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Border czar Tom Homan fired back at a heckler during a Turning Point USA conference at the University of Texas at El Paso on Thursday.

During the event, Homan spoke and answered questions from the audience, which numbered roughly 500.

‘I don’t want anybody hurt. I don’t want anybody to die — that includes officers and that includes aliens.’

He compared the border security under the Trump administration to that of the previous White House, describing the difference between them as “night and day.”

“There was 12,000 a day sometimes crossing the border illegally,” Homan said, referring to illegal crossings under the Biden administration. “You know what it was yesterday — 106 across 2,000 miles of border. And those 106, not a single one of those were released into the United States.”

The audience erupted in applause.

Homan debunked the legacy media’s narrative claiming that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is disproportionately arresting non-criminals. He stated that the most recent stats indicated that 64% of immigration arrests were of criminals.

RELATED: ‘He’s not that smart’: Homan lampoons Chicago mayor for pleading with UN to intervene against ICE

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

He slammed the media and immigration enforcement critics for labeling him the architect of “family separations.”

“It wasn’t done to punish. It was done in an attempt to save lives and stop sexual assaults, and maybe control the border,” Homan said.

“You are a racist!” a heckler shouted. “You are destroying the Constitution!”

The audience responded with boos and drowned out the heckler’s rant by chanting, “USA!”

Homan continued his speech unfazed by the disturbance, explaining that the Biden administration lost track of over 300,000 unaccompanied alien children and had not attempted to locate them. He reported that the Trump administration had already located 40,000 of those children.

RELATED: DHS to increase operations in Twin Cities region as Somali fraud becomes unignorable

Photo by BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP via Getty Images

“Every night [when] I go to bed, I pray for the safety and security of every Border Patrol agent, ICE agent, and I pray for everybody that we’re looking for,” Homan said. “I don’t want anybody hurt. I don’t want anybody to die — that includes officers and that includes aliens. … Call me what you want.”

“Traitor!” a heckler shouted back.

Homan replied by telling the heckler to “grow a backbone, put a Kevlar vest and a gun on your hip, and go secure this border!”

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​News, Tom homan, Homan, Border czar, Trump administration, Trump admin, Immigration crisis, Illegal immigration crisis, Immigration, Illegal immigration, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Border, Border security, National security, Turning point usa, Tpusa, Politics 

On November 29 — Small Business Saturday — New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani slapped a new caption on a five-month-old campaign video pledging to boost NYC’s small-business ecosystem with massive deregulation measures, leading some conservatives to applaud the socialist as more based than they originally thought.

In the clip, Mamdani vows to “make it faster, easier, and cheaper for small businesses to get started and stay open” by cutting fines and fees by 50%, expediting permits and applications, appointing a “Mom and Pop czar” to fight bureaucracy, and increasing funding for small business programs by 500%.

This kind of red-tape-slashing, deregulatory rhetoric is something you would normally hear from Republicans or maybe an old-school Democrat, but to hear it from a self-described socialist is truly an anomaly.

Or is it?

John Doyle, BlazeTV host of “The John Doyle Show,” says these conservatives praising Mamdani’s small-business plan have had the wool pulled over their eyes. Mamdani doesn’t care about small business; “he is simply rewarding his foreign base.”

For starters, the massive increase in small-business funding, Doyle reminds, is simply “redistribution of wealth from the whiter neighborhoods.”

“I’m quoting Mamdani, who wanted to raise taxes specifically on the whiter neighborhoods … to pay for these handouts,” he says.

But the more important issue is who these small-business perks are intended to benefit. It’s not native New Yorkers; it’s the foreigners who “elected him to office,” says Doyle.

In response to the people who foolishly think that Mamdani’s small-business plan reveals he’s maybe not the stark raving mad Marxist we thought he was, Doyle tweeted the following:

— (@)

Because NYC’s business marketplace is one of the most saturated and competitive in the nation, “who is moving to New York and starting businesses?” Doyle asks. “It’s obviously foreigners.”

Deregulation for Mamdani, he argues, isn’t about helping businesses; it’s about lowering the standards — “cleanliness standards, worker hygiene standards, temperature control, food safety standards, inspections, record-keeping” — to turn NYC into the kind of third-world slum his voter base came from.

“That is what is going on here,” he declares.

“You have to be 200 IQ enough to understand that in this instance, deregulation is actually Marxist in nature.”

To hear more of Doyle’s fiery take, watch the episode above.

Want more from John Doyle?

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​The john doyle show, John doyle, Blazetv, Blaze media, Zohran mamdani, Nyc, Mamdani, Small businesses, Small business loans 

A political system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

RELATED: The real danger isn’t immigration — it’s the refusal to become American

Photo by AASHISH KIPHAYET/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

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​Islam, Political islam, Sharia law, Texas, Immigration, Opinion & analysis, Jihad 

Modern gender activists have convinced much of the world — and themselves — that transgenders are suffering from gender dysphoria and truly believe they were born in the wrong body.

However, there’s a dark underbelly to transgenderism that BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey believes is more likely the reason for the surge of gender transitions among young men and women today.

And it’s readily available on your children’s devices.

“I no longer believe that most people today who say that they’re the opposite sex have true gender dysphoria. I believe that gender dysphoria exists as it is defined, or was defined, in the DSM5,” Stuckey says.

“Today it is, I believe, mostly due to pornography,” she explains. “It is due to a sexual fetish that they have developed over time, that there is now a very real algorithmic pipeline via Pornhub and other porn sites that push young men to seek more and more exciting dopamine hits.”

“So the pornography changes from something that is simple to something that might be more erotic, more violent, more subversive, and it gets into not only like different kinds of sexual deviancy in addition to just pornography, homosexuality, but then gender bending and gender fluidity,” she continues.

This presents a major issue as pornography has been widely normalized over the years as almost a rite of passage for young boys — but it can have devastating effects on their impressionable minds.

“I believe that is what is motivating the majority of transgenderism among men today,” she says, “And I just want you to know that this is not nuance, that this doesn’t deserve more of our empathy, that these people don’t deserve to be allowed into any women’s spaces at all.”

“I want you to stare at it in the eyes as sexual depravity and perversion,” she continues, adding, “That doesn’t have anything to do with gender. It has do with sex. And I’m not talking about biological sex. I’m talking about sexual fetish and pornography.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Free, Sharing, Video, Camera phone, Video phone, Upload, Youtube.com, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Transgenderism, Mental illness, Dsm5, Lgbtq agenda, Trans radicals, Transgender, Pornography, Psychology 

Fr. Brendan Kilcoyne is one of the few priests in Ireland with the courage to say what others won’t.

Week after week, he tells the truth that the rest of public life tiptoes around: Ireland, like Britain and much of the West, is being reshaped by two forces at once — an aggressively secular culture that mocks belief, and a rising influx of people whose values come from religious traditions deeply at odds with Christianity.

This is the part the West refuses to face: A culture without God doesn’t stay neutral.

Both currents weaken what remains of Ireland’s Christian foundations. One breaks it down. The other builds something else in its place.

Kilcoyne doesn’t simply call for “legal immigration” — the safe line politicians repeat to sound reasonable — but he goes farther.

