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Establishment Republicans are not the only ones who have suffered stunning electoral upsets lately.

After more than two decades in Congress, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) lost the Democratic primary runoff on Tuesday to Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas), a man not only 40 years Green’s junior but who just took his seat in Congress a few months ago.

‘The President of the United States is a racist, a bigot, a misogynist, as well as an invidious prevaricator.’

Texas Republicans can take credit for forcing a contest between two sitting Democratic congressmen. After the Texas congressional district map was redrawn, the 9th district suddenly became much redder, compelling Green to seek the 18th district seat currently occupied by Menefee.

Neither Menefee nor Green managed to crest the 50% of the vote needed to win the Democratic primary outright on March 3. Menefee eked out a slight edge over Green that night, 46% to 44%.

By contrast, the primary runoff on Tuesday was a blowout in which Menefee trounced Green nearly 70% to 30%. The outcome was so unexpected that NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki called it “jarring.”

Menefee was gracious in victory, stating, “Congressman Green, brother, I want to give you your flowers. I want to thank you for your service to people across Houston and Harris County.”

Green claimed the loss would mark the move “to another chapter in life,” adding, “I plan to continue to have a career associated with service.”

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

Rep. Christian Menefee and other Democrats; Nathan Posner/Anadolu/Getty Images

The extent to which Green has “served” his constituents in Texas since he was first elected in 2004 is a matter of debate. Even the Houston Chronicle acknowledged that Green is not necessarily as well known for “shepherding high-profile legislation” as he is for building “influence through seniority and committee assignments.”

At the national level, Green, a former president of the Houston chapter of the NAACP, is probably best known for his race-based activism and anti-Trump animus.

“The President of the United States is a racist, a bigot, a misogynist, as well as an invidious prevaricator,” he railed in July 2019. “To say that Donald John Trump is unfit for the Office of the President of the United States is an understatement.”

Since Trump began his first term in office in 2017, Green has introduced or co-sponsored articles of impeachment against him at least four times. Green has also been forcefully removed from each of Trump’s last two State of the Union addresses, most recently back in February, when he carried a sign that read, “Black people aren’t apes!”

Trump is not the only racist Republican in Green’s eyes. Green has also leveled accusations of racism against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Tennessee Rep. Diana Harshbarger, and all the Texas state lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who helped redraw the congressional map.

The 18th District of Texas is deep blue, and Menefee is expected to coast through the general election in November against Ronald Whitfield, who secured the Republican nomination in March after earning just 4,500 total votes.

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​Al green, Democratic primary, Establishment republicans, Texas republicans, Politics 

As the Trump administration and congressional Republicans work to lower Americans’ cost of living this year, they should be guided by a simple principle: All affordability is local.

Democrats and too many establishment Republicans still think they create jobs, economic growth, and opportunity. Whenever high prices pinch consumers, lawmakers huddle up with K Street lobbyists to see what big business, big tech, and big banks want … and give it to them.

Yet they scratch their heads as corporate profits surge while working families’ monthly bills only climb higher.

Corporate consolidation makes life easier for lawyers, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians. But it makes life much more expensive for everyone else.

We’ve seen this pattern again and again. Obamacare. Federal student loans. Subsidized mortgages. The Build Back Better inflation bomb. These policies doled out billions to insiders and middlemen but left everyday Americans holding the bag.

Instead of writing more checks this time, congressional Republicans should focus on rewriting the rules that are contributing to our affordability crisis. Federal regulations — mostly imposed by deep-state bureaucrats, not elected legislators — cost the U.S. economy more than $2 trillion per year. That’s five times the size of last year’s Working Families Tax Cuts legislation.

Reforming these regulations would lower prices, spur job-creating investment, and produce the broadly shared prosperity Republicans promised on the campaign trail.

Their first priority should be to reform the federal permitting process, an issue the White House and Congress have been working on together. However, despite real progress to improve efficiency and remove unnecessary red tape, the response has yet to match the urgency of the moment.

The permitting process has become a punchline — it’s wasteful, corrupt, and self-defeating. Federal agencies are blocking massive, urgent infrastructure investments in energy, mining, defense, transportation, AI computing, and manufacturing. Sometimes it seems like the U.S. economy’s greatest rival is not China, but our own government.

Our energy needs alone warrant wholesale regulatory reform. The United States today has neither the energy production nor transmission capacity we need to keep up with AI-driven electricity demand. New rules should be streamlined, transparent, and, most of all, fair. Our economic competitiveness and national security depend on these investments. A more prosperous, more secure future is not going to build itself.

The second priority, related to the first, is housing. President Trump has already signed executive orders to reform regulations that are holding back new home construction. Congress needs to follow his lead. The inability of working families to afford homes today has metastasized into more than an economic drag — it’s becoming a social crisis.

Current housing regulations seem intentionally designed to drive up home prices. This is great for well-off Boomers who see their homes primarily as 401(k)s with finished basements. But it’s catastrophic for young couples hoping to get married and start families.

By some estimates, the U.S. housing shortage is already more than 4 million units. Federal regulations should not stand in the way of new home building — nor should Washington subsidize state and local governments’ regulatory obstruction.

RELATED: A ‘Soviet’ housing fix from Congress

Michal Fludra/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Federal rules drive up costs in every sector of our economy. Health care, education, business, and occupational licensure all present golden opportunities to reform-minded policy entrepreneurs in the House and Senate.

And while they’re fixing regulations in those industries, Congress should also key in on the industry that ties them all together: banking. Right now, federal banking regulations are tilted in favor of the big banks, unfairly hamstringing some community banks and forcing many others to merge or close.

Industries dominated by huge corporations always seem robust. But as we saw during the financial crisis — and as we see every time an artificial bubble bursts — healthy, consumer-friendly markets are diverse and decentralized.

While outright bank failures have remained relatively limited in recent years, community banks are steadily disappearing through mergers, consolidations, and voluntary closures. In 1990, there were around 12,000 community banks scattered across the U.S. Today, only around 4,000 remain.

According to the FDIC, the number of community banks continues to decline each quarter, with 44 of them either closing or being absorbed by larger institutions in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone. That trend matters because community banks are not interchangeable with Wall Street giants.

Corporate consolidation makes life easier for lawyers, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians. But it makes life much more expensive for everyone else.

Too many federal regulations treat all banks the same, putting compliance burdens on small lenders that only megabanks can afford.

These regulations squeeze resources out of the local financial institutions that growing communities rely on. Especially in the AI era, the real-world human economy will depend more than ever on personal relationships, community solidarity, and interpersonal trust. Right now, Washington disadvantages those things and the community banks defined by them.

The American people are ready to make our economy affordable again — as soon as Washington lets them. Streamlining federal rules will allow Americans to build, drill, mine, invest and lend, and compute and compete as never before.

Lawmakers must remember that a more affordable economy is a more local, more cooperative, and more human economy. Regulatory reform — from national infrastructure to community banking — is an investment in America’s most powerful and undervalued resource: our people.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at The American Mind.

​Big banks, Big business, Big tech, Corporate profits, Cost of living, Democrats, Obamacare, Trump administration, Opinion & analysis, Inflation, Affordability, Housing 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton enjoyed more than one victory on Tuesday night.

In addition to defeating incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP Senate primary runoff election by over 380,000 votes, Paxton saw his endorsee, Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton, win the Texas attorney general Republican primary runoff.

With over 97% of the expected votes in, Middleton — a proud supporter of the America First agenda — had secured 55.2% of the vote. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a former deputy to Paxton who who turned coat and pushed for Paxton’s resignation, trailed behind by 10.4 percentage points.

‘Republican obstructionists have to be done away with.’

Roy noted just before 10 p.m. that he had called Middleton to congratulate him. The victor thanked the fourth-term congressman online, writing, “Looking forward to working with you to keep Texas Red and see you pass the SAVE Act.”

Middleton — an oilman, seventh-generation Texan, and father of four who was endorsed by numerous conservative groups including the Texas Family Project, Moms for America Action, and the True Texas Project — pledged in his campaign to “lead the charge to secure our border, protect Texas kids, ensure fairness in girls’ and women’s sports, protect Texas taxpayers and consumers, ensure strict election integrity, and root out waste, fraud, and abuse from our government.”

