The Wire - August 1, 2025

//The Wire//1800Z August 1, 2025//
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//BLUF: CHRISTIANS AMBUSHED AT CHURCH EVENT IN SEATTLE. MULTIPLE FEDERAL INVESTIGATIONS LAUNCHED INTO STUDENT ALTERCATION AT FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY.//

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-HomeFront-

Washington: An ambush was reported in Seattle at a Pursuit Northwest Church event last night. One person was killed after unknown attackers opened fire on them, while laying in wait inside a vehicle parked on the street. The attacker(s) fled the scene after the shooting in a white Hyundai Elantra, which has a broken window. The Seattle Police Department has confirmed that the shooting was a deliberate ambush targeting churchgoers.

Analyst Comment: This is the same Church at the center of recent controversy in Seattle, and the same Church that was berated by Seattle police for having the audacity to express their faith in public. This Church was condemned by the Seattle police union a few months ago for holding an event at a park deep behind the lines into ANTIFA-held terrain, with the police complaining that they had to protect the churchgoers from violent criminals. Following this incident, it was made clear that the city itself not only approved the permit for this event, but specifically suggested that exact park. Now, the violence continues, not only by parishioners being beaten by the crowd, but now including murders of people trying to go to Church. From a risk management perspective, this is one of the most clear cases of violent religious persecution in the United States, and the city is very obviously not interested in combating the violent militants which are now shooting and murdering Christians in the streets. The federal Department of Justice has not commented on this incident, nor is there any indication of federal interest in Christians persistently being attacked (and now murdered) in Seattle.

Florida: The Department of Justice has responded directly to an altercation between two students at Florida State University. The FSU Police Department has launched a full investigation in to the incident, and Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered US Attorney Jack Heekin, the US Civil Rights Division, and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon to launch a full federal investigation into the incident as well. Florida Congressional Representatives have also gotten involved, and FSU has brought in third-party therapists to provide free trauma counseling services for students who may have indirectly heard about this incident.

Analyst Comment: This event, which warranted the involvement of multiple federal law enforcement agencies, revolves around verbal anti-Israeli comments a woman made in the gym toward another student; this entire response stems around a woman saying mean things to a man in the gym. Of course, a response to this would normally be carried out by a university as harassing someone in the gym in this manner is counter to good social order. Normally this type of behavioral incident is handled in-house (usually with something like a brief suspension from classes, if even that). However, as a particular foreign nationstate was mentioned this incident is being responded to as if a murder took place. Consequently, as it's very clear that these types of statements are by far the most heavily-policed speech crimes in the United States, the woman who made the comments has already been doxxed, suspended from classes, and banned from campus, pending the multiple federal investigations that are now underway.

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Analyst Comments: In Washington D.C. politics continues as before, most of which isn't immediately pressing but worthy of note. Talk surrounding the potential pardon of both Diddy and Ghislaine Maxwell continues, with no indication of whether or not a decision has been made on either front yet. The Epstein scandal continues to develop by the hour, most of which has been concerning to the point of sheer incredulity. Most people are still trying to figure out what President Trump actually meant when he stated that Epstein was outcast from Trump's circle for poaching the workers at Trump's own resorts. The implications made by this direct statement don't leave much room for interpretation and the reality of that logic is rather sobering for many.

The developments in this case alone have cast a shadow over what probably should be a much bigger scandal: the various developments regarding the targeting of President Trump by previous administrations. If the Epstein scandal had not been handled as poorly as it has, more attention would probably be given to the evidence of prior administrations' corruption. However at this point, trust has faltered to the point that even smoking-gun evidence of collusion by intelligence agencies to spread fake information is not met with the intended response...even just a year ago this would have been an earth-shattering story, but compared to everything else that is going on it's not as groundbreaking as one might expect, especially since most people already knew this information or at least assumed as much. Plus (to be brutally honest), when many people are broke, being replaced by H1B-hires, censored everywhere, and federally investigated for criticizing a specific foreign nation, they are not going to care about what happened to Trump. And the White House has burned through a lot of the goodwill that got them across the finish line (mostly from younger conservatives), which for many people has washed away a lot of the good things that have happened, rightly or wrongly. Everyone wants "their guy" to win. And everybody thinks that when "their guy" wins, everything will be vastly better than it was before. In reality, the situation is often only marginally better than the other paths that could have been taken, which is regardless of political party. This "grass is always greener" phenomenon has always been true, but it's still a hard pill to swallow for many, and it's important to remember when it comes to both expectation management and risk assessment. Most of Trump's supporters thought that the crackdown on speech would end when he got elected. But now (in many ways) it's just as dangerous to have certain opinions as before, just in a slightly different way. This is most heavily demonstrated by both the global crackdown on speech and privacy, and also the White House launching headfirst into the same data concerns. Red or blue, it doesn't matter: a future where nothing is private and every bit of personal data is monetized and analyzed...is not exactly a comforting thought for many.

Nevertheless, the newly-declassified documents really are an important milestone in the political realm. But despite this importance this situation may fall victim to the age old lesson of politics: if someone alienates a good chunk of their supporter base once they reach power, their supporters may return the favor in kind one day. Whether or not this idea will truly come to fruition is anyone's guess, however this will be important in the context of the challenges faced by Americans over the next few years, especially as speech crimes and censorship efforts continue to be a very significant bi-partisan efforts

Analyst: S2A1
Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground
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