Category: blaze media

Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists have discovered hundreds of hatching eggs that could be carrying infectious diseases packed in layers of foam, according to a press release obtained exclusively by Blaze News.

The 337 eggs, incorrectly manifested as “winter jackets,” were shipped from Germany and headed to Alaska. CBP revealed that the items, seized on May 27, lacked proper documentation.

‘These interceptions highlight the vigilance and dedication our CBP agriculture specialists demonstrate daily.’

“Hatching eggs include all avian species, including poultry, game birds, racing pigeons, and other birds,” the CBP reported.

“These live eggs are shipped to the United States for hatching or reproductive purposes. Upon arrival, the eggs would be incubated, hatched, and raised,” the CBP continued. “For agricultural purposes, hatching eggs fall under regulations for live animals and are highly regulated because they can carry Newcastle disease and avian influenza.”

The eggs were seized and turned over to the local U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The CBP noted that the USDA does not allow the importation of hatching eggs from countries that have highly pathogenic avian influenza.

RELATED: Exclusive: Elderly American allegedly tries to traffic $455K worth of cocaine and ketamine across US border

Ian Waldie/Getty Images

The department warned that such unauthorized shipments risk spreading diseases that could impact the U.S. food supply.

Since the start of an avian influenza outbreak in Feb. 2022, nearly 207 million birds in the U.S. have been affected, according to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Outbreaks have occurred in over 2,000 flocks in all 50 states and one territory.

RELATED: PAYBACK: No $10K fine for owners of slain ostriches

Image source: Customs and Border Protection

“Our nation’s food supply is constantly at risk from diseases not known to occur in the United States,” stated Eric Zizelman, the port director for the Port of Cincinnati. “These interceptions highlight the vigilance and dedication our CBP agriculture specialists demonstrate daily. Our specialists mitigate the threat of non-native pests, diseases, and contaminants entering the United States. They ensure the United States is safe from harmful diseases that could affect our food supply.”

CBP encouraged international travelers to declare all items acquired abroad and advised those who wish to bring plant and animal materials or other agricultural items to first consult the CBP Information Center section on the agency’s website.

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​News, Avian flu, Customs and border protection, Cbp, Cincinnati, Us department of agriculture, Usda, Politics 

Admittedly, planning a wedding is a strange time to start reading cancer research. The seating chart had 17 unresolved feuds in it; the oncology journals felt like lighter reading.

Until they didn’t.

Public health researchers call this ‘social monitoring.’ In practice, it means someone loving you enough to be annoying about your symptoms.

A recent American study, drawing on more than 4 million cancer cases, found that adults who never married face considerably higher cancer rates than those who did. Never-married women saw rates dramatically elevated. Never-married men weren’t far behind.

The gap widens after age 55, which is when a lifetime of accumulated habits, poor decisions, and missed appointments begins sending invoices.

Settling for less?

Marriage rates in America have fallen steadily for decades. What was once expected is now optional — and sometimes viewed with suspicion. The language around “settling down” carries a faint odor of defeat, as though building a life with someone else were a concession rather than a choice.

The cultural conversation, meanwhile, circles endlessly around diet, exercise, and whatever superfood is currently being flown in from a distant rainforest. Billions flow into wellness industries. Podcasts dedicate entire seasons to optimizing sleep. And yet the data keeps returning to something far less marketable: whether you have someone in the next room who gives a damn.

The researchers are careful to avoid claiming that a wedding ring makes tumors vanish. But the pattern holds and appears across most major cancer types. Cancers linked to smoking, alcohol, and infections showed the biggest gaps between married and never-married adults. That concentration is telling. It points at behavior, environment, and the kind of low-level interference that only someone who genuinely cares about you will bother to sustain.

Buddy system

A man living alone can ignore a cough for months. A wife will drag him to a doctor. A woman juggling everything on her own might postpone a checkup indefinitely. A husband will plead, push, insist, and escalate if necessary. Public health researchers call this “social monitoring.” In practice, it means someone loving you enough to be annoying about your symptoms.

Then there’s the physiological cost of chronic loneliness. Without someone else setting the rhythm, sleep suffers, meals become erratic, and the basic architecture of self-maintenance gradually gives way. A person alone sets his own standards, and standards, without a witness, tend to decline. Freedom looks like a luxury until it tips into neglect.

The research on loneliness as a health risk has been mounting for years. Chronic isolation produces measurable changes in stress hormones, inflammatory markers, and immune function. The body registers abandonment, and it responds accordingly.

Previous generations were hardly models of healthy living. They smoked heavily, drank liberally, and regarded dietary advice as a personal affront. The average mid-century American male was not tracking his resting heart rate. Yet many of them were embedded in something we have spent decades dismantling: long marriages, tight families, a reliable social unit that caught problems early and addressed them without being asked. The neighbor who checked in. The sibling who showed up uninvited. The spouse who had the kettle on before the door had closed behind you.

Noticing matters enormously.

RELATED: Aging is inevitable — catastrophic decline is not

The author with his mother and grandmother. Photo courtesy of John Mac Ghlionn

The cure of community

Cancer rates in younger Americans have been climbing. The old assumption — that serious disease waits its turn at the end of a long life — has expired. It is arriving earlier, frequently without warning, and the reflexive response has been to scrutinize diet, sleep, and screen time. All valid. All insufficient on their own.

There are complications worth acknowledging. Marriage has its limits as a medical intervention. As Tina Turner and Johnny Depp demonstrated at considerable personal cost, not all marriages are protective. Some are so destructive that they make solitude look like sensible doctor’s orders.

Nevertheless, the directional evidence holds.

Knee-deep in wedding planning, I keep returning to what this whole undertaking actually represents. Families reactivate. Old friendships resurface. Obligations form. The ceremony is a public declaration that someone will be watching, intervening, and on occasion refusing to let you get away with things.

The vows carry legal and emotional weight. They’re also a mutual surveillance agreement, entered into willingly, which turns out to be rather good for your health.

We’ve built an entire cultural vocabulary around independence. Self-optimization. Personal growth. The solo journey. These are not entirely worthless ideas, but they have crowded out an older and more durable understanding. Humans aren’t built for sustained isolation. The people around us, intrusive and imperfect as they are, perform functions that no app, no routine, and no amount of cold-plunge evangelism can replicate.

A culture that treats relationships as provisional and commitment as one lifestyle choice among many is making a collective wager. The evidence suggests the odds aren’t favorable. In ways we’re only beginning to quantify, permanence appears to be protective.

​Make america healthy again, Loneliness, Loneliness epidemic, Marriage, Weddings, Culture, Courtship, Community, Lifestyle 

President Donald Trump’s tolerance for allied actions that undermine America’s negotiations with Iran may have reached its limit.

Negotiators representing the U.S. and Iran appeared poised last week to advance the cause of peace between their respective nations, extend the fragile ceasefire that first went into effect in April, and open the Strait of Hormuz again to trade.

‘Everybody hates you now.’

On Monday, Trump stated that “Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us.”

Within hours of the president expressing optimism about resolving the unpopular conflict that is now in its 13th week — the peace talks began to quickly unravel.

Iranian state media and government officials indicated that Tehran was backing out of the talks largely over Israel’s offensive in Lebanon and the escalations in Beirut that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced earlier in the day.

RELATED: Congress may be quietly seeking to integrate US and Israeli militaries — but critics have taken notice

Evan Vucci/Pool/Getty Images

Although he initially appeared apathetic — telling NBC News, for instance, “I think it’s fine if they’re done talking” — Trump attempted to resurrect the peace talks, calling Netanyahu to impress upon him the need to change course in Lebanon.

According to the president, Netanyahu agreed that “there will be no Troops going to Beirut, and any Troops that are on their way, have already been turned back.”

Two U.S. officials and a third source briefed on the call revealed to Axios that Trump used some choice words and effectively “steamrolled” the Israeli prime minister.

One official, summarizing Trump’s remarks to Netanyahu, claimed that the president effectively said, “You’re f**king crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

Netanyahu, who faces an outstanding warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, was indicted in 2019 in three Israeli criminal cases for alleged bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. Last year, Trump called for Israel to pardon Netanyahu and/or drop his corruption case. Netanyahu’s corruption trial is ongoing.

‘Let’s see how long that lasts.’

The source briefed on the call told Axios that Trump was “pissed” and yelled at Netanyahu, “What the f**k are you doing?”

One of the U.S. officials claimed that Trump was aware of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel and the Jewish state’s need to defend itself but was still convinced that Netanyahu’s recent escalations were disproportionate.

