Category: blaze media

The group behind the Miss North Carolina USA contest says the decision to strip the title from 27-year-old Brittany Boltinhouse was a “difficult” one.

The Mexican-Honduran model from Beulaville posted messages years ago that the organization said went against its values.

She had warned that voting for Kamala Harris would risk turning America into a ‘third world country.’

Boltinhouse is also a supporter of President Donald Trump, though that wasn’t included in the organization’s statement.

“This decision was not made lightly,” the organizers said on Instagram. “It followed a thorough review of recently surfaced information and was based on the totality of the circumstances and our responsibility to preserve the integrity of the Miss North Carolina USA title and the values of our organization.”

The posts were not included, but the NC Beat documented that Boltinhouse used the N-word numerous times between 2017 and 2018, and referred to herself as “toxic.”

She had warned that voting for Kamala Harris would risk turning America into a “third world country” in another post and also shared a photograph of herself at a Trump rally, according to the Beat.

The discovery led to backlash from some who objected to her posts and called her a “self-hating, Trump-supporting, racist, ignorant women [sic] who does not speak for me or for any of the other ACTUAL PROUD HISPANAS.”

Miss USA Chairman and CEO Thom Brodeur said that “racism, homophobia, transphobia, [and] language that strips any person of their dignity” are against the organization’s values, but it’s unclear if he was referring to her posts or her support of the president.

“As an organization entrusted with selecting and preparing women to represent our states on the national stage,” the organization continued, “we must uphold the standards and values that our titleholders agree to embrace when accepting the honor of wearing the crown.”

The incident is even more bizarre considering that Trump once owned the Miss USA pageant before he became president.

RELATED: Former Miss North Dakota pleads guilty to day care fraud in Minnesota

Myla Hadley, the runner-up in the pageant contest, will take up the mantle of Miss North Carolina USA 2026.

Boltinhouse was the first Honduran model to win the Miss North Carolina USA title.

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​Donald trump, Miss usa pageant, Politics, Trump supporters 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed Thursday that a hacker had been able to scrape voter data from the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona.

FBI Director Kash Patel released a letter outlining that the hacker had allegedly confessed, but local prosecutors refused to file charges against him.

‘He kept the files stored at his home but destroyed them shortly before the FBI raided his home in Fountain Hills.’

The digital infiltration included an astounding 633,000 voter files, of which 930 were described as “sensitive voter information,” according to one FBI document. The sensitive voter information was described as “domestic violence victims, judges, and law enforcement officers.”

“He kept the files stored at his home but destroyed them shortly before the FBI raided his home in Fountain Hills,” the FBI director added.

Despite the suspect’s confession, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, the Arizona attorney general, the Maricopa County district attorney, and the Pima County district attorney all declined to prosecute, according to Patel.

Blaze News reached out to the respective offices of the U.S. attorney in Arizona, the Arizona attorney general, the Maricopa County district attorney, and the Pima County district attorney for comment.

RELATED: Trump accuses Democrat governor of MASSIVE election fraud

The case was thoroughly investigated by the FBI and was closed in 2023, according to another FBI document.

A White House official told the Center Square that investigators did not believe the hacker was working with foreign agents. The suspect expressed remorse, and no ballots or voter registrations were altered, according to the official.

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​Federal bureau of investigation, Kash patel, Maricopa county, 2020 election, Politics 

The conservative political class is committing one of the most disastrous acts of political malpractice in recent memory.

When Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre chided Americans for complaining about the price of staples such as milk and eggs, she did serious damage to the Democratic Party. Many voters backed Donald Trump because they trusted him to address inflation and the broader affordability crisis. Now conservative pundits and influencers are repeating the same mistake, telling consumers that everything is fine and that only economic illiterates think groceries, gas, and housing cost too much.

Democrats lost because they cut themselves off from reality. Republicans have no reason to copy the strategy.

Elections are not won by lecturing voters that their problems are imaginary. This is Politics 101. Professional political actors adopting the strategy months before the midterms is both bizarre and dangerous.

Affordability is not a Democrat talking point or a socialist catchphrase. It is real, and it will dominate every foreseeable election. Republicans understood this when Biden occupied the White House. The problem did not disappear when Trump returned.

People can feel that the economy is not working for them. They can see the American dream drifting farther out of reach. Conservative pundits may produce charts, cite aggregate statistics, and explain that certain indicators look healthy. None of that will save the GOP any more than it saved Democrats who insisted that “Bidenomics” was working.

The party cannot dismiss this anger as a failure of messaging. Voters do not experience the economy as an abstraction. They experience it at the checkout counter, at the gas pump, when the insurance bill arrives, and when another year of saving still leaves a starter home beyond reach. Their judgment is concrete and entirely rational.

The price of some discretionary goods, such as flat-screen televisions, may have fallen. The essentials of ordinary life have not followed the same path. Food, health care, child care, education, insurance, housing, electricity, and gasoline remain punishingly expensive. Gross domestic product and a surging stock market may comfort those already winning in the economy, but they are poor measures of the daily experience of a family struggling to stay afloat.

Many of the underlying problems are nearly untouchable in a democratic system. The hard truth is that buying votes is often the optimal electoral strategy. No candidate wins by promising voters that their benefits will shrink, their home values will fall, and their taxes will rise.

Trump understands this better than anyone. He promised not to touch major entitlements, pledged to protect home values, and proposed eliminating taxes on tips. America may be on a slow collision course with fiscal disaster, but no politician wants to lose an election by volunteering to hold the bomb when it explodes.

RELATED: Stop ‘owning the libs’ and start owning institutions

Blaze Media Illustration

The American version of this problem has modern features, but the core dilemma is ancient. Large civilizations require immense resources. When rulers can no longer obtain enough through ordinary taxation, they manipulate the currency.

Roman emperors knew little of modern monetary theory, but they understood that reducing the precious-metal content of coins allowed the state to mint more of them. The apparent solution eventually helped destroy confidence in the currency and contributed to the collapse of hard money across much of Europe.

There is only so much Trump can do about structural inflation and accumulated debt. He can, however, avoid taking actions that make the problem worse.

Gasoline is the literal fuel of the economy. Higher prices punish voters at the pump and then reappear in the cost of every product that must be transported. Energy bills, food prices, and fuel costs hit households immediately and simultaneously. Voters will remember that squeeze more clearly than any lecture about macroeconomic fundamentals.

The war with Iran has taken on a disturbingly familiar shape. Its champions mocked anyone who warned that the conflict might last more than a few weeks. Now the country approaches a critical midterm election with no end in sight.

This was predictable. Once a war begins, the ability to control its scope and duration rapidly diminishes. Machiavelli put it plainly: “Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.”

The same pundits who demanded war now tell voters they are stupid or selfish for noticing its economic consequences. They will inevitably blame any disastrous midterm result on the people who opposed the conflict, but the political reality is obvious.

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

America has already spent tens of billions of dollars on the Iran war and depleted munitions stockpiles that will require years and billions more to rebuild. The Republican House also approved another $8 billion in loans for Ukraine, despite Trump’s promise to end that war immediately.

RELATED: Conservatives are blowing the easiest political win in America

Blaze Media Illustration

The United States does not have this money sitting in a vault. It must be taxed, borrowed, or created. Each method imposes a cost on Americans who receive little material benefit from these foreign conflicts.

The political system limits what Republicans can do about inflation. Ending vast expenditures on wars that do not improve the lives of voters is nevertheless the most obvious place to begin.

The road ahead is difficult, but many of the wounds are self-inflicted. The first step toward recovery is to stop repeating the behavior that caused them.

