Category: blaze media

Immigration detainees from this weekend include some of the “worst of the worst” criminal suspects, according to exclusive information from the Department of Homeland Security.

Critics of President Donald Trump’s order for mass deportations claim that federal officers are targeting people based solely on their illegal status, but the report from DHS documents some of the heinous criminal allegations tied to them as well.

‘ICE arrested sickos who sexually abused children, raped innocent women, and committed murder.’

In one case, criminal illegal alien Javier Salvador Morfin from Mexico was convicted of assault with intent to commit a felony and attempted rape by force/fear in Los Angeles, California.

“Thanks to the Biden administration open-border policies, every town is now as a border town flooded with worst-of-the-worst criminal illegal aliens,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.

“While Americans were enjoying their weekend and the media peddled falsehoods that DHS was not targeting the worst of the worst, ICE arrested sickos who sexually abused children, raped innocent women, and committed murder,” she added.

The criminal illegal aliens detained in this latest sweep include:

Bharatkumar Manilal Patel of India, who was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, victim 13 to 16 years old in Cook County, Illinois.Cesar Ramirez-Ortiz of Mexico, who was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual assault of a child in Chicago, Illinois.Juan Bernardo Perez-Gomez of Mexico, who was convicted of sex with a minor and burglary in San Bernardino, California.Ronald Alexander Bonilla-Aguilar of Honduras, who was convicted of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 in Santa Clarita, California.Alvin Henry of Trinidad and Tobago, who was convicted of rape in Brooklyn, New York. Noel De Jesus Bravo-Gonzalez of Nicaragua, who was convicted of larceny, robbery, and homicide in Miami, Florida. Nicole Benavente Torres of Peru, who was convicted of aggravated assault in Prince William County, Virginia.Leonardo Morales-Lozada of Colombia, who was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Tarrant County, Texas.

The release also said that 70% of ICE arrests involve people charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S., and the statistic doesn’t include “foreign fugitives, gang members, terrorists, and human rights abusers.”

RELATED: Anti-ICE activists hold Home Depot business operations hostage with disruptive ice-scraper stunt

In another case from DHS, Sergio Jesus Villegas-Dorta from Cuba was convicted of intentional killing involving a weapon, robbery, and aggravated assault with a weapon in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

“As we look ahead to Thanksgiving this week, Americans can be thankful our brave DHS law enforcement got these pedophiles, rapists, and murderers off American streets,” McLaughlin concluded.

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​Ice arrests, Worst of the worst, Dhs vs the media, Criminal illegal aliens, Politics 

Offer Vince Shlomi, the 61-year-old Israeli-born pitchman whose work selling absorbent towels on late-night TV gained him recognizability as the “ShamWow guy,” has filed to run for Congress as a Republican.

According to the Texas GOP’s list of filing applications, Shlomi has filed an application to unseat Republican incumbent Rep. John Carter, who has represented Texas’ 31st congressional district since 2003 thanks to a series of landslide electoral victories.

‘Hopefully I won’t make another mistake.’

“The woke churches are after our kids’ nuts,” Shlomi said in a video where he can be seen standing outside a structure painted in the LGBT imperial colors. “Not no more. We’re not chopping nuts. You’re going to love your nuts with the ShamWow guy.”

The allusion to nuts is both a play on LGBT activists’ support for child genital mutilation and the “Slap Chop” infomercial wherein Shlomi states, “With Slap Chop, you’re going to love my nuts,” prior to dicing a bowl full of almonds and walnuts.

Shlomi, an apparent Los Angeles resident who serves as president and CEO of the TV marketing company Square One Entertainment, told Fox News Digital on Sunday that he was motivated to run for office by a desire to “destroy wokeism” and as a tribute to assassinated conservative Charlie Kirk, whom he referred to as the original “woke buster.”

In a recent parody music video titled “Woke Busters,” Shlomi signaled opposition to men in girls’ locker rooms, child sex changes, the “Me Too” movement, identity politics, and cancel culture.

While Shlomi’s new role as culture warrior might find resonance with voters, he may have to address on the campaign trail some of the skeletons crowding his closet.

RELATED: Justice Alito delivers win to Texas GOP, temporarily restores Republican congressional map

Vince Offer’s mugshot following his 2009 arrest in Miami Beach, Florida. Photo by Kypros/Getty Images

For instance, Shlomi was arrested and slapped with a felony battery charge in February 2009 for allegedly pummeling a prostitute at a hotel in Miami Beach, Florida.

According to the arrest affidavit, Shlomi kissed a hooker he had met earlier at a nightclub. Shlomi told police that the hooker bit his tongue and would not let go, so he punched her in the face several times. The prostitute reportedly suffered facial fractures and numerous lacerations. Prosecutors ultimately dropped the case.

Two years later, Shlomi’s former personal assistant sued him in a separate case, alleging he stalked and emotionally abused her, made unwanted sexual advances, and at one stage offered to buy her eggs, reported CBS News.

In 2013, Shlomi told NBC News that he was cleaning up his act, stating, “People understand you make mistakes in life.”

“Hopefully I won’t make another mistake,” he added.

Shlomi has reportedly not yet formalized his intention to run with the Federal Election Commission.

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A “buy-in” protest against federal immigration operations at Home Depot has led to clogged lines at a store in Southern California, where a man allegedly being chased by officials was killed after running onto a freeway.

About a hundred protesters stood in line to buy one item, an ice scraper, at the store in Monrovia and then waited in line to return the item, worth about 17 cents, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

‘Buy it and try to collapse their system for a moment, or for some time, with the group of people that are witnessing and are willing to stay, to stand up for the human rights of day laborers.’

Home Depot has denied involvement in the operations, but the company’s critics say that Home Depot is not doing enough to protect customers and employees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A spokesperson for Home Depot sent a brief comment to Blaze News via email about the protest.

“We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in the operations,” the spokesperson wrote. “We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.”

Video on social media showed the protesters standing in line, some with signs criticizing Home Depot. The protest was organized by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

“Whether the corporation wants to admit it or not, Home Depot has become ground zero for this cruel, vicious immigration enforcement that’s taking place in our country,” said National Day Laborer Organizing Network co-director Pablo Alvarado to the Times.

The Department of Homeland Security has previously denied that the man who was killed after running from the Home Depot was being pursued by DHS officers. The 52-year-old man from Guatemala was struck by a vehicle on the freeway.

“We want to scrape ICE from our communities,” said NDLON communications director Palmira Figueroa to KCBS-TV. “It’s kind of symbolic, right, to use an ice scraper. Buy it and try to collapse their system for a moment, or for some time, with the group of people that are witnessing and are willing to stay, to stand up for the human rights of day laborers.”

Some pointed out that they were actually buying putty knives, not ice scrapers, likely because ice scrapers don’t sell well in the Southern Californian climate.

RELATED: VIDEO: Leotarded liberals protest ICE facility with ’80s-themed aerobics class

The protest lasted for about an hour before the protesters started to march through the store, which led to store workers closing it down.

“Oh, you can actually shut a store, right?” replied Figueroa. “You can shut for this, but you cannot, you have not, shut them when an ICE raid and abuse is happening.”

Some have also called for a boycott against Home Depot over the ICE operations.

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​Ice at home depot, Ice scraper protest, Ice deportations, Day laborer protest, Politics 

A former safety lead for one of Mark Zuckerberg’s social media apps alleged the company is not very strict when it comes to those who engaged in human trafficking.

The claim comes from a plaintiff’s brief filed as part of a lawsuit against Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. The lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California alleges that the social apps “relentlessly” pursued growth at all costs and “recklessly” ignored the impacts their products have on the mental health of children.

‘You could incur 16 violations for prostitution and sexual solicitation.’

Vaishnavi Jayakumar, Instagram’s former head of safety and well-being, testified that she was shocked when she learned Meta had a “17x” strike policy toward those who reportedly engaged in “trafficking of humans for sex.”

