Category: blaze media

After the extremely popular Spencer Pratt fell behind no-name Nithya Raman in the Los Angeles mayoral race, BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler believed there was possible election fraud.

Now, she’s sure of it.

“Today we have crimes detected for you,” Wheeler says. “But let’s make one thing very clear first. The California election system is completely rigged. And you and I have zero obligation to simply accept that because California is ‘Commie-fornia.’”

These “crimes detected” were covered in a recent report by the New York Post, where it found that “thousands of homeless voters … were registered to vote at L.A. shelters, despite many not living there or the facilities not having any beds.”

And in an interview this week with Will Chamberlain, he theorized to Wheeler that “there was going to be some centralized location where an unreasonable amount of these homeless people all had their ballots sent.”

“That’s exactly what the New York Post found,” Wheeler says.

“As Spencer Pratt was eliminated by Nithya Raman in the mayor’s race on Monday night, it can be revealed that one drop-in center … that received $600,000 from the socialist candidate … had 185 voters at the address but offers no accommodations,” the article reads.

“So not only is this one of the centralized locations that Will speculated about yesterday, 185 people registered here, doesn’t even have beds, and it’s tied monetarily to Nithya Raman. The New York Post says the revelations have prompted U.S. Attorney [for the Central District of California] Bill Essayli to say that he will investigate the concerns uncovered by the Post,” Wheeler comments.

The Post also uncovered that the drop-in center that received $600,000 from Raman was taxpayer funded.

“The corruption of these people, it can never be overstated,” Wheeler says.

When the Post contacted Raman’s campaign as well as the L.A. shelter, not only did the campaign not respond — but a photograph of Raman presenting a check was taken down from the shelter’s website.

“This is taxpayer money that Nithya Raman gave to this place,” Wheeler says, adding, “Your money if you live in the city of Los Angeles.”

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​Blazetv host, California election, Election fraud, Liz wheeler, New york post, Nithya raman, Spencer pratt, The liz wheeler show 

Iran and the United States have riddled their fragile ceasefire with missiles in the 14th week of the war.

President Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday that the U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter downed while patrolling the Strait of Hormuz on Monday had been shot down by Iranian forces. While the uninjured pilots were rescued, the president stressed that “the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”

‘US forces remain vigilant, lethal, and ready.’

Hours later, U.S. Central Command announced that it had begun launching “self-defense strikes,” which it characterized as a “proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.”

Early Wednesday, Trump noted on Truth Social that “they’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”

The president clarified later in the day that more American strikes were forthcoming.

“We hit them hard yesterday. We’re going to hit them again hard today, in case you miss it, in case you don’t turn on your television set, and we’ll see what happens with the deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

On Wednesday evening, CENTCOM launched another series of “self-defense” strikes, stating afterward that it had targeted “Iranian military surveillance capabilities, communication systems, and air defense sites across Iran.”

RELATED: US Apache helicopter crashes near Strait of Hormuz on 100th day of Iran war; Trump says end in sight

Ford Williams/U.S. Navy/Getty Images

Iranian media claimed, however, that among the structures damaged in the American strikes was a pair of water tanks in the south of the country with a combined capacity of 2.5 million liters — tanks said to have supplied water to tens of thousands of civilians. When asked by the New York Times about reports of damage to water facilities, CENTCOM declined to comment.

“U.S. Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy assets fired precision munitions on Iranian targets that posed a threat to U.S. forces and international commercial ships transiting regional waters,” CENTCOM said in a statement. “The strikes are in response to Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression. U.S. forces remain vigilant, lethal, and ready.”

According to Trey Yingst, an Israel-based Fox News reporter, Trump said that the U.S. fired at least 49 Tomahawk missiles into Iran and executed bombings via fighter jets, hitting targets as close as 40 miles outside Tehran. Trump also reportedly said that if the Iranians don’t sign the peace agreement, “we’ll bomb the s**t out of them.”

Iranian state media reported on Thursday that in retaliation for the American strikes, “18 important targets belonging to the U.S. military in the region were successfully hit during two operational waves following the recent aggression against Iranian territorial integrity.”

The Iranians maintain that their attacks constitute self-defense “as recognized under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations.”

According to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the targets were located “at the Al-Salem and Ahmad al-Jaber air bases, as well as the Sheikh Isa air base.”

Citing an unnamed military official, Jordanian state media reported that 20 missiles had been intercepted and neutralized by the country’s air defense systems, adding there had been no human casualties or material damage.

Iranian drones and “hostile aerial targets” were reportedly intercepted over Bahrain and Kuwait.

While Iranian media also claimed that the Strait of Hormuz had been completely closed in response to the American strikes, CENTCOM stated on Wednesday evening that “commercial ships are continuing to transit in and out of the Strait of Hormuz.”

Trump emphasized on Wednesday that “the UNITED STATES of AMERICA CONTROLS the Strait of Hormuz — NOT Iran.”

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​Iran, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Middle east, War, Israel, Donald trump, Tehran, Bombing, Centcom, Military, Conflict, Strait of hormuz, Politics 

Many AI systems now produce fully documented reports with citations, making the apparatus of scholarship available without the slow friction through which scholarship is ordinarily built. From the university to the lab, the repercussions are quickly being felt. As researchers benefit from these shortcuts at scale, what is being lost?

OpenAI’s Deep Research spends five to 30 minutes searching the internet, filing results into a structured synthesis, and delivering a report complete with footnotes. Google’s equivalent may use 80 search queries for a typical task, running asynchronously in the background while the user attends to something else. Anthropic describes a multi-agent architecture in which a lead agent spawns parallel subagents to explore separate branches of a question; this setup outperformed a single-agent arrangement by 90.2% on an internal evaluation. Perplexity logged 21 search queries and 193,947 reasoning tokens to answer a single prompt. The systems find facts and compress them into a format a human can skim in four minutes.

What the system decides gets to count as knowledge.

The dream behind all this is older than the microprocessor. Vannevar Bush, in 1945, called for a new relationship between the thinking person and the sum of human knowledge. Douglas Engelbart later imagined a human-artifact system designed to improve problem-solving by restructuring symbols, processes, and collaboration. What is striking about the current systems, by contrast, is how thoroughly they have dissolved the researcher into the background. Bush and Engelbart mostly imagined tools that strengthened the researcher’s own agency. What we have now is a delegated researcher, one that disappears and returns with a finished report. The human researcher merely issues the prompt.

The compression is the key principle. Retrieval narrows the corpus. Ranking narrows retrieval. Subagents narrow branches. The final report narrows everything again into prose. What the system decides is worth compressing is what gets to count as knowledge. Anthropic’s description of its architecture notes that “the essence of search is compression.” The observation is an announcement of how the world will henceforth appear.