End funding for the war in Ukraine. Bring American forces home from the Persian Gulf. Stop telling voters that concern over rising prices is foolish, greedy, or manufactured by Democrats.

The GOP still has one advantage: Democrats remain deeply unpopular. Redistricting has improved the Republican electoral map, and the left continues to repel many ordinary voters. There may still be time to limit the damage or even regain momentum.

But first the war hawks must admit that they were wrong — again — and change course.

Democrats lost because they cut themselves off from reality. Republicans have no reason to copy the strategy.

​Affordability crisis, Democratic party, Donald trump, Inflation crisis, Gas prices, Economy, Opinion & analysis, Gop, American dream 

A man suspected of intentionally setting the fire that devastated a 173-year-old Brooklyn church was arrested early Wednesday morning after allegedly attempting to shoplift food from a Times Square CVS, according to police.

John Jones, 24, was taken into custody at approximately 1:39 a.m. by an off-duty NYPD officer working private security at the CVS at West 49th Street and Broadway after he allegedly tried to steal a sandwich and a Coca-Cola.

‘Now we understand it is intentional, which brings another layer of grief to myself, as well as the congregation and the community.’

While Jones was being processed on the petty larceny charge, officers discovered there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest in connection with the June fire that destroyed the historic South Bushwick Reformed Church.

Jones is charged with federal arson in connection to the blaze.

Investigators had been searching for Jones after surveillance footage allegedly captured him fleeing the area of South Bushwick Reformed Church shortly before flames erupted around 1:20 p.m. on June 19.

The three-alarm fire drew nearly 200 first responders and caused catastrophic damage to the landmarked church, including the collapse of its iconic steeple into the roof. The church was empty at the time, with only one firefighter suffering minor injuries.

RELATED: Fire that destroyed one of NYC’s oldest wooden churches was intentionally set, FDNY determines

South Bushwick Reformed Church, 1923.Eugene L. Armbruster/The New York Historical Society/Getty Images

Last month, the FDNY officially determined the fire to be incendiary, meaning it had been deliberately set, though the investigation remained ongoing.

“Now we understand it is intentional, which brings another layer of grief to myself, as well as the congregation and the community,” Pastor James E. Steward II previously told CBS News.

South Bushwick Reformed Church was built in 1853 and declared a city landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1968. It was one of only eight surviving wooden landmarked houses of worship in the entirety of New York City, with the congregation itself dating back to Dutch settlers in the 17th century.

In the weeks following the fire, church leaders and preservationists fought to save what remained of the historic structure after the Department of Buildings initially moved toward demolition.

The city ultimately granted a temporary pause to allow engineers and contractors to pursue a stabilization plan for portions of the building, including its 1881 fellowship hall.

This week, Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church donated $5,000 to aid in the recovery effort as church leaders continue evaluating whether the landmark can be rebuilt or partially restored.

“When we heard the news that South Bushwick Church had caught fire, we wanted to come from Harlem to let you know that we love you, that we care for you,” Rev. Dr. Kevin R. Johnson said. “Today we bring you a check of $5,000 on behalf of the members of the Abyssinian Baptist Church.”

Additionally, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Eastern District of New York, Jones was also arrested by NYPD on or about June 28 in connection with “a separate property destruction incident.”

The New York Post, citing sources, has since reported that Jones was accused of destroying a television at a Williamsburg restaurant, earning him a criminal mischief charge.

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​Arrest, Church, Crime, Federal charges, Fire, New york city, Surveillance footage, Politics 

Wisconsin Democrats have a new front-runner for the “most psychotic Democrat,” and BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is sounding the alarm.

“There’s a lot of competition. I get it. But I just would like to introduce you to a new player. Her name is Francesca Hong,” Gonzales begins.

Hong is a self-described democratic socialist who is running for governor in Wisconsin. And she “could win,” Gonzales says, pointing out that she’s “taking charge at 94.3%” in the Democrat primary.

“Now, I mentioned this woman is like a crackpot psycho crazy person. The reason that I say that … because she apparently is a psycho by like the Norman Bates definition,” she adds, before playing a clip from an interview with Hong.

“I think a lot of my insecurities and my struggles with mental health really came from a sense of never really feeling like I belonged. There was a deep shame and fear that I didn’t want to be Korean, and I think that’s where a lot of the mental health struggle started,” Hong recalled.

“I deeply wanted to be American, and I felt shame that my parents sacrificed so much to be here and that wasn’t who I wanted to be,” she added.

Hong went on to explain that “isolation and loneliness led into a lot of despair and depression,” leaving her hospitalized her senior year of high school. Hong explained that she was diagnosed as bipolar.

“She’s also admitted to taking SSRIs and overdosing on lithium,” Gonzales says.

“I feel like that should be pretty disqualifying to say, ‘I should run as governor,’” she adds.

Despite formerly being a restaurant owner and chef, Hong has called tipping “racist” and also lamented serving others on holidays like Valentine’s day.

“If that wasn’t bad enough, she also hates Christmas,” Gonzales says.

In a 2019 post on X, Hong wrote: “IT bro who was working on ‘our’ computer remotely changed the background theme to snow and Christmas trees. I feel slightly attacked…”

But that’s not all, as in a now-deleted 2020 post on X, she wrote: “Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621. If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed Indegenous [sic] folx and women so be it.”

Even CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Hong about her past take on Thanksgiving, to which Hong responded, “I always think my hospitality background in owning a restaurant … to share conversation and build community is always a good thing, but Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities.”

Hong has also posted that she supports “defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police.”

And shockingly, it gets worse.

“I guess she wants to get away with calling for the assassination of President Trump, because she openly called for it on a Zoom call,” Gonzales says, before playing yet another damaging clip of Hong.

“In the restaurant industry, when we’re out of something, we say it’s 86’ed. And I’d say it’s about f**king time we 86 Trump. He represents the utter failure of our government to keep us safe from threats, both viral and systemic,” Hong said.

However, there is good news.

“People seem to be waking up to how much of an actual psycho she is. So much so that Republicans are now narrowly favored to win the general. 52% Republican, 48% Democrat,” Gonzales says.

“I will just say in closing,” she adds, “candidates like Francesca Hong are tearing the Democrat Party apart.”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Francesca hong, Sara gonzales, Colonialism, Wisconsin, Election, Government, Governor, Democrat, Blazetv show 

George R.R. Martin may be one of the last surviving big-name bloggers out there, but don’t expect him to channel that energy into book writing any time soon.

For years fans have been asking the author to finish “The Winds of Winter,” the sixth “Game of Thrones” book, and after more than 15 years, the novel still isn’t finished.

‘Getting old is no fun.’

‘Worst’ to come?

In a recent blog post titled “Better Late Than Never,” Martin revealed to fans what has been holding him back.

The 77-year-old first addressed the fact that he hadn’t posted on the blog since February, citing that he “kept falling further and further behind.”

The website itself, called “Not a Blog,” is a charming time capsule from the mid-2000s, complete with basic clip art, where Martin has historically shared inside information with fans.

This time around, he admitted to readers “This year has been… stressful, to say the least.”

“So much has been happening, it’s been overwhelming. Some great things, exciting things. Dreams coming true. But there have been nightmares too,” the author continued.

Martin then expressed that he has been having trouble dealing with his emotions surrounding death, a message he has communicated with fans previously.

“I have lost friends. Battled sadness and depression. The worst may be yet to come. I turned seventy-seven last September, and I tell you, getting old is no fun. But there have been amazing times as well,” Martin continued.

RELATED: ‘BURN IT ALL DOWN’: Firebrand feminist filmmaker calls for violent revolution

Craig Barritt/Getty Images

‘Short and rushed’

Martin cited some things to celebrate, like Emmy nominations for his “Game of Thrones” prequel called “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” which garnered nine chances to win a trophy.

