Category: blaze media

Fans of the popular multi-season show dramatizing the life of Jesus Christ were thrilled when the trailer for the latest season was released Thursday.

“The Chosen” famously received support from one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns ever and has become a hit with hundreds of millions of viewers.

‘Season Five was the powder keg. In Season Six, it explodes.’

“This is it. We’re at the toughest part. Season Six covers the 24 hours of the events surrounding Jesus’ death,” read the description from show creator Dallas Jenkins on social media.

“It was painful to shoot, and it’s painful to contemplate,” he continues. “But if there’s one thing I want you to take away from this season, it’s that Jesus chose this path. He even tells the apostles he could be rescued from it if he wanted. He chose surrender and humility and sacrifice. Knowing that should make this story a little less painful.”

Jenkins concludes, “Season Five was the powder keg. In Season Six, it explodes.”

The show’s creator told BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey that he began writing about the life of Jesus after his bright future as a director appeared to collapse along with a box office disaster.

“It was in 2017 that my feature film came out that completely bombed at the box office,” Dallas said in the 2022 interview.

“In just a couple hours, I went from being a director with a very bright future to being a director with no future,” he explained.

He said he received a message from a stranger on Facebook about the biblical story of Jesus feeding 5,000 with fish and loaves that changed his life.

“Remember, it’s not your job to feed the 5,000. It’s only to provide the loaves and fish,” the message read.

RELATED: Did Jesus really pray for Judas? ‘The Chosen’ faces backlash over ‘super unbiblical’ scene

“In that moment, my life changed. I felt more than ever like God was present. … I felt more cared for in that moment than ever,” Jenkins added.

Season 6 of “The Chosen” will be released on Prime Video November 15.

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​The chosen, Jesus christ, Bible, Christianity, Politics 

Instead of taking accountability, men like Deion Sanders and Stephen A. Smith, Jason Whitlock argues, would rather find someone else to blame.

On “Fearless,” Whitlock puts the Colorado football coach and ESPN personality on what he calls the “Mount Rushmore of entitlement,” accusing both men of deflecting criticism instead of owning their mistakes.

“Stephen A. Smith put out some, I mean, just really hard-to-understand, ridiculous video about the Atlanta Dream in the WNBA and how the WNBA wasn’t prepared because they … didn’t have an arena big enough to host the WNBA Finals,” Whitlock explains.

“And he’s ranting and raving … but then he turns it into something about himself and critics and apologizing and making mistakes, and he turned it into the mistakes that he’s been making, and the apologies he’s been making are proof of how good he is or how righteous he is,” he continues.

This attitude is why Smith, Whitlock says, belongs on the “Mount Rushmore of entitlement” alongside Deion Sanders.

“Deion, in their last game two weeks ago against Texas Tech, made coaching blunder after coaching blunder. His team looked unprepared. Deion looked unprepared. They lost their third straight game to Texas Tech,” Whitlock explains.

Sanders took two weeks to give a press conference, which Whitlock notes didn’t help.

“With two weeks of preparation, he could offer no explanations for anything,” Whitlock says.

“It’s been reported, and Deion copped to it, that someone on the Colorado coaching staff or players left their playbook at the team hotel and Texas Tech fans found it. Deion had no explanation for that two weeks ago,” he explains.

“I’ve been around coaches my entire life. Losing your playbook is not an option,” he says.

“He won’t take responsibility for it. He won’t be held accountable for it,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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​Jason whitlock, Stephen a smith, Deion sanders, Blazetv show 

Radical Democrat James Talarico attempted to woo Republicans and independents at a town hall in Fort Worth on Wednesday as he attempts to turn a Texas U.S. Senate seat blue for the first time in more than 30 years.

This attempt evidently relied on deception.

‘That industry is not gonna last.’

In addition to claiming that “the Bible is silent on the issue of abortion,” Talarico made a number of other eyebrow-raising statements at the event hosted by CNN and Jubilee.

One of the Texas voters in attendance asked the Democrat about border security, “regardless of what party was in the White House,” and whether federal law should require the removal of illegal aliens who have no basis to stay in the country.

“Texans understand this issue of immigration better than most people around the country because we live with it,” Talarico replied. “We live with the challenges, and we live with the benefits.”

After stating that “both political parties have failed us on this issue,” casting shade on the Biden administration’s “unacceptable” handling of the border crisis and criticizing some Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics, Talarico identified himself as a “border security Democrat.”

This purported “border security Democrat” apparently was counting on the audience to overlook the fact that he:

states on his campaign website that “our border should be like a front porch” with a “welcome mat out front and a lock on the door” and that certain illegal aliens should have a pathway to legalization;advocated in 2019 for diverting Texas’ $800 million two-year border security budget to public education, claiming that “putting a bunch of boats, planes, and border patrol agents on the physical border” “does not solve the problem” and amounts ultimately to “political grandstanding”;shared documents in 2019 advising foreigners how to “fight back” against ICE;condemned some of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts to secure the southern border, calling them “atrocities”;voted in 2021 against a bill that provided an additional $1.8 billion in state funding for border security over a two-year period;voted in 2023 against a bill that aimed at beefing up border security and cracking down on transnational criminal activity; voted in 2023 against a bill that would have expanded the law enforcement authority of federal immigration agents in Texas; andvoted in 2023 against a bill that made illegal entry into Texas from an alien nation a state crime.

The Border Patrol Union’s National Border Patrol Council said Wednesday, “JAMES TALARICO DOES NOT SUPPORT BORDER SECURITY: Talarico’s false claim that he called out the Biden Administration for failing on the border is nothing more than a #FakeNews political ad.”

RELATED: Talarico gets DEMOLISHED after he cites Bible in defense of abortion

Danielle Villasana/Getty Images

In addition to masquerading as a proponent of strong security at the southern border, Talarico played the role of an ICE supporter at Wednesday’s town hall.

CNN talking head Erin Burnett asked the Democrat, “Do you support abolishing ICE or not?”

“No,” replied Talarico. “And I never have.”

He did, however, lead a “Stop ICE rally” in January, accuse ICE of “terrorizing our country,” and implore Texans to rise up against the federal agency and “fight back.”

After boasting about previously having taught illegal alien students, Talarico said in his lengthy speech at the January anti-ICE rally in Austin, “It is time to tear down this secret police force and replace it with an agency that is actually going to promote public safety.”

Talarico further denied ICE’s legitimacy, demanded that ICE agents be hauled before Congress, and claimed that the agency was “deporting the very people who keep our economy running.”

The same Democrat who months ago demanded ICE’s “replace[ment]” told Burnett on Wednesday, “We need Immigration and Customs Enforcement in this country.”

In an apparent attempt to reconcile the two statements, Talarico claimed that “what we’ve seen over the last year is a secret police force, and that’s what we don’t want in this country.”

Talarico also tried to pull a fast one Wednesday regarding his past criticism of capitalism.

Burnett noted that at a Sierra Club event in September 2020, the Democrat said that capitalism is an “oppressive system” in need of dismantling. The CNN talking head then questioned Talarico’s current identification as a proud capitalist.

“If you go back and listen to the conversation that we were having, I was talking about the system we have now, which is actually not capitalism. It’s crony capitalism,” Talarico said.

Talarico does not appear to have specified that he was criticizing “crony capitalism” at the Sierra Club event in 2020. Rather, he highlighted the supposed link between “climate change and white supremacy and capitalism in our country.”

“I think only understanding the ways that all three of those oppressive systems work together are we going to be able to begin the process of dismantling them,” Talarico said at the time.

A spokesperson for Talarico told the Texas Scorecard last month that “James is a proud capitalist and agrees with the majority of Texans that racism, natural disasters, and a billionaire-controlled economy are all problems we need to address.”

Madison Cercy, a spokeswoman for the campaign of Talarico’s Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, said that “James Talarico is a democratic socialist who wants to destroy economic opportunity, ban oil and gas, and raise taxes to pay for his radical agenda.”

Talarico, who told Burnett that he wants to return to old-school capitalism, also claimed at the town hall that “if the Democratic Party is going after the good-paying oil and gas jobs here in Texas, I’m going to stand up against them.”

Yet Talarico said during the same Sierra Club event, “We all know that Texas has been a leader in oil and gas, but in many ways that’s like being the leader in cassette tapes in the 1980s,” CNN reported.

“That industry is not going to last. And if we want to ensure we have an economy that’s going to work for our children and our children’s children, we gotta be ahead of the curve, and Texas has to lead instead of follow on this issue,” Talarico added.

This supposed friend of the oil and gas industry claimed in 2022 that “fossil fuels are destroying the planet” and suggested that Texas should “transition” to so-called renewables.

The Talarico campaign did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Blaze Poll Watch presently shows Talarico leading Paxton 48.1%-45.1%.

