Category: blaze media

The conservative Christian owners of a traditional Korean, women-only nude spa in Washington state had their lives turned upside down for refusing access to trans-identifying males with an intact penis.

After spending the better part of a decade fighting the Washington Human Rights Commission — which had determined the spa’s female-only rule violated state law — the immigrant Korean family who operate Olympus Spa now may have their case heard by a court that might actually affirm their God-given rights.

‘It feels like the supposed adults in the room have collectively lost their minds.’

Alliance Defending Freedom and the Pacific Justice Institute, the organization that has defended Sun Lee and his family from the outset, asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to take up the case Olympus v. Armstrong.

“This is not about just one law. It’s not just about one business,” Brad Dacus, founder and president of the PJI, told Blaze News. “This is a case that fundamentally asks the question: To what extent can the government require people to have to forfeit and compromise their sincerely held religious beliefs and conscience in order to operate a business in the United States?”

Legal warfare

Prior to 2020, Olympus Spa had maintained its female-only policy for over two decades without complaint.

It learned in late 2020, however, that Caleb Richmond — a man who was once married to a woman and now goes by Haven Wilvich — had filed a complaint with the Washington Human Rights Commission alleging that in January of that year, the spa had denied him services and “stated that transgender women without surgery are not welcome because it would make other customers and staff uncomfortable.”

RELATED: Whitmer’s law DEFEATED! Therapists are free to steer kids away from trans insanity

L-R: Sun Lee and the front of his establishment. Pacific Justice Institute

According to court documents, the spa required that entrants “physically present in the nude as … female,” further noting, “Biological women are welcome.”

It is unclear whether Richmond ever visited the spa.

Sun Lee, co-owner of the spa, explained to a WHRC investigator that the spa is modeled on jjimjilbang, sex-segregated bathhouses in Korea, which require that guests be nude inside the pool area. He further denied any violation of the Washington Law Against Discrimination.

The Washington law prohibits denial of “the full enjoyment of any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, or privileges of any place of public resort, accommodation, assemblage, or amusement” on the basis of sex, race, and “sexual orientation,” which the state has defined to include “gender expression or identity.”

Lee’s explanation fell on deaf ears.

Threatened with prosecution, the spa signed a pre-finding settlement agreement requiring compliance with WLAD while reserving the right to mount a constitutional challenge.

Olympus Spa sued the WHRC in March 2022, alleging that enforcement of the discrimination law against the establishment violated the owners’ First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of association.

Among the issues raised in the complaint was that the enforcement of the discrimination law requires the spa to render services to nude males and females and thus forces them to “choose between violating the law or their religious convictions.”

This, said the complaint, constitutes a “substantial burden” on the Lee family’s religious beliefs.

Brad Dacus emphasized to Blaze News that the Lee family “did not want to be in the news. They didn’t want their business in the news. They just wanted to run their business with a clear conscience.”

A Washington District Court judge dismissed the case with prejudice in 2023, but Lee appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

At the appellate court in May 2025, the family was delivered another upset, as a three-judge panel ruled that the spa cannot sue the WSHRC on First Amendment grounds.

RELATED: Trans basketball player dominating French women’s league responds to calls to play in WNBA

Annie Wells/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Olympus Spa petitioned the Ninth Circuit for a panel rehearing and/or a full-court rehearing of the case. The business was denied in March. This time, however, the Lees were not alone in their disappointment.

Judge Lawrence VanDyke, an appointee of President Donald Trump, rebuked his colleagues for refusing to rehear what he characterized as “a case about swinging d**ks.”

“Sometimes, it feels like the supposed adults in the room have collectively lost their minds,” wrote VanDyke. “Woke regulators and complicit judges seem entirely willing, even eager, to ignore the consequences that their Frankenstein social experiments impose on real women and young girls.”

‘The state is turning their lives into a nightmare.’

Van Dyke accused his colleagues of allowing “Washington State bureaucrats to trample” on Americans’ constitutional rights.

The WHRC and Democrat Gov. Bob Ferguson did not respond to Blaze News’ requests for comment.

Despite all the setbacks, the Lee family is evidently unwilling to surrender.

The final battle

In the petition for a writ of certiorari filed on Monday, attorneys for the family asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether forcing “a Christian, all-female jjimjilbang to admit males violates the Free Exercise Clause” and “whether a policy that differentiates based on anatomy discriminates ‘based on gender identity or transgender status.'”

The petition highlights loopholes in Washington’s discrimination law as applied to jjimjilbang spas — such a spa operated as a private club or a sorority organization would be free under the law to exclude male patrons, for instance. It also emphasizes that under the Supreme Court’s precedents, “the Constitution protects the Spa owners’ religiously motivated desire to keep a male out of a space reserved for female patrons as young as 13 years old.”

“Based on a single complaint by a male who may never even have visited the spa, Washington state decided its views on gender identity must override a centuries-old cultural practice and deep religious conviction, turning its enforcement power against a Korean family’s small business,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel John Bursch.

“The state is turning their lives into a nightmare, insisting they compromise not only their deeply help religious beliefs but also the privacy and safety of women and girls as young as 13 who visit the spa,” continued Bursch. “The First Amendment forbids all that, which is why we’re urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the Lee family’s case.”

Sun Lee thanked the Pacific Justice Institute for its legal support and expressed hope that the high court justices “will recognize the importance of the constitutional questions before them and give thoughtful consideration to the privacy, dignity, and rights of women in such a deeply sensitive and consequential matter.”

Brad Dacus told Blaze News that while SCOTUS agrees to hear very few petitioners’ cases, he suspects this case has an excellent chance of being heard, as it is “dealing with a very fundamental issue of civil rights” to which the high court has proven sensitive.

Dacus stressed that if other business owners across America encounter similar encroachments on their religious freedom and constitutional rights, “they should not hesitate to contact us because we work completely without charge.”

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​Christian, Alliance defending freedom, Washington state, Supreme court, First amendment, Transgender, Politics 

Late last month, one or more suspects attacked a postal worker at the San Bruno Post Office in California. They weren’t after the employee’s wallet or phone. They wanted the mail.

The thieves made off with four tubs of it, loading them into a silver Lexus before disappearing. Federal authorities are now offering up to $150,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Postal officials warned customers who had recently used the branch or nearby collection boxes to watch their bank and credit card accounts for suspicious activity.

In Chicago, members of a street gang began recruiting postal workers as early as 2017.

Three days earlier, another postal worker had been punched in the face outside a post office in nearby San Leandro. Federal authorities put another $150,000 reward on that case.

Dog eat dog

For generations, the occupational menace most closely associated with the American mail carrier has been the dog. That danger remains very real. More than 5,200 Postal Service employees were attacked by dogs last year. Carriers are trained to use their mail satchels as shields and are even equipped with dog repellent.

But lately, some carriers have considerably more to worry about than the neighborhood Rottweiler.

Robberies of postal workers have exploded. In 2019, there were roughly 90 reported nationwide. By 2023, there were about 600 — many involving firearms — a nearly sevenfold increase in four years.

Why would anyone suddenly start mugging the mailman?

Part of the answer is obvious: What he carries is valuable. Personal checks can be altered, cashed, or sold online. Credit cards and financial documents can feed other forms of fraud. Stealing a tub of mail gives a criminal dozens or potentially hundreds of opportunities to find something worth money.

But criminals also discovered that some postal workers carry something even more valuable than the mail itself: an arrow key.

Unsafe deposit

Arrow keys are the master keys many mail carriers use to access collection boxes and other secured mail receptacles along their routes. Stealing one batch of mail gives a thief whatever happens to be inside it. Stealing the right key can provide access to multiple mailboxes, allowing criminals to come back again and again.

The criminal calculus isn’t difficult to understand. A mail carrier travels a predictable route, often alone and on foot. He may be carrying checks, credit cards, financial documents, and a key capable of opening numerous secured mailboxes. Compared with robbing a bank or armored truck, attacking a postal worker can look to a criminal like a relatively easy route into somebody else’s bank account.

Once criminals obtain the mail, old-fashioned paper becomes raw material for thoroughly modern fraud. Stolen checks can be altered or resold. Credit cards can disappear before their intended recipients even know they have arrived. Personal information extracted from correspondence can be combined with data obtained elsewhere.

The result is that an institution built to move birthday cards, utility bills, tax documents, and catalogs around the country has inadvertently become part of a lucrative criminal supply chain.

Pen pals

But attacking postal workers has an obvious drawback: It attracts federal law enforcement attention, carries serious criminal penalties, and creates witnesses.

So organized criminals eventually discovered another option. Why rob the postal worker when you can recruit him?

The U.S. Postal Service inspector general has warned that criminal organizations are actively targeting postal employees because of their privileged access to the nation’s mail network.

In 2022, Missouri mail carrier Cambria Hopkins sold her arrow key to a criminal and told him which collection boxes it opened. She later stole checks from the mail and sold those too, receiving payment in cash, through Cash App, and sometimes in groceries. Earlier this year, she was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison.

Package deal

The money involved can become enormous. In Mobile, Alabama, postal employee Kalaijha Tomeco Ranier Lewis was recruited by Brian Christopher Williams III as part of a check-fraud scheme that operated from 2021 to 2023. Lewis stole hundreds of high-value business checks destined for P.O. boxes. Investigators later watched her manipulate windowed envelopes as she sorted the mail, checking the dollar amounts inside before deciding which ones to take. Williams paid her between $2,000 and $3,000 for each stack she delivered.

In June 2023, investigators caught Lewis stuffing a stack of stolen checks down her pants. They arrested Williams later that day at a Mobile gas station, where he had arrived to buy the checks. He was carrying $10,000 in cash; authorities also found drugs, a handgun, and stolen checks worth more than $417,000.

