Category: blaze media

Passengers aboard a Boeing 737 heading to Tel Aviv, Israel, braced themselves when the plane suddenly plunged by 16,000 feet over an alleged hijacking attempt.

A co-pilot stabbed the other pilot on the flight in a 9/11-style attempt to take control of the plane, according to law enforcement officials.

‘We’re here during the hijacking of an airplane. At this point, we’ve subdued the terrorists.’

Some of the 174 passengers of the plane, which took off from the United Arab Emirates, recorded cellphone video of the harrowing incident.

“We’re here during the hijacking of an airplane. At this point, we’ve subdued the terrorists,” said one passenger on his video.

Some of the videos show passengers with blood on their clothing from confronting the alleged attacker. A passenger said cabin crew and passengers rushed to stop the attack.

“We were either going to crash or be murdered,” said another passenger to I24 News. “It was like a terrorist attack in mid-air.”

A flydubai spokesperson said in a statement that following the “altercation in the flight deck,” the “on-duty flydubai crew travelling on the flight … diverted and landed the aircraft safely at Tabuk Airport.”

“At this early stage, the underlying reasons and motives behind this event are unknown and remain subject to a formal investigation. We urge all parties to refrain from premature speculation while authorities gather the facts,” the flydubai statement added.

Sources told the Jerusalem Post that the alleged co-pilot terrorist is believed to be from Oman.

Photos showed that the rudder on the plane was damaged during the landing, which was completed by two off-duty European pilots, the New York Post reported.

“Someone shouted ‘stabbing,’ and my husband understood what was happening and rushed to the front of the plane,” a passenger said. “Along with other Israelis, they neutralized the terrorist.”

RELATED: NY woman allegedly thanked Allah for 9/11 and plotted to bomb state capitol and White House

The flight was diverted and landed in Saudi Arabia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that “all passengers are out of danger” and that “the pilot who stabbed them has been arrested and is currently being questioned by the Saudi authorities.”

Some of the videos from passengers can be viewed on social media.

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​Terror attack, Israel, Plane hijacking, Islam, Politics 

Every day, tens of millions of Americans walk. Some walk to the kitchen, others walk to the bathroom, and plenty make the familiar trip back to the kitchen after forgetting what they went there for in the first place. The more adventurous, in search of a little exercise, head outside for a stroll around the block.

I enjoy a good walk myself. But after reading about the latest method, I have to ask a critical question: Have we all been walking wrong this entire time?

By next spring, expect the arrival of Scandinavian Sitting Down, a Nordic method that involves placing your buttocks on a chair when your legs feel tired.

You see, researchers in Japan have found that deliberately alternating between slower and faster walking can improve aerobic fitness, leg strength, and blood pressure more effectively than simply walking at a steady moderate pace. Hence the latest viral craze sweeping the West. Japanese walking involves three minutes of relaxed walking, followed by three minutes of faster, more vigorous walking. You repeat the process for about 30 minutes.

It’s formally known as Interval Walking Training, which makes it sound infinitely more impressive than “walk normally, then go a bit faster.”

The saber-tooth protocol

Humanity has survived famines. It has endured plagues and savage wars without a digital timer strapped to its wrist, telling it when to put one foot in front of the other. Yet today, millions of supposedly sane adults in America and beyond subscribe to services that tell them to speed up for 180 seconds. Our ancestors accelerated when a saber-toothed tiger chased them and slowed when the tiger disappeared. They called it staying alive.

The absurdity extends far beyond walking. The entire self-improvement industry rests on taking an ordinary human function, giving it a very fancy name, and selling it as a revolutionary lifestyle breakthrough.

When you eat smaller portions, you’re not practicing moderation. No, you’re engaging in the fine art of portion control. If you skip breakfast because you slept through your alarm, you’re practicing intermittent fasting. Should you fall asleep on the couch on a Sunday afternoon, you’re not taking a nap. Instead, you’re practicing a form of Non-Sleep Deep Rest.

The obsession with rebranding even the most basic things stems from deep-seated collective insecurity. Modern culture distrusts anything that lacks an instruction manual or a monthly billing cycle.

Linguistic inflation

When you step outside your front door to observe an oak tree, you’re forest bathing. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator is known as incidental exercise. Drinking a glass or two of water when you feel thirsty has evolved into a hydration protocol, complete with a gallon jug marked with motivational quotes to ensure optimal cellular fluid retention.

Going to bed at 10 p.m. on a weeknight used to be called common sense. Now it’s called sleep hygiene. And naturally, getting a good night’s sleep requires blue-light-blocking glasses, a weighted blanket, and enough magnesium to stock a small pharmacy.

Sitting near a window at 7 in the morning is circadian activation. Taking a 10-minute break from your computer screen is deliberate recovery.

In the 1920s, if a laborer needed a breather, he sat down on a crate and smoked a pipe. A century later, an office manager hires a certified consultant to teach him breath work, which involves inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth.

The linguistic inflation is out of control. Sitting on a chair without looking at your phone for a few minutes is mindfulness. Writing about your annoying boss and even more annoying neighbor in a notebook is journaling. Drinking a mug of black coffee before going for a jog is pre-workout supplementation.

Vacuuming the living room and carrying heavy laundry baskets down to the basement is functional fitness. Throwing a ball around with your son in the back yard is active family bonding. Jumping into cold water is aquatic cardiovascular conditioning. Staring at nothing in particular for 10 minutes is dopamine detoxing.

RELATED: Rare disease? Chronic illness? Fame awaits as a ‘sickfluencer’

Getty Images

Wellness wordsmiths

Influencers have built multimillion-dollar digital empires by doing little more than glancing at the dictionary, grabbing an everyday word, and replacing it with something that sounds like a medical diagnosis.

The goal is to make you feel fundamentally incompetent at simply existing. If breathing, sleeping, walking, and drinking water require a life coach and a six-week online seminar, you’re permanently broken without their intervention.

Things are bad now, and they’ll likely get worse. By next spring, expect the arrival of Scandinavian Sitting Down, a Nordic method that involves placing your buttocks on a chair when your legs feel tired. By autumn, wellness retreats will charge exorbitant fees to teach corporate clients the ancient art of Korean Going to Bed. This esoteric eastern practice involves shutting your eyes in a dark room until you fall asleep.

The solution to this nonsense is pretty simple. And more importantly, it’s entirely free. Put away the stopwatch. Delete the tracking apps; ignore the snake-oil salesmen online. Go outside. Put one foot in front of the other, and walk at whatever speed feels comfortable until you decide to stop.

​Breathwork, Circadian activation, Deliberate recovery, Forest bathing, Health, Hydration, Incidental exercise, Influencers, Japanese walking, Journaling, Lifestyle, Make america healthy again, Wellness 

President Donald Trump has once again found the quickest way to send Canada’s political establishment into a fit of national indignation: point out the obvious.

This time, Trump went after the country’s immigration policies.

It is an extraordinary thing to hear a Canadian prime minister publicly discuss planning for an invasion by the US.

“Canada is destroying itself by allowing millions and millions of people into the Country, essentially unchecked and unvetted, and who are causing problems that will soon be too big to handle,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week. “It is a Liberal takeover that will end very badly. Already showing up in their numbers. Big unemployment.”

Fatuous fact-check

Canadian officials and media outlets were quick to push back. CBC pointed out that immigrants and temporary residents are screened and that Canada’s unemployment rate, while still 6.4% in August, has fallen half a percentage point since May.

Fair enough. Like many of Trump’s pronouncements, “unchecked and unvetted” is an obvious exaggeration. But concentrating on that phrase conveniently allows Canada to avoid the substance of what he said: The country allowed immigration and temporary migration to rise so rapidly that the Liberal government is now scrambling to bring the numbers back down.