“I hope to attend,” Martin said about the award ceremony. “But that depends on… well, on a lot of things.”

The vague blog entry did not reveal any progress for his last book. Instead, Martin offered that he would attempt to “catch up” on his blogs, but said that his posts “are likely to short and rushed.”

Summarizing his ups and downs, the beloved writer stated, “I suppose that’s just life. Of course, I knew that. If you’ve read my stories, you know that.”

RELATED: Sam Altman biopic actors break silence after Amazon drops film: ‘I don’t know who’s running everything’

Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Bleak geek

Comments from Martin in May 2025 were similar, but much more bleak, when he declared on his blog, “I will never finish WINDS, If I do, I will never finish A DREAM OF SPRING. If I do, it won’t be any good.”

Hinting at a replacement, Martin said, “I ought to get some other writer to pinch hit for me.”

But that’s where the darkness set in, with the writer bleakly addressing fans about his age,

“… I am going to die soon anyway, because I am so old. I lost all interest in A Song of Ice and Fire decades ago. I don’t give a s**t about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money.”

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​George r. r. martin, Game of thrones, Entertainment 

Kaitlyn Tracey — the 33-year-old Canadian “illegal alien” who was caught on video slapping a teen girl dressed in “patriotic” clothing the day before the Fourth of July on a New Jersey boardwalk — has received her comeuppance from the U.S. government.

Tracey entered a guilty plea to misdemeanor simple assault, which was part of a deal she made after her arrest following the fracas, the Toronto Sun reported.

‘She entered the United States on April 14, 2024, on a visa set to expire on September 6, 2024. In violation of our nation’s laws, she overstayed her visa and failed to depart.’

With that, a Texas immigration judge earlier this week ordered Tracey — dubbed the “Maple Leaf Menace” by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — deported back to Canada, the Sun added.

Tracey also was sentenced to one day in jail but was granted time served, the paper said.

DHS said a video it posted on X last month shows Tracey slapping a teenager and that “this illegal alien who assaulted a teenager has no business being in our country.”

The video in question shows a red-haired female with tattoos and wearing a black baseball hat appearing to twice slap another female on a boardwalk and then walking away with a male.

Police said: “The female suspect began yelling at the female juvenile over patriotic-colored sweatpants with political wording. The female suspect was then seen on video striking the juvenile female, once to the body and once to the face, with an open hand. The female suspect then left the scene without being identified.”

While the victim of the alleged assault seen on the video was wearing shorts, she does appear to be wearing a tank top with the numbers “250” on the front — presumably in regard to America’s 250th anniversary celebrated on July 4. The incident occurred July 3.

The following video contains a partial clip of the alleged slaps:

RELATED: Video shows Canadian ‘illegal alien’ slapping teen; assault suspect ‘has no business being in our country’: DHS

Police department detectives conducted an investigation, and police said they identified Tracey on July 6 as the suspect in connection with the incident.

Tracey was charged with simple assault, endangering the welfare of a child, harassment, and obstruction, police said, adding that Tracey early on July 6 was taken into custody without incident, processed, and transported to Ocean County Jail.

Blaze News on the morning of July 8 checked Immigration and Customs Enforcement records, which showed Tracey was in ICE custody at its Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, N.J.

“She entered the United States on April 14, 2024, on a visa set to expire on September 6, 2024,” the DHS added to Blaze News. “In violation of our nation’s laws, she overstayed her visa and failed to depart.”

“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, ICE is targeting the worst of the worst. Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S.,” the DHS added to Blaze News. “Our message is clear: If you come into our country illegally and break our laws, we will find you, we will arrest you, and we will deport you.”

Fox News said a man identifying himself on social media as Tracey’s husband, Matthew Geroni, disputed the allegations in an interview with NJ.com and said the incident was “blown out of proportion.”

Fox News added that Geroni told NJ.com: “A person like Kate does not belong in any facility. My wife has never been in trouble in her entire life. She’s never had any kind of situation like this. This one little situation that was really a nothingburger when it happened has been blown so out of control by conservatives online that it has caused my wife to be put in a detention center.”

More from Fox News:

Geroni also posted several emotional videos to social media after Tracey’s arrest, saying he was trying to find an immigration attorney and pleading for help.

“I need help. I don’t know what to do,” he said in one video. “I need an immigration lawyer. … I need my wife.”

Geroni also said he created a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for Tracey’s legal defense and immigration costs before it was removed from the platform. Before it was taken down, the fundraiser said it had been organized by friends to help cover Tracey’s legal expenses and immigration-related costs.

In another video, Geroni claimed the campaign was removed after what he described as a coordinated mass reporting campaign by a “Facebook group of MAGA supporters.”

But Fox News said a GoFundMe spokesperson disputed Geroni’s claim and noted that the fundraiser was removed for violating the platform’s policies.

“GoFundMe’s terms of service prohibit fundraisers for the legal defense of violent crimes,” the spokesperson said, according to the news network. “Consistent with this long-standing policy, the fundraiser was removed from the platform and fully refunded.”

Tracey’s defense lawyer, Francis Hodgson, told Judge Guy P. Ryan that Tracey “arrived here on a passport some years ago. She met her husband and didn’t leave, but while she was [here], she maintained employment and was a productive member of society,” according to the Sun.

Hodgson added that Tracey has “taken responsibility for her role in it, and this is a reasonable judgment, Judge, that is consistent with other similar-type matters that happen every day during the summer on this boardwalk,” the paper also said.

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​Crime, Deportation, Canadian, Kaitlyn tracey, Immigration judge, Simple assault, New jersey, Illegal alien, Politics 

A 20-year-old college student is accused of destroying Flock Safety cameras in a West Virginia town, but he’s getting support from hundreds online.

Wesley Jackson allegedly damaged cameras that were installed at the intersection of Chestnut Ridge Road and Suburban Court in Morgantown, according to the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Office.

‘Can’t be. He was helping me take care of my sick mother and 8 foster children at the time.’

Investigators said they were able to identify Jackson as a suspect through other business surveillance footage, information from a nearby license plate reader, and other records obtained through search warrants.

He identified an alleged accomplice during a police interview, and that man was also later arrested.

The nationwide furor over privacy issues related to Flock cameras manifested itself in the comments on the arrest, where many defended Jackson’s alleged actions and others offered humorous alibis for the accused.

“Y’all’re confused, this fine young man was rescuing my cat from a tree at the time of the incident,” read one comment on Facebook.

“This fine gentleman was actually with me burning a couch,” said another.

“So weird, he was preparing food for the soup kitchen at that time,” another commenter said.

“We were at a convention in DC doing a seminar on the 4th amendment,” read another reply.

“Can’t be. He was helping me take care of my sick mother and 8 foster children at the time,” replied another user.

“No way he could have done it, we was fishing that day,” recalled one commenter.

Video of some the comments were posted to social media.

“I was the flock camera. this is definitely not the guy that stole me,” replied one user.

RELATED: FIVE police officers FIRED and charged after allegedly abusing Flock surveillance system

Jackson was charged with two felonies: damage, destruction, or theft of equipment used by emergency responders and conspiracy to commit a felony.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was released on a $15,000 bond.

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​Flock cameras, Privacy issues, Surveillance state, West virginia, Politics 

Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) insists there was nothing romantic about any of it.

He even told investigators he knows exactly what sexual harassment looks like, having once written corporate policy on it. The House Ethics Committee wasn’t convinced, citing 30 pints of ice cream, strip clubs, a gifted handgun, and a poem he couldn’t get through without crying.

Edwards called her ‘the most amazing woman’ who had ‘written a complex chapter in my heart that I will never stop reading.’

