Category: blaze media

Washington has forced local television stations to compete in a 21st-century media market under rules written for the 20th century.

Americans pay the price whenever outdated regulations make it harder for local broadcasters to invest in better news coverage, stronger emergency alerts, and new technology.

The future of local television should not be determined by regulations written before streaming, smartphones, and digital competition transformed the media landscape.

The Federal Communications Commission has now taken an important step toward fixing that mismatch by replacing a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach with a more flexible, fact-based review process.

The principle is simple: Regulation should respond to today’s marketplace, not yesterday’s assumptions.

Local television still matters. Americans rely on hometown stations for storm warnings, election coverage, school closings, and stories that national outlets rarely cover. Yet, like local newspapers before them, many stations face serious financial pressure.

More than half of U.S. television stations operate at a loss even as they continue providing essential public service.

To survive, broadcasters need investment. They want to upgrade transmission systems, strengthen emergency alerts, expand local journalism, and deploy next-generation broadcast technology.

But investment requires scale, and investors are understandably reluctant to fund companies that federal policy artificially prevents from reaching more than 39% of American households.

That ownership cap was created for a different era, when Americans watched one of three television networks and broadcasters dominated the video marketplace.

The market changed. Washington’s rules did not.

Americans now consume news and entertainment on smartphones, tablets, laptops, streaming services, social media, and podcasts. Broadcasters compete with Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, cable networks, and digital platforms capable of reaching essentially every American.

Local broadcasters, however, remain constrained by a federal ownership cap designed before the internet transformed the media business.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has warned that America should not repeat the mistakes made with local newspapers.

That warning deserves attention.

Washington watched thousands of local newspapers disappear while old business models collapsed and investment arrived too late. Communities never stopped needing local journalism. The economics simply stopped supporting it.

Local television should not be next.

Critics of the FCC’s order warn that loosening ownership restrictions could weaken localism. That is a legitimate concern, but it should be tested against evidence rather than treated as an argument for preserving the status quo indefinitely.

The politics of the moment also matter. Because the reform comes from a Republican FCC, opponents can dismiss it as simple deregulation. Yet media-ownership debates have shifted with partisan control before, and Democrats have supported modernization efforts of their own when they held power.

RELATED: FCC slaps ban on Chinese robots — revealing US plans for unmanned warfighting

John Keeble/Getty Images

Localism should remain the objective. The 39% ownership cap is only one regulatory tool.

There is little evidence that fixing the national ownership limit at 39% — rather than 50%, 75%, or some other figure — produces more local news, stronger emergency coverage, or better community service.

Good public policy should ask whether a regulation produces measurable benefits, not whether it has survived for decades.

If policymakers want stronger local journalism, they should focus on the conditions that make it possible: investment, innovation, modern technology, and financially sustainable business models.

Emergency communications make the point especially clear.

During hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and other disasters, local broadcasters provide information that can save lives. Those capabilities depend on modern infrastructure, skilled journalists, reliable transmission systems, and continuing investment — not on an arbitrary national ownership ceiling.

The FCC’s decision does not guarantee that every station will thrive. Nothing can.

But it gives local broadcasters something they have lacked for too long: greater freedom to attract investment, modernize operations, strengthen emergency communications, and build sustainable local-news organizations.

Government should not freeze one industry in time while every competitor is free to innovate.

The future of local television should not be determined by regulations written before streaming, smartphones, and digital competition transformed the media landscape.

Local communities are best served when their broadcasters have the freedom to grow, compete, and invest in the journalism Americans still depend on.

​Broadcast rights, Fcc, Streaming, Television, Regulations, Tv, Public services, Opinion & analysis 

Three “women” are accused in the torture death of 7-year-old Ohio boy — but authorities said two of the suspects are male who co-parented the victim with his mother.

Cincinnati police said the Mercy Rookwood emergency department called Thursday after a woman claimed that someone was trying to kill her and her boy.

‘We saw injuries that would indicate physical beatings, blunt force injuries from a striking device on the face, torso, back, upper and lower extremities …’

“We have somebody that came in and kind of just dropped herself on the floor. She’s barefoot. She thinks that her partner’s trying to kill her, that they took her son,” the worker said in the call to police.

“She’s saying that he’s hiding him up in the attic. She is sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth and barefoot,” the worker added.

Hours later officers were called to a home on Madison Road in Oakley over a “suspicious death.”

They found William Evans-Ellis bound and wrapped with duct tape in a closet. Police arrested two males who had been co-parenting with the victim’s mother, who also was arrested.

Cincinnati police detective Kyle Smith said in court that the case is “one of the most disturbing examples of child abuse” he’d ever seen.

“From what we could see, we saw injuries that would indicate physical beatings, blunt force injuries from a striking device on the face, torso, back, upper and lower extremities. Impact injuries to the back of the head,” Smith said.

“We believe that there was, for lack of a better term, some water torture involved,” he added. “We believe the victim was choked under water, held under water for a long period of time. There was some burn torture involved, and the victim was found duct taped in positions that immobilized him.”

The boy also was revealed to have been “mentally handicapped.”

An attorney for 38-year-old Kaitlin Evans — the boy’s biological mother — admitted that she had not done enough to save her child but denied that she had killed him. Evans accused one of the two other suspects of killing the boy.

The attorney for 23-year-old Nessa Keaney said he tried to administer “treatment” to the boy and claimed Keaney was the “least culpable” for the boy’s death.

A detective testified that the third suspect, 33-year-old Kirby Rankin, admitted to his part in the abuse and had implicated Keaney and Evans as “active participants” in the abuse of the boy.

The victim’s biological father also spoke in court.

“Willie was my life, and I trusted you to care for him. They kept him from me for the past nine months over lies,” the father said.

A WXIX-TV news video described the suspects only as “people,” and other outlets described them as women — but Keaney’s arrest record lists him as a male, and Rankin also is listed as a male, while Evans is listed as a female.

RELATED: Florida woman brutally beat man to death with a hammer — and left a note saying ‘PEDO Touches Children’

Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge Rodney Harris set each suspect’s bond at $1.1 million — $1 million for murder and $100,000 for child endangering, WXIX said, adding that all three pleaded not guilty and are expected back in court later this month.

Officials apparently missed a chance to save the boy months prior to his death, when Rankin attacked a woman in a parking lot amid a driving dispute. The woman suffered fractured teeth, a concussion, a neck injury, and a torn meniscus — and asked police to charge Rankin with a felony. He was charged only with a misdemeanor and aggravated menacing.

“I asked to go to [the] grand jury. They refused. I kept being told because she was hit one time it wasn’t a felony, which is absolutely absurd,” Lance Bunnell, the husband of the victim and a retired law enforcement captain, said.

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​Child abuse, Child torture, Ohio, Transgender, Murder, Crime 

The depth behind the policies endorsed by the co-chair of the Democratic Socialist Party of America was revealed to be incredibly shallow.

Megan Romer was interviewed by David Remnick on “The New Yorker Radio Hour” about DSA policy positions, when he simply asked her what it meant to tax “the hell” out of millionaires.

‘So again, it’s democracy, right? And we have to look at what we need to spend and what we need. We don’t want to depend on the existence of millionaires, because that means people are still getting exploited.’

Romer said she was more concerned about billionaires before circling back about millionaires.

“I think most billionaires got their wealth because they exploited the working class in some very significant way usually,” Romer said.

“But we do believe in taxing the hell out of millionaires, yeah, absolutely,” she laughed.