As recently as 2021, more than 8.3 million Canadians — 23% of the population — were or had once been landed immigrants or permanent residents, the highest proportion among G7 countries.

And that was before the subsequent explosion in temporary residents. By October 2024, Canada’s non-permanent resident population had climbed to nearly 3 million, or 7.2% of the population.

Ottawa is now reversing course. The government has cut its target for new temporary-resident arrivals from 673,650 in 2025 to 385,000 this year — a reduction of about 43% — and says it intends to reduce the temporary-resident population to less than 5% of Canada’s population by the end of 2027. The government itself acknowledges that immigration levels must be brought into line with Canada’s housing supply, health care system, and labor market.

Justin time

That is quite a retreat from the immigration consensus that prevailed under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

In January 2017, days after Trump’s first inauguration, Trudeau responded to Trump’s immigration restrictions with a social media invitation heard around the world.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” Trudeau wrote. “Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada.”

Nine years later, Ottawa is trying to get the numbers back down.

Statistics Canada reported last week that the number of non-permanent residents fell by nearly 155,000 over the previous year. Yet 2.78 million non-permanent residents still remained in Canada on July 1 — about 6.7% of the population.

You don’t have to accept every word of Trump’s Truth Social post to notice what happened. Canada dramatically increased immigration and temporary migration. The government that presided over the increase is now cutting it.

Yet Canada’s political establishment remains far more comfortable talking about Donald Trump than examining how the country arrived here.

Carney’s cosplay

Within days of Trump’s latest broadside, Prime Minister Mark Carney was discussing something considerably more dramatic than immigration: the possibility of war with the United States.

Asked by the New York Times whether he had seriously considered the possibility of American military action against Canada, Carney said he had examined the “extreme tail risk.”

“I think you have a responsibility in these roles to look at extreme tail risk,” Carney said. He stressed that an American invasion was “not a base case,” describing the exercise as simple “risk management.”

It is an extraordinary thing to hear a Canadian prime minister publicly discuss planning for an invasion by the U.S. Despite Carney’s fond reveries about the War of 1812, when American forces repeatedly invaded British North America, Canada and the United States have spent the past century preparing to fight alongside each other, not against each other.

The two countries were founding members of NATO. They jointly operate NORAD, the world’s only binational military command, and maintain a web of bilateral defense agreements and joint military plans for the defense of North America. The U.S. State Department has described America’s defense arrangements with Canada as more extensive than those it maintains with any other country.

That cooperation dates back at least to 1940, when Prime Minister Mackenzie King and President Franklin Roosevelt established formal cooperation on continental defense.

Eighty-six years later, Canada’s prime minister is publicly acknowledging that his government has considered what happens if the country on the other side of that defense partnership becomes the threat.

The military imbalance makes the hypothetical stranger still. Canada’s armed forces are a shadow of the military that fought through two world wars and landed at Juno Beach on D-Day. During World War II, the Royal Canadian Air Force grew into the fourth-largest Allied air force. Today’s Canadian military has struggled with recruiting, aging equipment, and years of procurement delays.

RELATED: ‘AMERICAN INVASION’: Flailing Canada PM Mark Carney invokes historical grudge in latest lob at Trump

George Rose/Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Made in Canada

Carney’s comments might have remained an odd diplomatic footnote if Donald Trump were not simultaneously becoming the organizing principle of Canadian domestic politics.

In British Columbia, Premier David Eby has just called a provincial election two years ahead of schedule. The timing could hardly be better for Eby. B.C. Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay had resigned only days earlier after months of turmoil within the opposition party.

But Eby says the election is necessary because British Columbia faces an “existential moment.” The threat comes courtesy of — you guessed it — Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump is attacking our jobs, driving up costs, and threatening our ability to make decisions for ourselves,” said Eby in announcing the election.

Obviously, no alliance means that two countries’ interests will always align. Canada has benefited enormously from its relationship with the United States, but there have always been disputes over trade, defense, energy, and any number of other issues. Trump’s tariffs have hurt Canadian industries, while his repeated talk about Canada becoming the 51st state has understandably irritated Canadians. That is what happens when two sovereign countries pursue their own interests.

But Canadian politicians seem increasingly preoccupied with the points of friction. And Trump has become awfully useful to them.

Meanwhile, many of the problems Trump is talking about were made in Canada.

Trump did not create Canada’s housing shortage. He did not create its enormous temporary-resident population or set the immigration targets the Liberal government is now cutting. Those were Canadian decisions, made by Canadian governments.

The immigration reversal should make that particularly difficult to ignore. Ottawa spent years pushing the numbers higher and is now scrambling to bring them down. Correcting Trump’s exaggerations does not make that record disappear.

Canadian politicians can continue blaming Trump for what he says about their country. They might spend a little more time explaining what they’ve done to it.

​British columbia, Canadas immigration policies, President donald trump, Trade disputes, Health care system, Mark carney, Justin trudeau, War of 1812, David eby, Canada, Trade policy, History, Culture, Letter from canada 

Chris Hansen built his career confronting alleged child predators — adults who had agreed to meet up with children — but Hollywood is telling his story from a different angle.

An angle where, apparently, he’s the predator.

In “Primetime,” Robert Pattinson portrays the longtime “To Catch a Predator” host in a fictionalized take on Hansen’s career.

BlazeTV hosts Stu Burguiere and Dave Landau are less than impressed with the film’s spin, especially considering Hollywood doesn’t hold any moral high ground when it comes to predatory behavior.

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“It’s odd because Hollywood’s like, you know, we’re the industry falling apart because we’re, you know, the industry that’s been accused of pedophilia and grooming. So what we should do is make a movie about Chris Hansen where the pedophiles are the good guys,” Dave says.

“This is what fascinates me more than anything else,” Stu agrees, “because of course we live in the country that would … make the guy getting the pedophiles arrested into the bad guy.”

Dave notes that having met Hansen twice himself, he found him to be a “genuinely good dude” who “actually cares about his work.”

Hansen isn’t a fan of the film either, explaining in an interview that even though he is not “the most objective reviewer … since A24 made it without [his] consult or consideration, and they use [his] name, image, and likeness,” that the film is “pure fiction.”

“They mix in some reality here and there. At the end of the day, I wasn’t blown away by it either way. It’s a movie, and I’ll continue to do the work I do, and people can watch this movie and make up their own minds,” he added.

A Washington Post article also addresses the new film’s spin on Hansen’s career, titled “A new movie asks whether Chris Hansen is the predator. He’s sure of his answer.”

“‘No’ is his answer,” Stu laughs. “Quite obviously ‘no’ is the correct answer. It’s easy to detect because he was the people putting predators into prison.”

“Yes, that’s how you know he wasn’t the predator,” Dave agrees.

“The pitch on him being the bad guy, by the way, is all he cared about was ratings and he was exposing these losers and their weird sexual things to the masses for his own publicity and ruining their lives, which, at some level, parts of that storyline are true,” Stu says.

“I’m sure he cared about ratings, as every television person does,” he continues. “I’m sure he was trying to advance his career and make the show popular.”

“But … just because you’re a loser and just because, you know, you have a weird sexual thing does not make it OK to act on that with kids,” he adds.

Want more from Stu and Dave?

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

​Chris hansen, Dave landau, Hollywood, Stu burguiere, To catch a predator, Washington post, Primetime, Robert pattinson, Blazetv show 

Philadelphia police said a masked male allegedly broke into a woman’s apartment before sunrise Wednesday — but she was armed with a gun and opened fire.

Officers were called to an apartment complex in the 4600 block of Castor Avenue in the city’s Frankford section just after 5 a.m. for a shooting, WPVI-TV reported.

‘It appears this individual broke the window and was able to reach in and open the door and then entered this woman’s apartment and that’s when the shot — or shots — were fired.’

The woman in her 20s told police she heard someone breaking windows to the apartment and encountered the man inside, the station said.

