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As President Donald Trump explained in the wake of the political assassination of Charlie Kirk last week, many of the loudest voices in politics and media have consistently appealed to the rising danger of “far-right extremism.” Some, including the president, have connected this rhetoric to a left-wing justification for violence, and the administration is cracking down on those who have contributed to the problem.

404 Media reported that the DOJ quietly removed a flawed National Institute of Justice study entitled “What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism.” The removal was first noted by Daniel Malmer, a Ph.D. student studying online extremism at UNC-Chapel Hill.

‘My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.’

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said in a speech following Kirk’s death. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”

RELATED: Media tries to protect Antifa with tired al-Qaeda talking points

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The study explains that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”

The study explains this “trend” in more detail: “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”

In 2023 congressional testimony, Heidi L. Beirich, co-founder and executive vice president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, echoed the findings of the June 2024 study:

Data on acts of political violence clearly shows that it is the far right that is driving terrorism in the U.S., including targeting and, in certain cases, murdering law enforcement. That is not to say there is no violence from far-left actors, it is just simply not on the scale or as deadly as what is coming from far-right actors.

The Biden-era study is no longer available on the DOJ website, but Blaze News was able to locate the document off-site.

Kyle Shideler, the director and senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, told Blaze News, “This is typical of the countering violent extremism approach that has predominated the response to terrorist threats and also the Biden administration’s effort to make hate crimes and hate speech as equivalent to terrorism.”

Shideler continued, “The problem with these kinds of studies is they rely on slanted or biased databases which poorly categoriz[e] or refus[e] to categorize or underreport[] far-left extremism. This has even included things like coding black supremacists as white supremacists, counting drug deals gone wrong as hate crimes, and the like.”

“The Trump administration recently canceled funding for one such database,” Shideler added, referring to the government’s July revocation of funding for the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism program.

“We don’t live in 1975. We don’t live in 1995. We don’t live in 2001, or even 2015,” National Journalism Center Director Geoff Ingersoll explained in an X thread about a similar study out of the libertarian-left Cato Institute. The researcher, he wrote: “cooked the books and muddied the water. Any suggestion that the problem we face RIGHT NOW is something other than political violence on the left is being dangerously dishonest. More than a quarter of college students believe violence is justified to silence a speaker. Self identified ‘very liberals’ think political violence is justified at 6x the rate of ‘very conservatives.'”

A significant section of the study explores extremism tied to “white supremacist” groups. A footnote says: “The project included three human rights groups (Anti Defamation League, Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Southern Poverty Law Center) and Life After Hate, an organization that assists white supremacists in exiting the movement.”

This marks another of the Trump administration’s decisive steps toward quelling the justification for left-wing violence since these flawed studies are used to back up their arguments. This is also an opportunity for the government to continue investigating the federal funding of these studies and institutes.

The Department of Justice and Steven Chermak, one of the co-authors of the study, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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​Politics, Pam bondi, Doj, Nij, Donald trump, Charlie kirk, National institute of justice, Left wing, Right wing, Adl, Splc 

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Wednesday, sending at least one stock market soaring.

On Wednesday, the Fed announced that it had decided to cut the federal funds rate by a quarter of a point, bringing the new rate range down to 4-4.25%. The committee made the decision to reduce the rate despite continued “uncertainty about the economic outlook.”

‘He should have cut them a year ago.’

While the committee apparently continues to worry about reportedly slowing “job gains” and a slightly higher unemployment rate, at least one market rallied in response to the news. The Dow Jones immediately jumped over 400 points, though those gains soon moderated. As of mid Wednesday afternoon, the NASDAQ and S&P were down.

Late last month, when Fed Chairman Jerome Powell teased a possible upcoming rate cut, President Donald Trump indicated that any such cut would be too little, “too late.”

“He should have cut them a year ago,” the president said at the time. “He’s too late.”

RELATED: Powell’s tight money policy is strangling the US economy

alexsl/Getty Images

Trump has also lately referred to the Fed chairman by the nickname “Too Late.” “‘Too Late’ MUST CUT INTEREST RATES, NOW, AND BIGGER THAN HE HAD IN MIND. HOUSING WILL SOAR!!!” the president wrote on Truth Social on Monday.

Blaze News reached out to the White House for comment.

This is a developing story.

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​Federal reserve, Jerome powell, Interest rates, Politics 

Republicans in the U.S. Congress passed two bills meant to strengthen law enforcement policies in Washington, D.C., while most Democrats voted against the provisions.

One bill was called the D.C. Criminal Reforms to Immediately Make Everyone Safe Act, or DC CRIMES Act, and restricts the ability of local officials to change sentencing laws. Also included was a provision that changed the threshold for easing punishments against young criminals from 25 to 18 years old.

‘We believe in investing in solutions that make people safer, not political stunts or short-term gimmicks or cheap tough talk.’

The second bill allows for suspects as young as 14 years old to be charged as adults for certain crimes. That bill passed by a vote of 225 to 203, while the DC CRIMES Act passed by a vote of 240 to 179.

Democrats excoriated the effort and claimed that Republicans were usurping the power of local residents to govern themselves.

“People are rightly concerned about crime in D.C. and back home in their communities, and Democrats of course want safe streets. But we believe in investing in solutions that make people safer, not political stunts or short-term gimmicks or cheap tough talk,” said Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California.

“The over 700,000 D.C. residents, the majority of whom are black and brown, are capable and worthy of governing themselves,” said District Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat.

President Donald Trump has been criticizing the crime and lack of order in the district. He ordered military troops to patrol the district, leading to Democrats angrily denouncing what they saw an authoritarian takeover.

RELATED: Liberals pounce to defend drug cartels after Trump reveals strike on drug-running gang members near Venezuela

Many residents in the district have said that the troop presence has helped tamp down crime and they support the efforts. Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser admitted that carjackings had decreased after the troop deployment, though she was heavily criticized by other local Democratic figures for being honest about crime.

“We know that when carjackings go down, when use of guns goes down, when homicide or robbery go down, neighborhoods feel safer and are safer,” Bowser said. “So this surge has been important to us for that reason.”

Congress is scheduled to vote on other measures meant to help law enforcement combat crime in the district.

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​Crime bills dc, Crime in dc, Dems for crime, Washington dc crime, Politics 

NFL teams that were happy to go above and beyond to memorialize George Floyd after his death declined to honor Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated.

As Blaze News previously reported, at least five NFL teams did not honor Kirk in home games over the weekend, while others held moments of silence or displayed his image on their in-stadium screens. Kirk was shot and killed on Sept. 10 during a campus tour stop in Utah, with countless memorials being erected in his honor.

‘Please do not mistake a lack of public commentary for indifference.’

The five teams that did not honor Kirk, however, did honor Floyd after his 2020 death while he was in police custody.

The Minnesota Vikings, for example, not only stood in unison to honor Floyd at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis (pictured below), but they hosted Floyd’s family for the same game, their 2020 season opener against the Green Bay Packers. The team also pledged $5 million to “social justice,” while planning a scholarship in Floyd’s name.

The Vikings have not made a public statement about Kirk and did not return Blaze News’ request for comment.

RELATED: Houston Texans hold moment of silence — but don’t say Charlie Kirk’s name

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – SEPTEMBER 13, 2020: Members of the Minnesota Vikings stand with arms linked as the team pays tribute to George Floyd before the game against the Green Bay Packers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

The Indianapolis Colts did not honor Kirk’s death, but they did introduce measures to fight “racism and injustice” after Floyd died. The team also created a new staff position — director of diversity, equity, and inclusion — along with a scholarship fund.

“In addition to the recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and others, I have heard stunning testimonials from our players and staff about their personal experiences with racism,” owner and CEO Jim Irsay said at the time.

