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

In a video shared earlier in the week, six Democrat veterans in Congress urged members of the military and the intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders” from the Trump administration, though without specifying which orders were deemed illegal.

On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump posted a string of responses to the viral video.

‘SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!’

In a Truth Social post, Trump said, “It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand — We won’t have a Country anymore!!!”

RELATED: ‘Rebellion’? Democrat lawmakers urge federal agents to resist Trump agenda in cringe video

Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.)Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“An example MUST BE SET,” he added in the same post.

In a second post, Trump reiterated his call for accountability: “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”

Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) delivered the incendiary message.

In the video, the Democrats urged military and intelligence members to resist the Trump administration, telling them “we have your back”: “Americans trust their military. But that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.”

“You MUST refuse illegal orders,” the video warned.

“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Trump said in another Truth Social post later on Thursday morning.

“It is insurrection — plainly, directly, without question. … It’s a general call for rebellion from the CIA and the armed services of the United States by Democrat lawmakers. … It shows what a dangerous moment we’re in,” White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller said on Wednesday.

The video posted by Senator Elissa Slotkin reached 12 million views by Thursday morning.

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​Trump, President trump, Rebellion, Democrats, Elissa slotkin, Mark kelly, Intelligence community, Seditious behavior, Stephen miller, Congress, Sedition, Politics 

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Democrat support for jailing Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro could blow back on Clintons

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) issued deposition subpoenas in August to failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton requiring their testimony “related to horrific crimes perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein.”

Comer made clear on Tuesday that the Clintons risk criminal exposure should they continue not to comply with the subpoenas — and that he is willing to make use of the precedent set in recent years by Democrats.

‘They’re the one group in this investigation that’s never had to answer questions … from attorneys or members of Congress.’

The chairman noted in his Aug. 5 letter to Bill Clinton that owing to the former president’s past relationships with Epstein and child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, the committee believed him to have information regarding their activities relevant to the investigation.

“By your own admission, you flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane four separate times in 2002 and 2003. During one of these trips, you were even pictured receiving a ‘massage’ from one of Mr. Epstein’s victims,” wrote Comer.

“It has also been claimed that you pressured Vanity Fair not to publish sex-trafficking allegations against your ‘good friend’ Mr. Epstein, and there are conflicting reports about whether you ever visited Mr. Epstein’s island,” continued the chairman. “You were also allegedly close to Ms. Ghislane Maxwell, an Epstein co-conspirator, and attended an intimate dinner with her in 2014, three years after public reports about her involvement in Mr. Epstein’s abuse of minors.”

RELATED: Epstein emails SHAME Obama/Clinton ally: Larry Summers quits public life amid calls for Harvard to cut ties

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Comer noted in his letter to Hillary Clinton that her testimony was of interest to the panel not only because of her husband’s relationship with the dead sex offender but because of her links to Maxwell, whose nephew worked for Hillary Clinton’s first failed presidential campaign, then later for the State Department while Clinton was secretary of state.

The Oversight Committee compelled Hillary Clinton to testify on Oct. 9, but she didn’t show up.

When Bill Clinton’s Oct. 14 deposition date came around, a committee spokesperson announced that it would be delayed as the panel was “having conversations with the Clintons’ attorney to accommodate their schedules.”

Republicans on the committee are apparently still trying to settle on a date with the Clintons’ attorneys, a source familiar with the matter told ABC News.

“We expect to hear from Bill and Hillary Clinton,” Comer told “Just the News, No Noise” on Tuesday. “Donald Trump answered questions for years about Jeffrey Epstein. Every day he gets asked questions about Epstein, and he answers them in front of the American people. We’ve subpoenaed Republicans and Democrats.”

“Other Democrats have sent letters saying they knew nothing about Epstein, which would hold in court if something ever comes out that they did know something, then they’ve committed perjury there,” continued the chairman.

“But the Clintons have never responded. They’re the one group in this investigation that’s never had to answer questions in front of a credible reporter, and they’ve never certainly answered questions from attorneys or members of Congress,” added Comer.

Comer, evidently tired of the Clintons’ avoidance, added, “So we expect the Clintons to come in, or I expect the Clintons to be met with the same fate that Bannon and [Peter] Navarro were met with when the Democrats were in control.”

Democrats would likely condemn the Clintons’ visitation by legal consequence over their refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas — but such criticism would amount to rocks thrown from a glass house.

Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general, was held in contempt of Congress in a decisive 255-67 vote in 2012 for refusing to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal.

The Obama Justice Department rewarded Holder for keeping the Democratic president’s documents from the American people’s elected representatives by refusing to prosecute.

House Republicans voted last year to hold former Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas for audio recordings of former President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

The Biden Department of Justice revealed on June 14, 2024, that it would not bother prosecuting Garland.

Although keen to shield their own from consequence, Democrats held Republicans to a different standard.

The Democrat-controlled House voted 229-202 in 2021 to hold former Trump adviser and “War Room” host Stephen Bannon in contempt for defying a subpoena issued by the Jan. 6 committee.

Whereas the Biden DOJ would later let Garland off the hook for the same charge, the same outfit energetically prosecuted Bannon, securing a conviction and recommending that he serve at least six months in prison and pay a $200,000 fine. Bannon ended up languishing in prison for four months.

The president’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, received similar treatment for not complying with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee. Navarro, who figured he was bound by executive privilege when he defied the subpoena, served a four-month prison sentence.

Navarro noted in a speech last year at the Republican National Convention, “I got a very simple message for you: If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful. They will come for you.”

Comer’s apparent threat came a week after President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department and the FBI on Friday to “investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton” and others, and “determine what was going on with them, and him.”

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​Bill clinton, Hillary clinton, Clinton, Jeffrey epstein, Pedophile, Elite, Cult, Sex offender, Child sex offender, Rapist, Politics 

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Mark Levin eviscerates Republicans treating 2025 Democrat sweep as future campaign fuel

On November 4, 2025, Democrats didn’t just win Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City — they crushed them. In Virginia, Democrats swept the statewide offices in a clean blue trifecta: Abigail Spanberger as governor, Ghazala Hashmi as lieutenant governor, and Jay Jones as attorney general. New Jersey followed suit, with the gubernatorial race called for Democrat Mikie Sherrill shortly after polling closed. And in New York City, Muslim Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race.

Mark Levin is disturbed by Republicans’ apathy. “We gotta fight like hell, every single time, in every election, at every level of government. That’s the bottom line!”

Virginia, he says, was once “a red southern state” until the “locusts” — “government bureaucrats” looking to evade blue-state taxes and regulations – moved in and “screwed up everything.”

“Now the state of Virginia — the Commonwealth — has the largest number of federal bureaucrats of any state in the country, even more than Maryland. Wow. Go figure,” says Levin. “Plus, on top of that, we’ve had years and years of illegal immigration and legal immigration without assimilation, particularly under the Democrats.”

Add to that the fact that “Republicans are depopulating the state” and Soros and CAIR funding install people like Hashmi — a Muslim progressive Democrat who is now teed up to be Virginia’s next governor — and it’s clear that the state is on a one-way track to destruction.

New Jersey is much the same, although it doesn’t have the red history of Virginia. Blue voters, despite the already crushing taxes and regulations, voted in the same Democrat machine with Sherrill, who Levin says will simply sit at a desk and use a rubber “YES” stamp on every radical blue bill that crosses her desk. She’s nothing more than “a placeholder,” he scoffs.

Levin calls out Republican pundits on television and radio who ignorantly believe they can use these recent Democrat victories, especially Zohran Mamdani’s in New York City, as red campaign fuel in the future.

“They’re organizing at the local level like we’ve never seen before,” he warns. ”They’ve got more billions flooding in like we’ve never seen before. They’re already twisting the minds of our youth in our colleges and universities.”

To those pushing the idea that these blue victories will only help Republicans in the midterms and the 2028 election, he says, “Are you out of your mind?! … Get out of the way and let the serious people deal with this!”

To hear more of Levin’s commentary, watch the clip above.

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​Levintv, Mark levin, 2025 elections, Virginia, New jersey, New york city, Zohran mamdani, Abigail spanberger, Ghazala hashmi, Jay jones, Mikie sherrill, Blazetv, Blaze media 

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Kerosene lamps: Your escape from the sickly glare of LEDs

It’s my favorite time of year. When it gets cold, I fuel up four or five of the dozens of antique kerosene lamps I own. I use these to heat and light my house in winter; the charm and warmth make the cold and dark more bearable.

In past columns I’ve tried to convince you to abandon new, low-quality appliances and buy old workhorses. This time I want to persuade you to go even lower-tech and give flame light a try. You want to gather around the lamp with good people. You’ll find yourself staring into the flame, noticing the warmth it radiates (literal and metaphorical).

My center drafts have saved me during electricity outages in winter, giving enough light to work by as well as heat.

No electric lamps will make you feel this way. Some are very beautiful, of course, and the most charming use the original Edison-style incandescent filament bulbs. But they’re almost gone.