The problem for the alleged intruder? The woman had a gun.

Arriving officers found in the apartment’s bedroom an unresponsive 29-year-old man who had been shot in the head, the station said.

He was pronounced dead at the scene, police added to WPVI.

“It appears this individual broke the window and was able to reach in and open the door and then entered this woman’s apartment and that’s when the shot — or shots — were fired,” Chief Inspector Scott Small with the Philadelphia Police Department told WPVI.

The station showed an image of a broken window in the rear of the second-floor apartment, through which the intruder reportedly placed his hand and then unlocked the apartment’s rear door.

Police told the station it didn’t appear the male had any weapons on him.

Investigators told WPVI that once they removed the mask from the male, the woman recognized him, telling police they had a prior relationship, although the nature of the relationship is unclear.

Officials told the station the woman is cooperating with police and has turned over a semi-automatic handgun to officers.

RELATED: Gun-toting woman ‘took care of business’ after male broke into her home, entered her bedroom, and wouldn’t leave

Homicide detectives are interviewing the woman, and police also are reviewing surveillance video from near the scene, WPVI added.

A woman the station interviewed after the shooting said, “I feel anybody should defend themselves if they think they’re in harm’s way.”

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​Crime thwarted, Philadelphia, Fatal shooting, Home invasion, Break-in, 2nd amendment, Guns, Self-defense, Woman shoots intruder, Crime 

The NFL promotes politics on clothes and in the end zones, but when it comes to players doing so, it’s a no go.

Muslim players found this out the hard way earlier this month when they were fined for writing messages on their eye black, an apparent violation of league rules.

‘If you’re going to pull down the messaging, pull it all down.’

Arizona Cardinals defensive back Kei’Trel Clark wrote, “Glory Be 2 God …,” with a peace sign in the middle, while Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair was fined for having the name of a deceased Palestinian child.

Both were fined for displaying personal messages, but one former NFL player turned Christian minister says they should have the right to do so.

Former Minnesota Vikings defensive back Jack Brewer told OutKick he thought it was “disgusting” for the NFL to fine players for writing religious messages on their equipment.

“If someone’s writing things across their uniform or putting it out there on top of their helmet, that’s a different story,” Brewer said. “But the eye black — think back to Tim Tebow and many, many other athletes, myself. We would write stuff on our tapes, on our forearms. We would write stuff on our eye black.”

Brewer revealed that he spoke with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington, D.C., about the issue, discussing the players’ freedom of speech and employee rights.

“When you start talking about freedom of speech in this country and you start talking about employees’ rights in this country, it’s a big deal,” Brewer explained. “As a Christian man, I’m not going to stand for that. And as a former NFL player, I’m not going to stand for that.”

RELATED: Muslim NFL players say they’re confused after thousands of dollars in fines: ‘I need answers’

Kenneth Richmond/Getty Images

Brewer said that players of any religion should be protected from being fined for displaying messages such as those from Clark and Al-Shaair; both are Muslim.

Much of the former player’s argument centered around the fact that the NFL already has significant political messaging around the sport, such as gay pride merchandise and anti-racism messaging in the end zones.

“If you’re going to pull down the messaging, pull it all down, but don’t pick and choose,” Brewer said.

He added, “You cannot treat people differently based upon whatever it is you want to promote.”

Brewer argued that the NFL, through all its different statements, “cannot pick and choose” which messages it wants its players to be a part of.

RELATED: Former Vikings player says ‘demonic’ Minnesota Democrats are upset ICE is ‘deporting their voters’

Jack Brewer 2004. Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

The players who were fined seemed to be in direct violation of Rule 5, Section 4, Article 8 of the NFL rulebook, which states, “Players are prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages” during game day when the player is visible to the stadium or television audience.

For Clark, his fine may have come as a surprise given that he had worn religious messaging on his eye black in September 2025 that read, “Inshallah …,” one of many ways the player expresses his Muslim faith publicly.

“The NFL treated Clark’s gratitude to God, as expressed in four words, as a punishable personal message,” Brewer said in a letter, per OutKick. “This fine represents an action that strikes at the heart of religious liberty and sends a chilling message to every person of faith in professional sports.”

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​Nfl, Jack brewer, Religious freedom, Azeez al-shaair, Kei’trel clark, Football, Sports 

Deportation flights are cleared for takeoff.

The Supreme Court of the United States on Tuesday issued an emergency ruling allowing the Trump administration to resume deporting migrants to “third countries,” or those other than their nation of origin. The administration has deported Cubans and Venezuelans to African nations like Liberia and Eswatini.

‘A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike.’

Though the one-page stay did not include a vote count, the three liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson noted they would not have granted the Trump administration’s request.

The Department of Homeland Security wasted no time taking a victory lap on social media.

“In our second Supreme Court victory in less than a week, DHS’s third country removal policy is back in effect,” DHS General Counsel James Percival said on X after the ruling. “A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike. It’s not too late to get $3,000 and a flight home.”

The practice became a practical necessity for removing illegal aliens after several countries, including Cuba and Vietnam, refused to accept the return of their deported nationals.

Though third-country deportations to African nations have generated prominent media attention, Mexico remains the leading destination for said removals. Of the roughly 25,000 third-country deportees since the policy took effect, 20,000 have been sent to Mexico.

Department of Justice Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed the successful application to stay Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s February judgment.

RELATED: Libertarian think tank clutches pearls about reduced Islamic migration — but it’s music to MAGA ears

J. David Ake/Getty Images

“The United States relies on third countries in part to facilitate the removal of criminal aliens who are otherwise difficult to remove because their home countries and other countries refuse to take them,” Sauer wrote in the filing. “Absent an effective third-country removal policy, the United States is forced to retain (and often release into the interior) vicious criminals who have already harmed our communities.”

Tuesday’s emergency ruling is a temporary stay, not a final decision. The justices also granted the administration review and set oral argument for December.

SCOTUS will evaluate in December whether Murphy had jurisdiction to issue a nationwide pause and whether the third-country policy is lawful on its merits. The emergency ruling allowed the Trump administration to resume third-country deportations without the lengthy notice-and-hearing process previously imposed by Murphy.

“The Left wants you to believe that removing aliens to countries other than their home country is cruel,” Percival said. “What is cruel is allowing criminal illegals who can’t be sent home to stay in our communities and victimize anew.”

Tuesday’s order marks the third time that the Supreme Court has granted the federal government third-country deportation powers pending a final hearing and decision.

The DHS and DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.

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​Department of homeland security, Department of justice, Illegal aliens, Trump administration, Politics, Supreme court 

After 12 years of fighting ISIS and 23 years since the start of the Iraq War, U.S. troops have withdrawn from Iraq.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement released Wednesday that Operation Inherent Resolve had “formally concluded” in Iraq and that troops and equipment had departed Erbil Air Base in Northern Iraq, marking “the successful conclusion of the military mission that defeated ISIS in Iraq.”

‘The United States supports a strong sovereign Iraq.’

Parnell added that the Iraqi government must now take “responsibility for addressing Iraq’s remaining security challenges, including ISIS remnants and Iran-aligned militias that undermine Iraqi sovereignty and regional stability,” even as the U.S. continues “to work with Iraq and our partners to ensure ISIS can never reconstitute from Iraqi territory.”

U.S. CENTCOM claimed that the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve has relocated to Jordan and will conduct ongoing anti-ISIS efforts in Syria, in coordination with the Syrian government.

The withdrawal follows the timetable set in a joint statement from the U.S. and Iraq in September 2024, which pledged that the mission and U.S. involvement would continue until September 2026.

Some, however, especially in the Kurdistan Region, have concerns about security without a more pronounced U.S. military presence.