Another U.S. official told Axios that Trump was also concerned over how many civilians Israel has killed in Lebanon. Well over 3,300 people have been killed and around 10,000 have been injured in the Israeli strikes on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The White House did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Shortly after the call, Netanyahu confirmed he had spoken to Trump and “told him that if Hezbollah does not cease attacking our cities and citizens — Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut. This stance of ours remains unchanged. In parallel, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”

Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir publicly told Netanyahu after the call that “this is the time to tell our friend, President Trump — ‘no.’ Now is the time to do what is required and necessary to strike Hezbollah, to unleash the hands of our fighters, and to restore security to the north.”

After stating that “talks are continuing, at a rapid pace, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump thanked Netanyahu for reversing course on his planned Beirut attacks in a Monday evening post on Truth Social and noted that both Israel and Hezbollah have tentatively agreed to stop shooting at one another.

“Let’s see how long that lasts — Hopefully it will be for ETERNITY!” added Trump,

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​Benjamin netanyahu, Donald trump, Strait of hormuz, Iran, Israel, Tel aviv, Peace talks, Peace, War, Conflict, Politics 

A California woman — dubbed the “party mom” by local authorities — has been sentenced to decades in prison after throwing alcohol-fueled parties for young teens and orchestrating sexual misconduct between the minors.

The Santa Clara District Attorney announced Thursday that 52-year-old Shannon O’Connor, also known as Shannon Bruga, was sentenced to 35 years and 10 months in prison — the maximum punishment.

‘The trauma shattered parts of me, and every day I wake up, I’m rebuilding what you broke.’

O’Connor has been in jail since her arrest in 2021, and she will receive credit for time served.

She also was ordered to register as a sex offender.

As Blaze News reported in March, O’Connor was convicted of 48 charges — including two felony charges of sexual penetration.

The Mercury News previously reported, “The sexual penetration convictions were the most serious, as prosecutors argued that O’Connor sexually assaulted the two girls by enabling them to become so intoxicated they could not legally consent.”

The district attorney said O’Connor hosted “drunken parties for young teenagers where she bought alcohol and egged on sex acts — some with teens too drunk to consent.”

The district attorney’s office said O’Connor hosted “drunken and destructive parties” for teens for two years.

Authorities said O’Connor would message teenagers and encourage them to leave their homes in the middle of the night and come to her house to drink alcohol.

The DA said O’Connor supplied vodka, Fireball whiskey, and condoms to teens who attended parties at her home.

“At one party, O’Connor handed an underaged teenager a condom and pushed him into a room with an intoxicated minor,” the district attorney stated.

“During a New Year’s Eve party with about five 14-year-olds, the defendant watched and laughed as a drunk teen sexually battered a young girl in bed,” the statement read.

The DA noted, “In another case, the defendant brought one drunk teen into a bedroom, where an intoxicated 14-year-old girl was lying in the bed.”

According to the district attorney, after the victim was sexually assaulted, she told O’Connor: “Why did you leave me in there with him? Like, you knew, like, what he was going to do to me.”

During the trial, one of the female victims told the courtroom she became suicidal from the trauma she experienced at a house party, the DA said.

The district attorney noted that O’Connor instructed the victims to not tell anyone about the parties because she could go to jail.

Police said O’Connor allowed a minor to drive her SUV in the parking lot of Los Gatos High School with two other teens holding on to the back. However, one of the teens fell off the vehicle and was knocked unconscious, according to authorities.

O’Connor was arrested in October 2021 in Idaho.

When detectives went to O’Connor’s house to arrest her, there were “10 underage boys and two girls at her home — most of whom spent the night there,” according to the Ada County Sheriff’s Office.

RELATED: ‘The Epstein of Indian Country’: ‘Dances with Wolves’ actor learns fate for sexually assaulting women, girls for years

KABC-TV reported that a victim during the hearing said, “I wish I could say that every memory with you has been healed with time, but I still find myself crying myself to sleep over the way that you took complete advantage of me.”

Another victim said, “Shannon O’Connor held me prisoner for almost six years. It’s her turn to serve a very long sentence in jail.”

Yet another victim added, “The trauma shattered parts of me, and every day I wake up, I’m rebuilding what you broke.”

The mother of one of the victims during the hearing said, “When people call you a monster, pedophile, rapist, they had it right. You preyed upon my daughter by supplying her alcohol, enticing a sexual situation, and pushing her when she was not in a place to consent.”

The Los Gatan reported that one victim said, “I was 11 years old when I met you. That was when you started texting me every day, slowly earning my trust only to use it against me.”

KRON-TV reported that O’Connor apologized to the victims and their families during the sentencing hearing.

“I am responsible for the harmful situation that I put your daughters and sons through,” O’Connor told the courtroom.

“But as I look at you all today, I hope you can find some comfort knowing that I have been punished — and will continue to be for years to come,” O’Connor continued.

She added, “I’m sorry for all of you and what I put you through. I am ashamed, and I face every day knowing that I was the cause of so many people’s anguish.”

O’Connor concluded, “I want you all to know that I live every day wishing I could take everything back.”

However, Deputy District Attorney Joanne Lee described O’Connor’s remarks as “deeply offensive” and showed “zero accountability.”

Before handing down the sentence, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth C. Peterson said she did not find O’Connor “genuinely remorseful.”

Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement:

Many people call this defendant the “Los Gatos Party Mom.” This isn’t some fun parent giving sips of wine spritzers to kids. She facilitated dangerous and drunken sex acts with these children. She risked their lives and damaged their psyches. She is not a party mom. Shannon O’Connor is a convicted felon. Shannon O’Connor is a registered sex offender.

O’Connor’s lawyer, Stephen Prekoski, said they will appeal, according to KRON.

“She never had a meaningful opportunity to settle this case,” Prekoski stated. “I’m not persuaded by those that believe that she was not remorseful. I’m not persuaded by those that believe that she didn’t take accountability for her actions.”

Kate Gude, the mother of another one of the victims, said after the sentencing, “This shows that when you come together, you put these bad people away, and the kids have a shot. You got to speak up and speak out. It’s the only way to keep everybody safe, happy, and whole.”

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​Alcohol, California, Crime, Los gatos high school, Party mom, Shannon oconnor, Sentenced 

Basketball fans are used to league-wide activism, but now the NBA has seemingly made a decision that will bring some normalcy to its fanfare.

By this point, viewers are no doubt used to the league promoting race-based activism, and most will probably remember the vaccine debacle that brought individual rights and bodily autonomy to the forefront.

‘The NBA family has long believed in the unifying power of basketball.’

Now, in a league where players are quite literally rewarded for their activism, a partnership with sports trading-card company Topps and other America-focused groups is taking a front-row seat at the NBA Finals.

For the series between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs, the players will wear patches that read “USA 250” on their jerseys to celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States, the NBA reported.

According to Topps, players’ patches will be removed after every game, and “select game-worn patches” will be featured inside “ultra-rare” trading cards.

The initiative is part of the NBA’s year-long celebration of the United States, which was announced in January, alongside partnerships with several groups, some of which are less controversial than others.

RELATED: ‘Adam Silver, I got questions’: Jason Whitlock accuses NBA of rigging Spurs-Thunder Game 5

“The 250th birthday of the United States offers the NBA family a wonderful opportunity for reflection and civic engagement, and we’re proud to help bring communities together through hands-on service,” said the NBA’s senior vice president of social impact and inclusion, Barbara Bush.

“The NBA family has long believed in the unifying power of basketball and the importance of taking collective action to strengthen our communities,” Bush added.

To that end, the NBA has been working with the organizations Military250, Stand Together, and America250.

Military250 is described as a national initiative dedicated to honoring the 250th anniversaries of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as focusing on veterans and military families.

Stand Together is an organization that is more political in nature, pledging to work through the country’s toughest issues while offering discussion on topics like immigration, freedom of speech, and criminal justice.

RELATED: NFL players defend NY Giants QB Jaxson Dart after he introduces Trump: ‘Fake Trump hate’

Elizabeth Ruiz/Getty Images

America250 is more direct. Its website says it is focused on inspiring fellow Americans to reflect on the country’s past, strengthen their “love of country,” and to renew their “commitment to the ideals of democracy.”

In addition to the America-themed NBA trading cards, Topps announced it will have “Freedom 250” cards for the upcoming UFC event at the White House.

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​Nba finals, New york knicks, San antonio spurs, America250, Basketball, Fearless, Sports 

Washington has an old joke: Nothing is more permanent than a temporary government program.

Look past the quip and a pattern emerges. Programs created to address specific problems rarely disappear when those problems recede. They develop constituencies, build bureaucracies, and acquire defenders. Programs meant to die are kept alive through zombie funding long after their original purpose has faded.

