Category: blaze media

While the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s one-year Medicaid moratorium may deal a significant blow to big abortion providers, it would be a mistake not to point out that Planned Parenthood (i.e., the nation’s largest abortion provider) has been in a steady state of decline for decades. The defund provision could hit the corporation’s finances hard — but Planned Parenthood was digging its own grave long before Congress penned the BBB.

As the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made its way to the House floor in May 2025, Planned Parenthood Federation of America stated that a federal defund would “put 200 health centers at risk of closure.” From May to July, PPFA was on the offensive, lobbying politicians, curating messaging to garner public sympathy, and scrambling to “rush” donations from donors in the face of a possible federal defund.

Planned Parenthood is clearly not the giant it used to be.

To capitalize on the political moment, PPFA closed a Cleveland clinic in late May 2025 as final votes on the President’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act drew nearer to a close. PPFA ambiguously cited severed federal funds as the cause of the clinic’s closure, but the BBB had not been signed into law. The Cleveland clinic was on the rocks, and its closure was politically efficacious.

What better time to solicit donations and beg for public support than in the face of a federal defund?

The Cleveland closure is not an unusual circumstance for Planned Parenthood — the first mark of PPFA’s pre-BBB decline was a consistent annual swath of clinic closures.

From January 2022 to May 2025, 66 Planned Parenthood locations closed in the United States. In February 2025, the New York Times reported that “Planned Parenthood’s health care operation has shrunk from a high of five million patients served across 900 clinics in the 1990s to 2.1 million patients and 600 clinics today.”

Planned Parenthood is clearly not the giant it used to be.

RELATED: Planned Parenthood’s ugly truth finally has consequences

President Trump signs the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ into law. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

The passage of the BBB is a perfect excuse for PPFA to continue closing clinics while pointing fingers. In July alone, PPFA closed 25 clinics — including its Houston mega clinic — despite an ongoing legal battle that has delayed the implementation of the BBB’s Medicaid moratorium.

Second, simple math from PPFA’s own reports tells the story of decline: Planned Parenthood’s abortion numbers are skyrocketing as general services plummet.

Breast exams, cancer screenings, and pap smears are down 70% from 2010; contraception services are down 39%. In 2023-2024, prenatal services made up only 1.6% of total services, miscarriage care 0.9%, and adoption referrals 0.4%. The remaining 97% percent of pregnancy-related services at Planned Parenthood were exclusively abortions.

Simultaneously, Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding has risen by 50% since 2013, making up 39% of total revenue at present ($792.2 million in 2024). By law, Medicaid reimbursements cannot cover abortions — so why is Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding rising year by year as abortions rise and general services fall?

Before the BBB’s passage, PPFA was growing increasingly dependent on taxpayer dollars.

Women do not need Planned Parenthood’s 500 (failing) abortion clinics.

A third marker of PPFA’s decline is its remaining clinics’ shocking health and safety conditions. The New York Times reported in another article that patients and PPFA staff alike are concerned about botched abortions, nerve-damaging IUD insertions, outdated and inadequate clinics, and frequent health code violations.

It appears that Planned Parenthood and its affiliates were a sinking ship well before talk of the BBB’s one-year defund provision. But with the bill’s passage, PPFA was quick to cast blame on the BBB.

PPFA even posted a doomsday message on Instagram: “Know what happens without Planned Parenthood Health Centers? Cancers go undetected. STIs go untreated. Birth Control is harder to get … and our communities lose needed public health safety nets.”

These claims, however, are false. Nineteen thousand federally qualified health centers — already funded by the government and available for Medicaid users — provide the general and sexual health care Planned Parenthood cannot. Women do not need Planned Parenthood’s 500 (failing) abortion clinics.

With abortions high, general services low, and a demonstrated dependency on taxpayer dollars, the BBB’s defund provision could bring large abortion providers like Planned Parenthood one step closer to closure.

For at least the next year, American taxpayers can rest easy knowing that their hard-earned dollars will not float a failing big abortion provider — and if PPFA takes a financial hit, the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill is not to blame for decades of pre-existing corporate decline.

​Planned parenthood, Big beautiful bill, Abortion 

Two church shootings, a decade apart, received strikingly different treatment from America’s corporate media. The first occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. The second took place in Minneapolis just last week.

On June 18, 2015, CBS News reported:

A white man opened fire in a historic black church, in Charleston, South Carolina, the night of June 17, 2015, killing nine people, including a pastor, during a prayer meeting. The suspect, Dylann Roof, was arrested in North Carolina and extradited to South Carolina June 18, 2015, for what authorities are calling a hate crime.

On June 28, 2025, CBS News reported:

Two young children were killed and 18 others were injured in a shooting during a Catholic Mass packed with young students in south Minneapolis Wednesday morning. The shooter is also dead.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the shooting triggered a massive law enforcement response to Annunciation Catholic Church at West 54th Street between Harriet and Garfield avenues around 8:30 a.m. The church is connected to a school building.

The shooter approached from the outside of the building and fired a rifle through the church windows toward children and worshippers. The shooter also used a shotgun and a pistol that he had legally purchased ‘recently,’ O’Hara said.

Both reports were written one day after the massacres. Both shooters were identified by that point. Yet the second account omitted key information about the shooter.

Establishment media needs to look at the facts — and report them. While they do, they should also look in the mirror.

What a shock when Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey used a press conference on the very day of the church massacre to pivot from murdered children to a lecture on transgender rights and gun control.

“I have heard about a whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community,” Frey told reporters at an afternoon briefing.

He went on:

Anybody who is using this … as an opportunity to villainize our trans community, or any other community out there, has lost their sense of common humanity. We should not be operating out of a place of hate for anyone.

In truth, no one should be shocked by Frey’s diversion. This is the same mayor who let Minneapolis burn in 2020, which included the torching of a police station. His record of weakness is already clear.

And this year, he’s locked in a tough re-election fight against Omar Fateh, a bona fide democratic socialist. To survive, Frey is racing leftward, stooping to whatever level he thinks will protect his job.

The real revelation from his comments wasn’t his tired blame-shifting but his admission that the shooter identified as transgender — a fact establishment media has rushed to bury.

The killer, born Robert Westman, legally changed his name to Robin Westman in January 2020 at age 17. The petition states that he “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”

Such details were not hidden for anyone willing to look. Hours before the massacre, Westman posted videos that exposed both his planning and his hatred.

In one, he flipped through pages of a handwritten manifesto laying out why he chose Annunciation — the Catholic church and school he had graduated from in 2017:

I am feeling good about Annunciation. It seems like a good combo of easy attack form and devastating tragedy and I want to do more research. I have concerns about finding a large enough group. I want to avoid any parents, but pre and post school drop off.

In another, Westman showed off his arsenal. His gun magazines bore hand-scrawled taunts, including the chilling phrase: “Where is your God?”

Basic facts become optional

Ten years ago, coverage of Charleston leaned heavily on words like “white” and “white supremacist.” Reporters stressed Dylann Roof’s race from the outset, and his racist motivations were treated as central to the story. That was fair. His ideology mattered, and his identity explained why he targeted a black church.

But why is the same standard not applied today?

RELATED: If ‘words are violence,’ why won’t the left own theirs?

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Westman was transgender. Court filings documented his legal name change to “Robin” and the reasons behind it. His own videos revealed a deeply disturbed mind, with specific plans to attack Annunciation and taunts of his victims scrawled on his weapons. These are facts. They belong in basic reporting. Including them doesn’t equate “transgender” with “deranged” any more than “white” equates to “white supremacist.”

