Category: blaze media

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vehemently denied the suggestion he made a crude remark about a female foreign leader’s “melons.”

Albanese made the comments — and hand gestures — during his appearance on the “Bush Deep” podcast with Australian comedian Nikki Osborne. He also said during the show that he would “shag” singer and actress Kylie Minogue.

‘The comments were beneath the office of prime minister.’

Osborne asked him about gifts from foreign leaders when he told a story involving Sanae Takaichi, the female prime minister of Japan

“Here’s something I got recently here that was pretty strange but ended up being quite good was a melon. The Japanese prime minister brought a melon here!” said Albanese.

“How did he get that through customs?” Osbourne asked.

“She — it’s a royal melon,” he answered.

“Oh, she smuggled — it was a she? Did she smuggle it?” the podcaster asked, while making a gesture as if referring to pregnancy.

“I dunno,” he said, smirking.

“Oh, I’m expecting!” Osbourne joked.

“Got a couple of melons!” said Albanese while gesturing with his hands at his chest.

“She brought two?” she laughed.

“She brought two! As you do!” he replied.

“She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson!” the podcaster joked.

“She brought two!” he replied. “And they’re beautiful!”

Video of the interaction can be viewed on social media.

Takaichi had been visiting Australia to improve diplomatic relations as China threatens to expand its influence in the South China Sea.

Albanese’s political critics pounced on the incident, lambasted him, and demanded that he apologize for the joke.

“The comments were beneath the office of prime minister,” said Liberal leader Angus Taylor on Monday. “They were insulting, and the prime minister should make a personal apology. He’s done it through a statement. I mean, the hypocrisy of Labor and the prime minister on this topic knows no bounds, no bounds whatsoever.”

Opposition leader Ted O’Brien, after meeting with Japanese officials, said “the prime minister’s words were inappropriate and a national embarrassment.”

RELATED: France recalls ambassadors from the US and Australia after calling Indo-Pacific pact a ‘stab in the back’

What’s more, Shingo Yamagami — a former Japanese ambassador to Australia — rebuked Albanese for his words.

Yamagami wrote, “Prime Minister, please enjoy Japan’s sweet and juicy melons without thinking about a women’s anatomy” before adding that “however lighthearted it was intended to be, the recent joke delivered by PM Anthony Albanese at the expense of Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi is how he might be remembered by Japanese who most value the friendship with Australia.”

Yamagami added that “what dismayed some was that Takaichi has recently been subject to derogatory remarks about her body and gender” and that “the last thing she expected was to be so casually mocked by the trusted leader of Japan’s special strategic partner.”

Albanese previously apologized for his comment about shagging Minogue.

Takaichi is considered a very conservative leader who supports the legacy of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The melons in question are a special kind called Shizuoka-grown Crown Melons, which are grown so that only one fruit can be harvested from each plant. They are very expensive and are exported to Canada from Japan.

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​Australia, Chinese communist party, Japan, Sexism, Melons, Politics 

When Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet shared a college student’s complaint that basic purchases have become prohibitively expensive — he also began a war on social media.

“One of our TPUSA college students gave me his take on affordability:

‘A burrito shouldn’t cost $20.’

Yeah, a lot of this is a hangover from Covid and Biden-era inflation, but the lived experience is the same: It just feels like basic things cost too much,” Kolvet wrote in a post on X.

The post went viral, and people all over the country chimed in with their opinions on the affordability crisis.

However, BlazeTV host Pat Gray isn’t buying it.

“There’s a big problem with affordability now because somebody paid 20 bucks for a burrito, and now the world’s out of control,” Gray says on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“All of a sudden, burritos are the most important thing in American society and their affordability. And they should never cost $20, ever. Nothing should cost 20 bucks,” he adds.

“It is surprising going through fast-food restaurant drive-throughs lately when you get the bill,” Jeff Fisher argues.

“Sure. But that’s, I mean, that’s been the case for a while. Don’t go out to eat then,” Gray says. “Buy the ingredients at the store. Go home and make your own burrito.”

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​Burrito, Pat gray, Turning point usa, Affordability crisis, Inflation, Groceries, Blazetv show 

A Kentucky middle school teacher is accused of grooming and having an improper relationship with a student, according to authorities.

Graves County Sheriff’s Office announced that 25-year-old Sadie M. Flores of Mayfield was arrested around 3:30 p.m. Friday.

‘We take any allegation involving the safety of a child or the professional conduct of an employee extremely seriously and will continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement and the appropriate authorities.’

Flores was charged with grooming a minor — a Class D felony.

Kentucky’s grooming a minor law was enacted July 15.

The law states that a person is guilty of grooming a minor when the offender is 18 years or older and engages in grooming behavior directed at a minor who is under 14 years old with the “intent to entice, coerce, solicit, or induce the minor to engage in sexual conduct with the person or another person.”

In addition, the law states that a person is guilty of grooming a minor when the offender is in a position of authority or special trust and engages in grooming behavior directed at a minor who is under 18 years old with the intent to entice, coerce, solicit, or induce the minor to engage in sexual conduct with the person or another person — or develop an intimate or secretive relationship with the minor.

Flores was booked at the Graves County Restricted Custody Center, according to jail records. Police said Flores later was transferred to an out-of-county detention center.

Flores — a teacher at Graves County Middle School — was “having an improper relationship with a minor student of the district,” according to the Graves County Sheriff’s Office.

“District administration was made aware of an allegation involving a teacher at Graves County Middle School,” stated Matt Madding, superintendent of Graves County Schools.

The Graves County School District Office “immediately reported it to the Graves County Sheriff’s Office for an investigation.”

The statement read, “Sheriff’s detectives’ investigation included the seizure of electronic records, interviews, and other related investigative measures.”

Police said detectives interviewed Flores and then arrested her.

RELATED: Video allegedly shows female HS teacher wearing ‘Jesus Loves You’ shirt while having sex with student: Warrants

Madding said, “Because this is an ongoing legal and personnel matter, we are limited in the information we can publicly share.”

Madding noted that the “safety and well-being of our students is our highest priority.”

“We take any allegation involving the safety of a child or the professional conduct of an employee extremely seriously and will continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement and the appropriate authorities,” Madding said.

Graves County Sheriff Jon Hayden said the investigation is ongoing.

Authorities have not released further details regarding the alleged relationship, the alleged victim’s age, or the possibility of additional charges, Fox News reported.

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​Teacher arrested, Teacher student sex scandal, Grooming, Child sex crimes, Kentucky, Middle school, Crime 

Democratic socialist Francesca Hong’s rise is about more than one candidate — it’s a warning sign that ideas once confined to the political fringe are gaining influence across the country.

“If you don’t live in Wisconsin, you may not be interested, but you should be interested, because this is something that’s spreading across the nation. We have the same types of people running for office in Texas, and you probably have them in your state, so you’ve got to pay attention,” “Relatable” host Ron Simmons explains.

Hong, Simmons notes, has been “endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America as a member of the Wisconsin Socialist Caucus.”

“That tells you something. If there’s enough people in there to have a caucus, meaning there’s enough of her other fellow state reps that they form their own caucus, that’s a little scary,” he says.

And according to a Marquette University poll, she leads the primary with 38% support among Democrat voters, with her closest competitor being former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, who only has 16%.

“So I would say the chances of this lady winning the Democrat primary are pretty good. She has expressed some pretty radical views, including the criticism of traditional holidays such as Thanksgiving and support for anti-racism policies that most of us would argue are actually racial themselves,” he says.

However, even some Democrats are weary of her past comments, including CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.

Collins pressed the socialist on her controversial Thanksgiving opinion, asking, “Do you still believe that Thanksgiving should be canceled?”

Hong responded, “Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so I think there, I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve, and the position that I’m running for right now, and I think my background as a chef will actually help me become a better governor that’s able to bring more people to the table.”

“So I’ve never known anybody that’s traumatized by Thanksgiving,” Simmons comments. “… And this lady is Korean … why would she be traumatized by Thanksgiving?”

Hong also lamented on a podcast that her son is half-white, which gives him a “proximity to whiteness.”

“He’s an American male. And the fact that he’s half-Korean or whatever, half-non-Korean, what she calls ‘half-white,’ he’s an American male. That’s what he is,” Simmons says.

“And that’s what we should think about him as being,” he adds.

