Former Special Counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his federal criminal investigation into President Trump.

Merrick Garland, US Attorney General under Biden, appointed Jack Smith to investigate Trump in November 2022, just one day after Trump announced a 2024 White House bid.

In June 2023, Smith indicted Trump on 37 federal counts in Miami for lawfully storing presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago estate, which was protected by Secret Service agents.

In a separate case in Washington DC, Jack Smith indicted Trump on four counts: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

On Tuesday, Jack Smith defended his inquisition and said he stands by his decision to charge President Trump.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz blasted Jack Smith and accused him of “egregious abuse of power.”

“Congratulations! Because you have succeeded where Richard Nixon failed, which is weaponizing the DOJ to go after your political opponents! You are stepping into the shoes of John Mitchell…your abuses are far greater,” Ted Cruz said.

“For the rest of your life, you’ll be hailed as a hero in the resistance movement. I presume you have a pink hat somewhere at home,” Cruz said.

He continued, “But you have brought the DOJ into disrepute. Instead of being apolitical and enforcing the law, you willingly conscripted as a foot soldier as the DNC.”

“And you reelected Donald Trump, because the people were disgusted at you,” Ted Cruz said.

“I believe his conduct represents the most egregious abuse of power in the history of the Department of Justice,” Ted Cruz later said.

WATCH:

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a barrage of high-profile arrests on Monday that included convicted murderers, drug dealers, and child abusers.

“Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, there have been ZERO releases at the border for 16 months,” a Homeland Security news release read.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement that “while Americans enjoyed their weekend, the brave men and women of ICE arrested murderers, child sexual predators, and child abusers who should not have been in our country in the first place.”

Mullin added, “Under President Trump, ICE has been unleashed to target and remove illegal aliens from our communities so that we can Make America Safe Again. Arresting and deporting illegal aliens saves lives.”

The list included criminals from Mexico, Cuba, Laos, Nigeria, Micronesia, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador.

These individuals committed crimes across the country in California, Indiana, Louisiana, Florida, New York, Iowa, Texas, Kansas, Maryland, Virginia, and Massachusetts.

The list of offenses ranged from murder, sexual abuse of a minor, and assault to drug possession with intent to distribute heroin and fentanyl.

Additionally, there were some who’d been convicted of “child abuse with great bodily injury or death,” as well as “lewd and lascivious acts” with a child under the age of 14.

The release came just days after ICE posted about another large group of illegal alien criminals who had been successfully apprehended.

“Despite a 1,600% increase in assaults against them, the brave men and women of ICE will never stop enforcing the law,” the post read.

Despite a 1,600% increase in assaults against them, the brave men and women of ICE will never stop enforcing the law.

Yesterday, @ICEgov arrested more murderers, sexual predators, robbers, and other dangerous illegal aliens.

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) September 25, 2026

That same day, the agency announced it had arrested an illegal alien who’d assaulted a law enforcement officer, blaming sanctuary city leadership for encouraging violence against the federal government.

ILLEGAL ALIEN WHO WOUNDED OFFICER ARRESTED.

Jesus Israel Garcia-Cobarruvias, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, has been ARRESTED by @HSI_HQ and @ICEgov after allegedly using his vehicle to assault a law enforcement officer in California.

This comes as sanctuary politicians’… pic.twitter.com/veyp9Wsau1

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) September 25, 2026

“This comes as sanctuary politicians’ violent rhetoric against the men and women of ICE have resulted in a 1,600% INCREASE in assaults against our officers,” it concluded.

“Garcia-Cobarruvias has already been removed from our country THREE times and has a lengthy criminal history that includes burglary and domestic violence. DHS will NOT tolerate violent criminals in our nation.”

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post ICE Announces Arrests of Killers, Child Predators, Drug Traffickers in Major Sweep appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A toddler brought a loaded Glock to a Canton, Michigan, daycare on Monday morning.

Surveillance video showed a daycare worker jump into action and confiscate the weapon from the 3-year-old child.

The toddler reportedly brought the firearm in a backpack. The child took the gun out of the backpack and that’s when a daycare worker swiftly intervened.

The child’s mother, a nurse, has been taken into custody and may face charges this week.

The toddler’s father is a Detroit police officer, and he is not expected to face charges.

Police said the child’s gun was not his father’s service weapon.

WXYZ reported:

A quick-thinking daycare worker stopped a potentially deadly situation after a toddler brought a loaded Glock pistol into a classroom at a Canton early learning center Monday morning.

Police say the gun belonged to the toddler’s mother, a nurse, who has been arrested and could face formal charges as early as Wednesday. The toddler’s father is a Detroit Police Department (DPD) officer, according to new information obtained by 7 News Detroit. DPD is not commenting on the case.