Thanks to meddling safetyist government, we live under the ghastly glow of LEDs. Before that, it was compact fluorescents. And before that, it was the sickening, flickering off-green morgue illumination of the overhead fluorescent tube, the appropriate furnishing for the inhuman Brutalist aesthetic that has infected 90% of commercial office space in the U.S. since the 1960s.

We weren’t made to live this way or light this way. We did not evolve under unnatural artificial light stripped of whole swaths of the color spectrum, drained of infrared.

We evolved by the campfire. For most of human history, the communal fire was the only source of “artificial” illumination at night. Firelight is a first cousin to sunlight, the original illumination that gave rise to all life on earth.

I’m going to give you basic tips on buying and running lamps, from simple to more complex. There’s a kind of kerosene lamp for everyone.

Sensible safety

Use common sense. You’re working with fire, and larger lamps put out a lot of heat, so be mindful that there’s plenty of clearance between the top of the chimney and the ceiling.

Keep charged fire extinguishers (you should anyway).

Yes, of course it’s possible to tip over a lamp, but in practice, it rarely happens unless you’re careless. They’re weighted to be fairly stable.

People also ask if my cats knock over the lamps. The answer is no, but you must use your own judgment because you know your animals and the layout of your house. My cats love to sleep near them for warmth and will walk on a table to get to them. But they don’t bump them. Again, you must exercise your own judgment.

Shredder the cat dozes by a center-draft lamp. Josh Slocum

No, you’re not in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. Do you have a gas cookstove? Did you ever worry that you would get carbon monoxide poisoning from having your gas cookstove running? If you’re not afraid of your gas stove giving you carbon monoxide poisoning, there’s no physics-based reason to fear it if the flame comes from a kerosene lamp instead.

Carbon monoxide results from incomplete combustion. No combustion is 100% complete, but these lamps are burning close to it. I have been running kerosene lamps for about 15 years. They’ve never even blipped my smoke or carbon monoxide detectors.

No, the lamps won’t “suck up all the oxygen.” Your house is not hermetically sealed. The air is changing over all the time, even with your windows closed. You’re not in a pressurized submarine hull.

But “fumes,” you say. Every time you burn your favorite scented candles, you’re doing the same thing at a small scale, but no one is afraid of “fumes.” I think “fumes” is just miasma theory of disease, like how people used to falsely believe that bad odors from graveyards could transmit sickness to the living.

The only “fumes” you’re going to get with a lamp using clean kerosene are a bit of kero smell on lighting and on extinguishing. If it bothers you, take the lamp outside to light and extinguish. Remember that your ancestors right here in America all lit their homes this way, rich or poor. People weren’t dying of “fumes” or “lack of oxygen.”

The right stuff

Burn only clear, undyed kerosene. Not “lamp oil.” Not “lamp fuel.” These lamps want one thing only: the specific chemical we call kerosene. It’s a petroleum distillate similar to (but much less stinky than) diesel. Kerosene is not explosive like gasoline; don’t fear an explosion.

If you’ve experienced stinky oil lamps, it’s almost certainly because someone was burning “lamp oil,” which is liquid paraffin wax. This stuff clogs up wicks, it burns half as brightly as kerosene, it can smoke, and it smells awful. Stick with clear kerosene labeled “K1” or “1K,” found in your hardware store, Tractor Supply, Walmart, and similar stores.

Level I: Flat-wick lamps

Let’s introduce you to lamps. I categorize as Level I, Level II, and Level III. We’re going to go from simplest and least expensive to more high-powered lamps. If you’re new to lamps, start with Level I, the flat-wick lamps.

Everyone knows these lamps. These are what come to mind when you hear the phrase “oil lamp.” You remember lamps just like this from “Little House on the Prairie” on television.

These are called flat-wick lamps because, you may have guessed, their wicks are flat. This is my “sewing lamp,” so called because it’s tall enough to sit on a table by you for handwork.

Josh Slocum

Consider a wall-mounted flat-wick lamp, too. These can fit in beautiful wrought-iron brackets. Mount them to a stud in the wall and enjoy the character they add to your room. Below is one of my Victorian wall-mount lamps with a mercury reflector.

Josh Slocum

Level II: Center-draft lamps

So-called “center-draft” lamps are my personal favorite, and I recommend that you get at least one of them. They draw air from a central tube in the middle of the burner. Unlike flat-wick lamps, center-draft lamps have a round wick. They’re larger than most flat-wick lamps, so they put out about three times the light and heat of a basic lamp.

One center-draft lamp is enough to heat a medium-sized room, and you can cook over it in a pinch by rigging up a trivet. My center-draft lamps have saved me during electricity outages in winter, giving enough light to work by as well as heat. They’re essential equipment for anyone who is into prepping for emergencies. Plastic electronic LED lights with fancy solar panels can’t hold a candle to the rugged practicality and versatility of these.

Here’s my favorite, the “New Juno” model, made from 1886 to about 1915.

Josh Slocum

Any center-draft lamp is a good buy as long as it has all the parts necessary for operation (be sure it has a flame spreader). At the end of this article, I’ll link to businesses that specialize in advice and replacement parts. Do a little bit of reading, and you’ll learn everything you need to know before you buy.

Level III: The magical Aladdin lamp

Technology becomes as fun as it will ever get when one tech is declining as another rises. The old tech has to compete with the new, so the old tech gets refined to its highest potential just before it becomes obsolete.

That’s the Aladdin lamp. “Aladdin” is a brand name, not a generic type. These lamps are the zenith of kerosene technology that was competing with new electric light. These are mantle lamps. What does that mean? Bring to mind the Coleman lanterns you remember from camping. The ones that hiss and put out a very bright light. Those are mantle lamps too.

Aladdin lamps are mantle lamps, but instead of burning compressed gas, they burn kerosene.

In mantle lamps, the light does not come from the flame. The flame is used to heat the incandescent mantle. This is a thin, delicate mesh impregnated with rare-earths and mineral salts. These elements glow white-hot under heat. This is how the Aladdin lamp can produce a light that matches modern electric bulb output.

They are wonderful devices, and I have a few, but they are more finicky. They need a mantle, and you have to be very careful to keep the wick absolutely level, or you’ll get flame spikes that leave black carbon deposits on your mantle. The solution is to turn the flame low and burn off the carbon slowly.

Here’s my 1936 Aladdin Model B in green Corinthian glass:

Josh Slocum

Hopefully this has tempted you to get your first kerosene lamp. There are some dependable businesses run by people who love these lamps and know everything about them. Most breakable and replaceable parts like the glass chimneys and the wicks are still made and readily available from these purveyors and others.

Nobody knows more about lamps, and nobody has a wider selection of wicks, chimneys, diagrams, and how-to articles, than Miles Stair on the West Coast of the U.S. Go to his site first whenever you have a question.

Woody Kirkman of Kirkman Lanterns manufactures and sells quality reproduction lamps and replacement parts for antiques. You have likely seen his work in period films and at Disney parks and like. He is often hired to supply kerosene and gas lighting fixtures for movies and TV and for theme parks.

Gather those you love around you, and light your lamp.

​Lifestyle, Home, Heating, Kerosene lamps, Provisions, Antiques, Oil lamps, Little house on the prairie, Aladdin lamps, Intervention 

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Armed crook breaks through window, orders elderly homeowner to turn over valuables — but victim fights back with his own gun

Police in Jacksonville, Florida, said they responded to a home around 12:41 p.m. Tuesday after a report that a person was shot, First Coast News said.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said a man believed to be in his 70s living in the home on Arlex Drive, off Merrill Road, reportedly told police that a male armed with a gun broke through a window in the back of the home, the outlet reported.

‘Just glad to have another one, another one of these guys off the streets.’

The victim said he was ordered into a back bedroom and forced to hand over his car keys and other valuables, the outlet added, citing the sheriff’s office.

But the elderly victim fought back.

The sheriff’s office said the homeowner was able to grab a gun and managed to shoot the suspect once in the shoulder, the outlet reported.

The wounded suspect reportedly fled the home and drove off in the victim’s car, First Coast News said.

However, the sheriff’s office said police found the suspect inside the vehicle about 30 minutes later and took him into custody on Fort Caroline Road, near Jacksonville University — just a few miles from the scene of the home invasion, the outlet noted.

Brandon Meredith, who was driving along University Boulevard, told First Coast News he witnessed the suspect’s capture.

“Everyone had their tasers drawn,” Meredith told the outlet. “They’re moving up in a special kind of formation on the back of the car, heard a pop, they grabbed him and pulled him out, put him on the ground, and EMS was tending to him, and they had the intersection shut down for about two hours while this whole thing unfolded.”

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

The suspect, who has not yet been publicly identified, was taken to a hospital for the gunshot wound, the sheriff’s office told First Coast News, and was in police custody.

Meredith added to the outlet that he’s happy with the way things ended up: “Just glad to have another one, another one of these guys off the streets.”

First Coast News said those with information about the incident that could help in the investigation can contact the sheriff’s office at 904-630-0500. The outlet added that anonymous tips are also welcome through Crime Stoppers.