RELATED: Trump-endorsed Paxton DEMOLISHES Cornyn in GOP Senate primary runoff

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

He also said that he would work to eradicate Sharia law in the state and abolish the H-1B visa program.

During the campaign, Roy and some of his backers characterized Middleton as inexperienced. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Middleton’s former primary opponent, Aaron Reitz, were among those who countered this framing.

Patrick repeatedly stressed that “Mayes Middleton is one of the most conservative members in Texas Senate history — a proven, unapologetic MAGA conservative who fights and wins,” who will “work hand-in-hand with the Governor, the Legislature, the Department of Justice, and President Trump to make the Texas Attorney General’s office the strongest in the nation.”

“Some criticize Mayes by saying he lacks the legal experience to lead. But that argument doesn’t hold up,” Reitz noted in an op-ed. “For nearly twenty years, Mayes has practiced law as a civil attorney, focusing on oil and gas transactions and litigation, while at the same time serving in state government.”

Middleton criticized Roy in turn for previously turning on President Donald Trump, characterizing the lawmaker as a backstabber who “betrayed MAGA.”

Roy — who enjoyed the backing of elements of the GOP establishment including Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) — stressed that he is aligned with Trump and has a stellar conservative voting record. However, some evidently have not forgotten that he opposed efforts to challenge the 2020 election results in Congress; accused Trump of “clearly impeachable conduct” after the Jan. 6, 2021, protests; and backed Trump 2024 presidential primary challenger Gov. Ron DeSantis.

After winning the presidential election in 2024, Trump suggested that Texas Republicans should primary Roy, accusing Roy of “getting in the way, as usual,” and noting that “Republican obstructionists have to be done away with.”

Middleton will now face off with Texas state Sen. Nathan Johnson, a litigator and composer, endorsed by the Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus and multiple gun-grab groups, who contributed scores to the anime series “Dragon Ball Z.”

Johnson has pledged to lead “the fight against the MAGA machine’s assault on our individual rights, against the looting of our tax dollars, and against federal overreach.”

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​Attorney general, Chip roy, Donald trump, Election, Maga, Mayes middleton, Texas, Politics 

Poping ain’t easy. After the turbulence of the Benedict and Francis papacies, during which the Vatican largely wrestled with internal challenges, the unique and contested authority of the bishop of Rome finds all of Christianity at an uncanny crossroads.

Just since Leo’s ascension, AI has developed to a point that — for many millions of people worldwide — intuitively underscores the failure of modernity’s greatest power structures to justify humanity’s continued existence and our continued individual existence as human beings. Science, economics, ideology, art, philosophy, ethics — none of these grand pillars of modern life can any longer give a defense of humanity adequate to bring silence and stillness, or even a “strategic pause,” to the juggernaut.

Already, of course, there are instant criticisms.

Desperate for something to cling to in the storm, many find themselves thirsting for exactly what modernity seemed to tell them to abandon: a guiding spiritual authority over their personal and social lives, one they are sure they can trust as a matter of life and death. With so many of the cults and sects born in the modern age fizzling out or mid-collapse, the obvious place to turn is the nemesis of the self-determining modern person: so-called “organized religion,” which for most in the West, especially America, still means the Christian church.

The depth of cognitive discomfort and embarrassment required of so many to return to the one place they had been convinced most to walk away from is so intense that the pressure on would-be spiritual authorities is reaching historic proportions. How to speak in a way neither too harsh nor too gentle? How to communicate effectively in an era of communication overload and parasocial relationships at scale? How to take needful risks of rhetoric and persuasion without provoking a devastating backlash, without being totally misunderstood, without becoming just another huckster cleverly hooking people with yet another sensationalistic, over-optimistic or over-pessimistic scenario?

Pope Leo, among many others of lesser public exposure, confronts all these questions and more. And in one document (so far), “Magnifica Humanitas,” he is expected to somehow answer them all or at least point the way to an answer as grand and comprehensive as the cyber ultimatum — justify yourself or say goodbye — being thrown down at the trembling feet of the human race.

Great expectations

This is obviously way too much weight to be piled atop one letter from one person — even this 50-page letter (an encyclical, addressed to the bishops of the Church in communion with Rome) and this person, the first American pope and the first with a degree in mathematics. It could have been guessed that Leo himself is cognizant of the good and not-so-good reasons for these towering expectations, and in this respect his much-hyped encyclical does not disappoint. It is a masterful exercise in managing constraints to preserve freedom of movement for a few carefully chosen steps. Leo had to show that his approach to the question of technology flowed with not only his predecessors but the Church as a whole, reaching back to its ancient origins. He had to speak in terms Christians generically could at least understand and find in the text some basis for sympathy and respect. He had to affirm his office’s claim to spiritual authority, and the Catholic Church’s and its tradition, without much further alienating any significant audiences, but while paying special homage to the constituencies he believes are key to mounting a successful bid for spiritual authority of any kind over AI-age technology. And he had to extend an olive branch of sorts to at least some of the most powerful of the AI technologists — a treacherously political task, given the increasingly naked opposition he faces from the Thiel/Palantir wing of tech and the increasingly naked worshipfulness toward AIs shown by tech’s effective altruist wing.

All this he managed to do, focusing his remarks on the core Christian understanding that humanity is alone the image of God on Earth, made capable by Christ of attaining to the very heights of sacredness intended for us by the Father. This purpose, this being, however deeply marred by the Fall, preserves for us individually and together a magnificent grandeur that nothing made by our own mortal hands can possibly surpass. Only by using our tools to degrade ourselves to radical new lows can those tools establish over us an overawing mastery that appears in our disfigured and diminished state to be godlike — to be, in fact, the real deity, the only deity.

RELATED: AI ‘doomers’ suffer from their own weird god delusion

ArtMarie/Getty Images

To avoid this fate worse than death, Leo brings the reader to the Catholic social teaching tradition. In sum, that teaching describes our inalienable sacredness in terms of a universal and particular human dignity that must be protected and cultivated among all, even and especially the most wretched, through the affirmative protection of full access to life’s ancient fundaments (work, rest, shelter, movement, family, etc.) and newer social staples (intellectual property, software, hardware, etc.). Rather than a set of principles, Leo shows the teaching as an embodied and active social practice, one that harbors and manifests the human grandeur bestowed by God as a common good that we, and the Church, are duty-bound to sow into.

Lovers and haters

Already, of course, there are instant criticisms. The feed has begun to fill up with many clever and incisive critical commentaries of “Magnifica Humanitas.” It is asserted that Leo’s cozying up to Anthropic is both cynical and naive. It is claimed that the pope spends so much time on social organization that he fails to dig into the fundamental questions about how a person is supposed to locate his own personal significance or identity apart from the community or the cyber collective. Some accuse Leo of simping for the political left by defending illegal “migration.” Others take issue with his insistence on a clear phenomenological and ontological distinction between the capabilities of humans and the capabilities of AIs. The list goes on and on.

Above and beyond all these objections, however, it would simply be absurd to think that any pope, making a respectable go at fulfilling even only his “first among equals” role ascribed before the schism to the bishop of Rome, would not issue a theological and anthropological “effort post” on the present technological situation that looks more or less like “Magnifica Humanitas.” While Leo’s repeated emphasis on the conciliar and synodal character of the Church could uncharitably be seen as mere theological window dressing for socialist-style social justice, Orthodox and high-church Protestant Christians, to take a few examples, could see at a higher level a papal recommitment to an embodied experience and understanding of spiritual authority that is both well grounded and well distributed, not concentrated at a single earthly point from which every drop of trustworthy guiding must radiate down.

Yet it is true that Leo chose his emphases for reasons not all Christians or Americans would prefer to privilege most, and in the spirit of developing some of the more useful themes left outside the encyclical, I would venture — as someone who covered all these issues over five years ago, complete with passages heavily citing the same Romano Guardini quoted in “Magnifica Humanitas,” in my book “Human Forever” — a few additional reflections.

