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Ever since Marlon Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to decline his Oscar in 1973, celebrities have felt free to treat acceptance speeches as a kind of political pulpit.

Over the years, our socially conscious superiors have used the stage to advance a range of causes. Whether it’s Leonardo DiCaprio scolding us about climate change, Patricia Arquette reminding us that “wage inequality” affects even the most overpaid among us, or Joaquin Phoenix shaming milk enjoyers, many stars refuse to bask in the adulation without giving a little something back.

It was, by the standards of modern Hollywood, almost subversive.

Even moments that touch on family have often been refracted through politics. At the 2020 Golden Globes, Michelle Williams credited her success to the children she didn’t have: “I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose” — while in the same breath celebrating the two kids who presumably didn’t run afoul of her reproductive rights.

But Sunday night, Irish actress Jessie Buckley did something far more unusual: She praised marriage, children, and the ordinary drama of family life.

Accepting Best Actress for her role in “Hamnet” — a film that imagines the marriage of William Shakespeare and Agnes Hathaway and the grief they endure after the death of their young son — Buckley turned not to politics but to her husband and infant daughter, even revealing her daughter’s name publicly for the first time:

Fred, I love you, man. … You’re the most incredible dad. You’re my best friend, and I want to have 20,000 more babies with you. … And Isla, my little girl … I love you, and I love being your mom, and I can’t wait to discover life beside you.

It was, by the standards of modern Hollywood, almost subversive.

She returned to the theme later in the speech, noting that it was her first Mother’s Day in the U.K. and dedicating the award “to the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.”

She was even more effusive backstage. Speaking to reporters, Buckley described the moment as a kind of “crazy alchemy,” noting that her Oscar win fell on her first Mother’s Day. Her daughter, she said, had just gotten her first tooth.

I woke up with her lying on my chest, snuggling me … what a gift to get to explore motherhood … and then to become one myself … and then to receive this recognition of the incredible role mothers play in our world on this day is something I will never, ever forget.

Buckley has suggested the role didn’t just portray motherhood — it stirred a longing for it. While filming “Hamnet,” she said she “deeply wanted to become a mother,” an experience she described as “quite intense” before it became real. Soon after, it was.

Some commentators wondered why Buckley didn’t thank her on-screen husband Paul Mescal, the film’s Shakespeare. Was it a calculated move to avoid being overshadowed by a bigger name?

More likely, they’re overthinking it.

Buckley has always seemed as grounded as she is talented. Born and raised in Killarney, County Kerry, one of five children, she comes from a large, close-knit family — a background that makes her ease with motherhood feel less like a rebrand than a continuation. She is married not to a fellow celebrity but to a man the public knows only by his first name. Her speech reflected that life: intimate, unvarnished, and oriented toward something other than careerism.

And that, in today’s Hollywood, is what made it feel radical.

In an industry that often frames family as an obstacle — something to be delayed, outsourced, or quietly regretted — Buckley spoke of it as the central adventure. Not a burden, but a joy. Not a limitation, but a calling.

For decades, Oscar speeches have tried to tell audiences how to remake the world.

Buckley’s suggested something simpler: that the most meaningful work might already be waiting at home.

​Culture, Hollywood, Jessie buckley, Motherhood 

The confirmation for President Donald Trump’s top choice for the next head of the Department of Homeland Security is off to a rocky start, thanks to one Republican senator.

Trump tapped Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma to replace current DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. While most of Mullin’s Senate colleagues have praised Trump’s choice, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was not keen on the nominee.

‘Seems like you fight Republicans more than you work with us.’

Paul opened the confirmation hearing Wednesday by challenging Mullin to disavow political violence. Paul was specifically asking Mullin to address alleged past comments in which he said he “completely” understood why Paul’s neighbor attacked him in 2017, leaving him with severe injuries including broken ribs.

“You have never had the courage to look me in the eye and tell me that the assault was justified,” Paul said of Mullin’s comments. Paul also claimed Mullin referred to him as a “freaking snake.”

RELATED: Noem is OUT — and Trump has named her replacement

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Mullin addressed Paul’s claims, insisting that he and Paul had a conversation about their differences when Mullin was still a member of the House. Mullin also looked directly at Paul and said, “I’m very blunt and direct to the point. And if I have something to say, I’ll say it directly to your face.”

Mullin then added, “Seems like you fight Republicans more than you work with us.”

Paul later said he would note vote for Mullin’s confirmation, saying Mullin’s “temperament was not suitable” and that his “anger issues are a problem.”

“They’ve had to have known for weeks that I couldn’t be real happy about a guy that won’t apologize and thinks that my assault was perfectly understandable,” Paul said.

A “no” vote from Paul could cost Mullin the confirmation. Mullin first needs to be approved by a simple majority of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Paul chairs. If senators vote on party lines, just one Republican defection could throw the whole nomination.

RELATED: Trump’s unusual Cabinet meeting may reveal which officials are on thin ice

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

If Mullin’s nomination advances through committee, he will need a simple majority in the Republican-controlled Senate.

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​Donald trump, Kristi noem, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Rand paul, Senate republicans, Markwayne mullin, Trump nominee, Senate confirmation, Confirmation hearing, Political violence, Politics 

Every March, without consent, the federal government steals an hour of sleep from hundreds of millions of people. Every November, it hands the hour back, as if that settles the debt. It doesn’t. The damage is already done. The bodies counted. The fender-benders filed with insurance.

This is the absurdity of daylight saving time: a policy dressed up as convenience that functions, in practice, as a twice-annual public health hazard. Two states — Hawaii and Arizona, apparently the adults in the room — do not participate.

The trade: preventable deaths in exchange for slightly earlier winter sunsets. It’s not a close call.

The carnage is well documented and almost comically avoidable. Heart attacks spike in the days after the spring shift. Strokes climb. Traffic fatalities rise during that first fog-brained week, when reaction times slow to something approaching drunk driving. Workplace injuries surge. Emergency rooms fill.

Physiological shock

The mechanism isn’t mysterious. The human body is exquisitely calibrated to light cycles, and ripping away an hour mimics the physiological shock of being flung across time zones overnight. Stress hormones spike. Melatonin craters.

The body’s rather elegant machinery gets jammed with a wrench — annually, on a schedule — by people who will never be held responsible for any of it.

If a pharmaceutical company produced a drug with this side-effect profile, the FDA would pull it from the market within a week.

