Republican and Democrat leaders alike entered Tuesday night anxiously. Each side feared its loudest members would turn the State of the Union into an ugly scene and poison the evening.

Democrats worried about the Squad and about 78-year-old Texas Rep. Al Green, who after 10 terms in Congress seems more comfortable waving signs than writing laws. Republicans worried about the president — specifically, whether he would get dragged into a nasty back-and-forth with congressional activists.

Trump does not pretend the country is more unified than it is. He ran as a builder and a wrecking ball: a candidate with a program and a man eager to force Democrats to defend their most radical positions.

President Donald Trump had another idea.

He had no reason to brawl from the podium, flanked by the vice president and the speaker of the House and standing at the most powerful pulpit in American politics. He set a trap instead. In front of more than 30 million ordinary Americans, Democrats walked into it.

Political junkies live inside the daily partisan trench war. They know the script. The fighting started not long after America’s founding and never really stopped.

Most Americans do not live that way.

They have jobs, kids, bills, errands, sports, church, aging parents, and whatever time remains at the end of the day. With the old monoculture mostly dead, they gather around only a handful of events: a few major sports broadcasts, presidential elections, and the State of the Union.

Viewership has fallen over the decades, but the speech still pulls a massive audience — usually somewhere between 30 million and 40 million people. In modern America, that is a huge number.

For perspective, the finale of “Game of Thrones” drew just under 20 million viewers. The USA-Canada hockey game pulled 18.6 million live viewers. The Super Bowl remains the true annual monocultural event, with around 60 million viewers, but even that scale only underscores the point: the State of the Union still reaches a country-sized audience.

More important than the raw number is who those viewers are.

Many of them do not follow politics closely. They caught the big campaign ads, such as “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” and responded. They saw headlines about riots, crime, and immigration. Maybe they saw footage of crackdowns. Then they went back to their lives.

On Tuesday night, they tuned in again — and watched Trump stage a live study in contrasts.

After spending the first hour of the speech reciting accomplishments and laying out goals, Trump turned toward the increasingly agitated Democrat side of the chamber and began forcing choices.

He challenged them to stand if they put American citizens ahead of illegal immigrants and foreign nationals. They sat.

He put a grieving mother before them — the mother of a young Ukrainian woman murdered on a train in North Carolina — and dared them to remain frozen. They did. Iryna Zarutska may be the only Ukrainian in the world Democrats won’t cheer for.

He highlighted a young woman torn from her family as a child by transgender ideology and the institutions that privilege bureaucrats over parents. Democrats reacted exactly as he wanted.

Even when he managed to draw applause from them — despite every congressional instinct telling members to show nothing — he flipped the moment and used it to needle the institution itself, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the chamber’s most famous suspected symbol of insider trading.

State of the Union speeches are usually built for broad appeal. Presidents of both parties use them to sound larger than their coalition. Barack Obama did this well. However radical his policies, he often sounded like Ronald Reagan in these addresses. He studied the Great Communicator, and it showed. Republicans could call him a liar and an ideologue — and did — but many Americans liked the version of Obama they saw on that stage each year.

Trump operates in a different register and in a different era.

He does not pretend the country is more unified than it is. In both 2016 and 2024, he ran as a builder and a wrecking ball: a candidate with a program and a man eager to force Democrats to defend their most radical positions.

That formula worked in both victories. He laid out a positive vision while tying Democrats to policies many voters reject — open borders, soft-on-crime governance, and transgender ideology aimed at children.

Tuesday night, he did not need a campaign ad buy to run the same play.

He had the pomp, the circumstance, and, most importantly, the audience.

And with the instincts of a once-in-a-generation political talent, he let Democrats supply the contrast for him.

​Opinion & analysis 

In his nearly two-hour State of the Union address last night, President Trump celebrated what he described as an extraordinary “turnaround for the ages” in his leadership, declaring America now “bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever” amid a booming economy marked by declining inflation, reduced gas and mortgage rates, rising wages, and a tightly secured border with no illegal entries reported in recent months.

He spotlighted aggressive immigration enforcement measures, stood firm on his tariff strategy, cautioned Iran against pursuing nuclear weapons while favoring diplomatic paths, floated new proposals like universal retirement savings access and curbs on institutional home buying, paid tribute to military veterans and the Olympic hockey squad, delivered pointed critiques of Democrats and previous administrations, and painted an optimistic picture of renewed national strength heading into the midterm elections.

