Category: blaze media

Video has emerged from the “Jesus Christ Superstar” concert held at the Hollywood Bowl, showing a pointy-fingered Cynthia Erivo, a black female, portraying the titular character, Jesus. Viral clips showed Erivo locked in a passionate duet with Adam Lambert, an openly gay vocalist, who had been cast as Judas.

When asked about Erivo’s casting, Lambert stated that he was “excited by the challenge of presenting the audience with a production led by a female, black ‘Jesus’ and [encouraging] the audience to expand their minds a bit. … That’s the whole point.”

As Democrat approval ratings dip to the lowest they’ve been since the 1990s, they are forced to rely on being increasingly theatrical.

In the postmodern world, liberals have changed the purpose of artistic expression. Instead of using artistic pursuits — such as music, theater, and painting — to glorify creation and promote beauty, it is intended to be ugly.

Postmodernism is all about subversion, and that means destroying anything traditional.

The casting choices in “Jesus Christ Superstar” are not just an edgy gender-swap. They are an intentional attack on Christianity. They are using subversion to destroy basic biblical truths.

Over the past several years, leftists have pushed their radicalism to new extremes. Their stances on gender ideology, immigration, and abortion have become increasingly militant. In 2008, Joe Biden stated that he and Barack Obama had no intention of nationally legalizing gay marriage. Less than a decade later, Obergefell v. Hodges proved their willingness to push their agenda leftward to appease the masses.

The Democratic Party of decades past has been eaten alive by its own ideology as it now caves to radicals like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Now, the only way for liberals to justify their constantly shifting positions is through theatrics.

RELATED: Cynthia Erivo to play Christ in left’s latest boring attention grab

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

For many years, Democrats targeted disaffected groups, such as racial minorities and college students. Their goal was to build a coalition of people who felt like they didn’t fit the mold of a middle-class American. This strategy led them to target creatives like artists, musicians, and actors.

Many of these individuals were considered “outsiders,” a classification that opened them up to Democratic influence. Liberal, anti-capitalist agendas persuaded many artists that their lives would be better in a communistic, tolerant society. Their art would have more value if they weren’t subject to the scrutiny of a free-market society.

This mindset encouraged many artists to join forces with the Democratic Party. From actors like Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller to musicians like Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, there is a noticeable artistic bias against Republicans.

As a result, Democrats have used this advantage to become increasingly performative.

In the 2010s, for example, Lady Gaga caused a stir with her hit song “Born This Way,” a pro-LGBT song that used surrealist imagery inspired by Salvador Dali. In 2023, Sam Smith’s hit song “Unholy” featured hyper-sexualized lyrics and a music video with androgynous burlesque dancers. Democrats were quick to defend these performances, even calling them “liberating.”

You can see this same trend among elected leaders of the Democratic Party.

Earlier this year, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker’s 25-hour marathon speech protesting the Trump administration was a ploy for headlines. Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett (Texas) mocked Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) by saying she had a “bleach-blond, bad-built, butch body.” Crockett would go on to trademark this phrase and use it to sell merchandise. After this embarrassing act, the Atlantic described Crockett as a “Democrat for the Trump era.” Even Zohran Mamdani, the outspoken socialist running for mayor of New York City, has used performative viral videos to gain over one million followers on TikTok.

Conservatives are quietly making real change in America without needing to dance around onstage in subversive costumes.

Booker, Crockett, and Mamdani use theatrical melodramatics to make a name for themselves. They are winning woke points in their liberal base and raising the ire of Republicans. All of these politicians are relatively young but have managed to set themselves apart from Democratic institutions. Party leaders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) have been slow to ally themselves with figures like Mamdani, who is appealing to social media virality instead of the party’s institutional approval. His success as the frontrunner in the mayoral campaign thus far proves that this might be a successful approach.

Republicans have been able to capitalize on the left’s absurdity by making real policy changes.

Their position on illegal immigration, a top voter issue, has proved successful as border crossings plummet to their lowest numbers in decades. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s work at the Department of Health and Human Services to root out conflicts of interest, fix the food system, and stop unethical practices like organ harvesting have led a former CDC director to call RFK Jr. one of the most “consequential” public health figures ever. The country of Cambodia has even nominated President Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize after he helped broker a peace deal with Thailand, one of several peace deals he’s made throughout his second term.

Conservatives are quietly making real change in America without needing to dance around onstage in subversive costumes. As Democrat approval ratings dip to the lowest they’ve been since the 1990s, they are forced to rely on being increasingly theatrical. It’s why Hollywood is eager to cast “Jesus” as a black bisexual female.

Erivo is intended to make Christians angry because that’s the only way they can keep themselves in the headlines.

​Cynthia erivo, Jesus christ superstar, Jesus, Christianity, Democratic party, The left, Liberals, Democrats, Culture 

In June, a judge acquitted Patrick Brice of first-degree assault over a brutal assault he carried out against 73-year-old pro-life worker Mark Crosby in front of a Baltimore Planned Parenthood in May 2023.

It was good news for the attacker as he awaited his sentencing, since the acquittal lessened the possibility of jail time.

‘It’s not equal justice under the law.’

Crosby’s attorney Terrell Roberts — retained by the Thomas More Society to assist Crosby amid deliberations — told Blaze News in June that the judge’s acquittal was the “most ridiculous decision I’ve seen in a long while.”

All the reasons why were captured on surveillance video outside the abortion facility.

Brice — a decades-younger male who Crosby estimates stands well over six feet tall and weighed about 250 pounds — reportedly was arguing with Crosby’s fellow pro-life worker, Dick Schaefer, about abortion that day.

Suddenly Brice is seen on video charging at Schaefer and tackling the 84-year-old backward into a large flower pot.

RELATED: Justice for elderly pro-lifer beaten to a pulp outside Planned Parenthood takes brutal turn

Image source: Baltimore Police

Image source: Baltimore Police

Image source: Baltimore Police

According to WBAL-TV, a witness said Schaefer was out cold “for several minutes.”

As you might expect, Crosby — dressed in a blue and white “pro-life” T-shirt — runs over to help his friend.

RELATED: Elderly pro-lifer beaten to a pulp in vicious attack outside Planned Parenthood; another elderly pro-lifer knocked out cold in same attack, witness says

Image source: Baltimore Police

But Brice is standing directly in Crosby’s path.

Image source: Baltimore Police

And Brice easily knocks the 73-year-old down to the sidewalk and punches Crosby in the head.

Image source: Baltimore Police

Image source: Baltimore Police

Then Brice rears back his right foot and kicks Crosby in the face before finally walking away.

Image source: Baltimore Police

Image source: Baltimore Police

YouTube age-restricted the Baltimore Police video of the attack on Schaefer and Crosby — which may give some indication of its gut-wrenching nature — so you can only view it there.

Here’s a local video report, though.

RELATED: Cops release surveillance images of man believed to be in his 20s who brutally punched, kicked face of elderly pro-lifer outside Planned Parenthood

Local pro-life advocate John Roswell told LifeSiteNews at the time of the attack that Crosby’s “plate bone in his upper right cheek is completely fractured” and that he “is bleeding from some unidentified area behind his eye, and the bone eye orbit is completely shattered and will have to be replaced with metal” as a result of the brutal beatdown.

Crosby told Blaze News that he was blind in his right eye “for nine days” after the attack, that he spent three days at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, that he was “spitting blood,” and that a piece of his iris is missing.

He also told Blaze News he still experiences foreign body sensation, which is a “feeling that something’s in your eye and you can’t get it out. But I can live with that. Babies are being murdered. I give it up for them.”

RELATED: Blaze News original: ‘Barbaric’ attacker destroys elderly pro-lifer’s face outside Planned Parenthood. Victim awaits justice.

Image source: American Center for Law and Justice, used by permission (left); Mary Crosby (right)

A few weeks after the attack, police released surveillance images of the culprit, but it wasn’t until over a year later — July 1, 2024 — that police finally arrested Brice. He was indicted on charges of first-degree assault, second-degree assault, and assault on an elderly person 65 and over, according to the American Center for Law and Justice. He was released on his own recognizance, Catholic Review said.

The criminal trial for Brice took place in February 2025 in Baltimore Circuit Court. Brice’s attorney — assistant public defender Matthew Connell — argued that his client didn’t intend to cause serious physical injury, which is needed to support a conviction for first-degree assault, the Baltimore Banner reported.

Connell also called Schaefer and Crosby “old white men” who say “the most vile things” to women and see themselves as “religious martyrs,” Catholic Review reported. He also said Brice “didn’t mean to hurt them that bad” and “made a mistake,” the Banner reported.

The jury convicted Brice on two counts of second-degree assault and reckless endangerment for his attacks on Schaefer and Crosby, the Banner said, adding that jurors acquitted Brice on one count of first-degree assault against Schaefer.

However, the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict on the first-degree assault charge for Brice’s brutal attack on Crosby — knocking him to the ground, punching him in his head, and kicking him in his face while he was on his back on the sidewalk.

Crosby was then left waiting for justice.

‘Legally absurd’

The opportunity came — and went — during June’s retrial of Brice’s first-degree assault charge for his attack on Crosby. Circuit Judge Yvette M. Bryant — who presided over February’s jury trial — presided again during the bench retrial, and she acquitted Brice of first-degree assault, the Banner said in a separate story.

Her reason? The paper said the judge concluded that it was all about Crosby’s intent. Does video of the attack show him rushing over to help his friend? Or does it show 73-year-old Crosby running over to fight Brice — a bigger, taller 20-something who had just knocked Schaefer out cold?

The Banner said Bryant agreed that Brice’s attack against Crosby was unjustified — but disagreed with the prosecution’s contention that it was unprovoked.

“How can you claim a 73-year-old man provoked a man who just knocked out an 84-year-old man? It’s legally absurd,” Roberts remarked to Blaze News at the time, adding that “any judge would have to find him guilty based on the video.”

Crosby added to Blaze News that Bryant stated in court that he could have “gone around Brice to help Dick Schaefer” rather than taking a path directly to his friend to give him aid. “So she’s blaming me. … I’m the bad guy.”