Commenters on WJAX’s Facebook post about the incident expressed a variety of opinions about the outcome. The following are but a few of them:

“‘In custody’ means the homeowner needs some range time,” one commenter asserted.”Dang, people still dare to break in other houses in open carry state,” another user opined.”He’s a hero,” another commenter declared.”The only problem I see is the homeowner needs some shooting lessons,” another user wrote, adding “shoot for center mass, and this potentially eliminates the issue.””In blue states and cities, this poor homeowner would have to face trial and have his life financially ruined (at best), or spend the rest of his life in prison,” another commenter observed.

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​Crime thwarted, Florida, Jacksonville sheriff’s office, 2nd amend., Home invasion, Armed intruder, Robbery, Gun rights, Shooting, Jacksonville, Car theft, Guns, Self-defense, Crime 

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‘Not medicine — it’s malpractice’: Trump HHS buries child sex-change regime with damning report

The Department of Health and Human Services delivered what could prove to be a lethal blow this week to the profitable and predatory child sex-change industry that has been on the defensive since President Donald Trump’s Jan. 28 executive order directing all federal agencies to ensure that medical institutions receiving federal funding “end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”

HHS published an exhaustive peer-reviewed report on Wednesday that should make abundantly clear to those still clinging to LGBT activists’ preferred narrative about so-called “gender-affirming care” that “the harms from sex-rejecting procedures — including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations — are significant, long term, and too often ignored or inadequately tracked.”

“This is a new day in the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s a new day in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, a new day for the country,” Admiral Brian Christine, assistant secretary for HHS, told Blaze News. “It is because of President Trump and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that this information has come out.”

‘The HHS report should put an end to the scourge of child mutilation masquerading as health care.’

The 410-page report, titled “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” reads as the weightier American counterpart to Britain’s damning Cass Review, detailing:

the often glossed-over risks and medical uncertainties involved with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change genital mutilations; the unscientific nature and strategic omissions of fact in the World Professional Association of Transgender Health guidelines; the manipulation of medical definitions undertaken in service of gender ideologues’ medical agendas; ethical concerns regarding consent for sex-change procedures as well as the regret often experienced by victims of such procedures; andthe “international retreat” from the “gender-affirming” model of care.

The report — which National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya indicated “marks a turning point for American medicine” — notes that the overall quality of evidence concerning the effects of sex-change medical interventions on long-term health, psychological outcomes, quality of life, and regret was found to be “very low.”

Accordingly, the beneficial effects alleged in the literature and often cited by gender ideologues are likely to differ substantially from the actual effects of the sex-change procedures.

‘It’s literally a billion-dollar industry. It creates lifelong customers.’

What’s more, the report noted that while the risks of child sex changes are many and unmistakable — including infertility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density accrual, surgical complications, and heart, metabolic, and psychiatric disorders — publication bias, a failure of existing studies to adequately track and report harms, and other factors may have obfuscated the true fallout of so-called “gender-affirming care.”

The report minces no words in its conclusion, stating:

Many U.S. medical professionals and associations have fallen short of their duty to prioritize the health interests of young patients. First, there was a rapid expansion and implementation of a clinical protocol that lacked sufficient scientific and ethical justification. Second, when confronted with compelling evidence that this protocol did not deliver the health benefits it promised, and that other countries were changing their policies appropriately, U.S. medical professionals and associations failed to reconsider the “gender-affirming” approach. Third, conflicting evidence — evidence that challenged the foundational assumptions of the protocol and the professional standing of its advocates — was mischaracterized or insufficiently acknowledged. Finally, dissenting perspectives were marginalized, and those who voiced them were disparaged.

“The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics peddled the lie that chemical and surgical sex-rejecting procedures could be good for children,” HHS Secretary Kennedy said in a statement.

“They betrayed their oath to first do no harm, and their so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people,” continued Kennedy. “That is not medicine — it’s malpractice.”

RELATED: Sacrificing body parts and informed consent to the sex-change regime

Photo by Bob Riha Jr./Getty Images

When other Western nations, Britain in particular, began to re-evaluate their barbaric medical approaches to gender dysphoria, the Biden administration and the U.S. medical establishment dug in their heels and pushed the child sex-change regime to new extremes.

For instance, Biden’s transvestic Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Rachel Levine, formerly Richard Levine, successfully pressured WPATH to drop its recommended minimum age requirements for sex-change mutilations. His reasoning for lowering the recommended age minimums — 17 for genital mutilations, 15 for healthy breast removals, 16 for breast implants, and 14 for hormone treatments — was apparently not based on scientific evidence but on politics.

Levine’s successor, Trump HHS Assistant Secretary Brian Christine, told Blaze News, “There was absolutely an effort by the prior administration and, very specifically, an absolute effort by the individual who was the prior assistant secretary for health, Rachel Levine,” to continue politicizing children’s health.

He added that both ideology and profit prompted medical professionals and associations to similarly dig in their heels.

“It’s literally a billion-dollar industry. It creates lifelong customers,” said Christine. “You bring a little boy or a little girl in and you have them either get hormones or they get a mutilating surgery — you’ve created a lifelong customer. You’ve created someone who’s going to come back again and again and again because of surgical complications or other things going on.”

Gender dysphoria is an “emotional and mental condition,” he explained. “There’s no question about that. These individuals who truly have gender dysphoria, they suffer terribly. They deserve compassion. They deserve mental health care. What they don’t need are sex-rejecting surgeries.”

Christine said that treating gender dysphoria as a mental health condition is especially important with kids. “You should treat them with mental health care because we know that if you do, the majority of these kids, by the time they’re in their late teens, are very comfortable in their own skin,” he said.

Neeraja Deshpande, policy analyst for the Independent Women’s Forum, said that the report, “in addition to creating a more transparent system, confirms once and for all what never should have been up for debate to begin with: that so-called surgical and chemical body alteration in the name of ‘gender transition’ is a medical danger to children.”

Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, said in a statement to Blaze News, “The HHS report should put an end to the scourge of child mutilation masquerading as health care.”

RELATED: ‘They’ll create second sets of genitals’: WPATH Files author tells Glenn Beck about ‘gender-affirming care’ mutilations

Luis Soto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

“The peer-reviewed study only confirms what the American Principles Project and anyone with common sense has known all along: The gender industrial complex relies on bad faith, bad science, and a radical ideology that places the financial interest of drug companies over those of children,” said Schilling.

Schilling suggested to Blaze News that elements within the child sex-change regime are now more likely to reap the whirlwind in court.

“This is, at a minimum, some type of consumer fraud. I do think that because of how horrific the harm that they did was that it does cross into serious criminal areas.”

While Schilling noted that the industry presently enjoys robust protection from trial attorneys and left-wing institutions, once major legal actions break through, prompting big payouts, “then you’ll have blood in the water, and the sharks will start circling.”

Schilling alluded to Chloe Cole‘s lawsuit as one such potential breakthrough action.

Cole, a detransitioner who has raised awareness across the country about the horrors and fallout of sex-change medical interventions, has sued Kaiser Permanente for alleged medical negligence in connection with the sex-rejecting procedures the health system performed on her as a minor.

Schilling commended the numerous experts who put their names to the report — including doctors and scientists from the Baylor College of Medicine, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Duke University — stating, “They’re very courageous for doing this. This is a very powerful and embedded industry that’s been doing really big and terrible things in the country … and for these guys to put their names behind it is a very big deal.”

When asked whether this report ultimately amounts to a lethal blow against the sex-change regime, HHS Assistant Secretary Christine told Blaze News, “Yeah, we certainly hope so. We certainly believe it will be. Listen, our job in the administration is to protect our children, protect our citizens. Our job is to produce gold-standard science. That’s exactly what we have done. It’s exactly what we’re doing.”

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​Sex change, Gender affirming care, Gender, Lgbt, Sex change surgeries, Medicine, Health, Hhs, Terry schilling, Medicalization, Robert f kennedy, Rfk, Gender ideology, Science, Brian christine, Politics 

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Suspect walks free amid serious charges due to jaw-dropping technicality — and is accused of murder just weeks later

A 29-year-old male accused in a fatal stabbing in Boston over the weekend was facing weapons and drug charges less than a month ago but walked free.

Court records indicate that Javonte Robinson’s previous weapons and drug charges were dismissed when an attorney could not be found after 45 days, WCVB-TV reported.

‘Under Governor Healey, the state failed to pay public defenders adequately, failed to ensure the courts had the staffing they needed, and failed to protect the public.’

Robinson’s case was dropped amid a work stoppage involving private attorneys who normally defend suspects who can’t afford lawyers, the station said, adding that the attorneys in question stopped accepting new cases in May in an attempt to force the state to pay them more.

WCVB said Robinson was among 145 individuals whose charges were dismissed in one day of court proceedings.

Robinson then allegedly stabbed a man Saturday night in the city’s Mattapan neighborhood, and the victim was taken to a hospital, where he died, Boston police said, according to the station. Robinson was arrested just after 3 p.m. Sunday, WCVB noted.