“U.S. withdrawal, under a Coalition-[Government of Iraq]-U.S agreement, comes at a sensitive time, when instability threatens regional and Iraqi security,” said a statement Monday from the Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs.

RELATED: Osama bin Laden is dead. His strategy is still working.

Ammar Karim/AFP/Getty Images

Moreover, the Peshmerga Ministry notes that the Kurdistan Region, including civilian areas, has suffered over 1,000 drone and missile strikes since the U.S. conflict with Iran began six months ago, resulting in “injuries, material damage, and deaths.”

Additionally, no alternative air defense system has yet been put in place in the Kurdistan Region, an issue that the Peshmerga Ministry called “deeply concerning.”

Parnell hinted at the concerns of the Peshmerga Ministry, stating that while the U.S. Department of War “will continue to provide targeted training and intelligence support to our Iraqi partners,” all Iraqi forces, including those in the Kurdistan Region, must now step up and “lead the continuing effort to secure Iraq and keep ISIS remnants suppressed.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi seems pleased with the withdrawal of U.S. troops, claiming that it ushers in “a new phase” of Iraqi “sovereignty.”

Al-Zaidi also previously promised that non-state militia groups in Iraq would be disarmed by Wednesday, though he has since extended that deadline until the end of June 2027, CNN reported.

Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, a leader of the Iran-allied Kataib Hezbollah militia, likewise called the withdrawal of “occupation forces” a powerful demonstration of Iraq’s “full sovereignty,” according to CNN.

For his part, Parnell indicated that a fully sovereign Iraq is exactly what America wants.

“The United States supports a strong sovereign Iraq that secures its borders, protects its people, and serves as the foundation for deeper commercial, diplomatic, and security cooperation between our two countries.”

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​Iraq, Isis, Iran, Kurds, Politics 

After many years of catering to mid-range phone customers and serving up nostalgia on the back of the Razr name, Motorola is back with a major flagship release. The Motorola Signature 27 debuted at the Qualcomm Tech Summit in September, and a must-have privacy feature is coming next year.

Motorola used to be one of the great phone brands of the age, introducing the world to the original Razr flip phone and captivating a generation of Android users with its Motorola Droid series of devices.

The mystery is finally over.

When Google acquired the company in 2012, the future looked brighter than ever, thanks to an ultra-customizable phone called the Moto X that was assembled in Fort Worth, Texas. Sadly, the phone flopped, the plant closed, and Google sold Motorola to Lenovo just two short years later.

By then, the Motorola brand had lost most of its industry appeal. Still, Lenovo found success by launching mid-range devices across international markets, earning it enough revenue to tread water until the foldable craze sparked an opportunity for the Razr to return. With a foldable display, Razr carved out a unique place in the smartphone market that has sustained itself for six years.

That brings us to the present day. Motorola just showed off a brand-new flagship dubbed the Signature 27. It will be one of the first phones on the market to include a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip, Qualcomm’s newest chip and the second mainstream consumer SOC built on a 2nm architecture after the A20 Pro found in the iPhone 18 Pro series.

These 2nm chips prioritize extreme performance and power efficiency that surpass previous architectures. So far, the A20 Pro in the iPhone 18 Pro Max has proven to be a very capable device with fantastic power output and battery life. There’s no way to know how the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 will compare yet, but 2nm is the future for premium gadgets.

RELATED: Stronger security and privacy are coming to Android, but will they come in time?

Chayada Jeeratheepatanont/Getty Images

The Signature 27’s other big claim to fame is a unique triple camera system along the top edge arranged in a way that may just trigger the trypophobia — a fear of many holes — you didn’t know you had. It includes a 50MP Sony LYTIA L910 main sensor, a 200MP telephoto with 100x zoom enhanced with AI generation for clarity, and a 50MP ultrawide for wide shots. These are mated to a textured woven backplate unlike the usual aluminum or titanium found in most flagships today, giving it a distinct look and feel.

The most interesting part, though, is the software.

When the Motorola Signature 27 launches “in the coming months,” it will feature the typical Android OS you would expect from a Motorola device. Next year, though, Motorola will sell new Signature 27 models with another option — GrapheneOS.

This may not be a surprise if you have followed along on Blaze News. In early September, there were reports that Motorola was queuing up a new phone for GrapheneOS, the privacy-focused fork of Android that strips out all of Google’s spyware and replaces it with open-source software. Now we know for certain, though, that Signature 27 will be that phone.

In a reply to a user on X, the official GrapheneOS account said, “Yes, [the Motorola Signature 27] will be the initial supported phone. Wait for official news about it.”

X.com

Clearly, there are more details to come, but at least the mystery is finally over. Motorola Signature 27 will be the first phone to launch with GrapheneOS from the start.

Up until this point, the only way to use GrapheneOS was to purchase a Google Pixel phone and overwrite the default software. With GrapheneOS out of the box, the Motorola Signature 27 will make the Android alternative more accessible than ever, finally letting users kick Google to the curb with the least amount of hassle possible. That’s great for users who want a more private option outside Android and iOS.

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​Motorola, Android, Privacy, Tech 

European-style health care mandates are the latest fringe policies from the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. Packaged as “Medicare for Ya’ll” and “universal care,” these extreme plans from politicians like James Talarico and Abdul El-Sayed push control of health care to the government and away from patients and their providers.

With Talarico recently walking back some of his more controversial statements, Texans should take a hard look at how he is missing the mark on health care policy and urge him and state politicians to keep radical, European-style health care out of the state House and out of Congress.

We don’t have to look far to know what happens when government takes control of our health care.

The dangers of European-style health care policies are currently playing out across the pond. The National Health Service in England reports that waiting lists for patients have ballooned to over 7 million cases, including patients with serious and life-threatening medical conditions like cancer and heart disease.

Nearly 80,000 patients were removed from the waitlist between 2024 and 2025, not because they received care but because they died.

The promise of improved care simply doesn’t bear out when European-style policies are put into practice, yet Democrats in America are doubling down on more government intervention rather than innovation and reform.

When government boards and committees control health care decisions, there is no free market competition and no incentive to innovate. It takes nearly 20 months in Europe before patients can access a new drug once it is approved.

Why would we import these failed policies to our country?

In 2020, Americans watched as presidential contenders proposed and then abandoned European-style proposals after failing to articulate a clear vision for how the system would be implemented.

Democrats are currently recycling those same bad ideas for the midterms, only this time they are fueled by the socialist craze to force government on every aspect of American life.

RELATED: The DSA’s history lesson has one big omission

Sarah Rice/Getty Images

Americans should send a message that a government-controlled health care monopoly is not the answer. Already, bloated government health care programs fuel waste and abuse in the American health care system. The runaway 340B program is the perfect example.

Launched more than 30 years ago as a way to help safety-net providers and hospitals serve low-income patients, the program has gradually ballooned into a revenue stream that allows hospitals to purchase drugs at steep discounts and then charge insurers full price.

The Government Accountability Office has warned about insufficient oversight and improper use among hospital participants. There’s no accountability mechanism to ensure that the savings are used for charity care or passed on to low-income patients. As the program has grown, so has the waste, fraud, and abuse.

The Trump administration has made efforts to tackle the rampant abuse in the system, but Congress needs to act in order to enact lasting change. The Democrat response is more government control and health care expansion, bringing us one step closer to Europe’s harmful health care policies and further away from meaningful reforms.

States must reject attempts to import failed European health policies and government control into our health care system. Texans and Michiganders should push back against the socialist agenda that glorifies waitlists, price controls, and drug rationing over patient care.

We don’t have to look far to know what happens when government takes control of our health care. Americans need to send a clear message during the midterms: Don’t Europe our health care.

​Democrat party, Dsa, James talarico, National health service, Trump administration, Free market, Midterm elections, Socialism, Europe, Opinion & analysis, Health care 

Texas Senate Democrat candidate James Talarico has long made wild and untrue statements regarding Christianity, and now it’s become clear why.

