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The 2026 Grammy Awards were supposed to celebrate music, creativity, and artistic diversity, but instead they became a showcase for Hollywood elites pushing the same political narratives.

“The pack mentality is strong,” film critic Christian Toto tells BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere on “Stu Does America.”

“The rhetoric is pretty familiar. It’s often ugly. It’s often ill-informed. And you know, for a while there, these award shows were political. There were a lot of lectures, a lot of woke asides, and then it seemed like they tapped the breaks on that. They’ve been a little bit less so in recent years,” he continues.

However that’s changing, yet again.

“I think we’re veering back into it, it’s all full-steam ahead at this point. And I can’t imagine what the Oscars will be, because last night was ugly at times, and even Trevor Noah, you know, not only his crack against President Trump, which could be litigious, but basically calling out Nicki Minaj just because she supports Trump,” Toto says.

“Aren’t we allowed to do that?” he asks.

And of course, one of the most culturally important voices — at least to the left — was this year’s Super Bowl halftime performer Bad Bunny.

When Bad Bunny accepted his Grammy, the first thing he said was, “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out.” He went on to say that immigrants are not “savages,” “aliens,” or “animals,” but rather “humans” and “Americans.”

“If you’re a citizen you are, but those aren’t the people we’re talking about removing. We’re talking about removing people that are not Americans. That is the difference. And they just have no concept of this,” Stu comments.

Sticking to the liberal talking points, Billie Eilish also decided to bash Immigration and Customs Enforcement in her acceptance speech at the Grammys, telling the wealthy audience that “no one is illegal on stolen land.”

“I have to credit Matt Walsh for a great point, which is like if there’s no one that’s illegal, then you can’t steal land,” Stu says.

“There’s a point where Sabrina Carpenter is out in the audience,” he continues, “she’s this little, you know, pop star, and she’s just looking up and clapping with these, like, just innocent, dullard eyes, just this, like, ‘Oh my gosh, what you’re saying is so important,’ just this moronic nonsense, and it just summarizes everything in Hollywood.”

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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing calls from lawmakers and critics to resign over his appointment of Peter Mandelson, a known associate and possible informant of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.

While Starmer’s right-hand man, Morgan McSweeney, resigned on Sunday over his involvement with Mandelson’s appointment, the prime minister doesn’t appear keen to meaningfully accept any responsibility himself — a reluctance now supported by many of his liberal allies in the British government.

A short-lived appointment

Starmer appointed Mandelson — known in British political circles as the “Prince of Darkness” — as ambassador to the U.S. in December 2024, claiming he would “bring unrivaled experience to the role.”

Starmer’s choice was controversial at the time.

‘The game’s up, mate, and it’s time you recognized it.’

After all, Mandelson had not only publicly described the recently re-elected Donald Trump as a “danger to the world” and “little short of a white nationalist and racist,” but was an associate of Epstein long after Epstein pleaded to soliciting sex from girls as young as 14.

A source told the BBC that when Starmer made the decision, “The Epstein stuff in broad terms was definitely known and discussed in detail before his appointment.”

RELATED: Why are so many people all of a sudden saying Epstein is alive?

Peter Mandelson. Photo by Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

Emails released last year revealed that the Starmer pick was not only chummy with Epstein, but had grown close enough with the sex offender to apparently regard him as his “best pal.”

The Foreign Office announced on Sept. 11 that Mandelson had been withdrawn as ambassador, noting that the “emails show that the depth and extent of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment.”

“In particular Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information,” added the Foreign Office.

It gets worse

Any hopes that Starmer’s office may have had of putting the Mandelson appointment in the rearview mirror were dashed by the Department of Justice’s latest release of the Epstein files, which contains emails showing that Mandelson was not only tight with Epstein but possibly furnished him with confidential government information.

The New York Times noted, for instance, that newly released emails appear to reveal that Mandelson provided Epstein with a confidential economic memorandum that had been sent to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The documents also reportedly indicate that Epstein paid Mandelson $75,000 across three separate transactions in the early 2000s.

Mandelson announced earlier this month that he was leaving Starmer’s Labour Party to spare it from “further embarrassment.”

In a Feb. 1 letter to the party’s general secretary, Mandelson claimed that he had no record or recollection of financial payments from Epstein; he regretted “ever having known Epstein”; and had dedicated his “life to the values and success of the Labour Party.”

Mandelson is presently under investigation for possible misconduct in public office.

Starmer digs in heels

Days after his appointee left the Labour Party, Starmer gave a speech, stating, “Sorry that so many people with power failed you. Sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him.”

After insinuating that he was deceived by Mandelson, Starmer suggested that he will remain in the role of prime minister to “ensure accountability is delivered.”

Apparently, accountability for Starmer meant letting Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney fall on his sword.

In a statement obtained by the Spectator concerning his resignation on Sunday, McSweeney wrote, “The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country, and trust in politics itself.”

McSweeney, an apparent protégé of Mandelson, claimed that he advised Starmer to make the appointment and that the “only honorable course is to step aside.”

On Monday, Starmer’s director of communications, Tim Allan, also quit “to allow a new No. 10 team to be built.”

Neither resignation appears to have placated those in the British Parliament keen to see Starmer shoulder some blame.

Calls to resign

Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, said on Monday, “The leadership from Downing Street has to change,” reported ITVX.

“We cannot allow the failures at the heart of Downing Street to mean the failures continue here in Scotland,” continued Sarwar. “They promised they were going to be different, but too much has happened. It cannot continue.”

Clive Lewis, a member of Starmer’s party, suggested that upon reflection, it’s clear the Labour Party is “ruined” and needs to be rebuilt without its current leadership.

Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK Party, told GB News, “It’s over; it’s done. The game’s up, mate, and it’s time you recognized it.”

“He’s lost legitimacy, he’s lost authority, events have moved way beyond his control, and I’m afraid it’s all down to his own grievous misjudgment,” continued Farage. “But remember, even before the Peter Mandelson case, he was already the most unpopular prime minister in living memory.”

On Monday, Starmer stated, “After having fought so hard for the chance to change our country, I’m not prepared to walk away from my mandate and my responsibility to my country, or to plunge us into chaos, as others have done,” reported the Guardian.

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The Department of Justice’s publication last month of over 3 million additional pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images from the Jeffrey Epstein files provided the public with new insights into the child sex offender, his degeneracy, his business dealings, and his international network of affluent friends.

The files, which are replete with odd and in many cases damning communications — already triggering at least one criminal investigation in the United Kingdom — have prompted renewed interest in a number of theories about Epstein.

While many sleuths poring over the files have zeroed in on references to cannibalism and accusations of Epstein and his inner circle allegedly engaging in “ritualistic sacrifice,” others appear more focused on what the files have to say about the sex offender’s reported death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.

Citing discrepancies in the official narrative, admissions about falsified records, and viral claims on social media, skeptics have long theorized that Epstein did not kill himself but was murdered or possibly even secreted away in August 2019.

Despite the newly available autopsy photos and details, these theories are enjoying a second life due in part to certain details in the new files, a viral image of a bearded look-alike, and signs of activity on a video game account name associated with the sex offender.

Epstein in Tel Aviv

An image went viral earlier this month purportedly showing a bearded Jeffrey Epstein alive and well in Israel. On closer examination, however, the image — which was popularized in part by a self-described “unapologetic Muslim Palestinian” and by a Middle Eastern-based news account — showed signs of AI manipulation and/or generation.

For starters, the wording on the street signs is reportedly “gibberish,” providing not only incorrect Hebrew and Arabic lettering but in one case referencing a road that doesn’t appear to exist.

RELATED: Bill Clinton accuses GOP of setting up ‘kangaroo court’ over Epstein testimony — and demands public hearing

The Metropolitan Correctional Center. Photo by Don Emmert / AFP via Getty Images.

The supposed photograph of Epstein in Tel Aviv also appears to be a cropped version of an image that appeared days earlier bearing a Gemini AI watermark on the subreddit r/hardaiimages — a destination for AI-generated images designed to give viewers pause.

