Hundreds were arrested in a recent multi-day undercover operation targeting child predators, prostitution, and human trafficking in Florida. The arrestees included 17 theme park employees, according to law enforcement.

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office launched a seven-day joint-agency undercover operation “focusing on those who prey upon and travel to meet children for unlawful sexual activity, and human trafficking.”

‘He wanted to wear diapers.’

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the sting, named “Polk Around and Find Out II,” is the “single largest undercover operation we’ve ever done.”

The sheriff’s office said in a statement that the undercover sting resulted in 281 arrests, including 239 related to soliciting prostitutes, offering to commit prostitution, and aiding/abetting or transporting prostitutes.

Authorities also arrested 31 suspects in connection with alleged child sex crimes.

Among those arrested were 17 theme park employees, including 13 from Disney and four from Universal Studios. Of the arrested theme park employees, seven were accused of committing child sex crimes, according to the sheriff’s office.

WKMG-TV reported that a “former Walt Disney World Mickey Mouse character was among those arrested in the child predator operation.”

The sheriff’s office stated that 24-year-old Collin Klaco of Clermont “communicated online with an undercover detective posing as the guardian of a 13-year-old boy.”

“He said he wanted to do something in a public family restroom,” the police statement read. “He drove to the undercover location and was taken into custody; detectives found diapers and wipes in a backpack that he carried into the house.”

“He wanted to wear diapers,” Sheriff Judd explained. “He wanted to put diapers on the children, and he wanted to do all kinds of nasty stuff.”

Judd added, “He had the high squeaky voice, too, by the way.”

Police said Klaco was charged with traveling to meet a minor, use of a computer to solicit a guardian, use of a two-way communication device to commit a felony, and attempted lewd/lascivious battery on a minor.

Judd said all of the Disney employees caught in the sting had been fired.

“These predators are out there, online, trying to groom and violate our children,” Judd said, adding that “the things that these predators say to children are vile, disgusting, and not fit for anyone except trained detectives to read. And even seasoned, trained detectives are repulsed.”

RELATED: US attorney announces indictments against ‘prophet,’ wife for alleged sex trafficking, forced labor in alleged church scheme

The statement said 40-year-old Orange County Deputy Sheriff Eric Raymond was arrested in the sting.

Raymond, from Winter Garden, also is a school resource deputy at Independence Elementary School in Horizon West.

The statement said of Raymond, “He answered an online ad placed by an undercover detective and agreed to pay her $110.00 to have unprotected sex during a ‘quick visit.’ He told detectives he is married.”

Raymond was charged with one count of solicitation of a prostitute.

Sheriff Judd said Raymond “should have known better.”

“His actions demonstrate moral turpitude,” Judd stated.

Sheriff Judd continued:

The online prostitution industry enables and empowers human traffickers, allowing them to profit off the people they exploit. Our goal is to identify victims, offer them help, and arrest those who are fueling the exploitation of human beings like Eric Raymond and those profiting from the exploitation of human beings. Prostitution is not a victimless crime — it results in human exploitation, misery, disease, dysfunction, drug and alcohol addiction, violence, and broken families.

Police noted that 32 illegal aliens from nine different countries were arrested.

WTVJ-TV reported that 16 suspects have been turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

WTVJ added that 32 individuals were charged with drug possession, including methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl.

Police said the suspects were charged with a total of 198 felonies and 290 misdemeanors. The statement added that the suspects had previous criminal charges totaling 358 felonies and 440 misdemeanors.

Law enforcement also identified 11 human trafficking victims during the operation.

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​Child sex crimes, Child sex abuse, Child sex predators, Florida, Disney, Polk county sheriff, Grooming, Sting operation, Crime, Grady judd 

It turns out Texas’ 21st Congressional District is a big fan of baseball.

Running as a Republican to replace longtime Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), former MLB slugger Mark Teixeira took home the easy victory over Democrat Kristin Hook, who lost for the second straight time.

‘TOTAL WINNER, on and off the field.’

In the center of Texas sits Congressional District 21, where Teixeira was heavily favored to take the dark-red seat.