A frustrated Crosby also told Blaze News at the time that “now the pro-abort movement will know this, and violence will continue against us.”

Brice’s sentencing took place Thursday.

What happened at the sentencing?

During the hearing, Roberts read Crosby’s victim impact statement, which said, “Due to the brutality of the attack, I respectfully call for the court to impose a lengthy sentence of imprisonment for the defendant in this case.”

That didn’t happen.

Brice got no jail time. Instead, Judge Bryant ordered him to spend one year on home detention and gave him three years’ probation, the Banner reported in a separate story.

In addition, Brice must complete anger management classes, undergo drug and alcohol screening, virtually attend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and remain in therapy, the paper said.

Blaze News spoke with Crosby and his attorney, Roberts, following Brice’s sentencing. As you might expect, both were upset about it.

Roberts said that “clearly justice was not done here. The sentence for this kind of criminal act should be jail time without any question.” He added that Brice’s attack left “permanent” injuries and that “he fled the scene, leaving Mark and Dick lying on the ground.” But instead of jail time, Brice was “walking out without any kind of punishment. It’s shameless. And it pretty much means it’s open season for any pro-life person working” in front of Planned Parenthood.

Crosby told Blaze News that after the judge handed down her sentence and was walking out the courtroom door, he “screamed out” at her, asking, “What about my well-being?”

He added that the Brice’s sentence includes a lot of “easy stuff” and that “it’s not equal justice under the law.” Crosby noted that he’s hoping the federal government will look at the case.

But despite his disappointment, Crosby added to Blaze News that he “couldn’t ask for a better gift” than “shedding my blood on the bricks in front of Planned Parenthood and suffering pain for Jesus and the babies.”

Crosby also said since the attack, “wonderful things have happened — along with the not-so-wonderful things — but there’s no greater joy than saving one of God’s beautiful babies from being murdered. It’s a great feeling when people come up and say thank you for counseling them — and that their babies are alive and well.”

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​Crime, Abortion, Pro-life, Baltimore, Planned parenthood, Pro-life workers attacked, Arrest, Trial, Sentencing, Probation, Home confinement, Patrick brice, Mark crosby, Dick schaefer, Physical attack, Politics 

I notice to my profound disappointment that two of my major scholarly projects landed with a thud. Despite years of research and two books on fascism and antifascism, my findings have been ignored by both the left and the right — including the so-called conservative media establishment.

That’s a pity, especially with so much loose talk about “fascists” running around Washington these days.

Fascism, as it existed in the 20th century, is dead. Antifascism, as it is wielded today, is a political weapon that thrives by manufacturing enemies.

My argument is straightforward: Fascism was a popular European movement in the interwar period, shaped by several conditions unique to that era — returning soldiers who saw themselves as a “front generation” after World War I, economic turmoil in countries like Italy, France, Romania, and Spain, disillusionment with corrupt parliamentary systems, and a “cult of the leader.”

Fascist movements also fed on fears of the Soviet takeover of Russia. Unlike the communists, who worked to spark revolutions across Europe, fascist groups pushed a revolutionary nationalist ideology.

The most representative example was Benito Mussolini’s Italian movement, which came to power after his March on Rome in October 1922. Italy was the only country to establish a full-fledged fascist government, although fascist or fascist-like parties held influence in coalitions elsewhere. The Italian regime blended a cult of the leader with corporatist economics and nostalgia for imperial glory.

Contrary to the later alliance with Hitler, Mussolini’s government initially drew support from patriotic Italian Jews and between 1934 and 1936 led European opposition to Nazi Germany, denouncing its anti-Semitism as barbaric. The 1938 anti-Jewish laws came only under heavy German influence.

Nazism was not “generic” fascism. Hannah Arendt was right to classify it as totalitarian and genocidal. While Hitler borrowed certain trappings from Latin fascists, Nazi Germany drew far more from Stalin’s Soviet model — particularly in its use of terror, secret police, and propaganda to remake reality.

Equating Mussolini’s authoritarian nationalism with Hitler’s genocidal regime is intellectually lazy, even if Mussolini’s disastrous decision to ally with Nazi Germany at the 11th hour paved the way for the comparison.

My critic Jacob Siegel accuses me of drawing this distinction to “sanitize” fascism. Not so. I do not treat it as an archaic movement out of nostalgia but because it is irrelevant to the contemporary West, which is dominated instead by a woke, bureaucratic left.

Antifascism, however, is another matter. It began with Marxists — and later communist regimes — branding capitalist nations that resisted revolution as “fascist.” The Frankfurt School and its American heirs expanded the label to cover ideas and movements far removed from Mussolini or Hitler. By the 1950s, an “F-scale” was used to screen government employees and teachers for supposed fascist sympathies.

RELATED: The cold civil war is real — and only one side is fighting to win

Photo by JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/AFP via Getty Images

Today, “antifascists” slap the term on anything that conflicts with their politics or lifestyle. Esteemed Yale professors Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley insist our current president is not only a fascist but possibly a Nazi. In their view, opposing any part of the feminist or LGBTQ agenda puts one on the road to Hitlerian tyranny.

This rhetorical game serves a purpose: It shields the accusers from the obvious countercharge that they are the true totalitarians. In my book on antifascism, written as Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots engulfed American cities in 2020, I documented how the American left and its European counterparts mobilize with the same discipline and ruthlessness as the Nazis before they took power.

The difference is that today’s left faces no organized counterforce comparable to the German communists — and enjoys the support of a compliant media. That media not only excuses leftist violence but portrays it as justified. This mirrors the Nazi and communist tactic of claiming to be under siege even while holding power, using the manufactured threat as a pretext to crush dissent.

Fascism, as it existed in the 20th century, is dead. Antifascism, as it is wielded today, is a political weapon that thrives by manufacturing enemies. And the left is using it with remarkable success.

​Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Fascism, Fascists, Antifa, Antifascist, Benito mussolini, Adolf hitler, Italy, Germany, Europe, The left, The right, Marxism, Communism, Violence, Riots, Totalitarian, Hannah arendt, Timothy snyder, Jason stanley, Yale, Nazis 

Amid President Donald Trump’s efforts to drain the swamp, a new explosive whistleblower account reveals troubling allegations about former Attorney General William Barr, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and the Georgia election case against the president.

According to a Thursday report from Project Veritas, former journalist Patrícia Lélis claims that she has evidence from her work at Howard Stirk Holdings that Trump’s former AG “devised legal strategies to target Trump supporters and block his political comeback.”

‘Barr has put the entire FBI after this woman to get the documents she has.’

Lélis’ handwritten meeting notes, emails, and photos, reviewed by Project Veritas, claimed to outline secret discussions from 2021 to 2023 between Barr and others to strategize legal action against Trump, his supporters, and those involved in the January 6th protest.

“I have notes of every single meeting,” she told the outlet.

She claimed that during a meeting on September 13, 2021, Barr had discussed the newly formed January 6th Committee. Lélis’ notes read, “The investigation will be focused on people close to Trump and make efforts to formally prosecute these people.”

According to her notes, Barr hoped to target Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Enrique Tarrio, the Oath Keepers, and the Proud Boys, among others.

RELATED: The long, murky friendship of Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Barr

Former Attorney General William Barr. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Notes dated March 15, 2022, revealed that Barr was allegedly communicating with Fulton County DA Willis and special counsel Jack Smith regarding planned legal action in Florida, Georgia, and New York.

Lélis also wrote, “Barr believes the FBI will go to Trump’s house soon.”

The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022.

On February 27, 2023, Barr allegedly advised Willis to pursue RICO charges against Trump.

In August 2023, Willis brought a 41-count indictment against Trump and 18 codefendants. The indictment charged the president, in part, under Georgia’s RICO statute.

Lélis told Project Veritas, “Bill Barr was like, ‘We should bring RICO because it’s a very difficult type of charge to defend.'”

RELATED: Fani Willis ordered to pay $54K in Trump case for breaking Georgia’s open records laws

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Lélis said she reported Barr to the FBI and was subsequently prosecuted by the Department of Justice. She was granted political asylum in an undisclosed foreign country.

The outlet stated that it was first tipped off about these allegations by DOJ officials who were concerned about a potential cover-up to attribute Barr’s alleged actions to Lélis.

A DOJ official told Project Veritas, “Barr has put the entire FBI after this woman to get the documents she has.”

Barr is listed as a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute and a partner at the Torridon Group.

Blaze News contacted the Hudson Institute and the Torridon Group to seek a comment from Barr, but they did not respond. Willis’ office also did not reply to a request for comment.

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​News, Donald trump, Trump, Trump administration, Trump admin, Bill barr, William barr, Fani willis, Georgia, Election interference, Rico, Project veritas, Fulton county, Patrícia lélis, Patricia lelis, January 6th, January 6, Politics 

It’s been a few years since liberals began rejecting the idea of transracialism.

Rachel Dolezal, a white woman, sparked controversy in 2015 when she claimed she was a black woman despite being born to white parents. Liberals then overwhelmingly — and confusingly — decided that while gender is a social construct, race most certainly is not.

Therefore, it did seem to be an act of futility when Dolezal changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2024; she still wasn’t going to be accepted as black.

While this conversation has since evaded the public eye, the idea of transracialism has quietly progressed past simple changes of makeup and clothing and, much like transgenderism, has advanced through surgeries and community in distinct corners of social media.

‘Cosmetic surgeons are profiting off mental illness.’

An alarming report from outlet Pirate Wires focused on the alleged plight of two women who have allegedly gone to great lengths to change their ethnicity.

The first woman is Lisa Yo, a beauty influencer who was assumed to be Korean, but after being accused of faking her ethnicity, she claimed to be Mongolian. According to the report, however, Yo is a white Austrian woman who has appeared in previous videos speaking German.