Yet the difference in coverage is glaring. In Charleston, identity was headline news. In Minneapolis, it was buried. Everyone knows why. Westman’s story doesn’t serve the establishment narrative, so the press ignored it.

A reckoning for mainstream media

Journalism once prided itself on covering the unexpected — the classic “man bites dog.” That’s over. News today is about reinforcing narratives, not reporting facts.

Americans see through it. They know why trust in media sits at historic lows. They see newspapers hemorrhaging readers, network news losing viewers, and MSNBC shrinking into a dumb rebrand. The bias is obvious, the omission blatant, and the public is done playing along.

People usually know when they’re being lied to. They also know that half-truths amount to half-lies at best. The press pushed the Russia hoax with glee. They buried Hunter Biden’s laptop. They shielded the public from Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline.

The left depends on this cocoon. It shelters them from the clash between their mistaken beliefs and stubborn reality. And the establishment media — blind to their own collapse in credibility — gladly supply the insulation.

In Minneapolis, the slaughter of Catholic schoolchildren should have shattered the narrative. Instead, the media treated it like an inconvenience. They will glance at it briefly before memory-holing what doesn’t fit.

If they have any integrity left, they’ll face the facts — and face themselves. Because the real scandal isn’t just what they cover. It’s what they refuse to see.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Minnesota shooting, Annunciation, Annunciation catholic school, Annunciation church and catholic school, Annunciation catholic shooting, Annunciation shooting, Leftist media, Mainstream media, Mainstream media lies, Media bias, Transgenderism, Minneapolis, Omar fateh, Jacob frey, Dylann roof, Robert westman, Mental illness, Mass murder 

Snoop Dogg came under fire recently for criticizing LGBTQ content in kids’ films, complaining that during a recent trip to see “Lightyear” with his grandson, he had to explain why a child had two mothers.

Now, an apology that claims to be from Snoop Dogg has been going viral across the internet — but some are saying it’s fake.

According to Deadline, “Sources close to the rapper also told Deadline that the comments, which appeared to be made by Snoop’s verified Instagram account, were not written by anyone on his team either. ‘It is fake,’ an anonymous source told the outlet.”

However, BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock isn’t buying it.

“I think he backpedaled,” Whitlock tells BlazeTV contributor Shemeka Michelle. “I think he got blowback for backpedaling, and now he’s pretending like he didn’t do this or anyone on his team did this.”

“I definitely feel like he backpedaled,” Michelle agrees. “And I was expecting it. He backpedaled smoother than Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk. But I’m not surprised because we talked about this when the story first came out about him coming against Buzz Lightyear, that he would not stand ten toes down.”

“They never do. So I think that there was an apology, or he had someone put the story out to say, ‘I have gay people that are friends and family.’ This is what they always do,” she adds.

Whitlock points out that even if the apology was fake, Snoop Dogg is still a hypocrite.

“Snoop Dogg can make music that little kids listen to, know every word to, that grooms them and destroys them just as much as these Disney movies. And again, I’m sure someone pointed that out to him. It’s like, ‘What are you doing here, man? Your music is just as bad, and we can cancel you,’” Whitlock says.

“These fake, wannabe, politically incorrect, fake rebels, they don’t have a set of values that they actually stand on,” he continues. “And so it’s whatever will get them the most money, and Snoop has done what is financially expedient here.”

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Sharing, Free, Camera phone, Video, Video phone, Upload, Youtube.com, Jason whitlock harmony, Jason whitlock, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Lightyear movie, Lightyear lgbtq themes, Lgbtq in kids movies, Lgbtq agenda, Snoop dogg, Fearless with jason whitlock, Snoop doggs fake apology 

I was out to dinner with my wife when my phone rang. The caller ID said “POTUS.” My wife muttered, “Oh, s**t.” President Donald Trump told me he wanted me to take care of three things: secure the border, run a mass deportation operation, and find hundreds of thousands of missing children. Those were his instructions when he offered me the job as his border czar.

As of today, we have the most secure border in the nation’s history. I don’t take credit for that. The credit goes to President Trump for signing the executive orders that ended catch-and-release, reinstated Remain in Mexico, and put into place the agreements and policies that worked. And the greatest credit belongs to the men and women of the United States Border Patrol, the finest I’ve ever met.

Every day I look at the numbers: criminals arrested, terrorists stopped, children rescued. It makes me proud — proud of ICE, proud of Border Patrol, and proud of the president who made it possible.

Under Trump, Border Patrol brought down illegal immigration more than 90% in just seven weeks — even faster than I thought possible. I expected it would take 120 days. That’s what happens when the men and women of Border Patrol are allowed to do their jobs.

A border crisis by design

For the last four years, I’ve been raising hell about the open border intentionally inflicted on this country by the Biden administration. This wasn’t mismanagement or incompetence. It was by design.

I know because I was there under President Barack Obama. Former President Joe Biden was vice president, and former Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas was deputy secretary. We faced a family surge back then. We stopped it by building family residential centers, detaining migrants until they saw a judge, and then deporting the 90% who lost their asylum claims. It worked.

But when Biden and Mayorkas returned to power, they did the opposite of what they knew worked. They refused to detain. They refused to let Immigration and Customs Enforcement do its job. They created chaos by design. Every day the border was open, women were raped, children died, families were trafficked, and terrorists slipped through. A harrowing 31% of women who cross the border through cartels are sexually assaulted. That’s horrendous.

Trump’s policies cut illegal immigration by 96%. That meant fewer rapes, fewer deaths, fewer trafficked children, and less fentanyl poisoning Americans. Trump’s policies saved thousands of lives every week. But you won’t hear that from the media.

Nothing about Biden’s border was humane

The Biden administration called itself humane. That’s a lie. Under Biden, a record number of migrants died — over 4,000. A quarter-million Americans died from fentanyl crossing an open border. Sex trafficking hit all-time highs. Cartels made record profits smuggling people and drugs.

Compare that to today: Trump’s secure border has reduced crossings from 10,000 to 15,000 a day under Biden to as few as 162 — all arrested, all returned, zero releases. That is a secure border.

Biden’s so-called humane approach killed more Americans and more migrants, and it enriched cartels. There is nothing humane about that.

Enforcing the law saves lives

ICE removals since January are approaching 400,000. About 70% of arrests are of criminals — and yes, DUI counts. Ten thousand Americans die every year from drunk drivers. The other arrests include gang members and even suspected terrorists. ICE is enforcing the laws Congress passed.

But sanctuary cities stand in the way. They release criminal aliens back into neighborhoods instead of handing them over to ICE. They call themselves “welcoming.” In reality, they are sanctuaries for criminals. Victims in immigrant communities don’t want predators back in their neighborhoods. Sanctuary politicians know this, but they put politics above safety.

So we’re flooding the zone. Chicago’s mayor said I wasn’t welcome. I went anyway. In one day, ICE arrested child predators, gang members, drug traffickers, and murderers. Chicago will be made safe again.

Attacks on ICE, silence on missing children

ICE agents are under attack like never before. Assaults against agents are up 1,000%. Their families are being doxxed. Members of Congress call them Nazis and racists, even though all they do is enforce the laws Congress wrote. It’s disgusting.

Trump also tasked me with finding hundreds of thousands of missing migrant children. It’s the hardest job, because kids don’t have digital footprints. We rely on the so-called sponsors who took them in — many with fake addresses. Too often, these children end up in sex trafficking or forced labor.