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​Border security, Capitalism, Cnn, Immigration and customs enforcement, James talarico, Ken paxton, Politics, Town hall, Us senate 

A California researcher pleaded no contest to one felony count of poisoning his coworker, which allegedly made the female victim gravely ill. However, the defendant was granted what a judge called an “extremely generous” plea deal despite hidden-camera video of him tampering with his colleague’s water bottle.

Rong Yuan began working at Berkeley Engineering and Research in January 2017, and she worked alongside David Xu, a fellow UC Berkeley alumnus.

‘I almost died.’

Yuan told the San Francisco Standard that her first workplace encounter with Xu was tense, saying that Xu told her she wasn’t allowed to use the company’s material characterization lab.

Yuan said she told Xu, “I know how to use all these tools. I’ve even repaired them.”

Yuan recalled, “I just decided I will never overlap with him. I’ll just simply do my work, and he can do whatever he wants.”

Just weeks after the encounter, Yuan said she began experiencing mysterious health issues, including vomiting, dry heaving, and hair loss.

Yuan sought medical treatment after her symptoms became increasingly severe.

Yuan remembered that she suddenly became gravely ill after drinking from her water bottle in July 2017.

“I began to feel like I was dying,” Yuan stated.

The Standard reported that by late 2018, she had been to the hospital repeatedly, her health was deteriorating, and she was vomiting all the time, often having to miss work.

Yuan said her parents, who are from China, feared her illness could be fatal, so they traveled to visit her.

On Nov. 27, 2018, Yuan sent an email stating that she was vomiting again and wouldn’t be able to work at the office.

Xu reportedly replied, “You should work from home until you feel better. No reason to rush in.”

Xu allegedly added that Yuan might be sick because he believed the workplace is “moldy.”

In January 2019, Yuan was working at the office when she drank from her water bottle at her desk and suddenly felt sick again to the point that she thought to herself: “I’m going to die.”

Later that day, Yuan’s mother drank from the same water bottle and noticed an unusual sour taste.

Fearing someone was tampering with her water bottle, Yuan on Feb. 11, 2019, set up a secret camera on the wall next to her desk and focused on her water bottle.

At 11:04 a.m., Xu appeared at her desk, and the camera caught a close-up of his face and his arm reaching toward where her bottle was placed, the Standard reported.

A second video from March 4 seemingly shows Xu pouring a substance from a small white container into Yuan’s bottle; Xu is seen exiting the frame of the video but appears back in frame, rotates Yuan’s water bottle, and moves away.

“My blood was frozen,” Yuan said of first seeing the alarming video. “I almost died. I experienced death so, so close so many times. I cannot let him go.”

That day, Yuan presented the Berkeley Police Department with the videos and the water bottle.

The Standard reported that samples taken from Yuan’s bottle tested positive for cadmium, a toxic heavy metal, at “levels up to 3.5 million times the federal limit for drinking water.”

A report from the Berkeley Police Department accused Xu of putting cadmium in Yuan’s “food and water on multiple occasions.”

According to Alameda County Superior Court records reviewed by San Francisco Gate, Xu was arrested in March 2019 and charged with premeditated attempted murder and two felony counts of poisoning.

Then-Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price offered Xu a plea deal of one count of poisoning and one year of probation.

The Standard reported that the deal “shocked” even the judge, who remarked at Xu’s 2024 sentencing hearing that it was “extremely generous, considering everything in this case” and doubled his probation to two years.

Despite facing a punishment of up to life in state prison, Xu served just one day in jail and two years of probation, according to the Standard.

Xu completed his two-year probation in March 2026 and filed a petition for dismissal in July 2026.

The Daily Californian reported that Alameda County Superior Court Judge Pelayo Llamas granted Xu’s petition to dismiss his felony poisoning conviction on Monday, despite objections from Yuan and Assistant District Attorney Priscilla Vuong.

The dismissal allows Xu to avoid disclosing the poisoning conviction to private employers.

RELATED: Husband sets up hidden camera, catches teacher wife poisoning his smoothie with deadly plant: Police

Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson released a statement that read:

In 2019, David Xu was charged with attempted premeditated murder and poisoning. In 2023, the case resolved to a felony poisoning charge, 2 years of probation, and no additional jail time. After completing probation, the defendant petitioned the court to dismiss the case. As a result, we joined the victims to oppose the motion pursuant to Penal Code section 1203.4. The court granted the motion over objections. We hope the survivors are able to continue healing, both emotionally and physically, from this shocking event.

Yuan described the decision as “expected” but noted that she was “still disappointed.”

Yuan said she received $7,058 in restitution but added that her out-of-pocket medical expenses after insurance were more than $65,000.

Xu’s attorney, Charles Huang, on Tuesday told the Daily Californian that he was not at liberty to provide a comment on the case and didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Californian’s emailed request for comment.

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​Poisoning, Plea deal, California, Scientists, Crime 

The death penalty remains a deeply divisive issue among Christians. Some hold that it is a biblically justifiable punishment, proven by Old Testament endorsements of capital punishment for serious crimes and Romans 13’s affirmation of governmental authority. Others argue against it, pointing to New Testament teachings that emphasize mercy, forgiveness, and the sanctity of life.

This divide was most recently exemplified by the announcement from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that Nidal Hasan — the radicalized Muslim U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others in a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 — would be executed by firing squad in December, with initial plans to livestream the event.

Some Christians have condemned the planned execution — especially those initial livestream plans, which President Trump ultimately decided against. Others have publicly supported the public execution on biblical grounds.

BlazeTV host John Doyle, a Catholic, falls into the latter camp. On this episode of “The John Doyle Show,” he not only argues that Hasan should be publicly executed but also that “we should be killing criminals far more often, far more expediently, and far more legally and coolly.”

Doyle argues that conservatives who claim to stand on the principle that “life has infinite value” but oppose the death penalty are contradicting themselves.

“When you murder an innocent person, you have now taken from the world something of infinite value. The only way to approximate righting that wrong would be to take your life from you,” he explains.

“It’s to say we can never repair what has been stolen. We can never bring it back. We can never make the balance sheet squared, but we can try; we can get close. And the only way that we can get close is actually taking from you something that is, of course, of infinite value, which is your life,” he continues. “That is the only thing we can do that can approximate justice. Anything less than that … basically says ‘human life doesn’t actually have infinite value.”

Those who claim life has infinite value but oppose the death penalty, Doyle says, “have a kind of indignation behind their speaking that they never extend to the murder victims themselves.”

“They concede, ‘dude, yeah, of course murder’s wrong. Of course terrorism is wrong’ … but then they go out of their way to use all of their influence and all of their power to basically make it as easy as possible for terrorists and murderers and so on to continue living their lives as they would without any kind of consequence,” he says.

In the next part of the episode, Doyle dives into the “theological weeds” of the Catholic faith when it comes to the death penalty. To hear his full breakdown, watch the episode above.

Want more from John Doyle?

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​Catholic, Death penalty, John doyle, Pete hegseth, Blazetv show 

Air travel can and does bring out the worst in people — but it is rare that this mid-air frustration turns into a full-blown assault.

And even rarer when it is a Hollywood celebrity.

This past weekend, actress Selma Blair allegedly assaulted two flight attendants aboard a Delta Air Lines flight that landed at New York’s JFK Airport. Blair, who has multiple sclerosis, was claimed by representatives to have experienced a medical emergency.

“The good news for them is she’s a 100-pound actress in her 50s with MS,” BlazeTV host Dave Landau tells co-host Stu Burguiere on “Stu and Dave Do America.”

“Not that brutal an attack,” Stu agrees.

“Nobody should be assaulted on a Delta flight,” Dave says, joking, “I mean, some.”

“Some people should be?” Stu asks.

“I had a guy take his shoes off next to me,” Dave explains.

In audio following the attack, the pilot explains the flight needs “medical personnel at the gate to look at [Blair’s alleged victims’] injuries.”

“It sounds like the disruptive passenger also bashed her head on the bulkhead or something like that,” the pilot said, before Blair was heard screaming.

“I don’t understand what can happen on a plane that leads to that,” Dave comments.

“You just described it,” Stu adds.

Want more from Stu and Dave?

To enjoy more of Stu and Dave’s lethal blend of wit, humor, and insightful commentary subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Delta flight, Selma blair, Assault, Stu burguiere, Dave landau, Blazetv show 

AI slop is everywhere. It is strewn across the internet, stuffed into social feeds, and even popping up in real-world printed materials. If you have a good eye or you’re simply wise to bad imagery, you may be able to spot these on your own. If not, Google has an AI slop detector designed to make it easier to tell fake images from real ones.

The tool is called SynthID Detector. Why SynthID, you ask? The moniker is borrowed from the namesake of Google’s invisible digital watermark embedded into every image created with Nano Banana, the image generation tool found in Google Gemini. Every time you make an image with Gemini, it contains invisible digital noise that tells other apps and services that the image was made with AI and that it came directly from Google’s platform.

