Category: blaze media

Months after President Trump called for the arrest of the “seditious” Democrats who called on military and intelligence personnel to “refuse illegal orders” from the administration, federal prosecution efforts led by D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro have hit a roadblock.

On Tuesday, a grand jury refused to indict Democratic lawmakers involved in the video, the Associated Press reported, citing an anonymous source familiar with the matter.

‘Tonight we can score one for the Constitution, our freedom of speech, and the rule of law.’

The Justice Department reportedly opened an investigation into the six members of Congress who appeared in the November “Don’t Give Up the Ship” video. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) complained at the time that this was a form of “intimidation.”

RELATED: ‘SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR’: Trump demands arrest of ‘traitor’ Democrat congressmen for ‘dangerous’ video

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

It was not immediately clear whether prosecutors were pursuing indictments against all six of the lawmakers or what charges they were attempting to bring. Prosecutors, however, could still attempt to secure an indictment against those involved, Fox News reported.

Slotkin was joined by Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) in the video.

Slotkin, who claims to have organized the video, made a lengthy social media post on Tuesday.

“President Trump continues to weaponize our justice system against his perceived enemies,” Slotkin said in part. “It’s the kind of thing you see in a foreign country, not in the United States we know and love. No matter what President Trump and Pirro continue to do with this case, tonight we can score one for the Constitution, our freedom of speech, and the rule of law.”

Kelly called the investigation an “outrageous abuse of power by Donald Trump and his lackies,” adding, “Donald Trump wants every American to be too scared to speak out against him. The most patriotic thing any of us can do is not back down.”

Crow posted a minute-long video captioned in part, “We will continue to fight back against their rising tyranny.”

Deluzio chimed in: “They may want Americans to be afraid to speak out or to disagree — but patriotism demands courage in this moment. DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!”

Houlahan called the entire investigation a “distraction”: “Today, as we celebrate the win for free speech, I’m putting this distraction behind us and getting back to the real work at hand.”

The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Justice Department did not respond to the AP’s request for comment.

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​Politics, President trump, Elissa slotkin, Seditious six, Trump administration, Jeanine pirro, Don’t give up the ship, Mark kelly, Maggie goodlander, Chrissy houlahan, Jason crow, Chris deluzio, Military, Illegal orders, Refuse illegal orders 

The Canadians were beat every step of the way as Team USA delivered a historic beatdown on Tuesday.

A goal in each period saw the United States women’s hockey team not only triumph over Canada, but it is one the neighbors to the north may never forget.

‘Oh, you think you’ve done something, that’s when the mountain eats you up.’

The 5-0 trounce included two goals from 24-year-old Texan Hannah Bilka and marked the first time ever Team Canada has failed to score a goal in a women’s Olympic hockey game.

To add insult to injury, it was also the largest margin of defeat Canada has ever suffered at the hands of Team USA in both men and women’s Olympic hockey.

“It’s pretty special,” said 21-year-old American Kirsten Simms, per NBC. “This group has been unbelievable from the start of the tournament, and I think we displayed that going against our known rivals. It’s just good momentum for us going into the playoff rounds.”

Simms scored just over a minute into the second period.

RELATED: Skier Hunter Hess changes tune after saying he has ‘mixed emotions’ about representing USA: ‘I love my country’

“We’re playing a good brand of hockey, and we’re just sticking to it,” added Ohio native Laila Edwards, who scored in the third. “We’re sticking to the principles, and that benefits us. We’ve got a great group that just gels really well together.”

Coach John Wroblewski reminded his team not to get ahead of themselves, despite their record-setting victory. According to ESPN, the coach asked his team, “What’s the hardest part of climbing the mountain?”

Wroblewski provided the answer himself:

“Getting home,” he said. “If you ever feel good about climbing Mount Everest, it’s the way down. Oh, you think you’ve done something, that’s when the mountain eats you up.”

RELATED: Olympic skier who wrote ‘F**k ICE’ in snow now says he is victim of ‘hate and vitriol’

Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images

Team USA will play Italy in the quarterfinals on Friday, February 13, at 3:10 p.m. ET, in what should be an easy win. Italy has over-performed by some accounts, beating France and Japan, both of whom are ranked higher internationally. However, a loss to Germany and a pounding from Sweden have brought them back down to earth, and they likely will not be a problem for the Americans.

ESPN’s Emily Kaplan called Team USA a deep and dynamic team with an “extremely balanced attack.”

With the Americans rolling all four offensive lines, the hockey insider wrote that the team’s mix of fresher faces may be what is giving them an edge. Kaplan noted that Canada has 16 players returning from their 2022 Olympic team.

The two teams could still meet again, but it may have to wait until the finals as Canada’s quarterfinal opponent is yet to be determined, and the bracket is not yet fleshed out; Canada still has to play Finland on Thursday.

If Team USA beats Italy, they would move on to the semifinals on February 16, with the bronze and gold medal games airing on February 19.

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​Fearless, Olympics, Italy, United states, Canada, Women’s sports, Ice hockey, Hockey, Winter olympics, Sports 

American snowboarder Chloe Kim was not looking to turn her Olympic event into a sideshow.

The two-time gold medalist from California was subject to the most popular — and divisive — question being asked of U.S. Olympians at the 2026 games in Italy.

‘The US has given my family and I so much opportunity.’

On Monday, a female reporter asked a panel of Americans how they “feel representing Team USA right now.”

The open-ended question has been a source of much controversy already, but when Kim spoke up, it was probably not what the reporter was hoping for.

“Obviously my parents being immigrants, this one definitely hits pretty close to home,” Kim began. “I think in moments like these, it is really important for us to unite and kind of stand up for one another for all that’s going on.”

While her answer was not likely to please both sides of the political aisle, Kim continued.

“I’m really proud to represent the United States. The U.S. has given my family and I so much opportunity. But I also think that we are allowed to voice our opinions on what’s going on,” the 25-year-old added. “And I think that we need to lead with love and compassion. And I would love to see some more of that.”

RELATED: Olympic skier who wrote ‘F**k ICE’ in snow now says he is victim of ‘hate and vitriol’

The question in Livigno, Italy, seemed to be deliberately politically divisive. The reporter prefaced it with a reminder that President Donald Trump had called Kim’s “teammate” Hunter Hess “a real loser.”

Hess is an American freestyle skier who told reporters that he had “mixed emotions” about representing the United States, which the president replied to by saying Hess should not have tried out for the team.

“U.S. Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Hess later walked back his comments, stating on his social media that he loves the United States, while adding, “But there are always things that could be better.”

RELATED: Olympic boxer Imane Khelif admits to having male genes, but sends message to Trump: ‘I’m not trans’

Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images

Kim, born in Torrance, California, is defending her Olympic gold in women’s snowboard half-pipe, having won at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang and the 2022 games in Beijing.

Kim qualified for the finals on Wednesday, finishing first in the qualifier ahead of Japan’s Sara Shimuzu and American teammate Maddie Mastro, according to the Olympics.

The final takes place on Thursday, February 12, at 1:30 p.m. ET.

