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A Team USA Olympic legend went against the advice of “experts” and sold his coveted gold medals at auction.

In a revealing Facebook post, the former athlete said he used the money to move abroad, selling a house in California, too. Apparently in financial strain, the Olympic hero explained that after the sales, he picked up his life and moved to Central America.

‘I told the truth; I needed the money.’

A Wheaties box cover athlete and four-time gold medal winner, 65-year-old diver Greg Louganis said his career was mismanaged and he needed the money that auctioning off some of his medals would get him.

“I have auctioned three of my medals, which sold, I believe, because I went against what the ‘experts’ told me last time when I tried the first time,” Louganis wrote in a surprising Facebook post.

Louganis sold two of his four gold medals, along with a silver medal, the New York Post reported. The high-diver won gold in the three-meter springboard and 10-meter platform dives at both the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

His silver came in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada, for the 10-meter platform dive.

Louganis’ medals took in a reported $437,000 combined, the Post reported.

“I told the truth; I needed the money. While many people may have built businesses and sold them for a profit, I had my medals, which I am grateful for,” Louganis continued.

In the same post, the retired Olympian said goodbye to his home, while selling/giving away his belongings before moving abroad.

RELATED: Trump wins: US Olympic Committee bans men from women’s sports

Greg Louganis competes in the Men’s 10-meter platform competition at McDonald’s Olympic Swim Stadium at the 1984 Summer Olympics, August 11, 1984. Photo by Rob Brown /Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

“I decided to donate, sell what can be sold, give gifts, and give where things might be needed or appreciated,” Louganis explained, revealing that he had a lot to consider regarding shipping and import fees when moving.

Now calling Panama home, the former diver was forced to confront the idea that he would be lacking in possessions when he moved, but he kept friends in mind who had lost their homes in some of California’s wildfires, such as the Pacific Palisades fire in 2025 and the Woolsey Fire in 2018.

While Louganis’ remarks left questions unanswered, including why Panama was the destination of choice, he chalked up his future to needing a spiritual journey to redefine himself.

RELATED: Western Michigan sparks controversy with Arabic jersey during NCAA college football kickoff

Greg Louganis attends the Los Angeles premiere of ‘Strange Darling’ at DGA Theater Complex on August 19, 2024, in Los Angeles. Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images

“Now I get to discover who is Greg Louganis? Without the distraction and noise from outside. At least this is my goal, and hey, I may not find that,” he wrote.

The Olympian added, “I think I may find it at times, in moments, my goal is to live it! Discover, allow, and nurture that human spirit through the experiences of life. To be joyful in the moments, embrace the grief, the anger, and the laughter, and embrace it all, feel it all in this experience we call our lives.”

In addition to his Olympic medals, Louganis won 11 more gold medals between the World Championships and Pan American Games from 1979 to 1986.

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​Fearless, Olympics, Seoul, Korea, 1980s, Los angeles, Summer games, High diving, Diving, Palisades, California, Olympian, Panama, Sports 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) said on Tuesday that the real reason why his city had a Labor Day weekend filled with shootings and other crimes is because Republican-run states have more gun rights than Illinois.

Johnson made his remarks after President Donald Trump confirmed that he will be sending National Guardsmen and federal law enforcement into Chicago to lower the city’s crime rate.

‘Chicago will continue to have a “violence problem” as long as Red states continue to have a gun problem.’

“We’re going in. I didn’t say when. We’re going in. … This isn’t a political thing. I have an obligation. When 20 people are killed over the last two and a half weeks, and 75 are shot with bullets,” Trump said, pointing to how his deployment of personnel to Washington, D.C., has made the city safer.

Johnson and Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) have repeatedly said they do not want the extra help to address crime.

“Chicago will continue to have a ‘violence problem’ as long as Red states continue to have a gun problem,” Johnson reiterated on X. “The endless flow of illegal guns into Chicago can be traced to Red states like Mississippi, Indiana, and Louisiana. It is up to the federal government to step up and stop interstate gun trafficking networks.”

RELATED: ‘That is an outright lie!’ Chicago pastor rips into Democrats over crime

— (@)

Johnson said the “vast majority” of firearms used in crimes do not come from Chicago. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Firearms Trace Data for 2023, at 9,147, Illinois was the number-one source state of guns that were recovered. Indiana was number two at 2,796.

Johnson rallied protesters on Labor Day, telling the cheering crowd, “Are you prepared to defend this land? This land that [was] built by slaves. The land that was built by indigenous people. The land that was built by workers. Are you prepared to defend this land? I need you all to stand firm, to stand strong, if this president decides to continue to break this Constitution.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed on Sunday that extra immigration agents will be sent to the sanctuary city in a manner similar to what has been happening in Los Angeles, using U.S. Border Patrol agents.

RELATED: Federal judge says Trump unlawfully sent military troops into Los Angeles

— (@)

It remains to be seen where National Guardsmen will placed in Chicago after they are deployed there. Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez (D) suggested that the soldiers protect the tourist areas of the city so that Chicago police can go back to patrolling other areas of the city that have higher crime rates.

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​Politics 

During a Wednesday speech at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, D.C., border czar Tom Homan outlined the Trump administration’s success regarding immigration enforcement.

‘I said two months ago, “We’re going to flood the zone,” and that’s exactly what we’re doing.’

Homan explained that President Donald Trump gave him three tasks as border czar: secure the border, run a mass deportation operation, and find missing unaccompanied migrant minors.

“We have the most secure border in the history of the nation,” he stated, giving credit to the president and Border Patrol agents. “Illegal immigration is down 96%.”

Trump’s success with the border proves that the Biden administration “unsecured the most secure border on purpose,” Homan declared.

“It wasn’t mismanagement. It wasn’t incompetence. It was by design,” he added.

