Category: blaze media

A probationary wildlife biologist for Yosemite National Park lost her job last year after perverting an American landmark in protest of the Trump administration’s reality-affirming policies regarding gender.

Furious over her visitation by consequence for covering the side of El Capitan on May 20, 2025, with a giant trans-activist flag, Shannon Joslin painted herself as a victim and took legal action.

‘You have failed to demonstrate acceptable conduct.’

Joslin, a “nonbinary”-identifying woman, first complained to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, asking it to halt her termination.

When the OSC denied her request, Joslin asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to force the National Park Service to reinstate her; to bar the Trump administration from enforcing park regulations against her for “speech supportive of trans rights”; and to award her damages.

Her case was transferred to a federal court in California, where U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston, a Biden appointee, delivered the LGBT activist some bad news on Friday.

While adopting a sympathetic tone and referring to Joslin using her preferred “they/them” pronouns, Thurston dismissed the LGBT activist’s employment-related claims and requests for relief, explaining that her hands were effectively tied.

“The Court lacks jurisdiction to review Joslin’s termination or to offer any related relief, including a reinstatement,” wrote the Biden judge.

RELATED: Actress Elliot Page mocked ruthlessly after trying to define ‘healthy masculinity’

Heather Diehl/Getty Images

“The government claims for its part that Joslin was fired for reasons that had ‘nothing to do’ with ‘speech,'” wrote Thurston. “But the government has another more fundamental and more persuasive point: Under the laws that Congress has passed, and under the legal precedent that a federal trial court must follow, this court does not have authority to decide whether Joslin was fired for unconstitutional or illegal reasons, nor to block a hypothetical criminal case against them.”

Joslin hatched the idea to rig a flag on El Capitan as a “statement in support of trans people,” then worked with other radicals to “stake out the technical logistics of fixing a sizable flag to the rock face,” according to her original complaint.

She told Climbing.com, “Calling congressmen and writing representatives feels like yelling into the void. We have this f**king microphone that is El Cap.”

Wyn Wiley, a drag queen who goes by “Pattie Gonia,” partook in the protest and said in a May 22, 2025, propaganda video featuring clips of Joslin securing the flag, “The Trump administration and transphobes would love to have you believe that being trans is unnatural.”

“Call it a protest; call it a celebration,” continued Wiley. “We are bringing elevation to liberation.”

Months after transforming the rock formation into a “microphone” for gender ideologues, Joslin received notice indicating that she was out of a job effective Aug. 12, 2025.

The letter provided a reminder that the purpose of the two-year trial period — which started for Joslin on Sept. 10, 2023 — is to “determine whether newly appointed Federal employees are suitable for successful service in the areas of conduct and performance.”

“During your trial period, you have failed to demonstrate acceptable conduct,” continued the letter. “Specifically, on or about May 20, 2025, you participated in a small group demonstration in an area outside the designated protest and demonstration area without permit as required by 36 CFR 2.51 and thus circumvented rules applicable to all park visitors.”

Following the dismissal of Joslin’s complaint, the Department of the Interior and the NPS have reissued the statement they provided to Blaze News February: “We take the protection of the park’s resources and the experience of our visitors very seriously and will not tolerate violations of laws and regulations that impact those resources and experiences.”

“Yosemite National Park was designated by Congress to highlight the beautiful natural and cultural features of the area,” continued the statement. “No matter the cause, demonstrating without a permit outside of designated First Amendment areas detracts from the visitor experience and the protection of the park. To safeguard the protection of visitors, visitor experiences, and park resources, many demonstrations require a permit.”

Unable to draw a salary working as an NPS employee in the park, Joslin is attempting to exploit her termination with an agitprop film about the “complicated relationship between wildlife, food systems, and LGBTQ+ rights.”

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​Activist, Biden, California, Court, National park service, Trans, Yosemite, El capitan, Transgender, Flag, Drag queen, Pervert, Politics 

While many on the left have framed the murder of Austin Metcalf and conviction of Karmelo Anthony through the lens of race, BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler argues that the real story is being deliberately ignored.

“There’s a reason the mainstream media doesn’t want you to know the truth, the reality, and the facts. Because if you know what actually happened, you are much less likely to fall for the lies that they’re telling you,” Wheeler says, explaining that what the left refuses to discuss is the element of “black culture” involved in the case.

“What I’m talking about is gang culture and rap culture that has infiltrated and broken black families — a culture that glorifies violence, that dehumanizes people. Young men, young black men specifically, who are raised in broken black families, who don’t have male role models, who instead look to these celebrities, whether it’s gang members for community or rap culture for their idols — they are not being molded from young men into actual men,” she says.

“And nobody wants to say this. It’s unpopular. It’s uncomfortable. You’ll be accused of saying racially charged things,” she explains, “But it’s true. The murder of Austin Metcalf by Karmelo Anthony is also an indictment on wokeness. An indictment of ‘The 1619 Project,’ which told us that America is racist. It’s an indictment on critical race theory.”

“Every politician, every corporation, every celebrity, every leftist influencer, every teacher, every liberal white woman who spews, ‘White privilege,’ and, ‘America is inherently racist,’” she continues, “seeds and feeds this anger and forms this lens through which Karmelo Anthony sees the world.”

And the lens through which he sees the world is one where he believed bringing a knife to a track meet was a good idea.

“It’s not a normal reaction to grab a knife and stab the other person to death,” Wheeler says. “That’s not normal human behavior. The behavior of Karmelo Anthony in the tent, even before he got the knife out of his backpack and stabbed Austin Metcalf to death, that behavior is deliberate.”

Want more from Liz Wheeler?

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​Liz wheeler, Austin metcalf, Karmelo anthony, Racism, Murder, Leftism, The liz wheeler show 

Forget the final score. The real World Cup upset this summer is how many international fans are discovering that America is, against all odds, kind of great — especially in a “why does this gas station have 40 kinds of jerky and also a Wi-Fi password printed on the receipt” way — and they’re documenting their delightful experiences on social media.

The breakout star of the bunch is a German fan known on X as Freddy who has been chronicling a six-week road trip across the U.S. and Canada, following Germany’s national team, and has picked up hundreds of thousands of followers in his trek.

‘The European mind can’t comprehend this.’

Freddy’s Atlanta stop hit the respectable tourist beats — Stone Mountain, the MLK National Historical Park, some “Stranger Things” filming locations — and then immediately abandoned all dignity for Taco Bell, which he called “the holy land.”

A 1 a.m. Waffle House visit got a perfect 10/10 — food, prices, and staff included.

His Wendy’s stop in Tennessee produced the single best exchange of the whole tour. His order somehow came back under the name “John,” and when he posted his haul of burgers and fries, the official Wendy’s account replied with one demanding question: “WHERE IS THE FROSTY.”

He also fit in a Walmart run for water, socks, and USA soccer merch and somehow found time to watch the NBA Finals at Chili’s amid all this.

Before a single World Cup match had kicked off, Freddy watched the War Eagle fly over Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium and called it the most “the European mind can’t comprehend this” moment of his life.

One of Freddy’s posts got enough traction that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy shared it on X, writing: “There’s no better way to see our country than on a road trip! Because to LOVE AMERICA you have to SEE AMERICA.”