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​United states, News, Olympics, Italy, Snowboarding, Patriotism, Trump, Woke, Liberalism, Politics 

Universal Ostrich Farms has won a victory in its fight against the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

On Friday, February 6, Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal member Patricia Farnese ruled that the CFIA’s violation notice and $10,000 fine issued against Universal Ostrich Farms must be set aside.

‘Our farm is leading a movement.’

The ruling was based solely on procedural grounds. Farnese found that the CFIA failed to personally deliver the quarantine notice to the farm, instead sending it by email on Dec. 31, 2024, a day after verbally informing the owners of the quarantine.

“The agency’s failure to personally deliver the quarantine notice as mandated by subsection 91.4 of the HA Regulations is fatal to its case,” Farnese wrote.

Ruefully noting that the CFIA refused to test the ostriches for avian influenza, farm spokeswoman Katie Pasitney told Align: “The true virus here was the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. … They were the virus.”

Blood-soaked hay

The dispute — which attracted global media attention and significant support for the farm from figures such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz — began in September 2025, when the CFIA imposed a quarantine on UOF after alleging the presence of H5N1 avian influenza. The CFIA maintained that the farm posed a public health risk, despite refusing to test the animals for the virus.

The agency subsequently occupied the property for nearly seven weeks and issued an order to destroy the flock. The order was carried out overnight late on November 6 and into the early hours of November 7, resulting in the deaths of more than 300 ostriches.

Afterward, the agency left the farm in disarray, with hay bales contaminated with the blood of dead ostriches strewn across the property. Pasitney and her mother say they have been unable to clean up the mess because the property remains under quarantine, even as the federal government continues to insist that the birds carried H5N1 avian influenza.

RELATED: Aftermath of a slaughter: Universal Ostrich Farms vows to hold Canada accountable

Katie Pasitney

‘Off guard’

Pasitney said Monday that she and her mother, Karen Espersen, who owns the farm, were caught “off guard” by the tribunal’s decision — one they did not believe would go in their favor and did not expect to arrive until much later in the year.

“We read [the email from the tribunal] together,” said Pasitney, “and we both started crying, because it was just nice to hear from somebody on the federal level that they validated our concerns.”

Beyond nullifying the $10,000 fine, the decision raises broader legal implications. Does it undermine the legality of the CFIA’s entire operation against the farm — the initial invasion last September, the nearly seven-week occupation, and, most importantly, the killing of more than 300 ostriches?

“You know, those safeguards [against illegal quarantine] are put in place by Parliament for a very important reason, because quarantines carry such an excessive consequence for people with their livelihoods and their animals and their properties,” said Pasitney.

Leading a movement

So why did the tribunal rule in favor of UOF?

It assessed the CFIA’s negligence in its conduct at the farm, specifically finding that the quarantine notice relied upon by the agency was not properly served in accordance with federal law.

Pasitney shared the decision to her Facebook page on Monday, along with a statement from the farm. In the decision, the tribunal cited subsection 91.4(1) of the Health of Animals Regulations, which requires quarantine notices to be personally delivered — meaning physically handed to the affected party. The tribunal ruled that the CFIA failed to meet this requirement by relying on email.

As a result, the notice of violation and the accompanying $10,000 penalty were set aside.

The implications may extend beyond one farm, noted Pasitney. “How many other farmers were improperly served … and that resulted in unlawful enforcement?”

Pasitney said the decision has strengthened her resolve to keep pushing for accountability from the Canadian government — a crusade she said is now larger than Universal Ostrich Farms.

“Our farm is leading a movement. I’ve been blessed to be able to be the voice,” she said.

“And so I will continue to fight for my family and for everybody else out there.”

​Lifestyle, Mark carney, Universal ostrich farms, Quarantine, Canada, Government overreach, Letter from canada 

The Federal Aviation Administration briefly shut down El Paso flights after Mexican cartel drones “breached” American airspace on Tuesday.

The FAA lifted the flight restrictions Wednesday morning, less than 24 hours later, after initially establishing a 10-day closure due to “special security concerns.”

‘All flights will resume as normal.’

An official from President Donald Trump’s administration later clarified the security concern to Blaze News, noting the Department of War’s involvement.

“Mexican cartel drones breached U.S. airspace,” the official told Blaze News. “The Department of War took action to disable the drones. The FAA and DOW have determined there is no threat to commercial travel.”

RELATED: ‘Impossible to deal with’: Pete Hegseth reveals the real culprit behind defense contractor delays

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The FAA reiterated that flights have resumed as normal in a statement posted on X.

“The temporary closure of airspace over El Paso has been lifted,” the statement reads. “There is no threat to commercial aviation. All flights will resume as normal.”

RELATED: Exclusive: ICE busts pedophile, abuser, and fentanyl trafficker despite ongoing shutdown

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

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​Pete hegseth, Department of war, Dow, El paso, Faa, Federal aviation administration, Mexican cartels, Mexican cartel drones, 911, American airpsace, Politics 

The House of Representatives failed to protect President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with three Republicans enabling any lawmaker to challenge his economic policy on the floor.

Republicans attempted to pass a rule to block Congress’ ability to challenge Trump’s tariff policies late Tuesday night. The GOP ultimately fell short, failing to pass the rule in a 214-217 vote after Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Kevin Kiley of California, and Don Bacon of Nebraska sided with Democrats.

‘It’s time for Congress to reclaim that responsibility.’

Massie fired back at accusations that he voted simply to buck Trump, arguing that the vote was an attempt to “subvert the Constitution.”

“My goal is to defend the Constitution and to represent the people,” Massie said in a post on X. “Taxing authority is vested in the House of Representatives, not the Executive. The vote tonight was to subvert the Constitution and the 1976 National Emergencies Act by literally saying a day is not a day.”

RELATED: Vance casts tiebreaking war powers vote after Republicans betray Trump

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Bacon, who has deviated from Trump in the past, also cited constitutional concerns with the vote.

“I don’t like putting the important work of the House on pause, but Congress needs to be able to debate on tariffs,” Bacon said in a post on X. “Tariffs have been a ‘net negative’ for the economy and are a significant tax that American consumers, manufacturers, and farmers are paying.”

“Article I of the Constitution places authority over taxes and tariffs with Congress for a reason, but for too long, we have handed that authority to the executive branch. It’s time for Congress to reclaim that responsibility. I also oppose using the rules votes to legislate. I want the debate and the right to vote on tariffs.”

RELATED: Exclusive: Republicans pen OMAR Act, targeting lawmakers who have ‘blurred’ ethical lines

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Although the vote failed, Trump allies like Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) continued to defend tariffs.

“This is life with a razor-thin majority as we have, and sometimes this happens,” Johnson said on Fox News Wednesday. “We had three defections. … I think it’s a big mistake.”

“I don’t think we need to go down the road of trying to limit the president’s power while he is in the midst of negotiating America First trade agreements with nations around the world.”

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​Thomas massie, Don bacon, Kevin kiley, Donald trump, Mike johnson, House republicans, House democrats, Tariffs, America first, Trump tariffs, Congress, Constitution, Constitutional authority, Politics 

Democrats are no longer even pretending they’re not pushing an inflammatory, racially charged agenda — and BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is grateful that they’re being honest, calling it “beautiful.”