RELATED: National conservatism is the revolt forgotten Americans need

Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Homan stated that Trump’s border policies have saved thousands of lives by reducing human trafficking, drug trafficking, and sexual assaults.

“They always say the Trump administration is inhumane,” he continued. “I’m a racist, supposedly. I’m a white nationalist. I read it all. I’m a terrorist.”

“Whatever you want to call me. I don’t give a s**t what people think about me, never have,” Homan remarked.

He explained that under Biden’s open border policies, a historic number of immigrants died making the journey to the U.S., hundreds of thousands of Americans died from fentanyl, sex trafficking was at an all-time high, and cartels prospered.

RELATED: Trump prepares massive immigration enforcement in sanctuary city

Border czar Tom Homan. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Homan also addressed sanctuary cities that are attempting to shield illegal aliens from federal immigration officials.

“I said two months ago, ‘We’re going to flood the zone,’ and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” he stated. “In Chicago, it’s coming.”

“President Trump is going to make Chicago safe again,” Homan declared.

The Trump administration is reportedly planning a massive operation in Chicago that will involve 200 Department of Homeland Security agents and the use of the Naval Station Great Lakes.

“President Trump has been clear: We are going to make our streets and cities safe again,” a senior DHS official previously told Blaze News. “Across the country, DHS law enforcement are arresting and removing the worst of worst, including gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and rapists that have terrorized American communities. Under Secretary Noem, ICE and CBP are working overtime to deliver on the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe again.”

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​News, Tom homan, Illegal immigration crisis, Illegal immigration, Immigration crisis, Immigration, Deportations, Trump administration, Trump admin, Donald trump, Trump, Border, Politics 

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump broke free of his usual pro-COVID vaccine sentiment and appeared to openly question pharmaceutical companies in a post on Truth Social.

“It is very important that the Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs. Many people think they are a miracle that saved millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW,” Trump began in his post.

“I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public. Why not??? They go off to the next ‘hunt’ and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC, trying to figure out the success or failure of the Drug Companies Covid work,” he continued.

“I want them to show them NOW to the CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!! I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???” he added.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention insider Dr. Robert Malone, who’s been on the front lines of the vaccine fight ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, has his own thoughts on the matter.

“In public health, I don’t think that we’ve ever had a period of time, a window of time, in which the underlying culture and a lot of the established conceptions of particularly the vaccine sector being challenged so actively,” Malone tells BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler in response to Trump’s post on “The Liz Wheeler Show.”

But the COVID vaccine isn’t even close to the only one that Trump should be questioning.

“There is a culture, and it really has earned the name of the term, being a cabal. There is a culture, an obsessive culture of vaccination. And let’s be real here. Vaccines are just another pharmaceutical. That’s all they are. They are not a magic bullet that cures all infectious disease,” Malone tells Wheeler.

“Influenza vaccination is something like less, well less than 50% effective. Sometimes it’s almost down in the single digit,” he continues.

However, the “experts” refuse to acknowledge this.

“They act as if they are untouchable, that their determinations are God’s truth and shall not be questioned,” Malone tells Wheeler, adding, “This is scientism.”

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​Upload, Sharing, Video phone, Camera phone, Free, Video, Youtube.com, The liz wheeler show, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Liz wheeler, Dr robert malone, President trump, President donald trump, Covid vaccine, Covid 19, Robert malone, Pfizer, Moderna, Truth social 

Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino attempted, and failed, to erase Highway America’s beloved country store. Masino’s doomed endeavor is just the latest example of refinement culture’s steamrolling homogeneity, but this felt different, somehow much worse, than previous flattenings of consumer couture. Cracker Barrel’s eccentricities and nostalgia kitsch turned a remodel into a reckoning.

Of course, the woke Millennialification is cringe-inducing. However, this is not the first overhaul of an established chain with pop culture power. Previous iterations of Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut also invoke nostalgia, with images from the 1990s and early aughts making the rounds online once a season or so. Cracker Barrel, clearly, had a different pull. In practical terms, it has always been a sit-down-first experience, but the backlash runs deeper than that.

The logo may have been salvaged, but if interior remodels continue apace, your roadside retreat will become a hospice grab-and-go.

Founded in 1969 as a purposefully nostalgic endeavor, the Cracker Barrel project set out from the get-go to tug on your heartstrings. It evoked a bucolic America already gone by, the decor a launching point for older relatives to spin yarns about the good old days. Pizza Hut nostalgia is down simply to a decade of construction and the passage of time.

Cracker Barrel’s true uniqueness is its emphasis on an ambience that says “stay,” inviting customers to settle in and reminisce. Whether you were playing the peg game over butter and biscuits or rifling through the wooden toy and Weasel Ball aisle, Cracker Barrel never motioned toward the door. Cozy and familiar, Cracker Barrel invited you into the tangible world of things: clutter, knickknacks, antiques, wood, gas lamps, and farm equipment. The walls were heavy. Stone hearths anchored every dining room. The Barrel presented itself as a destination, as the American grandparent par excellence, a barn-den of earthly delights.

Contrast this with the new interior. The tyranny of gray, of symmetry and 90-degree angles, becomes omnipresent. It is profoundly soulless: rolling pins arranged in perfect squares and sequence, kettles in fluorescent color affixed exactly upright in rows on bland canvas displays. In essence, Cracker Barrel’s simulacrum of a country home is abstracted even farther into its most literal parts and parcels, calling to mind cooking blog thumbnails and pallid pop art. It points toward the digital, to the representative over the real, and even worse, it pushes the consumer toward the exit. It seems to say “get in and get out.”

RELATED: Why Cracker Barrel’s disastrous rebrand was inevitable

Photo by Joe Raedle / Contributor via Getty Images

The digital is fundamentally temporary, the way in which we interact with essays, short-form video content, tweets, and the rest. The sign of this is the gray, the sleek, nostalgic props rendered in perfect lines like typeface, all blaring with the same refrain: EXIT. They’re razing the physical and replacing it with a digital reconstruction.