The pre-emptive death notice

In line with the official narrative, the newly released FBI New York Field Office report regarding Epstein’s death — which includes images of paramedics apparently attempting to revive the sex offender, an image of his corpse without his arm tattoo visible, images of his broken hyoid bone and breaks in his thyroid cartilage, and images of his apparent scene of death — asserts that Epstein was found unresponsive and died as the result of an apparent suicide on the morning of Aug. 10, 2019.

However, one of the other newly released files suggested that Epstein died a day earlier.

In the document, which is dated Aug. 9, 2019, then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman stated, “Earlier this morning, the Manhattan Correctional Center confirmed that Jeffrey Epstein, who faced charges brought by this Office of engaging in the sex trafficking of minors, had been found unresponsive in his cell and pronounced dead shortly thereafter.”

‘Someone’s been having fun renaming their Fortnite account.’

“Today’s events are disturbing, and we are deeply aware of their potential to present yet another hurdle to giving Epstein’s many victims their day in Court,” Berman added.

The date on the release as it appears now with an “updated” note on the Justice Department website is Aug. 10, 2019.

The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

While the incorrect date might simply be a typo in a draft release, many online have speculated it is an indication of foreknowledge of Epstein’s real or faked death.

Gaming from beyond the grave

Some sleuths who dug into the new trove of Epstein files found mention of the child sex offender’s YouTube username, “littlestjeff1.” They also found possible evidence that Epstein was active in the video gaming ecosystem after his permanent ban from Xbox live in the form of a May 7, 2019, email highlighting a $25.95 charge for the virtual currency in the game Fortnite.

Justice Department.

In a massively viral and widely shared tweet, the X user @Truthpole noted that some individuals “matched this exact username to a Fortnite profile on Fortnite Tracker … which showed stats like Silver 1 rank in Chapter 5 Season 1 (post-2019), wins into 2025, and past activity flagged in Israel.”

The suggestion that Epstein may have been active on Fortnite after his supposed death was not only advanced in viral posts by other accounts on X but on other social media platforms, including Instagram.

The claim was all the more provocative after littlestjeff1’s stats were set to private earlier this month, according to archived page captures highlighted by Snopes.

Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Fornite’s developer and publisher Epic Games, weighed in on Feb. 6 to pour cold water on this particular theory, writing, “Someone’s been having fun renaming their Fortnite account, but it’s recent and not connected to the email addresses in the archive.”

The official Fortnite Status account similarly piped up, stating, “This was a ruse by a Fortnite player.”

“A few days ago, an existing Fortnite account owner changed their username from something totally unrelated to littlestjeff1, following the revelation of littlestjeff1 as a name on YouTube,” the official Fortnite account said. “These Fortnite trackers only display your current name, not any prior changes to it.”

The Fortnite Status account noted further, “We have no record of the subject’s email addresses referenced in the public document existing in the Epic account system. Since the public document releases, people have created Fortnite accounts with similar-looking email addresses and user names.”

When challenged on this explanation and prompted to account for why the apparent Epstein handle appeared to be associated with the game user in a third-party, year-end recap detailing player results in 2025, Fornite Status noted, “Fortnite gg Wrapped shows the account’s current name with stats from 2025.”

Skepticism still abounds about the explanation from Epic Games, given the mention of the digital Fortnite currency purchase in the Epstein emails; however, in that email, both the sender and the recipient’s addresses were redacted. Snopes suggested that other correspondences in the files indicate the game currency purchase pertained to a mother and her child.

Besides eyebrow-raising video game activity, fake sightings, and a questionable DOJ memo, skeptics have also raised questions about other findings in the files, including the mention in an FBI memorandum of a “flash of orange” spotted on surveillance footage heading toward the isolated prison tier where Epstein was housed the night before his body was reportedly found.

A 2023 report on Epstein’s death released by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General identified the “orange shape” as a corrections officer carrying linen or inmate clothing.

Video forensic experts expressed to CBS News in August that they were “skeptical about that interpretation and suggested that the shape could be a person dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit climbing the stairs.”

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While many are debating the meaning of the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, at least one left-wing influencer was caught trying to peddle misinformation to rile up both sides.

Ed Krassenstein posted that a little boy included in the show was Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old who was abandoned by his father during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation and became a left-wing cause célèbre.

‘Holy racism you dumb f**k. … Nice self-own.’

“Many of you may have missed this, but the little boy who Bad Bunny handed his Grammy to at the Super Bowl was Liam Ramos! Amazing!” Krassenstein wrote.

The claim was immediately contradicted online, and Krassenstein was mocked and ridiculed for what many saw as a racist suggestion.

“It’s not Liam Ramos. This is a child actor named Lincoln Fox,” read a community note attached to the post on the X platform. The note linked to an Instagram account for the child actor confirming his presence at the game.

“Leftist thinks all Hispanic kids look the same,” podcaster Brittany Hughes joked.

“Pretty racist … to assume that all brown people are the same and that one kid is the same as another without even checking,” one critic said.

“Not only is this wrong, but it’s racist. And instead of deleting and posting an update, you’re keeping it up because you’re desperate for a few bucks,” another user said.

“Pretty racist of you to see a little Hispanic boy and assume it’s the one little Hispanic boy whose name you know,” another popular response reads.

“Holy racism you dumb f**k. All Hispanic kids look the same to you? They’re not even the same age or complexion you dips**t. Nice self-own. … Don’t ever preach from your pulpit again, d**khead,” another detractor responded.

“It’s not the same kid you absolute buffoon. Kid is about 4 inches taller than you though,” one user joked.

Krassenstein added a second message saying there were conflicting reports about the child. He eventually admitted the child was an actor but did not delete the first post, which got over 11 million impressions.

RELATED: ‘State-of-the-art’: GOP congressman pre-empts Crockett’s ‘grandstanding’ with glimpse inside ICE facility in Texas

A publicist for Bad Bunny rejected the claim to NPR Music and confirmed the boy was an actor.

The halftime show was also criticized by many who were angered that the music artist rapped almost entirely in Spanish, and one brief shot showed two men dancing suggestively with each other.

Turning Point USA’s alternative halftime show starring Kid Rock had more than 6.1 million viewers tune in on its YouTube livestream, according to the New York Times.

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Hollywood celebrities love nothing more than lecturing everyday Americans on morality, politics, and how we should live — but of course, their hypocrisy is hard to ignore.

“We’ve got all the hypocrisy in the world coming from Hollywood. These are not our moral exemplars, and they really don’t have as much influence over our elections as they think they do,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says.

“Thank the Lord. Otherwise, Donald Trump wouldn’t have won in 2016. He wouldn’t have won in 2024. So, we can continue to highlight their hypocrisy just as a good reminder that we shouldn’t be looking to them in any way,” she continues, noting that there are some exceptions — like Jelly Roll’s recent Grammys speech about Jesus Christ.

“There was a time in my life, y’all, that I was broken. That’s why I wrote this album. I didn’t think I had a chance, y’all. There was days that I thought the darkest things. I was a horrible human. There was a moment in my life that all I had was a Bible this big and a radio the same size in a 6-by-8-foot cell,” he said at the Grammys.

“And I believed that those two things could change my life. I believed that music had the power to change my life, and God had the power to change my life. And I want to tell y’all right now, Jesus is for everybody. Jesus is not owned by one political party. Jesus is not owned by no music label. Jesus is Jesus, and anybody can have a relationship with him. I love you, Lord,” he continued.

“Yes and amen,” Stuckey responds. “That is absolutely true. Love people giving glory to God in moments like that instead of saying stupid things about politics.”

“There’s no better news than the news that Jelly Roll just told us of the gospel,” she adds.

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Despite overwhelming support from the American electorate, over the past month Democrats have ratcheted up attacks on Republican-led nationwide voter ID legislation. On Sunday, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) slammed the attacks from his party in an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

During the wide-ranging interview, the conversation turned toward the SAVE Act, a bill that would require voters to show government-issued identification to register to vote in federal elections. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 36 states currently have voter identification laws.

