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The throwback co-headliners are slated to rock Brooklyn's Prospect Park Bandshell on Sept. 19.

Opponents of voter ID say that voter fraud never happens. Then why do people keep getting arrested for it?

US Military Shoots Down 3 Mexican Cartel Drones With Laser

Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,

A laser system was used to shoot down three drug cartel drones in southern Texas, close to the Mexican border, the U.S. military said on Aug. 27.

A so-called hunter drone in front of a mobile sensor unit for drone detection using optical systems and lasers at the National Test Center for Unmanned Aerial Systems of the German Aerospace Center in Cochstedt, Germany, on Oct. 8, 2025. Jens Schlueter /AFP via Getty Images

The North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, in a joint statement, said an Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) was used overnight on Aug. 25-26 in the Rio Grande Valley.

The Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) deemed the three drones to be hostile and posing a physical threat to U.S. military personnel and their partners in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, commander of JTF-SB, said the successful operation against the drones was a testament to the readiness, vigilance, and technological edge of his force.

US Will 'Not Tolerate Hostile Surveillance'

"Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners," Taylor said. "By integrating layered countermeasures alongside advanced directed-energy capabilities like this laser system, we have made it clear that we will not tolerate hostile surveillance."

Ammon Blair, a former U.S.Border Patrol agent and senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Secure & Sovereign Texas Initiative, told The Epoch Times in March 2025 that he recalled hearing cartel-operated drones overhead while working along the Texas border.

"You'd be running, and you'd have a drone right above your head and tracking every move you made," Blair said at the time.

In February, the airspace around El Paso International Airport was closed for 7 hours for "special security reasons."

The White House told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement at the time that Mexican cartel-operated drones had breached U.S. airspace and that the Department of War took action to disable them.

In other parts of Mexico, cartels have used drones to drop explosives in deadly attacks, but there is no suggestion the drones in the Texas incident were armed.

U.S. soldiers monitor a known border crossing point along the Rio Grande River in Brownsville, Texas, on Feb. 25, 2025. Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Sveen/U.S. Army

In the Ukraine conflict, both Moscow and Kyiv have been using armed drones to target enemy infantry personnel and, allegedly, citizens.

In the statement, the military said 8,000 service personnel were deployed across 1,954 miles as part of JTF-SB.

Taylor said he appreciated the support of the Mexican army and said they were working together to combat the cartels in the border area.

Commander Vows to Disrupt Cartels

"We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our CBP partners to secure this border, protect our service members, and disrupt these criminal organizations at every turn," Taylor said.

The military did not specify the details of the weapon used, but in August 2025, AeroVironment Inc., a company based in Arlington, Virginia, announced it had delivered two laser weapon systems to the Army as part of the "first increment of the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) prototyping effort."

It said the AMP-HEL prototype systems featured the company's LOCUST laser weapons systems integrated on a General Motors Defense Infantry Squad Vehicle.

U.S. President Donald Trump has taken an aggressive stance toward narcotics cartels since he returned to the White House in January 2025.

On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order designating several groups, including Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), as foreign terrorist organizations.

Ioan Grillo, a Mexico-based journalist and author of several books, including "El Narco, The Bloody Rise of Mexican Drug Cartels," told The Epoch Times in February 2025 that the designation would have significant ramifications.

"As for the legal implications, it redefines the battle and could be used in justification of other things such as military actions, as were used against al-Qaeda in Pakistan," he said.

At the time, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth refused to rule out the possibility of carrying out military strikes on cartels inside Mexico.

"All options will be on the table if we're dealing with what are designated to be foreign terrorist organizations who are specifically targeting Americans on our border," Hegseth said.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has previously said any U.S. military action on Mexican soil would be a breach of her country's sovereignty.

Mexican cartels are known to import weapons and may be buying drones from abroad.

Earlier this month, four people allegedly affiliated with CJNG were indicted by the United States after being arrested in the Czech Republic in June, where they are alleged to have traveled to buy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortar launchers, and accompanying ammunition and ordnance.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 17:00

The first episode takes a lot of time establishing that its main character's identity has been stolen.

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Topless Sydney Sweeney Bakes A Cake In New 'Birday Boobs' Lingerie Ad

With western birthrates circling the drain, Sydney Sweeney and her 'perfect titties' are once again fighting the good fight for humanity - this time appearing in a new ad for her new lingerie brand, Syrn, entitled "Birthday Boobs."

The 28-year-old posted the racy new ad to her Instagram page, in which she can be seen in the kitchen baking a cake - which ends up being the only thing covering her up top at one point.

At one point in the baking process, Sweeney cannot locate a towel to wipe her hands - so she uses the only available thing...

... before pulling her panties down because she made such a mess, and then slipping back into blue lingerie. 

There's a reason Sweeney keeps converting her curves into a P&L of T&A. The global lingerie market is already a roughly $100 billion business - about $99 billion in 2025, by one industry estimate, on course for something like $104 billion this year and $166 billion by 2033 - growing at a mid-to-high single-digit clip.