Over the course of the scheme, Williams altered stolen checks totaling more than $17 million and sold them to other scammers through an illicit marketplace on Telegram. Lewis was sentenced to five years in federal prison; Williams got eight. The pair were also ordered to pay more than $234,000 in restitution.

Phony express

In Chicago, members of a street gang began recruiting postal workers as early as 2017. One of the first was a young female carrier spotted grocery shopping in her USPS uniform. A gang member approached her with a proposition: Make some money on the side by pulling particular envelopes from the mail and handing them over.

She agreed, smuggling stolen mail out in her uniform and handing it off during her route or after work. At first, she received large amounts of cash and expensive gifts. Then the money dwindled and, according to the Postal Service’s inspector general, her recruiter threatened her life when she tried to stop.

The operation eventually grew to include 35 postal employees and 13 outside suspects, compromising more than 200 ZIP codes and at least 10,300 victims. Employees stole checks, credit cards, Treasury checks, cash, and personal information; some workers at processing plants were caught walking out with garbage bags full of mail.

Investigators put actual losses at more than $6 million, with another $46.6 million in intended losses. Twenty-seven defendants were ultimately convicted, and the ringleader received nine years in federal prison.

RELATED: New study: One Chinese cyberattack could make your taps run dry

Dmytro Buianskyi/Getty Images

Return to sender

The Postal Service has been fighting back: replacing vulnerable locks, installing more secure collection boxes, and moving toward electronic alternatives to traditional arrow keys.

But the basic attraction is difficult to eliminate. Every day, an enormous government delivery network moves checks, credit cards, financial documents, and other valuables directly through American neighborhoods, often entrusted to individual employees working alone.

Although it is not an official motto, generations of Americans know the words carved above the entrance to Manhattan’s old General Post Office: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Perhaps its time for an update: nor the robber who wants the mailbag. Nor the gang member who wants the key.

And now, apparently, nor the criminal recruiter offering enough money to make betraying the public trust look tempting.

​Criminal supply chain, Mail theft, Postal employee theft, Usps, Crime 

A Texas family’s surveillance video captured the moment two pit bull dogs snuck into their home through doggy doors and lethally attack their beloved pets.

The homeowner, who spoke to KHOU-TV but did not want to be identified, said she had gone to a Houston Astros baseball game with her son when she starting getting Ring camera alerts.

‘We’re sorry about what happened. We did not mean for it to happen. It was a fluke, a fluke accident.’

She said she asked her neighbor Kendra Donald to check on her home through the garage, and she told KHOU that she screamed when she saw the aftermath.

“There was blood everywhere,” she said.

Donald’s husband and son rushed to help when they heard her scream, and they brought out one of the family’s injured dogs, while Donald stayed with the other dog as it died.

“I laid down with Charlie, and I just told him what a good boy he was,” she said.

She said he wagged his tail before finally dying.

On Friday, investigators with Montgomery County Animal Services met with the family whose dogs were attacked and also with the owners of the pit bulls.

“We’re sorry about what happened. We did not mean for it to happen. It was a fluke, a fluke accident,” said one of the owners, who also did not want to be identified.

The owner said the dogs had never been aggressive before the incident and that the owners were cooperating with investigators.

The animal services agency released a statement to KHOU.

“We recognize this is a tragic and traumatic situation for everyone involved, and our thoughts are with those affected,” read the statement in part.

“Montgomery County Animal Services takes incidents of this nature very seriously and is actively investigating this case,” they added. “Because the investigation is ongoing, we are unable to comment on the status of the investigation or discuss any potential enforcement actions at this time.”

Neighbors told KHOU that they helped clean up the home before the homeowner’s son returned in order to avoid him being traumatized any more.

KHOU also obtained video of the pit bulls coming into the home after the family’s two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels went inside.

RELATED: Arizona mom nearly mauled to death by pit bull she rescued from homeless person and nurtured to health for 4 years

The homeowners said they are scared to go outside into their yard and they never let their surviving dog go out without accompaniment.

Donald said neighbors fear the possibility of another attack. She also said more should be done to prevent the attacks.

“Yes, absolutely. More than just a simple citation for $125. There’s a whole family devastated here,” she added.

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​Animal attack, Dog attack, Pit bulls, Surveillance video, Texas, Crime 

Jason Arday is almost certainly a fraud. But I hope he is something vastly more interesting.

Until very recently, Arday was one of those people liberal institutions put on a pedestal: Cambridge professor, youngest black professor in the university’s history, working-class, autistic, illiterate until late adolescence, scholar of inequality, champion of diversity, ultramarathon runner. And, by every indication, a man of the left.

It’s a fair bet Arday understood liberal institutions well enough to know that their pants-soiling terror of violating ideological taboos left them ripe for manipulation.

That last part I believe. The rest? Well.

Now there are serious questions about plagiarism, his curriculum vitae, fundraising claims, ultramarathon feats, and some of the more lurid tales he fed the press about racist abuse. Cambridge opened an investigation. Arday promptly resigned.

Right on cue came the liberal anguish: What does this mean for black academics? Neurodivergent scholars? Will racists exploit this? Is the scrutiny itself racist?

I have a better question: What if Jason Arday knew what he was doing all along?

Not merely that he lied. Anybody can lie. What if he understood what the people around him feared, understood what they desperately wanted to believe, and fed it back to them until he landed at Cambridge?

I can’t prove that. But I know the type.

Years ago, I had a close friend who was one of the most brilliant people I ever knew. He was black, an artist and journalist, a trickster, and a magnificent pain in the neck. He loved racial games.

He understood white liberal anxiety about race better than most white liberals did. This was a dude who hung a Confederate battle flag in his apartment just to get a reaction. I thought it was hilarious.

He would also have been deeply insulted by any suggestion that he needed affirmative action. He was too good. He wanted to beat his competition straight up, and he did. Over and over.

RELATED: DEI’s favorite trick: Failure proves discrimination

Chris Harris/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

So when I read what Arday told a reporter asking pointed questions, I stopped and smiled: “To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me.”

Of course you did, you magnificent bastard! Never give a sucker an even break, right?

Look again at the bio: black, poor, autistic, victimized by racism, couldn’t read, then fell upward and upward until he landed at Cambridge. It’s exactly the kind of story liberal institutions want to tell about themselves.

Look at us! Look how inclusive we are! Look how far we’ve come!

Here a little ideological taxonomy becomes necessary. Conservatives are much too quick to conflate leftism with liberalism. The two overlap, especially in their preference for faux equality and social justice over liberty, but they are not the same. Leftists often look at liberals and see weak, bourgeois, self-congratulatory people who can be bullied with their own moral vocabulary.

Now, I don’t know what to believe about Arday’s biography. My default is to believe nothing at all. But I have little doubt he’s a genuine left-winger. And it’s a fair bet he understood liberal institutions well enough to know that their pants-soiling terror of violating ideological taboos left them ripe for manipulation.

That’s the game. He didn’t need to infiltrate enemy territory. He only needed to know which buttons to push and what gaps to fill.

Did he really hold that job? Did anyone actually read the dissertation? Did he raise those millions? Did he run that far? Was any of it true?

Why are you asking, bigot?

Once Arday became evidence of liberal virtue, liberals stopped looking at Arday and started looking at what he represented. That’s where judgment went limp.

My old friend would have understood that instantly.

He later became severely mentally ill. Last I heard, he was homeless. I don’t know whether he’s alive. Every so often I Google his name, looking for an obituary I pray I never find.

So forgive my limited patience for ritual concern about what Arday’s downfall means for “neurodivergent scholars.” My friend’s illness wasn’t an inspirational bullet point. It wrecked his life.

Maybe Arday really is autistic. I don’t know. But once a man has told enough big stories that prove phony, dubious, inflated, or impossible to verify, he loses the right to say: Trust me on the rest.

RELATED: Cambridge star Jason Arday was the perfect DEI success story. Is that why nobody questioned him?

Simon & Schuster; Anselm Ebulue/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Arday has a memoir coming out this week called “Great and Unfortunate Things.” Simon & Schuster reportedly paid over $1 million for the ghostwritten manuscript. I’m not interested. It probably it belongs alongside James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” in the fiction section.

No, the book I want to read will come later and has only one possible title: “I Thought You’d Believe Me.”

I want the confession. I want Arday to tell us he really is a leftist, really does believe the ideology, and nevertheless realized that respectable liberal institutions had made themselves absurdly easy marks.

I want him to tell us he kept pushing and pushing, waiting for somebody to say, “Hold on.”

And for years, nobody did.

If that’s the story, Jason Arday isn’t merely another academic fraud. He’s a world-class trickster.

And somewhere, I hope, my old friend is laughing.

Game recognizes game.

​Affirmative action, Jason arday, Social justice, Biography, Liberals, Leftists, Racial politics, Universities, Neurodivergent, Great and unfortunate times, Opinion & analysis 

America is engaged in negotiations to end the war in Iran on terms favorable to the United States. It is difficult to believe this will be achieved through negotiations alone, however hopeful President Trump is about the prospects. Like many Americans, the president wishes to bring this war to a close. After all, America is not the policeman of the world. Nor is the U.S. the protector of the Middle East.

When the United States spends the blood and treasure of the American people, we do so for the good of the American people. This is both the beginning and the end of President Trump’s strategic view of the war in Iran.

How long did we imagine it would be before something had to be done about Iran?

Although other very high-priority policies must be carried out — the deportation of 25 million illegal aliens that came during the Biden administration, for starters — this war must be prosecuted to a satisfactory conclusion for the United States.