In a comment to the Daily Mail, the Colts said the reason they did not honor Kirk was because they held a moment of silence for Forrest Lucas, the founder of Lucas Oil, who is the namesake of their stadium. The team said the honoring was planned last month when Mr. Lucas passed away.

The Cincinnati Bengals, who also have not honored or seemingly made any public statements about Kirk, were quick to squash any claims in 2020 that they did not have an opinion on Floyd’s death.

The Bengals committed to “listening and action” and pledged $250,000 to “community initiatives.”

“Please do not mistake a lack of public commentary for indifference,” the team said in a statement. “The Bengals organization believes that fighting prejudice and discrimination requires action but to do so we have to listen first.”

The Bengals did not return Blaze News’ request for comment.

RELATED: Here are the NFL teams that held a moment of silence to honor Charlie Kirk — and the ones that didn’t

INGLEWOOD, CA – AUGUST 27: George Floyd name displayed before the Los Angeles Chargers boycott scrimmage on August 27, 2020, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA. (Photo by Jevone Moore/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Additionally, the Baltimore Ravens held a moment of silence for Floyd in 2020 but not for Kirk in 2025. The team has not made any public statements about Kirk, either.

At the same time, though, star quarterback Lamar Jackson shared a post on X from former Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith that said, “Celebrating the death of someone you don’t share the same beliefs as is wild. Seeing it play out in real time is disgusting.”

The Ravens did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

The Detroit Lions were the fifth team not to honor Kirk or give a public statement. However, in 2020, their statement about Floyd was adamant.

“Right is right and wrong is wrong. What is happening is not acceptable. We recognize that the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery are only the most recent examples plaguing our communities,” the franchise stated at the time.

The team vowed to engage in “real action and conversation” as well as “continue to LISTEN.”

Blaze News was unable to reach the Lions for comment.

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​Fearless, Nfl, Football, George floyd, Charlie kirk, Tribute, Sports 

A Florida man was arrested after the Federal Bureau of Investigation received a tip from the man’s high school friend about alarming threats posted to social media.

When police confronted Michael Whitehead at his apartment in Fort Myers about the threatening messages, the 27-year-old allegedly admitted that the account belonged to him and he wrote the threatening messages.

‘I personally will do everything I can to democide republicans.’

“All American conservatives will be systematically erased, I personally will do everything I can to democide republicans,” one alleged post read.

Democide refers to the killing of citizens by the government.

“Her oppressors will suffer by my hand I promise,” another alleged message read.

The woman who tipped off the FBI had taken screenshots of the threats.

Whitehouse was arrested on Sept. 10 by the Fort Myers Police Department and released on bond the next day with restrictions that included surrendering his firearm and wearing a GPS monitor.

His attorney, Michael Hornung, told Gulf Coast News that the incident was simply a misunderstanding arising from poor judgment.

“What can be misconstrued, especially with politics nowadays, I can understand the fever that’s out there,” he said.

Hornung said that Whitehead had never previously been in trouble with the law and that none of the threats specifically singled out any politician or person.

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

Jim Rosinus, the chair of the Democratic Party of Lee County, rejected the comments vehemently in a statement to GCN.

“Political violence of any kind is unacceptable. It is not acceptable on the left, it is not acceptable on the right, it is not the way to run a democracy.”

Whitehead was charged with making a written or electronic threat.

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​Florida man arrested, Michael whitehead, Leftist threats against republicans, Political violence, Politics 

An American Airlines flight attendant went missing, and her body has yet to be found. However, authorities say a Texas woman may have implicated herself and her friend after an accidental butt-dial phone call left behind a damning voicemail.

Rana Nofal Soluri — a 47-year-old flight attendant from Fort Worth — was reported missing on June 11.

‘It’s been torture.’

Soluri had been out of work since late March while recovering from minor surgery, the New York Post reported. Her co-workers at Envoy Air — an American Airlines subsidiary — reported Soluri missing after they purportedly were unable to contact her.

During a June 10 welfare check, police questioned 66-year-old Dennis William Day — Soluri’s roommate. According to the Post, Day told investigators that Soluri had been a longtime friend and had been living with him in Fort Worth but added he had not seen her for three months.

On June 23, police conducted a search of Day’s property and interviewed him again.

Citing an affidavit, NBC News reported that investigators also looked at surveillance video from the property.

Police said the surveillance video shows Day dragging “what appears to be a lifeless body from the home into the backyard” on March 21.

Coincidentally, detectives secured a search warrant for Soluri’s cell phone records, which reportedly show that the last call she made was on March 21, according to People magazine.

Day was arrested and booked into the Tarrant County Jail on June 26, according to jail records. Day was charged with murder and is being detained on a $200,000 bond.

On Aug. 26, police arrested a second suspect — 62-year-old Joni Thomas. She was charged with tampering with evidence. She has since been released on bond.

RELATED: ‘Monster’ learns his fate for killing 2-year-old girl; officials say he ‘completely severed’ toddler’s spine

According to a criminal complaint obtained by KXAS-TV, Day convinced Thomas to let him use her pickup truck to transport Soluri’s body, and Thomas assisted Day in throwing the corpse off a bridge.

Thomas initially told investigators that she didn’t allow Day to use her truck, according to police. However, Thomas allegedly changed her story later.

Citing the arrest warrant, KXAS reported that investigators said Thomas later said Day did use her truck and that she was with him but didn’t know what was going on. In addition, it’s alleged that Thomas said she thought Day had stopped on the bridge to urinate, and then she fell asleep in the passenger seat, waking up in Day’s driveway.

However, Day allegedly admitted to authorities that he borrowed Thomas’ truck to dispose of a body.

According to the arrest warrant, police say cell phone records show Thomas drove to Day’s house after he allegedly killed Soluri, and both Thomas and Day left their phones at his house before driving to Bowie.

“This is a clear effort by both [Day] and [Thomas] to deceive law enforcement and make it appear like they never left [Day’s] house in Fort Worth, Texas, when they were dumping [Nofal’s] body in Bowie, TX,” police said in the warrant, according to KXAS.

Then, investigators discovered an accidental voicemail that could incriminate Day and spell trouble for Thomas.

According to the arrest warrant, a male and female can be heard speaking in the voicemail left on Thomas’ cell phone. The pair reportedly were talking about lifting something heavy.

A male can be heard saying, “Hey … help me,” “Make sure the lid’s on,” and “I’m sorry I got you messed up in this.”

Citing the arrest warrant, the New York Post reported that Day confessed to getting into an argument with Soluri after she allegedly recorded video of him acting irate and threatened to call 911. Day claimed he “snapped” and reacted by strangling his roommate with his bare hands, according to police.

The New York Post reported that police said he confessed to stuffing Soluri’s body into a black trash bin and dumping it off a bridge in the town of Bowie — roughly 70 miles north of Fort Worth.

The Post added that despite searches at multiple bridges in Bowie, Soluri’s body has not been recovered — and officials fear flooding may have pushed the body downstream.

Soluri’s sister, Nez, told KXAS that her family has been heartbroken: “It’s been torture. Every other day, I keep dreaming or wishing … maybe she bumped her head, had amnesia — something.”

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​Murder, True crime, Rana nofak soluri, Homicide, Crime, Missing body, Cover-up, Accidental voice mail 

Jimmy Kimmel lashed out at Republicans and President Donald Trump in his monologue on Monday.

Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, murdered at a university speaking event in Utah. On the September 15 episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” the host went against the apparent preponderance of evidence and claimed Kirk was killed by a man who shared similar beliefs.

‘This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend.’