“What does ‘taxing the hell out of them’ mean?” Remnick asked simply.

“Yeah. You know, again, I don’t have, like, a solid,” she laughed again.

“But shouldn’t you?” Remnick interrupted.

“Umm, that’s a good question,” she replied.

“If you’re the co-chair of the DSA, shouldn’t you be more specific than just taxing the hell out of something? What exactly do you mean?” he asked.

“So again, it’s democracy, right? And we have to look at what we need to spend and what we need. We don’t want to depend on the existence of millionaires, because that means people are still getting exploited,” she responded.

“So yeah, we need to look at what we need to pay for in the interim, what sort of tax base we need for that to happen, and then build from there,” she added.

While video of the exchange was widely circulated on social media, the entire interview can be viewed on the YouTube channel for the New Yorker.

RELATED: Democratic Socialists of America seek to RADICALLY upend the federal gov’t in reported platform update

The DSA is surging after a recent spree of primary victories against establishment candidates of the Democratic Party, leading to concerns that the extremist fringe is taking over.

Some Democrats responded by rejecting the extremist policies and forming a small group dedicated to defeating the communist fringe of the party.

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​Democratic socialists of america, Socialism, Communism, Democratic party, Politics 

Almost 30 years later, the murder of Tupac Shakur will go to trial for the first time.

The gang leader allegedly responsible, according to the prosecution, will only have himself to blame if he goes behind bars.

‘I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody, never did ever kill nobody.’

Smoking gun

Postmortem records, documentaries, and conspiracy theories have surrounded the death of Shakur for decades, and the same goes for his rival, rapper Christopher Wallace, aka the Notorious BIG.

The rivalry between the West Coast and East Coast rappers and their entourages hit a boiling point on September 7, 1996, in Las Vegas following a Mike Tyson boxing match.

The two sides had already employed gangs for protection, with Shakur and Death Row Records protected by Mob Piru, a Los Angeles gang affiliated with the Bloods. Producer and longtime suspect Marion “Suge” Knight was already affiliated with the group. Wallace’s side, Bad Boy Records and Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, had allegedly hired the South Side Compton Crips as their bodyguards.

It was then, prosecutors say, that Duane “Keffe D” Davis was the leader of those Crips who ordered the killing of Shakur on Sept. 7 and provided the gun to kill him in a drive-by shooting, the Guardian reported.

Reports from the trial, starting Monday, say that the cold case was revived only after Davis’ memoirs were published in 2019. In the book, Davis said he was in the front seat of the Cadillac from which Shakur was shot and allegedly handed the pistol used to someone in the back seat. The book reportedly does not say who opened fire, but everyone else who was in the car that night has since died.

RELATED: HULK HYPOCRITE: $35 million man Ruffalo stumps for socialism

Steve Marcus-Pool/Getty Images

‘I ain’t killed nobody’

The story goes that Shakur and Knight attacked Davis’ nephew, another member of the Crips named Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson. The fight was allegedly a retaliation for an assault on an employee of Death Row Records.

Prosecutors say Davis was out for revenge after the scuffle, but the 63-year-old said he did not commit the murder and said there was no evidence against him.

“I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody, never did ever kill nobody,” Davis told ABC News in 2025.

Davis argued to the outlet that he should be out living a normal life instead of facing the allegations.

“I’m supposed to be out there enjoying my twilight,” he said. “At one of my f**king grandson’s football games and basketball games. Enjoying life with my kids.”

Saying he left the gang life long ago, Davis stated that he was not even in Nevada at the time of the shooting but in Los Angeles, which is over four hours away by car.

RELATED: Diddy’s Big Circus

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Hype or homicide?

“They don’t have no evidence against me. They can’t even put me in Las Vegas,” Davis asserted.

Davis faces life in prison without parole if he is convicted, but despite his apparent admission in his memoirs of being involved in the murder, he has since claimed that the information in the book is not accurate.

“I just gave him details of my life,” Davis said about the author, claiming he never read the memoirs. “And he went and did his little investigation and wrote the book on his own.”

Davis claimed the book’s details were inflated to generate book sales.

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​Tupac shakur, Notorious big, Suge knight, Diddy, Entertainment 

Newly released texts from Dr. Anthony Fauci showed that he and other health officials knew about a miscarriage risk to the coronavirus vaccine, but told the public it was safe.

The texts were released by Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin as part of the investigation by the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

‘It’s really one of those things that’s kind of not a close call. It really is pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated.’

The exchange showed Fauci referring to the miscarriage risk in texts to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who was the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time.

“I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of,” he wrote. “Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”

It was sent Jan. 25, 2021.

Days later, he said the Food and Drug Administration had “found thus far, and we have to be careful, but thus far no red flags about that, about pregnant women,” during a livestream with the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Months after that, Fauci made similar comments to “What to Expect” creator Heidi Murkoff.

“[I]f you look at the literally — literally — tens and tens and tens of thousands of women who have been followed by the CDC who were vaccinated when they were pregnant, there’s no indication whatsoever that there’s any increase of any adverse issues in a pregnant woman who was vaccinated compared to a pregnant woman who wasn’t vaccinated,” said Fauci.

“It’s really one of those things that’s kind of not a close call. It really is pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated.”

Johnson posted the message on his social media account.

“While I’ve been conducting oversight for years, now that we have the documents and Fauci’s government-issued phone, my investigation has only just begun,” he said.

“Pregnant women were told it was safe! How many women lost babies due to Dr. Fauci’s lies?” responded Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier.

RELATED: Former Fauci adviser INDICTED for allegedly hiding emails about the origins of COVID

“Americans were told to shut up, trust the experts, and get the shot or risk their jobs and livelihoods,” replied Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

“Meanwhile, behind closed doors, Fauci, Walensky, and Murthy were discussing the very uncertainties Americans were attacked for raising: missing pregnancy data, pregnant women excluded from the trials, a WHO statement citing lack of data, and even a theoretical concern about miscarriage after the second dose,” he added.

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​Centers for disease control, Coronavirus vaccine, Dr anthony fauci, Miscarriage, Politics 

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vehemently denied the suggestion he made a crude remark about a female foreign leader’s “melons.”

Albanese made the comments — and hand gestures — during his appearance on the “Bush Deep” podcast with Australian comedian Nikki Osborne. He also said during the show that he would “shag” singer and actress Kylie Minogue.

‘The comments were beneath the office of prime minister.’

Osborne asked him about gifts from foreign leaders when he told a story involving Sanae Takaichi, the female prime minister of Japan

“Here’s something I got recently here that was pretty strange but ended up being quite good was a melon. The Japanese prime minister brought a melon here!” said Albanese.

“How did he get that through customs?” Osbourne asked.

“She — it’s a royal melon,” he answered.

“Oh, she smuggled — it was a she? Did she smuggle it?” the podcaster asked, while making a gesture as if referring to pregnancy.

“I dunno,” he said, smirking.

“Oh, I’m expecting!” Osbourne joked.

“Got a couple of melons!” said Albanese while gesturing with his hands at his chest.

“She brought two?” she laughed.

“She brought two! As you do!” he replied.

“She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson!” the podcaster joked.

“She brought two!” he replied. “And they’re beautiful!”

Video of the interaction can be viewed on social media.

Takaichi had been visiting Australia to improve diplomatic relations as China threatens to expand its influence in the South China Sea.

Albanese’s political critics pounced on the incident, lambasted him, and demanded that he apologize for the joke.