We’re trying to reunite kids with their parents. We even had agreements to return children safely to Guatemala. But liberal judges blocked us. These same people accuse Trump of family separation. Yet Biden’s failures have led to half a million separations and more than 300,000 missing children. Who are the real masters of family separation?

The stakes

Biden released millions into this country because he wanted to delay their hearings for years. Why? To buy time for amnesty and to gain political power through census reapportionment. That’s not just cynical — it’s selling out America.

Trump’s policies, by contrast, work because they follow the law. If you enter illegally, the law says you shall be detained. That law is saving lives today.

I took a pay cut to come back under Trump because I respect him as much as I respected my father. He’s not perfect — no man is — but when it comes to border security, there’s no one better.

RELATED: ‘I don’t give a s**t what people think about me’: Homan outlines Trump admin’s immigration enforcement wins

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Every day I look at the numbers: criminals arrested, terrorists stopped, children rescued. It makes me proud — proud of ICE, proud of Border Patrol, and proud of the president who made it possible.

To those agents on the front lines: Thank you. You are making this country safer every day.

And to the politicians, judges, and media who attack us: Shame on you. We’re not going anywhere.

Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from remarks delivered on Wednesday, September 3, at the fifth National Conservatism conference (NatCon 5) in Washington, D.C.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Border crisis, Border, Border patrol, Border security, Border czar, Border wall, Tom homan, Illegal immigration, Illegal immigration crisis, Illegal alien, Illegal immigrant crime, Illegal immigrant 

President Donald Trump intends to restore the original name of the Department of Defense.

Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Friday that will designate the Department of War as the DOD’s secondary title, according to a White House fact sheet obtained by Fox News Digital. The change will also name Pete Hegseth the secretary of war.

‘Call the endless WARS what they are. And maybe then, we’ll finally put an end to this cycle.’

Further, the order seeks to make the alteration permanent by instructing Hegseth to propose legislative and executive actions. The Trump administration plans to update public-facing websites and the Pentagon’s office signage, a White House official told Fox News Digital.

The Department of War title was used for the United States’ military agency until 1949.

“We won WWI, and we won WWII, not with the Department of Defense, but with a War Department, with the Department of War,” Hegseth told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday. “As the president has said, we’re not just defense, we’re offense.”

RELATED: Tim Kaine trying to weasel a ban on Hegseth changing base names into the military budget

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

“We’ve re-established at the Department the warrior ethos. We want warriors, folks that understand how to exact lethality on the enemy,” he continued. “We don’t want endless contingencies and just playing defense. We think words and names and titles matter. So we’re working with the White House and the president on it. Stand by.”

Trump told reporters last week that the name change was imminent.

“We’re just going to do it,” Trump declared. “I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that. I don’t think we even need that.”

RELATED: Congress must kill DEI before it kills our military readiness

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck reacted to Trump’s plans to change the agency’s name.

“Renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War would remind both the world and OURSELVES what our tax dollars are funding: Bombs will be dropped. Our children will die. I think that’s what Trump is trying to do. Call the endless WARS what they are. And maybe then, we’ll finally put an end to this cycle,” Beck wrote in a post on social media.

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​News, Department of defense, Dod, Defense department, Department of war, War department, Pete hegseth, Trump administration, Trump admin, Donald trump, Trump, Defense, War, Politics 

A massive announcement from the surgeon general of Florida, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, is turning the vaccine-obsessed world as Americans know it completely upside down.

That is, that all vaccine mandates will be eliminated in Florida.

“What I’m most excited about is an announcement that we’re going to make, that we’re making now, which is that the Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law,” Ladapo announced.

“All of them. All of them,” he repeated to overwhelming cheers. “Every last one of them.”

“Every last one of them,” he emphasized. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery, okay? Who am I, as a government, or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body? I don’t have that right. Your body, your body is a gift from God.”

“What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God. I don’t have that right. Government does not have that right. They want you to believe they have that right. And unfortunately, you know, they’ve been successful,” he added.

BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler is thoroughly impressed.

“Dr. Ladapo, it sounds almost revolutionary to hear a public health official speak like this, because most of them don’t,” she tells Ladapo.

“I mean, tell me what this means. Does this mean even for public schools there will be no vaccine requirements for children to attend?” she asks.

“Society’s gotten people to believe that, ‘Oh, actually, you know, governments do have that right.’ They don’t have that right. They don’t have that right. It’s time to reclaim that right. That’s a right from God who gave us our bodies, these vessels that house our souls. So, yes, public schools, absolutely, everything,” Ladapo answers.

“It’s just an unethical policy inherently,” he adds.

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​Free, Sharing, Video, Camera phone, Video phone, Upload, Youtube.com, The liz wheeler show, Liz wheeler, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Florida surgeon general, Vaccine mandates public schools, Vaccine mandates, Vaccine mandates florida, Florida vaccine policy, Dr joseph ladapo 

Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz, a detention center established to expand bed capacity for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been engaged in a persistent legal battle but achieved a significant victory on Thursday afternoon.

‘It is entirely unclear to us, moreover, how the district court concluded that it could order the proactive dismantling of the Facility by way of a mandatory preliminary injunction.’

Kathleen M. Williams, a federal judge in Miami, ruled last month that no additional detainees could be housed at Alligator Alcatraz and required it to be dismantled within 60 days.

In a 2-1 vote on Thursday, a panel of judges with the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta blocked Williams’ ruling to shut down the facility. The ruling allows the detention center to remain open.

Environmental groups have argued that the facility, which opened in July and is located in the Florida Everglades, should have been subject to federal environmental reviews.

However, Alligator Alcatraz is a state-operated facility, and Florida has not received federal reimbursements for its operation.

RELATED: Florida makes one thing absolutely clear after Obama judge orders teardown of Alligator Alcatraz

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

“It is entirely unclear to us, moreover, how the district court concluded that it could order the proactive dismantling of the Facility by way of a mandatory preliminary injunction,” Judge Barbara Lagoa wrote for the majority. “It is wholly unreasonable to conclude from the naked assurances of politicians and lawyers that the Facility is federally funded when not only is the record devoid of credible evidence that a legally binding payment decision has been made, but the record undisputedly contradicts that finding.”

RELATED: Trump admin expands ICE detention space into notorious state prison

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier called the latest ruling “a win for Florida and President Trump’s agenda!”

“The 11th Circuit not only blocked Judge Williams’ order to close Alligator Alcatraz, but they blocked her from proceeding with the case until the appeal is complete,” he wrote in a post on social media.

Governor Ron DeSantis (R) declared that the “mission continues at Alligator Alcatraz” and celebrated the overturned ruling of “leftist judge” Williams.

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​News, Florida, Ron desantis, Desantis, James uthmeier, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Immigration, Immigration crisis, Illegal immigration, Illegal immigration crisis, Alligator alcatraz, Politics 

The husband of Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who advocates ensuring corporations “pay their fair share,” previously owned a company that reportedly owed money to the IRS.

Tim Mynett, Omar’s husband, and William R. Hailer, Mynett’s business partner, operated EStreetCo, an advertising, design, and public relations business that dissolved in June 2022, according to a Thursday report from the Washington Free Beacon.

‘The company has no outstanding tax obligations from the COVID era; in fact, we have a balance due to us.’

A document obtained by the news outlet revealed that in 2023, after the company’s dissolution, the IRS filed a lien for nearly $206,000 in unpaid income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes.

Omar announced in February that she introduced an amendment in the House Budget Committee to “make corporations pay their fair share.” The representative has opposed Republicans’ budget resolution, calling it “a blueprint for American decline.”