Mistakes are made

Consider the failure cases, which the companies document. OpenAI’s notes acknowledge that its system can hallucinate facts, make incorrect inferences, and struggle to distinguish authoritative information from rumors. Anthropic says its testers found early agents over-selecting SEO content farms over more authoritative, less search-optimized sources, requiring the addition of source-quality heuristics. Google warns about prompt injection from malicious webpages. WebGPT, the earliest major working prototype of the form, made the deepest point years before the current products existed: a capable system may eventually learn to cherry-pick persuasive sources rather than fairly represent the evidence. The system inadvertently hides its reliability problems.

The BrowseComp benchmark presents agents with 1,266 short-answer tasks whose solutions are hard to find but easy to verify. On that benchmark, OpenAI’s Deep Research reaches 51.5% accuracy versus 1.9% for GPT-4o with browsing. But the benchmark’s authors note that short answers are easy to grade, and it remains unclear how tightly this correlates with open-ended work in the actual world. Model Evaluation and Threat Research found that many pull requests passing automated software evaluations would still not be merged into real repositories. Machine-evaluable success and acceptable work are not the same thing.

RELATED: Disembodied human brains kept ‘alive’ for drug testing by controversial American startup

Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The deeper problem is knowledge that cannot be found by any search. Much that matters is not already in PDFs, public filings, or searchable webpages. It is tacit, local, and embedded in what scholars, laboratories, newsrooms, or courtrooms have internalized over years of practice.

Automatic AI research can summarize a method section, compare papers, draft a literature review, but it is less secure when what matters is the unsaid context, the understood constraint, the judgment that would embarrass its holder to have to articulate. Sakana AI’s AI Scientist-v2 submitted three fully AI-generated papers to an ICLR 2025 workshop, and one scored above the average acceptance threshold. Sakana also reported citation errors and reproducibility concerns and judged none of the submissions good enough for the main conference track. Synthesis is advancing faster than judgment. The system can generate the form of scientific inquiry without inheriting its discipline.

Automatic AI research depends on the open web while threatening the business models that keep parts of that web alive. CNN sued Perplexity on May 28, 2026, alleging unlawful distribution of copyrighted content. If research agents become the primary interface to knowledge, then questions of licensing, attribution, and compensation become reliability problems. A research tool that undermines the conditions of its own training data is not a stable arrangement.

The unintentional user

Pew’s 2025 survey found that only 16% of American workers said at least some of their work was currently done with AI. Workers who did use chatbots were more likely to say the tools helped them work faster than to say they improved quality. A separate Pew browsing study found that 58% of respondents encountered an AI-generated summary in Google search, but only 13% used an AI tool during the month. Automatic AI research is becoming ambient infrastructure before it becomes a universally adopted destination. People may increasingly receive AI-mediated research without thinking of themselves as users of anything in particular. The most consequential technologies often arrive this way.

What has been built is the industrialization of a specific layer of epistemic labor: searching, filtering, summarizing, and drafting, at scale. That changes what kind of thinker a user can become and what kind of web a publisher must survive in. What it is not, at least not yet, is a substitute for the full ecology of inquiry: the laboratory humiliation, the hallway argument, the reading that goes nowhere and then suddenly does. The system knows how to compress the world. We do not yet know what we are losing in the compression.

​Tech 

As their cultural icons fall, leftists cannot accept reality or responsibility. The reality is simple: The market for their increasingly radical beliefs is shrinking. The responsibility is theirs. They moved far away from the American public and then blamed the public for refusing to follow.

So the left does what it always does. It refuses to blame its fallen icons. It refuses to change its beliefs. Instead, it turns its icons into martyrs.

The left makes martyrs of the people and institutions falling from their pedestals. That is easier than admitting the left was wrong.

The latest martyr is Scott Pelley, a former correspondent for CBS’ “60 Minutes.” According to the Associated Press, Pelley accused one of his bosses of “murdering” the show and said “she has no qualifications for her job.” He then reportedly turned on others, saying, “You have slender qualifications for this job.”

Page Six’s Hollywood section put the episode more bluntly: “‘Poison Pelley’: Scott Pelley’s tirade against new ‘60 Minutes’ boss latest example of respected CBS journo’s ‘diva’ behavior.”

Pelley told the New York Times on Sunday that CBS News had lost its way.

“We have people who’ve been installed in these jobs who, through no fault of their own, have no experience in television,” he said. “They don’t know what they’re doing. And there’s a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen at ‘60 Minutes’ before, or at CBS News before. So that is my hope: a return to sanity.”

Pelley is right about one thing. CBS News has never had a “subtle political bias.” The bias has always been obvious and leftward, as AllSides’ media bias rating makes clear.

His elevation to martyr status joins a long and growing list.

Network news did not need Scott Pelley to damage itself. It was already doing that quite well. According to Gallup polling in 2025, only 28% of Americans had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mass media. In February, Pew Research found that 57% of Americans had low confidence in journalists to act in the public’s best interest.

That helps explain why NBC News cut loose MSNBC, why MSNBC tried a major rebrand and cut salaries and staff, and why CNN underwent another major overhaul in 2025. These outlets did not suffer because America suddenly became too stupid to appreciate them. They suffered because Americans understood them too well.

Hollywood tells the same story. “Supergirl” is a super flop, another link in the industry’s chain of progressive pandering. It was short on plot and long on marketing budget. The marketing could not overcome the product. And if the force-feeding of ideology were not enough, the film’s star insulted the prospective audience before viewers had a chance to walk out.

“Supergirl” is symptomatic of Hollywood’s superhero genre and of the larger industry. Both now treat entertainment as beneath them. A movie is no longer a movie. It is a vehicle for indoctrinating supposedly backward Americans who can absorb the left coast’s “higher values” only through metaphor and spandex.

RELATED: ‘Supergirl’ Milly Alcock’s most fearsome foe? Christian dads

David Jon/Getty Images/Warner Bros. Pictures

Late-night television offers the same lesson through Stephen Colbert. Or rather, it did. Colbert is no longer on television and for good reason. He was not funny. His show was too expensive. Like Pelley, he repeatedly insulted his bosses. Now, the left lionizes him as a brave man who stood up to President Trump.

Colbert was to late night what “Supergirl” is to Hollywood: a symptom of a larger disease. What was true of him individually is true of late-night television generally. It became another forum for the left to talk to itself while demanding that the rest of America listen.

Print media is no better. The Washington Post is suffering the same fate as its brethren in film and television: declining readership, mounting financial losses, and staff cuts. As with TV, what can be said of the Post can be said of newspapers generally. Their audience shrank because their contempt grew.