He calls for Christian-only immigration, not as a provocation but as a survival strategy for a civilization that once took the gospel for granted. In a country where faith once shaped the architecture of daily life, he argues that if people must come from abroad, they should be people who can carry that faith forward.

He’s right. It’s the only sane path left.

I know this to be true from experience. Ireland hosts thousands of Filipino workers, many of them nurses and care staff. They are some of the warmest people I have ever met. In many ways, they remind many Irish people of an older Ireland — devout, hardworking, grateful, family-centered.

My mother works closely with a Filipino woman in her home-nursing work. She describes her as one of the kindest souls she has ever known. This isn’t some abstract argument about cultural cohesion. Instead, it’s something I’ve watched play out in real life. Their Catholic faith shapes their character, their sense of duty, and their reverence for life. Wherever they go, they make the place stronger.

Contrast that with what just happened in the U.S.

Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old Army specialist, was shot and killed in Washington, D.C. The alleged gunman, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, came into the country after the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. One can’t pretend cases like this exist in a vacuum, any more than one can pretend the grooming-gang scandals in Britain came out of thin air.

These tragedies sit inside a larger pattern. The West has opened its doors to people with radically different expectations about women, law, authority, violence, and faith — and then acts stunned when those differences surface in the streets.

RELATED: Correcting the narrative: What the Bible actually says about immigration

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In America, Islam is on track to become the second-largest religion by 2040, outpacing Judaism and mainline Protestantism. That shift isn’t driven by conversion but by immigration patterns and birth rates.

Let that sink in. A country built on Christian memory and Christian morals is heading toward a religious landscape its founders would barely recognize. None of this is speculation. It’s demographic math.

This matters because religions aren’t interchangeable. They shape law, culture, expectations for public life, attitudes toward authority, dissent, forgiveness, and the value of the individual. A society shaped by the Sermon on the Mount will never think or function the same as one shaped by Islam’s foundational texts.

The two traditions couldn’t be farther apart.

One formed cultures around decency and love of neighbor. The other arose in an age of conquest, tribal loyalty, and rigid obedience. These differences aren’t cosmetic but civilizational. And with Christianity in the West losing its fighting spirit, it’s not hard to see which force will fill the vacuum. Islam is not a private spirituality, but a complete system of life — legal, social, political — built on the expectation that it will shape the society around it.

Again, this isn’t speculation. It’s written into its earliest texts and confirmed by its history, which raises the obvious question: What kind of West emerges when the religious balance tips this far?

Kilcoyne’s message isn’t aimed at Ireland alone. It applies to any nation whose culture was built on Christianity — meaning most of Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

A society can’t function without shared belief and shared boundaries. Christianity once provided both. It shaped civic standards, festivals, art, manners, and the meaning of freedom. Remove it, and the God-sized space is claimed by something else immediately, like nihilism, resentment, and ideologies far more savage and unforgiving.

While being Christian doesn’t automatically make people decent, it does mean they’re far more likely to share the values that hold a society together.

This is the part the West refuses to face: A culture without God doesn’t stay neutral. It slides into something far less humane. And a country that imports large numbers of people who follow a religion with no respect for Christian norms doesn’t stay stable. It absorbs that religion’s worldview whether it wants to or not.

If immigration is necessary — and in many aging nations it is — Kilcoyne asks why we wouldn’t welcome those whose faith strengthens, rather than weakens, the society they enter.

Why not bring in people who see children not as burdens but blessings, who honor marriage, who take charity seriously, who treat the elderly with care, who believe suffering has meaning, and who know the world is more than appetite and impulse?

These are the qualities that once made the West strong. And while being Christian doesn’t automatically make people decent, it does mean they’re far more likely to share the values that hold a society together.

Sarah Beckstrom is dead. A young woman who trusted her country, trusted its leaders, trusted the system that put her in uniform. If America had been more serious about value-based immigration — if it had prioritized people who share its creed and its cultural instincts — she might still be alive. Her death shouldn’t be treated as another tragic headline to scroll past.

If anything, let it mark the moment the country finally admits that immigration policy isn’t a paperwork issue but a question of national survival in the most literal sense. Let her death mean something.

Let it push America toward choosing people who lift the nation up — not those who drag it into the abyss.

​Brendan kilcoyne, Catholic, Christian, Christianity, God, Immigration, Sarah beckstrom, Faith 

Our new addition is finally finished — level floors, wide doors, and a space where my wife, Gracie, can move freely despite her severe disabilities. After years of improvising in tight quarters, we’re grateful to have a place that works for us, even if it’s not perfect.

The new part of the house went up during Trump’s second non-consecutive term; the original part went up during the second term of the only other president to do the same, Grover Cleveland. Joining the two is a bit like welding a Tesla to a horse-drawn buggy — functional, charming, and only slightly defiant of gravity.

When most of life leans, you can still make one crooked thing right.

During construction, the fridge in our tiny kitchen got bumped off the carefully placed shims and tilted just enough to drive me crazy. Admittedly, that’s not a long trip.

I ignored it for about a week but finally couldn’t stand it anymore. Leveling a refrigerator in a cabin built during the Cleveland administration isn’t simple. There are pulleys, levers, questions about physics, and — in my case — a call to the engineering department at Montana State. They were not amused. My neighbor Charles, who often “pity helps” me, wasn’t available. I can’t prove it, but I think he hung up and immediately burst into laughter.

So I did it myself.

I knew it would be a project — and once I started, it could not easily be interrupted by caregiving duties. But exasperation collided with need, and I got down on the floor (at a slant) and went to work. It went exactly as expected: mild swearing, a few tears, and then a small victory. When the bubble on the level finally drifted near the center, I declared success, remembering that old rancher’s saying: “Most things can be fixed with baling wire and bad language.”

It’s level — well, Montana level — but I’ll take it.

Much of what I’ve faced as a caregiver over 40 years can’t be fixed. But small victories, like leveling a refrigerator in a house built when bread was 3 cents and buffalo still outnumbered politicians, remind me that even when most of life leans, you can still make one crooked thing right.

Everyone has a version of that tilted refrigerator — something off-kilter you keep meaning to fix but never quite reach. It might be a strained relationship, a stack of bills, or a heart worn down by too much bad news. You can’t straighten the world, but you can steady what’s right in front of you.

When life feels unsettled, taking time to level something — even a small thing — matters more than we think. Sometimes that quiet act of setting one thing right gives us just enough footing to stand through the rest of it.

RELATED: When fathers fall, grace asks more of us

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Years ago, city officials talked about “broken-window” policing: Neglect one thing, and the whole neighborhood starts to crumble. The opposite is also true. Fix one small thing, and a bit of order comes back. Leveling even one ordinary object pushes back against the chaos.

Most caregiving must be repeated tomorrow, but every so often something stays fixed. A grab bar anchored in the right place. A ramp that finally fits the chair. The day may still be full of mess and pain, but that one thing won’t need doing again. It stands there quietly, reminding you that not everything leans. Some things still hold. And sometimes that’s enough to remind you that you still can too.

When I turn on the news, I see dysfunction I can’t do anything about. But when I fix dinner, my refrigerator no longer leans.

There’s an old Appalachian saying: “Fix what you can. The rest was never yours to mend.”

Level what you can. Let the rest lean.

