Only 3% of individuals detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first 14 months of the second Trump administration had a violent felony conviction, according to an @ABC News analysis of government data. abcnews.link/ZQHm7ct

This is exactly why I’m unconvinced America comes back to the world any time soon…

USA. A backyard. A man. A grill. Four hours. He never left it once. Everyone else drifted, drank, wandered, laughed. He stood before the flames, turning meat with a long fork, immovable. I knew him at once. The keeper of the sacred fire. I took my place beside him. I said nothing. This is the first rule. You do not speak first to the man at the grill. After a long while, he spoke. "Low and slow," he said, eyes never leaving the coals. "You can't rush it. Rush it, you ruin it." I bowed my head. A blade. A tea. A life. None can be rushed. I had crossed four thousand miles of ocean to hear my grandfather's words spoken by a man in a "KISS THE COOK" apron. "Everything worth doing is slow," I said. I have never cooked meat in my life. But I said it as if I had said it a thousand times before. He glanced at me. Something passed between us. A current older than language. His voice dropped, low, almost ashamed. "My wife says just use the oven." He shook his head at the fire. "She doesn't get it." "They never do," I said. And this is where the man transformed. For the first time in years, he had been understood. He rose to meet it. His back straightened. His shoulders set. His voice fell half an octave. A teenager reached for the grill. He lifted one hand without even looking. "Not yet." The boy retreated. He did not argue. He could not have argued. A woman asked when the food would be done. He told the flames, not her. "It's ready when it's ready." Three people approached. Three were turned away with a single word each. By the fourth hour, no one questioned him. The whole party had arranged itself around the man and his fire, the way a village arranges itself around a shrine. Then he turned to me. He held out the fork. "Watch it a sec. I gotta pee." I have stood at the gate of lords with a naked blade in my hand. Nothing has ever weighed as much as that fork. I did not move my eyes from the coals. I did not touch the meat. I did not know how. I would not learn. To learn would be to break the moment. When he returned, I handed back the fork without a word, as one returns a sword to its rightful master. He served everyone before himself. He ate last, standing, still watching the fire. We never traded names. We did not need to. He believed he had finally met a man who took grilling seriously. I believed I had finally met America's last samurai. Neither of us will correct the other. Not now. Not ever. So I have made a vow. Every summer of my life, I will return to this country. I will find a backyard. I will find a man at a grill. I will stand beside him and say nothing until he speaks. And when he says "low and slow," I will bow my head as if my grandfather had spoken. I will die before I tell him I do not know how to cook meat. "KISS THE COOK," his apron commanded. I have obeyed. I will obey again.

Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named. The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river. The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn. Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound. "Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever. It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin. "Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet. In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair. And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge. You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain. The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste. I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind. Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again. "Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up. Discipline is a journey.

ICE took a 31 y/o Haitian asylum-seeker into custody, drove her 30 miles away to a Pittsburgh office, put an ankle monitor on her, then sent her out the front door with no way to get anywhere or contact her family. She froze to death at a bus stop. It's now ruled a homicide.

This morning, UK forces boarded a Russian tanker in the English Channel that was secretly helping to bankroll Putin's war in Ukraine. The first operation of its kind led by British forces, and a clear message: there is nowhere to hide.

“Self-made trillionaire” my arse.

ISG Senator Farah Mohamed: Canada should give young people a year to serve, and a reason to stay hopeful #cdnpoli hilltimes.com/2026/06/10/can…

Incredible turnout in Scarborough Southwest today for @AhsanulHafizOLP office opening! A room full of people ready to fight for their community. This is what the build looks like🔨

On June 13, 1777, a 19-year-old French teenager landed on a beach in South Carolina, uninvited, to fight in someone else's war. He would become one of the most important men in American history. The Marquis de Lafayette was one of the richest young aristocrats in France. He had a beautiful wife, a fortune, and zero reason to risk any of it. But he believed in the American cause so fiercely that when the French king forbade him from going, Lafayette bought his own ship and sailed anyway. He literally went AWOL from a life of luxury to bleed for a country that didn't exist yet. Congress was annoyed at first. Another foreign officer looking for a paycheck? Then Lafayette offered to serve for free and pay his own way. That got their attention. He met Washington and the two formed one of the great father-son bonds in American history. Washington had no biological children. Lafayette named his only son George Washington Lafayette. He took a bullet in the leg at Brandywine and kept rallying the retreat. He was instrumental at Yorktown, the battle that won the war. He went home a hero on two continents. A foreign teenager believed in America before America did. 249 years ago today.

How far is FIFA going with its brand restrictions? The condiments at the Levi’s Stadium press box have all been taped over 😆

Donald Trump didn’t look close enough at that reflection before posting this.

Reporter: ''So you agree that people who break in and vandalize a building should be prosecuted?'' JD Vance: ''Yes'' Reporter: ''Ok, I'm just checking, because you helped raise money for people who did so on January 6th'' JD's Soul Leaves his Body.

Ohio police chief arrested in Florida after grand jury hands down 70-count child sex indictment trib.al/YEEbSaZ

Old but good 💪🇺🇦

The most important American document you were never taught in school was adopted on June 12, 1776. Three weeks before the Declaration of Independence, Virginia adopted the Declaration of Rights, written by a man most people can't name: George Mason. Read the opening line: "All men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights." Sound familiar? Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia at that exact moment, and he borrowed heavily from it. Then it happened again. When James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights in 1789, he used Mason's document as his blueprint. Freedom of the press, religious liberty, no cruel and unusual punishment, jury trials. Mason had all of it first. The document even crossed the ocean. Lafayette leaned on it when drafting France's Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789. And here's the kicker: Mason later refused to sign the Constitution. Why? It had no bill of rights and didn't end the slave trade. He died politically isolated for it. Then the country added the Bill of Rights, proving him right. One Virginia farmer wrote the rough draft of American freedom, influenced two revolutions, and got almost zero credit. 250 years ago today. Raise a glass to George Mason.

🇮🇷 A senior Iranian parliamentarian just publicly shredded the current Hormuz draft. And he named the Supreme Leader's red lines one by one to show they aren't in it. Mahmoud Nabavian, Deputy Head of Iran's Parliamentary National Security Commission, explicitly: Mojtaba Khamenei has stated Iran must have exclusive management of the strait, Oman must not interfere, Iran must collect fees from civilian ships, Israeli-linked vessels must be blocked entirely, and US civilian traffic must pay compensation. None of those 4 conditions, he says, appear in the current text. Source: SNN TV via WarFront Witness (Telegram) / Writer: Oliver

Taoiseach of Ireland, Micheál Martin pays tribute to PM Mark Carney: Throughout your hugely distinguished career, you have demonstrated wisdom, integrity and leadership at moments of great consequence. You have earned respect, not only in Canada, but all around the world.

Oh.