“The beautiful part of it is that they aren’t trying to hide their racist agendas anymore. They’re just saying everything out in the open. They’ve just been emboldened to just be blatantly, publicly racist. And then that’s where you know their true colors,” Gonzales says.

“I always tell people the day the Latino, African-American, Asian, and other communities realize that they share the same oppressor is the day we start winning because we are the majority in this country now. We have the ability to take over this country,” state Rep. Gene Wu (D-Texas) said in an interview on “Define America” with Jose Antonio Vargas.

“Oh, OK, that sounds, like, a little insurrection-y,” Gonzales comments.

“He’s calling on all of the minorities, all of the non-whites to take over the country. By what means, Gene?”

And Attorney General Ken Paxton is on the same page as Gonzales.

“Gene Wu is a radical racist who hates millions of Texans just because they’re white. This is who the modern Democrat party is,” Paxton wrote in a response to Wu’s comments on X.

But Wu isn’t the only one who has made inflammatory comments recently.

“There are those that have their own motivations for critiquing,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said in an interview on VOX’s “Today, Explained.”

The interviewer then pressed Crockett, asking, “Is it just racism and sexism?”

“I think there’s a lot of things. I think it depends on who it’s coming from, but I’ve been a black woman my whole life. So this idea that I’m going to go and be like, ‘Oh, well, they’re being racist and misogynistic towards me,’” Crockett said.

“Like, you think I didn’t know I was a black woman when I woke up and decided that I was going to run for the United States Senate. You think I didn’t factor in and make sure that we had enough room to account for that?” she asked.

“I’m going to be honest … I am a little bit black-pilled. I feel like every clip that I’ve played this show just makes me dumber somehow. It’s difficult to follow the logic there,” Gonzales comments.

“White people in this country are tired of hearing that they’re racist because they have brains,” she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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

​Video, Video phone, Camera phone, Sharing, Free, Upload, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Gene wu, Jasmine crockett, Racist democrats, Racism, Insurrection, Minorities 

A home invader in Tallahassee, Florida, picked the wrong victim late last week.

The Leon County Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded to a report of shots fired in the 5400 block of Touraine Drive around 9:40 p.m. Friday and found a male suffering from a gunshot wound.

‘Completely justified! Homeowners have a right to defend their property, their lives, and their families.’

Detectives determined the male entered a home uninvited and refused to leave after multiple requests from the homeowner, officials said.

The suspect then threatened the homeowner with a weapon while advancing toward him, officials said.

With that, the homeowner fired a single round from a semi-automatic handgun, striking the suspect, officials said.

The suspect was taken to a hospital in critical condition, officials said, adding that no other individuals in the home were hurt.

Officials said charges are pending in the ongoing investigation.

RELATED: ‘Anyone who breaks into someone’s home should expect to get shot’: Gun-toting Florida homeowner takes care of business

Image source: Leon County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office

As you might expect, commenters under the Facebook post about the shooting from sheriff’s office were decidedly backing the homeowner’s actions:

“This the epitome of ‘fawk around and find out,'” one commenter wrote. “I hope those ‘pending [charges]’ aren’t against the homeowner.””Completely justified!” another user said. “Homeowners have a right to defend their property, their lives, and their families.””Good for the homeowner having a gun and defending himself!” another commenter declared. “This is one of the EXACT reasons we have the Second Amendment! Thank heavens!””Multiple requests to leave?” another user asked. “Um, you’re lucky if you get ONE request to leave.””Shouldn’t have to be transported to hospital,” another commenter said, adding that it would “be much better if they transported the subject to morgue.””Ain’t no intruder gonna survive to tell at my house,” another user promised.”I love a happy ending,” another commenter said.

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​Crime thwarted, Florida, Guns, Gun rights, 2nd amend., Home invasion, Self-defense, Shooting, Crime 

Idaho votes like a conservative juggernaut. Republicans hold the governor’s mansion, both legislative chambers, and every statewide office. Yet the administrative state still runs on autopilot, and progressives who never win at the ballot box keep their hands on levers of power.

Last week delivered a clean example. Estella Zamora, the 72-year-old vice president of the Idaho Human Rights Commission, lost her seat after Gov. Brad Little withdrew her reappointment. Progressive activists erupted. The press corps dutifully framed it as a purge. But the real scandal sits one step earlier: Little’s office initially recommended her for another term, as if nobody bothered to look.

President Trump’s ‘drain the swamp’ mandate doesn’t end at Maryland and Virginia’s borders. It reaches every state capital where permanent bureaucrats ignore the electorate.

That rubber-stamp culture explains how red-state voters keep getting blue-state governance.

Zamora held influence for more than three decades. She didn’t win it from voters. She inherited it from the system. A Democratic governor appointed her in the 1990s. Republican administrations kept renewing her anyway, term after term, until she became another “untouchable” fixture inside Idaho’s bureaucracy.

Only public pressure forced movement. Conservative activists and outlets like the Gem State Chronicle, along with our own program, Idaho Signal, highlighted Zamora’s political activism online. She appeared before the Senate State Affairs Committee on Jan. 28 as part of the reappointment process. Lawmakers asked questions. The public noticed. Little reversed course a few days later.

Little made the right call in the end. The process that led to the near-miss should worry every Idaho voter.

Zamora didn’t simply hold personal opinions. She couldn’t resist using her public platform to attack Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency charged with enforcing federal immigration law. Her posts pushed anti-ICE propaganda, circulated protest material, and condemned enforcement operations as “harmful.” She aligned herself with the activist line that treats border enforcement as a moral offense.

Idaho doesn’t need every commissioner to share the governor’s politics. Idaho does need commissioners who can credibly carry out their duties without turning a state post into a political megaphone. A human rights commission depends on public confidence. Activism that signals contempt for lawful enforcement undermines that confidence.

This isn’t a free-speech dispute. Zamora can say whatever she wants as a private citizen. Voters can judge it. Officials must still decide whether that behavior fits a role that demands impartiality and restraint.

Progressives are already shouting “censorship” and “partisan purge.” They’re portraying Zamora as some saintly Latina icon victimized for speaking out. That rhetoric flips the facts. Nobody owes a lifetime appointment to someone who campaigns against the policies Idaho voters repeatedly choose in overwhelming numbers at the ballot box. Public service carries conditions. When the public loses trust, leaders should act.

RELATED: Trump’s primary endorsements are sabotaging his own agenda

Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

The greater lesson extends beyond Zamora.

Idaho’s bureaucracy keeps reappointing the same figures because too many Republican offices treat commissions and boards as background noise. Staffers recycle names. Vetting becomes procedural. Appointments become habit. Progressives understand this weakness, so they play the long game: They entrench themselves in institutions that outlast elections.

That pattern repeats across the country. Red states elect Republican leaders. Agencies keep advancing progressive priorities through regulation, enforcement discretion, and institutional culture. The left loses elections and wins governance anyway.