​Opinion & analysis, Caregiving, Caregivers, House, Crooked, Homeownership, Fix, Donald trump, Grover cleveland, Family, Marriage 

Back in July, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, establishing Trump Accounts — a tax-free savings program that provides a $1,000 government deposit for every U.S. newborn from 2025 to 2028. Families are permitted to contribute up to $5,000 annually starting July 4, 2026. Funds are locked until age 18, when they become available for uses like education, a first home, or business startup.

The core idea behind the initiative is to revive the American dream for today’s young Americans, who have lower home ownership rates, more student debt, and less wealth at age 30 than their parents or grandparents did.

But is it really a good idea? Or is it just another form of socialist wealth redistribution that creates dependency rather than true opportunity?

On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn spoke with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s adviser Joseph Lavorgna.

Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described these Trump Accounts as “the beginning of a shareholder economy” during a panel at the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York.

“That’s a little frightening because we’ve been warning against the stakeholder economy. How far down the road does Secretary Bessent think we were on the stakeholder if this is the beginning of a shareholder economy?” Glenn asks.

But Lavorgna says there’s nothing frightening about Bessent’s statement.

“What he meant by that was that the U.S. economy is one that thrives when you’ve got incentives to produce and work,” he says.

“The bill that the president signed … encourages capital formation and growth and the ability to invest in the future to teach, in many cases yet-to-be-born boys and girls, the power of compound interest in being a stakeholder in the capitalist system.”

“In other words, if you have a stake in the system, you don’t want to burn it down?” Glenn asks.

“Right. It’s essentially the American dream. It’s a way to build wealth creation,” Lavorgna confirms, praising Trump Accounts as “a great investment for the future.”

But Glenn has two major concerns.

One: The same idea was proposed to our founders, but they shut it down.

“This was proposed before, during the founding era. It was called Agrarian Justice, and Thomas Paine said, ‘We should give 15 pounds to everybody who turns 21,’ and that 15 pounds … would be, in today’s dollars, about $2,500 to $3,000,” says Glenn.

The founders, he explains, “rejected it” as “redistribution of wealth” and “not government’s role.”

But Lavorgna defends the idea. “That was over a couple hundred years ago, and the economy and the capitalist system has evolved significantly. This isn’t a redistribution of wealth; this is an investment in the future and people’s livelihoods.”

He also argues that the program is a tool for developing “financial literacy,” meaning American youth will be taught that “when they put money aside, that money will grow and do wondrous things through the power of compound interest.”

Glenn’s second counterargument is that we shouldn’t be beginning any new government programs when the national debt is already out of control.

“We’re $38 trillion in debt. I’m so torn on this because I really do understand people feel like they don’t have a stake; they’re never going to get ahead; they’re never going to get a house — all of this stuff that’s leading them to this lie of socialism,” he says.

“We have to do something. But again, I’m so concerned about opening up a can of worms here that just gets out of control again.”

But Lavorgna says Trump Accounts are “not consumption.” The money, he says, goes straight “back into the capitalist system” — sparking businesses, growing companies, and creating jobs and wealth.

“The only way that we are going to be able to deal with the debt situation is to grow and to grow fast,” he says.

To hear Glenn’s response, watch the full interview above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Blazetv, Blaze media, Scott bessent, Joseph lavorgna, Us treasury, Trump accounts, Capitalism, Wealth redistribution, Socialism, National debt 

Following the unrest that unfolded at a Turning Point USA event at the University of California, Berkeley, the Department of Justice has launched an investigation into those behind the disruption.

One of the alleged organizers of the recent protest, By Any Means Necessary, has been described as part of the ecosystem of the “anti-fascist” movement.

These educators are attempting to advance their political agenda through statewide governmental jobs and teachers’ union leadership positions.

Unfortunately, UC Berkeley is no stranger to left-wing protests turning violent.

In 2017, several far-left agitators were arrested at a conservative rally on the same campus. One of those individuals was BAMN member and middle school teacher Yvette Felarca, who had previously defended the use of militant violence in an interview. She had also been charged in 2016 with assault related to a previous counter-protest.

But Felarca is not an anomaly. Rather, she is one example of a fringe of aggressive, far-left revolutionaries who seek to corrupt the K-12 education ecosystem to advance their radical political ideology. Whether through ethnic studies curriculums, organizing “Teach-ins for Gaza” and anti-Israel activism, or alleged glorification of terrorism and endorsement of Antifa, activist teachers are leveraging the historical trust bestowed upon the education profession to foment an anti-Western, anti-American mindset in schools and the culture writ large.

Not surprisingly, the teachers’ unions play a role in funding, promoting, and protecting these activist educators.

In fact, the American Federation of Teachers came to Felarca’s aid in 2018 by passing a resolution in support of her and her lawsuit against Judicial Watch. The legal action was aimed at stopping the watchdog group from obtaining public records from the school district. But the lawsuit failed.

Yet this has not stopped Felarca and other BAMN members from continuing to advance a far-left ideology both inside and outside K-12 schools.

For example, in March, Oakland High School (Calif.) students, flanked by teachers who affiliate with BAMN, led a protest over immigration policies. In this instance, the influence of the teacher-activists is no secret. The student protesters publicly claimed they received help from the local BAMN chapter in organizing the event.

RELATED: The radical left is poisoning our schools — here’s how we fight back

skynesher/Getty Images Plus

Even though street activism can be the most visible form of ideological battle on the American culture, these educators are attempting to advance their political agenda through statewide government jobs and teachers’ union leadership positions.

The executive vice president of United Educators of San Francisco, for example, is currently running for state superintendent of public instruction. The San Francisco Unified teacher touts that under his leadership, the UESF “transformed into one of California’s strongest and most militant unions.” His site also states that he is an activist and “longtime organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation” — an organization known to be behind many of the anti-Israel and anti-ICE protests that have taken place across the country.

In Los Angeles, the Association of Raza Educators, the education wing of the radical group Union del Barrio, has a slate of individuals running for positions of leadership in United Teachers Los Angeles. Included on the roster is teacher Ron Gochez, who is no stranger to controversial comments and actions.

In fact, he was recently the subject of a DOJ probe over public statements he made toward Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Other ARE members have served on committees for the California Teachers Association, have been delegates to the NEA convention, and are engaged in groups such as Educators for Justice in Palestine and Queers for Palestine.

The system is being used as a tool to advance a radical left-wing political agenda.

But should ARE achieve its goal of taking over leadership of the union of one of the largest school districts in the country, it would be more status quo than anomaly.

In 2021, UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz infamously proclaimed that “there is no such thing as learning loss.” She continued by stating that it was “OK that our babies may not have learned their times tables … they learned the difference between riot and a protest.”

Myart-Cruz said the quiet part out loud — the teachers’ unions and far-left educators value political activism over learning.

Yet parents, public officials, and even other teachers are either willfully blind or largely unaware of the influence that these nefarious actors have on education despite the increase in public-facing activism. The system is being used as a tool to advance a radical left-wing political agenda, and it comes with a very steep cost for American children.

The proof is already starting to rear its ugly head, as evidenced by a recent University of California, San Diego, report.

Regardless of one’s position on public schools or teachers’ unions, this issue will eventually impact all Americans if left unaddressed. It is time to put a stop to the “school to far-left activism” pipeline and return the institution to its primary charter — to teach children to read and do math.