In all these cases, the left has transformed icons into martyrs because it refuses to accept reality. In Pelley’s case, the reality is especially obvious. Publicly lashing out at your bosses is showboating stupidity. Everyone knows this. Everyone follows that basic rule except the left, which believes its heroes deserve a different standard.

In the other cases, the left refuses to accept the market’s verdict. Life does not operate as a charity or a government program. Charities can treat losses as proof of need. Governments can tax and borrow their way around failure. Markets are less sentimental. When audiences stop watching, buying, reading, or subscribing, the message is clear.

RELATED: Propagandist Stephen Colbert gets final jab from Trump on the way out

Kent NISHIMURA/AFP/Getty Images

The left hates that message because it hates markets. Markets reveal what people actually want. They do not care what cultural elites believe people should want.

That is why the left prefers government and bureaucracy. Regulation can soften market verdicts. Subsidies can delay them. Institutional capture can disguise them. But none of it can make Americans love products they have already rejected.

The left also refuses to accept responsibility for the collapse of its icons. America’s left has become more radical, and the rest of the country has not followed. To admit that would require admitting failure.

So the left makes martyrs of the people and institutions falling from their pedestals. That is easier than admitting the left was wrong. It is less painful than asking why so many Americans stopped listening.

But the answer is not hard to find. The icons fell because the public fell away.

​Scott pelley, Stephen colbert, Hollywood, Cbs news, Supergirl, Mainstream media, The left, Washington post, Opinion & analysis 

As America approaches its 250th birthday, patriots are gearing up for festivities and traditions, while many Democrats are fantasizing about living in another country.

In a new poll from Elon University conducted by YouGov between April 30 and May 4, 55% of Democratic respondents answered that there is another country they would rather live in than the United States.

Glenn Beck was disheartened by the data.

“If anyone on this continent ever had a right to say, … ‘This country is a fraud. These documents are a lie,’ … it was Martin Luther King and the people who lived at that time,” he says.

He recounts how in King’s day, “Black Americans [were] being beaten for trying to vote; children [had] fire hoses turned onto them; men [were] being lynched, and the murderers [were] walking free.”

But instead of listening to the voices in the Civil Rights Movement denouncing the American project as “rotten to the root,” King, Glenn says, “reached for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution … and he called them a promissory note.”

“This is the solution to our problems!” he exclaims.

In his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, King expressed genuine belief in America’s promise that all had a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” but argued that black Americans had received a “bad check … marked ‘insufficient funds.’”

This hopeful yet demanding position Glenn calls “extraordinary.”

“He could have torn the note up; he could have said that promise is worthless. But he didn’t. He said he refused to believe that the bank of justice was bankrupt,” he declares. “He didn’t come to Washington to renounce the founding; he came to cash the check.”

This is what allowed King to change the world, Glenn says.

But many of today’s disgruntled Americans wouldn’t fit in with King. Unlike him, they don’t believe in the American project.

“King said, ‘The promise is real, so pay it.’ Today, they say, ‘The promise is fraudulent, so what’s the point of staying or living within the system?’” Glenn says.

The latter group, he says, is perpetuating a dangerous narrative: “If the documents are the disease, then there is no cure to be found inside the house. There’s no way out except the exit door or the match.”

To the 55% who long to leave the country, Glenn gives a sobering message: “Nearly every country on the menu you’d flee to has a lot more [soft despotism], not less.”

The “antidote,” he says, is neither flight nor destruction; it’s the Bill of Rights.

“That is the tool that Frederick Douglass picked up. That’s the tool that King picked up. When the majority had failed him, he didn’t appeal to a foreign flag; he appealed to the promise the majority had signed and broken — and he demanded America honor it,” Glenn passionately recounts.

“The Declaration is your check. … The Constitution is that check. The Bill of Rights is your enforcement clause. They are not the thing standing between you and a country worth loving. They are the only road to that country worth loving.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Americas 250th birthday, Martin luther king 

A Mexican prosecutor said authorities discovered the naked body of an Indiana woman abandoned in a ditch in the state of Chiapas over the weekend.

Maurica Lambert said 30-year-old Makala Pendley was raped and beaten to death, according to local authorities who informed the family of the woman’s death.

‘It just never would have crossed my mind that it would have been him. I’ve never gotten, like, that type of, like, feeling from him or anything.’

Lambert says her sister was over six months pregnant.

“It just still does not feel freaking real,” Lambert said to WXIN-TV. “It just doesn’t feel real at all.”

A local prosecutor said in an online broadcast that she had been dead between eight and 12 hours before her body was found in the ditch in a small village in the municipality of Zinacantán.

“The deceased woman’s death was caused by traumatic brain injury secondary to blunt force trauma,” the prosecutor said.

Pendley’s death led to a frantic search for her seven children. By Tuesday, Mexican officials said they had located the children and arrested the children’s father.

WXIN said it was unable to confirm the arrest with the local prosecutor, but other online reports also reported the arrest.

“I thought it was somebody else. I still feel like it’s someone else,” Lambert said. “It just never would have crossed my mind that it would have been him. I’ve never gotten, like, that type of, like, feeling from him or anything.”

Lambert said her sister had fled from Indianapolis to Mexico with the children and their father out of fear that the children would be taken away.

In February 2026, Pendley and the children were reported missing to Indianapolis authorities. Mexican officials reportedly found the children and returned them to Pendley.

The Mexican prosecutor said the children’s father previously had been detained for numerous crimes that included rape, assault, robbery, fraud, illegal possession of weapons, and intimidation to cause bodily harm.

Lambert admitted her sister had a “toxic, on-and-off relationship” with the father.

RELATED: 23-year-old stripper decapitated 55-year-old boyfriend and immediately fled to Mexico, police say

“We will seek the maximum sentence of 100 years for this perpetrator of femicide,” the local prosecutor said about the father of the children.

The prosecutor said the children were in good health and that authorities were working with the State Department to return them to the U.S.

Lambert confirmed the children were returning to Indianapolis along with the remains of their mother.

“She was a good mom,” she added. “As moms, you know, we have our bad days, you know what I mean? And she was a good mom, though. She put her kids before she put anything.”

Chiapas is the southernmost state of Mexico and includes a large indigenous population that maintains the Mayan language and culture. Indigenous activists accuse Mexican officials of discriminating against them.

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​Missing children, Mexico, Pregnant woman murdered, Femicide, Crime 

After decades of brutal race and gender politics from the left, conservatives began treating identity itself as toxic. That reaction is understandable after fighting a sinister ideology for years, but ignoring identity is not an option. Human beings need a firm sense of who they are and where they belong. Progressives exploited that impulse in twisted, artificial ways, but the impulse remains natural and healthy.

As the United States confronts mass immigration, the question “What is an American?” has become unavoidable on the right once again. It is a question about identity. For the first time in decades, conservatives must navigate one of the most important parts of human life.

