever—with the lion’s share going to the Gates Foundation.”

Since 2006, Buffet has donated no less than $48 billion to Gates’ philantropic organization.

“Buffett and his aides have been in contact with the foundation’s leadership in a bid to learn more about its links to Epstein, the Journal’s report added.

In March, Buffett told CNBC that he hasn’t spoken with Gates since the release of the Epstein files, which highlighted the Microsoft founder’s relationship with the convicted sex offender (Gates has not been accused of any wrongdoing).”

Warren Buffett says he has not spoken to Bill Gates “since the whole [Epstein] thing was unveiled” pic.twitter.com/Yv82iGf2pX

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) April 11, 2026

Read more:

Under Pressure by Congress, Bill Gates Names the 3 Women He Had Affairs With, and Jeffrey Epstein Tried To Blackmail Him Over – Plus: the Nobel Prize and the Norwegian Connection

The post Warren Buffett PAUSES Donation to Gates Foundation as Probe Over Epstein Leaks Continues appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) went crazy during a House Appropriations Committee Hearing on Tuesday, screaming at Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought over the Trump Administration’s cuts to foreign aid and federal spending. 

“The Trump administration unveiled its proposed budget for fiscal 2027 earlier this year, which includes a 40 percent increase to the $1 trillion defense budget approved by Congress last year, and a 10 percent cut to non-defense spending,” the Hill reports.

DeLauro began her questioning of Vought, immediately accusing the Trump Administration of violating the law and asking about grants being reviewed and limited by political appointees. When she didn’t like the Director’s answer, she launched into a two-minute rant, lecturing Vought about the funding reviews and cuts to “science.”

Stammering through her speech, DeLauro went off without actually posing real questions, declaring that the Trump Administration’s cuts are “wrong, and we’re not going to let it happen.”

When Vought attempted to respond to her unhinged tirade, she cut him off and went crazy again, screaming, “You flout the constitution every single day, and you have been doing it for the last year and a half, and we again not going to continue to allow that to happen!”

She continued, No president has the right to just violate the United States Constitution, and no member of this committee does that, but the administration is doing it regularly!”

WATCH:

Transcript:

DeLauro: I think you made clear, Director, that you are not going to really carry out the spending laws as Congress intended, and that really is very, very troubling. Look, we’ve already seen OMB implementing political review of grants. It’s led to massive delays at NSF, the NIH — NIH has had about a 34% decrease in new awards in 2026 compared to what they’ve done in the past. And we understand that the decrease is due to new layers of political review at the NIH, at HHS, OMB, as well as the Office of Extramural Research, directives limiting the number of funding opportunities that are allowed. There have been cases where people are still awaiting approval, and political appointees have really denied the award going forward. The same problem is occurring across the government: Interior, Homeland, what is a government-wide problem. What can you do to address it? Where is the holdup? And, quite frankly, how would requiring a political appointee to approve every single grant improve government efficiency?

Vought: Congresswoman, one of the things I heard constantly when we were considering the rescissions package last year, of which you all opposed, but one of the things I heard was, why wouldn’t you just eliminate just the small things that you have concerns with, and not actually take the number down lower, and the way that we do that, the way that we provide good oversight of federal dollars is to be able to assess and review how the agencies intend to spend the money, and that takes time. You don’t do that in the middle of a 30 day period after you pass the appropriation.

DeLauro: With all due respect, Mr. Director, my heavens, we haven’t seen spend plans. That has been one of the biggest, one of the big problems, this committee hasn’t even seen spend plans that we’re supposed to, you know, get, and so that there’s a point— and this rule that is really in the process of comment, which you won’t extend the timing on, is really specific about who is going to review the grants, not on merit, but they’re going to go through a political lens, and there’s all kinds of restrictions on these grant awards. That is reverting a process, as I said earlier, that has been established after the Second World War.

Vought: Can I give you an analogy? An analogy is that when I do the budget for the president, do you think I don’t rely on the career staff? It has a political responsibility for the line item.

DeLauro: has a with all due respect, I got five seconds left, five seconds left. It is about political appointees making the decision, not people based— the evidence, and not based on, and particularly in health and science, not based on the science of the award that’s happened everywhere. I can quote you, I can talk to you, and you talk offline about the what’s been denied at Yale University that has to do with HIV suppression, Tourette’s, etc! Don’t tell me that these are — they do not meet the government’s priorities or the president’s priorities. Is it not to deal with Tourette’s syndrome, to deal with OCD, is not about somebody wasting money! This is science. It’s reviewed as it has been over 75 years, when these awards have been made, and you are all in the business of reversing that and putting all of these grants through a political lens and someone’s political ideology, it’s wrong, and we’re not going to let it happen. I yield back.

Vought: I would just say that there was an election. The president was put in charge of the executive branch—

DeLauro: The Constitution says that the appropriations process has is the power of the purse. You are ignoring that. You flout the constitution every single day, and you have been doing it for the last year and a half, and we again not going to continue to allow that to happen! No president has the right to just violate the United States Constitution, and no member of this committee does that, but the administration is doing it regularly!

The post WATCH: Crazy Purple-Haired Rep. Rosa DeLauro LOSES IT and Starts Screaming at OMB Director Russ Vought appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A historic former Catholic convent near the burial place of Saint Patrick in Northern Ireland was devastated by a deliberate fire Sunday night, forcing more than 70 firefighters into an overnight battle to save the adjacent parish church.

The blaze, according to a report from Life Site News, broke out at the former Convent of Mercy in Downpatrick, County Down, at around 7 p.m. on June 28. By the time emergency crews arrived, the building was already engulfed in a well-developed fire.

The Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service said the cause is believed to have been deliberate. No injuries were reported, but the damage to one of Downpatrick’s most recognizable Catholic landmarks was severe.