Classroom chaos

Children absorb the worst of it. After the spring shift, school buses roll before sunrise, hauling kids whose biology insists it’s still the middle of the night. Adolescents — already sleep-deprived by group chats and the algorithmic abyss of TikTok — get hammered hardest. Attention fractures. Memory slips. Impulse control dissolves.

The classroom after the time change looks less like a learning environment and more like a hostage situation.

Billions get poured into fixing education, while a mandated sleep disruption quietly picks its pockets twice a year. The policy eats the investment. Test scores dip, classrooms destabilize, and learning suffers.

All to preserve someone’s evening tee time.

Mental health follows the same logic. Circadian misalignment fogs the mind. It destabilizes mood, amplifies anxiety, and deepens depressive episodes.

The human standard

Standard time — anchored to the sun rather than legislative preference — flips that script. Earlier morning light stabilizes serotonin, steadies metabolism, and synchronizes human rhythms with the environment humans actually evolved under.

The benefits aren’t philosophical. They’re measurable, reproducible, and stubbornly indifferent to the opinions of state legislators.

Enter California’s Senate Bill 1197.

What makes this legislation notable — beyond its merits — is who is championing it: Republican senators who actually read the research.

Not a talking point. Not a culture-war signal. Just data, reviewed and acted upon.

In a political climate where bipartisan cooperation on health policy feels about as common as a lobbyist who forgot to file paperwork, a group of Republican legislators looked at the peer-reviewed evidence on sleep disruption, cardiovascular events, traffic fatalities, and childhood cognition and reached the obvious conclusion: This is stupid, and we should stop doing it.

RELATED: Trump ‘fully on board’ with legislation to make daylight saving time permanent, senators say

Photo by SAMUEL CORUM/AFP via Getty Images

Votes are in

California voters agreed back in 2018. Legislative inertia is the only thing standing between the state and sanity.

The science here isn’t complicated, contested, or politically inconvenient. Even Sacramento should be able to handle that.

The economic case is just as compelling. Productivity losses from post-shift disruption cost tens of billions nationally every cycle. Sick days multiply. Error rates climb. Health care spending ticks upward.

Sleep debt correlates with obesity, metabolic disorders, and long-term cognitive decline — costs that don’t show up in the week of the shift but accumulate quietly across years.

Opponents of the bill will likely invoke evening leisure — longer summer nights for golf, grilling, gender-reveal parties, and so on — as if that justifies annual cardiac events and crashed school buses.

An obvious trade

Standard time still delivers long summer evenings. Sunset in Los Angeles in late June arrives around 8 p.m. under standard time. Nobody’s barbecue is getting canceled. Nobody’s constitutional rights are being trampled.

The trade: preventable deaths in exchange for slightly earlier winter sunsets. It’s not a close call.

The federal government could authorize a national fix tomorrow. Congress has simply chosen not to. In the meantime, California’s bill offers a replicable model: well researched, cross-partisan, and focused on whether a policy actually helps people rather than whether it polls well in October.

Pass S.B. 1197. Encourage every statehouse still running this cruel charade to follow.

The science on this one isn’t contested or nuanced. It’s stacked, overwhelming, and pointing in one direction.

Let noon mean noon. Let light arrive when it’s supposed to. And let people sleep without the government scheduling their insomnia.

​Daylight saving time, Make america healthy again, California, Sleep, Circadian rhythms, Time, Lifestyle 

The residents of a small town in Alabama were shocked to discover that a police officer and four faculty members of their school district were accused of possessing child sex abuse material.

The four teachers, as well as the police officer and school basketball coach, worked for the Pickens County School district in Aliceville, a town of only about 2,000 residents.

The officer had also worked as an assistant basketball coach at a Pickens County school.

Three of the teachers worked at the Aliceville High School, another worked at the Aliceville Elementary School, and the police officer worked for the Aliceville Police Dept.

The five suspects faced charges related to child sexual abuse material and are being held at the Pickens County Jail.

Math teacher Roderick Granger, 41, was arrested Jan. 30 for possession of child pornography, failure to report, and an ethics violation. Online records indicate he was given a $1 million bail.

Aliceville High School teacher Antavious Belgrave, 28, faces a number of charges:

Three counts of failure to report;Three counts of sexual misconduct;Three counts of ethics violations;One felony charge for indecent exposure; andThree felony counts of distributing a private image.

Belgrave was also given a $1 million bail.

Fourth-grade teacher Lakethia Wilkins was charged with use of position for personal gain, possession of child pornography, and intent to disseminate pornographic and obscene matter.

High school employee Winston Bishop, 58, was charged with solicitation of child pornography, possession of child pornography, distribution of a controlled substance, and providing a minor with drugs. He was also given a $1 million bail.

Police officer Caminion Gary, 24, was given a $1 million bail and charged with the following:

Solicitation of child pornography;Sexual abuse, a first-degree felony;Production of child pornography;Felony count of transmitting obscene material to a child by computer; andFelony count of child molestation/enticing a child.

Aliceville Police Chief Tonnie Jones said the allegations were serious and Gary had been placed on unpaid administrative leave.

“We’re asking everyone who can — if you believe — to pray because there are a lot of a victims, a lot of victims,” Jones said.

RELATED: Elementary school teacher allegedly possessed thousands of files of child sex abuse material

Gary had also worked as an assistant basketball coach at a Pickens County school.

The Pickens County Sheriff’s Office said the Department of Homeland Security was assisting with the investigation as well as the State Bureau of Investigation and the Aliceville Police Dept.

Pickens County District Attorney Andy Hamlin said there may be more arrests and charges as the investigation continues.

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​Teachers caught with child porn, Police officer with child porn, Crime, Aliceville alabama, Aliceville child sex abuse material 

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock is raising concerns over disturbing scenes of youth violence, pointing to viral footage from spring break in Daytona Beach and the Washington Navy Yard as evidence of what he sees as a growing cultural crisis.

“I see these videos, I see these events, and it breaks my heart. And it breaks my heart because nothing’s being done about it,” Whitlock says.

“If you do any research, the first eight years of a child’s life — critical to their development. And if both parents aren’t on that job those first eight years, you virtually have no shot with course-correcting or fixing or properly adjusting that child,” he continues.

And when Whitlock plays a clip of spring break in Daytona Beach, gunshots ring out, teens are scattered all over, and he describes “women losing their weaves as they run away.”

In another video from the Washington Navy Yard, a fight breaks out between teenagers who appear to be, like in the Daytona clip, majority black.

“Oh, the black kids fighting each other. I’ve never seen that. That’s so unusual,” Whitlock says sarcastically.