“Let’s be clear: They want to exploit your labor, take your tax dollars, and gut your earned benefits — all to bankroll tax cuts for their wealthy friends and donors. They want to increase your health care costs — while Elon Musk and his friends hoard even more wealth,” Omar said in February during a speech on the House floor.

RELATED: Here are the top 3 LEAST patriotic members of Congress

Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

The Free Beacon noted that Omar’s personal wealth is as much as $30 million. In a 2021 financial disclosure, she described EStreetCo as a “creative agency,” claiming that her husband’s share in the firm was worth $1,000 or less.

The news outlet reported that the Sonoma County recorder does not have any record that the IRS released its lien against EStreetCo.

RELATED: Trump derangement final boss: Ilhan Omar claims Somalia is better than America

Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference

However, a spokesperson for EStreetCo told Blaze News, “The company has no outstanding tax obligations from the COVID era; in fact, we have a balance due to us.” Documents provided by the spokesperson showed that the IRS owed the company approximately $3,000 as of September 3, 2025.

A representative for Omar did not respond to a request for comment.

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​News, Ilhan omar, Tim mynett, William hailer, Will hailer, Estreetco, Irs, Taxes, Irs lien, Politics 

Police Scotland has charged a man and a woman in connection with the young, axe-wielding Scottish girl who went viral online.

In late August, a 12-year-old Scottish girl was charged with possessing weapons after online rumors swirled that she was fending off a migrant man. She was seen brandishing an axe and a large knife on video.

The following week, both the accused immigrant and an alleged witness spoke out, providing conflicting accounts of the events in St Ann Lane, Dundee, Scotland.

Now, police have laid subsequent charges.

‘They are thankful that everyone now knows the truth.’

In a statement to Blaze News, Police Scotland said, “Following extensive enquiries, a man and a woman have been charged in connection with an incident in St Ann Lane in Dundee, which was reported around 7:40 p.m. on Saturday, 23 August, 2025.”

The statement added, “The circumstances will be reported to the Procurator Fiscal,” otherwise known as Scotland’s public prosecutor.

Police Scotland also said the 12-year-old girl who was previously charged for “being in possession of offensive weapons” will be referred to the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration, a government body that decides whether a child needs legal intervention from the state.

“Members of the public are again urged not to share misinformation about this incident or speculate on the circumstances,” the statement concluded.

The new charges seemingly confirm allegations made in a witness testimony, as well as claims made online by a reporter who claims to have been in communication with the 12-year-old’s family.

RELATED: Scottish axe girl was defending beaten 13-year-old, witness claims

— (@)

Fatos Ali Dumana, the accused 21-year-old Bulgarian immigrant, had previously told the Daily Mail, “If I did hurt the girl, why didn’t the police arrest me? They have done nothing to me.”

He added, “They saw from the CCTV cameras from Farmfoods that she was stopping me go on my way to the shop.”

Dumana also alleged that another bystander witnessed him being attacked and labeled a “f**king migrant.”

“I did not hit them. I am a human, not an animal,” he added.

At the same time, a TikTok user named Mayah, 13, said in a video testimony that she witnessed the incident personally. Mayah said she was with two sisters, Ruby, 13, and Lola, 12, the latter of whom was allegedly subjected to inappropriate remarks from a strange man.

As the altercation escalated, the alleged witness claimed that the man’s sister attacked Ruby, causing head injuries and sending her to the hospital with a concussion.

“She has a severe concussion and swelling inside of her head,” Mayah said.

It was at that point Lola allegedly brandished the weapons in an effort to protect her sister.

Neither Dumana’s nor Mayah’s testimonies have benefited from any further proof from witnesses, CCTV, or evidence from police, but an independent reporter — who says he has spoken with the family — now says he has concrete evidence to go along with the newly laid charges.

RELATED: Scottish police blame axe-wielding girl for altercation, reveal nationality of migrant

A reporter going by the online moniker Aesthetica claims to have been in contact with Lola’s family and even to have helped her mother, Elaine Thomson, start a fundraiser.

Aesthetica told Blaze News exclusively that Police Scotland “confirmed to the family” that “Fatos Ali Dumana and his sister were the two people charged.”

Police Scotland said they had “nothing further to add” when asked by Blaze News for the names, ages, and/or nationalities of the two adults who were charged. They also neither confirmed nor denied if Dumana was the man who was charged.

Blaze News also reached out to Dumana for comment about the alleged charges and the claims made by Aesthetica, but did not receive a reply.

Image provided to Blaze News by ‘Aesthetica’ on X

Reporter Aesthetica provided an alleged hospital document to Blaze News, purported to be from Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, Scotland. The document is an attempt to prove that Ruby sought medical aid from injuries stemming from the altercation.

The document is addressed to a person with the alleged last name of Ruby and Lola. It shows treatment was provided for a “diagnosis” of a “head injury — concussion.”

The photo also shows the examination was done to a “female, accompanied by mum,” with a head injury again listed. The document said the patient attended the emergency room at 8:11 p.m. on August 23, 2025. This would be approximately 31 minutes following the incident described by police. The patient was discharged at 9:44 p.m.

“The hospital document was sent to Elaine Thomson, Lola and Ruby’s mother, which was sent to [Mayah’s mother], who sent it to me,” Aesthetica explained to Blaze News.

The family has declined to speak publicly, out of fear of public backlash and for their own safety, according to Aesthetica. However, the reporter told Blaze News that the family is “relieved that their names have finally been cleared.”

He added, “They are thankful that everyone now knows the truth and that they’ve been telling the truth the entire time.”

The fundraiser has garnered approximately $120,000 at the time of this writing.

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On Tuesday, September 2, the House Oversight Committee released over 33K pages of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents. Once again, it seems that the majority of the information had already been released.

Even the tiny bit of new information proved to be disappointing — most notably the infamous missing minute from Epstein’s prison cell surveillance footage on the night he supposedly committed suicide. The latest document dump provided the missing time, but it revealed nothing of consequence.

“I love this administration, but they seem to be just bungling every single aspect of this particular issue in ways that I just can’t quite comprehend,” says Sara Gonzales, BlazeTV host of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“Everything about this stinks.”

“Obviously people are saying, ‘This isn’t enough. We want the rest of the files, and more importantly, we don’t just want a file dump. We want something to be given to us in an organized manner that says who the hell was helping traffic children, who the hell was having sex with children, who knew about it, who was in on it,’” Sara says.

“I want to know who was committing crimes against children, and I want them to suffer greatly from it. And I think that that’s what the majority of Americans want.”

It appears to be what Epstein’s victims want as well. The day following the document dump, a group of nine alleged Epstein survivors held a press conference on Capitol Hill and threatened to compile their own list of names if the government fails to do so.

“We know the names. Many of us were abused by them,” survivor Lisa Phillips said.

“I want to understand this so badly because I believe in President Trump. I believe in the America First agenda,” Sara said.

But she can’t ignore the discrepancy between his campaign promise to declassify the Epstein files — which everyone assumed would include the client list — and the administration’s refusal to release specific names.

“Thus far, this administration, not President Trump himself, but the people who have been in charge” have done nothing but “[gaslight] the American public,” Sara says.

She expresses frustration and confusion about how Attorney General Pam Bondi made a spectacle of passing out Epstein binders to conservative influencers, including Blaze Media’s Liz Wheeler, at the first Cabinet meeting to tease a big Epstein unveiling that never came.

