Category: blaze media

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 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) says Republicans have “done nothing to make life more affordable for the American people” and instead have “made life more expensive.” That’s a remarkable accusation from a party that presided over a historic jump in consumer prices and continues to defend policies that add to the bills families pay.

With the November midterms approaching, Democrats want voters to blame Donald Trump for the cost of groceries, rent, power, and gasoline. They should first account for the prices Americans inherited when Trump returned to office — and for the costs imposed by Democrat-led states.

Americans did not forget what groceries and rent cost four years ago. Democrats should not expect them to forget who held power when those prices took off.

Start with inflation. The Federal Reserve aims for 2% annual inflation over time. Even when inflation slows, prices generally keep rising. A smaller annual increase does not reverse the larger increases that came before it.

According to the consumer price index, overall prices climbed about 21% during Joe Biden’s presidency. They rose roughly another 5% between January 2025 and August 2026, the latest available monthly data. Inflation has not stopped: The August report put the 12-month rate at 3.4%. But the distinction between the rate of inflation and the price level explains why families still feel the squeeze from the Biden years.

Household essentials tell the story. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded increases of more than 20% in grocery prices and residential rents during Biden’s term. Electricity costs rose by roughly 30%. Slower subsequent increases leave those earlier jumps in place.

At the pump, the weekly national average hit $5.01 a gallon in June 2022, during Biden’s term. It peaked at $4.50 so far in Trump’s second term, amid disruptions to oil supplies due to the Iran war. Nominal term averages have run $3.46 under Biden and $3.43 so far under Trump, according to federal energy data.

Still, the household costs Democrats now denounce were already elevated when Biden left office. The party cannot credibly campaign as though American families began paying those bills in January 2025.

State policy makes the contradiction sharper. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors stricter immigration enforcement, estimated in 2023 that illegal immigration imposed a net fiscal cost of $150.7 billion a year on federal, state and local taxpayers. The report raises a question Democrat officials cannot dismiss: Who pays for education, health care, and other public services as migration increases?

RELATED: The diesel panic cure could make the disease worse

Frederic J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

Housing supplies another pressure point. A September 2026 Brookings study estimated that the post-pandemic immigration surge raised rents in receiving metropolitan areas by 1.4% to 1.6%. Policymakers who expand immigration without making room for more housing should expect renters to notice.

Electricity offers an even clearer test of state choices. An analysis publicized by the American Energy Alliance found that rates rose 32.4% from 2014 to 2024 in states that backed the Democrat presidential nominee in 2020 and 2024, compared with 18.5% in Republican-voting states. States with mandatory renewable portfolio standards also saw larger increases than those without them. Voters should ask what those mandates cost.

When House lawmakers passed legislation requiring state utility regulators to consider shielding ratepayers from new data-center infrastructure costs, Senate Democrats blocked its advance. Families watching their power bills climb deserved a better result.

Taxes provide another point of comparison. Visual Capitalist’s analysis estimated that a New Jersey resident would pay about $1.36 million in federal, state, and local taxes over a lifetime, equal to 48.2% of estimated earnings. Eight of the 10 highest-tax states in that ranking had Democrat governing trifectas in 2026. The concentration is striking.

RELATED: The kindness con: Fraudsters exploit America’s safety net

Aleksei-veprev/Getty Images

New Jersey, my home state, levies the nation’s highest top corporate income tax rate, 11.5%. Burlington has announced plans to shift its headquarters to Philadelphia, and Samsung has announced a headquarters move to Texas. ExxonMobil moved its legal domicile to Texas. Lawmakers should consider what those departures say about the state’s tax and regulatory climate.

The state’s employment figures offer another warning. New Jersey’s initial estimate of 25,600 jobs lost in July was subsequently revised to 21,900. Officials have reason to examine the burdens they put on employers.

Americans have also seen welcome gains. The Census Bureau reported that real median household income reached a record $87,460 in 2025, up 2.6% from 2024, while the official poverty rate fell to 10.2%. Median income for black households rose 4.8%.

Democrats are free to make their case that Republican policies have made life more expensive. Voters should require them to answer for their own record: the price surge under Biden, the tax burdens in Democrat-led states, the cost of energy mandates, and the fiscal consequences of immigration policy.

Americans did not forget what groceries and rent cost four years ago. Democrats should not expect them to forget who held power when those prices took off.