“Part of the reason I bring this up is, like, there is an enjoyment that black people clearly have about seeing other black people fight with each other. We whip out our phones, and we record it. No one does anything to stop the fights or break them up,” he continues.

“It’s a recording opportunity,” he adds.

However, while Whitlock is pointing out his disappointment with how the next generation of black kids are turning out, plenty of people don’t seem to want to hear it.

“People are upset with me right now for talking about it,” he says, adding that people often point out that white kids have problems too.

“They have problems. Drugs, you know, sexual degeneracy and all that, feminism. They have problems, but they’re just not as acute because they still have families,” he says. “They still have mom and dad in the home in relatively large numbers.”

“There’s a crisis of black fatherhood, of divorce, dysfunction, kids unsupervised, kids raised by televisions and video games and iPhones,” he continues.

“This is the pandemic, the real pandemic, and it’s not being discussed,” he adds.

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​Fearless with jason whitlock, Fearless, Jason whitlock, Jason whitlock harmony, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Shemeka michelle, Black violence, Black culture, Black lives matter, Spring break, Viral video 

The U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran are taking a toll on each American’s pockets as gas prices surge to the highest level in three years.

Iran responded to the decapitation strikes by confirming fears that it would shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a choking point for global oil tankers.

‘I would love to see the gas prices go down because everybody might not be financially able to meet the demands of these high prices.’

Oil prices have skyrocketed in the nearly three weeks since the strikes began, and Americans are paying nearly a dollar more per gallon at the pump.

That equates to about a 28.9% increase on average, from $2.98 at the beginning of the war to $3.84 on Wednesday.

The Associated Press spoke to drivers in Louisiana and Mississippi as they pumped gas into their vehicles.

“It’s pretty hard. I mean, times are tough for everybody right now,” Amanda Acosta said. “I’m getting way less gas and paying way more money.”

“I would love to see the war end,” said Thelma Williams, an Army Reserves veteran. “I would love to see the gas prices go down because everybody might not be financially able to meet the demands of these high prices.”

Meanwhile in Texas, Lubbock resident Clay Plant said the spikes in oil prices mean an immediate surge of jobs for workers in his region.

“It’s kind of a good sign for us in west Texas,” he said. “I look at it as my friends and family get to eat, and they get to go to work.”

Gas prices range from a high in California of over $5.56 per gallon to a low in Kansas of about $3.23.

RELATED: Gavin Newsom tries to hit Trump administration on energy prices — and gets humiliated online

Economists warn that the rise in oil prices increases the cost of all products that need to be transported and also leads to lower consumer spending as Americans readjust their budgets.

To provide some gas price relief, President Donald Trump temporarily suspended the Jones Act, a 1920 law restricting foreign-flagged ships, on Wednesday. The act has been excoriated by free market economists who argue that it leads to detrimentally higher costs on products shipped to the U.S.

About one-fifth of the world’s global oil supply flowed through the Strait of Hormuz.

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​Us gas prices, Us-israeli war on iran, Oil prices skyrocketing, Why is gas so expensive, Politics 

As the Maine Senate race heats up, BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler is calling out Senator Susan Collins not as a stabilizing moderate, but as a “subversive” within the Republican Party.

“What Collins is facing in the state of Maine is not a pretty picture. Susan Collins has portrayed herself to be a moderate Republican all her life, a sort of centrist Republican. You could call her a liberal Republican,” Wheeler explains.

“She’s not a social conservative. She’s not based. She’s not fully woke either. But what’s happening in the state of Maine is embarrassing for her because the state of Maine is about to elect a senator instead of Collins who’s not a moderate,” she continues.

And this politician who’s not moderate “has a Nazi tattoo on his arm.”

“A Democrat with a Nazi tattoo. A Democrat who has trained the militia, the transgender militia groups that seek to be the Marxist vanguard for a revolution. A man who not only claims to be a socialist, but claims outright to be a communist. I’m talking about Graham Platner,” Wheeler explains.

“Graham Platner, currently in Maine, is polling higher than Susan Collins. Susan Collins risks losing her seat to this whack job. Unless she gets a boost from you, unless people want to support her and turn out, unless people want to expose who Graham Platner is. But what would be our motivation to do that if Collins isn’t on our side?” she asks.

“What would be our motivation to make sure that Graham Platner loses if Collins votes in the exact same way that Graham Platner has promised to do? If Collins is subverting your vote by subverting the president’s agenda, is she on our side really, or is she set to lose everything that she has spent her entire career building?” Wheeler continues.

And Collins does not have a great track record when it comes to supporting the president’s agenda.

“It was Senator Susan Collins and Senator Bill Cassidy who torpedoed President Trump’s original nominee for the CDC, Dave Weldon. Dave Weldon is a congressman from the early 1990s who had the audacity, what, 30 years ago, to question whether the increase in the childhood immunization schedule had any correlation to the increase in chronic disease,” Wheeler explains.

Wheeler also points out that over the course of her career, Collins has taken “nearly three-quarters of a million dollars from the pharmaceutical and health products industry.”

This is why Wheeler crowns Collins as the “most destructive to the MAHA agenda within our own party.”

“The subversive that pretends to be one of us is Susan Collins,” she adds.

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​The liz wheeler show, Liz wheeler, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Susan collins, Maine senate race, Graham platner, Democrat vs republicans, Maha, Make america great again, President trump, The trump administration, Vaccination schedule 

A NASCAR driver apologized after he was suspended indefinitely for mocking another driver in a tone that he called his “gay voice.”

Daniel Dye, 22, was captured on a livestream video using the voice to ridicule IndyCar driver David Malukas after another person said Malukas “plays for the other team.”

In 2022, he was suspended for allegedly punching a high school classmate in the groin.

Dye, who was trading cards at the time, used the gay tone and bobbed his head in a mocking fashion, as described by NBC News.

“It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, yes! We race Indianapolis too! Love Indianapolis and Roger Penske. I love Roger. Love you, Roger,'” Dye said.

“As soon as I do a David Malukas gay voice I get a gold, so let’s keep it going,” he added, implying that the gay voice led to his finding premium cards. “I’m on fire!”

Nascar said the incident violated its policy against drivers making a statement that “criticizes, ridicules, or otherwise disparages another person based upon that person’s race, color, creed, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, religion, age, or handicapping condition.”

Dye issued a lengthy statement apologizing for the behavior and promising to be better in the future.