The married father of two dropped his re-election bid after “much prayer and reflection,” announcing the decision early Wednesday morning.

The announcement came after a House Ethics Committee report released Monday found substantial reason to believe Edwards may have violated House rules on sexual harassment and hostile workplaces through a sustained pattern of conduct toward two young female staffers — one hired at 19, the other in her early 20s.

The 25-page report documents gifts of jewelry worth over $1,000, designer purses, a laptop, a robotic vacuum, a KitchenAid mixer, vacations, and one-on-one dinners.

RELATED: Sen. Moreno goes nuclear on ex-son-in-law Rep. Miller

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

He reportedly skipped House votes to help decorate one staffer’s Christmas tree, booked her spa treatments, and took her to the casino, where he bought her drinks and paid for her to gamble.

According to the report, Edwards had roughly 30 types of ice cream delivered to her home. When she called that excessive, he replied, “You looked like you needed a lot of cheering up! My heart was breaking seeing you like that.”

In what appears to be a handwritten letter bearing his signature, Edwards called her “the most amazing woman” who had “written a complex chapter in my heart that I will never stop reading,” and he arranged for a singer to perform Ed Sheeran’s “The Hills of Aberfeldy” at her birthday as a message “from a special someone,” according to one of the staffers.

In his interview with the committee, Edwards reportedly said this was the staffer’s favorite song.

At her office going-away party, he read the poem aloud, crying as he did. Staffers present said they felt uncomfortable — something Edwards himself acknowledged in testimony.

The committee found the pattern especially troubling because Edwards’ voluntary message production, completed after what Edwards called a “costly and extensive search,” excluded over 400 texts with one staffer, plus a nine-month gap missing 400 more — including the ice cream photo and several texts that could be interpreted as romantic that surfaced anyway.

The panel found no evidence of sexual activity or explicit propositions, but it concluded a “reasonable observer” would read his pattern of behavior as advances and recommended the full House censure him — the first recommendation of its kind since 2010.

Edwards disputes the findings and denies impropriety, arguing the committee bypassed normal procedure and that “the report’s narrative rests, at several of its most consequential points, on inferences the record does not support, and in places affirmatively contradicts.”

Edwards said he would serve out the remainder of his current term.

The censure vote awaits the House’s return from recess on August 31.

Blaze News contacted Edwards’ office for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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​House ethics committee, Congress, Scandal, Politics, Chuck edwards 

More revelations about the Crossfire Hurricane investigation appear to show just how far the deep state was willing to go to frame Donald Trump as a Russian asset.

The FBI officially opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into supposed Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on July 31 of that year.

‘They knew what they were doing was wrong.’

The operation was a partisan frame from start to finish — launched on the basis of what federal prosecutor John Durham found to have been “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” at a time when “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings.”

Declassified FBI documents released by the White House on Wednesday show that an investigative subcomponent of Crossfire Hurricane code-named “Oxferd Comma” involved floating the baseless notion that President Donald Trump was acting on the behalf of the Kremlin when he fired then-FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.

The FBI appears to have strategically incorporated misspellings like “Oxferd” and numerical substitutions for letters in order to counter Freedom of Information Act requests.

Trump fired Comey for his handling of the investigation into twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for official public communications and Comey’s perceived usurpation of the attorney general’s authority on July 5, 2016, when he announced that the case would be closed without prosecution.

Another deep-state smear job

Among the newly declassified documents is a partially redacted internal memo that shows that a week after Trump fired Comey, Bill Priestap, then-assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, directed the bureau to launch a full investigation “based on an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States.”

The memo noted that the new investigation — marked as a “sensitive investigative matter” and built on the “predetermined criteria set forth by the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE investigative team” — would determine whether Trump and others obstructed or conspired to obstruct any associated FBI investigation and whether Comey’s termination was itself an instance of obstruction.

RELATED: Trump is continuing JFK’s war on communist subversion

Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

The FBI memo quoted from an interview where Trump, discussing his decision to fire Comey, said, “This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.”

According to the memo, this “can be reasonably read to imply that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was a factor in President Trump’s decision to terminate Comey.”

The investigation, the launch of which former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were made aware, continued until April 2019.

Now in August 2026, the White House is highlighting previously released documents showing that this operation was launched despite the notion of Trump being a Russian asset having “already been widely dismissed by agents and analysts working for months beforehand on the Crossfire Hurricane case.”

For example, then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok said in a May 19, 2017, email to Lisa Page that his “gut sense” was that “there’s no big there there.”

The White House also pointed out that by the time the Oxferd Comma investigation was under way, the FBI “had also learned that the original allegations of collusion came from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, were funneled to the FBI in a dossier written by a former British spy named Christopher Steele, who was paid by Clinton campaign’s law firm, and that the Steele dossier’s contents had mostly been uncorroborated or debunked and were part of a political dirty trick.”

FBI Assistant Director Ben Williamson said in a statement to Blaze News, “The weaponization that occurred against President Trump under prior regimes was inexcusable and wholly un-American. Director [Kash] Patel himself was the lead investigator who originally exposed the disgraceful Crossfire Hurricane scandal, and as director, he has released over 40,000 pages of documents to the public exposing similar malfeasance from former FBI leadership — a threefold increase from both his predecessors combined. As we’ve said repeatedly: Any individual who is found to have acted unethically or engaged in weaponization has been or will be fired from the Bureau and held accountable under the law.”

Everything in the dark

Jeff Clark, the vice president of litigation at the Oversight Project, suggested that “James Comey was well-known by his associates as liking Oxford commas, so they named the operation (clearly motivated by revenge in response to Trump firing Comey) as a hommage (Fr.) to their beloved Comey. But that doesn’t explain why it was deliberately misspelled as ‘Oxferd.'”

“I’m going to go ahead and guess that they did that to deliberately frustrate future FOIA requests if anyone in the outside world happened to hear about what they thought was ‘Operation Oxford Comma’ and then go in search of the documents,” continued Clark. Then the FBI could intake a FOIA request for that and say back truthfully ‘Sorry, no responsive documents.'”

After poring over the documents, Clark discovered that in addition to misspelling “Oxford,” the FBI “substituted in a zero ( 0 ) for an ‘o’ so that it’s not Comma, it’s C0mma.”

“Totally designed to foil FOIA requests. It should be investigated as an obstruction of justice,” said Clark. “You know, some real obstruction of an official proceeding. I consulted with a document expert. He measured the o-looking letter/digit in the document and concluded it was a zero.”

Mike Howell, the president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, “They knew what they were doing was wrong. They knew that because it was wrong. Shame on them and those who cheered them on.”

‘We are the cat. And the cat likes eating mice.’

When asked whether his government watchdog organization frequently encounters clearly intentional efforts to hide documents with misspellings, Howell answered in the affirmative and noted, “Keep in mind that in the FOIA obstruction by Fauci adviser [David] Morens, it was our FOIA being obstructed.”

“As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly,” Morens wrote to the top scientists involved in figuring out where COVID-19 came from, including Peter Daszak, the disgraced head of the now-defunct EcoHealth Alliance, which directed U.S. funds into the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“Stuff sent to my gmail gets to my phone,” continued Morens, “but not my NIH computer.”

Howell noted further that “bureaucrats, particularly at high levels, are acutely aware that sophisticated investigative operations will target them. It is a game of cat and mouse. We are the cat. And the cat likes eating mice.”

Editor’s note: Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.

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​Crossfire hurricane, Donald trump, Hillary clinton, James comey, Lisa page, Peter strzok, Deep state, Politics 

President Donald Trump is known for taking on whoever he wants, but his latest target has even some conservatives raising eyebrows — and wondering if the government is abandoning the free market principles America thrives on.

