Category: blaze media

Jackie Norris, the chairwoman of the Des Moines Public School Board who once served as chief of staff to Michelle Obama, has pulled out of the race for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat as recommended by her Republican opponent, Rep. Ashley Hinson.

Hinson stressed earlier this month that Norris, a champion of DEI, had “lost all shreds of credibility” over the role she played in the hiring of the Des Moines district’s former superintendent, a criminal illegal alien who was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Sept 26.

‘The state is so red that having her albatross on the ticket all but assured a Democrat loss.’

Ian Andre Roberts, a native of Guyana, has a lengthy criminal record. In addition to being convicted in 2012 of reckless driving and in 2022 of unlawful possession of a loaded firearm, Roberts — who served as superintendent and worked with children until late last month — was previously charged with criminal possession of narcotics with intent to sell; criminal possession of narcotics; and criminal possession of a forgery instrument.

According to ICE, when agents went to arrest Roberts last month, he “identified himself then sped off, abandoned his vehicle, and hid in a brushy area about 200 meters away, where ICE officers located him with help from Iowa State Patrol officers.”

After apprehending Roberts, arresting officers allegedly found a loaded handgun, a hunting knife, and $3,000 cash in his vehicle. Roberts was subsequently charged with being an illegal alien in possession of firearms.

“Ian Andre Roberts, a criminal illegal alien with multiple weapons charges and a drug trafficking charge, should have never been able to work around children,” stated Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

RELATED: Exclusive: ICE arrests alleged MS-13 gang leader on El Salvador’s ‘most wanted’ list

Ian Andre Roberts. Photo: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

“As chair of the Des Moines School Board, Iowa Democrat Senate candidate Jackie Norris hired an illegal alien with a rap sheet to be her superintendent and work with children,” Samantha Cantrell, the regional press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, noted in the wake of Roberts’ arrest. “Jackie Norris has put every single Des Moines student and family in danger. Democrats will stop at nothing to protect criminal illegal aliens.”

In addition to being a convicted criminal noncitizen, Roberts reportedly lied about his academic bona fides, falsely suggesting, for instance, that he had attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Norris seemingly made things worse for herself by suggesting in the immediate wake of Roberts’ arrest that the community should “engage in radical empathy as we work through the situation together.”

Rep. Hinson suggested that instead of “radical empathy,” it was time for “radical accountability.”

Norris later suggested the school board had similarly been victimized by Roberts’ deceit, then attempted to displace blame over the decision to hire him, filing a lawsuit against the headhunting firm JG Consulting for alleged negligence in the process of offering Roberts as a candidate, reported the Iowa Capital Dispatch.

In addition to facing significant backlash from parents, the district is now under investigation by the Trump Justice Department over its alleged discriminatory hiring practices.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon noted in a Sept. 30 letter to Matthew Smith, the interim superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools, that “DMPS may be engaged in employment practices that discriminate against employees, job applicants, and training program participants based on race, color, and national origin in violation of Title VII.”

Just days after telling Axios she was going to stay in the race, Norris announced she was instead calling it quits.

“The recent Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent crisis demanded my full attention as Board Chair and, overnight, put the School Board, our community, and me personally in the crosshairs of vicious and coordinated attacks,” said Norris. “Those realities took time and oxygen away from the work I set out to do: stand up for our kids and families — and the backbone of our communities, their educators and caregivers.”

Norris, who was the state director for Barack Obama’s 2008 general election campaign, noted further, “I leave this race with my head high.”

Blaze News has reached out to Norris for comment.

“Do not think Jackie is the first Democrat in recent memory to have any sense shame or self-awareness in ending her bid,” BlazeTV host and Iowa native Steve Deace told Blaze News. “This is still the party that won’t denounce their attorney general nominee in Virginia who has a murder fetish.”

“Rather,” continued Deace, “Jackie is ending her bid because Iowa isn’t Virginia. The state is so red that having her albatross on the ticket all but assured a Democrat loss, and obtaining power is all Democrats care about. Now it’s time to pursue her criminally and make an example out of her.”

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​Jackie norris, Michelle obama, Obama, Senate, Iowa, Democrat, Illegal alien, Criminal noncitzen, Thuggery, Teacher, Ashley hinson, Politics 

Since former DOJ special counsel Jack Smith’s alleged surveillance scheme surfaced earlier this month, House Republicans are leading the charge to bring justice.

Republican Rep. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, a member of the Republican Study Committee, urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to open a criminal investigation into Smith for his apparent involvement with Operation Arctic Frost, according to a letter obtained by Blaze News. During former President Joe Biden’s administration, the FBI obtained private cellphone information from nine Republican lawmakers, an internal document indicated, in what appears to be an ideologically motivated instance of government weaponization.

‘Weaponizing the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency to spy on political opponents is what we expect from authoritarian regimes.’

Brecheen’s call for an investigation is also in accordance with President Donald Trump’s executive order entitled “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” which Trump signed the same day he was inaugurated.

Since the scandal broke, the FBI has opened an internal investigation, firing several agents who were involved in the operation. As of this writing, the Department of Justice has not yet opened a criminal investigation, leading Brecheen and his co-signatories to be the first federal group to call for a criminal investigation into the operation.

RELATED: ‘WORSE THAN WATERGATE’: Republicans demand answers after documents reveal FBI spied on 9 GOP lawmakers

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Image

“The Biden administration used Operation Arctic Frost to target its political opponents by authorizing covert surveillance on elected members of the Republican Party,” Brecheen told Blaze News. “We cannot let the Biden administration and special counsel Jack Smith get away with this direct violation of the Constitution.”

Many prominent lawmakers, including Brecheen, have characterized the scandal as a modern-day Watergate, according to the letter obtained exclusively by Blaze News. Brecheen also warned that if high-profile politicians can have their privacy violated for ideological purposes, ordinary Americans could too.

‘The Bureau could easily be directed against individual citizens.’

“The revelation that the Biden Administration directed the FBI to surveil duly elected American lawmakers is indeed a scandal of magnitude our country has not seen since Watergate,” the letter reads. “Let us be clear: weaponizing the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency to spy on political opponents is what we expect from authoritarian regimes such as North Korea or Iran, not the United States.”

RELATED: Corrupt Stacey Abrams groups once led by Sen. Raphael Warnock go extinct after admission of guilt

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“The ramifications of this unprecedented scandal, however, stretch far beyond the lawmakers who were surveilled,” the letter reads. “By empowering federal agents to secretly monitor the private phone calls of sitting United States Senators, Jack Smith set the sinister precedent that the same form of covert surveillance can and will be deployed against law-abiding American citizens.”

“If the FBI could be so readily weaponized against powerful figures in our government, then it is not difficult to conclude that the Bureau could easily be directed against individual citizens.”

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​Josh brecheen, Republican study committee, Jack smith, Operation arctic frost, Pam bondi, Donald trump, Kash patel, Fbi, Doj, Federal weaponization, Government weaponization, House republicans, Senate republicans, Joe biden, Watergate, Surveillance, Government surveillance, Politics 

October 11 marked the end of another Banned Books Week, the American Library Association’s annual campaign celebrating works it claims have been unjustly kept from the reading public.

While the event has skewed liberal since its 1982 founding, this year’s theme seems to make a direct appeal to those worried about the Trump era’s incipient fascism.

A book does not need to induce the behavior it depicts to have an ideological impact; it just has to imply a world in which such behavior is either normal or inevitable.

“Censorship Is So 1984 — Read for Your Rights” rebukes recent successful conservative campaigns to rid local school libraries of books deemed to promote racial, gender, and Marxist ideology or to expose children to inappropriately explicit material.

Censor censure

On its website, the ALA dismisses these campaigns as either disingenuous, hysterical, or malicious.

“The most common justifications for censorship provided by complainants were false claims of illegal obscenity for minors; inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes; and covering topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice.”

The recent Kanopy documentary “Banned Together” exemplifies this perspective, portraying book challenges as the work of fearmongering politicians like Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) or “dark money” groups such as the Heritage Foundation and Moms for Liberty.

Not for teacher

Opponents of these “bans” do have a point. At times overprotective adults can underestimate the capacity of high-school students to handle challenging subject matter. I recall reading Kafka, Camus, and Sherman Alexie as a senior without becoming either a nihilist or an activist.

But there is a deeper question at the heart of this debate: What rights do parents have when it comes to their children’s education?

Teachers, progressives argue, are certified experts entrusted with the crucial duty to help students navigate complex issues and protect them from abusive home environments. Who are the parents — relative amateurs when it comes to the formation of young minds — to meddle?

Yet given the recent injection of what used to be considered radical ideas about race, sex, and religion into curricula, skepticism at this expertise is understandable. Educators may laugh off the idea of “liberal indoctrination,” but any parent who has been called “racist” or had his faith “deconstructed” by his newly minted college student may disagree.

‘Sold’ out

The ALA may be technically correct that the books it defends don’t meet the strictly legal definition of “obscenity,” but something is nonetheless rotten in the state of Denmark (if the reader will permit me a Eurocentric “Hamlet” reference).

Consider the ALA’s “Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024.” Without exception, each has been flagged by concerned parents as “sexually explicit.” It’s telling that the ALA diminishes these characterizations as mere “claims.” Unlike “pornography,” the label “sexually explicit” generally implies no judgment; it’s merely descriptive.

So perhaps something more than prudishness is motivating parents. To what end do these books employ explicit depictions of sex? In Patricia McCormick’s “Sold,” the first-person account of a 13-year-old Tibetan girl sold into sex slavery, detailed scenes of rape and abuse are used to convey the horrors of sex trafficking.