Robinson was arraigned Monday in Dorchester District Court and pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, Boston.com reported, citing court records. He was then taken to Suffolk County Jail, the outlet added.

RELATED: Thugs on parole, probation thrown behind bars after allegedly repeating same crimes that got them in trouble previously

More from Boston.com:

In late August, Robinson was arraigned on charges of possession of a dangerous weapon and possession of a Class A drug. He was released on personal recognizance, according to the records, but was transported to Attleboro District Court, where he was wanted on other outstanding warrants.

Last month, Robinson’s charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning that the case could be reopened in the future. This was the result of the “Lavallee protocol,” which was activated in Massachusetts earlier this year due to the work stoppage.

Boston.com noted that the “Lavallee protocol” mandates that defendants without attorneys are ordered released after being held for more than seven days — and those who go 45 days without a lawyer have their cases dismissed without prejudice.

This is what happened in Robinson’s dangerous weapon case, Boston.com said, citing court records.

Massachusetts Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Shortsleeve blasted Democrat Gov. Maura Healey for her handling of the lawyer shortage in the wake of the Robinson case, the Boston Herald reported.

Shortsleeve, according to the paper, said that “this should never happen in a functioning state government. Under Governor Healey, the state failed to pay public defenders adequately, failed to ensure the courts had the staffing they needed, and failed to protect the public. That is unacceptable, and it is dangerous.”

Fellow Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Minogue also blamed Healey, the Herald said: “The fundamental role of the governor is to uphold the law and keep our communities safe. This is another example of our governor failing to solve problems and [running] an organization that has a horrible impact on the victim and their families.”

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​Boston, Massachusetts, Criminal set free, Possession of a dangerous weapon charge, Murder charge, Fatal stabbing, Lawyer work stoppage, Pay dispute, Police, Maura healey, Crime 

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Packed churches, skyrocketing conversions: Is New York undergoing a Catholic renaissance?

The years-long trend of American de-Christianization recently came to an end, with the Christian share of the U.S. population stabilizing at roughly six in ten Americans, according to Pew Research Center data. Of the 62% of adults who now identify as Christians, 40% are Protestants, 19% are Catholics, and 3% belong to other Christian denominations.

There are signs in multiple jurisdictions pointing to something greater than a mere stabilization under way — at least where the Catholic Church is concerned.

The New York Post recently found that multiple New York City Catholic parishes have not only seen a spike in conversions but their churches routinely fill to the brim. That’s likely good news for the Archdiocese of New York, which was found in a recent Catholic World Report analysis to have been among the 10 least fruitful dioceses in 2023 in terms of baptism, conversion, seminarian, and wedding rates.

‘We’ve got a real booming thing happening here.’

Fr. Jonah Teller, the Dominican parochial vicar at Saint Joseph’s in Greenwich Village, told the Post that the number of catechumens enrolled in his parish’s Order of Christian Initiation of Adults for the purposes of conversion has tripled since 2024, with around 130 people signing up.

Over on the Upper East Side, St. Vincent Ferrer has seen its numbers double since last year, jumping to 90 catechumens. The Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral has reportedly also seen its numbers double, ballooning to around 100 people. The Diocese of Brooklyn doubled its 2023 numbers last year when it welcomed 538 adults into the faith and expects the numbers to remain high again this year.

Attendance in New York City reportedly skyrocketed in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was apparently attending mass with his Catholic wife, Erika, and their children.

RELATED: Charity, miracles, and high tech — here’s how these monks built a massive Gothic monastery

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“We’re out of space and exploring adding more masses,” Fr. Daniel Ray, a Catholic Legionary priest in Manhattan, told the Post. “We’ve got a real booming thing happening here, and it’s not because of some marketing campaign.”

While a number of catechumens cited Kirk’s assassination as part of what drove them to the Catholic Church, others cited a a desire for a life- and family-strengthening relationship with God; a desire to partake in the joy observed in certain devout Catholics; a desire for community; a desire for “guardrails”; and a desire for anchorage and meaning in a chaotic world where politics has become a substitute for faith.

“My generation is watching things fall apart,” Kiegan Lenihan, a catechumen in the OCIA at St. Joseph’s told the Post. “When things all seem to be going wrong in greater society, maybe organized religion isn’t that bad.”

Lenihan, a 28-year-old software engineer, spent a portion of his youth reading the works of atheist intellectuals such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. After experiencing an anxiety-induced crisis at school, he apparently sought out something of greater substance, devouring the works of Marcus Aurelius. He found that his life still lacked greater meaning despite achieving material success.

‘The Catholic Church is a place of sanity.’

“I realized on paper, I had everything I wanted, but I had no fulfillment in my soul,” said Lenihan, who remedied the problem by turning to Christ.

Liz Flynn, a 35-year-old Brooklyn carpenter who is in OCIA at Old St. Patrick’s, previously sought relief for her anxiety and depression in self-help books and dabbled in “pseudo spiritualism.”

After finding a book about God’s unconditional love for his children in a gift shop during a road-trip stop at Cracker Barrel, she began praying the rosary and developed an appreciation for Catholicism.

“I’m happier and calmer than I’ve ever been,” Flynn told the Post. “Prayer has made an enormous impact on my life.”

New York City is hardly the only diocese enjoying an explosion in conversions.

The National Catholic Register reported in April that numerous dioceses across the country were seeing substantial increases in conversions. For instance:

the Diocese of Cleveland was on track to have 812 converts at Easter 2025 — 50% more than in 2024 and about 75% more than in 2023; the Diocese of San Angelo, Texas, expected 56% more converts in 2025 (607) than in 2024 (388);the Diocese of Marquette, Michigan, was expected to see a year-over-year doubling of conversions; the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, was expected to see a 59% year-over-year increase; the Diocese of Grand Island, Nebraska, was set for a 45% increase;the Diocese of Steubenville, Ohio, was expecting a 39% increase in converts; andthe Archdiocese of Los Angeles noted a 44% increase in adult converts.

Besides the Holy Spirit, the conversions were attributed to the National Eucharistic Revival, immigration, and evangelization.

Pueblo Bishop Stephen Berg told the Register that people are flocking to the church because it stands as a bulwark against the madness of the age.

“I think the perception of the Catholic Church is changing,” said Bishop Berg. “In a world of insanity, I think that people are noticing that the Catholic Church is a place of sanity.”

“For 2,000 years, you know, through a lot of turbulent times — and the Church has been through turbulent times — we still stand as the consistent teacher of the faith of Christ,” continued Berg. “The people are intrigued by that.”

As of March, 20% of Americans described themselves as Catholics, putting the number of Catholic adults at around 53 million nationwide.

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​Catholic church, Catholic, Christian, Faith, Religion, Abide, Conversion, Evangelization, Vatican, Renaissance, New york city, Diocese, Rcia, Catechumen, Politics 

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UK woman said she wanted to be tortured and killed on fetish site — her body was found in shallow grave in the US

The boyfriend of a woman who allegedly paid someone to torture and kill her said that she had been suffering from mental illness before the shocking events, according to Florida authorities.

Sonia Exelby was reported missing in October before police were able to trace her to an Airbnb in Reddick and found her remains nearby.

‘I’m so, so scared. I’m so broken and in so much pain. … I thought he’d do it quick and not give my mind time to stew.’

Exelby boarded a flight to Florida and arrived on Oct. 10, according to an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The FDLE said that Exelby posted on a fetish website that she was willing to pay someone to torture and kill her.

A week after she arrived in Florida, her remains were found in a shallow grave.

Investigators linked her to a man named Dwain Hall, who had used her bank card and tried to use her credit cards.

When they interviewed him, he gave conflicting accounts of how they met.

Police said they gathered evidence pointing to Hall as Exelby’s alleged killer.

Authorities said Hall purchased rope and gun cleaner among other items at a Walmart in Gainesville on Oct. 10. After that purchase, he made a second purchase of a shovel. He then allegedly went to pick up Exelby at the airport, and they both went to an Airbnb that he had rented.

The next day, he charged $1,200 to Exelby’s bank card.

Authorities said he recorded a video of Exelby showing her with cuts and bruises, and asking her to say that she consented to being stabbed.

Exelby sent a message to a friend via the Discord app expressing regret.

“I’m so, so scared. I’m so broken and in so much pain. … I thought he’d do it quick and not give my mind time to stew,” she wrote.

On Oct. 14, Hall allegedly sent a package to a friend that authorities said contained a knife that had traces of Exelby’s blood. It also had a bracelet with DNA from both Exelby and Hall.

RELATED: NJ grade school janitor who allegedly contaminated food with bodily fluids called it the ‘devil’s work’ and a ‘sexual fetish’

Police also said the shovel Hall purchased matched the one they found at Exelby’s grave site.

Hall was initially arrested for fraud in relation to his alleged use of Exelby’s financial cards, but those charges were dropped when he was charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder.

U.K. law enforcement said that Exelby sought someone to kill her in 2024, but she obtained mental health treatment instead after the attempt was thwarted.