Yo also allegedly claimed her brother looks more European than she does because she has a Mongolian father and he has an Austrian father. Eventually, the report goes on, Yo admitted to have undergone rhinoplasty, ear pinning, double-eyelid surgery, and even a procedure called aegyo sal, which refers to the injection of fat underneath the eyes. The term translates roughly to “charming or cute tissue.”

RELATED: White influencer under fire for identifying as Korean: ‘If you can be transsexual you can also be TRANSRACIAL’

Donna Briggs, meanwhile, has hundreds of thousands of social media followers and has been accused of having “lightened” her skin to appear more white.

A former radio host, Briggs has a long history of appearing as her normal self, so it’s really not a secret that she has gone through at least some effort to change her appearance.

It was only when a TikTok creator named Tea with Ladii contacted Briggs’ family members that the truth came out. Not only did Briggs’ relatives confirm she is black, but they also claimed there is a trauma-related issue behind the former host’s identity crisis.

Given that liberal media has fully embraced other illogical identity disorders, it should come as no surprise that the rejection of transracialists under the leftist banner means these seemingly severe issues are being ignored.

Pirate Wires found several examples of the racially confused youth on messaging and forum apps like Discord.

“Hey, question, how did you guys discover your specific ethnicity?” one server user asked. “Maybe I should have explored more Asian cultures before I went with [Japanese].”

“The vibes,” a user replied. “I feel like I just licked different lollipops until I found the right one.”

Another user told the outlet, “I just feel so out of place in my body and in general.”

The self-identified East Asian is actually a 24-year-old white person who believes he or she is “primarily Chinese and some Japanese” since 15 years old. Luckily, in this case, surgeons have rejected the user’s requests for ethnic-based procedures.

RELATED: Transracial hustler Rachel Dolezal fired from teaching job after reportedly posting explicit content to her risqué OnlyFans page

Activist Rachel Dolezal leaves the ‘Today Show’ taping at the NBC Rockefeller Center Studios on March 27, 2017, in New York City. (Photo by Ray Tamarra/GC Images)

Writer Natasha Biase told Blaze News that “while there is a high probability these individuals are only doing this for TikTok views, it raises a larger question about why so many people from the ‘love yourself’ generation are determined to change absolutely everything about themselves — from their gender to now, apparently, even their race.”

This need to change can reach absurd lengths, from ethnic-based makeup tutorials to the aforementioned Discord users even allegedly sharing hypnosis videos to “manifest perfect Korean DNA.”

Parsing through trolling and actual cases of mental illness is difficult, but those boasting about their surgeries are as real as it gets.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Biase added. “The fact that this is a real phenomenon or the fact that cosmetic surgeons are profiting off mental illness.”

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​Align, Transracialism, Korean, Transgender, Rachel dolezal, Lifestyle 

When you think about buying a car, you probably picture the final step — walking into a dealership, shaking hands, and driving off in something new.

But what you might not think about is the incredibly complex process that got that vehicle into your hands. And even more overlooked? The vital role that middlemen like car dealerships play in making that possible.

Sure, the idea of ordering a car online sounds sleek. But what happens when there’s a defect? What if your title gets lost in the shuffle?

We live in an era obsessed with “cutting out the middleman.” The phrase gets thrown around like it’s inherently virtuous. Tech companies promise lower costs and better service by eliminating dealers and distributors.

In defense of the middleman

Some automakers, especially those in the electric vehicle space, push hard for direct-to-consumer sales, arguing that it’s the modern way to sell cars.

But that narrative skips over something critical. Without middlemen — like your local car dealer and the shipping company that brought the car to your part of the world — the entire automotive experience would be slower, more expensive, and far less accountable.

Let’s admit it: Americans use middlemen every day. Whether it’s Amazon getting packages to your door or your grocery store stocking fresh produce, these companies act as connectors. They’re the ones that bring products from point A to point B — efficiently, reliably, and at scale. Amazon may be seen as a tech giant, but it’s really a supply chain company, built on logistics and distribution.

Adding value

It’s the same with the auto industry. Cars don’t go straight from the factory to your driveway, nor do you have to drive to Detroit to buy from the manufacturing plant. They move through a massive network — raw materials, parts suppliers, assembly plants, transportation hubs, and finally, your local dealer. Each step adds expertise, accountability, and value to the customer.

This stands in sharp contrast to direct-to-consumer brands like Tesla, which operate without traditional dealerships. Instead, customers place orders online or in company-owned showrooms, often without ever driving the vehicle first.

The company controls everything — from pricing to delivery to service — which might sound efficient, but it removes the local relationship and accountability that dealerships offer. When problems arise, buyers are often left waiting for corporate to respond on its own timeline, without any local recourse or advocacy.

Local connection

And here’s where it matters most to you: the dealership.

Dealers aren’t just there to hand you the keys. They’re your local connection to a global system. When you walk into a showroom, you’re gaining access to a support system. Dealers offer real-time comparisons between different trims and models. You can see the options, test drive them, ask questions, and get answers from someone who knows the product and knows your local driving needs.

You’re not left clicking through an app or talking to a call center on the other side of the country. You’re dealing with someone who wants your repeat business — which is why they also help you navigate the often-complicated world of financing and paperwork.

You’re not navigating the labyrinth of paperwork and regulations for loans, titles, warranties, and insurance on your own. From the time you walk in the door to the time you leave the lot, dealers are making sure your investment is protected. And you’re supporting local businesses, which means jobs and improving the economy around you.

Help desk blues

That’s something direct-to-consumer models can’t replicate. Sure, the idea of ordering a car online sounds sleek. But what happens when there’s a defect? What if your title gets lost in the shuffle? What if you need help when the battery range underperforms in winter driving?

Without a local dealer, you’re often stuck dealing with a corporate help desk, hoping for a response, with no one nearby to step in. Or you’re waiting for weeks to get your vehicle serviced if it can’t be repaired remotely.

There’s also a bigger issue here — consumer choice. Dealers create competition. When you can walk into several dealerships in your area, compare prices, and negotiate, that gives you leverage. When everything is sold directly through the manufacturer, there’s no competition — only a fixed price and a one-size-fits-all approach.

RELATED: Looking to save big on a car? Dealerships have never been more desperate to sell

David Goddard/Getty Images

Good jobs

Let’s not forget the economic role dealerships play. They employ over a million Americans, often in communities where good jobs are hard to come by. Many are family-owned, multigenerational businesses that reinvest in their towns through local sponsorships, community events, and charitable giving. When you remove them from the equation, you’re not just changing how cars are sold — you’re pulling economic activity away from local communities and concentrating it in corporate headquarters and tech platforms.

At a time when so much of life is becoming impersonal and centralized, local dealerships remain one of the last industries where consumers can actually engage face-to-face, get personalized service, and make informed decisions. This contrasts sharply with Tesla, where a car that doesn’t run gets the “we’ll repair it when we can” treatment.

So the next time you hear someone say we should “cut out the middleman,” stop and think about what that really means. Because in the auto industry, the middleman — your local dealer — isn’t just a convenience. He’s your advocate, your partner, and your safety net.

Eliminating dealers may streamline the process, but in doing so, it strips away the layers of protection and personal service that American car buyers have come to rely on for over a century.

Let’s not make that mistake.

​Car dealerships, Direct-to-consumer, Tesla, Auto industry, Lifestyle, Made in america, Align cars 

“The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart recently attempted to dunk on Blaze media co-founder Glenn Beck by claiming he flip-flopped his position on the Epstein files in unwavering support of President Donald Trump.

Of course, the talk-show host seemed to forget that taking things out of context is disingenuous — but Glenn is unfazed.

“Jon Stewart has been mocking me for years, and that’s fine,” Glenn says.

“The only reason why I want to play this,” he explains before beginning Stewart’s montage, “’cause it’s really not worth it other than for anybody who doesn’t know how the left works. What they do is they take everything out of context, and they twist it to make it look as though I’m saying something that I’m not,” he adds.

“I honestly think my favorite thing about this is watching conspiracy theorists have to unravel the red string that they themselves originally strung out. Here’s the OG conspiracy theorist, Glenn Beck, at his excitement for Trump’s beginning of the second term,” Stewart said, before playing a clip of Glenn saying he believed the Epstein files would be released immediately.

However, Stewart made it seem like Glenn was saying Trump would release the files, when it was really Kash Patel who he thought would release the files.

“I had that on very, very good authority. Trust me, very good authority on that,” Glenn says. “I can’t help that that person that told me that was wrong. It was hard to be wrong, but they were wrong. And so I look like I was just out there on a limb. I don’t really care.”

Stewart then jumps to another clip of Glenn at a chalkboard, about six months later, where he’s explaining why he doesn’t believe Trump is on the Epstein list.

The entire time, Glenn is not stating facts, but rather saying what he believes.

“I asked, ‘Do you believe that?’ Leaving it open for you to say, ‘Yes, I do believe that,’” Glenn says.

“But remember, this whole chalkboard was, ‘What do I feel is most likely,’ not ‘What happened.’ What do I feel is most likely to have happened? Why? I wasn’t excusing no release. I was saying, ‘Why wasn’t there a release? Why didn’t it happen?’ But again, you’ll notice he doesn’t cover that,” he continues.

“This is exactly the way the left works,” he says, adding, “And especially with people like Jon Stewart, who are doing comedy, you take it out of context, and you take it out of context so you can make it funny.”

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Nowadays, it seems we can be addicted to anything — not just alcohol and drugs, but pornography, random internet browsing, video games, and smartphones. Academic research papers have investigated a wide range of other behaviors including gambling, but also “dance addiction,” “fishing addiction,” “milk tea addiction,” and “cat addiction.” One cheeky paper used the standard medical criteria to show that young people are “addicted” to their real-life friends.

While this trend involves many factors, perhaps the single most important claim that has transformed what might be devoted or enthusiastic behavior into a presumed medical case of addiction is the presence of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Parents and others are at risk of missing more fundamental mental health issues that could be at the root of the obsessive behavior, potentially harming the very children they seek to help.