“The comments were beneath the office of prime minister,” said Liberal leader Angus Taylor on Monday. “They were insulting, and the prime minister should make a personal apology. He’s done it through a statement. I mean, the hypocrisy of Labor and the prime minister on this topic knows no bounds, no bounds whatsoever.”

Opposition leader Ted O’Brien, after meeting with Japanese officials, said “the prime minister’s words were inappropriate and a national embarrassment.”

RELATED: France recalls ambassadors from the US and Australia after calling Indo-Pacific pact a ‘stab in the back’

What’s more, Shingo Yamagami — a former Japanese ambassador to Australia — rebuked Albanese for his words.

Yamagami wrote, “Prime Minister, please enjoy Japan’s sweet and juicy melons without thinking about a women’s anatomy” before adding that “however lighthearted it was intended to be, the recent joke delivered by PM Anthony Albanese at the expense of Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi is how he might be remembered by Japanese who most value the friendship with Australia.”

Yamagami added that “what dismayed some was that Takaichi has recently been subject to derogatory remarks about her body and gender” and that “the last thing she expected was to be so casually mocked by the trusted leader of Japan’s special strategic partner.”

Albanese previously apologized for his comment about shagging Minogue.

Takaichi is considered a very conservative leader who supports the legacy of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The melons in question are a special kind called Shizuoka-grown Crown Melons, which are grown so that only one fruit can be harvested from each plant. They are very expensive and are exported to Canada from Japan.

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​Australia, Chinese communist party, Japan, Sexism, Melons, Politics 

When Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet shared a college student’s complaint that basic purchases have become prohibitively expensive — he also began a war on social media.

“One of our TPUSA college students gave me his take on affordability:

‘A burrito shouldn’t cost $20.’

Yeah, a lot of this is a hangover from Covid and Biden-era inflation, but the lived experience is the same: It just feels like basic things cost too much,” Kolvet wrote in a post on X.

The post went viral, and people all over the country chimed in with their opinions on the affordability crisis.

However, BlazeTV host Pat Gray isn’t buying it.

“There’s a big problem with affordability now because somebody paid 20 bucks for a burrito, and now the world’s out of control,” Gray says on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“All of a sudden, burritos are the most important thing in American society and their affordability. And they should never cost $20, ever. Nothing should cost 20 bucks,” he adds.

“It is surprising going through fast-food restaurant drive-throughs lately when you get the bill,” Jeff Fisher argues.

“Sure. But that’s, I mean, that’s been the case for a while. Don’t go out to eat then,” Gray says. “Buy the ingredients at the store. Go home and make your own burrito.”

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​Burrito, Pat gray, Turning point usa, Affordability crisis, Inflation, Groceries, Blazetv show 

A Kentucky middle school teacher is accused of grooming and having an improper relationship with a student, according to authorities.

Graves County Sheriff’s Office announced that 25-year-old Sadie M. Flores of Mayfield was arrested around 3:30 p.m. Friday.

‘We take any allegation involving the safety of a child or the professional conduct of an employee extremely seriously and will continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement and the appropriate authorities.’

Flores was charged with grooming a minor — a Class D felony.

Kentucky’s grooming a minor law was enacted July 15.

The law states that a person is guilty of grooming a minor when the offender is 18 years or older and engages in grooming behavior directed at a minor who is under 14 years old with the “intent to entice, coerce, solicit, or induce the minor to engage in sexual conduct with the person or another person.”

In addition, the law states that a person is guilty of grooming a minor when the offender is in a position of authority or special trust and engages in grooming behavior directed at a minor who is under 18 years old with the intent to entice, coerce, solicit, or induce the minor to engage in sexual conduct with the person or another person — or develop an intimate or secretive relationship with the minor.

Flores was booked at the Graves County Restricted Custody Center, according to jail records. Police said Flores later was transferred to an out-of-county detention center.

Flores — a teacher at Graves County Middle School — was “having an improper relationship with a minor student of the district,” according to the Graves County Sheriff’s Office.

“District administration was made aware of an allegation involving a teacher at Graves County Middle School,” stated Matt Madding, superintendent of Graves County Schools.

The Graves County School District Office “immediately reported it to the Graves County Sheriff’s Office for an investigation.”

The statement read, “Sheriff’s detectives’ investigation included the seizure of electronic records, interviews, and other related investigative measures.”

Police said detectives interviewed Flores and then arrested her.

RELATED: Video allegedly shows female HS teacher wearing ‘Jesus Loves You’ shirt while having sex with student: Warrants

Madding said, “Because this is an ongoing legal and personnel matter, we are limited in the information we can publicly share.”

Madding noted that the “safety and well-being of our students is our highest priority.”

“We take any allegation involving the safety of a child or the professional conduct of an employee extremely seriously and will continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement and the appropriate authorities,” Madding said.

Graves County Sheriff Jon Hayden said the investigation is ongoing.

Authorities have not released further details regarding the alleged relationship, the alleged victim’s age, or the possibility of additional charges, Fox News reported.

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​Teacher arrested, Teacher student sex scandal, Grooming, Child sex crimes, Kentucky, Middle school, Crime 

Democratic socialist Francesca Hong’s rise is about more than one candidate — it’s a warning sign that ideas once confined to the political fringe are gaining influence across the country.

“If you don’t live in Wisconsin, you may not be interested, but you should be interested, because this is something that’s spreading across the nation. We have the same types of people running for office in Texas, and you probably have them in your state, so you’ve got to pay attention,” “Relatable” host Ron Simmons explains.

Hong, Simmons notes, has been “endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America as a member of the Wisconsin Socialist Caucus.”

“That tells you something. If there’s enough people in there to have a caucus, meaning there’s enough of her other fellow state reps that they form their own caucus, that’s a little scary,” he says.

And according to a Marquette University poll, she leads the primary with 38% support among Democrat voters, with her closest competitor being former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, who only has 16%.

“So I would say the chances of this lady winning the Democrat primary are pretty good. She has expressed some pretty radical views, including the criticism of traditional holidays such as Thanksgiving and support for anti-racism policies that most of us would argue are actually racial themselves,” he says.

However, even some Democrats are weary of her past comments, including CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.

Collins pressed the socialist on her controversial Thanksgiving opinion, asking, “Do you still believe that Thanksgiving should be canceled?”

Hong responded, “Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so I think there, I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve, and the position that I’m running for right now, and I think my background as a chef will actually help me become a better governor that’s able to bring more people to the table.”

“So I’ve never known anybody that’s traumatized by Thanksgiving,” Simmons comments. “… And this lady is Korean … why would she be traumatized by Thanksgiving?”

Hong also lamented on a podcast that her son is half-white, which gives him a “proximity to whiteness.”

“He’s an American male. And the fact that he’s half-Korean or whatever, half-non-Korean, what she calls ‘half-white,’ he’s an American male. That’s what he is,” Simmons says.

“And that’s what we should think about him as being,” he adds.

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​Caucus, Democratic socialist, Francesca hong, Kaitlan collins, Mandela barnes, Marquette university, Poll, Primary, Texas, Thanksgiving, Wisconsin, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Blazetv show 

A Green Bay election official accused of bungling ballot distribution sent herself packing on Friday.

Celestine Jeffreys resigned August 7 after allegedly issuing 152 duplicate absentee ballots to registered voters in April 2026 amid a subsequent Wisconsin Elections Commission investigation into her conduct. Jeffreys was the Green Bay official who helped facilitate Mark Zuckerberg-backed 2020 election grants routed through the Center for Tech and Civic Life, according to RealClear Investigations.