In its defense of “Sold,” the ALA clearly sides with McCormick, who says “To ban this book is a disservice to the women who shared their stories with me so the world could know about their plight. And to ban this book is disrespectful to the young readers who want to know about the world as it is.”

Conveniently overlooked here is the obvious truth that we regularly educate our children about “the world as it is” while still leaving out age-inappropriate details.

Gender fear

“Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins is another unsparingly graphic account of the sex trade, detailing the stories of five American teens who fall into prostitution. “Crank,” Hopkins’ other novel on the list, charts a teenager’s descent into drug addiction.

Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is a slice of high school life that includes a ninth-grader taking LSD, a tumultuous love affair between two teenage boys, a middle-schooler’s suicide, and a teen pregnancy that ends in abortion.

“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews addresses cancer and mortality through the profanity-laden, sex-obsessed voice of its adolescent male protagonist. John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” is a coming-of-age novel with a heavy emphasis on drug use and sexual experimentation.

Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” is a multigenerational saga that pivots on a father’s brutal rape of his daughter and her subsequent descent into insanity.

The memoirs “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson and “Flamer” by Mike Curato each recount an adolescent’s discovery and eventual embrace of his same-sex attraction, while Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel “Gender Queer” charts the author’s journey toward a “nonbinary” identity and the use of “e, em, eir” pronouns.

RELATED: Librarian group fights woke ‘banned books’ narrative

Getty Images/Anadolu

Groomer doomers

Likening those who advocate putting such books in the hands of minors to “groomers” only obscures the real issue. A book does not need to induce the behavior it depicts to have an ideological impact; it just has to imply a world in which such behavior is either normal or inevitable.

The “reality” these books represent is in fact the relatively recent consensus of a small liberal elite, imposed on our society from the top down. It confidently asserts that racism is an intractable quality of “whiteness,” premarital sex and drug abuse are normal parts of growing up, homosexual relationships are in no way less preferable than heterosexual pairings, and one’s “gender” is open to interpretation.

This consensus casually dispenses with the de facto Christian values that have guided America — with varying degrees of success — since its founding.

Slaves to fashion

Most of the “banned” book defenders act not out of malice but rather from an unthinking adherence to fashionable opinion. As G.K. Chesterton observed, compulsory secular education inevitably produces an inoffensive, pluralistic system that offends no one and invests enormous moral authority in teachers:

And if his own private opinions happen to be of the rather crude sort that are commonly contemporary with and connected with the new sciences or pseudo-sciences, he can teach any of them under cover of those sciences.

In other words, educators possess enough authority to smuggle personal beliefs into the classroom. The Ten Commandments and school prayer are impermissible in our secular age, but theories of gender and race are treated as objective truth. Indeed, many insist it would be irresponsible not to teach them.

A glance at what doesn’t appear on the Banned Books list reveals the imbalance. Are activists urging students to read banned right-wing literature? To restore the Bible to school libraries? To study “The Turner Diaries” — a genuinely vile book — in the name for of intellectual freedom? Of course not.

Meanwhile, the publishing industry’s broken business model incentivizes controversy. Slapping a “Banned Book” sticker on a new release is can lead to a major boost in sales.

School for scandal

That might be harmless if confined to a Barnes & Noble display. But it occurs in the context of public education, where foundational classics have been quietly displaced by shallower contemporary novels. Teachers boast about removing Homer, Shakespeare, and other “dead white men” from curricula. “Huckleberry Finn” languishes while legislators debate striking him from schools altogether.

A student’s reading years are limited. Prioritizing great works that shape moral and intellectual formation is essential. Yet in an age of collapsing institutional trust, progressive educators flaunt their credentials and demand the state’s blessing to teach whatever they see fit.

Despite left-wing rhetoric, there is no great epidemic of book-burning in America. Aside from the occasional Pentecostal preacher torching “Harry Potter” for headlines, such incidents are rare. Conservatives, generally, are classicists who want their children reading Homer and Shakespeare. Yet even modest debates over age-appropriate material draw accusations of illiteracy and bigotry.

And that’s by design. Banned Books Week is little more than a marketing campaign — an annual ritual of ginning up demand for “forbidden” books and laundering blatant activist propaganda into the merely “controversial.” Conservatives who approach this debate on the ALA’s terms only add fuel to the fire, as it were. When it comes to the left’s persecution narrative, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

​Banned books, American library association, Banned books week, Genderqueer, Education, Lgbtq, Censorship, Pornography, Culture 

On October 12, Los Angeles-based YouTube media company Jubilee dropped an episode of its popular series “Surrounded,” where 20 progressive Christians formed a ring around a single conservative Christian opponent. Over the course of nearly two hours, the surrounders competed for a chance to sit in the hot seat, where each contestant had a short window of time to debate the lone dissenter over a range of controversial issues.

To be in the eye of the storm — literally hemmed in by opponents who outnumber you 20 to one — is not for the weak of heart. It takes grit, self-control, an armory of rhetorical skills, and extensive expertise to stand a chance of holding your own.

But for Blaze Media’s very own Allie Beth Stuckey, host of the compelling podcast “Relatable,” it was just another day of dismantling progressive “Christian” narratives.

In an hour and 40 minutes, the “Toxic Empathy” author put on a clinic of what it looks like to crush liberal Christian arguments without ever forsaking the kindness Jesus calls us to. With surgical precision, Allie graciously picked apart argument after argument over marriage, gender, abortion, empathy, and the compatibility of progressivism and Christianity.

Using a wide range of scripture from both the Old and New Testaments, Allie made an iron case for conservative Christianity: God, the creator of the universe, gets the final say on everything. The Christian, regardless of his or her emotions or natural-born proclivities, is called to submit to God’s ways, trusting that He alone is perfect in love.

Allie condemned the progressive Christian tendency to read the Bible through the lens of “what can I get away with?” and encouraged reading scripture in search of “what God calls good.” Reading the Bible to glorify God, she argued, yields conservative convictions: Marriage unites one man and one woman, gender is fixed, abortion is a moral evil, and love speaks truth (1 Corinthians 13:6)

The episode has gone viral — already over 1.5 million views on YouTube. The conservative Christian world, which is experiencing revival after the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, has been in awe of Allie’s performance, specifically her articulate defense of traditional Christian values and ability to engage respectfully with opposing viewpoints while maintaining her convictions.

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck said of Allie’s “Surrounded” appearance: “She’s so happy. She’s great.”

— (@)

Daily Wire host Matt Walsh echoed Glenn’s praise, claiming “God has clearly called [Allie] to do what she’s doing.”

But Allie’s Jubilee appearance isn’t just a how-to course on debunking “Christian” progressivism. It embodies the question all conservative Christians must answer, especially given the moment we’re living in: Are we going to sit on the sidelines, hoping the lost find their way, or are we going to enter the fray armed with biblical truth?

Conservative media outlets have noted the importance of Allie’s Jubilee episode as a fire-starter for hesitant Christians who feel unequipped or unsure about engaging in theological debates.

Patriot Powered News Network praised Allie for doing what most of us wish we had the courage to do: “She stood resolute in her faith and made the left’s muddled theology look exactly like the moral confusion it is.”

Allie’s masterful skill in gracious apologetics was coached by none other than Charlie Kirk himself, whom Allie praised as “an incredible debater” on a recent episode of “Relatable,” where she recapped her Jubilee experience. A week before he was assassinated, Charlie urged Allie to agree to the debate, and he also taught her key strategies, like challenging opponents’ claims with questions such as “Is that biblical?” and “By what standard do you believe that?”

Even though filming couldn’t have been scheduled for a worse time — just days after Charlie was murdered — Allie, committed to honoring God and her friend, bravely entered the “Surrounded” arena armed with the truth of scripture and a deep knowing that it “never returns void,” as she so often reminds her “Relatable” audience.

In an X post following the recording of “Surrounded,” Allie wrote, “I’ve seen a lot of people say this was different than other Jubilee debates. Everyone felt that in the moment — even the producers, who are progressive, said so. You’ll just have to believe me when I tell you the Holy Spirit was there.”

Her words are a reminder that we are not called to be self-reliant truth-tellers. The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is what empowers us to go forth boldly, bringing light where there is darkness.

The question is: Will we pick up the baton?

Last weekend, the 6,700 women who attended Allie’s Share the Arrows conference said yes to that question, committing to bold and courageous witness in their spheres. The rest of the conservative Christian world’s reaction to Allie’s Jubilee appearance suggests that they’re ready to step up to the plate, too.

In her closing speech at Share the Arrows, Allie urged, “We do what God calls us to do, even when it’s painful, even when it’s unpopular, even when it’s scary, even when it requires sacrifice, even when we lose friends and we lose family and we lose jobs.”

That charge, rooted in sacrifice and truth, captures the heart of a movement ready to rise.

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.

​Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Allie beth stuckey, Relatable, Jubilee, Jubilee debate, Surrounded jubilee, Allie jubilee, Blazetv, Blaze media, Progressive christianity 

Kansas lawmakers are debating whether to expand health care providers’ access to the federal 340B drug pricing program. If passed, Senate Bill 284 would hand even more power to large hospital chains while shrinking consumer choice. It would also deepen the program’s existing problems — lack of accountability, rising costs, and market consolidation — all without helping the patients it was supposed to serve.