“You could incur 16 violations for prostitution and sexual solicitation, and upon the 17th violation, your account would be suspended,” Jayakumar claimed. The former employee also said that she considered it to be a “very, very high strike threshold” in comparison to the rest of the industry and that internal documentation from Meta corroborated her claim.

As Time reported, plaintiffs in the case claim that Jayakumar raised the issue in 2020 but was told it was too difficult to address. This reportedly came at the same time it was allegedly much easier to report users for violations surrounding spam, “intellectual property violation,” and the “promotion of firearms.”

In a statement, Meta strongly denied the claims.

RELATED: Florida attorney general announces lawsuit against Snapchat for allegedly empowering child predators

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture,” a Meta spokesperson told Time.

“The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens — like introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with controls to manage their teens’ experiences. We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, and we stand by our record.”

Still, the lawsuit claims Meta was aware of the harms its platforms caused and even knew about millions of adults who were trying to contact minors through its apps.

Moreover, the lawsuit also alleges that Meta halted internal research that would have shown those who stopped using Facebook became less depressed or anxious, NBC News reported.

The study, reportedly titled Project Mercury, was allegedly initiated in 2019 as a way to help “explore the impact” that Meta apps have on “polarization, news consumption, well-being, and daily social interactions.”

RELATED: Blaze News investigates: Is social media really a ‘breeding ground for predators’ — or are we worrying too much?

Additionally, the lawsuit compares the social media sites to “tobacco,” likening the platforms to cigarette companies marketing their products to kids.

A Google spokesperson said the lawsuit “fundamentally misunderstand how YouTube works and the allegations are simply not true.”

“YouTube is a streaming service where people come to watch everything from live sports to podcasts to their favorite creators, primarily on TV screens, not a social network where people go to catch up with friends,” the Google spokesperson stated. “We’ve also developed dedicated tools for young people, guided by child safety experts, that give families control.”

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The Department of War issued a statement Monday announcing an investigation into Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona after he made comments advising military members against carrying out allegedly unlawful orders from the president.

Several Democrats participated in a video calling on U.S. military members to refuse to follow unlawful orders, and the president slammed them Saturday in a post on social media. Kelly is a retired Navy captain.

‘It was sedition at the highest level, and sedition is a major crime. There can be no other interpretation of what they said!’

“The traitors that told the military to disobey my orders should be in jail right now, not roaming the fake news networks trying to explain what they said was OK,” President Donald Trump wrote in all caps.

“It was sedition at the highest level, and sedition is a major crime. There can be no other interpretation of what they said!” he added.

He also suggested that they should be hanged for their “seditious behavior,” but the White House walked back those comments.

On Monday, the Pentagon said Kelly was under investigation.

“The Department of War has received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.). In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures,” the statement reads.

“All servicemembers are reminded that they have a legal obligation under the UCMJ to obey lawful orders and that orders are presumed to be lawful. A servicemember’s personal philosophy does not justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order,” the DOW statement added.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, one of the Democrats who participated in the video, said police responded to her home over a bomb threat. She said she was not at home at the time.

Kelly responded on social media to the Pentagon statement.

“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” he wrote. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

RELATED: Marjorie Taylor Greene says she has received violent threats — and blames Trump

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

“This matter will be handled in compliance with military law, ensuring due process and impartiality,” the statement from the Pentagon continued. “Further official comments will be limited, to preserve the integrity of the proceedings.”

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​Unlawful orders video, Court martial, Sen mark kelly, Pentagon vs democrats, Politics 

A programmer has made it possible to read Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous emails from his point of view.

The computer whiz, going by the name Riley Walz, has a history of creating unique webpages and even created a fake 2020 Republican candidate.

‘You’re logged in as Epstein and can see his emails.’

Walz is assumed to be in his early 20s given that he was described by CNN as a high school student from Upstate New York in February 2020.

The youngster’s website features several links to obscure but clever programs he has created, like a fast-food price comparison index and a random video viewer that shuffles between YouTube videos uploaded between 2009 and 2012 from iPhones using their default file names.

For his latest endeavor, Walz, along with another young man named Luke Igel, created Jmail.world. While it is not clear what the “J” stands for in this case, the website is a Gmail inbox clone that lets users operate a replica version of Epstein’s Gmail account.

“We cloned Gmail, except you’re logged in as Epstein and can see his emails,” Walz plainly wrote on X.

RELATED: Epstein files backfire as Democrats get pulled into their own trap

The inbox includes the last message Epstein received at his “jeevacation@gmail.com” address, which was a July 14, 2019, note from Quora Digest.

Interestingly enough, the email included popular stories at the time, like “Why do you think the reason behind Trump abruptly canceling Pence’s New Hampshire trip?” and “Why is Trump’s trade war the wrong way to compete with China?”

Under a list of sidebar contacts, names like Ghislaine Maxwell, his confidant, activist Noam Chomsky, and attorney Alan Dershowitz are listed.

The emails also include numerous exchanges of articles and news clippings between Epstein and longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon. The dates range between February 2018 and April 2019.

RELATED: How GOP leadership can turn a midterm gift into a total disaster

Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

Emails between Epstein and Maxwell — who went by “Gxax” at times — ranged in nature, but included parody emails with Maxwell pretending to pen a message from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking President Obama to rescind his citizenship.

“Dear President Obama:

I am writing today with a somewhat unusual request. First and foremost, I am asking that you return America to its August 20th, 1959 borders so that Hawaii is no longer a state and you are no longer a citizen,” the email read.

Others showed Maxwell telling Epstein she would “have to distance myself from you in [a] statement.”

“And they need me to say I was not aware of massage w/andrew in my house,” it added.

Finally, readers can also view the emails that Democrats have widely circulated in an attempt to implicate President Trump, including a message where Epstein tells Maxwell that Trump “spent hours” at his house. Democrats redacted Virginia Giuffre’s name, a victim of Epstein’s that had previously noted that she never witnessed Trump do anything inappropriate.

In other emails to author Michael Wolff, Epstein said Trump “never got a massage.”

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​Return, Gmail, Jeffrey epstein, Trump, Obama, Ghislaine maxwell, Democrats, Steve bannon, Tech 

On November 18, six Democrat lawmakers released a short online video titled “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” in which they encouraged service members and intelligence personnel to reject “illegal orders” from the Trump administration.

While the video posited that the administration “is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens” and acting in ways that threaten the Constitution, it did not substantiate its claims with any evidence or examples of illegal orders, leading many — President Trump included — to call it sedition.

When Glenn Beck got wind of the scandal, he posted the following, which President Trump then reposted.

Today on “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn expounded on his warning, urging the need for four actions to be immediately taken to prevent the unraveling of our republic.

1. Congress must censure the mutinous 6

“If lawmakers can publicly encourage military resistance without consequence, then Congress has surrendered its moral authority. You cannot police the executive branch; you can’t oversee the intelligence agencies; you can’t demand transparency if you cannot police your own members,” says Glenn, calling censure necessary “constitutional maintenance.”

“If Congress refuses to [discipline the lawmakers who made the video], then the precedent remains, and it gets worse. And history shows us no nation survives a politicized military — ever.”

2. Pentagon must publicly reaffirm: ‘We obey the president’s lawful orders’

The military has to “restate the chain of command publicly and immediately. The joint chiefs don’t need a press conference; they don’t need hearings. They just need to say the United States armed forces obey all lawful orders of the president,” says Glenn.

“That’s the firewall between an American republic and every failed nation in history.”

3. SCOTUS must slam the door on Boasberg’s secret spying precedent — immediately

Glenn urges the “the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court: Close the door on the Boasberg case” immediately.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg “opened a door that is so dangerous,” says Glenn, by approving secret grand jury subpoenas and gag orders in the 2022-2023 Arctic Frost investigation — launched by the FBI and special counsel Jack Smith to probe Trump allies’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election — that let the executive branch seize phone records from at least nine Republican senators without any notice to Congress for over a year.