Google’s AI image slop scanner could be helpful when you encounter AI-generated photos online, but it is not foolproof.

Since you can’t see SynthID details in an image with the naked eye, these photos can proliferate online spaces without anyone knowing they’re not real. Google hopes to fix that, though, with SynthID Detector, which can decipher the origin of some AI images — emphasis on some.

To use SynthID Detector, go to the webpage and sign in with your Google account. Then find an image that you suspect to be AI, and drag and drop it into the search box. If successful, the page will instantly display the AI origin of the image, and it can even tell you if the photo has been edited further from its original version.

SynthID Detector/Zach Laidlaw

You can scan images, videos, and audio files across a broad range of formats that you would typically encounter on the web so that all your bases are covered. Unfortunately, there are some other limitations to keep in mind before you rely on SynthID Detector too much.

As a Google-made service, SynthID Detector is designed first and foremost to detect images with Google’s proprietary SynthID watermark embedded inside. Right now, that includes images generated with Gemini, along with a couple of other partners, such as Nvidia, OpenAI, and Kakao, an AI company from South Korea that you have never heard about.

That’s it.

RELATED: Google’s data-devouring AI wants everyone’s personal information

solar22/Getty Images

Google is working to expand SynthID support into other AI image generation companies, apps, and services. For instance, Apple Playground, the image generation app that comes with newer iPhones, will soon be compatible. However, the vast majority of image creation tools will slide under SynthID Detector … well … undetected. And there are a lot of them: Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, and the open-source versions of Stable Diffusion, Flux, and DALL-E 3, just to name a few.

So in other words, Google’s AI image slop scanner could be helpful when you encounter AI-generated photos online, but it is not foolproof. If the image comes from a non-SynthID-partner, any queries will show up empty.

SynthID Detector/Zach Laidlaw

Another area where SynthID falls short is in detecting real images. Because the system is designed to search only for SynthID watermarks, it can’t decipher when no watermarks are present at all. Therefore, real images are treated just like AI-generated images from non-SynthID-partners. It would be nice if SynthID Detector could at least tell when a real photo is real, but in this aspect, it is virtually useless.

As AI becomes more prevalent, society will likely need more tools like SynthID to help us discern factual content from fiction. Unfortunately, while SynthID Detector is a good first start, it shows just how severely lacking AI detection is when working with non-centralized standards for AI creation, labeling, and distribution. To truly be beneficial to mankind, detection tools need to either adopt robust scanning features or AI needs standardized policies, neither of which are likely to happen soon.

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​Ai slop, Gemini, Internet, Nvidia, Openai, Ai images, Artificial intelligence, Tech 

The president says the execution of the Fort Hood terrorist attacker will not be public after all.

War Secretary Pete Hegseth had recommended the public execution by military firing squad of Nidal Hasan, the admitted terrorist killer of 13 people plus an unborn baby in the Nov. 2009 shooting near Killeen, Texas. The execution is scheduled for December 3.

‘He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.’

The decision to livestream the event was praised by many, but some took exception, including Catholic leaders and critics of capital punishment.

On Thursday President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the execution will not be public.

“I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan,” wrote the president, “but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device. He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”

He added that the execution can be viewed by the families of the victims if they choose to do so.

“They deserve to witness JUSTICE!” he concluded.

Among those critical of livestreaming the execution was Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who said the livestreaming video would become a recruiting tool for other terrorists. Vice President JD Vance said he would not watch the livestreamed execution.

“We live in a society that already diminishes death so much. I don’t want it on TikTok,” said Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck, who went on to say livestreaming the execution would “rot our souls.”

Many expressed gratitude that the president was willing to listen to others’ voices and change his mind.

“Thanks to @POTUS for the right decision not to livestream the execution of the terrorist, Nidal M. Hasan, who unjustly murdered 14 people at Fort Hood. This decision at least stops us from taking a step deeper into the violent culture of death by exploiting Hasan and his victims’ survivors,” responded Bishop Michael Olson of the Diocese of Fort Worth in Texas.

“This is clearly the right choice and President Trump should be commended for making it,” replied theologian and academic Matthew Lee Anderson of Baylor University, an evangelical Protestant Christian.

“A great step in the right direction,” responded Father Matthew P. Schneider, a Catholic priest and moral theologian.

“Thank you, Mr. President,” wrote Father Aquinas Guilbeau, moral theologian and Dominican priest.

RELATED: DHS fires back at ‘absurd’ CBS report on ‘nonviolent’ illegal aliens by citing horrific cases

“Trump overrides Hegseth to cancel live-stream of public firing squad execution. Sanity prevails momentarily,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).

Father Joshua J. Whitfield, a prominent Catholic priest and columnist who had said a public execution would have been “perverse,” appeared to approve of the change as well.

An ABC News poll found that 53% of respondents approved of the execution of Nidal Hasan, but only 18% supported livestreaming the execution and 80% were opposed to it.

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​Capital punishment, Execution, Fort hood, Donald trump, Pete hegseth, Politics 

The United States is about to make history as it prepares to televise the first-ever execution by firing squad. Former U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan will be put to death this December for a heinous crime committed in 2009. But while the original plan was to show the event to the world, the Trump administration is locked in a debate that could take the execution off air before it even happens.

A formal execution has never been aired on TV in the United States. The most recent public execution happened in 1936 in Kentucky after Rainey Bethea raped and killed a 70-year-old woman. He was hanged for his crimes, and since the first public broadcast network didn’t arrive until several years later, the only way to witness the event was in person. Needless to say, we’re in uncharted waters.

The broadcast could be used against the United States.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave the green light for the public execution, telling Jack Posobiec in an interview, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

These “things” Hegseth refers to are the 13 U.S. Army members that Hasan murdered on November 5, 2009. Hasan was later charged and convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. He was ultimately sentenced to death days later.

The execution will take place right back at the scene of the crime. On December 3, 2026, at 1 p.m. Central Time, Nidal Hasan will die at the hands of a firing squad. While lethal injection is usually the first option to carry out a humane death sentence, firing squads are still common in the U.S., with the latest execution taking place as recently as 2025.

The public execution of Nidal Hasan was meant to air on television and be available on streaming platforms in December. However, a new report reveals that the Trump administration is still debating the morality of putting a man to death in front of the entire world.

Vice President JD Vance has said he won’t watch a livestreamed event, while Trump is reportedly cool to the streaming idea; according to ABC News, some within the administration fear that the broadcast could be used against the United States as anti-American propaganda or fuel for Islamic extremists, or that it could simply reflect poorly on the nation. The situation looks even worse considering Hasan was paralyzed during the murders in 2009, leaving him confined to a wheelchair. Visually, killing a disabled man on TV would not play well.

Despite internal discussions, the Pentagon insists that the execution will be carried out on air as planned. A list of supported TV channels and streaming services has not been finalized yet. However, some services have already pre-emptively barred the content from their platforms, including TikTok and Newsmax. Specific viewing details should be available as we get closer to the execution.

RELATED: The Fort Hood shooter is the ‘victim’ now as media compares execution to ‘lynchings’

Sara Gonzales Unfiltered

In terms of the legality of the event, the FCC has strict laws that govern the content available on TV. Specifically, stations can’t display indecent or obscene material, nor can they propagate hoaxes or distort the news. One thing dubiously absent from regulatory scrutiny is violence. Violent content is protected on TV under free speech laws. That means a public execution is technically within the FCC’s rules.

Furthermore, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has made no threats to get in the way. In fact, he left the final decision to air the execution to Hegseth. So as long as the Trump administration sorts out its internal disagreement, the event will be available for all to watch.

The only question now is: Should you watch it?

Legally, the death penalty is a just process sanctioned by 27 U.S. states and the federal government. At least some of biblical Scripture supports the death penalty as well. Genesis 9:6 states, “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.” Spiritually — as in for the sake of your soul — it may be best not to tune in.

Just because the death penalty is legal and righteous doesn’t mean that it’s meant for the entire world to see. Watching someone’s life be taken siphons away a bit of one’s own soul in kind, and the spiritual trade-off isn’t worth the cost.

Without any more details, there is no way to know exactly how brutal the event will appear on TV. That said, the forceful end of a life is still a vicious death. Children definitely shouldn’t watch the event, and if you wish to protect your soul, you shouldn’t watch it either.

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​Brendan carr, Crime, Death penalty, Execution, Firing squad, Lethal injection, Pete hegseth, United states, Tech 

A 33-year-old Florida male shot an Uber Eats driver in the buttocks and pistol-whipped him after the driver tried to get the phone number of the suspect’s girlfriend, WPLG-TV reported, citing Miami-Dade deputies.

The shooting happened early Monday morning outside the Pearl Dadeland Apartments at 7440 N. Kendall Drive, the station said, citing the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office.