“Big Tex,” a former New York Yankees and Texas Rangers player, was a massive favorite just days before the election. Pollsmax had him sitting at a 99% chance of winning, while Smarter.Vote gave him a 95% chance and an estimated 20-point margin of victory.

Both sources were right to predict Teixeira as the winner. He fended off the blue wave that crashed through Texas on Tuesday and took home a win with 54.5% of the vote and a nine-point margin of victory, according to the AP.

RELATED: Former MLB star wins GOP primary to replace Chip Roy in Texas

Sam Hodde/MLB Photos/Getty Images

Teixeira had a very strong endorsement from President Donald Trump ahead of his Republican primary.

The president called Teixeira a “TOTAL WINNER, on and off the field” on Truth Social in February.

“Mark has a great wife, Leigh, and three beautiful children.”

Both Teixeira and Hook breezed through their primaries with over 60% of the vote back in March. However, Democrats totaled just over 66,000 votes against Republicans’ 95,500, a bad sign for the Democrat.

RELATED: Who put the left in charge of America’s working class?

Winslow Townson/Getty Images

During her campaign, Hook promoted policies like making billionaires “pay their fair share,” expanding voting accessibility (including by mail), and restoring abortion “freedoms.”

Teixeira, however, promoted very MAGA-aligned policies like the expansion of the DOGE, border security, and fighting against “cultural Marxism.”

In 2024, Hook lost to Roy by more than 100,000 votes, a difference of more than 15 percentage points.

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​Mark teixeira, Mlb, Baseball, Politics, Texas 

The lengthy and unpopular conflict in Iran has evidently had an outsized impact on the midterm election.

Exit polling conducted by NBC News and other media outfits showed that when thinking about their vote for Congress, 34% of voters said that the conflict in Iran was “crucial”; 40% said it was a “major factor”; and 19% said it was a “minor factor.”

‘The Iran War is the greatest political blunder in the last two decades at least.’

Twenty-seven percent of those who said the conflict was “crucial” and 42% of those who said it was a “major factor” were Republicans.

Weeks ahead of the election, a Gallup survey indicated that Iran was a top issue among voters, with 47% of respondents stating that the situation in Iran was “extremely important” and 30% saying it was “very important.”

After Republicans lost the U.S. House and Senate in a landslide on Tuesday, President Donald Trump acknowledged in a phone interview with Fox News that “part of it was Iran.” He also admitted that the conflict drove up gasoline prices and that price increases hurt Republicans at the polls.

The president suggested, however, that historically, the military operation in Iran is “going to be much more important than this evening because you can’t let the number-one state sponsor of terror have a nuclear weapon.” He also said that he “had no choice,” in part because the nuclear deal brokered by former President Barack Obama “was the road to a nuclear weapon.”

RELATED: Trump’s 2024 coalition was a loan. The bill just came due.

Trump was long a critic of his predecessors’ costly foreign entanglements, stating both that he would end “the era of endless wars” and that it was not the job of American forces to “solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of.”

After brokering numerous peaceful resolutions between warring parties, Trump kicked off a conflict with Iran on Feb. 28.

While there were clear indications that such a military operation would be unpopular, a chorus of interventionists inside and outside Congress suggested it was worthwhile. The Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen, for instance, penned an op-ed in January titled “There is no U.S. downside to striking the Iranian regime.”

Support for the unresolved conflict — the projected cost of which the Pentagon told Congress last month was roughly $47.1 billion — currently sits at 35.9%, according to the Silver Bulletin’s polling average. Opposition sits at 56.5%.

Despite the unpopularity of the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and the apparent backlash by voters, Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that he “did the right thing” and if afforded a do-over, he “would have done it again.”

“The Iranian regime is evil. Few people have been as consistently vocal on this issue as I have,” BlazeTV host Steve Deace wrote in an aftermath reflection. “But it’s one thing to use American air power to ensure Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon and quite another to drag our military and economy into a months-long quagmire with no end in sight and no clear definition of victory.”

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre tweeted, “The real retard right were the people who told you the war wouldn’t matter.”

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh wrote, “The Iran War is the greatest political blunder in the last two decades at least. A catastrophically stupid decision. An unforgivable betrayal of America First principles.”