“No judge — no matter how noble his intentions — has the authority to rewrite the separation of powers. If one branch can secretly spy on another, then you have no checks and balances. You have a surveillance government,” says Glenn, insisting that the Supreme Court must “intervene.”

“If they don’t, this is the new normal,” he warns.

4. If media and elites stay silent, the American people must stand up and demand consequences

“In a functioning republic, this is supposed to be where the media steps in. This is where the cultural leaders, the voices — left, right, center — stop obsessing over clickbait and start explaining to the people what just happened, why it’s unprecedented, why it matters, [and] how we as citizens need to respond,” says Glenn.

But as of now, that’s not happening in media, academia, or Hollywood.

The reason for their silence, says Glenn, is “because America’s cultural class no longer sees its role as the guardian of the republic” but rather as “guardians of ideology.”

If their failure continues, it’s the role of the American people to “step in,” Glenn says.

In order to do that, citizens must put aside their political beliefs and party affiliations and focus on the big picture.

“This is about whether the military stays under civilian authority, whether our adversaries overseas are given the indication that we are ripe for the taking. This is about judges that want to erase the separation of powers. … Most importantly, this is about whether your children will inherit a functioning republic,” Glenn says.

“You don’t riot; you don’t panic; you don’t despair. We are headed into Thanksgiving. Give thanks for the crosses that we bear; give thanks because our liberty, our freedom — should we decide to keep it — will be more valuable to us. But you should call your representatives. … You need to demand transparency; you need to insist on consequences.”

Rage, division, and apathy, Glenn warns, will get us nowhere. The answer is “citizenship.”

“If we sleep through this, the system will break — guaranteed. But if you wake up, stand up, and insist on boundaries, eventually it will happen.”

To hear more of Glenn’s encouragement and analysis, watch the clip above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Sedition, Truth social, Donald trump, Don’t give up the ship, Blazetv, Blaze media 

A WNBA player just may have put a tired debate to rest for good.

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham responded to comments made by a panel of male basketball players last week, and her willingness to agree with them might land her in hot water with gender activists.

‘Men are just stronger, bigger, athletic; they just are a different build.’

On Tuesday, NBA players Michael Porter Jr. and Lonzo Ball and former pro LiAngelo Ball shot down claims from WNBA star Paige Bueckers, who said she could beat NBA player Josh Hart one-on-one. The panel also denied former NBA player Pat Beverley’s claim that the WNBA champions could beat an NBA team.

By Thursday, Cunningham said dozens of people had sent her the remarks looking for her reaction.

“This is my personal opinion, but if you are a professional football player, basketball player … if you’re in that elite-level group, yeah, you should be able to beat the girls,” she explained. “Like, I’m not surprised by that.”

The 29-year-old then delivered a blunt message to her peers: “I just don’t get why it’s continuing to get brought up. And like, if women are saying that, like, he couldn’t beat them, yeah, he could. Any NBA star or player could beat a female in high school,” she said.

Cunningham’s co-host on the “Show Me Something” podcast, West Wilson, had a different approach to Porter’s comments. He put forward the notion that Porter has some sort of issue with women that caused him to bring up the topic.

RELATED: NBA players finally drop brutal truth bombs on WNBA stars: ‘It should be common sense’

Wilson said Porter has been “talking about true women” for the last two years, adding that he believes the Brooklyn Nets player is “weirdly insecure about women being around him” and their “reflection of him.”

The co-host was silenced when he read the contextual argument made by Porter. However, he omitted the portion of Porter’s remarks in which he said he had played against Cunningham when he was in the eighth grade and easily defeated her.

“My sisters went to University of Missouri, and I was still a young dude, and they had me playing on the scout team,” Porter said last week. “And they had a few WNBA players on their team, like Sophie Cunningham and a couple others. I think I was in seventh or eighth grade.”

Cunningham then brought her co-host back down to earth with her next comments, admitting that a team of elite eighth-graders could indeed handle adult women on the court.

RELATED: WNBA player complains chartered planes are too small: ‘We are grateful, but there’s still work to be done’

– YouTube

“If they’re future pros,” she prefaced, “… it’s probably true.”

Cunningham continued, stating the obviously biological differences.

“I don’t want to be unrealistic or delusional, like, men are just stronger, bigger, athletic; they just are a different build. And so if you put them up against females, well, yeah, they’re gonna win. Duh,” she said.

Wilson asked if any WNBA players thought they could beat a group of high-school boys, and Cunningham was more than willing to put a nail in the coffin.

“Dude, there’s no way. … If you put their best high-school [players] against the best WNBA … the male and female are just so different. I just don’t think that’s a fair matchup,” she admitted.

Interestingly, the duo went on to discuss Cunningham’s basketball history, which included discussions of playing with Porter’s older sisters.

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A federal judge dismissed the cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James Monday.

Senior U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie dismissed the two indictments, ruling that President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan was invalidly appointed to her position.

‘No one is above the law.’

Currie said that “all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment” to serve as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia “were unlawful exercises of executive power and hereby set aside.”

Prosecutors who work alongside Halligan said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has the authority to choose whom to appoint to the position and that the 120-day period interim U.S. attorneys serve operates as a temporary check-in system for appointees.

RELATED: Eric Swalwell offers melodramatic response to Trump DOJ probe: ‘I refuse to live in fear’

Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images

“The implications of a contrary conclusion are extraordinary,” Currie said of Halligan’s appointment. “It would mean the government could send any private citizen off the street — attorney or not — into the grand jury room to secure an indictment so long as the Attorney General gives her approval after the fact. That cannot be the law.”

Currie dismissed the cases without prejudice, keeping the door open for the cases to be refiled, though whether they will be remains unclear. The Department of Justice may also opt to appeal Currie’s decision. Blaze News reached out to Bondi’s office for comment.

Comey was indicted in September for “serious crimes related to the disclosure of sensitive information,” with the Department of Justice alleging that the former director lied to Congress.

“No one is above the law,” Bondi said in a statement following the indictment. “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”

RELATED: Letitia James gives unhinged rant after court hearing for bank fraud allegations: ‘This is not about me!’

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

James was indicted shortly after Comey in October over allegations of bank fraud and providing false statements to a financial institution. If James had been convicted, she would have faced up to 30 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines on each count.

“The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust,” Halligan said in a statement following the indictment. “The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.”

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​Letitia james, Pam bondi, James comey, Lindsey halligan, Lawfare, Donald trump, Department of justice, Fbi direcor, Cameron currie, Politics 

After attending a somewhat run-of-the-mill novus ordo Mass with only a few redeeming qualities, my husband and I decided to visit another church in Nevada that is possibly one of the most hated and misunderstood Christian denominations — even with the Latter-day Saints and Seventh-day Adventists.

It was both his and my first time attending a Jehovah’s Witness church.

‘I personally don’t want to go to heaven, but want to remain on Earth when we’re resurrected. I want to live among the animals and trees and plants and not rule over others.’

We walked 40-some minutes to the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses and were greeted warmly, even though we were two minutes late and the congregation had already begun singing the first hymn. The setting might have been bland, but I felt I had achieved a bucket-list goal.

For years I’d tried to visit a Kingdom Hall. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were one of the last churches to reopen nationwide after COVID, offering online meetings for nearly two and a half years, until summer of 2022. Even after that, many remained closed for another year, and a large portion still host hybrid Zoom/in-person gatherings for the immune-compromised.

Kingdom Hall

To many, the inside of the meeting hall would appear no different from a conservative Protestant church. Most women wore skirts or business suits; the men were in full suits. The carpet was gray, the walls plain, decorated with a few pictures of flowers. There were no windows.