Everything is an airport. Everyone, everywhere, wants you out as soon as you walk in. The restful, the physical are stripped away in order to sap the hearth of its heat so you never get comfortable enough to stay. There is nowhere to stop and wait for a while. You have to keep moving, racing through a world of commodities blurring together into one long strand of gruel.

The last redoubt of color and clutter, Cracker Barrel is now just another franchise, flattened and homogenized. The logo may have been salvaged, but if interior remodels continue apace, your roadside retreat will become a hospice grab-and-go.

We still crave slivers of the real, of invitation and warmth, of the physical world. We desire escape from our escapes, entry into the real and exit from the digital. Cracker Barrel’s rebrand discarded the pleasant lie of highway stopover as home away from home. Venues will increasingly resemble the virtual as comfort food becomes uncomfortable.

​Culture, Cracker barrel 

National conservatism is an idea whose time has arrived. The battle for our future is not between democracy and autocracy, capitalism and socialism, or even “right” and “left,” in the old meaning of those terms. It is between the nation and the forces that would erase it.

For decades, many in power — not just here, but across the West — have been locked in a cultural war with their own nations. We see it across Europe today, where the immigration crisis threatens to transform the ancient fabric of those nations — and an increasingly totalitarian censorship state menaces all who object. America, too, is threatened by these elites, driven by the same interests and ambitions.

Settled, founded, and built by the most adventurous and courageous sons and daughters of the West, America realized the destiny of Western civilization.

They are the elites who rule everywhere but are not truly from anywhere. National conservatism is a revolt against this fundamentally post-American ruling class.

Revolt on the right

This revolt is from the right — but also within the right. For too long, conservatives were content to serve as the right wing of the regime. They waged foreign wars in the name of global “liberalism” and “democracy.” They rewrote our trade policies in service of global capital. They supported amnesty and mass migration.

The Washington Consensus was a bipartisan affair. Until President Trump, the mainstream right quibbled over the left’s means but hardly ever challenged its ends. Conservatives cheered intervention after intervention — not to defend America’s national interests, but to pursue the Wilsonian fantasy of a “world safe for democracy.”

They backed the North American Free Trade Agreement and welcomed China into the World Trade Organization, not because it was good for American workers, but because it served the vision of a borderless marketplace. On immigration, the old conservative establishment may have opposed illegality on procedural grounds, but it took no issue with the substance. If the same end were achieved “legally,” many celebrated it.

At this point, it should be clear that the fact that the government sanctions something does not mean it’s good for our country.

Immigration and the American worker

For decades, we were told “high-skilled immigration” was an urgent necessity. The H-1B visa, for example, was sold as a way to keep America competitive. But programs like H-1B have imported a vast labor force not to fill jobs Americans can’t or won’t do, but to undercut American wages, replace American workers, and transfer industries into the hands of foreign lobbyists.

Millions of foreign nationals were funneled in to take the jobs and futures that should belong to our children — not because they were more talented, but because they were cheaper and more compliant. While trade agreements kneecapped blue-collar workers, abuse of H-1B is kneecapping white-collar workers before our eyes.

For tens of thousands of Americans forced to train their foreign replacements just to get severance, the fact it was “legal” is little comfort.

A nation, not just an idea

For decades, the left and the right alike seemed to accept the idea that America was merely an “idea.” President Bill Clinton said in 1998 that immigration proved America was “not so much a place as a promise.”

But America is not just a proposition. Our founding principles are rooted in a people and a way of life. Take a trip to rural Missouri, and you’ll see that the Second Amendment is not a theory. It’s who they are. If you imposed a carbon copy of the U.S. Constitution on Kazakhstan tomorrow, Kazakhstan would not become America.

What makes America exceptional is not only our commitment to self-government, but also that we, as a people, are capable of living it. The left drained our principles of their substance, turning the American tradition into an ideological creed that demanded transformation of the nation itself. So the statues come down. The names are changed. Yesterday’s heroes become today’s villains.

On the right, too many accepted this worldview. Neoconservatives spoke as if the whole world were Americans-in-waiting. America, they said, was “the first universal nation.”

RELATED: They won’t admit it: Why Trump’s agenda is guided by a higher calling

Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump rejected this. He knew America was not just an idea but a nation and a people. His movement is the revolt of the real American nation — a pitchfork revolution, driven by millions of Americans who felt like strangers in their own country.

They were the forgotten men and women, mocked as “deplorables,” sneered at as “bitter clingers,” but still loyal to their nation. In Trump’s defiance, they heard their own. In 2016, they discovered millions more felt the same way.

It is their interests, their values, their lives that the American right must defend, without apology, if it wants a future.

Our birthright

The Pilgrims at Plymouth, the Continental Army soldiers at Valley Forge, the pioneers of Missouri — they did not fight for a proposition. They believed they were establishing a homeland. America is their gift to us. It belongs to us. It is our birthright, our heritage, our destiny.

If America is everything and everyone, it is nothing and no one. But America is real, distinctive, unique — the most essentially Western nation. Settled, founded, and built by the most adventurous and courageous sons and daughters of the West, America realized the destiny of Western civilization.

For decades, elites tried to turn our past into a repressed memory. But we are done being ashamed.

That spirit explains why Americans mapped the genome, invented the microchip, built the airplane, and planted footprints on the moon. We are the nation of explorers, builders, and pioneers.

Yet for some time now, we’ve been taught to be ashamed. The left says our curiosity and ambition were sins. But the American frontier was not a crime. It was an expression of our pioneer spirit — a spirit that raised cities, cured diseases, explored galaxies, and forged new worlds.

We’re not sorry. America is the proudest and most magnificent heritage ever known to man.