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (R) invited him back for football season. When he posted from the Gulf Coast, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis welcomed him to Florida — but couldn’t let it go that Freddy had called the Gulf “the sea.”

RELATED: ‘I had the right papers’: Somali World Cup referee booted from US gets an answer from the White House

Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images

Freddy is not even the only German on this beat. Finn Agostinelli has been touring Chicago — the Riverwalk, “the Bean,” and a visit to Portillo’s so good that he posted a petition to get one opened back home in Hamburg.

His best moment came at Macy’s, where he had ducked in to find a restroom and instead found himself staring up at an enormous American flag. “I respect how proud Americans are of their country,” he wrote. “Unimaginable back home in Germany.”

Texas, for its part, did not go unnoticed either. A group of Japanese fans told KDFW their assessment of the state in six words: “Texas is good — everything is big.” Which checks out. Everything is bigger in Texas.

And in a tradition that has followed Japan’s national team since its 1998 World Cup debut, Japanese fans were spotted picking up trash in the stands after a 2-2 game against the Netherlands in Dallas, a habit rooted in a saying that a bird leaves no trace when it flies. Stadium staff, presumably, were thrilled — and possibly a little confused.

Meanwhile, a young Swedish fan named Elsa Thora landed in Indianapolis and immediately discovered ranch dressing, which, by the tone of her posts on X, may have been a bigger moment for her than the actual soccer.

“Why did no one tell me ranch sauce is like crack? EUROPE WE NEED RANCH ASAP,” she said.

Elsa screamed at a school bus in Indiana, posted a photo of Twinkies and Combos pretzels with the caption “I feel like I’m in a movie,” and has been working her way through Trader Joe’s ever since.

She also discovered that Amish people are, in fact, real.

Not every discovery has been a hit, though. Elsa also found shampoo locked behind anti-theft barriers at a store, a security measure uncommon in much of Europe, and called it her first negative experience of the trip.

She’s not alone on the friction front. Scottish fan Shaun Cumming arrived in New York after flying from Edinburgh and was blunt about the cost of everything — especially after a $150 Uber ride into Brooklyn.

He also noted to Newsweek that Americans are noticeably more open than people back home.

“People here are very positive, enthusiastic, and they’re not shy at all,” he said. “They will tell you how they feel for good or for bad. And sometimes for British people, it can catch us off guard a little bit.”

Cumming had no complaints about the food. He said American cooking is simply better seasoned than what he’s used to: “Here, you get flavor, you get fed well, they put a lot spices, herbs and seasoning into their food in general, which just makes it really good” — and that the regional variety is what stuck with him most.

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

Joe Lamberti/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Underneath all of it is something that keeps surprising people more than the food: the locals.

A tourism expert told Fox News that visitors driving nine hours across Texas are running into “overwhelming American kindness,” often from small-town residents who have no idea why someone with hundreds of thousands of followers just pulled into their gas station.

A New Jersey deli owner gave a couple of British tourists a free lunch, and Alabama firefighters gave other British fans a station tour and sent them off with free gear.

Waffle House has been open at 1 a.m. for 50 years. Buc-ee’s has always been enormous. Ranch dressing has been sitting in American refrigerators, unremarked upon, since before the Reagan administration. Perhaps the deli owner who fed the British tourists wasn’t doing anything he wouldn’t do for a local who looked lost.

What’s new is that someone finally pointed a camera at it.

For years, the conversation about America — at home and abroad — has been almost entirely about Washington: the politics, the division, the sense that the country is somehow failing itself. But that was never the whole country.

The actual texture of American life — the diners, the gas stations, the absurd portion sizes, the stranger who will drive you to a game because your Uber didn’t show — was always there, underneath all of it, completely unaffected by whatever was happening in D.C.

This summer, a few hundred thousand people from somewhere else have seen the real America: big, weird, generous, a little much.

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​American life, Bucees, Culture, Diners, Florida, Gas station, Nba finals, Netherlands, Taco bell, Texas, Trader joes, Transportation secretary, Washington, Politics 

DEI is not dead. It survives because the left embedded it deep inside institutions, habits, grant programs, training regimes, and professional language. Even when the label changes, the ideology keeps moving.

One of President Donald Trump’s first actions in his second term was an executive order directing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to eliminate illegal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The order put immediate pressure on organizations that built their funding models around DEI and what they call “victim-centered” ideology.

Democrats have already parroted the brainwashing narrative. If they win the midterms, many will try to turn it into impeachment-palooza and legal warfare.

Those organizations are now fighting back. They are filing lawsuits, mobilizing allies, and defending their grants. A federal court order has complicated the fight by forcing the government to keep funding some of them while litigation continues. In other words, taxpayers are still cutting checks to groups openly hostile to the president and his movement.

The Civil Rights Division should treat this novel doctrine as what it is: DEI with prosecutorial power.

The “victim-centered approach” is a federally funded prosecution doctrine. It carries a badge and wears judicial robes, but it rests on the same power-differential framework that drove DEI through human resources departments, universities, and activist nonprofits. It replaces objective proof with subjective harm and presents ideological assumptions as neutral expertise.

Nearly 12,000 American judges have been trained in this doctrine since 1999. The training does not teach law. It teaches trauma theory, “power and control” wheels, trauma bonding, and coercive-control frameworks imported from activist social work and repackaged as forensic science.

Judges emerge from the program describing themselves as “trauma-informed” members of a new generation of jurists who understand what victims are really experiencing — even when some of those alleged victims insist they were not victimized.

That is ideological preconditioning, not legal education. And the federal government has funded it for 25 years.

One major proponent is Freedom Network USA, an organization that trains law enforcement and certifies victim advocates nationwide. It has sued the Trump administration, arguing that the executive order prevents it from delivering trafficking-victim services because the order restricts words central to its curriculum.

RELATED: Trump’s Justice Department is shining a light on woke universities — finally

Angela Lewis/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Americans have already seen DEI in schools. They have seen DEI hiring programs raise serious questions about competence in public safety and aviation. The victim-centered approach shows DEI wearing a badge and sitting on the bench.

The left built this machinery for use against communities it has already labeled dangerous, irrational, or cult-like. And the left has made clear that it regards MAGA as a cult and Trump as its leader.

How do we know? Because they told us.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and a former impeachment manager, said publicly that he consulted cult experts to help him communicate with Republican colleagues. Hillary Clinton said MAGA supporters may need “formal deprogramming of the cult members.”

Those were not stray comments. They were previews.

Freedom Network USA is one node in a federally funded network of nongovernmental organizations that train law enforcement, write curriculum, and certify judges. These groups are not merely observers of the doctrine. They are its infrastructure. The same political coalition calling MAGA a cult built the legal machinery to act on that belief. Now it is suing the administration to keep the money flowing.

The public can already see how this victim-centered approach may play out in court. The government has relied on “cult expert” Steven Hassan, author of “The Cult of Trump,” to help shape prosecution theories. The Oversight Project has documented Hassan’s ties to Raskin, whom Trump has called on Congress to expel.

Real victims of horrible crimes deserve care and respect from the justice system. That is not in dispute. But this doctrine does not strengthen judicial decency. It undermines it by weakening the protections that should apply to all parties.

RELATED: How to fix the woke teacher problem

H. Rick Bamman/Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

The victim-centered approach is what MAGA will face if the left regains power. Conservatives will be cast either as brainwashers or as the brainwashed.