Federal grants are not entitlements. Recipients should earn and re-earn them through demonstrated performance.

Milton Friedman spent decades explaining why. In “Free to Choose,” he distilled the point into a simple insight: When you spend your own money on yourself, you care about cost and value. When you spend someone else’s money on someone else — which is precisely what federal grantmaking entails — neither cost nor value receives the same scrutiny it would if the money were your own.

That is the system the Trump administration is now trying to change through a sweeping overhaul of federal grant regulations developed by the Office of Management and Budget. The core idea is simple enough that it should not require federal rulemaking to defend: Public money should produce public results. If it does not, the money should not continue automatically.

Washington has often operated on the opposite assumption. Grants get awarded. Organizations build staffs around them. Those staffs lobby to preserve them. Programs that fail rarely disappear cleanly; they are restructured, rebranded, and refunded. The constituency for any particular line of spending is loud and organized. The constituency for cutting it is diffuse and quiet. That is not a bug. It is a feature that benefits insiders and leaves taxpayers with the bill.

The proposed reforms rest on a simple principle: Federal funding should be earned continuously, not granted automatically. Stronger reporting requirements would force grantees to demonstrate results rather than document activity. Expanded use of the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay system would help prevent improper payments before funds go out — a meaningful safeguard given that the OMB reported roughly $236 billion in improper payments government-wide in the 2023 fiscal year. Enhanced transparency rules would make it easier for taxpayers to see where federal dollars go and what they produce.

The goal is to shift federal grantmaking from routine renewal to ongoing performance review.

The proposal also takes on something Washington rarely discusses honestly: grantee capture. When a nonprofit receives most of its revenue from federal grants, it no longer operates as a purely independent civic institution. It functions as a publicly funded contractor with a development office. Taxpayers deserve to know when groups presenting themselves as independent advocates also depend heavily on federal money.

RELATED: ‘Pigs at the trough’: Spencer Pratt and Bill Maher come together to blast California ‘socialists’

Man_Half-tube/iStock/Getty Images

One provision deserves special support: ensuring that faith-based organizations can compete for grants on equal terms with secular ones. Charitable-choice provisions dating to the 1996 welfare reform law, executive-branch guidance under President Bush, and Executive Order 14332 signed by President Trump in 2025 already prohibit religious discrimination in many grant competitions.

But law on paper and law in practice often diverge. The federal government should judge applicants on their ability to deliver results — not on whether they pray before staff meetings.

Critics will argue that these reforms could be used to disadvantage political opponents. Some of that criticism will land. Implementation will matter enormously, and the effort’s credibility will depend on whether agencies apply performance metrics consistently and transparently across programs.

But the underlying principle should command broad support: Federal grants are not entitlements. Recipients should earn and re-earn them through demonstrated performance. Any serious steward of public resources should embrace that standard.

Friedman understood that bad incentive structures produce bad outcomes regardless of the intentions of the people operating within them. The federal grant system has tolerated weak incentives for too long. Large flows of public money require constant oversight. Without it, mistakes, waste, and fraud become predictable.

After decades of promises to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, the Trump administration’s reforms represent something Washington too rarely attempts: real change.

Every dollar the federal government spends was earned by someone outside Washington. Taxpayers deserve to know it was used well.

​Budget, Donald trump, Entitlements, Federal spending, Grants, Milton friedman, Office of management and budget, Reform, Regulations, Taxpayers, Opinion & analysis 

Liberals in the United Kingdom have worked feverishly in recent years to paint white Britons uniquely as history’s villains, undermine their unique claims to the isles, and erase them from British history.

What’s more, police and some in the justice system have shown that they are willing to hold whites — white men in particular — to a different standard than virtually every other group.

The British public has now been confronted with incontrovertible evidence of this campaign’s influence and impact in the case of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old Englishman who died at the feet of maligning and disbelieving police.

‘Henry told officers that he could not breathe nine times.’

Walking home from a night out with his soccer team on Dec. 3, Nowak encountered a 23-year-old Sikh named Vickrum Digwa, who, on account of a religious exemption to the general ban on carrying knives in Britain, was armed.

In an unprovoked attack, Digwa stabbed the University of Southampton finance student repeatedly with an eight-inch blade — a blade that Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, later hid in an effort to aid her killer kin.

Digwa and his family members also proceeded to falsely tell police not only that Nowak was the real aggressor — a supposed racist who had attacked Digwa and knocked off his turban — but that Nowak hadn’t been stabbed and was just exaggerating about his injuries.

Even as Nowak lay dying, officers from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary reflexively entertained the Digwa family’s lies and handcuffed the white teen. Nowak’s handcuffs were removed only after the “severity of his condition was becoming clear,” police claimed.

After much public clamor, the damning police body camera footage of Nowak’s arrest was finally released on Monday, showing the nightmarish scene, including:

Digwa and his kin standing over the dying Englishman, then lying about what happened;police dismissing Nowak’s claims about being stabbed;Nowak begging repeatedly for help while being handcuffed; anda female officer suggesting they should confirm he was not stabbed, then aborting the effort after seeing one of Digwa’s slash marks on the victim’s face.

RELATED: ‘No such thing as a defensive weapon’: Judge warns Scottish axe girl she shouldn’t have carried blades

William Mousley, the Southampton judge who oversaw the murder trial, noted in his sentencing remarks on Monday that after stabbing his “defenseless” victim, Digwa — accompanied by his brother, Gurpreet — abused the teen and made “films of Henry suffering” and trying to escape before the arrival of police.

“You lied to him that you had been attacked, picking up on his question about whether it had been accompanied by racism by falsely claiming that Henry had called you a ‘Paki,'” said Mousley. “I am sure that Henry had said nothing racist.”

Mousley sentenced Digwa to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years and 190 days before any consideration can be given to possible parole.

According to the BBC, the attorney general’s office is reconsidering the prison sentence after being deluged by requests to review it under the unduly lenient sentence scheme.

Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, is set to be sentenced for attempting to help her son cover up his crime. Digwa’s father, Moga Singh, and his brother, Gurpreet Digwa, have reportedly been slapped with multiple weapons charges and are expected to appear in court on Tuesday.

After Digwa’s sentencing, Mark Nowak, Henry’s father, publicly addressed his dead son’s egregious treatment by the Southampton police as evidenced in the video footage.

“When police arrived, Henry was lying on the floor, barely able to sit up and plainly in severe medical distress,” said the bereaved father. “With his final words, he told officers that he could not breathe. He told them he had been stabbed. In fact, Henry told officers that he could not breathe nine times. He told them he had been stabbed four times.”

“The response from one officer was ‘I don’t think you have, mate,'” continued Mark Nowak. “The police have said they were misled by the murderer and that the scene when they arrived was complex. Unfortunately, it seems to us the truth is much simpler.”

Mark Nowak emphasized that police chose not to believe his son or the member of the public who called and reported someone claiming to have been stabbed. Instead, they dragged his bloody son across the gravel, wrenched his hands behind his back, handcuffed him, formally arrested him for assault, and read him his rights.

“Henry did not die with dignity. He did not die with the care he deserved. He lost consciousness before anyone believed him,” said Mark Nowak.

‘Look back in anger.’

While assigning to Digwa all blame for his son’s death, Mark Nowak noted that his son should not have died in police custody and that “the way he was treated was inhumane and degrading.”

The father noted further that, unlike his son, the Sikh murderer was curiously “afforded decency. He was believed. He was not handcuffed when arrested. He was not handcuffed when transported to the police station. As far as we understand, he was never handcuffed at all.”

“The contrast is unbearable,” said Mark Nowak.

Others around the U.K. and around the globe have reacted similarly to the police video.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK Party, said, “This is the most shocking footage of discrimination that you will ever see. A white boy being handcuffed by police officers more concerned by an accusation of racism than an act of murder. This must be a turning point. White lives matter too.”

Whereas Prime Minister Keir Starmer offered a weak response coupled with a condemnation of “knife crime,” British Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe, formerly of the Reform UK Party and now the leader of Restore Britain, offered a forceful series of condemnations and demanded “prosecutions for what happened to Henry Nowak.”

‘Now this is the moment for real f**king change.’

“Young white British men are bleeding to death in the street as a direct result of our racist establishment. I will never forget, and I will never forgive,” Lowe said on Tuesday.

Lowe vowed to “look back in anger” and suggested that were his party in power, Digwa would be put to death, “the police officers on the scene who allowed Henry to die [would] face criminal charges for gross negligence manslaughter,” and “Digwa’s foreign family [would] be deported.”