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

​Caucus, Democratic socialist, Francesca hong, Kaitlan collins, Mandela barnes, Marquette university, Poll, Primary, Texas, Thanksgiving, Wisconsin, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Blazetv show 

A Green Bay election official accused of bungling ballot distribution sent herself packing on Friday.

Celestine Jeffreys resigned August 7 after allegedly issuing 152 duplicate absentee ballots to registered voters in April 2026 amid a subsequent Wisconsin Elections Commission investigation into her conduct. Jeffreys was the Green Bay official who helped facilitate Mark Zuckerberg-backed 2020 election grants routed through the Center for Tech and Civic Life, according to RealClear Investigations.

‘A clerk who does not believe the law prohibits issuing duplicate ballots cannot be trusted to prevent it from happening again.’

According to reporting by Spectrum News 1, Jeffreys was placed on administrative leave by the City of Green Bay on July 9 after the Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously voted to open an investigation into the absentee ballot incident.

Brown County Republican Party board member Theresa Sipes filed a complaint against Jeffreys in April, alleging the duplication violated state law. The duplicates created “a substantial risk of confusion, double voting and increasing the opportunity for and possibility of fraud,” according to the filing.

The Wisconsin Republican Party backed Sipes’ filing.

The City of Green Bay defended Jeffreys, arguing that the discrepancy was an accident.

“Wisconsin law prohibits election fraud, not the inadvertent issuance of multiple ballots,” Green Bay stated in its response, obtained by Fox 11. “The statute does not impose liability for inadvertent duplication in issuance, rather, it establishes the elector’s right to receive a ballot.”

RELATED: Spanberger’s plot to let 66,000 felons vote just in time for the midterms is complete

JASON REDMOND/AFP/Getty Images

Sipes’ lawyer Nicholas Boerke rejected the city’s defense.

“A clerk who does not believe the law prohibits issuing duplicate ballots cannot be trusted to prevent it from happening again,” Boerke argued in a supplemental letter to the WEC. He went on to say that the “fundamental misunderstanding of ballot issuance law displayed in the response makes future violations inevitable absent commission action.”

The WEC saw enough merit in Boerke’s arguments to open an investigation.

“The commission authorizes an investigation into the City of Green Bay clerk to determine if the clerk or any employee or contractor of the City of Green Bay failed to comply with Wisconsin law or otherwise abuse their discretion in the preparation and mailing of absentee ballot mailers,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Don Millis told Spectrum News 1.

Her resignation follows a years-long string of controversies, beginning with her tenure as Mayor Eric Genrich’s chief of staff.

“Is he working with you? As far as I’m concerned I am taking all of my cues from CTCL and work with those you recommend,” Jeffreys wrote in an email to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, according to RealClearInvestigations.

After Jeffreys’ email and in conjunction with CTCL, Green Bay hired Democrat operative Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein to oversee its 2020 election operations. Spitzer-Rubenstein eventually drove out then-City Clerk Kris Teske after demanding unprecedented access to voter databases.

The WEC reviewed the incident and found no impropriety. Wisconsin voters banned private election assistance via constitutional amendment in 2024.

Jeffreys previously courted controversy in 2023 when she allowed third parties to return absentee ballots on behalf of others. In 2024, the clerk failed to deactivate voter registrations in violation of state law in instances where Election Day materials were returned as undeliverable.

The Green Bay Mayor’s Office directed Blaze News to its August 7 press release when reached for comment.

“The City of Green Bay and Celestine Jeffreys are jointly announcing that Ms. Jeffreys has made the decision to step down from her role as City Clerk. We wish her the best in her future endeavors,” the press release states. “This will be the City’s only statement on the matter.”

Jeffreys, the Brown County Republican Party, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and the Center for Tech and Civic Life did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Mark Zuckerberg declined to comment.

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​Mark zuckerberg, Donald trump, Absentee ballots, Wisconsin, Politics, Election-fraud 

The Democratic Socialists of America are no longer hiding the ball.

In July, the organization published a manifesto calling on the United States to “establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.”

Public ownership does not give power to the people. It gives power to the government — and asks the people to trust that government never to abuse it.

That is not a proposal for higher taxes, tighter regulation, or a larger welfare state. It is a demand to replace private ownership of America’s largest companies with government ownership.

The language is designed to sound appealing. Why should a handful of billionaires control enormous corporations while everyone else gets left behind? Why shouldn’t “the people” own those companies instead?

No more greedy executives collecting fortunes while workers earn far less. No need to nationalize every business — only the “essential” industries deemed too important to operate for profit or remain in private hands.

It sounds reasonable. It sounds as though power would finally be taken from wealthy corporations and returned to society.

But that is nearly how Fidel Castro sold communism to the Cuban people.

History shows that “ownership by the people” usually means control by the government. The public does not acquire power. Politicians and bureaucrats do.

Castro did not introduce himself as a communist promising state control over every part of Cuba’s economy. He said he was fighting corruption, inequality, and concentrated wealth. Private property and capitalism became the villains. The solution was to place the country’s most important industries under the control of “the people.”

The rhetoric sounded fair and humane. Wealthy owners would lose power, and ordinary Cubans would gain it.

The first part happened. The second did not.

RELATED: From helping hand to five-finger discount

Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Power was taken from private owners, but it never reached ordinary Cubans. It accumulated in the hands of the state. Today, Cubans live under political repression, chronic scarcity, and widespread poverty.

“Nothing belongs to you. It all belongs to the government,” Rosa Garcia, a survivor of Castro’s Cuba, recalled in an interview with Young Americans Against Socialism.

Garcia watched the transformation firsthand. She remembers Castro assuring Cubans that his revolution was not communist. Many believed him. Some hung signs on their doors reading, “This house is yours, Fidel.”

As government control expanded, private property rights disappeared. So did the ability to obtain goods, build wealth, or make basic economic choices without permission from the state.

When Garcia’s family later applied to leave Cuba, government officials came to their home and inventoried everything they owned to ensure they took nothing with them. Utensils, clothing, and household possessions all belonged to the government.

That is the reality behind the dreamy language of collective ownership. What supposedly belongs to everyone is controlled by the people who run the state.

Public ownership also carries enormous economic costs.

Private property gives people a reason to create, invest, innovate, and serve customers. Every smartphone, laptop, lifesaving medicine, digital platform, and other product we rely on exists because someone had the freedom to take a risk and the opportunity to profit from success.

Before Castro’s revolution, Cuba ranked among Latin America’s more prosperous countries. Today, it is one of the region’s poorest, with nearly 90% of its population living in severe poverty.

Take away private ownership, and you do more than redistribute wealth. You weaken the incentive to build businesses, develop technology, create jobs, and produce the prosperity those activities generate.

Supporters of democratic socialism will reasonably object that modern America is not revolutionary Cuba. The United States has stronger institutions, a different political culture, and constitutional protections Cuba did not preserve. Public ownership of one enterprise does not automatically produce a one-party communist state.

That distinction does not eliminate the underlying danger.

Nationalization begins with the easiest targets: highly profitable companies, billionaires accused of earning too much, and industries politicians label too important to remain privately owned.

RELATED: Who wants to eat a trillionaire?

Leon Neal/Getty Images

Once society accepts the principle that government may replace private ownership whenever politicians decide an owner is too rich or a company is too important, no clear limiting principle remains.

Why stop with the largest corporations?

Every industry placed under public ownership gives government officials more authority to decide how resources are used, which services are available, and who receives them.

Cuba’s history shows how quickly control of a few “key industries” can become a broad assault on private property. America would be foolish to assume the same principle could be embraced here without the same temptation to expand it.

Public ownership does not give power to the people. It gives power to the government — and asks the people to trust that government never to abuse it.

​Democratic socialists of america, Socialism, Taxes, Capitalism, Fidel castro, Cuba, America, Democrats, Public ownership, Rosa garcia, Communist, Propoganda, Opinion & analysis 

A black WNBA player blamed “white privilege” after she was tossed out of a very physical match between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky over a flagrant foul.

DiJonai Carrington aggressively took down the Fever’s Sophie Cunningham as Cunningham drove to the basket for a layup at the start of Saturday’s game, leading to an angry response from Cunningham.

‘I’m not going to let anyone just do that to me. I think everyone knows that. I think that’s why she did it because she wants attention.’

Carrington was ejected from the game and then potentially worsened the situation for the league by posting “WHITE PRIVILEGE” on social media afterward.