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​Midterm elections, Donald trump, Iran, Republican, Democrat, Politics 

Recent polls suggested that Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi was going to cruise to victory in her re-election race against George Soros-backed Democratic prosecutor Scott Colom. Like many of her GOP colleagues, Hyde-Smith had a rude awakening on Election Day.

As of Wednesday morning, Hyde-Smith and Colom were tied at 48.9% with over 95% of the votes in, according to the Associated Press.

‘Sometimes when you think somebody is doing so well, nobody votes.’

Colom told supporters early Wednesday, “Our race is too close to call. We are going to make sure every single vote has been counted, and I am confident we will ultimately flip this seat.”

If successful in unseating Hyde-Smith — a former state commissioner of agriculture and commerce who assumed office in 2018 — Colom will become Mississippi’s first Democratic U.S. senator since 1982.

Hyde-Smith ran on supporting the Second Amendment, fiscal conservatism, defending the unborn, stopping illegal immigration, lowering taxes, and standing with Israel.

RELATED: Trump takes DEFIANT tone after Democrats take the House: ‘Buckle up’

Kent NISHIMURA/AFP/Getty Images

She enjoyed an endorsement from President Donald Trump, who joined her on the campaign trail last week and expressed concern about voters staying home.

“I’m here because Cindy’s doing great, but I just got to make sure,” said the president, reported the Mississippi Free Press. “I can’t take a chance. I can’t take a chance. She’s got no problem. The only problem is sometimes, and this happens in — sometimes when you think somebody is doing so well, nobody votes. They all stay home.”

Colom, who may ultimately reap the benefits of some voters staying home, ran on lowering costs, raising wages, making “Big Tech pay its own way,” and combating corruption in Washington, D.C.

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​George soros, Mississippi, Donald trump, Politics 

Redistricting has been a hot topic lately. Democrats generally support gerrymandering when it gives them more political power, yet they oppose the effort when Republicans do the same. This time, however, Democrats can’t stand in the way as a redistricting proposal made it onto the Missouri ballot for a vote. Here’s what the people decided.

This year, Proposition A on the Missouri ballot covered the next phase of a mass congressional redistricting effort across the Show Me State. It’s based on House Bill 1 from 2025 that splits Kansas City into new zones designed to give Republicans more representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A vote ‘yes’ on Proposition A upholds the newest district map that gives Republicans more representation.

The original plan was approved in 2022 under House Bill 2909, and former Republican Gov. Mike Parson signed it. The new map solidified Missouri’s eight congressional districts, with six Republican-leaning districts and two Democrat-leaning districts — all based on the 2020 U.S. Census.

Years later, current Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed HB1, a revised district bill that further divided Kansas City into smaller portions that could ultimately give Republicans control over seven of the eight districts within Missouri, further tipping the scale of power to the right.

Missouri Congressional District Maps/Ballotpedia

Proposition A put the revised map on the Missouri ballot.

After 99% of the results were tallied, the measure officially failed with 61.8% opposed and 38.2% in favor. That means Missouri’s congressional map will change back to the last version approved in 2022, where six districts will lean Republican, while Democrats will be favored in the two districts over St. Louis and Kansas City.

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​Election results, Gerrymandering, Midterms, Redistricting, Politics, Missouri 

Missouri has once again voted in favor of a constitutional amendment enshrining abortion “rights” in the formerly pro-life state’s constitution. The amendment first passed narrowly in 2024.

Republican lawmakers provided Missouri on Tuesday with an opportunity not only to undo the 2024 constitutional amendment and restore the state’s previous near-total abortion ban but to prohibit sex-rejection mutilations and sterilizing puberty blockers to minors.

‘We won’t go back.’

Missouri state Rep. Ed Lewis, the Republican who introduced the amendment that ultimately made its way to the ballot in 2026, told the Columbia Missourian, “We just think that, obviously, transition surgeries should not be allowed, that abortion through the second and third trimesters is barbaric, that it’s a human life.”

Planned Parenthood, which is not only a champion of abortion but a top provider of sex-rejection drugs, was among the organizations that concern-mongered about the amendment.

RELATED: Allie Beth Stuckey and Ginna Cross talk equal protection and the growing divide in the pro-life movement

Missouri Secretary of State.