The 340B program, created in 1992, was meant to help safety-net providers serving uninsured and low-income patients by requiring drug manufacturers to sell medications at steep discounts. Today, it has ballooned into the second-largest prescription drug purchasing program in the United States, behind only Medicare Part D, costing $66.3 billion in 2023.

The 340B program no longer fulfills its stated purpose. It fuels industry consolidation, drives up costs, and reduces access to care — especially in rural communities.

SB 284 would make that worse. The bill would block drugmakers from denying access to certain drugs, reduce transparency, and discourage innovation. It would do nothing to stop hospitals from exploiting the program. Instead, it would encourage them to expand the same practices that drive up costs for Kansans, small businesses, and rural health care providers.

The 340B shell game

The myth behind 340B is that big health systems use their windfalls to support rural hospitals. The reality is the opposite. As 340B has expanded, rural hospitals have closed by the dozens. The law’s original purpose — to subsidize drug purchases for clinics that serve the needy — has been lost.

What began as a narrow, temporary safety net for vulnerable populations has evolved into a profit engine for massive hospital systems. Many 340B participants today are large urban hospitals, cancer centers, and wealthy institutions that do little charity care. Once a hospital buys an outpatient clinic, it can immediately declare that clinic 340B-eligible, regardless of the patients it serves. Those discounted drugs can then be billed at full price to insurers or government programs, and the hospital keeps the difference.

Federal watchdogs, including the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Inspector General, have repeatedly documented the program’s lack of oversight. Hospitals aren’t required to report how they use 340B revenue or whether they pass savings on to patients.

The rich get richer

Hospitals buy drugs cheap, bill high, and pocket the profits. Those profits fund expansion — not lower costs for patients. The lure of easy money drives hospital consolidation across the country. Smaller, independent clinics — often more efficient and affordable — can’t compete with heavily subsidized giants and are forced to sell out.

This pattern has repeated hundreds of times nationwide, inflating 340B spending and diverting subsidies far from the low-income patients the program was meant to help. Since 2014, when 340B abuse accelerated alongside the Affordable Care Act, nonprofit hospitals have gone on a buying spree, snapping up local clinics, raising prices, and squeezing out independent providers.

Each participating hospital can also contract with hundreds of retail pharmacies, creating sprawling networks that capture 340B discounts far removed from any needy patient. The result is “mission creep” on a massive scale — a program once justified by compassion now serves as a revenue stream for billion-dollar systems.

Instead of cutting costs, 340B creates a hidden subsidy that enriches institutions while obscuring the real price of care. Worse, some hospitals use their freed-up funds to expand abortion and gender-transition services, sidestepping Hyde Amendment restrictions on federal money for those procedures.

RELATED: Dr. Oz exposes the nonprofit lie at the heart of US health care

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

A program beyond saving

The 340B program no longer fulfills its stated purpose. It fuels industry consolidation, drives up costs, and reduces access to care — especially in rural communities. Expanding it in Kansas would cement a broken system, trapping the state in a cycle that benefits hospitals and harms taxpayers.

Congress and the Trump administration are working to reform 340B and Medicare to curb waste and corruption. Kansas lawmakers should follow that lead. Instead of handing big hospital chains another windfall, they should restore accountability, competition, and transparency — so that health care serves patients, not institutions.

​Opinion & analysis, Drug prices, Hyde amendment, 340b program, Rural america, Rural hospitals, Kansas, Medicare part d, Subsidies 

Failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D) founded a pair of voter turnout groups over a decade ago with the apparent aim of registering largely Democrat-leaning, non-white voters across the Peach State.

The groups, the New Georgia Project — for which Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock was listed as CEO on corporate filings in 2017, 2018, and 2019 — and the associated New Georgia Project Action Fund, reportedly knocked on millions of doors, registered tens of thousands of voters, and were credited with helping turn Georgia blue during the 2020 presidential election.

Abrams’ New Georgia groups, which turned out to be as corrupt as they were energetic, have finally been shuttered.

‘There is one less way for Stacey Abrams Inc. to fleece people and get rich.’

NGP and NGP Action Fund — which sought to help Abrams in her pursuit of power, sided with alleged domestic terrorists in 2023, and campaigned against election integrity initiatives — were slapped in January with a $300,000 fine, which the Georgia State Ethics Commission indicated was both the largest fine it has ever imposed and possibly also “the largest Ethics Fine ever imposed by any State Ethics Commission in the country related to an election and campaign finance case.”

The groups, which Abrams supposedly walked away from in 2017, admitted to violating 16 state laws, largely by illegally contributing to Abrams’ 2018 gubernatorial campaign while masquerading as a nonpartisan voter turnout group.

RELATED: Conservative SCOTUS justices appear skeptical about race-based redistricting

Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images

The ethics commission found that the NGP failed to disclose over $4.2 million in contributions and over $3.2 million in expenditures during the 2018 election cycle, prompting House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) to request that the Internal Revenue Service investigate and ultimately revoke the group’s tax-exempt status.

“This represents the largest and most significant instance of an organization illegally influencing our statewide elections in Georgia that we have ever discovered,” the ethics commission noted at the time of the fine’s imposition.

With the ruse both exposed and admitted, Abrams’ groups were evidently not long for this world.

The board of directors for the NGP and NGP Action Fund indicated in a statement on Thursday that both scandal-plagued groups “will officially dissolve as organizations.”

Despite their groups’ flagrant violation of state law and the allegation that the board unlawfully fired employees in retaliation for their unionization efforts, the board wrote, “Reflecting on our journey, we are proud of the milestones we have achieved, the communities we have engaged, and the countless individuals whose lives have been strengthened by our work.”

James Woodall, board chair of the NGP Action Fund, said the news of the groups’ dissolution was “difficult,” and implored “all who continue in the fight” to “stay grounded, keep the faith, and don’t come down from the wall.”

Garrison Douglas, a spokesman for Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R), said in a statement to Blaze News, “Georgians everywhere can rest easy tonight knowing that there is one less way for Stacey Abrams Inc. to fleece people and get rich.”

Blaze News has reached out to Abrams and Warnock for comment.

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​Georgia, Stacey abrams, Abrams, Democrat, New georgia project, Raphael warnock, Warnock, Ngp, Kemp, Election, Election integrity, Voter, Voter turnout, Politics 

An Austin, Texas, police officer who was caught on video last week punching a male in face and knocking him flat on his back has been named by the department and taken off the street, KVUE-TV reported.

Earlier this week, Blaze News highlighted a video showing what appeared to be that officer seeming to throw a single punch — and a male crumpling to the ground and lying flat on his back a second later.

‘I know that Chief Davis will take appropriate action, including action that leads to termination.’

But that clip from a KXAN-TV story about a “crowd control” incident last Friday night on Sixth Street shows just one angle of the officer’s apparent single punch.

The KVUE video report, however — which ran Thursday night — shows a much closer view of the incident from a front-facing angle. It clearly shows the officer throwing a face punch at a male dressed in an orange shirt, blue jeans, and a backward white baseball cap — and that male falling to the ground and lying flat on his back.

Austin police didn’t tell KVUE what led up to that punch, but the station said police confirmed it was the incident that resulted in one officer being placed on restricted duty and taken off patrol. The department identified him as Officer Garcia but did not release his first name, citing policy, KVUE reported.

You can view that punch at the 24-second mark in the below KVUE video report.

RELATED: Video: Texas cop appears to throw single punch — and a male is flat on his back a second later

The KVUE video report also notes another incident that same night involving Austin police throwing punches.

A KVUE story that ran earlier this week indicated the station received a pair of videos of a second incident “from witnesses at the scene. Both videos show an officer on top of a person, appearing to punch them numerous times. Another officer, who is holding a separate person down, then assists the first officer, putting his knee on the back of the person being held down and appearing to throw a punch at him.”

Interestingly, a KVUE video report of that second incident shows a male dressed in an orange shirt, blue jeans, and a backward white baseball cap — apparently the same one who was knocked flat on his back in the video of the single-punch incident — standing off to the side and watching the officers punch the male on the ground:

RELATED: Texas murder suspect’s bail reduced from $800,000 to $200; he’s released after paying cash. Gov. Abbott is not happy.

In another KVUE story, the station said it obtained documents from the District Court of Travis County revealing more information about what took place in the second incident caught on video.

The station said Austin Police Officer Leger was working in the downtown area when he heard a radio call reporting a “physical altercation” outside the Voodoo Room nightclub. With that, Officer Leger and Officer Garcia responded to the scene, where two men reportedly were fighting, KVUE said.

The station, citing court documents, reported that Officer Leger tried to break up the fight when he was struck in the back of the head, after which he “executed a controlled takedown maneuver” on one of the men, who allegedly resisted. KVUE noted that the court documents indicate Officer Leger struck the man in the face several times in response.

Documents added that a crowd reportedly formed around the officers, and people began throwing objects and pushing and kicking, the station said.

KVUE reported that the male accused of attacking Officer Leger was identified as 19-year-old Johnny Acuña-Jacobo, and he was arrested on a charge of assault on a peace officer, a second-degree felony, and booked into the Travis County Jail on a $10,000 bond. The Austin-American Statesman on Tuesday reported that Acuña-Jacobo had been released on bond.

RELATED: 69-year-old stabs man in butt after leg press run-in at gym, cops say. Suspect then reportedly yells, ‘Who else wants some?’

Police previously indicated that an officer was placed on restricted duty but did not state which officer and for which incident.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis in a statement to KXAN early Saturday said “last night, an Austin police officer struck an individual during a crowd control incident on Sixth Street. After reviewing the video footage, I share the community’s concern and take this matter very seriously. The officer has been removed from patrol and placed on restricted duty pending a thorough investigation.”