President Trump does not see the war in Iran as a diversion from America’s true interests, as many of his critics on both the left and the right insist. He sees it as one front in a larger world war that America did not choose but needs to fight and win.

The Chinese Communist Party declared a “People’s War” against the United States in May 2019. Communist China and Russia have supplied, financed, and shielded the Islamic Republic of Iran for decades precisely because Iran is useful to them: a deadly proxy that bleeds America and the West while Beijing and Moscow deny responsibility.

And Iran is useful to the broader Islamic world as well. However much Sunni and Shia Islam may differ, Iran regards itself as the military vanguard of the global Islamic movement — the effective instrument of Islam against the United States and the West.

To treat the war in Iran as an isolated regional quarrel is to misunderstand the global war we are in today.

The mullahs and the Iranian people

To understand the war, one must first understand the Iranian regime.

The mullahs who rule Iran look on the Iranian people — whose attendance at Friday mosque services ranges from a high of 12% to perhaps as low as 1.5%, the lowest in the Middle East — with contempt. They regard themselves as the faithful remnant, determined to fulfill an apocalyptic worldview, whatever the cost to the nation they rule. The Iranian people are expendable instruments of that destiny.

Herein lies our central challenge: We Americans value human life. We do not wish to kill the Iranian people, the vast majority of whom do not share the anti-Western fanaticism of the Islamic Republic. But because the Iranian people do not have guns, they are poor candidates to overthrow the regime that oppresses them.

Any serious effort at regime change would require continued economic warfare, the arming of various factions within the country, and the separation of the Iranian military from the theocratic leadership. These are not quick or easy steps, and no one should pretend otherwise.

Let us be clear: In this war, we play by different rules than our enemy. If Iran had the capability to launch an array of thermonuclear weapons against the United States — whether from long-range ballistic missiles or from medium-range, ship-launched ballistic missiles, the latter delivery system well within their capability — it might well do so. It would not matter to them that the response would be the nuclear annihilation of Iran.

For the mullahs, such a cataclysm would fulfill their apocalyptic worldview. A regime that hates its own people will not be deterred by the promise of their destruction.

This is the reason President Trump believes Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. It is not a position he arrived at recently, nor one supplied to him by the so-called Israel lobby or the military-industrial complex. He has held this view for more than a quarter century.

As Trump wrote in 2015 before he was president, “Whatever it takes, whatever we have to do, Iran cannot be allowed to build a nuclear weapon. … An Iran with a nuclear weapon would start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East with potentially devastating consequences.”

And in the first two weeks of his second term, he translated that belief into policy in National Security Presidential Memorandum-2, which includes this language: “A radical regime like this can never be allowed to acquire or develop nuclear weapons, or to extort the United States or its allies through the threat of nuclear weapons acquisition, development, or use.”

President Trump abhors nuclear weapons. He regards them as a necessary evil for deterring our enemies abroad, and nothing more. This is a key reason he has placed such emphasis on building the Golden Dome missile defense system.

RELATED: America needs to understand Golden Dome before it’s too late

MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images

A fully operational and robust Golden Dome would render the Iranian nuclear threat irrelevant. Iran could still do us harm — terrorism in its various forms would not be out of the question — but the civilization-ending attack by a nuclear warhead or an Iranian electromagnetic pulse device detonated over the American homeland would be largely negated.

The U.S. Golden Dome, however, is still years from completion. Until it is finished, the American people remain exposed to precisely the ship-launched ballistic missile scenario the Iranians rehearsed in the Caspian Sea two decades ago and rehearsed again from the IRIS Shahid Mahdavi in 2024.

We do not know with certainty whether Iran already possesses a nuclear warhead. Prudence requires that we assume the worst, especially as Iran is so closely allied to our mortal enemy communist China. It also requires that the building of the Golden Dome proceed at a pace far more rapid than it is currently.

The stakes

The Iranian regime’s strategy today is simple. Fight a war of attrition against the United States. Maintain strategic, military, and economic relationships with communist China and Russia to keep the economy afloat and the arsenal of drones and missiles replenished. And wait for the day when President Trump is out of office, trusting that his successor will lack his resolve. The mullahs believe time is on their side. Every American president before President Trump taught them to believe it.

President Trump very much wants to end this war — but only on terms that guarantee the security of the United States. From the beginning, and even now, he has not set out upon the task of regime change. The key strategic objective continues to be to deny Iran the ability to launch nuclear weapons against the United States and to do so in ways that do not create an expanded war with communist China and Russia.

Those who demand regime change should be honest about what it requires. It is not enough that the regime be defeated; it must know it has been defeated. That is very difficult to achieve against men who belong to what can only be described as an Islamic death cult, men who would welcome a global cataclysm in service of a delusional worldview.

And there is a harder question still: How many Iranians are we willing to kill? Short of a nuclear attack upon us, I do not believe the president is prepared to kill millions of Iranians in order to degrade Iran to the point that regime change would require. President Trump is a civilized man. He has not crafted a military strategy that will lead to the annihilation of the Iranian people. The mullahs, by contrast, may well fight and expend Iranian lives to the bitter end.

The permanent problem

To avoid a forever war, we need to understand a truth that our political class resists: As long as the Islamic Republic stands, it is a permanent enemy of the United States.

What we face is not a forever war, but a permanent problem — the perpetual ambition of the mullahs to build nuclear weapons — with which we must deal. If regime change is not possible, however desirable it may be, then the next best option is a military strategy that continuously destroys Iran’s nuclear capabilities as they appear, for as long as they appear, until American missile defenses are fully operational.

This is not the endless nation-building of Iraq and Afghanistan. It requires no occupation, no democracy promotion, no American garrisons rebuilding Iranian society. It is the periodic and decisive application of American power in defense of the American homeland — nothing more and nothing less.

RELATED: America is winning the air war and losing the information war

Chris DELMAS/AFP/Getty Images

What would such a strategy look like in practice? Consider the Pickaxe Mountain site, the complex Iran has been tunneling beneath a ridge just south of the Natanz nuclear facility since its centrifuge assembly plant was destroyed there. Its halls are buried at least 100 meters down, deeper than our GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which burrows through some 60 meters of earth, can reliably reach. And although it is also believed that enough sustained bombardment may permanently bury the uranium at Pickaxe, a facility does not need to be totally destroyed to be rendered ineffective.

Pickaxe Mountain has four known tunnel entrances, ventilation shafts, and above-ground power lines running to it. An American strike would not have to reach the halls themselves. B-2 bombers would put Massive Ordnance Penetrators into the tunnel portals, collapse the ventilation system and sever the power — entombing whatever centrifuges and whatever portion of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium the mullahs have buried there.

And when the regime begins to dig it out — an excavation that takes months and is visible from space the entire time — we strike again. For the United States, sealing the mountain costs a few sorties. For Iran, unsealing it costs a year. That is an exchange rate America can sustain until we have a fully operational Golden Dome system in place.

Some will ask why we do not simply go and take Iran’s highly enriched uranium by invasion, or by a special forces operation. An invasion can be dismissed quickly. To conquer and occupy Iran — a nation of 90 million people, four times the size of Iraq, where 150,000 American troops proved too few to hold the ground — would require hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. That is the forever war, arrived at by another name.

A special forces operation sounds more attractive, and it deserves a serious answer. To be sure, such a raid is within American capability. It would require a few thousand men: special operators, an airborne force to seize and hold a desert airstrip, and American airpower overhead to suppress Iranian air defenses and keep a corridor open.

The numbers, however, are not the problem.

First, one must know where the material is. Four hundred-odd kilograms of highly enriched uranium fit in a handful of transport cylinders; it can be moved in a few trucks and dispersed the moment the regime suspects a raid. Much of it now likely sits beneath the rubble of our own strikes, which means excavation.

Second, excavation transforms the raid into a siege: American forces holding a fixed position deep in Iran’s interior for days or weeks while the IRGC masses against them. A fixed American position in the Iranian desert would present the mullahs with a stationary American target, the one thing their remaining arsenal was built to hit, as they demonstrated against our base at Al Udeid.

Third, even a flawless raid ends nothing. Iran would keep its scientists, its centrifuge know-how, and its intent. We would have seized a stockpile, not a program — buying the same delay as the bombing campaign buys, at vastly higher risk.

And here is the essential point: We do not need to possess Iran’s uranium. We need Iran not to possess it. Highly enriched uranium entombed beneath a collapsed mountain is denied to the mullahs as surely as if it were in American hands — without a single American boot on Iranian soil.

And the war came

Let me close with two points: one about expectations and one addressed to those who support the president but do not approve of this war.

On expectations: The American people should not expect a surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship. Wars against regimes like the one in Iran do not end cleanly. They end when the enemy is denied the means of destroying you and knows that any attempt to rebuild those means will bring their destruction. That is the standard by which President Trump’s conduct of this war should be judged — not by the false choice between a forever war and a pretended peace.

To those who support the president but not this war, let me ask a question in a spirit of friendship, for I understand the sentiment: How long did we imagine it would be before something had to be done about Iran?

RELATED: Washington still has not learned the North Korea lesson

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The Islamic Republic has committed textbook acts of war against the United States for 47 years — the seizure of our embassy in 1979, the murder of 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983, the American soldiers killed and maimed in Iraq by Iranian munitions — while president after president deferred the reckoning to his successor. Did we believe this problem would never mature to the point where we would have to deal with it? That a regime whose schoolchildren recite “Death to America” each morning, and which enriches uranium to build a weapon, would simply grow old and moderate on its own? The debt was always going to come due. It came due on President Trump’s watch, and rather than defer payment once more — the politically expedient thing every predecessor did — he paid it.