Health experts and the popular press tell us that fun activities can give us “dopamine hits” and that overindulging can result in “dopamine blowout.” Indulging too much in naughty activities (somehow, it’s always naughty activities) may create a “dopamine deficit.”

To cite a few of many examples: A Washington Post podcast declared that “dopamine surges” explain why “you can’t stop scrolling, even though you know you should.” The Guardian reported that Silicon Valley is “keen to exploit the brain chemical” to keep us hooked on tech. Earlier this month, CNN told readers that “an addiction expert says it might be time for a ‘dopamine fast.’”

The problem with this scientific-sounding explanation for an alleged explosion in addictive behaviors is that it’s not supported by science. Solid research connecting dopamine spikes to drugs and alcohol — that is, the capacity of one chemical to ignite another — has not been shown to occur in similar ways with other behaviors. Drug use is fundamentally and physiologically different from behaviors that do not rely on pharmaceutical effects. This has been confirmed in humans: Technology, such as video games or social media, simply doesn’t influence dopamine receptors the way illicit substances do.

Experts say what we are seeing instead is pseudoscience that appears to legitimize a moral panic about behaviors that trouble certain segments of society. By falling for this pseudoscience, parents and others are at risk of missing more fundamental mental health issues that could be at the root of the obsessive behavior, potentially harming the very children they seek to help.

“Addiction is an important clinical term with a troubled and weighty history,” said Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist and co-author of a brief explainer of what dopamine does and doesn’t do. “People enduring genuine addiction struggle to be taken seriously or viewed sympathetically at the best of times, so to apply their very serious condition to much more benign actions like scrolling TikTok makes this worse.”

Burnett likens current narratives about dopamine and technology to “science garnish,” effectively adding a dash of scientific language to nonsense beliefs. “It’s the informational equivalent of sprinkling parsley on a lasagna that’s 90% horse offal,” he said. “It may look nicer, but it isn’t.”

The pseudoscience, however, does play a useful role for parents and others who seek to restrict the behaviors they find disturbing. After all, “don’t do X because it will dangerously rewire the reward circuits of your brain and cause addiction” is more compelling than “don’t do X because I don’t like it and think you are wasting your time.”

Growing mistrust of experts

At a time when science has been riven by a series of scandals involving unreliable and falsified research at universities, including Stanford and Harvard, the public is having a harder time distinguishing scientific truth from pseudoscience. As growing numbers of Americans question the veracity of many well-established findings, such as the safety of vaccines, the popularity of the dopamine myth amounts to another misreading of science to serve other purposes in a culture desperate for simplistic moral answers.

Such answers can be found in bookshelves full of titles like “Dopamine Detox” and “Dopamine Reset.” These experts warn us that activities we think make us happy are actually making us unhappy in the long term because we’re doing dopamine wrong.

Advice sites are quite explicit about this: “You can get dopamine either from rich sources like meditating, exercising, or doing something that is meaningful to you and that serves you in the long run. Or you can get dopamine from self-sabotaging activities like eating junk food, scrolling social media mindlessly, or anything that provides pleasure instantly or in the short term. The choice is yours.” At the extreme, people may go on “dopamine detoxes,” avoiding fun activities for some length of time in hopes of resetting their dopamine.

It’s time to put the pseudoscience on dopamine in the dumpster and let kids be kids.

It is not surprising that dopamine has been seized on as a ready explanation for human behavior. Dopamine is a naturally occurring neurotransmitter in the brain. It is involved in a number of behaviors and functions, ranging from movement to memory to executive functioning. It’s also involved in pleasure centers of the brain, particularly anticipatory pleasure. Think of it like the feeling of a child awaiting Christmas, the giddy excitement. That’s often different from Christmas Day itself, which feels less exciting, even if it’s pleasant.

The role played by dopamine in the brain, however, is complicated. Brain functions rarely work out to one-to-one relationships between a single chemical and some horrible outcome. And certainly not in ways that happen to coincidentally flatter people’s pre-existing moral conceits.

Much of what we know about dopamine comes not from humans, but from experiments on rats — which cannot, of course, peruse the internet or use smartphones. In a series of graphs produced by the National Institute on Drug Addiction back in the early 2000s, the difference in activation of dopamine for addictive drugs versus pleasant and normal activities is well documented.

They show that administering stimulant drugs such as cocaine and amphetamine causes massive elevations in dopamine after the drug is introduced. These levels spike to over 300% of baseline for cocaine and a whopping 1,000% for amphetamine.

By contrast, the increase in dopamine levels from routine activities such as food or sex is much lower, about 150% of baseline for food and 200% for sex. And this increase occurs in anticipation of the activity, not afterward.

So yes, there is a kernel of truth in the dopamine/addiction story. Some drugs, as well as routine pleasurable activities, definitely involve dopamine systems. But the key difference is the timing of when and how much of the dopamine is released — before versus after the activity — and this distinction is almost always ignored in scaremongering stories about rampant addiction.

“Addictive drugs are different from natural rewards (e.g. food, water, sex) in that [dopamine] will not stop firing after repeated consumption of the drug, the drive to consume is not satiated because they continue increasing dopamine levels, resulting in likelihood of compulsive behaviors from using drugs and not as likely when using natural rewards,” according to an article in the Journal of Biomedical Research.

Pete Etchells, a professor of psychology at Bath Spa University in England and the author of “Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time,” says research doesn’t support the claim that dopamine drives addiction in other pleasurable behaviors that don’t rely on pharmaceutical effects.

“The role that it plays is really complex, to the point that neuroscientists no longer really consider it the sole or universal factor to consider,” he said. “So when we try to say dopamine ‘surge’ = pleasure surge = addiction, that doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny.”

Is everything addictive?

Part of the confusion over the science comes from the widespread way the term “addiction” is used. Long-standing debates are still ongoing about whether the criteria used to identify substance dependencies still work when applied to everyday hobbies and behaviors such as work, exercise, shopping, sex, video games, or social media.

The problem is apparent when looking at the basic criteria the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual uses for addictive disorders. A person needs to answer “yes” to five of the nine questions below to be diagnosed. In this example, X is the sport or hobby you happen to be passionate about and spend some money on.

Do you think about X (i.e., your passionate hobby) when not doing X?Do you feel bad (sad, anxious) when unable to do X?Do you find yourself spending more time/money on X?Do you notice you’ve kept doing X even when you meant to stop or cut back?Have you given up other hobbies/activities to do X?Have you continued to do X despite it causing obvious problems (i.e., health, work, family commitments)? Have you deceived others about the time you’ve spent doing X?Do you find yourself doing X to relieve negative moods or stress?Have you experienced the loss of a job/school/relationship because of X?

If X is heroin, a yes answer to all of these questions leads to bad results. But it’s not clear that this is true for all the questions when X is eating pizza, reading a book, working out, or playing a video game. If the answer is yes to the question about reading books to relieve negative moods or stress, that’s good. People should do something to relieve negative moods.

The question is whether things like video games or social media are more like heroin or more like books. At present, the best evidence suggests the latter. Older adults may not like these activities, but there’s little evidence that they’re addictive in any analogy to substance abuse. There’s no tolerance and withdrawal from technology. They don’t interact with dopamine systems the same way.

Parents may believe that taking a smartphone or game console away will ‘fix’ their kids’ problems, leaving the real underlying issues unaddressed.

Making matters more complicated is the psychology of why some people overdo some pleasant behaviors. It’s widely believed that behavioral addictions are a feature of the thing that users are using. To be sure, smartphones, for example, are designed with elements like push notifications to hold the attention of users. However, users can easily adjust these settings, and they are hardly an innovation of modern technology. Books often end chapters mid-scene for the same reason.

But such addiction mainly appears to be a feature of the person exhibiting the problems, research shows. Cases of technology overuse can be a symptom of other underlying mental health problems like anxiety and depression, which tend to predate the specific technology addiction. Constant texting is not something done to teenagers by machines via dopamine. By contrast, time spent on technology is a poor predictor of mental health issues.

History of moral panics

As it purports to provide a simple explanation for complex issues, dopamine pseudoscience can be linked to previous moral panics, particularly regarding the new habits of youth. Fear sells, as Frederic Wertham showed in the 1950s when his book “Seduction of the Innocent” gained wide traction for its spurious claim that connected comic books to delinquency and homosexuality.

Today, many schools are enthusiastically attempting to shift blame for their own failures onto technology. At present, evidence suggests that cellphone bans in schools don’t work as well as expected, for instance. Public records requests have revealed that even as some teachers and administrators promote these policies, data from their own schools indicates that some student outcomes worsen after cellphone bans, rather than improve.

RELATED: How Baby Boomers became unlikely digital addicts

Photo by IsiMS via Getty IMages

The false narratives on addiction may end up hurting children in more profound ways, too. They can distract families from the real psychological issues youth face. Parents may believe that taking a smartphone or game console away will “fix” their kids’ problems, leaving the real underlying issues unaddressed. These efforts may even backfire, removing stress reduction and socialization outlets that youth rely on.

It’s time to put the pseudoscience on dopamine in the dumpster and let kids be kids. Some may have mental health issues that need to be addressed, and others, well, mostly need some freedom to explore the world on their own terms.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

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Gentle parenting — or as BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey calls it, “permissive parenting” — was all the rage for a while. It encouraged parents to replace authority and traditional discipline with empathy, compassion, and positive reinforcement, promising flourishing children who were confident, autonomous, and respectful.

What it really did was birth entire generations of undisciplined kids ruled by their emotions, who loathe authority and don’t understand the first thing about natural consequences. You’ve seen the videos of parents futilely attempting to reason with their screaming 3-year-old who wants to eat dirt or permitting their 6-year-old to smear paint on the walls because she’s just “expressing herself.”

We’ve seen the fruits of gentle parenting. They’re poisoned.

The pendulum, however, is now swinging back. Authoritative parenting — modernly called FAFO, or “f**k around and find out,” parenting — is back in style. Even the Wall Street Journal says so. In a recent article titled “Goodbye Gentle Parenting, Hello ‘F— Around and Find Out,” author Ellen Gamerman defines FAFO parenting as an approach that “[teaches] children accountability through tangible repercussions.”