‘As a Democrat, I do not believe it’s radical or extreme to just produce ID to vote.’

Host Maria Bartiromo asked Fetterman, “Why it is so difficult to get the SAVE Act into the portfolio and onto the floor? What’s wrong with having an ID to vote?”

The senator responded, “As a Democrat, I do not believe that it’s unreasonable to show ID just to vote. And I remind everybody that less than a year ago in Wisconsin, they added that to the constitution by a 63%, you know, passing to put that in the constitution, that you have to show ID to vote.”

Fetterman’s statement stands in stark contrast to his fellow Democratic senators, such as Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who went on ABC News’ “This Week” to fearmonger about voter ID laws by saying people “don’t have the proper Real ID, driver’s license, don’t have the ID necessary to vote, even though they are citizens. This is another way to simply try to suppress the vote.”

RELATED: ‘Vast majority’ of Americans of all races agree with Nicki Minaj about voter ID, says CNN analyst

Fetterman responded to those sorts of attacks from members of his party by highlighting the results of a recent Wisconsin election. He said, “They also elected a very, very liberal justice into their supreme court. So it’s not a radical idea for regular Americans to show your ID to vote.”

On February 2, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) labeled the SAVE Act “Jim Crow 2.0” in a Senate floor speech. The minority leader said, “Now as for the SAVE Act itself: It has nothing to do with protecting our elections and everything to do with federalizing voter suppression. The SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0.”

Fetterman is not buying that characterization: “Those things are not Jim Crow or anything.”

The senator from Pennsylvania’s position is in line with a large majority of American voters. CNN polling analyst Harry Enten recently told his audience, “A photo ID to vote is not controversial in this country. It is not controversial by party — and it is not controversial by race. The vast majority of Americans agree with Nicki Minaj.”

Minaj has also expressed support for voter ID laws.

Enten’s data showed that over 75% of Americans favor a photo ID to vote, including the highest support on record in 2025 at 83%.

In closing, Fetterman said, “As a Democrat, I do not believe it’s radical or extreme to just produce ID to vote.”

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According to a February 6 CBS News article, “Newly released Department of Justice documents show that investigators reviewing surveillance footage from the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s death observed an orange-colored shape moving up a staircase toward the isolated, locked tier where his cell was located at approximately 10:39 p.m” — an observation, CBS says, that has gone “previously unreported by authorities.”

In addition, the CBS reports that an “FBI memorandum” suggests that video footage reviews conducted by the FBI and other examiners “led to disparate conclusions” — the FBI logged the mysterious orange shape as “possibly an inmate,” while the inspector general’s report recorded it as “an unidentified [corrections officer]” carrying orange “linen or bedding.”

Glenn Beck is sincerely puzzled by these FBI reports. “Inmates at 10:39 are not going around in that area, outside of their cell, so FBI, that doesn’t make sense,” he says.

Further, “we now know … [the FBI] knew that bedding is delivered the shift before this. … No one is allowed on that floor at 10:39,” he adds.

Even more shocking to Glenn is that then-Attorney General Bill Barr publicly stated that “no one entered” Epstein’s housing tier the night of his death, which was then reiterated by former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino last summer during a “Fox & Friends” interview. These statements are seemingly called into question by the revelations made by CBS.

However, the most jaw-dropping revelation in the article, says Glenn, centers on shocking new details from corrections officers Tova Noel and Michael Thomas about the noose — or rather the lack of one — on the night Epstein reportedly took his own life.

According to the article, records of Thomas’ interview, which were released in the latest Epstein document dump, indicate that he told investigators he discovered Epstein in his cell early on August 10 and that he “ripped” him down from the hanging position. However, when asked about the noose, Thomas could not recall taking off a noose. Noel, who was reportedly standing at the entrance of Epstein’s cell at the time, told investigators that she did not see a noose either.

The noose, reported CBS, has “never been definitively identified,” and the one collected at the scene was later determined “not to be the ligature used in Epstein’s death.”

“All right: First, you had us believe that it was a paper noose. Now you’re saying the paper noose that was found was not the noose that killed him. In fact, you can’t find the noose — the paper noose — and this one was later added to the scene. By whom?” asks Glenn.

He is astounded that Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide by the chief medical examiner just six days later despite failure to identify the actual instrument that caused his death.

“You don’t have the … suicide weapon. The weapon that you do have, the noose, is not the noose that killed him. No explanation on how that arrived later at the scene. … You have a blurry figure going up in the middle of the night, and you can’t identify that individual … and yet you rule this a suicide?” he asks in disbelief. “That is fascinating to me.”

“I mean, there’s just no way to square this circle. There’s no way to do it. You cannot, with any credibility, say, ‘Yeah, this guy committed suicide,”’ he scoffs.

“There’s a reason why we don’t believe the government. There is a reason, and it’s this kind of crap.”

To hear more of Glenn’s commentary and analysis, watch the video above.

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While James Fishback, a Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate, has seen a good deal of campaign success since the launch of his campaign in late November, he has also seen a great deal of resistance — and potentially intimidation.

On Sunday night, Fishback’s campaign alleged that a fire was “intentionally set” near his house, where he and his team were working.

‘I’ll be hosting a rally in my own backyard tomorrow night.’

Emma Wright, Fishback’s campaign manager, posted an official statement less than an hour after the alleged incident.

“Shortly after 5:50 p.m. on Sunday, a fire was intentionally set in his side yard and began spreading toward his home, where Mr. Fishback and members of his staff were working. We are grateful to the Madison County Fire Rescue for their swift response and for containing the fire before it damaged his home,” the statement read.

RELATED: Young GOP outsider takes aim at Trump-endorsed candidate in campaign launch to replace Gov. DeSantis in Florida

Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images

Fishback’s campaign also condemned political violence of any kind, stressing that it has “no place in America.”

Fishback quote-tweeted the statement from his campaign manager, adding, “My team and I are okay.”

In a post that has since received 560,000 views, Fishback provided some photos of the scene, including what appears to be a burned area of a yard with the fire department on the scene.

Fishback followed up with a few more posts in the hours following the alleged attack, including an invitation to an unconventional rally.

“I’ll be hosting a rally in my own backyard tomorrow night,” he wrote just hours after the alleged incident on Sunday. “We will not be intimidated.”

Shortly thereafter, he added an invitation to his house for a “backyard rally.” The invitation included what appears to be his home address in Madison, Florida. The rally will be held on Monday night.

Blaze News reached out to Madison County Fire Rescue for comment. The Fishback campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

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Turn on any TV show with a funeral scene. Watch any movie from 1915 to 2026 with a funeral scene.

What do you see? Dignified grieving families all in tasteful, restrained black clothing. The men wear black suits. The women wear black dresses and obscure their faces with a veil, or at least the suggestion of one on a fascinator.

‘Personalization’ is precisely what most of us do not need at a moment of crisis.

You’ll never see a more unrealistic scene on film.

Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral

Very few reading this article have ever witnessed this kind of sober, black-clad mourning in real life. America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has jettisoned nearly all etiquette as “lol boomer stupid,” and not even the most solemn occasion was spared the vulgarization.

Go to a funeral today and tell me what you see. I’ll tell you what I see: men who should know better walking into the parlor in jeans and name-brand sneakers in day-glo colors. Women wearing tarty outfits that barely cover enough leg to qualify for even the skimpiest Catholic schoolgirl uniform.

Since the hippie-commie takeover of the 1960s, we have decided to let it all hang out, including our backsides and cleavage. No matter what. Nothing is serious. Nothing is sacred. Not even death has enough gravitas to prod the average American into showing respect through sober dress.

It’s time to bring back the black. Contrary to modern glibness about everything, etiquette is not some silly, optional “Boomer” fixation on using the correct utensil at dinner. It’s not an oppressive regime. Etiquette is the word we use for the universally agreed-upon rules of behavior.

All human societies have etiquette. Without it, there is no society, only tribes and warfare. When etiquette is important enough to be codified, it becomes what we call “law.” That, too, is becoming seen as some quaint notion from a bygone era, and we can all look to our cities to see where this road is taking us.