Hall allegedly told police he was upset because she promised to pay him $4K, but he only received $1.2K.

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​Sonia exelby, Woman pays to be tortured, Woman pays to be killed, Dwain hall arrest, Crime 

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When a ‘too big to fail’ America meets a government too broke to bail it out

I’ve been titanically bearish on America for years. Sorry. I can do math.

The United States owes more than $38 trillion. That alone makes the balance sheet hopeless. The debt is insurmountable.

America’s GDP in 2024 was $29.2 trillion, meaning the debt exceeds 130% of what we produce in a year. If this were a business, every financial adviser would tell you to file Chapter 11 and salvage what you can.

Washington keeps adding another trillion to the tab roughly every 100 days. As the debt climbs, interest payments climb faster. The country now spins in a debt spiral that ends only one way. Game over.

The more the world moves away from the dollar, the more tens of trillions of unwanted dollars come flooding home. You haven’t seen anything like real devaluation yet.

Then comes the $210 trillion in future unfunded liabilities — mostly Social Security and Medicare. Those numbers don’t pencil out in any universe.

Underneath all of it sits a sinking currency. The dollar lost 87% of its value since we abandoned the gold standard in 1971. For decades, the petrodollar arrangement held the world in our system by forcing oil purchases through the U.S. currency. Saudi Arabia let that mandate expire last year. Global energy deals immediately began shifting to other currencies.

The more the world moves away from the dollar, the more tens of trillions of unwanted dollars come flooding home. You haven’t seen anything like real devaluation yet.

To fund our binge, Washington must keep selling treasuries. But foreign buyers are losing interest. Rates rise. The government buys its own debt just to keep markets from buckling. The Cayman Islands now holds $1.85 trillion — the largest single foreign share and rising fast. Treasury officials tried to obscure the numbers. None of it signals stability.

Meanwhile, our economy rests on an absurdly fragile foundation: 70% consumption. Seven out of 10 dollars depend on Americans buying things they can no longer afford. Household debt hit a record $18.6 trillion — nearly two-thirds of GDP. Families now pay down debt instead of fueling growth.

Shrinking consumption means a shrinking economy. Shrinking economy means shrinking tax revenue. Combine that with a weakening dollar and the picture becomes darker still.

Enter artificial intelligence, the accelerant. AI threatens tens of millions of jobs within years, wiping out income and collapsing the consumption model even faster. A government facing falling revenue and exploding obligations cannot pretend to stay solvent.

Some cling to fantasies like universal basic income. With what money? The same government already $210 trillion short on existing promises? Please.

This all points toward an economic crash far larger than 2008. Washington froze that crisis with $29 trillion in bailouts — money it didn’t have then either. We conjured it and shoved it onto the national debt.

That option is gone.

Today the government sits too deep in debt, with a weaker dollar and fewer global buyers. And the next crisis won’t hit one sector. It hits everything:

• Record mortgage debt: $13.1 trillion
• Record credit-card debt: $1.2 trillion
• Collapsing commercial real estate: $4.9 trillion
• Big Tech borrowing hundreds of billions to inflate an AI bubble

OpenAI’s Sam Altman already expects an eventual government bailout for AI’s collapse.

RELATED: When the AI bubble bursts, guess who pays

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Total U.S. debt — public and private — hit $102.2 trillion in 2024. Washington cannot rescue a single major sector, let alone all of them. The national debt was $10 trillion during bailout 2008. It’s four times that now. The dollar buys less. Foreign creditors show less patience.

So who steps in next time? Who buys the treasuries? Who absorbs the losses?

No one. Not abroad. Not at home. Nowhere on this planet.

That leaves Washington with only one move: Print tens of trillions in new dollars and hand them to itself — more IOIs (as opposed to IOUs) stacked on a pile already ready to topple.

And that printing wave will obliterate whatever value the dollar still holds.

Think the dollar’s fallen far? You haven’t seen anything yet.

​National debt, Us government, Dollar, Opinion & analysis, Debt, Artificial intelligence, Taxes, Consumers, Economy, Economic growth, Cayman islands, China, Bonds, Gdp, Bubble 

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Why the post-Pelosi Democratic Party seems directionless

Earlier this month, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement after nearly four decades of public service. As Democrats say goodbye to one of their last remaining operatives to actually effectuate change, the party is left directionless.

The extent of Democratic leadership has now been reduced to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Both figures have repeatedly struggled to balance the progressives and the establishment moderates, with the most recent shutdown fiasco serving as a prime example.

‘We all need to take a very big dose of humility.’

Onlookers on both sides of the aisle largely agree that the undisciplined messaging and disorganized strategy would never have taken place when Pelosi held the gavel.

With no obvious leader to follow in Pelosi’s footsteps, the Democratic Party has become more undisciplined and rudderless than ever before.

RELATED: ‘Rebellion’? Democrat lawmakers urge federal agents to resist Trump agenda in cringe video

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“She’s an all-time great speaker because all other tools that speakers had to discipline or motivate legislators were not available to her,” said Dheeraj Chand, a Democratic strategist and pollster with Siege Analytics, of Pelosi.

“She has no whip. She has no carrot. All that she has left is persuasive power, and she held that entire group of imbeciles together using nothing but persuasive power,” Chand told Blaze News. “No small feat.”

The latest instance of intraparty insubordination took place when 23 House Democrats chose to rebuke one of their own. The unusual reprimand came after Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia of Illinois was censured by nearly all Republicans and several Democrats, with Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington authoring the condemnation.

Garcia, a retiring Democrat, was censured after he set up his chief of staff to be the lone Democrat on the primary ballot to succeed him in his deep-blue district, a move which Gluesenkamp Perez called “election subversion.”

“Both parties are finding it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to lead their respective caucuses in the traditional hierarchical manner,” Len Foxwell, a Democratic strategist based in Maryland, told Blaze News. “We see the example with Representative Garcia as emblematic of the challenges that Democrats face with breakaway members, and we saw during the attenuated leadership tenure of Kevin McCarthy how virtually impossible it is for establishment Republicans to contain the Freedom Caucus.”

“When there’s no leader, it’s not only that there’s no opinion, but there’s nobody calling the shots,” Chand told Blaze News. “When there’s nobody calling the shots, it’s hard to feel like you are playing for a team that can protect you.”

RELATED: Democrat lawmaker faces censure for ‘colluding’ with Epstein during congressional hearing

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In both cases, neither party had a political north star to follow. With former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, President Donald Trump’s command of the party slipped away after former President Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election. In the case of Democrats today, the party is still on the back foot following the colossal electoral rebuke they endured in November 2024 after Kamala Harris stepped in to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.

Some party moderates still believe that “a lot of Democratic voters didn’t come out because they were appalled at the vice president just getting to step in for the president, even though that was her job! Another perceived coronation, from her eyes, is just going to exacerbate the brand problem,” Chand suggested.

“Without a leader, every legislator is responding to what they think is the reason for the loss,” he told Blaze News.

“The Republican leadership chain is much more vertical and much more linear because the party is still led by Donald Trump,” Foxwell told Blaze News. “It is still absolutely Donald Trump’s party, and Mike Johnson toes the Donald Trump line, period full stop. It’s easy when you have an outsized leader at the top to set the substance, the tone, and the stylistic direction of the party.”

“We don’t have that, and we haven’t had it in more than a decade, even with the four-year interim with Joe Biden,” Foxwell added. “He was not what one would consider a strong party leader.”

RELATED: Hakeem Jeffries’ campaign allegedly solicited money from Jeffrey Epstein

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The shortcomings of the directionless Democratic Party culminated on November 4, 2024, when Trump swept all seven swing states and secured impressive electoral gains across nearly every demographic.

“Exit polls are something like tabular tarot cards — you see what you want to see in them. They reveal more about you than they do the world,” Chand told Blaze News. “It’s unreasonable to rely on them too much, but post-election surveys are very, very revealing. This kind of loss is a catastrophe that is decades in the making. It’s bigger than one candidate in 100 days or one term. We lost share with everyone except affluent white people. That’s a Reagan-level defeat [over Walter Mondale], for similar reasons.”

“Right now our party is in the midst of one of its periodic transitions in which the establishment wing is in a battle for primacy with its progressive insurgent wing. It’s taking on philosophical overtones, but also generational ones,” Foxwell told Blaze News. “It’s not just that the old-school leadership represented by Pelosi was perhaps philosophically out of sync with some of these younger, more progressive insurgents, but she also came from a different generation.”

While Republicans comfortably dominate the political landscape, Democrats are trying to find their own identity. New York progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani have emerged as rising stars in their party and as a rebuke to establishment figures like Schumer and even Pelosi. Other figures, like Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and even failed candidate Kamala Harris, seem to be scoping out the competition.

Even with a range of politicians to choose from, the first step Democrats need to take is zoom out and understand their electoral failures.

“Nobody sees this coming,” Chand told Blaze News. “I think we’re going to lose until we win. And when people figure out what it takes, we will win. I think we all need to take a very big dose of humility.”

