Category: blaze media

A “Sunday Funday” lakeside party went off the rails after 23 people were injured just outside Oklahoma City in a mass shooting.

According to reports, three people were in critical condition, four were listed as serious, and no arrests have been made.

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock points out that the flyer for the party showed young men smoking weed — which should have served as a warning to attendees.

“At some point we have to acknowledge and admit that any time there are large groups of young black people — and by young, that may stretch all the way up to age 40 and under — that there’s going to be violence,” Whitlock says.

“And that’s a very uncomfortable thing to say, but this is the price of a matriarchal, fatherless culture — this type of chaos and violence,” he continues, showing clips of the party that were uploaded to social media.

One clip shows women bent over and twerking all over the party, while other attendees dance around them to rap music.

“We see these videos constantly. And there’s no national conversation. There’s no outrage. There’s no violence in the streets. There’s no protests. There’s no nothing,” Whitlock says. “It blows my mind.”

“If no one else wants to talk about it, we will,” he adds.

While the media constantly report on mass shootings carried out by young white men, they often ignore those that are happening much more often.

“Once a week we see one of these videos — every weekend in Chicago. I can’t ignore it, and I can’t false equivalence it and say, ‘It’s just the same as mass school shootings, and you won’t talk about that,’” Whitlock explains.

“I’m just not going to play into it,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Critical condition, Fatherless culture, Fatherlessness epidemic, Fearless, Fearless with jason whitlock, Jason whitlock, Jason whitlock harmony, Mass shooting, Mass shootings, Matriarchal culture, Oklahoma city, Rap music, School shootings, Sunday funday, The blaze, Twerking, Violence in the streets, Young black people 

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota did not meet the deadline set by a Minnesota state committee to produce documents related to its investigation into the “Feeding Our Future” fraud scandal.

The House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee of Minnesota took a vote on Tuesday to subpoena the congresswoman, but it failed by falling short by just one vote.

‘This is one of dozens, if not hundreds of things we are investigating. We have had hundreds of whistleblower reports. They continue to come in weekly.’

Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins, a Republican member of the committee, excoriated Omar in comments to Fox News.

“It shows her continued disdain for the taxpayer,” she said. “She feels like she’s above having to answer for her involvement in the fraud and her responsibility as a member of Congress who … passed the bill that took the guardrails off the school nutrition program that led to the conditions that enabled Feeding Our Future.”

Robbins said committee members reached out to Omar several times and had not received a response.

She tied the fraud to Omar passing the MEALS Act in March 2020. At least 65 people have been convicted in relation to the massive fraud ring at Feeding Our Future.

“I do think the subpoena is important. This is one of dozens, if not hundreds of things we are investigating. We have had hundreds of whistleblower reports. They continue to come in weekly,” Robbins added. “Even though the committee will no longer have official hearings, we will continue to investigate these whistleblower reports and webs of fraud.”

Robbins said she would seek to have Republicans in the U.S. Congress seek a subpoena against Omar next.

“I don’t know if they are, but they would have the same authority ,and it’s still relevant to them because it’s a federal program that’s been swindled,” she said. “So I don’t know if they would be willing to do it, but it’s worth asking.”

A Blaze News request for comment to Omar’s office was not immediately answered.

RELATED: ‘Feeding Our Future’ scam artist agrees to plea deal with a slap-on-the-wrist sentence

“Democrat Ilhan Omar has shown her disdain for the taxpayers. She believes she’s above answering for her role in the Feeding our Future fraud,” Robbins wrote on social media. “We’ve sent her multiple letters and invites, but zero response from Ilhan Omar — what is she hiding?”

Republicans have also questioned Omar’s suspicious growth in assets as reported in her financial disclosures. After months of criticism, Omar released a revision that significantly lowered the amount of reported assets by millions of dollars.

Robbins is also running for Minnesota governor.

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​Rep ilhan omar of minnesota, Feeding our future scam, Omar fraud allegations, Politics, State rep kristin robbins 

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a stern warning to Iran while substituting as the White House press secretary on Tuesday.

Rubio took on a briefing room full of reporters after Karoline Leavitt took time off from her role as press secretary in order to spend time at home with a newborn child, her second.

‘They really shouldn’t test the will of the United States, at least not under President Donald Trump. … If they test him, ultimately, they will lose.’

Rubio issued a warning to Iran that it should take the diplomatic path the Trump administration is offering in order to avoid the other option of economic ruin and defeat.

“There’s a real diplomatic path. … If there is one there, it could be one that leads them to reconstruction, to prosperity, and to stability, and to not posing a threat to the world. The alternative is growing isolation, economic collapse, and ultimately total defeat,” Rubio said.

Peace negotiations between Iran and the U.S. have focused on control of the Strait of Hormuz, which has been shut down, causing high gas prices across the globe.

“I know what the right choice is for Iran. I hope that the people over there making decisions will make the right one,” he added.

“They really shouldn’t test the will of the United States, at least not under President Donald Trump,” Rubio concluded. “He has proven time and again that he will back up what he says — and if they test him, ultimately, they will lose. The hard way, the easy way, the long way, the short way — they will lose.”

He went on to discuss the situation with the energy shipments to Cuba, claiming that “there’s no oil blockade on Cuba per se” but that Venezuela had chosen not to provide free oil to the island nation.

“Their economic model doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, and the people who are in charge can’t fix it. And the reason they can’t fix it is not just because they’re communists — that’s bad enough. But they’re incompetent communists,” he said. “The only thing worse than a communist is an incompetent one.”

Rubio also said there was no change in U.S. relations with Venezuela.

RELATED: ‘We are not doing this any more’: Rubio to strip billions in foreign aid from ‘NGO industrial complex’

At one point, he lightheartedly noted that the briefing room was overloaded with journalists.

“You can ask two questions, and I’ll pick which one I like better,” he said to one reporter.

Rubio had previously joked that he was taking over the press secretary role based on a popular meme online that shows the state secretary reluctantly taking on numerous new jobs for the administration.

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​White house press secretary marco rubio, Us-israel strikes on iran, Marco rubio, White house press briefing, Politics 

An illegal alien accused of torturing dogs at the animal shelter where he worked was arrested and charged with animal torture, according to a Department of Homeland Security statement.

The alleged animal abuse at the Working Dogs of Nevada training facility in Las Vegas was first reported by a woman who applied for a job and surreptitiously took video of the treatment of the dogs in February.

‘This disgusting criminal tortured dogs at the shelter where he worked.’

Those allegations led to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s Animal Cruelty Section performing a search warrant at the business and the removal of 35 dogs on April 1.

John Young Cotter Johnstone, 38, was arrested at that time and charged with four felony counts of willfully or maliciously torturing, maiming, or mutilating an animal kept for companionship or pleasure.

Tabitha Berube, 32, was also arrested and charged with one count of the same crime.

On Tuesday, DHS confirmed that Johnstone was an illegal alien from the United Kingdom after he entered the country in 2021 but overstayed his visa since Feb. 2022. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a detainer request the day after his arrest, and he was turned over to federal custody.