“It’s incomprehensible how badly this has been bungled,” Sara reiterates.

She fears that as long as names are kept secret, President Trump risks fueling false accusations against him.

During the press conference, one alleged victim said, “[Epstein] bragged about his powerful friends, including our current president, Donald Trump. It was his biggest brag, actually.”

“That is what has gone viral. That is what you’re going to see on CNN. That is what you’re going to see on MSNBC,” Sara says.

What we will almost certainly not see on mainstream news is the snippet from NBC’s exclusive interview with the victims where they all admitted they never once saw President Trump engaged in inappropriate behavior.

“No one has been able to tie Donald Trump to anything related to any of the disgusting, despicable acts that Jeffrey Epstein did with children. … But the problem is that if the government, if this administration, does not take charge of what is in whatever these files are and show it to the American people, you are going to have people like that woman” shaping a false narrative around President Trump, Sara says.

“We need the truth, and we need it from this administration,” she adds.

To hear more of her commentary, watch the episode above.

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Democratic leaders in Washington, D.C., seem divided on President Donald Trump’s law enforcement surge aimed at cleaning up the district’s streets.

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb (D) filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the Trump administration for deploying thousands of National Guard troops to the nation’s capital.

‘This lawsuit is nothing more than another attempt — at the detriment of DC residents and visitors — to undermine the president’s highly successful operations to stop violent crime in DC.’

“The residents and leaders of the District of Columbia have not requested any of this,” the complaint reads. “None of this is lawful.”

Schwalb accused Trump of “run[ning] roughshod over a fundamental tenet of American democracy — that the military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement.”

“No American city should have the U.S. military — particularly out-of-state military who are not accountable to the residents and untrained in local law enforcement — policing its streets,” Schwalb said. “It’s D.C. today but could be any other city tomorrow. We’ve filed this action to put an end to this illegal federal overreach.”

He further claimed that the Trump administration authorized the National Guard deployment without Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D) consent. However, Bowser recently thanked the White House for helping the city reduce crime.

RELATED: Pam Bondi makes concession to DC AG after lawsuit challenging ‘brazenly unlawful’ federalization of police

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what [the Metropolitan Police Department] has been able to do in this city,” Bowser stated during a Wednesday news conference.

While she admitted the law enforcement surge had lowered crime, she simultaneously claimed that the presence of federal immigration agents and National Guard troops was “not working,” noting that she is “devastated” by residents “living in fear.”

RELATED: Trump floats sending federal agents to yet another crime-ridden blue city besides Chicago

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

The White House called Schwalb’s lawsuit an attempt to undermine Trump.

“President Trump is well within his lawful authority to deploy the National Guard in Washington, D.C. to protect federal assets and assist law enforcement with specific tasks,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Daily Signal. “This lawsuit is nothing more than another attempt — at the detriment of D.C. residents and visitors — to undermine the president’s highly successful operations to stop violent crime in D.C.”

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Several members of the Senate Finance Committee tried desperately during a hearing on Thursday about President Donald Trump’s 2026 health care agenda to paint Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as both a “charlatan” and as a danger to public health.

Like the mutineers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who revolted over Susan Monarez’s removal last week as their director, Democratic lawmakers — Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Maggie Hassan (N.H.) in particular — and a few Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.), quickly discovered that Kennedy wasn’t willing to play their games.

‘You are lying.’

In addition to highlighting recent victories at the Department of Health and Human Services such as recent reductions to bureaucratic waste and the obliteration of the DEI regime, Kennedy informed the committee at the outset, “We are ending gain-of-function research, child mutilation, and reducing animal testing. We are addressing cellphone use in schools, excessive screen time for youths, the lack of nutrition education in our medical schools, sickle cell anemia, hepatitis C, the East Palestine chemical spill, and many, many others.”

— (@)

Rather than dwell on these or other recent positive developments at the HHS, Hassan, like other Democrats on the committee, instead focused her attack on Kennedy’s approach to vaccines.

Hassan, whom Open Secrets indicated has received over $1 million in campaign donations from the health professional industry and hundreds of thousands of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry, claimed that Kennedy “acted behind closed doors to overrule scientists and limit the freedom of parents to choose the COVID vaccine for their children” and “unilaterally changed the parameters for giving vaccines.”

“This is crazy talk,” Kennedy said. “You’re just making stuff up.”

Hassan appears to have been grossly misrepresenting recent actions taken by the Food and Drug Administration.

RELATED: RFK Jr. makes crystal clear to the CDC mutineers: The restoration of public trust ‘won’t stop’

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary noted in a recent op-ed that his agency has “approved COVID-19 vaccines for adults over 65 and for people 6 months and older who have one or more risk factors that put them at high risk of severe COVID,” thereby bringing “the U.S. in line with peer nations.”

Makary underscored that “the FDA can’t regulate the practice of medicine. The FDA grants marketing authorizations, but doctors are able to prescribe drugs off label to people at low risk. In a few states, pharmacists may require a prescription.”

In other words, parents still enjoy the freedom to choose the COVID vaccine for their children even though Makary indicated his agency is not confident that the benefits outweigh the risks.

“Since the FDA isn’t approving a vaccine for the healthy school-age and working population, college and school mandates will be legally impossible,” Makary wrote. “Accordingly, the FDA is revoking the emergency-use authorization for COVID vaccines. The emergency is over. The FDA will now return to an evidence-based standard.”

Kennedy told Hassan on Thursday that the decisions about the COVID vaccines were not made “behind closed doors. The industry makes the studies, and they could not provide a study that said it is effective for healthy kids.”

“You’re just making stuff up, Senator,” Kennedy said.

RELATED: Florida’s fight for medical freedom targets vaccine mandates

SementsovaLesia/Getty Images

Hassan prompted a laugh from the health secretary by responding with, “Sometimes when you make an accusation, it’s kind of a confession, Mr. Kennedy.”

Despite the continued ability of Americans to get the COVID vaccines, Hassan suggested again that “people who want to exercise their freedom of choice are being denied that because you are citing data that you won’t produce to the public and you are rejecting science.”

“You are making things up to scare people, and it’s a lie,” Kennedy said. “You are lying.”

‘I know you’ve taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, Senator.’

Elizabeth Warren picked up where Hassan left off, willfully conflating FDA approval for COVID vaccines with their general availability.

“Last week, you announced that the COVID-19 vaccine is no longer approved for healthy people under the age of 65,” Warren said. “In announcing the change, you said that the vaccine will be available for anyone who wants it. Now obviously, both things cannot be true at the same moment.”

“Anybody can get it,” Kennedy said. “It’s not recommended for healthy people.”

When Warren started down another rabbit hole, insinuating that an insurance company’s refusal to cover a drug on the basis of pulled FDA approval is the same as a governmental denial of vaccines, Kennedy told her flatly, “I’m not going to recommend a product for which there’s no clinical data for that indication. Would you?”

“I know you’ve taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, Senator,” Kennedy added, possibly answering his own question.

According to Open Secrets, Warren received $818,997 from “pharmaceuticals/health products” sources during the 2020 campaign cycle. Between 2019 and 2024, Warren’s Senate campaign committee and leadership PAC have also reportedly received $131,329 from the pharmaceutical industry; $528,320 from the health professional industry; and $109,924 from the hospital/nursing home industry.

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On the third and final day of the National Conservatism conference, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) gave an uncompromising speech on the dangers of AI-fueled transhumanism. From 1950s eugenicists to the tech overlords of Silicon Valley today, Hawley addressed many of the dark undercurrents seething below the surface of the AI revolution.