Defining American identity will be difficult, but it begins with friction. Borders must be closed and illegal aliens deported. That part is nonnegotiable.

Identity feels dangerous because it is dangerous. From the beginning of time, identity has been something men kill and die for. People can fight over voluntary commitments, but identity largely consists of things we did not choose. We do not choose where we are born or to whom. We do not choose to be a brother, sister, son, or daughter. Even religion, though it requires voluntary practice, is usually inherited before it is chosen.

Identity is what you cannot leave behind, often because you never chose it in the first place.

That is why identity produces existential conflict. Its involuntary nature means people cannot simply opt out when the pressure rises. If someone wants to kill everyone who likes the movie “Jaws,” you can stop being a fan. If someone wants to kill everyone born English, you cannot stop being English. You have no option but to fight.

This explains why the post-World War II consensus tried to suppress as many thick identities as possible. If people lack strong attachments to heritage, tradition, nation, or religion, they are less likely to treat those attachments as matters of life and death. The impulse is understandable. No sane person wants another war of religion or world war fought over nationalism.

But the shift carries a cost. Without the boundaries of nation and religion, we drift toward open-borders globalism, which is deeply unhealthy.

A nation without identity has no coherent sense of the public good. The man whose family has lived in America since the founding has different priorities from a newly arrived immigrant hoping to move his extended family here. The Christian who wants his faith reflected in his ancestral nation has conflicting interests with the Muslim who wants his new home to implement Sharia law.

The state cannot remain neutral between these visions. It must decide which identity takes priority and which public good it will pursue. Neutrality is a lie. Identity is inescapable.

RELATED: Two-tier Britain finally has its George Floyd moment

Blaze Media Illustration

As America tries to unwind the open-borders disaster liberalism produced, the need for concrete identity becomes obvious. Illegal immigration is a massive problem, but legal immigration has also been destructive. If being American means more than obtaining paperwork, uncomfortable lines must be drawn. Identities are inherently exclusive. Some people are in, and some people are out.

That feels dangerous because it is. But we no longer have the luxury of avoidance. Turning a blind eye to these questions created the mess. We will not escape it by doing the same thing again.

Modern people like rigid categories, but identity has always had strong centers with some flexibility at the margins. A traditional biological family is the best outcome and should be preferred above alternatives, but an adopted child can still become part of a family. People know what a woman is, but progressives exploit overly rigid definitions to destroy the category. If you say a woman is someone who can bear children, they immediately point to a sterile female and ask whether she is still a woman.

The rigid category becomes the tool of deconstruction.

Identity should be understood not merely as a scientific fact or a voluntary choice, but as a situated-ness that draws us toward particular ends. Americans are born with inalienable rights, but also particular duties. Our identities as Americans, Christians, sons, brothers, or fathers should cost us something. They are not merely about rights, choices, and freedoms. They are also about limits.

There are things you cannot be when you are a father, a Christian, or an American. These categories are flexible, but they are not fluid.

Our globalist order hates borders and limits because they create friction for economies of scale. McDonald’s wants to sell the same hamburger to everyone the same way. If it must accommodate Hindus or Catholics, or close Sunday in America and Saturday in Israel, efficiency and profitability suffer. Uniformity maximizes scale. That is why governments, corporations, and NGOs work to homogenize every population on earth.

But identity should create friction. People need borders and limits. Only when we know who we are and who we are not can we chart a beneficial course for our nation.

RELATED: The collapse of conservatism nobody wants to admit

Blaze Media Illustration

Defining American identity will be difficult, but it begins with friction. Borders must be closed and illegal aliens deported. That part is nonnegotiable. Legal immigration should be radically limited, or ended altogether, until we work through this crisis. Every tribe has had a path for outsiders to join, but the cost should be steep. If someone is granted the gracious opportunity to become American, it should require real sacrifice.

The Bible gives us a model in Ruth, who abandons her homeland and pledges, “Your people will be my people, and your God my God.” She does not cling to her former identity. She leaves her former people, her former gods, and marries into the tribe.

Becoming part of the Hebrew people involved friction. It came at great cost. That is how you know it was worth it.

To be American is to be distinct and set apart. If anyone is to have the privilege of joining that identity, it should be difficult. Only through sacrifice can a stranger prove worthy of our great nation.

​American, Assimilation, Borders, Family, Globalism, Identity, Immigration, Nationalism, Naturalization, Opinion & analysis, Religion, Tribe, United states 

Workers at a bar in Ohio said that two men ripped down their Pride flag just hours after they put it up and then returned to break a window with a rock.

Beth Rea of O’Reilly’s Pub in Clintonville said she had put up the flag for Pride Month just that afternoon hours before the alleged incident.

‘We are definitely a regulars bar. We are very close with our customers. We’re very accepting of everybody in here.’

“I stapled it here. You can see there’s still a little remnants,” Rea said while pointing to the spot for WBNS-TV.

At about 10:45 p.m., the two ripped the flag down and were confronted by some customers, according to Rea.

“The gentlemen then pulled off and came back probably about five minutes later with the rocks,” she added.

They allegedly threw the rock through a window.

“Luckily, nobody was sitting there,” Rea said, “which was concerning because we were worried about safety, of course, initially.”

The report showed other decorations for Pride Month inside the bar, including other smaller flags and a sign reading “Pride Month.”

She said the incident was unsettling.

“I mean, we are located in Clintonville,” she added. “We are definitely a regulars bar. We are very close with our customers. We’re very accepting of everybody in here.”

They shut down the bar for the night after the incident and boarded up the window, but she said they will be not be intimidated into taking down their Pride decorations.

RELATED: LGBTQIA+ center workers outraged over vandalism on Pride flags outside Presbyterian church

“Absolutely not going to stop us from putting up our decorations, not gonna let that intimidate us to the point that we can’t, you know, celebrate Pride,” she added.

WBNS said that Columbus police are investigating the incident and are looking for the two alleged vandals who drove away.

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​Pride flag, Pride month, Vandalism incident, Columbus ohio, Politics 

The workers who restored the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial were all grins and laughter when they visited the president at the White House Tuesday evening.

President Donald Trump signed hats for each of the workers after they completed their mission to clean up the reflecting pool in time for the 250th anniversary celebration of the Declaration of Independence.

The president joked to reporters that the pool might become filthy again under another president but that it would remain ‘perfect’ while he was in office.

A video of their visit was posted to social media by White House communications adviser Margo Martin. She said each of the workers also received an official presidential challenge coin.

The renovation was completed last week and included draining the pool, cleaning it up, painting and sealing it, and then refilling it.

“This was highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last for 100 years, applied by very talented people, many of whom came from the Great State of Oklahoma,” the president said on Truth Social.