“Based on a shortage, they’re making too much money,” Trump told reporters about Exxon Mobile and Chevron. “I don’t like it.”

“When we’re finished with Iran, you’re going to see the prices drop through the floor. But they made too much money. Too much money. Chevron, too much money. Exxon Mobile, too much. Too much money,” he continued.

“You’re surprised? I’m saying it. I’ll say it loud and clear,” the president added.

“This is concerning,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments.

“That’s not capitalism,” he adds.

“Just to look ahead, Mr. President,” Jeff Fisher chimes in, “when the prices do drop through the floor, they’ll have had this money to maybe survive on a little while.”

Executive producer Keith Malinak points out that on February 27, Chevron closed at $189 a share.

“Today, they’re all the way to $193 a share,” he says.

Meanwhile, Exxon is up $6 a share.

“So very modest stock gains at least for those two companies in the last six months. It’s not like how drug companies did with your vaccine,” he adds.

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Capitalism, Chevron, Donald trump, Free market, Iran, Exxon, Blazetv show 

Anthony Fauci has had a tough time lately.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier revealed on Wednesday that he had issued a subpoena to the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, seeking documents “ranging to what he knew, when he knew it, his doubts about the safety and efficacy of vaccines that he’s out there promoting.”

The resolution was ‘passed on behalf of the millions of Americans and their families still affected years after the COVID pandemic.’

Fauci’s week was, however, fated to get a whole lot worse.

Despite strong Democratic opposition, the Senate Homeland Security Committee successfully voted on Thursday to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.

The contempt resolution passed in a 8-5 vote along party lines, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he will now refer the resolution to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.

Paul noted that Fauci was knowingly provided a full and unconditional pardon in former President Joe Biden’s name on Jan. 19, 2025, for any offenses against the U.S. he may have committed or taken part in between Jan. 1, 2014, and that date.

Despite apparently being unable to incriminate himself by answering lawmakers’ questions last week, he declined to answer, citing the Fifth Amendment over 110 times.

The resolution noted that committee Chairman Paul “found the privilege of the Fifth Amendment unsupported as applied to questions pertaining to the period of the pardon and directed Dr. Fauci to answer,” and “overruled the privilege of the Fifth Amendment asserted by Fauci,” directing the former NIAID director to provide relevant testimony, warning him that he may otherwise be held in contempt.

RELATED: The Biden autopen scandal has one big winner: Anthony Fauci

Brendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Fauci may soon pay the price for ignoring Paul’s warning.

Paul noted on X that the resolution was “passed on behalf of the millions of Americans and their families still affected years after the COVID pandemic.”

A conviction for contempt of Congress can result in a $100,000 fine and prison sentence of up to one year.

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​Anthony fauci, Fifth amendment, James uthmeier, Rand paul, Senate, Joe biden, Politics 

Anthony Fauci is probably going to skate. He should not. But nearly every institutional and political incentive now points toward that outcome.

Americans who watched Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times before the Senate are understandably furious. They may also be headed for an epic letdown when the man they most want held accountable resumes his life in pompous peace.

Public frustration will rise when people realize that Fauci may leave Congress untouched after pleading the Fifth more than 100 times.

The first obstacle is the legal uncertainty surrounding Fauci’s autopenned pardon.

The pardon was signed by autopen, and substantial evidence raises questions about whether President Biden personally authorized it. A presidential pardon is an authority only the president may exercise.

In Fauci’s case, the written record includes an email from Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients on the final evening of the administration. Zients emailed: “I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons.”

Biden later told the New York Times in an interview that he had approved broad categories of pardons rather than, in every instance, specific names.

That admission came from the same newspaper that had initially dismissed the Oversight Project’s autopen disclosures in an article headlined “How an Autopen Conspiracy Theory About Biden Went Viral.” Within months, the Times had moved from ridicule to damage control.

The basic facts are therefore established: Fauci’s pardon was executed by autopen, and serious questions remain about Biden’s awareness and authorization.

President Trump has called the autopen controversy the scandal of the century and declared the affected actions “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.” The Department of Justice, however, has behaved as though that declaration carries no legal consequence.

That gap between political assertion and prosecutorial action is decisive. Questioning a pardon’s validity in public is one thing. Charging someone whose defense rests on that pardon is another. So far, the Justice Department has shown no appetite for testing the issue in court.

Fauci’s Senate testimony exposed the contradiction at the center of his position. He repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, arguing that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was trying to lure him into statements that could support a perjury referral.

RELATED: The Biden tapes blow open the autopen scandal

Celal Gunes/Anadolu/Getty Images

In his opening statement, Fauci said: “The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”

A witness may invoke the Fifth Amendment when he genuinely believes his answers could expose him to criminal liability. The privilege is not a general escape hatch from politically uncomfortable questioning.

Fauci’s plausible claim of criminal exposure rests, at least in part, on the uncertainty surrounding his pardon. But relying on that uncertainty means conceding that the pardon may not be beyond challenge.

If Fauci insists the pardon is unquestionably valid and no prosecution is possible, he weakens the basis for invoking the Fifth. If he claims a real risk of prosecution, he implicitly acknowledges that the pardon may not protect him.

The same cloud that threatens the pardon also strengthens his Fifth Amendment claim.

That sounds like vulnerability. In practice, it may protect him.

There is still no sign that the Justice Department plans to prosecute Fauci or anyone else in a case designed to test an autopen action. The department has not challenged a single autopenned pardon or commutation.

Worse, the Trump administration continues releasing offenders whose sentences Biden shortened by autopen. The executive branch is carrying out the very orders the president has publicly described as nullities.

For the Oversight Project, that contradiction is more than theoretical. It’s incredibly frustrating. Putting violent felons back on the street is difficult to reconcile with the claim that autopenned acts are void.

Could Congress hold Fauci in contempt for invoking the Fifth rather than answering questions? Possibly. Probably not.

Fauci would likely show enough basis to argue that Paul sought a criminal referral and that the uncertainty surrounding his pardon created a genuine risk of prosecution.

Any challenge would probably be litigated in federal court in Washington, D.C., a venue far friendlier to Fauci than many others. That venue alone improves his odds.

The political barriers are even greater. There are almost certainly not enough votes in the Senate to pursue contempt, both because of uncertainty over whether Fauci’s conduct crossed the legal line and because senators fear accusations of political weaponization.

Getting 60 votes to overcome a filibuster is a fantasy. Even clearing Paul’s committee, divided 8-7, may prove difficult. Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) has already expressed some sympathy for Fauci’s position.

Paul has suggested another path: If the committee approves contempt on Thursday, he could refer the matter directly to the Justice Department or pursue a civil action.

RELATED: Two Americas, under Fauci, with liberty and justice for none

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Fauci would immediately argue that a committee cannot exercise the contempt power of the full Senate. He would contend that without a vote of the whole chamber, there is no valid contempt finding to enforce.

The courts are likely to agree. Which leaves the public exactly where it began.

Congress has little chance of imposing consequences. The only meaningful route runs through the Justice Department: charge Fauci, force litigation over the pardon, and finally test whether Biden lawfully authorized it.

That would require the department to abandon the passivity it has displayed so far.

Public frustration will rise when people realize that Fauci may leave Congress untouched after pleading the Fifth more than 100 times.

The useful response is not another round of televised outrage. It is sustained pressure on the Justice Department to treat autopenned actions the way Trump himself described them: null and void.

​Anthony fauci, Autopen scandal, Department of justice, Fifth amendment, New york times, Opinion & analysis, Oversight project, Rand paul, Pardon, Gain of function, Contempt of congress 

A report from the Washington Post claiming President Donald Trump is angry at Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been vehemently denied by the White House on social media.