“I want to first apologize to David Malukas. I recently went on a live stream with some friends and made some careless comments. I chose my words poorly, and I understand why it upset people. I’m sorry to anyone who was offended,” Dye wrote.

He added that he spoke to his friends in the LGBTQ+ community about the incident.

“I’m taking this seriously and working on being more aware and respectful moving forward. I’m sorry to everyone I let down,” he added. “I am committed to learning from this and better understanding … the impact that my decisions can have on others.”

RELATED: NASCAR tried to hide its Pride Month promotion, but fans found it anyway

Dye’s racing team Kaulig Racing also announced an indefinite suspension of the driver.

This is the second time Dye had been suspended over off-track antics. In 2022, he was suspended for allegedly punching a high school classmate in the groin. He was charged with a felony that was reduced to a misdemeanor and eventually dropped altogether.

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​Nascar driver daniel dye, Gay voice controversy, David malukas gay voice, Lgbtq community insults, Politics 

A Utah woman self-published a book in 2023 titled “Are You With Me?” — the story of a child who loses his father but is comforted by the knowledge that he remains with him in spirit. The description for the book claims it was “written by a loving mother” who personally faced the challenge of guiding “children through the difficult experience of losing a loved one.”

The problem? The 35-year-old author, Kouri Richins, was just convicted of murdering her husband and the father of her three sons.

‘Eric had to die.’

A Utah jury of eight unanimously found Richins guilty Monday of aggravated murder for lethally dosing her husband for pecuniary gain on March 4, 2022; attempted aggravated murder for trying to kill her husband on Valentine’s Day 2022; two counts of insurance fraud; and one count of forgery.

Kouri Richins faces 25 years to life in prison without parole for the aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder convictions.

Prosecutors called scores of witnesses who helped paint a portrait of an adulterous and conniving woman who racked up millions of dollars in debt; whose real estate business was on the rocks; who lacked rights to several of Eric Richins’ assets in the event of a divorce per the terms of a prenuptial agreement; and who fantasized about her husband’s death.

“She did not have the money to leave Eric or the money to salvage her business,” prosecutor Brad Bloodworth said in his closing argument, CNN reported. “Kouri Richins is an intensely ambitious person. She is a risk-taker. There was a way forward — Eric had to die.”

The victim’s life reportedly was insured for over $2 million through numerous policies, including a policy that prosecutors said Kouri Richins applied for fraudulently.

RELATED: Mother publishes book about grief for her sons — after she allegedly murdered their father

“Kouri Richins wanted to murder Eric Richins, thus took out an insurance policy on his life to get money for murdering Eric Richins,” Bloodworth said. “Then she murdered Eric Richins, and then she submitted a claim to get the money.”

Wendy Lewis — Kouri Richins’ defense attorney — challenged the monetary motive, suggesting that Eric Richins was of more use to Kouri Richins alive as evidenced by the fact that “Kouri spent that life insurance within a matter of weeks and was still in debt.”

Prosecutors said Richins added fentanyl to a Moscow mule drink that she gave her 39-year-old husband, and a toxicologist testified that the victim’s blood contained five times the minimum level of a fatal dose of fentanyl, CourtTV reported.

Bloodworth provided a reminder in court that Carmen Lauber, a house cleaner who worked for Kouri Richins, testified that Richins asked her repeatedly in 2022 for illicit pills — pills she procured for Richins both prior to the Valentine’s Day murder attempt and days before Eric Richins’ death.

In addition to hearing about an apparent attempt on the part of Richins to pin the purchase of the illicit drugs on Lauber, jurors reportedly heard at trial that a forensic examination of Richins’ phone revealed internet searches about how to delete iPhone messages as well as about death benefit insurance payouts and fentanyl poisoning.

The jury reportedly also saw the romantic messages exchanged between Richins and her then-lover, Robert Grossmann, including messages from Richins about their future together.

A spokesman for the Richins family said the victim’s sons will remain in the custody of his family and that his family was “relieved” by the verdict.

RELATED: Ex-teacher and boyfriend indicted on 39 child sex charges; she confessed to abusing 5-year-old at his direction, cops say

The victim’s obituary stated in 2022, “Eric was a family man, who always strove to be the absolute best father and husband. He was an attentive and loving father to his three sons Carter (9), Ashton (7), and Weston (5), and a devoted husband to the love of his life, and wife of nine years, Kouri (Darden) Richins. Eric did absolutely everything in his power to provide his family with every possible opportunity to learn, grow, and have fun.”

Richins is scheduled for sentencing on May 13.

She also has been separately charged with multiple counts of mortgage fraud, money laundering, forgery, and issuing a bad check along with a single count of communication fraud, KSTU-TV reported.

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​Murder, Kouri richins, Utah, Killer, Poison, Marriage, Eric richins, Forgery, Killing, Murderer, Aggravated, Greed, Adultery, Crime 

Journalist Nick Shirley uncovered more than $170 million in alleged day-care and hospice fraud in California, surpassing the scandal he previously exposed in Minnesota.

On Monday, Shirley shared a 40-minute video featuring him and his team confronting alleged fraudsters living in luxury at the expense of American taxpayers.

‘It’s like somebody took a motel building and turned it into a hundred fraudulent organizations.’

“Here is the full 40 minutes of my crew and I exposing California fraud, Minnesota was big but California is even bigger,” Shirley wrote.

“We ALL work way too hard and pay too much in taxes for this to be happening. These fraudsters have been able to defraud American taxpayers for years without any pushback from the public and politicians,” he continued. “It is time to EXPOSE IT ALL and end America’s fraud crisis.”

In the video, Shirley explained that California’s version of Medicare, Medi-Cal, has more than doubled from $108 billion in fiscal year 2022 to a proposed $222 billion in fiscal year 2026.

“One out of every 10 dollars of home health care in America is spent in Los Angeles,” Shirley stated. “It is estimated that the fraud in California could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Shirley and his crew stopped at several claimed day-care locations, including some homes in residential areas, that seemed to have no children present. In one instance, the team visited a supposed day care in an apartment complex, where they found two young children playing outside. The children informed them that no adults were present.

RELATED: Mike Lee reveals the real victims of Somali fraud: ‘It is not the rich people who suffer’

Simone Lueck/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“The crazy thing is California allocates $6 billion to child-care and day-care facilities just like these, and there are over 39,000 facilities in the state,” Shirley said.

Shirley and his team also visited alleged hospice centers receiving millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. He explained that two of the facilities charged roughly $6,000 per beneficiary.