Cassidy Hutchinson’s story shows what may come next. Her memoir about her time as a Trump White House staffer makes a specific psychological claim: Loyalty to Trump becomes coercion. Personal devotion becomes proof that a person cannot leave freely. Under the victim-centered approach, and with criminal precedents already in place, that claim no longer remains a social critique. It can become a theory of prosecution.

Democrats have already parroted this brainwashing narrative. If they win the midterms, many will try to turn it into impeachment-palooza and legal warfare. That makes it time to take unserious arguments seriously.

They are telling us what they think of MAGA. They see a web of cults and subcults led by pastors, celebrities, politicians, and activists, all supposedly brainwashing followers to obey Trump.

They will try to draw a web of influence and use the victim-centered approach to build a brainwashing case against Trump and his supporters.

How do we know? Because they told us.

​Democrats, Trump, Dei, Woke, Civil rights division, Freedom network usa, American judges, Maga, Cults, Cult of trump, Radica left, Oversight project, Opinion & analysis 

California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton (R) has pledged to tackle the cross-border toxic waste issue in San Diego County’s Tijuana River Valley if elected.

On Monday, Hilton posted a video from his recent visit to the Tijuana River, explaining that Mexico is still dumping raw sewage into it. He slammed California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) for failing to address the ongoing health and safety crisis.

‘If this isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is.’

If elected California’s next governor, Hilton pledged that he would immediately declare a state of emergency and demand solutions.

“Today, we’re going to show you what’s going on with this unbelievable, disgusting scandal that’s been going on for 35 years here in San Diego, right at the border, the Tijuana River,” Hilton stated in the video.

“The water that’s flowing there,” Hilton said, pointing toward the river, “that is raw sewage, human sewage from Mexico coming into our country, our state. And then it’s flowing out into the ocean.”

RELATED: EPA uproots 455 DEI and ‘environmental justice’ workers to end Biden’s woke initiatives

GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP/Getty Images

Hilton noted that the Navy SEAL training center in Coronado is roughly 13 miles up the coast.

“Our Navy SEALs are swimming in raw sewage from Mexico,” he stated.

Hilton explained that the white foam in the river was from “forever chemicals” and “toxic waste” from Mexican industrial plants.

“It is just an absolute disgrace,” he added.

“If this isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is. … I will, on day one, declare a state of emergency for this outrageous situation.”

RELATED: Toxic gas linked to cross-border sewage sparks public health scare in San Diego — but county rejects researchers’ findings

Steve Hilton. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In 2024, researchers at San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego reported finding dangerously high levels of toxic gas in the Tijuana River Valley linked to raw sewage flowing from Mexico into the U.S. The findings sparked public health concerns and prompted a group of local Democratic lawmakers to urge Newsom to declare a state of emergency. Newsom has framed the crisis as “a decades-long federal failure.”

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​News, Steve hilton, California, Tijuana river, Gavin newsom, Mexico, Politics 

It took years after acquiring Fitbit, but Google is finally shaking up its health and fitness products and services. Last month, the tech giant officially replaced the well-established Fitbit app with Google Health, and it launched the brand new Google Fitbit Air tracker with an ultra-minimal design that’s built for 24/7 use. I’ve tested them both for two full weeks, and here’s how they stack up.

Fitbit Air returns to the company’s roots in more ways than one. It doesn’t feature a screen like the Charge series. It doesn’t receive notifications like Versa smartwatches. It doesn’t come with any bells, whistles, or distractions. It’s a no-muss, no-fuss fitness band that tracks what Fitbit does best – steps, workouts, heart rate, oxygen levels, sleep.

While there’s a lot to like about Fitbit Air, there are a few negatives.

The device itself is a tiny pebble that houses the electronics, battery, and heart rate sensor. Its size alone is pretty impressive, considering the original Fitbit was about the size of a simple pedometer. The pebble fits into specially made straps meant to be worn on the wrist. It comes with the fabric Performance Loop band that is both soft and comfortable. You can also buy a secondary silicone Active band that’s great for sweaty workouts or polyurethane Elevated Modern band that’s meant to dress up the tracker when you go out.

Once it’s on the wrist, Fitbit Air is extremely lightweight. During my two-week test, I forgot I had it on half the time, which is exactly what you want from a device that’s meant to be worn 24/7. Despite its tiny weight and size, Fitbit Air can last approximately seven days between charges, though you may get a little more or less depending on how often you work out.

The most important part, though, is the data. How accurate is this tiny device? To compare, I wore Fitbit Air alongside my Apple Watch that has been on my wrist every day since 2015. Let’s see where they agree and how they differ.

Steps

During the test period, Apple Watch marked a higher daily step count 70% of the time while Fitbit Air was higher 30% of the time. The largest disparity left a 605-step gap (approximately a quarter of a mile) between devices at the end of the day, while they were only 15 steps apart on the closest day. There was a lot of variation between the two, making it difficult to decide which one was more accurate, so I resorted to a 100-step controlled test, where both devices accurately counted exactly 100 steps each. Ultimately, the difference between daily metrics likely boils down to the way both devices misinterpret slight hand movements — like typing on a keyboard all day — as steps.

Heart rate

Each device measures heart rate differently, with Fitbit Air logging data every several seconds and Apple Watch measuring heart rates every 4-6 minutes. This logging algorithm gives Fitbit Air more heart data to track over time, providing a clearer look at your heart health. For the most part, my Apple Watch and Fitbit Air agreed, with both devices crafting similar heart rate graphs each day. The only place where Fitbit Air falls short is during strenuous workouts. Sometimes, the heart rate sensor misses sudden rate spikes or lags behind by several seconds before it registers, potentially leading to inaccurate workout tracking.

RELATED: How the iPhone crushed young women’s fertility

Godong/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

To end on a high note, though, Fitbit Air includes high/low heart rate notifications and irregular rhythm alerts to detect potential heart issues, which I thankfully didn’t get a chance to test during my review phase. Overall, Fitbit Air’s heart rate performance and safety features are impressive for its size.

Oxygen

Unlike Apple Watch, which lets you take an oxygen reading on demand, Fitbit Air only measures oxygen passively while you sleep. This data can then be used to help identify possible air obstructions or conditions, like sleep apnea. Comparing the two, Apple Watch was usually 0.5%-1% points lower than Fitbit Air, which is a huge discrepancy in the sensitive world of pulse oximetry. To be fair, though, wrist-based oxygen measurements are rarely as accurate as finger-based devices. The most important thing for fitness bands is how consistent the measurements appear from night to night, and both devices highlighted similar data trends.

Sleep

As someone who rarely gets enough sleep, tracking my good nights against my bad is critical for balancing energy, work, and responsibilities during the day. Thankfully, I’m happy to say that Fitbit Air excels at sleep tracking. Compared to my Apple Watch, both devices usually agreed on when I fell asleep and woke up within minutes of each other. There were even a few times when I woke up in the middle of the night for an hour and went back to sleep, which Fitbit Air captured perfectly. The coolest part is that you don’t have to put Fitbit Air into sleep mode (like Apple Watch) or tell it when you’re lying down for bed. It simply looks for physiological cues within your set bedtime and logs sleep automatically as you drift away. If you want more insight into your sleep health, Fitbit Air is a great place to start.