‘A clerk who does not believe the law prohibits issuing duplicate ballots cannot be trusted to prevent it from happening again.’

According to reporting by Spectrum News 1, Jeffreys was placed on administrative leave by the City of Green Bay on July 9 after the Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously voted to open an investigation into the absentee ballot incident.

Brown County Republican Party board member Theresa Sipes filed a complaint against Jeffreys in April, alleging the duplication violated state law. The duplicates created “a substantial risk of confusion, double voting and increasing the opportunity for and possibility of fraud,” according to the filing.

The Wisconsin Republican Party backed Sipes’ filing.

The City of Green Bay defended Jeffreys, arguing that the discrepancy was an accident.

“Wisconsin law prohibits election fraud, not the inadvertent issuance of multiple ballots,” Green Bay stated in its response, obtained by Fox 11. “The statute does not impose liability for inadvertent duplication in issuance, rather, it establishes the elector’s right to receive a ballot.”

RELATED: Spanberger’s plot to let 66,000 felons vote just in time for the midterms is complete

JASON REDMOND/AFP/Getty Images

Sipes’ lawyer Nicholas Boerke rejected the city’s defense.

“A clerk who does not believe the law prohibits issuing duplicate ballots cannot be trusted to prevent it from happening again,” Boerke argued in a supplemental letter to the WEC. He went on to say that the “fundamental misunderstanding of ballot issuance law displayed in the response makes future violations inevitable absent commission action.”

The WEC saw enough merit in Boerke’s arguments to open an investigation.

“The commission authorizes an investigation into the City of Green Bay clerk to determine if the clerk or any employee or contractor of the City of Green Bay failed to comply with Wisconsin law or otherwise abuse their discretion in the preparation and mailing of absentee ballot mailers,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Don Millis told Spectrum News 1.

Her resignation follows a years-long string of controversies, beginning with her tenure as Mayor Eric Genrich’s chief of staff.

“Is he working with you? As far as I’m concerned I am taking all of my cues from CTCL and work with those you recommend,” Jeffreys wrote in an email to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, according to RealClearInvestigations.

After Jeffreys’ email and in conjunction with CTCL, Green Bay hired Democrat operative Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein to oversee its 2020 election operations. Spitzer-Rubenstein eventually drove out then-City Clerk Kris Teske after demanding unprecedented access to voter databases.

The WEC reviewed the incident and found no impropriety. Wisconsin voters banned private election assistance via constitutional amendment in 2024.

Jeffreys previously courted controversy in 2023 when she allowed third parties to return absentee ballots on behalf of others. In 2024, the clerk failed to deactivate voter registrations in violation of state law in instances where Election Day materials were returned as undeliverable.

The Green Bay Mayor’s Office directed Blaze News to its August 7 press release when reached for comment.

“The City of Green Bay and Celestine Jeffreys are jointly announcing that Ms. Jeffreys has made the decision to step down from her role as City Clerk. We wish her the best in her future endeavors,” the press release states. “This will be the City’s only statement on the matter.”

Jeffreys, the Brown County Republican Party, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and the Center for Tech and Civic Life did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Mark Zuckerberg declined to comment.

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​Mark zuckerberg, Donald trump, Absentee ballots, Wisconsin, Politics, Election-fraud 

The Democratic Socialists of America are no longer hiding the ball.

In July, the organization published a manifesto calling on the United States to “establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.”

Public ownership does not give power to the people. It gives power to the government — and asks the people to trust that government never to abuse it.

That is not a proposal for higher taxes, tighter regulation, or a larger welfare state. It is a demand to replace private ownership of America’s largest companies with government ownership.

The language is designed to sound appealing. Why should a handful of billionaires control enormous corporations while everyone else gets left behind? Why shouldn’t “the people” own those companies instead?

No more greedy executives collecting fortunes while workers earn far less. No need to nationalize every business — only the “essential” industries deemed too important to operate for profit or remain in private hands.

It sounds reasonable. It sounds as though power would finally be taken from wealthy corporations and returned to society.

But that is nearly how Fidel Castro sold communism to the Cuban people.

History shows that “ownership by the people” usually means control by the government. The public does not acquire power. Politicians and bureaucrats do.

Castro did not introduce himself as a communist promising state control over every part of Cuba’s economy. He said he was fighting corruption, inequality, and concentrated wealth. Private property and capitalism became the villains. The solution was to place the country’s most important industries under the control of “the people.”

The rhetoric sounded fair and humane. Wealthy owners would lose power, and ordinary Cubans would gain it.

The first part happened. The second did not.

RELATED: From helping hand to five-finger discount

Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Power was taken from private owners, but it never reached ordinary Cubans. It accumulated in the hands of the state. Today, Cubans live under political repression, chronic scarcity, and widespread poverty.

“Nothing belongs to you. It all belongs to the government,” Rosa Garcia, a survivor of Castro’s Cuba, recalled in an interview with Young Americans Against Socialism.

Garcia watched the transformation firsthand. She remembers Castro assuring Cubans that his revolution was not communist. Many believed him. Some hung signs on their doors reading, “This house is yours, Fidel.”

As government control expanded, private property rights disappeared. So did the ability to obtain goods, build wealth, or make basic economic choices without permission from the state.

When Garcia’s family later applied to leave Cuba, government officials came to their home and inventoried everything they owned to ensure they took nothing with them. Utensils, clothing, and household possessions all belonged to the government.

That is the reality behind the dreamy language of collective ownership. What supposedly belongs to everyone is controlled by the people who run the state.

Public ownership also carries enormous economic costs.

Private property gives people a reason to create, invest, innovate, and serve customers. Every smartphone, laptop, lifesaving medicine, digital platform, and other product we rely on exists because someone had the freedom to take a risk and the opportunity to profit from success.

Before Castro’s revolution, Cuba ranked among Latin America’s more prosperous countries. Today, it is one of the region’s poorest, with nearly 90% of its population living in severe poverty.

Take away private ownership, and you do more than redistribute wealth. You weaken the incentive to build businesses, develop technology, create jobs, and produce the prosperity those activities generate.

Supporters of democratic socialism will reasonably object that modern America is not revolutionary Cuba. The United States has stronger institutions, a different political culture, and constitutional protections Cuba did not preserve. Public ownership of one enterprise does not automatically produce a one-party communist state.

That distinction does not eliminate the underlying danger.

Nationalization begins with the easiest targets: highly profitable companies, billionaires accused of earning too much, and industries politicians label too important to remain privately owned.

RELATED: Who wants to eat a trillionaire?

Leon Neal/Getty Images

Once society accepts the principle that government may replace private ownership whenever politicians decide an owner is too rich or a company is too important, no clear limiting principle remains.

Why stop with the largest corporations?

Every industry placed under public ownership gives government officials more authority to decide how resources are used, which services are available, and who receives them.

Cuba’s history shows how quickly control of a few “key industries” can become a broad assault on private property. America would be foolish to assume the same principle could be embraced here without the same temptation to expand it.

Public ownership does not give power to the people. It gives power to the government — and asks the people to trust that government never to abuse it.

​Democratic socialists of america, Socialism, Taxes, Capitalism, Fidel castro, Cuba, America, Democrats, Public ownership, Rosa garcia, Communist, Propoganda, Opinion & analysis 

A black WNBA player blamed “white privilege” after she was tossed out of a very physical match between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky over a flagrant foul.

DiJonai Carrington aggressively took down the Fever’s Sophie Cunningham as Cunningham drove to the basket for a layup at the start of Saturday’s game, leading to an angry response from Cunningham.