“It looks like there’s about 15 more hospice centers inside this one plaza we’re going to right now,” Shirley said.

He noted that some facilities had not even registered with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, suggesting they may be shell companies.

“It’s rumored that these are Armenian-Russian gangs,” Shirley said.

RELATED: Death threats, doxxing, and empty Dem seats: The high cost of Nick Shirley’s fight against Minnesota welfare fraud

PASCAL POCHARD-CASABIANCA/AFP/Getty Images

One of the hospice locations Shirley visited reportedly received roughly $1.3 million. However, the location was empty, with no employees or furniture inside.

“Not only are these shell companies, these are shell buildings,” an individual on Shirley’s team stated. “It’s like somebody took a motel building and turned it into a hundred fraudulent organizations.”

Shirley highlighted the luxury vehicles in the parking lot, including Mercedes, Teslas, and BMWs.

Shirley explained that fraudulent hospices collect taxpayer funds by obtaining Medicare beneficiary numbers from individuals and enrolling them in care without their knowledge.

“Must be very lucrative, because a lot of these businesses, these doors right here have nothing on them; all the blinds are turned out,” he said. “This is what you call welfare maxxing.”

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​News, Nick shirley, Minnesota, California, Los angeles, Fraud, Taxpayer dollars, Taxpayer funds, Hospice fraud, Daycare fraud, Childcare fraud, Day care fraud, Child care fraud, Politics 

The governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve have voted on interest rates — and President Donald Trump won’t be happy with the result.

The governors voted to keep overnight banking interest rates at their current levels despite pressure from Trump to lower them. The rates are currently in the 3.5%-3.75% range.

‘The US economy has really been just doing pretty well through a lot of significant challenges.’

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a media briefing Wednesday that holding the rates would contribute to fulfilling the dual mandate of maximum employment while keeping inflation down.

He emphasized that the economic effects of the tariffs, a Supreme Court ruling knocking down some tariffs, the attacks on Iran, and the spike in oil prices were all mostly unknown at this point.

“We are balancing these two goals in a situation where the risks to the labor market are to the downside, which would call for lower rates, and the risks to inflation are to the upside, which would call for higher rates, or not cutting anyway,” Powell said.

The stock market has tumbled downward since oil prices spiked following the U.S.-Israeli military strikes on the Iranian regime. Losses extended after the announcement from the Fed.

“The U.S. economy has really been just doing pretty well through a lot of significant challenges over the past few years. It’s been amazing to see,” Powell said.

He also rejected the assessment by some that the economy had entered a period of “stagflation,” which is low economic growth accompanied by higher inflation.

“I would reserve the term stagflation for a much more serious set of circumstances,” Powell added. “That is not the situation we’re in.”

RELATED: Supreme Court denies Trump emergency motion to fire Lisa Cook from the Fed — for now

Powell is also under investigation over claims that a billion-dollar renovation of the Federal Reserve building was being mismanaged. While those accusations appeared to have been defused when Powell hosted the president at the building to show him the renovation progress, the Dept. of Justice later issued subpoenas related to the claims.

Those subpoenas were rejected by a federal judge accused by the administration of being biased against Trump.

“There can almost be no inflation, but there can be a SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW,” Trump said of Powell in April 2025. “Europe has already ‘lowered’ seven times. Powell has always been ‘To Late,’ except when it came to the Election period when he lowered in order to help Sleepy Joe Biden, later Kamala, get elected. How did that work out?”

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On Monday night, the Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Houston Rockets 100-92, with star point guard Luka Doncic scoring 36 points to extend the team’s winning streak to six games.

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock thinks the reign of LeBron James is finally coming to an end — and even more, the longtime power broker may be OK with it.

“LeBron James seemed somewhat comfortable as the third leg, the third wheel,” he says, noting that even head coach JJ Redick is now referring to James as a third option.

Now that James, who Whitlock has long argued is a hindrance to the team’s success, is in his rightful place, will the Lakers finally reach their competitive potential?

On this episode of “Fearless,” Whitlock and guests Jay Skapinac, Dre Baldwin, and Steve Kim debate the future of the purple and gold.

“I know Charles Barkley will be upset with me for even suggesting this, but could the Lakers be a serious threat in the postseason?” Whitlock asks the panel.

For Baldwin, the answer is complicated.

“I say they are a threat because they have a very good player in Luka Doncic. They have Reeves, and of course, LeBron is still a very good third wheel. … As long as he’s OK with being in the third seat and staying there ego-wise, they are a threat,” he says.

“Now, are they actually going to win and come out of the West? I say no. They have all offense. They are not very strong defensively,” he caveats.

Kim is optimistic about the Lakers’ playoff prospects so long as the team continues to prioritize team performance over LeBron’s court time.

“You got to be able to play by the pecking order, and that’ll be the test for both JJ Redick and LeBron James,” he says.

Skapinac is more hesitantly optimistic.

“[LeBron] has actually muffled and suppressed his own ego for a couple games here, Jason. Can he do it for the next 16 games of the regular season and then for the remainder of the playoffs? … I still will hedge my bet and say no on that,” he argues.

Even if LeBron’s ego stays in check for the remainder of the season, however, he nonetheless has low hopes the Lakers will be serious championship contenders.

“It’s a stretch to suggest they’ll get out of the first round. They’re going to finish somewhere between three through six,” he predicts.

To hear more of the panel’s conversation, watch the video above.

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Former Auburn coach Bruce Pearl appears to be stealing the show as an analyst for the NCAA men’s tournament — and BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock is already over it.

“There’s no reason for Bruce Pearl to be the most interesting man in the NCAA Tournament,” Whitlock says on “Fearless.”

“For him to be overshadowing the players and the coaches in this tournament — and he is — that’s a problem. You have legitimate stars in this NCAA Tournament, and everyone’s talking about Bruce Pearl,” he continues.

“The former Auburn coach, the man that is still taking money, as we learned yesterday, from Auburn, while promoting Auburn, while taking a dump on Miami, while taking a dump on SMU. The former coach at Auburn and Tennessee should not be the most interesting man in any NCAA Tournament. He never won one,” he adds.

“I want to walk you through why this is a problem,” Whitlock says, pointing out that there are incredible stories all over the NCAA Tournament that aren’t getting the attention they deserve — because it’s all on Pearl.

“There’s more conversation about Bruce Pearl today than there is about Cameron Boozer at Duke. Cameron Boozer is a 6’9″ post player — power forward — who’s led Duke to the number one overall seed. He’s a fascinating story,” he explains.