But there was one singular moment that BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre says was genuinely unforgettable.

“The moment that’s going to stay with me for the rest of my life is watching Iryna Zarutska’s mother with Erica Kirk and just the pain on her face in that moment and the fact that Democrats could not even in that moment summon a shred of humanity,” he says.

“I still don’t think that we have dealt with the psychic trauma again of that one-two punch of Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska, and so I think that [Trump] highlighting that and, you know, showing the grief that is still there for that mother and knowing that we need justice, we need to end political violence, we need to end the soft-on-crime policy — I think those were all incredibly strong moments for him,” he adds.

Fellow BlazeTV host and SOTU panel member Steve Deace agrees that this was one of the most powerful, albeit enraging, moments of the entire event.

He points to a viral tweet from Turning Point USA Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer that shined a spotlight on the depths of Democrats’ hypocrisy.

Deace calls the close-up snapshot a “devastating” blow to Democrats.

“It’s a post of one of the Democrat members of Congress who did not want to stand during [the honoring of Anna Zarutska], and he’s got a Ukraine flag on his lapel. If that is not a portrait of where we are,” he scoffs.

“This is what the Democrats actually think of the Ukrainian people,” says guest and senior editor at Human Events Jack Posobiec.

To hear more, watch the video below.

​Btv, Blazetv specials, Blazetv, Blaze media, Sotu, 2026 sotu, Trump sotu, State of the union, State of the union address, Auron macintyre, Steve deace, Jack posobiec 

While President Donald Trump gave the first State of the Union address of his second term on Tuesday night, many Democrats boycotted the speech and opted to engage in some unconventional counterprogramming.

For example, some Democrats attended an event organized by Defiance.org at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C, and at least one of them was joined on stage by some … special guests.

‘Tonight I defy Trump and his authoritarian project by standing in joyful, radical, peaceful resistance with the Portland Frog Brigade!’

Video emerged on Tuesday night showing Oregon Rep. Maxine Dexter (D) speaking at the event, while six inflatable frogs stood beside her and many more stood off to the side.

“Tonight I defy Trump and his authoritarian project by standing in joyful, radical, peaceful resistance with the Portland Frog Brigade!” Dexter said as the frogs jumped around and waved small American flags.

RELATED: VIDEO: Federal agents clash with mob of Antifa-fueled, anti-ICE protesters in Portland

Defiance.org describes itself as a “club for courageous Americans — people willing to take peaceful, lawful, defiant action to defend democracy from a wannabe dictator.” The organization partnered with the Portland Frog Brigade for this event, though the group has been making its anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement stance known since last year.

According to its “about” page, the Portland Frog Brigade was created after an anti-ICE activist — apparently known by several names such as Toad, Toad Todd, and antifascistfrog — was sprayed by federal law enforcement outside Portland’s ICE facility. The organization emphasizes that the “absurdity” is core to the idea behind the group:

The image of a cartoon frog facing off against a wall of heavily armored men was so strikingly absurd that it cut straight through the noise and brought home the reality that our government is treating peaceful citizens as enemies.

From that moment, the frog became a symbol of resistance that refuses to lose its joy. The Brigade took inspiration from Toad and grew as so many others donned inflatable animal suits and joined actions across the country and around the world.

However, not all is well in inflatable paradise.

The partnership between Defiance.org and Portland Frog Brigade has apparently caused infighting with an adjacent group called Operation Inflation.

Operation Inflation posted a video on Instagram criticizing the partnership and distancing itself from the other organization: “The frog brigade, however, saw the frog and emptied it of context, taking the image without the work, the aesthetic without the politics, and shared it with an establishment that can only function through neutralizing resistance.”

“When the loudest voices take the safest route, do not trust them,” the spokesperson in a red frog suit said.

Toad, the figurehead, reposted the video on his own Instagram account, seemingly attempting to likewise distance the symbol from the Portland Frog Brigade. He has also previously called the brigade a “business of grifters seeking to piggy off the backs of actual activists.”

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​Politics, Maxine dexter, Portland oregon, Oregon, Portland, Ice, Anti ice, Anti ice protests, State of the union, Portland frog brigade, Antifascistfrog, Democrats, Defiance.org, Operation inflation, Toad 

Federal authorities confirmed media reports that the home and office of the Los Angeles School District superintendent were raided Wednesday but could not offer additional details.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho oversees the second-largest school district in the U.S., with over 420,000 students.