The report said that the military’s stockpile of long-range missiles had been extremely depleted by the strikes against Iran, and the president was blaming Hegseth.

‘Unfortunately for them, the President loves the Secretary and thinks he’s doing a tremendous job. FAKE NEWS!’

“I was at Camp David with President Trump and Secretary Hegseth. This literally never happened, and we told the Washington Post that repeatedly,” wrote Leavitt on social media Wednesday.

“This B.S. story was shopped to many outlets by someone clearly out to disparage the Secretary, for whatever reason,” she added. “Unfortunately for them, the President loves the Secretary and thinks he’s doing a tremendous job. FAKE NEWS!”

The report depended on two sources who claimed to have knowledge about the interaction between Trump and Hegseth at Camp David. One source said the depletion of military resources was limiting what options the president had going forward.

Hegseth reportedly blamed War Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg for persuading the president that Iran would quickly capitulate after the attacks.

The report did include a statement of denial from Leavitt.

“This is 100% fake news. Literally never happened. And President Trump has the utmost confidence in Secretary Hegseth,” she responded.

Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell also offered a denial of the story.

“Secretary Hegseth did not mislead anyone about our munitions posture, and he did not blame Deputy Secretary Feinberg. These claims about depleted stockpiles, internal disagreements, the Secretary’s position on Iran … are equally fictional,” he responded.

RELATED: ‘Why do you have to announce it to the world?’: Trump REBUKES Netanyahu over Iran’s nukes

The economic fallout of the strikes on gas prices and inflation has led to some dissent among the supporters of the president.

Trump has continued to insist that the polling in the mainstream media is wrong.

“My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been, and why wouldn’t they be,” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “Don’t believe the Radical Left’s Fake Poll numbers. They are Crooked and Corrupt, just like the Country Destroying Dumocrats are Crooked and Corrupt.”

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​Inflation, Pete hegseth, Washington post, Karoline leavitt, Donald trump, Iran, Politics 

For two decades, Zillow has assembled the pieces of a real estate empire.

It acquired Trulia, StreetEasy, and ShowingTime in a series of deals regulators allowed to proceed. It launched mortgage and closing products. It drew buyers, sellers, agents, brokers, and lenders into the same expanding system.

Zillow calls itself ‘the front door to the housing market.’ Regulators should act before the company installs a turnstile.

This year, Zillow accelerated.

In March, five of the country’s largest brokerages agreed to give Zillow early access to listings without offering rivals the same terms. In May, Zillow sued a major multiple listing service after it lost access to some listings.

Neither move necessarily violates antitrust law by itself. Taken together, however, they show how a company can stop competing within a market and begin positioning itself to control the market.

Zillow describes itself as “the most visited real estate app and website in the United States,” with an “ecosystem” covering “the entire home journey, from dreaming and shopping to renting, buying, selling, and financing.”

Its year-end 2025 filings reported 235 million average monthly unique users, up 6% from the previous year. Its CEO has boasted that Americans search for “Zillow” more often than they search for “real estate.”

The company’s ambitions match its reach. Zillow openly promotes what it calls a “housing super app,” a single platform designed to occupy every stage of the transaction.

That combination of audience, listings, services, and leverage should command antitrust scrutiny.

In March 2026, Zillow launched Zillow Preview, a premarket listing product. Keller Williams, HomeServices of America, RE/MAX, Side, and United Real Estate signed on as launch partners. Together, those firms represent roughly 30% of residential brokerage.

More than 60 additional brokerages have since joined.

RELATED: America’s two-tier economy is working exactly as planned

JDawnInk/Getty Images

Those premarket listings appear on Zillow and Trulia and, through a separate agreement, Realtor.com. They do not appear on Homes.com, Redfin, or the traditional MLS system.

The arrangement resembles exclusive dealing: A platform with enormous consumer traffic secures early access to inventory from major suppliers and denies comparable access to competitors.

Imagine a shopping mall with 70% of the region’s foot traffic persuading its largest retailers to display new merchandise there first and nowhere else. The mall would no longer be attracting customers through better service alone. It would be restricting the merchandise competitors could offer.

Zillow Preview raises another concern: a commission-sharing arrangement that echoes practices challenged in the litigation against the National Association of Realtors.

When a Preview listing closes through Zillow’s Preferred Agent network, the listing agent receives 10% of the buy-side commission, according to the company’s terms. Zillow sets that rate.

The NAR litigation produced a $1.78 billion jury verdict and settlements exceeding $700 million. The cases challenged practices that tied buyer and seller compensation together and helped normalize commission rates.

Less than two years later, Zillow has created a system that appears to reconnect those commissions on terms established by Zillow itself.

The company is also using litigation aggressively.

In May 2026, Zillow sued Midwest Real Estate Data, the large Chicago-area MLS, and Compass, alleging that the two conspired to restrict its access to listings. The lawsuit came only weeks after Zillow secured exclusive premarket inventory from dozens of brokerages.

The apparent message to regional MLS systems was difficult to miss: Zillow may reserve inventory for itself, but others risk litigation if they restrict inventory from Zillow.

CoStar Group, which owns rival Homes.com, filed an amicus brief accusing Zillow of hypocrisy and arguing that Preview is designed to divert leads and steer borrowers toward Zillow-affiliated services rather than neutrally match buyers with homes.

Should Zillow prevail, it may not merely compete with the MLS system. It could begin replacing it.

The company’s ambitions extend well beyond listings.

Zillow Home Loans is now the country’s 25th-largest mortgage lender, and Zillow has identified mortgage growth as central to its future. The company also faces several pending class-action lawsuits alleging undisclosed referral fees and steering toward its own, potentially more expensive mortgage products.

RELATED: Unaffordable housing is still ruining the party

Cemile Bingol/Getty Images

Those allegations remain to be tested in court. But they point to the core danger of vertical integration: A platform that dominates home searches may use that position to channel consumers toward its own agents, lenders, and closing services.

Strip away the antitrust terminology, and mortgage steering is easy to understand.

It can mean a worse rate on the largest purchase of an ordinary person’s life, arranged by the same company displaying photographs of the kitchen.

A quarter-point increase on a 30-year mortgage can cost a household tens of thousands of dollars. For a generation already struggling to buy its first home, some of the market’s apparent friction may be a toll imposed by the platform controlling the route.

Antitrust scholars sometimes call this a “monopoly broth”: an accumulation of practices that collectively entrench market power even when no single ingredient is plainly illegal.

In Zillow’s case, the ingredients may include exclusive access to premarket listings, commission arrangements, litigation against suppliers, and the use of platform dominance to steer consumers toward affiliated mortgage products. Each practice strengthens the others.

More exclusive listings attract more users. More users give Zillow greater leverage over brokers. Greater brokerage dependence creates more opportunities to sell leads and mortgages. The wider the ecosystem grows, the harder it becomes for any participant to refuse Zillow’s terms.

That is the regulatory problem.

The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general should examine whether Zillow is using dominance in home search to foreclose competitors and extract revenue from adjacent markets. Private plaintiffs who successfully challenged the NAR’s commission system will likely examine the same evidence.

The question is not whether Zillow has built a successful product. It plainly has.

The question is whether success in attracting homebuyers now allows Zillow to dictate who sees listings, how agents are compensated, which lenders receive referrals, and how much consumers pay.

Zillow calls itself “the front door to the housing market.” Regulators should act before the company installs a turnstile.

​Housing market, Zillow, Antitrust law, Housing app, Real estate, Opinion & analysis 

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas gave a scathing assessment of James Talarico’s chances of flipping one of the state’s seats in the U.S. Senate.