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson (D) released the following statement Saturday to KXAN: “I have seen the video of an Austin Police officer on Sixth Street last night. The action is inexcusable and indefensible. There is no room in APD for such violent behavior or for someone who claims to be a public servant and acts that way. I know that Chief Davis will take appropriate action, including action that leads to termination. Again, there is no room for such offensive, ridiculous action.”

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​Texas, Cop punches man, Austin police department, Police officer taken off street, Police officer placed on restricted duty, Crime 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing network of nongovernmental organizations, politicians, and corporations have pushed for sweeping global health initiatives. They lobby for massive funding, insisting it will prevent the next international health crisis.

Groups such as the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation, and the U.S. government have saturated the media with calls for “equity” and “preparedness.” Together, they established the Pandemic Fund — a financial pool designed to channel money into their shared vision of global health management.

It takes little imagination to see how a fund directed by Gates-linked institutions could steer money — intentionally or not — toward companies in which he holds a stake.

According to its website, the Pandemic Fund “finances critical investments to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response capacities at national, regional, and global levels, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries.” In practice, it serves as a central clearinghouse for governments, NGOs, and business coalitions to move money under the banner of “health security.”

The funds flow to “implementing entities” such as the World Bank; the WHO; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and UNICEF. These organizations, in turn, decide how the investments are distributed — and to whom. Each claims to act on behalf of public health, but their reach and influence often extend far beyond medicine into politics, surveillance, and control.

Convenient ambiguity

Who actually gets paid to implement these objectives? What do “surveillance” and “prevention” mean in practice? How is “preparedness” measured? Which corporations manage the process, and whose services are contracted for the lab upgrades? None of these questions has a straight answer. The fund’s language reads like a bureaucratic fog — dense, opaque, and unaccountable.

What the Pandemic Fund does provide is a clear list of donors: the United States, the Gates Foundation, and several European governments. It also highlights 47 active projects spanning 75 countries.

What it doesn’t provide is equally telling. The site omits the names of officials who manage the money in each country, the ownership of the laboratories, and the companies installing the surveillance systems. Even the identities of those delivering “medical support” remain concealed behind the veil of “global cooperation.”

Conflicts of interest

Beyond its opacity, the Pandemic Fund is riddled with conflicts of interest. The Gates Foundation ranks among its largest institutional donors, while Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, acts as an “implementing entity” responsible for distributing those same funds.

Gavi’s own website acknowledges that the Gates Foundation was both a founding partner and a seed donor, contributing $750 million at its launch in 2000. That relationship alone should raise questions. Gavi now helps allocate the Pandemic Fund’s grants, meaning one of its original funders plays a direct role in deciding where new money goes.

The potential conflicts run deeper. Bill Gates has invested heavily in Moderna and BioNTech, two of the world’s leading mRNA vaccine manufacturers. The Gates Foundation funded Moderna’s early mRNA work, and public records show that Gates himself owns more than 1 million shares of BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer to produce the COVID-19 vaccine.

It takes little imagination to see how a fund directed by Gates-linked institutions could steer money — intentionally or not — toward companies in which he holds a stake.

The web of influence extends into policy enforcement. The World Health Organization’s director-general oversees the International Health Regulations, a global framework that allows governments to impose quarantine, testing, or vaccination requirements during declared health emergencies. The United States accepted the IHR in 2005 but rejected the most recent amendments adopted in 2024, formally withdrawing from those obligations in July of this year.

Even so, the structure remains in place. If Washington — or any other government — adopted tighter compliance measures, it could channel money from the Pandemic Fund to purchase vaccines and “countermeasures.” Pharmaceutical companies would profit handsomely from policies that treat mass vaccination as the first and only line of defense. The more the world relies on vaccines as a universal solution, the more secure the profits for investors like Gates.

The Gates Foundation’s influence doesn’t stop at funding or investment. It appears on the WHO’s list of official “non-state actors,” a category that allows direct collaboration on projects and participation in committee meetings. In other words, the foundation helps set global health standards and then funds the programs that enforce them.

RELATED: Researchers tied to Fauci’s COVID cover-up still scoring big NIH grants

Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

American taxpayers foot the bill

At the end of the chain, American taxpayers pay for it all. Washington’s seemingly benevolent $700 million “donation” to the Pandemic Fund comes straight from the U.S. Treasury. Every dollar funneled into this global health consortium began as someone’s paycheck.

In practice, the fund operates less like a charity and more like a taxpayer-financed slush fund for international health bureaucrats and private interests. The U.S. government collects money from citizens, passes it through the fund, and watches as the Gates Foundation, the WHO, and their network of NGOs redirect it to vaccine manufacturers, foreign governments, and organizations with which they maintain deep financial and institutional ties.

This system of influence moves wealth in one direction — up and out. Money leaves the hands of American workers and flows to a global health elite that hides behind the language of “pandemic prevention.” The slogans of safety and preparedness disguise a network that rewards insiders and deepens the dependence it claims to end.

Congress and federal auditors need to dig into where this money actually goes and who profits from it. Americans deserve to know whether their taxes support genuine public health or line the pockets of the same institutions that cashed in during the last pandemic.

​Opinion & analysis, Bill gates, Gates foundation, Vaccines, Mrna vaccines, Moderna, Pfizer-biontech, World health organization, Who, Unicef, Gavi the vaccine alliance, Surveillance, Public health, Pandemic fund, Centers for disease control, National institutes of health, Taxpayer money 

Is there anything more off-putting than a tech founder who concern-trolls himself — warning with deep seriousness that the things he’s doing are actually quite troubling and we all need to get serious about passing laws that will mitigate their consequences before disaster strikes?

I don’t know — I don’t want to know! — but one related instance currently going viral highlights why it’s worse than a mere turnoff. In a heartfelt cry for help, Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic, one of the leading AI companies, posted a long warning about how dangerous his frontier technology really is and how it’s our responsibility to take action to remedy that.

“Make no mistake: what we are dealing with is a real and mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine,” he writes.

“In fact, some people are even spending tremendous amounts of money to convince you of this — that’s not an artificial intelligence about to go into a hard takeoff, it’s just a tool. … It’s just a machine, and machines are things we master.” To the contrary, he insists that “what we are dealing with is a real and mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine,” one that, despite his optimism about AI’s benefits, leaves him “deeply afraid.”

There’s only one thing that can justify human existence over and above that of the most powerful tools we can build.

Now, it is notable that Anthropic has a certain reputation. David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto chief, posted in response that the company “is running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering. It is principally responsible for the state regulatory frenzy that is damaging the startup ecosystem.”

In fact, as the New York Post recently reported, Anthropic is on a “collision” course with the Trump administration due to its deep, elite connections with the left-wing political machine, ranging from previous administrations to the Ford Foundation, one of the so-called “nongovernmental organizations” the White House has blamed in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination for fomenting and funding political violence.

But worse, in a sense, are Anthropic’s links to effective altruism, a cultlike Silicon Valley movement whose brushes with large-scale fraud (in the FTX scandal starring Sam Bankman-Fried) and polyamory have led even eccentric and controversial figures like Sam Altman to raise red flags. As former FTC chief technologist and Abundance Institute AI policy head Neil Chilson has explained, today EA figures are best known for pushing extraordinary crackdowns on AI development, ranging from “authoritarian” policy responses to literally calling in the airstrikes on AI data centers, an approach driven by their insistence that runaway AI is an apocalyptic development sure to wipe out humanity unless we collectively act first.

To be clear, Anthropic’s founders have distanced themselves from EA in public remarks, and Clark’s recommendations do not include anything like nuking AI from orbit just to be sure. In fact, he should be commended for his call to listen more to “labor groups, social groups, and religious leaders” on the subject of our future relationship with our most powerful technologies.

But there is no escaping the fact that the ultimate goal behind the alarm raised by Anthropic’s leadership and the EA network sharing its orbit is to take coordinated global legal action to pervasively restrict and dictate the course of technological development from the very highest level on down. This is something many Americans instinctively reject, whatever their fears or concerns about AI might be. It is easy to see how such an approach would disregard the Constitution right out of the box. But the appeal being made is to higher-scale principles and powers than the Constitution’s or the American people’s. And ultimately, in this context, weaving in the “voices” of “stakeholders” across various “communities” is merely a means to that end, a diversitarian stamp of moral legitimacy that, as a core part of DEI’s use as an algorithm to create a new global governance regime, has already worn out its welcome.

So what do we do?

I would hardly characterize myself as a “religious leader,” but the fact is that very few Christians have spent recent years working seriously across the interrelated fields of tech theory and practice, and in that capacity I do want to offer a perspective that can prove useful to cutting through the increasingly intractable and fruitless debates between “nones” who love (or even worship) AI and “nones” who hate (or even want to destroy) it.

The overarching problem posed by the Anthropic controversy is that people who do not believe that our given human being is sacred really can’t be trusted with legal control over the technology they think is going to obliterate our humanity — because they fail to understand that no law can ever save us from destroying ourselves regardless of how much technology has advanced in any particular direction, and they fail to grasp that we will continuously destroy ourselves in ever more feverish ways the more we reject God’s own message that He created us in an act of love so great that our relationship to Him is familial, calling us to reciprocate that love and act toward one another accordingly.

RELATED: Against the Butlerian Jihad!

Photo by Tobias Schwarz/Getty Images

There’s only one thing that can justify human existence over and above that of the most powerful tools we can build. Only one thing that can justify our authority and control over those tools. Nature, reason, philosophy, myth, story, legend, ethics, ideology, rights, might … none of these suffice any more.