‘Babe, please stop!’

A deputy responded to the area just after 3:30 a.m. after receiving reports of a gunshot, WPLG said, citing an arrest report, adding that a bystander flagged down the deputy “and reported that a group of individuals had been involved in an altercation but left the area minutes before deputies arrived.”

At about the same time, South Miami police reported that the victim arrived at Baptist Health South Miami Hospital with a gunshot wound, the station said, citing deputies.

The arrest report said the victim told deputies that he delivered food to a woman living at the apartment building about an hour before and “engaged in a brief conversation with [her] and took a liking to her,” WPLG said.

Deputies said the victim returned around 3:25 a.m. “in an attempt to see the [woman] again and possibly obtain her phone number” but was unsuccessful, the station said.

But as the victim was returning to his car, deputies said the woman’s boyfriend — Khuslen Saruultuya — pulled up in a Chevrolet Corvette, WPLG reported.

Deputies said Saruultuya ordered the victim “to lie on the ground” as he pointed a handgun at him, the station reported.

“The victim complied and laid flat on the ground [and Saruultuya] fired one round, which grazed the victim on his right buttock,” the arrest report states, according to WPLG. “While the victim remained on the ground, [Saruultuya] struck him on the back of the head with the buttstock of the handgun, causing a two-inch open wound.”

Saruultuya then ordered the victim to stand and pointed the gun at his head, telling him, “I am going to kill you,” the arrest report states, according to the station.

Saruultuya’s girlfriend, witnessing the incident, pleaded with him, yelling, “Babe, please stop!” WPLG said, citing the arrest report.

The victim told deputies that Saruultuya “chased” him around the Corvette, still pointing the gun at him, as the woman “attempted to hold [Saruultuya] back,” the station reported.

Authorities told WPLG they traced the Corvette’s license plate back to Saruultuya and went to his unit at the nearby Palmer Dadeland Apartments to take him into custody; the victim also picked him out of a photo lineup.

Deputies added to the station that during a “cursory sweep” of Saruultuya’s unit, they found drugs, including Xanax, Adderall, oxycodone, amphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, MDMA, psilocybin mushrooms, and marijuana.

What’s more, deputies told WPLG that Saruultuya also had 16 pills of the erectile dysfunction drug Cialis along with two bags of the party drug tusi, also known as “pink cocaine.”

RELATED: Florida male allegedly opens fire at woman inside parking garage at courthouse. Turns out they’re reportedly married.

“Those are my prescriptions,” Saruultuya said in court Tuesday before Judge Mindy Glazer warned him to not speak about the case, the station said.

The Mongolia-born Saruultuya is facing charges including attempted murder, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, and nine felony drug trafficking charges, WPLG said, citing jail records.

During his court appearance, the judge denied Saruultuya’s bond, WTVJ-TV reported. Jail records indicate Saruultuya remained behind bars Thursday morning.

WTVJ, citing records, said Saruultuya in 2022 got into a different altercation with a man at a gym in Kendall after the man was checking out Saruultuya’s girlfriend. Investigators said the man pulled a knife on Saruultuya and was later arrested, WTVJ added.

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​Florida, Shooting, Miami-dade, Uber eats, Arrest, Attempted murder, Drug trafficking, Crime 

I was on Facebook one day when I happened to see an event schedule for the super-woke nonprofit Literary Arts Bookstore we have here in Portland.

I looked through the store’s calendar. Most of the events were what you would expect: a young woman presenting her trauma memoir, a BIPOC reading night, a Chinese woman’s immigration story, a female brain surgeon’s journey through the sexist medical field …

All three of them knew exactly what they were allowed to write about. And they stayed inside those bounds.

Then I saw something strange. It was an event that featured three young white guys.

You don’t see a lot of literary readings by white guys in Portland. Or anywhere else. We’ve been at a low ebb of white guys in any kind of literary undertaking in recent years, unless they have written a book about their own toxicity or are revealing the secrets of the patriarchy.

Maybe they were gay, or trans, or of some unusual ethnicity. Maybe they claimed to be Native American, like Elizabeth Warren.

But their descriptions didn’t include any of those things. They were just three normal-looking white guys. They were poets.

But that couldn’t be right. There had to be a catch.

The good, the bad, and the certified

Reading through the listing, I saw they had a lot of credentials. That made sense. You couldn’t just have three white guys reading poetry, unless they were seriously vetted and certified.

All three of them had master’s degrees in the fine arts. One guy had a Ph.D. They had all won various poetry prizes. They had received poetry fellowships. They had held prestigious teaching positions. They were associate editors of important journals.

In short, they had jumped through every hoop, subjugated themselves in every way, to be accepted into the woke academic poetry community — which typically hates people like them.

Eyewitness to the improbable

Of course I went to the reading. I wasn’t going to miss this. And anyway, I still assumed there was some angle. Some extenuating circumstance.

I arrived and took a seat. There were a lot of people there. Were the other attendees thinking what I was thinking? How did these guys get this gig?

They were all young and good-looking. That probably helped. The first guy was from Los Angeles. His poetry was about his difficult childhood under his football-coach father. Now he had a son of his own, which he had complicated feelings about.

The next guy looked like he might be gay. But he too had a son. And a wife. And a house, apparently. He was smartly dressed and very personable. He looked like a young literature professor, back before such jobs became contentious and problematic.

The last guy was younger than the other two. He did interesting things with poetry “on the page,” blacking out words and then crafting poems out of those that remained.

He was clearly talented, but appeared oblivious to the ill-will he no doubt generated within the poetry community — taking up space as a privileged white male, while disadvantaged bodies struggled against systemic oppression.

RELATED: 5 poems by Joseph Massey

O.W. Root

Silos

The one thing I noticed about all three of the poets: they were “siloed” in what they wrote about. They rarely addressed anything outside their immediate familial situations. Their homes. Their sons. Their fathers. Their memories of those things.

They did not write about their neighbors. Or the unrest in the streets. Or the identity politics that rule over all of us.

They had learned to stay very close to home in their writing. No politics. No social commentary. Nothing controversial. No unruly thoughts. No sex or desire or horniness. It was all extremely contained.

All three of them knew exactly what they were allowed to write about. And they stayed inside those bounds.

One small step for man

Still, they were there. They were reading in public. The Literary Arts woman who introduced them — gay, nose-ringed, POC — even made a joke about how shocked her colleagues were by their presence.

Afterward, they signed books and mingled with the public. I stayed around for that. I felt a sense of relief from the crowd and from the poets themselves. Nobody had protested their presence. Nothing bad had happened.

It seemed like white dudes were back. Within limits. And as long as they stuck to the script. And knew their place. And didn’t, you know, act too much like men.

​Poetry, Art, Culture, Straight white male, Portland oregon, Lifestyle, Lgbq, Poetry reading, Blake’s progress 

In 2017, as Hurricane Harvey battered Houston, three police officers found DJ Daniel and his brothers wandering through a shelter. The boys had gone looking for snacks. The officers reunited them with their father and took them upstairs for pizza. DJ still remembers that meal — and the officers who helped his family through a frightening time.

That small act of kindness gave DJ a dream. He wanted to become a police officer so he could help others the way those officers helped him.

Three officers had no way of knowing how far their kindness would travel. They simply saw a family who needed help and acted.

Nearly a decade later, DJ has been sworn in by about 4,400 law enforcement agencies across the United States and abroad. In March 2025, President Donald Trump recognized him during an address to Congress, when the Secret Service director made him an honorary agent. A boy inspired by three officers and a slice of pizza had found a professional family numbering in the thousands.

That journey inspired our new children’s book, “Special Agent DJ.” We wanted to tell a story about courage, family, service, and the impression one good deed can leave on a child. We also wanted young readers to understand something practical: When they need help, police officers can be people to turn to.

A child becomes separated from a parent in a crowded store. A youngster gets lost in a park or feels frightened and does not know who to ask for help. Officers help reunite families, respond to emergencies, and protect neighborhoods. Children should learn to recognize when to seek help. DJ learned that lesson firsthand.

His determination has been tested in ways most adults can barely imagine. Diagnosed with brain and spinal cancer as a young child, DJ has undergone 13 brain surgeries. He has lived for years beyond an initial prognosis that gave him only months. Reading has also presented difficulties, yet he helped turn his experience into a book for other children.

RELATED: You can medicate despair. You can’t manufacture meaning.

Merovingian/Getty Images

DJ’s father, Theodis, has been by his side throughout the journey. He has driven him across the country, stood with him at ceremonies, and encouraged him through grueling days. During the book’s development, he helped us work through illustrations, story ideas, and revisions by phone. His steady support helped make the project possible.

We brought “Special Agent DJ” together in roughly four months. That schedule was ambitious for a children’s book, but we had a reason to move quickly: We wanted DJ to hold the finished book, see what he had helped create, and enjoy the accomplishment himself.