Frontier observations

Firstly, Leo makes much use of a contrast between two forms of building — that of the Tower of Babel, which seeks to consummate human pride by tooling a total, united identity, and that of the walls of Jerusalem, which were patiently reassembled under the repentant leadership of Nehemiah. Some people, especially exceptional ones, will always seek to build for the whole of humanity by building at scale for a whole-of-humanity use case, and indeed this is not the only or the crucial modality. At the same time, the metaphor of rebuilding Jerusalem suggests a unity of the city of God and the city of man that many will experience as unattainable even on a more patient timeline. Historically, Christians in this position have ventured to society’s frontiers, “empty” spaces where the barest habitations can be prepared to protect and nourish the cleansing of the personal heart and the prayer for the salvation of the human race. And, historically, these habitations, which grew into monasteries, not infrequently became the seeds of villages and townships — the city of God the germ of the city of man. Ours is a moment perfect for the building of monasteries, into which many who feel incapable of living in the world will flow if they are not enclosed in a system of “assisted suicide” at scale.

Secondly, work, value, and society — these relational things at the center of Leo’s presentation of human worth — take on still higher stakes when energy, memory, and money increasingly converge, as they are now clearly doing. Obviously a tool that asserts a monopoly on the choice of tools — where “everything’s computer,” as Trump says, and AI is “the only thing we have,” as Thiel says — is not neutral. More interestingly, however, what choice of tools do we have to cultivate and sustain a socioeconomic life richly rooted in the full complement of salutary architectures? Today, any worthwhile answer to this question has to begin with Bitcoin — where the unity of energy, memory, and money is manifested in a tool that isn’t AI and that just about anyone can start using right now to enable friends, family, parishioners, and even monks to build and strengthen one another without relying on top-down, centralized control. Indeed, if Bitcoin is not used in this way, it is easy to see how it will be seized upon to undergird even stronger and more sweeping forms of top-down control.

Thirdly, Leo recognizes the limitations of any papal encyclical to address these matters. How to know who to trust in seeking and receiving authoritative spiritual wisdom is a matter increasingly hard to settle from a primarily or mainly intellectual approach, such as considering the persuasiveness of a person’s presentational management of concepts, terms, and ideas. So does the risk of hinging humanity’s prospects on intellectual persuasiveness become acute, driving the seeking and the receiving deeper into the direct experience over time of face-to-face relationships with persons not legible from the increasingly disembodied “aerospace” of the field of intellectual presentation. Subsidiarity as a “principle” precipitates ultimately into relational and personal practices — beginning with their grounding not just on bottom-up practices of fraternity, but, even more fundamentally, on the rock of one’s own personal and interior humbled attention toward the moment-to-moment effort at cleaning out the chamber of the heart enough to receive the Holy Spirit.

Finally, while harmony between us and our own tools is not a pipe dream, it is a difficult matter of balance and degree tested by the deepest honesty about what rationales lurk in the hidden recesses of our hearts. Free will must involve trade-offs, often stark while rarely utterly absolute. The gradations thereof pertain increasingly to accepting that all choices in favor of merely human means at the expense of divine means make debits of treasure that can and do compound. The joyful sadness of accepting the prospect of divine forgiveness for the infirmity involved — and the dedication of the will to keeping this weakness in mind, even as our more merely human means are used even or especially unto the human good — is increasingly essential to maintaining a relatively more harmoniously balanced relationship between human-made and divine-made (or begotten) means.

​Tech, Pope leo xiv, Artificial intelligence 

Arizona police raced to the home of a woman after she threatened to harm two children she had with her husband, only to find a gruesome scene.

Andrea Clarice Davis, 38, sent her husband a photograph of their child bleeding before she killed the two children and then killed herself, police said.

‘She was a good mom, so please don’t just, whatever happens, don’t portray her to be some — she did what she did, but she wasn’t a horrible person. She wasn’t.’

Glendale Police spokesperson Jose Santiago said the woman’s 39-year-old husband called police on Monday from Tailgaters Sports Bar & Grill just after midnight to report the shooting.

He said Davis had found him with another woman and fired a gun at both of them just outside the bar. The 36-year-old woman was shot in the back of the head as she tried to flee.

The husband told police that Davis had threatened to harm their two children, and police responded to their home near 49th Avenue and Paradise Lane, only 2 miles away from the bar in Phoenix.

He then received a photo from his wife showing one of the children bleeding and notified police.

Glendale and Phoenix officers arrived at the home about 2:30 a.m. and forced their way into the home because of the alarming texts Davis had sent to her husband.

When they gained entry, they found the bodies of the two children, 18-month-old Andolan and 10-year-old Austin, shot dead, and Davis dead after shooting herself.

Felicia Queen, a cousin of the father, told KTVK-TV that she was shocked by the incident.

“They were little, you know. They didn’t deserve it. They still had a whole life ahead of them. And it’s not fair. I can’t even imagine what my cousin’s going through right now,” Queen said.

Davis’ best friend told KTVK that she had lost her mind after finding out her husband had been having an inappropriate relationship with a co-worker.

RELATED: Woman confesses to heinous crime on social media and mocks victim: ‘I bet he ain’t laughing now’

The woman shot at the bar was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. The husband was not harmed in the shooting.

Santiago would not confirm whether Davis’ husband was in a relationship with the other woman. Both police departments said they had no prior interactions with the family.

“He is a very good dad,” Queen added. “And she was a good mom, so please don’t just, whatever happens, don’t portray her to be some — she did what she did, but she wasn’t a horrible person. She wasn’t.”

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​Alarming texts, Inappropriate relationship, Mom kills kids, Murder suicide, Crime 

Eleven months ago in these pages, I argued that task forces would not cut it. President Trump needed a truth and reconciliation commission.

I noted at the time that the Biden administration oversaw one of the most sweeping campaigns of federal abuse in modern American history. Nearly every major department played a role. A truth and reconciliation commission on political persecution would give Americans what they had long been denied: justice, reconciliation, and a full accounting of the truth.

Trump has created an opportunity to help real victims in a real way. Republicans should not kill it. They should make it work.

In November, Senate Republicans tried the opposite. Rather than compensate everyday victims of federal weaponization, they tried to pay themselves.

The scheme emerged from the Arctic Frost scandal. Senators quietly inserted legislative text into a funding bill to end the government shutdown. The provision would have created a $500,000 cause of action for individual senators for each instance in which investigators seized their data. Some senators could have become millionaires many times over.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) drove the effort and repeatedly went on television to defend it.

I argued then that the surveillance of senators was wrong. It should never have happened. But senators did not face what ordinary Americans endured.

Senators have large campaign accounts to hire top lawyers. They operate from official offices, protected by constitutional safeguards such as the Speech and Debate Clause. They did not lose their homes, jobs, savings, or businesses. But thousands of Americans did. Many still face legal bills, ruined livelihoods, and ongoing cases. They deserve restitution — not the politicians who failed them.

The Oversight Project, my organization, joined the fight. We called out Graham and made the legal, prudential, and political case for compensating the real victims of weaponization. The Senate’s self-dealing provision was eventually pulled, much to Graham’s chagrin.

But the victims remained ignored.

Trump created a better path

That began to change last week. President Trump stepped up in his own unique and unmistakable way.

In January, Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service over a political leak of his tax returns. Those returns, after years of left-wing fixation, revealed nothing especially interesting. Trump sought $10 billion in damages. He recently settled for a far lower amount: $1.776 billion.

RELATED: The anti-weaponization fund is not just for J6. It is for the rest of us too.

JDawnInk/Getty Images

But rather than pocket the money himself, Trump directed it toward the creation of an Anti-Weaponization Fund. The fund would be governed by five members empowered to issue monetary settlements to victims of government weaponization.

That act deserves applause. It also deserves protection.

Trump is redirecting money that could have gone to him toward Americans harmed by the government. Conservatives should encourage that kind of selflessness, especially from a president who suffered more than anyone from the weaponization he now seeks to address.

The fund must work

I instantly recognized the historic opportunity the fund presents. I have spent years defending victims of weaponization, investigating government abuse, and advocating restitution. The fund needs to work, and it needs to work well.

For that reason, I threw my hat in the ring to serve as one of its five members. But this column is not about my campaign for that position. It is about the Anti-Weaponization Fund and the bad-faith attacks now aimed at destroying it.