No more shame

On July 4, 2020, as riots raged, President Trump stood at Mount Rushmore and declared: “This monument will never be desecrated.” Mount Rushmore is who we are. Americans carved the faces of heroes into a mountain — not out of necessity, but because they could.

For decades, elites tried to turn our past into a repressed memory. They made shame our civic religion. But we are done being ashamed. We love our country, and we will never apologize for the great men who built it.

RELATED: Rekindling statesmanship to secure America’s golden future

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

To transform a nation, you must transform the way it understands itself. That’s why the left tears down statues, rewrites language, and mocks traditions. It wants a new America with new myths. But America does not belong to the left. It belongs to us.

This fight is about whether our children will have a country to call their own. It’s about whether America will remain what she was meant to be: the apex and vanguard of Western civilization.

A strong, sovereign nation — not just an idea, but a home, belonging to a people, bound together by a common past and a shared destiny.

Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from a speech delivered on Tuesday, September 2, at the fifth National Conservatism Conference (NatCon 5) in Washington, D.C.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, National conservatism, National conservative conference, Senator eric schmitt, American heritage, Immigration crisis, Citizenship, Mount rushmore, The left 

A major charity providing healthy food to vulnerable seniors has had to close two sites in its home base of Portland, Oregon, mainly on account of crime.

Earlier this summer, Meals on Wheels People, linked to the national organization Meals on Wheels America, closed its Hillsboro and Elm Court Center locations. While Hillsboro closed because of low site traffic, the Elm Court site in downtown was no longer safe, CEO Suzanne Washington indicated.

‘If you’re out here by yourself, don’t come out here at night.’

“We couldn’t guarantee the safety of our staff and our volunteers. We’ve had many issues with drug dealing, threats of violence, and safety issues around needles and defecation,” Washington said, according to KPTV.

“Every day, they’re stepping over feces, and there’s needles and drug dealing and deaths,” she added, according to KOIN.

On at least one occasion, MOWP personnel had to step over a dead body to enter the Elm Court site. “We’ve been threatened with knives, and fires have been set,” she claimed. “It was time to close.”

Residents confirmed that crime and drug-use have become major problems in the area. Sean Meece, who rents an apartment above the shuttered Elm Court site and who used to dine there, said, “If you’re out here by yourself, don’t come out here at night. Because within a mile or two-mile radius, it’s not a fun place to be by yourself.”

The Elm Court location opened in 2007 and served more than 300 clients. Though the site stopped providing in-person dining during the government-imposed COVID lockdowns, it had still been used as a distribution center for staff and volunteers to pick up food to deliver to seniors in need.

“We got to the point where we were paying for space for congregate dining, but we couldn’t use it because people were afraid to come in,” Washington said.

Meals on Wheels America declined to comment on the specific situation affecting Meals on Wheels People, but it did provide Blaze News with the following statement:

Meals on Wheels providers across the country are having to make really tough choices every day given rising demand and inadequate funding. One in three Meals on Wheels providers has a waitlist while COVID-19 emergency funding has dried up. Meals on Wheels is proven to be the most effective solution to senior hunger and isolation, but the network of community-based providers needs more resources to ensure everyone who needs these services gets it.

RELATED: Woke Portland DA pushes for reduced sentences for violent offenders, including murderer, on his way out of office

aquaArts studio/Getty Images

While Washington and her team considered finding an alternative location, they ultimately decided to save the cost. “Instead of paying for someplace else, we want to keep people fed,” she said.

Washington noted that some of the COVID-era federal funding has since expired, and with further federal cuts looming on the horizon, MOWP has slashed more than $1 million from its 2025-26 budget.

“One of the things we’re trying to do is make sure the money we do have is going to feed people, not to pay overhead,” she explained.

So far, the new MOWP budgeting plans have worked. Despite increased demand, MOWP has continued to provide meals without waitlisting anyone.

Still, Washington added, MOWP is ever in need of donations and volunteers. “We do need help, we need it every year,” she said.

“Whether the Medicaid cuts impact us today or tomorrow, we need funding now to feed the seniors who are coming to us for help.”

H/T: The Daily Mail

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​Meals on wheels, Meals on wheels people, Crime, Portland, Oregon, Politics 

While the White House has tried to move past the Epstein files, some Republicans are reigniting the pressure campaign for transparency.

The commotion surrounding the Epstein files largely subsided in early August after Congress left Washington, D.C., for its annual five-week recess. Now that the Hill is back in full force, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky is once again leading the charge to release the Epstein files.

‘They’re threatening anyone who helps bring true transparency.’

Massie filed a discharge petition on Tuesday as soon as Congress came back into session. The discharge petition, should it reach at least 218 signatures, would force a vote on his bill to make public all Epstein-related materials with minimal redactions.

Although Massie’s petition has gained traction with Democrats, a White House official warned Republicans that signing on to the petition would be viewed as a “hostile act” by the administration.

RELATED: Thomas Massie leads pressure campaign, forcing Congress to address Epstein

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

“Helping Thomas Massie and liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the Oversight Committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration,” the official said in an email to NBC.

Within two hours of Massie’s filing, the petition secured the backing of 131 Democrats and three Republicans: Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Assuming all 212 Democrats back Massie’s petition, he will need six Republicans besides himself to meet the 218 signature threshold.

“I’m committed to doing everything possible for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein,” Greene said in a post on X. “Including exposing the cabal of rich and powerful elites that enabled this.”

RELATED: FBI, DOJ Epstein memo sparks right-wing outrage: ‘Nobody is believing this’

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“They’re threatening anyone who helps bring true transparency and justice for the survivors,” Massie said in a post on X. “This is a tacit admission the Oversight Committee data release is woefully incomplete.”

The data release Massie is referring to came from the House Oversight Committee Tuesday afternoon and includes over 33,000 Epstein-related documents that were made publicly available.

“As a survivor, I stand with victims demanding justice and full transparency,” Mace said in a post on X. “I also just signed the discharge petition to ensure the full truth comes out.”