Some of the secret video footage was published by KTNV-TV and showed a man kicking and dragging a dog.

DHS said the other videos provided to police showed Johnstone using shock collars and swinging dogs in mid-air by their leashes.

“This disgusting criminal tortured dogs at the shelter where he worked,” Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said.

“Thanks to the cooperation of Clark County officials who honored the ICE detainer, this freak is in ICE custody,” she added. “Seven of the 10 safest cities cooperate with ICE. We need more state and local politicians to work with us to keep criminals off our streets and out of our country.”

RELATED: Ohio woman pleads guilty to horrific child sex abuse charges and bestiality — and will testify against her husband

The woman who recorded the alleged abuse later adopted two of the dogs, according to the KTNV report.

“Seeing the use of the shock collars and the way the dog was screaming because he was being shocked and being drug across the floor, it was a horrible thing to witness,” she told KVVU-TV.

“Everything in me, I wanted to tell them to not do that to an animal, but I knew if I did I wouldn’t be able to get the evidence that I did get,” she added.

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​Illegal alien from uk, Las vegas dog training abuse, Dog torture, Video dog abuse, Politics 

A 31-year-old California man named Cole Tomas Allen was charged with the attempted assassination of President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Armed with guns and knives, he allegedly fired shots while trying to breach security at the Washington Hilton in an attempt to assassinate the president and other administration officials. Fortunately, Trump, the first lady, and others were safely evacuated by the Secret Service, and no casualties occurred.

When BlazeTV host of “Strange Encounters” Rick Burgess heard the news, he immediately suspected that Allen acted under demonic influence. Now, after diving into his history, he’s almost certain of it.

Allen’s professional persona as a self-employed indie game developer was the first red flag for Rick. Even though his game is described as “nonviolent,” it includes shooting.

“I have an issue with a game that involves fighting and shooting to be in any way, shape, or form deemed nonviolent,” says Rick.

Allen’s manifesto — specifically the “anti-Christian rhetoric” — also gave him pause.

“One of the things he had a real problem with,” says Rick, “was the turn-the-other-cheek instruction from Jesus.”

“Biblical truth is becoming hate speech, or it’s becoming, in this case, instruction that should be ignored. … We don’t have to look very far to see the demonic part of this,” he continues.

Further, Allen — a Caltech and California State University grad — “was educated in an education system that I personally believe has been taken over by a lot of demonic-type ideology,” Rick adds.

Many universities today, he argues, don’t actually educate students but rather “indoctrinate” them with ideologies that stand in direct “conflict with God’s standard and the Scriptures.” He believes Allen was likely a victim of this.

In his manifesto, Allen outlined his plans to kill President Trump and other high-ranking officials and acknowledged that his plan would likely culminate in severe consequences for him personally — which Rick saw as another indicator of demonic influence.

“Remember one of the markers of demonic activity is that usually those that are possessed by demons — they are sent on a mission where they will be killed or they will kill themselves,” he says.

Allen’s manifesto also acknowledged that his assassination plan felt “awful” to the point of wanting to vomit — but that the internal “rage” he felt was all-consuming.

He wrote, “Oh and if anyone is curious is how doing something like feels: it’s awful. I want to throw up; I want to cry for all the things I wanted to do and never will, for all the people whose trust this betrays; I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.”

“And that’s where you see some markers of demonic activity,” says Rick.

“Demons convince people to do things that at the end of it all ultimately will either end their life on earth or their life will be destroyed forever, and he did it anyway.”

To hear more of Rick’s spiritual analysis on Cole Allen and other cases of “demons in the headlines,” watch the episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

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​Assassination attempt, Attempted assassination, Blaze, Blaze media, Blazetv, Cole thomas allen, Demonic influence, President trump, Rick burgess, Strange encounters, Strange encounters with rick burgess, White house correspondents 

CBS News debuted a “60 Minutes” report on Sunday that delved into the supposedly troubling trend of Americans bypassing official channels to help other Americans who are struggling in the aftermath of natural disasters.

“What if we told you that after natural disasters, some of those who descend on hard-hit communities with offers to help are anti-government conspiracists and white nationalists?” Lesley Stahl said at the outset of the episode.

‘Shameless and transparent.’

While the geriatric talking head clutched pearls over a pattern of life-saving help from undesirable sources — namely “anti-government, far-right groups” — video played showing men helping to clear brush, distribute supplies, and reinforce disaster-stricken Americans.

Among those men reportedly featured in the montage are members of the multiracial Virginia Kekoas militia group, which provided aid in 2024 to those areas impacted by Hurricane Helene and neglected by the Biden administration.

The “60 Minutes” report — which strategically focuses on the efforts of Patriot Front and Active Club, a pair of groups regarded as white supremacist hate groups by the scandal-plagued Southern Poverty Law Center — smears unsanctioned volunteers who are “far-right” and/or affiliated with militia groups as “disaster tourists who are out to sow doubt in government, soften their own image, and gain followers.”

In addition to leaning on Henderson County Sheriff Lowell Griffin’s critique of the challenges supposedly posed by “misinformation” and “outside folks” in disaster areas, “60 Minutes” turned to Freddy Cruz, a program manager at the Western States Center — a Portland-based leftist organization whose bread and butter appears to be concern-mongering about perceived white nationalism — for help in framing the story.

RELATED: Klansman allegedly on SPLC payroll was ‘true believer’ white supremacist, not reformed infiltrator

ALLISON JOYCE/AFP/Getty Images

“These people come in, they hand out water, they help clean up the debris,” Stahl said. “Whatever their ideology, they’re doing something positive, aren’t they?”

“What we’re seeing is actually these groups will show up and generate a whole bunch of social media content,” Cruz said. “We’re dubbing it ‘disaster tourism.'”

This and the other bizarre attacks in the report did not go over well with some of the self-giving groups and individuals who have repeatedly stepped into the breach in those moments where the government’s relief efforts have proven wanting.

The United Cajun Navy — a nonprofit organization that was not mentioned in the “60 Minutes” episode by name but has for decades engaged in life-saving rescue operations, humanitarian assistance, and logistical support in areas hard-hit by floods, hurricanes, and other ruinous natural events — noted on X, “We have many media outlets that are very good to us. Then there’s this trash.”

“This SCREAMS ‘Funded by the [SPLC],” wrote the UCN, which in the wake of Hurricane Helene joined forces on aid efforts with Mercury One — another outfit whose relief efforts “60 Minutes” smeared by implication. “Even though we aren’t mentioned, we would still be happy to comment ON THE RECORD about what [horse manure] this is. It’s time to put 60 Minutes out to pasture, Holla!”

Shawn Hendrix, the “expert survival dad” featured on MrBeast’s YouTube channel who was among those who helped victims of Hurricane Helene, said in response to CBS News’ agitprop, “Not one ‘left’-leaning news station reached out to me during the disaster. They pretended it wasn’t happening because Biden was president and Cooper was governor, failing us badly. I was up there for months and never once saw a CNN camera or MSNBC crew. Now, over a year later, they want to create some wild narrative. They weren’t there, so how did they know?”