‘We can confirm that the FBI is serving a court-authorized warrant.’

Sources told KNBC-TV that Carvalho’s home in San Pedro was searched on a warrant. One neighbor reportedly saw as many as 20 agents at the residence.

“We can confirm that the FBI is serving a court-authorized warrant at those locations,” said the Los Angeles office of the FBI in a statement. “However, the affidavit in support of the warrant has been sealed by the court and we, therefore, have no further comment.”

Carvalho has been a frequent and vocal critic of the Trump administration, especially with regard to Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations near his schools.

In June, he said that school police would be deployed to protect the families of students from federal law enforcement agents at graduation ceremonies.

“We stand strongly on the right side of law,” said Carvalho at the time. “Every student in our community, every student across the country, has a constitutional right to a free public education of high quality, without threat.”

RELATED: LA schools to set up police perimeters to keep ICE away from students and their families

“Every one of our students, independently of their immigration status, has a right to a free meal in our schools. Every one of our children, no questions asked, has a right to counseling, social-emotional support, mental support,” he added.

Carvalho has been the LAUSD superintendent since 2022 and previously managed the Miami-Dade School District. He has often cited his experience as a former illegal alien from Portugal when criticizing the Trump administration.

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The Epstein files released by the Department of Justice last month painted Microsoft co-founder and vaccine champion Bill Gates in a particularly unfavorable light.

Amid uproar over her ex-husband’s repeat mention in the files — including in a 2013 email wherein Jeffrey Epstein alleged that he procured for Bill Gates “drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls” — Melinda French Gates told NPR’s “Wild Card” podcast, “It’s personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage.”

‘Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse.’

While French Gates indicated that she has “been able to move on in life,” her ex-husband is alternatively still dealing with the consequences of his long-standing association with the notorious child sex offender.

Gates reportedly apologized to the staff of the Gates Foundation for the fallout of his Epstein ties during a town hall on Tuesday, stating, “It was a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein,” according to a recording reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

Gates, who has not been accused of wrongdoing by any of Epstein’s victims and whose spokesperson characterized the claims in the 2013 email as “completely false,” reportedly stressed, “I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit.”

The billionaire reportedly had an explanation for the photographs in the files featuring him in the company of women whose faces are redacted. Epstein asked to take pictures of his assistants with Gates after meetings, Gates claimed, according to the Journal.

RELATED: Epstein-friendly lesbians managing fraud-plagued Manhattan club in hot water — again

Photo by Leon Neal – WPA Pool /Getty Images

“To be clear, I never spent any time with the victims, the women around him,” said Gates, according to the Journal. He noted, however, that he “did have affairs, one with a Russian bridge player who met me at bridge events, and one with a Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities.”

Gates reportedly suggested further that despite his ex-wife expressing concerns about Epstein in 2013 — five years after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor for prostitution — Gates continued meeting with Epstein.

“Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse in terms of not only his crimes in the past, but now it’s clear there was ongoing bad behavior,” Gates reportedly told staff.

Gates, apparently recognizing that his relationship with Epstein helped boost Epstein’s reputation, reportedly apologized “to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake I made.”

Gates also recognized the negative impact his Epstein ties have had on the organization previously known as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which became the Gates Foundation last year following the couple’s divorce and previous revelations about Bill’s ties to Epstein.

“It definitely is the opposite of the values of the Foundation and the goals of the Foundation,” said Gates, who has directly and through his foundation worked to shape public health, the news landscape, education policy, AI, American farmland, the energy sector, foreign policy, and the Earth itself.

“And our work is very reputational sensitive,” continued the billionaire. “I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us.”

When asked about the recording and Gates’ remarks, the Gates Foundation told Blaze News in a statement, “This was a scheduled townhall with employees, which Bill does twice a year. In the conversation, Bill answered questions submitted by foundation staff on a range of issues, including the release of the Epstein files, the foundation’s work in AI, and the future of global health.”

The foundation added, “In the townhall, Bill spoke candidly, addressing several questions in detail, and took responsibility for his actions.”