Republican governors and legislators can’t keep solving this problem only after activists force their hand. They should audit commissions and boards, review reappointments with real scrutiny, and replace partisan operatives with people who respect the mission and the law without bias and without apology.

President Trump’s “drain the swamp” mandate doesn’t end at the Maryland and Virginia borders. It reaches every state capital where permanent bureaucrats ignore the electorate and treat public posts as ideological turf.

Idaho voters spoke loudly. The administrative state had better listen because we’re just getting started.

​Opinion & analysis, Deep state, Administrative state, Idaho, Brad little, Red states, Red state governors, Estella zamora, Idaho human rights commission, Anti-ice, Immigration, Immigration and customs enforcement, Rubber stamp, Autopilot, Bureaucracy, Donald trump, Drain the swamp 

Many in the AI field believe that the future is inevitable, a destination arrived at through the brute application of electricity and capital. This prevailing faith, known as the scaling hypothesis, posits that if one feeds enough data into enough GPUs, AI will emerge as a matter of course. It is a comforting determinism, suggesting that the machine evolves under its own logic, provided the resources are sufficient.

However, if we observe the actual dynamics of this revolution, we notice that the machinery is useless without a very specific, rare kind of human intervention. Servers may hum in their air-conditioned vastness, but the architecture of the computing they house does not emerge spontaneously from the chips. It is crafted, often painfully, by a handful of individuals. As the entrepreneur Naveen Rao observed, there are perhaps “only a couple hundred people in the world” who possess the deep expertise required to train cutting-edge models.

Progress relies on the spark of insight that only a human mind can provide.

The leaders of the industry are betting that a brilliant mind can unlock more progress than an extra few billion parameters can. While scaling provides the clay, the spark of human genius acts as the catalyst. This scarcity has precipitated what Elon Musk called the “craziest talent war” he had ever seen. Companies are not merely hiring; they are offering seven-figure salaries to lure researchers away from rivals, regarding these individual experts as the ultimate competitive edge.

There is a historical resonance here, a recurring pattern in which the movement of a few minds alters the geopolitical trajectory. We saw it in the 20th century, when the United States imported Wernher von Braun and his team under Project Paperclip, a move that enabled America’s achievements during the space race. We saw the inverse when the U.S., concerned with communist espionage, deported the Caltech-trained scientist Qian Xuesen to China, an act later described by a U.S. official as the “stupidest thing this country ever did.” Qian returned to China to orchestrate its nuclear program, proving that the loss of talent can be a strategic error that capital cannot fix.

We are now witnessing a diffusion of genius that belies the American assumption of dominance. For years, American discourse failed to see the rise of Chinese AI, lulled by the belief that innovation was a function of Silicon Valley’s unique ecosystem. Then came DeepSeek. In early 2025, this Hangzhou-based lab released a model that rivaled the best American systems, trained at a fraction of the cost.

RELATED: Zuckerberg names ex-White House deputy Meta’s new president — and Trump LOVES it

Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The shock was palpable. It was described as a “Sputnik moment.” DeepSeek did not achieve this by out-spending the Americans; it did it by out-thinking them. It utilized architectural efficiencies to achieve frontier capability with about a tenth of the computing power of its competitors. It demonstrated that elite technical talent can compensate for, and optimize around, resource constraints. Brains had outsmarted brawn.

This dynamic is reshaping the cultural geography of the field. Talent is no longer content to sit in the monolithic campuses around the San Francisco Bay Area. Consider the exodus from Meta. Of the 14 authors who wrote the original LLaMA paper, 11 had departed by 2025. They did not vanish; they circulated. Many resurfaced in Paris, founding Mistral AI, which quickly raised over €100 million on the promise of making AI accessible through open-source models.

The shift is from institutional loyalty to intellectual nomadism. Some researchers are driven by an open-source ethos, preferring to publish their model weights and invite global collaboration rather than lock their work behind corporate walls. Openness can be a strategy to harness talent. When Alibaba’s Qwen team or DeepSeek release their models, they are not just releasing code; they are signaling to the global community of mathematicians and engineers that the work is happening there, outside the confines of the American giants.

The scaling hypothesis suggests a kind of inevitability, that any sufficiently funded lab would eventually reach the same breakthroughs. The history of the field suggests, rather, that the Transformer architecture, the very backbone of modern AI, might not have appeared in 2017 had Vasilii Vaswani and his collaborators not been in the room to imagine it. These shifts are not guaranteed by external conditions: They require advocates, mavericks, particular minds capable of the conceptual leap.

Michael Polanyi spoke of tacit knowledge, the ineffable know-how that cannot be written down but resides in the intuition of the expert. With neural networks, this tacit knowledge is the feel for tuning a loss function, the aesthetic judgment required to guide a model’s learning. To build machines that behave intelligently, we are dependent on the rarest and most distinctively human forms of creativity.

The models are getting larger. The data centers consume the power of small nations. However, the direction of this juggernaut is still determined by a very small number of people. The scaling hypothesis was only ever half the story. The other half is the talent hypothesis, the stubborn fact that progress relies on the spark of insight that only a human mind can provide.

The intelligence we are so desperate to manufacture is not a commodity we can mine from the earth but a reflection of the people who build it. Without the elite engineers to imagine what to do with the compute, the ambitious visions of artificial intelligence remain just that — visions, waiting for a mind to bring them to life. The servers may be loud, but it is the quiet work of these few hundred people that will determine what they are saying.

​Tech, Ai 

On June 18, 2024, Collin “Mia” Bailey gunned down his parents in cold blood in their Southern Utah home and attempted to do the same to a brother and sister-in-law.

Through bodycam footage and police reports obtained via public records requests, Blaze News can confirm that less than two weeks before the heinous shootings, Bailey made a disturbing call to police, accusing his then-housemate of harassing him and threatening to kill him with a shotgun.

Sound amplifier, ‘X-ray’ device, and poison: Bailey spins wild tale

At 3:41 a.m. on June 5, 2024, Officer Weston Hughes knocked on a door inside a residence in a quiet neighborhood in St. George, Utah. A sign reading “Baby is Asleep” hung on that interior door, and behind it lived Joseph Earl, his wife, and their young children.

Other tenants lived in the house as well. Collin “Mia” Bailey was one of them.

‘I’m going to screw my wife and make you die from masturbation.’

Though not for long.

Bailey was supposed to move out later that day. Earl’s wife, whose name is not provided in any of the reports, told police they were evicting Bailey for repeatedly making noise at night and waking up their kids.

This night was apparently no exception.

Officer Hughes and backup Officer Rob Anderson arrived at the residence in response to a 911 call from Bailey made at 3:23 that morning. The officers met Bailey outside the residence and listened to his wild rantings about Joseph Earl, whom he identified as the “house manager.”

“He hates me quite a bit, like, hates my guts,” Bailey emphasized. “And he’s pulling these stunts for months now. And the moment he pulled the gun, it was like, all right, I gotta say something.”

Bailey then explained to the cops that about a half-hour earlier, Earl had loaded a shotgun and threatened to kill him. Bailey reiterated to Anderson that Earl threatened to kill him “multiple times” and that he had been making similar threats for days.