​American families, Bureau of labor statistics, Consumer price index, Consumer prices, Donald trump, Exxonmobil, Federal reserve, Gasoline, Groceries, Hakeem jeffries, Housing, Inflation, Iran war, Joe biden, Migration, New jersey, Public services, Republicans, Taxes, Opinion & analysis 

This last Saturday, a 15-year-old girl in a remote Guatemalan village was believed to be dead. Her family brought her home for a wake, and mourners gathered around her coffin. Then, hours later, she opened her eyes.

The extraordinary story prompts Glenn Beck to revisit a forgotten historical fear held by even George Washington — being buried alive.

“Some say her father was carrying her towards a clinic and just felt her go still. Some say she had gotten to the hospital and the hospital pronounced her dead,” Glenn explains.

“And Dad has put her in a box. He gets a box, picks [his] daughter up, I mean, it’s, you know, the mountains. Picks her up, puts her in the box, puts her in the car, drives her home. The coffin goes into the house, and they start having a wake and, you know, doing it the way that generations in Guatemala and the mountains have done it forever,” he says.

“All the neighbors come, women are bringing food, somebody lights candles, nobody leaves her alone. Seven hours, maybe eight, she’s perfectly still in the box,” he continues.

“Around 2:30 in the afternoon, somebody is standing near the coffin and sees the girl’s eyes open up. She doesn’t move, just her eyes open up,” he says.

“Then she tries to sit up.”

That’s when they started giving her oxygen. Now, it’s reported that she is “getting better every day.”

“There’s no medical report. Nobody has produced a death certificate, you know, nothing. Deep faint, heart that goes quiet, body goes cold, frightened father can’t find a pulse, goes to the hospital, they can’t find a pulse,” Glenn says.

And had she not woken up, had they buried her too quickly, she would have been buried alive.

“Being still in the room,” Glenn says, is what saved the girl.

And this is what George Washington was afraid of.

“Washington wasn’t afraid of dying. He said so. The fear was being given up on while you still could be reached,” Glenn explains.

“And we do that now, not with coffins. We do that with people. The marriage that we call dead. The friend we wrote off. The son who wandered off and stopped calling. We’ve written them off,” he continues.

“We pronounce it. We close the lid. And we go home early. The bell never saved anybody. What saved things were those people who refused to leave the room,” he adds.

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​Glenn beck, Guatemala, George washington, Buried alive, Blazetv show 

Ken Dilanian of MS Now probably didn’t think he’d inadvertently make the case for mass deportation at the progressive news channel, but that is what happened Wednesday.

Dilanian and others were discussing the targeted raid on Monday of the Washington, D.C., residence of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) by Homeland Security Investigations.

‘You would find a lot of cases, perhaps, where people fudged facts, where things weren’t all as they were represented.’

“There’s obviously a pattern here, and it would be crazy not to address the pattern and fit her into the context. But again, we have not seen the underlying evidence,” host Katy Tur said.

“Why her D.C. home? If it is about immigration and fraud on paperwork, why the D.C. home?” she asked.

Dilanian responded that they could only speculate on the evidence in the case at this point in the investigation before he offered a curious defense.

“I think the larger issue is, we all know that if you scrutinize every refugee case, everybody who came here as a refugee and then became naturalized, and you went through that with a fine-tooth comb, you would find a lot of cases, perhaps, where people fudged facts, where things weren’t all as they were represented,” he said.

Video of Dilanian’s comments were posted to social media, where many noted that fudging facts on an asylum application is grounds for deportation.

He went on to muse about the possibility that the Trump administration was weaponizing the government against Omar because she’s an outspoken opponent of his policies.

“The question here is, the federal government has a limited amount of resources. Where are they directing those investigative resources? Are they doing it in a fair way or a vindictive way?” he added.

“That’s, I think, what’s really at the heart of the case: Is this on the level, or are they doing this because it’s an outspoken critic of the president who’s been targeted by right-wing conspiracy theories for more than a decade?” Dilanian concluded.

RELATED: Ilhan Omar hit with yet ANOTHER investigation — this time from Jeanine Pirro

The progressive congresswoman responded to the raid in a post on social media.

“Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” Omar wrote.

“I will not be silenced,” she concluded.

Omar is also being investigated over her financial disclosures, according to District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.

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​Mass deportation, Ms now, Ilhan omar, Immigration fraud, Politics 

A new California law requiring federal immigration agents to wear identification during their operations was permanently slapped down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Critics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations say masked and unidentifiable agents pose a risk to illegal alien targets as well as the greater public.