Zach Laidlaw

So what’s the catch?

While there’s a lot to like about Fitbit Air, there are a few negatives worth mentioning: It doesn’t have a GPS sensor like most premium Fitbit devices and watches, and it doesn’t come with an altimeter either. This means that you’ll need to carry your phone with you on outdoor walks or runs to map your journey and record elevation information; otherwise, your workout data may not be as accurate or informative. Depending on your activity level, though, this may not even be an issue for you.

By the end of the test period, I walked away (slight pun intended) very impressed with this little device. It excels in heart rate detection, sleep tracking, and long battery life, and it’s more than good enough when it comes to monitoring workouts and oxygen at night. At only $99, Fitbit Air is easy to recommend to anyone who wants to get fit or simply keep tabs on health — that is, if you don’t mind giving your health data over to Google for at least the life of the product. And when it’s time for an upgrade — well, you know the deal.

Like most tech companies these days, Google wants as much of you as possible in its ecosystem for life. Fitbit Air makes it easy and tempting to say yes.

​Tech 

The police chief of a small Ohio village was arrested on Thursday over child sex assault allegations from his time as a teacher and Young Marines instructor.

Chad Essert, 44, of Blanchester was indicted by a Clermont County Grand Jury on 56 third-degree felony counts of sexual battery and 14 third-degree felony counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.

‘It takes tremendous courage for a victim to come forward, especially when the accused wears a badge and holds a position of authority.’

Essert allegedly committed the crimes between 2005 and 2010 during the time he was a teacher at a Sharonville school, according to a press release from the Clermount County Sheriff’s Office. He later became the police chief of Bethel.

Prosecutors said the victim was one of Essert’s students.

The incidents of abuse occurred at numerous locations in Clermont and Hamilton County, according to prosecutors.

The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office Tactical Investigations Section took Essert into custody in Seminole, Florida. He is awaiting extradition to Clermont County.

The mayor of Bethel said he’s working to have Essert fired from this position.

“Chief Essert should no longer lead the Bethel Police Department. I intend to initiate the statutory process to remove Chief Essert from employment with the Village of Bethel,” reads a statement from Mayor Jay Noble.

Essert faces a maximum penalty of 280 years in prison if he’s convicted on all charges.

RELATED: Virginia man allegedly tried to meet minor for sex and sought victims on Snapchat, police say

“It takes tremendous courage for a victim to come forward, especially when the accused wears a badge and holds a position of authority,” reads a statement from Sheriff Chris Stratton.

“Today’s indictment demonstrates that no one is above the law,” he added. “Every victim deserves to be heard, and every allegation will be thoroughly investigated and pursued in accordance with the law.”

Bethel is a village of about 2,600 residents located in southeast Ohio.

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​Child sex assault, Police chief, Sexual battery, Unlawful sexual conduct, Crime 

Warner Discovery last week staged what it called a memorial ceremony for TBS and CNN founder Ted Turner, who died on May 6. What it delivered instead was a propagandistic pep rally — one that twisted Turner’s story into his beatification as a left-wing journalistic saint, amid an institutional chest-thump by Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Christiane Amanpour, and former CNN President Tom Johnson.

Johnson was a longtime aide to President Lyndon Johnson before becoming publisher of the Los Angeles Times. He ran CNN from 1990 to 2001. His remarks about Turner last week quickly veered into an anti-Trump sermon that also managed to mask the huge failures of the contemporary CNN.

Ted Turner was no saint. He was loud, brash, womanizing, hard-drinking, chance-taking, and wildly successful — an All-American original. That was exactly the sort of role model I admired in 1982 — and still do.

Johnson ended his diatribe with this declaration: “CNN will not bend and will not sway during this terrible, chaotic Trump era. We can best honor Ted by continuing to keep CNN as the most outstanding news network of them all.”

Really, Tom?

CNN “will not sway”? You mean the same CNN, under your watch, whose international news chief, Eason Jordan, admitted in the New York Times that the network had withheld reporting on Saddam Hussein’s abuses to keep its Baghdad bureau open?

CNN “will not bend”? You mean the same CNN that, under your successor, Jeff “Mother” Zucker, turned prime-time into a rolling psychodrama and allowed Don Lemon to become one of the network’s most embarrassing public faces? Lemon was fired in 2023 after a long trail of controversies and allegations of misogynistic behavior.

Zucker himself was pushed out after his sexual relationship with Allison Gollust, CNN’s chief marketing officer. Maybe that qualifies as not getting bent.

And “the most outstanding news network of them all”?

Maybe CNN deserved that description in the early 1980s, when I was there helping build the network. Maybe it still did in the 1990s, during Johnson’s tenure. But after Johnson left in 2001 and Turner lost control to Warner, CNN entered a quarter-century of decay and decline. And Johnson knows it.

How else would he explain the clown show created by Chris Cuomo and his brother Andrew, the disgraced former governor of New York? Or Jeffrey Toobin, the CNN legal analyst who humiliated himself and tarnished the network by masturbating on a Zoom call? Or the fact that Zucker turned the network Johnson helped bring to its zenith into a laughingstock of the news business?

Several CNN anchors used the memorial to mount their ego-steeds and blather about “editorial independence,” likely because they can feel the walls closing in. If — when! — Skydance and Paramount take over Warner Bros.-Discovery, Bari Weiss could gain real editorial influence and give CNN’s lefty stable the Scott Pelley treatment.

Christiane Amanpour phoned it in from Beirut, looking like Mother Teresa on life support, and delivered the expected sermon in her usual syncopated style.

“I am a complete and utter adherent to fighting for editorial independence and to being able to pursue independent news coverage without fear or favor, no matter who is in charge politically, no matter where we go,” she said. “That is our mission. That is Ted Turner’s legacy, and that’s one that I intend to fulfill in my life.”

Right, Christiane.

This would be the same Amanpour who, under wildly anti-Trump Jeff Zucker, compared the Trump administration to Kristallnacht. That was not “independent journalism.” It was journalism independent of facts, independent of fairness, and independent of good judgment.

RELATED: The left’s icons keep face-planting in public

Scott Kowalchyk/CBS/Getty Images

And no CNN self-celebration would be complete without Wolf Blitzer.

“Ted Turner was one of the greatest visionaries of our time,” Blitzer said, demonstrating his masterful command of the obvious. “He always told me to make sure we report the news fairly and accurately, and, if possible, break those stories first on CNN.”

Sure thing, Wolf. But while we are discussing fairness and accuracy, I do not remember CNN making much of your previous work for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Jerusalem Post when you covered the Middle East. That seems like relevant context.

Finally came the Man from Glad himself, CNN’s SOB — son of a billionaire — Anderson Cooper.

Cooper described Turner as “a complex man of passion and guts and daring and drive,” a man who “saw what was possible when others didn’t, when others couldn’t.”

Too bad Cooper did not bring that kind of precision to his coverage of Hurricane Katrina or the BP oil spill.

The strangest moment came when Cooper told Johnson he should come back to CNN.

“We just want you to stay here,” Johnson told Cooper.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Cooper replied.

I’ll take Bari Weiss and no points against that spread.