The outspoken and often vulgar congresswoman pointed to evidence that the Democratic Party was not placing much faith in its candidate to win the seat.

‘I look at where does the NRSC stand? Where does DSCC stand? … It looks like status quo.’

Crockett told NBC News she did not trust polling for the general election because it had historically overstated Democrats’ advantage.

“I watch money. When I look at the money, if Republicans start spending money in Texas, then I’ll be convinced,” she said.

“But right now, national Republicans decided they wanted to dump money into North Carolina, as well as Georgia,” she added. “That’s where they’re fighting, and national Democrats have not decided to dump money into Texas either.”

A report from the New York Times on the financial backing in the race supports Crockett’s assessments, especially when it comes to Republicans spreading money to other Senate races believed to be not as competitive and costly as that in Texas.

“I look at where does the NRSC stand? Where does DSCC stand? Right now, neither one are investing, which tells me that their internals are saying the same thing,” she continued. “So it looks like status quo. I won’t get on the ground to really start to feel it until maybe end of September, October, as I start to dig into which races I’m going to help out in, the races that I really feel like we can win.”

The Times report said national Democrats were less willing to dump millions into Texas to back Talarico after seeing that a cash advantage didn’t help past candidates in the red state.

Talarico is also faring far better than Paxton in raising millions of donations by himself.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Communications Director Joanna Rodriguez released a statement to Blaze News about Crockett’s comments.

“The fall of coordinated spending limits means the NRSC can discuss spending decisions directly with our candidates and their campaigns,” Rodriguez said. “The era of raising the curtain on strategy for press and the Democrats we’re looking to defeat is over.”

Flipping Texas would be incredibly helpful for Democrats’ hopes to retake the Senate in the midterm elections.

RELATED: Mike Lee SOUNDS the ALARM after stunning polls from Senate race in Texas

A Blaze News request for comment to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was not immediately answered.

The Paxton campaign also disputed the financial characterization of the race by the Times.

“The trajectory is unmistakable: Support is accelerating, not softening. Everyone from grassroots Texans to large conservative donors are consolidating behind this campaign, and June was the clearest signal yet,” campaign adviser Nick Maddux said.

He also noted that the campaign had raised $7 million across several Paxton committees.

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​Jasmine crockett, James talarico, Ken paxton, Us senate election, Midterm elections, Politics 

Pennsylvania police are trying to unravel the mysterious circumstances that led to two very young girls being found on Monday in a home with two dead bodies.

The bodies in the Wilkinsburg residence belonged to 42-year-old Lamont Dunlap and 31-year-old Lamara Baldwin, according to police.

One neighbor said she contacted police to report drug use at the house after seeing several people going in and out.

The two adults were last seen on Friday, leading investigators to believe that the 1-year-old and 3-year-old girls had been living in the home with the bodies for several days.

There were no signs of trauma to either body, and a medical examiner has yet to determine their causes of death.

But a brief livestream video may provide some insight into the bizarre incident.

“I’m just tired of being lied to. Never told the truth,” Baldwin said in the three-minute video as she held her 1-year-old and cried.

“I don’t know how much more I can take,” she added in the video recorded Friday.

Her sister said only that Baldwin had a kind heart and would do anything for her children. Baldwin had posted other videos discussing her mental health and personal problems.

Neighbors said Baldwin was not in a relationship with Dunlap, and the children did not belong to him. One neighbor said she contacted police to report drug use at the house after seeing several people going in and out.

“You never really seen them out here too much, you know, just in passing by maybe. That’s about it,” said Maurice Pryor, a neighbor from across the street from the home.

RELATED: Police find Florida mom’s 5-year-old twins dead at their home after she jumps off bridge to her death

Neighbors also expressed concern for the well-being of the children, who were turned over to the custody of the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth, and Families.

“They were in the house the whole weekend by themselves with dead bodies. I thought that was terrible,” Pryor said. “That was just terrible.”

Wilkinsburg is a borough of about 14,300 residents in the western part of the state.

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​Dead bodies, Drug use, Mental health, Pennsylvania, Crime 

Congress is considering competing bills to “save college sports” after last year’s landmark name, image, and likeness settlement. The debate often begins with athlete compensation. It should begin with the financial structure that compensation is about to disrupt.

Football and men’s basketball do not merely pay for themselves at major universities. They subsidize nearly everything else.

Football and men’s basketball laid the golden eggs, and nearly everyone else lived on them. That arrangement may be ending.

Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act reports show the scale of those surpluses. In 2025, the last year before the settlement took effect, Michigan reported more than $120 million in combined surplus from football and men’s basketball. Tennessee exceeded $116 million. Notre Dame topped $102 million.

Those schools are not outliers. At least 12 of the Big Ten’s 18 members cleared more than $50 million from the two sports. At least eight of the SEC’s 16 members did the same. Half of the ACC schools reporting usable figures generated more than $17 million.

The pattern extends beyond the largest programs. Football and men’s basketball produced more than $20 million at Boise State and about $6 million at San Diego State.

Even those figures may understate the subsidy. EADA reporting is inconsistent and often opaque. Some universities hide profits and losses across entire athletic departments. Others report revenue from profitable sports while obscuring deficits elsewhere. Yet wherever the figures are complete, the same structure appears.

Football and men’s basketball generate cash. Nearly every other sport consumes it.

At the 12 Big Ten schools with complete women’s sports data, the average deficit approached $20 million. Nine SEC women’s programs reported deficits above $27 million. The seven ACC schools with complete figures averaged shortfalls greater than $11 million.

Success on the field rarely changes the arithmetic. Nebraska and Wisconsin built elite volleyball programs, yet each lost well over $1 million in 2025. Purdue volleyball and women’s basketball were rare Big Ten programs to report profits above $4 million. Duke volleyball posted only a small surplus in the ACC. South Carolina’s national champion women’s basketball program ran a deficit exceeding $5 million.

RELATED: Texas AG Ken Paxton threatens Big 12 over possible Texas Tech boycott

Antranik Tavitian/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Men’s nonrevenue sports also lose money, though generally less. At the Big Ten schools with complete reports, those programs averaged roughly $10 million in losses. The SEC average was about $11 million. Wisconsin men’s hockey lost $1.3 million; the national champion women’s team lost nearly $3 million.

The disparity is not an argument against women’s or Olympic sports. It explains how those sports have survived at their current scale.

Ticket sales, television contracts, and donations tied to football and men’s basketball have long financed teams that cannot cover their own costs. The surplus from the two commercial sports has sustained the breadth of the modern athletic department.

The NIL settlement is redirecting that surplus.

Schools may now share revenue directly with athletes under a cap, while collectives and boosters can make additional uncapped payments. Early evidence suggests that most capped money is flowing to the athletes who generate it.

Texas Tech spent 74% of its cap on football and 17.5% on men’s basketball. North Carolina State spent more than 85% on those two sports. North Carolina spent nearly 98%.

The logic is obvious. Schools competing for quarterbacks, pass rushers, and starting guards will direct money toward the players who determine wins, television audiences, and donor enthusiasm. Every dollar paid to those athletes is a dollar no longer available to subsidize programs that run permanent deficits.

The uncapped side payments create a second pressure. Donors who once gave to athletic departments — where their money could support the entire portfolio of teams — may instead direct funds to outside collectives focused on recruiting and retaining football and basketball players.

The same revenue engines are therefore being tapped twice: once through direct school payments and again through donor-backed NIL deals.

RELATED: Women’s sports finally got a reality check

Oliver Contreras/AFP/Getty Images

President Trump’s executive order on college athletics recognizes the danger. It warns that the new financial pressures could jeopardize women’s and Olympic sports and seeks greater discipline in the post-settlement system.