His own pastor, Dr. Jim Rigby, holds equally insane beliefs about the religion, and he was caught on camera proudly announcing them.

“James Talarico calls Jim Rigby his mentor,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments. “And so Jim Rigby, according to his biography on the St. Andrews website, has a love of world religions and a passion for social justice.”

“And of course, James Talarico has referred to him as the biggest influence on him as a Christian and a human being,” she adds, before playing undercover footage obtained by Blaze Media of Rigby discussing the “problem” with evangelical Christians.

“They are people who are just not that smart, and like abstract thinking, which is where a lot of the liberal stuff and the principles of human rights, all that stuff, comes up … it doesn’t show up on their radar,” Rigby told the undercover reporter unwittingly.

“They panic when that stuff is laid out in front of them. They know there’s something they’re not seeing. It’s like they have black-and-white vision and somebody’s showing them a color photograph or something like that,” he added.

But that’s not the worst of it. When Rigby was asked by the reporter if he needed to profess the belief that “God became a baby and that a virgin had a baby” in order to become a member of his church, Rigby answered that “we all got in by lying.”

“That’s the least you can do,” he added.

“It’s just a social club that we have,” Gonzales mocks, “We call ourselves Christians, but we don’t actually intend to live by any of the principles set forth in the actual document, the Bible.”

Matthew Marsden is shocked by the footage but unsurprised that he’s linked to Talarico.

“I don’t get this Talarico thing,” he says. “It’s almost as if they went, ‘Let’s get the worst possible candidate, especially for Texans, and let’s roll him out and let him just express what he thinks.’”

“And he’s still in the running. It is completely mind-boggling to me,” he adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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

​Christianity, James talarico, Matthew marsden, Jim rigby, Pastor, Austin, Texas, Blazetv show 

Scientists using a vast array of antennas have made a unique discovery coming from out this world.

What makes the discovery groundbreaking is that for the first time, the signal Earth is receiving is clear.

‘No radio detection has previously been unambiguously localized.’

Using the 64-dish array called MeerKAT, scientists have been able to capture radio signals coming all the way from a distant gas giant planet called Beta Pictoris b, more than 63 light years away.

However, while this marks the first time clear signals have been identified directly from a distant planet rather than its star, it is not a sign of alien life sending signals to Earthly compatriots.

What the dishes are actually picking up are the signals of a strong magnetic field around the planet, which the Daily Mail reports is more than 1,000 times more powerful than Earth’s.

The signals allegedly come from the planet’s aurora, which is similar to that of Earth’s northern and southern lights.

RELATED: How to get iPhone alerts when the latest story hits Blaze News

MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images

“Here, we report the first direct detection of auroral radio emission from an exoplanet, the giant planet β Pictoris b,” researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics wrote, per the Independent.

The researchers explained in their paper that “although auroral radio bursts are observed in Solar System planets and in some ultracool dwarfs, no radio detection has previously been unambiguously localized to an extrasolar planet rather than its host star.”

This discovery comes from the same region scientists have looked at on four separate occasions, where they have previously discovered that the region’s star has four orbiting planets, plainly named Beta Pictoris a, Beta Pictoris b, Beta Pictoris c, and Beta Pictoris d.

Beta Pictoris b’s size is also something to marvel at: It is 12 times the mass of Jupiter. Also, its distance from the star it orbits is about the distance between Saturn and our sun — 886 million miles.

MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images

As for the MeerKAT system, it was built between 2014 and 2018 and is considered to be one of the biggest scientific undertakings in South Africa’s history.

It gets its name from being located at the Meerkat National Park, spans approximately 97,000 square feet, and was previously called the Karoo Array Telescope.

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​Space exploration, Beta pictoris b, Jupiter, Tech 

America’s most prominent libertarian think tank released a report on Monday concern-mongering over the drastic drop in legal immigration from third-world Muslim nations under President Donald Trump.

The Cato Institute — admittedly a big supporter of immigration and longtime opponent of the president’s border wall — is fretting over an apparent 96% drop in immigrant visa issuances and refugee admissions from majority-Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, and Somalia.

‘We’ve come so far on these issues.’

Meanwhile, prominent voices in the MAGA movement are celebrating the news from Cato.

The White House’s rapid response account even shared a Cato Institute graph showing the decline in migration from Muslim countries.

In response to the graph, Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet wrote, “I couldn’t love this stat and this graphic any more. This is actually exactly what I voted for.”

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said, “Coming to America means committing to America: our Constitution, our laws, our freedoms. Tougher vetting under POTUS Trump has cut admissions from high-risk countries by 96%. We owe Americans nothing less than knowing exactly who we let in.”

Texas Rep. Brandon Gill (R) noted, “Absolutely incredible victory for the American people, thanks to POTUS.”

RELATED: Alabama: The anti-caliphate

Aaron Schwartz/AFP/Getty Images

The libertarian think tank underscored that Trump and his administration are directly responsible for the drop in admissions of refugees and migrants from nations, highlighting:

Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, proclamation that the U.S. “admit only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States,” “ensure that the United States preserves taxpayer resources for its citizens,” and suspend the entry of refugees into the U.S. under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program;Trump’s Sept. 30, 2025, determination allocating refugee admissions for fiscal year 2026 primarily to Afrikaners from South Africa;Trump’s Dec. 16, 2025, proclamation restricting the entry of foreign nationals into the U.S. from scores of third-world countries including Afghanistan, Mali, South Sudan, and Yemen;the State Department’s pause on immigrant visa processing from 75 countries “whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates”;U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Jan. 1, 2026, memo applying Trump’s 40-country entry ban; and the State Department’s recent immigrant visa interview freeze.

Many of the administration’s actions have been challenged and in some cases blocked in the courts. The State Department’s pause on visa processing from 75 countries, for instance, is no longer in effect as of Aug. 21, owing to a court order.

Nevertheless, these actions have proven impactful.

The libertarian think tank’s analysis of State Department data shows incredible drops in migration from various Muslim terrorist hot spots.

Whereas, for example, 5,563 immigrants and refugees from Afghanistan were admitted by the U.S. in former President Joe Biden’s final month in office, there were only nine in February 2026 — a decline of 99.8%. Whereas 3,026 Pakistani refugees and migrants were admitted in December 2024, only 63 were admitted in February 2026. Similarly dramatic declines were observed among admissions from various other Muslim nations.

“If the current pace continues, the fiscal year 2026 (which started in October) would see the fewest immigrants and refugees from majority-Muslim countries in at least 30 years,” said the Cato Institute report.

‘Of course, there are immigrants who don’t work and commit crimes.’

The report noted further that if these levels continue for the rest of this fiscal year, “then only about 40,000 immigrants and refugees from these countries will have immigrated that year. This would be down nearly 80 percent from 2024 and even about 30 percent lower than 2020, when the first Trump administration used the pandemic as an excuse to cut off legal immigration.”

The libertarian outfit also questioned the administration’s justification for the 40-country entry ban on the basis of security, claiming that “only two of the ten majority Muslim countries on that list have ever carried out a deadly terrorist attack in the United States.”

The Cato Institute further characterized immigrants from Muslim nations as hard workers who have a positive effect on government budgets and as “much more highly educated than the US-born.”

RELATED: Diversity is our strength? Britain has to remind migrants: Don’t rape kids

Afghan migrants attempting to cross US border near Sasabe, Arizona, in January 2025. John Moore/Getty Images

Minnesota is among the states that has had a different experience on the ground with some of these supposed scholarly and industrious imports.

The Center for Immigration Studies reported in December that approximately 54% of Somali-headed households in Minnesota received food stamps and 73% of Somali households had at least one member on Medicaid. By way of comparison, the figures for native households were 7% and 18%, respectively. The CIS also noted that 58.2% of working-age Somalis do not speak English very well and 39% have no high school diploma.