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​Nancy pelosi, Donald trump, Kevin mccarthy, Mike johnson, Hakeem jeffries, Chuck schumer, Joe biden, Kamala harris, Barack obama, Democratic party, Republican party, Chuy garcia, Marie gluesenkamp perez, Establishment, Epstein, Alexandria ocasio-cortez, Zohran mamdani, Gavin newsom, 2024 election, Election night, 2028 election, Congress, Politics 

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The 2026 map tilts left if Republicans ignore what voters just told them

The Associated Press told us a partial truth after the November 4 elections: Republicans delude themselves when they brush off their losses. AP then added its usual spin, claiming GOP leaders deny that “affordability” drove their defeat. According to AP, soaring costs and economic uncertainty explain why Republican candidates collapsed across several high-profile races.

Republicans did not simply underperform. They were routed. GOP candidates lost in the marquee races in New Jersey and Virginia, and Democrats came within striking distance of a supermajority in the Virginia legislature. Democrats even clawed back ground in places like Luzerne County, Pennsylvania — a longtime working-class stronghold that had tilted red for decades.

The left treats politics as a total struggle. Republicans cannot keep treating it as a polite debate.

The GOP took a real shellacking.

AP captured only part of the story. Republican leaders keep denying the obvious, insisting the mid-cycle results followed the usual pattern for a party out of power. That excuse collapses when measured against the magnitude of the losses.

In New Jersey, a scandal-scarred, aggressively pro-LGBTQ Democrat crushed a strong Republican challenger by more than 14 points — in a state battered by high taxes, rising crime, and deep voter frustration. Jack Ciattarelli was supposedly running neck-and-neck with Mikie Sherrill. The final tally proved otherwise.

Virginia delivered an even starker picture. A hyper-progressive Democrat won the governor’s race against a conservative black Republican woman. The new attorney general prevailed despite revelations that he sent violent, disturbing text messages expressing rage toward a Democratic opponent and his children. Voters shrugged and voted for him anyway.

This election was not routine. It was a decisive, unmistakable rejection of the party in power. The results cannot be explained away by economic anxiety. Voters responded to ideology and identity — not affordability indexes.

Democratic voters turned out as a unified bloc against what they have been conditioned to believe is a dangerous, authoritarian movement. Media outlets, universities, Hollywood, and most major cultural institutions spent years drilling that narrative into the public. The left absorbed it fully and voted accordingly.

It’s hard to square AP’s affordability argument with the fact that voters rewarded Biden’s economically disastrous administration in the 2022 midterms — and continued to do so in these off-year races. By every major metric, economic conditions have improved dramatically since Trump returned to the White House. Inflation fell. Energy prices dropped. Markets hit record highs. Food and housing costs remain problems, but they remain high largely because the Federal Reserve refuses to cut rates — something Trump intends to fix when he replaces the current chair.

Meanwhile, Biden’s border catastrophe flooded the country with roughly 10 million illegal migrants, burdened taxpayers, and fueled a surge of crime. Yet he paid little political price. Voters did not punish him or his party.

To understand why, look at a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll. Georgia Republicans list inflation and the economy as their top concerns. Georgia Democrats list something else entirely: a “tougher response” to Trump and MAGA Republicans. They rank economic issues and even abortion behind their desire to defeat an ideological enemy. For them, politics is a moral crusade.

RELATED: Mamdani sells socialism — and Republicans peddle the Temu version

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This reveals the central mismatch. Republicans speak the language of policy: inflation, taxes, energy, spending. Democrats speak the language of existential struggle. They believe they are at war with a malevolent force, and that belief animates them far more than grocery bills or mortgage rates. Trump derangement syndrome is very much alive and well with these voters.

Republicans just want to return to normal politics — debates over issues, clean contests, and sportsmanlike disagreements. Their media allies keep telling them nothing has changed since Trump beat a ditzy, verbally inept opponent in 2024.

Wrong. Everything has changed.

Republicans face a massive, highly motivated voting bloc determined to strip them of power. Democrats aim to defeat and humiliate their opposition, not negotiate with it. Their rhetoric against ICE, their nonstop attacks on Trump, and their saturation campaigns across media and education paid off. They fought harder. They fought longer. And they won nearly everywhere that mattered.

The GOP cannot afford to treat this moment as another cyclical setback. The left treats politics as a total struggle. Republicans cannot keep treating it as a polite debate. Until the GOP grasps the scale of the conflict, election nights will keep looking like this one.

​Midterm elections, Gop, Democrats, 2026, Opinion & analysis, 2026 election, Republicans, Blue wave 

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Undercover video reveals Ohio school official IGNORING ban on boys in girls’ sports

One of the first things President Trump did when he got into the Oval Office was to take action to protect children in this country by signing an executive order to ban men from women’s sports.

And in 2024, Ohio passed a law banning males from competing in girls’ sports — but the law isn’t actually being enforced. In fact, it is being actively ignored.

In an undercover investigation carried out by Accuracy in Media, an interview with Jodi Zunk, assistant principal and athletic director of Eastwood Middle School in Pemberville, Ohio, revealed just that.

“We as a school are very open, but I will say in the larger community, there is still some — you know, it’s a small rural community. Whenever you get rural, you get pushback sometimes. But we are here to protect. Pronouns — him or her?” Zunk said in the secret recording.

“Ohio just passed a bunch of laws with the current administration. I’m very left-leaning, and I’ll just put that right out there. And so, this has been a struggle for me. But with the Trump administration and Ohio’s a Republican state, there have been some recent laws in OHSAA, which is our governing athletic body,” she continued.

“Previously, before they just changed some of these laws, we’ve had transgender students participate on the boys’ track team, or the girls’, or vice versa. Like, not their biological gender,” she added.

The reporter then played along, saying, “I do have an adopted birth certificate for my sister. She passes for a young lady. So we have that adopted birth certificate.”

“I wonder if we just don’t even tell anybody,” Zunk responded.

Accuracy in Media President Adam Guillette has had his team doing these undercover investigations in more than 250 schools.

“It’s gosh darn everywhere,” Guillette tells BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales. “You know, we’ve been undercover in Texas. In districts throughout the state, the exact same thing was occurring.”

“This is a part of our investigations in Ohio. I think it’s part seven. Both of them red states. If that’s what’s happening in presumably conservative, Republican states, you know, what’s happening in Illinois, Rhode Island, California, or even the purple states?” he continues.

“These radicals put their agenda ahead of the safety of girls every time,” he adds.

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.

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Feds charge Democrat and her brother for allegedly stealing millions in FEMA pandemic funds

A federal grand jury in Miami indicted four people, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida, for allegedly stealing millions in federal emergency funds.

Federal prosecutors said in a press release Wednesday that Cherfilus-McCormick used some of the stolen funds to support her 2021 campaign to win election.

‘No one is above the law, least of all powerful people who rob taxpayers for personal gain. We will follow the facts in this case and deliver justice.’

The 46-year-old congresswoman was indicted, along with her 51-year-old brother Edwin Cherfilus, for the scheme that involved overpayment to her family health care company.

She is also accused of participating in a straw donor scheme with the funds through the help of 46-year-old Nadege Leblanc, and filing a false federal tax return in 2021 with the aid of her 41-year old tax preparer, David K. Spencer.

If found guilty, Cherfilus-McCormick faces 53 years in prison. Her brother faces up to 35 years, Leblanc faces up to 10 years, and Spencer faces up to 33 years.

“Using disaster relief funds for self-enrichment is a particularly selfish, cynical crime,” read a statement from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. “No one is above the law, least of all powerful people who rob taxpayers for personal gain. We will follow the facts in this case and deliver justice.”

The congresswoman’s allegedly shady campaign practices were first reported by Inside Elections in 2022. The report noted that she had squeaked out a win in the heavily contested election through the use of expensive ads.

RELATED: Newsom’s former chief of staff arrested on corruption charges — the governor blames Trump

Cherfilus-McCormick was the subject of an ethics investigation by the House Ethics Committee in January 2024, and that probe was reauthorized in July.

The congresswoman denied any wrongdoing at the time.

“The Committee on Ethics has not yet concluded its review of the allegations, and no decision has been made at this time. As outlined in the Committee’s public statement, the referral for further review does not imply that any violation has occurred,” Cherfilus-McCormick said in a statement to Florida Politics. “I fully respect the process and remain committed to cooperating with the Committee as it works to bring this inquiry to a close.”

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​Sheila cherfilus-mccormick, Democrat indicted, Dem steals fed funds, Political corruption, Politics 

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Charlotte ice cream shop shuts down over threat from ICE to Latino workers and customers, owner says

The owner of a Latino-themed ice cream shop in Charlotte says his workers are too scared to drive to the shop over the threat of being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Javier Morales is the co-owner of Legends Ice Cream & Snacks, but his is not the only business shuttering over the threat from ICE operations in North Carolina.

‘We have shut down. We are an ice cream shop that 80%-90% of our customers are Latino, because we sell Latino ice cream flavors. We have mangonadas, we have Mexican street corn.’