Digging in

For 20 years I was the executive director of a nonprofit called Funeral Consumers Alliance. It was an educational organization and a watchdog group. Think of it like Consumer Reports magazine, but only for the funeral and burial purchase. Our aim was to give people accurate information so they could choose a send-off that was emotionally meaningful and affordable.

Strange as that may sound, contemplate the fact that Americans spend more than $20 billion annually to bury the dead. It’s easy to see how the grieving can be hoodwinked into paying premium prices for scams like “protective caskets” (the claim is that they keep the body dry and preserved; not true) and a host of other purchases that push the tab up to $10,000 or more.

My mentor was the outgoing organization director who became my dear friend. Lisa was a tough old no-nonsense broad. We spent many a night at her kitchen table working while drinking wine and chain-smoking, cracking each other up over the absurdity of the funeral business while figuring out how to arm grieving people against graveside upselling.

Lisa taught me almost everything I know about the subject. When we first met in 2002, she told me how “modern” consumers wanted something different in a funeral. “The Baby Boomers aren’t going to put up with cookie-cutter funerals. They want personalization,” she said.

Graveside groove

Lisa was correct, as I would discover after taking over her job. During my two decades, I spoke with more than 10,000 American families over the phone who needed counseling on funeral arrangements. This gave me a good baseline of understanding of the American mind on the topic of deathways.

The majority who called for advice wanted to avoid overspending, certainly. But the next biggest category of question was, “How do we do this the right way, but also our way?”

This never sat right with me. The more I thought about it, I began to realize why. “Our way” invariably meant conforming to a new set of assumptions about death, assumptions we had adapted en masse at some point in the last 50 years.

To say someone “died” is offensively blunt; “passed away” or simply “passed” is preferred.“Funerals” are gloomy remnants of the Victorian era designed to make everyone suffer. What your friends and family really want is a “celebration of life.”And anyway, who cares what other people want? This is about you — not your loved ones and their messy, depressing grief. “Throw me a big party!”

In other words, we have agreed to pretend that death is just another stop on a soft-focus Life Journey™. If we maintain this fiction, then somehow the deaths of our husbands, wives, and friends won’t be real. Or we won’t hurt as much. We convinced ourselves that there was something pathological about being bereft.

Crisis without crutches

This is all fake. We can’t party away grief, and our efforts to do so have left people in mourning with no guideposts. Like G.K. Chesterton’s fence, we tore down the structures around death without asking why we built them.

Should I send invitations to the funeral or is that not “done” any more? Is it OK if I skip the wake? What kind of photos am I supposed to put in our PowerPoint Tribute™? Is it OK to play the pop standards of the 1950s that my dad loved? Am I wrong to think my granddaughter should not have worn a halter top to my husband’s wake?

Honestly, there’s no need for any of this flailing, but we did it to ourselves by insisting that what mattered most was “personalization.” Well, no. “Personalization” is precisely what most of us do not need at a moment of crisis. We need dependable crutches, and that’s what our former customs did for us.

Sadness welcome

Judith Martin is one of the wisest philosophers of the American mind of the past century. You know her as the arch etiquette columnist “Miss Manners.” Years ago, I read an essay in which she said in more eloquent words the same thing I’m trying to communicate now: Death is no time for improvisation. Funeral customs were support structures that buttressed the grieving, taking pressure off of them so they didn’t have to stand on their own when it was impossible to think through the emotions.

I’m pleased to see that she hasn’t changed her tune. And I’d like to persuade you to take her viewpoint seriously. In her column from March 2025 in the Washington Post, Martin responds to a reader who went all in on the “celebration of life” approach. Martin’s gentle reader asked her if she made a distinction between “funerals” and “celebrations of life.” She also asked Miss Manners if it was acceptable to wear white instead of black.

Martin responded this way:

Funerals used to be set rituals, usually religious ones. Eulogies were given by clergy members, who were unlikely to have known the deceased as well as their relatives and friends and could inadvertently make mistakes — misattributing specific virtues, for example.

She acknowledged that many modern people prefer “celebrations of life,” but find themselves making mistakes in tone at a time of solemnity because they’re preoccupied with putting on a “personalized” performance at the wrong time.

“But there is another danger in the very premise of a celebration of life: the attempt to banish sadness,” Martin wrote.

So please do not mandate cheerfulness. This loss is a tragedy, and grief should not be made to seem out of place. You may succumb to it yourself. The American color of mourning is black, although the code is only sporadically observed (except in cases of funerals for national figures). But Miss Manners is not going to say you should not wear white — a mourning color in other cultures — if it makes you feel better.

I’m going to out Miss-Manners Miss Manners and be a little less gentle to the readers. No, you may not wear white. Or green. Or what “feels comfortable.” The funeral is not about you. It is about standing together with people in sorrow and showing them that you recognize the depth of their loss. It is your moral duty to voluntarily forswear your own comfort and vanity as a signal of respect and love.

Get back into black.

​Manners, Judith martin, Miss manners, Etiquette, Funerals, Celebrations of life, Lifestyle, Funeral consumers alliance, Mourning, Death, Intervention 

For Americans tuning in to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, there was more than one choice for halftime show entertainment. Viewers could watch Bad Bunny’s halftime show at the Super Bowl, most of which was in Spanish, or they could switch over to Turning Point USA’s counterprogramming on YouTube and other social media platforms.

President Trump apparently watched the former — and quickly made his opinions about the show known.

‘Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting.’

On Sunday night, Trump attacked the performance via Truth Social.

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence,” Trump said.

RELATED: Bad Bunny delivers just 1 line in English during Super Bowl LX halftime show

Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images

He continued, “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World. This ‘Show’ is just a ‘slap in the face’ to our Country, which is setting new standards and records every single day — including the Best Stock Market and 401(k)s in History!”

Trump added that there was “nothing inspirational” about the show, but that the “Fake News Media” would shower the performance with praise “because they haven’t got a clue of what is going on in the REAL WORLD.”

Trump concluded the post with a familiar call to replace the NFL’s “ridiculous new Kickoff Rule,” a request he has made on more than one occasion when talking about the league.

Turning Point’s alternative show drew as many as 6.1 million concurrent viewers, according to one estimate from the Athletic.

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A male who last year ran over a Kansas City police officer with an ATV during a traffic stop, then sped away from the scene, has received his sentence.

Kansas City police said they tried to stop a group of ATV riders and motorcyclists committing traffic violations on April 12, 2025, KCTV-TV reported.

‘The noise and the aggressiveness, they’re not following any road rules, you know, they’re blazing through intersections.’

One officer tried to remove Kendall Coleman from his ATV and place him in custody, police told the station, adding that Coleman reversed, causing the officer to fall.

Police said Coleman then lifted his ATV into a wheelie, hit the officer with its front two tires, and ran over the officer with all four tires before speeding away, KCTV reported.

Court documents from last year indicate Coleman called his father — Marc Coleman — the night of the assault, telling him he was in trouble and needed to leave town, KMBC-TV reported.

Investigators used license plate readers to track Marc Coleman’s vehicle traveling west on Interstate 70 into Colorado Springs, KMBC noted.

Authorities told KMBC that prepaid phones were purchased after Kendall Coleman’s phone was disconnected, and surveillance video and other records helped link him to the ATV involved.

An anonymous Crime Stoppers tip ultimately led investigators to Kendall Coleman on April 23, and he was arrested, KCTV reported.

You can view video of the assault on the police officer in the below news video, which aired prior to Coleman’s capture:

RELATED: Blaze News original: A dozen times gangs on motorcycles, ATVs, and bikes harassed, attacked, and killed others

The officer suffered head injuries but has since made a full recovery, KMBC reported.

Kendall Coleman pleaded guilty Thursday, KMBC reported.

Prosecutors dropped an armed criminal action charge against Coleman — who is 28 years old — as part of a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and aggravated fleeing, KCTV said, citing Jackson County Circuit Court records.

KMBC also said Coleman originally had been charged with first-degree assault.