“I, however, was there,” Hendrix continued. “The only people being selective about who they helped were FEMA. I saw no racism; no one cared who you voted for. We were all just surviving and serving.”

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre tweeted, “SPLC funding the KKK story drops[.] A week later 60 Minutes just happens to run a ‘hey that white guy helping you while your house was destroyed is probably a fascist’ segment.”

“Shameless and transparent,” MacIntyre added.

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​Active club, Americans, Anti-government, Auron macintyre, Biden administration, Cbs news, Cnn, Disaster relief, Fascist segment, Fema, Freddy cruz, Government, Henderson county sheriff, Hurricane helene, Kkk, Lowell griffin, Mercury one, Militia, Natural disasters, Patriot front, Portlandbased organization, Southern poverty law center, Splc, United cajun navy, Virginia kekoas, Western states center, Politics, Lesley stahl 

“Anti-ICE” signs are reportedly popping up all over official buildings in Los Angeles at the order of Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, who is running for re-election.

Bass ordered the signs to be installed at over 450 sites in order to warn federal agents against entering and using the locations to launch immigration enforcement operations.

‘This whole thing is silly. The signs have no legal weight, force, or effect on anything.’

“I will not stand by while federal agents use our neighborhoods as staging grounds for fear and intimidation,” Bass said in a statement to KTTV-TV. “In Los Angeles, we are setting clear boundaries: City property will not be used to carry out these raids.”

Bill Essayli, the first assistant United States attorney for the Central District of California, derided the signs and the order from Bass.

“I just think this whole thing is silly. The signs have no legal weight, force, or effect on anything the federal government does,” he said. “Federal agents will go anywhere they need to go to enforce federal law, including city property.”

He went on to deny the signs would prevent federal officers from performing their duty.

“No. Not at all. They’re null and void. They mean nothing to us,” he said of the signs.

The signs read as follows:

“This property is owned or controlled by the city of Los Angeles. It may only be used for its intended city purpose and not used for immigration enforcement as a staging area, processing location, or operations base.”

The sign prominently cites Mayor Bass, whose beleaguered re-election campaign has been hamstrung by low approval ratings from Angelenos.

While L.A. municipal races are technically nonpartisan, Bass is a prominent member of the Democratic Party. She even gave a speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

RELATED: More than 100 outraged community members denounce elementary school teacher over 2-word post about ICE

KTTV said officials did not say how much the signage cost the city, but the news outlet estimated it could have cost about $250,000.

The signs are posted at transit hubs, parks, libraries, zoos, and parking lots.

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​Mayor karen bass, Anti-ice signs in los angeles, Bill essayli, Trump admin vs los angeles, Politics 

Legendary country star Dolly Parton says in a video on social media that she is canceling some concert appearances out of health concerns.

Parton, who turned 80 in January, had postponed a Las Vegas residency in September over health issues, but the six shows have now been canceled completely.

‘I can’t be dizzy, carrying around banjos, guitars, and such on five-inch heels … not to mention all those heavy rhinestone outfits.’

“I’m here to give you an update on a few things going on in my life,” Parton said. “First, it’s concerning my health. And I have some good news and a little bad news. But the good news is, I’m responding really well to meds and treatments, and I’m improving every day.”

She added that she had troubles with kidney stones that have taken a toll on her digestive system as well as her immune system.

“It’s going to take me a little while before I’m up to stage-performance level because some of the meds and treatments make me a little bit swimmy-headed, as my grandma used to say,” she continued. “And of course I can’t be dizzy, carrying around banjos, guitars, and such on five-inch heels … not to mention all those heavy rhinestone outfits, the big hair, my big personality.”

She compared herself to a classic car that needs some rebuilding to continue running well.

“Once restored, it can be better than ever, but when they raised the hood on this old antique, they realized that I need to rebuild my engine, that my transmission is slipping, my oil pan is leaking, and my muffler is busted, and my shocks and pistons need to be replaced,” she added.

“And for sure my spark plugs need to be changed — because you know as well as I know that I can’t lose my spark.”

RELATED: Dolly Parton raises $9 million for victims of Gatlinburg fires

She said she was working on opening a museum and hotel in Nashville as well as writing and reworking a Broadway musical based on her life.

Parton kept her characteristic sense of humor despite the sad news.

“I know I’m still crazy, but they didn’t mention nothing about my mental health!” she joked.

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​Dolly parton, Celebrity health issues, Las vegas residency, Country star, Politics, Entertainment 

Under the guise of “comedy,” late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel has long made claims about President Trump and his supporters that don’t hold water, as well as refused to apologize for jokes like his recent “widow” line aimed at Melania Trump.

But when Aaron Rodgers made a similar joke about Kimmel a couple of years ago, the comedian went on a long rant condemning the former NFL quarterback for his comments.

“There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, that are really hoping that [list] doesn’t come out,” Rodgers said on “The Pat McAfee Show.”

“He decided to insinuate that I am a pedophile,” Kimmel responded in a January 2024 monologue. “This is how these nuts do it now. You don’t like Trump, you’re a pedophile. It’s their go-to move. And it shows you how much they actually care about pedophilia.”

“If you are a member of a group that thinks it’s okay to randomly call someone a child molester because you don’t like what that person has to say, maybe you should rethink being a part of that group,” he continued.

“The same doesn’t apply to calling people Nazis,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray interjects.

Kimmel went on to claim that when he does “get something wrong,” he apologizes for it.

“Which is what Aaron Rodgers should do, which is what a decent person would do, but I bet he won’t,” he added.

CNN’s Jake Tapper then went on defense for Kimmel as well, calling Rodgers “wildly irresponsible.”

“Tapper then injected himself into this whole controversy at the time between Kimmel and Rodgers,” executive producer Keith Malinak chimes in.

“New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers is facing intense and frankly well-deserved criticism over comments he made on ESPN’s ‘The Pat McAfee Show’ in which Rodgers made false allegations about accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and a popular late-night comedian,” Tapper said on CNN.

“False, defamatory, wildly irresponsible, and not funny,” he continued in defense of Kimmel. “If Rodgers was trying to be funny. This is child sex trafficking.”

“Frankly, just the latest example of Aaron Rodgers using his platform to spread misleading and false information. So wildly irresponsible,” he added.

“Methinks you doth protest too much,” Malinak comments, shocked.

“I mean, it was a joke,” Gray adds.

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​Aaron rodgers, Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Blazetv host, Child molester, Child sex trafficking, Cnn, False allegations, Jake tapper, Jeffrey epstein, Jimmy kimmel, Keith malinak, Nazis, New york jets, Nfl quarterback, Pat gray, Pat gray unleashed, President trump, Sex trafficker, The blaze 

Ottawa and members of the eastern ruling class of Canada have made no secret of their contempt for Canada’s resource-rich prairie provinces and their inhabitants, proving time and again their willingness to simultaneously exploit the West’s wealth and hinder its progress.

‘Albertans are engaged and this is an issue people want to have a say on.’

While the powers that be might not be losing sleep over alienating the residents of these provinces, they could soon lose something far more precious: a province roughly 1.56 times bigger than California that’s home to over 5 million people, vast natural beauty, the fourth-largest proven oil reserves in the world, a large variety of valuable metallic and industrial minerals, and Atlanta’s former NHL franchise.