“Right now, I cannot take the risk to bring my employees to be profiled because a lot of them speak Spanish. They look like me. I look like the profile that they’re looking for. So it is a risk that I am not willing to take. My customers — the same thing,” Morales said.

The Trump administration ordered a surge in federal immigration sweeps in Charlotte named Operation Charlotte’s Web. The operation has led to a large drop in school attendance, which many say proves the immense size of the illegal immigration crisis.

“So right now there’s a lot of uncertainty — we have shut down,” Morales continued. “We are an ice cream shop that 80%-90% of our customers are Latino, because we sell Latino ice cream flavors. We have mangonadas, we have Mexican street corn, we have our Legends products, which are our big sellers that are just full of Latino flavor, and it’s what we try to do.”

He said that on Sunday, he only had one customer during a two-hour period.

“Even in their face, you could tell that they were scared,” he added. “They came in, got their things, and left right out. The weather in Charlotte was beautiful this weekend, and as an ice cream shop, we should have been packed. We should have been busy, and now we’re dealing with our shutdown.”

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

Morales suggested that ICE was profiling people based on their ethnicity.

“It’s just really unfortunate that by the look of your skin, you’re being profiled and you’re being stopped — you’re being questioned,” he added.

WJZY-TV reported that a U.S. citizen claimed to have been stopped by ICE twice within 10 minutes on South Boulevard, and he was dragged out of his vehicle after his car window was busted out.

One report from the operation indicated that 1 out of every 6 residents in Charlotte are foreign-born.

“We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed,” read a statement from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “There have been too many victims of criminal illegal aliens. President Trump and Secretary Noem will step up to protect Americans when sanctuary politicians won’t.”

A closed sign on the business blamed “icy conditions” for the interruption in service.

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​Latino themed ice cream shop, Ice threat to latinos, Operation charlotte’s web, Ethnic profiling, Politics 

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Lee Zeldin humiliates Jasmine Crockett over her embarrassing accusation about Epstein donations

Left-wing firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) tried to smear Republicans with a bizarre attack about supposed campaign donations from deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein but got humiliated instead.

Crockett tried to insinuate that the disgraced financier had donated to the campaign of former Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York along with other Republican politicians.

‘Crockett should get censured for this and staff should be fired. What a shocking embarrassment.’

“Folks who also took money from somebody named Jeffrey Epstein, as I had my team dig in very quickly: Mitt Romney, the NRCC, Lee Zeldin, [former President] George Bush … McCain-Palin,” she said in a video that was circulated on social media.

“I just wanna be clear. If this is the standard that we’re gonna make, just know we gonna expose it all!” she added. “Just know that the FEC filings? They are available for everybody to review!”

Zeldin mocked her in a post on his social media account.

“Yes Crockett, a physician named Dr. Jeffrey Epstein (who is a totally different person than the other Jeffrey Epstein) donated to a prior campaign of mine,” he wrote.

“NO FREAKIN RELATION YOU GENIUS!” he added with interspersed clapping emojis.

Others hopped in to make fun of Crockett’s suggestion.

“My team dug into Representative Crocket. Did you know she died at the ALAMO?! Stop the presses,” joked one account.

“Please order immediate testing of the drinking water across her congressional district — something is seriously wrong with it,” added another.

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

RELATED: Jasmine Crockett calls Trump a ‘piece of s**t’ during rant at left-wing rally

“Crockett should get censured for this and staff should be fired. What a shocking embarrassment to go to the floor with this kind of insane accusation, and have the WRONG JEFFREY EPSTEIN,” replied GOP communications expert Matt Whitlock.

Crockett has recently suggested that she may launch a campaign for the U.S. Senate as retribution against Texas Republicans who redistricted the congressional maps to help them in the midterm elections.

“If you want to take my seat of 766,000 away, I feel like there has to be some karma in that to where I take your seat that is for 30 million away,” she said in October. “So we are, you know, the primary is the primary. That’s cool, but you got to win the general. So we are doing some testing here shortly to see if I can expand the electorate.”

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​Lee zeldin, Jasmine crockett, Jeffrey epstein donations, Epstein files, Politics 

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The 5-point plan to turn Trump’s 2025 wins into permanent victory

As the Trump administration nears the end of year one, Chris Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman (Lomez), hosts of BlazeTV’s newest show “Rufo & Lomez,” are compelled to not only pause and reflect on 2025, but also to ask the hard questions no one else will — and demand the second-year playbook that actually delivers total victory.

“I think it started out with some very solid wins — kind of blitzkrieg-style action on many fronts — but has the Trump administration hit a stall? Are things going as well as they should be?” asks Rufo.

In this episode, the duo, celebrating the wins and acknowledging the losses, offer a “five-point agenda” aimed at ensuring more success is on the horizon.

1. Reimmigration warfare

Immigration was second only to the economy in issues that drew voters to Trump, who pledged “mass deportations” from the rally pulpit his entire campaign trail. While the administration came out of the gate with ferocious plans to flush illegal aliens out of the country, deportations need to speed up, Rufo argues.

“What we’ve seen is a lot of fireworks, especially when it comes to DHS and ICE activities, but the actual deportations are rather low,” Lomez notes.

But that makes sense. “You’re never going to have enough muscle, enough kind of logistical force to deport 15 million people in handcuffs,” says Rufo.

The answer to this problem, they argue, is remigration — the voluntary relocation back to one’s native country. If the Trump administration is serious about hitting high numbers of deportations, it must incentivize people to leave of their own accord.

“If you want to get 10 million plus people to voluntarily leave the United States, you have to make their current life virtually impossible,” says Rufo. “You have to freeze them out of the financial system. You have to have punitive taxation on remittances that makes that economic incentive disappear.”

It is also critical that we begin looking at immigration through the lens of what benefits the American people, he adds. “We have to be ruthlessly selective about which populations are most likely to assimilate, most likely to contribute, and least likely to be a kind of net negative on whatever dimension — economic, social, cultural, [and] political. … Nobody has a right to immigrate to the United States. That’s a decision left to us.”

2. Build a future young Americans can afford

The nation’s younger generations are financially crushed in ways they weren’t just 10 years ago. Home affordability especially is out of reach for the majority of people under 40.

Rufo emphasizes the need for the Trump administration to “make a concrete economic agenda that will improve the possibilities for young people that are entering the work world and becoming adults.”

For starters, says Lomez, “We need to get rid of the regulatory framework that benefits older people at the expense of the young” — things like senior property-tax caps, locked-in low interest rates that keep people from ever selling, and zoning laws and building restrictions that prevent affordable homes from being built.

3. Crush terror networks

“The administration has to dismantle the left-wing terror networks, whether it’s Antifa [or] other organized militant groups,” says Rufo. “They have to actually get mugshots, case numbers, inmate numbers — the tangible evidence.”

These terror networks “are essentially saying that ‘we can control the streets in places like Portland; we can veto peaceful conservative speech in places like Berkeley.’ We have to ensure that they can no longer do so and can no longer exert control through violence.”

Lomez says the Trump administration’s designation of Antifa as a terrorist network was “a huge step in the right direction,” but more action is needed. He acknowledges that some of what the administration is doing is probably “sensitive” and might take years to accomplish, but it needs to “explain to the American people what they are doing” and up the consequences for violent members of these groups.

“The other thing that we need to put pressure on,” he says, “ is these institutions that are harboring these people [in terror networks].”

“If you do a good job planting bombs at the Pentagon as the Weather Underground did, you get sinecures at major universities’ you get speaking gigs; you get massive publicity. You become a public intellectual for the left. There are ways of applying pressure to these institutions to prevent them from doing this.”

However, in order to see this through, the right people must be in power. Otherwise bureaucracy slows it down or makes it impossible. Right now there are “certain Cabinet officials [who] are doing an amazing job,” says Rufo. “They’re extremely aggressive, [but] others seem to be more in it for the prestige, more in it for the spotlight, more in it the perks of the office.”

“We have to get people that are willing to fight and willing to play hard, and it has to be backed up at the highest level of the government.”

4. Death to DEI

While the Trump administration excelled at ripping up the DEI apparatus in the federal government, the initiative lives on in other places.

“Corporations, universities, school districts have kept this DEI system, a system of anti-white discrimination in particular, as part of their operating procedure,” says Rufo.

The Trump administration must “use the power of the government to say, ‘This stops now. It’s a violation of the Civil Rights Act. You don’t qualify for federal grants and contracts. You have to stop it.”’

“We need to go back and we need to look at who was making decisions in accordance with this anti-white ideology, but that broadly is encompassed under this sort of woke banner, so this would include like the trans stuff … and we need to remove them completely,” adds Lomez. “We need to apply maximum coercive pressure on these institutions to get rid of these people. They cannot employ these people any longer.”

5. Bankrupt the universities

To fix broken, ideologically captured universities, we can’t just punish them with investigations or funding cuts, says Rufo. We have to make them financially liable for student loans. “You have to make the universities hold the bag so that when it blows up, they blow up with it.”