Cunningham was far less divisive in her response following the game.

“Clearly I think it was unnecessary,” she said. “I’ve never really spoken to her, and I have no beef with her, but I guess she has some pent-up stuff.”

She also explained why she charged at Carrington after the attack, in which Carrington swiped at Cunningham’s head while Cunningham was in the air and knocked the Fever player to the floor.

“I popped up,” Cunningham said. “I’m not going to let anyone just do that to me. I think everyone knows that. I think that’s why she did it because she wants attention.”

Sports Illustrated writer Grant Young called Carrington’s “white privilege” post “dangerous” and “asinine” in an opinion column calling on the league to suspend the Sky player.

“Frankly, it’s not only immature but dangerous for Carrington to imply that race played any role on her getting a Flagrant 2 and ejected from Saturday’s game,” Young wrote.

“Any player in the league would have been ejected for the shot she landed on Cunningham, and players have certainly been ejected for less,” he added. “For Carrington to try to turn it into a race thing is asinine, especially because she’s trying to make an exchange that she started bigger than basketball in a hostile and polarizing way.”

RELATED: WNBA team co-owner FINED and SUSPENDED for cursing out teen fans of Sophie Cunningham at game

Carrington also posted on social media a laughing emoji with the date of the next time her team plays the Fever.

The Fever went on to beat the Sky by a score of 90 to 86.

Both Cunningham and Fever teammate Caitlin Clark have been targeted with harassment and criticism — Cunningham for speaking out against biological men in women’s sports, and Clark has been accused by black players and pundits of receiving favoritism.

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​Caitlin clark, Indiana fever, Sophie cunningham, White privilege, Wnba, Racism, Politics, Fearless, Sports 

There is a piano at the entrance of Moonshot AI, the Beijing start-up that released Kimi K3, the leading open-weights model, in July 2026. The conference rooms are named after bands. Employees wear slippers. The stated ethos is that no one tells you what to do, and when new employees arrive, no one does.

These details are meant to communicate a refusal of corporate life as it is usually practiced in China’s large technology firms, with their KPI rituals, their departmental territories, and their hierarchies of condescension. The symbols of institutional authority have been stripped away so thoroughly that what remains can look, to the uninitiated, like nothing at all.

A young employee cried after failing to produce a campaign that satisfied leadership.

In fact, Moonshot’s system is demanding, though the demands are of a mostly unspoken kind.

Moonshot has no departments in the ordinary sense, no managerial titles, no OKRs, no time clocks, no performance reviews. Roughly 300 employees organize themselves around problems rather than roles. More than half the employees have changed responsibilities multiple times; perhaps 80% are doing work significantly different from anything they have done before. The implicit unit of production is not the job but the bottleneck. When the company’s long-context research project, MoBA, stalled repeatedly, Moonshot did not assign blame or dissolve a team; instead, it temporarily routed expertise from across the organization toward the failure, rewrote the underlying logic, and returned to the project after multiple setbacks.

The company calls this way of working “generalization,” borrowing the term from machine learning, where it means the capacity to perform under conditions not represented in the training data. Applied to people, it means something like the readiness to become someone else.

The word Moonshot uses for the quality it most values in employees is “taste.” In context, taste is not merely aesthetic preference but the ability to detect which technical direction is fertile, which complexity is decorative, which benchmark improvement matters, which eccentric teenager is capable of important work. Taste selects architecture and colleagues. At least 100 recent hires arrived through employee referrals, a process jokingly called “person-to-person transmission,” and the network produced is unmistakable: roughly 80% introverts, roughly 80% graduates of China’s elite universities, average age below 30. The scent that enables frictionless coordination also makes everyone smell alike.

This concept is where the freedom, a term not often associated with China in the U.S., reveals its structure.

Escaping the Western model

Moonshot’s organization is formally flat, but five co-founders remain involved in frontline decisions, each reportedly interacting with 40 to 50 individual contributors. The distance between strategic intent and execution is short, as is the distance between a founder’s displeasure and an employee’s nervous system. At a late 2024 growth meeting, more than 30 young employees discussed advertising, user operations, and holiday campaigns in granular detail while co-founders participated, and the meeting ended shortly before four in the morning. A young employee cried after repeatedly failing to produce a campaign that satisfied leadership. This approach is founder micromanagement without the buffer of experienced middle managers, who have been removed on the theory that their authority was organizational overfitting.

Hierarchy has been compressed into founder judgment, peer reputation, technical evidence, and the elusive criterion of taste, which appeals to tacit knowledge. In a field where reliable metrics arrive after decisions must be made, tacit knowledge can be indispensable but also unchallengeable. When the decisive quality is deliberately inarticulate, exclusion becomes invisible, and disagreement can be reframed as proof that the dissenter simply does not understand.

RELATED: Why selling your face is big bucks in China

Ian Waldie/Getty Images

The company’s internal narrative attributes exceptional foresight to its founder, Yang Zhilin. One experienced hire described his existing intellectual framework “collapsing” before Yang’s vision of reinforcement learning. The organization’s unifying object, the model, gains force from founder credibility, and credibility is renewed with each frontier release: K2, K2.5, K2.6, and K3. Each model serves not only a commercial function but a legitimating one: It proves that the unusual organizational demands were justified. A prolonged period without results would make the costs of ambiguity, overwork, and intense selection much harder to bear.

K3 itself is a 2.8-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model. Only about 104 billion parameters activate for any given token; the rest wait, specialized and dormant, until the router calls them. Moonshot’s human organization works on the same principle: Intelligence is routed. Small groups assemble around the present problem, do the work, and dissolve.

The company sees this as an advance beyond the West’s modern industrial division of labor, Taylorism, and of its bureaucratic knowledge firm.

Can it compete?

DeepSeek’s breakthrough in January 2025 supplied the external shock that made Moonshot reorganize into its current form. Before DeepSeek R1, Moonshot had drifted toward consumer advertising, spending tens of millions of yuan on user acquisition while the model itself received less organizational energy. DeepSeek demonstrated that a Chinese start-up could earn global prestige through engineering and open releases rather than marketing. One Moonshot employee’s formulation was blunt: “DeepSeek saved us.” The competitor had supplied evidence strong enough to overturn Moonshot’s prior strategy.

The correction was swift. Moonshot retreated from paid acquisition, renewed its focus on the model, embraced open weights, and reoriented its products toward agents, coding, and professional work. K3 arrived as vindication. Within days of release, demand exceeded forecasts and approached the limits of existing compute clusters. In response, Moonshot had to suspend new consumer subscriptions. The episode was strategically encouraging and operationally sobering: a successful product had created an infrastructure crisis precisely because its intended use worked.

Moonshot has replaced visible bureaucracy with invisible constraints of system prompts, agent traces, tool permissions, context windows, routing logic, and the model’s own learned behavior. Employees who once navigated reporting chains now navigate a founder’s attention. The forms have changed, but the pressure has not. Accounts of tears, sleeplessness, severe self-doubt, and inverted schedules recur in descriptions of life inside the company. They are narrated as evidence of resilience.

K3 demonstrates that Moonshot can build frontier models. It remains to be seen how well a system that depends on founder bandwidth, cultural homogeneity, abundant trust, and the nervous energy of 300 people who have been told they are geniuses can make the transition to a durable institution.

​Tech, China, Start-up, Moonshot 

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s bad year just got a whole lot worse.

Besides facing congressional scrutiny, the liberal organization whose bread and butter is smearing law-abiding conservatives as “extremists” was federally charged in April with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.

‘The American people deserve to see this hate racket exposed in court.’

The SPLC — now under the leadership of CEO Ryan Haygood — tried to play the victim in hopes of having the case thrown out. The federal judge overseeing the case did not, however, buy what the professional concern-mongers were selling.

Tyler O’Neil, author of “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” told Blaze News, “The SPLC just tried to weasel its way out of accountability for allegedly propping up the Ku Klux Klan by complaining about President Trump’s mean social media posts. Judge Marks rightly saw through this charade.”

“Abbe Lowell’s legal team must have known it was a stretch to ask a judge to dismiss the case for vindictive prosecution before trial, but to do so without any evidence tying alleged animus directly to prosecutors required real chutzpah,” continued O’Neil. “The motion may have been catnip to the legacy media, but it was dead on arrival in court.”