Allie is relieved that people are finally returning to common sense. “Yes, we should all be authoritative parents,” she says, noting that it’s possible to be an authority while still being gentle in the way the Bible instructs.

“If you’re not the authority in your home, your 3-year-old’s going to be the authority in your home. That is disordered, and you are setting them up for failure,” Allie warns.

“[Children] don’t have the emotional regulation, the maturity, to be able to do that.”

According to the WSJ article, FAFO parenting depends on letting children suffer the natural consequences of their actions. “FAFO is based on the idea that parents can ask and warn, but if a child breaks the rules, mom and dad aren’t standing in the way of the repercussions. Won’t bring your raincoat? Walk home in the downpour. Didn’t feel like having lasagna for dinner? Survive until breakfast. Left your toy on the floor again? Go find it in the trash under the lasagna you didn’t eat,” Gamerman writes.

She also stated that “critics blame the [gentle parenting] approach for some of Gen Z’s problems in adulthood.”

Allie agrees, “Yes! Like not being able to look in people’s eyes … and just, like, the overemphasis on, ‘I’m sorry, like, that’s outside of my realm of comfort. I’m not comfortable doing that. I don’t want to do that. That’s outside of my boundary.’”

The difference between the thriving Gen Zers and the stereotypical ones who get roasted for their laziness and entitlement, Allie says, is that the first group “had good parents … who told them no.”

“They had parents who said, … ‘You’re not going to get a phone when you’re 11. You’re not going to have social media when you’re 13,” she says.

“The parents who knew that their role was to steward and to be an authority and to love their children … while still being as kind and as gentle and as supportive as possible — those are the kids I’ve seen that can look you in the eye, that can sit through dinner and they’re not looking at their phone. They’re not obsessed with social media; they’re not obsessed with themselves; they’re willing to work hard even when it’s not fun.”

To hear more of Allie’s commentary, watch the episode above.

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Personally, I’m happy that autocomplete for email exists. If my kid has to write some goofy templated email — like a formal apology for being late to a class they don’t care about — great, hit autocomplete, tweak the results, and be done.

But then I’m always going to ask them: “What did you do with the time you saved?”

Because let’s be real: No child a hundred years ago had to waste time writing pointless emails. So now that you’ve reclaimed that lost time, how did you spend it?

We have to actively decide how we’re going to introduce AI into our lives and how we’re going to interact with it.

We’re an AI-friendly household, obviously. My kids have full access to ChatGPT, image-generation tools, all of that stuff. But they don’t use it much — they don’t care. They’d rather draw, write their own stories, read each other’s stories out loud, and proudly show us things they’ve created themselves. Why would they replace that with ChatGPT?

As their parents, we appreciate their original creations, and they appreciate each other’s work too. Those creations become part of our family culture — not labor, but something meaningful.

If someone’s stuck doing repetitive, low-value labor — especially something mundane like certain kinds of emails — please, press a button, automate it, and then use the time you save for something meaningful. That’s my real goal.

I definitely don’t want my kids to cheat, but I also don’t want them wasting their time. A lot of our educational system currently trains kids to waste time. So if AI can help them avoid that, that’s genuinely valuable.

My co-founder, Devin Wenig, and I are people with deep expertise in a specific industrial process — news production. News production is highly structured, especially at enterprise scale for large newsrooms. A piece of content typically moves through multiple phases, touched by many different hands along the way.

RELATED: Jim Acosta is getting torched for ‘grotesque’ interview with AI version of child killed at Parkland massacre

Photo (left): Stewart Cook/UTA via Getty Images; Photo (right): Saul Martinez/Getty Images

We’re basically graybeards (literally!) in a particular industry that has accumulated a lot of inefficiencies. So we’re applying this new technology to reduce those inefficiencies in a phased industrial workflow, resulting in an industrial product that people consume as news.

Now, there’s an ethical aspect to all this — similar to debates around industrial farming: Is it good? Is it nutritious? I guess I’m implicated in that.

Right now, much of what gets published as news comes from reporters juggling a dozen tabs at once, repackaging existing information into content that’s mostly designed to get clicks.

When you introduce AI into this scenario, it can play out two different ways, and everyone here probably knows what they are.

My hope is that it leads to something like, “I’ve reclaimed some time as a reporter. I can pick up the phone and call a source, or write something deeper, longer, and more meaningful.” That’s one possibility.

The other possibility is, “Well, now you’ve got extra time, so crank out 80 more pieces of the same shallow content.”

Which direction newsrooms choose will be their responsibility.

What my startup aims to do is give every journalist more productivity per unit of time — whether they’re processing municipal bond reports, covering earnings season, or similar repetitive tasks. Ideally, newsroom editors will then encourage journalists to use the reclaimed time for deeper reporting: calling sources, traveling to do on-the-ground reporting, and producing higher-quality journalism. Hopefully they don’t just say, “Great, now we can lay off half the newsroom and push the remaining staff even harder.”

I can definitely think of other examples that might also qualify as anti-culture. But ultimately, I think it will be whatever we choose to make of it. We have to actively decide how we’re going to introduce AI into our lives and how we’re going to interact with it.

Luckily, we dodged a bullet with the centralized versus decentralized AI debate. Because we have open-weight models and decentralized tools — which almost got banned — we now have leverage and an opportunity to steer this technology. We have a window right now to choose how we adopt and guide its use.

A version of this article was published at jonstokes.com.

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One of the world’s premier cancer research hospitals, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, is hiding behind so-called “red state privilege,” leaving the public in the dark about its ongoing support for LGBTQ issues.

Information and documents obtained by Blaze News from a whistleblower inside the hospital demonstrate MD Anderson’s continuing LGBTQ-focused research and groups, even as its public-facing website appears to keep such promotion a secret. The whistleblower spoke with Blaze News on the condition of anonymity.

‘It’s good to be in a red state these days’

MD Anderson, a nonprofit that nevertheless receives some state funding as part of the University of Texas System, may keep its public support for LGBTQ issues rather muted with President Donald Trump back in the Oval Office, but its president, Dr. Peter Pisters, appears to believe the hospital can still participate in woke activism behind the scenes on account of its “red state privilege.”

The whistleblower told Blaze News that it is “common knowledge” that Pisters, like other MD Anderson officials, is a “true believer” in woke causes and regularly discusses the hospital’s “red state privilege” with top hospital executives, even though “he doesn’t speak freely like that to the faculty.”

By “red state privilege,” Pisters generally means that MD Anderson can maintain most lines of federal funding and avoid serious scrutiny from the Trump administration about its woke policies and research interests because the state of Texas is generally perceived to be conservative, the whistleblower explained.

‘The longer they get away with it, the more this continues.’

According to minutes from the Strategy Leaders Forum on June 6, Dr. Pisters assured forum attendees that the Trump administration “is not looking at MD Anderson since we are afforded red state privilege, as opposed to our colleagues at Harvard.”

RELATED: Trump admin drops charges against whistleblower who exposed transgender operations at Children’s Hospital in Texas

Screenshot given to Blaze News

Dr. David Vining, a professor of diagnostic radiology and the medical director of the Image Processing and Visualization laboratory, recalled Pisters making a similar remark during a “coffee talk” conversation back in early April.

“We will not know the repercussions of what’s happening in DC until cuts come our way,” Vining wrote in an email. “The potential loss in revenue could be staggering.

“He mentioned that they are working behind the scenes to lobby for the institution,” Vining continued, seemingly referring to Pisters, “and that it’s good to be in a red state these days.”

The hospital did not respond to Blaze News’ questions regarding Pisters or “red state privilege.”

RELATED: Exposed: Harvard’s elite law journal accused of discriminating against white men

Screenshot given to Blaze News

Notably, the Trump administration has targeted medical schools such as Harvard that have allegedly engaged in anti-white discrimination and other institutions of higher education that have seemingly stoked the flames of anti-Americanism on their campuses. Trump has also issued an executive order prohibiting the “chemical and surgical mutilation” of children related to so-called “gender affirming care.”

“Anderson is the crown jewel of the UT System. They exceed financial performance of every other UT institution by hundreds of millions of dollars. So nothing is done to upset the apple cart. And I would actually argue that they use that wealth to get whatever it is that they want,” the whistleblower explained.

‘Walk with MD Anderson colleagues in Houston’s iconic Pride Parade.’

“They really are a paper tiger,” the whistleblower added, referring to MD Anderson executives like Pisters. “… They just rely on the backing of the state to cover up whatever mistakes they’ve made. And that really is the heart of it.

“The longer they get away with it, the more this continues.”

Inside MD Anderson

While corporate and municipal support for Pride Month was down considerably in 2025 in comparison with recent years, Pride Month 2025 celebrations were apparently in full swing at Inside MD Anderson, the hospital’s internally facing online board.

“This year, MD Anderson’s LGBTQ+ Employee Network has several opportunities for employees to participate in Pride Month both virtually and in-person. All employees are invited to participate,” said one 2025 post reviewed by Blaze News.

RELATED: How Jaguar’s gender-bending rebrand is threatening its total collapse

Screenshot given to Blaze News

That Inside MD Anderson page, which also included an image of a transgender Pride flag, went on to list seven Pride-related events, culminating in the 2025 Pride Houston 365 LGBT+ Pride Celebration: Festival and Parade. “Walk with MD Anderson colleagues in Houston’s iconic Pride Parade,” an attending message said.

Screenshot given to Blaze News

According to another photo from Inside MD Anderson, seen here, the LGBTQ+ Employee Network at the hospital is a lively, active group that wore matching green T-shirts, proudly waved the rainbow flag, and hoisted an MD Anderson balloon adorned with rainbow trim during a recent Pride parade. The whistleblower claimed that the photo was from the 2025 parade, but Blaze News could not independently verify that claim.

Blaze News did review another photo at Inside MD Anderson dated 2022 in which parade participants from the hospital’s LGBTQ+ network wore matching blue or purple T-shirts.