This will have multiple positive downstream effects: reduce administrative bloat; stop the admission of unqualified students; end the “everyone must go to college” scam; and shift lower quintiles to trades, apprenticeships, associates degrees, and on-the-job training.

“The Trump administration should figure out how to use this student debt problem and essentially offload it to the universities. Look, universities are not MAGA’s base. Punishing the universities is not going to punish MAGA voters — precisely the opposite,” says Rufo, “and so there’s got to be a little bit of political calculation that’s baked into this formula that yields the outcome that we want.”

To hear more of Rufo and Lomez’s five-point plan for the Trump administration to stack up Ws, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Rufo & lomez, Chris rufo, Jonathan keeperman, Blazetv, Blaze media, Trump administration, Immigration, Dei, Housing crisis, Universities 

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Google boss compares replacing humans with AI to getting a fridge for the first time

The head of Google’s parent company says welcoming artificial intelligence into daily life is akin to buying a refrigerator.

Alphabet’s chief executive, Indian-born Sundar Pichai, gave a revealing interview to the BBC this week in which he asked the general population to get on board with automation through AI.

‘Our first refrigerator …. radically changed my mom’s life.’

The BBC’s Faisal Islam, whose parents are from India, asked the Indian-American executive if the purpose of his AI products were to automate human tasks and essentially replace jobs with programming.

Pichai claimed that AI should be welcomed because humans are “overloaded” and “juggling many things.”

He then compared using AI to welcoming the technology that a dishwasher or fridge once brought to the average home.

“I remember growing up, you know, when we got our first refrigerator in the home — how much it radically changed my mom’s life, right? And so you can view this as automating some, but you know, freed her up to do other things, right?”

Islam fired back, citing the common complaints heard from the middle class who are concerned with job loss in fields like creative design, accounting, and even “journalism too.”

“Do you know which jobs are going to be safer?” he posited to Pichai.

RELATED: Here’s how to get the most annoying new update off of your iPhone

The Alphabet chief was steadfast in his touting of AI’s “extraordinary benefits” that will “create new opportunities.”

At the same time, he said the general population will “have to work through societal disruptions” as certain jobs “evolve” and transition.

“People need to adapt,” he continued. “Then there would be areas where it will impact some jobs, so society — I mean, we need to be having those conversations. And part of it is, how do you develop this technology responsibly and give society time to adapt as we absorb these technologies?”

Despite branding Google Gemini as a force for good that should be embraced, Pichai strangely admitted at the same time that chatbots are not foolproof by any means.

RELATED: ‘You’re robbing me’: Morgan Freeman slams Tilly Norwood, AI voice clones

– YouTube

“This is why people also use Google search,” Pichai said in regard to AI’s proclivity to present inaccurate information. “We have other products that are more grounded in providing accurate information.”

The 53-year-old told the BBC that it was up to the user to learn how to use AI tools for “what they’re good at” and not “blindly trust everything they say.”

The answer seems at odds with the wonder of AI he championed throughout the interview, especially when considering his additional commentary about the technology being prone to mistakes.

“We take pride in the amount of work we put in to give us as accurate information as possible, but the current state-of-the-art AI technology is prone to some errors.”

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​Return, Ai, Artificial intelligence, Google, Chatbot, Gemini, Economy, Job market, Tech 

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Joy Reid takes ‘transphobic’ stance on locker rooms — after previously comparing trans critics to Nazis

Joy Reid came out against transgender-identifying males in women’s locker rooms after previously calling critics of the transgender movement Nazis.

The former MSNBC host made the surprising comments while opining about an incident at a Los Angeles gym where a woman expressed her outrage at seeing male genitalia in the locker room.

‘I can see why she would have gone and reported to management. … Does she not have the right to be at least uncomfortable with the situation?’

“I would be disturbed. I would be alarmed. I’m alarmed enough when I see a woman with her dangling boobies,” said Reid on her podcast Sunday.

“If I saw a penis in the ladies’ locker room, I would freak out, too!” she added.

Singer Tish Hyman went viral over video showing her accusing Alexis Black of exposing himself in the women’s locker room at a business formerly run as a Gold’s Gym. Hyman, who is a lesbian woman, said that it was the fourth time she had been forced to deal with the issue and the staff had ignored her complaints.

Reid sided with Hyman but said the issue had nothing to do with anti-transgender bigotry.

“What it’s saying is if I turn around and I see a pee-pee, a penis in front of me inside of the room, I would probably go to management and say, ‘Wait a minute. Why is there somebody — a naked man — in this room?’” Reid asked.

“Because just the world we live in, just from a safety standpoint and just from a privacy standpoint … I can see why she would have gone and reported to management,” she added. “Because if she’s uncomfortable, does she not have the right to be at least uncomfortable with the situation?”

Reid had previously compared critics of the transgender cause to those who supported Nazi Germany.

“Targeting trans people isn’t new. It is an age-old tradition which Nazi Germany did with brutally violent ends in the 1930s. While the Supreme Court refuses to do anything about weapons of war in schools, today they seemed inclined to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors,” she said nearly a year ago in comments documented by Sky News.

RELATED: Joy Reid says no one used the word inflation until Republicans taught them what it means to damage Dems

“I was in shock. I was scared, and I told him to leave. He would not leave and had no regard for my naked body,” said Hyman of the incident.

Hyman says her gym membership was revoked because of the incident.

“Trans people have a right to exist,” she said. “They need their own locker rooms and their own spaces. It doesn’t make sense to put them in the same room with women.”

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​Joy reid, Trans man in womens locker room, Nazi anti trans, Transgender bathrooms, Politics 

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Trump admin takes major step toward dismantling Department of Education

The Trump administration is advancing its plan to dismantle the Department of Education, seeking to return more power to the states.

The department announced on Tuesday that it had entered into six new interagency agreements with four government agencies to “break up the federal education bureaucracy” and “ensure efficient delivery of funded programs.”

‘What we want to do is to show Congress that this implementation works.’

These new agreements involved partnerships with the Departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State.

“Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said. “As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state through our 50-state tour, empower local leaders in K-12 education, restore excellence to higher education, and work with Congress to codify these reforms. Together, we will refocus education on students, families, and schools — ensuring federal taxpayer spending is supporting a world-class education system.”

The Education Department and the DOL will establish the Elementary and Secondary Education Partnership, which aims to “empower parents and states” to promote improvements in the education system that will better serve students.

“DOL will take on a greater role in administering federal K-12 programs, ensuring these programs are better aligned with workforce and college programs to set students up for success at every part of their education journey,” a press release from the Education Department read.

A separate partnership with the DOL aims to improve postsecondary education and workforce development programs. The Labor Department will administer grant programs to “help students from all walks of life obtain the credentials and career training they need to prosper and contribute to the American economy.”

RELATED: America’s largest teachers’ union declares war on the Trump administration, will use kids as foot soldiers

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The Department of the Interior will work with the Education Department to establish the Indian Education Partnership to improve Native American education.

“Through a vital partnership with the Department of Education, the Department of the Interior will assume administration for enhancing Indian education programs, streamlining operations, and refocusing efforts to better serve Native youth and adults across the nation,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum stated.

The HHS will establish the Foreign Medical Accreditation Partnership to assess whether the standards of foreign medical schools are comparable to U.S. standards.

“Medical education must incorporate timely, rigorous science on nutrition, metabolism, and all medical subjects. [HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] is leading the charge with American medical schools and HHS will encourage foreign medical schools through this partnership,” Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill stated.

HHS will also create the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Partnership to improve on-campus child care programs for parents attending college.

Lastly, the State Department will set up the International Education and Foreign Language Studies Partnership “to streamline international education program funding and data collection measures, consolidate program management, and advance national security interests.”

RELATED: Trump admin battles teachers’ unions in latest Education Department legal challenges

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

McMahon told CNN on Wednesday that these partnerships are not yet ready to implement but are in the “beginning stages” of establishing interagency agreements.

She acknowledged that the Trump administration would need congressional approval to make these moves permanent, adding that the current goal is to demonstrate that the changes will be effective.

“What we want to do is to show Congress that this implementation works,” McMahon told CNN.

Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, has previously pledged to take legal action against the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Education Department.

Freedom Foundation CEO and Teacher Freedom Alliance President Aaron Withe responded to the Education Department’s latest “bold action” and the union’s roadblocks, in a statement emailed to Blaze News.

“President Trump is delivering on his promise to dismantle the federal education bureaucracy, and who is leading the opposition? Randi Weingarten and the teachers’ unions,” Withe stated. “The teachers’ unions have enjoyed unprecedented power over this department since Jimmy Carter created it as a political favor to the [National Education Association]. They’ve had decades to deliver results. Instead, American students keep falling further behind while spending keeps going up.”

“The unions oppose these reforms because they threaten the special access they’ve enjoyed for too long,” Withe continued. “Well, that era is over. Parents, students, and local communities deserve better than a system designed to serve union bosses. The Freedom Foundation applauds President Trump and Secretary McMahon for taking bold action to break up this failed bureaucracy and return control of education where it belongs.”

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