Jackson County Circuit Judge Adam Caine sentenced Coleman to 12 years in prison, KCTV said, citing court documents.

Coleman remained in the Jackson County jail Thursday evening and was awaiting transfer to the Missouri Department of Corrections, KCTV added.

A restaurant owner down the street from where the assault took place told KMBC that ATV riders have been a problem: “The noise and the aggressiveness, they’re not following any road rules, you know, they’re blazing through intersections.”

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The Department of Justice is apparently no longer willing to play ball with U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, the Washington, D.C.-based activist judge who has spent the past year frustrating the Trump administration’s efforts to keep suspected criminal noncitizens out of the homeland.

This turning point, signaled in a court filing last week, all but guarantees a showdown between Boasberg and government attorneys in the case J.G.G. v. Trump on Monday — and a possible return to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Quick background

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on March 15 invoking the Alien Enemies Act and declaring Tren de Aragua “a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

The Trump administration subsequently deported hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gangsters — many of whom were credibly accused of murder, robbery, rape, and other crimes — to El Salvador, where they were placed in a Salvadoran prison for terrorists.

‘Defendants intend to immediately appeal.’

In July, the administration had Venezuelan deportees who were imprisoned at the Terrorism Confinement Center repatriated to Venezuela, where they were welcomed home by Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, who has since been deposed.

The deportees’ safe return home evidently wasn’t enough for Boasberg and other activists back in the U.S., including the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the suspected foreign gangsters.

RELATED: Federalism cannot be a shield for sanctuary defiance

Photo by El Salvador Press Presidency Office/Anadolu via Getty Images

In December, Boasberg — an Obama-appointed judge who initially tried to stop the deportations and previously helped the Biden FBI spy on Republican lawmakers’ phone records — certified the Venezuelan deportees as a class and ordered the administration to offer them legal relief abroad.

DOJ punches back

DOJ lawyers noted in a filing last week that Boasberg’s demands were unworkable.

For starters, the government lawyers pointed out that remote hearings for all of the suspected Venezuelan gangsters would “present insuperable legal bars and substantial practical problems that together render this an untenable and unacceptable proposal.”

Besides there being “no legal basis for holding remote habeas hearings without custody,” the lawyers noted that the U.S. “cannot enforce perjury or other procedural rules in Venezuela, or even verify the identity of the witnesses.” Additionally there would be no way of ensuring that sensitive or classified information implicated in the proceedings could be protected over “potentially unsecure lines in foreign settings.”

In light of these and other problems with remote hearings, the lawyers noted that “the only jurisdictionally proper means of permitting new habeas proceedings would be for aliens to return to United States custody.”

Bringing the Venezuelans back for proceedings, however, “presents grave national security and foreign policy impediments” — not least because the deportees “have been determined to be members of a foreign terrorist organization” and may lack passports or identity documents.

The lawyers suggested that taking the Venezuelans back into custody would require “diplomacy with top leaders in the Delcy Rodriguez interim regime or foreign sovereigns in third countries and thus raise separation of powers issues.”

Satisfying Boasberg’s order would threaten “material damage to U.S. foreign policy interests in Venezuela” as it would inject an “extremely complicated issue into what is already a delicate situation, potentially negatively affecting U.S. efforts toward stabilization and transition that aim to benefit tens of millions of Venezuelans,” added the lawyers.

The DOJ effectively concluded by telling Boasberg to pound sand: “If, over Defendants’ vehement legal and practical objections, the Court issues an injunction, Defendants intend to immediately appeal.”

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America has always protected lawful protest. It has never protected persecution. Some communities now blur that line on purpose, and anyone who cares about civil rights, religious freedom, or the rule of law should be alarmed.

Most recently, agitators stormed Cities Church in Saint Paul, near Minneapolis, during a worship service to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids around the Twin Cities. Federal authorities, including the Department of Justice, are investigating the incident under civil rights laws that protect religious exercise at places of worship. Several people, including journalists present, have been arrested or charged in connection with the disruption.

You don’t need to agree with the worshippers in Minnesota or California to defend their rights. Civil liberties mean nothing if they apply only to causes we like.

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Peaceful worshippers have faced unlawful harassment before.

Last year, in March and September, Christian and Jewish worshippers in Southern California gathered peacefully to pray, sing, and express deeply held religious beliefs about Israel and the Jewish people. They came to worship. A coordinated campaign of intimidation met them instead: blocked entrances, screaming mobs, bullhorns blaring sirens, graphic signs aimed at children, physical assaults, and targeted harassment designed to make worship impossible.

First Liberty Institute filed a detailed federal complaint describing how the disruptors planned and coordinated these attacks and then celebrated them afterward. They registered for church events under fake names, infiltrated the Mission Church, screamed accusations of “genocide” and “Nazism” at Jewish and Christian worshippers, and resisted removal. Outside, others blocked exits and forced families — including children and seniors — to run a narrow gauntlet just to reach their cars.

At another interfaith service, agitators surrounded vehicles, jumped on worshippers’ hoods, laid dolls in driveways while calling Jewish guests “baby-killers,” and blared sirens for hours to drown out prayer and preaching.

That conduct is flatly illegal. It is also a transparent attempt to cloak intimidation in the First Amendment.

The First Amendment does not authorize people to physically interfere with worship, intimidate attendees, or use force and coercion to silence beliefs they despise. Congress recognized that principle when it passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) made sure the law would protect religious exercise at places of worship from exactly this kind of obstruction. When mobs block entrances, assault worshippers, or deliberately prevent services from being heard, they break the law.

RELATED: When worship is interrupted, neutrality is no longer an option

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

These incidents also reveal something darker: the targets and the motive.

The worshippers were Christians and Jews united by shared religious convictions about Israel. For Jewish attendees, support for Israel is not a political slogan; it is woven into faith, daily prayer, and identity. For Christian congregations, support for the Jewish people flows from sincerely held theological beliefs. Targeting those beliefs through harassment and violence is religious discrimination.

History shows where this road can lead. When officials tolerate intimidation against one disfavored group, it spreads. Our complaint documents a surge in anti-Semitic attacks nationwide since Oct. 7, 2023, along with a widening hostility toward anyone who publicly stands in solidarity with Jews. Persecution works the same way every time: isolate the target, then punish anyone who refuses to abandon the target.

The aftermath should chill every American. The complaint alleges that organizers vowed to continue, posted videos on public Code Pink channels boasting about their actions, and shared images of worshippers online to expose them to further harassment. Churches canceled events. Interfaith groups struggled to find safe venues. Ordinary people began to fear worship in their own communities.

The Free Exercise Clause means little if mobs can intimidate Americans into silence inside their own sanctuaries.

RELATED: A protest doesn’t become lawful because Don Lemon livestreams it

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

On Monday, victims of this harassment will testify before President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission. The commission plans to issue a detailed plan to protect religious liberty in coordination with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

You don’t need to agree with the worshippers in Minnesota or California to defend their rights. Civil liberties mean nothing if they apply only to causes we like. The moment we excuse intimidation because we sympathize with a protest’s message, we abandon equal freedom under the law.

Courts now have an opportunity — and an obligation — to draw a firm line. Peaceful protest belongs at a respectful distance, not inside sanctuaries. Reasonable debate belongs in the public square, not enforced through threats, coercion, and attempts at injury. If mobs get to decide who may worship freely, no one is safe.

​Opinion & analysis, First amendment, Freedom of religion, Free exercise, Religion, Freedom of speech, Freedom of the press, Don lemon, Face act, Minnesota, Cities church protest, California, Interfaith, Worship, Law and order, Anti-ice protests, Minneapolis, St. paul minnesota, Department of justice, Journalists, Rule of law, Persecution, Christianity, Christians, Jews, Donald trump, Religious liberty commission 

In a recent poll from Pew Research Center, a whopping 71% of Democrats said they favored requiring photo ID to vote — a shocking departure from what Democrats like Chuck Schumer appear to believe.

“We’ve got to get this done and we’ve got to get it done very quickly. The SAVE Act is an abomination. It’s Jim Crow 2.0 across the country. We are going to do everything we can to stop it,” Schumer told reporters.