The choice before us was never between this war and no war. It was between war now, on our terms, against a regime not yet armed with nuclear weapons, and war later, on their terms, quite possibly announced by the destruction of an American city.

And here a word must be said to the president himself. President Trump, knowing well the American people’s reluctance to go to war, has never fully explained the Iranian nuclear threat to them. Now would be a good time to do so.

The American people have been asked to bear real sacrifices — the expenditure of American military power and treasure, oil prices above $100 a barrel, the disruption of the economy, and the daily risk to American servicemen — without ever hearing, plainly and from the Oval Office, what a ship-launched Iranian nuclear missile or an electromagnetic pulse attack would mean for their country.

These hard facts are unpleasant to explain. But the American people are more than capable of bearing sacrifice when they are told honestly why it must be borne, and they will not sustain a war they have not been given reason to understand.

A people who know the stakes will see this war through to its conclusion. A people kept in the dark will demand it end before its object is achieved — and hand the mullahs the only victory available to them.

Put simply, this war ends when the nuclear threat from Iran ends and when the regime in Tehran understands that it is suicidal to attack the United States. Until the Golden Dome is complete, President Trump must deny our permanent enemy the permanent object of its ambition. That is the task before us and one we must achieve sooner rather than later.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the American Mind.

​America, Iran, Nuclear weapons, Russia, Strait of hormuz, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Mullah, Troops 

The mayor of New York City faced two major roadblocks for his far-left plan to hit certain rentals in the city with a pied-à-terre tax.

The tax scheme from Mayor Zohran Mamdani was temporarily blocked by a Staten Island judge on Monday who sided with a group of homeowners suing against the tax.

‘It is pure Amateur Hour, and it’s hard, as President of the United States of America, to sit back and watch it happen, especially to a place I once loved.’

Then President Donald Trump piled on and said he would seek to use the powers of the federal government to oppose the “dangerous” policy in his hometown.

“This dangerous political ‘experiment’ in New York will destroy what was once a great City and State,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “It is pure Amateur Hour, and it’s hard, as President of the United States of America, to sit back and watch it happen, especially to a place I once loved. Financial, and then Social, RUIN, is a 100% certainty.”

The tax would impose a penalty for non-primary residences rented out in the city and worth more than $5 million. Mamdani said it would hit larger landlords and help pay for his socialist schemes in the city.

The president went on to say he would seek to oppose the tax himself in order to save the city from certain ruin.

“I am looking to see if the Federal Government has any legal right to avert this disaster, before it is too late,” he added, “for the millions of people who cherish New York and want to see it thrive, as opposed to becoming a filthy, crime ridden, decrepit place of mockery and scorn.”

The Mamdani administration said i would file an appeal in order to allow the tax to continue.

“The City will continue with the pied-à-terre’s implementation,” said Matt Rauschenbach, a spokesperson for Mamdani.

“We disagree with today’s ruling, but we are confident in both the pied-à-terre surcharge and the City’s ability to implement it fairly and effectively,” he added.

RELATED: Prominent professor supported Mamdani’s socialist scheme — until he became a target

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit said he supported the tax but was shocked when he got a notice in the mail demanding he pay it. He says it was a mistake.

“Hopefully they can take a bit of time, take a step back, and say, well, let’s approach this in a more thoughtful way, do a little bit more diligence before we start sending out letters,” said Simon Hedley.

The tax would also apply to non-primary co-ops or condominiums worth over $1 million.

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​Zohran mamdani, Piedaterre tax, President donald trump, Socialism, Taxes, Politics 

The residents of a tiny Spanish province in Northern Africa mounted a mass protest to call for action against the tens of thousands of illegal aliens who tried to breach the border from Morocco.

The protesters gathered at the Plaza de la Constitución under the slogan, “Enough, Ceuta won’t give up!” and waved Spanish flags while singing their national anthem, according to Reuters.

‘One day it’s 500 people, the next, 70,000, and they cannot be sent back! What kind of law allows for rejection by land but not by sea …’

Dozens of migrants perished in the waters trying to swim into Ceuta from Morocco in order to try to gain entry into Spain.

The protest was reportedly organized in part by leaders in the four main religious communities in Ceuta: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu.

Samuel Levy, a member of Ceuta’s Jewish community, spoke about the protest to a local news outlet.

“There comes a point where the government’s inaction becomes overwhelming. We cannot live with this sword of Damocles hanging over us,” Levy said.

Some suspect the migrants were motivated to overrun Ceuta after a Spanish Supreme Court ruling saying migrants crossing into the country by sea deserved due process before being turned back, unlike those coming by land.

Levy referred to that suspicion directly.

“One day it’s 500 people, the next, 70,000, and they cannot be sent back! What kind of law allows for rejection by land but not by sea in a country surrounded by coastline?” he added.

“We need protection. We need the agreements that were reached to be honored,” said Mercedes Canca, a representative of the Catholic community.

“Morocco said that after the events of 2021, this would not happen again,” she added, referring to a previous migrant invasion. “Five years have passed, and it has happened again, only this time on an extreme scale. It is unsustainable.”

RELATED: Spain says 25,000 migrants have been expelled from tiny Ceuta territory — with 34 DEATHS

Levy went on to point out that the four communities lived in peace and harmony in Ceuta before the migrants overran the province.

“Ceuta is peace and concordance,” he said.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement condemning the circumstances that led to the invasion.

“This unacceptable incident is the direct result of the Spanish government’s deliberate efforts to enable and facilitate mass illegal migration into Europe,” the agency said in a statement. “We are considering actions to defend Americans at home and abroad from this threat and stand ready to assist other European allies considering similar options.”

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​Ceuta, Illegal immigration, Morocco, Spain, Europe, Nationalism, Politics 

In March this year, openly gay celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who built his cruel empire on crude photoshopped doodles on faces, relentless body-shaming, outing people, and gleeful pile-ons, had a dramatic public conversion to Christianity after a severe case of sepsis left him on death’s doorstep. Hilton claimed he encountered God in the hospital and vowed to change his wicked ways, including ceasing his mean-spirited tabloiding, reading the Bible, taking his three children to church, and being a more present father.

Tragically last week, Hilton was hospitalized after a TikTok livestream captured him naked and covered in blood while self-harming. Thousands of people witnessed the gruesome spectacle before TikTok shut down the live stream.

The questions immediately began pouring in. Was this the lingering fallout from his recent sepsis battle? Was he under spiritual attack? Is he suffering from mental illness?

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey examines whether Perez Hilton’s disturbing live stream was a mental health crisis or a case of demonic possession.

Many Christians speculate that Hilton’s self-harming was due to demonic possession. Allie acknowledges this possibility — but only if Hilton’s conversion was not genuine. If he is truly indwelled by the Holy Spirit, then demonic possession is not in the cards, she argues.

But from what she’s seen of Hilton in the months since his public conversion, Allie isn’t certain he really understands the gospel.

She highlights his continued celebration of his gay identity, his comment from a recent post claiming that he “[doesn’t] believe in everything that the Bible says,” and his new line of spiritual-themed merchandise as “red flags.”

Further, self-harm, Allie admits, is a “hallmark” of true demonic possession in the Bible.

“I don’t think that this means that it is always demonic possession, but it seems that when a demon is possessing someone, there is violence done to their bodies,” she says, citing Mark 9, where Jesus heals a demon-possessed boy who kept throwing himself into fire and water, and Mark 5, where Jesus healed a man possessed by legions of demons who cut himself with stones.

While Allie acknowledges that no one knows for certain what really happened to Perez Hilton that horrible night, the circumstances do seem to fit the biblical description of demonic possession.

“The Perez Hilton live stream looks more like demonic possession. … As soon as I saw the description of it, it reminded me of the man walking among the tombs who was cutting himself with the stones every day who was possessed by Legion,” she says.

If it’s true that he was indeed possessed by a demon, then Allie believes Hilton was never saved to begin with.

“Scripture has repeated serious warnings about those who claim to have accepted Christ as their savior but persist in this kind of unrepentant sin. … That unrepentant attitude of stubbornness of ‘This is my identity. This is how I’m going to live. I know what the Bible says. I don’t care. I am my own authority’ — the Holy Spirit is not going to allow you to continue in that if He lives in you,” she argues.

She then reads from Hebrews 10:26-27: “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.”

“I think that we can say in confidence the Holy Spirit is not living inside [Perez Hilton]. He doesn’t have the fruit of the Spirit, and we want that for him,” says Allie, urging her audience to pray for him and his children.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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​Allie beth stuckey, Bible, Celebrity gossip, Christianity, Demonic possession, Mental illness, Perez hilton, Blazetv show 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened in the controversial case where a couple of California parents called for their hired surrogate to abort their intended baby after the child was found to have a heart defect.

The “Baby Gabriel” case has divided many along the pro-life and pro-abortion divide after the surrogate mother traveled to Texas in search of life-prolonging care for the baby.

‘Baby Gabriel deserves a chance at life, and I will not allow anyone to unlawfully deny him medically necessary care.’

The unborn child has a serious but treatable heart condition, and the California couple have threatened to transport the child out of Texas to avoid the extensive surgeries necessary to save the baby’s life.

On Tuesday Paxton released a statement announcing that he had officially notified UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas of their legal obligation to provide the baby with “medically necessary, lifesaving care upon birth.”

Paxton said he also asked a district court to issue an order preventing the removal of the baby from Texas.

“Baby Gabriel deserves a chance at life, and I will not allow anyone to unlawfully deny him medically necessary care,” said Paxton in the press release. “My office will use every tool available to protect innocent lives and ensure that every child receives the care required under Texas law.”