A post on the hospital’s official Instagram account further claimed that MD Anderson sponsored the 2024 Pride parade. As of Wednesday, that post remains live.

‘One of the most underreported stories in American politics is that the so-called Republican Texas government fully supports, funds, promotes, and forces taxpayers to subsidize DEI and transgender ideology.’

The LGBTQ+ Employee Network appears to be one of only a handful of organized intra-hospital staffing networks at MD Anderson. An apparently outdated webpage — available via internet search but not at the hospital website — about the similarly named LGBTQ+ Network at MD Anderson claims the group works to:

“ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity are not barriers to full participation in the professional and academic workplace,””present recommendations for increasing awareness and tolerance of LGBTQ+ issues,” and”foster a sense of community for LGBTQ+ employees.”

The outdated webpage likewise promotes the 2019 and 2022 Pride parades in Houston.

Blaze News reached out to an email address for the LGBTQ+ Employee Network that, as of last week, was still available at Inside MD Anderson. We did not receive a response.

MD Anderson did provide a statement about the network, telling Blaze News, “The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has multiple employee networks, including an LGBT network, to provide opportunities for employees to feel connected with their colleagues. Participation in each network is voluntary and open to all employees regardless of whether they personally identify as a member of that group.

“Employee networks are for internal engagement and therefore are not referenced on our public-facing website,” the hospital reiterated.

The hospital did not respond to a question about whether staff members in heterosexual relationships and traditional families enjoy similar support services. The hospital also did not clarify whether it provides any funding to the LGBT network.

Out in the open

While LGBTQ+-oriented photos and events are readily promoted at Inside MD Anderson, the public-facing website for the hospital is relatively quiet about LGBTQ-related issues. The “About MD Anderson” website page makes no overt reference to woke-related topics except to list “teamwork and inclusion” among its “core values.”

A search of “pride parade” at the website yields only two results, both of them from 2019.

‘This grant was canceled in March 2025 as part of the administration’s broader effort to remove gender ideology from federal programs and ensure that public health initiatives remain grounded in evidence-based science.’

In fact, most of its LGBTQ-related materials are years old. For example, a hospital website article from January 2023 cited Dr. Benjamin Schrank, a medical doctor as well as an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology, who co-founded the Sexual and Gender Minority Cancer Care & Research Committee at MD Anderson.

Schrank indicated at the time that LGBTQ+ patients had unique treatment needs because of their fears of substandard care or maltreatment, presumably from bigoted or insensitive medical staff.

“Ultimately, we want all patients to know MD Anderson is a safe place to seek care, and we want to give our patients the resources, support, and dignity they deserve,” Schrank said, according to the article, which likewise mentioned Schrank’s “husband.”

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

RELATED: ‘We’re going to do real science’: RFK Jr. promises Tucker Carlson he will study vaccine-autism link

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

According to records from the Department of Health and Human Services, MD Anderson has also collected more than $1 million in federal grants for “sexual and gender minority cancer … research and education” since 2019.

However, in keeping with Trump’s promise to Make America Healthy Again and to end “gender ideology extremism,” his second administration seems to have cut this line of so-called SGM research funding for MD Anderson.

In a statement to Blaze News, the Department of Health and Human Services said: “This grant was canceled in March 2025 as part of the administration’s broader effort to remove gender ideology from federal programs and ensure that public health initiatives remain grounded in evidence-based science and the best interests of all Americans.

“HHS remains fully committed to advancing rigorous, high-quality cancer research.”

MD Anderson did not clarify to Blaze News whether its Sexual and Gender Minority Cancer Care & Research Committee still exists or whether the hospital is still receiving any federal grant money for SGM-related research. It also did not confirm whether it recognizes any juvenile patients as “trans” or SGM.

Instead, the hospital said only that “the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is committed to providing high-quality and safe care to cancer patients” and that it “complies with state and federal laws, including Texas Education Code § 51.3525.”

That particular statute regulates institutions of higher education and strictly forbids them to establish policies or infrastructure related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Failure to comply can result in the loss of state funding.

Earlier this year, state Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) introduced the Defunding Indoctrination in Education Act, which seeks to ban institutions of higher education in Texas from “offering programs or courses in LGBTQ or DEI studies.” Harrison then refiled it during the special legislative session that began earlier this month, though Gov. Greg Abbott (R) must first add it to the agenda before the legislature can consider it.

Harrison told Blaze News that the ongoing shadowy LGBTQ push at MD Anderson would likely qualify as the kind of propaganda the DIE Act is trying to prevent. “I have no problem believing it’s happening [at MD Anderson] because I’m seeing it happen all over the place with DEI or transgender ideology, people just changing the names of it and continuing to fund it at taxpayer expense,” he said, characterizing such deception as “taxpayer abuse.”

Though Harrison stopped short of agreeing that woke activists in Texas enjoy “red state privilege,” he did tell Blaze News that for years Texas has “just been simply coasting on [its] reputation” of conservative values and limited government, a reputation he called a “myth.”

“One of the most underreported stories in American politics is that the so-called Republican Texas government fully supports, funds, promotes, and forces taxpayers to subsidize DEI and transgender ideology,” he claimed.

Abbott’s office did not respond to Blaze News’ question about adding the DIE Act to the special session agenda.

A ‘very liberal’ hospital

MD Anderson annually receives more than $100 million from the National Institutes of Health at the Department of Health and Human Services, so the recent cessation of the “sexual and gender minority cancer … research and education” grant, which brought in less than $300,000 a year, should not have a major impact on the important research and treatment that the hospital conducts in the fight against cancer.

But the whistleblower indicated to Blaze News that leaders at MD Anderson are generally “very liberal” and push leftist politics, including those regarding LGBTQ, at the hospital.

For instance, the whistleblower revealed that the hospital’s internal email system includes a group called the SURG Gender Inclusiveness Committee, though it’s unclear whether the committee has ever met or engaged in any meaningful advocacy at the hospital. The whistleblower confirmed to Blaze News that “SURG” is short for “surgery.”

RELATED: Trump deep-sixed DEI — but is it undead at major federal contractors like Lockheed Martin?

Screenshot given to Blaze News

The hospital has also recently promoted ongoing “sexual and gender minority”-based cancer research. As recently as last September, the hospital offered a “Sexual and Gender Minorities in Cancer Research” professional development event.

Shine Chang, the leader of and contact for the recently canceled SGM grant project at the NIH, was listed as a “co-activity director” for the event.

RELATED: Another white flag! Child sex-change regime continues to collapse under weight of Trump enforcement

Screenshot of MD Anderson website

According to her biographical information on the MD Anderson website, Chang, a member of the Department of Health Disparities Research faculty, is deeply invested in woke medicine. Her research interests include:

establishing an “LGBTQIA+ cancer research” workforce,examining “systemic bias and systems thinking in health science,”understanding the role that “financial toxicity” and other factors play in cancer outcomes,studying “cancer disparities across multiple demographic factors,” and”developing culturally and geographically specific cancer prevention curricula.”

‘Spearheading blood or stem cell drives that invite and welcome LGBTQ peoples to participate as donors.’

Yet another hospital researcher, hematologist Warren Fingrut, sent a blast email to the Graduate Medical Education program in May 2025, less than three months ago, seeking prospective trainees for “projects to engage LGBTQ peoples to healthcare.” Fingrut even expressed interest in “spearheading blood or stem cell drives that invite and welcome LGBTQ peoples to participate as donors.”

RELATED: Dear Chip and Joanna: We need a change order — before it’s too late

Screenshot given to Blaze News

Fingrut and Chang did not respond to requests for comment. The hospital also did not respond to questions about transgenderism and whether men can become women or vice versa.

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​Md anderson, Cancer treatment, Cancer research, Dhhs, Health and human services, National institutes of health, Sgm, Sexual and gender minorities, Lgbtq, Lgbt, Texas, Red state, Peter pisters, Politics 

The tragic death of another child in New Mexico has prompted a child advocate to blame the governor and the children’s safety agency that had been warned about the threat.

Vanessa Chavez was charged with child abuse resulting in death after her 18-month-old daughter was found unresponsive and died after 20 minutes of CPR, Albuquerque police said. The girl’s death is the sixth in only four months of incidents that involved the state’s Children, Youth & Families Department, according to KOB-TV.

‘This is on the governor. There is blood on the governor at this point.’

New Mexico Child First Network founder Maralyn Beck said the death was preventable and places the blame squarely on the governor as well as the child safety agency.

“Every single one of these deaths was preventable,” Beck said to KOB.

She added: “This is on the governor. There is blood on the governor at this point.”

The child had been taken away from Chavez when she was born premature because the girl had been drug-exposed. KOB reports that the girl was returned to the parents for a trial period and died soon afterward.

“One call to child protective services in a functioning system should save the life of a child,” an emotional Beck said. “One single call. That’s a functioning system, and we don’t have that.”

KOB put the criticism to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, and she said that it would be a priority for her office as she nears the end of her term but admitted that the agency had troubles.

“You’re chasing your tail, and we’ve been chasing our tail for decades,” she said.

When asked if she was going to make progress in the 18 months she has left, she responded, “We’re gonna make some damn important progress, yes sir.”

RELATED: Drunk illegal alien runs red light and crashes pickup into two cars, killing 22-year-old coach, according to New Mexico police

The governor’s office also released a statement.

“Gov. Lujan Grisham is working diligently to address flaws in the system for protecting New Mexico’s most vulnerable children, most recently announcing a bold overhaul of the way our state protects babies born to drug-addicted parents,” reads the statement in part. “New Mexico must also urgently address its addiction crisis — a contributing factor in recent child deaths.”

CYFD also released a statement about its involvement in the death of the child. The department confirmed that two of the three children belonging to Greg Montoya and Vanessa Chavez had previously been taken into CYFD custody. On June 18, an attorney for the couple asked for the abuse and neglect case to be dropped because the parents had complied with a “court-ordered reunification plan,” according to the CYFD.