One last thought: Ted Turner was no saint. He was loud, brash, womanizing, hard-drinking, chance-taking, swashbuckling, creative, and wildly successful — an All-American original. You know, all the traits that make contemporary leftists, no kingsers, and me-too’ers gasp, cover their eyes, point, and scream “toxic masculinity!”

That was exactly the sort of role model I admired in 1982 — and still do. That was why I wanted to work for Ted Turner when I joined the CNN Special Assignments Unit. If Ted came back to life tonight, I would be first in line to join whatever he wanted to build next.

​Cnn, Tbs, Ted turner, Anderson cooper, Wolf blitzer, Liberal media, Trump, Bari weiss, Opinion & analysis 

A third reconciliation bill is becoming a central question in Republican economic policy. President Trump has called for one. House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) supports it. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is trying to assemble the votes. Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) is open to it if the numbers work.

Senate Republicans sound far less certain. Former Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been blunt: “I think it’s safe to conclude there will not be another reconciliation bill.”

The question congressional Republicans should ask is not merely what they can pass — it’s what they are willing to fight for.

Someone will win that argument. If House Republicans prevail, the real test will be what goes into the bill. Trump is right that defense readiness and election integrity are priorities. But neither is an economic growth agenda. Growth comes from removing barriers to work, saving, investment, and capital formation.

Supply-siders know what they want: lower corporate rates, zero capital gains, full repeal of the death tax, and a complete rewrite of how the tax code treats savings and investment.

Reconciliation in 2026 is not the vehicle for all of that. But it can still do real work.

Index capital gains to inflation

Investors now pay taxes on nominal gains from selling an asset. A family that bought a home in 2010 for $600,000 and sells it today for $1.2 million has not doubled its real wealth. Much of that increase reflects the dollar’s declining purchasing power. Taxing inflation on top of inflation is double taxation by another name. Congress should index all capital gains to inflation.

A practical fallback already has bipartisan support. Reps. Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) have reintroduced the More Homes on the Market Act, which has 123 co-sponsors. The bill would raise the primary-residence exclusion from $250,000 to $500,000 for single filers and from $500,000 to $1 million for joint filers. Those thresholds were set in 1997 and have never been adjusted for inflation.

The 2026 Economic Report of the President identifies supply constraints as a major driver of housing costs. Either reform would reduce the tax penalty that discourages homeowners from selling, moving, or downsizing.

Tax tax-exempt wealth hoards

Universities and hospitals have spent decades accumulating vast tax-exempt wealth while pricing out the people they claim to serve. Harvard’s endowment exceeds $56 billion. Most of its investment earnings remain largely exempt from federal taxation. Economist Richard Vedder has called university tax subsidies one of the most regressive policies in the tax code.

Congress raised the endowment tax as high as 8% in the last reconciliation bill. A 15% excise tax on endowments above $100 million would send a clearer signal that tax-exempt status is a privilege, not a birthright.

The same logic applies to commercial activities at universities and hospitals. When a university runs a hotel, a patent-licensing operation, or a hospital system, it is engaging in commerce. Tax it accordingly.

RELATED: Trump’s new tariffs will put America’s rivals on notice

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Cap Medicaid fraud

Every dollar lost to Medicaid fraud is a dollar extracted from taxpayers and lost to the private economy. Capping federal Medicaid allocations to states with demonstrated high fraud rates is both fiscally sound and pro-growth. It belongs in any serious reconciliation package.

Redirect health care subsidies

The current system funnels public money through insurance intermediaries that extract rents at every step. The 2026 Economic Report of the President documents how lack of competition in physician markets drives up costs. Redirecting health care subsidies directly to individuals would restore price signals to a sector long insulated from them.

Republicans have a narrow window and a thin majority. The votes may not be there. But the question congressional Republicans should ask is not merely what they can pass — it’s what they are willing to fight for.

Every item here removes a barrier to capital formation or productive investment. That is not four different ideas. It is one growth agenda, applied four ways.

​Trump, Trump administration, Mike johnson, More homes on the market act, 2026 economic report, Medicaid fraud, Republicans, Tax exempt wealth, Richard vedder, Opinion & analysis 

In a delusional Substack post, a Howard University journalism professor blamed Austin Metcalf’s father for the teen athlete’s murder — conducting what she called her own “postmortem” on the horrific murder.

Dr. Stacey Patton criticized Austin Metcalf’s father, Jeff Metcalf, and broke down his courtroom address to killer Karmelo Anthony.

“Yesterday evening, Jeff Metcalf, the father of Austin Metcalf, used his victim-impact statement to address Karmelo Anthony directly, after he was sentenced to 35 years after the court treated his act of survival as murder,” Patton wrote.

“He insisted this case was ‘never about race.’ He said, ‘We all bleed the same color.’ And he described his grief not as sadness, but as ‘rage’ – ‘pure unfiltered rage.’ And then he turned that rage on the black 19-year-old sitting before him,” she continued.

“‘You failed your parents, you failed yourself, and you failed society. You don’t belong in this community.’ He also reportedly told him, ‘You’re going to prison, and, ‘You can’t even look me in the eyes right now, but you can stab my f**king son in the heart.’ And right there, in his own words Jeff Metcalf told on himself,” she added.

“She decides that the best thing she can do with her time is attack the still-grieving father of a murdered child in the face of all this,” BlazeTV host John Doyle comments, disturbed.

“But what’s also telling here is that she does not actually care that Jeff Metcalf is deliberately and painstakingly trying to say specifically that the case is not about race … Stacey Patton is absolutely making it about race,” he continues.

“But not only that, but that blacks are actually the real victims here in a case which again, is about the deliberate murder of a white man,” he adds.

Patton went on to criticize the way Metcalf taught his son “about the cultural socialization that helped his son meet his fate under that track meet tent in April 2025.”

“This is your method of attack, to attack fatherhood in white America,” Doyle comments.

“So yeah, she’s going to blame Jeff Metcalf here for the murder of his own son and literally just justify Karmelo Anthony’s killing of the son here,” he continues. “She’s going to go on and list a bunch of incidents which all of these people have memorized to just like throw out there, justify all their bad behavior.”

Patton went on to say, “Since this country loves to examine black parents when black children die, let us examine you. Since America loves to ask what black mothers and fathers failed to teach, let us ask what you failed to teach your son. Since dead black boys are never allowed to remain innocent, let us stop pretending dead white boys are beyond scrutiny. Let us refuse the sentimental immunity given to dead white boys and grieving white fathers.”

She adds, “Let’s go postmortem up in here.”

“This line in particular is like no different than the people who want to make AI edits of themselves pissing on his grave,” Doyle says, adding, “She is in essence doing the same thing.”

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​John doyle, Stacey patton, Howard university, Austin metcalf, Karmelo anthony, Jeff metcalf, Racism, The john doyle show 

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was injured when he was struck by a van whose driver was fleeing from an arrest operation in Stafford Township in New Jersey, according to police.

A spokesperson for ICE said agents were trying to arrest Friedrich Castillo-Ormeno, of Peru, at about 9:30 a.m. on Route 72 in the Manahawkin community.

‘You just see the guy’s body just get twisted and mangled, and in that twist, you know, he then pulled out his gun and shot at the van.’

Castillo-Ormeno had been ordered to leave the country by the end of January, but when ICE agents tried to arrest him, he fled in his van and struck one of the officers, according to officials.

That officer fired his gun at the van and possibly blew out the vehicle’s back window.