The only thing that will do is faithful belief in the truth of the Christian anthropology: that our given human form, including its visible and invisible parts, is sacred in the highest — for we were given that form, as the consummation and microcosm of all creation, because of how unfathomably the immeasurably supreme God loved and loves us, individually and together, even unto the degree that we can and must call Him not just Lord or Master, but Father, so that we can freely return His complete and total love with our own.

Nothing else will hold the line against occultism, obscurantism, destitution, servitude, profanation, disenchantment, and despair in the realm of AI or any other technology capable, if pushed, of simulating the human person and the human soul to the point of complete deception and delusion.

It just so happens that “we” have pushed technology to a degree that this uncomfortable truth about what justifies our existence (as it always has) is coming ever more starkly and inarguably out into the open.

Of course, a lot of people really don’t want this to be true, for all the endless reasons and rationales we are all extremely familiar with. You would think that the revelation of “this one weird trick” would cause waves of relief to spread joyously across the world, but no. The most prominent reactions are from those who would rather flee into the underground catacombs or dive into the black hole of the Borg.

These foolish attempts at a hasty solution will not just fail you as a person; they will fail the many, many millions desperately thirsting to be trustably, authoritatively led into the more strenuous and tension-filled but more peaceful and beautiful middle way between the two great negational temptations.

Abandoning the people and the devil take the hindmost 300 million-plus is a poor way of loving one’s fellow creatures so beloved by God that in them He commands us to see His very self. Obey the commandments (Matthew 22:37-40) with discernment, patience, discipline, humility, loving-kindness, and long-suffering, and we can have “nice things” like technological advancement and flourishing communities and so forth. Seek ye first the kingdom, and the rest will follow.

Seek ye other stuff — such as a simulation so powerful that there, all experience and memory of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are obliterated, and the rest will follow from that.

Start in your heart

This is emphatically NOT about attacking or debunking or destroying other faiths, doctrines, ideologies, wishes, passions, agendas, or anything else. The time has come to deny pride of place to blaming the other instead of the self, to fixating on what the other says or does instead of what lurks within and issues forth from one’s own heart (Matthew 15:18-20).

This is about the urgency of taking up the calm and quiet invitation to pursue an active, affirmative path that unlocks the kind of future so many thirst for and even say they want. It’s so simple. It doesn’t require anything of us that can’t be done by just about any person, regardless of place or time. I like to “joke” that “Interstellar” is a movie about how men will literally shoot themselves into a black hole instead of going to church. It’s not a joke, of course. That temptation, right to the very limit of sanity and imagination, is always there somewhere, lurking in our hearts, ever since the Fall.

Drawing near to your fellow man, drawing near to God, is often painful, scary, “destabilizing,” unpredictable, laborious, costly, and hard to explain or even understand in hindsight. Yet it is essential — it is of the very essence of who we are.

No attempt to escape or replace this experience, no matter how grandiose, all-consuming, or incomprehensible, can lead us to any solution to our deeply human problems, especially in a golden age, where some such problems not only persist but grow acute: monstrous, menacing, overwhelming, to the point where we must realize, as we must realize now, that where we are going there are no solutions, only salvation — not by any merely human creation, but by our all-good, holy, and life-giving Creator.

​Tech, Culture, Faith 

The three major candidates for New York City’s mayor’s office debated each other on Thursday in a heated exchange that lasted two hours and covered many of the most important issues plaguing the Big Apple.

Former Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent, hammered away at Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdami as an extremist who is unprepared and inexperienced, while Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa came at both from the right and tried to claw away more time and attention.

‘I try to avoid yellow cabs; as you know, I was shot in the back of a yellow cab in 1992 by the Gottis and Gambinos. But I find my way around. If I have to, I Uber.’

President Donald Trump became a pivotal figure in the debate that differentiated the positions of the three candidates. When asked how they would deal with the president’s threats to pull funding from the city, Sliwa said he would negotiate with Trump, while Cuomo said he would oppose Trump and Mamdani accused him of not fighting enough.

Sliwa, who gained fame as the head of the Guardian Angels, ripped into both of his opponents for going easy on crime and had one anecdote that stunned debate-watchers. When the candidates were asked which form of transportation they chose apart from the subway, Mamdani said a bicycle, Cuomo responded that he called a taxi, and Sliwa said he was shot by the mafia.

“I try to avoid yellow cabs; as you know, I was shot in the back of a yellow cab in 1992 by the Gottis and Gambinos,” he said. “But I find my way around. If I have to, I Uber, if i can’t get there by mass transit.”

Mamdani advocated for free bus fare on the basis that it would reduce attacks on bus drivers.

Crime was a big issue in the debate, and Sliwa made it clear that he was endorsing pro-law-enforcement policies, in contrast to Cuomo and Mamdani. Cuomo accused Mamdani of endorsing police-defunding policies and calling cops “racist,” while Mamdani distanced himself from his old statements and instead took a shot at Cuomo, claiming he sent “seniors to their death in nursing homes” as governor in 2020.

Mamdani advocated for mental health workers to respond to mental illness calls rather than police, to which Sliwa objected vehemently.

RELATED: Zohran Mamdani casually says he would support the abolition of property in resurfaced video

Photo by Angelina Katsanis-Pool/Getty Images

Mamdani tried to position himself as a solution to the broken system in New York City politics.

“I have the experience of having served in the New York State Assembly for five years and watching a broken political system,” he said, “the experience of seeing a governor in Andrew Cuomo who would rather have served his billionaire donors than the working-class New Yorkers who voted for him.”

Cuomo accused Mamdani of wanting to legalize prostitution, which Mamdani denied, after which Sliwa accused both of trying to decriminalize prostitution.

Sliwa was clearly frustrated that the moderators were far more interested in giving time to Mamdani and Cuomo, and he interrupted to get more time in the limelight.

He also proposed the cessation of taxes for older Americans under a certain income level as a part of his “improve, not move” policy solutions.

On immigration, Sliwa took a moderate position that claimed that America needs hard workers while also saying that illegal aliens need to be deported. Mamdani was predictably angry about federal immigration operations and said he would oppose them.

When the question came to the economy, Cuomo hammered away at Mamdani’s socialist policies and tried to make himself appear as friendly to capitalism as possible. Sliwa said that toothpaste shouldn’t be locked up, but that criminals should be locked up.

Ultimately, each candidate was disciplined enough to do what he needed to do — Cuomo attacked Mamdani’s extremism, Mamdani tried to appear as reasonable as possible, and Sliwa tried to get as much attention as possible.

RELATED: Rolling Stone is getting crushed online for trying to whitewash controversies around Zohran Mamdani

Photo by Angelina Katsanis-Pool/Getty Images

The entire debate can be viewed on the YouTube channel of WNBC-TV.

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani posted his endorsement after the debate on social media.

“Curtis Sliwa is a New Yorker through and through. He knows this city — and its neighborhoods — better than almost anyone alive. If New Yorkers pay attention and wake up, they’ll elect this good man as their next mayor. He has my total and complete endorsement,” he wrote.

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​Nyc mayor debate, Andrew cuomo, Zohran mamdani, Curtis sliwa, Trump vs nyc, Politics 

We have a crisis of trashy public “art,” and sculpture is one of the main offenders. More on this below; I have to buffer your reading experience with a reminder of actual beauty before we dive to the bottom of the aesthetic dumpster.

When I was 8 years old, my grandmother gave me a small hardback book of Greek mythology. I can’t remember the title. It was written in the 1940s and probably used as a textbook or primer for college-level courses.

They say that some children have a face only a mother can love, but not even the father of that piece could look at it and see anything but a gargoyle at hell’s check-in kiosk.

It smelled exactly as you’re imagining right now: that scent of a 20th-century quality-bound book from the library stacks. Though only about seven inches by four inches, it had onionskin pages like a Bible, and there must have been 900 of them.

Pictures from History/Getty Images

Set in stone

The book always fell open to the same page because I always looked at that one. There was a black-and-white photograph of Bernini’s bust of Medusa. It fascinated me, and only later did I realize that the figure of Medusa drew me so powerfully, in part, because my mother was a gorgon.

But it wasn’t just that. The detail and life Bernini infused into stone took my breath away. How could a piece of marble be made so like a human face that we try to divine the emotion in the carved eyes?

Photo: Shhewitt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Have you seen the statuary of veiled figures? They offer the most incredible illusion of the Virgin behind a gossamer veil of the thinnest translucent silk. To look at a statue like this is to feel a glimmer of the divine. And this example, the Veiled Virgin, was carved in the 19th century. This means that until fairly recently, there were still skilled sculptors who have earned the title “artist.”

So what the hell is this?

Adam Moss via Flickr/Creative Commons

Brucille

I can tell you what it is not: Lucille Ball. It appears to be a bronze casting of Brucille Lall, Lucy’s evil trans-identifying cousin. Who could believe that the figure is offering Vitameatavegamin, when it’s obviously liquid arsenic? “Just like candy” indeed.

The sculptor behind the piece (the late David Poulin), which was installed in the comedy legend’s hometown in 2015 to honor her, gave up his craft after the negative public reaction. He complained to local media that he was tired of being razzed for a statue that was “not one of my best works.”

Well? They say that some children have a face only a mother can love, but not even the father of that piece could look at it and see anything but a gargoyle at hell’s check-in kiosk.