A badge or a ceremony may seem like a small thing to someone watching from a distance. For DJ, every welcome from a police department has reinforced the kindness he encountered as a child. Each officer who embraced his dream helped him carry it a little farther.

Parents and educators teach children many lessons about safety. Knowing when and how to ask a police officer for help deserves a place among them. A positive encounter can shape a child’s understanding of public service long after the immediate trouble has passed.

DJ’s story began with a slice of pizza in a hurricane shelter. It grew into thousands of honorary swearing-in ceremonies, recognition in Washington, and a book he can share with children he has never met. Three officers had no way of knowing how far their kindness would travel. They simply saw a family who needed help and acted.

That is the lesson we hope readers take from “Special Agent DJ”: A small gesture can change the course of a life.

​Agent, Badge, Brain cancer, Courage, Dj daniel, Family, Hurricane harvey, Kindness, Parent, Police officers, President donald trump, Reading, Service, Washington, Father, Pizza, Opinion & analysis 

James Talarico, the Democrat nominee hoping to succeed John Cornyn of Texas in the U.S. Senate, demonstrated at the CNN Jubliee Town Hall on Wednesday that he doesn’t require the presence of his Republican opponent to badly lose a debate.

Among the attendees afforded an opportunity during the town hall to raise and discuss sensitive matters with the Senate candidate was Jodi Hunt, an eighth-generation Texas woman and orthodox Catholic who has taught in the University of Dallas’ theology department since 2018 and serves as the executive director of the university’s Neuhoff Institute for Ministry and Evangelization.

‘That’s OK. We’re both Christians.’

Hunt noted at the outset that like many other Catholics, she is a “one-issue voter. Abortion is a large part of that, and dignity of the human person and natural law.”

Fully 67% of Texans identify as Christians, 22% as Catholic, according to 2024 data from the Pew Research Center.

“We believe that at the moment of conception, there is a human life to protect,” continued the Texas Christian. “So we struggle with the idea that it’s the woman’s right to choose.”

Hunt added that Democrats’ unwillingness to protect “the most innocent among us” not only makes it hard to vote for them but saps prospective voters’ trust in their ability to “provide policies to protect the rest of Texans and to promote dignity and human life.”

RELATED: Vance: Talarico wears Christianity as a ‘skin suit’ — and it reveals more than just contempt

Talarico — a part-time Presbyterian seminarian who has attempted to use Scripture to justify abortion and previously preached at a leftist church that regards abortion as a “blessing” — said that “we may come to different moral and ethical conclusions when it comes to the question of ‘should abortion be legal or not?’ It sounds like you and I do come to a different conclusion. That’s OK. We’re both Christians.”

Dusting off a claim he previously used without much pushback, Talarico asserted that “the Bible is silent on the issue of abortion.”

The Catholic theologian proved immune to Talarico’s gaslighting.

“The Bible is not silent on abortion,” said Hunt. “There is the Ten Commandments. ‘Thou shalt not kill.'”

Hunt’s statement prompted thunderous applause from the audience.

“If I believed that abortion was murder, that it violated the Ten Commandments, then I wouldn’t support it,” said Talarico, who has protested the public display of the Ten Commandments.

After stating that he does not regard killing unborn human beings as murder, in a state where killing a pregnant woman counts as a double homicide, Talarico condemned Texas’ Human Life Protection Act, claiming that “if we are authentically pro-life, I think we should be disturbed by the outcomes of this extreme abortion ban.”

Hunt was joined in refuting Talarico’s claim that “the Bible is silent on abortion” by others online, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which wrote, “Nope,” and Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins, who wrote, “No, the Bible is not silent on killing children made in His image.”

Chris Gustafson, communications director for the Senate Leadership Fund, said in a statement obtained by Blaze News, “Talarico proved once again that he’s simply too liberal and too dangerous for Texas.”

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​James talarico, Ken paxton, Catholic, Abortion, Bible, Christianity, Faith, Texas, Politics 

Christian parents are posting photos of their teenage daughters in revealing homecoming dresses, then pushing back when Christian schools try to enforce modesty standards.

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey doesn’t believe this is even close to the appropriate response that Christian families should have, pointing out that Christian mothers are posting “their teen daughters going to homecoming in dresses that barely cover their bodies.”

“This is obviously a big problem because Christian school policies for homecoming dresses are changing,” she explains. “Apparently this was an issue at a Christian school in Colorado, because back in 2022, they started requiring girls to send photos of their dresses, front and back, to be reviewed by female staff members.”

A petition was started that received 553 signatures to get rid of the rules, as they were “being objectified.”

“You’re not forced to go to the school,” Stuckey says. “This is a Christian school who I’m sure says up front, ‘Hey, we have Christian values. If you don’t believe in these Christian values, then there is a public school right around the corner.’”

In 2023, a Catholic school in Nevada also adopted new rules requiring homecoming dresses be ankle- or floor-length — and another petition attempting to fight it followed.

“I just find it strange that when you have people opting for schools that are Catholic, that are Christian, evangelical, whatever, and suddenly they try to enforce those values, that the parents balk, that the students freak out,” Stuckey comments.

“So what is going on?” she asks. “Is it just impossible to say no? Is it the worst thing in the world for your daughter to look different than her peers? In fact, if your Christian daughter dresses exactly the same as all of her non-Christian friends, is that probably just not great?”

And while she believes that “looking lovely and feminine and radiant can be glorifying to God,” that’s not the message Christian teens and women are sending when they dress scantily.

“If the point of an outfit is to draw eyes to anything other than the face or the overall beauty of a woman’s presence, then it’s not an outfit that a Christian woman should wear, whether she is a teenager or whether she’s an adult,” Stuckey says.

And while Christians are called to “love thy neighbor,” Stuckey explains that “wearing something intentionally provocative is not loving your neighbor.”

“It’s distracting,” she says. “It’s tempting. It conveys a message of narcissism and invites objectification. Immodesty is not an excuse for lust. I am not saying that. It does not alleviate the responsibility of the person lusting. But lust also doesn’t alleviate the responsibility of someone dressing deliberately scantily.”

“Both the person displaying their body and the person lusting after the body are sinning,” she adds.

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.

​Allie beth stuckey, Homecoming dresses, Modesty, Christianity, Blazetv show 

If you’re a deputy sheriff upset that your Republican boss isn’t doing enough to help with immigration enforcement and you decide to run for sheriff in Alabama, prepare to be fired and apparently spied on by your political opponents.

Just ask former deputy and current Republican nominee for Lee County sheriff Cam Hunt.

‘The meeting started at 9 a.m. By 9:10, I was walking out of there, calling my wife to tell her he’d fired me.’

After launching his bid for sheriff and making immigration enforcement a central part of his campaign, someone inside the Lee County Sheriff’s Office geofenced Hunt’s home during the primary, according to a state ethics complaint and screenshots of the department’s taxpayer-funded tracking system provided exclusively to Blaze News by Hunt.

That geofence, allegedly enabled by the department’s Verizon fleet GPS system, may have flagged deputies and county vehicles that visited Hunt during his campaign.

On July 1, about four weeks after Hunt filed his complaint, deputies were told to turn in their GPS units because the office had canceled its Verizon contract, according to Hunt.

The sensitive records the system is designed to collect are wiped on a recurring basis, and the state hasn’t indicated that it will preserve materials related to the complaint, according to Hunt.

Hunt, a Marine veteran, beat longtime Sheriff Jay Jones in the Republican sheriff primary on May 19, seven months after Jones fired him for informing him of his forthcoming campaign against him.

Hunt says a whistleblower found his address in the geofence list shortly before that vote in May. But Hunt now faces a write-in campaign to keep Jones in office, backed by progressive activists who want a sheriff who will keep federal immigration enforcement out of Lee County.

The local Republican Party has done little to stop it, according to Hunt.

Screenshots provided exclusively to Blaze News by Hunt show two saved locations in the system covering Hunt’s home and an adjoining lot he owns, he claimed.

One of the geofences has four vehicle groups attached, each labeled with the name of a sheriff’s office lieutenant. The screenshots do not show what those groups were used for.

RELATED: Maine got robbed under Democrat Matt Dunlap’s nose. Now he’s running for Congress.

Blaze Media

The screenshots do not show who built the geofences, when they were built, or whether any alerts went out. Hunt says a whistleblower spotted his address in the system before the primary.

“From what they could tell, User 1 created a new account. User 2 went into the new account and used it to create the geofences,” Hunt told Blaze News. “Once they were established, they went back to the User 1 account and deleted the new account. So, essentially, covering their tracks.”

Not long after the geofence was discovered, Jones’ office canceled the Verizon contract linked to the system, according to Hunt. There has been no replacement.