Planned Parenthood Great Rivers Action, which resumed aborting babies after the state constitution was amended in 2024, accused Republican lawmakers of attempting to “trick Missourians into voting away their own rights.”

Abortion Action Missouri similarly characterized the opportunity for Missourians to vote as a trick, stating, “We won’t go back.”

Evidently, voters largely agreed, deciding not to take Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) up on the opportunity to “restore common sense in our state’s constitution.”

With over 95% of the votes counted, the amendment was defeated 55.5%-44.5%, according to the Associated Press.

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​Abortion, Constitutional amendment, Midterm election, Missouri, Planned parenthood, Politics, Puberty blockers 

Rebellion against the administrative state used to entail packing up, moving to a log cabin in Montana, and trying your best to survive off the land. Now all it takes is a Venmo account and decent internet.

As Wired recently reported, Kristin LaHargoue, a Utah-based influencer who goes by “Minister Veda,” caters to a hyper-specific, delusional niche: convincing people that it is patriotic not to register their children with the government. On Instagram (@veda.revival), she posts videos of her family traveling internationally without birth certificates or Social Security numbers for her children. In her view, registering a baby with the government is an unforgivable surrender of parental freedom.

The great escape from the administrative state still requires the administrative state to stamp your little blue book.

Her business model is simple: commodified chaos. For $997, LaHargoue offers personal coaching on how to obtain a passport for an unregistered child, including guidance for dealing with Department of State officials. If that’s too pricey, another option is available. For $497, she sells a downloadable bundle to navigate the bureaucratic minefield.

The problem, of course, is that the parents aren’t the only ones who must live with the consequences.

Off the record

Wired highlighted the real-world fallout through the story of Sarah Ashley Townsend. Raised by a sovereign-minded mother without a birth certificate or Social Security number, Townsend spent her childhood largely isolated from ordinary society. At 16, she repeatedly struggled to get a driver’s license. In her early 20s, she discovered that supposedly having her documents straightened out had not solved the problem. When she gave birth to her own son, officials couldn’t establish her birth records, and his birth certificate had to be amended twice.

Townsend was 22, newly postpartum, and running around Maryland collecting notarized documents just to get her son the paperwork her own mother had denied her.

This sovereign baby concept isn’t new. Its roots trace back to William Potter Gale, a former Army lieutenant colonel who founded Posse Comitatus in Southern California around 1970. Gale preached distrust of the federal government, insisting that county sheriffs were the highest lawful authority and that Washington had vastly exceeded its constitutional powers. His followers rejected federal taxation and claimed the right to resist authorities they considered illegitimate.

Posse Comitatus helped inspire later sovereign-citizen groups, whose members developed increasingly inventive theories about secret government contracts, fictitious legal identities, and the supposed power of declaring oneself exempt from ordinary laws. Some issued bogus liens against judges and public officials, attempting to weaponize paperwork against the very institutions they rejected. Others refused to recognize courts, taxes, or government authority, sometimes with violent consequences.

The underlying fantasy remained remarkably consistent. Reality was supposedly negotiable, provided one knew the right words and possessed enough contempt for the rules everyone else had to follow.

Monetizing paranoia

Today’s influencers have traded backwater meetups and photocopied manifestos for selfies in front of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família. Take Minister Dionne, who peddles a $555 “Status Correction” package. Or Marisse Vista, whose $7,777 “Sovereign Conception Program” promises such delights as ancestral clearing and womb activation. Yes, it’s absurd, but it perfectly captures the current zeitgeist, with online chancers monetizing paranoia.

Now, to be clear, I am no fan of the paperwork police, and I am all for parents being free to make the best decisions for their children. But the claim that birth certificates make newborns government assets relies on the long-discredited straw man legal theory. According to this fantasy, a birth certificate creates a separate legal identity that the government uses as collateral for its debts. By declaring themselves separate from this fictitious identity, believers supposedly escape government authority. Courts have repeatedly rejected the theory, yet influencers continue peddling it as gospel.

They claim to be selling rebellion. What they’re really selling is a bureaucratic nightmare.