​Radical left, Education takeover, Teachers unions, Education 

After the nearly unanimous passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act last month, many have wondered what other files and information have yet to be disclosed amid the heated controversy over the Epstein files.

A federal judge in Florida just ordered the release of grand jury documents from an old case against Epstein, defying past orders not to release them.

U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith argued that a recent law now takes precedence over the rules that prohibited past disclosure.

U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith has ordered the release of grand jury transcripts related to investigations from 2005 and 2007 involving convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

RELATED: Was the latest Epstein document dump just Trump’s 4D chess trap? Steve Deace answers.

Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images

Grand jury proceedings are often conducted in private and there are higher standards to meet in order to disclose transcripts from them.

However, U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith, in his short decision to release the transcripts, argued that a recent law now takes precedence over the rules that prohibited past disclosure.

Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky), who spearheaded the effort for disclosure, posted the news of the ruling on X on Friday afternoon.

Massie highlighted the fact that the Epstein Files Transparency Act played a crucial role in the judge’s decision to override past decisions against disclosure.

The Act, being “later-enacted” and more “specific”, trumps the rules barring the release of the documents in the past.

Epstein was not convicted of any crimes as a result of this grand jury investigation..

Instead, he famously pleaded guilty to comparatively minor charges in 2008 under the U.S. Attorney at the time, Alex Acosta, who later became Trump’s Labor Secretary in his first term. Acosta subsequently resigned following scrutiny over the non-prosecution agreement in 2008.

It is not clear when the grand jury transcripts will be released or exactly how much new information will be disclosed.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law on November 19, gives the government 30 days to prepare and release all relevant records.

Those following the case can expect an update on the release of any remaining files by December 19.

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​Politics, Epstein, Epstein files, Trump, Trump administration, Rodney smith, Epstein files transparency act, Thomas massie, Florida, Jeffrey epstein 

One of the great beauties of America, says Mark Levin, is her lack of fixed social classes. With grit and determination, anyone from any background can rise in the ranks and become successful. That’s why America is the top country of origin for self-made millionaires and billionaires.

Now compare that to Marxist regimes, where the mantra is “you are what you are, and that’s where you’re going to stay.” Work ethic, intelligence, ambition don’t get you anywhere, unless, of course, you’re part of the government machine that crushes the people.

And yet the radical left and the neofascist right alike are pushing similar grievance politics that echo Marxist tactics — demanding more government to “fix” a rigged system. Progressives say, “If you’re a minority, the system is out to get you,” while “the neofascists [say] if you’re white, the system is out to get you,” says Levin, accusing both groups of “racializing” economics to the detriment of all.

“They want more and more government, which is the biggest problem we have,” he says.

But this push for more federal power is the folly of ideologues. “We conservatives are motivated by reality. … Our principles are based on knowledge and information and experience and reality — not a fanatical ideology,” says Levin.

“This ideology of Marxism and socialism, it’s been imposed on one society after another — imposed. And it’s a disastrous outcome in every case: poverty, often genocide, no civil liberties.”

But because the government holds all the power, the blame can’t be placed on the ruling class when everything inevitably goes to hell in a handbasket. Rather the people — powerless and crushed economically and in spirit — shoulder the blame.

But even though history lessons in failed socialism abound, still people like Robert Reich make capitalism the villain. Levin plays a clip of the former secretary of labor under Bill Clinton whining about McDonald’s high prices — the same complaint he made in 1994 — as proof that corporations are deliberately creating a permanent underclass.

Levin’s response is brutal and simple: “You were an idiot in 1994, and you’re an idiot today.” In the 31 years since Reich’s prophecy, millions of supposedly “left-behind” Americans started businesses, bought homes, and invested.

“Your life isn’t static. The economy is not static. Nothing is static. The fact is things keep turning along. Sometimes they go over a cliff; sometimes up to the stars,” says Levin, noting that his life has changed tremendously since 1994.

But if you really want to buy Reich’s argument that McDonald’s and “processed foods” are the problem, go ahead and ban them, he says.

Get rid of the Big Macs, the canned beans, the frozen pizzas, the mass-produced bread, the snacks — everything affordable and convenient. The result won’t be social justice; it’s “people starve to death,” says Levin.

The ideological war on private enterprise always ends up punishing the very people it claims to help — exactly the pattern Marxism has repeated from Moscow to Havana. America works, Levin concludes, precisely because we let people solve their own problems instead of letting utopian grifters in Washington or on social media tell them the system is rigged and only total government control can save them.

To hear more of his commentary, watch the video above.

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The United States is one of the few countries that allows prescription drugmakers to speak directly to patients. That simple fact now fuels political calls to “ban the ads.” But restricting direct-to-consumer advertising would do more than change what runs during football games. It would shrink the flow of information to patients and push our system toward the bureaucratic throttling that has turned other countries into innovation laggards.

Advertising is part of a dynamic market process. Entrepreneurs inform consumers about new products, and when profits are high, firms have every incentive to improve quality and expand access.

The pattern is clear: The more Washington intervenes, the fewer cures Americans get.

New, cheaper treatments need to be brought to consumers’ attention. Otherwise, people stay stuck with older, more expensive options, and competition falters. Banning pharmaceutical advertising would hobble innovative firms whose products are not yet known and leave those seeking medical care less informed.

Critics warn that “a growing proliferation of ads” drives demand for costly treatments, even when less expensive alternatives exist. Yet a recent study in the Journal of Public Economics finds that exposure to pharmaceutical ads increases drug utilization across the board — including cheaper generics and non-advertised medications. In short, advertising pushes people who need care to make better, more informed decisions.

A market-based system rewards risk-taking and innovation. Despite the many flaws in American health care, the United States leads the world in medical breakthroughs — from cancer immunotherapies to vaccines developed in record time. That success wasn’t created by government decree. It came from competition: firms communicating openly about their products, fighting for patients, and reinvesting earnings into the next generation of lifesaving discoveries.

Sure, some regulations are adopted with good intentions. But drug ads are already heavily regulated, and a full ban would create serious unintended consequences — including the unseen cost of innovative drugs that will never reach patients because firms won’t invest in developing treatments they are barred from promoting.

American health care is now regulated to the point of satisfying no one. Patients face rising costs. Physicians navigate a Kafkaesque maze of top-down rules. Taxpayers foot the bill for decisions made by distant bureaucracies. Measures associated with socialized medicine continue creeping into the marketplace.

Price controls in the Inflation Reduction Act are already cutting into pharmaceutical research and development. One study estimates roughly 188 fewer small-molecule treatments in the 20 years after its enactment. The pattern is clear: The more Washington intervenes, the fewer cures Americans get.

RELATED: Trump faces drugmakers that treat sick Americans like ATMs

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The answer to the problems in American health care isn’t more government. It’s less. Expected profitability drives investment in biomedical research. Imposing new advertising bans or European-style price controls would mean lower-quality care, higher mortality, and the erosion of America’s leadership in medical innovation.

The United Kingdom offers a warning. Once a global leader, it drove investment offshore through overregulation and rigid price controls. Today, only 37% of new medicines are made fully available for their licensed uses in Britain. Americans spend more, but they also live longer: U.S. cancer patients outlive their European counterparts for a reason.