In a telling moment, Hawley emphasized that AI is continuously being curated to serve the powerful transhumanist leaders in Silicon Valley and the government: “AI is fulfilling transhumanist goals, whatever its boosters may personally believe, and if it proceeds in this way undirected, if it proceeds in this manner unchecked, the tech barons, already the most powerful people on the planet, will be more powerful than ever.”

‘Large language models have already trained on enough copyrighted works to fill the Library of Congress 22 times over.’

Hawley revealed a shocking statistic about large language models and the amount of data that they have accrued: “Large language models have already trained on enough copyrighted works to fill the Library of Congress 22 times over. Let me just put a finer point on that. AI’s LLMs have ingested every published word in every language known to man already.”

RELATED: Reddit bars Internet Archive from its website, sparking access concerns

Photo by Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images

For reference, the Library of Congress had roughly 178 million items in its collection as of 2023.

Companies and individuals have begun to raise privacy and copyright concerns around AI companies scraping the internet to train the LLMs. For instance, Reddit cracked down on the Internet Archive last month over this very issue.

Hawley has been dogged in bringing congressional pressure to bear on Big Tech companies. Most recently, last month, he launched a probe into questions surrounding how Meta’s chatbot may allow minors to engage with “romantic” and “sensual” content. In July, he reached across the aisle to co-sponsor a bipartisan bill to block AIs from training on copyrighted works without authors’ permission.

Addressing the audience, Hawley said, “As I look out across the room and see many authors, all of your works have already been taken. Did they consult you? Doubt it. Do they compensate you? Of course not. This is wrong. This is dangerous. I say we should empower human beings to create, to protect the very human data that they create.”

While the pathways toward protecting Americanism, as he called the defense of liberty in his speech, are narrowing, they are not yet closed. “How do we do it? Assign property rights to specific forms of data. Create legal liability for the companies who use that data. And let’s fully repeal Section 230. Open the courtroom doors, allow people to sue for their rights being taken away, including suing companies and actors and individuals who use AI. We must add sensible guardrails to the emergent AI economy and hold concentrated economic power to account.”

Drawing from the lessons of humility and humanity reaching back as far as the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” Hawley warned of the dangers of the transcendence that transhumanism is seeking. “Our limits make us something better and powerful that make us good, and they keep us free, because there’s only one God. We allow no man or class of men to rule over us. We rule ourselves together as equals. That is the American way. It always has been. Let’s keep it so for this age and beyond. God bless you.”

​Tech, Josh hawley, Ai revolution, Silicon valley, Library of congress, Llm, Large language models, Ai, Artificial intelligence 

After the atrocious Minneapolis shooting, one celebrity made a fool of herself when she was quick to place blame where it didn’t belong: Rosie O’Donnell.

This isn’t the first time O’Donnell has made it clear in a public rant that she is vehemently anti-MAGA, after famously fleeing the United States for Dublin, Ireland, to escape President Trump when he took office for the second time.

“I saw about the Minnesota shooting, and it brought me right back to Columbine in 1999, where I just could not get it through my head that students in America were shooting each other in schools. And this was a church inside a Catholic school,” O’Donnell in a rant posted to her social media.

“And what do you know, was a white guy, Republican, a MAGA person. What do you know? A white supremacist,” she added.

However, O’Donnell shortly had to walk back her comments and issue an apology — as she was completely wrong.

“My apologies to maga for saying the school shooter was one of u — that is incorrect — i made a mistake,” the caption of another selfie video read.

“I know a lot of you were very upset about the video I made before I went away for a few days. I didn’t go online and haven’t seen them till today. But you are right. I did not do my due diligence before I made that. I said things about the shooter that were incorrect,” O’Donnell said in the video.

Despite apparently learning her lesson, O’Donnell went on to say that most shooters fit the description she originally believed to match the Minneapolis shooter.

“I assumed like most shooters, they followed a standard MO and standard, you know, feelings of, you know, NRA-loving kind of gun people. Anyway, the truth is I messed up. And when you mess up, you fess up. I’m sorry. This is my apology video, and I hope it’s enough,” she said.

“It’s not,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments, disgusted.

“Not only does she not mention the fact that the guy wasn’t Republican, he was trans and part of her community. As 11 others have been over the last few years. So why don’t you talk about what really is going on in America right now?” he says.

“People with real problems are manifesting them in this way. And that’s whether they’re white straight people or whether they’re transgender people,” he continues, adding, “They’re mentally ill.”

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested several violent criminal illegal aliens on Wednesday, according to a press release obtained exclusively by Blaze News.

‘This doesn’t even count illegal aliens with rap sheets in foreign countries, gang members, and suspected terrorists.’

“ICE officers will continue to arrest and remove violent criminals who have no place in our communities,” the press release reads.

Wednesday’s arrests included Gildardo Bucios-Lorenzo, a Mexican national, who was previously convicted of rape and criminal deviate conduct.

Gildardo Bucios-Lorenzo. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

ICE also detained Mary Rodriguez-Fuentes, a Honduran national, who was convicted of endangering the welfare of a child.

RELATED: Trump admin expands ICE detention space into notorious state prison

Mary Rodriguez-Fuentes. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

Jorge Morales-Aguilar, a Mexican national, was convicted of assault causing bodily injury to a family member before federal immigration officials arrested him this week.

Jorge Morales-Aguilar. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

Immigration agents captured Juan Carlos Martinez-Mendoza, an illegal alien from Mexico who was convicted of assaulting a peace officer.

Juan Carlos Martinez-Mendoza. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

ICE also noted the arrest of Luis Johnatan Yupangui-Alomoto, an illegal alien from Ecuador who was convicted of attempted robbery.

RELATED: Man who allegedly towed away ICE vehicle during operation has been arrested: ‘Now he can laugh behind bars’

Luis Johnatan Yupangui-Alomoto. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

The agency noted that 70% of its arrests are individuals who have been charged or convicted of a crime in the United States, as the Trump administration continues its mission to arrest the most serious offenders.

“Thanks to the courage of our ICE law enforcement, these criminal illegal aliens are no longer free to terrorize our communities and prey on innocent Americans,” a DHS spokesperson stated. “Secretary Noem unleashed ICE to target the worst of the worst. Seventy percent of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens who have been charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S. This doesn’t even count illegal aliens with rap sheets in foreign countries, gang members, and suspected terrorists.”

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House Majority Whip and Minnesota native Tom Emmer (R) bashed Democratic Gov. Tim Walz for his “failure to lead” in the aftermath of the gruesome Minnesota shooting during an exclusive interview with Blaze News.

Following the tragic shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School, Emmer spoke about the heartbreak felt in the community while also criticizing Walz’s repeated inaction to protect Minnesotans.

‘There were warnings all along the way.’

“I’m a Minnesotan and father of seven kids, and we’re a Catholic family,” Emmer told Blaze News. “The Annunciation school is one of the strongest Catholic parishes in the Twin Cities.”

“Words just can’t describe the amount of heartbreak and anger that I think all of us feel about this unspeakable act of evil.”

RELATED: Tone-deaf Democrats lash out over prayers for Christians murdered in devastating Minnesota shooting

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

The shooter was later identified as Robert Westman, a man who suffered from gender confusion, raising concerns about transgender gun ownership. Emmer said that rather than addressing Westman’s mental health, Democratic policies like those backed by Walz exacerbate the issue.