Rows of theater chairs faced a pulpit. Though the Jehovah’s Witnesses do not have ordained ministers, any baptized man may teach from Scripture. On the day we visited, a guest speaker from Idaho — tailored suit, bright red tie — delivered a sermon much like any Protestant pastor’s, citing extensive Bible verses to support his points. There was no American flag, unsurprising given JW pacifism. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not vote, and while they don’t forbid self-defense, they register as conscientious objectors during drafts. They believe that those who live by the sword will die by the sword (Matthew 26:52).

RELATED: Church-hopping: Confessions of an itinerant worshipper

Keturah Hickman

The sermon

The message, titled “Is There in Fact a True Religion from God’s Standpoint?” began with statistics: 85% of the world identifies as religious, 31% Christian, across 45,000 denominations — with a new one forming every 2.2 days. “But how does Jehovah want to be worshipped?” he asked.

He read from Mark 7:6-7 and James 1:26, then cited Solomon: True religion is to fear God and keep His commandments (Ecclesiastes 12:13). More verses followed — Isaiah 48:17-18, Micah 6:8, Matthew 7:16 — arguing that true belief and conduct must fit like a well-tailored suit, not mismatched pieces.

He condemned most Christian denominations for justifying slavery so that men might Christianize pagan souls for the kingdom of God. He pointed out that the Jehovah’s Witnesses never supported such horrid beliefs. (He failed to mention that slavery was already abolished by the time they came along.) He warned against fatalism, ancestor worship, and faith in human institutions. “If a religion permits or promotes practices the Bible condemns, it is not true,” he said, citing Colossians 3:10, John 8:32, James 3:17-18, and others.

“Truth is found in the word of God,” he concluded. “When we love the word, we are peaceable.”

The sermon ended with the JW hymn “My Father, My God and Friend (Hebrews 6:10).”

All along the Watchtower

After the hymn, an elder read from “The Watchtower,” the denomination’s monthly study magazine. Before the group was called Jehovah’s Witnesses, it was the Watch Tower Society, founded by Charles Taze Russell in 1881.

The article that day was “Jehovah Heals the Brokenhearted” (Psalm 147:3). The elder read each paragraph aloud, then passed the microphone for congregants — men and women, in person or on Zoom — to share reflections.

Here are some highlights.

Satan wants us to wallow in our feelings. Jehovah wants us to defy Satan and serve Him. When we do that, He sees us and is moved to help us.Jehovah doesn’t keep track of our sins, but only of the good we do.Jehovah does not put a time limit on our prayers as if it were a therapy session. We can pray to Him for as long as we like, and He’ll keep listening.The Son’s sacrifice forgives our past sins so we can move ahead into the future.We can comfort each other by being gentle and genuine.We are not to blame for how others hurt us.

It was repetitive but sincere — an hour-long group meditation on comfort and resilience.

The service ended with another hymn. There was no tithe, and communion is held only once a year for those who believe they are among the 144,000 destined for heaven.

The congregants

Afterward, several congregants welcomed us. One woman, Linda, about 70, explained that she had converted from Protestantism before marrying.

“There aren’t many differences between us and other churches,” she said, “except that we don’t teach what other places teach.”

“Such as?”

“We teach that Jehovah is Almighty God and that Jesus is His son and our Messiah. And we don’t believe in hellfire,” she said. “You can’t really find that idea in the Bible.”

I asked her if that meant that she believes everyone goes to heaven or if they just die.

She said, “The Bible says 144,000 go to heaven to be kings and priests to be the government of the kingdom of heaven that will come to Earth. I personally don’t want to go to heaven, but want to remain on Earth when we’re resurrected. I want to live among the animals and trees and plants and not rule over others.”

Linda gave me a small Bible — I gladly accepted it because it was lightweight and would fit perfectly into my backpack, and until now I had only been able to carry a New Testament. She explained to me that the Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t approve of many of Scofield’s notes in the KJV and that their version had more accurate cross-references. I love having various versions of the Bible to read through, so there was no complaint from me!

She invited us to join her husband and friends at a cafe for a late lunch. And so we went with about 20 other congregants. I sat by a woman just a little older than I. Ozzy had been raised in the Jehovah’s Witnesses and had spent much of her youth as a traveling nanny. She told me that nearly six years ago she had married a Grace Baptist Church man and had a daughter with him. They eventually divorced. “I’m just grateful my daughter is learning about God in both homes she’s raised in,” she said.

Although Ozzy did not speak ill of her ex-husband, it was clear that she thought her expression of faith was more valid than his. So I asked her what was different between the two theologies, in her opinion.

“That’s a good question,” Ozzy said. “Not much.”

Then she added:

Except how we define the Trinity — you know, you can’t find that word in the Bible. I’ve searched every translation of the Bible, so I know. We both believe in the concept, though JW is more literal and bases their definition on how the Bible describes it. We believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three separate entities united by a common will. Grace Bible Church is more Catholic when they talk about the Trinity.

After a day with them, I found them sincere and Bible-focused, hardly cult-like. They loved God, quoted Scripture freely, and treated us with warmth — even when I somewhat aggressively asked about one of their more infamous beliefs.

“I have heard that your church does not allow people to get blood transfusions and that this has caused many people to die.”

“Yes, we believe blood is sacred and not to be spilled in war nor ingested for any reason,” Linda responded. “But blood can be divided into four components, and it is okay to receive any of those minor fractions.

“Most people don’t even need blood transfusions as much as they used to,” she added, noting that “scientists have discovered that there are healthier ways to fill a low blood count with supplements and iron.”

Are the Witnesses a cult?

I’m not sure what makes a group a cult any more. Some say it’s when people follow a man rather than the Bible — but the Jehovah’s Witnesses have no central figure. They encourage personal Bible study.

Interestingly, 65% of members are converts — adults who join by conviction, not birth. While many leave, those who stay do so deliberately. Angry ex-members exist in every religion, and that alone doesn’t define a cult.

Much of JW doctrine is nothing your average Protestant would quarrel with: anti-abortion but pro-birth-control, personal responsibility for family size, and no institutional oversight (beyond guidance from JW Broadcasting in New York). There’s also no enforcement mechanism for rules on blood transfusions or holidays.

There are 8.6 million Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide, compared to 15.7 million Jews, 17 million Mormons, and 22 million Seventh-day Adventists. Many Protestants single out the denomination’s rejection of transfusions, but the Jehovah’s Witnesses are neither faith healers nor anti-medicine. They are pacifists but politically moderate and scientifically literate.

Charles Taze Russell

Jehovah’s Witnesses founder Charles Taze Russell was raised Presbyterian. At age 13 he left his church to embark upon a kind of quest for the truth, for a time backsliding into unbelief.

Known for writing Bible verse on fences as a way to evangelize, he founded a group called the Bible Student Movement in 1879. Much like Mormons, the Two by Twos, and the Jim Roberts Group, his group grew by sending out pairs of men to preach the word of God directly from the Bible.

Despite Russell’s zeal, his life was riddled with scandal. He divorced his wife after she demanded a larger editorial influence on “The Watch Tower.” He sued for libel often, occasionally winning — one time the jury mockingly ruled in his favor but gave him only one dollar, and so he filed an appeal and received $15,000.

After wrongly predicting the end of the world numerous times, Russell died in 1931. The group split apart. Approximately a quarter of the members remained faithful to Russell’s successors and began calling themselves Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Their use of the name “Jehovah” also irritates critics, though it appears in the King James Bible (Exodus 6:3; Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 12:2; 26:4).

Their rejection of the Nicene Trinity remains the sharpest point of division — a doctrine codified by the Catholic Church and later adopted by nearly all of Protestantism. It’s an irony of history: Protestants who define themselves against Rome still use Rome’s creed as the boundary of belief. Disagreement with that doctrine, however, does not make a faith a cult.

The trend to schism

One striking point from the sermon stayed with me: Every 2.2 days a new denomination is created.

Until the 16th century, Christianity had only a handful of branches. Now there are 45,000. The JW speaker said it is because everyone seeks truth; I think it’s because we’ve forgotten love.

As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13: “If I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.”