Discovering new drugs is hard. Every breakthrough begins with the freedom to imagine, to compete, and to communicate. Strip companies of the ability to inform patients, and you strip away the incentive to develop the next cure. Competitive markets — not centralized control — will fuel tomorrow’s medical miracles.

​Drug prices, Big pharma, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Robert f. kennedy jr., Regulation, Advertising, Tv ads, Innovation, Research and development, European union, Rules and regulations, Competition, Free markets, Generic, Bureaucracy 

An 18-year-old New Jersey male is accused of approaching a woman from behind while she was walking her 2-year-old in a stroller — and then putting her in a chokehold and throwing her to the ground.

The incident took place Nov. 17 on Pinewood Road, Howell Township Police said. Howell is a little over 30 minutes east of Trenton.

‘Off with his head!!! Do this the old school way; we don’t need people in … society like that!!!!’

According to News 12 New Jersey, police said the suspect ran off after the woman screamed for help.

RELATED: Female accused of stabbing 1-year-old in stroller in front of parents on Philly street was out on bail after NYC stabbing

Photo by Bob Carey/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Jaden Thompson of Freehold was criminally charged Tuesday for endangering the welfare of a child (3rd degree) and simple assault (Disorderly Persons Offense), police said.

But there was no need to lock up Thompson.

Turns out he already was behind bars in the Ocean County Jail as of Nov. 29 on unrelated criminal charges, police said.

What else is he accused of doing?

According to Jackson Police, just after 11:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving, officers responded to the Paragon apartments at 1020 Larsen Road for a report of a female who had been stabbed by an ex-boyfriend. Jackson is about three miles west of Howell Township.

A family member of the stabbing victim told police that Thompson was the ex-boyfriend and that he carried out the stabbing.

It was determined that Thompson was arguing with the victim when he stabbed her in the lower abdomen, police said, adding that he then fled the area in a vehicle believed to be a black 2012 Nissan Altima.

After a two-day search with the assistance of U.S. Marshalls, the suspect was located in Edison, police said. Edison is almost an hour northeast of Trenton.

Police said Thompson crashed the car following a vehicle chase. After he fled the crash scene, police quickly apprehended him and transferred him to the custody of Jackson Police.

In connection with the stabbing incident, police said Thompson was charged with:

Attempted murder (1st degree)Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (2nd degree)Endangering the welfare of a child (2nd degree)Possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose (3rd degree)Unlawful possession of a weapon (4th degree)Criminal trespass

Some commenters under the Jackson Police Department’s Facebook post about the stabbing seemed as though they’ve had about enough:

“Sad that we have come to the crossroads,” one commenter wrote, adding that “the people in town need to really take a stand against this degradation of our community.””Hope he rots in 666,” another user said.”Off with his head!!!” another commenter exclaimed. “Do this the old school way; we don’t need people in … society like that!!!!”

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Trump’s would-be assassin in Butler, Pennsylvania, had a lengthy online history of radicalization, extremist posts, and fetishes — but somehow, none of this sparked any concern with our intelligence agencies.

“One subset of this pornography that is also pushing these men toward sexual degeneracy and gender fluidity, including transgenderism and nonbinary identity, is furry porn,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey comments on “Relatable,” noting that this kind of sexual obsession is rampant in violent individuals.

“We also have to see that this form of pornography is actually leading to, in some ways, political violence that has now affected the president of the United States, who had an assassination attempt against him on July 13, 2024,” she continues. “And then also Charlie Kirk.”

“I do not think it’s a coincidence that both of these men who are suspected as the killers of these top, you know, conservative — one politician and one activist — were also allegedly addicted to this kind of pornography and obsessed with transgenderism,” she adds.

While Stuckey believes that the moral, spiritual, and political meaning behind this is a necessary topic of discussion that could “shake us out of our stupor that these are identities or interests that deserve our compassion,” those who have been tasked with uncovering the truth don’t seem to care about actually finding it.

The 20-year-old gunman who attempted to murder President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year had a horrific online footprint and was using they/them pronouns online.

“This person is messing with gender fluidity, which again, had become a sexual fetish and that this had manifested itself in the demonic identity of being they/them. Now, this person is clearly unwell for a lot of reasons,” Stuckey explains.

“He had an online footprint that included extreme rhetoric espousing political violence as far back as 2019 when he was only 15 years old. He apparently was a former Trump supporter. He left violent threats against ‘the Squad.’ He wished them a quick and painful death,” she continues.

“He wrote things in 2019 like ‘murder the Democrats.’ Then he also would apparently search for things that were violent like Kennedy’s assassination,” she adds.

In 2020, however, it all changed.

“He became critical of Trump. He called Trump a ‘racist,’ referring to Trump supporters as ‘cult followers,’” Stuckey explains, noting that he publicly posted in YouTube comments that the “only way to fight the government is with terrorism style attacks.”

“So I think it’s fair to question, like, why didn’t the FBI do something about this beforehand? Because the FBI actually is able to step in when someone is making these kinds of threats online,” she continues.

“Why wasn’t this happening to this guy when we have so much intelligence,” she asks, “so many resources going to our intelligence agencies?”

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I have a longtime friend — I’ll omit his name because he is somewhat politically prominent — who has been very involved in the extraction of Afghans who allegedly helped us from Afghanistan and resettlement of them in the United States. My friend already has a demanding job, but he has often worked through the night, forgoing sleep to help with this task.

I have several strong political disagreements with him, but I would never question his patriotism. He voluntarily served as a soldier in Afghanistan after overcoming great obstacles to be accepted into the military. But I would strongly question his political judgment and the judgment of anyone who thinks we should be settling Afghan refugees in America.

‘The second the US military backed out, their men folded and refused to fight for what we gave them. We don’t owe them, they owe us.’

Unfortunately, a number of our former soldiers, no matter how sincere their beliefs, seem to sympathize more with people in a foreign country whom they believed, rightly or wrongly, to be allies rather than with the interests of the only country to which they owe their allegiance.

Joe Kent, an Afghanistan combat veteran and director of the National Counterterrorism Center, argued on social media for the deportation of all of our “Afghan allies.”

“Vetting a foreigner in a war zone to determine if he will fight a common enemy is vastly different than vetting a foreigner to see if he is suitable to live in our country,” Kent wrote.

As journalist Daniel Greenfield notes, the targeted attack on two National Guardsmen by an Afghan national in Washington, D.C., the day before Thanksgiving was not a one-off. It’s part of an extensive series of assaults by Afghans whom we have foolishly allowed to resettle in the United States.

Unbridgeable inequalities

Having lived briefly in a third-world country and having traveled for many years in various countries of that description, I have quickly learned to be wary of “friendships.” It is not that people in these countries are inherently bad or incapable of genuine friendship in principle. It is that the gap between you (a well-off American) and them (a third-world citizen who, even if relatively affluent, is often at a huge disadvantage versus an American) is astronomical.

And that gap is not just financial and legal, but also based on traditions and customs. Relationships that may feel like genuine friendship for a time usually come with future requests or pleas for assistance. Again, I don’t necessarily blame these people — I might do the same in their shoes — and of course genuine friendships in such situations are possible, but they are far rarer than idealists might wish them to be.