January 6, 2021, became the fulcrum for the left’s assault on civil rights, legal norms, and basic rule-of-law principles. Prosecutors, courts, media outlets, members of Congress, and left-wing activists turned their power against ideological, political, and religious enemies.

In their minds, January 6 gave them moral and political permission to go all the way. They used it to hurt thousands of Americans, including people who had nothing to do with the Capitol riot. Once they saw what their unleashed machinery could do, they lost all shame and restraint.

These victims were my friends, colleagues, and fellow patriots. Some had to sell their homes. Some lost jobs. Some saw their reputations destroyed. Many incurred crushing legal bills.

The so-called conservative legal movement and legacy conservative institutions were largely absent. Too many viewed the targets as a lower-class problem — or worse, as an opportunity to purge the Republican Party of the deplorable MAGA voters they detested.

Republicans funded the machine

The FBI sent agents to question parents at school board meetings. The government pressured social media companies to censor lawful speech on a massive scale. Senators had their phone records secretly subpoenaed. Churchgoers were surveilled. Americans who did nothing more than hold the wrong political opinion found themselves under the microscope of a weaponized federal government.

Republicans in power did worse than nothing. They confirmed Merrick Garland, an obvious case of a scorned partisan with revenge on his mind, as attorney general. As weaponization accelerated, Republicans funded it without restraint.

They also poured billions into the Department of Homeland Security, helping finance a vast network of left-wing nonprofits that moved illegal immigrants into and around the country while providing them with every service imaginable. USAID and other federal agencies served as Democratic patronage networks, funneling money to left-wing projects and make-work jobs.

House Republicans even launched a so-called Weaponization Committee. It barely scratched the surface of its $20 million budget and achieved little.

What did Republican leaders do well? Fundraise and appear on cable television to denounce the very abuses they kept funding.

RELATED: If Congress can’t oversee the FBI, who can?

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Now they want to kill restitution

Then, despite the private and public misgivings of much of the establishment, Trump won the presidency again. Much of his campaign rested on addressing the harms inflicted not only on him but on all the Americans targeted by the same regime. On his Agenda 47 promise list, he vowed to “end the weaponization of government against the American people.”

The politicians fell in line. They did not contest the promise then.

Now some Republicans have joined Democrats in threatening to destroy the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Some have even floated refusing to fund central elements of Trump’s presidency, including Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, if that is what it takes to stop the fund.

They are willing to reopen the border rather than let Trump compensate victims of federal abuse. That crosses a line no Republican should approach.

When the government harms people, the government should do what it can to make them whole. Critics may object to the form of the fund. I object to four years of destruction visited upon my friends and allies.

Trump has created an opportunity to help real victims in a real way.

Republicans should not kill it. They should make it work.

​Gop, Republicans, Lindsey graham, Irs, January 6, Fbi, Anti-weaponization fund, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump 

Hasan Piker has built a lucrative career denouncing the United States from inside the United States. That arrangement has always carried a certain comic hypocrisy. But his reported subpoena over a March trip to Cuba raises a question far more serious than one streamer’s revolutionary cosplay.

When does anti-American activism become aid to America’s enemies?

The academy may discover that Americans have grown tired of funding institutions that teach students to despise the nation that sustains them.

The latest controversy surrounding Piker is not merely another internet spectacle. It touches an old constitutional question: What limits apply when political activism moves from criticism of American policy into support for regimes hostile to the United States?

Investigators with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control have reportedly subpoenaed Piker and CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin over their March trip to Cuba as part of the “Nuestra América Convoy.” The investigation concerns possible violations of U.S. sanctions law, including the financing, coordination, and delivery of goods to the Cuban regime.

The details remain incomplete, and a subpoena obviously is not a conviction. But the story matters because it exposes a broader issue universities, politicians, and media elites have avoided for years.

What counts as “aiding America’s enemies”?

Coordination is key

According to reports, investigators seek financial, logistical, and communications records related to the trip. The inquiry reportedly centers on whether activists coordinated with Cuban government entities or violated sanctions restrictions administered through OFAC.

Piker has framed the investigation as an attempt to silence criticism of the United States and Israel. He has defended the convoy as humanitarian relief. He has also praised communist Cuba while enjoying the freedoms and opportunities of the United States. He did not, apparently, spend much time asking Cuban-Americans why they fled the island.

Cuba is not merely a tropical backdrop for revolutionary aesthetics. It remains a communist dictatorship and a longstanding U.S. adversary. American sanctions against Cuba arose from decades of geopolitical conflict, expropriation of American property, intelligence operations, and alliance with hostile foreign powers.

That is why the law treats this area seriously.

In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on providing “material support” to designated foreign terrorist organizations, even when that support took the form of training or coordinated advocacy. The court reasoned that seemingly benign support can legitimize hostile organizations and free resources for more dangerous activities.

The key legal principle is coordination.

RELATED: Woke ‘Squad’ member appears to confess to undermining Trump embargo on Cuba

Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

Independent speech criticizing America remains constitutionally protected. Americans may denounce foreign policy, oppose wars, criticize sanctions, or defend unpopular causes. But direct coordination with hostile foreign entities belongs in a different category. Logistical support, fundraising, organized assistance, and coordinated propaganda can cross the line from protected dissent into unlawful support.

That distinction is vital. It also leads to a question much larger than Hasan Piker.

From scholarship to treason

For years, professors at publicly funded universities have argued that violence against the United States is morally justified because of colonialism, slavery, capitalism, or American support for Israel. Some have praised political violence abroad as “resistance.” Others have defended Hamas rhetoric as “decolonial struggle.” Still others have trained students to view America itself as an illegitimate regime founded on oppression.

At what point does this cease to be scholarship and become ideological assistance to America’s enemies?

The modern university loves to invoke “academic freedom” as though the phrase ends all debate. But academic freedom was never meant to shield every form of political agitation from public scrutiny. Nor does it require taxpayers to subsidize institutions that teach students to despise the constitutional order that protects them.

A professor at a public university holds a privileged position funded by taxpayers and entrusted with forming the minds of future citizens. That status does not erase his constitutional rights. But it does heighten the public’s interest in what universities reward, protect, and promote.

Can a tax-funded professor argue that Americans deserve violent retaliation? Can he encourage students to view foreign terrorist organizations as morally justified revolutionaries? Can he defend armed resistance against the United States as a legitimate response to “settler colonialism”?

Universities have spent decades pretending these questions do not exist. Many of the same institutions that warn endlessly about white supremacy tolerate faculty rhetoric that justifies violence against Americans, Israelis, and other supposed oppressors in the name of liberation.

They have built entire departments on ideological hostility to the American constitutional order. Students learn that the United States is fundamentally illegitimate, that Western Civilization is inherently oppressive, and that power — not truth or justice — determines morality. Under those assumptions, violence becomes easy to rationalize as liberation.

Campus activism has repeatedly celebrated anti-American movements abroad while denouncing America itself as uniquely evil. Faculty members increasingly blur the line between analysis and activism, between scholarship and revolutionary agitation, all from tax-funded offices under institutional protection.

RELATED: Democrats don’t have a fix for their extremism problem

Noushad Thekkayil/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The contradiction is striking. Universities often police ordinary constitutional patriotism while tolerating rhetoric sympathetic to regimes hostile to the United States. Professors may face investigation for questioning DEI orthodoxy or praising MAGA politics, while admiration for Marxist revolutionary movements often receives the protection of “academic freedom.”

The Hasan Piker subpoena exposes this double standard.

An overdue reckoning?

The issue is not whether Americans may criticize their government. Of course they may. The First Amendment protects dissent because free societies tolerate disagreement.

But the First Amendment does not require public institutions to pretend that all forms of anti-American agitation carry the same civic meaning. A democracy may distinguish between criticism of its policies and organized sympathy for hostile regimes. It may distinguish between unpopular speech and material coordination. It may distinguish between scholarship and indoctrination.

Universities should have drawn those lines long ago.

If professors encourage students to sympathize with anti-American violence, defend revolutionary movements hostile to the United States, or justify armed resistance against the constitutional order, taxpayers may reasonably ask whether public universities are subsidizing ideological warfare against the nation itself.