“We hit some new lows over the weekend,” Kimmel said, just two minutes into his show. The 57-year-old then placed blame at the feet of the Make America Great Again crowd, saying Kirk’s killer was part of their movement.

“With the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel remarked.

While it is true that the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, has been reported as being raised Mormon, alleged messages between Robinson and his roommate showed he believed Kirk was spreading “hatred” and that “some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

As well, Robinson’s roommate allegedly identifies as trans, and the two men were dating, according to Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray.

The bullet casings tied to the assassination were also allegedly engraved with leftist messaging, as the alleged messages between Robinson and the roommate confirmed.

RELATED: Late-night host reveals he got Italian citizenship because Trump is ‘so much worse’ than expected

As NewsNation reported, the engravings included a transgender meme, the phrase “Hey fascist! CATCH!” and the lyrics to an anti-fascist song from World War II.

Kimmel continued his remarks, going after President Trump and claiming he was not properly grieving his murdered friend.

“In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving,” Kimmel stated. “On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism. But on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.”

Kimmel then aired a clip of President Trump being asked by a reporter how he is “holding up” since Kirk’s death. Trump replied, “I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they’ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it’s going to be a beauty.”

The late-night host could not let this stand and mocked Trump as being “at the fourth stage of grief: construction. Demolition, construction.”

“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend,” Kimmel declared. “This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish, okay?”

RELATED: Is that all you got? Late-night’s tepid Trump trash talk tanks

Jimmy Kimmel wins the Outstanding Host for a Game Show Award for ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,’ at the 2025 Creative Arts Emmy Awards 2025. Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

“There is no bottom for Jimmy Kimmel,” Curtis Houck, managing editor for NewsBusters, told Blaze News. “Facts need not exist for the left to bloviate and smear their enemies. Kimmel, like most of his liberal comrades, never concede wrongdoing or say they themselves should ‘do better’ when it comes to their tone.”

Houck added that conservatives have every right to be angry over the idea that the left has “skirted its responsibility” in fostering factual public discourse.

“Kimmel doesn’t care about any of this. All he cares about is adulation from his liberal elite pals and canned laughs from his audience,” Houck concluded.

ABC, which airs Kimmel’s show, was contacted by Blaze News for comment on the remarks, but did not respond to the request.

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​Entertainment, News, Jimmy kimmel, Charlie kirk, Tyler robinson, White house, Assassin, California, Woke, Politics 

Since Charlie Kirk’s tragic passing, Turning Point USA and the show’s producers have been organizing a series of guest hosts to continue broadcasting “The Charlie Kirk Show” as a tribute to his legacy. Notable voices stepping in have included Vice President JD Vance, Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, and Human Events senior editor Jack Posobiec. Today, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck, a longtime friend and mentor of Charlie’s, was honored to be the next voice that pays tribute to his enduring impact on the nation.

“To sit in [Charlie’s] studio right next to his chair is more difficult than I imagined,” Glenn says through tears.

He reflects on first meeting Charlie when he was just 17-years-old. “He was amazing. He was so well read, so smart, so clear,” Glenn says.

Charlie told Glenn back then that he wanted to be just like him some day — one of the great voices in radio history.

As part of his tribute to Charlie, who indeed became one the most celebrated broadcasters of his generation, Glenn pulls out Rush Limbaugh’s golden Excellence in Broadcasting microphone — a gift he was given by Rush’s wife after his death in 2021 — and sets it in front of Charlie’s microphone.

Glenn mourns the fact that he never got the chance to tell Charlie that he was “thinking too small” by wishing to become a great broadcaster. “Charlie was a broadcaster and a narrowcaster. Charlie was a pastor and a priest, and listening to the way he could argue and think differently, he was a rabbi as well — and one of the best. He was a political organizer; he was a political think tank himself. He was a compassionate friend,” Glenn says.

“He surpassed Rush Limbaugh by miles.”

Glenn is then joined by Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show” and Turning Point USA spokesperson, who says he and Charlie regularly fantasized about Rush Limbaugh’s golden EIB microphone.

He notes that as a high school student, Charlie watched Glenn Beck’s 2010 speech at the Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C, where Glenn famously said, “Somewhere in this crowd is the next George Washington. I know it. You know it. We are here together, and the next great leader is here. They may not know it yet, but they will rise, and they will lead us to a better tomorrow.”

At just 31 years old, Charlie was well on his way to becoming the man Glenn predicted 15 years ago. “I saw him young, and I saw his desires and how he builds and everything that he did. … Charlie would have been president … a great president,” he says. “He surpassed all of us. I don’t know if there’s another person in history on our side, at least in the last 150 years, that was like Charlie.”

To replace someone like Charlie, he says, we’d need a bare minimum of “six people at the top of their craft to cover everything that he has done.”

Kolvet recounts all the times he witnessed people begging Charlie to run for president. “Charlie would always say, ‘No, no, no, I’m happy doing what I’m doing,’” he says, noting that Charlie was rooting for JD Vance as the next in line.

Even still, “Charlie was in so many ways being honed and sharpened for such a job,” he says.

“People need to understand that, yes, Charlie was a brilliant communicator. Yes, he was an autodidact who kept studying the classics …. and he was deeply, deeply sincere in his faith. But he was also so skilled at the quiet things — the behind-the-scenes things — and he would honor people. He was trusted. … His goal was to keep people together.”

Just a few weeks before his death, Charlie sent Kolvet a Greek hierarchy of the highest virtues and callings. “He said to me, ‘Andrew, we are not the actors and the entertainers at the bottom. … We need to strive to be statesmen and philosophers up at the top,” he recalls.

“[Charlie] knew that God had put him in a position that he could keep people together.”

To see the full show, watch the episode above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Glenn beck, The glenn beck program, Charlie kirk, The charlie kirk show, Charlie kirk assassination, Blazetv, Blaze media, Turning point usa, Rush limbaugh, Golden microphone 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and CNN’s Kaitlan Collins got into a contentious exchange while discussing a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday night. The discussion began with a reaction to the hearing, during which Cruz called on President Trump to designate Antifa — a left-wing extremist group — as a terrorist organization.

While speaking on CNN, Cruz emphasized the importance of cracking down on left-wing terrorism, urging Trump and the Department of Justice to “follow the money. Much of this violence that we’ve seen, it’s not organic. There is real money that is funding it.”

Cruz went on to point to Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk, as a clear example of someone radicalized and inspired by left-wing extremism to the point of becoming violent, as evidenced by the slogans on his rifle and bullet casings and various discussions in left-wing groups online.

Things got heated when Collins pushed back, claiming, “We don’t have a motive yet, we don’t know yet.” Cruz immediately retorted, “We don’t have a motive yet? Really? That’s CNN’s position? He just happened to fire the gun in celebration?”

RELATED: Punk college student blatantly mocks Charlie Kirk assassination during campus vigil for slain TPUSA founder. Big mistake. | Blaze Media

Photo by the Salt Lake Tribune / Contributor via Getty Images

The dispute went on, with Collins claiming that law enforcement has yet to officially attach a specific motive in a legal document and Cruz attacking the distinction as a willful distraction from the fact that Robinson is “a left-wing activist who hated Charlie Kirk.”

In attacking Collins’ argument as misleading, Cruz pointed to a poll showing that 41% of Democrats believed that Charlie Kirk’s killer was a Republican. He pointed to CNN engaging in “misinformation” as part of the reason for this attitude.

When asked if she had seen the poll, Collins did not answer, choosing instead to ask Cruz if he believed that right-wing groups online should be subjected to the same DOJ investigations as left-wing groups.

Cruz responded by saying that “anyone engaged in acts of violence should be prosecuted and go to jail.” He then rebuked CNN for engaging in “both sides-ism,” pointing out that “it is the left that overwhelmingly celebrates this.”