‘No set of circumstances exist under which the Act would be valid.’

On Wednesday, the three-judge panel of the appeals court said the state could not restrict federal operations without congressional approval.

“We conclude … the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions,” Judge Mark J. Bennett wrote. “No set of circumstances exist under which the Act would be valid.”

The ruling said the law violated the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Department of Justice had sued to stop the identification law as well as another restriction barring federal agents from using masks during operations.

In April, the same court struck down a similar restriction issued by California.

“If a state law directly regulates the governmental conduct of the United States without congressional authorization, it is void irrespective of whether the regulated activities are essential to federal functions or operations, and irrespective of the degree to which the state law interferes with such functions or operations,” Bennett wrote at the time.

More than a dozen other states have similar laws intended to oppose federal immigration operations.

A request for comment from the governor’s office was not returned in time for publication.

First Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli has responded with ridicule to other efforts by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to restrict ICE operations.

“If you want to regulate federal agents, you have to win a federal election,” Essayli responded to Newsom over new restrictions at the end of September.

“Until then, you have no jurisdiction,” Essayli added. “Accordingly, I have advised DHS to disregard your bill attempting to ban safe and effective less-lethal tools that agents need to escalate dangerous situations.”

RELATED: DOJ hilariously MOCKS Newsom after he signs bills to restrict ICE operations in California

Newsom has tried to position himself as the foremost opponent to the president’s policy in an apparent campaign to increase his name recognition and run for president.

In the most recent polling, the governor falls far behind Kamala Harris in the race for the Democratic nomination, with support from only 15% of voters, compared to 30% for Harris.

Newsom has also indicated that he would not run for president if Harris decided to run again after losing to President Donald Trump in 2024.

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​Politics, Gavin newsom, Immigration and customs enforcement, Kamala harris 

“Enter Sandman,” exit politics.

During a recent show at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Metallica front man James Hetfield assured fans that the band had come to play music, not deliver a political message.

‘Metallica is not here, like some other entertainers, to influence you with their bulls**t.’

Nothing else matters

Metallica recently kicked off a 24-date residency at the Sphere that runs through March 2027. During Saturday night’s performance, Hetfield paused to thank fans for making the trip.

“Unless you live in Vegas, you’ve come a long way to spend some time with Metallica. We’re grateful for that,” Hetfield began in a clip that’s since gone viral. “Your travels, the money you spent, the time it took. Thanks for coming to celebrate with us.”

Then he made clear what fans could expect from the band.

“And I just got to say, Metallica is not here, like some other entertainers, to influence you with their bulls**t, OK? We are here — no bulls**t — we’re here to forget about all the outside s**t, OK? Metallica’s agenda is love, energy, and heavy music, baby!”

The 63-year-old has held this position for years, declining to share his political opinions even when directly asked.

RELATED: 50-year-old rock star tears up at MLB playoff game — only Millennials will understand

Ride the lightning

In a 2017 interview with Chilean newspaper La Tercera, Hetfield was asked his opinion of President Donald Trump, then in his first term.

“Everyone has one, but I keep mine to myself,” Hetfield replied, according to a translation of his remarks.

“I am an artist, a singer who plays guitar in a band,” he explained. “I hate politics. I don’t want to talk about politics. It separates people, and I want to connect them with music.”

Hetfield worried that taking political sides would alienate fans.

“If I say ‘I love Trump’ or ‘I hate Trump,’ someone can say, ‘Then I don’t like his music anymore,’ which is very silly,” he said.

RELATED: Country singer Kacey Musgraves unleashes foul-mouthed rant against ‘loser’ Christopher Columbus – conservatives fire back

Mike Lewis Photography/Redferns

Shill ’em all

Other musicians have been more than happy to bring politics to the forefront of their performances.

Bruce Springsteen recently criticized Trump and ICE agents during a concert in Maryland. Paramore singer Hayley Williams has also repeatedly attacked Trump supporters, calling MAGA fans “pieces of s**t” at a recent show in New Orleans.

Rapper Macklemore went even further, delivering a pro-Palestinian speech while opening for Ed Sheeran on a stadium tour. The remarks prompted objections from stadium operators, and Macklemore was subsequently dropped from the tour.