“The material is thick, strong, flexible, and has a natural, beautiful color, the dark blue of the American Flag!” he added.

The president joked to reporters that the pool might become filthy again under another president but that it would remain “perfect” while he was in office.

“It’s really beautiful. It’s something for you to see. It’s incredible,” the president said after the pool reopened. “You know, it’s really amazing.”

The pool was constructed and opened in 1922. A new circulation and filtration system was installed at the pool during renovation under former President Barack Obama.

RELATED: Outrage erupts over new passport for America’s 250th — and guess whose image is on it

The president said the renovation would also keep the pool from leaking.

“I’m very proud of it,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “I’m very good at building things and constructing things.”

The restoration of the reflecting pool was initially estimated to cost $1.8 million but ballooned to more than $13 million. A group of historic preservationists filed a lawsuit claiming the application of a blue coat altered the “historic character” of the pool without proper preservation review.

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​Lincoln memorial, Reflecting pool, President donald trump, White house visit, Politics 

Two-time NBA champion Mychal Thompson has been a Caitlin Clark fan since she started in Iowa, but he’s not liking what he’s seeing with the Indiana Fever.

In a now viral post on X, Thompson wrote: “I’m hearing from a reliable source the Fever don’t want Caitlin no more … SPARKS … Go get her … NOW!!!”

The tweet piqued BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock’s interest.

“Do you stand by your original tweet that, according to a reliable source, the Indiana Fever do not want Caitlin Clark?” Whitlock asks Thompson.

“Well, that’s what I’m hearing, you know, from all the contacts we have around the basketball world,” he responds, pointing out that from just watching the Indiana Fever, it “looks like they don’t want the Caitlin Clark that we fell in love with at Iowa.”

“They seem to want more of a benign, more of a pedestrian point guard. So, I don’t think her style fits the way they’re using her,” he continues.

“They prefer to have more of a traditional type of point guard, not a point guard who can shoot from the logo threes. We want that Caitlin back, and we’re not seeing that Caitlin anymore,” he adds.

And according to Thompson, what’s happening to Caitlin Clark is rare in the world of sports.

“Have you ever seen this before where you have this transcendent superstar and they seem to have adopted a system that doesn’t work for Caitlin Clark?”

“Never seen this in any sport,” he responds.

“It’d be like taking the serve away from Serena Williams. A coach telling her, ‘No, I don’t like that big serve you have, so let’s have a more traditional serve,’” he continues.

“They’ve taken away Caitlin’s superpowers,” he adds.

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​Fearless, Jason whitlock, The blaze, Caitlin clark, Iowa, Indiana fever, Mychal thompson, Nba, Wnba, Fearless with jason whitlock 

Allegations of voter fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral primary election were bolstered by some homeless people on Skid Row claiming they were paid to vote for the leftists in the race.

Republican-leaning Spencer Pratt was shut out of the jungle primary, which allows the top two vote-getters to proceed to the general election.

‘I was just trying to make 5 bucks, you know? But I didn’t do the fraud.’

Some Pratt supporters became suspicious after Pratt initially won second place in the partial results announced on Election Night and then the gap whittled away with each tranche of ballots that were counted.

A pro-Pratt TikTok account posted video of the claims from homeless people recorded in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday morning.

“It was like two bucks,” said one unidentified woman who claimed she was paid $2 to vote for Bass.

“Yeah, they come out here all the time,” she added.

The TikTok creator told the New York Post that he was tipped off by a friend who worked in the area and claimed to have seen political volunteers operating in the neighborhood.

One of the men in the video called himself Kevin Shepherd and said he was paid $4 to vote for Bass. He said he negotiated the price up from $2 and that he was also allowed to vote for Raman, but not Pratt.

“They gave you an optional choice,” Shepherd said.

Rene Johnson, 39, claimed she was paid $5 to vote for Bass but was unclear about the documents she signed.

“But, you know, at the time, I didn’t know that that was going on,” she said. “I was just trying to make five bucks, you know? But I didn’t do the fraud.”

However, an investigation into her claims found that there was no vote under her name from Skid Row, but there was one with that name and age in the nearby Inglewood election, which has a mayor separate from that of Los Angeles.

The Post said it was unable to independently verify the claims in the video.

“Everybody said it was normal,” the content creator said to the Post.

RELATED: Socialist mayoral candidate is outraged at encampment outside her LA home — it’s not what it seems

The Justice Dept. said it was investigating accusations of voter fraud in the California elections but noted one claim, that Pratt received no votes in one tranche of ballots, was untrue.

California’s electoral system was widely mocked after results were delayed far past what is typical in other states. Some pointed to the delays as evidence of fraud, but officials have denied the claims.

One report indicated that 185 voters for Raman were registered in a homeless shelter in Venice that had received $600,000 through the efforts of the socialist city councilwoman. Others pointed out that the hundreds of votes in the Skid Row area would not have made much of a difference in the gap between Pratt and Raman.

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​Homeless people, Karen bass, Los angeles mayoral, Nithya raman, Skid row, Politics 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested several illegal aliens on Tuesday who were previously convicted of “reprehensible crimes,” according to a Department of Homeland Security press release obtained exclusively by Blaze News.

The DHS noted that federal immigration agents continue to nab the “worst of the worst” despite pushback from sanctuary politicians.

‘Despite smears from sanctuary politicians, ICE law enforcement officers continue arresting the worst of the worst.’

The agency highlighted five of Tuesday’s arrests, which included illegal immigrants with criminal records for child cruelty, sexual battery by restraint, and other offenses.

“Yesterday, ICE arrested child abusers, sexual predators, and drug traffickers. Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S.,” DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis stated.

ICE agents arrested Elipidia Aguirre-Romero, an illegal alien from Mexico who was previously convicted of child cruelty that resulted in possible injury or death in Fresno, California.

RELATED: Exclusive: Illegal aliens convicted of rape, domestic violence, and drug trafficking arrested by ICE

Elipidia Aguirre-Romero. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

Jose Alfredo Patino-Avelino, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was also picked up by federal immigration officers. Patino-Avelino was convicted of sexual battery by restraint and assault with intent to rape/mayhem in Santa Barbara, California.

Jose Alfredo Patino-Avelino. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

ICE arrested Saul Alberto Garay-Amaya, an illegal alien from El Salvador. His criminal record includes convictions in Fairfax, Virginia, for sexual penetration with an animate object by force, strangulation resulting in wounding or bodily injury, and abduction by force, intimidation, or deception. The Vienna Police Department stated that his 2020 arrest for these crimes was the result of “a lengthy and thorough investigation by VPD Detectives after receiving info that he had sexually assaulted a female victim.”