​Politics, Charlie kirk, Cnn, Kaitlan collins, Ted cruz 

A student at Texas State University in San Marcos was caught on video blatantly mocking the assassination of Charlie Kirk in front of a crowd on campus.

The incident took place during a Monday vigil for the slain Turning Point USA founder, KEYE-TV reported.

‘I will not tolerate behavior that mocks, trivializes, or promotes violence on our campuses.’

In the video, the student is first seen in the crowd saying, “Charlie Kirk got it in the neck!” before slapping the right side of his neck, pretending to convulse, and uttering a number of words that had to be bleeped out of the clip. Some observers are heard laughing at the student.

Seconds later, the student walked up to the front of the crowd to an elevated position under a statue and announced to those gathered in front of him, “My name is Charlie Kirk,” before again slapping the right side of his neck and falling to the ground. As the student walked back into the crowd, he spit on the ground near others and is heard saying in an unredacted video, “F**k that [N-word].”

Reactions to the student demonstratively mocking Kirk’s death were stronger, with many uttering stunned “oh!” exclamations. One person is heard telling the student as he walked by, “Oh, buddy! You’re gonna get expelled, dude.”

RELATED: Charlie Kirk hater goes nuclear on supporter of slain activist — then pays price after allegedly unleashing physical attacks

The prediction was right on the money.

First off, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott reacted on X to video of the mocking student by writing, “Hey, Texas State. This conduct is not accepted at our schools. Expel this student immediately. Mocking assassination[s] must have consequences.”

The school issued a statement Tuesday from President Kelly Damphousse saying, “The university has identified the student in the disturbing video from Monday’s event. I will not tolerate behavior that mocks, trivializes, or promotes violence on our campuses. It is antithetical to our TXST values. The individual is no longer a student at TXST.”

— (@)

KEYE said student Hayden Allard spoke with the student in question just minutes before the incident.

“I was like, ‘Hey, man, I want to get your input about why you feel this way. Why do you feel this rage?’ He just shook his head, and he was like, ‘F Charlie Kirk, all my dead homies.’ He kept saying stuff like that. He’s like, ‘You’re just talking to a brick wall. You’re not getting anything out of me,'” Allard told the station.

Another student, Felix Federer, told KEYE that the part of campus where the incident took place — “The Quad” — is a designated spot for students to express free speech: “I think he should not be expelled just for having his opinions.”

As readers of Blaze News likely already know, an unhinged Texas Tech student was expelled after getting caught on video mocking and accosting a Charlie Kirk supporter Friday. She then allegedly unleashed physical attacks and was soon arrested and charged with assault.

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​Education, Texas state university, Student, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk assassination, Mocking, Greg abbott, Expelled, Politics 

As major universities continue to embrace a corporate bureaucratic model, the idea of a “liberal arts education” has been hollowed out.

Not only have standards of academic excellence slumped, increasingly favoring mediocrity, but coursework has become results-oriented, focusing more on conferring marketable credentials rather than on fostering deep learning.

The way I lived my friendships was permeated by a drive to consume. I treated my friends like tools I could use to stave off boredom and loneliness.

Instead of encouraging open inquiry, teachers present material within narrow ideological agendas that more often than not flatter their charges’ pre-existing assumptions. All of this in the name of keeping “customers” satisfied.

Restless hearts

Countless screeds have been written from voices on both the left and right, from both religious and secular perspectives, bemoaning how inadequately such an education prepares students to participate in civic life.

While this is true, in my time attending and working within universities, I’ve come to observe the more immediate consequences of treating students as interchangeable consumers. Depression, anomie, and loneliness have metastasized in schools that fail to offer space in their curricula for the fundamental, existential questions about truth, virtue, and love.

And yet, I continue to find examples of hope — starting with my own experience as an undergraduate student. Thus why I try to make it a point when working with undergrads — especially those making the transition from high school to college — to directly face questions about loneliness, sadness, and meaning, at times even risking sharing my own discoveries.

Department of dopamine

I remember asking myself as a student why I often felt so lonely, even when surrounded by groups of people, whether physically or digitally. I found that even when hanging out with people who care about me, when we’re having a good time enjoying each other’s company, that loneliness crept in. Even when I received those little dopamine-inducing digital indications of approval and affirmation called likes on social media, I still felt the need for more.

I attempted desperately to acquire more and more friends with whom I could fill my time. I was keenly aware of my need to be liked, to know I mattered, and to know that what I did had meaning. Finding myself bored with classwork and scrolling through Facebook aimlessly, I waited for someone to text me so that I could find something more stimulating to do. Every time I thought I heard my phone buzz, my heart leaped.

Higher education

I spent much of my freshman year pursuing such highs, hoping each one would be more intense than the last. We watched movies together, went to concerts and nightclubs, and tried all different kinds of cuisines.

And yet, even in the midst of my enjoyment, I’d feel dread creeping in: the knowledge that this moment, like all the others, would soon come to an end. My mood would crash as I remembered the abyss of “life as usual”: boring homework, tedious chores, and worse — the loneliness that always seemed to accompany being alone.

The way I lived my friendships was permeated by a drive to consume. I treated my friends like tools I could use to stave off boredom and loneliness. I was constantly anxious that they didn’t like me enough or that they would want to spend time with someone more exciting and interesting than me. I tried to find ways to convince them, even going so far as to guilt them into spending more time with me.

Looking inward

This anxiety pervaded everything I did, until I met a friend who didn’t seem interested in constantly chasing after new and exciting experiences. Instead, he wanted to talk about life. I was used to conversation as distraction, but he wanted to discuss just the subjects I used conversation to avoid.

He opened up to me about his experience of loneliness, boredom, powerlessness. He shared with me his desire to find meaning in his schoolwork. He wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable, to talk about his neediness, and he was audacious enough to ask me if I ever felt the same way.

What kind of person is this? I thought. He seemed to have no interest in using me to fill his time. Rather, he seemed interested in me — in understanding my life and in walking with me toward the answers to the questions that plagued us most. I had never met someone who wasn’t afraid of being alone, of feeling all those dark feelings I hid from.

When I was with him, I felt free to be myself, to talk about whatever was happening in my life. I didn’t feel like I needed to put on a show and market myself; I didn’t have to make myself “interesting enough” for him to want to get to know me.

Why is he like this? I needed to know.

‘The Long Loneliness’

He invited me to meet his other friends, who I soon realized were just like him. When they got together, they weren’t seeking to escape reality. They weren’t obsessed with going out, getting wasted or high, or filling themselves with entertainment ad infinitum (which is not to say they never did those things). Instead, they were more interested in facing life together, talking about their experiences, asking the questions that were heaviest on their hearts, and seeking the truth in all aspects of their lives.

When I came across Dorothy Day’s book “The Long Loneliness” several months later, I realized that this was the type of community she was talking about. I found that loneliness is not something we can use other people to eliminate, but instead something that we need to share with each other. Loneliness — which is tangled up with our infinite longing for fulfillment, as well as with the variety of human weaknesses and flaws we inevitably grapple with — will never completely disappear.

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community,” Day wrote.

Heading for the hurt

We need other people not to “fix” our loneliness, but to help us find the courage to delve deeper into that loneliness and to embrace it. Above all, we need other people to walk with us on the journey toward the ultimate source of truth and love for which this loneliness calls out.

I naively attempted to smother the voice of my heart when I was younger, hoping that my friends would be enough for me. I found that a true friend is able to acknowledge that she is not and never will be enough. It’s this kind of friend who is able to embrace the truth of my need, and it’s in this embrace, this unity, that I begin to experience my loneliness not as a curse but as a gift that propels me ever closer to the higher love I crave.