What applies in basically peaceful third-world countries applies a thousandfold in an impoverished, war-torn, and primitive country like Afghanistan. It is monstrously arrogant to think the American political class understands deeply the inner workings of these countries and the motivations of the people there, given that we spent almost $1 trillion to occupy Afghanistan, only to see all of our efforts collapse within a week after we removed our military as a threat of force.

Wade Miller, the executive director of Citizens for Renewing America and a U.S. Marine combat veteran, responded to the claim that resettling Afghans was the moral thing to do since they “fought alongside our own” soldiers, rightly calling it a “BS metric.” As he noted, “1. Many played both sides. 2. Many only did it to make money. 3. Many were plants. 4. Many had long-standing tribal grudges against the Taliban.”

And none of them necessarily has a long-term loyalty to America, which is the first step to assess before even beginning to consider a claim of residency.

All of this would be obvious to anyone who does not let suicidal empathy overwhelm good sense. But unfortunately, we have lost that common sense, even among many of our supposedly hardened fighting forces.

‘We don’t owe them’

Miller punctures the lie that we owe these Afghans for “doing America a favor,” pointing out that we did them a favor by expending American lives and treasure to help them govern themselves without the Taliban. But “the second the U.S. military backed out, their men folded and refused to fight for what we gave them. We don’t owe them, they owe us.”

This is a harsh assessment, but in the aggregate, it is not unfair.

Or consider what Mark Lucas, an Afghanistan veteran and founder of the Article III Project, has written: “Afghans were untrustworthy allies who sold their children to pedophiles, ritually raped little boys, and beat their women.” He notes that without male soldiers guarding them, countless local Afghans made clear that they would have raped the women who were attached to their detachment.

RELATED: Trump makes America dangerous again — to our enemies

Jim Watson/Getty Images

Lucas points out that even asking simple questions of potential Afghan asylum-seekers, such as whether they support putting apostates to death, child marriage, Sharia for non-Muslims, defense of suicide bombings, polygamy, and honor killings, would quickly disqualify them. The vast majority of Afghans, he says, support one or more of these views — none of which are compatible with the American way of life.

One of the few Afghan refugees who resettled in my own state of Montana promptly raped a Montanan shortly after his arrival. Unsurprisingly, the crime and its implications were shamefully underreported by local media.

Toward a more sober policy

Even assuming we have an obligation to those we believed helped us in Afghanistan, it would mean we were obligated to get them to safety — not get them to America. If we had made it clear at the outset that relocating to America was not on offer, we would have see a drastic reduction in the number of “refugees.” We can and should resettle them in other countries. Making arrangements to do that is a worthy use of American soft power.

The notion that resettling Afghans in America is a moral duty reflects Joe Biden’s poor political leadership. His administration and previous ones before it had become arrogant about their ability to control events and remake complex societies and peoples far different from our own. In reality, their policies promoted cultural arrogance under the guise of friendship. They abandoned our own in favor of those from distant cultures and lands.

Let us hope that President Trump’s promise to refuse all new Afghan visas and to remove postwar arrivals and resettle them elsewhere is the start of a more sober, realistic, and serious refugee policy that will put the interests of America and its citizens first.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

​Afghanistan withdrawal, Afghan fighers, Us foreign policy, Refugees, Opinion & analysis, Asylum seekers, Joe biden, Donald trump, Assimilation, Islam, Jihad, Terrorism, Patriotism, Third world, Ban, Crime 

The Trump administration has worked with great success over the past year to dismantle racist DEI initiatives in government and public education across the country. Nevertheless leftist identity politics continue to linger in various taxpayer-funded institutions.

The parental advocacy group Defending Education recently highlighted that the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, which received $628 million in federal research awards in the 2024 fiscal year, is harboring an anti-white research project that claims America is suffering from a “Whiteness Pandemic.”

‘Family socialization into the centuries-old culture of Whiteness — involving colorblindness, passivity, and fragility — perpetrates and perpetuates US racism.’

Rhyen Staley, research director at Defending Education, said in a statement obtained by Blaze News, “This far-left programming at a major public university is another example of how ingrained DEI is in higher education and is not going away any time soon.”

The UMTC’s Culture and Family Lab, which is part of the school’s Institute of Child Development, has a page titled, “Whiteness Pandemic Resources for Parents, Educators and other Caregivers.”

The website:

characterizes the white family as a threat, stating, “At birth, young children growing up in White families begin to be socialized into the culture of Whiteness, making the family system one of the most powerful systems involved in systemic racism”;tells white adults that it is their “responsibility to self-reflect, re-educate [themselves], and act” and that they need to engage “in courageous antiracist parenting/caregiving”;recommends white adults begin “listening to, taking seriously, and following the stories and recommendations” of the scandal-plagued Black Lives Matter organization and “humanizing victims of police brutality and racism — such as Mr. George Floyd”; andlinks to various works of agitprop for parents to “read and watch with children as part of a discussion about race, racism, white privilege, and antiracism.”

While the website references content from various radical sources, it largely focuses on a 2021 paper by the lab’s director, Gail Ferguson, titled “The Whiteness pandemic behind the racism pandemic: Familial Whiteness socialization in Minneapolis following #GeorgeFloyd’s murder.”

RELATED: Woke lecturer cries ‘white supremacy’ after MAGA-racist smear doesn’t go as planned

Photo by KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images

The paper, which was published in the journal American Psychologist and dedicated to repeat offender George Floyd, claims that “family socialization into the centuries-old culture of Whiteness — involving colorblindness, passivity, and fragility — perpetrates and perpetuates U.S. racism, reflecting an insidious Whiteness pandemic.”

While generally implying that “Whiteness” is a disease, the UMTC professor suggested that “color-evasion and power-evasion” specifically are “pathogens of the Whiteness pandemic” that “are inexorably transmitted within families, with White parents serving as carriers to their children unless they take active preventive measures rooted in antiracism and equity-promotion.”

According to Ferguson, who is black, and the paper’s other authors, one litmus test for whether a white mother is helping spread the supposed “Whiteness” disease comes down to how that mother responded to George Floyd’s death.

A mother’s apathy over the criminal’s death and her unwillingness to discuss so-called “systemic racism” with her children were treated as indicators that she approves of or is at the very least indifferent to imagined racism. Alternatively the willingness of mothers to express grief and concern over Floyd’s death and to discuss it “and Black Lives Matter with their children using color- and power-conscious parenting” were regarded as signs of a desired “antiracist” mentality.

The authors stressed that to dismantle “colorblind racial ideology,” white students should be subjected to “racism and antiracism education,” especially at a young age, and that “it will be important to go beyond how White women learn to say the right things to also consider how they learn to do the right things and actually ‘show up’ for racial justice.”

The basis for the conclusions in the paper was a survey of 392 white mothers, 51% of whom were “somewhat or very liberal,” 18% of whom were “somewhat or very conservative,” and over 91% of whom had a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The racist initiative was made possible with the help of federal funds provided by the National Institute of Mental Health during former President Joe Biden’s tenure.

When asked about the anti-white project, the UMTC told the National Review that it remains “steadfast in its commitment to the principles of academic freedom.” The NIMH reportedly did not respond to the Review’s request for comment.

“It is not only concerning that these programs appear to still be up and running, but that absurd ideas like ‘whiteness’ also gain legitimacy through dubious activist-academic ‘scholarship,'” said Staley. “Universities must end this nonsense yesterday.”