What merit is truth without love? God does not honor self-righteous division. This, perhaps, was Martin Luther’s and Henry VIII’s greatest sin — their pride tore Christ’s body into pieces.

Protestants readily maintain friendly regard for Judaism, which does not accept Christ’s divinity, while showing far less tolerance for groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, or Adventists — who profess Jesus as Lord and Redeemer.

For this reason, I urge believers: Visit all churches. Seek unity where possible. Not to follow fads, but to love the whole body of Christ — even the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

​Faith, Abide, Christianity, Jehovah’s witnesses, Cults, Sects, Protestantism, Catholicism, Lifestyle, Church-hopping, Culture 

Last week, a woman was lit on fire while riding the Blue Line in Chicago during an unprovoked attack. Now new evidence has emerged that this was not only a preventable attack, but a judge let the accused attacker off easy after a brutal assault that was caught on camera back in August.

And the judge, Teresa Molina-Gonzalez, has apparently proudly spoken about her unconventional approach to criminal justice in her position of authority.

‘However, I had a chance as a prosecutor to make a difference as to what cases come in.’

Libs of TikTok posted a video of Judge Molina-Gonzalez apparently boasting about her soft-on-crime approach in a 2021 speech about the “power of diversity,” according to a screen slide.

RELATED: Chicago mayor obliterated by ActBlue strategist over ‘absolutely insane’ response to woman set on fire on train

Photo by Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images

The judge is heard talking about a common $354 fine in the video: “Some of the judges that I work with came from money, so $354 is no big deal. But to most of the people that come to my courtroom, it is a big deal.”

“And so I always offer them the opportunity to do community service.”

Judge Molina-Gonzalez also seemed to suggest that she filtered the cases based on whether the defendants “look like” her.

“You know, being a Latina in the office, people would tell me, like, ‘Don’t you feel like you’re prosecuting your own people?’ But it’s true, there are a lot of defendants that look like me. However, I had a chance as a prosecutor to make a difference as to what cases come in. I had a chance as a prosecutor to decide what offers were appropriate,” she can be heard saying, seemingly referring to her time as a prosecutor.

She also claimed in an interview posted to the Illinois courts website that “diversity on the bench is important because it allows all people to be represented. It instills faith and integrity in our judicial system.”

Lawrence Reed, the 50-year-old accused of lighting the Chicago woman on fire, reportedly has a rap sheet of over 70 arrests and 13 convictions prior to the barbaric attack last Monday.

Judge Molina-Gonzalez placed Reed on a lenient electronic monitoring system after he allegedly slapped a female social worker unconscious in August.

“I can’t keep everybody in jail because the state’s attorney wants me to,” she said at the time after the prosecutor warned that an ankle monitor “could not protect the victim or the community from another vicious, random, and spontaneous attack,” according to CWB Chicago.

The female victim, 26, is reportedly still in the hospital in critical condition.

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​Politics, Chicago, Lawrence reed, Judge teresa molina-gonzalez, Dei, Activist judge, Woman lit on fire 

Democratic congressional candidate Aftyn Behn’s political past has once again come back to haunt her.

Behn, who currently serves in the Tennessee state legislature, has failed to navigate her on-the-record remarks ahead of the December 2 special election to replace former Republican Rep. Mark Green. Despite running to represent Tennessee’s 7th congressional district, Behn has expressed disdain for the district and critical resources that assist constituents.

‘I don’t remember these tweets.’

Behn was confronted on MS NOW about a series of now-deleted tweets where she apparently advocated to dissolve the police department in 2020, the same summer as the George Floyd riots.

One of these tweets read, “Good morning, especially to the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified.”

RELATED: Trump cracks jokes with Mamdani in cordial Oval Office meeting: ‘I’ve been called much worse’

Photo by SAMUEL CORUM/AFP via Getty Images

“Yeah, I’m not going to engage in cable news talking points,” Behn said. “But what I will say is that, you know, our communities need solutions. We need local people deciding … solving local problems with local solutions … and that’s not the overreach of a federal government or a state government of which we are dealing with in Nashville and our cities across the state.”

The MS NOW anchor pressed Behn to clarify her comments repeatedly, but she failed to do so.

“Once again, I don’t remember these tweets,” Behn said.

RELATED: ‘You’re a piece of s**t’: Nancy Mace and Cory Mills clash in heated exchange after failed censure

This is not the first time Behn’s past remarks have landed the Democrat in an uncomfortable situation. She previously expressed severe disdain for Nashville, the very city she is running to represent.

“I hate the city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville, apparently,” Behn said.

“I hate it.”

In a video posted to X on Thursday, Behn seemed to deny that she hates Nashville, admitting that she takes issue with “the bachelorettes” and “pedal taverns” but ultimately blames Republicans for her comments.

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​Aftyn behn, Tennessee, Mark green, Msnbc, George floyd, 2020 riots, Nashville, Defund the police, Democrats, Congress, Political violence, Deleted tweets, Politics 

Four unidentified individuals arrived at a south Florida home Saturday evening and tried to force their way inside, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office told WPLG-TV.

However, the homeowner was armed with a gun and opened fire.

‘Everyone has a duty and a right to defend themselves when attacked. Good job homeowner!!!’

Indeed, gunshots and a male hollering in pain are audible on two home surveillance videos that are part of WPLG’s report. The station in a separate story said it all went down in the area of Southwest 141st Street and 110th Avenue in Miami-Dade’s Richmond Heights neighborhood around 6:40 p.m.

The homeowner struck one of the subjects in the upper body, deputies told WPLG, adding that the other three individuals fled the scene in an unknown direction.

The wounded male died at a nearby hospital, the station said, adding that the Homicide Bureau of the sheriff’s office has taken over the investigation.

RELATED: Elderly Texas homeowner armed with hunting rifle spots burglar who broke through back door. It doesn’t end well for intruder.

The mother of the fatally shot male told WPLG the next morning in the separate story that she’s “in shock, disbelief” and “hurt.”

The mother, who did not provide her name, added to the station that while she was told that her son “tried to break into someone’s house,” she also noted, “That’s not him.”

Commenters under WPLG’s Facebook post about the mother’s reaction offered a number of opinions in the aftermath:

“I am truly sorry for this mother, but the son apparently was involved with the wrong people and participated in a fatally stupid crime,” one commenter wrote. “No doubt that the homeowner feared for his life with four men trying to force their way inside. Either she really didn’t know her son at all, or he was easily misled.””I’m pretty sure she is distraught,” another user observed. “But the bottom line is her son committed a crime. I feel bad for her, but not for him. Break into my home and find out.””Everyone has a duty and a right to defend themselves when attacked,” another commenter declared. “Good job homeowner!!!””The son should have made better choices, and he would still be here,” another user noted.”Play FAFO in Florida and this is the result!!!” another commenter exclaimed. “Love our freedom to protect ourselves.”

Authorities were continuing to search for the three remaining suspects, WPLG reported, adding that those with information can call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.

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​Crime thwarted, Florida, Attempted home invasion, Intruders, Self-defense, Fighting back, Fatal shooting, 2nd amend., Guns, Gun rights, Richmond heights, Miami-dade sheriff’s office, Crime 

For more than two centuries, the great American novel has tempted writers who dreamed of capturing the country’s soul between two covers.

From Melville’s “Moby-Dick” to Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” from Faulkner’s haunted South to Steinbeck’s dust-caked plains, these novels shaped the way Americans saw themselves. Even in decline, the form still attracted giants. Updike, Roth, Morrison — writers who made words shine and sentences sing. Each tried to show what it means to be American: to dream, to stumble, and to start again.

To compound matters, ‘Ingram’ isn’t just a story of exploration, but also one of self-exploration, in the most literal and least appealing sense.

Now comes comedian, filmmaker, and repentant sex pest Louis C.K. to try his hand at what turns out to be … a not-great American novel. In truth, it’s awful.