RELATED: How I rediscovered the virtue of citizenship on a remote Canadian island

Buddy Mays/Getty Images

A deeper orientation

Universities may no longer consider it their duty to guide students in their pursuit of transcendent meaning, but the hunger for such meaning remains. And if the rapidly rising suicide rates among the college-aged and younger are any indication, well-meaning but overly sentimental therapeutic approaches to “happiness” are woefully inadequate substitutes.

Despite this bleak state of affairs, we should remember that it only takes one classmate, professor, or administrator to broach the subject, to help students understand that the loneliness they feel is the loneliness that always has driven humanity’s attempts to understand itself and its place in the world.

This fall, like every fall, colleges across the country will have welcomed incoming students with what is generally called “orientation” — practical advice on navigating the academic, social, and logistical challenges of the task before them. Let’s hope that somewhere in that rush of new experiences these young men and women are also afforded the time and the opportunity to orient their souls.

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Phoenix police rushed to the Turning Point USA’s Arizona headquarters just prior to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck going live as the guest host of “The Charlie Kirk Show” on Wednesday after a suspicious bag was left on the premises.

The Phoenix Police Department indicated that in “the abundance of caution and for the safety of those in the area, this location has been cleared and the PPD Bomb Squad has responded.”

KMYA-TV footage shows multiple bomb robots deployed at the scene.

RELATED: Plans for first Charlie Kirk statue revealed by formerly woke institution

Additional footage shared to X by Newsmax’s John Huddy shows an officer dressed in a explosive ordnance disposal suit scrutinizing the bag at the scene.

— (@)

While the discovery of the suspicious bag prompted a delay, Beck ultimately went live, paying tribute to his fallen friend and discussing with counterterrorism expert Ryan Mauro the new report from Capital Research Center detailing how George Soros’ Open Society Foundations has poured tens of millions of dollars into U.S.-based organizations that are allegedly engaged in activities the FBI has defined as domestic terrorism as well as into foreign outfits allegedly linked to designated foreign terrorist organizations.

— (@)

Police later deemed the bag safe and lifted the restrictions.

Rikki Ratliff-Fellman, Beck’s executive producer, noted on X, “Was not fun telling my husband and family this. I’m in the control room now getting this live show to air but when it’s over I’m going to scream in a pillow.”

Beck noted on Tuesday, “It’s going to be really hard, really hard tomorrow.”

“I’m so proud of him,” Beck said of Kirk, “and everything he accomplished.”

Ratliff-Fellman told Blaze News the day before the broadcast, “We are not just honored, we are humbled that Turning Point USA would ask Glenn Beck to fill in on ‘The Charlie Kirk Show’ this week.”

This is a developing story.

Editor’s note: This article was updated after publication to incorporate Rikki Ratliff-Fellman’s remarks on X about the incident.

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A Charlie Kirk debate statue has been commissioned by a college that was formerly known to be a bastion of leftism.

Kirk has been honored across the country after his murder on September 10, when he was shot and killed by a suspect who allegedly admitted in text messages that he hated Kirk and that their differences could not be “negotiated.”

Since, Kirk has been honored by NFL teams and NASCAR drivers, for example, but it now seems the first statue is being commissioned in his honor.

‘She let her pink hair dye fade and her mullet grow out before returning to school.’

A mock-up of the memorial was shared online that showed a bronzed Kirk sitting at a table with a microphone, reaching his hand out across the table.

The endearing design was shared by the New College of Florida on Tuesday, which announced it would “commission a statue of Charlie Kirk to honor his legacy and incredible work after his tragic assassination last week.”

The school noted that the statue will be privately funded by “community leaders” and will “stand on campus as a commitment by New College to defend and fight for free speech and civil discourse in American life.”

While NCF is seemingly the first institution or group of people anywhere to commission a statue for Kirk, the school has not always been at the forefront of conservatism by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it was once heralded for being a safe place for LGBTQ-themed leftism.

RELATED: Stop blaming schools — the crisis starts in America’s homes

NCF, located in Sarasota, Florida, boasts itself as being “rooted in reason [and] rising with purpose,” but was described by a student in 2023 as “a tiny place of safety in this increasingly hostile state.”

The student, who identified as “LGBTQ,” told the New York Times that he or she was “praying that DeSantis would never find out about [the school]. But he did.”

Later that year, Gov. Ron DeSantis followed through on a promise to rid the school of its “woke indoctrination” policies and subsequently eliminated its diversity office and fired its diversity chief and academic librarian. The Times noted both of these faculty members were gay. More than a third of faculty was eliminated — around 36 or so — with 125 students voluntarily leaving the school.

One outgoing student said that the school had lost everything that was “good and charming,” while another remaining student was described as doing the following out of fear:

“She let her pink hair dye fade and her mullet grow out before returning to school,” the Times wrote. “For fear, she said, that administrators and new students would judge her.”

NCF has since increased its enrollment.

RELATED: Explosive alleged text messages between suspected Kirk killer and his transgender roommate obliterate liberal narrative

Candles and flowers are seen near a portrait of Charlie Kirk at a makeshift memorial during a candlelight vigil at Memorial Park in Provo, Utah, on September 12, 2025. (Photo by Melissa MAJCHRZAK / AFP) (Photo by MELISSA MAJCHRZAK/AFP via Getty Images)

According to a report by Fox 13 on Tuesday, NCF is seeing “record high enrollment.”

About 900 students are enrolled in the college for this semester, the most in the school’s history. With 300 new students, it marks the third year in a row that the school has reportedly exceeded enrollment expectations.

The location of the Kirk memorial statue has not yet been announced.

NCF was founded in 1960.

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Republican Rep. August Pfluger of Texas urged President Donald Trump’s administration to address the “grave concerns” regarding China’s global influence in tech, Blaze News has learned.

China is set to host the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference, posing a threat to America’s national security and giving our adversary the opportunity to shape the global telecommunications landscape. In a letter obtained exclusively by Blaze News, Pfluger is urging Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to address China’s looming influence or else “we risk being overtaken by our adversaries.”

‘We must use every tool at our disposal to counter China’s influence.’

“President Trump’s consistent leadership and support of an America First agenda to counter China is important now, more than ever,” the letter reads.

“Our leadership in technology and innovation is at risk, and our allies may increasingly turn to China for telecommunications solutions, eroding our influence and compromising shared security interests.”

RELATED: Congress takes aim at billionaires bankrolling left-wing ‘hate campaigns’ following Kirk assassination

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Pfluger pointed to the many advantages China will have for hosting the conference and how it could threaten American tech dominance as well as national security.

“Hosting the WRC provides several significant advantages, including setting the agenda, guiding discussions, and influencing themes, thereby enabling the host country to exert substantial ‘soft’ influence over global telecommunications standards and policies,” the letter reads.

Some of these policies and regulations that will be determined during the conference include allocating new spectrum bands for mobile broadband as well as regulating satellite communications, according to the letter.

“China’s role as host thus raises concerns about potential impacts on U.S. leadership in innovation and open, secure communications,” the letter reads. “This, combined with the threat of espionage against government officials and participants, raises significant data security and national security concerns.”

RELATED: GOP lawmaker introduces bill barring illegal aliens from ‘sabotaged’ census

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

“We must use every tool at our disposal to counter China’s influence and ensure the United States remains at the forefront of global telecommunications leadership,” the letter reads. “As Members of Congress, we stand ready to provide the necessary support to assist the Administration in accomplishing these goals.”

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On September 15, Vice President JD Vance guest-hosted a special memorial episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show” from the White House following the assassination of the Turning Point USA founder last week.