The surrogate mother is a nurse and single mom of two from Alaska named McKenna West. Court documents said the biological parents triggered the “abortion on demand” clause of their agreement after learning about the heart defect diagnosis.

“Every life matters. No woman should be forced to end the life of the baby she is carrying — including me,” West told the New York Post.

“Baby Gabriel should receive a chance at life.”

The biological parents had demanded that West travel to Seattle, Washington, for the abortion procedure after Alaskan doctors refused.

West refused and tried to relieve the parents of financial responsibility for the child, but they refused and sued her for $250,000. She faces bankruptcy if they are successful, West says.

RELATED: Yet another bewildering anti-Christian statement from James Talarico has been unearthed

The couple, however, have accused West in court documents of refusing to undergo an amniocentesis test to identify genetic disorders in order to seek money from them.

Paxton is in the middle of a bruising campaign for the U.S. Senate, which may determine whether Democrats are able to seize control in Congress.

The Baby Gabriel case helps highlight the Republican’s pro-life beliefs in contrast to his far-left competitor, James Talarico. The Texas Democrat enthusiastically supports a woke church that has referred to abortion as a “blessing.”

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​Abortion, James talarico, Ken paxton, Prolife, Surrogacy, Politics 

Oakland resident Jesse Rosemoore began the campaign to “cancel Piedmont” more than a year ago against the 1.7-square mile city with its own police force and school district.

Rosemoore hands out stickers reading, “CANCEL PIEDMONT” and sells $10 T-shirts bearing the provocative slogan, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

‘I felt like someone needed to bring even more attention to it, because what’s going on there says a lot about our society as a whole.’

Some have referred to the city as “Oakland’s Doughnut Hole” because it is encircled by the larger city.

The Chronicle acknowledges that residents in Piedmont have tried to make up for admitted historic efforts of racial exclusion, but those efforts have just led to more backlash.

“I know people want to always think that we’re horrible,” said Jean Chen Takazawa, a diversity, equity, and inclusion director for the Piedmont school district. “The reality is we’re doing good work here. Stop judging us and let us just do the work.”

Rosemoore disagrees.

“It really is ridiculous that a place like Piedmont even exists,” the 44-year-old said. “I felt like someone needed to bring even more attention to it, because what’s going on there says a lot about our society as a whole.”

While one in every five Oakland residents is black, the Chronicle reported that only 1% of Piedmont residents are black.

“Back in the day, segregation tended to look like you having the white neighborhood and the Black neighborhood in the same city,” said Stephen Menendian, an assistant director of a DEI center at UC Berkeley. “But now, most segregation is felt between cities, rather than within them.”

Piedmont residents report feeling scapegoated after city officials attempted address the inequality by hiring DEI experts and trying to build multi-unit apartments with lower-income units. Critics say the efforts are performative rather than substantive.

Rosemoore also recognizes that it’s nearly impossible to have Oakland annex Piedmont because it would require the approval of the wealthy enclave’s residents.

“If I proposed that, I’d be tarred and feathered,” said a former Piedmont mayor to the Chronicle.

RELATED: Video captures the moment karate instructors thwart alleged armed carjacking in Oakland

The Chronicle noted that a “young jogger” had enthusiastically endorsed Rosemoore’s campaign against Piedmont, but an older black woman issued him a warning after furrowing her brow.

“Don’t feel bad if you get some pushback,” she said. “People feel strongly about their small towns.”

Another woman described as a young woman wearing a “Free Palestine” hat also told Rosemoore she supported Piedmont after moving there.

“I’m not going to lie,” she said. “As a Latina who has lived in really bad areas my whole life, it’s pretty sick. And I’m hopeful it’ll only get better. I heard they might be building more apartments.”

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​Diversity equity and inclusion, Gentrification, Segregation, Dei programs, California, Politics 

A CNN investigation has found that the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Michigan has apparently removed more than a hundred YouTube videos expressing his far-left beliefs.

Abdul El-Sayed narrowly won the Democratic nomination from an establishment candidate last Tuesday, leading many to seize upon the contest as further evidence of fringe extremists taking over the party.

Another video no longer accessible to the public had the Democrat calling for the end of the 2nd Amendment guaranteeing gun rights.

Before he ran for the nomination, El-Sayed removed public access to more than 100 videos on his YouTube account, according to the CNN KFILE report.

In one removed video, El-Sayed blasted the Republican Party for focusing on illegal border crossings and claimed illegal immigration should not be a top concern for voters.

Another video no longer accessible to the public had the Democrat calling for the end of the Second Amendment guaranteeing gun rights and instead offered that there should be a constitutional right to health care.

“What if we tweaked the Constitution, amended the amendment, and instead of the ‘right to bear arms,’ we change it to the right to have health care?” said El-Sayed in the removed video.

One removed video from July 2024 featured El-Sayed arguing that Americans should stop celebrating the Fourth of July with fireworks. He cited the environmental damage and the risk they allegedly pose to veterans with PTSD as well as pets and children.

He also expressed support for “feminist prison abolition” while reading an ad for the show.

El-Sayed’s campaign responded to the CNN report in a statement downplaying the video removals.

“Abdul is the former captain of his high school football team, loves Michigan football on Saturdays, and celebrates the Fourth of July with fireworks like the next Michigander,” the statement read. “Cherry-picked comments from old podcasts don’t reflect his beliefs today.”

Although the campaign said El-Sayed had changed his beliefs since posting the videos, the most recently removed videos were just two years old.

RELATED: ‘He’s full of s**t’: Trump RIPS INTO Abdul El-Sayed after his narrow victory

The campaign claimed he respected the Second Amendment and pointed to recent messages he posted telling Americans to enjoy fireworks on the Fourth of July.

CNN said it had reviewed transcripts of the videos that had been archived before they were removed.

El-Sayed is aiming to defeat Republican candidate Mike Rogers, helping to determine whether Democrats are able to seize control of the Senate in the midterm elections.

The RealClearPolling average currently has Rogers winning with a very slim lead of 44.3% to El-Sayed at 44.0%

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​Abdul el-sayed, Us senate election, Michigan, Midterm elections, Politics 

Former NFL quarterback and league MVP Cam Newton is likely to cause a huge disruption in the NFL with his latest comments.

Newton, a three-time Pro Bowl player with the Carolina Panthers, is known as one of the best quarterbacks never to win a Super Bowl, but he’s also known for being one of the most outspoken in the league’s history.

On Thursday’s episode of “4th&1 with Cam Newton,” the Georgia native defended NFL QB Aaron Rodgers over his recent statements on ESPN.

‘Everybody in the NFL voted Democrat? Hell no, they didn’t.’

While appearing on “The Pat McAfee Show” last week, Rodgers unloaded on ESPN for its coverage of his refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccination in 2021 while with the Green Bay Packers.

Newton said he respects Rodgers for speaking out before detailing, at length, how organizations handle controversial issues. Minutes later, he declared it was time to be wholly honest on the topic.

“I hate to be the whistleblower, but I call it how I see it,” Newton began. “Look, if we’re being honest, going back to 2020, there were multiple players, coaches, and executives that fraudulently got their COVID shot. Yes, I said it.”

“Aaron Rogers wasn’t the only one,” Newton said about players being against the vaccine. “He wasn’t the only one in the Packers organization. He wasn’t the only one in the Packers quarterback room.”

RELATED: ‘That absolute coward’: Aaron Rodgers goes scorched-earth on ‘criminal’ Anthony Fauci as fans go ballistic

Newton, who last played in the league in 2021, then called the NFL’s vaccine protocol into question as possible propaganda.

“There was whispers about the shot,” Newton went on.

“So we make it a big thing like, ‘yo, it’s mandatory for you to get the shot or you got to go through these procedures.’ How do we not know that that was propaganda for the pharmaceutical companies to penetrate and say, “Hey, if we could control the NFL, then everybody else will follow.'”

The league did not require players to get a COVID-19 vaccination, but expanded requirements, including daily testing and physical distancing, for those who weren’t vaccinated or weren’t fully vaccinated.

Newton’s claims about the NFL kept broadening, moving from vaccination to political viewpoints to any sort of unauthorized opinion.

“If you were to tell me everybody in the NFL got that shot, hell no, they didn’t,” Newton said.

“Everybody in the NFL voted Democrat? Hell no, they didn’t,” Newton continued. “There’s some people in your locker room that voted for Trump. But when we get to start talking about who voted for who, red or blue? ‘No, no, no. Stay away from that. Don’t talk about that.'”

RELATED: Did Jason Whitlock cost Cam Newton his ESPN job?

Cooper Neill/Getty Images

Newton eventually covered most political bases from left to right, claiming any player who is speaking on something “real” is told to “shut the hell up.”

“No program, no organization, no franchise wants you really to stand on the table and talk about worldly issues that you may believe in. … That’s not good for business,” Newton added.

The NFL did not respond to requests for comment. The New England Patriots, Newton’s team in 2020, did not respond to a request for comment either.

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​Nfl, Covid-19, Covid vaccine, Cam newton, Aaron rodgers, Sports 

Move over, Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders. There’s a new multisport athlete making headlines.

However, this time it’s a male athlete who identifies as a woman.

‘Cycling was so simple by comparison.’

Back in 2018, the man then known as Rachel McKinnon became the first transgender-identifying athlete to win the women’s Masters Track Cycling World Championships in England. He then won a second-straight title in 2019.

McKinnon even told Sky News at the time that his obvious advantage over female competitors did not mean he should be excluded from competing against them.