CYFD said that none of the parties at the hearing objected to the dismissal, including social workers from the Office of Family Representation and Advocacy and the presiding judge.

“The death of this child is a tragedy of immeasurable proportions. CYFD extends its deepest condolences to all those affected by this loss,” the agency said.

Beck believes far more needs to be done to prevent the child deaths.

“If this isn’t a public health crisis, it’s a moral health crisis,” she said.

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There’s an old joke about how things change “after the honeymoon’s over” (in both marriage and work). It’s funny because it’s true. Every couple eventually comes down from the cake, the photos, and the glow. Some land gently. Others crash.

But the principle holds: The real work begins when the music fades.

Newlyweds may still bask in the warmth of vows they barely felt. But life has a way of testing those words sooner than expected.

Are we preparing couples for that moment — especially men — in a culture that rewards detachment more than devotion? In a nation filled with boys, are we raising men? In a society where even those at the highest levels of authority will not clearly define what a woman is, are we preparing men to sacrificially love one? In a world obsessed with sex and gratification, are we preparing men to lay down their lives rather than taking up their desires?

Treasure forged in marriage

I recently interviewed Jay Leno, who’s been caring for his wife of 45 years, Mavis, through serious health challenges. He told me, “This is where you earn your mettle. This is where you find out — do I really love her, or was it just easy when life was easy?”

Jay’s words reminded me that the cost of marriage isn’t just a burden — it’s a path to treasures only commitment reveals.

What makes marriage better isn’t avoiding the cost; it’s discovering the treasures it brings. You get to see grace do its quiet work over many years. You see joy flourish in places that should be barren. You see how scars — both physical and unseen — can frame a beauty more profound than youth. And you see God’s faithfulness in the unglamorous valleys where most resign.

Marriage is rewarding, and even one with caregiving is not a burden if you understand the calling. It’s not unhappy, but it does mean choosing one person above all others and guarding that choice. Chronic impairments just cause the guardrails to get a bit higher.

Newlyweds may still bask in the warmth of vows they barely felt. But life has a way of testing those words sooner than expected.

Love in suffering

A caller to my radio show once shared what happened when his wife came down with the flu.

“It was chaos,” he said. “Laundry stacked up. We lived on takeout. I missed work. No sleep. No sex.”

“How long did it last?”

“Five days.”

He sounded like he’d survived a war, not a week of sneezes. If five days can do that, what happens when it’s 100 days? A thousand? Ten thousand?

I’ve logged more than 14,000 days as a caregiver for my wife.

Most couples ease into suffering. We started with it. By the time we married, Gracie had survived a car wreck and 21 surgeries. That number has since climbed to 98 — across 13 hospitals. I lost count of physicians after 100. Minor procedures that didn’t require anesthesia easily surpass 150. I’ve collected more hospital visitor badges than some people have church bulletins.

But in that weight, I’ve come to see something sacred.

Our Savior also took a wounded bride. And he offered his body to be broken for her.

To my knowledge, Scripture gives only one direct charge to husbands: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

Not when she’s at her best. Not when it’s fair. Not when the load is balanced.

Just this: Love her. As Christ loved the church. At the cost of yourself.

Marriage is deployment

Failure lurks in every marriage, especially in those that include caregiving. My “sanctification opportunities” are like Costco — always in bulk — where my weakness crashes into God’s mercy, usually after frustration hits a wall.

Yet while my performance record is nothing to brag about, my attendance record remains flawless. I’ve discovered faith is often disguised as consistency.

Soldiers understand this better than most.

When you’re deployed, comfort isn’t expected. You have a mission. You stay focused.

Caregiving is deployment.

I didn’t sign up for applause. But I did sign up. And like many soldiers, I’ve learned to travel light, stay alert, and protect what matters: a woman whose scars still reflect the beauty of God’s sustaining grace.

Everything must serve the mission to “love your wife as Christ loved the church,” and that means saying no to jobs, travel, or even well‑meaning voices that pull you off course. Sin threatens the mission, but distraction does it quietly. Even good things, if misaligned, become the wrong things.

The cross Christ carried wasn’t shared evenly. Neither is caregiving. That’s why clarity matters.

RELATED: Big weddings, bigger regrets: Gen Z says ‘I don’t’ to wedding debt

Photo by Andre Taissin/Getty Images

When poetry becomes a battlefield

Churches valiantly try to strengthen marriages, and for many couples, those efforts help. But most of what’s offered assumes shared capacity. Suffering doesn’t always allow for mutual effort. Sometimes it’s just one of you standing while the other fades.

Standing alone doesn’t mean failing. It means standing.

That’s when the vows stop sounding like romantic poetry and become a daily battlefield, often marked by crushing silence.

In caregiving, strength is budgeted. Waste it, and there’s nothing left for what matters most.

Christ’s mission for his wounded bride didn’t trap him. It revealed his glory.

He walks with us

This mission we choose won’t make headlines. It’s not meant to. But God sees. He hasn’t asked us to understand everything. He’s asked us to trust Him. And maybe that’s the point, whether you’re facing five days of sickness — or a lifetime.

Show up. Filter the noise. Decline the distractions. Love the one entrusted to you — you won’t do it perfectly, but you can do it persistently and consistently.

Scripture doesn’t offer husbands “10 steps to a successful marriage.” It offers a cross. Just a path: the Via Dolorosa. And the one who walked it before us and walks it with us.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Marriage, Caregiving, Caretaker, Family, Sacrifice, Devotion, Health care, Mental health, Jesus christ, Christianity, Weddings 

“South Park” just unleashed season 27, episode 2, taking a gleeful swing at Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA firebrand who’s garnered significant fame roasting liberal college kids in heated campus debates.

In the episode, the character Eric Cartman adopts a persona resembling Kirk. Donning a similar hairstyle, Cartman, calling himself “the master debater,” goes full scorched-earth on his fellow students, slinging Bible verses and zingers like, “You just hate America, and you love abortions!”

But when Alex Stein, BlazeTV host of “Prime Time with Alex Stein,” caught the episode, he smelled a rat — or rather, a “Kirt.”

He argues the “South Park” take on Kirk feels less like the real deal and more like his own alter ego, “Charlie Kirt” — a “bad-to-the-bone … mother trucker,” who cranks Kirk’s debate style to 11 with troll-tastic flair to make woke students implode.

Check out Kirt’s most viral campus takedown here:

Unlike Kirk, who Alex characterizes as “a tough debater,” yet “very gracious” and “very respectful,” Cartman’s persona is a verbal wrecking ball with a heaping side of unhinged lunacy.

“I feel like [‘South Park’ is] channeling a little Charlie Kirt,” says Alex.

He plays a clip from the episode where the phrase “another woke student destroyed” flashes on-screen – a dead ringer for the cheeky edits in his own Kirt videos.

“See, Charlie [Kirk] does not do that last part! We do that! Charlie Kirt does that!” laughs Alex.

“I have a big ego, so I’m going to say it’s all me.”

Watch the videos and decide for yourself: Did “South Park” lampoon Charlie Kirk or sneakily swipe Alex’s Kirt schtick?

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​Prime time with alex stein, Alex stein, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirt, Blazetv, Blaze media, South park 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that a court granted his emergency request to stop what he called a “deceptive financial influence scheme” by former Congressman Beto O’Rourke.

Democrats have been able to thwart a vote on redistricting by fleeing the state and thus preventing a quorum from being called so Republicans can push the motion through. O’Rourke has helped fund these efforts through his group, Powered by People, until the court stopped him temporarily.

‘Today, I stopped his deceptive financial influence scheme that attempted to deceive donors and subvert our constitutional process.’

“The Beto Bribe buyouts that were bankrolling the runaway Democrats have been officially stopped,” reads a statement from Paxton. “People like Robert believe Texas can be bought. Today, I stopped his deceptive financial influence scheme that attempted to deceive donors and subvert our constitutional process. They told me to ‘come and take it,’ so I did.”

Paxton said the court granted his request for a temporary restraining order against O’Rourke and his group and blocked them from making any further expenditures or fundraising while litigation continues.

He alleges that O’Rourke ran afoul of Texas campaign fundraising laws by misleading donors on the purpose of the money spent on fleeing Democrats.

“O’Rourke and Powered by People sought to take advantage of uninformed donors by directing them to explicitly political fundraising platforms, all while intending to use the funds for purposes they understood to be constituted as personal expenditures,” Paxton said in part.

He said the group violated Texas prohibition against organizations “engaging in false, misleading, and deceptive acts.”

RELATED: Paxton will ask court to kick Democrats out of office if they refuse to return to Texas: Report

O’Rourke has responded to the allegations by attacking Paxton on his past controversies.

“The guy impeached for bribery is going after the folks trying to stop the theft of five Congressional seats,” he wrote in part. “Let’s stop these thugs before they steal our country.”

Paxton was under federal investigation for alleged bribery and abuse of office but was never charged. He is now running against current Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas for the Republican nomination.

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​Paxton vs beto orourke, Beto orourke funding scheme, Runaway democrats, Paxton vs runaway dems, Politics 

A Georgia man has been arrested for allegedly making numerous comments threatening to kill President Donald Trump on an online forum.

Jauan Rashun Porter, 29, said that he would shoot Trump between the eyes and watch him bleed out, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Northern Georgia.

‘I’m gonna watch him bleed out and I’m gonna watch him die. … I’m gonna do that.’

Porter joined a TikTok livestream on July 29 that had to do with the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida and wrote the comments to other users, according to prosecutors.

“So there’s only one way to make America great and that is putting a bullet in between Trump’s eyes,” he allegedly wrote.

“I’m gonna kill Donald Trump. I’m gonna put a 7.62 bullet inside his forehead,” another message read.

“I’m gonna watch him bleed out and I’m gonna watch him die. … I’m gonna do that,” a third message read.

The livestream host apparently asked Porter what he would do when federal agents appeared at his door.

“I’m gonna kill them too,” he responded.

He was unable to fulfill that promise because the federal agents who searched his home were able to find an explosive and pistol ammunition.