‘I’m not going to let anyone just do that to me. I think everyone knows that. I think that’s why she did it because she wants attention.’

Carrington was ejected from the game and then potentially worsened the situation for the league by posting “WHITE PRIVILEGE” on social media afterward.

Cunningham was far less divisive in her response following the game.

“Clearly I think it was unnecessary,” she said. “I’ve never really spoken to her, and I have no beef with her, but I guess she has some pent-up stuff.”

She also explained why she charged at Carrington after the attack, in which Carrington swiped at Cunningham’s head while Cunningham was in the air and knocked the Fever player to the floor.

“I popped up,” Cunningham said. “I’m not going to let anyone just do that to me. I think everyone knows that. I think that’s why she did it because she wants attention.”

Sports Illustrated writer Grant Young called Carrington’s “white privilege” post “dangerous” and “asinine” in an opinion column calling on the league to suspend the Sky player.

“Frankly, it’s not only immature but dangerous for Carrington to imply that race played any role on her getting a Flagrant 2 and ejected from Saturday’s game,” Young wrote.

“Any player in the league would have been ejected for the shot she landed on Cunningham, and players have certainly been ejected for less,” he added. “For Carrington to try to turn it into a race thing is asinine, especially because she’s trying to make an exchange that she started bigger than basketball in a hostile and polarizing way.”

RELATED: WNBA team co-owner FINED and SUSPENDED for cursing out teen fans of Sophie Cunningham at game

Carrington also posted on social media a laughing emoji with the date of the next time her team plays the Fever.

The Fever went on to beat the Sky by a score of 90 to 86.

Both Cunningham and Fever teammate Caitlin Clark have been targeted with harassment and criticism — Cunningham for speaking out against biological men in women’s sports, and Clark has been accused by black players and pundits of receiving favoritism.

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​Caitlin clark, Indiana fever, Sophie cunningham, White privilege, Wnba, Racism, Politics, Fearless, Sports 

There is a piano at the entrance of Moonshot AI, the Beijing start-up that released Kimi K3, the leading open-weights model, in July 2026. The conference rooms are named after bands. Employees wear slippers. The stated ethos is that no one tells you what to do, and when new employees arrive, no one does.

These details are meant to communicate a refusal of corporate life as it is usually practiced in China’s large technology firms, with their KPI rituals, their departmental territories, and their hierarchies of condescension. The symbols of institutional authority have been stripped away so thoroughly that what remains can look, to the uninitiated, like nothing at all.

A young employee cried after failing to produce a campaign that satisfied leadership.

In fact, Moonshot’s system is demanding, though the demands are of a mostly unspoken kind.

Moonshot has no departments in the ordinary sense, no managerial titles, no OKRs, no time clocks, no performance reviews. Roughly 300 employees organize themselves around problems rather than roles. More than half the employees have changed responsibilities multiple times; perhaps 80% are doing work significantly different from anything they have done before. The implicit unit of production is not the job but the bottleneck. When the company’s long-context research project, MoBA, stalled repeatedly, Moonshot did not assign blame or dissolve a team; instead, it temporarily routed expertise from across the organization toward the failure, rewrote the underlying logic, and returned to the project after multiple setbacks.

The company calls this way of working “generalization,” borrowing the term from machine learning, where it means the capacity to perform under conditions not represented in the training data. Applied to people, it means something like the readiness to become someone else.

The word Moonshot uses for the quality it most values in employees is “taste.” In context, taste is not merely aesthetic preference but the ability to detect which technical direction is fertile, which complexity is decorative, which benchmark improvement matters, which eccentric teenager is capable of important work. Taste selects architecture and colleagues. At least 100 recent hires arrived through employee referrals, a process jokingly called “person-to-person transmission,” and the network produced is unmistakable: roughly 80% introverts, roughly 80% graduates of China’s elite universities, average age below 30. The scent that enables frictionless coordination also makes everyone smell alike.

This concept is where the freedom, a term not often associated with China in the U.S., reveals its structure.

Escaping the Western model

Moonshot’s organization is formally flat, but five co-founders remain involved in frontline decisions, each reportedly interacting with 40 to 50 individual contributors. The distance between strategic intent and execution is short, as is the distance between a founder’s displeasure and an employee’s nervous system. At a late 2024 growth meeting, more than 30 young employees discussed advertising, user operations, and holiday campaigns in granular detail while co-founders participated, and the meeting ended shortly before four in the morning. A young employee cried after repeatedly failing to produce a campaign that satisfied leadership. This approach is founder micromanagement without the buffer of experienced middle managers, who have been removed on the theory that their authority was organizational overfitting.

Hierarchy has been compressed into founder judgment, peer reputation, technical evidence, and the elusive criterion of taste, which appeals to tacit knowledge. In a field where reliable metrics arrive after decisions must be made, tacit knowledge can be indispensable but also unchallengeable. When the decisive quality is deliberately inarticulate, exclusion becomes invisible, and disagreement can be reframed as proof that the dissenter simply does not understand.

RELATED: Why selling your face is big bucks in China

Ian Waldie/Getty Images

The company’s internal narrative attributes exceptional foresight to its founder, Yang Zhilin. One experienced hire described his existing intellectual framework “collapsing” before Yang’s vision of reinforcement learning. The organization’s unifying object, the model, gains force from founder credibility, and credibility is renewed with each frontier release: K2, K2.5, K2.6, and K3. Each model serves not only a commercial function but a legitimating one: It proves that the unusual organizational demands were justified. A prolonged period without results would make the costs of ambiguity, overwork, and intense selection much harder to bear.

K3 itself is a 2.8-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model. Only about 104 billion parameters activate for any given token; the rest wait, specialized and dormant, until the router calls them. Moonshot’s human organization works on the same principle: Intelligence is routed. Small groups assemble around the present problem, do the work, and dissolve.

The company sees this as an advance beyond the West’s modern industrial division of labor, Taylorism, and of its bureaucratic knowledge firm.

Can it compete?

DeepSeek’s breakthrough in January 2025 supplied the external shock that made Moonshot reorganize into its current form. Before DeepSeek R1, Moonshot had drifted toward consumer advertising, spending tens of millions of yuan on user acquisition while the model itself received less organizational energy. DeepSeek demonstrated that a Chinese start-up could earn global prestige through engineering and open releases rather than marketing. One Moonshot employee’s formulation was blunt: “DeepSeek saved us.” The competitor had supplied evidence strong enough to overturn Moonshot’s prior strategy.

The correction was swift. Moonshot retreated from paid acquisition, renewed its focus on the model, embraced open weights, and reoriented its products toward agents, coding, and professional work. K3 arrived as vindication. Within days of release, demand exceeded forecasts and approached the limits of existing compute clusters. In response, Moonshot had to suspend new consumer subscriptions. The episode was strategically encouraging and operationally sobering: a successful product had created an infrastructure crisis precisely because its intended use worked.

Moonshot has replaced visible bureaucracy with invisible constraints of system prompts, agent traces, tool permissions, context windows, routing logic, and the model’s own learned behavior. Employees who once navigated reporting chains now navigate a founder’s attention. The forms have changed, but the pressure has not. Accounts of tears, sleeplessness, severe self-doubt, and inverted schedules recur in descriptions of life inside the company. They are narrated as evidence of resilience.

K3 demonstrates that Moonshot can build frontier models. It remains to be seen how well a system that depends on founder bandwidth, cultural homogeneity, abundant trust, and the nervous energy of 300 people who have been told they are geniuses can make the transition to a durable institution.