“He has a twin brother on the Duke team that’s going to be starting. I believe his name is Cayden Boozer … the Boozer brothers and Duke. Fascinating story. Overshadowed by Bruce Pearl,” he says.

“He’s sucking up all the oxygen in the room. He’s launching this television career, which I hope ends after this year. He’s done enough damage,” he adds.

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Brent crude, the primary global benchmark for oil prices, rose higher than $120 per barrel in early summer 2022, largely on account of the fallout from the war in Ukraine and increased demand in countries reopening after suffering through years of self-imposed COVID restrictions.

At the time, this generated a great deal of excitement and consternation, especially when U.S. gas prices soared to a record high of roughly $5 a gallon.

Americans may soon long for the days of $120 per barrel.

‘Consumers continue to feel the sting of rising oil, gasoline, and diesel costs as geopolitical tensions in the Middle East remain elevated.’

Analysts at Citi said in a note on Wednesday that Brent crude — which recently saw an intraday high of nearly $120 a barrel and is presently trading over 65% above its level at the beginning of the year — could hit $200 a barrel if Tehran executes “broad energy infrastructure attacks” or keeps the Strait of Hormuz blocked until June, Investing.com reported.

Iran appears keen to satisfy both of these conditions.

Following the initial joint U.S. and Israel strikes on Feb. 28, Iran targeted energy facilities in its backyard, prompting various companies to wind down their production and shutter their facilities.

RELATED: Trump blasts allies over reluctance to join Iran conflict: ‘WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!’

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Qatar’s state-run QatarEnergy, for instance, shut down its LNG production complex following Iranian drone strikes at two of its facilities. OilPrice.com recently noted that even if the hostilities in the region ended immediately, it could take several weeks to restart production.

On Wednesday, Tehran issued a warning via state media to several Middle Eastern oil facilities — the Samref Refinery and Jubail Petrochemical Complex in Saudi Arabia; the Al Hosn Gas Field in the United Arab Emirates; and the Mesaieed Petrochemical Complex, Mesaieed Holding Company, and Ras Laffan Refinery in Qatar — notifying them of imminent strikes “in the coming hours,” Reuters reported.

“These centers have become direct and legitimate targets and will be targeted ⁠in the coming hours,” the warning said. “Therefore, all citizens, residents, and employees are requested to immediately leave these areas and move to a safe distance without ⁠any delay.”

The warning, which was followed by a jump in the per-barrel price of Brent crude, came in the wake of airstrikes against the South Pars gas field, the world’s largest natural gas reserve which is shared by Iran and Qatar.

A source confirmed to the Jerusalem Post that several energy facilities in South Pars and the Iranian city of Asaluyeh were struck by the Israeli Air Force on Wednesday. Two senior Israeli officials told Axios that the attack was coordinated with and approved by the Trump administration.

Amid the attacks and threat of attacks on energy infrastructure, analysts at Citi wrote, “Brent prices will rally as the conflict continues over the coming days, to $110-120/bbl,” adding that could be the “price or market event which drives the U.S. to end its military operation” or alternatively drives global powers to “forcefully reopen the Strait.”

President Donald Trump has implored the international community to aid the U.S. in reopening the strait, emphasizing that China and other nations are far more reliant than America on the supply flowing down the strait.

According to Reuters, China received 1.6 billion barrels of crude oil over the past 14 months via the Strait of Hormuz; the rest of Asia collectively received 1.6 billion barrels; India received 1 billion barrels; Japan and South Korea each received 800 million barrels; the U.S. and Europe each received around 200 million barrels; and the rest of the world received a combined 300 million barrels.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that Vice President JD Vance and other administration officials plan to meet at the American Petroleum Institute on Thursday to meet with oil executives.

“We look forward to convening key officials — including Vice President Vance, Energy Secretary [Chris] Wright, bipartisan leaders in Congress, and governors — to discuss the role of American oil and natural gas in supporting reliable energy supply amid global volatility,” Andrea Woods, a spokeswoman for the institute, told Bloomberg. “Our industry is focused on providing insight into market dynamics and strengthening American energy leadership and resilience for the long term.”

The price-tracking service GasBuddy noted that as of Monday, the national average price of gasoline was up 80 cents per gallon from a month ago and 66.1 cents higher than a year ago.

“Consumers continue to feel the sting of rising oil, gasoline, and diesel costs as geopolitical tensions in the Middle East remain elevated, pushing gasoline prices to their highest levels in years while diesel could soon approach the $5-per-gallon mark nationally,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

“Until we see a meaningful resumption of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, upward pressure on fuel prices is likely to persist,” De Haan continued. “At the same time, seasonal forces are beginning to intensify as several regions complete the transition to summer gasoline, creating a double headwind that could continue driving pump prices higher in the weeks ahead.”

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The New York Post has uncovered a bizarre music video starring Bobby Pulido, an Emmy-winning musician who won the Democratic nomination for a U.S. congressional seat in Texas.

In the video titled “Dias de Ayer,” Pulido portrays several characters, including a gun-wielding gangster in the mold of “Scarface,” a pervert who pleasures himself in public spaces, as well as a gay male who is attracted to the pervert.

‘This freak is who Democrats chose to run in Texas?’

The embarrassing video from 2010 might complicate the campaign effort by the political neophyte.

The Post noted that he had made somewhat derogatory comments to users on social media implying that he might be gay.

“I can swear on the Bible that I’m not,” said Pulido in Spanish to questions about his portrayal of a homosexual in the video.

Pulido is hoping to unseat Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz for the 14th congressional district in Texas. President Donald Trump won the district easily in 2024, and De La Cruz trounced Democratic opponent Michelle Vallejo by more than 14 percentage points.

Democratic polling found Pulido was trailing behind the incumbent by only three percentage points in September.

His campaign did not respond to a Post request for comment.

RELATED: Rep. Al Green forced into runoff with candidate half his age after failing to get 50% of Democratic primary vote

The Republican National Committee did have a comment on its official account on the X social media platform.

“This freak is who Democrats chose to run in Texas?” said the account.

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The governor of New York was reduced to begging the wealthy to move back to the high-tax state in order to help fund its social programs.

Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul made the comments during a Politico forum in Albany on March 11 after the state legislature called for higher taxes.

‘They’re not going there because they have a nicer governor. … They’re going there because of the tax rate.’

“I need people who are high net worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state,” said Hochul.

“There are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up. OK! Cut me the checks. If you want to be supportive, then maybe the first step should be go down to Palm Beach and see who you can bring back home, because our tax base has been eroded,” she added.