House Republicans also scheduled a vote later in the week to allow the House Oversight Committee to “continue its ongoing investigation” into the government’s “possible mismanagement” of the Epstein case. Massie pushed back, calling it a “meaningless vote” meant to provide “political cover” for politicians who don’t want to support his bill.

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​Marjorie taylor greene, Thomas massie, Nancy mace, Lauren boebert, White house, Donald trump, Trump administration, House republicans, Congress, Epstein files, House oversight committee, House democrats, Epstein victims, Politics 

A University of Kentucky cheerleader has been arrested for hiding her dead infant inside a closet, according to police.

Laken Snelling, 21, is accused of wrapping her dead infant in a towel, placing it in a trash bag, and stashing the baby’s body in a closet to conceal the recent birth, authorities said.

Snelling posted a $100,000 bond and is now on ‘home incarceration with no ankle monitor.’

The city of Lexington issued a statement saying police officers were dispatched on a report of an unresponsive infant around 10:30 a.m. Aug. 27.

“When officers arrived, they located an infant that was pronounced deceased at the scene,” authorities stated.

The Fayette County Coroner’s Office is investigating the infant’s cause of death.

Investigators with the Lexington Police Department identified Snelling as the mother of the dead baby.

Citing the arrest citation, WLEX-TV reported that investigators interviewed Snelling and that she “admitted to giving birth.”

Snelling “admitted to concealing the birth by cleaning any evidence, placing all cleaning items used inside of a black trash bag, including the infant, who was wrapped in a towel,” the arrest citation said.

RELATED: Mother confesses to killing her newborn because of ‘expenses,’ enlisting daughter to help dispose of baby still crying inside trash bag: Prosecutor

Police arrested Snelling on Sunday and booked her at the Fayette County Detention Center. Police said she was charged with abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and concealing the birth of an infant.

WLEX, citing a court document, said in a Tuesday update that Snelling posted a $100,000 bond and is now on “home incarceration with no ankle monitor.” It’s not clear exactly when she posted the bond.

The station, citing the document, added that Snelling is “to live with parents.” WLEX also said Snelling reportedly entered a not guilty plea and is scheduled for a Sept. 26 court appearance.

The Lexington Police Department’s Special Victims Section is investigating the infant’s death.

NBC News reported that Snelling has been a “member of the competitive cheer stunt team” at the university and that it was “not clear” if she has a lawyer.

RELATED: Florida woman allegedly tried to sell baby daughter for $500 outside an H&R Block, then abandoned infant

Photo by benedek via iStock / Getty Images Plus

The university told WLEX in a statement, “We can confirm that she has been a member of the STUNT team for the last three seasons. All other questions should be directed to the Lexington Police.”

University of Kentucky Athletics describes STUNT as “a head-to-head competition between two teams that focuses on the technical and athletic aspects of cheer. It is one of the fastest-growing female sports in the United States.”

Snelling on Tuesday afternoon was still listed on the school’s STUNT roster.

Police are urging anyone with information regarding the case to contact the Lexington Police Department at 859-258-3600 or submit anonymous tips to Bluegrass Crime Stoppers by calling 859-253-2020 or online at bluegrasscrimestoppers.com.

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​Kentucky, Kentucky crime, Infanticide, Laken snelling, University of kentucky, Stunt team, Crime, Student, Abuse of a corpse charge, Tampering with physical evidence charge, Concealing the birth of an infant charge 

Nathalie Rose Jones of Lafayette, Indiana, was arrested in Washington, D.C., last month for allegedly threatening to kill President Donald Trump and transmitting threats across state lines.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C., indicated that “justice will be served”; however, an Obama judge and a grand jury comprising Washington residents evidently had other plans.

‘The government may intend to try again to obtain an indictment, but the evidence has not changed.’

U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg, whom Attorney General Pam Bondi slapped in July with a misconduct complaint “for making improper public comments about President Trump and his administration,” overruled a magistrate judge last week and ordered Jones’ release.

Boasberg told Jones, who recently participated in an anti-Trump protest outside the White House, to drive to New York City and meet with her psychiatrist.

Jones’ attorneys revealed in a Monday court filing that a D.C. grand jury declined to indict her.

“The Honorable James E. Boasberg reversed the detention order on August 25, 2025, and released Ms. Jones to home detention,” wrote the attorneys. “One of the factors the court considered in determining the conditions of release was the nature of the case and the weight of the evidence. A grand jury has now found no probable cause to indict Ms. Jones on the charged offenses.”

“Given that finding, the weight of the evidence is weak,” continued the attorneys. “The government may intend to try again to obtain an indictment, but the evidence has not changed and no indictment is likely.”

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

Judge James Boasberg. Photo by DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images

The Department of Justice noted that among the 49-year-old woman’s many alleged threats against the president was a statement on social media indicating a willingness to “sacrificially kill this POTUS by disemboweling him and cutting out his trachea.”

Prosecutors claimed that Jones — who a friend indicated in a character reference had spent some time in the Army Reserve — also said she “would take the president’s life and would kill him at ‘the compound’ if she had to, that she had a ‘bladed object,’ which she said was the weapon she would use to ‘carry out her mission of killing’ the president, and that she wanted to ‘avenge all the lives lost during the COVID-19 pandemic,’ which she attributed to President Trump’s administration and its position on vaccinations.”

In recent years, others have been indicted and ultimately convicted for far less graphic threats against Democrat presidents.

‘The system here is broken on many levels.’

On Thursday, 20-year-old Troy Kelly of New York was convicted for threatening former President Joe Biden. Kelly said in response to a Biden post on social media that he was “gonna put a bullet in your head if I ever catch you.”

Cody McCormick of Kansas was sentenced last year to nearly two years in prison for writing, “I will get a Greyhound bus ticket and go and shoot him,” in reference to Biden.