“Sara Sharif. The Nottingham killer. The Manchester bomber. The grooming gangs. Now Henry Nowak,” wrote Conservative Party MP Claire Coutinho, the shadow minister for equalities. “We have to unpick the mentality across our public services that says accusations of racism are more important than protecting the public from harm.”

“If we stay the hand of those who are meant to protect the public, if we tie them up in knots with unconscious bias training and Islamophobia definitions, then we are making their jobs even more impossible and we can see from case after case that we are failing to protect the public from serious harm,” added Coutinho.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badnoch similarly criticized the “training that the police have been given” and the “race action plans” implemented in the wake of the Black Lives Matter mania earlier this decade.

“Now this is the moment for real f**king change, not George Floyd, a dead crackhead in America,” said activist Tommy Robinson.

The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Robert France, the temporary deputy chief constable, apologized on Thursday for the police’s grievous mistreatment of Nowak, stating, “I am sorry that in the moments before he lost consciousness, [Nowak] had been handcuffed and arrested.”

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​Henry nowak, Murder trial, Nigel farage, United kingdom, Vickrum digwa, White lives matter, Leftism, Racism, Anti-white, White, Murder, Police, Dei, Politics 

Vice President JD Vance revealed just how much taxpayer money is lost to fraud across America — and it’s more than you think.

“We’ve referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans back to the Treasury for collection. We deferred more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements that were coming from various states, particularly California,” Vance explained.

The Trump administration has also “put a six-month hold on enrollments for new hospice and home health care providers” due to a large amount of fraud uncovered in hospices all over the country.

“We’ve recovered taxpayer funds from the $135 billion stolen after the floodgates were opened in the immediate aftermath of COVID. We have found $6.3 billion in suspected fraudulent government contracts which were mostly awarded during the last administration, and that has stopped,” Vance continued.

“And finally, we’ve blocked $60 million in student aid fraud that should have gone to young people trying to get an education, but instead were going to fraudsters,” he added.

“JD Vance is doing his darndest to try to clean up the fraud situation in America,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments. “We’ve got all the Somali fraud. We’ve got fraud in California. We’ve got fraud, I’m sure, in every state, but it’s really really rampant in some more than others.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also commented on the huge amount of fraud, explaining that American systems were “set up based on the honor system.”

“They’re set up based on the idea that you could trust the average person, through their own morality, to abide by the rules and comply with the law,” he said, before championing Vance’s efforts to tackle fraud.

“Because of the vice president’s leadership, you are seeing the most muscular, robust, aggressive, dedicated, determined, and speedy effort to shut down criminal fraud that has not only ever occurred in the history of this country, but in any developed nation,” he said.

“Thank you,” Gray comments.

Want more from Pat Gray?

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​Pat gray, Jd vance, Fraud, Student aid, Hospice care, Taxpayer, Trump, Stephen miller, Pat gray unleashed 

A rare defect that can be devastating to children is getting a first-of-its-kind medicine from Japanese researchers.

A new treatment is now five years in the making, and after being used for medical applications, it’s likely the product will be available for use by the general population as well.

‘We feel that people’s expectations … are high.’

Since 2021, Japanese researchers have been hoping to find a solution for anodontia, the medical term for the complete absence of teeth, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

The initial study for this project states that anodontia and congenital tooth agenesis are common tooth anomalies affecting 1% of the worldwide population, resulting in a high rate of missing teeth.

The solution, according to lead researcher Katsu Takahashi, is to counteract a protein called USAG-1, which inhibits the growth of teeth.

“We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,” he told the Mainichi in 2024. “While there has been no treatment to date providing a permanent cure, we feel that people’s expectations for tooth growth are high.”

The goal of the project is to give young children who have no teeth the joy of a real smile.

RELATED: Japan’s beautiful love affair with America

EyesWideOpen/Getty Images

The research was moved into human trials in October 2024 and lasted until October 2025. The controlled trial involved 30 males between 30 and 65 who were missing one or more molars, and the medicine was administered through one single intravenous dose.

The study has since been marked as completed, but little public information has been released. However, the Economic Times reported that as of April, preliminary analyses showed positive results with no significant side effects.

The next phase of the research is reportedly to test the medicine on children between 2 and 7 who suffer from congenital anodontia.

RELATED: That customer service rep with the American accent might still be an Indian guy — here’s how

– YouTube

The teams at Kitano Hospital and Kyoto University Hospital believe that it may be soon possible to grow teeth not only in people with the aforementioned conditions, but also for common conditions like tooth loss from cavities or injuries.

According to Popular Mechanics, if the latest trials are successful, the researchers believe the medicine will become available to the public for all forms of tooth loss around 2030.

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​Return, Teeth, Tooth loss, Rare disorder, Children, Japan, Tech 

The government watchdog White Coat Waste Project pulled back the curtain in 2021 on federally funded gruesome beagle experiments under the leadership of then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci. The scandal sparked a national outcry to end animal experimentation.

President Donald Trump’s administration set a goal to stop all mammalian animal testing by 2035, and on Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced significant steps to reach that objective, according to a press release obtained exclusively by Blaze News.

‘The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!’

The EPA declared that it is expanding its approved list of “cutting-edge” alternatives to animal studies by adding 13 more new approach methods. The agency describes NAMs as “high-quality alternatives” intended to reduce animal testing, particularly on vertebrate mammals such as rabbits, mice, rats, and dogs.

The Toxic Substances Control Act “directs EPA to use NAMs whenever scientifically appropriate when evaluating chemicals, and to reduce, refine, or replace vertebrate mammal testing,” the EPA’s press release read. “Modern NAMs, including human cell models and advanced computer-based methods, help EPA identify hazards and exposures faster and often with results that are more relevant to people, not laboratory animals.”

The EPA contended that these alternative methods can reduce time and costs, as well as provide more applicable insight into how chemicals interact with the human body. The move “opens the door for innovators to bring the next generation of tools to the table,” according to the EPA.

The agency highlighted a few of those new replacement methods, including a way to evaluate eye hazards using reconstructed human cells; a process to evaluate phototoxicity using a 3D human cell-based tissue model, and combining in-chemico and in-vitro test data to “identify potential dermal sensitization hazard, dermal sensitization potency, and a quantitative point-of-departure.”

RELATED: Trump’s NIH closes Fauci’s apparent puppy-torture lab after 40 years of sadistic experiments

Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Tuesday’s announcement marks the first time the EPA has expanded its NAMs list since 2021.

The EPA also announced a streamlined process for industry stakeholders to nominate additional NAMs for consideration in pesticide and chemical assessments.

While the goal to end animal testing was initially announced during the first Trump administration, under former President Joe Biden, the phase-out deadlines were canceled, the EPA stated.

“Today’s actions get that progress back on track,” the agency declared.

The EPA stated that the Trump administration has already made measurable progress toward meeting its goal to phase out mammalian animal testing, including implementing the agency’s first lab animal adoption program in April 2025 and using alternative methods in cancer evaluations for dibutyl phthalate and di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, which prevented an estimated 1,600 mice and rats from undergoing experiments.

“When the Trump administration makes a commitment, we deliver. With today’s announcement, we’re accelerating the shift to modern, gold-standard science — without the use of animal testing — by using new, innovative methods to review chemicals,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stated. “By broadening high-quality alternatives and inviting strong new candidates, we can deliver faster, more protective decisions while reducing animal testing.”

RELATED: Republicans should take the easy win and stop medical testing on animals

Katherine Frey/Washington Post/Getty Images

Anthony Bellotti, founder and president of White Coat Waste, commended Zeldin and the EPA for honoring their commitment to reduce animal testing.

“Earlier this year, White Coat Waste proudly joined EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to restore the historic Trump-era plan to phase out animal testing by 2035 after we exposed how the Biden administration quietly scrapped it behind closed doors,” Bellotti said in a statement provided to Blaze News.

He stated that WCW is leading the charge alongside Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) to “eliminate outdated EPA red tape that forces companies to poison puppies in expensive, ineffective, government-mandated pesticide and chemical tests.” Bellotti was referring to the Fiscal Year 27 Interior-EPA Appropriations bill, which includes WCW-backed language to defund dog testing mandates for pesticides and chemicals. The House is scheduled to vote on the bill on Wednesday.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to bankroll big-government bureaucrats who mandate beagle torture, butcher bunnies, force animals to inhale firearm emissions in bizarre gun-control experiments, or make animals eat lard and breathe smog,” Bellotti continued. “The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!”

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​News, Anthony fauci, White coat waste, Lee zeldin, Donald trump, Trump administration, Michael cloud, Animal testing, Politics 

A troubled Democratic congressional candidate in Hawaii has been arrested after allegedly brandishing a firearm at county employees.