Eventually, British Cycling got its legs under itself and in 2022 suspended the inclusion of “transgender and nonbinary” participants in its women’s category, opting instead for women and “open” categories.

With women’s cycling off the table, McKinnon is now competing in a new sport under a fresh moniker, having reportedly changed his name at the end of 2019.

Now age 44, McKinnon is going by Veronica Ivy and is competing in Canadian women’s golf.

Last week, Ivy along with teammates Nonie Marler and Aram Choi won British Columbia its third consecutive Inter-Provincial title at the Canadian Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship.

RELATED: Transgender female dominates at Masters Track Cycling World Championships

OLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

“Doing it back-to-back is fun especially out of province,” Marler told Golf Canada. “We fought hard, and the course is in unbelievable shape, and we’re proud to bring it home to B.C.”

The New York Post reported that Ivy separately won two individual women’s championships in June, the British Columbia Mid-Amateur and Mid-Master championships.

Following the first win, Ivy remarked on social media how much harder golf is than cycling.

“I swear, golf has to be the hardest sport out there,” Ivy wrote, per the Post. “Cycling was so simple by comparison. Cycling is maybe five minutes of peak stress, but golf is just five hours of nonstop stress, for days on end.”

Moreover, OutKick reporter Joe Kinsey cited a previous comment from Ivy where the athlete allegedly said he hoped to develop a 280-yard drive, a distance averaged by only three women on the professional tour, the LPGA.

RELATED: The trans movement has resulted in biological males beating women in their own sports

OLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

Ivy’s recent team win was the trio’s second-straight championship together and was celebrated by Golf Canada on their social media pages. Comments have been disabled on Facebook and X.

Ivy has long spoken about how it is incorrect to refer to him as a male, telling multiple outlets that he considers himself to be female.

In 2019, Ivy (then McKinnon), told Sky News that he was “legally and medically female.”

In 2022, he told talk-show host Trevor Noah, “I am a woman, that’s a fact. I am female. So all my identity records, my racing license, my medical records all say ‘female.’ And I’m pretty sure I’m made of biological stuff, so I’m a biological female as well.”

Eligibility

Ivy will likely face no barriers from Golf Canada, as the governing body does not require gender “disclosure or documentation.”

Golf Canada’s website plainly states in its “Transgender Persons Participating Policy” that “athletes can participate in events in the gender category in which they identify.”

The policy continues, “Athletes who identify as a girl or woman are eligible to compete on girls’, women’s, and mixed teams and as individual competitors in events for girls and women.”

However, Ivy will not be getting into the LPGA, thanks to its December 2024 policy requiring athletes to be female at birth.

Golf Canada did not respond to a request for comment.

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​Transgenderism, Women’s sports, Cycling, Golf, Canada, Lpga, Sports 

A 54-year-old California woman last week pleaded guilty to murdering her Cal Fire captain wife in 2025, according to authorities.

Yolanda Olejniczak Marodi is scheduled for sentencing Sept. 2, according to KTLA-TV.

‘I don’t want to die.’

She faces 36 years to life in state prison.

As Blaze News previously reported, 49-year-old Cal Fire captain Rebecca “Becky” Marodi was found stabbed to death at her home in Ramona around 9 p.m. on Feb. 17, 2025.

The arrest warrant said deputies from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office found Rebecca Marodi with “several lacerations and apparent stab wounds on her body, including her neck area, her chest, and abdomen.”

Days after the firefighter’s death, an arrest warrant was issued for Yolanda Marodi.

The sheriff’s office said Yolanda “was seen on surveillance video earlier in the evening arguing with Rebecca and physically assaulting her,” NBC News reported.

An affidavit said Rebecca Marodi could be seen with blood on her back and was heard on the video saying, “Yolanda! Please … I don’t want to die.”

Yolanda Marodi, who was seen in the video holding a knife, replied, “You should have thought about that before,” according to the affidavit.

Approximately 10 minutes later, Yolanda Marodi was “seen gathering pets, random items, and some luggage and loading it into a silver Chevrolet Equinox SUV,” according to the affidavit.

Blaze News reported that Homeland Security later spotted the vehicle crossing the border into Mexico.

After 33 days on the run, Marodi was taken into custody after being located at a hotel roughly two miles south of the U.S. border in Mexicali — approximately 175 miles southeast of where her wife was found stabbed to death at her home.

RELATED: Woman dies after male bludgeons her in head with can of beans — but defense argues alcoholism played role in her death

Rebecca Marodi served Cal Fire for 30 years and helped battle the devastating Eaton Fire.

“Becky was a beloved member of our community and department, and we miss her greatly,” Cal Fire and Riverside County Fire Department said in a statement after her death last year.

In an eerie similarity, Yolanda previously attempted to flee from law enforcement with her two young children after the October 2000 stabbing death of her then-estranged husband, according to law enforcement.

As Blaze News previously reported, Yolanda is an ex-convict who went to prison for the stabbing death of 26-year-old James Joseph Olejniczak in San Bernardino County.

In January 2004, Yolanda pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the stabbing death of her first spouse and was incarcerated from 2004 to 2013 after her conviction for voluntary manslaughter.

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​California, Guilty plea, Mexico, Murder, Stabbing, Ex-con, Crime 

The Chicago Sky’s DiJonai Carrington was assessed a Flagrant 2 foul and ejected in a game against the Indiana Fever for hitting Sophie Cunningham in the face from behind while she was attempting a layup.

Carrington quickly jumped on Instagram Threads after her ejection and posted “WHITE PRIVILEGE” — which didn’t look good for the WNBA player.

But BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock doesn’t believe she’s the only one with this attitude in the league.

“Sophie will not run the approved script after she gets her mouth bloodied. So Sophie is not sisterhood material. She is content. She is a problem to manage. She is the woman the machine is built to isolate. DiJonai Carrington is not a random villain of the week. She is a perfect instrument of this culture,” Whitlock says.

“When the trans athlete fight heated up around Sophie’s public stance, Carrington did not stay out of it, she stepped in. Then she stepped into Sophie at the rim, and when the ejection hit, she did not apologize to the woman with the blood in her mouth,” he continues.

“She posted ‘WHITE PRIVILEGE’ in all caps. That is the whole ideology in two words. Hurt a woman outside the circle, then accuse her of systemic advantage, systemic racism. Sophie is the victim of the file, and the defendant in the narrative. That inversion only works if the media runs it for you,” he adds.

And run it the media does.

“Enter Jemele Hill and Cari Champion. These are not the independent columnists who happen to land in the same place. They are best friends,” Whitlock explains.

“Both of them were on the line for Carrington,” he adds.

In a post on Threads, Hill wrote, “Dijonai Carrington receiving a Flagrant 2 and an ejection was the right call, but let’s go back to the play that made Sophie Cunningham famous. SC gained a million followers overnight. She is affectionately known as an enforcer. Nobody suggested she should be brought up on assault charges despite her play being clear retaliation.”

“Meanwhile Dijonai Carrington was actually going for the ball but she’s being called racial slurs, a thug, and some suggested a suspension for multiple games. Hmm …” she added.

And Champion wrote in a post on X, “The question is a fair ask — will @dijonai be applauded? Will she gain millions of followers and marketing opportunities?”

“One softens the foul. One questions the incentive structure while still centering Carrington as the protagonist. Same friendship, same hours, same protected player,” Whitlock comments, adding, “That is not a coincidence.”

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​Chicago sky, Dijonai carrington, Indiana fever, Jason whitlock, Sophie cunningham, White privilege, Cari champion, Wnba, Blazetv show 

Francesca Hong was one of only six Wisconsin Democrats to vote against a law making grooming a felony.

Assembly bill 677 aimed to make “grooming a child for sexual activity” a felony in Wisconsin. The bill was introduced in 2025 after public school teacher Christian Enwright got away with mere disorderly conduct charges despite apparently conducting “a months-long grooming relationship with a 14-year-old student.”

‘I will never vote for legislation that institutes hate speech, and that is recognized hate speech.’

“No person may engage in a course of conduct, pattern of behavior, or series of acts with the intention to condition, seduce, solicit, lure, or entice a child for the purpose of engaging in sexual intercourse or sexual contact or for the purpose of producing, distributing, or possessing depictions of the child engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” the bill read.

The Wisconsin Assembly passed the bill 93-6 in January. Hong and three of the other no votes form the Assembly’s Socialist Caucus, which unanimously rejected the new child protections. Democrat Gov. Tony Evers signed the bill into law in March.

Currently the front-runner in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor, Hong has offered no public explanation for her vote. Her campaign did not respond to requests for comment as to why she opposed creating a felony for the patterned sexual grooming of children.

Four of the bill’s opponents have endorsed Hong’s gubernatorial bid.

“The term ‘groomer’ has been increasingly used as a slur to imply that LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly educators, are threats to children,” said an explainer circulated by fellow bill opponent state Rep. Angelina Cruz (D).

RELATED: Hasan Piker is the anti-Charlie Kirk

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

“I will never vote for legislation that institutes hate speech, and that is recognized hate speech,” Cruz told the Racine County Eye in January. “This is not about protecting children. It’s about advancing a political agenda.”

Cruz is a public school teacher and former president of the Racine Education Uniserv Council labor organization.

Socialist Caucus member Rep. Christian Phelps (D) claimed the bill was not a “good-faith effort,” according to the Wisconsin Examiner. Phelps is also vice chair of the Assembly’s LGBTQ+ Caucus.

Even the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, which oversees public education and libraries, supported the bill.

At the time of Enwright’s conviction, no specific Wisconsin statute criminalized grooming. Prosecutors could charge him only with misdemeanor disorderly conduct, allowing Enwright to avoid the sex offender registry.