“It was to micromanage,” Hunt said of how the system had been run. “It wasn’t about officer safety or any of that.”

Hunt wrote an email to the Ethics Commission on Oct. 1 after commission staff told him the complaint was still “in line for review” by its legal team and that “no preservation request or other action has been taken.” He has asked the commission to preserve the records “relating to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office fleet GPS system” before they are lost.

RELATED: GOP operative fired for ‘OK’ sign rehired after Blaze News report

Blaze News

Jones has denied any misuse.

“The Sheriff’s Office has not and would not allow the use of this system for any purpose not involved in the interest of public safety,” Jones said in a September statement to WTVM-TV.

Jones and the sheriff’s office did not respond to requests for comment regarding the screenshots and the contract cancellation.

Hunt beat Jones 9,301 to 8,994 in the May 19 GOP primary, denying Jones another term after a nearly three-decade tenure that began in 1998.

Jones fired Hunt in October 2025, according to a letter and statement reported by WRBL-TV. The firing occurred immediately after Hunt informed Jones of his intention to challenge him in the Republican primary.

“The meeting started at 9 a.m. By 9:10, I was walking out of there, calling my wife to tell her he’d fired me,” Hunt said.

Hunt ran on joining 287(g), the federal program that deputizes local officers to help enforce immigration law. Jones consistently refused to sign on leading up to the primary election.

ICE’s list of participating agencies shows at least 26 of Alabama’s 67 sheriff’s offices in the program. Lee County is not one of them.

“If we did any less, we’d be a sanctuary county,” Hunt said of Jones’ approach.

Jones says the program carries administrative and liability costs and that “the absence of 287(g) paperwork has never and will never stop our department from deporting illegal immigrants.” His office reports 271 transfers to ICE custody in 2025 and 185 from January through September 2026.

No Democrat is running for sheriff, so Hunt is the only name on the Nov. 3 ballot. That’s not stopping liberal partisans, who have taken it upon themselves to organize a write-in campaign for Sheriff Jones.

The idea surfaced in Indivisible Auburn Alabama’s Facebook group the day after the primary. “Can we write in Jay Jones for Sheriff in November?” a member asked on May 20.

RELATED: Fraud, fraud, and more fraud: How Maine became a Somali scammer’s paradise

Blaze News

“We do not need a Sheriff who has made it abundantly clear that he wants to throw Lee County in with ICE and CBP,” another post reads. The poster called on Democrats to write in Jones and called federal immigration agents’ actions under the Trump administration “constitutional atrocities.”

On Aug. 11, the sheriff’s office called claims that it doesn’t cooperate with ICE “blatantly untrue” and said it “has, and will continue to, cooperate with ICE in the arrest, detention, and transfer” of people in the country illegally.

When a commenter in the group pushed back that Jones “wants ICE here,” a group administrator answered that Jones “has said he would not sign a 287g agreement.”

“While the letter isn’t what most of us would want to hear, 287g would be worse,” the administrator wrote. “I will be writing in Jay Jones.”

A former Lee County deputy took the effort public in September, and supporters made signs showing voters how to write Jones in. One supporter promoted an online store selling “write in Jay Jones” yard signs, stickers, and T-shirts; the link now returns an error. Absentee voting began Sept. 9.

Jones has not disavowed the liberal write-in campaign against his own party’s candidate. The Alabama GOP’s sore-loser rules prevent primary candidates from running as Republicans again if they appear on the other party’s ticket or endorse a write-in campaign after a primary loss.

“If people wish to organize for a write-in candidacy, I’m very humbled they would feel that way,” Jones told Now Georgia in September. “People have been kind to me over the years. They would like that to continue.”

Indivisible Auburn/Opelika did not respond to a request for comment.

RELATED: Retiree radicalism: Behind the scenes with Maine’s anti-ICE activists

Blaze News

Jones lost the sheriff’s race, but he won a seat on the Alabama Republican Party’s State Executive Committee on the same ballot.

Hunt says his own party isn’t standing up for him.

On the day he spoke with Blaze News, Hunt was headed to a Lee County Republican lunch where Probate Judge Jere Colley was scheduled to answer questions about write-in voting. Hunt claimed he wasn’t supposed to get the invitation.

“I got the impression they weren’t on board with it, but at the same time they weren’t really willing to put pressure on Sheriff Jones to disavow it,” Hunt said. “With the more recent things, I feel like it’s a little more than that, and they’re a little more complicit in it.”

Lee County GOP Chairman Cole Lawson told Blaze News that Jones assured him privately he “has not been involved” in the write-in campaign and “has not asked anybody to write his name in.”

RELATED: Exclusive: Republican operative fired after flashing ‘OK’ sign speaks out

Blaze Media

Actively campaigning against the nominee “would be grounds for removal” from the county executive committee, Lawson said, but declining to endorse is not.

“The way this would work is, if a member of the Republican Party here chose to file a formal challenge to remove Sheriff Jones from the executive committee, they would file that to the executive committee,” Lawson told Blaze News. “It would come to me to be the judge of whether that line had been crossed or not.”

The county party has not disavowed the write-in campaign. Lawson told Blaze News its message to voters is the same one it has pushed all cycle.

“The Lee County GOP urges citizens to get out and vote straight-ticket Republican up and down the ballot on Nov. 3, like their livelihood depends on it.”

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​Republican party, Sanctuary county, Politics, Alabama, Lee county sheriff’s office 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy — the Ukrainian leader whose five-year presidential term officially ended over two years ago — is presently on a media blitz, trying to shore up British and European support.

So far, his efforts have been successful even in Germany, where an ex-Ukrainian special forces officer is on trial for allegedly leading the undersea bombings of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022 — bombings that NATO initially appeared ready to treat as Article 5-triggering attacks.

‘We are losing [a] strong partner.’

Zelenskyy has, however, also used his trip abroad to complain about Elon Musk and the United States as well as about President Donald Trump, who suggested on Saturday that Ukraine “should get a new leader who can make a deal.”

In an interview that aired on Wednesday, the eponymous host of “Piers Morgan Uncensored” concern-mongered about Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel and his call for an energy ceasefire.

Morgan claimed that Trump had “thrown [Zelenskyy] under the bus,” then asked Zelenskyy whether he felt “betrayed.”

“Really, yes, really, between us,” replied Zelenskyy. “But I mean, it’s a little bit more complicated than just my emotions or my feelings.”

“Our country has to survive, and we count on our real partners, strategic partners — United States,” continued the Ukrainian leader. “And President Trump, they wanted us not to attack [Russian oil refineries]. My opinion was, it is not fair.”

RELATED: Democrats slam Iran war gas prices but keep their climate surcharges

On Saturday, Trump said that Ukraine “better damn well stop” attacking Russian oil refineries and stated, “Zelenskyy could have settled this war many times. Many, many times. And he chooses not to.”

The following day, he announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.

On Monday, Kyiv claimed that Moscow had violated the ceasefire. Kyiv has since resumed its strikes on Russian oil refineries.

Zelenskyy told Morgan that Russia wants Trump to be “weak” and said with regard to the Russo-American diesel deal, “It’s a pity that we are losing, we are losing [a] strong partner.”

When asked whether he was “losing America,” Zelenskyy answered in the affirmative.

“It’s painful when President Trump chooses one side — not our side,” said Zelenskyy. “We are okay that he’s in the middle, but if you’re in the middle, you have to stay in the middle, not on the wrong side. I think his advisers are wrong.”

While the Ukrainian president insinuated that the U.S. is a fence-sitter, America has poured a fortune into Ukraine’s defense and provided military and intelligence support to the beleaguered nation.

Ukraine Oversight, Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve

Zelenskyy further suggested that Trump was being pushed away from the “right side of history.”

When asked about Zelenskyy’s remarks, a White House official told Blaze News that President Trump “wants this war settled so the senseless killing ends. The president and his team remain committed to continuing to play a constructive role in ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, and he remains optimistic that we’ll ultimately get a peace deal done.”

“The United States continues to play a constructive role in speaking to both sides in working towards bringing the war to an end,” continued the official. “We are the only country in the world that can play that role.”

Neither the Department of War nor the State Department responded to Blaze News’ request for comment.

On the theme of betrayal, Zelenskyy also alleged to Morgan that Kyiv had missed warnings from allies about imminent missile attacks because Starlink connectivity was deliberately restricted, “blocked of course by the SpaceX and of course by the United States.”

“This decision will bring a lot of human losses,” said Zelenskyy.

“Of course, people will die.”

SpaceX did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Musk emphasized on Thursday that “Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company.”

Musk noted further that “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s former minister of defense, noted on Wednesday that “Starlink connectivity at speeds of up to 160 km/h is being restored. Removing Starshield’s speed limit entirely is now critical for Ukraine’s defense. Thank you, @elonmusk . We hope for your continued support.”