Among other officials, Vance interviewed White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who had some powerful remarks about the Trump administration’s plans to target and dismantle what he described as the “vast domestic terror movement” of left-wing networks that led to Charlie Kirk’s targeted murder.

“We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks,” he said.

He then specified that the administration would go after “the organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses,” as well as the leftist “messaging that’s designed to trigger [and] incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence.”

“It is a vast domestic terror movement, and with God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have … to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name,” Miller vowed.

To discuss the importance of dismantling the domestic terror groups fomenting violence, especially Antifa, Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson invited Kyle Shideler, director and senior analyst at the Center for Security Policy, to “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

Shideler, who warned about increasing political violence back when BLM was in its prime, says Miller’s comments indicate the administration is “on the right track.”

“The challenge, I think, that they’re going to have is getting the federal bureaucracy in alignment with what needs to be done. And first and foremost, they’re going to need to get the federal bureaucracy to accept that there is such a thing as far-left extremism,” he tells Peterson.

Currently, there’s just one catch-all category for “anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists,” Shideler explains. That single category encompasses everything from a far-right “lunatic survivalist somewhere in the woods who thinks the government is out to get him” to the people in “left-wing anarchist cells — your Antifa types.”

The problem with this broad category of extremism is that it allows the bureaucracy significant discretion in deciding which threats to prioritize, leading to inconsistent and biased enforcement.

The other issue is that left-wing extremism is often fragmented into silos, like pro-abortion extremism and environmental extremism, when in reality, these two groups are largely populated by the same people, says Shideler. He gives the example of left-wing activist Calla Walsh, who’s done everything from co-founding the sabotage group Palestine Action US and orchestrating direct-action protests targeting imperialism and capitalism to participating in BLM and environmental protests.

The way the current system is set up has Calla “spread out under a variety of different categories,” even though all her activism points at one motive: revolution.

“What we need to do is get the federal government to recognize a category of far-left violent extremism and put under that category all of your anarchists, autonomous Marxists, your Marxist Leninists, your Maoists, your violent socialists and the like and say, ‘These are all one thing; these are all a movement that is working towards revolution in the United States, that’s working towards the overthrow of the United States government,”’ Shideler proposes.

Dividing far-left activism into subgroups allows the government to ignore this grim reality, which almost certainly drove Tyler Robinson to target Charlie Kirk.

If we successfully create an all-encompassing category for left-wing extremism, the next step, says Shideler, is to “conduct a number of designations against Antifa-linked groups primarily in Europe, but across the world.”

While the most effective solution is likely to consolidate all Antifa-linked groups under a single Foreign Terrorist Organization, the government’s long-held practice of targeting smaller, specific groups complicates this idea.

“If you try to designate just Antifa as a single entity or movement, what I suspect you’ll find is that the bureaucrats will say, ‘We don’t know what that is; that’s not a thing that exists,”’ explains Shideler.

His recommendation is to designate foreign Antifa groups as terrorists first, then link them to international Antifa networks, before targeting U.S.-based groups connected to the network. “That will, in the long run, be faster and more effective,” he says.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

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President Donald Trump indicated on Monday that his administration is poised to take action against violent leftist radicals and to bring racketeering charges against the liberal organizations that apparently support them.

Within hours of Trump revealing that a crackdown is imminent, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller stated on “The Charlie Kirk Show,” “We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people.”

‘This is something that we can win.’

A new report from the Capital Research Center might make the administration’s job a little easier — at least in the way of identifying nodes in the nonprofit funding network that Democratic mega-donor George Soros has bequeathed to his son Alexander and in justifying potential action against them.

The 95-page report first obtained by Blaze Media details how George Soros’ Open Society Foundations has poured tens of millions of dollars into U.S.-based organizations that are allegedly engaged in activities the FBI has defined as domestic terrorism as well as into foreign outfits allegedly linked to designated foreign terrorist organizations.

Ryan Mauro, counterterrorism expert and Capital Research Center investigative researcher, told Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on “The Glenn Beck Program” on Wednesday both that the findings in the report “are shocking” and “today, the counteroffensive begins.”

The Capital Research Center indicated that Open Society has awarded at least $23,275,000 to seven groups that allegedly “directly assist domestic terrorism and criminality on U.S. soil”; at least $50.57 million across 41 groups that have allegedly endorsed terrorist attacks and/or are directly linked to foreign terrorist groups or their known front groups; and nearly $10 million to five nonprofits that allegedly qualify as associates of terrorist groups or pro-terrorist groups.

Blaze News has reached out to Open Society Foundations for comment.

RELATED: Media tries to protect Antifa with tired al-Qaeda talking points

AMY OSBORNE/AFP via Getty Images

Among the seven groups identified in the report that are funded by Open Society and allegedly assist in domestic terrorism are:

the Sunrise Movement, a climate alarmist group that reportedly endorsed the violent Antifa-linked Stop Cop City campaign;the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of leftist BLM-associated organizations that condemned Israel after its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas terrorists; andthe Center for Third World Organizing, which Mauro noted has consolidated three extremist groups under its so-called hub, namely the Minnesota-riot-linked Ruckus Society, BlackOUT Collective, and the Black Land Liberation Initiative.

Capital Research Center noted that its findings “could potentially form the justification for various accountability actions, including federal investigations and prosecutions, U.S. State Department and Treasury Department sanctions, revoking of tax-exempt statuses of Open Society and its grantees by the Internal Revenue Service, congressional investigations, and civil suits.”

“If you look at the IRS code, nonprofits are not allowed to be engaging in criminal activity,” Mauro told Beck, adding that they’re likely not permitted to even encourage criminal activity.

Beck, who expressed amazement “that these guys have gotten away with it for so long,” indicated that he would personally hand the report to President Trump.

Mauro noted further that by identifying the amounts obligated, the recipients, and some of the radical activities the recipients engaged in, all in one document, it is easier to understand “that this is an infrastructure. This is a movement. And as scary as that is, it also means it can be taken down. We can confront them, and this is something that we can win.”

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The FBI has been investigating whether trans-activist groups and other radicals had foreknowledge of the Charlie Kirk assassination plot. A law enforcement source confirmed to the New York Post that one of the radical leftist groups that investigators have been looking at is Armed Queers Salt Lake City.

This scrutiny of Armed Queers has evidently rattled some cages, prompting the State Department to take decisive action.

The radical group

Armed Queers SLC is a radical socialist outfit that stated in its now-deleted Instagram group that it was a “revolutionary LGBTQ organization dedicated to the defense, and success” of supposedly oppressed peoples.

‘We are taking aggressive action.’

A membership form for the socialist group identifies six principles, including “the armed and militant protection of queer and trans communities” and “trans liberation from the gender binary and biological essentialism.”

The group told Voyage Utah in a July 2024 interview, “We have organized, educated, and agitated within LGBTQ, anti-imperialist, and labor movements towards a socialist future.”

In addition to referring to training sessions in Cuba for its members “as a part of a yearly May Day Brigade,” the group has shared various radical sentiments and quotations on social media in recent weeks.

RELATED: Explosive alleged text messages between suspected Kirk killer and his transgender roommate obliterate liberal narrative

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

For example, in a post titled “Black August,” the group shared a quote from George L. Jackson, a Marxist thug who was convicted of armed robbery and accused of murdering a prison guard, that read, “Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done; discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”

Following Kirk’s assassination, allegedly by a leftist with a trans-identifying boyfriend, Armed Queers began scrubbing and deleting its social media profiles.

The radical

Ermiya Fanaeian is a male pretending to be a female who as of last year indicated that he was an “active organizer” of Armed Queers and a student at the University of Utah. Where Armed Queers is concerned, Fanaeian is, however, apparently far more than just an organizer.