“How is it Jim Crow to ask for ID, a picture ID? That’s what the SAVE Act is. That you’d be required to have picture ID to go in and vote or to register to vote and then to vote. OK, that is not unreasonable,” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck explains.

“You need a photo ID to get a driver’s license to drive a car, or to renew your driver’s license, or replace your lost license, get a learner’s permit. You need a photo ID to rent a car, to pick up a rental car, even if you prepaid it, to buy car insurance, to file auto insurance claims, to register your vehicle, transfer your vehicle’s title,” he continues.

But that’s not all, as Glenn also points out that you need a photo ID to get a parking permit, use car sharing apps, buy an airline ticket in person, to board a commercial flight, and enter the TSA pre-check.

“Is it Jim Crow to ask for photo ID as they scan your eye? Is it racist to ask for photo ID when you check a bag at the airport or when you rent a U-Haul truck or a moving truck, buy a bus or a train ticket in person? Is that really ‘no blacks’?” Glenn asks.

“No blacks can ever go on the bus or the train or an airplane. Really? Really? No, it’s just too hard for them to get a photo ID,” he says, joking, “What a racist.”

And of course, the list of reasons one might need a photo ID is never-ending.

“You want to open a bank account. You want to withdraw a large amount of cash. You want to cash a check, even your own check at many banks … you need a photo ID to deposit cash, to wire money,” Glenn says.

“But let’s get into your daily life of just housing. You want to rent an apartment, you need a photo ID. No blacks have ever rented an apartment? Really? No Hispanics, no blacks. It’s racist to say we need a photo ID voting, because you can’t get a photo ID somehow or another,” he continues.

“Yet you need one to rent a house or an apartment or to apply for public housing,” he adds.

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Bad Bunny — real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — used the Super Bowl LX halftime show to deliver a political message. That’s his right. The part worth discussing is the NFL’s decision to underwrite it, package it as entertainment, and beam it into tens of millions of living rooms as if it were part of the deal fans signed up for.

As Martínez Ocasio demonstrated at halftime, he is an unrepentant Puerto Rican leftist, following a familiar script in the tradition of Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo of the 1950s and the Macheteros of the 1970s: grievance, agitation, and a convenient villain.

If the NFL is now acting as an advertising agency for political organizations, shouldn’t the IRS take a fresh look at the tax advantages that help the league operate like a monopoly?

Bad Bunny uses hip-hop instead of bullets or bombs, but he is still selling the same posture — righteous rage, revolutionary cosplay, and a political edge aimed squarely at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

What irritates even more is the sponsor of this performance: the National Football League, allegedly as American as an institution can be — and certainly as profitable. It rakes in enormous revenue under a legal regime that has long treated the league like a protected creature of Congress. Then it rakes in more when corporations pay obscene sums for skyboxes and “experiences” and promptly write much of it off as a business expense. Nothing says “shared sacrifice” like a luxury suite tax deduction.

All of that would be tolerable if the league stuck to what it does best: organize a children’s game for adults, staffed by small groups of millionaire “college graduates” sprinting around a 100-yard patch of turf while the rest of us yell at referees and pretend we understand the salary cap.

Instead, the NFL now wants to be your civic tutor. The league has decided that the score isn’t enough; it also needs slogans — mostly in Spanish — delivered to a mostly non-Spanish-speaking audience that paid for tickets, cable packages, streaming subscriptions, and, in many cities, the stadium itself.

In recent years, the NFL has plastered the experience with political catechisms: “Black Lives Matter,” “Say Their Names,” “I Can’t Breathe,” “Justice,” “Equality,” “Freedom,” “Power to the People,” “Justice Now,” and “Sí se puede.” Now, thanks to Bad Bunny, the league has added:

“Quieren quitarme el río y también la playa / Quieren el barrio mío y que abuelita se vaya.” (“They want to take away my river and my beach / They want my neighborhood, and they want grandma to leave.”)“Aquí mataron gente por sacar la bandera / Por eso es que ahora yo la llevo donde quiera.” (“They killed people here for flying the flag / That’s why I carry it wherever I go.”)“De aquí nadie me saca, de aquí yo no me muevo / Dile que esta es mi casa, donde nació mi abuelo.” (“No one’s going to run me out of here — I’m not going anywhere / Tell them this is my home, where my grandfather was born.”)“Fueron 5,000 que dejaron morir y eso nunca e nos va a olvidar.” (“They let 5,000 people die, and we will never forget that.”)

Those lines don’t function as “art in the abstract.” The NFL presented them as civic messaging — without bothering to ask the audience.

RELATED: Bad Bunny delivers just 1 line in English during Super Bowl LX halftime show

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Why am I being subjected to a deluge of unpaid political commercials when all I wanted to do was watch millionaire athletes dramatically move an oblong ball around? Maybe enjoy a few big hits, a few bad calls, and, yes, perhaps place a wager without getting a sermon at halftime? Is that really too much to ask?

And once the NFL decides one side gets free political advertising, why stop there? Why shouldn’t every cause group get a slot? At least we’d have clarity. “Tonight’s halftime: The Coalition for Whatever.” Next year: “The League of Extremely Loud People.” Keep going until the entire broadcast becomes a charity auction for ideologies.

Then there’s the implicit holier-than-thou attitude of the players and performers who shill on cue for “the right side of history.”

Nothing screams ‘liberation’ like outsourced production under an authoritarian regime.

If the NFL wants to present its stars as moral authorities, maybe the league should be required to release the supporting documentation. Police reports. Court records. Paternity suits. The pharmaceutical list required to keep a battered body functioning after one too many concussions. Divorce filings that reveal what the slogans never will.

After all, a convicted dogfight organizer or a wife-beater looks ridiculous wearing “Say Her Name!” or “Justice Now!” on his back — and the league has fielded enough of those case studies to fill a warehouse.

RELATED: Bad Bunny, Green Day, and ICE: ‘The most political Super Bowl ever’

Photo by Jaydee Lee SERRANO/AFP via Getty Images

Add another layer of absurdity: Many of the league’s millionaire geniuses take a knee against “oppression” and “slavery,” with stern faces and closed-fist salutes, while remaining blissfully indifferent to the fact that their uniforms, sneakers, and promotional trinkets come from supply chains tied to modern forced labor. Yes, geniuses. Nothing screams “liberation” like outsourced production under an authoritarian regime.

At that point, the old Marxist-Leninist label becomes less a slogan and more a job description.

Lenin is often credited with the phrase “useful idiots.” Whether he coined it or not, the category exists for a reason: privileged Westerners eagerly carrying propaganda for movements that despise the civilization that makes their privilege possible. The NFL has decided that this is not merely acceptable, but brand-enhancing.

One more thing: If the NFL is now acting as an advertising agency for political organizations, shouldn’t the IRS — along with state and local tax authorities — take a fresh look at the tax and regulatory advantages that help the league operate like a monopoly?

Now would be an excellent time.

​Opinion & analysis, Super bowl lx, Bad bunny, Halftime show, Benito martinez ocasio, Entertainment, Woke sports, National football league, Nfl, Puerto rico, Nationalism, Leftism, Griselio torresola, Oscar collazo, Macheteros, Terrorism, Irs, Nonprofit, Tax exemption, Stadiums, Subsidies, Professional sports, Football players, Spanish, Lenin, Marxist-leninist 

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show was nearly entirely in Spanish. In fact, the artist only said one line in English.

‘The only thing more powerful than hate is love.’

The rest of the English-speaking was left to singer Lady Gaga, who appeared as a wedding singer for some Puerto Rican nuptials before dancing with Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny.

Singer Ricky Martin also made a guest appearance during the well-shot and well-produced performance that saw Bad Bunny sing on top of a pickup truck, a convenience store, and throughout a grass maze.

Bad Bunny did not wear a dress — but the show did include two men dancing sexually with each other up against the truck as Ocasio performed on the roof. Other than that, the only likely contentious part of the performance was that it was almost completely in Spanish.