“So I philosophically don’t have a problem. It is, like, I have to look at the fact that we are in competition with other states who have less of a tax burden on their corporations and their individuals,” Hochul concluded.

Hochul is seeking to win re-election after she was elevated to the governor’s office because of the fall of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).

New York joins other states looking to tax the wealthy in order to fund their socialist schemes, including California, which is facing its own population exodus, and Washington state. Both states have experienced billionaires fleeing to other states with lower tax burdens.

“Wall Street businesses looking at Texas?” Hochul asked rhetorically. “They’re not going there because they have a nicer governor! I know that for sure! But they’re going there because of the tax rate. We have to be smart about this.”

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

Hochul’s critics pointed out that she told conservative and Republican New Yorkers to leave the state in 2022 and go down to Florida, “where you belong.”

Ironically, just months later, she lamented that too many people were leaving the high-tax state to seek better opportunities elsewhere.

“We must and will make our state safe,” she said at her inaugural speech.

“And we must reverse the trend of people leaving our state in search of lower costs and opportunities elsewhere.”

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Thermostats have become so intelligent that they can build entire lifestyle portfolios on a homeowner simply by using the embedded technology that regulates and tracks heat and electricity.

Many smart thermostats are openly asking users for this information. But studies have also revealed that other knowledge, which no homeowner would want a stranger to know, can now easily be harvested and quantified.

A thermostat’s built-in motion sensors determine if a homeowner is home or away.

For example, an Ecobee smart thermostat, available on Amazon for $140, has been used to monitor sleep patterns over the course of a year. A 2022 study used six Ecobee sensors to track sleep time, wake-up time, sleep duration, as well as time spent at home. It also determined how those behaviors were influenced by weekends and seasonal weather.

This all came from the thermostat’s data, which can connect to Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant.

Google Nest thermostats can come equipped with a series of cameras, sensors, and more, as well as public-facing features like Home/Away Assist and Auto-Away. These features track whether the user is home or not and can do so in multiple ways.

The first option is to sync with the homeowner’s phone location. It asks for user location and address, and it even helps pinpoint the home on a map.

Auto-Away does not even need add-on sensors throughout the house to tell if the user is home. According to How to Geek, it uses the thermostat’s built-in motion sensors to make this determination.

The justification for the intimate invasion of privacy is to lower and limit heating or cooling usage when the user is not at home or to enable security features.

Ecobee also has passive motion sensors that can tell when a person is home or not.

RELATED: Creepy new laws will mean your car monitors you 24/7 — eyes, skin, even breath

Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Ecobee also utilizes a feature so it knows which rooms in a home are occupied. “Follow me” mode is an attempt to maximize energy efficiency by tracking the resident with sensors as he moves through rooms, and it adjusts the temperature accordingly.

At the same time, it tracks the amount of time spent in each room.

A 2018 study showed a 95% accuracy rating in terms of gauging home occupancy using a technology called WalkSense. The technology identified room occupancy, house vacancy, and even occupant activities.

The latter is helped by what is referred to as “load monitoring,” which is a fancy term for tracking what type of appliances a person uses by how much electricity he uses, another feature of smart home devices.

RELATED: Storm season is here. Yes, you need a better weather app.

Load monitoring works by applying a “signature” to an appliance by extracting data from its power signal. The signature is applied to the typical amount of energy usage from the appliance, which henceforth identifies the amount of power used by a dishwasher, washing machine, etc.

A February 2021 study proposed such a system that identified appliances with 98% to 99% accuracy.

Another study from 2017 even showed it was using load monitoring through a smart meter called Rainforest at the time.

Load monitoring is typically used with energy meter trackers like Sense Energy — installed on the electrical panel — but can be paired with home monitoring systems like Google Nest or Alexa, which either pair with or operate the smart thermostat.

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Actress Katherine Heigl was in attendance at Mar-a-Lago last weekend where she posed for photos with Lara Trump and Jeanine Pirro. And while the left is not happy with seeing the actress there, it was at an event that raised $5.5 million for Big Dog Ranch Rescue.

“Liberals outraged, I told you about everything, including dogs. Dogs,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments, shocked. “They don’t like dogs. That’s how you know they’re not the party for you. They are the party of hating dogs, because there was a big fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago to rescue dogs.”

“Now everyone hates Katherine Heigl for going there and trying to raise money to save dogs,” she adds.

One X user wrote, “F**k her and anyone attending maga-lago for any reason,” while another wrote, “Supporting Nazis. So many orgs that aren’t run by white supremacists. This is a choice.”

However, Heigl wasn’t taking the attacks lying down.

“Animals don’t vote. The only room they don’t like is the euthanasia room at a shelter,” Heigl told Page Six in a statement. “They are completely at the mercy of us, and they have no voice of their own.”

“This event was about animal advocacy, something that has always been deeply personal to me,” she continued. “Anyone who knows me knows that protecting animals is one of my greatest passions.”

“The point is, animals, of course, do not knowingly vote,” Gonzales comments, adding, “They’re not involved in our politics. And the charity event raised $5.5 million for rescue dogs.”

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Carl von Clausewitz framed war as a “continuation of politics by other means.” Weaponry, in this view, is an extension of state judgment, a tool pulled from the kit when the talking stops. Looking at the landscape of directed-energy weapons and autonomous subsea networks, one suspects the tools have begun to write their own script. The question is no longer just what we do with the tools, but what kind of world becomes thinkable and governable once they exist.

The new frontier is the management of latency, visibility, and energy at the very edges of the habitable world. It is a reorganization of politics around the capacity to see and the speed at which one can destroy.

The border is becoming a software-defined stack of sensing and response.

The visual theatricality of directed-energy weapons appeals to our desire for a clean defense. We hear of the Iron Beam, a 100kW-class laser system integrated into multitier defense arrays. The descriptions are intoxicating: an unlimited magazine, almost zero cost per interception, and the promise of reduced collateral damage. These defense systems promise to restore cost symmetry in the face of cheap, numerous drones that can saturate expensive missile defenses.

The technical reality is more mundane and perhaps more telling. These weapons of light remain stubbornly bound to the earth. A laser is a system of ordering: power generation, cooling, and software integration. It is also a prisoner of the weather. For all their speed-of-light elegance, lasers are degraded by the most common of things: rain, fog, and storms. Even when the technical feasibility is proven, the operational reality is constrained by the atmosphere itself.