At around 9:30 a.m. on Friday, a suspect later identified as 40-year-old Kirill Basin marched into a county building in Wailuku and began “brandishing a firearm and engaged in a verbal altercation with County employees,” prompting a call to dispatch at approximately 10:57 a.m., according to a press release from the Maui Police Department.

The alleged gun incident on Friday is but the latest in a series of apparently bizarre events involving increasingly aggressive behavior from Basin.

The county has not explained the 90-minute gap between when the suspect first arrived and when police were finally called, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported.

Basin was arrested in Kihei around 12:30 p.m. and taken into custody without incident, police said. He was later charged with felony first-degree terroristic threatening.

“The Maui Police Department will not compromise public safety, and incidents of this nature are taken extremely seriously in Maui County,” said a statement from Chief John Pelletier. “I am extremely proud of the quick response and professionalism displayed by our personnel, which helped ensure a peaceful resolution.”

Jail records indicate Basin has since bonded out of custody.

Basin’s campaign told Blaze News:

Kirill Basin denies that he brandished a firearm or threatened anyone. According to Mr. Basin, the item being referenced was an unloaded pellet gun inside his backpack, with no pellet magazine in it. He states that it was never removed from the backpack, and that the individual making the accusation only saw it inside the bag.

The campaign is deeply concerned that the public description of this matter omits critical facts and presents a one-sided version of events before the evidence has been reviewed. Mr. Basin is presumed innocent. He intends to fight the charge and expects the facts, including available video, witness accounts, police records, body camera footage, booking records, and medical documentation of his injuries, to be reviewed through the proper legal process.

RELATED: Hawaii tells Supreme Court our rights should exist only with permission

Handcuffs and fingerprint card; Daniel Tamas Mehes/Getty Images

The alleged gun incident on Friday is but the latest in a series of apparently bizarre events involving increasingly aggressive behavior from Basin.

On Wednesday, Basin had to be forcibly removed from a South Maui town hall meeting, police said, after he engaged in “a verbal altercation with Council Member Tom Cook and staff members.”

As a result of some continuing alleged interactions in the parking lot outside the town hall, Jared Agtunong, Cook’s executive assistant, successfully petitioned for a temporary restraining order against Basin on Friday, the Civil Beat reported.

The petition alleged that Basin has also badgered Agtunong with threatening texts and phone calls, the Civil Beat added.

“I did not answer Basin’s phone call, but he left a message telling me that I’m a piece of trash, said I should think of my family, and insisted I call him back,” the filing said, according to the outlet. “In additional texts sent on the same day, Basin wished me luck with prison, then at 9:00 p.m., Basin’s text said ‘you’re f**ked.'”

Then on Thursday, the day after the outburst at the town hall but a day before his arrest for alleged terroristic threatening, Basin filed a lawsuit alleging he has been the victim of police brutality, including “prolonged and deliberate infliction of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse,” the Civil Beat reported.

The lawsuit “basically outlines how 3 police officers tortured me for 14 hours,” Basin wrote in an Instagram post on Saturday. “That’s the gist. It’ll never happen to anyone again.”

Basin was also arrested for disorderly conduct on May 2.

As the press release from Maui PD states, Basin is running for Congress. He has filed to run as a Democrat in the 2nd Congressional District of Hawaii.

Records with the Hawaii Office of Elections revealed that Basin was just issued an official 2026 candidate report last Tuesday.

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​Democrat, Hawaii, Terroristic threatening, Politics 

Every year around mid-spring, Google hosts its annual IO event where it shows off the latest and greatest features coming to its products, services, and platforms. While the keynote address is now mostly reserved for AI and Gemini, we still got a sneak peek at the cool new things coming to Android 17. Here’s what you can expect when the update lands later this summer.

Gemini Intelligence

AI is everything these days, with Google even admitting it’s become an “AI-first” company under CEO Sundar Pichai, so it only makes sense that Android would receive a fresh new AI-powered update.

Those who despise it may do the unthinkable: consider switching to iPhone.

Perhaps as a cheeky nod to the flailing Apple Intelligence, Google introduced Gemini Intelligence, the first native AI agent for Android. Its main mission is to automate tasks on your device to free up your time to do other things. Just like you, Gemini Intelligence can interact with the apps installed on your device. If you don’t have an app required to complete a task, it can shift its workflow to the web via Chrome to navigate webpages.

It’s literally like having a personal assistant inside your phone. Tell it what to do, and it will go out and do it on your behalf. Theoretically, that means Gemini Intelligence can do your online shopping, reserve tickets to an upcoming concert, and even book your vacation, complete with airplane tickets and a hotel stay.

In many ways, Gemini Intelligence is the ultimate personal assistant that Google Assistant was always meant to be when it launched more than a decade ago, and with generative AI, we might finally be at the cusp of having useful AI agents in our mobile devices. That may excite some users who are bullish on the AI rush, while those who despise it may do the unthinkable: consider switching to iPhone.

While the Gemini Intelligence demo looked promising, we’ll have to test Google’s new AI agent firsthand to see if it lives up to the hype, which we’ll get to do soon. Gemini Intelligence is coming to Google Pixel 10 phones and Samsung Galaxy S26 devices later this summer.

Gemini Intelligence/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

Pause Point

Phones are addictive, and even with the Digital Wellbeing settings baked into Android that let you set app timers and silence notifications, sometimes your favorite app still pulls you in and wastes hours of your time before you realize what’s happened. If you’re trying to kick certain addictive apps to the curb and setting time limits isn’t enough, Pause Point might be what you need.

This new feature acts as a check point between you and your apps. When activated, a pause screen will show up on your device the next time you open an addictive app. The screen stays up for 10 seconds, giving you time to consider if you really want to click through and waste hours of time doomscrolling on social media or watching cascades of short-form videos. During the waiting period, you’ll be prompted to take a couple of meditative breaths or browse photos of people you should spend time with instead of scrolling. You can even tell it to suggest different apps to open instead of that one addictive thorn in your side.

RELATED: Sick of Microsoft’s preinstalled propaganda on your PC? Block it now.

DigitalVision/Getty Images

Either let the time go by and open the app anyway, or tap “Don’t Open” to close the addictive app and reclaim the free time you almost lost.

The idea of Pause Point is to get you to think twice before you spend too much time looking at a screen, and even though it might sound a little silly for some, it’s a great tool for other users who want to break their app addiction without completely throwing out their smartphone.

Pause Point/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

Other interesting announcements

Google had a few more interesting updates before the close of the event. Here are the highlights:

Expanded Quick Share support: It’s easy to share a photo from one iPhone to another with AirDrop, or between Android phones with Quick Share, but it’s nearly impossible to do the same across OS platforms. That’s changing now that Android 17 includes interoperability with AirDrop, letting iPhone owners and Android users exchange photos, videos, and other files over the air with just a tap. The list of supported devices is small right now, but it’s a step in the right direction to knocking down the walled garden that historically made it harder for Apple and Google devices to communicate with each other.

Quick Share + AirDrop supported devices/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

New iOS transfer tools: Again, it’s easy to upgrade from an iPhone to an iPhone and Android to an Android, but it’s historically been difficult to switch platforms entirely. With Google’s new iOS transfer tools, more of your personal data can be pulled from an old iPhone to a new Android phone, including apps, app data, home screen layout, calls, contacts, and more.

New iOS transfer tools/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

Android Auto optimizations: Widgets you can easily glance at are coming to Android Auto to provide more contextual information about your apps while on the road. Immersive navigation offers a new 3D view of Google Maps when driving, complete with lanes, stop signs, stop lights, and other markers. You can also watch videos on the internal display when your car is stopped or listen to the audio of the video only when in drive.

Android Auto updates/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

Googlebooks

Serving as its “one more thing” moment, Google had a final surprise to tease before the end of the event. It’s called Googlebook.

Not to be confused with Google Books, the books archival service established in 2004, or Google Play Books, the company’s little-known competitor to Amazon Kindle and Apple Books, Googlebooks are a new breed of laptop that run on a combined version of Android and ChromeOS.

Just like mobile Android, this laptop-ready version of Android is centered on AI. Gemini lives in the cursor. Simply wiggle the mouse to summon it to the forefront to read your screen and complete different tasks based on what it sees — schedule a calendar event it spotted in your email, automatically write a reply, or prompt Gemini with your own queries. The goal is to make laptops more useful with AI, though I’m not sold on the initial demo. It feels like Googlebooks are still searching for a problem in need of a solution to make them stick.