Saul Alberto Garay-Amaya. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

Fidel Larreta-Boltor, an illegal alien from Mexico, was captured by ICE agents. He was previously convicted for trafficking heroin by possession, sale, and delivery in Forsyth County, North Carolina.

Fidel Larreta-Boltor. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

The DHS also highlighted the arrest of Yeison Beltran-Avila, an illegal immigrant from Colombia who was convicted of burglary in Queens, New York.

RELATED: House Republicans STEAMROLL obstructionist Democrats, secure ICE funding for rest of Trump’s term

Yeison Beltran-Avila. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

“Despite smears from sanctuary politicians, ICE law enforcement officers continue arresting the worst of the worst,” Bis stated. “We encourage Americans to visit wow.dhs.gov to see the dirtbags we have removed from their communities.”

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​News, Illegal immigration, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Politics 

On Monday, President Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to attend an NBA Finals game, appearing at Game 3 of the Knicks vs. Spurs series at Madison Square Garden, where he was loudly booed by the New York crowd during the national anthem.

But his less-than-warm welcome wasn’t the only controversial thing that happened. After the Knicks lost 115-111, some Knicks fans blamed Trump for throwing the home team off its mojo. Apparently his attendance created a circus-like atmosphere with heavy security, booing, and shifted crowd energy that allegedly contributed to the team’s loss.

According to some disgruntled fans, Trump’s appearance is why Knicks player Mikal Bridges “disappeared.” The shooting guard had a rough game, scoring only two points, leading to his benching in the second half.

“They’re — of course — blaming him for the loss,” sighs “Pat Gray Unleashed” co-host Keith Malinak.

Before Game 3, “The View’s” Alyssa Farah Griffin expressed concern about Trump attending the game and warned that he would be the scapegoat if the Knicks lost.

“If I were advising him, I would be like, ‘Do not go, because if they lose tonight, everyone’s going to blame Trump,”’ she cautioned.

“And it happened,” says Pat. “They are blaming him.”

But it appears that Trump is unaware of — or unaffected by — the backlash.

In a postgame interview, he said, “It was, I think, mostly cheers. It was loud, and it was very enthusiastic.”

Once again, Trump lives rent-free in the heads of his critics — even when it comes to an NBA game.

To hear more of the panel’s discussion, watch the episode above.

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​Pat gray unleashed, Pat gray, Knicks, Donald trump, The view, Alyssa farah griffin 

Many in the black community have responded negatively to the verdict in the Karmelo Anthony murder trial, but few have reacted as poorly as Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas did.

Anthony was found guilty Tuesday of murdering 17-year-old high school star athlete Austin Metcalf at a track meet in Frisco, Texas, last year. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

‘It’s impossible to have a conversation with people who live in this level of delusion and perpetual fake victimhood.’

The case sparked a bitter debate on social media as some suggested that Anthony was prosecuted unfairly because he is black and the victim was white.

Crockett went even further to insult the parents of Austin Metcalf in order to inflame her fans and supporters.

“Black women, especially black women who have black male children, live in fear and agony every single day, a fear and agony that, I promise you, the Metcalfs probably never spend a day living that way,” she said.

“We’re gonna have to have just some real conversations about race in this country,” she added, “but also just, like, what are we going to do to protect ourselves.”

Crockett made the comments on her livestream show, “Clock It with Crockett,” which can be viewed on her YouTube channel.

The snippet of her downplaying the Metcalf family’s pain was posted to social media, where many reacted with rancor.

“Idolizing skin color has completely robbed you of common sense and decency. How dare you compare just being a black woman to the horror of losing a child,” Shemeka Michelle replied.

“Jasmine Crockett believes the mere existence of black women in America is more painful than a white family watching their son murdered and living with that reality. It’s impossible to have a conversation with people who live in this level of delusion and perpetual fake victimhood,” T.J. Moe responded.

RELATED: Jasmine Crockett calls Trump a ‘piece of s**t’ during rant at left-wing rally

“This is disgusting! They lost their son. They look at their remaining son and see what their dead child would look like if he had a chance to age with him. Can she imagine that?” another user replied.

Crockett failed to secure the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat for Texas after running in order to punish Republicans for redistricting the state.

She was beaten by Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, who is now running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in the pivotal race that could determine control of the Senate.

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​Jasmine crockett, Karmelo anthony, Black community, Online outrage, Politics 

A Somali referee says he was held for half a day before being kicked out of the United States, where he hoped to officiate games at the World Cup.

The official in question is Omar Abdulkadir Artan, who recently refereed high-profile international matches for the Africa Cup of Nations and also earned the award for best male referee in Africa last year, per BBC.

‘President Trump’s administration will not allow any security threat to enter our country.’

Artan was set to be the first Somali ref to work at a World Cup but was dropped from the list after being denied entry to the United Sates. As one of 52 officials chosen by FIFA, he was attempting to enter the official training camp in Miami.

Artan told the New York Times on Tuesday, “I had the right papers and everything. I had the right visa.” He also had an accreditation from FIFA before traveling to the U.S.

However, the 34-year-old was turned away from Miami International Airport after an alleged 11-hour process that involved a detainment in a holding cell before he was sent back to Istanbul, Turkey, where he departed from.

An unnamed official with the Donald Trump administration told Fox News that the referee’s entry was rejected because he was suspected of being associated with terrorists.

“This individual was seeking admission to the United States. Upon further inspection by CBP, derogatory information, including association with suspected members of terror organizations, was discovered making the traveler ineligible for admission to the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the official said, per reporter Bill Melugin.

RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: CBP dogs on high alert as World Cup-destined third-worlders smuggle in rotten souvenirs

The official said the “traveler” was refused admission and provided immigration forms that cited the law used to complete his extradition.

“President Trump’s administration will not allow any security threat to enter our country — full stop,” the official added.

FIFA later confirmed the referee’s removal to the BBC, saying that “match official Omar Abdulkadir Artan will be unable to train and officiate at the FIFA World Cup 2026 after he was denied entry into the United States.”

The soccer organization added that it is “not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications, and has been informed by authorities that Mr. Artan’s status will not be changed at present.”

FIFA also noted that host governments ultimately decide who is worthy of admission into their country.

RELATED: Trump and Mamdani are on a collision course about ICE at the World Cup

Khaled DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images

Similar complaints were made about members of Iran’s national soccer entourage, which the country described as the United States having “revoked World Cup ticket allocation for their supporters.”

In response, the White House recirculated comments from April by Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he said, “What [Iran] can’t bring is a bunch of IRGC terrorists into our country and pretend that they’re journalists and athletic trainers.”

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​Fearless, World cup, Somalia, White house, Trump administration, Sports 

Former Fox News host and small-business owner Steve Hilton (R) will face a head-to-head runoff election against former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra (D) in the California gubernatorial race, according to the Associated Press.