When asked whether he plans to step down, Zelenskyy — who has dissolved rival parties and consolidated Ukraine’s media outlets — said, “Not, of course. This is my responsibility.”

The Ukrainian president emphasized that his ouster would be a “decision, of course, of our people, not Trump, not Musk, not anyone.”

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, said that Zelenskyy has proven incapable of making the “very difficult decisions to stop this war,” adding that “either Zelenskyy takes on that responsibility and demonstrates that political will, or he does not,” reported the Kyiv Post.

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​Donald trump, Volodymyr zelenskyy, Nord stream, Russia, Ukraine, Starlink, Elon musk, Spacex, Politics 

Democrats are poised for a good night on November 3. The only question is how far into Republican territory their gains will reach. Yet unlike the Democratic waves of 2006, 2008, and 2018, this election has no unmistakable leftward pull. Watch the ads. Democrats are attacking Republicans on issues that conservatives should own.

Trump won Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, and Texas by double digits in 2024. Now Republicans must defend Senate seats in every one of them, along with North Carolina, which Trump also carried. Georgia, another Trump state, has a Democratic incumbent senator that Republicans appear unlikely to unseat. Some of the fiercest contests are unfolding where the GOP should be cruising.

Trump’s endorsements helped protect milquetoast incumbents from serious primary challenges. Now Republicans must spend millions defending them. It’s political malpractice.

Does this mean voters have embraced the left? The Democratic Party’s commercials suggest the opposite. They seldom lead with abortion, transgender ideology, or illegal immigration, though those issues will surely figure in their governing agenda. Instead, Democrats attack inflation, health care costs, insider trading, data centers, Big Tech surveillance, and the Epstein scandal. Some of these spots would fit comfortably in a conservative primary.

We’re losing an election for things we don’t even believe in. Republicans embraced the cost of living as the “golden economy” while Democrats run on affordability, corruption, and opposition to corporate favors. Voters hear one party attacking powerful interests and another defending them. Guess which one holds the White House?

Take Texas. James Talarico, the radical leftist running against Ken Paxton, recently attacked Paxton for tax breaks and campaign donations tied to data centers that are “selling off Texas — our land, our water, our communities.” Talarico also promoted an ad calling out Biden for “failing us on the border” and promising to put Texas first. I could have written those attacks against a corporatist Republican myself!

In Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown (D) casts Republican attacks on transgender issues as distractions from gas prices, groceries, and health care. He goes after Senator Jon Husted (R) for promoting data centers across Ohio. Rather than defending their cultural agenda, Democrats make Republicans look like the ones obsessing over it while families struggle.

Independent Dan Osborn is doing something similar against Sen. Pete Ricketts (R) in Nebraska. His ads tie Ricketts to Epstein, challenge the importation of foreign beef over Nebraska cattle, and promote right-to-repair laws — a cause I have championed while few Republicans joined me. Osborn also condemns Ricketts’ vote to pardon a convicted rapist who had already served his prison sentence. That is a political opening no tough-on-crime conservative should offer.

RELATED: Democrats have a political violence problem

Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

I have no faith in Osborn to govern as a conservative. But why hand him those openings? He is hammering Ricketts over sprawling data centers and casting himself as the champion of farmers and ranchers. The Senate Leadership Fund is pouring another $8 million into Nebraska, a state Trump won by 20 points.

Trump’s endorsements helped protect milquetoast incumbents from serious primary challenges. Now Republicans must spend millions defending them. It’s political malpractice.

In Kansas, Democrats are running an ad condemning Sen. Roger Marshall (R) for voting against releasing Epstein files and quoting his remark that the matter was “not of much interest to me.” Trump won Kansas by 16 points. The state hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. Yet a toxic mix of corporate baggage, scandal, and a rudderless Republican agenda has put even this seat in play.

Campaigns have aired more than 160 different Epstein-related ads this cycle, backed by more than $35 million in airtime, according to CNN’s analysis of AdImpact data. Democrats have found an issue that lets them sound like the outsiders demanding accountability while Republicans defend the status quo.

The same pattern holds in Georgia. Incumbent Democrat Jon Ossoff is attacking Flock cameras and Big Tech surveillance, issues most Blaze readers would recognize as legitimate threats to liberty. I don’t trust Ossoff to get them right. But my kind of Republican would never give him such an easy target. Why did the GOP?

RELATED: On ‘Meet the Press,’ El-Sayed denied his family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hours later, the receipts landed.

Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Michigan offers another example. Abdul El-Sayed, perhaps the Democrats’ most radical Senate nominee, isn’t running ads about making the Muslim Brotherhood great again. He’s attacking Republican Mike Rogers for promoting government surveillance and saying officials would love to get “one-tenth of what Google has on you.” Once again, Democrats have seized ground conservatives should occupy.

Then comes Iran. The war has battered energy prices and supply chains. Trump opened with two weeks of bombing and failed to plan for Iran’s predictable disruption of the Strait of Hormuz. Even from a hawkish perspective, what meaningful objectives did he accomplish? That is another glass jaw Republicans did not need to inherit.

After Nov. 3, conservatives will face a long conversation about what went wrong. No single issue explains it. For two years, the movement has been pimping Big Tech, protecting Epstein, defending corporate welfare, and selling an economic message that bears little resemblance to what voters experience. None of that is inherent in conservative principles.

Democrats may be on the cusp of a blue wave, but they’ve written it with a red script. If conservatives refuse to learn, Democrats will repeat the performance in 2028 while Trump remains president. We need to break out of the paralysis of the Trump era and write our own script — so we can finally win or lose on what we believe.

​Big tech, Blue wave, Conservative principles, Corruption, Cost of living, Data centers, Democrats, Election, Health care, Inflation, Republicans, Senate, Trump, Opinion & analysis 

America is synonymous with a peculiar list of cultural exports: Coca-Cola, Bruce Springsteen, peanut butter on everything, monster trucks, prescription drug commercials with terrifying side effects, and, of course, tipping.

I remember the first time I visited the United States, some 16 years ago, shortly after finishing high school. Coming from a country where leaving a few spare coins on the table was considered high praise, the whole business felt like navigating a Vietnamese minefield.

The actual employers are nowhere in sight while customers and workers fight over spare change like gladiators in an arena made of iPad swivel stands.

I was genuinely shocked to discover that tipping wasn’t an optional nod to genuinely exceptional service. No, like breathing and blinking, it was mandatory.

Tapped out

For my first few weeks in your great nation, I harbored a genuine fear that the FBI would burst through my door and drag me away to a federal penitentiary unless I gave a generous 20% to every human who handed me a donut.

Many visitors find this arrangement odd, even tyrannical. Back home, if someone hands you a cup of coffee, they hand you the coffee, you pay the price listed on the board, and everyone moves on with their lives. Nobody looks at you like you just insulted their lineage because you didn’t pay an extra three dollars for the act of turning a paper cup around.

Americans themselves appear to be getting fed up. A 2026 LendingTree survey found that a quarter of consumers are tipping less as they cut restaurant spending amid higher food costs. Other polling points directly at the mechanism driving everyone insane: Two-thirds of Americans say they feel pressured to tip when a digital payment screen displaying suggested amounts is visible to the employee.

Screen-grab

That payment screen is the real villain of this decade. You used to tip a waiter at a booth or a valet who drove your car. In 2026, you face a digital tablet turned toward you at a self-service bakery, a dry cleaner, and a drive-thru window. The cashier presses a button, spins the screen around with a practiced flip of the wrist, and stares directly into both your eyes and your soul.

The screen offers four giant preset buttons: 18%, 20%, 25%, or “Custom.” Finding the “No Tip” option requires a master’s degree in user interface design and the shamelessness of a Scientologist. You stand there panicking, aware that three people in line behind you are also casting judgment. You hit 20% not because it’s necessarily the right thing to do but because it’s the quickest way to escape with some level of dignity.

America has built an economy where basic human transactions increasingly require a tax on awkwardness. The logic of the system vanished long ago. You step up to a counter, a worker reaches two inches to the left, grabs a bag of chips, hands it to you, and suddenly you are expected to subsidize the worker’s salary. The actual employers are nowhere in sight while customers and workers fight over spare change like gladiators in an arena made of iPad swivel stands.

Customer servitude

The history behind this custom is darker than you might expect. Tipping migrated to the United States from Europe in the 19th century, adopted in part by wealthy Americans eager to imitate European aristocratic manners. It was not warmly received. Newspapers and labor activists denounced the practice as un-American, servile, and little better than bribery. By 1915, several states had banned it.

Employers, however, discovered an obvious advantage: Tips allowed customers to shoulder part of the payroll. The notorious Pullman Company paid its mostly black porters miserable wages while expecting passengers to make up the difference. Restaurants likewise came to rely heavily on gratuities. The anti-tipping laws didn’t last; by the 1920s, they had been repealed or struck down.