How it started

Prosecutors have accused the SPLC of secretly pouring several million dollars in donated funds to individuals linked to various extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the National Alliance, Aryan Nations, and National Socialist Party of America — groups the liberal organization was supposedly fighting against.

According to the superseding indictment filed by the Justice Department in June, which charges the SPLC with the same 11 counts, some of the donor funds were dumped into “fictitious accounts” and used ultimately to pay for so-called field sources “who were either leading or affiliated with multiple violent extremist organizations.”

Field sources allegedly used SPLC donor money for numerous questionable activities, including creating racist paraphernalia that extremist groups sold at rallies; publishing extremist literature for recruitment purposes; purchasing materials for cross burnings and Ku Klux Klan hoods; and creating new chapters of extremist groups.

RELATED: SPLC director allegedly used donor cash to fund secret romance with neo-Nazi informant: Indictment

SPLC President Ryan Haygood. Elizabeth Frantz/Bloomberg/Getty Images

A former SPLC director is also alleged, among other things, to have used donor cash to fund her secret romance with a neo-Nazi informant.

Blaze Media did not immediately receive a response from the SPLC.

In May, the SPLC, which denies any wrongdoing, filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama to dismiss the federal charges, claiming that it is the victim of “a vindictive prosecution” launched in response to speech protected under the First Amendment — the “latest manifestation of a top-down, retributive campaign.”

The SPLC claimed that it has been “falsely accused” by the Trump administration of being anti-Christian, aiding the Biden administration’s weaponization of the DOJ, participating in political violence, and helping rig the 2020 election.

The SPLC claimed further that the administration’s supposed animus “culminated in the criminal charges against the SPLC — an indictment premised on conclusory accusations but devoid of provable facts or a proper statement of the law.”

Should the court refuse to dismiss the charges, the SPLC asked that it at least require discovery into the government’s prosecutorial motives.

How it’s going

U.S. District Court Judge Emily Marks, a Trump appointee, delivered some bad news to the SPLC on Friday.

“The SPLC is not entitled to discovery or dismissal of the indictment,” Marks said in her order. “The SPLC has failed to offer some evidence tending to show animus on the part of the prosecutors involved in bringing this case and that such animus resulted in the prosecution, the showing required for discovery. Because it cannot satisfy that standard, it necessarily fails to satisfy the higher standard that would entitle it to dismissal of the indictment.”

In her order, Marks also highlighted the inevitable fallout of presuming vindictiveness on the part of the government just because the SPLC was bashing the Trump administration prior to its indictment.

“It is true that before its indictment, the SPLC extensively criticized the Trump administration,” wrote the judge. “But if that were sufficient to warrant a presumption, then the Government’s fears would be realized, and an entity could effectively immunize itself from prosecution simply by engaging in protected speech, such as criticizing political figures and their policies.”

Marks stressed that the “Court cannot license a fishing expedition based on innuendo or speculation.”

“It is the SPLC’s, not the Court’s, burden to show that the Government’s prosecution was improperly motivated,” continued the judge. “The SPLC cannot merely provide the rough outline of a theory — the President is out to get it — and expect the Court to fill in the blanks.”

An SPLC spokesperson said in a statement obtained by The Hill, “While the Southern Poverty Law Center is disappointed with the outcome of the motion, we will continue to vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

The spokesperson for the group accused of reviving at least one hate group and bankrolling the creation of KKK garb added, “SPLC will continue to fight hate, and we will continue to envision and create a safer and more just world.”

“The SPLC can scream to high heaven about FBI Director Kash Patel calling the group a ‘partisan smear machine,’ but that doesn’t make it any less true,” Tyler O’Neil told Blaze News. “The SPLC scares donors and demonizes its opponents by putting mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits on a ‘hate map’ with Klan chapters. Now it stands accused of reimbursing cross-burning materials and paying for KKK hoods. The American people deserve to see this hate racket exposed in court — and Marks’ ruling brings this case one step closer to trial.”

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​Southern poverty law center, Donald trump, Justice department, Racism, Ku klux klan, Politics 

To the dismay of many who love America and her founding principles, Abdul El-Sayed, a radical leftist Muslim activist, won the Michigan Senate primary last week.

The Democratic Socialists of America-backed ideologue, who was exposed in 2018 for promising driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, is as progressive as they come. Between supporting unrestricted abortion, Medicare for All, and aggressive gun control — while openly opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and previously pushing to defund the police — El-Sayed is a conservative’s worst nightmare.

But BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales believes he just became an even bigger problem.

“This part actually scares me,” she admits.

On this episode of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered,” Sara pulls back the curtain on El-Sayed’s controversial campaign finances.

According to a Fox News Digital review of campaign finance records, Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign received more than $115,000 from at least 41 individuals who currently work for, previously worked for, or have held leadership roles with the Council on American-Islamic Relations — which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and formally designated or labeled as such by the governors of Texas and Florida.

Additionally, El-Sayed’s father-in-law — a top donor to a Super PAC that supports El-Sayed’s campaign — is a leader of an Islamic organization that the federal government has identified as having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“This is the Democrat Party now. They are just embracing this,” says Sara. “It is not just socialism and communism. It is terrorism too.”

To hear Sara’s deep dive into El-Sayed’s donors and organizational ties, watch the episode above.

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​Abdul el-sayed, Communism, Michigan, Sara gonzales, Blazetv show, Democratic party 

In 2023, a hacking group called Scattered Spider executed an unprecedented hit on Las Vegas, using a relatively simple yet shockingly effective technique. Now, group members are the prime suspects in another shockingly high-profile cyberattack.

The group attacked MGM casinos in 2023, seemingly gaining access after phishing for credentials. In response, the Bellagio, Aria, Cosmopolitan, and Excalibur casinos shut down large parts of their networks after the breach was discovered in an attempt to cordon off the access.

The FBI has warned about these scams since 2007.

“Slot machines stopped working, electronic transfers of winnings slowed down, and key cards for thousands of hotel rooms no longer functioned,” Ars Technica wrote at the time.

Later that same year, Caesars Entertainment described a social engineering attack that led to data theft from its customer rewards program.

An outsourced IT support vendor provided unauthorized access, and the breach wasn’t discovered for weeks.

Now, that same method, called “vishing,” has been used to penetrate another massive target: Wall Street.

Several major Wall Street firms faced the attacks, which use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls. The problem is that the technique, which became possible some 20 years ago, is pretty much immune to any cybersecurity measures the affected funds are able to implement. In fact, the basic idea behind the exploit goes back some 50 years to when early hackers used “phone phreaking” to coax key info from unsuspecting targets.

RELATED: This throwback app is competing with Big Tech — using a business model out of the 1980s

Zak Bennett/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Among the attacked firms was Citadel, the financial services company that manages over $70 billion in assets. While Citadel has not publicly offered any inside information on what happened, another firm that was attacked, Point72 Asset Management, offered some bread crumbs by saying no customer information was stolen, per Reuters.

Two Sigma, the private hedge fund responsible for $75 billion in assets, provided the most detail when it said it caught the attempt before any information was compromised.

“Our security team responded quickly to an attempted vishing campaign targeting Two Sigma and other investment managers, and we have no indication of any impact to our data or our systems,” a spokesperson said, according to Briefs Finance.

Scattered Spider has been linked to Russian-speaking hackers called AlphV/BlackCat, using VoIP calls to trick IT workers into bypassing multifactor authentication.

Employees can relatively easily be tricked into granting access or providing login information to major institutions and chains.

The phone-call tactic is still widely used due to its effectiveness.

RELATED: Is this the number-crunchers’ come-to-Jesus moment?

Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The FBI has warned about these scams since 2007, warning citizens to answer “vishing” attempts at accessing their personal information “with a healthy dose of skepticism.”

Businesses are warning of “social engineering” as a practice of manipulation that can affect gatekeepers of sensitive information.

Cloudflare has categorized these phone-call breach attempts along the same lines as a fake delivery truck driver or a cyber attack. In most cases, these attacks aim to get the victim to divulge either login credentials or sensitive financial information.

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​Wall street, Hacking, Citadel, Phishing, Tech 

A high-ranking law enforcement official in New York state and her husband have been arrested after prosecutors alleged they helped their son flee the scene of a shooting that targeted a suspected rival gang member in a getaway vehicle.