Enwright pled guilty and was sentenced to over a year in prison plus probation, according to Fox 6.

Assembly Bill 677 became 2025 Wisconsin Act 88 after Evers signed it into law. Prosecutors began charging suspects under the new statute just over a week after it took effect.

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​Francesca hong, Pride, Politics, Grooming 

For a brief period last week, Telegram disappeared from Apple’s App Store. That is no small thing. Telegram has more than a billion users worldwide, and for anyone who tried to install Telegram on an iPhone, Apple had temporarily cut off the normal route to getting the app. Apple said it removed Telegram after finding child sexual abuse material on the service. Telegram deleted the material, banned the offending user, and Apple restored the app the same day. Existing users were able to keep using Telegram while it was unavailable for download.

That alone would have been a noteworthy story, but Telegram founder Pavel Durov later offered a much stranger explanation for what happened. According to Durov, the material was not simply posted by some random criminal. He claims it was deliberately planted by what he called a “takedown extortionist,” someone who threatens online communities with removal unless their owners pay up.

It’s a much stranger security problem than most people are used to thinking about.

In Durov’s telling, the attacker found an old message in an active public Telegram group, edited it to contain AI-modified illegal material, and then reported the offending content directly to Apple. Because the edited message was buried in the group’s history, ordinary Telegram users were unlikely to stumble across it and report it themselves. The Verge subsequently reported Durov’s account of the alleged scheme.

Apple has confirmed the illegal content and the reason it removed Telegram, but it has not independently confirmed Durov’s story about the extortion scheme. That distinction matters. The claim that an extortionist deliberately planted the material, that AI was used to modify it, and that the old message was selected specifically to evade Telegram’s own moderation all come from Durov.

Still, if his account is accurate, the incident offers a glimpse of where cyberattacks may be headed. The alleged attacker did not have to hack Telegram’s servers, compromise Apple, steal anyone’s password, or discover some exotic zero day vulnerability. He simply figured out how to manipulate Apple’s enforcement system into attacking Telegram for him.

Hack the referee

That may sound like an entirely new category of attack, but the basic idea has been around for years. Social media companies have dealt with organized mass reporting campaigns in which activists, dissidents, competitors, and political opponents are buried under bogus complaints in hopes that an automated moderation system will suspend them.

Meta disclosed in 2021 that it had broken up a network in Vietnam that used real, duplicate, and fake accounts to submit hundreds and sometimes thousands of false reports against activists and critics of the Vietnamese government.

YouTube has had similar problems with fraudulent copyright complaints. Google reported that more than 6% of videos targeted through YouTube’s public copyright removal process in 2025 were subject to abusive removal requests.

The reason the Telegram case is more interesting is that artificial intelligence is changing the economics of these attacks. A human being has always been capable of lying, filing false reports, forging evidence, or pretending to be someone else. AI makes it possible to do those things at enormous scale and with much less time and effort.

RELATED: Infamous cyberattackers claim their next shocking victim — using a decades-old trick

Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The FBI has already warned that criminals are using generative AI to create fake identification documents, fictitious social media profiles, synthetic photographs, cloned voices, and fraudulent videos for impersonation and fraud. The FBI has separately warned that criminals are using AI-altered images and videos to create explicit material for extortion.

The important thing is not merely that AI can make a convincing fake photograph. It is that one person can now manufacture photographs, voices, accounts, documents, messages, and identities faster and cheaper than ever before.

The attack surface is getting bigger

That becomes especially dangerous as more institutions hand decisions over to automated systems. Banks use software to decide whether a transaction looks fraudulent. Email providers decide whether a message is spam. Social networks decide whether a photograph violates their rules. App stores determine whether software is safe enough to distribute. Advertising platforms decide which businesses are legitimate. Payment processors determine which merchants are too risky to serve.

In every case, the system has to take some collection of inputs and make a judgment about them. An attacker does not necessarily have to defeat those systems in the traditional sense. He only has to learn which inputs produce the result he wants.

That is a much stranger security problem than the one most people are used to thinking about. For decades, the stereotypical cyberattack involved a hacker trying to break through a locked door. He stole a password, exploited an unpatched vulnerability, installed malware, encrypted a hard drive, or broke into a database.

Those attacks are not going anywhere, and AI is making them more sophisticated as well. But increasingly, attackers may be able to accomplish their goal without ever breaking through the door. If they can persuade the security guard that the owner of the building is a criminal, the guard may do the damage for them.

Apple’s power is part of the problem

That is essentially what Durov claims happened to Telegram, and it exposes another uncomfortable part of the story.

Apple obviously cannot ignore child sexual abuse material. Nobody is arguing that it should. But that does not automatically answer the much larger question of what Apple should do when a single user uploads prohibited material to an application serving more than a billion people.

Is Apple responsible for policing every photograph, message, and file that passes through every app it distributes? More importantly, should Apple have the authority to punish every user of an application because one user violated the rules?

Apple’s own App Store guidelines do not require developers to somehow guarantee that objectionable material will never appear. Apps containing user generated content are required to have systems for filtering objectionable material, reporting it, blocking abusive users, and providing contact information so complaints can be addressed.

Apple’s guidelines also describe a remediation process in which the company may contact a developer, ask that offending material be removed, and request a plan for preventing similar violations. The guidelines reserve immediate removal for more serious circumstances, including egregious or repeated behavior.

That raises an obvious question if Durov’s account is accurate. Why did Apple remove Telegram before contacting the company instead of first giving Telegram an opportunity to remove the content and address the offending account?

RELATED: Surveillance pricing is here — and this surprising state is saying NO

mathisworks/Getty Images

There may be additional considerations involving child sexual abuse material that are not fully spelled out in Apple’s general App Store guidelines, so it would be too strong to say Apple clearly violated its own policy. But the discrepancy is worth asking about.

Telegram says this entire episode stemmed from the actions of a single user. Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn criticized Apple for disrupting access to the app over one user’s actions, while Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney questioned how any large messaging service could realistically guarantee that none of its users would ever upload prohibited material.

That gets to the larger issue. No communications platform with hundreds of millions or billions of users can promise that no individual user will ever do something criminal. The meaningful question is how quickly and effectively the platform responds when that happens.

Yet Apple possesses the power to remove an entire application from the primary software marketplace for more than a billion iPhone users.

That is an extraordinary amount of authority for one private company to exercise over communications software.

It also makes the alleged extortion scheme possible in the first place. The attacker’s leverage did not come merely from his ability to plant prohibited material. It came from knowing that Apple possessed both the power and the willingness to punish an entire application in response.

If Durov’s story is accurate, the extortionist was exploiting Apple just as surely as he was exploiting Telegram.

Who decides who gets to stay?

There is also reason to question how consistently Apple exercises that authority.

The Verge reported Friday that Apple took a different approach toward X and Grok during controversy over sexualized AI-generated images. Apple reportedly contacted X and sought moderation changes rather than immediately removing the apps.

Durov, by contrast, says Telegram was removed before Apple contacted the company.

That does not prove Apple acted improperly in either case, and the underlying facts were not identical. But it does expose how much discretion Apple possesses. Apple worked with one platform while another was removed before contact, according to Durov.

That should make even people who have little sympathy for Telegram uncomfortable. The question is not whether Apple should tolerate illegal material. It is whether a company that controls one of the two dominant mobile operating systems should also serve as judge, jury, and executioner for applications containing the speech of billions of third-party users.

Seen that way, the Telegram affair is not merely a warning about AI-powered cyberattacks. It is also a warning about centralized gatekeepers.

The more power we give a handful of companies to decide who may communicate, transact, advertise, publish, or distribute software, the more valuable those companies become as targets for manipulation.

Why bother silencing a billion users yourself when you can trick Apple into doing it for you?

AI is getting better at old-fashioned hacking too

AI makes these manipulation attacks easier, but the machines themselves are also becoming much better at traditional hacking.

OpenAI recently disclosed an internal cybersecurity evaluation in which advanced models escaped the constrained environment researchers had built for them after discovering and exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability. The models gained internet access, escalated privileges, moved laterally through systems, and ultimately exploited vulnerabilities in Hugging Face’s real production infrastructure while pursuing the objective of the test.

There are important caveats. This was a deliberately aggressive cybersecurity evaluation. OpenAI had reduced or disabled some of the safeguards that would ordinarily restrict such behavior, and the prerelease model involved was an internal research prototype rather than a product released to the public.

Even with those caveats, the result was remarkable. The models found ways around barriers that researchers had not expected them to overcome.

RELATED: They had their life savings drained online in an instant. So who’s next?

Velishchuk/Getty Images

Then on Friday, OpenAI disclosed another development that shows how quickly these capabilities are progressing. The company said testing of its upcoming Astra model had advanced far enough that it could no longer rule out what OpenAI classifies as “critical” cybersecurity capability.

That is the highest category in OpenAI’s cybersecurity framework. At that level, according to OpenAI’s description, a model could potentially discover functional zero-day exploits against hardened real-world systems without human assistance or independently plan and execute complex novel attacks from a high-level objective.

OpenAI has not said Astra definitely possesses those capabilities. It has said the possibility is serious enough that the company has tightened security controls around the model while testing continues.

We have reached the stage where one of the companies building the world’s most advanced AI systems considers autonomous attacks against hardened real-world targets plausible enough to build safeguards around.

Cybersecurity is becoming a fight over reality

Put these developments together, and the future of cybercrime starts to look much more complicated than simply giving hackers better tools.