How it started

Canadians — not so much those in the 18-to-34 age bracket, who largely voted Conservative, but those over the age of 55 — decided last year to award another four years to the Liberal government that in the preceding years oversaw a historic growth of the federal deficit, numerous tax hikes, an unprecedented influx of immigrants, a spike in illegal immigration, rising crime, unanswered church burnings, a worsening housing crisis, and the rise of state-facilitated suicide as a leading cause of death nationally.

Unlike certain progressive regions that got what they wanted in the form of another Liberal government, the Province of Alberta flatly rejected World Economic Forum regular and self-identified “European” Mark Carney and his woke party.

The Conservatives netted 91.9% of the vote in Alberta, the province with the youngest population. The Liberals alternatively brought in a measly 5.4%.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith acknowledged her fellows’ frustration at the time, stating, “A large majority of Albertans are deeply frustrated that the same government that overtly attacked our provincial economy almost unabated for the past 10 years has been returned to government.”

RELATED: Priest breaks hip — now Canada apparently wants him dead

Elections Canada

While there has long been chatter about Alberta possibly separating from Canada, the 2025 federal election energized the secessionist movement.

Proponents of Albertan sovereignty were further emboldened after the provincial legislature passed amendments to the Citizen Initiative Act, which make it easier to start a referendum, including one on separating from Canada.

On Jan. 2, Alberta’s chief electoral officer issued the separatist group Stay Free Alberta’s citizen initiative petition, kicking off a 120-day signature collection period and setting the stage for a possible referendum in the event the group could secure at least 177,732 signatures, which amounts to 10% of eligible voters.

How it’s going

Stay Free Alberta petitioners, accompanied by hundreds of supporters, delivered the goods to Elections Alberta’s Edmonton office on Monday.

The separatists claim to have collected 301,620 signatures, state media reported. Another 1,500 signatures were allegedly late in coming owing to problems with Canada Post, the nation’s strike-happy, government-owned postal delivery service.

Stay Free Alberta leader Mitch Sylvestre told the crowd, “This process shows that Albertans are engaged and this is an issue people want to have a say on.”

Elections Alberta confirmed that Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure has received the petition and signature sheets from Sylvestre.

The verification is, however, on hold until Justice Shaina Leonard — an appointee of the Trudeau Liberal government — rules on a legal challenge advanced by a pair of Indian tribes that claim the petition process threatens treaty rights. Her decision is expected later this month.

Should the Indians’ legal challenge fail, the province will have 21 days to verify the petition.

If deemed successful, the petition will be submitted to provincial officials, who will then decide whether to sign off on a province-wide referendum, which could take place as soon as Oct. 19. Premier Smith previously indicated that if the requisite number of signatures were collected, she would put the question to a referendum.

RELATED: ‘AMERICAN INVASION’: Flailing Canada PM Mark Carney invokes historical grudge in latest lob at Trump

Leah Hennel/Bloomberg/Getty Images

An Abacus Data survey of 1,000 Alberta adults conducted in late February found that 26% of respondents support Alberta ceasing to be a Canadian province and becoming a sovereign country. Sixty-four percent of respondents signaled opposition, and 9% said they were undecided. The idea of regional independence was apparently most intolerable to those in the 60+ age cohort, 71% of whom signaled opposition.

A poll conducted last month by Canadian state media, whose coverage has largely been critical of the independence movement, said that 57% of United Conservative Party voters — those who back Alberta’s current ruling party — would vote for separation. Supporters of the province’s socialist New Democrat Party were almost unanimous in their opposition to breaking from the federation and Canada’s leftist central power, with 98% saying they would vote against the initiative.

When asked on Tuesday how he would prevent Albertan separatists from succeeding in a possible referendum, Prime Minister Carney said that “there’s the rule of law — there’s the Clarity Act which has been opined upon by the Supreme Court,” and “any referenda in any part of Canada need to be consistent with that.”

The Clarity Act sets out the conditions under which the federal government would negotiate the separation of a province.

Carney, who also appears hopeful that the Indian tribes’ legal challenge might prevail, added that Ottawa will in the meantime act “in the spirit of cooperative federalism, making the country work, making it work for Albertans, making it work for indigenous peoples, making it work for all Canadians.”

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​Secession, Separatism, Alberta, Canada, Mark carney, Calgary, Edmonton, Secede, North america, Independence, Albertan, Danielle smith, Canadian, Elites, Laurentian elites, Ottawa, Alienation, Sovereignty, Free alberta, Politics 

When Viktor Orbán lost the Hungarian parliamentary election last month, most of the coverage told a familiar story: Liberal democracy had defeated nationalist authoritarianism. Left had beaten right. Those headlines, while partly true, left out an important point that has implications well beyond Hungary.

What actually drove ordinary Hungarian voters to the polls wasn’t ideology. It was economic stagnation, rising inflation, and falling living standards.

Traditional right and left parties may be north or south, regardless of the partisan language we brand them with.

Widely classified as far right, Orbán had governed in a strongly interventionist manner: nationalizing industries, rewarding allies, punishing competitors. He did not lose because Hungary turned left. He lost because his brand of right-wing economic intervention had made people poorer, and they noticed.

That distinction points to a flaw in the political vocabulary we have been using for two centuries.

The left-right spectrum was born in the French National Assembly, where supporters of the king sat to the right of the presiding officer and revolutionaries to the left. Somehow we are still using it, as if the geometry of an 18th-century parliament contains all the wisdom we need for the 21st-century world.

It doesn’t. And on some level, most of us already know it.

Instead, the political compass now looks more like an actual compass, with north, west, east, and south poles. The traditional right-left debate is between east and west. But there is an additional north-south debate that relates to political parties’ support of competition, open trade, and property rights (north), or support of statism, industrial policy, and government intervention (south).

This north-south debate is every bit as important, and it illustrates how traditional right and left parties may be north or south, regardless of the partisan language we brand them with.

Here is the error of the traditional axis: It puts so much energy into the horizontal argument, left versus right, progressive versus conservative, that we have largely stopped asking the vertical question: not who should wield state power, but how much state power should exist at all.

The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, which has measured market conditions across 184 countries for 30 years, finds that economies it classifies as “free” average around $112,000 in per capita GDP, while those it classifies as “repressed” average roughly $10,000. A tenfold gap, consistent across decades.

The Index has its critics. Jeffrey Sachs has argued that it measures current wealth better than it predicts growth. Even so, the broad pattern it documents is not seriously disputed. More economic freedom tends, over time, to correlate with more prosperity.

If you accept even a modest version of that premise, the compass begins to replace the old map entirely.

Due north, on this map, represents genuine economic freedom: voluntary exchange and limited coercion. Due south is the statist trap, whether administered by socialists or nationalists. What unites them is not ideology, but the same drive to expand state control over economic life, with the same results.

The distinction that matters is not the flag you wave getting there, but how far south you end up.