​Tech, China, Start-up, Moonshot 

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s bad year just got a whole lot worse.

Besides facing congressional scrutiny, the liberal organization whose bread and butter is smearing law-abiding conservatives as “extremists” was federally charged in April with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.

‘The American people deserve to see this hate racket exposed in court.’

The SPLC — now under the leadership of CEO Ryan Haygood — tried to play the victim in hopes of having the case thrown out. The federal judge overseeing the case did not, however, buy what the professional concern-mongers were selling.

Tyler O’Neil, author of “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” told Blaze News, “The SPLC just tried to weasel its way out of accountability for allegedly propping up the Ku Klux Klan by complaining about President Trump’s mean social media posts. Judge Marks rightly saw through this charade.”

“Abbe Lowell’s legal team must have known it was a stretch to ask a judge to dismiss the case for vindictive prosecution before trial, but to do so without any evidence tying alleged animus directly to prosecutors required real chutzpah,” continued O’Neil. “The motion may have been catnip to the legacy media, but it was dead on arrival in court.”

How it started

Prosecutors have accused the SPLC of secretly pouring several million dollars in donated funds to individuals linked to various extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the National Alliance, Aryan Nations, and National Socialist Party of America — groups the liberal organization was supposedly fighting against.

According to the superseding indictment filed by the Justice Department in June, which charges the SPLC with the same 11 counts, some of the donor funds were dumped into “fictitious accounts” and used ultimately to pay for so-called field sources “who were either leading or affiliated with multiple violent extremist organizations.”

Field sources allegedly used SPLC donor money for numerous questionable activities, including creating racist paraphernalia that extremist groups sold at rallies; publishing extremist literature for recruitment purposes; purchasing materials for cross burnings and Ku Klux Klan hoods; and creating new chapters of extremist groups.

RELATED: SPLC director allegedly used donor cash to fund secret romance with neo-Nazi informant: Indictment

SPLC President Ryan Haygood. Elizabeth Frantz/Bloomberg/Getty Images

A former SPLC director is also alleged, among other things, to have used donor cash to fund her secret romance with a neo-Nazi informant.

Blaze Media did not immediately receive a response from the SPLC.

In May, the SPLC, which denies any wrongdoing, filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama to dismiss the federal charges, claiming that it is the victim of “a vindictive prosecution” launched in response to speech protected under the First Amendment — the “latest manifestation of a top-down, retributive campaign.”

The SPLC claimed that it has been “falsely accused” by the Trump administration of being anti-Christian, aiding the Biden administration’s weaponization of the DOJ, participating in political violence, and helping rig the 2020 election.

The SPLC claimed further that the administration’s supposed animus “culminated in the criminal charges against the SPLC — an indictment premised on conclusory accusations but devoid of provable facts or a proper statement of the law.”

Should the court refuse to dismiss the charges, the SPLC asked that it at least require discovery into the government’s prosecutorial motives.

How it’s going

U.S. District Court Judge Emily Marks, a Trump appointee, delivered some bad news to the SPLC on Friday.

“The SPLC is not entitled to discovery or dismissal of the indictment,” Marks said in her order. “The SPLC has failed to offer some evidence tending to show animus on the part of the prosecutors involved in bringing this case and that such animus resulted in the prosecution, the showing required for discovery. Because it cannot satisfy that standard, it necessarily fails to satisfy the higher standard that would entitle it to dismissal of the indictment.”

In her order, Marks also highlighted the inevitable fallout of presuming vindictiveness on the part of the government just because the SPLC was bashing the Trump administration prior to its indictment.

“It is true that before its indictment, the SPLC extensively criticized the Trump administration,” wrote the judge. “But if that were sufficient to warrant a presumption, then the Government’s fears would be realized, and an entity could effectively immunize itself from prosecution simply by engaging in protected speech, such as criticizing political figures and their policies.”

Marks stressed that the “Court cannot license a fishing expedition based on innuendo or speculation.”

“It is the SPLC’s, not the Court’s, burden to show that the Government’s prosecution was improperly motivated,” continued the judge. “The SPLC cannot merely provide the rough outline of a theory — the President is out to get it — and expect the Court to fill in the blanks.”

An SPLC spokesperson said in a statement obtained by The Hill, “While the Southern Poverty Law Center is disappointed with the outcome of the motion, we will continue to vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

The spokesperson for the group accused of reviving at least one hate group and bankrolling the creation of KKK garb added, “SPLC will continue to fight hate, and we will continue to envision and create a safer and more just world.”

“The SPLC can scream to high heaven about FBI Director Kash Patel calling the group a ‘partisan smear machine,’ but that doesn’t make it any less true,” Tyler O’Neil told Blaze News. “The SPLC scares donors and demonizes its opponents by putting mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits on a ‘hate map’ with Klan chapters. Now it stands accused of reimbursing cross-burning materials and paying for KKK hoods. The American people deserve to see this hate racket exposed in court — and Marks’ ruling brings this case one step closer to trial.”

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​Southern poverty law center, Donald trump, Justice department, Racism, Ku klux klan, Politics 

To the dismay of many who love America and her founding principles, Abdul El-Sayed, a radical leftist Muslim activist, won the Michigan Senate primary last week.

The Democratic Socialists of America-backed ideologue, who was exposed in 2018 for promising driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, is as progressive as they come. Between supporting unrestricted abortion, Medicare for All, and aggressive gun control — while openly opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and previously pushing to defund the police — El-Sayed is a conservative’s worst nightmare.

But BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales believes he just became an even bigger problem.

“This part actually scares me,” she admits.

On this episode of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered,” Sara pulls back the curtain on El-Sayed’s controversial campaign finances.

According to a Fox News Digital review of campaign finance records, Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign received more than $115,000 from at least 41 individuals who currently work for, previously worked for, or have held leadership roles with the Council on American-Islamic Relations — which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and formally designated or labeled as such by the governors of Texas and Florida.

Additionally, El-Sayed’s father-in-law — a top donor to a Super PAC that supports El-Sayed’s campaign — is a leader of an Islamic organization that the federal government has identified as having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“This is the Democrat Party now. They are just embracing this,” says Sara. “It is not just socialism and communism. It is terrorism too.”

To hear Sara’s deep dive into El-Sayed’s donors and organizational ties, watch the episode above.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Abdul el-sayed, Communism, Michigan, Sara gonzales, Blazetv show, Democratic party 

In 2023, a hacking group called Scattered Spider executed an unprecedented hit on Las Vegas, using a relatively simple yet shockingly effective technique. Now, group members are the prime suspects in another shockingly high-profile cyberattack.

The group attacked MGM casinos in 2023, seemingly gaining access after phishing for credentials. In response, the Bellagio, Aria, Cosmopolitan, and Excalibur casinos shut down large parts of their networks after the breach was discovered in an attempt to cordon off the access.

The FBI has warned about these scams since 2007.

“Slot machines stopped working, electronic transfers of winnings slowed down, and key cards for thousands of hotel rooms no longer functioned,” Ars Technica wrote at the time.

Later that same year, Caesars Entertainment described a social engineering attack that led to data theft from its customer rewards program.

An outsourced IT support vendor provided unauthorized access, and the breach wasn’t discovered for weeks.

Now, that same method, called “vishing,” has been used to penetrate another massive target: Wall Street.