What used to be a low-involvement undergarment category has been re-priced as lifestyle and identity: high-margin lace and nylon, sold direct, marketed as comfort, empowerment, and desire rather than as something you hide under clothes. Celebrity founders have already shown the capital markets that this works. Kim Kardashian's Skims is a multi-billion-dollar valuation. Rihanna's Savage X Fenty turned intimates into a fashion house. Sweeney's Syrn, launched in January with backing from Coatue - the same shop whose innovation fund took a $1 billion injection from the family offices of Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell - is the latest bid for that spread: 44 bra sizes, most pieces under $100, DTC margins, and a customer-acquisition cost that is basically her Instagram.

You can see the ad on Instagram or below, for science!

Sydney Sweeney for the new collection from her lingerie brand, SYRN. pic.twitter.com/P3MuSZuHP0

— Sweeney NEWS (@sweeneyarchives) August 27, 2026

Early projections put Syrn's first-year revenue around $20 million - though tabloids are already whispering it'll be a bust. We shall see!

Bonus: RIP Dolly

A tradition unlike any other . . .

It's Friday and the NBBD Edition! pic.twitter.com/4sMXTcK9Dg

— Flappr (@flapprdotnet) August 28, 2026 Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 16:40

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Welcome To FAFOland

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Clusterfuck Nation,

". . . the worse they become, the more they blame you for it."

- El Gato Malo on the Lefty-left

As the Democratic Party pulls out all the stops to make itself ridiculous, their proxy warriors in the federal judiciary play chicken with the executive branch on sane, uniform standards for mail-in ballots. The Democrats don't want sane, uniform standards for mail-in ballots because they are insane. They want to "defend Democracy" with mail-in ballot chaos. Democracy is their flabby rubric for any artifice or subterfuge that beats a path to power so they can continue their racketeering operations. Yes, it's that simple.

The president issued executive order (EO) 14399 in March directing the Postmaster General to make rules for federal mail-in / absentee ballots where chaos and cheating have prevailed since the Covid prank was used to vastly expand mail-in voting. These new rules include a standard envelope with a bar code to establish a coherent, trackable chain-of-custody for each ballot. Mail-in ballots have become the preferred vehicle for voter fraud based on motor-voter registration of non-citizens, "harvesting" of untrackable ballots, drop-box stuffing, and vote-counting machine shenanigans.

The EO requires states to submit lists of their voters to whom they intend to send mail-in ballots. The USPS is ordered to transmit mail-in ballots only from qualified voters listed on the state rolls, that is, matching ballots to qualified voters at real mailing addresses. Twenty-four states have sued to block all this. They refuse to submit their state's voter rolls to the USPS. The lawsuit landed magically in the Boston court of Democratic Party activist federal judge Indira Talwani, who has blocked, lifted, and re-blocked the EO - reversing her own decisions. In the course of all that, SCOTUS ruled that Judge Talwani made procedural errors.

The matter remains unresolved. The point of all the legal rigmarole is to delay action so as to invoke the Purcell principle (from SCOTUS, 2006, Purcell v. Gonzalez), which established a judicial protocol (not a statute) that federal courts should avoid changing election rules close to elections. In other words, it's a judicial suggestion. The case involving the twenty-four states could return to SCOTUS, or SCOTUS could decline based on Purcell.

Meanwhile, Congress does not return to full session (with the Senate) until September 14. Chances are slim-to-zero that they will manage to pass the SAVE Act, or that its provisions would be allowed to apply to the midterm election if, somehow, they did pass it. This leaves the president with only one option: to issue a National Security (NatSec) Executive Order to provide for coherent election procedure. That might include the provisions in the SAVE Act - voter ID, proof of citizenship - but could even go further to ban computerized tabulation machines, greatly restrict absentee ballots, and require results within twenty-four hours of one-only election day. Maybe even place ICE agents at polling places . . . the horror!

Such a NatSec EO would be immune from lawsuits in the federal court. On January 6, 2017 outgoing Homeland Security Sec'y Jeh Johnson (Obama admin) declared election infrastructure a critical part of government facilities "vital to our national interests." In September, 2018, President Trump declared a national emergency (EO 13848) over the threat of foreign interference in US elections. Under the National Emergencies Act of 1976 (50 U.S.C. § 1622), a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress is necessary to overturn such an EO. That September 2018 national emergency declaration was continued officially by "Joe Biden" and remains in-force. Good luck with that, Democrats.

Okay, so what happens then, when Mr. Trump invokes that NatSec EO on emergency election procedure sometime in mid-September after Congress fails?

I will tell you: a constitutional crisis.

The Democratic-led blue states will refuse to participate in the election. Yeah, they'll go that far - because they are insane.

The president will respond forcefully, invoking the federal Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2), which states that federal law avails over the states. States can't nullify or contradict it. The president might have to arrest some Democratic governors and hasten them into special military courts on insurrection charges. Henceforth, this will be known as the FAFO protocol.

Will there be riots?

Probably, though just now Treasury Secretary Bessent is apparently considering the termination of tax exemptions - loss of 501(c)(3) status - for George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and others who finance street actions by the Lefty-left. No money for snack shacks, water bottles, and Froggie costumes.

Will the country survive the trauma?

I think so. The election will be held one way or another, even if it's a month late. If anything, the midterm election might be the tombstone of the Democratic Party. The way things are tending, they've got nothing left but insurrection, and that's probably not a winning move. Mr. Trump apparently loves renaming things geographical. Maybe he can change the USA to FAFOland.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 16:20

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