The horizontal axis doesn’t disappear; it shifts from economics to culture. Both left and right have northern and southern variants. Market-oriented progressives sit in the northeast; market-oriented conservatives in the northwest. The southern quadrants — interventionist left and interventionist right — share more with each other than either would care to admit.

RELATED: Universal basic income is a dangerous delusion

Blaze Media Illustration

The northeast quadrant is where the most instructive examples sit. Paul Keating in Australia and Roger Douglas in New Zealand were leaders on the left who pursued serious market liberalization. They were not ideological converts but pragmatists who concluded that the social programs they cared about required a productive economy to fund them.

Critics will note that both Keating and Douglas presided over substantial social spending alongside their market reforms, but this misses the point. Keating and Douglas understood something their ideological allies did not: that a government that destroys the market in pursuit of social goals will eventually have neither.

Orbán’s Hungary sat in the southwest quadrant: culturally conservative, economically interventionist. It was as state-directed in practice as many of the left-wing governments it claimed to oppose. The southwest quadrant has no ideology. It has only consequences.

None of this means markets are perfect. But the relevant comparison is never between a flawed market and a perfect government. It is between a flawed market and a flawed government.

In that comparison, the historical record is not close. What this compass insists on is that voters stop evaluating politicians purely on cultural grounds and start demanding an account of the vertical axis too.

Hungarian voters, faced with the concrete consequences of statism, made an economic judgment. They didn’t need an ideology. They needed cheaper groceries and a functioning future for their kids. It is a practical, unsentimental instinct. Focused on results, not rhetoric.

The left-right debate will continue. It probably should. But the question that matters comes first: not which side you are on, but how far north you are willing to go.

​Orban, Viktor orban, Politics, Compass, Left-right, Economics, Opinion & analysis 

Not everyone is a winner, and President Trump announced on Tuesday that he wants to put competition back at the forefront for American youth.

To prove this, Trump is reviving a nearly 70-year-old policy that was phased out by President Barack Obama in his second term.

‘We want to make sure our kids have the best opportunity to succeed in life.’

The commander in chief brought a number of high-profile athletes, Cabinet members, and children into the Oval Office to sign a memorandum to bring competition back to kids all across the United States.

As part of an executive order signed last July that reinstated the Presidential Fitness Test, Trump announced at the White House that he would bring back the National Physical Fitness Award as well as the Presidential Fitness Award.

According to Harvard Health, President Dwight D. Eisenhower initiated the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in 1956. It included a one-mile run, pull-ups or push-ups, sit-ups, a shuttle run, and a sit-and-reach exercise for flexibility.

The test endured in different forms all the way up until 2013, when President Obama replaced it with the Presidential Youth Fitness Program.

Gone were the awards, once listed on a government website under the President’s Challenge. The president’s award recognized students who scored at or above the 85th percentile on all five activities, while the national award went to those who scored above the 50th percentile in all five activities.

RELATED: Make America Fit Again: Presidential Fitness Test returns after 13 years

– YouTube

President-elect John F. Kennedy is credited with popularizing the fitness craze in the 1960s after writing an article titled “The Soft American” for Sports Illustrated.

In his writings, Kennedy cited research he had come across that spanned 15 years, comparing the physical fitness of American children versus the fitness of children in Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. Kennedy wrote that for six tests evaluating muscular strength and flexibility, over 57% of American children failed one or more, while less than 9% of the Europeans did.

Kennedy later proposed the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, which would later establish the awards program under President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. referenced his uncle’s article at the White House on Tuesday, calling the physical fitness program “an enduring right of passage for us that everybody in my generation remembers.”

“It was a benchmark for measuring national physical fitness,” the secretary continued, adding that he hopes Americans “help each other get in shape so that we can prepare for our great future that this administration is providing for this country.”

RELATED: The left can’t handle Hegseth’s combat stance

– YouTube

Also joining the president in the Oval Office were former professional athletes, including NHL player T.J. Oshie, MLB pitcher Noah Syndergaard, and golfer Gary Player, as well as current pro golfer Bryson DeChambeau.

DeChambeau’s remarks were celebrated when he thanked the administration for prioritizing the physical health of American youth.

“We want to make sure our kids have the best opportunity to succeed in life. … Their physical fitness is a huge priority in helping them become better human beings,” he said.

Also in attendance were War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

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​American youth, Fitness, National physical fitness award, Presidential physical fitness test, Presidents council, Sports, The soft american, President trump, Obama, Politics 

When Russell Brand published his 2007 memoir, “My Booky Wook,” I bought it with no particular expectations. The lanky provocateur from Essex was already famous for his drug-addled, debauched adventures as a stand-up comic and onetime MTV host — a job he lost after showing up the day after 9/11 dressed as Osama bin Laden. I suspected this latest venture might be no more than a shoddy attempt to cash in on this notoriety.

I was wrong. “My Booky Wook” was engaging, witty, and painfully self-aware. Brand could write.

The unbuttoned shirts and Jim Morrison-like leather pants mask a keen intelligence and shrewd rhetorical instincts.

Born identity

And Brand can still write, in the strict sense. The sentences in his new book, “How to Become a Christian in Seven Days,” are sometimes funny, often eloquent, and occasionally beautiful. The man has range. He has cadence. He has, by any measure, talent.

He also has a problem with the truth, as his subsequent New Age-inflected leftist activism has demonstrated. Now that he’s taken a turn for the traditional, Brand still shows the same affinity for self-serving fabulation — and the same instinct for monetizing his “countercultural” views.

I am a Catholic. I take conversion seriously, which is precisely why I take this one so unseriously. I never agreed with Brand’s anti-capitalism shtick, the Che Guevara cosplay, the Bernie Sanders lovefests — but I always thought he meant it. That was the charm. Like Jon Stewart, he used humor to make political points. Unlike the erstwhile “Daily Show” host, Brand showed real humility while doing so, presenting himself less as an authority than as a fellow truth-seeker.

It’s precisely humility, ironically enough, that is missing from Brand’s public embrace of Christianity.

Brand management

Part of it, certainly, is the convenient timing. In September 2023, a Channel 4 “Dispatches” documentary and a Sunday Times investigation surfaced allegations of rape and sexual assault against Brand. A few months later, Bear Grylls — yes, that Bear Grylls — baptized him in the Thames. Recently, in an interview with Megyn Kelly, Brand admitted on the record to sleeping with a 16-year-old when he was 30, calling himself an “exploiter of women.” I watched the interview. He delivered the lines as eloquently as ever, but the remorse seemed rehearsed rather than felt.

Now comes the book. One hundred thirty-four pages. Thirty-three dollars. A man who once wrote a manifesto called “Revolution” about the predations of capitalism is selling salvation by the page at roughly a quarter a sheet.

The prose tells you what kind of conversion this is. Brand opens with a passage about how the title is “figurative” because seven days might take longer, then immediately explains that in the Bible, “days” don’t really mean days because the earth’s rotation, et cetera, et cetera and concludes: “This book has already paid for itself in cosmological bullion — ‘Now I know what a day is!'”