Law enforcement officials are searching for Castillo-Ormeno and the van.

One witness described the incident in unnerving detail to WCAU-TV.

“They tell him to roll down his window; he’s inching forward, and you can tell it’s getting tense by his inching forward,” said Payton Johnson, a resident of the township.

“As soon as he gunned it, you just see the the front of the van, pin the lower half of the officer’s body into the officer’s car,” he added. “You just see the guy’s body just get twisted and mangled, and in that twist, you know, he then pulled out his gun and shot at the van.”

Sources told WCAU that the officer who was struck would recover.

A spokesperson for the Stafford Township Police said they were not involved in the ICE operation but were providing help to manage traffic and secure the crime scene. According to New Jersey’s Immigrant Trust Directive, police are restricted from helping federal immigration officers.

RELATED: Democratic congressman claims he forced ICE agents to back off from arresting man outside courtroom

“ICE agents put their lives on the line every day to enforce our nation’s laws and protect our communities,” Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey said in a statement.

“Yet too many politicians and activists continue to demonize them for doing the job they are sworn to do,” he added. “This incident is a reminder of the dangers these brave men and women face. I am grateful the agent is expected to recover, and I will always stand with ICE and law enforcement.”

The investigation into the incident has been taken over by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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​Immigration and customs enforcement, Stafford township, Illegal alien crime, Ice officer injured, Politics 

Vice President JD Vance is taking on those accused of immigration fraud and asylum approvals in the hope of completely turning back the clock on Biden-era policies that are still in play, explaining in an interview on Fox News just how this administration plans to do it.

“One of the angles that we’re looking at is the people who committed immigration fraud against our system and how do we denaturalize those people and send them back to where they came from,” Vance said.

“The Biden administration would often take people who were coming in on fraudulent asylum claims, fraudulent refugee claims, and basically wave the magic wand of amnesty and say, ‘We’re not going to enforce the immigration laws against those people,’” he continued.

“We stopped that from happening. But then you still have a lot of people who benefited from that Biden administration amnesty program. We’re trying to unwind as much of that as possible,” he added.

And even though “left-wing radicals in the justice system” have tried to stop the Trump administration, Vance explained that they’ve still found success.

“We have been able to denaturalize and actually unwind that temporary protected status, a lot of those fraudulent asylum claims,” he said, explaining that this will keep happening “so long as Donald Trump is president.”

“The good news is that we’re stopping the fraud that’s happening against the American taxpayer. The bad news is that my own children will never be able to attend school at the Quality Learing Center,” he joked.

“That ‘Learing Center’ has gotten a lot of mileage,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray laughs.

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​Jd vance, Donald trump, Immigration, Fraud, The blaze, Denaturalize, Illegal, Pat gray, Pat gray unleashed 

Parents of students in Fairfax County Public Schools say their opposition to a suggestion about religious holidays is being ignored, and they believe anti-Christian bias to blame.

The district asked parents whether they would be open to adding more instructional days to the school calendar at the expense of the holiday vacation that included Christmas Day.

‘Even though my friends are certainly against ignoring Christmas, the district won’t listen to us anyways because the leaders have their pre-selected conclusion.’

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora appeared on Fox News to voice her opposition to the change and noted that it was only the latest scheme by the school to cut out Christianity from the classroom.

“Fairfax leaders have an anti-Christian bias,” Lundquist-Arora said.

“In 2022, the school board voted to change spring break with the express purpose of decoupling it from Easter. And then in 2024, the county’s Board of Supervisors, the governing council, also voted to commemorate transgender visibility day on Easter,” she continued.

The mom of three students in the district went on to say that her friends were shocked at the suggestion by the district.

“This is just a drop in the bucket in showing their anti-Christian biases once again,” Lundquist-Arora added.

The text of the survey was published by WJLA-TV.

“Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) values your input as we plan future school calendars,” the email reads. “You are invited to complete a brief survey to share your priorities and perspectives, which will be considered as part of the calendar planning process. Your feedback matters, and we appreciate you taking a few minutes to respond.”

One of the questions reads: “If the school calendar required modifying one of the following, which would be the most acceptable to you?”

One option reads, “Winter break shorter than a full two weeks,” while another reads, “Eliminating holidays recognizing religious and cultural observances (e.g., Christmas, Diwali, Eid al-Fitr, Rosh Hashanah, and other observed holidays).”

They are given the option to say all of the options are “equally unacceptable.”

Board members of the district told WJLA that they had received thousands of message from parents demanding more weeks of five-day instruction be added to the school calendar. The report says that fewer than half of the weeks of instruction at Fairfax County Public Schools include a full five days.

RELATED: ‘Why would somebody have such hate?’ Churchgoers stunned at vandalism on Nativity display

Lundquist-Arora told Fox News that the district had previously ignored an overwhelming poll of parents.

“They sent out a survey asking if we wanted to have shared-sex classrooms for sex education. Eighty-four percent of us said, ‘No, we did not,’ and then the superintendent responded by saying, ‘Well, the majority doesn’t always dictate,’ and then implemented a pilot program doing just that,” she said.

“So, even though my friends are certainly against ignoring Christmas, the district won’t listen to us anyways because the leaders have their pre-selected conclusion,” Lundquist-Arora concluded.

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​Antichristian bias, Fairfax county public schools, Parental rights, School calendar, Politics 

California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom says that he and his wife are under investigation by the Department of Justice and claims the president ordered the probe.

Newsom accused President Donald Trump of targeting him because he “consistently” calls out the president, who he said was the most corrupt in U.S. history.

‘We have nothing to hide. Mr. President, come after me.’

“Today, my wife & I joined Donald Trump’s hit list. He has directed his Department of Justice to investigate us,” the governor wrote in a post on social media Monday.

“They have not found a crime — they are simply trying to find one,” he added. “He isn’t coming after me because of mean tweets, but because I am considering running for President.”

Newsom posted a video in which he expanded on the accusations.

“He’s coming after my wife, Jen, a public servant, a woman who’s dedicated her life to supporting women and girls, someone who has done nothing wrong other than having the temerity to advocate for what she believes in,” he said. “If they can’t intimidate me, they’ll go after the mother of our children.”

He then addressed the president directly.

“I have a message for you,” Newsom said. “You can subpoena my records. You can investigate me. You can harass me. Put my name on every and any enemies list you have, but leave my wife and family out of your personal vendetta.”

He also apologized to his wife over the investigation and said that investigators looking for corruption should look at Trump instead.

The DOJ declined a request for comment from NBC News.

RELATED: Gavin Newsom tries to dunk on Trump and gets obliterated with online ridicule

Newsom has previously positioned his administration in California as the foremost state opposition to Trump and his policies. Many believe the rhetoric is intended to amplify Newsom as a possible presidential candidate for 2028.

“We have nothing to hide. Mr. President, come after me,” he concluded. “I am not going anywhere. The country is watching.”

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​Corruption, Department of justice, Gavin newsom, Jennifer siebel newsom, Politics 

Former Fox News host Steve Hilton is running for governor of California, and while hopeful, he’s well aware that the election system is rigged.

“There’s a line in the law that says that actually, the proof that you mailed your ballot on or just before Election Day — even if it arrives after Election Day — it’s not just the postmark. You can write it. You can handwrite the date,” Hilton said on “Hot Mics with Billy Bush.”