Bad Bunny performed a medley of songs, taking obvious pride when he sang about his native territory of Puerto Rico, and held the flag high.

However, the singer did stop at one point to say just one sentence in English: “God bless America!”

RELATED: Liberal media goes after comedian for not knowing everything about Bad Bunny: ‘I don’t care’

Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images

Bad Bunny yelled the line before shouting out around a dozen other countries, including Canada.

As a crowd followed the singer off the field, background performers carried and waved flags that were seemingly limited to North and South American countries.

At the same time, Levi’s Stadium’s video screen in Santa Clara, California, read, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” in plain black letters.

Elsewhere, Turning Point USA’s alternative, “The All-American Halftime Show,” garnered millions of views across different platforms — particularly on YouTube, as more than 4.4 million viewers tuned in concurrently to watch artists like Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, and Lee Brice.

RELATED: Bad Bunny, Green Day, and ICE: ‘The most political Super Bowl ever’

Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images

Rock band Green Day’s pregame performance could possibly be considered controversial, given the band’s heavy anti-President Trump bias, but they seemingly exhausted their political statements the night before when they told ICE agents during a performance to quit their jobs.

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, the public address announcer at Levi’s Stadium spoke about the Declaration of Independence before the singing of “America the Beautiful.”

Cheers for troops in the Middle East capped a fairly patriotic opening ceremony for the game.

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If Friedrich Hayek taught us to inquire about who should decide and Abraham Lincoln taught us to ask to what end, then the question of immigration compels us toward a third and inescapable question: Where is the line drawn?

The principles of subsidiarity and federalism demand that matters should be resolved at the lowest level of authority competent to manage them. Much of what the national government has usurped would be more wisely and justly managed by the states, local communities, families, and institutions of civil society.

A nation that treats its laws as optional, its borders as permeable, and its citizenship as devoid of meaning invites the very chaos that destroys liberty.

The Constitution itself was framed to embody this division of powers, preserving the vitality of local self-government against the dangers of centralized tyranny.

Yet subsidiarity is not an absolute doctrine, nor is federalism morally sovereign. America’s founders never regarded federalism as an end in itself, but as an instrument ordered toward justice, liberty, and the common good.

When the claims of federalism or local autonomy come into conflict with the equal dignity of the human person, federalism must yield. This is the profound teaching of the Civil War. That great conflict established beyond doubt that there are moral limits that no level of government — federal, state, or local — may transgress, even under the guise of divided sovereignty. The principle of human equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence sets a boundary that no appeal to states’ rights or local preference can override.

Before 1861, the defenders of slavery advanced an argument we hear echoing in our own day: that each state must be free to decide for itself the very foundations of republican government. The Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford lent its sanction to this view regarding slavery. But Lincoln repudiated it utterly.

He understood that the rights of man do not vary according to geography or popular vote. The self-evident truth that all men are created equal declares that no majority, no state legislature, no municipal council may lawfully decree some men unfit for liberty on grounds that deny their humanity. To enslave a man is to violate his natural rights; to nullify federal authority in matters essential to national existence is to dissolve the Union that secures those rights.

Lincoln did not abolish federalism — he preserved it by subordinating it to the higher law of nature. Federalism endures insofar as it is grounded in moral truth and serves to perpetuate a regime dedicated to equal natural rights.

This distinction becomes decisive when we turn to immigration. It concerns not merely internal policy but the very nature of the American political community: who may enter, under what conditions, and by whose authority.

The power over naturalization and the regulation of foreign entry are among the essential attributes of sovereignty, which the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) has expressly delegated to the federal government. Borders define the “We the People” whose consent forms the government. A people that cannot control its own borders or decide who can become a citizen cannot long govern itself justly or preserve equality under law, our regime’s moral foundation.

The federal government exists not to confer human dignity (which is inherent in every person) but to secure it among the specific members of the polity. Human dignity demands that no one be enslaved or deprived of life and liberty without due process; it does not entail an unqualified right to enter any political community or claim automatic citizenship.

The right to migrate is not the same as the right to enter any country of one’s choosing. Conflating the two dissolves the distinction between universal natural rights and the particular rights of citizens, a distinction the founders carefully preserved.

RELATED: Civil war chatter rises when Democrats fear losing power for good

Photo by Sean Bascom/Anadolu via Getty Images

The real question for us is not merely whether authority is federal or local, but whether policy is directed toward justice, human dignity, and the nation’s common good. Lincoln saw that democracy unbounded by moral limits becomes incoherent and self-destructive. A nation that treats its laws as optional, its borders as permeable, and its citizenship as devoid of meaning invites the very chaos that destroys liberty.

Federalism is a means to the end of justice; it is not a refuge from moral duty. Local communities may not, under color of autonomy (sanctuary cities), nullify the Union’s authority over matters essential to its preservation — any more than Southern states could nullify the Fugitive Slave Clause or obstruct the enforcement of laws necessary to national integrity.

These acts of interposition — driven by radical professional activists and their followers in cities like Minneapolis — echo the nullification and secession doctrines Lincoln condemned as fatal to the republic. In his 1861 Annual Message to Congress, he accurately described the true nature of such “principles”: “rebellion thus sugarcoated” that has “been drugging the public mind.”

The lesson of Lincoln and the founders is unchanging: Decentralization without moral anchors descends into anarchy; centralization without moral purpose hardens into despotism. True statesmanship orders power toward the permanent truths enunciated by the Declaration of Independence. Only then can the American experiment endure as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people — and dedicated to the Declaration’s proposition “that all men are created equal.”

Editor’s note: A version of this article was published originally at the American Mind.

​Opinion & analysis, Abraham lincoln, Federalism, Immigration crisis, Immigration and customs enforcement, Mass deportations, Ice raids, Subsidiarity, Union, Anarchy, Rebellion, Civil war, Declaration of independence, Natural rights, Equal rights 

On a recent appearance on Fox News, Dave Landau poked fun at Bad Bunny — the Super Bowl’s halftime show performer of choice.

“What this comes down to is, you look at somebody like Bad Bunny, or you look at somebody like Trevor Noah. They don’t actually have the ability to talk trash in their own countries, so they come to America, make a great living, living the American dream, insulting our country, because they know in their homeland they would be killed for doing the very same thing,” Landau said to host Greg Gutfeld.

Media Matters caught on to Landau’s error — which is that Bad Bunny’s home country is the United States — and put him on blast.

But Landau isn’t concerned with their ire.

“They put out this so people would let me know that Puerto Rico is a territory ’cause I clearly would have no idea of such things,” he tells BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

Now, he tells Gonzales that he’s receiving death threats because “Media Matters is a horrible company.”

“Talk about how you are funded by George Soros. Do that, Media Matters. Keep complaining about white billionaires, too, to tell your people that white billionaires are a problem when you’re funded by white billionaires,” he says.

“Where did you think that Bad Bunny was from?” Gonzales asks.

“I thought Colombia,” Landau responds. “Here’s why. I don’t care. Even when I was here, I think it’s very obvious that I wasn’t actually watching the news. I was just trying to find stories. All I knew about Bad Bunny was they said he didn’t speak English. And the left, that is, was worried that ICE was going to take him at the Super Bowl because he’s an illegal.”

“That’s all I heard from the left,” he explains.

“Turns out he’s from Puerto Rico,” he says.

“God, you’re racist,” Gonzales jokes.

“Exactly. I’m a monster,” he adds.

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​Free, Upload, Video, Sharing, Camera phone, Video phone, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Bad bunny, Superbowl 60, Greg gutfeld, Fox news, Liberal media, Media matters, Dave landau, Comedian, Comedy 

A study published Monday in the Milbank Quarterly, an esteemed peer-reviewed health policy journal, indicated that ultra-processed foods “share key engineering strategies adopted from the tobacco industry, such as dose optimization and hedonic manipulation.”

While the overlap in approach and fallout is striking, it’s also unsurprising given the industries’ entanglements. After all, tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris acquired food companies such as Kraft, General Foods, and Nabisco in decades past.