You have to ask: What possessed the city government in Celoron, New York, to pretend that this is normal? Is it the sunk-cost fallacy? Is it embarrassment at wasting money on a figure that has sent local children to long-term therapy?

Hug it out

Whatever motivates this behavior was probably also at work in Boston when it commissioned and placed this atrocity downtown. Called the Embrace, this bronze oversized … whatever … allegedly depicts a hug between Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King.

Boston Globe/Getty Images

Take it in. If it helps, you can let Boston Mayor Michelle Wu explain to you how this piece “differs from the singular, heroic form of many memorials to Dr. King and others, instead emphasizing the power of collective action, the role of women as leaders, and the forging of new bonds of solidarity out of mutual empathy and vulnerability.”

Or, like one local Reddit commenter, you can just trust your own eyes: “Could have been something amazing but instead we get a somewhat pornographic bronze turd.”

This turd, the work of a successful black artist named Hank Willis Thomas, beat out 125 other designs. Thomas says he didn’t want to “oversimplify” MLK’s legacy by proposing something that actually looked like him.

Sure. Or maybe he figured his best chance to win was to submit something so bizarre and off-putting that the judges would have no choice but to mistake it for brilliance. And why not? Liberal white people (like the billionaire entrepreneur who spearheaded the project) love to demonstrate their sophistication by praising provocatively ugly and incompetent art — especially if it allows them to take credit for supporting “diversity.”

Less impressed by the Embrace was a cousin of Coretta Scott King, who simply called it “an atrocity.”

Monumental entitlement

Dismembering your subjects so that only a grotesque pair of floating limbs remains is one way to make a name for yourself as a public artist. Another way is to dispense with the tired notion that only people who have accomplished something should get a statue.

That’s the approach of black British sculptor Thomas J. Price, who specializes in oversized monuments to mean-looking, fat black women who appear to be waiting to speak to the manager.

Here’s Grounded in the Stars, the 12-foot bronze sculpture Price installed in Times Square last spring.

Timothy A. Clary/Getty Images

You see, what Price is doing here is “challeng[ing] historical notions of representation in NYC’s most iconic public space.” Oh. Someone better tell the many black women who find the statue “humiliating” and “insulting.”

Another recent piece by Price is a 13-foot statue of a surly-looking young black woman holding her cell phone out in classic I’m-going-to-treat-this-crowded-bus-like-my-living-room-and-have-this-annoyingly-loud-conversation-on-speaker posture. (Credit where it’s due — that does indeed capture the entitlement of many women today.)

Shutterstock

But is putting it in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria alongside classical and Renaissance sculpture really “a significant conversation with the canons and aesthetic models that have defined the history of Western art for centuries”? Or is it just another big, resentful middle finger to “whiteness” and its oppressive standards of beauty?

Simply the worst

But wait — there’s more! The latest insult to black womanhood is a grotesque tribute to the legendary Tina Turner, who died in 2023. It must be seen to be believed.

Shutterstock

You know this is the work of a black artist because any white person creating such a monstrosity would immediately be charged with a hate crime. Fred Ajanogha (“also known as ‘Ajano’”) is an Atlanta-based “master sculptor” who works in the storied “Benin Bronze” tradition of his native Nigeria.

Making a sculpture with this ancient wax-casting technique does indeed require a certain mastery. What it doesn’t require, apparently, is any sort of reference photo of Ms. Turner.

Do admit — it looks like he gave the legendary singer Down syndrome, as well as hair lifted directly from the McDonaldland Fry Guys.

This Trisomy Tina now graces Turner’s small Tennessee hometown. Fan’s of Turner’s song “Nutbush City Limits” know it as a pleasant community full of proud locals intent on keeping it that way. They make sure it’s clean. They don’t allow motorcycles or liquor.

Most of all, they don’t tolerate any out-of-towners disrupting things with their dumb, big-city ideas. “You have to watch what you’re puttin’ down.” Unfortunately, it looks like times have changed, even in old Nutbush.

​Culture, Public art, Statues, Monuments, Florence, Medusa, Art, Benini, Thomas j. price, Martin luther king jr., Tina turner, Lucille ball, Woke, Dei, Intervention 

A Texas man was mauled to death by his own dogs despite the help of a neighbor who tried to stab at the dogs with a machete, police said.

The horrific incident unfolded at the home of Jose “Eddie” Padron Castillo on Louisiana Avenue in Bacliff, an unincorporated area near Galveston, according to his neighbor.

‘He was crying, pleading, pleading and crying. … That dog was not letting go.’

Jesus Excontitta told KHOU-TV that he rushed to help the 45-year-old and hacked away at the dogs, but they would not let go of their owner, who was pleading for help.

“It was just a horrific experience, for sure. I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Excontitta said.

“He was crying, pleading, pleading and crying, and I’m just, ‘Sorry, Eddie,’ and stabbing the dog and poking and poking and poking, slicing him, slicing him and poking him, poking him,” Excontitta said. “That dog was not letting go.”

The KHOU report described the dogs as pit bulls.

Neighbors said that Castillo was trying to keep his dogs from attacking passersby on a golf cart when they turned on him in his driveway. Excontitta ran over with a machete to help him but said that the machete broke during the incident. He had to run back and grab a butcher knife.

The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said the attack did not stop until a deputy responded and shot one of the dogs.

Castillo was rushed to a hospital in Clear Lake but was later pronounced dead.

RELATED: Arizona mom nearly mauled to death by pit bull she rescued from homeless person and nurtured to health for 4 years

The two dogs were euthanized. Other police arrived at the home apparently to try to find a third dog.

“The dogs grew up with him, you know what I mean?” Excontitta added. “They’ve always been fed, fed good, and I don’t know why something like this would happen.”

Neighbors in the area told KHOU that they avoided going near Castillo’s residence because of his dogs.

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​Dog mauling, Texas man mauled, Pit bull attack, Jose eddie castillo, Crime 

The whangdoodles are at it again — raging on X, posting grainy photos of World War II soldiers, and proclaiming, “Grandpa was Antifa!”

Because, you see, Grandpa fought Hitler. Or Hirohito. Or Mussolini. They were fascists, Grandpa was anti-fascist, and since “anti-fascist” shortens to “Antifa,” presto — Grandpa was Antifa.

What these self-styled internet historians are doing is a digital form of stolen valor. … Grandpa would be appalled.

Right.

Before scourging the ignorant cockwombles pounding keyboards across the internet, let’s define what fascism actually meant.

What fascism meant

Beyond the obvious militarism of Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hirohito’s Japan, the fascist regimes of the 20th century shared three defining traits. First, a top-down command economy controlled by a central planning body. Second, an integrated industrial and banking system. Third, a relatively homogeneous population under rigid state control.

Now ask yourself: Does the United States fit that mold? No central economic planning agency, no state-directed industrial-banking complex (ask the Fed and the Securities and Exchange Commission), and certainly no single, homogeneous racial population.

What we do have is an ever-multiplying swarm of willfully obtuse, historically illiterate useful idiots eager to join whatever digital mob happens to be trending this week.

The kind who think “being a furry” is a lifestyle choice worth defending.

You know — morons.

Grandpa fought for the Constitution

Among them are the smug keyboard warriors who post their grandfather’s old war photo without knowing a thing about his unit, his history, or the weapon he lugged across Europe — a Thompson M1A1 submachine gun chambered in .45 ACP.

These same people casually toss Grandpa’s honorable service into the same slime bucket as the modern-day anarcho-communists who call themselves “Antifa.” They hijack his image to dignify an extremist movement that despises everything he swore to defend.

Grandpa honored and fought under the American flag. Antifa burns it. They literally call it a “fascist symbol.”

Grandpa didn’t fight for a slogan. He fought for the Constitution. He raised his right hand and swore an oath — to protect and defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. If that meant bombing Tojo’s Japan, invading Hitler’s Germany, or crushing Mussolini’s Italy, so be it.

RELATED: Antifa isn’t ‘anti-fascist’ — it’s anti-freedom and anti-God

Definitely not Antifa.Bettmann/Getty Images

Generations after him have sworn the same oath. Those men fought communism in Korea and Vietnam, and later took the fight to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and, after 9/11, to al-Qaeda and ISIS across the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

Stolen valor for the hashtag age

What these self-styled internet historians are doing is a digital form of stolen valor. They wrap themselves in the virtue of men who actually faced fire, men who earned their medals the hard way — not with a post and a hashtag.

Grandpa would be appalled at his grandkids’ ignorance.

But give it time. Some nimrod, eager for another viral hit, will post a photo of his dad in Afghanistan with the caption: “Dad was intersectional.”

And the whangdoodles will cheer — none the wiser, and none the braver.

​Opinion & analysis, Antifa, History, Grandpa was antifa lie, Social media, Leftists, Rino republicans, Moderate republicans, Historical revisionism, Ignorance, Instagram, Xtwitter, Anti-fascism and communism, Communism, Anarchism, Portland, Flag burning, Constitution, Memes, Furries, Christianity, Stolen valor 

If the show “The View” isn’t paid for by advertising from pharmaceutical companies, you’d never know, because they defend vaccines with a tenacity that can only be rivaled by the manufacturers themselves.

And in a recent interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, the panel could not have fought harder in favor of those pharmaceutical companies — never once grazing the truth despite minutes of speaking over Hines.

“You know, Cheryl, it’s not fair to really put you on the spot about him because you’re his wife. I know that. But when you say that they are pro-vaccine, it seems as though Bobby and Trump are casting doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine, which makes Americans very nervous,” co-host Joy Behar said.