Brandon Correa was sentenced in 2015 to 18 months in prison for posting a social media message directed to former President Barack Obama that said, “Im [sic] coming to watch you die.”

RELATED: Online outrage erupts over video of illegal alien’s arrest in DC — then the horrific charges against him are revealed

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Pirro said in a statement to Fox News, “A Washington, D.C., grand jury refused to indict someone who threatened to kill the president of the United States. Her intent was clear, traveling through five states to do so.”

“She even confirmed the same to the U.S. Secret Service. This is the essence of a politicized jury. The system here is broken on many levels,” continued Pirro. “Instead of the outrage that should be engendered by a specific threat to kill the president, the grand jury in D.C. refuses to even let the judicial process begin. Justice should not depend on politics.”

‘I’m going to f**k your ass up.’

Blaze News has reached out to Pirro’s office for additional comment as well as to the White House and the U.S. Secret Service. When pressed for comment, the USSS referred Blaze News to Pirro’s office.

D.C. residents have repeatedly signaled an unwillingness to hold accountable those who allegedly threaten Trump or attack the federal agents keeping their city safe.

DOJ prosecutors recently told a magistrate judge that a grand jury also refused to indict Edward Alexander Dana, who is similarly accused of threatening President Trump, reported the Associated Press.

D.C. police responding to a report of destruction at a restaurant in the northwest of the city arrested Dana on Aug. 17. According to the U.S. Secret Service’s affidavit in support of a criminal complaint, Dana allegedly told an officer wearing a body camera that he was affiliated with the Russian mafia and said, “I’m going to find out who you are, where you live, who you’re married to, if any. … I’m going to make sure that many people, not just me, come after you. … I’m going to f**k your ass up.”

The affidavit indicated that Dana then proceeded to threaten Trump’s life, allegedly stating, “I’m not going to tolerate fascism. You see, I was adopted [inaudible] to protect the Constitution by any means necessary. And that means killing you, Officer, killing the president, killing anyone who stands in the way of our Constitution.”

D.C. grand juries also recently refused to indict:

Alvin Summers, an individual accused of fleeing from a U.S. Park Police officer who asked to see his identification, then assaulting the officer during a subsequent arrest attempt; Sidney Lori Reid, a D.C. resident charged in July with an alleged assault on an FBI agent who was assisting with the transfer of an alleged international gang member at the D.C. Central Detention Facility; and Sean Dunn, the former DOJ employee who was caught on video allegedly throwing a submarine sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer on Aug. 10.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Washington, Dc, District of columbia, Grand jury, Grand juries, Pirro, Donald trump, Secret service, Trump, Assassination, Threats, Threat, Politics 

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform kicked off its series of high-profile subpoena hearings last month with former Attorney General Bill Barr, who investigated the suspicious death of Jeffrey Epstein. Tuesday, however, former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s hearing ran into an unexpected hitch, leading to its cancellation.

Mueller, who became the FBI director shortly before the September 11 attacks and resigned in 2013, was reportedly diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease four years ago.

‘We’ve learned that Mr. Mueller has health issues that preclude him from being able to testify.’

The AP reported that the committee withdrew its subpoena of Mueller, citing the state of his health.

“We’ve learned that Mr. Mueller has health issues that preclude him from being able to testify. The committee has withdrawn its subpoena,” a committee aide told CBS News earlier this week.

RELATED: Former AG Bill Barr testifies he found no dirt on Trump during Epstein probe, Comer says

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

“Bob was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the summer of 2021,” Robert Mueller’s family said in a statement to the New York Times on Sunday. “He retired from the practice of law at the end of that year. He taught at his law school alma mater during the fall of both 2021 and 2022, and he retired at the end of 2022. His family asks that his privacy be respected.”

Suspicions that Mueller’s health was declining have been aired since at least 2019, when he gave a “halting performance” during a hearing on the Russia investigation, according to the New York Times. During a key meeting to discuss the findings of the investigation, Mueller’s hands “were trembling” and his voice was “tremulous,” Barr wrote in a memoir published in 2022.

In a cover letter addressed to Mueller on August 5, Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) explained the reasoning behind the subpoena issued on July 23, 2025. The committee sought information that members believed Mueller may have regarding the investigation into Epstein. “Because you were FBI Director during the time when Mr. Epstein was under investigation by the FBI, the Committee believes that you possess knowledge and information relevant to its investigation.”

The subpoena hearing was set for September 2, 2025.

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​Politics, House committee on oversight and government reform, James comer, Bill barr, Jeffrey epstein, Robert mueller, Former fbi director robert mueller, Chairman james comer 

As news of the beloved old country store Cracker Barrel’s “woke” makeover went viral, Americans across the country voiced their disappointment — and even President Donald Trump weighed in.

“Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll), and manage the company better than ever before. They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social.

“Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity. Have a major News Conference today. Make Cracker Barrel a WINNER again. Remember, in just a short period of time I made the United States of America the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World. One year ago, it was ‘DEAD.’ Good luck!”

Despite the obvious backlash, Cracker Barrel’s new CEO doesn’t seem to notice.

“Honestly, the feedback’s been overwhelmingly positive, that people like what we’re doing,” the CEO said on ABC News.

“I’m sorry,” BlazeTV host Jill Savage tells BlazeTV host Steve Deace on the “Steve Deace Show.” “You don’t have to be, like, a genius. You had to be online for about three minutes and you would know that people were making fun of this rollout on both sides of the aisle.”

Savage believes the new design choice reflects a larger agenda for a “soulless America.”

“They want, like, fashion trends that absolutely everybody follows and doing things that everybody else does. And that, to me, is the Soviet trend,” she explains.

“They’re trying to put this into a box that’s just like everything else. Don’t be exceptional. Don’t be yourselves. Don’t be unique. Just be like everything else,” she adds.