If the sky is becoming a theater of light, the ocean is becoming a laboratory for a different kind of visibility. Historically, the undersea domain was the last holdout against panoptic ambitions: It was difficult to see, difficult to communicate through, and difficult to police. The Cold War depended on this opacity, on stealth and the difficulty of detection by sonar.

Now, the sea is being made a platform. Subsea drones, from small autonomous vehicles to the U.S. Navy’s Orca extra-large uncrewed undersea vehicle, are designed to make the underwater domain legible. The goal is a distributed fleet architecture, storing eggs in many baskets to ensure that no single loss is catastrophic.

RELATED: Yes, there’s an AI hive mind, and it’s making us dumber

Yuuji/Getty Images

Yet the physics of water remains punishing. While we take high-speed wireless for granted on land, the underwater acoustic channel offers only a few kilobits per second over a 10 km link. This scarcity of bandwidth forces a shift toward decision-making at the edge. A drone under the ice cannot call home for instructions but instead must interpret its own sensors and manage its own contingencies through a complex stack of perception, state estimation, and mission policy.

Reliability here is engineering for trust. In the extreme cold of under-ice operations, in which temperatures can sustain -35°C, there is no fail-safe of surfacing. The ice layer removes the luxury of escape.

The Arctic was once the site of exceptionalism, a region governed by cooperation, science, and the explicit exclusion of military security from the mandate of the Arctic Council. That story is ending. As the sea ice declines, this environment is being revealed as a corridor for commerce and surveillance.

The IPCC suggests the Arctic may be practically free of sea ice in September at least once before 2050. The U.S. Department of Defense is more aggressive, suggesting an ice-free summer could arrive by 2030. This melting makes minerals, fisheries, and choke points like the Bering Strait newly available for military and commercial ordering.

The map is being redrawn by infrastructure as much as by diplomacy. Finland and Sweden have joined NATO, shifting the alliance geography of the North. The U.S. Air Force maintains a North Warning System of 49 radars, a logistical feat that requires sustaining sensors and fuel in an austere environment. In this theater, sovereignty requires infrastructure: keeping the sensors on, the parts moving, and the communications flowing.

The cost of latency here is strategic. Because geostationary satellites do not sufficiently support high-latitude operations, there is a frantic move toward low-Earth-orbit constellations to provide the connectivity required for modern command and control.

We are witnessing a shift in the nature of the border. It is becoming a software-defined stack of sensing and response. NATO now treats the ocean floor, the hidden architecture of cables and pipelines, as a critical space that must be monitored by AI and sea drones. It is the defense of the material substrate of digital life. Technologically mediated violence produces a new kind of border politics, in which the decisive terrain is invisible, found in electromagnetic spectra, sonar inference, and satellite coverage gaps.

In this world, we are always operating under imperfect information. We return to Clausewitzian friction, though today we call it packet loss, acoustic noise, or navigation drift. We find ourselves at the edge of the habitable world, watching the ice melt and the sensors blink, waiting for the speed of light to solve a problem that remains stubbornly human.

​Tech 

Several super PACs linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee reportedly poured over $20 million into multiple House primary races in Illinois in hopes of advancing favored candidates or at the very least kneecapping candidates critical of Israel.

Some of the groups’ investments paid off.

‘There’s no gray lines as it relates to their beliefs.’

For instance, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller — a beneficiary of nearly $4.5 million in ad spending from the AIPAC-linked group Affordable Chicago Now — defeated former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in the Democrat primary for the state’s 2nd Congressional District.

In the Democrat primary for the 8th Congressional District, former Rep. Melissa Bean, another beneficiary of spending by an AIPAC-aligned group, also came out on top, beating Junaid Ahmed, a leftist whom AIPAC faulted for centering “his campaign on attacking Israel.”

However, Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, a candidate who ran in the 7th District Democrat primary to replace retiring incumbent Rep. Danny Davis, turned out to be a bad investment.

With 90% of the votes in, the Associated Press called the race for state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat with a history of tax fraud who secured 23.9% of the total vote. Conyears-Ervin, one of only handful of candidates who said in a WBEZ-FM survey that she did not oppose sending U.S. military aid to Israel, trailed behind with 20.5% of the vote.

RELATED: Jesse Jackson Jr.’s political comeback fails miserably after he served prison time

John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

The United Democracy Project, an AIPAC super PAC established in 2022, poured nearly $5 million into positive ads for Conyears-Ervin, reported Politico.

Austin Weekly News reported that the AIPAC group’s intervention in the race was criticized by many of the other 13 candidates, including Ford, who was backed by the retiring incumbent.

“I’ve also had meetings with the very people that’s spending this money,” said Ford. “They want you to say ‘yes’ to everything that they have requests for. There’s no gray lines as it relates to their beliefs. It’s a yes or no. … ‘Don’t have a conversation, that this is what we want. We want you to vote with us in Washington 100% of the time, and we want to control our member,’ and that’s what this is about. And I refused that type of relationship.”

Ford suggested further last month that “this money dwarfs, or tries to dwarf, the voice of the voters in the 7th Congressional District, and it would tell you immediately who this candidate will be beholden to. Follow the money.”

Kina Collins, one of the leftist candidates defeated on Tuesday, said last month that it was “not going to help [Conyears-Ervin’s] case that AIPAC is backing her.”

While AIPAC’s support may have negatively affected Conyears-Ervin’s chances, she also had plenty of baggage. For instance, she reportedly agreed in September to pay a $30,000 fine to resolve charges brought by the Chicago Board of Ethics.

Conyears-Ervin, an ally of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D), was accused of misusing city resources and retaliating against whistleblowers — allegations she denies, reported WTTW.

Conyears-Ervin’s race was among the Illinois primaries regarded as a test for AIPAC. The lobbying group characterized the night as a win overall, however, stating, “Illinois voters rejected half a dozen anti-Israel candidates across several heavily Democratic open-seat races. These results further demonstrate that campaigns defined largely by opposition to AIPAC, our members, and the values we represent continue to fall short on election night.”

The group added, “Although Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin did not advance, AIPAC congratulates State Representative La Shawn K. Ford on his win. The pro-Israel community is proud to have helped defeat Kina Collins, who has voiced anti-Israel views over multiple election cycles.”

Ford — who was indicted on 17 counts of bank fraud but ultimately pleaded guilty in 2014 to only a single misdemeanor charge of tax fraud — will face off in the general election with Republican nominee Chad Koppie, a farmer and retired Delta Airlines pilot whose “main goal is trying to ban abortion.”

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