Nevertheless, Googlebooks are meant to replace Chromebooks as Google’s flagship laptop platform, though Google claims that Chromebooks are also sticking around, at least for schools and other institutions.

Googlebooks/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

Android 17 is coming

All the features covered today are expected to roll out in Android 17 to Google Pixel phones first this summer. After that, it will make its way to other Android phones as OEMs like Samsung, Motorola, and OnePlus integrate their user interfaces into the final Android codebase for their own devices.

​Tech, Google, Android 17, Artificial intelligence 

Texas police officers said a home “smelled like death” when they were called to investigate after being alerted about the foul odor.

Inside they found two young children sitting in a bathtub halfway filled with dirty water and the home buried with feces, garbage, and maggots, according to an affidavit.

Police said the children smelled like ‘urine, feces, body odor, and stagnant water.’ The children said they didn’t know how to read or write and had never been to school.

Officers from the Temple Police Department said they were called to the home on Young Avenue on May 20 after a caller reported the odor and no sign of the residents.

They knocked on the doors and windows, but no one responded. Then they noted flies at the windows, which led them to believe someone had died inside.

Police made entry into the home and found 34-year-old Michael Robbins and 68-year-old John Robbins coming to the door.

They inspected the home and said every surface was filled with garbage, rodent and mouse droppings, rotting food, and maggots.

Then they found the two children.

The 8- and 10-year-old children had matted hair that was apparently infested with bugs. When they were told to get dressed, they returned in foul-smelling clothing with food stains.

Police said the children smelled like “urine, feces, body odor, and stagnant water.” The children said they didn’t know how to read or write and had never been to school.

One of the children had their adult teeth growing rotten in their mouth, an affidavit said.

Police determined that the men were not providing food for the children and that they were forced to fend for themselves.

The children were transported to McClane’s Children’s Hospital for treatment.

RELATED: Police rescue 2 children from freezing home with ‘overwhelming’ smell of dog feces and urine: ‘Like a punch to the face’

Neighbors told police they had not seen the children in years.

Both men were booked into the Bell County Jail on charges of abandoning or endangering a child with intent. They each have a bond of $60,000.

Temple is a city of about 82,000 residents located 80 miles north of Austin in central Texas.

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​Child endangerment, Child abuse, Child neglect, Filthy home, Crime 

“Backrooms” came out of internet lore to take down “The Mandalorian.” Perhaps audiences are turning on Disney. The film is now a smash hit theatrical release, but its story began online, where it grew from a 2019 4chan image and creepypasta into one of the most recognizable examples of liminal horror: familiar spaces that somehow make no sense.

The idea began on 4chan’s paranormal board, where a discussion about “disquieting spaces that just feel off” led to a user defining the Backrooms as spaces where you “noclip” out of reality. The term comes from video games, where a player slips outside the designed bounds of the game into unintended space. The Backrooms are marked by yellow wallpaper, buzzing lights, and seemingly infinite rooms.

‘Backrooms’ asks a question more terrifying than anything hiding under the fluorescent lights: What are you doing with your guilt?

These spaces are liminal, meaning they should function as transitions. Hallways, corridors, and waiting rooms are meant to have an entry point and a destination. What makes the Backrooms terrifying is that they do not go anywhere. The hallway has no destination. That is not merely inconvenient. It is a picture of purpose removed.

The movement, then, runs from liminal horror to cosmic horror. Liminal horror unsettles us because a familiar space no longer performs its purpose. Cosmic horror goes further. It asks whether all of reality is like that. The terror is not merely that something bad may happen inside reality. The terror is that reality itself may not make sense.

On the surface, life seems familiar and coherent. But as we move through it, life often becomes stranger and harder to explain. It does not turn out as we hoped. Our efforts fail. Our goals recede. Our explanations collapse. That is the fear beneath the fluorescent lights: not monsters, but meaninglessness.

We assume reality can be understood. When failure comes, we think we need more information, more self-help, more discipline, or a better method. Then we try again. We expect success. But we fail again. The failures accumulate. And life gets shorter.

That makes this horror different from a standard slasher or zombie film. In those stories, the threat is physical and animal-like. You cannot reason with the monster. You simply have to survive it. Cosmic horror raises the stakes. It asks: What if rationality is not built into reality at all? What if reason is merely man’s frantic attempt to impose order on chaos?

Clark, the film’s protagonist, embodies that question. He enters the Backrooms already looking for an explanation that will let him escape responsibility. His failures have left him with a ruined marriage and a failed career. He wants to be told that none of this is his fault. He refuses to see his obvious flaws as the cause of what happened to him. That makes him a perfect fit for the irrationality of the Backrooms.

Guilt is the bridge between the film’s horror and its spiritual meaning. Clark does not simply want to survive the Backrooms. He wants the Backrooms to explain him. He wants the maze to tell him that his failures were not really his fault.

RELATED: Indiana Jones found the lost ark of campus clichés

Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Paramount+

In that sense, the Backrooms can be read as an image of the unconscious mind. As in a dream, things feel familiar but not quite right. The spaces are recognizable and impossible at the same time. Clark searches there for something that will excuse him, but he cannot find anything intelligible. He wants the maze to justify him. Instead, it exposes him. He is trapped in the Backrooms because he is already trapped inside himself.

Director Kane Parsons has said the Backrooms are not purgatory or hell. In a literal sense, he is right. They are not presented as divine judgment according to a moral order. But that is exactly why they work as an image of a different terror: existence without moral order at all.

Christianity gives a name to this terror. It is life severed from the God who made reality intelligible. Hell is terrifying not merely because of punishment, but because those in hell have cut off communion with God the Creator. God made the world with wisdom. The world makes sense because God created it and gave man a rational soul by which to understand his creation.

When human beings reject God, they cut themselves off from the source of rationality and meaning. They then try to create their own smaller rationalities and meanings. All of them collapse because human beings cannot be God.

The person who has lost communion with God occupies a dreadful liminal space. He senses that he was created for a purpose, but he can no longer grasp that purpose. Reality feels familiar, but something is wrong. It has become unintelligible.

To be handed over to final meaninglessness while still possessing a mind that longs to understand is the greatest terror imaginable. You cannot understand reality. You cannot understand yourself. All lesser terrors frighten us because they echo this one.

One word often used to describe the Backrooms and their occupants is “deformity.” That’s key. Deformity is the attempted creation of someone who cannot create rightly. It is Lucifer’s counterfeit of what God made, and it turns out wrong. When man follows Lucifer by believing he can be his own god, he ends up in the Backrooms of his own unintelligible mind.

God created through the Logos. Lucifer deforms creation through the anti-Logos.

RELATED: When ‘be nice’ becomes the whole ethic, we’re in trouble

akinbostanci via iStock/Getty Images

The movement of the film is clear: A man burdened by guilt enters a world without meaning, seeks self-justification, and is destroyed by the irrationality he hoped would excuse him. That gives us good reason to consider our own guilt before God. Clark is gripped by guilt, but his solution is self-justification. He deceives himself about his failures and wants others to join the deception.

If we do not deal with guilt by turning in repentance to God through Christ, we are left with the same self-deception and the same liminal space of meaninglessness.

The Christian answer is not self-justification but repentance and reconciliation. In Christ, guilt is not hidden in a maze, explained away by trauma, or dissolved into meaninglessness. It is forgiven. Communion with God is restored. Reality becomes intelligible again because we are reconciled to the One who made it.

In the end, “Backrooms” asks a question more terrifying than anything hiding under the fluorescent lights: What are you doing with your guilt?

​Backrooms, Horror, Guilt, Religion, Faith, Christianity, Hollywood, Entertainment, Movies, Opinion & analysis 

Barney Frank spent his final months warning Democrats that the left had become a danger to itself.

Frank, the 16-term congressman from Massachusetts who died May 19 at 86, had been promoting a book scheduled for September publication: “The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy.”

The most effective revolutionaries do not always sound revolutionary. Sometimes they sound like men telling the revolutionaries to shut up, count the votes, and wait their turn.

That title says a great deal. Frank warned his fellow Democrats that they’re losing the electorate. But he was no mushy moderate. He was solidly a man of the left who understood that his party had developed habits that could cost it power — and, in his view, endanger the country.

Before anyone mistakes my point: This is not a eulogy for the co-author of Dodd-Frank, a man with more than his share of ethical lapses and scandals — male prostitution, anyone? — and a long record of expanding federal power and undermining American civilization. I am not here to praise Barney Frank’s life and career. I am here to draw a vital lesson about politics — how it works, who wins, and who loses.