“So conformity over ingenuity is what you see,” Deace comments.

“Yep, absolutely,” Savage adds.

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Plenty of alternative takes on history circulate on the American right today. How did World War II really begin? Who were America’s true allies, and who were the enemies — foreign and domestic? These are serious questions, and some counter-narratives raise valuable points. But many of them belong in the advanced section. Before you dive into them, you need a grasp of the basics.

The left has long had this problem. For its adherents and especially its new recruits, woke history is the only history. Nothing fuels leftists’ superiority complex more than tossing around facts that appear to shatter common assumptions — if you don’t know the rest of the story. The right is only just beginning to learn that game.

You need to read these histories that challenge the national narrative as interesting, with real and uncomfortable truths — but not as definitive texts.

On the left, historians like Howard Zinn, William Blum, and Noam Chomsky absolutely excel. Did you even know that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves?! Did you even know that the founding fathers were a bunch of rich white guys?! Did you even know we worked with former fascists against the communists when we rebuilt Europe?!?

All that is true! And these realities should inform a proper understanding of history. Held in a vacuum, however, they obscure the real story.

It’s tempting to hear things that pierce the basic histories we’ve learned and that question the proud narratives all countries build around their histories. But that special feeling of knowing something you weren’t taught in school can inflate the ego well beyond where it should go.

How many woke scholars “know” Christopher Columbus was a tyrannical rapist, but don’t know that entire counter-narrative is based on the writings of one man who wanted his job, which were not taken seriously in their day and are corroborated nowhere else?

How many woke scholars know enough about the lives of Jefferson and Washington, the realities of the world they lived in, and their substantial contributions to a society in which no man is a slave? How many of them know what the communists were doing in Europe, the realities of functioning governance on the ground, and why communist terrorists had to be fought? You’re not going to find that context in “A People’s History of the United States.”

Today, the American right is experiencing its own reckoning with history. For the first time, many patriotic Americans are open to dissident accounts that challenge the United States’ “hero story.” Younger conservatives in particular grew up under elites who dismissed that story outright, replacing it with the Zinn-Chomsky narrative taught as unquestioned truth.

They were told that whiteness is wicked, men are oppressors, masculinity is toxic, Christianity is tyrannical, and America itself is evil. At the same time, they were fed lie after lie about COVID, the deep state, and more. They are angry, and the internet now supplies them with historical alternatives that reinforce a conspiratorial worldview.

Some of this is healthy. My grandfather remembered when World War II propaganda dubbed Josef Stalin “Uncle Joe,” even as Soviet sympathizers burrowed into the State Department and the White House. They funneled Stalin aid while forcing Britain to bankrupt itself to pay for its own defense, hastening the empire’s collapse.

The trick is that you need to read these histories that challenge the national narrative as interesting, with real and uncomfortable truths — but not as definitive texts. Did we choose bad allies in the 20th century? Yes. Did we choose correct foes? That’s a mixed record. Did we make mistakes that ended up with half of Europe under Soviet domination? Absolutely. Could we have prevented that? Maybe, but only at incredible costs.

Could we have prevented the original destruction of Europe that resulted from World War I? Certainly not. Could we have gone back farther and stopped it all by staying out of that war? Probably not. Could we have made the French be nicer to the kaiser? Very unlikely. Should we have gotten involved at all? Depends on where and when.

Did we target the only Catholic cities in Japan for nuclear attack? Yes. Did we also kill vastly more people in Tokyo than either of those outlier cities? Yes. And on and on and on.

The punk band NOFX mocked their radical fans in the early 2000s with the lyrics: “I never looked around, never second-guessed / Then I read some Howard Zinn, now I’m always depressed / And now I can’t sleep from years of apathy, all because I read a little Noam Chomsky.”

The young conservatives of the day scoffed at these preening “academics” at a time when the American right bought the old narrative more fully than it should have. That day has passed. The regime, the left, and the internet all combined to blast our shared history to pieces — and there’s so much left to question.

Just don’t be stupid about it. Investigate the alternative takes, then place them into the broader context. And never stop learning.

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​Opinion & analysis, Politics 

A curious feature of American life is the belief that putting a man on the moon in 1969 was not merely a thing we did, but a thing that defined who we are. The moon landing became the fixed point in a national narrative of progress, the ultimate rebuttal to any subsequent doubt. If we can put a man on the moon, the refrain went, we can do any lesser thing. It was a statement of faith in a particular kind of American power, the fusion of technological genius and free-enterprise grit that could, it seemed, bend the arc of history. The phrase has since acquired a certain nostalgic patina, a relic from an era when the country could still muster that kind of singular, massive effort.

Now, the proposition is being tested.

The question of whether China will beat the United States back to the lunar surface is, on one level, a technical one, a ledger of rocket tests and budget allocations. Yet to frame it this way is to miss the point. The competition is not about launch windows or payload capacities but about the story America tells itself. A Chinese flag planted in the regolith of the lunar south pole before an American one would do more than mark a geopolitical achievement; it would be a blow to perceptions of American exceptionalism. The old refrain would hang in the air, suddenly hollow.

We are witnessing the formation of two distinct camps, exporting earthly rivalries to space.

The American effort, named Artemis after Apollo’s twin sister, is a program freighted with legacy and ambition. It relies on the Space Launch System, a behemoth of a rocket that flew a successful uncrewed test in 2022, but also shed foam insulation on its way up, a disquieting echo of the Columbia disaster. For the actual landing, NASA has outsourced the task to SpaceX, whose Starship is a fully reusable silver ship promising fantastically to deliver, not just astronauts, but the entire infrastructure of a settlement. It is a characteristically American bet on the power of the private sector, a leap of faith that has yet to achieve, as of mid-2025, a successful orbital flight. The official timeline for an American return has slipped from 2024 to 2026, and now, in the quiet admissions of internal reviews, to 2027, at the earliest.