A version of that arrangement survives in federal law today. In states that allow the full federal tip credit, an employer can pay a tipped worker as little as $2.13 an hour in direct wages, provided wages and tips together reach at least the federal minimum wage.

And now we have somehow expanded tipping beyond the occupations on which this peculiar system was built. The prompt appears whether anyone carried your bags, waited on your table, parked your car, or did much of anything beyond operating a cash register.

RELATED: America’s young are being recruited into socialism — one dance party at a time

Bettman/Michael Tullberg/Getty Images

Turning Japanese

Better alternatives exist worldwide, and they manage without subjecting every purchase to a moral referendum. Japan has essentially no everyday tipping culture; the country’s own tourism authority warns that attempting to tip can cause confusion or discomfort. Across much of Europe, gratuities tend to be smaller, less automatic, and less central to how service workers are paid.

You see a price. You pay it. Everyone survives.

Now, I know I‘m not American, so telling you how to run your country can sound offensive. That is not my intention. You have built a remarkable nation that gave us jazz, the moon landing, road trips, sitcoms, backyard barbecues, Clint Eastwood, Britney Spears with hair and without, and avocado toast.

I am simply a genuine fan and frequent visitor who would prefer to buy an espresso without being asked to subsidize the payroll or shell out a small ransom for an already overpriced blueberry muffin.

​America, Bribery, Bruce springsteen, Digital tablet, Federal law, Pullman company, Socialism, Tax, Tip credit, United states, Digital payment screen, Tipping, Retail, Lifestyle 

A 47-year-old man was arrested after his elderly grandmother and his aunt were found gruesomely killed at their home in Mobile, Alabama.

Court transcripts reveal that a frantic call for help was made to police on Monday about Thomas Steele’s erratic statements and behavior.

‘He’s doing some bizarre things, and I don’t know if that’s, uh … good or. … He says he’s just going to live for God.’

Christy Deloach, 65, called 911 about 11 a.m., according to records obtained by WALA-TV.

Deloach said in the call that her nephew was “off his medication for lithium, and I’m not sure who to call or contact.”

“He gave away his phone … and giving his car away. Um, he’s doing some bizarre things, and I don’t know if that’s, uh … good or,” she added. “He says he’s just going to live for God and not going to have any kind of electronics.”

The dispatcher asked Deloach if she needed medical help.

“It’s in his mind. He’s following God,” she responded.

“I just needed to figure out what to do. … He’s calm! He’s not violent or anything. So, I guess I’ll just let it play itself out,” she added.

The dispatcher gave Deloach the number for the police department, and the call ended.

About two hours later, police were called to the home on Carolina Court and reported finding the bodies of Deloach and 85-year-old Dora Boone, the grandmother of Steele.

They were decapitated with a chainsaw.

Police said Steele was standing outside the home. He was arrested and booked into the Mobile County Metro Jail on two charges of murder.

RELATED: Wife and son helped father dismember man’s body with a chainsaw after a lethal poker game, police say

He was denied bond on Tuesday, according to a WKRG-TV report, and the judge ordered a competency examination for the suspect.

Steele was told a public defender would be appointed for him, and he gave a bizarre response.

“No, kill him,” he said.

Deloach’s boss at the hair salon where she worked for 15 years said she had mentioned that her nephew was bipolar.

“She was one of the first employees we had when we took over. And just a real sweet girl. Beautiful person. I considered her a friend,” Lenny Zanghi said.

“I’m just going to miss her and think about her every day,” Zanghi continued.

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​Alabama, Decapitation, Murder, Crime 

Americans are being told that restricting legal immigration would rig the competition for jobs and college seats. Apparently, allowing citizens to compete with the entire planet is “meritocracy,” while giving them preference in their own country is “discrimination.”

The argument has gained force as scrutiny moves from illegal crossings to work visas and foreign student admissions. Employers use H-1B visas to recruit skilled workers, and public universities often collect higher tuition from students who live outside their states. Critics of tighter visa rules portray any preference for Americans as a kind of affirmative action for the native-born.

A nation is its people, not an economic zone meant for optimization. Even if a global meritocracy were possible, it would be immoral to subject your nation to it.

The claim assumes something remarkable: America exists chiefly to administer a worldwide talent contest. Its citizens have no special claim on the institutions, industries, and opportunities their country built.

Even on its own terms, the global meritocracy argument collapses under scrutiny. It’s a myth.

Merit requires standards, judges, and rules. A perfect score wins in bowling; a low score wins in golf. Hit the pins with a golf ball on a bowling lane and nobody objects. Roll that same ball across a putting green with your hand and you have cheated. What counts as skill depends on the rules of the game. Standards require a recognized authority too.

University admissions present a far harder problem. Americans argue endlessly about standardized tests, grades, extracurricular activities, and what a degree should prove. Colleges that abandoned entrance exams are now restoring them, while others still refuse to consider scores. Even within one country, administrators cannot agree on what qualifies an applicant.

Now expand that disagreement worldwide.

Some countries place extraordinary pressure on students to excel in examinations that determine their educational futures. Others rely more heavily on interviews, recommendations, or years of coursework. Each system rewards different habits. More importantly, credentials are only as reliable as the institutions that issue them and the people who verify their authenticity.

Academic fraud also complicates the picture. Cheating and plagiarism plague American schools, and universities abroad confront their own scandals. Cheating and plagiarism are endemic in China and India. India’s University Grants Commission maintains a public list of institutions that lack authority to award degrees, but diploma mills where credentials are manufactured at scale remain rampant.

An American diploma hardly guarantees competence, either. Universities have diluted requirements, expanded administrative bureaucracies, and sold credentials whose value employers increasingly question. Yet the remedy for weak standards is honest verification, not faith that a global marketplace will somehow discover merit on its own.

RELATED: The real power of college has nothing to do with the classroom

Blaze Media Illustration

Culture adds another complication. Americans generally expect a posted store price to apply to every customer. In markets where bargaining is customary, skill can mean negotiating the lowest price through patience, personal relationships, and persistence. The same conduct can be admired in one setting and treated as manipulation in another.

Importing large numbers of people also imports habits, expectations, and assumptions about fairness. A country that refuses to acknowledge this invites conflict over the rules by which everyone is expected to live.

We have our own contradictions. Universities and employers spent years elevating diversity goals alongside measures of achievement. Courts and lawmakers have pushed back against some of those practices. On paper, federal law prohibits hiring discrimination based on race, sex, and national origin. Still, anyone who watched institutions defend racial preferences should be skeptical when those same institutions suddenly invoke neutral merit as an unquestionable principle.

The H-1B debate raises a separate problem. Federal rules require employers to pay visa workers at least the applicable prevailing wage or the wage paid to comparable employees, whichever is higher. The program was not written as permission to hire foreign workers at half price. But wage safeguards are only as good as enforcement, and employers can still gain leverage when a worker’s legal status depends heavily on keeping a particular job.

That dependency can hurt both the foreign employee and the American applicant. An employer may prefer the worker who has fewer options. Calling the resulting arrangement a free and fair contest does not make it one.

Even a perfect ranking of talent would not answer who America’s schools and employers ought to serve. An American need not prove superior intelligence or virtue to claim a privileged place in his own country.

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

Blaze Media Illustration

The case against the feasibility of a global meritocracy is sound, but the most important argument against the practice is one of ownership. A nation is its people, not an economic zone meant for optimization. Even if a global meritocracy were possible, it would be immoral to subject your nation to it.

The opportunities inside a country do not emerge from the ether. Americans inherit institutions built through generations of work, investment, and sacrifice. They finance schools, build infrastructure, defend borders, and bear the cost of political failure. The inheritance carries a moral claim, just as children have a claim to their parents’ estate.

Americans may welcome foreign talent when it serves their interests. They can debate which visas advance national purposes and how many to grant. They are not obligated to treat every qualified applicant on earth as equally entitled to the opportunities their country provides. Citizenship must carry a claim that a temporary visa cannot erase.

Calling visa restrictions “DEI for Americans” turns national obligation into an accusation of unfairness. Advocates of limitless competition insist that any preference for Americans violates meritocracy, even while relying on institutions that cannot agree on merit’s meaning or enforce its rules. Their supposedly neutral standard disguises a political demand.

A nation that treats its people as interchangeable bidders in a global labor auction has surrendered its purpose. America was not built to supply corporations with cheap labor or universities with tuition-paying students. Americans have every right to prefer their own people, especially in employment and college admissions. Their future should not be sacrificed on the altar of economic ideology.

​Americans, China, Citizenship, Competition, Credentials, Dei, Discrimination, H1b visas, India, Inheritance, Jobs, Legal immigration, Meritocracy, Plagiarism, Public universities, Work visas, Ownership, Higher education, Courts, Replacement migration, Opinion & analysis