Several major Wall Street firms faced the attacks, which use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls. The problem is that the technique, which became possible some 20 years ago, is pretty much immune to any cybersecurity measures the affected funds are able to implement. In fact, the basic idea behind the exploit goes back some 50 years to when early hackers used “phone phreaking” to coax key info from unsuspecting targets.

RELATED: This throwback app is competing with Big Tech — using a business model out of the 1980s

Zak Bennett/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Among the attacked firms was Citadel, the financial services company that manages over $70 billion in assets. While Citadel has not publicly offered any inside information on what happened, another firm that was attacked, Point72 Asset Management, offered some bread crumbs by saying no customer information was stolen, per Reuters.

Two Sigma, the private hedge fund responsible for $75 billion in assets, provided the most detail when it said it caught the attempt before any information was compromised.

“Our security team responded quickly to an attempted vishing campaign targeting Two Sigma and other investment managers, and we have no indication of any impact to our data or our systems,” a spokesperson said, according to Briefs Finance.

Scattered Spider has been linked to Russian-speaking hackers called AlphV/BlackCat, using VoIP calls to trick IT workers into bypassing multifactor authentication.

Employees can relatively easily be tricked into granting access or providing login information to major institutions and chains.

The phone-call tactic is still widely used due to its effectiveness.

RELATED: Is this the number-crunchers’ come-to-Jesus moment?

Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The FBI has warned about these scams since 2007, warning citizens to answer “vishing” attempts at accessing their personal information “with a healthy dose of skepticism.”

Businesses are warning of “social engineering” as a practice of manipulation that can affect gatekeepers of sensitive information.

Cloudflare has categorized these phone-call breach attempts along the same lines as a fake delivery truck driver or a cyber attack. In most cases, these attacks aim to get the victim to divulge either login credentials or sensitive financial information.

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​Wall street, Hacking, Citadel, Phishing, Tech 

A high-ranking law enforcement official in New York state and her husband have been arrested after prosecutors alleged they helped their son flee the scene of a shooting that targeted a suspected rival gang member in a getaway vehicle.

Jennifer Lackard, 49, was employed as the deputy commissioner of wellness for the Mount Vernon Police Department.

‘It is stunning that this public official would jeopardize her position and reputation to be involved in this alleged conspiracy.’

Lackard and her 20-year-old son, Chase Lackard, were arrested around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday following the execution of a search warrant at the family’s Bronx apartment, according to WCBS-TV.

Jennifer Lackard pleaded not guilty.

James Lackard, Jennifer’s 47-year-old husband, turned himself in to the 44th Precinct station house in the Bronx around 8:30 a.m. Thursday, according to the New York Post.

WCBS reported that the trio was charged with attempted murder, three counts of attempted assault, six counts of weapons possession, one count of conspiracy, and one count of reckless endangerment.

Court records show that Jennifer Lackard and her son each were released on $75,000 bail, and the father — James Lackard — was held on $300,000 bail, according to the New York Post.

A newly unsealed indictment states that the family participated in a coordinated shooting attack outside the Bronx Criminal Courthouse around noon June 29.

WABC-TV reported that the parents drove their son to the courthouse in their tan Chrysler Pacifica, and Chase Lackard fired a semiautomatic gun out of the vehicle’s window.

Prosecutors said Chase — a reported member of the Slutty Gang — was targeting a member of a rival gang, the Sex Money Murder crew.

However, prosecutors said the shooter missed the target, and nobody was injured in the alleged attack.

The indictment said Chase Lackard sent a text message instructing his mother to pick him up in the front of the courthouse.

Jennifer Lackard asked her son what time to be there, according to the indictment.

“You can’t just sit directly outside. It has to be timed right,” she texted, ABC News reported, citing the indictment.

The mother drove the family back to their home, according to the indictment.

RELATED: Cop torches career after home invasion, physical attack on former lover — and his girlfriend — plus threat to burn down house

ABC News, citing the indictment, reported that Jennifer Lackard’s “son changed his clothing “to avoid identification.”

Prosecutors said the shooting was caught on surveillance video.

According to ABC News, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark stated:

These defendants allegedly conspired with each other to drive from their Bronx residence to the Hall of Justice for the purpose of shooting someone. Despite multiple shots being fired, thankfully no one was hit.

It is stunning that this public official would jeopardize her position and reputation to be involved in this alleged conspiracy.

Jennifer Lackard was terminated from her position with the Mount Vernon Police Department.

The City of Mount Vernon said in a statement, “Effective immediately, the City of Mount Vernon has terminated Mrs. Lackard’s employment.”

“The allegations are unrelated to her duties with the Mount Vernon Police Department and do not stem from any conduct associated with the Department or the performance of her official responsibilities,” the statement read.

Lackard was paid a salary of $138,219 last year, according to online payroll records.

The Mount Vernon Police Department said in a statement that it was aware of the criminal history of Jennifer Lackard’s husband.

“As part of the hiring process, information regarding her husband’s prior criminal history was disclosed and reviewed and deemed not to be disqualifying for her civilian position,” the statement said.

The Mount Vernon Police Department stated that it will not comment on the situation any further because it is an active investigation.

The Journal News reported that Jennifer Lackard founded the Ivy House Center for Self-Sufficiency, a former nonprofit substance abuse and mental health outpatient treatment center in North Carolina, in 2007.

However, the center was forced to close in 2012 because James Lackard was arrested on drug charges.

WCBS-TV reported that a 2012 federal indictment shows James Lackard previously served 52 months on a drug conviction before later pleading guilty in another federal drug case.

Meanwhile, Chase Lackard reportedly has a history of encounters with police.

According to the Journal News, Chase Lackard has pending criminal cases in the Bronx and Manhattan.

The Journal News reported:

In November 2024 he was arrested after being shot in the leg by an NYPD officer when he allegedly pointed a gun at officers following a fight in the Soundview neighborhood. Three months earlier, he was arrested on gun charges in Manhattan. In 2023 he was shot in the chest during a gang-related fight on an MTA bus in the Bronx.

The NYPD stated that Jennifer Lackard has no criminal history in New York City.

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​New york, Attempted murder, Nypd, Crime, Mount vernon, Arrests 

The existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that “hell is other people.” Former Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera is among the bleeding hearts who believe that hell is Haiti — at least now that the Trump administration is repatriating its people.

Then

President Donald Trump identified Haiti in a January 2018 meeting as one among various “s**thole countries.” This was, after all, then a failed state plagued by violence, haunted by rumors of cannibalism, and still reeling from a deadly earthquake.

‘Ridiculous.’

There was tremendous backlash over Trump’s remarks — not only from the Haitian government and the United Nations’ human rights office but from Democrats and the liberal media.

Twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D) were among the many concern-mongers who claimed that Trump’s vivid characterization of Haiti as a less-than-ideal nation was “racist.”

In addition to similarly attacking Trump, celebrities ran a PR campaign for the Caribbean nation, portraying it as a paradisiacal place.

Conan O’Brien, for instance, aired a one-hour special showcasing Haiti’s perceived beauty — a special that included refutations of Trump’s “s**thole” comment from Haitian natives along with repeated emphases that the island nation was a “beautiful country.”

RELATED: Pets of Springfield, rejoice! DHS is coming for suspended-status Haitians after Biden judge takes ‘the L’

In subsequent months, others, including Bill Maher, jumped on the bandwagon, donning apparel that stated, “HAITI IS GREAT ALREADY.”

Unfortunately, the situation deteriorated in Haiti before it got better — simultaneously confirming Trump’s initial framing and prompting the liberal media to ramp up its gaslighting campaign.