Jennifer Lackard, 49, was employed as the deputy commissioner of wellness for the Mount Vernon Police Department.

‘It is stunning that this public official would jeopardize her position and reputation to be involved in this alleged conspiracy.’

Lackard and her 20-year-old son, Chase Lackard, were arrested around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday following the execution of a search warrant at the family’s Bronx apartment, according to WCBS-TV.

Jennifer Lackard pleaded not guilty.

James Lackard, Jennifer’s 47-year-old husband, turned himself in to the 44th Precinct station house in the Bronx around 8:30 a.m. Thursday, according to the New York Post.

WCBS reported that the trio was charged with attempted murder, three counts of attempted assault, six counts of weapons possession, one count of conspiracy, and one count of reckless endangerment.

Court records show that Jennifer Lackard and her son each were released on $75,000 bail, and the father — James Lackard — was held on $300,000 bail, according to the New York Post.

A newly unsealed indictment states that the family participated in a coordinated shooting attack outside the Bronx Criminal Courthouse around noon June 29.

WABC-TV reported that the parents drove their son to the courthouse in their tan Chrysler Pacifica, and Chase Lackard fired a semiautomatic gun out of the vehicle’s window.

Prosecutors said Chase — a reported member of the Slutty Gang — was targeting a member of a rival gang, the Sex Money Murder crew.

However, prosecutors said the shooter missed the target, and nobody was injured in the alleged attack.

The indictment said Chase Lackard sent a text message instructing his mother to pick him up in the front of the courthouse.

Jennifer Lackard asked her son what time to be there, according to the indictment.

“You can’t just sit directly outside. It has to be timed right,” she texted, ABC News reported, citing the indictment.

The mother drove the family back to their home, according to the indictment.

RELATED: Cop torches career after home invasion, physical attack on former lover — and his girlfriend — plus threat to burn down house

ABC News, citing the indictment, reported that Jennifer Lackard’s “son changed his clothing “to avoid identification.”

Prosecutors said the shooting was caught on surveillance video.

According to ABC News, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark stated:

These defendants allegedly conspired with each other to drive from their Bronx residence to the Hall of Justice for the purpose of shooting someone. Despite multiple shots being fired, thankfully no one was hit.

It is stunning that this public official would jeopardize her position and reputation to be involved in this alleged conspiracy.

Jennifer Lackard was terminated from her position with the Mount Vernon Police Department.

The City of Mount Vernon said in a statement, “Effective immediately, the City of Mount Vernon has terminated Mrs. Lackard’s employment.”

“The allegations are unrelated to her duties with the Mount Vernon Police Department and do not stem from any conduct associated with the Department or the performance of her official responsibilities,” the statement read.

Lackard was paid a salary of $138,219 last year, according to online payroll records.

The Mount Vernon Police Department said in a statement that it was aware of the criminal history of Jennifer Lackard’s husband.

“As part of the hiring process, information regarding her husband’s prior criminal history was disclosed and reviewed and deemed not to be disqualifying for her civilian position,” the statement said.

The Mount Vernon Police Department stated that it will not comment on the situation any further because it is an active investigation.

The Journal News reported that Jennifer Lackard founded the Ivy House Center for Self-Sufficiency, a former nonprofit substance abuse and mental health outpatient treatment center in North Carolina, in 2007.

However, the center was forced to close in 2012 because James Lackard was arrested on drug charges.

WCBS-TV reported that a 2012 federal indictment shows James Lackard previously served 52 months on a drug conviction before later pleading guilty in another federal drug case.

Meanwhile, Chase Lackard reportedly has a history of encounters with police.

According to the Journal News, Chase Lackard has pending criminal cases in the Bronx and Manhattan.

The Journal News reported:

In November 2024 he was arrested after being shot in the leg by an NYPD officer when he allegedly pointed a gun at officers following a fight in the Soundview neighborhood. Three months earlier, he was arrested on gun charges in Manhattan. In 2023 he was shot in the chest during a gang-related fight on an MTA bus in the Bronx.

The NYPD stated that Jennifer Lackard has no criminal history in New York City.

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​New york, Attempted murder, Nypd, Crime, Mount vernon, Arrests 

The existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that “hell is other people.” Former Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera is among the bleeding hearts who believe that hell is Haiti — at least now that the Trump administration is repatriating its people.

Then

President Donald Trump identified Haiti in a January 2018 meeting as one among various “s**thole countries.” This was, after all, then a failed state plagued by violence, haunted by rumors of cannibalism, and still reeling from a deadly earthquake.

‘Ridiculous.’

There was tremendous backlash over Trump’s remarks — not only from the Haitian government and the United Nations’ human rights office but from Democrats and the liberal media.

Twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D) were among the many concern-mongers who claimed that Trump’s vivid characterization of Haiti as a less-than-ideal nation was “racist.”

In addition to similarly attacking Trump, celebrities ran a PR campaign for the Caribbean nation, portraying it as a paradisiacal place.

Conan O’Brien, for instance, aired a one-hour special showcasing Haiti’s perceived beauty — a special that included refutations of Trump’s “s**thole” comment from Haitian natives along with repeated emphases that the island nation was a “beautiful country.”

RELATED: Pets of Springfield, rejoice! DHS is coming for suspended-status Haitians after Biden judge takes ‘the L’

In subsequent months, others, including Bill Maher, jumped on the bandwagon, donning apparel that stated, “HAITI IS GREAT ALREADY.”

Unfortunately, the situation deteriorated in Haiti before it got better — simultaneously confirming Trump’s initial framing and prompting the liberal media to ramp up its gaslighting campaign.

When confronted — a couple of years after Haitian President Jovenel Moise’s assassination — with reports that criminals had taken over the country’s capital, freed thousands of felons from jail, engaged in systematic rape, forced the prime minister to resign, and threatened genocide, NBC News, for instance, reassured its viewers in 2024 that contrary to claims by “right-wing pundits,” the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country did not also have a problem with cannibalism.

Now

The Trump administration announced in July 2025 that it was terminating Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status, having determined that the Caribbean nation no longer meets the conditions for special status, in part due to improvements in domestic safety and stability.

While the administration recognized that the country still suffers a “lack of functional government authority” and that “gang violence in Haiti persists,” then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated that “the environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home.”

This revocation of Haiti’s special status — which has shielded roughly 350,000 Haitians from removal — faced multiple legal challenges; however, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in the administration’s favor in June.

Now that the Department of Homeland Security is “going after” Haitian migrants with suspended special statuses, the usual suspects have jettisoned their “HAITI IS GREAT ALREADY” framing and adopted the president’s previous understanding of the Caribbean country as a loathsome place.

Geraldo Rivera, who asked Trump in 2018 to apologize for his “unfortunate” remarks about Haiti and other third-world nations, wrote on Sunday — in the wake of reports about the deportation initiative under way — that “expelling Haitian immigrants is sending them straight to hell.”

Rivera was widely criticized for joining the chorus of liberals against the repatriation campaign.

Normalcy advocate Robby Starbuck wrote in response, “Didn’t the entire media and Democrats in DC swear that Haiti was amazing and wonderful and perfect when Trump called it a hellhole? Trump then said okay, then sounds like they can go back and now the framing switches to, ‘it’s hell on earth, you can’t send them back!’ Ridiculous.”

Mike Howell, the president of the Oversight Project and Blaze News contributor, alluded to Rivera’s previous concern-mongering over Trump’s “s**thole,” then asked, “What happened[?]”

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​Bill maher, Department of homeland security, Geraldo rivera, Hillary clinton, Robby starbuck, Temporary protected status, Trump administration, Donald trump, Haiti, Politics 

When Biden’s White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly downplayed Americans’ frustrations over high milk and egg prices, she helped solidify the voter anger over affordability that directly contributed to the Democratic Party’s electoral damage in 2024.

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre is concerned the conservatives are now making the same mistake.

“Conservative pundits and influencers are repeating the exact same mistake, telling consumers that everything’s fine and only economic illiterates would think grocery, gas, and housing costs are too much,” says MacIntyre.

But this is disastrous messaging, he warns — especially heading into midterm elections.

“Elections aren’t won by lecturing voters that their problems are imaginary. This is politics 101,” MacIntyre says. “Professional political actors adopting this strategy months before midterms is both bizarre and dangerous.”

The reality is, most Americans are still struggling in the current economic climate.