The incident unfolded at the Children’s World Early Learning Center in Canton. Surveillance camera footage captured the moment a daycare worker noticed the child had a firearm and immediately intervened.

“That teacher — once recognized that a firearm was in the classroom — took immediate action,” Police Chief Joseph Bialy said.

The firearm was still in a holster when the toddler brought it into the classroom, with the trigger and trigger guard completely covered. Canton police said that, combined with the worker’s swift response, prevented anyone from being hurt.

More on this shocking story from Fox:

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House Speaker Mike Johnson recently dismissed opposition to data centers, saying that Democrats and China are playing mind games with Americans.

“This is what Democrats do every election cycle,” Johnson said in a video posted to X.

“They find something to glom onto and say that this is doom and gloom and everyone will die if we don’t win. Don’t buy it,” he said.

“It is a Chinese psyop. I really believe that. That’s not a conspiracy theory. I think they’re pushing those ideas,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) SMACKS DOWN the AI DOOMERS and anti-data center ads as Chinese Propaganda. “Don’t buy it. It is a Chinese psyop.”

“This is what Democrats do every election cycle. They find something to, you know, glom onto and say that this is doom and gloom… pic.twitter.com/04pPWygvtM

— RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) September 28, 2026

Data centers — massive buildings that hold the computing power needed for artificial intelligence — are controversial, with one strand of opinion saying they drive up utility costs and drain resources from local communities.

On the other hand, others say those negatives are overstated and that data centers are essential to keeping the United States in the lead in the artificial intelligence sector.

The concerns, coupled with fears that AI may slip beyond the ability of humans to control it, have spawned calls for regulation. Leading into the midterm elections, polling has shown, in general, that opposition to data centers outweighs support of them.

“We do not need a moratorium. We do not need to jump in and hyper-regulate this because we’ll lose the race to China,” Johnson said, according to Newsweek. “The innovation is important to continue.”

The Global Government Affairs Team on X has said debate is being manipulated by China.

“The X Safety team conducted an investigation into suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations: We identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 accounts. Within this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy,” it said in a recent post on X.

“These posts contained claims that AI data centers are driving up household electricity prices and straining the grid,” the post added.

“Others included AI-generated cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public’s expense. We remain committed to maintaining an open and authentic platform where people debate topics of public interest,” the post continued.

“We take seriously any attempts to undermine the integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that violate our Authenticity policy.”

President Donald Trump supports expansion of AI, including data centers.

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump posted in August on Truth Social.

“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” he wrote. “The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”

“China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!” he posted.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

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Romania’s Bucharest Court of Appeal has ordered Călin Georgescu into preventive detention for 30 days, overturning a lower court ruling that allowed the former presidential frontrunner to remain free under judicial supervision.

Călin Georgescu is the first political prisoner since the 1989 Revolution.

Let this be clear to everyone: today, the system is PSD–PNL–USR. All appointments to leadership positions within the prosecutors’ offices and the police are politically driven.

After reading the judge’s… pic.twitter.com/cRnsE5WAEf

— Remi 11 (@chiroban_r) September 29, 2026

The decision sends the figure at the center of Romania’s conservative, anti-globalist camp—and the most trusted politician in the country, according to some polls—back behind bars.

The move has further intensified accusations from his conservative Romanians that the country’s post-2024 establishment is using prosecutors and courts to contain a movement it has struggled, and even failed, to contain at the ballot box.

DIICOT prosecutors secured the reversal after challenging the Bucharest Tribunal’s refusal to imprison Georgescu while the €1.1 million fraud investigation proceeds. Businessman Ionel Rusen was also ordered into preventive detention, with the Court of Appeal’s ruling final.

Even the appellate panel was reportedly divided over whether detention was justified. Two judges disagreed, requiring a third to resolve the split in favor of incarceration—a detail Georgescu’s defenders have seized upon as evidence that the prosecution’s demand was hardly self-evident.

Georgescu’s lawyer, Mircea Sinescu, reacted with fury. “It is a hallucinatory solution!” he said, adding that “paper supports anything,” according to the Romanian account of the ruling. Pasted markdown
The contrast with last week could scarcely be sharper. Bucharest Tribunal Judge Vlad Andriescu had rejected preventive detention and instead placed Georgescu and Rusen under judicial control for 60 days while prosecutors continued their investigation.

More damaging politically for DIICOT, the lower-court reasoning reportedly questioned whether prosecutors had concretely established the precise role each defendant allegedly played in the supposed fraud. The judge called for investigators to clarify how the alleged deception was actually carried out rather than relying on a broadly asserted criminal association.