Sheeran, who said the decision belonged to the tour’s promoter, defended his own reluctance to bring politics into his concerts, explaining that fans don’t come to his shows expecting a political forum.

It seems Hetfield agrees.

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​Metallica, Macklemore, Hayley williams, Bruce springsteen, Donald trump, Entertainment 

In the viral Cornell 7 case, a series of text messages have drawn ire regarding how the alleged sexual encounter at Cornell University was initially described — and how the woman’s account changed nearly two weeks later.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray calls it “a crazy story.”

“I’ve kind of avoided talking about it, because what do you say about it? … I mean, it’s such a risque story from start to finish. It’s hard to even know what to say about it. But there was a little incident involving a woman and a bunch of men,” he says on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“And initially, supposedly, according to her even, it was all consensual,” he adds.

Gray explains that originally, one of the accused was texting “Jane Doe” and apologized for things getting “a little out of control.”

“And she was basically telling him not to worry about it. It was all fine,” Gray says, noting that in the text messages, she even called what happened “not illegal.”

“And if I’m not mistaken, rape is illegal. So it apparently wasn’t that,” he continues.

“She said a lot of things that would seem to exonerate them, but then, as time went on, she started feeling differently about it. And I’m guessing she got some heat from people around her. I don’t know,” he adds.

In one exchange, Newell tells Jane Doe, “You’re an amazing person and I genuinely hope you’re not catching as much heat from this as we are. We’ve been shutting down any stories we’ve heard, but again, I’m so sorry.”

Jane Doe responded “Ah, Jonathan, I really appreciate this text. My memory’s super clouded too. I think we were all way too freaking drunk and high.”

Thirteen days later, Jane Doe’s story flipped when she claimed that “90% of the night was not consensual.”

“But did she say ‘no’? We don’t even know that because they were all drunk and on ketamine. And now, I guess that releases anybody from any responsibility whatsoever if you’ve taken ketamine or you’re drunk,” Gray comments.

“There’s no personal responsibility on your part because you’re the one who took it. So now, you can use that as an excuse for everything that transpired afterward.”

“No means no, we all agree with that. But we don’t even know that she ever said no,” he adds.

Want more from Pat Gray?

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​Cornell university, Text messages, Jane doe, Cornell 7 case, Jonathan newell, Pat gray, Blazetv show 

District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro revealed that her office is investigating Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

In an interview on Fox News, Pirro opined about the possibility of criminal charges for Omar after Homeland Security Investigations agents performed a targeted raid on her residence Monday in Washington, D.C.

‘It doesn’t matter what the House does. It doesn’t matter what this agency or that does. We’re looking at the facts. Based upon the facts, we’ll follow them wherever they take us.’

“What you have is Homeland Security. They do everything from narcotics to immigration. They got a warrant signed by a federal judge,” Pirro told Fox anchor John Roberts on Tuesday.

“So you’ve got the executive branch through HSI going to a federal judge, who is cognizant of the Fourth Amendment rights of any target, who said, ‘You have the right to search this person’s house,'” she added. “Based upon that execution of that warrant, we will see what comes of it.”

“But you had to have probable cause, right?” Roberts asked.

“There’s no question that that judge would not have signed that warrant unless there was probable cause — and probably more than that, given the individual who’s involved and given the fact that we’re in the nation’s capital with judges in the nation’s capital,” she replied.

“But more than that, it is upon the execution of the warrant that we will see — are we dealing with civil immigration issues? Because they’ve made it clear this is about immigration from the warrant itself. Are we dealing with criminal immigration issues?” Pirro said.

“There are several investigations going on, and I don’t think there’s any question, but if there’s a crime that was committed, it will be prosecuted,” she added.

Roberts then asked about allegations of financial misconduct against Omar related to apparent discrepancies on political disclosures. He pointed out that the Office of Congressional Conduct voted 5-1 to recommend dismissal of the allegations to the Ethics Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.

“That doesn’t matter,” Pirro responded.

“I can tell you that is subject to an investigation as well,” she added. “And it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter what the House does. It doesn’t matter what this agency or that does. We’re looking at the facts. Based upon the facts, we’ll follow them wherever they take us.”

“This is your office that’s doing this?” Roberts asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

RELATED: ‘He’s been saying some dumb s**t’: Ilhan Omar MELTS DOWN when reporter presses her on Homan probe into brother

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

Omar resubmitted a 2024 financial disclosure filing in April 2026, and her lawyer claimed accountants had provided incorrect valuations for companies owned by her husband. The old valuations “did not take into account the liabilities of each of the companies,” the lawyer said, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

She has denied any wrongdoing and accused the Trump administration of abusing the powers of government to attack its political opponents.