“I know he has a shotgun because he tried loading it and then threatened to kill me and stuff,” Bailey told Hughes.

Hughes later asked Bailey to describe the gun. Bailey replied, “I don’t know what it was. It was too dark, but it was a shotgun.”

After Bailey gave meandering and seemingly inconsistent statements about what happened that night, Hughes asked him to clarify how he could have seen the gun but didn’t “know what it looked like.” Bailey replied: “I saw it. I’ve heard it. But I quickly opened the door and closed it.”

RELATED: Groomed for violence? The dark world of furries and transgenderism in America’s classrooms

In addition to accusing Earl of brandishing the shotgun, Bailey repeatedly claimed that Earl had a “sound amplifier” that allowed him to hear everything Bailey did in his room. Bailey further alleged that the amplifier gave him “splitting headaches.”

Bailey also referred to an “anti-recording” device that “blocks out sound from [Earl’s] end upstairs,” as well as some sort of “X-ray”-like device that allowed Earl to learn Bailey’s passwords.

“So there’s a thing. It slides — it’s four wheels. Because you can hear it up on the roof, you know. When you walk, you can hear footsteps, right? Or you can slide it throughout the house,” Bailey said of the “X-ray” machine.

Bailey indicated that both the “anti-recording” and the “X-ray”-like device seemingly interfered with his ability to document Earl’s antics. At least one of Earl’s alleged devices sometimes caused the house to “shake,” Bailey claimed, though it is unclear which one.

While Earl “appears to be in face fine,” he’s actually “very, very manipulative,” Bailey insisted.

Bailey also claimed to Officer Hughes that Earl had confessed to putting “poison” in Bailey’s drinks and threatened to put other drugs in them as well.

Bailey even claimed that some of Earl’s threats were sexual in nature. “I’m going to screw my wife and make you die from masturbation,” Bailey recalled Earl saying.

That particular night, Earl made other sexually explicit comments, Bailey claimed. “Basically he was saying, ‘F**k you! I hate you! Suck my c**k!'” Bailey said.

“So many messed up stuff. This guy is [a] lunatic,” Bailey insisted.

‘I don’t have schizophrenia or anything like that.’

Bailey later flipped through his phone, showing Officer Anderson a long list of apparent recordings as well as images and videos that Anderson indicated Bailey had taken of himself earlier that morning. Anderson then confirmed to Hughes that he saw nothing on Bailey’s phone to substantiate claims of a “disturbance.”

For his part, Earl denied making any threats, brandishing any weapon, or even engaging in any kind of argument with Bailey before he went to bed that night. “Absolutely nothing like that has happened,” Earl told Hughes.

Earl’s wife, wearing a bathrobe and carrying a child, confirmed to Anderson that there had been no “disturbance” and that her husband had been sleeping next to her all night. “I would have known if he left,” she added.

Throughout his conversations with the cops, Bailey repeatedly requested that they search the Earls’ apartment for evidence to back up his claims, alleging that Joseph Earl posed a threat to the other tenants in the home, but the officers declined. “It really doesn’t work that way,” Anderson replied. “There’s not even enough probable cause for us to apply for a warrant,” noted Hughes.

The bodycam videos, both about 20 minutes in length, conclude with Officer Hughes advising everyone to go to bed and explaining to Bailey that there is “no evidence” to corroborate his story.

RELATED: Trans-identifying man sentenced for brutal murder of his parents

‘A 96 ISSUE’: Bailey’s stability questioned

Police reports confirm that officials suspected Bailey of experiencing some kind of mental health episode from the start. Bailey called St. George police at 3:23 a.m. that day, the call report showed, and by 3:29, the dispatcher had already described him as “SOUNDING MORE AND MORE 96.”

Hughes, who first made contact with Bailey at 3:30 a.m. and exited Bailey’s residence at 3:50 a.m., reported to dispatch at 3:54 a.m. that “THIS WILL BE A 96 ISSUE.”

“96” is code for a “mental subject.”

Officer Hughes likewise admitted to Earl that Bailey’s statements and behaviors suggested that “there’s obviously something going on mentally. I just don’t know exactly what it is.”

In his incident report, Hughes documented that he asked Bailey whether he had “any mental illnesses” but that Bailey “denied having any.”

Audio redactions in the bodycam footage make it impossible to confirm Hughes’ claim of asking Bailey about “any” mental illness, but Bailey told the officers at 3:48 a.m., “I don’t have schizophrenia or anything like that.”

Bailey did tell Anderson that he identifies as “transgender” and began transitioning four years prior. Bailey also suggested that his gender identity could be a possible reason for Earl’s alleged animosity.

If the Earls harbored any trans-related animus against Bailey, they did not show it during their conversations with police. The Earls always referred to Bailey with female pronouns and indicated that they were mainly frustrated that Bailey frequently woke up their children and that he fabricated a story about their family and posted it to Facebook.

Throughout their appearances on the bodycam footage, the Earls seem calm and direct, just bewildered about being woken up in the middle of the night and about Bailey’s accusations against Joseph.

Joseph Earl and the woman believed to be his wife did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

At one point, Bailey did suggest that he suffered from self-loathing and that he admitted as much within earshot of Earl. “I kept complaining to myself that I didn’t like myself,” Bailey claimed to Officer Anderson. Bailey indicated that this alleged admission may have stoked Earl’s ire.

Bailey also admitted that he hadn’t been “feeling very well lately,” though he attributed that malaise to the “poison” Earl had allegedly given him.

It is unclear whether Bailey ever moved out of the residence he shared with the Earls and where he may have gone if he did.

‘Guilty and mentally ill’: Bailey’s murderous rampage

Less than two weeks after this encounter with police, Bailey shot and killed his father, 70-year-old Joseph Bailey, and his mother, 69-year-old Gail Bailey, in their home in Washington City, Utah. He also shot through a bedroom door where his brother and sister-in-law had barricaded themselves, though the couple were able to flee to safety.

Following his arrest, Bailey reportedly told investigators: “I would do it again. I hate them.”

In November 2025, Bailey, now 30, pled “guilty and mentally ill” to two counts of aggravated murder and one count of aggravated assault. He was sentenced to consecutive sentences of 25 years to life plus up to an additional five years for the assault.

At the sentencing hearing, Bailey’s attorney, Ryan Stout, claimed that Bailey had been diagnosed with a bevy of mental illnesses: autism, psychosis, schizophrenia, ADHD, and OCD.

Dustin Bailey — one of Mia’s brothers though not the one victimized in the attack — spoke at the hearing, reaffirming the family’s support for “LGBTQ rights” and seemingly blaming some of Mia’s mental spiral on cross-sex hormones.

“Providing powerful hormones to a person in a psychiatric crisis without proper psychiatric safeguards is not affirming care. It is reckless. … It acted as an accelerant, intensifying instability, impairing judgment, and compounding risk. That failure harmed Mia, and it endangered our parents,” Dustin said.