On one side, AI systems are becoming increasingly capable of probing networks, discovering vulnerabilities, writing exploits, and carrying out technical work that once required highly skilled human operators. On the other side, far less sophisticated AI can already generate fake identities, doctored evidence, fraudulent complaints, cloned voices, and synthetic content that can be used to manipulate the institutions surrounding a target.

You can imagine where that leads without getting too far into science fiction. A criminal might not need to break into a company’s bank account if he can generate enough convincing evidence to persuade the bank’s fraud system to freeze it. He might not need to hack a competitor’s website if he can convince its hosting company that the site contains illegal material. He might not need to compromise an executive’s email if he can clone the executive’s voice and video closely enough to fool an employee. An attacker targeting a social media account might simply generate and test thousands of variations of malicious content until he discovers one that reliably triggers the platform’s moderation system.

The institutions involved cannot simply stop enforcing their rules. Banks cannot stop looking for fraud. Email providers cannot stop filtering spam. Social networks cannot simply abandon moderation. Apple cannot simply shrug when illegal material appears inside an app.

But neither should we treat every decision made by those systems, or by the companies controlling them, as automatically legitimate simply because the underlying problem is serious.

Every system that makes judgments can also be studied, manipulated, and eventually exploited.

That is what makes the Telegram incident worth paying attention to, even if Durov’s account ultimately proves incomplete. Apple has removed Telegram over child sexual abuse material before, in 2018, and Telegram has faced years of criticism and regulatory pressure over illegal activity on the platform. Durov is hardly a disinterested observer.

But the broader vulnerability he describes is real whether or not every detail of this particular incident turns out exactly as he says.

For most of the history of cybersecurity, defenders worried about attackers taking control of their computers. The next phase may be stranger. Attackers may not need to take control of your computer at all.

They may only need to convince everyone else’s computers to turn against you.

​Tech, Cybersecurity, Cyberattack, Telegram, Apple 

A German airport that serves as a logistics hub was seemingly targeted as part of a plot carried out by enemies of the West.

How they did it is a wake-up call about the vulnerability of air travel worldwide.

‘All of this does not point to an amateurish approach.’

Leipzig/Halle Airport in eastern Germany almost became the site of disaster, but whether it was luck or poor execution, a mass causality event was barely avoided.

The airport is used by German military and its NATO allies for military transport, the BBC reported, but at the same time, it serves as a base for Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines.

Ukrainian aerial cargo was the apparent target when a drone was spotted carrying an explosive device near the Antonov planes.

The drone was fitted with military-grade explosives including Semtex and Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN). Fortunately, the detonator on the drone apparently malfunctioned, rendering the explosives useless, the Financial Times said, per German police.

A bomb-defusing robot was deployed to remove the detonator from the device, and police later carried out a controlled explosion to dispose of the material.

Moreover, a second unidentified object actually made contact with a cargo aircraft near the same airport, but the plane seemingly absorbed the blow and later landed in Hanover, Germany, with minor damage.

RELATED: America is winning the air war and losing the information war

NEWS5/AFP/Getty Images

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said that the incidents showed “a new level of threat” but warned the job was complex and professional, not a slapped-together device.

“All of this does not point to an amateurish approach. We are talking about a professional, hybrid threat scenario that we will continue to address.”

Without naming names, Dobrindt said that the attack “may also involve foreign powers.”

The claim comes as Polish authorities have alleged that U.S. intelligence forwarded them warnings that Russia could soon be looking to carry out an attack on NATO allies.

RELATED: Putin’s spies have been hiding in plain sight in Japan — now the US is helping clean house

John MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

According to LBC, Warsaw recently received intelligence from Washington that Russia could be planning an armed provocation (drone or missile strikes) on Polish soil, with the aim of escalating tensions among the West, which would lead to the suspension of support for Ukraine.

The warning included the possibility of an attack on what was described as critical Polish infrastructure, which could involve Russian or Belarusian troops crossing into NATO territory.

The United States “systematically informs Poland about ever-new Russian plans for a conventional attack on NATO’s eastern flank, from which Poland is by no means excluded,” a source close to the Polish president told LBC.

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​Drones, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Nato, Poland, Tech 

At Blaze Media, we strive to consistently bring you the best conservative talent on the market. Today, we’re excited to announce that pastor and podcaster Josh Howerton has joined our lineup.

As senior pastor of Lakepointe Church in Dallas, Texas, and host of one of the fastest-growing shows in the faith and culture space, “Live Free,” Howerton brings a large and loyal audience of faithful churchgoers and cultural observers who value his clear, biblically grounded perspective on the issues of our day.

Howerton told us he’s excited about joining the Blaze Media team because it allows him to accomplish the two things he’s “most passionate” about: “Telling everybody everywhere the good news of Jesus Christ” and applying “the whole word of God to the issues of the whole world.”

“This partnership advances both, so we’re in and excited about it,” he said.

We share in that excitement.

“Josh has built something rare: a podcast with genuine chart momentum and a growing audience that’s actively looking for clarity on faith and culture,” said Tyler Cardon, CEO of Blaze Media. “’Live Free’ fits naturally into our lineup, and we think our distribution can help Josh reach even more people hungry for the truth.”

“Live Free with Josh Howerton” launches today on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.

“Live Free with Josh Howerton” is currently ranked #2 in Apple Podcasts’ religion and spirituality category and #39 overall. It has also surpassed one million YouTube subscribers, with an audience that spans committed churchgoers, conservatives, and cultural observers alike. Josh is building something special, and we’re honored to come alongside him and his team to support and amplify the great work that he’s doing.

When you subscribe to BlazeTV+, you’re helping us bring more voices like Josh Howerton to Blaze Media, voices willing to speak clearly about faith, culture, and the issues shaping our country.

Join BlazeTV+ and start watching Josh today at blazetv.com/JOSH. Use promo code JOSH40 to get $40 off your subscription.

​Christianity, Culture, Josh howerton, Podcast, Blazetv show 

It’s now dawning on some liberals that there’s nothing funny about the clowns taking over the Democratic circus.

MS NOW talking head Joe Scarborough, for instance, was left momentarily speechless on Monday after sharing a video in which Megan Romer, the national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, not only blames Israel for its attack by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, but notes that she would have stood in solidarity with Hamas in the immediate aftermath of the massacres.

‘I really don’t want to hear from the DSA anymore.’

In an interview with the New Yorker’s David Remnick released Friday, Romer detailed the DSA’s platform, including its views on Israel. Romer condemned Israel and expressed support for a “one-state solution”: a “free Palestine with the capital in Jerusalem.”

Remnick noted that Darializa Avila Chevalier — the Islamic anti-police, anti-Israel, anti-border socialist now poised to win a congressional seat in New York as a Democrat — attended the pro-Hamas rally held in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023, which featured signs justifying the terror attacks and was organized by radical groups, including Al-Awda New York.

When asked whether she supports Chevalier attending the rally, Romer said, “Yeah, I do,” and noted that she too would have attended the rally had she been able.

“One day after the slaughter of 1,200 people and taking of over 200 hostages, you would’ve come and rallied behind Hamas?” asked Remnick.

“I think that October 7 was largely inevitable,” answered Romer. “If you put people in an open-air concentration camp, and you deprive them of rights, of dignity, of food, of the ability to live in safety, you have to expect that they are going to not take that for that long.”

“You cannot put people in a cage and expect them not to revolt,” added the socialist.

RELATED: Mike Rowe nukes DSA commies, then takes a moment to bask in the fallout

Spencer Platt/Getty Images (R)

After playing a clip of the exchange on “Morning Joe” on Monday, Scarborough appeared stunned.

He broke the silence to state, “The co-chair of the DSA supported going to a pro-Hamas rally the day after Hamas gleefully slaughtered more Jews on October 7 than any day the Jews were slaughtered since the Holocaust. Women raped. Young children shot in front of their parents. Parents shot in front of young children. The DSA co-chair, which means the DSA, supports that.”

‘This is about the Democrats once again fumbling the football on the 2-yard line.’

“I really don’t want to hear from the DSA anymore,” added the liberal host, “that they’re about economic justice or health care. This would be like going to a pro-Al-Qaeda rally on September 12, which I’m sure many people in the DSA would say, ‘Well, that would be perfectly fine because look at the U.S. policies throughout the years.'”

The talking head who officially left the GOP in October 2017 — for supposedly abandoning its fiscal principles — implored the Democratic Party to reject the DSA ahead of the primary elections on Tuesday in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

In Wisconsin, Francesca Hong — a card-carrying DSA member who has expressed a desire to abolish the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Senate — is likely to win the Democratic Party’s nomination in the state’s gubernatorial race.

In Minnesota, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan — who does not identify as a socialist but is nevertheless a leftist similarly extreme in her views — is up against establishment Democratic Rep. Angie Craig in the Gopher State’s Democratic Senate primary.

“There’s nothing wrong with the Democrats supporting economic justice. There’s nothing wrong with the Democrats supporting, you know, cutting taxes, or getting rid of the Trump taxes and making billionaires pay more in taxes,” said Scarborough. “That’s a legitimate mainstream debate for people to have.”

He suggested, however, “I don’t need people telling me, ‘Oh, you have to just turn a blind eye to people saying that women getting raped on October 7 didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.’ Americans aren’t going to support that.”

“This is about the Democrats once again fumbling the football on the two-yard line when they have the chance to make great gains but being … too woke to call out the obvious,” said Scarborough.

Scarborough underscored that it’s prudent for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to call out the extremism of the DSA and those socialists making inroads in the Democratic Party — or to, at the very least, call pro-terrorist rape apologetics “despicable.”

“It’s crazy that we’re even having this conversation!” he shouted.

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​Joe scarborough, Ms now, Democratic socialists of america, Megan romer, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Politics