For years, universities dismissed these concerns as paranoia.

Now federal subpoenas may force the country to revisit them in public.

And the academy may discover that Americans have grown tired of funding institutions that teach students to despise the nation that sustains them.

​Hasan piker, First amendment, Cuba, Hamas, American universities, Western civilization, Academic freedom, Opinion & analysis 

Amazon Prime Video’s series “The Boys” has long depicted its primary villain, Homelander, as a mockery of President Donald Trump, before killing him off in the series finale.

The show’s creator, Eric Kripke, specifically wanted to use Homelander’s death as a way of demonstrating how “strong men” are actually reduced to helpless cowards when “stripped of their power.”

And in his death scene, Homelander groveled and cried, making some disgusting offers in exchange for mercy.

“My understanding of this Homelander character is that he is actually … a very insecure, sort of neurotic guy who would not naturally find himself in a position of power. So, perhaps that ending is not exactly unexpected,” BlazeTV host John Doyle comments.

“But the point is, the reason that ending came about wasn’t so much because of the natural progression of the character so much as it was, again, the writer literally saying, ‘It’s very important for us to remind the audience that strong men are actually cowards and their power over you is freaking illegitimate,’” he says.

“They write the whole show to be nothing more than just this very thinly veiled contempt for patriots and normal Americans. It’s murder porn. It’s bloodlust porn. And that’s why, ultimately, it’s a portrayal of how they think we all just deserve to die,” he adds, calling the writer of the show a “completely deranged libtard” who’s “making propaganda.”

However, the propaganda backfired.

“And for the entire time, people were using that murder porn that the show was creating and using it to go against everything that the writer stood for and his terminal TDS,” Doyle comments.

While Homelander was considered evil by the left, the right has picked up patriotic memes of the superhero and begun sharing them across social media to describe themselves.

“Every time they try to create a piece of art or media that is depicting right-wing people in a negative light, even if it’s a caricature of how they perceive us to be, everybody always loves them,” Doyle says, using Rorschach from “Watchmen” as another example.

“Roschach is everybody’s favorite character,” he says.

“It brings me sort of immense joy to use your own work against you with a tiny, tiny fraction of the effort it took you to make it,” he continues.

“I am taking your livelihood and using it in a way that is against your will and without your consent,” he adds.

Want more from John Doyle?

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​Amazon prime, Donald trump, Eric kripke, Homelander, John doyle, Rorschach, The blaze, The boys, The john doyle show, Watchmen 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s challenge to incumbent Sen. John Cornyn went unresolved in the heated Republican primary race on March 3, as neither candidate proved able to secure 50% of the total vote.

Though Cornyn confidently warned Paxton that “Judgment day is coming,” Paxton ultimately proved victorious in Tuesday’s runoff election, handily beating the four-term senator by double digits.

AP News and NBC News called the race for Paxton around 9 p.m. ET, at which time 49.1% of the vote was in and Paxton was leading Cornyn 62.5% to 37.5%.

‘Our Country needs Fighters.’

Cornyn’s campaign blew over $24 million on advertising, including the attack ads that unsuccessfully tried to turn Republican voters off Paxton, reported the Texas Tribune.

Tens of millions of dollars more were blown by various pro-Cornyn groups, including the super PAC Texans for a Conservative Majority, which squandered $32.9 million on total advertising. The group even dropped $9.5 million in runoff-only ad-spending to help the senator.

The Lone Star State’s AG, whose campaign spent only $4.8 million on advertising, stated in a runoff Election Day interview that “John Cornyn has never done anything significantly good for the state of Texas in 42 years.”

In his final argument against maintaining the status quo, Paxton faulted his opponent for “siding with Joe Biden on restricting Second Amendment rights, siding with Joe Biden on bringing Afghan refugees here without vetting them, going against Donald Trump on the border, going against Donald Trump’s re-election, going against Donald Trump’s first election, fighting for amnesty, open borders — that’s John Cornyn.”

RELATED: GOP congressman sort of reappears after going AWOL for months, missing over 100 votes

Richard Rodriguez/Getty Images

Toward the end of the race, Cornyn’s team framed the senator — who received donations from elements of the GOP old guard including former President George W. Bush and Rupert Murdoch — as a steady and proven conservative and Paxton as “morally bankrupt” and a “mortal threat to the America First agenda.”

President Donald Trump evidently did not share Cornyn’s vision for the future or his concerns about Paxton.

The president endorsed Paxton last week, touting him as “a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate.”

While signaling goodwill to Cornyn by referring to him as a “good man,” Trump emphasized that Paxton is a fighter and that “Our Country needs Fighters, and also Loyalty to the Cause of Greatness.”

Trump wasted no time celebrating Paxton’s win on Tuesday, posting to social media an image of himself and the victor along with a reminder of his endorsement.

Paxton will now face Democrat state Rep. James Talarico — a part-time Presbyterian seminarian who has attempted to use Scripture to justify abortion, protested the public display of the Ten Commandments, concern-mongers about traditional Christian views, voted against sparing kids from sex-rejection mutilations, and claimed there are six sexes.

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​Donald trump, George w bush, James talarico, John cornyn, Ken paxton, Open borders, Runoff election, Rupert murdoch, Second amendment rights, Texas attorney general, Politics 

Video of a gay eighth-grade student’s expletive-filled graduation speech from Kentucky went viral after his uncle posted it online.

Daniel Mattingly called Stuart Academy in Louisville “f**king ridiculous” in the crude apex of the series of woke insults he tossed at school officials on Thursday.

‘This school is built on racism, sexism, and homophobia. I encourage everyone here today to stand up for yourself, even if it makes a scene.’

Mattingly claimed that officials turned down versions of his speech that were inappropriate for the event before launching into the insults.

“The theme that I was given for the speech was acceptance,” the eighth grader explained to WAVE-TV. “A majority of it was just explaining that I see that people are going through trauma and going through oppression today.”

He went on to claim that teachers at the school told him his speech wasn’t positive enough and was too controversial. On the day of the speech, he defied them and accused them of being homophobic and racist.

“Apparently this school doesn’t know better than to give an angry gay kid a microphone,” he said during the speech.

“No shade at all, but I came to this graduation planning to give a speech about my trauma influencing me as a person, and black, brown, and mixed youth are facing oppression nowadays and being forced to fear their own identities,” he added.

He went on to say that all of the school’s students are “oppressed” youth.

“This school is built on racism, sexism, and homophobia. I encourage everyone here today to stand up for yourself, even if it makes a scene,” he added. “This school is f**king ridiculous!”

He got a lot of applause from the students, and the woke speech got even more recognition after his uncle posted video online.

“All these teachers told me to speak from my heart for this speech, and I realized I shouldn’t chicken out, because I need to speak from my heart and tell these people what they need to be told,” Mattingly told WAVE.

RELATED: Parents protest after student who posted ‘up-skirt’ photos of female schoolmates is allowed to return to class

The student told WAVE he didn’t want to make the school look bad when he claimed that it was “built” on “racism, sexism, and homophobia.”

Video of his unedited speech was posted to social media.

Jefferson County Public Schools did not issue a statement about the school in their district.

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​Graduation speech, Public schools, Kentucky, Viral video, Politics 

A former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee announced a campaign running for Florida’s 20th Congressional District and was immediately accused of “dismantling” black “power.”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) was redistricted out of her previous seat and opted to run in the 20th district, which is composed of about 50% black residents.

‘DWS is everything that’s wrong with the Democratic establishment.’

In a statement released Tuesday, nearly all the DNC members from Florida condemned the decision by Schultz.

“Our party cannot credibly denounce the dismantling of black political power by Republicans while treating one of Florida’s few remaining majority-black districts as a political opportunity for an incumbent seeking a safer seat,” the statement reads.

Schultz, who has been in Congress for more than two decades, would likely win an easy contest in the general election in the left-leaning district. However, other Democrats accused Schultz of using her power to make her campaign easier.

“Debbie Wasserman Schultz is carpetbagging to FL-20, a black opportunity district instead of running in her own,” said Elijah Manley, another Democratic candidate running for Florida’s 20th district.