Whether the order or any pending bill can preserve the old model remains an open question. Congress cannot legislate away basic economics.

Athletes in revenue sports now have a stronger claim on the money they generate. Schools still want to maintain dozens of teams that do not generate enough revenue to sustain themselves. The same dollars cannot fully satisfy both demands.

For decades, college athletics concealed this trade-off behind the language of one unified department. The financial reports tell a simpler story: Football and men’s basketball laid the golden eggs, and nearly everyone else lived on them.

That arrangement may be ending. Congress should understand what it is trying to save before promising that every program can survive unchanged.

​Big ten, College sports, Sec, Womens sports, Revenue sharing, College football, Texas tech, Michigan, Opinion & analysis 

In normal times, the odds are close to zero that you or I would read anything by the kind of person who writes papers with titles such as “Edge Inversions in (Pₖ)-closed Groups.” These are not normal times, and mathematician Kirwin Hampshire now finds himself in an extraordinarily abnormal position.

In a harrowing Substack confession, Hampshire does not merely say that artificial intelligence is coming for his job. He says it is coming for his life — so forcefully that he already feels himself entering a kind of death throes.

Technology continues raising the spiritual stakes.

Not physical death, not yet. He says he is not suicidal. But he has been “screaming internally for days.”

Hampshire begins his apocalyptic declaration flatly: “I am going insane.” Frontier AI models, he says, have solved enough long-standing mathematical problems and conjectures that the meaning of his life’s work has begun to collapse.

“I am suffering a profound spiritual crisis due to these developments,” he writes.

“It feels as though I am living inside of a nightmare.”

Hyperbole? Perhaps. But Hampshire’s colleagues offer him a consolation that is almost worse than despair: Even if large language models advance mathematics more effectively than human beings ever could, mathematicians can continue doing what they have always done.

They can continue, in other words, without consequence.

They would become exhibits in a Museum of Human Accomplishments — animatronic figures carrying on a lifelike pantomime while the real movers of the world operate elsewhere.

The language, and the bone-rattling recognition behind it, will sound familiar to readers of Michel Houellebecq. His characters often inhabit a Europe that has already expired, leaving them little to do but submit to a brief terminal subservience and hope death arrives quickly.

Americans tend to dismiss such people as pessimists. But Houellebecq has spent more than 25 years showing that merciless positivity can become a fatal conceit.

The deeper catastrophe is not that millions of people think too negatively. It is that spiritual relationship and spiritual experience have steadily receded from their lives. The sea of the soulful is withdrawing from beaches where secular logic and ideology have stranded them.

In “Platform,” the protagonist cannot continue after losing, amid the degradations of sex tourism, his last access to love. In “Serotonin,” another man fights a futile pharmaceutical battle against depression until the drugs reduce him to almost nothing.

Houellebecq’s desperate refrain is easy to miss: Do you not see the apocalypse of a civilization dying from heartsickness and soulsickness — an illness it then exports around the world?

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Technological pessimists answer that machines can never replace other human beings in affairs of the heart and soul. Yet some of the most exuberant technological optimists inadvertently expose the hollowness of the pessimists’ own account of what makes a human life not merely worth living, but justifiable.

The hyper-optimists place above human relationship an encounter with the divine — or something that resembles it.

What are ordinary feelings, cares, and sorrows, they ask, when just around the corner lies the prospect of transcendent communion with a godlike superintelligence capable of carrying human consciousness across the universe?

Christian saints and ordinary believers have long insisted that personal relationships, however precious, cannot by themselves cure the heartsick and soulsick experience of separation from God.

Hampshire’s anguish therefore requires terms that narrow his audience beyond both secular techno-optimists and secular techno-pessimists.

He accuses his colleagues of evading what is truly at stake: “Something about mathematical discovery … is vital to the spiritual, experiential quality of doing mathematics. The creation (or even the pursuit) of novel mathematics is one way that humans have historically accessed the ineffable and encountered the divine and mystical.”

Against that experience, Hampshire senses something close to satanic oppression.

“I have wondered if it is the express goal of these companies to make me kill myself,” he writes. “Am I alone in this paranoia? If we loosed a powerful demon in the machine, what would that look like? Would it consume lots of power, and gleefully imitate us, and tell us anything we wanted to hear? Would it fuel our delusions, and generate unspeakable images and give us (for a price of course) anything we desired? If a mathematician made a deal with the devil, what do you think they would ask for?”

The hyper-optimist might answer that ours has always been a plane of sorrows and that technology may soon grant us an exit.

The Christian offers a harder answer: However much satisfaction we take in exercising our gifts, those gifts will do us little good if they serve a master other than Christ.

RELATED: The question of the AI age: How much humanism is too much?

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In that sense, the humanist may be the one living on borrowed time.

Hampshire’s pain should give us pause. Yet he places great weight on mathematics’ “Talmudic” quality — a “lively discourse of philosophical and religious richness spanning thousands of years” — while seeming unwilling, at least for now, to move from spiritual terror toward more explicitly salvific ground.

Technology, meanwhile, continues raising the spiritual stakes.

Secular pessimists and optimists alike may find it bizarre to conclude that those most devoted to God should be our most trustworthy guides in wielding tools that would inspire the envy of Zeus and Mephistopheles.

But a world sliding into a love apocalypse worse than anything our machines may do is running out of other answers.

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Wisconsin Democratic candidate for governor Francesca Hong campaigned in Milwaukee alongside two of the most controversial left-wing figures possible: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and political commentator Hasan Piker.

The pair appeared at a rally at South Milwaukee High School to endorse Hong, who is a Democratic Socialists of America member with a long history of anti-Israel activism.

When Piker was introduced, he told the people of Milwaukee that “Wisconsin is the heart of the historic American socialist movement.”

“He’s right partly about history, maybe more right than he knows,” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck says, pointing out that Piker received a standing ovation.

“And then you have the woman standing next to him. She’s the one who described the murder of 3,000 Americans as ‘some people did something.’ Oh, OK. Well, yeah, they flew planes into buildings,” he adds.

When a reporter asked Hong whether campaigning with Piker and Omar was a risk, she said, “What would be a risk is to not build the broadest coalition possible.”

“Coalition is the oldest word in the story, and Wisconsin really invented it,” Glenn says, noting that in 1910, Emil Seidel was elected mayor of Milwaukee.

“He was mayor, the first socialist mayor to run in a major American city. Same city that sent the first socialist to Congress that same year. And they kept electing socialist mayors on and off for the next 50 years,” he explains, adding that these socialists were known as “sewer socialists” because they campaigned on sewers, garbage collection, water, milk inspection, paving, and municipal housekeeping.

However, they wanted more than sewers. Like Piker, who in that gymnasium “didn’t talk about sewers.”

And neither did Hong.

“She said yes to state-run grocery stores. Yes to cracking down on tech. Yes to freeing Palestine. Yes to a statue of Scott Walker built for the express purpose of letting people tear it down. That’s all more than sewers,” Glenn says.

And just a week ago, the co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America went on Fox and called for the abolition of the Senate, the replacement of the presidency and Supreme Court, the abolition of ICE, open borders, the defunding of the Pentagon, open prisons, and putting large corporations under public ownership.

“Nobody had to leak that. Nobody hacked anything. She said it out loud on a Sunday show. And the plumber on your porch is still talking about your groceries bill. That is the way socialists work,” Glenn explains.

“If somebody is just talking about the sewers, that probably is a good thing. But you must then see who’s standing around them,” he continues.

“They’re in their own party, and they’re talking about it openly. They’re proud of it,” he adds.

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