RELATED: Texas man allegedly threatened to shoot Trump on visit to flooding disaster: ‘I won’t miss’

Porter was on probation and has a long criminal record, including the following offenses:

Making terroristic threatsInfluencing a witness Mutiny in a penal institution Drug possession Battery Possession of a firearm by a convicted felon Domestic violence

Prosecutors said he was charged with making threats against the president.

“The allegations against Porter are serious and required a swift, decisive, and collaborative response,” reads a statement from U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg. “We do not tolerate threats against public officials or law enforcement officers, and Porter will now face the consequences of his actions.”

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All six Cincinnati mob attack suspects were indicted Friday and hit with additional charges, WLWT-TV reported.

The station said all six suspects were indicted on eight charges each: three counts of felonious assault, three counts of assault, and two counts of aggravated riot.

‘We are extremely concerned that video footage appears to have been used to bring potential participants in the brawl to face consequences and not the individual who appears to have been the verbal and physical initiator of the incident.’

WLWT said each suspect faces up to 29.5 years in prison if convicted on all eight charges.

“What I saw on video is not the Cincinnati I know and love,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich said when announcing the indictments, the station reported. “These charges hold those involved in the attack accountable.”

WLWT said the following five suspects have appeared in court: 39-year-old Jermaine Matthews, 24-year-old Dekyra Vernon, 34-year-old Montianez Merriweather, 25-year-old Aisha Devaughn, and 37-year-old Dominique Kittle.

Patrick Rosemond, 38, was arrested Monday in Georgia and was set for extradition back to Cincinnati.

Rosemond is the male “accused of hitting the victim named Holly,” WLWT said in a previous story. Holly is the woman who was punched in the face by a male during the mob beatdown — and appeared to be knocked out as a result.

Cellphone video of the mob attack (1:34 mark) shows Holly, who’s wearing a blue dress, apparently trying to intervene on behalf of a beaten-up man, but instead, another female punches her in the back of the head — and seconds later, a male punches her in the face, knocking her flat on her back on the street.

Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio last week shared grisly images of Holly’s face that appeared to have been taken soon after the attack and showed her with a horrific black eye and massive bruising.

“This is Holly,” Moreno wrote on X. “She wanted to have a nice evening out with friends. Instead, she got this.”

Vivek Ramaswamy — who’s running for Ohio governor — shared a disturbing close-up image of Holly’s face after she hit the ground; her eyes are wide open, and her body is motionless. Video shows a few people soon trying to help her up.

Holly later recorded a tearful video in which she thanked those who’ve supported her.

She also spoke at a Wednesday news conference:

You can view cellphone videos of the mob attack here, here, here, here, and here.

Police on Friday also released bodycam video showing the aftermath of the mob attack.

The NAACP released a statement Friday morning saying the organization is “disheartened by the violence,” WLWT reported.

“It appears that a lot of bad decisions were made by various people, and as such, we ask that a thorough investigation by local law enforcement officials be permitted to be fully conducted to allow all persons involved to be given their day in court,” the NAACP added, according to the station. “However, we are extremely concerned that video footage appears to have been used to bring potential participants in the brawl to face consequences and not the individual who appears to have been the verbal and physical initiator of the incident.”

The NAACP’s statement also notes that “the community needs to have an answer regarding the lack of charges.”

Blaze News on Friday reached out to police and asked if they anticipate any more charges, particularly in regard to the individual the NAACP presumably referenced — a male seen on video issuing a face slap prior to the mob attack. Indeed, Mayor Aftab Pureval last Friday said that male is being “actively investigated.”

But police had no specifics, telling Blaze News only that it’s “still an open and active investigation.”

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​Indictments, Cincinnati, Mob attack, Arrests, Felonious assault charges, Aggravated riot charges, Prosecutor, Crime 

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) announced new administrative changes in an attempt to force Democrats who have fled the state to return.

Texas Democrats have left the state they serve in favor of Illinois in order to avoid having to pass a redistricting plan they claim will unfairly result in more Republican districts.

Since breaking quorum — which refers to the minimum number of members required to conduct state business — the state of Texas has directed the Texas Rangers to locate the missing Democrats. The state has also worked with the FBI, while at the same time issuing arrest warrants. The Democratic representatives still have not returned.

On Friday, Speaker Burrows announced new rules that will likely put a damper on his colleagues’ trips to the Midwest.

‘They won’t be arresting anyone.’

Along with Comptroller Kelly Hancock, Burrows said he has enacted a policy that will prohibit any House member who is breaking quorum from having his or her paycheck or per diem deposited electronically.

“The Constitution forbids us from withholding pay. It does not dictate how we issue the pay,” the speaker said from his podium. “Those checks must now be picked up in person on Capitol grounds, effective immediately.”

Burrows then announced that the missing members will also be forfeiting a portion of their living and travel expenses.

RELATED: Democrats ‘defend democracy’ by ditching it

“Starting today, to safeguard taxpayer dollars and account for forthcoming liabilities … 30% of each quorum-breaking member’s monthly operating budget will be reserved and made unavailable for expenditure,” Burrows announced.

It remains to be seen if the threat of going unpaid will work on the group of Democrats who so far have been comfortable with abandoning their constituents and becoming fugitives in their own state.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) said in a press conference this week that the FBI has only been authorized to locate Democrats, not arrest them, and therefore he welcomes them to come and see “the beauty of Lake Michigan.”

“They won’t be arresting anyone because there is no U.S. federal law that prohibits those Texas House Democrats from being here in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker explained.

However, Burrows said on Friday he is working on that aspect of the issue, as well.

RELATED: FBI to locate ‘derelict’ Democrats who fled Texas, GOP senator says

Burrows announced that he was collaborating with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the hopes of making the arrest warrants for Democrats “enforceable beyond Texas state lines.”

Additionally, the Texas speaker said he has contacted the sergeant at arms of the Illinois House of Representatives to request assistance in returning the absent members.

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​News, Texas, Democrats, Republicans, Quorum, Politics 

In a recent article published by the Daily Mail, the headline “Trump starts firing purge of top FBI agents opposed to his administration as they decry ‘retribution’” attempts to victimize the FBI agents recently fired — but it fails to mention that at least two of those agents were more than just “opposed” to his administration.

Steven Jensen and Walter Giardina worked for the former administration — and in Giardina’s case, he was willing to do almost anything to stop Trump from getting into office.

Brian Driscoll was a former FBI acting director appointed in January 2025, replaced by Kash Patel. Jensen was acting director of the FBI’s Washington field office and was heavily involved in the January 6 investigation.

“Gone. No, thank you. We don’t need that anymore. No, we’re not into political persecution,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says.

Giardina was a special agent who investigated Trump adviser Peter Navarro and also played a significant role in Crossfire Hurricane. He was also a part of special counsel Mueller’s investigation, as well as the Dan Scavino, Roger Stone, and Hillary Clinton cases.

And a June press release from the office of Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) included even more damning information.

The press release revealed that Giardina “was an initial recipient of the Steele dossier and falsely said that the report was corroborated as true” and that he had “stated openly his animosity toward President Trump and made known his personal motivation to investigate Trump.”

Giardina also “electronically wiped the laptop he was assigned while working for special counsel Mueller outside of established protocol for record preservation, raising the possibility that he destroyed government records” and “instructed agents to use false Emolument predication on President Trump to ‘dig around.’”

That’s not all. He was also a case agent assigned to the Crimson River case, later changed to Red Maasari. The case was leaked to the Washington Post “roughly 90 days before the presidential election, in an attempt to falsely discredit President Trump.”

“That means they knew it was not true, and they wanted to discredit him anyway,” Gonzales says, disturbed.

“I am hopeful that that is going to trickle down. It just can’t stop here,” she adds.

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​Video phone, Camera phone, Upload, Free, Sharing, Video, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Trump, Trump administration, Walter giardina, Brian driscoll, Steven jensen, Fbi agents fired, Kash patel, Fbi agents 

An appeals court panel handed President Donald Trump a victory in the court battle over deportations of illegal aliens who were sent to a prison for terrorists in El Salvador.

The administration was locked in a court battle with U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who had issued an order for the administration to stop the flights to the prison. When the flights continued, Boasberg said there was probable cause to find Trump administration officials in criminal contempt for ignoring his order.

‘Dangling this sword of Damocles to compel the Executive to exercise its foreign affairs powers exceeds the court’s authority and is an abuse of discretion.’

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with Trump in a split decision. Two of the three panel judges ruled in his favor. Both of the judges were appointed by Trump.

“Dangling this sword of Damocles to compel the Executive to exercise its foreign affairs powers exceeds the court’s authority and is an abuse of discretion,” Judge Neomi Rao wrote. “What a court lacks the power to do directly, it cannot accomplish indirectly.”

An attorney for the ACLU suggested that they are considering filing an appeal.

“We strongly disagree with the ruling and are considering all options going forward,” Lee Gelernt said. “The opinion brushes aside the considerable evidence that has emerged that DOJ’s lawyers understood the order at the time and simply ignored it.”

Boasberg had ruled that the Trump administration had not provided the illegal aliens with the proper due process when he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to send them to El Salvador. The administration designated the vicious gang Tren de Aragua a terror threat and used that designation to immediately deport suspected gang members.

When the issue was taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, all nine justices found that illegal aliens had some due process rights to be given proper notice and to argue their case against the government labeling them gang members.

A smaller majority vacated the ruling from Boasberg to block the deportations and allowed the administration to continue with its plans.

RELATED: Pam Bondi slaps Judge Boasberg with misconduct allegations

The full 11-member appeals court could take up the case. The full court has seven Democratic appointees and four Republican appointees.

In July, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a complaint against Boasberg over private comments he made suggesting that if the Trump administration ignored judicial rulings, it would result in a constitutional crisis. Bondi alleged that the comments undermined the integrity of the judiciary.

Boasberg could be impeached from the bench if the complaint is found to have merit.

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​Trump vs boasberg, Trump court vs boasberg, Judge neomi rao, Trump wins in court, Politics