“I had a whistleblower from the postal service explaining this. So just to be really clear what that means: You can backdate your ballot by hand and it will be counted. That’s how insane this system is,” he added.

“You say ‘fraud’s happening, fraud’s happening,'” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck comments, “No. A lot of it is legal. They have rigged the system.”

“They have made it so nobody’s breaking any laws. Nobody’s going to go to jail. It’s all part of the system,” he adds.

And Jason Buttrill agrees, noting that an election insider he has spoken to has explained how they do this and why it requires “many days of voting.”

“They can see the Election Day turnout, determine the deficit, and immediately go out and find all the votes they need,” Buttrill tells Glenn.

“Now, this is exactly what we’ve been thinking about, but we’ve been calling it fraud,” he says.

“Now here’s the kicker. This is all perfectly legal in blue states because of blue-state laws. … The thing that we really need to be focusing on here is the laws that are disenfranchising millions of voters in many of these states where they have just atrocious election laws,” he adds.

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​Glenn beck, Steve hilton, The glenn beck program, Whistleblower, Blue states, California, Rigged election, Fraud 

The U.S. Supreme Court will let the Trump administration make the case this fall that a pair of Obama judges erred in their 2024 ruling regarding the detention of criminal noncitizens.

Criminal foreigners and their complaints

Carol Williams Black is a Jamaican male who entered the United States in 1983 and subsequently obtained legal permanent residency.

‘No substantive-due-process right to a bond hearing.’

Black was captured in 2019 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which determined both that the Jamaican was removable under federal immigration law due to his criminal conviction for sexual abuse and endangerment of a child and that he should remain in detention until his removal.

Keisy G.M. is a man in his late 30s from the Dominican Republican who entered the U.S. in 2011, obtained permanent residency, and has since lived in New York. In light of G.M.’s 2015 guilty plea to second-degree assault, ICE arrested G.M. in 2020 and got the ball rolling on his deportation.

Both foreigners — Black, who was detained for seven months, and G.M., who was detained for 21 months — filed legal complaints alleging that their detentions without bond hearings amounted to violations of their due process rights.

A panel consisting of a pair of Obama–appointed circuit court judges — Hong Kong-born Denny Chin and Susan Carney — reviewed the criminal noncitizens’ cases and held in 2024 that “the constitutional guarantee of due process precludes a noncitizen’s unreasonably prolonged detention under [8 U.S.C. § 1226(c)] without a bond hearing.”

Trump administration asks for review

The Trump administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court in January to review whether the court of appeals erred in holding that due process requires bond hearings for criminal aliens detained under Section 1226(c) like Black and G.M., and whether there is a point at which such detention becomes “unreasonably prolonged.”

RELATED: A real nation knows who is in and who is out

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The administration also asked the high court to review the appellate court’s holding that due process requires placing the burden on the government to justify continued detention by a heightened standard.

“Section 1226(c) detainees have no procedural-due-process right to a bond hearing on matters that are ‘not material’ to the ‘statutory scheme,'” attorneys for the government noted in their petition. “And where, as here, detention bears a reasonable relation to legitimate immigration purposes — such as ‘preventing deportable criminal aliens from fleeing’ or ‘continu[ing] to engage in crime’ while their removal proceedings are pending … — Section 1226(c) detainees have no substantive-due-process right to a bond hearing either.”

The government’s attorneys noted further that the U.S. Supreme Court must provide clarity on the matter, especially since the Eighth Circuit Court “disagrees with the Second and Third Circuits about whether a Section 1226(c) detainee has a due-process right to a bond hearing when his detention becomes ‘unreasonable,'” and the Second and Third Circuit courts disagree about “how to determine when Section 1226(c) detention has reached that point.”

The American Civil Liberties Union lawyers who are representing the criminal noncitizens unsuccessfully begged the high court not to grant review.

The ACLU lawyers claimed in an April brief that the Trump administration was advancing “an extreme theory”; that the disagreement between the lower courts was little more than a “shallow split”; and that “these cases are strikingly poor vehicles” because Black has left the country and G.M. was released from detention in 2022.

Cecillia Wang, an ACLU lawyer who represents both criminal foreigners, said in a statement obtained by Reuters, “The court of appeals got it right, and we will defend ⁠our fundamental due process principles at the Supreme Court.”

“The Constitution protects all of us, regardless of immigration status, from being locked away without due process,” Wang continued. “[U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] cannot detain immigrants — separating families and cutting people off from their communities — for months or even years on end without a bond hearing.”

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take up the case but could ultimately dismiss it as moot.

The court is reportedly expected to hear arguments in the case in its next term.

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​Supreme court, Scotus, Immigration, Detention, Ice, Deportation, Criminal noncitizens, Aliens, Criminals, Aclu, Politics 

Actor Robert De Niro actually told his audience to stop applauding for America during a rambling speech at a liberal show intended to compete with the president’s UFC fights at the White House Sunday night.

While President Donald Trump’s event included a military flyover and patriotic displays of love for the U.S., the anti-Trump liberals at the “Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment” show in New York City did the opposite.

‘Loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they love their abuser.’

De Niro was reading from a letter about patriotism when the audience cheered.

“Later the letter stated, ‘Regardless of political affiliation or whether we engage in politics or not, we all love our country,'” he said.

After hearing cheers, he responded, “Not so fast!”

“The phrase, ‘We all love our country,’ stuck in my throat. Because our country isn’t so lovable right now. I hate to say it, but loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they love their abuser,” De Niro said.

This drew applause from the audience.

“I can’t love a country that starts stupid and inhumane wars, killing thousands of innocents and indirectly causing the deaths and suffering of millions more. I can’t love a country that takes health care away from millions of people and uses that money to enrich their pals in the Trump-Epstein class,” he continued.

“I can’t love a country that sends out masked militias to shoot citizens in the streets, torture our neighbors, and separate families,” De Niro said. “I can’t love a country that’s led by a racist, misogynist, xenophobic tyrant. And let me just say it: I can’t love the country that’s led by Donald Trump and his sycophant Congress.”

RELATED: WH removes song from ICE video after Ariana Grande objects: ‘Inhumane, heinous nonsense’

Meanwhile, the White House had a military flyover, a bald eagle, and large men fighting each other for glory and to entertain an audience of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen.

De Niro has been very vocal about his political opposition to Trump and his policies. In 2024, he said that the president would suspend elections and destroy Americans’ freedoms if he were allowed back into the Oval Office.

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​250th us anniversary, Politics, Robert de niro, Ufc, Donald trump 

A 25-year-old male is accused of shooting to death his mother, father, brother, and his brother’s girlfriend last week in Michigan.

Gage Pierce appeared before a Livonia judge Friday for the first time since he was charged in connection with the quadruple homicide, WXYZ-TV reported. Livonia is just over 20 minutes west of Detroit.

‘My heart goes out to them. It really does. The community is hurting over this.’

Pierce faces four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of felony firearm, WXYZ reported, adding that Pierce’s bond was denied.

Pierce tried to speak on his own behalf during the arraignment, but the station said his attorney quickly shut down the attempt.

More from WXYZ:

Prosecutors say Pierce used a semiautomatic rifle to shoot and kill his mother, Holly Kimball; his father, Sterling Pierce; his brother, Tanner Pierce; and Tanner’s girlfriend, Nevaeh Finch, at the family home Tuesday.