“So, that’s the problem that we’re having,” she added.

“It’s interesting because I don’t know if you saw ‘60 Minutes’ just did a piece about the vaccine injury compensation program. So, people that have had vaccine injuries can be compensated if they can prove it. And they have paid out $5.4 billion for vaccine injuries,” Hines replied.

“So, my question is, can we do better?” she asked.

“Is it all vaccines or just the COVID vaccine?” Whoopi Goldberg interjected, to which Hines replied, “It’s all vaccines.”

“So, the question is — yes to vaccines. Yes, they are important, and they are an important part of our health care. Can we do better? Can we make them safer? Can we listen to parents who say, ‘My child got the vaccine and changed and stopped hitting markers, stopped developing the way they were developing.’ Can we listen to people when they say that instead of saying, ‘You’re crazy?’” Hines continued.

But that wasn’t all the ladies of ‘The View’ went after Hines for.

Sunny Hostin called RFK the “least qualified Department of Health and Human Services head that we’ve had in history,” lamenting that this is “very dangerous.”

Having previously pointed out that Obama’s head of HHS was an economist, Hines responded, “Why is he less qualified than an economist?”

“He has spent his career studying toxins, studying people’s health, fighting for one guy who was using Roundup for his job,” Hines continued.

“He has also spread a lot of misinformation, a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion. And I think it’s just a very dangerous thing,” Hostin continued, adding, “and I say it with the utmost respect.”

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales isn’t shocked by what she’s hearing from the women on ‘The View,’ but she is disgusted.

“‘The utmost respect,’” she mocks. “Like, it’s just so tacky. ‘With all due respect, I actually think your husband is a terrible … person.’ Like, you can’t just say stuff like that. And it’s just so laughable.”

Gonzales points out that Joe Biden’s HHS secretary was Xavier Becerra, who had zero medical background.

“He was also a former politician and a lawyer. And the closest thing that he came to anything health-related was bringing felony charges against the Center for Medical Progress activists who exposed Planned Parenthood for allegedly selling fetal tissue,” Gonzales explains.

Not only that, but Biden’s assistant secretary for health was “Rachel” Levine — a transgender woman.

“That just tells you all you need to know about all of these recent Health and Human Services secretaries who haven’t given a s**t that we have become more sick,” Gonzales says, “We have become sicker than ever before.”

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Fourteen years after Occupy Wall Street and five years after the George Floyd riots, the Democratic Party has embraced the tactics of the mob. Anyone who hoped the party would retreat from extremism was wrong.

The movement calling itself No Kings has returned, proving the point. What began as a slogan of defiance now serves as the organizing banner for a political faction that thrives on confrontation, violence, and plausible deniability.

The republic cannot survive a ruling class that excuses its own mobs.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk could have been a moment of national reflection — a chance for Democrats to reconsider their indulgence in rhetoric that blurs the line between protest and terrorism. Instead, the party apparatus has chosen escalation.

When you tell unstable people that Trump is a “fascist,” that dissent is violence, and that opposition equals Nazism, don’t be shocked when someone acts on it.

The logic of the left

To understand how this happened, you must understand how the modern left thinks. Progressives treat speech as violence and dissent as an existential threat. Anyone who refuses to affirm their ideology becomes, by definition, an oppressor.

From that premise, violence becomes “self-defense.” If Trump is Hitler, then violence against him — or anyone aligned with his cause — is not just justified but virtuous.

The left’s revolutionaries no longer storm palaces. They dominate the streets. On October 18, No Kings protests will erupt again across the country. What was once the fringe tactic of radicals has become the preferred strategy of the Democratic Party: organized street action modeled on unstable regimes abroad.

This backslide into mob politics raises tensions at a time when the nation needs prudence. Instead, Democrats seem eager to test how far their own movement will go.

What lies beneath the No Kings network

After the June 14 protests, our team at the Oversight Project traced the movement’s primary organizing partner, 50501. What we found confirmed the worst suspicions: demonstrable ties to the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Democratic Socialists of America, Antifa, and Students for Justice in Palestine.

These groups have openly supported violent action or defended authoritarian regimes, including China’s Communist Party. Mapping their social media connections revealed links to foreign influence networks tied to Chinese propaganda operations.

Antifa affiliates have also joined the effort, circulating merchandise celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death — shirts reading “Nazi Lives Don’t Matter” and “Normalize Political Violence” printed with a guillotine.

This is the energy behind No Kings. Its rhetoric echoes the Chinese Communist Party’s talking points on Tiananmen Square and defends regimes that crush dissent. Some of its alumni have even celebrated the murder of Israeli diplomats. Others maintain direct connections to Neville Singham and Chinese consulate officials.

For years, Democrats obsessed over alleged Russian meddling in U.S. politics. Yet now they embrace networks steeped in foreign influence to advance their own protest movements. As the Trump administration maps these organizations, many roads will lead overseas. Beijing has long used this method — stoking domestic unrest to weaken rivals from within.

The question isn’t whether the Democrats know this. It’s whether they care.

How the extremists captured the party

So how did a movement this toxic gain institutional cover from the Democratic establishment? Why do party leaders like Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) offer it full-throated support? And why do former Republicans like George Conway, Bill Kristol, and Joe Walsh lend their credibility to the cause?

Because the Democrats have surrendered to their radical base. They’ve stopped trying to lead it and started following it. Rather than condemn political extremism, they seek to normalize and rebrand it.

When Antifa militants show up at Democrat-aligned protests, party leaders feign surprise. When violence erupts, they retreat to the safety of “plausible deniability.” It’s a tired act — and the public no longer buys it.

RELATED: Trump names Antifa. The establishment still pretends it doesn’t exist.

hoto by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

Why the crackdown terrifies them

This explains why Democrats fight so ferociously against classifying Antifa as a domestic or foreign terrorist organization. Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 directs a whole-of-government response to domestic extremism. Through the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, federal agencies already possess the tools to investigate, expose, and dismantle these networks.

The real question is whether they will use them.

A serious enforcement effort would strip away the Democrats’ mask of deniability and expose the institutional support behind the violence. It would show that what poses as activism is, in fact, the operational arm of a radicalized political movement.

The choice ahead

Across the world, major parties have flirted with revolutionary tactics when democracy failed to deliver their goals. It’s the oldest temptation in politics. But America is now watching a mainstream party openly indulge in it.

Street action, foreign influence, and mob intimidation are not signs of progress — they are symptoms of decay. If Democrats continue down this path, they will drag the country with them.

The republic cannot survive a ruling class that excuses its own mobs.

​Opinion & analysis, Antifa, No kings, No kings mass protest, Democratic party, Mob rule, Charlie kirk assassination, Fascism, Donald trump, 50501 movement, Democratic socialists of america, Students for justice in palestine, Chinese communist party, Beijing, Neville roy singham 

On October 14, President Donald Trump posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor in the United States — to Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. The star-studded ceremony took place in the White House Rose Garden and coincided with what would have been Kirk’s 32nd birthday.

Declaring the day a “National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk,” President Trump praised the conservative trailblazer as a “fearless warrior for liberty,” a “beloved leader who galvanized the next generation,” and a “a martyr for truth and freedom.”

Glenn Beck, who attended the ceremony, says he “learned a lot” in the span of a few hours. On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” he shared five things he learned from attending Charlie’s honorary ceremony.

1. President Trump is a force unlike any other.

Even though he was in the Middle East celebrating the peace deal he miraculously facilitated between Israel and Hamas, President Trump cut his trip short in order to be back in time for the Medal of Freedom ceremony, which he insisted happen on Charlie’s birthday.

This required him to go “36 hours” with no sleep, Glenn says, and still he handled it with his usual vigor and showmanship.

“I don’t know how this guy does it. … Nothing non-natural goes into this guy’s body,” he says, alluding to Trump’s commitment to total abstinence from alcohol, drugs, and all forms of stimulants.

2. Marco Rubio is “killing it.”

While Glenn was a fan of Marco Rubio long before he became the Secretary of State, he has noticed an incredible “change” in him since his confirmation.

“He’s killing it,” Glenn says, referencing Rubio’s diplomatic triumphs, hawkish stance on China, and tireless advocacy for American interests abroad.

When he asked Rubio at Charlie’s ceremony what has been the catalyst for his transformation into a total powerhouse, he humbly pointed to President Trump.

3. Erica Kirk is “gaining her voice.”

Even though the widow, mother of two, and new TPUSA CEO is still wrestling with the grief of losing her beloved husband, Erika Kirk is “really gaining her voice,” Glenn says.

During the ceremony, Erika accepted the award on behalf of her late husband and delivered an emotional speech, during which she shared personal anecdotes about Charlie’s faith, relayed a birthday message from their daughter, and pledged to continue his legacy at Turning Point USA.

She closed with: “To live free is the greatest gift, but to die free is the greatest victory.”

“She was very good,” Glenn says.

4. The White House is more secure than ever.

“The security perimeter of the White House is astounding. It’s at least doubled,” Glenn says, adding that he’s heard the plan is to “[move] the security perimeter at least a block around [the White House], all the way around.”

This uptick in security has allowed President Trump to breathe a bit easier. “It was the first time I’ve seen the president in many months outside without bulletproof glass between us,” Glenn says.

Glenn’s biggest takeaway from the ceremony was that President Donald Trump, despite the incessant efforts by political opponents and the mainstream media to smear him, is a remarkable human being.

“The president was so gracious yesterday with everybody. I mean, he is really an amazing man,” he says.