“Conservative pundits may produce charts, cite aggregate statistics, and explain that certain indicators look healthy, but none of that will save the GOP any more than it saved the Democrats who insisted that Bidenomics was working,” says MacIntyre.

Right now, he explains, “food, health care, child care, education, insurance, housing, electricity, and gasoline remain punishingly expensive.”

While MacIntyre understands that honesty with voters about the current economic situation is a death sentence for politicians, downplaying the predicament isn’t helping either.

“There’s only so much Trump can do about the structural inflation and accumulating debt. He can, however, avoid taking actions that make the problem worse,” he says, pinpointing the ongoing conflict in Iran as a major contributor to America’s economic strife.

But when Americans complain that the war is driving up gas prices and forcing the U.S. to borrow or print tens of billions of dollars to pay for it, they’re called “stupid or selfish” by “the very same pundits” who support the war, he explains.

MacIntyre speculates that these politicians will “blame any disastrous midterm results on the people who oppose the conflict, but the political reality is obvious.”

“The central issue is not that voters have developed a sophisticated position on Iran. Many of them probably care very little about the strategic details. What they do care about is that everything costs more. Telling them that they lack economic literacy has roughly the same electoral appeal as shooting a puppy on live television,” he says.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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​Affordability crisis, Auron macintyre, Gas prices, Housing costs, Iran, Midterm elections, Blazetv show 

Trump-endorsed Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) lost the Republican primary in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District on Thursday to newcomer Charlie Hatcher.

The loss comes after the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC spent $2 million against Ogles as retribution for his opposition to green energy subsidies. Ogles was also affected by redistricting, with over 80% of voters in the redrawn district previously belonging to another.

‘Communist Democrats defeated Andy Ogles tonight in Tennessee, but we cannot let them win in November.’

Hatcher did not respond to requests for comment.

“Last night, the radical left successfully employed a strategy to influence a Republican primary,” Ogles told Blaze News. “The night before early voting began, a California Green Energy PAC publicly disclosed a four-week, $2 million spending campaign all to defeat a Trump-endorsed America First conservative.”

“Republicans across the country should take notice. If the left can spend millions to meddle in Republican primaries in Tennessee, they’ll do it in every red state where they think they can buy the outcome,” Ogles said. “While last night’s outcome wasn’t what I hoped, Charlie is a good man, and I will do whatever I can to help him be successful.”

Ogles served in the House of Representatives for two terms. He introduced the Remigration Act bill in June, aiming to expand denaturalizations and deportations.

“Tennessee’s 5th District just proved once again that standing in the way of America’s energy future comes with a hefty political price,” ITC Chairman Tom Matzzie said in a statement provided to Blaze News. “This is our second upset in as many primaries — first Chip Roy, now Andy Ogles — and we will continue to punish members of either party who want to play politics with American jobs, energy security, and utility prices.”

“The entire map is in play, and we will take this fight across the country through November.”

RELATED: Liberals in MAGA clothing run covert campaign against Trump-backed candidate

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Invest in Tomorrow’s campaign ran advertisements attacking Roy (R-Texas) as insufficiently MAGA. Roy lost his primary to state Sen. Mayes Middleton.

Matzzie previously held positions at MoveOn.Org, in John Kerry’s presidential campaign, at the Democratic National Committee, and at the AFL-CIO.The White House directed Blaze News to the president’s Friday Truth Social post when reached for comment.

“Last night was another good night for Endorsements, 8-1,” Trump wrote. “The 1 was a person who I remained loyal to even though he had virtually no chance of winning, and was running against a Great ‘Trump’ Candidate.”

Hatcher served as Tennessee’s commissioner of agriculture for seven years and received Gov. Bill Haslam’s endorsement in July. The primary winner positioned himself as a Trump ally and voice for rural Tennesseans during the campaign.

“Congressman Andy Ogles lost tonight because a super PAC bankrolled by left-wing California Democrats spent $2 million to raid the Republican primary. These leftist Democrats include a San Francisco billionaire who gave $12 million to Kamala Harris and has pledged to spend ‘whatever it takes’ to elect Gavin Newsom,” the Freedom Caucus Fund said in a statement.

That San Francisco billionaire is Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen, who donated $6 million to the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC between February and June 2026, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures. During the 2024 campaign, Larsen donated millions to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. Larsen is worth nearly $13 billion.

The Freedom Caucus Fund spent over $560,000 to defend Ogles against Invest in Tomorrow’s campaign, according to a spokesperson.

“This same super PAC is pledging tens of millions to take out conservative pro-Trump Republicans in the House and Senate this November. Their goal is to destroy President Trump’s America First majority in Congress, install Hakeem Jeffries as speaker, and reinstate Biden’s Green New Scam that President Trump and the House Freedom Caucus eliminated in the Big Beautiful Bill.

“Communist Democrats defeated Andy Ogles tonight in Tennessee, but we cannot let them win in November.”

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​Andy ogles, Democratic national committee, Green energy subsidies, House freedom caucus, White house, Tennessee, Politics 

President Donald Trump announced on July 30 that his Board of Peace had “reached a HISTORIC agreement” in Gaza that would bring an end to a conflict that has claimed well over 70,000 lives.

While the president characterized his proposed resolution as a major win for the Palestinian people and for Israel alike, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is evidently of a different mind.

‘President Trump will be very, very disappointed.’

Netanyahu — whom Trump has rebuked repeatedly in recent months for undermining his initiatives in the region — rejected the Board of Peace’s 15-point peace plan on Sunday, telling his cabinet that some of its terms are unacceptable.

Peace proposal

The peace plan released by Trump’s Board of Peace, which would be undertaken in stages, requires, among other things, that:

Israel, Hamas, and “other Palestinian factions” suspend military operations in Gaza;Hamas and other factions in Gaza agree not only that all civilian governance and security functions in Gaza will be taken over by the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, but that the committee can carry out its responsibilities independently;the NCAG will oversee the disarmament process;Gaza will be “governed according to the principle of One Authority, One Law, One Weapon”;Israeli forces — who presently occupy more than half of Gaza — will execute a phased withdrawal from Gaza; andthe International Stabilization Force will separate Israeli forces from NCAG-controlled areas during the withdrawal.

“This agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people,” Trump said in a statement. “At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks.”

RELATED: It’s the economy, stupid — again

Khan Yunis in the southern Gazan Strip on July 31, 2026. Bashar Taleb/AFP/Getty Images.

“The threat that emerged from Gaza on October 7 will NOT be allowed to rebuild!” continued the president. “Under this agreement, Gaza will finally be in the hands of a new Palestinian government that serves its PEOPLE.”

After announcing the deal, which Hamas accepted through Egyptian mediators, Trump told reporters that “Israel is very happy.”

While the Israeli security cabinet initially approved of having the International Stabilization Force enter Gaza to aid in the disarmament of Hamas and the transition, top officials called on Netanyahu to reject the plan, reported the Times of Israel.

Rejection

Netanyahu, who facing both a tough re-election battle and an ongoing corruption trial, told his cabinet on Sunday, “Israel rejects the 15-point document.”

“The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed,” continued Netanyahu. “And when I say Hamas must be disarmed, I mean the heavy weapons, the less-heavy weapons, all weapons. And we are talking about genuine disarmament, not a fictitious one.”

The Israeli leader — whose nation is the “largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II” — noted that his government has raised its reservations over the peace deal with Washington.

“They have ideas,” said Netanyahu, apparently referring to the Americans behind the peace deal. “Some of them are acceptable to us and some are unacceptable to us, and we know how to stand up to these things. We have proven this in the past, and we are proving it today as well. In addition, the IDF will continue to thwart threats against our forces and against our citizens.”

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

While flatly rejecting Trump’s peace plan, Netanyahu nevertheless spoke warmly of the American president.

“I have great appreciation for President Trump,” said the foreign leader. “He is a great friend of ours in the White House. I greatly appreciate the historic partnership with the United States against Iran’s attempts to acquire nuclear weapons. And I want to emphasize again: With an agreement or without an agreement, as long as I am prime minister, Iran will not possess nuclear weapons.”

“Unlike all those who preach to us, we are doing what needs to be done for Israel’s security, and we can and know how to stand our ground even against our very best friends when necessary,” added Netanyahu.

In addition to rejecting the peace deal, Netanyahu rejected the possibility of a Palestinian state in Gaza.