She has also previously asserted that the value range for her assets reflects the full value of the businesses and not the lower value of the percentage of the business that is actually owned by her husband.

On Monday, she responded to the DHS raid on her home.

“I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” she wrote on social media.

“I will not be silenced,” Omar concluded.

Omar’s office and campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Blaze News.

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​Homeland security investigations, Ilhan omar, Jeanine pirro, Politics 

Ask some voters why they support a candidate, and you might get a detailed explanation of his policies. Ask supporters of Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed why they support him, and you get “everything.”

In a recent man-on-the-street-style interview, the interviewer asks a group of women what their favorite thing is that the Michigan Senate hopeful is campaigning on.

“Everything! How can you not like what he’s for? I mean, it’s like we need it. We’re in bad shape,” one woman responded.

“What’s your one favorite, though? What stands out the most?” the interviewer asked.

“Health care for all,” another woman chimed in, before another woman agreed, “That’s mine too, health care.”

“And how are we going to give health care to everyone? How are we going to pay for that?” the interviewer asked again.

“We’re going to tax the rich,” a woman answered.

“What’s kind of scary about that,” Alex Stein tells BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales, “is when I think of Michigan now, like Dearborn, and I think it’s all Muslim. Those were like upper-middle-class white women. You know, they look like they have fine health care.”

“They almost look like they were Lindsay Clancy fans on a bunch of different prescription drugs,” he jokes.

“It is suicidal empathy,” he continues, though he doesn’t believe El-Sayed is as likely to win as his base seems to think he is.

“I think actually Mike Rogers is going to do better than people are predicting, though,” he adds, noting that Sayed “barely won” in the primary despite being projected to “win by 10 points.”

Gonzales agrees, pointing out that whatever the result is, “it’ll be really interesting to see because … Michigan is a flash point.”

“This will tell us,” she says, “is Michigan too far gone or is it not?”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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

​Abdul el-sayed, Michigan, Senate, Voters, Alex stein, Sara gonzales, Blazetv show 

Women at the gym might be upset with Shane Gillis, but they’re still watching.

The comic’s latest hosting gig at “Saturday Night Live” delivered one of the show’s biggest YouTube audiences in nearly a year.

‘I’d be Sharia on her.’

Magic mic

His opening monologue has drawn more than 2.7 million views, ranking second among “SNL” monologues posted since November 2025.

Gillis took the stage on Saturday night and stirred up online controversy with two observations about big-city gyms: They’re filled with the “hottest gay guys you’ve ever seen,” and “women just dress like whores now.”

Only Ryan Gosling’s early March monologue has drawn more views over the same period, with 3.04 million. The only other monologue to surpass 2 million was actor Connor Storrie’s late February appearance, with 2.08 million.

Gillis’ previous appearances have drawn even bigger audiences. His jokes about President Biden and President Trump in 2025 garnered almost 4.5 million views, while his 2024 appearance drew 7.26 million.

That appearance — his first time back since being fired from the show five years earlier — also generated controversy over his use of the words “gay” and “retarded.”

RELATED: ‘He’s right about gym girls’: Former ‘SNL’ star backs Shane Gillis as liberal celebs ‘gasp’ in shock

Will Heath/NBC/Getty Images

Good egg

Gillis also made himself a target in the latest monologue, joking about his weight and his comedian pals describing him as a “gas station egg.”

Some women responded by mentioning Gillis by name in their gym videos — after he had joked about being the creepy guy in the background of just such a video.

He already played a version of that guy on his show “Tires.”

In a clip Netflix promoted in August, Gillis’ character is caught leering at a woman at the gym by a content creator disgusted by his behavior. Gillis’ character tells the man not to let his girlfriend leave the house unless she’s wearing slacks or a burqa.

“I’d be Sharia on her,” he tells the man.

RELATED: Actor MELTS DOWN over jokes about women in Shane Gillis’ ‘SNL’ monologue

The natural

Some “SNL” alumni praised the monologue as it aired.

Victoria Jackson, a cast member from 1986 to 1992, said Gillis looked “skinny/handsome!”