When confronted — a couple of years after Haitian President Jovenel Moise’s assassination — with reports that criminals had taken over the country’s capital, freed thousands of felons from jail, engaged in systematic rape, forced the prime minister to resign, and threatened genocide, NBC News, for instance, reassured its viewers in 2024 that contrary to claims by “right-wing pundits,” the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country did not also have a problem with cannibalism.

Now

The Trump administration announced in July 2025 that it was terminating Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status, having determined that the Caribbean nation no longer meets the conditions for special status, in part due to improvements in domestic safety and stability.

While the administration recognized that the country still suffers a “lack of functional government authority” and that “gang violence in Haiti persists,” then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated that “the environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home.”

This revocation of Haiti’s special status — which has shielded roughly 350,000 Haitians from removal — faced multiple legal challenges; however, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in the administration’s favor in June.

Now that the Department of Homeland Security is “going after” Haitian migrants with suspended special statuses, the usual suspects have jettisoned their “HAITI IS GREAT ALREADY” framing and adopted the president’s previous understanding of the Caribbean country as a loathsome place.

Geraldo Rivera, who asked Trump in 2018 to apologize for his “unfortunate” remarks about Haiti and other third-world nations, wrote on Sunday — in the wake of reports about the deportation initiative under way — that “expelling Haitian immigrants is sending them straight to hell.”

Rivera was widely criticized for joining the chorus of liberals against the repatriation campaign.

Normalcy advocate Robby Starbuck wrote in response, “Didn’t the entire media and Democrats in DC swear that Haiti was amazing and wonderful and perfect when Trump called it a hellhole? Trump then said okay, then sounds like they can go back and now the framing switches to, ‘it’s hell on earth, you can’t send them back!’ Ridiculous.”

Mike Howell, the president of the Oversight Project and Blaze News contributor, alluded to Rivera’s previous concern-mongering over Trump’s “s**thole,” then asked, “What happened[?]”

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​Bill maher, Department of homeland security, Geraldo rivera, Hillary clinton, Robby starbuck, Temporary protected status, Trump administration, Donald trump, Haiti, Politics 

When Biden’s White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly downplayed Americans’ frustrations over high milk and egg prices, she helped solidify the voter anger over affordability that directly contributed to the Democratic Party’s electoral damage in 2024.

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre is concerned the conservatives are now making the same mistake.

“Conservative pundits and influencers are repeating the exact same mistake, telling consumers that everything’s fine and only economic illiterates would think grocery, gas, and housing costs are too much,” says MacIntyre.

But this is disastrous messaging, he warns — especially heading into midterm elections.

“Elections aren’t won by lecturing voters that their problems are imaginary. This is politics 101,” MacIntyre says. “Professional political actors adopting this strategy months before midterms is both bizarre and dangerous.”

The reality is, most Americans are still struggling in the current economic climate.

“Conservative pundits may produce charts, cite aggregate statistics, and explain that certain indicators look healthy, but none of that will save the GOP any more than it saved the Democrats who insisted that Bidenomics was working,” says MacIntyre.

Right now, he explains, “food, health care, child care, education, insurance, housing, electricity, and gasoline remain punishingly expensive.”

While MacIntyre understands that honesty with voters about the current economic situation is a death sentence for politicians, downplaying the predicament isn’t helping either.

“There’s only so much Trump can do about the structural inflation and accumulating debt. He can, however, avoid taking actions that make the problem worse,” he says, pinpointing the ongoing conflict in Iran as a major contributor to America’s economic strife.

But when Americans complain that the war is driving up gas prices and forcing the U.S. to borrow or print tens of billions of dollars to pay for it, they’re called “stupid or selfish” by “the very same pundits” who support the war, he explains.

MacIntyre speculates that these politicians will “blame any disastrous midterm results on the people who oppose the conflict, but the political reality is obvious.”

“The central issue is not that voters have developed a sophisticated position on Iran. Many of them probably care very little about the strategic details. What they do care about is that everything costs more. Telling them that they lack economic literacy has roughly the same electoral appeal as shooting a puppy on live television,” he says.

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Trump-endorsed Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) lost the Republican primary in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District on Thursday to newcomer Charlie Hatcher.

The loss comes after the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC spent $2 million against Ogles as retribution for his opposition to green energy subsidies. Ogles was also affected by redistricting, with over 80% of voters in the redrawn district previously belonging to another.

‘Communist Democrats defeated Andy Ogles tonight in Tennessee, but we cannot let them win in November.’

Hatcher did not respond to requests for comment.

“Last night, the radical left successfully employed a strategy to influence a Republican primary,” Ogles told Blaze News. “The night before early voting began, a California Green Energy PAC publicly disclosed a four-week, $2 million spending campaign all to defeat a Trump-endorsed America First conservative.”

“Republicans across the country should take notice. If the left can spend millions to meddle in Republican primaries in Tennessee, they’ll do it in every red state where they think they can buy the outcome,” Ogles said. “While last night’s outcome wasn’t what I hoped, Charlie is a good man, and I will do whatever I can to help him be successful.”

Ogles served in the House of Representatives for two terms. He introduced the Remigration Act bill in June, aiming to expand denaturalizations and deportations.

“Tennessee’s 5th District just proved once again that standing in the way of America’s energy future comes with a hefty political price,” ITC Chairman Tom Matzzie said in a statement provided to Blaze News. “This is our second upset in as many primaries — first Chip Roy, now Andy Ogles — and we will continue to punish members of either party who want to play politics with American jobs, energy security, and utility prices.”

“The entire map is in play, and we will take this fight across the country through November.”

RELATED: Liberals in MAGA clothing run covert campaign against Trump-backed candidate

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Invest in Tomorrow’s campaign ran advertisements attacking Roy (R-Texas) as insufficiently MAGA. Roy lost his primary to state Sen. Mayes Middleton.

Matzzie previously held positions at MoveOn.Org, in John Kerry’s presidential campaign, at the Democratic National Committee, and at the AFL-CIO.The White House directed Blaze News to the president’s Friday Truth Social post when reached for comment.

“Last night was another good night for Endorsements, 8-1,” Trump wrote. “The 1 was a person who I remained loyal to even though he had virtually no chance of winning, and was running against a Great ‘Trump’ Candidate.”

Hatcher served as Tennessee’s commissioner of agriculture for seven years and received Gov. Bill Haslam’s endorsement in July. The primary winner positioned himself as a Trump ally and voice for rural Tennesseans during the campaign.

“Congressman Andy Ogles lost tonight because a super PAC bankrolled by left-wing California Democrats spent $2 million to raid the Republican primary. These leftist Democrats include a San Francisco billionaire who gave $12 million to Kamala Harris and has pledged to spend ‘whatever it takes’ to elect Gavin Newsom,” the Freedom Caucus Fund said in a statement.

That San Francisco billionaire is Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen, who donated $6 million to the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC between February and June 2026, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures. During the 2024 campaign, Larsen donated millions to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. Larsen is worth nearly $13 billion.

The Freedom Caucus Fund spent over $560,000 to defend Ogles against Invest in Tomorrow’s campaign, according to a spokesperson.

“This same super PAC is pledging tens of millions to take out conservative pro-Trump Republicans in the House and Senate this November. Their goal is to destroy President Trump’s America First majority in Congress, install Hakeem Jeffries as speaker, and reinstate Biden’s Green New Scam that President Trump and the House Freedom Caucus eliminated in the Big Beautiful Bill.

“Communist Democrats defeated Andy Ogles tonight in Tennessee, but we cannot let them win in November.”

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