As of Wednesday morning, more than a week after Election Day, California has completed counting 91% of the ballots. Becerra has secured nearly 2.4 million votes, 27.9%, and Hilton received just over 2.1 million votes, 25%. Climate advocate and businessman Tom Steyer (D) trailed in third place with roughly 1.9 million votes, 22.5%.

‘He represents that kind of energy we need.’

Steyer released a statement Tuesday conceding to Hilton.

“It’s now clear that we do not have the votes necessary to advance to the general election in November,” he stated. “Today, my message to you is simple: Pay attention. Know what you deserve, and know who is on your side. Understand who the villains are, and say their names out loud. Continue to demand more from your leaders and your government, until they give you the California — and the country — you know you deserve. I will be with you all the way.”

Hilton told KTTV on Tuesday that he would consider teaming up with Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, who will not be moving on to the November general election.

“Clearly, this city is not doing well, right? We’ve got a massive problem with homelessness. There’s a sense of decay in the city,” Hilton said, referring to Los Angeles.

“The fact that you had a campaign for change that got a lot of energy and excitement, and actually all that energy, all those votes, all those hopes are just now not going to be reflected in the choice in November, I think, is a real problem.”

RELATED: Los Angeles mayor race called for far-left challenger after Pratt loses 40,000-vote lead

Steve Hilton. Mario Tama/Getty Images.

Hilton criticized the state’s election system, which allows the top two candidates, regardless of their political affiliation, to advance to the general election.

“You’ve got to have a clear choices in elections. That’s why I’m so happy we’ll be there in November. If it was a choice between two Democrats, as we’re now going to have in L.A., I don’t think that’s a choice at all,” Hilton added. “That is a feature of the top-two system.”

While the Los Angeles mayoral race is nonpartisan, both candidates, incumbent Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman, are left-leaning.

Hilton commended Pratt for his plan to address the city’s homelessness crisis, which he referred to as “very well thought through.”

“Whatever I can do to help make that happen, including working with him or not, I’m not going to rush it, but I do think that he had some really important things to say,” Hilton continued.

RELATED: ‘Fraudster’s paradise’: Feds plan to file election fraud charges in California

Spencer Pratt. HIGHFIVE/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images.

When asked whether he would bring Pratt into his administration, Hilton replied, “Of course. Like a shot, my door would be open.”

Later that day, Hilton told Fox News that he would “100%” consider having Pratt join him on the campaign trail, applauding the mayoral candidate for his “incredible impact.”

“I’d love that. He represents that kind of energy we need,” Hilton said.

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​News, Steve hilton, Spencer pratt, Xavier becerra, Tom steyer, Politics, California 

For years, Americans were told the country was moving in only one direction on LGBTQ issues. But a new Gallup poll suggests that trend may be slowing — and in some cases reversing.

Support for same-sex marriage has fallen from its recent high-water mark, while fewer Americans now view gender transitions as morally acceptable than they did just a few years ago. And while Democrats remain the most supportive of LGBTQ issues, Republicans and independents have dropped in their support.

“How do you attribute this decline? What do you think it means?” BlazeTV host Steve Deace asks author Jon Harris.

“I think that the left pushed very hard, and it hurt people,” Harris answers. “And it seems like the right doesn’t get engaged until they’re hurting in some way. If it’s theoretical, let the left have what the left wants. It’s not going to affect my marriage.”

“Unfortunately, it did affect people because three seconds after they pushed for gay marriage, they wanted men in women’s sports, and they wanted to trans your kids. And so I think there was a backlash against it for that reason,” he adds.

Harris believes that if things “continue in the MAHA direction,” that “actually spells doom for the LGBT movement.”

“The whole logic of it is we need to get back to some kind of a created order, some kind of a way that we’re meant to function. And as soon as you start asking those questions, you’re going to start realizing, well, actually, men were made for women, women were made for men,” he explains.

“While I agree theoretically with MAHA is doing things that should light up the broader citizenry and maybe even the church, but the problem is that the church has got to be first and foremost,” co-host Todd Erzen chimes in.

While Erzen believes morality should be why Americans reject homosexuality, Harris points out that it seems like the rejection is coming from an evolutionary perspective.

“If that’s the message, if it’s, ‘We don’t want homosexual marriage because, well, that doesn’t conform with science,’ then it’s not about being rooted in the Creator’s design for us in God,” Harris says.

“Unnatural as opposed to immoral,” Deace adds.

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​Democrats, Gallup poll, Gay marriage, Homosexuality, Independents, Jon harris, Morality, Republicans, Steve deace, The blaze, Todd erzen, Steve deace show 

The first iPhone served as a technological marvel for some, but may have acted as birth control for a significant segment of the female population.

A working paper, published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, discussed a causal relationship between the release of the original iPhone in 2007 and a declining general fertility rate in the United States.

‘The algorithms … are incredible at getting you to keep scrolling.’

While women of all age groups shelled out $499 for the Apple smartphone, women under 25 years old seemed significantly hit by its introduction, according to researchers Caitlin K. Myers and Ezekiel Hooper.

The 22% drop in fertility rate in the U.S. since 2007 is not explained by the economy, contraceptives, housing, or child care costs, the researchers wrote. Instead, the study looks at causal evidence that coincides with the release of the iPhone, combined with other known factors like time use and sexual activity.

The study surmised that access to the iPhone reduced births by 4.5%-8.0% among those ages 15-19, as well as between 3.2%-6.6% for those 20-24.

There were also “statistically significant but smaller declines” among older age groups, the study claimed.

RELATED: Can we have online safety without total surveillance? Yes. Here’s how.

Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

The research went on to say that the diffusion of the iPhone deepened the decline in births for women under 30 overall, while suppressing the rise in birth rates for older women.

In total, the iPhone allegedly explains somewhere between a third and half of the decline in general fertility in women ages 15-44 over the years.

The researchers said that sexual behavior and time use of iPhones are consistent with a reduction of “in-person interactions, increasing pornography use, and [reduced] sexual frequency.”

Venture capitalist Nic Carter later pointed to commentary by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2025, citing a blog post in which the AI exec said social media algorithms have had the power to override long-term preference for some time.

RELATED: Google is about to overhaul the Android. You’ll either love it or hate it.

Edward Berthelot/Getty Images

While claiming that AI systems will be geared toward achieving what the user really wants over a long period of time, Altman wrote that “social media feeds are an example of misaligned AI.”

Altman continued, “The algorithms that power those are incredible at getting you to keep scrolling and clearly understand your short-term preferences, but they do so by exploiting something in your brain that overrides your long-term preference.”

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​News, Iphone, Social media, Sam altman, Tech 

The CEO and president of the Democratic fundraising portal ActBlue repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in order to avoid answering tough questions about foreign donations.