“He’s right about gym girls dressing like ‘whores,’” Jackson said. “When did ‘camel toe’ become acceptable gym fashion and grocery shopping attire?”

Jeff Richards, a cast member from 2001 to 2004, called Gillis a “really funny guy” and an “obvious natural.”

Among his most vocal critics was “Schitt’s Creek” actor Dan Levy, son of beloved sketch-comedy performer Eugene Levy.

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​Shane gillis, Saturday night live, Ryan gosling, Entertainment 

Flock Safety has spent the better part of 2026 trying to convince people that its cameras aren’t mass surveillance tools used to track the whereabouts of anyone who drives by. Lawmakers aren’t buying it, though, as legislators push back to the point that the company is starting to collapse. Here are the latest updates on the Flock camera controversy.

The public first took notice of Flock Safety’s dubious activity as early as 2024, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that Flock cameras were being used for more than reading license plates. According to datasets that the group received, Flock cameras tracked various protests and activist groups and even monitored civilians suspected of breaking local laws.

‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’

Flock cameras may read license plates, but to say that this is all they do is a severe mischaracterization. Countless stories have emerged of police officers abusing the network. In the case of five officers in Georgia, they were caught inputting specific license plate numbers into the search system to track the location of specific individuals over time.

When pressed about the growing concern over Flock camera abuse, company CEO Garrett Langley gave a stunning response: “When people talk about just one of these, privacy or safety, they’re prioritizing the wrong thing, and what we have to prioritize as a country is compromise.” He continued, “How do we have our safety, and how do we balance privacy?”

For most liberty-loving Americans, there is no room for balance. There is only freedom or mass surveillance. Or, as my favorite Benjamin Franklin quote goes, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

First, cities noticed the public outcry. Local bans went into effect as Flock cameras were either covered, disabled, or removed from municipalities like Tempe, Arizona; Oviedo City, Florida; and St. Charles County, Missouri. Others simply let their contracts with the company lapse, as was the case with Knox County, Tennessee, and Stow, Massachusetts. So far, 214 cities and counties have de-Flocked their communities, though the number may be more since this report from August.

As local backlash continued, politicians stepped in to examine the situation. Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley issued a letter on his X.com account, declaring an investigation into Flock Safety over the “recent examples of abuse and misuse of personal data reveal the woeful lack of safeguards in these systems,” as a result of the St. Charles County situation. In his post, he wrote:

Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church.

Weeks later, Hawley broadened his national surveillance investigation to include several other camera companies, such as Motorola Solutions Inc., Verkada Inc., and Axon Enterprise Inc.

RELATED: We’re winning the fight against Flock — but the surveillance isn’t going away that easily

The Washington Post/Getty Images

Around the same time, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued a similar cry on X. “Newer Flock cameras do not just record vehicles,” he insisted. “They record people. Flock’s AI system can combine images of you and your vehicle with databases of phone numbers, relatives and court records to find out who you are, where you’re going and why.”

The issue has quickly become a bipartisan concern, with both sides of the aisle scrutinizing Flock Safety more than ever, and the company is starting to flounder under the pressure.

Despite its rapid rise to infamy, Flock Safety is still a newer startup company, which makes it susceptible to rapid changes in its industry. Following the backlash and canceled accounts, it has already begun to downsize.

According to Reuters, Flock is offloading up to 270 employees via a voluntary buyback program, and all terminations will be finalized by the end of October. With 1,500 employees currently on the payroll, this shift will impact 18% of Flock’s workforce.

In late September, Hawley introduced a new bill called the Stop Flock Abuse Act. As the name suggests, the bill includes several key points meant to protect citizens and also quell concerns:

Local governments can’t sell collected data to third parties.Users must receive written approval to conduct data searches.All searches must be logged and preserved for regular audits.Collected data must be encrypted, and it cannot leave the United States.Collected data must be deleted every 10 days, unless it is involved in an active criminal investigation.All hardware and software used with Flock cameras must be domestically sourced.Use of facial recognition technology with Flock is prohibited.

If successful, the bill could be a huge boon to both citizens and Flock Safety. The former would get back their peace of mind knowing that they aren’t being tracked, and the latter would get to continue to operate as a business without the specter of mass surveillance haunting future partnerships.

Everybody benefits. But first, the bill has to pass.

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​Flock safety, Investigation, Liberty, License plates, Privacy, Privacy rights, Safety, Surveillance, Facial recognition technology, Flock cameras, Flock, Tech