The LGBT gun rights group Pink Pistols confirmed on Monday that Fanaeian — who was among the LGBT activists who supported Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign in 2019 and at one point allegedly appeared on stage with the senator — was a University of Utah student who ran the Salt Lake City Pink Pistols chapter from 2020 to 2021.

“While initially welcomed, she began using the Pink Pistols name to promote broader political issues, violating our rule that we are a single-issue organization devoted solely to the safe, legal, and responsible use of firearms by the queer community,” Pink Pistols said in a statement. “In 2021, her group and Pink Pistols parted ways, and she renamed her organization Armed Queers of Salt Lake City.”

It turns out that Pink Pistols is not the only organization that has distanced itself from Fanaeian.

Blaze News has reached out to Sen. Warren’s office for comment.

The NGO

Utah Global Diplomacy is an NGO that has hosted international exchange programs of the State Department to welcome foreign nationals to Utah for short-term professional and cultural experiences. The outfit is supposedly guided by the idea that citizens have a responsibility to “help shape U.S. foreign relations ‘one hand-shake at a time.'”

The famous analyst DataRepublican highlighted on Monday that Fanaeian, who indicated in a now-deleted 2019 student profile that he was “originally from Iran,” was recognized by the nonprofit organization Utah Global Diplomacy in September 2022 with its 7 for 17 award.

RELATED: Rubio puts visa holders who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death on high alert

Photo by Franklin Jacome/Agencia Press South/Getty Images

Although Utah Global Diplomacy scrubbed the relevant award page and as of Wednesday had password-protected its entire site, an archived UGD page still refers to the radical’s receipt of the award, as does an Aug. 25, 2022, post on Instagram.

The award “recognizes young Utahns working to achieve the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while exemplifying Utah Global Diplomacy’s core values of respect, social responsibility, and open dialogue,” says an archived page. “Each 7 for 17 award winner must demonstrate a commitment to meeting one (or multiple) of the 17 United National Sustainable Development Goals through novel, innovative, or unique means.”

The radical’s bio on the archived award page states:

Ermiya Fanaeian is a Trans liberation and Feminist political organizer whose work has included organizing around the abortion struggle, working with the ACLU to secure the rights of Trans youth in the education system, organizing to criminalize conversion therapy in the state of Utah, working on electoral campaigns, and creating research studying the conditions of gender oppressed people at the hands of state institutions.

DataRepublican noted, “SLC Armed Queers is not ‘adjacent’ to the honor that Ermiya Fanaeian got from Utah Global Diplomacy. Utah Global Diplomacy specifically awarded her for her work with trans people, of which SLC Armed Queers is key. This may be why they scrubbed their pages.”

Blaze News has reached out to Utah Global Diplomacy for comment.

The breakup

A State Department source confirmed to Blaze News that any ties to Utah Global Diplomacy, “which existed indirectly via an external implementor, are being completely severed and dismantled.”

This could prove greatly consequential for the NGO, as the bulk of its funding takes the form of government grants.

“We are taking aggressive action to ensure that any implementor that has any relationship whatsoever with this radical organization is completely cut off from any State Department engagement,” said the source.

Secretary Marco Rubio revealed this week that the State Department has also been revoking visas of individuals who have celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

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Famous NFL football players Benjamin Watson and Emmanuel Acho are jumping on the anti-Charlie Kirk bandwagon — and like everyone else, they’re taking the Turning Point USA founder out of context and smearing his character while they do it.

“Since hearing of the murder of Charlie Kirk and seeing such unjustifiable graphic violence my heart has been torn and my spirit uneasy. I was neither fan nor follower of Charlie, but I was aware of his influence. While respecting his humanity and right to dialogue, my critique of his words and opinions was pointed,” Watson wrote in a post on Facebook.

“I found Charlie’s verbal attacks on black men, women, and their achievement reprehensible and utterly inexcusable. His derogatory words were a form of violence and dehumanization. He routinely amplified stereotypes and platformed prejudice, giving license to masses with similar sentiments. He did this while routinely proclaiming the name of Jesus,” he added.

While Watson went on to call Charlie’s assassination an “evil, unconscionable act,” it doesn’t change that he also became one of the many actively slandering the Turning Point founder in his passing.

And BlazeTV contributor T.J. Moe is not a fan.

“I have a lot of disdain for Ben Watson for the damage that he’s done over the years, and this adds to it. You know, Ben Watson, I think, reads the Bible, at least contends to. He should know that Proverbs 6 states the things that God hates. One of them is a lying tongue, and he lied about every word of what he just said about Charlie Kirk,” Moe tells BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock on “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”

But Watson is not even close to the only former NFL player going after Kirk.

“Charlie Kirk’s death has led me to an uncomfortable conversation that I want to facilitate. To my white brothers and sisters, how would you hope your minority friends respond to the celebration of Charlie Kirk’s life when he has very publicly said things like this,” sports analyst Emmanuel Acho says before playing several out-of-context clips of Charlie speaking.

One of the clips showed Charlie saying “Cenk” to Cenk Uygur. Acho assumed Charlie was calling an Asian the “C-word.”

“He’s calling someone by their name. He’s not calling them a c***k. Acho couldn’t be bothered with doing that level of research as it relates to taking Kirk out of context at every turn and just leaning into sound bites,” Whitlock says.

“Engage with the actual argument,” he adds.

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The transformation of Twitter into X was certainly a watershed moment. But it was nothing compared to the transformation of X into a feeding tube for xAI.

Hold that thought in your head as I pivot for a minute to something that stuck out in my feed the other day: a worthy neologism. Many of us are starting to feel like even with the bazillion channels of wordy content on X, there is sort of nothing on. Another way of saying this is that we already know exactly what’s on; we’ve seen it all before.

When software exhaustingly consumes the world, we want to be bricked.

Rainmaker founder Augustus Doricko touched on this recently when he reflected (on X) that, as a Zoomer, the scriptedness of it all is taken for granted. “It’s all politicized, everything. All the time. I’ve never known anything but hyper polarized internet politics discourse. Zoomers know which side of an issue every influencer and politician is going to land on the moment they read the headline. Zoomers could practically write their commentary for them. … There are no surprising thinkers.”

Speaking as an Xennial, I relate — it really feels deranged to me that now a majority of my life has been spent unable to evade online discourse involving, to take a random example, Ezra Klein. Nothing personal — it’s just really evident that our political regime is still fixed around the principle that talking matters and that even the largest things are justified — can only be justified! — by people talking about them.

This approach has resulted in a fixity of “Voices” hardened all the more by the relentlessly taxonomical character of the digital medium, which flips Marx’s critique of capital on its head by solidifying even the most airy and ephemeral of things by locking them into place in the one huge fractal bracket of the internet: everything identified down to the smallest unit according to its classification. Like the Great Chain of Being but for transforming subjects into objects.

A bit creepy considering how much we associate digital life with disincarnation … but a strong reminder that to be incarnate is to be in the flesh, not merely to be matter; embodiment requires a body, a given body, given by God — not a golem, a cap table, an Excel sheet. All that “free” information flying around is more like a caged bird. The taxonomy is the tax — and the debtor’s prison.

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Photo by Cooper Williamson/Blaze News

You can hear the cries each day of people sure they have no choice but to spend inordinate hours on “this hellsite,” and while the perpetual gossip and envy and resentment and profane curiosity and so forth are certainly hellacious, the lack of surprise is a real killjoy — a special curse levied against the online intellectual, who can feel himself unaliving into a petrified rock crystal the minute he can’t find a new idea, a new insight, a fresh source of soyface, an of-the-moment mind-blower.