The irony is that the passport procedure itself is perfectly legitimate. The State Department allows applicants without conventional birth certificates to establish citizenship through secondary evidence, including baptismal records, early school records, family Bible entries, and affidavits. This exists for people who genuinely lack ordinary birth records, not as some secret sovereign-citizen loophole.

LaHargoue and her peers frame opting out of government records as grand independence, but it is pure hypocrisy. These influencers reject the obligations of a functioning society while demanding its perks and protection abroad. Having declined to obtain the usual documents, they must then assemble alternative paperwork and persuade the very government they supposedly reject to issue a passport.

The great escape from the administrative state still requires the administrative state to stamp your little blue book.

RELATED: How to thrive without a Social Security number

Print Collector/Getty Images

Sovereign headache

As Wired reported, one woman who purchased LaHargoue’s instructional material eventually obtained a passport for her infant without a birth certificate. She submitted baptismal records, a family Bible, an affidavit, and a newspaper birth announcement. After considerable back-and-forth, the State Department approved the application.

In other words, parents are paying hundreds of dollars to navigate an elaborate government procedure made necessary by their refusal to follow a much simpler one.

A New York family lawyer told Wired he has seen an increase in parents attempting to reject or undo their children’s official identification documents, while a law enforcement consultant described motorists refusing to show identification because they insist they are merely “traveling” rather than driving. Healthy skepticism is one thing. Pursuing a fantasy of total independence that only creates problems for you and your loved ones is another. Freedom is fantastic and necessary, but it doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

When a boy or girl grows up and runs into trouble opening a bank account, getting a driver’s license, signing a lease, enrolling in college, or finding a job, the opportunist who cashed that fat check is long gone. The parent may get a fleeting rush of anti-establishment heroism; the child, however, is left with an endless headache, forced to spend years proving to the clipboard class that he is who he says he is — and that he actually exists.

​Administrative state, Birth certificates, Bureaucracy, Constitutional powers, Culture, Drivers license, Family, Influencers, Passport, Posse comitatus, Social security, Sovereign baby, Sovereign citizen, Lifestyle 

The Constitution is not a suicide pact. Donald Trump most certainly isn’t one. After Tuesday’s electoral massacre, the right faces a choice: Ride or die with this man through 2028, or declare independence and rebuild a movement capable of winning power and actually using it.

On Tuesday, we held an election between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks won. When do conservatives get on the ballot under our own banner? When do we get an at-bat? We won’t if we keep running on the same hamster wheel and calling it progress.

Tuesday proved how much the status quo can cost. We have nothing left to gain by pretending it’s working.

Name the conservative issue that lost Tuesday night. Voters in states that overwhelmingly backed Trump in 2024 didn’t suddenly embrace woke radicalism. They rejected Trump and a corporatist, corrupt, listless, and hypocritical Republican Party. Democrats even borrowed issues that conservatives like me have been pushing for two years.

Look at the wreckage: Democratic Senate victories in Texas, Kansas, South Carolina, and Ohio; the loss of the Texas governorship; and a sweep through places Republicans had come to regard as safe territory. Democrats took control of the Senate and picked up at least 31 House seats. The full down-ballot damage will take time to assess, but the partisan realignment we were promised has been torn apart.

Everyone will manufacture an excuse based on his favorite issue. Some will blame the economy, others the Iran war, tariffs, bad candidates, or the usual midterm curse. Most of the conservative influencer class will perform amazing contortions to avoid uttering the name Donald Trump.

But it was all of the above, bound together by a Marie Antoinette presidency. Voters worried about paying their bills got a president boasting about a “golden economy,” stock portfolios, and a ballroom. Let them eat capital gains!

It was the tariffs. It was the war with Iran, launched with enormous fanfare and left without a convincing account of what victory means. It was the aimless legislative agenda, the Greenland fantasies, the narcissism, the Big Tech courtship, and the enthusiasm for data centers and the surveillance state. It was the endless spectacle of family business interests and questions about conflicts of interest.

This was the antithesis of Trump’s 2016 message. That message was directed at people who believed their country had been sold to the highest bidder. Now the White House seems astonished that those same people don’t celebrate every new accommodation with powerful interests.