At a Committee on House Administration hearing on Wednesday, Regina Wallace-Jones was challenged on whether previous statements she made to Congress were “false and misleading,” but she refused to answer and cited her constitutional right.

He went on to ask why ActBlue weakened fraud prevention standards twice in 2024, and Wallace refused to confirm whether that happened.

Republican Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin posted his questioning of Wallace-Jones where he specifically asked about the statements that he said were “false and misleading.” He focused on a letter she sent to Congress about the steps ActBlue took to prevent illegal foreign donations.

“Ms. Wallace-Jones, when you signed this letter to me, did you believe that this letter was false and misleading?” Steil asked.

“On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer this question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution,” she responded.

“Your letter claimed that passport information is required from donors providing an address outside the United States,” Steil continued. “In November 2023 when you wrote that letter, did every ActBlue donation that provided an address outside the United States require passport information?”

“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution,” she replied.

Steil then cited previous testimony where Wallace-Jones stated that ActBlue contacts donors to request passport information if the contribution seems to have originated from a foreign address. And if they cannot contact that person, she claimed they would return the donation.

“Is that correct?” he asked.

She invoked her Fifth Amendment right again.

He went on to ask why ActBlue weakened fraud prevention standards twice in 2024, and Wallace-Jones refused to confirm whether that happened.

Steil posted video of his questioning of Wallace-Jones to social media.

RELATED: ActBlue sues to block Ken Paxton lawsuit — and he fires back defiant response

Wallace-Jones had written a statement published in the Washington Post explaining why she would invoke the Fifth Amendment.

“This is a proceeding designed to build an illegitimate criminal case against us. I cannot and will not let my words be misused in that way,” she claimed.

The official account for ActBlue also released a statement about the testimony.

“The House Administration Committee has called our President and CEO, Regina Wallace-Jones, to testify,” the statement reads. “Not because ActBlue has done anything wrong, but because we are the backbone of small-dollar Democratic fundraising in America.”

Wallace-Jones isn’t the only ActBlue official who refused to answer tough questions. In April 2026, two ActBlue employees cited the privilege against self-incrimination a stunning 146 times while testifying about alleged donor fraud.

“Not a single employee offered testimony that could help ensure that American elections are free, fair, and decided by Americans alone,” reads a staff report from the House Administration, Oversight, and Judiciary committees.

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​Actblue, Fifth amendment, Politics 

After Karmelo Anthony was found guilty Tuesday of murdering Austin Metcalf in a stabbing at a Frisco, Texas, high school track meet in 2025 — and the same jury soon after sentenced Anthony to 35 years in prison — Metcalf’s loved ones read impact statements in a Collin County courtroom with Anthony present.

Jeff Metcalf, the victim’s father, called his son a friend, a leader, and a true warrior, KDFW-TV reported.

‘My son’s death destroyed the person I used to be.’

“Since the day he first grabbed my finger, he had my heart with it,” Metcalf said, according to the station, which added that the elder Metcalf also spoke about the joy he felt while watching both of his sons on the field at the same time.

Jeff Metcalf also said the public response to his son’s murder was sickening, KDFW reported, adding that he said he was targeted in six swatting calls and the victim’s mother has been targeted twice.

“With a gag order, I can’t defend myself when people want to tear down my son’s memory. That time is over!” Jeff Metcalf added, according to the station. “I said from day one this was never about race. It’s about right and wrong. We are all humans. We all bleed the same color. You will face those consequences starting today.” Anthony is black; Metcalf was white.

Jeff Metcalf also spoke directly to Anthony, KDFW reported: “You failed your parents, yourself, and society. You don’t belong in this community.”

“My son’s death destroyed the person I used to be,” the father added, according to WFAA-TV. “He does not exist any more.”

Jeff Metcalf added that “people think grief is sadness; it is not. It is rage. Pure, unfiltered rage,” he said, slamming his fist on a table with his voice rising, WFAA noted.

The enraged father added to Anthony, “You can’t look me in the eyes, but you can stab my f**king son?!” KDFW reported.

With that, the judge motioned to prosecutor Bill Wirskye about the cursing, WFAA said.

Indeed, a reporter in a KXAS-TV video called Jeff Metcalf’s impact statement “full of rage” and noted that the judge had the prosecutor and a bailiff “step in” although Metcalf was allowed to finish reading his impact statement.

When he was done, Jeff Metcalf stared at Anthony the entire time he walked past him — just two feet from his son’s convicted killer, WFAA reported.

RELATED: Jury reaches verdict in Karmelo Anthony murder trial (UPDATE)

Hunter Metcalf, the twin brother of the victim, also observed the lack of eye contact and asked Anthony to look him in the eye, KDFW reported: “I would really respect that.”

Hunter Metcalf said he’s been trying to learn how to forgive, KDFW said, adding that he also said he’s chosen God and is trying to understand why his brother and best friend was taken from him.

“Now I want everything taken from you,” Hunter Metcalf told Anthony, KDFW reported. “You took everything from me. I wake up every morning, and his door is still shut.”

Megan Metcalf, the victim’s mother, talked about raising two energetic, loving souls, KDFW said: “Now I only have videos and memories of his laugh.”

The mother talked about the morning of the track meet, KDFW said, adding that she recalled packing her son a snack and giving him a hug — yet not realizing it would be the last time she would embrace her boy.

“You may have been given a sentence of 35 years. You should feel lucky,” Megan Metcalf told Anthony, KDFW said. “I’ve been sentenced to a lifetime without my son.”

KDFW noted that Anthony, 19, will be eligible for parole after he serves half of his 35-year sentence. His murder conviction could have resulted in a prison sentence of as little as five years to as many as 99 years.

During the sentencing deliberation, the jury was considering whether Anthony acted out of “sudden passion,” which would have limited his time behind bars to 20 years, KDFW said.

The reporter in the KXAS video described Anthony as “shaking” and “sobbing” and displaying a “sheer look of shock” on his face after his guilty verdict was read. The reporter added that Anthony was “trembling” in his chair and “sobbing” as his mother asked the jury during the sentencing phase to “please have mercy on my son.”

A new mug shot of Anthony was taken Tuesday after he was placed in the custody of the Collin County Sheriff’s Office following his guilty verdict.

RELATED: Karmelo Anthony murder trial: Jurors begin deliberations — and can consider lesser charge of manslaughter

Karmelo Anthony. Image source: Collin County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office

In addition, the reporter in the KXAS video said Anthony was seen mouthing the words “I’m sorry” to his family and added that Anthony’s parents were not in court for his sentencing or for the impact statements.

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​Karmelo anthony, Austin metcalf, Jeff metcalf, Impact statements, Murder conviction, Texas, Court, Fatal stabbing, Prison sentence, Crime