That is, to be fair, a funny line. It is also the entire book. He cracks a gag, dresses it in Scripture, and bills you for the privilege. Later, he writes that he is “attempting to reinterpret the Bible,” catches himself, and adds: “Phew, for a minute I thought I was an out-of-control egomaniac trying to rewrite the Bible and charge you for the privilege.” The self-awareness is the alibi. He names the con and proceeds with it.

RELATED: What Shia LaBeouf’s public struggle shows us about Christian redemption

MEGA/GC Images via Getty Images

Selling salvation

None of this is to say genuine conversion is impossible for the famous, the rich, or the disgraced. Augustine was a libertine before he was a saint. Dorothy Day had a common-law husband and an abortion behind her when she found Catholicism. Conversion is exactly the sort of thing that happens to people whose lives have spiraled. That is half of the point of the doctrine.

What separates those stories from this one is the absence of a sales pitch. Augustine wrote his “Confessions” 15 years after his baptism, in Latin, for an audience of fellow bishops, and he spent most of it agonizing over a pear he stole as a boy. Day lived a life of voluntary poverty and poured any money she made from “The Long Loneliness” back into her work for the poor. Neither of them timed their repentance to a court docket.

Any considering this purchase should realize that Brand, perhaps more than many celebrities, is a shrewd manipulator of the media. The unbuttoned shirts and Jim Morrison-like leather pants disguise a keen intelligence and shrewd rhetorical instincts; this is a man who has survived two decades in the crosshairs of the British tabloids (which, it must be said, operate with a brutality that makes their American counterparts look like Ladies’ Home Journal). Brand is a warrior, someone capable of weathering the most brutal of storms.

Property of Jesus

He’s also capable of reading the room. In this case, the room is a world besotted with American evangelicalism, which tends to focus on dramatic tales of redemption more than on the day-by-day grind of repentance.

That this type of Christianity is so forthright about embracing the broken is its glory, but it can also be its blind spot. Brand has bet, with considerable shrewdness, that this audience will buy the book without interrogating the allegations behind it.

Every person is owed his day in court, presumed innocent until proven guilty. I am not here to litigate the allegations, but to question the suddenness of the transformation. People who knew Brand well have described him as sociopathic. That is plausible. If Brand’s come-to-Jesus moment is no more than a way to leverage other people’s decency for personal gain, the word would certainly apply.

In the meantime, the best we can do for Brand is pray, as we would for any fellow sinner. It’s not for us to judge the authenticity of his conversion; that’s between him and God. But we should be wary of supporting his attempts — whether cynical or simply misguided — to profit from it.

​Books, Christianity, Confessions, Conversions, Converts, Dorothy day, Entertainment, Memoirs, Review, Russell brand, St. augustine of hippo, The long loneliness, Salvation, Hollywood, Movies, Sexual assault, Faith 

While Jimmy Kimmel’s widow joke wasn’t calling for violence, BlazeTV host Ron Simmons explains that calling for violence isn’t the problem — it’s the normalization of political violence that is.

“I don’t think Jimmy is telling somebody to go out there and kill somebody, I do think that he is making light of what has been, as we already know, from the two previous assassination attempts, attempts on President Trump’s life, and the fact that we should be happy if he’s dead,” Simmons says on “Relatable.”

And the first lady is on the same page as Simmons.

“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy — his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America,” Melania wrote in a post on X.

The first lady went on to call for “ABC to take a stand” in response to Kimmel’s joke, while the president called for his firing in a post on Truth Social.

“He ought to be fired immediately,” Simmons agreed.

But Kimmel isn’t the only celebrity normalizing violent political rhetoric.

“There are other people out here that are inciting things that we need to pay attention to,” Simmons explains, before calling out Hasan Piker.

“The New York Times basically platformed him, allowed him to participate in some of their communications. And this guy, he’s even worse than Jimmy Kimmel,” he says, pointing out that in an interview with the NYT, he suggested that the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was justified.

“Engles wrote about the concept of social murder. And Brian Thompson as the United Healthcare CEO was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder, the systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for-profit paywalled system of health care in this country,” Piker said in the interview.

“And the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of death,” he added.

However, Simmons notes that Piker has said much worse on his own Twitch stream.

“If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott,” Piker said.

In another clip, Piker calls for property owners to be killed “in the street.”

“Yeah kill them. … Let the streets soak in their f**king red, capitalist blood,” he said.

“The New York Times, if they’re a legitimate journalistic output, they shouldn’t be platforming a guy like this,” Simmons comments.

“I mean, that’s just way, way, way over the line,” he adds.

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To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Abc, Allie beth stuckey, Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Blazetv host, Brian thompson, Comedy, First lady, Hasan piker, Healthcare system, Jimmy kimmel, Melania, New york times, Political violence, President trump, Relatable, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Rick scott, Ron simmons, The blaze, Truth social, United healthcare ceo 

Video game retailer GameStop says it has the best shot at becoming the next Amazon, and the company is ready to make big moves.

The story starts in early February, when GameStop says it began accumulating stock in order to position itself to buy one historic online outlet.

‘eBay should be worth — and will be worth — a lot more money.’

In a press release on Sunday, GameStop said that for the last three months, it has built a 5% economic stake in eBay and is ready to pull the trigger on a sale that would allegedly allow it to challenge Amazon for online superiority.

GameStop’s offer is to buy 100% of eBay at $125 per share in a 50/50 deal of cash and its own GameStop stock. This would total a $55.5 billion takeover.

GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen said that with his expertise, eBay could become a “legit competitor to Amazon.”

The proposal also promises that the newly formed company could reduce its costs by at least $2 billion in just 12 months. This includes cuttings its sales and marketing budget in half, shaving $300 million off of product development, and reducing its administrative costs by $500 million.

RELATED: No one believes this one-of-one Helen Keller item just sold for thousands of dollars

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

“There is nobody who is more qualified, based on my experience, to run the eBay business,” Cohen said, per Gamespot. “eBay should be worth — and will be worth — a lot more money. I’m thinking about turning eBay into something worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”

GameStop boasted a massive turnaround under Cohen, who is credited with taking a fiscal year 2021 net loss of $381 million and turning it into a FY 2025 net income of $418 million.

This came off the back of the meme stock craze, a moment in 2021 when online forums — predominantly Reddit — rallied around a flailing GameStop and kept it alive for nostalgic reasons. The amazing part about the story is that GameStop has been able to keep that momentum alive for all these years.

The company was at historic lows in 2020, sometimes trading at less than a dollar per share. By December 2020, shares had risen to over $4 before the company’s portfolio exploded in the next month.

RELATED: Viral video: Males in line for Pokémon cards begin arguing, then fighting — and then it gets way worse

Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

By January 1, 2021, shares were worth $81.25 before an inevitable sell-off. However, the company is still sitting at around $25 per share, double what it was in 2013 and about $10 higher than 2007, when physical video game sales were still a formidable source of income.

According to Marketplace, GameStop is still composed of mostly retail investors who own about 90% of its stock. This could pay off monstrously if CEO Cohen gets his way, as eBay’s own stock has more than doubled since 2024.