RELATED: Democrats seize control of the US Senate

Tom Brenner/Getty Images

Of course, some good has been done. Border enforcement and other executive actions deserve credit. Nor can every Republican defeat be laid at Trump’s feet. But too many accomplishments remain vulnerable because the administration has failed to build lasting legislative victories. Worse, nothing resembling a fresh conservative movement can take shape while one man monopolizes its message, candidates, strategy, and imagination.

The party has become a personality cult with a fundraising operation attached. Trump endorses one dreary candidate after another, and the rest of the right is instructed to applaud. If you question the candidate, you are accused of betraying the cause. Which cause, exactly?

Tuesday also offered an answer to the claim that conservative principles themselves have become unelectable. Florida voters approved a DeSantis-backed property-tax amendment with about 62% of the vote, even as Republicans elsewhere suffered crushing defeats. Voters were also asked to decide 41 local data-center measures in 10 states, 28 of which would restrict development. These fights reflect genuine public hostility to political favoritism and unchecked corporate power.

Florida, for all its narrow margins, at least held its Republican governorship. The state has a governor with an identifiable record, a clear set of priorities, and an agenda he spent years putting into practice. Ron DeSantis didn’t build that record by changing the subject every time a shiny object appeared. Florida supplied the one-state wave in 2022. This year, it offered a one-state save.

RELATED: If Republicans can’t get Wyoming right, what are they fighting for?

id-work/iStock/Getty Images

Instead of learning from that contrast, the GOP base and the Conservatism Inc. influencer class will be tempted to spend the next two years defending everything Trump says, excusing every failure, and hunting for a new reason to attack anyone who asks for results.

Here is the question every so-called conservative must answer: How do we rebuild for 2028 while Trump remains the godlike leader of the right for another 26 months? How do we recruit candidates with convictions of their own when he insists on anointing his favorites? How do we talk about a serious governing agenda when every day brings a new diversion?

We cannot spend the next two years defending corruption allegations, praising a “golden economy” voters do not recognize, and explaining away policies that benefit special interests. The president will remain the most visible Republican in America, and no amount of spin will change that. Believe me, he will remind the public of that fact every day The rest of the party must decide whether it has a voice independent of his.

For how much longer will we be a conservative soul trapped in the contaminated body of the gay old party? Tuesday proved how much the status quo can cost. We have nothing left to gain by pretending it’s working.

​2026 midterms, Capital gains, Donald trump, Opinion & analysis, Big tech, Republicans, Democrats, Bolsheviks, Conservative, Elections, Corporatism, Economy, Florida, Ron desantis, Iran war, Congress 

Are American sports simply having a bad season — or is something much bigger happening? BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock believes the latter, explaining why he thinks the chaos plaguing professional and college sports could be a form of biblical judgment.

Whitlock explains that not only have sports turned their back on “all biblical values,” but they were founded and organized in the mid-1800s by Christians.

“This is all documented history. You can even find this information on Wikipedia. This isn’t hidden information. The Young Men’s Christian Association organized sports in the mid- to late 1800s and early 1900s as a tool to fight first-wave feminism,” Whitlock explains.

“They started organizing sports to disciple young men in muscular, masculine Christianity. So, this is a gift — sports, organized sports — handed to us by God. And we’ve turned our back on it, and/or we have allowed non-Christians, the secular crowd, to snatch sports away from us,” he continues.

“And that’s why I sit here today, pondering, halfway believing, if not fully believing, sports are under judgment,” he adds, citing the “six woes of judgment” in Isaiah 5.

“Greed and land-grabbing, endless partying and escapism, defiance and mockery, moral confusion — when you start calling evil ‘good’ and good ‘evil’ — arrogance and self-wisdom, and then corrupt justice through bribery,” he explains.

“And in the book of Isaiah, God tells you there’s going to be this coming foreign invasion,” he continues. “And so, I just want you to think about what we’re witnessing in America. Do we not have these judgments? Are these not all obvious? Are we not experiencing a foreign invasion and a hijacking of our Christian culture?”

God, Whitlock says, came up “with a way through sports to encourage and disciple and develop masculine men with the right values.”

“And so, basketball and football and baseball, they’re all being organized so that Christian men can disciple young men in a masculine form of Christianity. And we’ve handed this over,” he explains, noting that “we’ve turned our back on this blessing.”