Road to nowhere

“Ingram” reads like a road map to nowhere — meandering, bloated, and grammatically reckless. The prose wanders as if written under anesthesia. Sentences stretch, then sag. The paragraphs arrive in puddles, not lines. There’s an energy in C.K.’s comedy — a kind of desperate honesty — that, on stage, electrifies. But on the page, that same honesty slips into self-indulgence. The book is less “On the Road” and more off the rails.

To be clear, I love his comedy. I’ve seen him live and will see him again in the new year. He remains one of the most gifted observers of human absurdity alive — a man who can mine a half-eaten slice of pizza for existential truth. But this is not about comedy. This is about writing. And C.K. cannot write. The pacing, the architecture, the restraint — none of it is there.

Rough draft

The story unfolds in a version of rural Texas that seems to exist only in C.K.’s imagination, a land of dull prospects and even duller minds. At its center is Ingram, a poor, half-feral boy raised in poverty and pushed out into the world by a mother who tells him she has nothing left to offer. His education consists of hardship and hearsay. He treats running water like sorcery and basic plumbing like black magic. C.K. calls it “a young drifter’s coming of age in an indifferent world,” but it reads more like rough stand-up notes bound by mistake.

The writing is atrocious. Vast portions of the book read like this:

I couldn’t see my eyes, but I knew what was on my throat was a hand by the way it was warm and tightening and quivering like you could feel the thinking inside each finger, which were so long and thick that one of them pressed hard against the whole side of my face.

Or this:

I sat up, rubbing my aching neck til my breath came back regular, and I crawled out the tent flap myself, finding the world around me lit by the sun, which, just rising, was still low enough in the sky to throw its light down there under the great road, which was once again roaring and shaking above me.

Sentences stretch on like prison terms, suffocated by their own syntax, gasping for punctuation. The dialogue is somehow worse. Ingram’s conversations with the drifters and degenerates he meets on his journey stumble from cliché to confusion, the rhythm of speech giving way to nonsensical babble.

RELATED: Bill Maher and Bill Burr agree Louis CK should be welcomed back in Hollywood

Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

A gripping tale

To compound matters, “Ingram,” isn’t just a story of exploration, but also one of self-exploration, in the most literal and least appealing sense. There’s a staggering amount of masturbation. C.K. doesn’t so much write about shame as relive it, page after sticky page. His public fall from grace plays out again and again, only now under the pretense of art. It’s less confession than repetition — self-absolution by way of self-abuse, and somehow still not funny.

Any comparisons to writers like Bukowski or Barry Hannah are little more than wishful thinking. Bukowski was grimy, but in a graceful way. He wrote filth with style, turning hangovers into hymns.

Hannah’s madness had a tune to it, strange but unmistakably his own. Even Hunter S. Thompson, at his most incoherent, had velocity. His sentences tore through the page, drug-fueled but deliberate.

C.K.’s writing has none of that. He tries to channel Americana — the heat, the highways, the hard men who dream of escape — but his clumsy prose ensures the only thing channeled is confusion. As C.K. recently told Bill Maher, he did no research for the book, and that much is evident from the first page. His characters talk like they were written by a man who’s only seen Texas through “No Country for Old Men.”

Don’t quit your day job

In the history of American letters, many great writers have fallen. Hemingway drank himself into oblivion; Mailer stabbed his wife; Capote drowned in his own decadence. But their sentences still stood. Their craft was the redemption. With “Ingram,” C.K. has no such refuge. The book exposes the limits of confession as art — that point where self-exposure turns into self-immolation. It could have been great; instead, it’s the very opposite. The only thing it proves is that writing and performing are different callings. Comedy forgives indiscipline. Literature doesn’t.

The great American novel has survived worse assaults — from bored professors, from self-serious minimalists, from MFA factories that mistake verbosity for vision. But rarely has it been dragged so low by someone so convinced of his brilliance. There’s perverse poetry in it, though. A man who was caught with his pants down now delivers a novel that never pulls them back up.

​Louis c.k., Great american novel, Literature, Culture, Entertainment, Ingram, Comedy, Hollywood, Review 

Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds’ bid to succeed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) just received another challenge from a fellow Republican.

On Monday morning, James Fishback, founder and CEO of investment firm Azoria, officially launched his bid for the governor’s seat in 2026.

‘Congressman Byron Donalds can’t be our next governor because he won’t fight for Florida like Ron DeSantis has.’

In a campaign launch video posted on X, Fishback, 30, says he will “stop the H-1B scam, tell Blackstone they can’t buy our homes, cancel AI Data Centers, and abolish property taxes.”

“Nowadays, not all Republicans are the same. If a Republican politician supports the H-1B scam that fires our workers, he can’t be our next governor,” he said in the video.

RELATED: Republican turncoat announces Democrat bid for Florida governor’s seat

Al Diaz/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

“Congressman Byron Donalds can’t be our next governor because he won’t fight for Florida like Ron DeSantis has.”

Fishback emphasized his outsider status in the campaign video: “I’m not a politician. I’m an investor and a businessman.”

Fishback promised to visit all 67 counties in Florida in the coming months because “Florida’s next governor has to be someone you can see, talk to, and even debate with.”

“Florida is our home; America is our birthright; and we will never let them steal it from us,” Fishback’s website reads.

Fishback’s X profile emphasizes making Florida affordable for families.

Fishback is also the founder of the Incubate Debate, an organization that encourages middle and high school students to debate and equips teachers with a no-cost “Teacher Toolkit.”

Donalds, who currently represents Florida’s 19th district in the U.S. House and has received Trump’s endorsement in the Florida gubernatorial race, has consistently led Democrat David Jolly, a former Republican, in early polling.

Fishback joins a very crowded gubernatorial race, with over 30 candidates having already filed.

Blaze News reached out to Fishback’s campaign but did not immediately receive a response.

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​Politics, Florida, Gubernatorial race, Ron desantis, James fishback, Byron donalds, David jolly, Florida governor, Azoria 

A New York City subway rider was stabbed in the stomach after asking his attacker to stop talking loudly on his cell phone aboard a train Saturday morning, police told the New York Post.

The attacker allegedly responded to the request by punching the 54-year-old victim several times in the face before stabbing him in the gut, police told the Post.

‘I guarantee you they were being loud on purpose to have a reason to stab someone.’

The attack occurred aboard an E train at the Jamaica Center–Parsons/Archer station in Queens around 11 a.m., police noted to the paper.

The attacker jumped off the train at the station and was on the loose, police told the Post, while the victim was taken to Jamaica Hospital in stable condition.

The victim’s daughter told the paper in a follow-up story that more police are needed in the NYC subway system.

“They’re supposed to be on the station,” the daughter, who requested anonymity, told the Post on Sunday. “I don’t really see them as much anymore.”

The paper added that the victim was “heading home from his restaurant gig” when the attack occurred.

“It’s a crazy world we live in,” the daughter told the Post as her father — a waiter — recovers in the hospital.

Commenters on WPIX-TV’s Facebook post about the attack agreed:

“Despicable behavior!!!” one commenter declared.”Sounds about right for NYC,” another user said, adding that “NY needs more lenient gun laws for law-abiding citizens.””I guarantee you they were being loud on purpose to have a reason to stab someone,” another commenter wrote.”F**king animals,” another user said.”This cant be true — remember when [Democrat Gov. Kathy] Hochul said it’s safe?!” a commenter reacted with just a bit of sarcasm sprinkled in.”I can’t anymore,” another user lamented. “I just don’t get it.”

Stabbing spike?

The Post said the stabbing occurred just a day after a homeless man was charged after being caught on video allegedly slashing two men in their faces on a Queens subway platform last week.

More from the paper:

Tyquan Manassa, 28, was charged Friday in connection to the Wednesday afternoon attacks on two men on the southbound platform of the E and F train at the Union Turnpike station in Kew Gardens, the NYPD said.