“Everyone has their own challenges. We respect that. We understand that,” Emmer told Blaze News. “But Tim Walz and all of these radical left-wing Democrats that look at a young man like the one involved in this case and tell them, ‘You’re confused. We’re going to make it worse. We’re going to encourage you to make it worse.'”

Under Walz’s leadership, Minnesota became a “trans refuge” that allowed the state to take children with gender dysphoria away from their parents if they weren’t giving them “gender-affirming care.” Additionally, Catholic schools were on guard and asking for increased security following the Tennessee shooting in 2023, but Walz ignored their pleas.

“The trans community, God bless them for the challenges they already have, but the suicide in that community is well above the national average. Why aren’t we talking about that?” Emmer added. “… He was screaming for help.”

“There were warnings all along the way,” Emmer told Blaze News.

RELATED: Tim Kaine shockingly compares the Declaration of Independence to Iran’s theocratic regime: ‘Extremely troubling’

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Since the shooting, Walz and other Democratic officials have pointed the finger at firearms instead of the underlying motives that may have led Westman to commit the heinous act. Rather than politicizing the atrocity, Emmer said leaders should come together to address the “root of the problem.”

“We should be focused on what the root of the problem is,” Emmer told Blaze News. “It’s mental health. It’s a failure of people to actually speak up and follow the laws that are there and enforce them.”

“It’s all about us and them for Tim Walz, as opposed to how do we all work together and live together in peace and security and respect,” Emmer told Blaze News.

RELATED: Ex-Clinton adviser warns Democrats of dire midterm season: ‘Elections have consequences’

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Unfortunately, the recent violence in Minnesota was not an isolated incident. Like many other blue cities across the country, Minneapolis is plagued by high crime rates. Although Trump has previously extended a hand to blue cities like Minneapolis, Walz continues to dig his heels in.

“I’m hoping partisan, hateful, failed leaders like Tim Walz, JB Pritzker, and others follow the model,” Emmer told Blaze News. “You don’t have to embrace Donald Trump. … But certainly you should care enough about your own people. The people that you work for that elected you to protect them and their families from the violence that we’ve been seeing in Minneapolis as a result of the failure to lead.”

“Seriously, there’s something wrong with Tim Walz,” Emmer told Blaze News. “Somebody should have his head examined and offer him some help, because he’s completely gone off the edge.”

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​House republicans, House majority whip, Whip emmer, Tom emmer, Minnesota, Minneapolis, Jb pritzker, Chicago, Donald trump, Tim walz, Democrats, Democratic governors, Democratic lawmakers, Anti-catholic hate crime, Annunciation catholic school, Trump administration, Crime crackdown, Transgender, Gender affirming care, Trans refuge, Catholics, Politics 

The right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany — often abbreviated AFD for its German name, Alternative für Deutschland — has grown increasingly popular since its founding in 2013 by free-market economists keen to strengthen German sovereignty.

Despite a concerted suppression campaign by the liberal German establishment, which has attempted to ban and criminalize the AFD outright, the right-leaning party came in second place in Germany’s national elections earlier this year, doubling the vote share it previously won in 2021.

The AFD is hoping for continued success in the local elections scheduled for Sept. 14 in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

‘The alternative is too frightening to contemplate seriously.’

The trouble is that its candidates keep dying.

On Sunday, Alice Weidel, the federal co-chairwoman of the AFD, confirmed the report from the German public broadcaster WDR that four candidates — Stefan Berendes, 59; Wolfgang Seitz, 59; Ralph Lange, 66; and Wolfgang Klinger, 71 — had “died suddenly and unexpectedly.”

Stefan Homburg, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Hannover, said on X that the cluster of deaths were “statistically almost impossible” — a claim that elicited concern from former Trump adviser Elon Musk, who noted a day earlier that “either Germany votes AFD or it is the end of Germany.”

The early and mail-in ballots cast for the dead candidates have reportedly been invalidated.

RELATED: Rule by the people? Not anymore in the Western world

Photo by Maryam Majd/Getty Images

The AFD regional association in North Rhine-Westphalia revealed that as of Monday, there were at least another two confirmed deaths of its politicians, reported Politico.

“In my view, it’s statistically striking and currently difficult to explain,” said AFD deputy federal chairman Stephan Brandner. “I have never heard in my life that politicians of a party die in such a short period of time before an election.”

German police suggested that while investigations are ongoing, there is no evidence of foul play.

Days after the Politico report, another AFD candidate, Hans-Joachim Kind, reportedly perished, making a total of at least seven dead AFD candidates just days ahead of the local elections.

Blaze News has reached out to the AFD and to Weidel for comment.

Suspicions online regarding the deaths have been fueled in part by the efforts of German establishmentarians — whose agenda and power is threatened by the AFD — and leftist activists to crush the party.

RELATED: Musk asks: ‘Why are they allowing the rape of Europe?’ — then vows to do something about it in the UK

AFD co-chairwoman Alice Weidel. Photo by SOEREN STACHE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images.

After designating the AFD as a potential extremist organization in 2021, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency placed the party and its federal members under surveillance, tapping their phones and monitoring their movements.

In May, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a spy agency, officially classified the AFD as a “proven right-wing extremist organization” — a brazen attempt to neutralize the opposition party. That classification has, however, been placed on pause pending the result of a court appeal.

Last year was an especially bad year for institutional attacks on the AFD: An administrative court disarmed party members, barring them from owning firearms; leftist activists succeeded in having the party de-banked; and an AFD politician, Marie-Thérèse Kaiser, was convicted of a hate crime for sharing government statistics about the disproportionate number of gang rapes committed by immigrants, specifically Afghan nationals.

Attacks on the AFD have also taken the form of violence.

Prior to the AFD securing 15.9% of the German vote in last year’s European parliamentary elections, a leftist who was tearing down an AFD candidate’s campaign posters allegedly stabbed AFD’s spokesman for Mannheim, Heinrich Koch, with a carpet knife.

Rod Dreher, a senior fellow at the Danube Institute in Budapest, noted, “What is the likelihood that four candidates and two reserve candidates of the same political party, in the same region, would drop dead suddenly, within 13 days of each other — and just before local elections?”

“It must be hoped that the unfortunate and statistically unlikely deaths of four politicians from a party the German government is considering outlawing were nothing more than a fluke,” continued Dreher. “The alternative is too frightening to contemplate seriously.”

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Writer/director Erik Bork summoned the late Rodney King with his newest film.

It’s called “The Elephant in the Room,” although the subtitle could easily have been, “Can’t We All Just Get Along?”

‘It made it a bigger challenge. How do you make a romantic comedy when you have that in the middle of it?’

The rom-com stars Alyssa Limperis and Sean Kleier (“Wedding Season”) as a couple staring down a near-impossible divide. She’s a dyed-in-the-wool progressive, and he voted for Donald Trump.

Twice.

Can this romance survive a very 21st-century fissure? Even more important, can a modern-day filmmaker treat conservatives fairly in a politically charged project?

Splitsville

Bork, who co-wrote “Band of Brothers” and “From the Earth to the Moon,” started worrying about the state of the union back in 2016. That, of course, marked the rise of Donald J. Trump as a political force.

The Hollywood hyphenate realized a divided nation could be fodder for a different kind of romantic comedy. Instead of fretting over dresses or ways to lose a guy, a couple could squabble about politics.

“I was starting to be convinced that polarization was a key issue in our society, maybe the key issue,” Bork tells Align. “It made me want to explore it.”

And he had a little help along the way.