Trump shared a graph on Jan. 4 titled “Immigrant Welfare Recipient Rates by Country of Origin,” which showed that the percentages of immigrant households on assistance from Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, South Sudan, and Yemen were all over 40% and went as high as 75%.

The Cato Institute’s report claimed, “Of course, there are immigrants who don’t work and commit crimes. But they are the minority. The vast majority of immigrants — including those from majority-Muslim countries — want to contribute to the United States, and they have contributed to it.”

The libertarian think tank implored Congress to “go further to protect Americans’ right to associate freely with people born in other countries, regardless of their countries of origin.”

William Wolfe, the executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, tweeted, “To see an official White House account celebrating a decrease in 1) legal immigration and from 2) explicitly Muslim-Majority countries is truly amazing. We’ve come so far on these issues. Some of the young guys don’t know that, but it did not used to be like this.”

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​Immigration, Muslim, Cato institute, Brandon gill, Markwayne mullin, Visa, Donald trump, Libertarian, Terrorism, Politics 

Voters were not confused about what they were choosing in 2024. “Mass deportation” was not a line buried in a white paper. It was printed on signs, chanted at rallies, and repeated by the candidate himself. Americans who cast their ballots on that promise had every reason to believe it meant what it said.

Nearly two years into this administration, it is fair to ask whether that promise is being kept. By the government’s own numbers, it is falling short. Those numbers are not a failure of the men and women in the field. They are the result of decisions made well above them.

As long as the jobs are there and the penalties for employers are weak, no amount of border rhetoric will change the math.

I spent 24 years in federal immigration enforcement and retired as deputy field office director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in New York City, the largest field office in the country. I know what it takes to move removal numbers, and it is not rhetoric.

Removals are a pipeline: locating the person, arresting him, detaining him, getting a final order through an overwhelmed court system, and putting him on a plane. The pipeline moves only as fast as its narrowest point.

When an administration is serious, it widens every one of those points at once, through detention space, fugitive operations teams, cooperation from local jails, immigration judges, and flights.

When it is not serious, you see press releases instead.

Consider what happens after an arrest. Many people assume a deportation is nearly complete once an officer puts someone in handcuffs. In reality, the foreign government has to be notified, and it has to confirm the person’s identity and issue a travel document. Some countries turn those documents around quickly, while others slow-walk them or refuse outright.

Every day of delay is a day in a detention bed that could hold someone else, and if the wait runs long enough, the person may have to be released back into the community. Even when the document arrives, the flight still has to be coordinated, whether that is a seat on a commercial flight with escorting officers or a spot on a charter that has to be filled and scheduled.

So where is the pressure against mass deportation coming from? Look at who benefits from enforcement that stops at the factory door. Agriculture, hospitality, construction, and meatpacking interests have lobbied openly for exemptions and slower worksite enforcement.

Each carve-out is defended as practical. Taken together, they amount to a policy of enforcing the law against individuals while protecting the employers who hired them.

RELATED: Kansas Republicans muddy the waters on ICE enforcement

Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

Worksite enforcement is the one measure that shows whether an administration means business, precisely because it is the one measure that impacts the political donor class. As long as the jobs are there and the penalties for employers are weak, no amount of border rhetoric will change the math.

We should also call things by their proper names. Issuing work-authorization workarounds, or declining to pursue people with final orders of removal, are just amnesty by other names. Every one of these moves is a message to the world that American immigration law is negotiable if you wait long enough.

The people most insulted by this message are the immigrants who did it the right way. Every fraudulent case that clears is a slot, a court date, or a benefit taken from someone who waited in line and told the truth.

Critics say mass removals would disrupt the labor market and raise prices. The answer to that concern is simple: An economy built on a permanent pool of workers without legal status, who cannot report abuse and undercut wages for citizens and legal residents alike, is not a model worth defending.

Regardless of how it is covered, a substantial share of Americans support mass deportation. The Harvard CAPS/Harris poll surveyed 1,725 registered voters from May 29 to 30, 2026, with a margin of error of ±2.4 points. It found that 80% support deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes, up five points from 75% in April. That includes 71% of Democrats, 90% of Republicans, and 79% of independents.

They are not asking for cruelty. They are asking for a system that works, one with no amnesty, no fraud, and no exemptions for the well-connected.

Here is what keeping the promise would look like: mandatory E-Verify for every employer, funding for detention capacity and fugitive operations that matches the stated goal, worksite enforcement without industry carve-outs, and immigration judges and attorneys to clear a backlog that currently stretches for years.

The president made a promise, and voters took him at his word. The officers in the field are ready to do the job. What is missing is the will to let them do it.

​Amnesty, Deportation, Economy, Fraud, Immigration, Labor market, Mass deportation, Ice, Trump administration, Worksite enforcement, Democrats, Republicans, Opinion & analysis 

X is the platform of free speech, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when it will limit the reach of a post to comply with platform policies or the government. Luckily, there’s a new reporting feature that will tell you if and when you’ve been shadowbanned, and you can use it right now.

Shadowbanning is the act of arbitrarily limiting the reach of a user’s post without his knowledge, warning, or consent. From the user’s perspective, his content will simply drop views and engagement with no explanation. Meanwhile, the social platform virtually removes the post from its algorithm so that the content isn’t served to as many users, if at all. The post is still visible on the user’s main profile page, but to the rest of the social network, it basically doesn’t exist.

X is giving users a new tool to see if their content is being limited for any reason.

Shadowbans, even on a free speech platform like X, are issued for a number of reasons: spam behavior, like mass following and unfollowing accounts or overusing hashtags, having a post reported by too many users, violating X’s safety policies, and requests from local law enforcement or the government, usually over “hate speech” or breaches of national security.

For what it’s worth, X’s official stance on shadowbanning is that it doesn’t do it, according to a blog post published in 2018, long before the Musk acquisition. This, however, has been proven false plenty of times in the past. For instance, conservative voices were silenced in 2018 and again in 2020 when the FBI met with Twitter to censor Charlie Kirk, Libs of TikTok, and Dan Bongino.

Needless to say, this has happened on and off for many years.

RELATED: 200,000 Chinese bots are hiding on X — built to control what you think

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Now X is giving users a new tool to see if their content is being limited for any reason. In an effort to improve platform transparency, Under the Hood gives users more insight into how their posts are labeled and served by X’s algorithm.

To access your shadowban report, simply log in to your X account and go to the official Under the Hood page. From here, there are several requirements you must meet before the system generates your report: Your account must be at least one year old, and you must have posted a minimum of 10 posts within the last month.

If you meet the criteria, tap or click the “View Report” button. This takes you to the next page that shows the number of posts you’ve sent within the last month as well as any labels attached to your content that could impact visibility. Labels are split into two categories: Post labels are attached to individual posts to limit their specific reach on X, while account labels are broader restrictions that can limit the visibility reach of an entire account. In most cases, both should be green.

Under the Hood/X.com

Unfortunately, if any of your posts or your account are flagged, there isn’t an easy way to tell exactly what you did wrong. X only allows users to download a JSON file of their report, which contains lines of code that may not tell the complete story. Preferably, X would build a proper user-friendly dashboard that clearly highlights the labeled posts, but so far, no such plans have been revealed.

At the very least, Under the Hood finally offers an official way to confirm your sneakiest suspicions that your posts or account are shadowbanned. Unless you’re an avid X user, you probably won’t need to run this report very often. This feature is mostly meant for those times when you see a sudden dip in your content engagement and you want to know why. That said, new reports can be generated every month, so if you’re so inclined, you can check your shadowban status regularly.