The prime minister’s remarks were welcomed by various Israeli officials, including finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionist Party.

“We went to war with a central goal: the destruction of Hamas,” said Smotrich, in a statement reported by the Times of Israel. “The (military) cannot withdraw even a millimeter from the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip cannot begin any process of reconstruction before the complete dismantling and demobilization of Hamas and the Gaza Strip.”

Hamas, on the other hand, remains supportive of Trump’s plan and has asked Washington to pressure Israel to get on board.

According to an X.com translation of the original Arabic, Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’ politburo, stated on Sunday, “We are committed to the roadmap reached with the representatives of the Peace Council in Cairo just days ago, and our agreement, despite all the challenges, reflected a commitment to the interests of our Palestinian people.”

“We expect the mediators and the American guarantor to press Netanyahu and his government to compel him to adhere to the roadmap and not obstruct the path for internal political and electoral reasons,” added Naim.

After Trump first announced the deal, a U.S. official told the Washington Post, “We’re not asking Israel to do anything other than agree to the 20-point plan that they agreed to initially, and so we’re very confident they will adhere to it. If they don’t, obviously, President Trump will be very, very disappointed.”

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​Benjamin netanyau, Donald trump, Gaza, Israel, Peace plan, War, Politics 

Inflation. Everyone’s discussing it these days, at least on X.

Is it bad? Is it fine? Are our perceptions skewed by virtue of living in 2026 which makes accurate evaluation of prices in 1996 impossible?

Going to McDonald’s was an occasion back then. There weren’t 35 different kinds of IPAs in the grocery store. Arugula didn’t exist until sometime around 2009.

It’s hard to know. Different people have different ideas on all of this and it’s hard to say one is more right than another. Sometimes there are multiple right answers.

Socialism starter

Matt Walsh wrote:

Grocery prices are insane. They’re still rising. Addressing this problem should be the number one priority of every elected leader. End the stupid foreign wars and focus on this issue. It’s one of the main reasons socialists are gaining power.

He’s not wrong. Grocery prices are higher than I ever remember. Most families I know are acutely aware of the situation. When you’re feeding growing kids, you can’t skimp the way you skimped when you were 21. You can’t feed them junk because it’s cheaper; you have to feed them nutritiously, and so you end up feeling those higher prices pretty sharply.

Burrito-nomics

Jeremy Kauffman wrote:

“So far as I can tell, it’s simply not true that food has gotten more expensive in real dollars in the United States. Why are people so convinced this is true? What’s the evidence?”

Below his post he shared a graph detailing the fact that grocery prices have only risen in nominal terms, not real terms, essentially saying prices are higher but so are wages.

In response to claims of $20 burritos being prohibitively expensive for young people, Kauffman detailed the hard numbers for feeding burritos to a family of eight with ingredients from Wal-Mart. The total price was $18.38

Kauffman isn’t wrong either. Although my wife handles the food in our house, I do know we buy our groceries from Meijer, Aldi, and Walmart. I know there are absolutely affordable prices to be found if you don’t buy your ingredients at Whole Foods and you make your food at home rather than going out. A gallon of milk from our local Walmart is $3.17; a gallon of milk from the nearby Whole Foods is $6.69.

To his point about prices rising nominally but not in real terms, I’m not an economist or a statistician, so I don’t know all the ins and outs of how these numbers are calculated, but I do know we tend to really notice in passionate and negative terms when the prices swell at the store but we don’t really notice or account for our paycheck swelling in our bank account. It’s a sad fact that we tend to focus on the bad more than the good.

Passion for premium

Lomez wrote:

Short answer is that post-boomers became accustomed to premium/boutique brands. These things do, in fact, cost a lot more than generics. No seed oils. All organic. Cage free. Etc. Etc. My family spends a lot more on groceries in *real* dollars than my parents did because, like just about everyone posting online about this, we over-extend and buy the$20 dollar bottle of nice Vermont maple syrup and $8 fancy French butter and do this across the board for almost every category [choose your own indulgence/health fixation]. I know we’re not alone in this. I’ve seen your pantries.

The longer answer is that other categories of spending have gone significantly up — housing, childcare, insurance — and so there’s less slack in the average person’s budget. Grocery prices might be flat as a general matter, but the belt can still feel — and actually be — a lot tighter.

He is certainly correct, and like most other very correct answers to complex questions, the people don’t want to hear it.

In the 1990s, before the foodie revolution, our parents fed us very plain food. We rarely went out to eat, and it was a big event when we did. There were no cans of sparkling water. We never had pop in the fridge. We didn’t even really stop at fast food when traveling; we packed sandwiches in a cooler full of half-melted ice bags at the bottom.

Going to McDonald’s was an occasion back then. There weren’t 35 different kinds of IPAs in the grocery store. Arugula didn’t exist until sometime around 2009. The children of 2026 have no experience with the iceberg lettuce salad of 1996 — you know the one, with bland white crispy lettuce, large tomatoes that aren’t even close to ripe, and three fat cucumber slices.

Our kids eat guacamole, sushi, organic eggs, copious amounts of raspberries with Greek yogurt in the morning, and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t even encounter until I was in my 20s.

RELATED: Greetings from my favorite vacation spot; it’s closer and cheaper than you may think

H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

Fancy feasts

It’s a fascinating story about class and taste. How even though our society is, in many ways, more classless and lowbrow than ever, many people are eating food that really only very wealthy and very health-conscious individuals ate back in 1996, and that fact plays some role in how we perceive prices.

The thing about shifting expectations after the foodie revolution is that it doesn’t feel like any of those things that were fancy and expensive in 1996 are elite in 2026. Fresh guacamole is now the Kraft American cheese single, and now no one would eat the Kraft American cheese single, and this skews our perception.

Of course, it goes without saying that someone does eat the Kraft American cheese single. Millions of people do, just like we did. Actually, in fact, we didn’t eat the Kraft American single at the Root house in 1996 because they were considered kind of fancy and more expensive than buying a block of cheese and cutting it yourself.

Reality bites

The truth about inflation is that whether it’s real bad, pretty normal, or the end of the world as we know it, we can’t do anything about it. You, dear reader, have no way to meaningfully change the global financial system or the American economic situation at this time. These things are too big for an individual citizen to have any control over. You can’t make the prices lower, you can’t stop the bleeding, you can’t do anything other than buy what you need to buy while doing your best to stay within your budget.

We humans have a terrible tendency to focus very heavily on things we can’t really change. I don’t know why it is, but it is. Is it because we are naturally malcontent? Or is it because we are whiners with no strength? Or maybe we are masochists? Obsessing endlessly about something you view as terrible and painful when you have no way to change it seems like a form of masochism, doesn’t it?

Whatever it is, it isn’t good. We can’t focus all our energy or emotional firepower on being angry about inflation. Maybe we should be angry; maybe we shouldn’t be angry. I don’t know. But I do know that all we can do is acknowledge the reality of the world as it is, whether it be good or bad, and do our best to adapt to the current situation, live the best life we can in the meantime, and hope for the best.

That’s how it was in 1996 and how it is in 2026.

​Budget, Economists, Family, Food, Grocery prices, Inflation, Lifestyle, Prices, Reality, Walmart, Socialism, Dsa, The root of the matter 

Actor Jon Bernthal is defending pit bulls from what he calls “racism” — but that doesn’t alleviate concerns about the breed potentially being a legitimate safety issue.

During an appearance on “The Howard Stern Show,” Bernthal compared the stigma surrounding pit bulls to human discrimination, arguing that it’s wrong to judge the breed out of fear.

“He said the widespread fear of pit bulls is ‘dog racism,’ and he said it was compared to judging people on their race or sexual orientation,” Stu comments.

Bernthal has pit bulls himself and has called them “honest.”

“So, apparently they’re giving him factual statements and sticking to their beliefs,” Stu laughs.

The actor also claimed that a pit bull is just as likely to bite as any other dog.

“Look, I think it’s wise to be a little bit skeptical of pit bulls, and I like all dogs. Personally, I know a lot of people that have pit bulls, and I like them, but you know, I think that you should discriminate a little bit,” Dave says.

“So, I don’t know what that says about me, but it’s probably a good idea to be wary,” he adds.

“There does seem to be a more likely terrible outcome when it comes to pit bulls. But still, it’s probably a small percentage of the dogs, right?” Stu asks.