“DWS is everything that’s wrong with the Democratic establishment. … I look forward to retiring her from public office permanently.”

Others like former 2 Live Crew rapper and black activist Luther Campbell, who is also running for the seat as a Democrat, warned Democrats that the black community is taking notice.

“To the Florida DNC members who stayed silent — we see you too. We’re taking receipts,” Campbell wrote on social media. “Congressional District 20 is not a political opportunity seat. Black representation matters. Lived experience matters. Make sure you’re on the right side of history.”

“This decision reinforces the same message Republicans have pushed for years: that black representation does not matter,” the Florida Democrats continued in their letter. “It does matter. Representation matters. Lived experience matters.”

RELATED: USC accused of racism after minority candidates don’t qualify for gubernatorial debate — so USC makes drastic decision

Schultz ran the Democratic Party from May 2011 until July 2016, just a few months before President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. The late Harry Reid, a top Democratic leader, blamed Schultz for the devastating loss.

“We need a full time DNC chair and what they should do — they can take my model if they want — it’s not rocket science,” Reid said at the time. “It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to figure out what needs to be done.”

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​Black activist, Democratic national committee, Rep debbie wasserman schultz, Politics 

The Democratic National Committee got absolutely lambasted for trying to politicize the death of U.S. military members on Memorial Day in order to attack President Donald Trump.

The post included photographs of 13 Americans who died during the U.S.-Israeli joint military strikes on Iran in recent weeks.

‘It’s wrong to politicize this day. I won’t hesitate to call out my own team when we fall short.’

“Today, we honor the American heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in Trump’s war with Iran,” the post read.

The DNC was immediately criticized, even by Democrats.

“It is incredibly distasteful to use our heroic dead for a political attack on Memorial Day. I’m a Democrat and I condemn this post by the DNC,” responded Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

“If we want the moral high ground, we have to be better,” replied Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.). “I fought for our country and served with those who made the ultimate sacrifice. It’s wrong to politicize this day. I won’t hesitate to call out my own team when we fall short.”

Others pounced on the disrespectful post.

“Just when you think the left can’t go any lower … Absolutely disgusting but not surprising,” replied Republican Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida.

“Yes, we honor these heroes for defending America and our allies with their lives. What we won’t do is dishonor their sacrifice by turning Memorial Day into a cheap political attack. Their memory deserves better,” wrote Sen. Tim Sheehy (R) of Montana.

“Using Memorial Day to politically exploit fallen service members is appalling and disgraceful. One of the most disgusting posts I have ever seen,” said Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters.

RELATED: The Iran war is causing another shortage — and it will directly affect every American

The DNC eventually deleted the post, but screenshots of the offensive message were widely circulated.

Trump has been seeking a peace deal to end the strikes on Iran, but the surviving members of the regime have made demands that the president has called “unacceptable” and “garbage.”

The war continues to be unpopular among Americans as the economic fallout has led to higher gas prices and increased inflationary pressure.

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Caitlin Clark kicked off her third professional season in the WNBA earlier this month with a mysterious back injury. Both she and Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White have repeatedly insisted that it’s minor and will not impact Clark’s season, but Jason Whitlock is suspicious.

The BlazeTV host believes that Clark’s prowess is on the decline after her body has taken a brutal beating from WNBA bullies who find Clark a threat — not because she’s “the best thing that ever happened to the WNBA,” but because she’s white and heterosexual.

The anti-Clark bias, Whitlock points out, continues off the court. In 2024, despite her dominance in her rookie season, Clark was left off of the U.S. women’s basketball team for the 2024 Paris Olympics. WNBA legend Sheryl Swoopes also repeatedly criticized Clark in interviews and podcasts, questioning the legitimacy of Clark’s broken records and dismissing her success.

Whitlock can only come to one conclusion: The WNBA prioritizes its “agenda” above athletic success.

“If we have to sacrifice the popularity of women’s basketball to stay on message, to stay on agenda that this is a league dominated and controlled by black women and lesbian women and we’re hostile to white women and heterosexual women, we will sacrifice popularity, attention, ratings, everything to stay on message,” he laments.

To prove his point, Whitlock runs several clips of Clark getting brutally fouled by opponents, with the physicality so over the top that it looks like they have a personal vendetta.

And yet “no one [spoke] out,” he says, criticizing the media’s silence and, in many cases, defense of Clark’s attackers.

“The mental coupled with the physical attack on Caitlin Clark, we haven’t seen anything like it,” he sighs.

The bias against Clark, Whitlock argues, is even apparent on her own team.

“The Indiana Fever [is] not constructing a team around her to protect her,” he says, noting how Erica Wheeler — Clark’s “ride or die” who would “get physical and defend” her — was replaced by Sophie Cunningham, who he says is more effective as “an Instagram model” than “an enforcer.”

On top of that, the Fever head coach during Clark’s rookie season, Christie Sides, was replaced by Stephanie White, an “alphabet mafia soldier,” says Whitlock.

Based on his analysis, the team is more committed to “[indoctrinating] Caitlin Clark” into the WNBA’s “black and lesbian” culture than it is “[building] a team” around her.

“They didn’t put her in an environment where she can excel,” he says.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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​Fearless with jason whitlock, Jason whitlock, Caitlin clark, Wnba, Fearless 

What began as an unconventional celebrity campaign is quickly becoming one of the most disruptive political movements in California.

Spencer Pratt, whose home was destroyed during the Pacific Palisades Fire, has emerged as an unlikely challenger to Los Angeles’ political establishment — and his relentless viral campaign targeting Mayor Karen Bass is gaining serious traction.

And BlazeTV host Pat Gray is seriously impressed with what Pratt has accomplished so far.

“If you’ve not been following the mayoral race in Los Angeles, it has really heated up. It’s unbelievable what’s happening with Spencer Pratt,” Gray comments.

“The guy has run a brilliant campaign with these creative ads that have gone viral all over the place, and it seems like there’s a new one every day,” he says.

“And I really hope he wins because Los Angeles used to be a beautiful city, a great place to visit. I’m sure it was a great place to live. But look at it now. I mean, he pointed out some of the issues with the feces in the street and the homeless encampments,” he adds.

In the aftermath of Pratt’s creative ads, Bass is facing increasingly critical questions from the media about the state of the city.

“When you talked to Jake Tapper in 2023, you said that your goal was to end street homelessness in L.A. by 2026. It’s now 2026,” a reporter on “60 Minutes” said to Bass in an interview.

“And we haven’t ended it,” Bass interrupted, laughing.

“And we’re not close to ending it,” the reporter interjected, asking, “How were you so off?”

“Well, basically, when I said that, it was at the beginning of my term. I am very committed to achieving that goal. I didn’t anticipate some of the bureaucratic barriers that I would experience, but I am prepared to take those on now,” Bass responded.

“So,” Gray comments, “What she is saying is, ‘I’ve really sucked up until this point, but I’m going to be great.’”

In another part of the interview, Bass championed the “42,000 units of affordable housing” she has fast-tracked, claiming, “It still takes a couple years.”

“So basically the policy of L.A. city and L.A. county was we could accept street homelessness as long as we were building. We didn’t anticipate the problem metastasizing,” she continued.

Bass went on to claim that they “know what we need to do now to end street homelessness.”

“We need to end the failed policies of the past, which is, ‘All we’re going to do is focus on building. And we are going to ignore street homelessness.’ That is what the city and the county has done for years,” she explained.

“That’s insane,” Gray comments.

“If you buy into that, wow, you’ll get what you deserve,” 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.

​Karen bass, Spencer pratt, Los angeles, Mayor, Campaign ad, Republican, Democrat, Pat gray unleashed 

A Florida female who was arrested earlier this year for allegedly urinating on Airbnb furniture is making headlines again after a similar accusation.

Back in March, Nicolette Keough, 31, was arrested on two counts of felony criminal mischief, WEAR-TV reported.

‘It goes to show that people will stoop to new lows these days to make money. And that’s a problem.’

Arrest reports said Keough urinated on furniture in two downtown Pensacola Airbnb homes, according to the station. She reportedly caused thousands of dollars in property damage, WEAR said, adding that she allegedly uploaded videos of the incidents to an adult website.