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​Shadowbanning, X.com, Twitter.com, Twitter ban, Twitter, Tech 

Jack Smith, the Biden regime’s former special counsel, is back in the news with his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. The Oversight Project has uncovered new records that don’t focus on the settled question of why Smith used federal power to target political enemies, but instead on how he was able to do it.

Understanding the “how” is more important at this stage. We all know why the weaponization of the Biden years happened. It happened because they wanted to extinguish a political movement so that people from around the country could never truly shake up Washington, D.C., again.

For those who believe Smith’s investigation crossed the line from legitimate law enforcement into political targeting, that broader reach is the central issue.

We also know why it can happen again if Democrats take back power.

In Democrats’ minds, they have unfinished business. They regard Donald Trump and his supporters as too great a threat to stop short the next time. That makes it essential to understand how the weaponization of government happened, how it could happen again, and what reforms are needed now to prevent a repeat.

Instead, systemic reform has largely fallen by the wayside, replaced by political declarations that government weaponization has been solved once and for all.

With few signs of meaningful accountability, the need for concrete action is urgent.

January 6 gave Democrats the justification they needed to discard restraint and use the powers of federal law enforcement against their political opponents. That effort did not stop with President Trump. It extended to his supporters, especially those who challenged the conduct of the 2020 election or became prominent figures in the broader America First movement.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith in November 2022 to investigate Trump’s handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and his actions surrounding January 6. Smith became the central figure in the federal effort to prosecute the former president.

Smith took over the FBI’s Arctic Frost investigation, a sweeping inquiry that gathered records involving Republican politicians, Trump allies, and organizations.

RELATED: ‘Deranged partisan fanatic’ Jack Smith obtained personal info on Trump supporters to try to rig the election, Tom Cotton says

L-R; Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

The investigation grew out of an inspector general inquiry that was later folded into Arctic Frost. Smith has cited that earlier investigation in denying knowledge of actions taken before his involvement, including those associated with former FBI agent Timothy R. Thibault.

According to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Smith’s team issued hundreds of subpoenas involving more than 400 Republican individuals and organizations. It also obtained phone records connected to 20 current or former Republican members of Congress.

Newly released records provide more detail about how Smith’s office conducted the investigation.

The scale is worth considering. Investigators collected cellphone records, audio, video, and other digital data involving elected officials as well as private citizens engaged in political activity.

Understanding exactly what was collected, from whom, and under what authority is essential to judging whether the investigation stayed within legitimate law enforcement bounds.

Smith’s office then faced the tough task of sorting through a vast trove of information and building a case for trial.

The investigation also gave prosecutors an unusually detailed picture of Trump’s political network. If the argument is that this information could be used for purposes beyond prosecution, the piece should show that rather than assume it.

Venue mattered too. Washington, D.C., offered prosecutors a jury pool markedly less favorable to Trump than many other jurisdictions.

Through Freedom of Information Act litigation, the Oversight Project obtained 844 pages of records from Smith’s office.

Those documents show that in July 2023, just weeks before Trump was indicted over his actions surrounding January 6, Smith’s team said it was in “desperate need” of forensic video software from Axon, a major law enforcement vendor best known for Tasers and police body cameras.

Axon has since drawn attention as cities across the country consider the company’s expanding surveillance technology.

The urgency inside Smith’s office was enough to override normal purchasing procedures, despite initial objections from a member of his own staff.

On July 13, 2023, the office’s executive officer wrote that Smith “supports more strict requirements than DOJ’s standard policies.” Even so, she authorized the purchase “prior to creating the UFMS obligation” — before the expense had been entered into the Justice Department’s financial system — because “the purchase is urgent.”

The order was placed July 14. Axon shipped the software licenses the next day.

Eighteen days later, on August 1, Smith indicted Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and events surrounding January 6.

The records leave key questions unanswered.

The Justice Department withheld the purchase price. It also has not disclosed what video or audio Smith’s team needed to process so urgently. Given the timing, the material may have been related to the January 6 case, but the records do not establish that.

Axon’s proposal also included language allowing the government to share “de-identified segments of Agency Content with Axon to develop new products.”

The Justice Department released only an unsigned copy of the agreement. As a result, it remains unclear whether Smith’s office agreed to let a private vendor use investigative material in product development.

Smith’s investigation likely cost taxpayers more than $50 million, according to a Fox News analysis of Justice Department spending reports. How much of that money went to outside vendors such as Axon remains unclear. Some expenses may have been recorded through the Antitrust Division or U.S. attorneys’ offices, making the full cost difficult to trace.

But we do know that when Smith needed help targeting President Trump, he called Axon in a rush, and the company was more than happy to answer. The grand jury indictment over January 6 that quickly followed appears to be a natural consequence of Smith finally being able to dig through the results of his dragnet.

Smith’s office was far less careful with its own records. When it moved its files at the start of the investigation, Justice Department e-discovery staff warned the transfer “will change the metadata on those files (create and modify dates).”

RELATED: Trump picked the wrong way to fight fake news

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The office replied, “The team has no issue with the changes to metadata.” Its records officer decided the team’s Microsoft Teams chats were “not necessary to be moved.” Phones and an iPad used by Smith’s lawyers were returned to other Justice Department offices, with nothing in the records showing their contents were preserved first.

In the end, Smith did not secure a conviction.

The classified documents case was dismissed after a federal judge ruled that Smith’s appointment was unlawful. The election case was narrowed by the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, then dismissed after Trump won the 2024 election and Justice Department policy barred continued prosecution of an incoming president.

Smith resigned 10 days before Trump returned to office.

For many Americans, the arguments and passions of that period have faded. For those who were investigated, subpoenaed, or otherwise drawn into the government’s scrutiny, they have not.

Smith remains one of the central figures associated with that period. His return to the news is a reminder that the powers of federal prosecution remain in place regardless of which party controls the executive branch.

The damage was not limited to the final disposition of the cases.

Years of litigation brought legal bills, damaging headlines, invasive discovery, and scrutiny of people beyond Trump himself. The investigation placed an entire political network under examination by the federal government.

Trump was the central defendant. But the investigation reached far beyond him, touching elected officials, activists, and others associated with the America First movement.

For those who believe the investigation crossed the line from legitimate law enforcement into political targeting, that broader reach is the central issue.

Understanding how Jack Smith almost pulled it off, and who he worked with, would go a long way toward understanding how lawfare works. The senators questioning Smith this week have a chance to start. Republicans would be wise to take the leads developed by the Oversight Project and get to the bottom of it.

​Democrats, Donald trump, Fbi, Federal judge, Grand jury indictment, Jack smith, January 6, Justice department, Lawfare, Oversight project, Senate judiciary committee, Supreme court, Washington dc, Opinion & analysis, Merrick garland 

A woman who claimed to be caring for a baby girl said she could not forgive her foster grandchild’s mother after her body was found discarded like garbage.

A bystander says she believed the girl was a doll when she found her body wrapped in a blanket inside a dumpster near the Holmes Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles, California.

‘I have no love for her. Why? Because she had no love for that innocent baby. I don’t feel nothing for her.’

The tragic discovery was reported to police after 10:30 p.m. on Monday.

“Someone was dumping trash and I guess saw the body in the dumpster and called 911,” said Los Angeles Police Department Juvenile Division Lt. Dave Hoskins.

The Los Angeles Fire Department responded and transported the child to a hospital, where she was declared dead.

Police later detained a woman but would not say whether she was the child’s mother, according to KTLA-TV.

The woman who found the child told KTLA that the baby was wearing gloves and shorts.

An anguished couple who spoke to KTLA said they were the foster parents of the mother and explained that the baby was wearing gloves to prevent scratching.

Herman Johnson and Laura Lacy said that their foster daughter had changed her story that day. Earlier she said she had the baby and later claimed that the father had her.