That earlier ruling did not amount to exoneration. The judge restricted Georgescu and Rusen from leaving Romania after considering intercepted conversations concerning a possible move to Tuscany, but concluded that imprisonment was not then necessary.

When Georgescu emerged from court after that decision, supporters greeted him with chants of “Freedom!”, “Călin, we love you!” and demands for the cancelled presidential runoff to be restored. Georgescu told the crowd that he was innocent and described the cases against him as “politically motivated.”

He also attacked what he called Romania’s “neo-Marxist and neo-Phanariot system,” casting his confrontation with prosecutors as something larger than one criminal file. That language reflects a conservative, sovereigntist movement that increasingly views Romania’s political, judicial and security establishment as a single entrenched structure defending the country’s existing order, which is said to take its orders from Brussels and Paris.

DIICOT, an institution that has a storied history of deep corruption, rejects that political interpretation and says it is pursuing an ordinary organized-crime and fraud case. Prosecutors allege Georgescu and two other men deceived businessman Răzvan Leu into providing roughly €1.1 million after promising access to a €15 million foreign credit facility that allegedly never materialized.

Those allegations remain unproven, and preventive detention is not a criminal conviction. Georgescu denies wrongdoing, meaning prosecutors will ultimately have to demonstrate both that the alleged scheme existed as described and that he knowingly played the role attributed to him.

The age of the underlying allegations has nevertheless become another rallying point for his supporters. The purported financial activity dates back to 2021, while the complaint moved into the DIICOT investigation in 2024, prompting Georgescu’s camp to ask why an old financial dispute has produced such an aggressive response only after he became Romania’s most prominent anti-establishment figure.

That perception hardened after the September 21 operation at his home. Georgescu was stopped in traffic, taken to his Mogoșoaia residence during searches lasting nearly nine hours, brought to DIICOT headquarters and later led outside in handcuffs before assembled cameras and supporters.

According to the reporting supplied, one of Georgescu’s sons was with him when officers stopped him, while his wife and younger child were at home when masked units arrived.

Five addresses were searched across Bucharest and nearby localities, turning the investigation into the kind of heavily visual police operation that was always likely to acquire political meaning.

Romanian Regime Arrests Presidential Election Winner — Raid Drags Georgescu to Jail in Front of His Son After Annulled Election

For AUR and Georgescu’s supporters, however, the image that endured was simpler: the winner of the first round of Romania’s 2024 presidential election being paraded in handcuffs less than two years after the state cancelled the election he had unexpectedly led. That sequence has become the emotional center of a much broader revolt against what conservatives routinely describe as Romania’s globalist regime.

The Constitutional Court annulled that election after intelligence services alleged, without providing any evidence, Russian-linked online interference, campaign irregularities and manipulation favoring Georgescu. To this day they have failed to provide evidence supporting their extraordinary claim, which effectively ended Romanian democracy. US Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and US State Department have all slammed the decision to annul the presidential election and effectively suspend democracy.

Following Georgescu’s earlier detention, the AUR leader George Simion warned, “Any of us could be next. Stop the abuses! Romania is a dictatorship!” — a political accusation that captures AUR’s interpretation of the crackdown, rather than an independent legal description of the Romanian state.

The scale of AUR’s support gives that rhetoric considerably more weight than it would have carried several years ago. INSCOP’s September survey placed AUR at 39.7% among respondents expressing a party preference and 40.2% among those expressing a preference who also said they were certain to vote.

PSD stood at 18.7%, PNL at 16.3% and USR at 9% among respondents expressing a party choice, leaving AUR with roughly twice the support of its nearest rival in that survey. The poll interviewed 1,100 adults between September 1 and 7 and reported a maximum sampling error of ±3 percentage points.

Those figures do not prove AUR’s allegations about the courts or prosecutors, but they expose the danger for Romania’s establishment of treating the sovereigntist challenge as a marginal phenomenon. When a movement polling around 40% watches one of its defining political figures repeatedly investigated, searched, handcuffed and detained, every prosecutorial decision inevitably becomes part of the country’s larger struggle over state legitimacy.

The Romanian state now faces a credibility test considerably larger than Georgescu’s next 30 days in detention. Prosecutors must show that the fraud case rests on evidence strong enough to withstand scrutiny, while institutions already damaged by the extraordinary 2024 annulment must convince millions of distrustful voters that the state is enforcing law rather than protecting an embattled political order from the sovereigntist movement now dominating the polls.

The post Romania’s Lawless Globalist State Puts Georgescu Back Behind Bars for 30 Days After First Cancelling the Election He Won appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.