‘Not simply natural products but highly engineered delivery systems.’

UPFs are defined by the NOVA food classification system as “industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch, and proteins), derived from food constituents (hydrogenated fats and modified starch), or synthesized in laboratories from food substrates or other organic sources (flavor enhancers, colors, and several food additives used to make the product hyper-palatable).”

Grocery stores are replete with UPFs, which include store-bought biscuits; frozen desserts, chocolate, and candies; soda and other carbonated soft drinks; prepackaged meat and vegetables; frozen pizzas; fish sticks and chicken nuggets; packaged breads; instant noodles; chocolate milk; breakfast cereals; and sweetened juices.

Numerous studies have linked UPFs to serious health conditions.

A massive peer-reviewed 2024 study published in the BMJ, the British Medical Association’s esteemed journal, for instance, found evidence pointing to “direct associations between greater exposure to ultra-processed foods and higher risks of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease-related mortality, common mental disorder outcomes, overweight and obesity, and type 2 diabetes.”

RELATED: ‘A giant step back’: Liberals rage against red meat after new food pyramid guidelines release

Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images

In the new study published this week, researchers from Harvard University, Duke University, and the University of Michigan noted that like cigarettes, UPFS “are not simply natural products but highly engineered delivery systems designed specifically to maximize biological and psychological reinforcement and habitual overuse.”

The researchers identified a number of commonalities between ultra-processed foods and beverages, which apparently now dominate the supply across much of the globe, and ultra-processed cigarettes.

The primary reinforcer in ultra-processed cigarettes is nicotine, which is optimized for rapid delivery. UPFs also have primary reinforcers optimized for rapid delivery, namely refined carbohydrates and added fats.

Just as the nicotine dose in ultra-processed cigarettes is standardized — 1% to 2% by weight — “to balance reward and aversion,” the researchers noted that refined carbohydrates and fats are precisely calibrated in UPFs to “maximize hedonic impact.”

“On a biological level, carbohydrates and fats activate separate gut-brain reward pathways. Refined carbohydrates stimulate dopamine release via the vagus nerve, whereas fats do so through intestinal lipid sensing and cholecystokinin signaling,” said the study. “When consumed together, their effects are supra-additive: the mesolimbic dopamine response can rise to 300% above baseline, compared with 120% to 150% for fat alone.”

“This makes UPFs with high levels of refined carbohydrates and added fats some of the most potently rewarding substances in the modern diet,” added the study.

In both ultra-processed cigarettes and food, the reinforcers are reportedly rapidly absorbed or digested; the reward is short-lived, leading to a desire for more; flavorants and sweeteners are added to processed ingredient bases to amplify appeal; risks of use abound.

The researchers noted further that both the tobacco and food industries have also worked diligently in their marketing to “create the illusion of reduced harm while preserving their core addictive properties.”

“Many UPFs share more characteristics with cigarettes than with minimally processed fruits or vegetables and therefore warrant regulation commensurate with the significant public-health risks they pose,” said the paper.

The researchers indicated that their analysis demonstrates “how UPFs meet established addiction-science benchmarks, particularly when viewed through parallels with tobacco.”

The apparent aim of such scholarship is to provide the “basis for policies that constrain manufacturers, restrict marketing, and prioritize structural interventions.”

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​Health, Ultraprocessed foods, Upfs, Food, Poison, Diet, Eating, Lifestyle, Cigarettes, Big tobacco, Obesity, Politics 

Although it received scant media attention, the FBI foiled a plot by members of the pro-Palestinian Turtle Island Liberation Front to bomb Southern California businesses on New Year’s Eve.

Most Americans have probably never heard of the term “Turtle Island,” a name said to be used by some indigenous communities to describe North America. “Turtle Island” proponents view the United States as a nation founded on stolen land and express solidarity with a host of anti-American positions and groups — most notably pro-Palestinian activists who support dismantling “colonizing” and “oppressive” power structures.

These ideas are being promoted by organizations that pressure school administrators to implement anti-American educational material.

TILF’s attempted terror attack shows the natural ends of the group’s subversive ideology: hatred, division, and violence. And unfortunately, teachers who view their role as agents of social change are now disseminating these ideas through the country’s K-12 schools in an effort to turn America’s students into child soldiers on the front lines of the country’s culture war.

Curricula such as liberated ethnic studies — a benign-sounding program that encourages students to view the world through an oppressor/oppressed lens and to treat their peers accordingly — is one such vector. Turtle Island is frequently cited in school curricula in the form of land acknowledgements, as well as in school meetings and school board notices on how to “support teachers of color.” The phrase also appears in lesson plans on “the social construction of race” that seek the “inclusion of Black and Latino studies in the public school curriculum.”

In 2021, a whistleblower provided Defending Education with photographs of a classroom at Los Angeles Unified School District’s Alexander Hamilton High School, where posters included “in 2020, make Israel Palestine again and make America Turtle Island again,” “F**k the Police,” and “F**k Amerikka, this is native land.” While those responsible ultimately removed the material under pressure, it is certain that those materials would have remained if not for withering public pressure.

Unsurprisingly, professors promote these ideas in college courses nationwide.

At the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, students can take a course called “Critical Indigenous Theory,” in which “indigenous” is described as a “comparative, interdisciplinary, and global project that exceeds the material conditions of Turtle Island …” One of the required readings for that class is “Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine.”

The University of Texas offers at least five courses with explicit land acknowledgements to Turtle Island, while at the University of California, Irvine, a doctoral candidate wrote a 300-page dissertation on the development of liberation schools on Turtle Island.

While examples abound of academics forcing radical ideas on impressionable university students, it is particularly galling for this to take place in the nation’s taxpayer-funded universities.

It is important to recognize that these ideas aren’t occurring organically. They are being promoted by organizations that pressure school administrators to implement anti-American educational material.

Consider the Great Schools Partnership, which provides professional development to K-12 school districts. The GSP’s self-proclaimed goal is “redesigning” public education with anti-American propaganda, including a 2020 blog post that preached about the need to “Decolonize Education” on “Turtle Island” while smearing Christopher Columbus.

There’s also the Zinn Education Project, a so-called history program coordinated by Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change, which refers to Turtle Island in its abortion advocacy.

One of the most concerning examples of Turtle Island’s negative influence is through its connection to Teach Palestine, an organization corrupting K-12 education with anti-Israel propaganda. Teach Palestine’s sixth-grade lesson plans emphasize the need to “talk about Palestine and Turtle Island in the same breath.”

RELATED: Why are we playing by the rules with people who follow no rules at all?

Photo by Joshua Lott/Washington Post via Getty Images

Through incendiary rhetoric about the perceived injustices indigenous people suffer, Teach Palestine actively encourages students to believe that their country and its history are inherently evil. While the organization doesn’t explicitly endorse violence, its partisan framing, one-sided view of history, and portrayal of Israel and the United States as oppressive colonizers could lead some, like the suspected TILF bombers, to justify violent resistance.

We’re already seeing the effects of this brainwashing destabilizing America.

Anti-Israel protests erupted on college campuses in the wake of the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, resulting in Jewish students across the country being violently attacked by their peers. Many of the 18- to 21-year-olds complicit in these riots seemed to genuinely believe they had the moral high ground and that they were “liberating” their campuses from “oppressive” power structures.

Their skewed logic and hatred are the inevitable result of forcing anti-American ideological frameworks on young students, rather than encouraging pupils to think critically for themselves or teaching the basics of history, science, and mathematics — areas where American students are increasingly falling behind.

Without critical thinking and basic education, future leaders and voters become frighteningly easy to pressure into despising their country — and into treating violence as a legitimate answer.

The fact that 2026 nearly started with a Turtle Island-inspired bombing should be a wake-up call for our leaders to address this crisis in the months ahead.

​Education, Dei, Turtle island, Pro-palestine, Land acknowledgement, Critical theory, Great schools partnerships, October 7, Opinion & analysis, Leftism, Critical race theory in classrooms, Public schools, Colleges and universities, Anti-semitism, Diversity equity inclusion, Anti-american propaganda