“She just seemed strange,” said Johnson. “Any time she called me and tell me to come over here and take the baby, you know, it was strange to me. She couldn’t control the baby. So that’s when me and Laura took the baby, and we had the baby ever since the baby was like two weeks old.”

Lacy was extremely upset at her foster daughter.

RELATED: Foul odor leads cops to gruesome scene inside Detroit home — and it gets worse a day later

“I have no love for her. Why? Because she had no love for that innocent baby. I don’t feel nothing for her,” said Lacy.

“I love her and I still want to know why. What was the problem?” she asked. “Why did you do that? You had no reason to do that. I was taking care of your child for you. Didn’t even go in the system. I was going to do it. I’m the grandma.”

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​Dumpster, Dead child, Los angeles, California, Crime 

The Trump administration’s tariff policies have delivered a series of wins for the American people. Ford announced that it would be shifting more production of its Lincoln line from China to the United States. Sapporo, the beer brewer, recently said it would move brewing from Canada to south of the border.

The tariff agenda has been pursued using a wide array of tools. Many, including steel tariffs, have come by way of Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. Steel and aluminum tariffs of some sort date back to Trump’s first presidency. Former President Joe Biden kept them going, and upon returning to office, President Trump increased them to 50% in some cases.

The loophole is pushing America’s retailers toward cheaper, foreign-filled canned food.

These tariffs helped to support a domestic steel industry that had fallen on tough times and whose weakness had turned the Steel Belt to the Rust Belt.

The strategy is clear: make foreign production more expensive, particularly in countries that regularly cheat, like China, in order to encourage companies to reshore in the United States. This will result in more jobs, weaker adversaries, more government revenue, and a stronger economy.

There is only one problem: There’s a loophole in the steel tariffs. The tariffs include tinplate steel, a type of thinner steel used to hold canned foods. Practically all of the cans of soup, fruit, vegetables, and fish that Americans purchase are made with tinplate steel. Tariffing tinplate steel in itself is no problem, as it fits in with broader goals of the administration. But in the current tariff landscape, cans manufactured in America and filled with foods grown by American farmers face much higher levies than cans produced overseas and filled with foreign-sourced foods.

It’s these imported canned foods that increasingly show up on American grocery store shelves, outcompeting against foods made in America.

The resulting issues this creates are obvious. The loophole is pushing America’s retailers toward cheaper, foreign-filled canned food. However, foreign food, especially in places like China, can be far less healthy or safe, since food safety regulations in those countries are far less stringent than in the United States.

This loophole weakens the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda. It also directly benefits foreign competitors over domestic producers, both in terms of the tinplate steel that goes into making canned goods and the food found within them. This tariff on tinplate also shifts production and jobs overseas, at a time when American farmers, food processors, and manufacturers are capable of supplying the same products domestically.

RELATED: How Trump got Washington to think about the national debt

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

Fortunately, the loophole can be easily corrected: Apply the same Section 232 treatment to the steel in imported finished food cans that applies to imported tinplate steel, using the authority President Trump has already granted to the secretary of commerce and the U.S. trade representative. It will align with the administration’s broader tariff goals and support domestic steel producers.

This fix should not be difficult. Steel producers and manufacturers want to make their products in the United States. U.S. Steel, which was just saved by the Trump administration, is reopening a tinplate steel mill in Gary, Indiana, next year. But as long as this loophole persists, other companies will have trouble following U.S. Steel’s lead. And Americans will continue, in an effort to save money, to be directed toward foreign-filled food cans.

If the administration wants companies to invest, reshore, and produce in America, it’s time to stop giving foreign-filled food cans the advantage. The steel tariff should follow the steel, whether it arrives as an empty can or inside a finished food product.

​Loophole, President trump, United states, Us steel, Tariffs, Trump administration, China, Steel, Canned foods, Tinplate steel, Imported food, Maha, Section 232, Gary indiana, Opinion & analysis 

Mica Miller was a 30-year-old worship leader at Solid Rock Church when she was found dead from a gunshot wound just two days after serving her husband, JP Miller, lead pastor and founder of the church, with divorce papers.

Authorities ruled her death a suicide.

The death has led to the Netflix documentary series “Death of the Pastor’s Wife,” which dives into the prior allegations of abuse against her husband — and questions whether or not her death was truly a suicide.

However, while the series puts an emphasis on JP’s religion as a reason for his alleged crimes and potential part in his wife’s passing, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey explains that he and his church were not biblically aligned at all.

“The problem with John Paul Miller at Solid Rock was abuse of power, was deviation from Scripture, rejection of biblical truth, not the hierarchy that is actually outlined in Scripture,” Stuckey explains.

And Miller was refusing to submit to Scripture long before Mica’s passing.

“There had been affairs before that. There had been allegations of abuse. There had been allegations of infidelity. There had been all kinds of scandals with Susie, the woman that he had apparently had an affair with,” Stuckey explains.

“There were accusations of grooming of Mica when she was a teenager. There should have been church discipline long, long before Mica Miller committed suicide,” she continues.

“John Paul’s first wife, Allison,” she explains, “said in an affidavit that when John Paul admitted to the affair with Mica, he also admitted to soliciting prostitutes, being sexually inappropriate with several female underage church members.”

John Paul’s church even recognized his “sin problem” and asked him to “step away from the pulpit.”

“But according to the church bylaws, no one within the church had the authority to make him do that,” Stuckey says.

“According to Allison’s affidavit, a council was formed and voted for John Paul to step down to get sexual addiction counseling. But instead of stepping down, John Paul held a meeting informing the council that according to the church’s bylaws, he had 100% decision-making authority,” she continues.

“That’s not the structure that’s outlined by Scripture,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Allie beth stuckey, John paul miller, Mica miller, Netflix, Blazetv show, Death of the pastors wife 

A Washington, D.C., councilman is celebrating a mistrial over allegations that he was involved in a $156,000 bribery scheme.

U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said Tuesday that her office will retry Trayon White after a jury said they could not reach a verdict despite deliberating for four days.

‘We want to accept the jury’s decision today, regroup, get back to work, because there’s a lot of work to do in the city to ensure equity and inclusion in the $20 billion budget.’

White was charged with bribery after prosecutors said they had recordings of his conversations with an informant of the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his receiving cash on four separate occasions.

“We have video showing piles of cash being given to a D.C. councilmember as part of a $156,000 bribe. Rest assured that we will retry this case and every corruption case to verdict,” said Pirro in a statement after the mistrial.

White would not answer when a reporter asked him to explain why he received the money.

“If the $35,000 wasn’t a bribe, what was the money for?” asked the WRC-TV reporter.

“Let’s stick to the topic, man. Come on. You’re smarter than that. I can’t speak to that,” White responded.

“That is the topic,” the reporter pressed.

“We want to accept the jury’s decision today, regroup, get back to work, because there’s a lot of work to do in the city to ensure equity and inclusion in the $20 billion budget,” he replied.

“The prosecutor didn’t submit sufficient enough evidence to convict me of a crime,” White added. “There was no crime in the first place. And so I’ll leave it at that.”

White won re-election despite the looming bribery charge in 2024, but the rest of the D.C. council voted in February 2025 to expel him. That prompted a special election to fill his seat, which he also ran in and won decisively in July.

He could face up to 15 years in prison if tried again and convicted.

White was previously criticized for claiming that the Jews control the weather in a bizarre post on Facebook from 2018.

“Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” he wrote. “And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.”

RELATED: Hawaii Democrat INDICTED for alleged bribery scheme over COVID contract

The Rothschilds are a wealthy Jewish family often used by conspiracy theorists as a stand-in for all Jews.

He later apologized and said that he did not realize his comments could be considered anti-Semitic. The Jews United for Justice organization said they spoke with White and explained the history behind the use of the Rothschilds conspiracy theory.

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​Jeanine pirro, Washington dc, Bribery, Mistrial, Democrat, Politics