Manassa was identified as the stabbing suspect after cops busted him for a separate, unhinged outburst at the Ward’s Island shelter where he’d been staying Thursday, sources said.

RELATED: ‘White boy,’ ‘cracker’: Subway rider dares to glance at hollering female behind him — so she veers into beatdown mode: Cops

“Unfortunately, I feel like it happens so often that it’s kind of like we’re desensitized to it,” Fatima Shahid, 18, told the Post in regard to subway violence.

Shahid, who lives in the area, added to the paper that “it does make me feel a little unsafe. I’m glad that I don’t take the train as often as I used to. … So I feel a little OK, but I know that somebody who does it every day would be scared and feel unsafe.”

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​New york city, Subway, Queens, Stabbing, Suspect on the loose, Police, Talking loudly, Cellphone, Violence, Crime 

Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, was featured along with five other Democrat lawmakers in a video last week urging the military to “refuse illegal orders” from the Trump administration.

Neither Slotkin nor the other Democrats bothered identifying in the video precisely which orders were illegal. They did, however, insinuate that the administration posed a general threat to the U.S. Constitution.

‘To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that are illegal.’

After the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces took issue with the apparent call for rebellion and identified those responsible as “traitors,” the six Democrats began painting themselves as victims.

In the process of attempting to shift attention from her action to the president’s reaction, Slotkin made a telling admission that casts the controversial video in a whole new light — namely that she couldn’t identify a single “illegal order” from the Trump administration warranting refusal.

The president took notice when Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck explained why this was a “BIG DEAL.”

Crying victim

President Donald Trump characterized the apparent call for rebellion as “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL” and noted in a Truth Social post on Saturday that “MANY GREAT LEGAL SCHOLARS AGREE THAT THE DEMOCRAT TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS, AS PRESIDENT, HAVE COMMITTED A CRIME OF SERIOUS PROPORTION!”

‘There is now increased threats against us.’

In the wake of Trump’s rumblings about possible sedition, the Democrats in the video went on the defensive, reading a similar script.

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said, “Donald Trump is threatening me with arrest and execution because I’m upholding my oath to the Constitution and standing with our troops,” and suggested that the controversy boiled down to a political disagreement.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) similarly suggested that Trump’s response — not his and the other Democrats’ apparent call for rebellion — was cause for concern, claiming, “Because of what he says, there is now increased threats against us.”

“He should understand that his words have, you know, could have serious, serious consequences,” Kelly told CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” adding that the president’s response to potentially seditious implorations was at odds with Republicans’ criticism of violent rhetoric in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

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

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

Pennsylvania Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, another Democrat featured in the video, echoed the same talking points and claimed that Trump’s response “reveals far more about his authoritarian instincts than it does about anything that we said. In fact, he made our case for us.”

Slotkin once again joined the chorus, suggesting in a video statement that Trump “threatened” her and the others with the textbook consequences for sedition “because he didn’t agree with a video we put out.”

Telling admission

The Michigan Democrat went farther in her Sunday interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC’s “This Week,” suggesting that Trump was “trying to get us to shut up because he doesn’t want to be talking about this,” said Slotkin.

‘Couldn’t you have done a video saying just what you just said?’

Silence may have been to Slotkin’s benefit, because she ended up admitting that she issued the call to disobedience without being able to identify a single illegal order handed down by the administration.

— (@)

“There is such things as illegal orders. That’s why it’s in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, going back to Nuremberg, right? And it’s just a — it’s a totally benign statement,” said Slotkin. “And if the president is concerned about it, then he should stay deeply within the law.”

When Raddatz asked whether Trump had issued any illegal orders, the Michigan Democrat said, “To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that are illegal, but certainly there are some legal gymnastics that are going on with these Caribbean strikes and everything related to Venezuela.”

“So it was basically a warning to say, like, if you’re asked to do something, particularly against American citizens, you have the ability to go to your JAG officer and push back,” Slotkin said later in the interview.

Raddatz pressed the issue, asking, “Couldn’t you have done a video saying just what you just said? ‘If you are asked to do something, if you are worried about whether it is legal or not, you can do this.'”

The host noted that the video as-is “does imply that the president is having illegal orders, which you have not seen.”

The Michigan Democrat wasn’t the only individual featured in the video who proved unable in recent days to name a single illegal order issued by the administration.

When asked flatly on MSNOW which orders she was telling troops to refuse, Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.) couldn’t name one.

When pressed again on CNN whether she or any of the other Democrats in the video have heard tell of illegal orders from service members or the broader national security community, Goodlander tried talking around the question, alluding only to certain service members’ alleged “concerns” about the legality of certain orders.

‘BIG DEAL’

On Sunday, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck flagged Slotkin’s admission and noted, “Democrats just told our military not to follow ‘unconstitutional orders’ — while admitting none exist. WHY IS THIS A BIG DEAL? They knew and know, that the message wasn’t for our soldiers … it was for the Global leadership.”

“If a video like this were aimed at Putin’s military, we’d assume Russia was unstable or nearing a coup,” continued Beck. “They didn’t give good advice, nor weaken Trump. They weakened America — signaling doubt to allies and opportunity to enemies. They are tilling the soil color revolution. Reckless beyond words.”

In the post, which President Trump promptly shared on social media without comment, Beck noted that the alleged offense in question is “not treason but a very serious crime under 18 U.S.C. § 2387.”

Trump also shared Beck’s elaboration on 18 U.S.C. § 2387, in which he noted it is a federal crime to advise, urge, or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty among members of the U.S. military with the intent to interfere with American military operations.

— (@)

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​Sedition, Rebellion, Democrats, Cia, Elissa slotkin, Uprising, Donald trump, Military, Mark kelly, Chrissy houlahan, Jason crow, Poliyivd, Politics 

President Donald Trump struck a second deal last month with the world’s largest drugmakers, promising lower costs for American patients. The industry claims cooperation, offering help for consumers and expanded domestic production. Yet those same companies have raised prices on nearly 700 prescription drugs since January.

Big Pharma hopes the most unconventional president will fall back on the most conventional policy: granting the largest firms regulatory advantages, taxpayer-funded promotion, and freedom to keep ratcheting prices upward.

Trump should expose the game Big Pharma has played for years and force the industry to compete in a real marketplace.

Trump’s instincts are right. Americans pay inflated prices, and he has confronted the industry’s excesses. But Big Pharma spent decades building cartel-level dominance. Few industries mastered regulatory capture more effectively. The pharma industry wins higher prices while concealing the system that keeps costs rising.

The industry’s tactics follow a predictable pattern. With its right hand, Big Pharma announces a partnership with the White House. With its left, it secures guaranteed government contracts, political protection, and federally promoted products. Independent analysts warn that rebate schemes encourage price hikes. The dynamic mirrors a retailer inflating list prices before Black Friday to create the illusion of deep discounts.

The federal government helps tip the scales. Regulatory frameworks favor the largest drugmakers and block smaller competitors, keeping profits high and patients in the dark.

Patients pay the price

What the industry calls reform resembles a shell game that protects profits and punishes patients. The Food and Drug Administration created an “accelerated approval” pathway to speed lifesaving treatments. In practice, the system advantages the largest corporations. A 2020 study found that increases in FDA regulations boosted sales for major firms while cutting sales for smaller companies by 2.2%. Smaller manufacturers cannot absorb substantial compliance costs, which means cheaper or more effective drugs never reach the market or arrive years late.

Patients pay the price. Follow-up studies for expedited approvals lag for years, and many drugs never show clear benefits. Harvard researchers found that nearly half of cancer drugs granted accelerated approval fail to improve survival or quality of life. The FDA withdrew one in four such drugs and confirmed substantial benefit for only 12% of the rest. The drugs generated revenue, but they offered little hope to patients who paid dearly for treatments that did not deliver.