“The harm Epstein inflicted on women and girls was horrific, and no one should ever have to experience what they did,” the foundation said in a statement earlier this month. “The foundation regrets having any employees interact with Epstein in any way.”

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​Bill gates, Gates, Cabal, Pedophile, Jeffrey epstein, Epstein, Sex offender, Microsoft, Gates foundation, Philanthropy, Politics 

Messaging app Discord assured its users that they will not have to show their faces, unless they live in certain places.

In certain regions, users will still be subject to face scans or government ID submission.

‘We’ll give you options, designed to tell us only your age and never your identity.’

This comes after a data breach in October that saw at least 70,000 images of government-issued IDs stolen through one of Discord’s third-party verification services. Proton reported that passports, driver’s licenses, names, and IP addresses were stolen, along with user transcripts from conversations they had with support agents.

Still, in February 2025, Discord told users that their profiles would promptly be reverted to teen-level accounts by default, unless they submit to “facial age estimation or submit a form of identification to its vendor partners.”

This means that without verification, users could not get message requests, join political chats, or unblur a wide variety of sensitive content.

After some intense backlash, though, Discord is now rolling back its requirements, but only for now.

RELATED: Gamers REVOLT over age-verify scheme subjecting users to ‘suspicious entity detection’

Photo by Thomas Fuller/NurPhoto via Getty Images

It seems obvious that Discord still has plans to roll out user verification eventually, but at this time it is leaning toward requiring less intrusive means. However, in some jurisdictions, giving up one’s identity is still required by law.

“Where we have legal obligations, we will continue to meet them,” the company wrote in a blog post.

In “the U.K., Australia, and Brazil, the law may require platforms to use approved methods like facial age estimation or ID checks,” Discord continued, adding that it will be exploring alternative methods of verification in other jurisdictions.

“If you’re among the less than 10% of users who do need to verify, we’ll give you options, designed to tell us only your age and never your identity.”

Simply put, Discord will still be enforcing age restrictions on the user experience.

RELATED: Digital tyrants want your face, your ID … and your freedom

Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP via Getty Images

Discord floated different verification options like credit card verification, while putting limits on companies that use facial age estimation.

“Any partner offering facial age estimation must perform it entirely on-device. If they don’t meet that bar, we won’t work with them,” the company said.

One company that “did not meet that bar” was Persona. Discord ran a “limited test” with the company customer verification service in the U.K. but has since decided not to move forward with it. It is unclear whether this relates to a recent report that showed Persona was not only performing almost 270 cross-reference checks on user face data, but the platform was allegedly set up for, and compliant with, parameters that allow for government access.

While Discord has promised ongoing transparency, it is still moving toward user data collection and will still be using facial scans to do so.

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Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) made waves at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, even shouting at President Donald Trump as he gave his speech and refusing to stand in support of American citizens. The controversy continued Wednesday after video emerged of the Democrat denying something she said directly into the camera.

Earlier that day, LindellTV posted to X a short interview between a reporter and Omar.

‘I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country.’

The reporter first asked Omar about her financial records and her alleged connection to a winery, both of which have some question marks lingering around them.

Omar snapped at the reporter and said, “Do you just ask silly questions?”

RELATED: ‘You should be ashamed’: Ilhan Omar melts down when asked to support Americans

Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The reporter moved on, asking her, “You recently stated that the American people should be afraid of the white man, that they should be fearful of the white man.”

“I never said that,” Omar replied.

“Yeah, you’re on video saying it,” the reporter said in disbelief.

The reporter then appears to have shown Omar video of her saying those words, yet Omar again denied it. She then admonished the reporter, claiming she needs to be more prepared because “what I was quoting was an actual study done by the FBI.”

In the video, which appears to come from a 2018 interview, Omar was asked about Islamophobia and its true origin.

The interviewer said, “A lot of conservatives in particular would say that the rise in Islamophobia is a result not of hate, but of fear. A legitimate fear, they say, of ‘jihadist terrorism.’ … What do you say to that?”

“I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country,” Omar replied.

“And so if fear is the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country, we should be profiling, monitoring, and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.”

Omar did not make any reference to any study or report from the FBI or other intelligence sources in the clip.