Mia Bailey, who claims to have converted to Islam, is currently housed at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City, which has separate buildings for men and women. Blaze News reached out to the Utah Department of Corrections to verify whether he is housed with male inmates but did not receive a response.

The St. George incident report and call report both list Bailey’s sex as male.

Washington City, Utah, is also the hometown of Tyler Robinson, accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk in September. Robinson’s alleged romantic partner, Lance Twiggs, reportedly identifies as transgender.

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A man called police to report that home intruders had killed his fiancée and her two sons, but Michigan police arrested him for allegedly murdering them all.

Charles Broomfield, 44, reported the shooting at about 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 27 at the home on Worden Street SE, according to the Grand Rapids Police Department. He was arrested two days later.

‘She’s one of the best things that ever happened to me out of any woman, girl I’ve ever been with.’

In an interview with WOOD-TV from the Kent County jail, Broomfield said he saw red and then “snapped” that day.

He claimed that his fiancée, Jacqueline Neill, told him to move out of their home, and he grew so angry that one of his personalities took over.

Broomfield said he met Neill on the Tinder app and had known her for eight years. They had a son together five years ago, and she brought two sons, 15-year-old Cameron Kilpatrick and 13-year-old Michael Kilpatrick, into the family, along with two daughters.

“She’s one of the best things that ever happened to me out of any woman, girl I’ve ever been with,” he told WOOD.

However, they disagreed on how to raise the children and got into an argument just days after moving into the home on Worden.

“I remember the night before like it was f**king yesterday,” he said.

“We were just being petty towards each other,” he added.

He said he had woken up early that morning to shovel snow but that Neill told him it was over and he needed to move out.

“Something inside me just seen red,” he added. “Snapped, I just snapped. I blacked out, couldn’t think of nothing.”

He admitted to shooting Neill and her two sons to death.

“A monster who don’t give a f**k, don’t have no remorse, will not cry, does not care. I was crying,” he added.

Police said that Broomfield confessed after they noticed inconsistencies in his story. He now claims that he is suffering with numerous personalities that he has named.

“I am battling demons, like I said. Chuckie, Charlay, Charlie, Charles — all had something going on and whatever and whatnot. Chaz was just chillin’, and it’s like, I know I’m not a bad guy,” he added.

Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker believes Broomfield is trying to set up an insanity defense and said that he doesn’t buy it. When WOOD confronted Broomfield with the suggestion, he denied it.

Broomfield is being held on three charges of premeditated murder and gun charges.

RELATED: Teens’ story claiming they were attacked unravels after cops find their damning video posted to social media, police say

He went on to offer an apology for the family of his alleged victims.

“Basically none of this was supposed to happen. Period,” he continued. “And I’m sorry to all of them.”

The Grand Rapids community held a vigil for the victims that included Neill’s sister Joanne Elzinga.

“Jacqueline and Cameron and Michael were an important part of all of our lives, and we’re going to do our best to begin patching up the holes that they left,” she said.

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The Washington Post just laid off more than 300 employees — roughly 30% of its newsroom — cutting back sports, local coverage, international reporting, and books. The paper has shed staff before, including a reduction in 2025 and voluntary buyouts, as losses piled up. Reports put the Post’s losses at $177 million over the past two years, with annual deficits topping $100 million since 2023.

Predictably, fired staffers and their allies blame owner Jeff Bezos for refusing to write blank checks indefinitely. They want the world’s fourth-richest man to underwrite their failing business model forever.

Downsizing isn’t a tragedy. It’s a market verdict.

But that’s not the story. The Post didn’t collapse because Bezos got cheap. It collapsed because its newsroom got ideological — and readers stopped trusting it.

The Post built its modern reputation on tough reporting and institutional seriousness. Then its editors and writers started injecting personal politics into straight news, smuggling advocacy into headlines, and treating dissent as moral failure. That approach earned applause inside the Beltway, but it bled credibility outside it. Readers left. Subscribers disappeared. Revenue followed.

Immigration coverage captures the pattern.

In 2018, the Post ran a story headlined “How Trump is changing the face of legal immigration.” The piece claimed an 81% drop in arrivals from Muslim-majority countries and a 12% overall decline in legal immigration, framing the change as a deliberate demographic overhaul. The story leaned on cherry-picked State Department numbers that covered only part of the admissions system while ignoring other federal data. The paper dressed activism up as analysis and called it news.

That same year, the Post published “U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question,” implying a broad campaign of anti-Hispanic discrimination. The story suggested “hundreds, possibly thousands” faced baseless fraud accusations tied to midwife-assisted births.

The piece ignored the long history of documented fraud in those cases and left readers with a clear impression: The Trump administration targeted Hispanics. In fact, denial rates actually fell under Trump — from 35.9% in 2015 to 25.8% in 2018. The Post later appended an editor’s note acknowledging errors challenged by the State Department. That kind of walk-back never repairs the original damage.

In 2024, the habit remained. The Post accused Republicans of “misleading ads” about the border while soft-pedaling the scale and timing of the Biden-era surge. It scolded language choices, such as “illegals” and “harsher,” framed enforcement as cruelty, and applied different standards depending on which party spoke.

This isn’t just an immigration problem. It’s a newsroom culture problem.

RELATED: Bernie Sanders gets obliterated online for dragging Melania into left-wing criticism of WaPo layoffs

Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The Post’s rush to judgment during the Nicholas Sandmann incident in 2019 showed how quickly narrative can replace verification. The paper treated a Kentucky teenager as a national symbol of Trump-era racism based on a misleading clip, then watched the fuller video upend the story. The Post paid an undisclosed settlement. The reputational hit lingered.

That pattern — moral certainty first, facts later — has infected much of corporate media. CNN, the New York Times, and their peers keep hemorrhaging trust because they keep selling ideology as “objective” reporting. They blur the line between news and opinion, then act shocked when audiences treat them as partisan actors.

That distortion carries consequences beyond subscriptions. When media outlets portray immigration enforcement as inherently malicious and frame routine operations as persecution, they turn policy disagreement into moral panic. They train audiences to view law enforcement as an occupying force. That mindset fuels the kind of street-level provocation that turns tense encounters into tragedy.

Journalism carries a sacred obligation: Tell the truth plainly, verify before amplifying, and separate reporting from activism. Too many at the Post treated that obligation as optional. The audience noticed. Circulation reportedly plummeted to about 97,000 daily in 2025. Financial losses followed.

Downsizing isn’t a tragedy. It’s a market verdict.

If the Washington Post wants to survive, it must rediscover objectivity — or keep shrinking until only its own employees bother to read it.

​Opinion & analysis, Washington post, Jeff bezos, Democracy, Media bias, Corporate media, Leftists, Amazon, First amendment, Billionaires, Immigration, Facts 

Conspiracy theories continue to swirl around Jeffery Epstein’s controversial death. Many are unwilling to accept the FBI’s official ruling that the convicted sex offender committed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on August 10, 2019.

The most widespread theory is that Epstein, believed by many to be a keeper of dark secrets, was murdered.