Former convent destroyed as over 60 firefighters battle huge blaze in Downpatrick

@Kscott_94 https://t.co/67qD9hekjp pic.twitter.com/yMoymA86OD

— Belfast Telegraph (@BelTel) June 28, 2026

At the height of the emergency, roughly 70 firefighters were on the scene. Ten appliances responded, backed by aerial ladder units, a command support unit and a water tanker.

Crews used breathing apparatus, firefighting jets and aerial ladder jets to bring the inferno under control. Their most urgent task was not only to contain the fire, but to prevent it from reaching St Patrick’s Church.

The former convent was attached to the church, immediately raising fears that the flames could spread to one of the town’s most important Catholic sites. Firefighters worked through the night to stop that from happening.

The Downpatrick Family of Parishes expressed relief that St Patrick’s Church had been saved. The parish said the fire had been prevented from reaching the church by the “heroism and skill” of the Fire Service.

“Fire fighters worked through the night to protect St Patrick’s and to them we owe an enormous debt of gratitude,” the parish wrote. The statement captured the community’s gratitude, but also the deeper grief of seeing a Catholic landmark destroyed.

CONVENT AND ST PATRICK BURIAL SITE BURN DOWN IN DOWNPATRICK, MEDIA SAYS NOTHING

Yesterday the convent and the burial place of Saint Patrick himself in Downpatrick was reduced to ashes.

Locals say it was arson. The resting place of the patron saint of Ireland set on fire, and… pic.twitter.com/TcXyYM4EDT

— British Intel (@TheBritishIntel) June 29, 2026

The timing made the fire even more painful. Just hours before the blaze, the parish had celebrated the ordination to the priesthood of Fr Thomas Hampton inside St Patrick’s Church.

“Coming at the end of a wonderful day in the life of the parish family — the Ordination to the Priesthood of Fr Thomas Hampton—when the parish came together in a tremendous act of hospitality and welcome, it is particularly sad that so beautiful a building has been destroyed,” the parish said.

The parish also honored the Mercy Order’s long service in Downpatrick. The sisters, it said, had left an “indelible influence for good” after more than 150 years of presence in the parish.

The former Convent of Mercy was built in the 19th century and had long formed part of Downpatrick’s Catholic skyline. Although the building had not recently been in use, it remained a visible symbol of the town’s religious memory and Catholic charitable life.

Local politicians described the scene as devastating. SDLP councillor Conor Galbraith said it was deeply sad to see a fire in “such a historical part of our town.”

South Down MLA Colin McGrath said many locals would remember the convent and the role it played over the years. “Even in recent times, it has remained a familiar part of the Downpatrick skyline, so seeing it go up in flames is upsetting,” he said.

The fire occurred in one of Ireland’s most spiritually significant towns. Downpatrick is closely associated with Saint Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint, whose reputed burial place is nearby at Down Cathedral.

That symbolism cannot be brushed aside. A former convent burning near the resting place of Saint Patrick is not merely a local property loss, it is another wound to the Christian inheritance of Ireland and the wider West.

Authorities have not announced a suspect or motive. There is currently no confirmed evidence linking the Downpatrick fire to immigration, Islam or any organized anti-Christian campaign.

But the destruction comes at a time when Catholic and Christian sites across Europe are being vandalized, desecrated, neglected and, in too many cases, burned. The public is expected to treat every incident as isolated, even as the pattern becomes harder to ignore.

France has become one of the clearest warning signs. Church fires, vandalism and anti-Christian property attacks have become a recurring feature of public life in a country that once called itself the eldest daughter of the Church.

In 2024, the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Saint-Omer was ravaged by fire, with its bell tower collapsing. A suspect was later detained in what investigators treated as a likely arson attack.

Nantes Cathedral was also set on fire in 2020 by a Rwandan national who had been serving as a church volunteer. The same man later stood trial for the killing of Father Olivier Maire, the Catholic priest who had sheltered him after his release from detention.

Not every major church fire has been criminal. Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019 and Rouen Cathedral in 2024 were treated by authorities as likely accidental or renovation-related incidents, not confirmed religious attacks.

But even those distinctions do not calm Christian communities. The sight of ancient churches in flames—whether through arson, negligence, decay or official failure—reinforces the sense that Europe is losing the will to defend its own sacred patrimony.

This is why Downpatrick matters beyond Northern Ireland. It is one more image in a wider civilizational crisis: convents burning, churches emptying, Catholic memory being left to rot while Western governments pour energy into progressive causes, migration systems and bureaucratic social engineering.

Ireland has been especially shaken by rapid demographic and cultural change. The country has faced rising pressure over asylum, accommodation centers and the transformation of local communities without meaningful democratic consent.

The issue, for many Irish Catholics, is not simply numbers. It is whether a historically Christian nation can survive when its ruling class treats borders, faith, memory and national continuity as obstacles to be overcome.

Large-scale immigration from societies with very different religious and cultural foundations has intensified that debate. Ordinary citizens are told to celebrate diversity while watching their own churches close, their towns change and their heritage treated as disposable.

That concern is not hatred. It is the instinct of a people who understand that a nation without a defended faith, a defended border and a defended memory will eventually become little more than an administrative zone.

For the growing number of right-wing Catholics, the answer must be renewal rather than apology. Ireland and the rest of the West must restore respect for the Church, defend Christian holy places, enforce borders and reject the globalist lie that nations have no right to preserve themselves.

St Patrick’s Church still stands because firefighters held the line through the night. But the destruction of the old Mercy convent is another warning that Catholic Europe cannot survive on nostalgia alone — it must be defended with faith, borders, law and courage.

The post Northern Ireland: Historic Catholic Convent Near St Patrick’s Tomb Destroyed in Deliberate Fire as Christian Europe Burns appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.