RELATED: The hidden hospital scam driving up drug prices, coming to a state near you

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Meanwhile, prices keep climbing. Since Trump left office after his first term, cancer drug prices rose faster than Biden-era inflation. Median list prices for new medicines more than doubled between 2021 and 2024, surpassing $300,000 a year. In 2023 alone, drug companies raised prices by 35%. The Rand Corporation found that Americans spent more than $600 billion on prescriptions in 2022 — almost triple what patients in other developed nations pay.

Competition, not cronyism

Families facing cancer now shoulder thousands more out of pocket while Big Pharma posts record profits. Trump deserves credit for recognizing how unfair practices and Democrat policies pushed drug costs beyond the reach of average households.

A better path is within reach. Real reform depends on competition rather than political connections. Trump can break the illusion by opening the market, lowering barriers to entry, and cutting regulatory burdens that keep smaller firms out. He should expose the game Big Pharma has played for years and force the industry to compete in a real marketplace.

​Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Big pharma, Prescription costs, Prescription drugs, Health insurance, Hospitals, Regulatory capture, Food and drug administration, Fda, Black friday, Profits, Free markets, Economics, Regulations, Compliance, Competition 

Everybody has a diagnosis these days.

Not just adults — kids too. It doesn’t matter if you’re 8 or 38, there’s someone somewhere waiting to explain away whatever’s different about you.

Perhaps you find your work excruciatingly boring and hard to care about precisely because it is excruciatingly boring and hard to care about.

It’s not a quirk of your personality or a flaw in your character or a wound in your soul. It’s a illness. Never mind that the symptoms are vague or the evidence that it’s a discrete medical condition are lacking — a pharmaceutical cure will fix it.

Just pop this pill, and you will be like everyone else. Isn’t that what you want?

All the rage

All the kids these days have ADHD or autism. Which often makes me wonder if any of them do. Or if these conditions exist at all.

Autism certainly seems real in its extreme forms, but I am not at all convinced that it’s at the far end of a continuum. I don’t really think being a little “on the spectrum” is a thing. Those people are just a little weird and need stronger guidance on how to get on in life.

I have a friend who was an engineer at Google. He told me half the people he worked with claimed to be “on the spectrum,” and according to him, it was all bull. They didn’t have medical problems; they had personal problems. They were guys who never learned how to interact normally, so they just ended up being kind of weird and rude.

As for ADHD, it’s so obscenely overdiagnosed that it’s essentially fake at this point. The market has been so oversaturated by ridiculous and erroneous diagnoses that whenever I hear about another kid with ADHD, it tells me more about the doctors and the “system” and less about the kid.

Boys will be boys

Are some kids better at sitting down at a desk for three hours at a time? Sure. Are more girls than boys better at doing it? Yes. Is there a gender factor here when it comes to diagnosis? Absolutely.

Boys don’t learn the same way girls do. But much of modern education ignores this fact. So when boys fidget or get bored, it gets chalked up to ADHD. This is more or less common knowledge by now. So the only thing a boy being diagnosed with ADHD tells me is that he doesn’t get enough recess.

Of course, there are extreme cases. There are kids who genuinely don’t seem to be able to focus at all. Something like actual ADHD exists in a small number of boys, but that doesn’t negate the broader truth: Instead of seeing people as individuals with different strengths and weaknesses, we decide to overmedicate when someone isn’t exactly like everyone else.

My mom worked with special ed kids. Some of them had mild disabilities, some more extreme. In some cases, it was clear they would need supervised care their entire lives. But in other cases, it wasn’t clear just what, if anything, was wrong — besides a certain learned helplessness reinforced by doctors and parents.

Pill and chill

Nowadays ADHD diagnoses aren’t just for kids; adults are getting in on it too. Believe it or not, an increasing amount of men and women, especially women, in their 30s and 40s are discovering that they too have ADHD — a discovery that inevitably “explains everything.” My wife sees reels on Instagram all the time, along with ads selling various solutions.

What’s that? You couldn’t focus at your computer, clicking on an excel spreadsheet, sending pointless emails for seven hours at a time? Shocking. No, you don’t need ADHD medication. You need to do something else with your life. Perhaps you find your work excruciatingly boring and hard to care about precisely because it is excruciatingly boring and hard to care about.

Overmedicalization and overdiagnosis is a deep problem in our society. Not just because the result is an increase in prescription drug use, but because the individual human being is lost or suffocated a little bit at a time. Everyone is different. Everyone has skills, and everyone has weaknesses. Everyone learns in a different way, and everyone focuses on different things too.

RELATED: Drugged for being boys: The TRUTH behind the ADHD scam

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Free agency

Some people are just a little awkward, a little weird, a little absent-minded, or a little dry. Sure, they should try to meet society halfway in some reasonable sense — but that happens through early teaching, parental guidance, community expectations, and personal effort, not through a pill you pop every day. For most of the 20th century, we relied far more on those nonmedical supports.

All the pill-popping flattens our individualism and undercuts our own agency as humans. It presupposes that one cannot make oneself better, one cannot work to act right, and that one doesn’t have any control. This is a lie. Yes, of course, there are people who suffer with truly debilitating problems who need medication, and they should get that medication. But it is a small fraction of the population. Most people can make themselves better when they set their minds to it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-psychiatry. I’m not into alternative medicine or any of the hippie stuff. I’m not denying that there are people with problems who are helped most effectively with medication. I’m thankful for the blessings of modern medicine and the advancements we continue to see every year.

But we have a problem with overdiagnosis in our country. We have a problem with losing sight of the individual. We have a problem with people who want to give up their agency and turn it all over to a pill, and we are worse off because of it.

​Men’s style, Family, Lifestyle, Health, Adhd, Autism, Big pharma, Pharmaceuticals, Fatherhood, The root of the matter 

Antifa radicals have been causing chaos throughout America for years and have finally been designated as a terrorist network by the Trump administration.

However, they’re still getting away with crimes.

“Antifa radicals in Berkeley, California, disrupted a Turning Point USA event outside of UC Berkeley, punched a conservative in the face. The conservative gets arrested,” BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo tells co-host Jonathan “Lomez” Keeperman on “Rufo & Lomez.”

“But our policy prescription is, the administration has to dismantle the left-wing terror networks, whether it’s Antifa, other organized militant groups. They have to actually get mugshots, case numbers, inmate numbers,” he continues.

“The tangible evidence that these left-wing terror networks, which are essentially saying that we can control the streets in places like Portland, we can veto peaceful conservative speech in places like Berkeley — we have to ensure that they can no longer do so and can no longer exert control through violence,” he adds.

While Rufo points out that Antifa is still out there disrupting whatever it can, Lomez notes that it was a “huge step in the right direction” that it has at least been designated as a terrorist network.

“The administration is making the right moves and/or saying the right things. What’s missing is the conspicuous action so that your average American, let alone Trump supporter, but just your average American goes, ‘Yeah, I don’t like Antifa, and the administration is doing something about it, and that’s good,’” Lomez says.

But the next step is taking the terrorist designation and doing something with it.

“Let’s just take this case at UC Berkeley, this recent event. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, released a great tweet,” Rufo says.

“Antifa is an existential threat to our nation. The violent riots at UC Berkeley last night are under full investigation by the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force. We will continue to spare no expense unmasking all who commit and orchestrate acts of political violence,” Bondi wrote.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, and pursuant to his Executive Order designating Antifa as a domestic terror organization, the Department of Justice and our law-enforcement partners are dismantling violent networks that seek to intimidate Americans and suppress their free expression and First Amendment rights,” she added.

While Rufo is glad to see Bondi using such strong wording, he’s skeptical.

“Why hasn’t UC Berkeley been defunded? Just say, ‘Hey, we’re withholding funds until you can establish a basic environment of civil discourse,’” Rufo says.

“You have to make sure that the directive that comes from the, you know, FBI director’s office, the attorney general’s office, you have to make sure that it means something at that regional level, at that agent level,” he explains.

“And I am not convinced that the current leadership, that the current structure, the current techniques that they’re using has sufficiently done that,” he adds.

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