Now, however, another conspiracy theory is ramping up. In the wake of the Department of Justice’s publication last month of over 3 million additional pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images from the Jeffrey Epstein files — some of which provided more insight into the event of his death — a new wave of online speculation has surged.

According to this hypothesis, which is fueled by unsubstantiated viral claims and AI-doctored photos on social media, Epstein is alive and well and living in Israel.

To gauge how many people were entertaining this theory, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) conducted his own experiment by posting a poll on X inviting users to vote on which Epstein outcome they believe is true. The responses, of which there were nearly 150,000, were telling:

During a recent interview with Massie, Matt Kibbe, BlazeTV host of “Kibbe on Liberty,” asked the Kentucky congressman to share his thoughts on the poll’s results.

“Three percent of the 147,000 people who took this poll think Jeffrey Epstein killed himself,” Massie says.

“Forty-some percent said that he’s still alive, and 30-some percent say that he’s dead, but he was murdered,” he adds, calling these numbers “surprising.”

Massie notes that he included the fourth option — “just show the results” — because some people fear that “Mossad might be watching the traffic on that poll.”

The ultimate question, he says, is: “Is [Epstein] the kind of guy who thought he was cornered and there was no way out?”

“I don’t think so,” Massie says. “Like, Jeffrey Epstein, to me, seemed like the kind of guy who was just waiting for them to come and unlock the key and take him back to one of his mansions.”

“He knew, just like with the first conviction, he just would have to wait for a while and play his cards right, and I think he was that arrogant,” he adds. “That kind of arrogance is built because you got away with it before, and then you got away with it a thousand times, and you got so much dirt. He’s probably thinking, ‘If I can get back to my hard drive, this is all over with.’”

Kibbe wonders if perhaps Epstein was secreted away, not necessarily because of the “dirt” he had on others, but rather because he was “indispensable.”

“He was the guy that fixed problems for this elite class of financiers and politicians,” he says.

Massie acknowledges this possibility, recalling Epstein’s advice to former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak: “Think of all the people who owe you something, and then start from there.”

“Those were his words to Ehud Barak. That’s what he had to be thinking in the jail cell,” he says.

While Massie initially thought the FBI’s suicide conclusion was “reasonable and plausible,” now that the released files show “the full color of who he was and the kinds of things he did and what he got away with,” he rejects that ruling.

“I’m not in that 3%,” he says.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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The latest partial government shutdown has ended, and two facts stand out: Washington will keep spending like a drunken sailor, and Republicans squandered their cleanest leverage point to rein it in.

Start with the number that matters: The House approved $1.25 trillion in additional discretionary appropriations. That decision pushes the annual deficit toward $1.75 trillion. Republicans voted for it, complained about it, and then acted surprised that the spending binge continued.

If Republicans keep missing moments like this one, investors will keep moving into gold and silver, not out of ideology, but out of self-preservation.

The shutdown fight should have forced a trade. Democrats focused on cutting Department of Homeland Security funding. Republicans had options beyond folding. They could have demanded real cuts elsewhere, then used Democrats’ own political pain points to make the deal stick.

One obvious target sat in plain sight. The Trump administration proposed a 50% cut to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That should thrill the MAHA crowd. Democrats hate what they call ICE “overreach.” Republicans despise what they view as CDC mission creep and pandemic-era abuses.

Congress could have paired both cuts and sold it as a reset: trim enforcement and trim the public health bureaucracy, then avoid another shutdown. Democrats could claim restraint at the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans could claim restraint at the CDC. Taxpayers would finally get something besides another blank check.

Instead, Republicans let the moment pass, and voters got another spending package.

Don’t expect the next round to improve. Markets already read Washington’s behavior as a warning label. Gold and silver prices sit at record highs because investors smell what Congress refuses to admit: Deficits at this scale produce either inflation, higher taxes, or both.

Central banks have acted on that judgment for years. They have moved away from dollars and Treasuries and into gold. Poland’s central bank led global gold purchases in October and November last year. That shift isn’t a protest from adversaries alone. It reflects a broader conclusion, from allies and rivals alike, that Washington keeps making promises it cannot afford to keep.

RELATED: Congress needs to go big or go home

Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

The trend looks set to continue. Goldman Sachs expects central banks to buy roughly 60 metric tons of gold per month in the year ahead. Retail demand is rising too. Gold-backed exchange-traded funds reportedly absorbed about 800 metric tons in 2025 as investors searched for an asset that doesn’t depend on congressional self-control.

Frederic Panizzutti of Numismatica Genevensis explains the appeal plainly: Gold’s simplicity attracts buyers “as geopolitics and geoeconomics have become more complicated.”

Americans across the political spectrum want to abolish wasteful agencies. Congress won’t do it. Fine. Then at least cut budgets hard enough to prove lawmakers can say no to constituencies, lobbyists, and the permanent bureaucracies that treat every crisis as a looting opportunity.

Washington’s real problem isn’t a lack of authority. It’s a lack of restraint. Entitlement growth, debt service, and a bipartisan appetite for militarized foreign policy push the country toward instability at home and abroad. Politicians focus on the next election and leave the bill to the next generation.

If Republicans keep missing moments like this one, the dollar’s erosion will accelerate. Investors will keep moving into gold and silver, not out of ideology, but out of self-preservation.

​Gold, Republicans, Democrats, Spending bill, Dhs, House republicans, Ice, Cdc, Economy, Markets, Opinion & analysis, Homeland security, Congress, Partial government shutdown 

The Trump administration ordered the removal of a Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument celebrating a riot by gay males against police in the ’60s.

The order said only U.S. flags and other authorized flags can be displayed at sites managed by the National Park Service.

‘New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history.’

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani expressed his outrage against the order in a post on the X social media platform.

“I am outraged by the removal of the Rainbow Pride Flag from Stonewall National Monument,” Mamdani wrote. “New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history. Our city has a duty not just to honor this legacy, but to live up to it.”

Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said he would re-raise the flag at the monument Tuesday, along with other New York City-area politicians.

The national monument commemorates a riot against police by gay males in Greenwich Village. LGBTQ+ activists cite the rioting as a turning point in the gay rights movement. The monument was established under the administration of former President Barack Obama.

“I think it’s important that we speak out and stand up for the community, frankly, just as our forebears, who exhibited much more courage back in 1969,” Hoylman-Sigal said in an interview Tuesday. “This is not a moment for our community to stand by idly as attempts to undermine our history are put forward by Trump and the federal administration.”

“I will always fight for a New York City that invests in our LGBTQ+ community, defends their dignity, and protects every one of our neighbors — without exception,” Mamdani continued in his X post.

RELATED: Trans activists are outraged that Twitter has quietly removed restrictions on ‘dead-naming’ and misgendering people

A similar outrage erupted from LGBTQ activists in February when the Trump administration stripped the “T” and the “Q” from LGBTQ at Stonewall. Protesters vandalized the sign at the monument to add the word “transgender.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) denounced the Trump administration at the time.

“This is just cruel and petty,” she responded. “Transgender people play a critical role in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights — and New York will never allow their contributions to be erased.”

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California Democrats are seeking to replace missing revenue after they passed an electric car mandate that undermined inflows from a gasoline tax.