The home has since become a memorial. Family members gathered there Friday to observe what would have been Tanner’s 23rd birthday.

Tanner’s uncle made sure to wish his beloved nephew a happy birthday Friday at the family home.

“You’ll never be forgotten. You achieved so much at such a young age … you were perfect. Love you, man. Happy birthday,” the victim’s uncle said through tears, according to the station.

Nevaeh Finch’s heartbroken mother, Shelly, told WXYZ over the phone that she watched the arraignment while making funeral arrangements for her daughter, whose birthday is July 9.

“She’s just a — she’s a good kid,” her mother told the station. “Right now I have to try to, you know, pick her last outfit she’s ever going to wear.”

Prior to a planned Saturday fundraiser at Mulligan’s Pub & Grub in Farmington Hills, owner Robert Mckiddie told WXYZ he was a friend of the suspect’s father for nearly two decades, and that Sterling Pierce also was a regular at the pub.

RELATED: Four people found shot to death after 12-year-old calls 911 from closet with other children, police say

“He’s always called me his brother every time we parted ways … and I loved him like a brother,” Mckiddie added to the station.

WXYZ said a $20 donation at the door of the pub would go directly toward funeral costs for the suspect’s mother, father, and brother — and that the fundraising event also will serve as a place for the community to gather, grieve, and share stories.

Mckiddie added to WXYZ that “my heart goes out to them. It really does. The community is hurting over this. All the money in the world will not make a difference to anybody. But it might help them get through what they have to get through. That’s a lot they have to deal with.”

The following video shows images inside and outside the pub during the fundraiser.

RELATED: ‘Extremely intoxicated’ teen shoots entire family dead, then calls 911 to confess to quadruple murder: Police

Pierce is expected back in court June 25, the station said.

Officials said police around 5:30 p.m. June 9 found the bodies of Holly Kimball, 53, and Sterling Pierce, 58, on the backyard patio of their home in the 19300 block of Rensellor Street, and the bodies of Tanner Pierce, 22, and Nevaeh Finch, 21, in a bedroom of the home. A dog in the home was found with a gunshot wound to the leg, police said, adding that the dog was taken to veterinary emergency services for treatment.

Gage Pierce was taken into custody at the home, police said.

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​Quadruple homicide, Murder charges, Livonia, Michigan, Arrest, Fatal shootings, Family dead, Gage pierce, Crime 

The president has announced a concert and rally for the Fourth of July concert at the Lincoln Memorial.

The concert is a part of the 250th anniversary celebration of the Declaration of Independence and will now be followed by a massive Trump rally.

‘We will have none of those people that put you to sleep and constantly complain!’

President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday morning that the rally would be held to “honor our Country’s People, Spirit, Strength, Resolve, and Triumphs.”

He said it would be the largest formation of military music and ceremonial performances in history.

“With the backdrop of the Lincoln Memorial and surrounding the beautifully new Reflecting Pool,” he wrote, “more than 300 Members of our strong and talented Military Bands, Orchestras, and Ceremonial Units, will perform Patriotic Melodies and American Classics, and my Playlist (We will have none of those people that put you to sleep and constantly complain!), as we celebrate our Country, and Rally into the next 250 years.”

The 250th celebration has already been kicked off at the White House after the president had UFC fights in front of the White House on Sunday.

The president went on to say the “spectacular” July 4th show would include flyovers and airshows as well as the largest fireworks show in history.

The plans for the celebration were disrupted after several singers backed out of their agreements to perform at the Great American State Fair, organized by Freedom 250. Martina McBride, Young MC, Flo Rida, and Morris Day and the Time all backed out, leaving rapper Vanilla Ice as the only one still willing to perform.

McBride claimed that she had been “presented with an opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event” but that she was misled about the show.

RELATED: Trump greets crew that restored Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in visit to the White House

“I asked lots of questions and was assured this was a nonpartisan event that was meant to celebrate ALL 50 states,” she added.

Trump concluded his post saying, “Do not miss it. See you on JULY 4th in Washington, D.C.”

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​250th us anniversary, Fourth of july, Lincoln memorial, Trump rally, Politics 

There is today perhaps no greater thorn in the side of the British liberal establishment than counter-jihad activist Tommy Robinson.

The 43-year-old son of an Irishwoman and an Englishman has proven time and again that he is able not only to draw crowds numbered in the tens of thousands but to focus British working-class fury over the fallout of mass immigration, the failure of multiculturalism, the threats posed by radical Islam, and the efforts by the powers that be to cover up and/or contain various related scandals.

‘This is an attack on free speech.’

In the wake of his criticism over the horrific death of 18-year-old Englishman Henry Nowak at the hand of a Sikh in England and the near-beheading of Scotsman Stephen Ogilvie by a Sudanese suspect in Belfast, Robinson found himself once again in police custody under the British equivalent of the Patriot Act.

Robinson noted in a Saturday post on X, “I’M A TERRORIST AGAIN. I have been detained at Heathrow Airport today for the best part of 3 hours. I was detained under section 3 of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019.”

Under schedule 3 of the counter-terrorism law, an examining officer “may question a person for the purpose of determining whether the person appears to be a person who is, or has been, engaged in hostile activity” if that person is at a port or in a border area and appears to be entering or leaving the country, or if that person is on a ship or aircraft that has touched down in the United Kingdom.

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Leon Neal/Getty Images

“Hostile activity” is defined as acts threatening national security, acts threatening the economic well-being of the U.K., or serious crimes carried out for or on behalf of a foreign power.

Per the legislation, it is “immaterial” whether the detainee is “aware that activity in which they are or have been engaged is hostile activity.”

Robinson claimed that his phone had been seized by police — just as it had when he was detained by Kent police under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act while attempting to travel in July 2024 to Spain, where he now lives.

The Westminster Magistrates’ Court determined in November that Robinson’s previous detention under the Terrorism Act was unlawful and cleared the activist of the corresponding charge.

According to paperwork dated Saturday that Robinson was provided with and later shared online, an examining officer at the airport seized the Englishman’s iPhone and Samsung Galaxy A16 on suspicion that the devices “could be used in connection with the carrying out of a hostile act.”

“Absolute f**king madness,” Robinson wrote.

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson told the BBC that a man in his 40s was stopped under the counter-terrorism law at Heathrow Airport after returning to the U.K. from Russia via Turkey.

Robinson — who met with Elon Musk’s father, Errol, while in Moscow — told the Guardian last week that he had traveled to Russia “to see how this country got itself so well on to the straight and narrow and see the beauty of a civilized society.”

The Metropolitan Police spokesperson stated that the man stopped on Saturday “was interviewed by officers and his communication devices were seized. He was subsequently released.”

A spokesperson for Robinson speculated that police confiscated the activist’s communication devices because “they likely want to see who he is talking to, and maybe find out who his sources are, sources who will expose politicians for their part in the rape of a generation of British girls.”

“This is an attack on free speech, this is an attack on investigative journalism, nothing more nothing less,” the spokesperson added.

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​Tommy robinson, Multiculturalism, Immigration, Terrorism, Leftism, Keir starmer, Britain, Uk, United kingdom, Censorship, Suppression, Politics