Frank spent more than three decades in Congress advancing left-wing causes, from gay rights and anti-discrimination law to financial regulation and a more aggressive federal role in American life.

But not too aggressive too soon.

In one of his final interviews, Frank told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Democrats had succeeded in moving inequality to the center of the party’s agenda. But that success, he said, had “enabled people who wanted to use that as a platform for a wide range of social and cultural changes, some of which the public isn’t ready for.”

That little caveat — what “the public isn’t ready for” — carries a lot of weight.

To the activist mind, public reluctance often looks like bigotry, cowardice, or false consciousness. To Frank, it looked like politics. Voters were not clay to be molded by professors, nonprofits, and online scolds. They had to be persuaded, reassured, pressured, and moved over time.

Politics is persuasion — and persuasion can be the work of a lifetime.

Frank never confused delay with defeat. He treated delay as part of the cost of lasting victory. That was the real meaning of his final, misunderstood calls to “moderation” — something his irritating leftist critics missed or chose to ignore. He did not ask the left to abandon its goals. He asked the left to stop endangering them.

RELATED: Inside the left’s push to reshape 2028 with ranked-choice voting

Michael Blackshire/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

His career offers a useful correction to our political vocabulary. We tend to call politicians “moderate” when they sound less insane than their allies. But Frank was not moderate in his ends. He was moderate only in his sense of timing, sequencing, and risk.

Consider same-sex marriage. Frank supported gay rights long before they became fashionable in elite institutions. But he understood that the movement first had to win more basic fights against discrimination before asking the public to redefine marriage.

“When we were fighting for gay rights — a fight I think we have essentially won — we knew that some issues were more popular than others,” Frank told the New York Times a week before his death. “So we tended to start by trying to win the ones that were most popular. Gays in the military. Employment. We didn’t go after same-sex marriage, we didn’t make marriage a litmus test, until the very end.”

Then he drew the analogy to biological males competing in women’s sports. “That is the most controversial part of the agenda — the equivalent of gay marriage — so put it at the end. If you go at it that way, you build support for it. But if you insist on the most controversial parts all at once, you make it harder.”

Notice what he did not say. He did not say men in women’s sports had crossed an uncrossable line. He said the left had mistimed the fight. Prepare the ground, then advance. Move the public, then consolidate the gain. Do not force every question at once and then denounce the electorate for failing to keep pace.

Call that whatever you like, but don’t call it mushy moderation. That’s professional politics.

The same instinct shaped Frank’s conduct in Congress. In 2007, he supported removing gender identity protections from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act because he believed the votes did not exist to pass the broader bill. Activists accused him of betrayal. Frank’s answer was coldly practical: Do what you can now, and return later for the rest.

Frank was a patient institutional leftist. He understood committees, votes, caucuses, and public opinion. He could be abrasive, partisan, and arrogant. But he did not mistake moral intensity for legislative power.

That separated him from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whom Frank often criticized as a politician with little to show for decades in Congress. Sanders treats politics as indictment. The system is corrupt. The billionaires are guilty. The people have been betrayed. Some of that rhetoric can move voters, but rhetoric alone does not write statutes, build coalitions, or hold fragile majorities together.

Sanders rages against the system. Frank learned how to use it.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complicates the picture. She entered Congress as a democratic socialist insurgent in the Sanders mold. But she has grown in office — not toward the center, exactly, but toward machinery. Frank would not have mistaken her for one of his own. But he might have recognized the beginning of her political education.

RELATED: Your enemies aren’t mentally ill. They apparently just want to kill you.

Blaze Media Illustration

A better comparison might be Jerry Brown.

California Republicans never got past the late-1970s caricature of “Governor Moonbeam,” and it cost them. “Moonbeam” was Jerry 1.0. The man who left the governor’s office in 2019 was Jerry 7.0, maybe 7.5: older, harder, more disciplined, more fiscally cautious, and vastly more dangerous. Brown was no conservative, though he possessed certain conservative instincts. Brown succeeded because he understood California’s currents better than the Republicans who mocked him.

Brown had his canoe theory of politics: Paddle a little to the left, paddle a little to the right, and you get where you need to go — ultimately, the to left bank of the river. Brown was smart enough and steady enough not to tip the canoe on the way there.

Conservatives should study politicians like Brown and Frank, not because we should admire or emulate their goals, but because we should understand their methods. A political movement that cannot describe its opponents accurately cannot defeat them. Worse, it cannot learn from them.

Frank’s final warning to Democrats was simple: Stop letting the loudest voices on the left turn every unpopular cultural demand into a test of moral seriousness. Read the room. Build consensus. Move when the ground can hold.

That warning should stir conservatives, too. The most effective revolutionaries do not always sound revolutionary. Sometimes they sound like men telling the revolutionaries to shut up, count the votes, and wait their turn.

​Barney frank, Bernie sanders, Democrats, Jerry brown, Opinion & analysis, The left, Alexandria ocasio-cortez, Gay marriage, Transgender agenda, Transgender athletes, Sports, Elections, Conservatives, Jake tapper, New york times, Moderate 

For years, Glenn Beck has warned that artificial general intelligence — a true master of all human intellectual tasks — will completely upend society by the year 2030.

But according to internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, AGI is already here. On a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” he claimed that we quietly crossed the threshold with the latest chatbot models like GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.6, Grok 4.3, and Gemini 3. Andreessen declared that these models now outperform top human experts in many domains.

Glenn believes this is critical information. Like electricity, telephones, television, the internet, and other general-purpose technologies that are so powerful and broad they fundamentally reshape how society, economies, and daily life function, AGI will revolutionize the world.

Is humanity ready to navigate the rapids, or will it crash on the rocks of blind trust and indiscrimination?

Unlike the aforementioned technologies whose transformative powers were slow, AI is “coming at the speed of light,” Glenn says.

“And because of that, there will be almost no chance to adapt or to stop and think, ‘Wait a minute, what is it we’re losing? And what is it we’re gaining here?’” he warns.

AGI, Glenn explains, will render much of the world’s experts obsolete.

“This is a tool that touches every single field at once: medicine, law, education, programming, finance, therapy, research, media, art, science — everything,” he says.

In his conversation with Rogan, Andreessen claimed that medical doctors are already relying heavily on AI models to assist in diagnosing and treating patients.

“When doctors are using this in examination rooms, you need to pay attention,” Glenn says, “because it’ll reveal something really important that always comes first in history, and that’s this: The experts themselves already know.”

“While we’re sitting here using it as a toy and debating whether AI is useful, the professionals, the ones who have those deep credentials, they’ve already quietly moved on to depending on it,” he continues.

Adoption before disruption, Glenn says, has long been the pattern.

“Factories automate before workers hear about it; banks digitize before the tellers disappear; retailers optimize before the storefronts close. The future arrives inside the institution first,” he explains.

While this seems like apocalyptic news, he acknowledges the bright side: People who learn how to use AGI to their genuine advantage by employing it as their own personal “staff” will not only avoid being replaced; they’ll create new opportunities that were impossible before.

“With AI, if you know how to prompt, a small company can compete against giant corporations. A teenager can launch a product that used to have millions in capital behind it. … A single mom can get tutoring, legal explanations, business advice, health analysis … free,” Glenn says. “The upside of this is staggering.”

But there is a dark side that “matters just as much,” he warns.

While access to information has been democratized, judgment remains a skill that must be cultivated with care.

“When everyone has access to infinite information, discernment becomes priceless,” Glenn says.

He fears that those who never learned how to think critically and ask questions will blindly follow whatever AI tells them, perhaps to their demise.

“I can ask AI how to treat symptoms, but do I know the right questions to ask to see if that analysis of what I’m treating is wrong? … You can ask it legal advice, but do you know when you need a real, actual, physical attorney?” Glenn comments.

When people lose that “living moral compass” inside them — the one that detects manipulation, corruption, and ill advice — we’re in a dark age indeed.

“That’s why I have said you will be lost without the spirit to guide you,” Glenn says, “because [AI arguments are] going to be so overwhelmingly well-crafted, you may not know what is true.”

“The whole thing is not whether machines can think. Yes. The real question is whether humans can still think, and I’m not sure about that.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Artificial general intelligence, Joe rogan, Marc andreessen 

New York state officials are facing a subpoena from the Trump administration after they refused to cooperate with the investigation into a horrific lethal bus crash.

Five people were killed, including two children, when the North Carolina-based travel bus plowed into cars that had slowed down for a construction zone on Friday at about 2:35 a.m. Dozens were injured in the Stafford County, Virginia, crash.

‘This is one of the most tragic things I’ve ever seen. Absolutely tragic.’