To hear Glenn’s full recount of his time at the White House for Charlie Kirk’s Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony, including a humorous anecdote showing how intensely strategic President Trump is, watch the video above.

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Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is facing brutal and hilarious ridicule on social media after making an embarrassing mistake during a tirade against Republicans.

The congresswoman was lambasting her opponents Wednesday during a town hall on CNN when she bizarrely accused the Deloitte company of dumping toxic chemicals into waterways.

‘AOC needs to go back to acting school because her little performance was embarrassing.’

Ocasio-Cortez was asked how she was going to respond to President Donald Trump withholding billions of dollars of federal spending on infrastructure in New York during the government shutdown. She made an apparently unrelated point about the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Once again, this administration is making a foolish mistake by saying that they think that investments in housing and in energy are so-called Democrat priorities,” Ocasio-Cortez responded.

“Cutting the EPA as a Democrat priority. You know what this country looked like before the EPA? Rivers in rural areas were on fire because of corporations poisoning the people who lived in those areas — poor, middle-class communities getting poisoned and dumped on by corporations like Deloitte and 3M, pouring chemicals into these places. And they want to call it a Democratic priority,” she added.

“And that’s why they want to eliminate the FDA!” she said, likely meaning EPA instead.

“Well, you know what? You’re damn well right that it’s a Democratic priority to keep people from getting poisoned,” she added, “from identifying dangerous chemicals that are being dumped and causing cancer in people without their knowledge.”

Video of the gaffe was posted to social media, where it quickly went viral with millions of views.

Critics immediately noted that Deloitte is an accounting agency and had nothing to do with any alleged chemical-dumping. Some believe she meant to say DuPont, the chemical company.

“Deloitte is an accounting firm, how are they pouring chemicals into rural areas. @AOC needs to go back to acting school because her little performance was embarrassing at the CNN Townhall,” one popular response reads.

“As a former Deloitte employee, I can guarantee that the only thing you’ll ever see them pour is a glass of wine. Plus, AOC must not know that Deloitte has gone all in on the climate con and the green new scam,” another user responded.

RELATED: Ocasio-Cortez makes embarrassing mistake while trying to dunk on Republicans about the migrant crisis

“Oh boy, Deloitte is going to ask AOC to issue an apology, and they should make it stick. This mistake is not just a slip of the tongue; it misrepresents Deloitte’s business and could damage its reputation,” another reply reads.

Others used the occasion to mock Ocasio-Cortez.

“As a young child, one of my earliest memories are the television stories of Deloitte secretly dumping thousands of old accountants into rivers in my hometown,” one user joked.

“Deloitte does a lot worse than this. If you don’t wish everyone a deloitteful weekend on your last Friday call, they take you out back and break your kneecaps,” reads another jab at Ocasio-Cortez.

A Blaze News request for comment to Deloitte was not immediately answered.

The entire program can be viewed on the congresswoman’s YouTube channel.

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The left has launched a cancellation campaign against members of the Young Republican National Federation after Politico released an article exposing leaked out-of-context messages between members.

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales points out that the left is not angry about the violent text messages sent by Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones, in which he called for the murder of innocent children.

“No, Democrats are actually pissed about leaked Republican messages where the people were clearly making jokes, which is so crazy ’cause I thought liberals were supposed to love it when people made edgy jokes,” Gonzales says.

“Let’s see those liberals protesting in the streets now for free speech,” she adds.

The group chat messages consisted of what Gonzales considers to be the participants simply “goofing off” and “joking in private where they never thought that anyone publicly would see their messages.”

“Would I choose to joke about these things? No, probably not. But it’s a far cry from the actual serious rhetoric that the Democrats engage in literally every day. And they’re not joking,” Gonzales says.

“Now, you also have the Young Republicans organization, who are now — it’s this big production where ‘we have to cancel everyone’s lives because they were joking in private group chats and never thought that these chats would see that light of day,’” she continues.

“And I have to ask everyone in the organization that is calling on all of these people to resign and trying to get them fired from their jobs and all of these things. I just have to ask: What do your group text messages look like? What do your private text messages look like? What do your private DMs look like?” she asks.

“If I just took your phone right now and just was able to just freely scroll through it and go back as many years as I wanted to, I wouldn’t find anything that you’ve said that might be spicy or inappropriate or off-color or anything? It’s just totally PC? I don’t buy it,” Gonzales continues.

“There is no one alive who doesn’t have something in their text messages that they would be embarrassed if it went public because that’s just how people are,” she adds.

And in the case of these Young Republicans, the jokes were completely taken out of context in the first place.

“The headline example, right there, ‘I love Hitler.’ Right there in the headline. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, if you keep reading, they’re talking about a meeting with Michigan’s Young Republicans to score more votes,” Gonzales explains.

“And in the message, he said, ‘My delegates I bring will vote for the most right-wing person.’ And then he was like, ‘Great. I love Hitler.’ It was a joke. It was a joke that was completely taken out of context,” she continues.

“I’m not going to condemn it. I honestly don’t care. … Nobody should care about a group chat with dudes joking around,” she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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A military veteran attending a championship baseball game recorded a woman threatening to call immigration officials on him and sent her to the unemployment line.

Ricardo Fosado said the exchange between him and several Milwaukee Brewers fans began as a friendly rivalry at Game 2 of the National League Championship Series at American Family Field.

‘Call ICE, call ICE. I’m a U.S. citizen, war veteran. … ICE is not gonna do nothing to me, good luck!’

Fosado said it got heated after the Los Angeles Dodgers got a lead late in the game, and he began recording and cheering while mocking Brewers fans. A woman got into his face and called him a “p***y” for drinking a cocktail instead of a beer.

She then joked to a man in front of her, “You know what, let’s call ICE.”

“Call ICE, call ICE. I’m a U.S. citizen, war veteran, baby girl! … ICE is not gonna do nothing to me, good luck!” Fosado responded while laughing.

The woman takes a swipe at his phone, to which he responds with an expletive.

Video of the interaction was posted online, where it went viral.

The woman was identified as Shannon Kobylarczyk, who then resigned as a board member of the Make-A-Wish foundation in Milwaukee. She also lost her job as an attorney at Manpower Group.

“As soon as we became aware of this video, the individual was placed on immediate leave, and we began an investigation,” the company said. “As a result of this process, the employee is no longer with the organization.”

RELATED: LA Dodgers say they blocked ICE agents at stadium after campaign to pressure team to condemn deportations

Fosado, however, also faced some consequences for his behavior at the game.

On Thursday, the Brewers released a statement saying that Fosado had been ejected from the game over the behavior he exhibited in the video, including “disorderly conduct and public intoxication.”

The statement said that both he and Kobylarczyk were notified that they were banned from the park. Kobylarczyk was banned because she “became physical” in her interaction with Fosado.

“The Brewers expect all persons attending games to be respectful of each other, and we do not condone in any way offensive statements fans make to each other about race, gender, or national origin. Our priority is to ensure that all in attendance have a safe and enjoyable experience at the ballpark,” continued the statement from the team.

WISN-TV reported that Kobylarczyk declined to comment on the story.

The Dodgers went on to win the game and go up two games on the Brewers. Whoever wins the series will go to the World Series.

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Harvard has stated that it had an “extraordinarily challenging” fiscal year amid its ongoing feud with the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump withheld over $2 million in federal research funding after he accused Harvard of “repeatedly” failing to confront anti-Semitic harassment on its campuses, arguing that the university was violating federal civil rights law.

‘Even by the standards of our centuries-long history, fiscal year 2025 was extraordinarily challenging, with political and economic disruption affecting many sectors, including higher education.’

Harvard responded to the funding freeze by suing the administration. While most of those awards have been reinstated, according to Harvard, President Donald Trump’s actions against the university appear to have made an impact.

“The reinstatements of those grants do not erase the disruption the terminations sparked, nor do they negate the uncertainty ahead. That means we can’t simply return to ‘business as usual,’” Harvard chief financial officer Ritu Kalra told Bloomberg.

A financial report released Thursday by the Ivy League school showed a $113 million deficit for fiscal year 2025, which ended on September 30. This marks Harvard’s first operating loss since 2020 and its largest deficit since 2011. In contrast, for fiscal year 2024, Harvard reported a $45 million gain.

Harvard’s financial difficulties prompted it to make “difficult but necessary choices,” according to Alan Garber, the university’s president. It reportedly implemented a hiring freeze, initiated layoffs, scaled back projects, and withheld salary increases from exempt employees.

RELATED: Harvard’s hypocrisy hits the courtroom

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“Even by the standards of our centuries-long history, fiscal year 2025 was extraordinarily challenging, with political and economic disruption affecting many sectors, including higher education,” Garber wrote.

He also blamed President Donald Trump’s termination of federal research funding, noting that a federal judge found the move to be unlawful. The administration reportedly has plans to appeal the judge’s decision.

RELATED: Why Trump’s war with Harvard hits closer to home than you think

Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images

“We closed [the fiscal year] confronting the abrupt termination of nearly all of Harvard’s federal research grants, facing potential constraints on the exchange of international scholars, and considering how we will absorb the enactment of a substantial increase to the federal tax on endowment income, scheduled to take effect in fiscal 2027,” the report read.

Despite its reported challenges, Harvard recorded the largest current-use gifts in its history, totaling $629 million — a 19% increase over the previous fiscal year. However, the university’s endowment gifts, which are more restricted in their use, have declined over the last two years. In fiscal year 2023, Harvard collected $561 million in endowment gifts, while the amounts dropped to $368 million in 2024 and $364 million in 2025.

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