We all have our fatal weakness here. Speaking as a longtime online coiner of terms and concepts, I’m always monitoring the situation for fresh, vine-ripe terms and concepts to munch on, savor, share. And these are declining along with everything else, it seems, as the direction of all human-generated content flows toward the great maw crystallizing everything into the ultimate taxonomy. Zoomer slang can’t innovate fast enough …

And yet what to my wondering eyes should appear but a poaster coining a new term relevant to just this torment: “The algorithm is a military grade dopamine drip designed to subject us to levels of fatigue addiction beyond our comprehension.”

Many people might look at this and go yeah, yeah, we know, we know. But have you encountered the phrase “fatigue addiction” before? I didn’t think so … yet it so well captures the strange and uncanny character of our experience becoming unalived into mere objects by way of our virtual entombment in the great bracket of nonbeing.

As the “Naked Gun” reboot is out, I flash on that other spoof flick that probably won’t be remade — “Dracula: Dead and Loving It.” We all know how many people wake up, log on, and post obsessively about how exhausted they are. What is this? Yes, we are way too obsessed; many believe that only obsession is sufficient any more to provide any motile force to anything, which indicates just how petrified are the rock crystals we all already feel we are. Yes, we are therefore way too obsessed with obsession itself; but are we not also increasingly monomaniacal, toward an asymptotic point, about our own exhaustion? Are we not in the grip of a love of exhaustion?

There’s a phrase called “system working as designed” that we ought to see at work here. We consume vast quantities of drugs that make us exhausted and seek out meds that simulate exhaustion. We want to “hit the wall.” We want to sacrifice ourselves to “the grind.” We want it to be “so over for us.” We envy the objects that overshadow us everywhere we turn. We don’t want to find our identities forever in oppositional ideology. We want to find them in rocks. In sand. Real ones, that don’t have to think all the time, like our hyperactive silicon does. When software exhaustingly consumes the world, we want to be bricked.

In the end, however, at the end of this trail of petrification, we must encounter the final source of our will to paralysis: fear — the fear of life itself and its source. Yes, go back to Proverbs to see that fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; but few today seem fearful at all of God’s punishment, whereas many seem absolutely terrified of the implications of being created in the image of an incomprehensibly loving God. But only confronting this fear can show the way out from the labyrinthine entombment of addiction to fatigue, to the experience of the life going out of you and the rock crystal creeping in.

​Tech, Culture 

A small-business owner in North Texas is facing severe backlash and danger to his business after voicing concern over the rapid cultural shift that mass Indian immigration has brought to his city. The threats to his livelihood include a recent emailed extortion attempt.

Daniel Keene, who owns Boundaries Coffee — a local coffee shop with two locations in the DFW Metroplex — posted a video on X showing an entire street in his neighborhood blocked off for a block party celebrating an Indian festival. The video shows the street blocked off by cars and people. Keene captioned the video, “I want my kids to grow up in America, not India.”

The post went viral on X, and he has since received hundreds of threatening calls, texts, and emails.

‘You must pay $20,000 or our games will BEGIN.’

The threats have turned into action, as his business has been targeted with hundreds of fraudulent negative reviews as well as calls insulting his employees and family. He is now fighting against a massive wave of insults, slanders, and racial animosity from people claiming to be Indian, both here and abroad.

Keene told Blaze News he was unprepared for the attack: “I was shocked by how rapid, and how intense, and how organized it was.” He has deleted the original video, saying the stress became too much for his family.

The hundreds of negative reviews on Google have been particularly damaging. Many reviews complained about a dirty lobby and bad conditions, even though both locations are drive-thru only.

“Review bombings,” or large numbers of coordinated and often fraudulent negative reviews on platforms like Google Maps or Yelp, can be incredibly damaging to small businesses, which rely on these applications to bring in customers. Keene said he believes these reviews, complaints, and threats seemed to be carried out entirely by Indians — either in the U.S. or in India.

On September 8, things escalated when someone claiming to represent a network of millions of Indian-Americans in the United States sent an email that appears to be an attempt to extort Keene.

The email read, “We will blast your business and profiles to over 6 million Indian Americans in America. If they each write negative reviews it will ruin your business. We have all proof regarding this. You must pay $20,000 or our games will BEGIN. Let me know if your [sic] ready for instructions.”

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Photo courtesy of Daniel Keene

In addition to this apparent extortion, the coffee shop owner has received threats against himself and his family; profane messages about his wife, who is pregnant with their third child; and slanderous messages calling him a pedophile.

Comments on the shop’s various social media pages include accusations of racism but also comments about Keene burning in hell, his children, and other graphic insults. Other users took to X to attack Keene, insulting and taunting him as the attacks increased.

One influencer on X who goes by the name Sidharth took the occasion to mock Keene, writing, “I don’t really think you can afford a home in that neighborhood,” and promising that “the day of reckoning is not far away.” Blaze News obtained screenshots of the post, which has since been deleted.

In response to a request for comment, Sidharth told Blaze News: “My comment would be to focus on the rapid xenophobia and sweeping generalizations against Indian Americans under the pretext of ‘H-1B.'”

Despite the intensity of the attacks and the harm done to his business, Keene says he stands by his comments about Indian immigration. The post expressed what he says is a growing frustration among Texans about the economic and cultural impact that Indians settling in the area have had.

“I don’t have any racial animosity towards Indians,” Keene said. “I would never use racially charged language about somebody.” His issue is not with Indians as people, he says, but with the immigration policies that have changed the demographics of the city where he was born and raised.

“I just want to live on an American street. … As an American, I feel like that’s my right.”

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Photo by Mark Ralston / Contributor via Getty Images

Keene was born and raised in Southlake and grew up in the DFW Metroplex area. After going to school and spending time in Arkansas, he came back to find the demographics shifting from the massive influx of Indian immigrants, many of them on H-1B or other work visas. He says that his frustration is “the normal experience of an American who is getting pushed out.”

Native Texans have been almost entirely priced out of the neighborhood where he lives, so now it is “almost entirely Indian.” He says the cultural shift has been hard for his family: “They don’t like us; we don’t share anything in common with them.”

Despite his frustration and the threats he has received, Keene says he does not harbor animosity toward Indian people. Rather, he expressed his discontent with the policies that he says have resulted in these demographic and cultural changes. “I oppose the use of the H-1B visa, specifically in the DFW Metroplex.” He believes that these policies have changed the culture of the area and make life harder for the native population.

Keene says he has been frustrated and disheartened by the contrast between his native Texan friends and neighbors and this new influx of wealthy Indian immigrants. “I’m losing my neighbors, the Americans. These guys are getting driven out of the neighborhoods. … Pretty much anyone below 35 is struggling.”

“Every house I’ve ever looked at is Indian-owned,” he continued. “… My home is Indian-owned. My street is Indian.”

In addition to his home, he rents the two properties for his coffee shops, as well as a warehouse. All four properties are Indian-owned.

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Photo by Visual Capitalist / Contributor via Getty Images

Texas has received the second-most Indian immigrants of any state in the country, about 11%. Recent data shows that there are currently about 2.1 million Indians in the U.S. on visas, and the average household income for Indian immigrants is $166,200, compared to $77,600 for native-born American households, according to a 2023 study. India took in a total of $118.7 billion in remittances last year — the most of any country. Of that, $32.88 billion, or 27.7%, came from the United States.

Keene said that he has received support from friends and various voices online as word of the harassment campaign has spread. However, the negative publicity has made it much harder to continue growing his business.

The Little Elm Police Department and the Collin County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment. The India Association of North Texas requested that Blaze News direct inquiries via email. Emailed requests for comment have not been answered as of time of publication.

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​Politics, H-1b