“Not all pit bulls, they’re not all going to be the same, but they were bred for violence initially, I believe, for fighting,” Dave says.

“And sometimes the dog will protect itself against you, the owner,” he adds.

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​Dave landau, Howard stern show, Jon bernthal, Stu burguiere, Blazetv show, Pit bulls, Racism 

A Texas pastor who previously served as director of vocations for the Diocese of Dallas and now sees over 9,500 people show up every Sunday at his church in Coppell recently discussed the need for men to assume leadership roles, the challenges they will invariably face, and two challenges fathers should take on today.

Fr. Edwin Leonard noted on the episode of “The Catholic Gentleman” podcast published on Thursday that when he took on the role of pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church during the pandemic, he observed that “everyone had been separated from their church community” long enough for some men to have “gotten used to the loneliness.”

‘He also knew that you would be reading that Gospel.’

Gospel and grill

To combat this pervasive sense of alienation, strengthen the community, and “more purposely target the hearts of men” so that like King David “they could be men after God’s heart,” the parish under Fr. Leonard began holding an annual men’s summit.

“We just got a bunch of guys together, and we had barbecue. We had some bourbon, some beer, and some cigars, and just like hung out in the courtyard of our church,” the priest said. “And it was about, you know, a 20-minute talk that first year from our key presenter.”

Feeling inspired by the Holy Spirit to go beyond consuming content that filled their bodies and minds, the attendees broke into groups and shared what the Lord was doing in their lives and how that had impacted them.

The parish recognized that this summit and similar initiatives focused on fortifying the hearts and minds of men in the community were not only the way to cultivate Christian leaders but to strengthen the faith of multiple generations.

RELATED: Blaze News investigates: Family or fallout — experts assess the threats now facing the nuclear family

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Test your mettle

The priest noted, after all, that the likelihood of successful religious transmission is greatly increased when children receive and grow in their faith in the presence of their father.

“The fact that he is leading in some way, shape, or form — it astronomically increases the opportunity and the chances for your children to have their faith,” Fr. Leonard said. “So we said … if we’re going to pour forth effort, we can do anything, we just can’t do everything. Let’s build up some leaders.”

The aim behind the men’s summit evidently became helping men not just serve their community but point in their service “towards the Lord whom they know.”

Over the course of the podcast, Fr. Leonard raised several issues he has observed negatively affecting young men and undercutting their leadership prospects, not least of which is passivity and “delayed adolescence,” which he clarified is the result of a lack of exposure to adversity.

To rectify these problems, he repeatedly advocated for controlled adversity — for engaging with and surmounting challenges of the kind that test mettle and build muscle.

Action items

After discussing the need to be challenged, Fr. Leonard was asked to provide those men listening with at least one challenge that if met could help them become better over the next week and into the more distant future.

The priest instead issued two challenges, the first of which was for fathers to “pray over your children every night. Make a sign of the cross on their forehead like you did at their baptism. Bless them.”

The second challenge Fr. Leonard issued was for men to “practice listening to the Word of God. So you need to read the Word of God — I would suggest reading the Daily Gospel.”

“Read it once and then, you know, ask yourself two questions: What is the Lord trying to say to me? This isn’t like a historical, critical method Bible study where you’re like, ‘What was the original source material? What was God trying to say 2,000 years ago?'” Fr. Leonard said. “God is omniscient, so as He was inspiring this to be read, He had a literal first-century meaning, but He also knew that you would be reading that Gospel reading in 2026.”

“The second question is the real crux of what I want people to do,” he continued. “Think how you can put that scripture verse or what the Lord said to you into action that day.”

The priest added, “The more that you listen to the Word of God, the more that you’re going to be able to hear the Word of God” and emphasized that “the practice of putting it into action bears fruit.”

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​Faith, Religion, Catholic, Coppell, St. ann catholic church, Texas, Fatherhood 

As a modest contribution to the general welfare, I have once again taken on a task that state universities, despite their ever-expanding bureaucracies, seem unable to perform: helping parents and students decipher the course catalog before they accidentally enroll in an ideological boot camp.

This year’s expedition into Arizona State University’s listings produced a familiar discovery.

The challenge is recognizing ideological conformity when it hides beneath academic jargon and historical subject matter.

For fall 2026, ASU offers eight courses with witchcraft, magic, or the occult in the title — and exactly one with Christianity.

Think about that for a moment.

At one of the largest public universities in the country, students can choose from a small festival of courses on witchcraft, while Christianity receives a single titled course.

The predictable defense is already forming: These are history classes. They merely study witchcraft as history; they do not promote it.

If only the syllabus cooperated.

One ASU syllabus from this summer says the course will examine how the identity of the heretic and the witch was constructed against its binary opposite, the “orthodox” Christian. It then turns to “religious Othering,” especially “the female as Other,” and asks students to explain how centuries-old witch persecutions continue to shape their own lives.

A student scrolling through the catalog may think, “Witchcraft? That sounds like an interesting history class.” What the description does not announce plainly is that the course has already selected its moral and political framework before the first reading begins.

Allow me to translate the academic dialect into ordinary English.

The syllabus contains three ingredients that appear with remarkable regularity across what I call the oppression-studies curriculum.

First, orthodox Christianity is cast as the principal villain. The word “orthodox” is not merely descriptive. It identifies the force against which everyone else must be understood. Those troublesome Christians, always insisting that the Word of God is true.

Second, history is organized around a fixed binary of oppressors and oppressed. The key term is “Othering.” Outside the university, the word means little. Inside it, “Othering” functions as a philosophical skeleton key.

RELATED: Warning: This college course may be bad for your brain

Andi Purnomo/Getty Images

Whatever the subject — witchcraft, colonialism, literature, economics, architecture, or even mathematics — the conclusion is expected to fit the same template: One group possesses power, another is marginalized, and scholarship consists of exposing the machinery of oppression.

Questions about whether Christianity is true, whether Christ is who Christians say He is, or whether salvation is real disappear from view. The course’s operating question is not “What is true?” but “Who has power?”

Third, the historical narrative must be applied directly to the present. Medieval Europe is not studied merely to understand medieval Europe. Students must show how the old oppression continues now.

History becomes raw material for a contemporary moral narrative in which Christians are still preventing women from having a little fun — even if that fun occasionally involves necromancy. Dead people need friends too.

Once you learn the pattern, whole sections of the catalog become easier to read.

The subject often matters less than the interpretive framework. Whether a course concerns witchcraft, fairy tales, Shakespeare, climate, coffeehouses, or design, the destination frequently remains the same. Society is assumed to be organized by systems of oppression, and every topic marches toward that conclusion.

That’s precisely why parents and students need help reading college catalogs.

Course descriptions are often written in a dialect that obscures more than it reveals. The average 18-year-old has no reason to know that terms such as “Othering,” “lived experience,” “deconstructing,” “intersectionality,” “hegemonic,” or “dialectic of oppression” may signal not simply a topic but an entire philosophical system.

Learning to recognize those signals is an exercise in intellectual discernment.

At the most elementary level, discernment means making distinctions. Ideas have presuppositions. Professors never merely present facts; every course is organized around assumptions about reality, morality, human nature, and truth.

For Christians, some distinctions remain basic. The Word of God? Yes. Communion with Satan? No. That binary is not about power. It is about truth and goodness, and it should not require four credit hours to sort out.

RELATED: Why do state schools bankroll people who despise the state?

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Once students grasp that first level of discernment, they are prepared for the next: watching how quickly the narrative shifts when necessary.

One day, witchcraft is presented as a genuine spiritual tradition unjustly maligned by Christianity. The next, it is described as a social category invented by Christians to oppress women.

Those claims are difficult to reconcile, but reconciliation is beside the point. Both preserve the same moral architecture: Christians remain the oppressors, and everyone else becomes the oppressed.

The hardest courses to identify are not those that openly advertise ideology. Those are easy enough to avoid. The greater challenge is recognizing ideological conformity when it hides beneath academic jargon and historical subject matter.

The sooner students learn to decode that language, the sooner they can decide where to spend their tuition dollars and intellectual energy.

College is expensive enough without paying thousands of dollars to hear that orthodox Christianity is the principal menace of Western civilization — and discovering only after the drop deadline that you accidentally enrolled in Witchcraft 101.

​State universities, Witchcraft, Occult, Christianity, Arizona state university, College, Opinion & analysis