While some are pushing a tax-by-the-mile to reclaim the revenue, a backlash from Californians has led to Democrats backing off from the proposal.

‘We already pay the highest gas taxes in the nation. Now Sacramento is talking about adding a new tax for every mile people drive.’

Democrats have known the state would be hit with lower tax revenue since 2023 when an independent legislative analyst released a report saying the mandate would lead to a loss of $5 billion per year by 2035. The gas tax is also affected by increased vehicle gas efficiency.

However, when Republicans in the state raised the alarm about the possibility of a mileage tax, legislative staffers in Sacramento said they were hit with angry calls from voters against it.

The outrage was so strong that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) was forced to address the controversy.

“Studying a concept is not enacting it,” his press office wrote on social media Wednesday. “Despite national support from prominent *conservatives* like the Cato Institute, there is no mileage tax proposal in California — and the Governor would not sign one.”

Democrats were also hit with angry messages on social media.

RELATED: LA Times gets obliterated online for scolding people wanting to leave high-tax California

“Californians are already getting crushed by the cost of food, housing, power, and gas,” Republican Assembly Leader Heath Flora said. “We already pay the highest gas taxes in the nation. Now Sacramento is talking about adding a new tax for every mile people drive.”

Newsom is widely considered to be trying to expand his national brand recognition in preparation for a possible presidential campaign in 2028.

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While the previous Epstein file dumps have proven to offer little information for the general public to work with, the latest Epstein files release has revealed just how evil some of the most powerful people really are — and naturally, BlazeTV contributor William Wolfe from the Center for Baptist Leadership is among those incredibly disturbed.

“What stood out to you the most about what is, you know, the most revealing Epstein file dump yet?” Deace asks Wolfe.

“I would say two things. One is that the conspiracy theorists are proven right yet again,” Wolfe says. “There is this cabal of truly horrific, disgusting, pedophilic people running things in our country and globally. And, you know, Alex Jones just stays winning and vindicated on this overall theme of, the worst people you could ever imagine are in charge.”

“The second thing that really stood out to me is just the total banality of evil. I mean, they’re just kind of dumb, evil, disgusting people. You know, they just happen to also have power. These are the same kind of evil people you could run into any day on the street. Yet somehow this cadre of individuals managed to take this evil to the highest levels of power and influence across our government,” he continues.

“And so, I mean, really in some ways it’s not that surprising. But it’s shocking, it’s revealing, it’s disgusting. But this is just, like, what we’re up against. It is a fight of good versus evil from the top to the bottom, from your everyday life at your city council to the highest levels of government,” he adds.

Wolfe believes that this is definitive proof that we’re in a “spiritual battle of good versus evil.”

“I don’t know how you look at these files and come away from that with any other conclusion,” he says.

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A nonprofit organization linked to the wife of the mayor of Baltimore is facing intense scrutiny after it ended operations despite taking in hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to WBFF-TV.

The mission of the Bmore Empowered nonprofit was to encourage black women and girls to excel in entrepreneurship and “holistic wellness,” according to its website. It was first founded in 2017 and came to be led by Hana Scott in Sept. 2021 until Sept. 2025.

‘This is not a pause. It is the end of a beautiful chapter.’

Her tenure as director of operations ended the same day that Bmore Empowered announced an “organizational pause.”

The organization is reportedly behind on tax filings, has been sued for unpaid rent, and is listed as “delinquent” on the state’s charity database.

In July 2022, Hana Scott went public about her relationship with Baltimore’s mayor, and Bmore Empowered got a surge of new funding.

The taxpayer-funded Downtown Partnership of Baltimore granted the group $80,000 at an event attended by the Scotts. The Baltimore City government gave the group taxpayer-funded payments that added up to $34,950 by 2024. And the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund, also paid for by taxpayer money, sent the organization $62,500.

Despite this, Bmore Empowered failed to report a tax form for the 2024 fiscal year, which was due to the IRS in May 2025.

WBFF reported that the organization did not respond to questions about how it intends to spend the taxpayer money. Hana Scott did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment, and the mayor’s office did not respond to questions about a possible conflict of interest, among others.

The report said that Bmore Empowered paused operations in September, but a post on its Facebook page Monday said the organization was coming to a close, adding, “This is not a pause. It is the end of a beautiful chapter.”

In addition to all of the taxpayer funds that Bmore Empowered received, the group obtained $175,000 from Open Society in 2022, which is funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros. The donation was part of a campaign by the Alliance for Open Society International to provide millions in funding for organizations in the Baltimore area.

RELATED: Nonprofit claimed to provide daily brown-bag meals to thousands of students — schools say they got nothing

WBFF also documented how Bmore Empowered received tens of thousands of dollars from the BOOST program of the Downtown Partnership to open a storefront and failed to do so. Instead, it opened offices at a separate location and then was sued for not paying rent at that location. The landlord won a financial judgment against the group when no one showed in court.

A Blaze News request for comment from the Bmore Empowered organization was not answered.

Despite pausing operations, Bmore Empowered continues to sell T-shirts on its website.

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During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday regarding the oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, Democratic lawmakers took turns giving their usual sanctimonious speeches.

When her opportunity came to pose questions to acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons, New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver (D) launched into a roughly 3.5-minute diatribe replete with not only dubious murder accusations but her trademark insinuations of racism.

‘Aggressively attacking those witnesses personally is inappropriate.’

McIver, a Democrat facing nearly 20 years in prison for allegedly assaulting ICE officers last year, then decided to present her attacks as spiritual reflections about eternal consequence.

After prompting Lyons to confirm that he was indeed a “religious man,” McIver — a staunch supporter of abortion — asked the acting ICE director, “How do you think Judgment Day will work for you with so much blood on your hands?”

“I’m not going to entertain that question,” Lyons responded.

“Of course not,” said McIver. “Do you think you’re going to hell, Mr. Lyons?”

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Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Once more, the acting ICE director, whose agents had to repel an apparent incursion by McIver’s fellow travelers into a Newark detention facility last year, indicated he wouldn’t entertain such a question.

Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) intervened to remind McIver both that members “must adhere to established standards of decorum and debate” and that “witnesses are here voluntarily.”

Garbarino added, “Aggressively attacking those witnesses personally is inappropriate and not in keeping with the traditions of our committee.”

“I’m just asking a question,” McIver said. “You all, you guys are always talking about religion here and the Bible. I mean, it’s OK for me to ask a question, right?”

Having evidently disregarded Garbarino’s reminder and the corresponding committee traditions, McIver immediately went back to the attack, asking Lyons, “How many government agencies, Mr. Lyons, are you aware of that routinely kill American citizens and still get funding?”

Before yielding her time, McIver called for the abolition of ICE.

The congresswoman was charged in June with multiple counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding, and interfering with federal law enforcement agents. She could face a maximum of 17 years in prison if convicted.

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​Lamonica mciver, Democrat, Ice, Todd lyons, Immigration and customs enforcement, Dhs, Homeland security, Congress, Hell, Heaven, Politics