Keough was released from the Escambia County Jail on a $5,250 bond, the station said.

But now Keough is behind bars again following a similar accusation.

She was hit last week with a felony charge of property damage worth over $1,000, WEAR said in a new story.

In reference to the new charge, the owner of another Pensacola Airbnb on April 24 told police videos show Keough — who stayed at his residence last year from Aug. 31 to Sept. 11 — urinating on furniture inside the home, the station said.

Videos given to Pensacola Police reportedly confirm the allegations, WEAR said.

The total estimated property damage comes out to $17,395, the station said, adding that the breakdown is:

blue coral chair: $500king-size mattress: $4,000twin mattress: $2,900leather sofa: $5,195sleeper sofa: $4,800

Keough appeared in court Thursday, and a judge set her bond at $10,000, the station said. But Keough will remain in Escambia County Jail, WEAR reported, since her bond was revoked for violating bail conditions over a battery arrest in mid-March.

Keough is due next in court June 9 for a bond revocation hearing, WEAR said, adding that she’ll then appear June 12 for the property damage charge.

RELATED: ‘Chunk of hair’ allegedly found on smashed windshield; cops say it resembles fatal hit-and-run victim’s hair — and case turns

Police told the station that while they believe there haven’t been new incidents since Keough’s first arrest in March, more charges for previous incidents are possible.

“These are incidents that happened around the same time frame,” Officer Mike Wood told WEAR. “It’s just that the owners are just now finding out about it and reporting it to us.”

Wood added to the station that Keough is “being very cooperative with us when she’s confronted — and that’s how we know there [are] probably going to be some more properties involved.”

If Keough is released on bond, WEAR said the judge ordered her to stay off social media.

Officer Wood added to the station that Keough’s motivation for these incidents is money: “It goes to show that people will stoop to new lows these days to make money. And that’s a problem.”

Wood also told WEAR that “social media platforms, even adult sites, have rules. And if they had a rule that something like this was not permitted, that would help a lot. Because then people are not able to make money doing this type of thing. And hopefully that would put a stop to this. But right now some of these sites are permitting this sort of thing, and these people are making money, and that’s a problem.”

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​Airbnb, Female, Florida, Furniture, Pensacola, Repeat offender, Criminal mischief, Arrest, Crime 

Alabama Republicans immediately called for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after losing a redistricting battle at a three-judge panel of a federal court.

Republicans are trying to reinstate a 2023 congressional map that would allow them the possibility of picking up a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Democrats claimed the new map would send Alabama back to the ‘1950s and 60s.’

On Tuesday, a U.S. district court in Alabama sided against the map and ordered the state to use a map with two majority-black districts.

“Ultimately, we cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” read the ruling.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall released a statement after the ruling.

“I am disappointed, but not at all surprised, that the three-judge panel has again struck down Alabama’s blandly unobjectionable congressional map that has been in place for decades,” wrote Marshall.

“I find nothing in the U.S. Supreme Court’s vacatur order of May 11 that would provide a basis for this outcome; thus, we will immediately appeal this decision to the Supreme Court,” he added.

Rep. Shomari Figures, one of the Democrats representing a black-majority district in Alabama, praised the ruling but said Democrats were prepared to continue fighting at the Supreme Court.

“I am pleased with the Court’s decision, but this case is still not over,” he wrote.

“Although we expected the Court to reach this decision given the overwhelming evidence, we fully expect the State to immediately appeal the decision to the Supreme Court,” Figures added. “This is a significant step in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go before this fight is settled.”

Figures had previously claimed the new map would send Alabama back to the “1950s and 60s in terms of Black political representation in the state.”

RELATED: VIDEO: Ocasio-Cortez makes humiliating mistake while telling New York to take on the South

“We’ve seen it from Republicans across the country — their goal is to eliminate every opportunity district for an African American candidate in the country,” Figures added in a separate comment.

Marshall expressed confidence that the Supreme Court would side with Republicans.

“This is a very fluid situation, and I will do my best to keep the People of Alabama apprised of our efforts,” he added. “Know this — in my mind, it is not a matter of whether we win this case, only when.”

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​Redistricting battle, Us supreme court, Midterm elections, Politics, Alabama 

There is a particular horror that attaches to threats you cannot see. In the days before Iran’s centrifuges exploded in Natanz, when they were spinning faster than their operators knew, when the gauges read normal and the logs looked clean, the malware was already there, silently acting. This condition is that of modern national security: the ambient, permanently contested digital terrain on which something is always happening, mostly out of sight.

AI accelerates this condition, introducing compression into cyber conflict, a shrinking of the intervals that give defenders room to think.

By the time anyone understood what was happening, it was over.

The interval between the disclosure of a vulnerability and its exploitation, already punishingly short, shortens further. The interval between reconnaissance and attack, between a phishing message and a compromised credential, between a software flaw and a working exploit, all contract. The U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre judged in 2025 that AI-enabled tools would, within two years, improve adversaries’ ability to exploit known vulnerabilities. By May 2026, Google’s Threat Intelligence Group reported a transition from tentative, experimental AI use in attack workflows to industrial-scale deployment, describing what it believed to be the first observed case of a zero-day exploit developed with AI assistance, built for a mass exploitation campaign.

The current moment shares an administrative dimension with earlier military revolutions. The decisive advantage in modern conflict has repeatedly been the capacity to see, sort, prioritize, and act across complex systems faster than the enemy. What is new is the degree to which that capacity is now embedded in software owned by private firms. Sovereignty in the cyber domain is exercised not only through ministries and militaries but through cloud identity systems, software supply chains, security vendors, and the access policies of model providers. When NATO describes cyberspace as contested at all times, it is describing a condition in which the terrain is mostly private property.

The relevant change in technology is agentic AI: systems that pursue objectives, use tools, spawn sub-processes, and take actions in the world with low human involvement. In offensive terms, this architecture compresses the cost of moving through each stage of an attack. The merely competent can now operate more coherently and at greater scale. Researchers at the University of Illinois demonstrated that teams of AI agents could exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, achieving 42% with five attempts on a benchmark of recent flaws, outperforming both open-source scanners and single models working alone. Anthropic and Carnegie Mellon found that frontier models equipped with a cyber toolkit could compromise more than half of 10 simulated business-sized networks.

The barriers to relatively autonomous cyber workflows are rapidly coming down.

RELATED: Big Tech handed the keys to America’s military?

Igorodenkoff/Getty Images

A bureaucracy of bots

A great deal of tacit expertise that once lived in specialist communities, in the accumulated institutional knowledge of people who understood how systems broke, has been translated into natural language interfaces, structured workflows, and reusable tool chains. Cyber capability becomes less the possession of a rare craft elite and more the product of workflow orchestration over commodity tools. In Anthropic’s account of an alleged AI-orchestrated espionage campaign, the operation relied overwhelmingly on open-source penetration-testing utilities and custom orchestration, with novelty concentrated in integration rather than exotic malware.

The imagination of cyber warfare has long been organized around elegance, exemplified by Stuxnet’s nearly surgical precision and the operatic complexity of a state-sponsored zero-day. What is actually emerging looks more like a very fast, very patient bureaucracy. The ENISA 2025 threat landscape found that AI-supported phishing represented more than 80% of observed social-engineering activity. The FBI reported that malicious actors were using AI-generated voice messages to impersonate senior U.S. officials. The losses from AI-enabled business email compromise exceeded $30 million in the 2025 complaint data.

AI does not unilaterally favor offense or defense; it amplifies existing asymmetries. Offense gains most where systems are poorly patched, identity is weak, or social engineering can bypass procedure. Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found that exploitation of vulnerabilities grew to 20% of known initial access vectors, up 34% from the prior year, with a median remediation time of 32 days and only 54% of edge-device vulnerabilities fully remediated during the year. Mandiant found that one PAN-OS vulnerability spread from disclosure to exploitation by more than a dozen groups within two weeks. However, AI-enabled defense can also make disciplined organizations faster at moving from vulnerability discovery to verified remediation, more capable of turning telemetry into action, and better at maintaining the unglamorous processes on which security relies.

Can freedom survive?