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy identified the driver as 48-year-old Jing Shen Dong, a man originally from China who could not speak English.

The agency has now indicated that Dong had a commercial driver’s license from the state of New York but is accusing the state of refusing to cooperate with its investigation.

Investigators are seeking information about what driving school Dong attended, his entry-level driver training, and other records related to his license.

The Transportation Department demanded that the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles produce the records by 10 a.m. on Wednesday or suffer consequences that could include criminal or civil contempt proceedings.

About 48 people were transported to local hospitals over injuries from the wreck, at least three of which were in critical condition.

Four of the victims killed in the crash were identified as a family of four from Massachusetts that was traveling to a wedding with homemade desserts. They had emigrated to the U.S. from Moldova in 2008.

Dong was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, but other charges are expected as the investigation continues.

Duffy vowed to uncover what agencies and companies were responsible for putting Dong on the road.

“Unacceptable. This is exactly why we are holding states accountable, enforcing the rules of the road, and cracking down on drivers who can’t speak English,” he said Friday. “If you can’t be properly trained, read our road signs, or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus.”

RELATED: Security camera shows school bus blow through stop sign and get hit by city bus, 6 people hurt

Thirty-four travelers were on the bus that originated in New York City and was headed to Charlotte, North Carolina.

“I’ve got to say, this is one of the most tragic things I’ve ever seen. Absolutely tragic,” said Federal Transit Administration spokesperson Peyton Vogel on the day of the crash.

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​Chinese driver, Commercial drivers license, Lethal bus crash, Subpoena, Politics 

A split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that War Secretary Pete Hegseth had acted unconstitutionally when he ordered a ban on transgender-identifying members of the military.

Two of the three judges said a preliminary injunction could stay in force against the Pentagon keeping transgender-identifying plaintiffs out of the military.

‘We have direct evidence in this case that animus motivated the classifications in the Hegseth Policy.’

The two judges said the order was likely a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

“The government’s stated reason for issuing the Hegseth Policy as based solely upon gender dysphoria was pretextual, and that instead, the Hegseth Policy was premised, at least in part, on a non-legitimate state interest to harm the politically unpopular group of transgender persons,” Judge Robert Wilkins wrote in the ruling.

Judge Judith Rogers agreed with Wilkins about the constitutionality of the order.

However, Wilkins and Judge Justin Walker agreed separately that the Trump administration would be allowed to block transgender-identifying plaintiffs who wanted to join the military as the case progressed through the courts.

In the first days of President Donald Trump’s second term, he issued an executive order declaring that the military’s “high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity” were not compatible with the “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.”

In Feb. 2025, the Defense Department issued the new restrictions on transgender-identifying military members.

Wilkins pointed out in his ruling that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit had collectively garnered more than 80 commendations in the military and served a combined 130 years.

“This is not a case where we are left to speculate why the government drafted such broad, undifferentiated classifications,” he said. “Unless we are going to fall for the old Groucho Marx line — ‘Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?’ — we have direct evidence in this case that animus motivated the classifications in the Hegseth Policy.”

RELATED: Transgender military members sue Trump, Hegseth over trans ban

Wilkins also argued that the Trump administration had “conceded” that there was “no evidence to establish that persons with gender dysphoria are not honest, humble, and full of integrity.”

A defense official said that about 4,200 troops had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by Dec. 2024.

Walker was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2020, Wilkins was nominated by former President Barack Obama, and Rogers was nominated by former President Bill Clinton.

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​Pete hegseth, Transgender military members, Us court of appeals, Lgbtq, Politics 

James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, has been distancing himself from some of his more provocative past statements now that he’s in the general election against Republican candidate Ken Paxton.

On this episode of “Pat Gray Unleashed,” Pat and the panel revisit one of Talarico’s wildest statements and criticize his convenient backtracking.

In 2021 during a Texas House floor/committee debate on transgender issues, Talarico claimed that “God is nonbinary.”

“God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary,” he began.

He then used Scripture to justify supporting trans rights.

“In Genesis 1:26, God speaks of God’s self in the plural, saying, ‘Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.’ That’s the infinite multitude of God. The masculine, the feminine, and everything in between,” Talarico continued. “Trans children are God’s children made in God’s own image. There’s nothing wrong with them. Nothing at all. They are perfect. They are beautiful, and they are sacred.”

This highly controversial claim, which many Christians called heretical, has been hammered by Attorney General Ken Paxton and Republicans as powerful proof of just how radical Talarico really is. The clip has resurfaced in force during the 2026 Senate race, with Paxton using it to expose Talarico’s extreme views on gender and Christianity that are wildly out of step with Texas values and mainstream biblical theology.

It appears Talarico knows his “God is nonbinary” statement isn’t helping him in the Senate race. In a recent interview with CBS’ Ed O’Keefe, he softened his former statement.

“I was being intentionally provocative with that statement. But what it means is that God can’t be defined by human categories. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians says that in Christ there is neither male nor female,” he said, blaming Paxton for “intentionally clipping [his] cringy comments to distract from his career of corruption.”

“Oh, so it’s Ken Paxton’s fault that you’re twisting the word of God?” scoffs co-host Keith Malinak, calling Talarico “insufferable.”

In an earlier interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Talarico shared similar sentiments.

“I understand that that comment is a little provocative. I said it on the House floor when the extremists in the Republican legislature were picking on school kids who were different. But I don’t think it’s controversial theologically. Most Christians would acknowledge that God is beyond gender,” he said.

Pat notes how “bizarre” it is that a trans advocate like Talarico claims to be “a champion of women’s rights” but only seems to care about the feelings of transgender-identifying people — never the women who suffer from their spaces and sports being invaded by biological males.

“If they want to play sports, let’s come up with a way to let them engage in sports. Like with their own biological gender, they could compete, or we create a separate category for trans people,” Pat argues. “But you don’t stick them against the females. It doesn’t make any sense.”

To hear more of the panel’s analysis and commentary, watch the episode above.

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​Pat gray, Pay gray unleashed, James talarico, Pat gray unleashed 

The crowded California gubernatorial race, which started with 61 candidates, has now apparently narrowed to just three: former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra (D), climate advocate and businessman Tom Steyer (D), and former Fox News host and small-business owner Steve Hilton (R), according to the latest polling.

‘If we don’t get together as a party, if we don’t unite, then we could have Tom Steyer and Xavier Becerra in the general election.’

With California’s primary election operating on a nonpartisan basis, which allows the top two candidates regardless of party affiliation to advance, there had previously been speculation that the Democratic Party’s failure to coalesce behind a single candidate could result in two Republicans, Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, advancing to the November 3 general election.

One month out from the election, polling showed 26% of voters were undecided, with votes split among the Democrat candidates.

However, polls conducted in the final days before the primary election revealed a significant decrease in undecided voters, an increase in support for Becerra, a close contest for second place between Steyer and Hilton, and Bianco falling behind.

An Emerson College poll conducted May 27-28 reported that 4% were still undecided. Of those surveyed, 28% stated they were likely to vote for Becerra, 22% for Steyer, 21% for Hilton, and 12% for Bianco.

A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll completed May 19-24 showed a similarly close race, with 25% supporting Becerra, 21% supporting Hilton, and 19% supporting Steyer. Bianco trailed with 11%.

RELATED: California Democrats’ search for a front-runner: Polls show 26% of voters undecided in fast-approaching gubernatorial race

Steve Hilton. Jason Henry/Nexstar/Bloomberg – Pool/Getty Images

The latest polling prompted Hilton to call on Bianco to drop out of the race. He encouraged Bianco supporters to vote for him to avoid two Democrat candidates advancing to the general election to succeed California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

“These polls are looking very concerning. Yes, it’s true that I’m leading in some of them, but it’s also true that it’s a very, very tight race,” Hilton stated on Saturday in a video published to social media.

“If we don’t get together as a party, if we don’t unite, then we could have Tom Steyer and Xavier Becerra in the general election. That is a disaster for California. That means no change.”

RELATED: Katie Porter’s new ad jokes about one of her worst moments — and she’s getting CRUSHED online for it

Chad Bianco. Leon Bennett/Getty Images

“There’s one person who could stop this doomsday scenario, and that is my friend Chad Bianco,” Hilton continued. “Chad, the best time to have dropped out would have been a couple of weeks ago, but the second-best time is right now.”

The following day, Bianco dismissed Hilton’s comments by calling on Hilton’s supporters to unite behind him instead.

“It’s clear that Steve Hilton supporters should unite and support me,” Bianco wrote.

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​News, Steve hilton, Xavier becerra, California, Gavin newsom, Tom steyer, Chad bianco, Politics