Both companies seem poised to continue their rise so long as resales of media and tech trend upward, while a trading card boom continues to permeate throughout the collector’s world, where both companies can thrive.

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​Amazon, Ebay, Gamestop, Reddit, Return, Takeover, Video game retailer, Meme, Trading cards, Tech 

The United States has established a “red, white, and blue dome” of protection over the Strait of Hormuz to ensure the safe passage of commerce ships, War Secretary Pete Hegseth stated during a Tuesday-morning press conference.

Hegseth was joined by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine to discuss Project Freedom, which Hegseth described as an operation that is “separate and distinct from Operation Epic Fury.”

‘We expected there would be some churn at the beginning, which happened, and we said we would defend and defend aggressively, and we absolutely have.’

“Project Freedom is defensive in nature, focused in scope, and temporary in duration, with one mission: protecting innocent commercial shipping from Iranian aggression,” Hegseth stated.

Caine stated that the operation involves more than 15,000 American service members protecting the region by land, sea, and air. Hegseth explained that American troops would not need to enter Iranian waters or airspace.

“We’re not looking for a fight, but Iran also cannot be allowed to block innocent countries and their goods from an international waterway,” he said.

Hegseth accused Iran of being an “aggressor” by “harassing civilian vessels, threatening mariners from every nation indiscriminately, and weaponizing a critical choke point for its own financial benefit.”

Two U.S. commercial ships and American destroyers had safely passed through the strait, according to Hegseth. Hundreds of ships from nations around the globe have since lined up to pass through, he added.

RELATED: Mike Johnson denies the US is at war with Iran ahead of key congressional deadline

Handout photo by the U.S. Navy/Getty Images

“As a direct gift from the United States to the world, we have established a powerful red, white, and blue dome over the strait. American destroyers are on station supported by hundreds of fighter jets, helicopters, drones, and surveillance aircraft, providing 24/7 overwatch for peaceful commercial vessels, except Iran’s, of course,” Hegseth stated.

The war secretary emphasized the temporary nature of the operation and stated that “at the appropriate time and soon,” the U.S. would hand over responsibility to allies and other nations ready to protect the strait.

RELATED: Hegseth warns European allies to stop ‘free riding’ and help reopen the strait

Amirhossein KHORGOOEI/ISNA/AFP/Getty Images

Caine explained that “Iran’s indiscriminate attacks across the region” had resulted in 22,500 mariners on over 1,550 commercial vessels being trapped in the Arabian Gulf, unable to pass safely through the strait.

Hegseth insisted that the ceasefire with Iran is not over.

“Ultimately, this is a separate and distinct project. And we expected there would be some churn at the beginning, which happened, and we said we would defend and defend aggressively, and we absolutely have,” he stated.

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​News, Strait of hormuz, Iran, Pete hegseth, Project freedom, Operation epic fury, Epic fury, Dan caine, Trump administration, Trump admin, Politics 

A female broke the window of a Philadelphia home Sunday afternoon and tried to enter the residence, police told WCAU-TV.

The armed homeowner warned her to stop, but the station said she continued to try to break in.

‘I guess he had to do what he had to do to protect his family. There was a stranger. He’s a good neighbor. He’s very good.’

The homeowner ended up shooting the female multiple times, and she died, police told WCAU, adding that the incident is being treated as a possible act of self-defense.

The homeowner stayed on the scene, tried to render aid before medics arrived, and is cooperating with investigators, the station said.

“At some point, the occupants of the home did make themselves known that they were inside, and this person … based on the information we have, refused to stop,” Philadelphia Police Inspector D.F. Pace told WCAU.

Pace added to the station that “it appears that this is a case of a person defending oneself inside their own home. Pace added to WPVI-TV that the person who fired the fatal shots is licensed to carry, and no arrests have been made.

RELATED: Armed crooks allegedly enter home in middle of night, but homeowner is prepared — and opens fire

Officers initially responded to reports of gunfire in the 2300 block of North Cleveland Street around 1:13 p.m., WCAU said.

Officers at the scene found an adult female suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, police told the station. WXTF-TV said officers found the female inside the home.

She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 1:49 p.m., WCAU reported.

The deceased female was listed as a Jane Doe, Pace told WCAU, which noted that it’s unclear why she was attempting to break into the residence.

A neighbor named Shawnee told WCAU that the homeowner who fired his gun is a good family man: “I guess he had to do what he had to do to protect his family. There was a stranger. He’s a good neighbor. He’s very good.

Those with information about the incident are urged to contact the Philadelphia Police Department at 215-686-TIPS (8477) or anonymously online, WCAU noted.

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​Crime thwarted, Philadelphia, Home invasion, Intruder, Guns, Gun rights, Self-defense, Police, Fatal shooting, Homeowner shoots intruder, Crime 

Like many of her fellow liberals, progressive podcast host Jennifer Welch used the latest attempt on President Trump’s life to show her true colors.

In a segment on her podcast “I’ve Had It,” Welch mocked Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, for her response to the assassination attempt.

Dressed in all black with a black baseball cap to match what Kirk wore in her video message, Welch said, “How would you feel if the president of the United States said he wanted to wipe out an entire population? How would you feel if your husband said, ‘Because he’s famous, he can grab them by the p***y?’”

“What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do to the black pilot? How would you feel if your husband, president of the United States, was an adjudicated rapist? How would you feel about that? How would you feel?” she said.

Welch also promoted her new anti-fascist book, saying, “Make sure you preorder my book, which I would like to dedicate to one Erika Kirk.”

“Erika, the person that I’m talking about today, fascist, is you. You. You were the racist fascist about whom I am talking to. The work that your husband’s company and that you are doing to America’s youth to make them racist, narrow-minded, hateful, and bats**t crazy is an absolute disgrace. And thank you for the outfit, hashtag inspo,” she added, while her co-host laughed uncontrollably.

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is disturbed by liberals’ new “radical leftist hero.”

“It’s alarming to me that a lot of people are watching this content, let alone like one person. I don’t understand the other worthless shrew that comes into frame and starts cackling like it’s just so hilarious,” Gonzales says, calling it “low-IQ content.”

“You’re talking about Erika Kirk’s dead husband and saying that he’s a fascist because he created Turning Point USA so that young people could have a conservative organization to look up to so that they weren’t just inundated by leftist indoctrination,” she continues.

“It’s kind of depressing that people are, anyone is, consuming this content,” she adds.

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​Assassination attempt, Blazetv, Charlie kirk, Depressing, Erika kirk, Fascist, Jesus, Leftist indoctrination, Liberal, Low iq, Podcast, President trump, Progressive, Racist, Sara gonzales, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Turning point usa, Youtube, Radical leftist hero, The blaze, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Jennifer welch 

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a hugely consequential 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais last week, striking down the Bayou State’s controversial 2024 congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and providing some much-needed clarity on “whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act can indeed provide a compelling reason for race-based districting.”

Democrats and other liberals — including Justice Elena Kagan — condemned the ruling, construing it as a gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and a setback for racial minority representation in American politics.

Less than a week after its monumental ruling, the high court gave critics another reason to rend their garments.

‘The dissent’s rhetoric … lacks restraint.’