States confronted by permanent digital vulnerability can feel pressure to centralize visibility, broaden preemption, and extend exceptional controls in the name of protection. The joint guidance issued in 2026 by the Five Eyes agencies on agentic AI systems spent considerable energy on accountability: explicit human oversight, incremental deployment, strong governance, clear delineation of which agents may do what, where, and under whose authentication. This guidance presupposes institutional cultures capable of following it.

AI is already changing cyber conflict by shrinking the interval between knowledge and action, making ordinary weaknesses more dangerous, and shifting national security toward a contest over who can govern complex socio-technical systems with the greatest speed and discipline. The centrifuges in Natanz spun faster than their operators knew and then did not spin at all. The lesson was that the attacker had more time inside the system than the defenders knew, and by the time anyone understood what was happening, it was over.

Speed of interpretation determines speed of repair. The new tools available to both sides are faster, and the intervals are getting shorter. The question of whether liberal societies can build a security order that is effective without becoming opaque remains open.

​Tech, Ai, Bot, Iran, Security 

Tom Kean Jr. — one of former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean’s twin sons — secured a seat in Congress in 2022 after serving for two decades as a Republican state senator. He is now running for re-election to represent the Garden State’s 7th Congressional District.

While Kean, whom President Donald Trump endorsed last May and touted as a “Tremendous Advocate of our America First Agenda,” has urged constituents in social media posts to vote for him, he hasn’t voted on their behalf in Congress since March 5, missing over 100 roll-call votes.

‘I understand the need for public transparency.’

Amid mounting speculation about his disappearance from work and public life, the 57-year-old Republican released a statement in late April thanking his “constituents and colleagues for their patience” as he addresses “a personal medical issue.”

“My doctors continue to assure me that my recovery will be complete and that I will be back to the job I love very soon,” said Kean. “I expect to return to a full schedule and be at 100 percent. I take my responsibilities seriously and have a strong record of showing up and delivering, which makes this absence all the more difficult.”

Neither Kean nor his campaign have revealed the nature of the medical issue. His office did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

“Nobody knows what’s going on,” Mary Melfoi, the Republican clerk of Hunterdon County, told Politico. “I’ve never seen a lid on anything tighter in my life.”

“Everybody’s hopeful that whatever’s going on is being addressed and he’s going to come back,” continued Melfoi. “But we’re not going around saying ‘Who do you think we should replace him with?'”

RELATED: Democrat voters in Georgia want nothing to do with Trump-hating ex-Republican

Serhiy Morgunov/Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images

Although apparently still actively trading stocks, Kean wasn’t seen or heard from for nearly another month after issuing the April statement. This continued absence prompted Democrats to increasingly like their chances of flipping the seat — an apparent “toss-up” even before he took a leave of absence — that Kean took in the last election with 51.8% of the vote.

Zoe Heath, Democrat chair of Sussex County, said that some of her fellow travelers figure Kean is doomed to lose, noting that “some Democrats are being incredibly cocky about this.”

Tina Shah, an anti-ICE liberal supported by the Hindu America PAC and Indian American IMPACT who is among the Democrats vying to face off with Kean, evidenced a willingness to politically exploit the Republican’s absence.

“What we are being assured is that his team is carrying the torch,” Shah said during a debate earlier this month. “But we elected Tom Kean Jr., not his team.”

Kean finally piped up last week, reaching out to a handful of Republican allies and telling the New Jersey Globe in a May 21 phone interview, “My doctors are confident that I’m on the road to a full recovery.”

The congressman claimed that his medical issue would not affect his cognitive health, that he is not expected to suffer any long-term effects or chronic health complications, and that he plans to “return to voting and to the campaign trail” sometime in the next couple of weeks.

“I understand the need for public transparency, and I appreciate the support of my constituents,” added Kean.

The Globe reported that Kean also spoke last week with Hunterdon County GOP Chairman Gabe Plumer, who said the congressman “sounds great and energized.”

Sussex County Republican Chairman Joseph LaBarbera also received a call from the absent congressman last week.

“I asked him if he needed anything,” LaBarbera told the Times. The chairman recalled Kean replying, “Just your prayers.”

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​Congress, Gop, Hunterdon county, Medical, New jersey, Republican, Trump, Politics 

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has filed for a political campaign in 2028 but says he has not decided whether to run.

Massie, a self-identified libertarian, lost the Republican primary campaign for Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District to Ed Gallrein, a Navy SEAL veteran backed by President Donald Trump.

‘This allows me to raise funds to continue my political operations supporting my position.’

“I filed with FEC for the 2028 House race,” Massie wrote on his social media account on Tuesday.

“This allows me to raise funds to continue my political operations supporting my position as a current office holder and as a potential candidate for federal office,” he added. “I haven’t made a final decision about which office to seek, if I run.”

The Republican campaign for the 4th Congressional District was the most expensive primary election for a House seat ever.

Gallrein is likely to easily win the seat in the heavily Republican district.

“The uniparty in D.C. finally found someone willing to be a rubber stamp for globalist billionaires, endless debt, foreign aid, and forever wars in failed candidate and Lindsey Graham donor Ed Gallrein,” Massie said about his competitor.

Gallrein accused Massie of “burning every bridge” in Washington and voting against the president’s political agenda.

RELATED: Thomas Massie’s viral Epstein poll reveals stunning top belief: He lives

Massie has been in office since 2012 and called the primary election an “inflection point” for the entire country. He also blamed campaign donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for turning what he said would be an easy victory into a loss for him.

“He was a bad guy. He deserves to lose,” Trump said about Massie.

Despite Massie’s recent loss, his supporters still have hope for his political future. Even during his concession speech the night of the primary, the crowd encouraged him to run for president in 2028.

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​House race, Kentucky, Libertarian, Politics, Republican, Thomas massie 

A crowd gathered on Memorial Day in Escondido, California, to pay their respects to a proud American, MAGA supporter, and Army veteran who was viciously assaulted outside his “Trump House” last week — and has since died.

Kerry Sheron, the 69-year-old owner of the “Trump House,” died on Sunday, police confirmed. Deputy District Attorney Ross Garcia indicated Sheron suffered severe injuries in the seemingly unprovoked attack four days earlier.

‘Kerry was a Trump supporter, but he was a patriot first.’

“It was a single punch to the jaw,” Garcia said, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. “The victim then falls to the floor, and there are subsequent hits to the victim’s head area.”

A bystander who intervened during the apparently violent confrontation was also injured.

Thomas Caleb Butler, a 32-year-old neighbor, was quickly identified as the suspected assailant and arrested. He has been charged with attempted first-degree murder, abuse of elder or dependent adult likely to produce great bodily harm or death, making criminal threats, and misdemeanor domestic battery, jail records show.

Butler pled not guilty on Friday, but prosecutors are now considering whether to amend the charges in light of Sheron’s death. Butler is scheduled to appear in court again a week from Wednesday.

“I feel a lot of pain in my heart,” Sheron’s wife, Maria Moreno, said, according to KUSI.

“I want my husband back,” she also said, according to KYMA. “I want my husband because that was my partner, a beautiful man.”

RELATED: Suspect in brutal beating of Trump supporter in San Diego identified as neighbor — and victim’s medical update is devastating

2024 Trump rally in Coachella, California. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Dozens of friends, neighbors, and others of good will paid tribute to Sheron on Monday. Some held signs while others waved flags or dropped off flowers.

“Kerry was a Trump supporter, but he was a patriot first, and when people would come and spew anti-Trump stuff at him, he didn’t let it bother him,” said longtime friend Jim Gillie, according to the Union-Tribune.

“He’d just say, ‘They have a right to freedom of speech, and so do I.'”

Yousef Miller, a member of the North County Equity and Justice Coalition, joined the memorial to stand for free speech in the community and against political violence.

“I believe no one should be harmed for their politics,” Miller said, according to the Union-Tribune. “I’m standing here with my brothers and sisters, even though we have different politics, to say the same thing: Never harm one another, just disagree and move on.”

Sheron’s house has been festooned with pro-America, pro-Trump, and pro-military memorabilia for years, but police have not confirmed any motivation for the attack.

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​Army veteran, Escondido california, Political violence, Politics