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​Politics, Ilhan omar, Rep ilhan omar, White men, Islamophobia, Islam, Jihadist, State of the union, President trump, Sotu 

I grew up measuring time by the turn of seasons. Autumn meant schoolbooks and shorter days. Winter meant stripped fields, wind off the Atlantic, and weekend mornings beside my father in the wild stretch of Connemara, County Galway. Stone walls, peat bog, and low mountains framed the years that shaped me.

We hunted game birds — wing shooting, as my father called it. Pheasants burst from hedgerows in a clatter of bronze feathers. Woodcock came tearing through trees like pilots who had misplaced their maps. Snipe flickered over the marsh, determined to test the dignity of anyone aiming at them. Over time, you learned the land — and with it the humbling truth that even a bird with a walnut-sized brain could make you look foolish.

There was a burst of snarling, then a sound I still hear nearly 20 years later. Two badgers were below.

Nothing about it was hurried. We walked for miles. We watched the wind. We read the ground. We spoke softly, and often not at all.

My first gun

My first gun came later than I wanted and earlier than my mother preferred. I fired my first shot at 13. I still remember the weight of it, the kick, the sudden understanding that I was holding something that demanded respect. I also remember missing completely and nearly falling backward from the recoil. My father didn’t laugh. He checked my stance, corrected my grip, and only then allowed himself a small smile that said “you’ll learn.”

And I did.

At first, like any boy, all I wanted was to pull the trigger and fire into the sky. But my father had other ideas.

Learning to shoot, he insisted, was an art. Cheek firm to the stock. Follow through. Don’t rush. Breathe steadily. Safety first, always. A gun was never waved about, never pointed without purpose, never treated as a toy. It was a tool, and tools required competence.

No waste

The first time I hit a clay target, a surge of triumph swept over me. The first time I brought down a pheasant cleanly, I felt pride — and with it a sober awareness of what the shot meant. A life had ended, and I understood my part in it. My father insisted that we retrieve every bird and carry it home. Waste wasn’t tolerated. Nothing was done carelessly.

In those early years, the hunting extended beyond birds. Foxes came too close to the farm in lambing season. They took what they could. When that happened, the task fell to us. I was younger then, and I didn’t relish it, but I understood it. This wasn’t sport but protection. The lambs were vulnerable. The farm depended on them. Badgers, powerful and stubborn creatures, could maim or kill a sheep if they set upon it.

One afternoon, when I was about 15, we brought our two terriers to a sett we had been watching. They were small, fearless dogs — my father’s pride and joy — bred to go to ground and drive out whatever lay beneath. We waited above the hole, listening.

What came back up wasn’t what we expected.

Brief and brutal

There was a burst of snarling, then a sound I still hear nearly 20 years later. Two badgers were below. The fight was brief and brutal. When it ended, both terriers were dead.

The silence afterward felt unnatural. My father said little. He knelt beside the dogs, his hands steady, his face set in a way I had never seen. That day left its mark on both of us.

Within a week, he had tracked the badgers’ movements. He watched their runs, noted their patterns, and returned at dusk when they emerged. He shot them cleanly. I remember the way I looked at him then — not simply as my father, but as someone I deeply admired. Our dogs were gone, and he had set things right.

RELATED: Fishing with my dying father

Tim Graham/Getty Images

A simple nod

After that, our trips to Connemara changed. I was less a child tagging along and more a companion. We walked side by side, reading the land together. He asked what I saw and waited for the answer.

I recently flew back to Ireland to hunt with my father again. Dawn came slowly over the Twelve Bens, washing the valley in a soft silver light.

We walked as we always had. Now in his early 60s, he moved more slowly, but his eye remained sharp. A pheasant burst from cover. I swung, fired, and missed. He said nothing. Another bird rose minutes later. This time the shot landed true. He nodded once — which, from him, amounted to high praise.

There is a caricature of gun culture that reduces it to aggression — the love of noise, the love of power. That was never my experience. Hunting with my father gave me a vocabulary that didn’t rely on words. Approval showed itself in the briefest of looks. Correction came with a hand on the stock. Trust arrived in small responsibilities — carrying the gun, crossing a wall safely, judging distance and wind.

We ended the day as we always did: muddy boots, cold hands, birds cleaned and hung, and a couple of pints at the local pub. Outside, evening settled. Inside, there was warmth and a quiet satisfaction.

​Hunting, Fathers and sons, Fatherhood, Ireland, Shooting, Guns, Lifestyle, Pheasant hunting, County galway, Connemara, First person