RELATED: Chat brats: ABC makes ‘The View’ hosts take back Trump trash talk

Lou Rocco/Getty Images

Likeable lovebirds

A pair of emerging groups — Bridge Entertainment Labs and the Civic Health Project — counseled Bork on how to make the script less polarizing and more believable. “Elephant” marks Bridge Entertainment Labs’ first foray into pop-culture fare.

“In a romantic comedy, you have to like both of the people. … Can they be both likeable and believable to both sides was a key mission,” he says. That took multiple drafts to ensure that audiences didn’t hate either lovebird.

His small cast also shared their perspectives before the cameras began to roll. Bork credits them for adding their insights to the project.

“They had thoughts and questions and concerns. … Some were playing characters very different from them. … The [film’s] ending was the result of that conversation, that negotiation,” he says.

Affection insurrection

“The Elephant in the Room” is set just before the events of Jan. 6, 2021, one of the most heated political moments in recent memory.

“It was the most dramatic thing,” he says. “It made it a bigger challenge. How do you make a romantic comedy when you have that in the middle of it?”

It’s easy to point a finger at the cultural forces pitting American against American these days. Bork singles out news outlets and politicians who “keep us polarized and make us assume the people on the other side are the most extreme, lockstep version of what we imagine them to be.”

Bork told a story with specific themes ripped from today’s headlines, but he tried not to make a rom-com equivalent of a white paper.

“I want people to enjoy the story, a comedic and heartfelt experience, and have the other stuff be secondary, but the other stuff is important to me,” he says. “It’s not a documentary, and I’m not a social change agent. There’s no call to action.”

Wrong-com?

That said, he hopes the film lets viewers empathize with those who voted the “wrong” way last November.

“It’s about humanizing your interactions with people and having some generosity and curiosity about each other,” he said.

And he knows that can be a tall task.

“Yeah, it’d be nice to get along better, but they’re terrible. They’re stupid and evil,” he said, imagining what some might say about his film’s larger themes.

Bork can’t speak for Hollywood in general, an industry dominated by left-leaning views and an unofficial blacklist against some right-leaning artists. He can share some early screening reactions, which gave him hope about the film’s impact.

He knows plenty of Americans would enter the film with their arms ideologically crossed. He’s seen it up close.

“This is the wrong time for this … a movie that humanizes a Trump supporter,” as he puts it. For some viewers, though, the central love story won them over.

“But I’ve had people watch the movie who I know basically have that feeling … then when they watch it, [they say] ‘this was great and we need this, even though it doesn’t change my view of that man,’” meaning the 45th and 47th president, of course.

Making “The Elephant in the Room” gave Bork a fresh perspective, too. The left-leaning director says working with the aforementioned nonprofits let him examine his beliefs and news feeds.

“I’m trying to notice if I’m in an echo chamber,” he said, “and if I’m consuming things that the whole point is to get me angry or depressed.

“I try to go issue by issue [now] … and be curious to understand, which I wasn’t before as much,” he adds.

​Movies, Culture, Entertainment, Erik bork, The elephant in the room, Hollywood, Rom-com, Trump, Align interview 

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has released over 33,000 pages of Epstein-related records that were provided by the U.S. Department of Justice — but Americans have been conditioned to wonder if this is real transparency or just D.C. political theater.

The same uncertainty applies to apparent meetings taking place behind closed doors that may be uncovering more information about the predators involved.

“Speaker Mike Johnson and Oversight Chairman James Comer actually quietly pulled something together that you almost never see. It’s been a rare bipartisan closed-door meeting,” BlazeTV host Jill Savage explains on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

“They had six women who survived Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, and for at least two of them, it was the first time that they had ever spoken out,” she says, noting that Johnson called the meeting both “heartbreaking” and “infuriating.”

According to Johnson, some of the women had been “groomed” for over 30 years.

“There’s so much that’s happening behind closed doors, and we still just don’t know. Are we going to get the transparency that we want, or is this more of the actual political theater?” Savage asks.

“There’s not much new, but what is new is that, you know, we’re told that these women have provided names of additional persons of interest, so that is interesting. Who are those people? Will that come out? Will we talk about that? I don’t know,” BlazeTV host Matthew Peterson says.

“We also have about a thousand pages … that are new, flight logs from him flying out of the country. But what we don’t have so far is actual names, and that’s what most people want,” he continues.

Blaze media senior politics editor and D.C. correspondent Christopher Bedford isn’t too pleased with how long it’s taken for them to interview these women in the first place.

“It’s the kind of attention that Congress probably should have paid to this from the very beginning, which is bringing in victims, having closed-door meetings, which, you know, are more serious than open-door meetings,” Bedford says.

“Open-door meetings are theater for MSNBC, CNN, and Fox,” he continues. “They’re not real. There aren’t real questions. It’s just, ‘Let me see how many points I can get. Let me see how many points I can put on the board.’ … But closed-door sessions are much more serious.”

Want more from ‘Blaze News: The Mandate’?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Video phone, Video, Upload, Camera phone, Free, Sharing, Youtube.com, Blaze news i the mandate, Blaze news tonight, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blazetv, Jeffrey epstein, Epstein victims, Epstein list, Oversight committee, Epstein files, 33k epstein pages, Department of justice, Ghislaine maxwell, Blaze news the mandate 

A simple move by the Trump administration means every former White House employee will be seeing the president sooner or later.

With just a few clicks, Trump’s team implemented a genius joke that will last at least until the end of his term and immediately struck a nerve with a member of the previous administration.

‘One of the great trolls of all time.’

On the job posting and career networking site LinkedIn, the administration changed the White House’s profile picture to President Trump’s official 2025 portrait, which was revealed in June.

That means any former employee who lists the White House under his or her job experience section will now have to see Trump’s face, for better or for worse.

Most notably, this affects former President Barack Obama’s page.

First son Donald Trump Jr. pointed out the change in a trolling social media post of his own.

“Just confirmed … it’s real,” Trump Jr. said on a screenshot of Obama’s LinkedIn page. “One of the great trolls of all time … changing the White House, LinkedIn profile picture,” he wrote on Instagram.

A member of President Biden’s administration did not appear amused by the photo, though, and got into a contentious exchange over the joke with a current White House staffer.

RELATED: Disgusting: Even Tim Walz cheers false rumors of Trump’s death

“The White House is now posting on LinkedIn and made their profile picture a picture of Trump’s face,” Jeremy Edwards, former Biden spokesman, wrote on X. “Which means if you worked for the White House in the past, and it’s on your profile, people see Trump’s face.”

White House communications director Steven Cheung replied hours later, confirming the executive branch’s intention to troll former employees.

“That’s the whole point, dummy. Trolololololol,” Cheung wrote.

Edwards did not take the remark kindly and lashed out at Cheung’s appearance.

“Thanks for the explainer, dumba**. I guess I should just be grateful that it’s not your face I have to see whenever I open the app,” his X post read. “Appreciate you looking out for us!”

RELATED: Trump admin expands ICE detention space into notorious state prison

Trump’s photo caused even more news after a reporter from the Daily Caller asked him about presidential portraits going on display in the Rose Garden.

When asked if he would include a picture of President Biden, Trump replied, “Isn’t that an interesting question.”

“And I’ll listen to you, too,” Trump told the reporter. “It’s a decision I have to make. We put up a picture of the autopen.”

After reporter Reagan Reese called the idea “hilarious,” Trump later added:

“I gotta do it. … It’s going up in about two weeks, because — it’s all being prepared.”

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​Politics, Trump, Troll, Trump administration, Social media, Biden, Donald trump, Linkedin, White hosue, News