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Despite thousands of lawsuits against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma now being settled, the opioid crisis continues to devastate families and communities. This is why there are massive national efforts to expand addiction treatment, develop non-opioid pain alternatives, promote natural remedies, and confront the Mexican drug cartels flooding America with fentanyl. In recent years, opioid-related deaths have finally begun to decline, suggesting that those initiatives are starting to make a real impact. But that progress may already be slowing.

The introduction of work requirements for Medicaid eligibility under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is producing unintended consequences for people in addiction recovery. Early studies show that declines in Medicaid enrollment correlate with drops in the number of patients receiving treatment for opioid use disorder. Because Medicaid is the primary source for buprenorphine and addiction services, these enrollment changes threaten fragile but meaningful recovery gains.

Conservatives champion individual responsibility — but responsibility also requires ensuring that systems meant to help people reclaim their lives aren’t working against them.

Work requirements aren’t the problem — they’re sound policy to preserve the financial stability and original intention of the program. The real issue is Medicaid’s regulatory structure, which is too rigid and dysfunctional to absorb yet another layer of complexity.

This crisis didn’t begin with work requirements. Medicaid’s own structure, combined with state policies, had been restricting access to effective OUD treatment for years. Patients face prior-authorization delays, prescriber rules that block lifesaving medications, and certificate-of-need laws that stop treatment centers from opening or expanding. Policymakers often claim these rules protect patients or control costs. In practice, they have choked off reliable care and pushed people in recovery farther from the help they need.

In states where prescriber limits and facility restrictions already make treatment scarce, adjusting Medicaid eligibility has a serious impact on the availability of buprenorphine providers. The problem lies in creating a policy that requires personal responsibility within an already bureaucratic structure that actively slows treatment access. When enrollment pressures combine with supply constraints caused by CON laws and prescription rules, the result is fewer people getting the care that keeps them alive.

This is especially true in Appalachia, which is ground zero of the opioid crisis. Pennsylvania explicitly prohibits off-site methadone “medication units,” while legislation has been floated in West Virginia that aims to ban methadone clinics. Local governments across the region routinely block zoning permits for treatment facilities, often caving to community pushback rather than addressing a staggering public health emergency. Many states still impose CON laws, restricting the ability of hospitals and clinics to add new treatment beds or open new treatment programs.

RELATED: Trump faces drugmakers that treat sick Americans like ATMs

Credit: Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images

On the provider side, well-intentioned prescribing rules have created even more barriers. Despite a dire shortage of addiction specialists, many states limit the prescription of OUD medications to certain providers, leaving primary care doctors — who could dramatically expand treatment access — underutilized or prevented from issuing prescriptions. Lawmakers have inadvertently created a bottleneck: too few qualified providers and too many hoops to jump through for those who want to treat addiction.

As the Trump administration continues to build a populist coalition that includes voters from Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other communities deeply scarred by opioid addiction, it must confront this reality head-on. Doing so does not require abandoning conservative principles, nor does it mean reversing work requirements. Those reforms remain both necessary and widely popular. But a serious conservative health care agenda must recognize that Medicaid’s regulatory architecture is undermining progress against opioid addiction — and America cannot afford to lose ground now.

Conservatives champion individual responsibility — but responsibility also requires ensuring that systems designed to help people reclaim their lives aren’t working against them. Addressing Medicaid’s regulatory failures is not just good policy; it is essential to sustaining progress in one of the most consequential public health fights of our time.

Editor’s note: A version of this article was published originally at the American Mind.

​Opioid crisis, Medicaid, Trump administration, Drug abuse, Big pharma, Opinion & analysis, One big beautiful bill, Oxycontin, Purdue pharma 

Two teenage boys have been arrested for allegedly shooting and killing a 14-year-old and then lighting her body on fire.

Danika Troy was reported missing by her mother on Monday, according to Santa Rosa County Sheriff Bob Johnson, who conducted a media briefing on Thursday.

‘The evidence pointed to them immediately. They took them into custody immediately.’

A day later, the girl’s badly burned remains were found by a man walking near Kimberly Road in Floridatown.

Police said they identified the remains as belonging to Troy because her mother had reported that she left with a scooter, and it was found near the remains. They also found shoes that matched those she was wearing.

Johnson said that a witness told police that 16-year-old Gabriel Williams and 14-year-old Kimahri Blevins had planned the murder of the girl.

In an interview with police, Blevins allegedly said he blocked Troy after they had a falling out on social media. Williams also said he was upset with something Troy had said, according to police.

But a possible motive is still undetermined.

“They have been interviewed, but the motive that we’re getting doesn’t fit the forensics or any facts of the case,” Johnson said.

The sheriff said Williams stole the gun they used from his mother.

“It’s bad enough that you kill a 14-year-old; you’re 14, you’re 16, you shoot her multiple times, and then you set her on fire,” Johnson added.

The state attorney’s office said a grand jury will determine whether the boys should be tried as adults.

RELATED: California man convicted of brutally attacking his son with a sledgehammer while he slept

“This is what major crimes calls a ground ball,” Johnson said. “The evidence pointed to them immediately. They took them into custody immediately.”

Williams and Blevins were each charged with first-degree premeditated murder. They both are in custody at the Santa Rosa Juvenile Detention Center.

“It shocks me,” neighbor Sue Petrisch said. “It’s always been so quiet here, and it’s getting bad. It’s terrifying, in fact.”

A candlelight vigil is planned to honor the victim on Monday at Avalon Baptist Church. A GoFundMe account has been set up to help pay for her burial costs.

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The idea that Adolf Hitler was some misunderstood or even “good” figure while Winston Churchill was the real WWII villain was once confined to the extreme fringes and unknown to almost everyone else. Today, however, the idea has resurfaced with disturbing visibility — no longer limited to neo-Nazi forums but now defended or entertained on major podcasts, viral social-media threads, and platforms with tens of millions of listeners and viewers.

Glenn Beck, a lover of history and collector of historical artifacts, is appalled that this revisionist narrative is being taken seriously.

“I really don’t get it. History, real history, is not a choose-your-own-adventure kind of thing. It’s ink on paper, orders in filing cabinets, telegrams, diaries, bodies. It’s what actually happened, not what we hope happened,” he says.

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn sets the record straight about Hitler, Churchill, and WWII.

Lie #1: Poland wasn’t part of Hitler’s conquest plan

“Let me just say this calmly, factually, and finally: Germany’s plans for Poland were not reactive. They were premeditated,” he asserts.

The faulty idea pushed by Hitler rehabilitators that Britain conned the West into going to war by promising to defend Poland is easily debunked with an artifact Glenn has in his possession. “It’s called Fall Weiss,” he says. “It’s Hitler’s operational blueprint for the invasion of Poland, drafted in 1938, a year before [British Prime Minister Neville] Chamberlain said, ‘We’re going to guarantee [Poland’s] safety.”’

“Hitler’s explicitly stated road map [targeted] Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, then the East,” he explains. “Britain didn’t pull Germany into war. Germany was already marching toward war — global war.”

Lie #2: Hitler had no Western ambitions

The second WWII fallacy that demands debunking, he says, is the idea that Hitler had “no Western ambitions” and actually wanted peace with Britain.