While it customarily waits 32 days after a ruling to issue its judgment, the Supreme Court on Monday granted Louisiana Republicans’ request to fast-track the process and immediately finalize its opinion in the case, thereby enabling the Bayou State to draw a new congressional map favoring the GOP in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

The court noted in its unsigned order that the usual 32-day delay ordinarily affords the “losing party time to file a petition for rehearing”; however, in this case, the defenders of the unconstitutional gerrymander “have not expressed any intent to ask this Court to reconsider its judgment.”

RELATED: Obama, Mamdani, other Democrats throw ugly tantrums after SCOTUS strikes racial gerrymander

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. JACQUELYN MARTIN/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

Absent that expression of intent or any opposition from Louisiana, the court allowed its ruling to go into effect immediately, prompting Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to lash out at her colleagues in an unhinged four-page dissent.

“The Court’s decision in these cases has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana,” Jackson said in her opening salvo.

After criticizing Louisiana’s eagerness to ditch its unlawful congressional map in the wake of the Callais ruling, Jackson said that “to avoid the appearance of partiality here, we could, as per usual, opt to stay on the sidelines and take no position by applying our default procedures. But, today, the Court chooses the opposite.”

Jackson said further that the court’s expedited certification of the ruling “is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map” and represents an abandonment of constraints and principles that is “unwarranted and unwise.”

Evidently it was Justice Samuel Alito’s turn to dunk on Jackson over the latest in her series of trademark screeds.

Alito underscored in an opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch that the charges leveled in Jackson’s dissent “cannot go unanswered.”

The conservative justice pointed out that if Jackson had her way, the 2026 congressional elections in Louisiana would be “held under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional,” and that the Biden-nominated justice had failed to make the case for why it is somehow now too late for Louisiana to adopt a new, constitutionally compliant map and “not feasible for the elections to be held under such a map.”

In response to the two reasons Jackson did provide for dooming Louisiana to use an unconstitutional map in the midterm elections — first, that the court should observe the customary 32-day delay, and second, that the court should do so to avoid the appearance of bias — Alito wrote that “one is trivial at best, and the other is baseless and insulting.”

Turning on its head the assertion by Jackson that an expedited ruling-certification process screams bias, Alito noted that the Biden-nominated justice failed to explain why “unthinking compliance” with the custom “does not create the appearance of partiality (by running out the clock) on behalf of those who may find it politically advantageous to have the election occur under the unconstitutional map.”

Alito called Jackson’s claim that the decision represents an unprincipled use of power “a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”

The conservative justice concluded, “The dissent accuses the Court of ‘unshackl[ing]’ itself from ‘constraints.’ It is the dissent’s rhetoric that lacks restraint.”

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​Callais, Congress, Gerrymander, Gerrymandering, Justice clarence thomas, Justice neil gorsuch, Justice samuel alito, Ketanji brown jackson, Louisiana, Louisiana v callais, Midterm elections, Racial gerrymander, Redistricting, Samuel alito, Supreme court, Politics 

The first time I flew on a plane, I was 14 years old. It was my first time going to Europe and my first time anywhere outside the United States other than Canada. But Canada doesn’t really count, does it? Not really, especially back then, when you didn’t even need a passport to drive over the border.

That first time overseas I was alone — kind of. I was playing in an orchestra on a music tour. There were itineraries and things were planned, and there were adults making sure I was present. I was with 85 other high school students, eight counselors, and a director.

I think maybe that’s part of what I’m most thankful for when I think of those summers in Europe. I felt so far away then.

But I wasn’t with my family or my parents. At that age, at least for me, that counted as “alone.”

Roughing it

This was back before we all had smartphones in all our pockets. I couldn’t text my mom and dad every hour, and I couldn’t check my email whenever I wanted. I didn’t even have an email. I could call them, however. And I did, every few days.

Of course, you couldn’t just pick up a pay phone and make an international call. You needed a calling card.

Remember those?

The back was covered with instructions. How to call out of a country, what code to enter calling into a country, and a ton of numbers you had to enter before you even made the call. It was an insanely convoluted system, almost as if it were a test you had to pass. If you accidentally pressed a wrong number, you would have to start all over again.

But this system did work. And it allowed me to check in with Mom and Dad every three or four days, as they requested.

Warm welcome

Every stop of the tour, we would get divided up and stay with different host families — a few kids per household. They would give us a little tour in their broken English (the only language any of us spoke), offer their phone if we wanted to call home, and — if they were really cool — let us have a little wine with dinner.

On our last night, we would play a concert outside in the middle of the town. All the host families would come, sit there in folding chairs, and listen. There was food, sparkling water (then still rare in America), maybe some wine.

The next morning, we would get on the bus and drive to another tiny little town three hours away and do it all again. After four weeks of this it was time to get on a plane and head back home.

I did this every summer in high school. It was a blast, and I learned a lot — both about other people and myself. They were formative experiences for a kid from the Midwest like me, and they set me on a path I’m still on today.

Far and away

Still, I have to wonder if I would ever let my kids do something like that. The thought of sending my son off to Europe at such a young age with people I don’t know gives me serious preemptive anxiety. On the other hand, my parents were good parents and they let me do it. And I survived.

Fortunately, my son won’t be 14 for years, so I have a little time to learn to let go. And if he does go, we’ll have the full spectrum of modern technology keeping us connected, not just some dinky plastic card.

At the same time, I wonder if the end of the calling card didn’t take some of the magic with it. Knowing everything that’s happening with all your friends back home while posting pictures every hour for all of them to see doesn’t quite plunge you into the unknown.

I think maybe that’s part of what I’m most thankful for when I think of those summers in Europe. I felt so far away then — far from Mom and Dad, my school, everyone I knew, and everything familiar. Maybe one of the blessings of having grown up when I grew up was the possibility of that kind of distance. Traveling meant just a little more when you could feel far away.

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Imperial War Museum/Getty Images

Cozy connection

I’m in Europe again, though I have a smartphone and email now. I text my wife all the time, and she sends me pictures of the kids. I FaceTime with them, tell them I can’t wait to see them next week, and send them videos of what it looks like here. I manage business on my phone, write columns like this one one my computer, and continue my work as usual despite being across the ocean in the Europe that used to feel so far away.

I like this new reality quite a bit, but I think I liked the old one too. Distance doesn’t feel so great any more. The world is smaller and everything nearer. Maybe the whimsy of those childhood summers in Europe was simply the whimsy of youth and I’m only feeling all this because now I’m old and without that same wonder. But I’m not sure.

We are in the age of ever-present digital connection, and that’s not changing any time soon. Those final years before the mass adoption of the cell phone were the last gasps of a big, magical world. We didn’t really understand it at the time, but the cell phone, the smartphone, and email marked the end of distance and some kind of world of whimsy.

There’s no good in lamenting the things we can’t change, and there are quite a few advantages to this newer, much smaller world. But whenever I want to remember the old excitement of that wider, wilder world, I recall the feel of a calling card in my hand and smile.

​Men’s style, Modern technology, Lifestyle, Travel, Calling cards, Europe, The root of the matter