“And you wonder why sports are in total collapse. You wonder why they’re totally invaded by corruption — bad, corrupt officiating. You wonder why the athletes are falling injured at record pace. You wonder why the games, the quality of play, is no good,” he continues.

“You’re not going to produce good fruit from the world of sports when it’s been turned over to radical materialism and money,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Jason whitlock, Ymca, Christianity, Sports, Nfl, Nba, Blazetv show 

Republicans lost more than just a midterm election on Tuesday night. They lost an essential part of the coalition that put them in power. And if they respond by blaming fraud, bad luck, or the usual midterm headwinds, you may as well start planning for another defeat in 2028.

This election is not a story about swing voters suddenly falling in love with Democrats. It’s about the Trump coalition hemorrhaging support from its base, and that is a much bigger problem. It is also one the Republican establishment seems uniquely incapable of confronting.

Presidents lose midterms. That is nothing new. What is new is losing voters from your base on an unprecedented scale.

In 2024, Donald Trump won with a coalition that included Gen X by 11 points, young men, and Hispanic men who had grown tired of the Democrats’ cultural insanity and economic failures. Those voters did not sign up for the latest corporate Republican seminar on how to lose gracefully.

They voted for mass deportations, law and order, accountability, and — most importantly — no new wars. Remember that campaign promise?

Did they get what they voted for?

The first two years of the Trump administration have seen some genuine, remarkable accomplishments. The FBI reports that murders fell by roughly 18% in 2025. Illegal border crossings have sunk to almost nothing. Don’t discount those achievements.

But where is the promised accountability for the abuses of the Biden and Obama years? Where is the follow-through on the Epstein files? Why do Republicans always seem to discover new procedural hurdles whenever the voters ask them to deliver on their promises?

And then there’s Iran.

Let me be clear: The Iranian regime is evil. Few people have been as consistently vocal on this issue as I have. But it’s one thing to use American air power to ensure Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon and quite another to drag our military and economy into a monthslong quagmire with no end in sight and no clear definition of victory.

What does winning look like? When is the mission over? What, exactly, are Americans being asked to sacrifice?

Meanwhile, Republicans still haven’t figured out how to govern. They excel at being a loud minority. Give them a Democrat to denounce, a hearing to stage, or a fundraising email to send, and they have all the energy in the world. Give them power, and they start explaining why they can’t give the base what they asked for.

Here is the question at the heart of Tuesday’s electoral wipeout: Is the GOP a populist party that answers to its voters, or a corporate party that strings the base along when it’s convenient? We cannot keep pretending these are the same thing.

RELATED: Iowa picks a Democrat senator

Photo by Scott Morgan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Look at South Carolina. Trump backed Darline Graham, sister of the late Lindsey Graham, for the Senate seat, and she went on to lose in one of the most humiliating Republican defeats imaginable. A completely preventable slap in the face to the president’s own base.

Tarrant County, Texas, is another example. That county has been a Republican stronghold, and it swung 30 points to the Democrats. You cannot blame a shift like that on voter fraud or independents.

Democrats didn’t need to reinvent themselves to capitalize on Republican failure. They borrowed the language of affordability and accountability while their ideological vanguard — represented by Democratic Socialist candidates across the country — kept moving left. When they take power, expect the mask to drop in a hurry. Investigations, lawfare, and political retaliation will be the order of the day.

To end on a high note, such as it is, we are not going to lose the Republic overnight. As long as Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito remain on the Supreme Court, the constitutional order will stay more or less where it is. Without 60 votes in the Senate, Democrats can only do so much.

Presidents lose midterms. That is nothing new. What is new is losing voters from your base on an unprecedented scale. The White House needs to have a serious conversation about what happened if they want to stop this problem from getting worse.

President Trump needs to remember who put him in office. The historic coalition that made his presidency possible can take its support elsewhere if he does not follow through for them.

Republicans need to ask why its own voters abandoned them. And this time, they might try listening to the answers.

​2026 midterms, Darline graham, Democrats, Donald trump, Epstein files, Gen x, Law and order, Lindsey graham, Mass deportations, Opinion & analysis, Republicans, South carolina, Tarrant county, Crushing defeat