“Really? Because we have the paper trail again,” Glenn retorts.

“How do you explain Operation Sea Lion — Hitler’s detailed plan to invade and occupy Great Britain?” he asks. “You don’t draw up amphibious landing schedules across the English Channel just in case.”

But before this plot was even fathomed, Hitler had already tried to tee himself up to dominant Britain. In May 1941, Hitler’s second in command, Rudolf Hess, secretly flew a plane to Scotland with a mission of trying to make a “peace deal” with Britain. The offer, Glenn says, was this: “Let Hitler dominate Europe, and Germany would leave Britain alone.”

He had Nazi sympathizers in high British society — including the ex-King Edward VIII, who had openly praised Hitler and was willing to be put back on the throne as a Nazi puppet if Germany invaded.

“The Nazi files recovered after the war show explicit German plans to reinstall him after an occupation,” says Glenn. “Hitler was not avoiding conflict with Britain; he was planning its subversion.”

Lie #3: Hitler was initially friendly toward America

The idea that Hitler admired America and never wanted to go to war with her is another idea that easily crumbles under the weight of basic logic.

Hitler’s ideology stands in contrast in every way possible to that of the United States.

“Hitler believed the state was supreme, that the German people existed for the Reich. In America, the Constitution is supreme, and it exists to limit the states. Rights come from the furor and the government in [Nazi] Germany; in America, rights come from God, and the government is the servant, not the master,” Glenn differentiates.

“The individual in Germany: expendable. The West is built on the sanctity of the individual. Racial hierarchy is destiny in [Nazi] Germany. The West, at its best, rejects racial supremacy. The Declaration starts with ‘all men are created equal’ — not ‘some races are destined to rule.’ Nowhere in our documents does it say the state must expand endlessly,”’ he continues.

Lie #4: The US should’ve sided with Hitler over Stalin — the greater evil

“People are arguing now that the Allies should have sided with Hitler instead of Stalin. No rational reading of history supports any of that,” says Glenn.

While “Hitler and Stalin were both monstrous,” the U.S. was forced to choose “survival.”

“The question for us was no longer, ‘Hey, which dictator is better?’ The question was, ‘Which outcome prevents Hitler from ruling all of Europe?’ Because if Hitler defeated the Soviet Union, the resources of the East — all the oil, all the grain, all the industry, all the manpower — would have made the Third Reich unstoppable,” Glenn corrects.

But even still, “We knew at the time Stalin was just as bad. We knew we were going to be in war with Stalin at some point.”

Lie #5: Winston Churchill was the real WWII villain

Nobody could see Stalin’s wickedness more than Winston Churchill, says Glenn. “He was the one saying, ‘We can’t have this guy as an ally.”’

Even still, it’s “not about defending Churchill, who I think is a hero; but it’s about defending the record, the truth, so in our moment of confusion and upheaval and ideological extremism, we don’t lose our footing on the bedrock of fact.”

“When we begin to question whether the West should have resisted Hitler, where are we going? When we entertain the idea that freedom and tyranny could have co-existed, you’re not just rearranging interpretations; you’re reopening a door millions died to close,” Glenn warns.

“Be very careful when someone tells you the villain wasn’t really the villain. Woe unto him who makes evil good and good evil.”

To hear more of Glenn’s commentary, watch the video above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Adolf hiter, Wwii, World war two, Nazi germany, Hitler, Nazis, Revisionist history, Hitler myths, Winston churchill 

Olivia Nuzzi’s fall from grace continues as she parts ways with another magazine.

Once a rising star in the journalism world, Nuzzi was first fired from the New Yorker in 2024 after news broke of her alleged sexting with then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., breaking the most basic forms of journalistic ethics and collapsing her engagement to then-Politico reporter Ryan Lizza. Nuzzi was later picked up by Vanity Fair to be West Coast editor.

The overlapping narratives inevitably caused a media firestorm.

Nearly a year later, the scandal has resurfaced after Nuzzi announced the release of her book “American Canto,” which apparently details her alleged behavior with Kennedy but refers to him only as “the politician.”

In the aftermath of the renewed interest in and attention to the scandal, Nuzzi and Vanity Fair “have agreed to part ways,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

RELATED: Trump calls New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi an ‘unattractive wack job’

Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for HBO

Nuzzi’s attempt at a comeback tour was met with a series of bombshell exposés written by her former fiancé, who began his career as an independent journalist following the scandal.

Lizza detailed in his Substack series how he found out about Nuzzi’s alleged sexting not just with Kennedy in 2024, but also with former presidential candidate Mark Sanford in 2020. Lizza went on to detail a toxic dynamic between Nuzzi and Kennedy, including graphic details about their sexual proclivities and the intense betrayal, while she insisted that the relationship was merely a “digital” one.

Despite the overwhelming evidence and multiple accounts of the behavior, Kennedy has denied the allegations.

RELATED: What the mainstream media’s outrage over RFK Jr.’s ‘affair’ is REALLY about

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The overlapping narratives inevitably caused a media firestorm, but it may not have translated into monetary success for Nuzzi’s new book.

Since its release on December 2, “American Canto” sat at No. 5,546 on Amazon’s best-seller list and at No. 3,059 in the Kindle store. Despite the onslaught of media attention, the supposedly “mesmerizing firsthand account of the warping of American reality over the past decade” is currently sitting at a brutal 1.69-star rating on Goodreads.

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​Mark sanford, Rfk, Robert f. kennedy jr., Olivia nuzzi, Ryan lizza, Vanity fair, The new yorker, Affair, Wall street journal, Politico 

A Democratic U.S. representative appeared to undermine her own accusations against federal agents when she posted a video of herself claiming to have been pepper-sprayed at a protest.

The newly sworn-in Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials pepper-sprayed her during a raid at a taco restaurant in Tucson on Friday.

‘If her claims were true, this would be a medical marvel. But they’re not true. She wasn’t pepper sprayed.’

“ICE just conducted a raid by Taco Giro in Tucson — a small mom-and-pop restaurant that has served our community for years,” reads a post from the politician. “When I presented myself as a Member of Congress asking for more information, I was pushed-aside and pepper sprayed.”

She said in the video that there had been about 40 agents in vehicles, most of them masked, but that the community stopped them. She claimed she and her staffers were pepper-sprayed and she was pushed, despite identifying herself as a member of Congress.

“While I am fine, if that is the way they treat me, how are they treating other community members who do not have the same privileges and protections that I do?” she added.

Many on social media pointed out that she didn’t have the appearance of someone who had been pepper-sprayed.

Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, gave a spirited response to the Democrat’s claims.

“If her claims were true, this would be a medical marvel. But they’re not true. She wasn’t pepper sprayed. She was in the vicinity of someone who *was* pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement,” McLaughlin wrote.

She went on to say that two agents were seriously injured by the mob that Grijalva joined.

RELATED: Church worker pretended to be ICE agent to extort $500 from massage therapist, police say

“Presenting one’s self as a ‘Member of Congress’ doesn’t give you the right to obstruct law enforcement,” McLaughlin added.

Grijalva said she happened to be getting lunch at the taco place when the raid operation began. She coughed once in the video and said it was because of the pepper spray.

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​Rep adelita grijalva, Ice raid, Congressional oversight, Pepper spray, Politics