China, meanwhile, proceeds with the calm of a nation that confidently measures progress in five-year plans. Its program lacks a poetic name but possesses an observable momentum. The hardware has a familiar, almost classical design: a Long March 10 rocket, a crew capsule named Mengzhou (“Dream Vessel”), and a lander called Lanyue (“Embracing the Moon”). The architecture is a direct echo of Apollo: a two-part lander with a command module in orbit. It is a repetition of a proven method, not a reinvention of it. While NASA contends with the uncertainties of Starship, China has been methodically hitting its marks. In August 2025, engineers successfully test-fired the first stage of its new rocket and simulated a lunar landing by hanging a 26-ton prototype from a crane. Its stated goal is to land taikonauts on the moon before 2030. At the current pace, they are likely to succeed.

This divergence in approach is telling. The United States is trying to innovate its way back to the moon, to do something bigger and more sustainable than before. China is simply trying to get there. One could argue this reflects a difference in governance models: the chaotic, brilliant, and often inconsistent engine of America versus the focused, centralized will of the Chinese state. While NASA’s budget is subject to the whims of Congress and shifting presidential priorities, a cycle of grand announcements and quiet cancellations that has plagued the agency for decades, China’s space program is integrated with its national and military ambitions, backed by pockets of undisclosed depth.

RELATED: China built a solar-powered back door into millions of American homes

Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe / Contributor via Getty Images

The geopolitical stakes extend beyond mere prestige. Both nations are aiming for the lunar south pole, where permanently shadowed craters are believed to hold vast quantities of water ice, the key resource for any sustained presence on the moon. The United States has attempted to shape the norms of this new frontier through the Artemis Accords, a set of principles for peaceful lunar exploration signed by over 35 nations. China and Russia are conspicuously absent, instead promoting their own coalition around an International Lunar Research Station. We are witnessing the formation of two distinct camps, exporting earthly rivalries to space. The nation that arrives first will not own the territory (the 1967 Outer Space Treaty forbids it), but it will enjoy the advantage of being there, setting precedents and controlling the most valuable real estate.

There are those who see a silver lining in this scenario. A Chinese landing could serve as a “Sputnik moment,” shocking the United States out of its complacency and galvanizing a new era of investment and innovation. It’s also possible that being second, but arriving with the revolutionary capability of Starship, could prove to be the more significant achievement in the long run. History may judge the establishment of a true lunar outpost as more important than the planting of the next flag.

Yet, the symbolism of that first footprint remains potent. For over half a century, the moon has belonged, in the popular imagination, to America. It was our “can-do” spirit made manifest. To see another nation achieve what we have struggled to repeat would be to confront a fundamental shift in the global order. It would suggest that the future is no longer a chiefly American enterprise. The race to the moon was never just about the moon. It was, and is, about the terrestrial anxieties and ambitions of the nations doing the racing. As we watch the trajectories of these two great powers, it is difficult to avoid the sense that we are witnessing not just the dawn of a new space age, but the twilight of an old one.

​Moon, Tech, China, Us 

Lisa Cook’s financial house is on fire. Naturally, there is a Michigan angle to the story. Because there’s always a Michigan angle to the story.

Cook, a governor with the Federal Reserve Bank, has a bank loan on a “secondary” home in Massachusetts, which the Trump administration alleges she rents out full-time. A judge might call that mortgage fraud.

There cannot be two sets of rules: one for the elites who scam their way into favorable financial terms and another for the rest of us.

Cook also owns a condo in Atlanta, which she claims is her primary residence on banking and government documents. The Trump administration alleges there is evidence that she rents that one out, too. And that also could be mortgage fraud.

But Cook also has a third home in Ann Arbor, which she also lists as her primary residence on banking and government papers. Lisa must be living in Ann Arbor in the tidy brick house with a columned portico on Jackson Avenue, right?

RELATED: Trump fires Biden Fed governor for possible ‘criminal conduct’ — but Lisa Cook is desperate to cling to power

– YouTube

I stopped by the house last week. The glass in the storm door was filthy with neglect. A metal lockbox — the kind used by realtors — hung on the door knob. From the porch, I could see a figure sitting at the dining room table. When I knocked, the door slightly cracked open, only to reveal a white man partially visible behind the filthy glass.

“I’m a reporter,” I told the figure, who did not undo the chain. “I was wondering if Lisa Cook lives here. Or do you rent?”

“No, we’re just renters here.” He made it clear he didn’t feel comfortable with a reporter on the deteriorating porch. “You’ll have to talk to the owner.”

“OK,” I said. “Is it you just living here?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Just renting?” I asked again.

“No comment.”

“I’m sorry?”

It was difficult to hear. The traffic was crackling like an old transistor radio. There was a bus stop nearby.

“You’ll have to talk to the owner of the house.”

And with that, the interview was over. The chain rattled. The door closed, and someone pulled the curtains tight.

It’s hard to believe Cook got confused over her mortgage paperwork. Cook is a financial sophisticate, a member of the board of governors of the world’s most powerful central bank. A bank that sets interest rates that influence the cost of financing a home, mind you.

All three mortgages were taken out by Cook in 2021, all within a timespan of two months, three weeks, and four days. In her 2025 government ethics filings, Cook claimed two of the properties are her primary residences and the Massachusetts dwelling is an income property.

That’s cheating. Trump fired her last week for “cause,” and two criminal referrals against Cook have been referred to the Department of Justice. For her part, Cook is suing over her firing.

Trump is accused of attacking a prominent black woman who refuses to lower interest rates as Trump has demanded.

Perhaps.

As far as my motivations go, I simply try to hold the powerful to account. When it comes to questions of residency and real estate, you may have seen me on the porches of two Detroit mayors, a current mayoral candidate, a county executive, a county commissioner, a supreme court justice, a circuit court judge, a district court judge, a member of Congress, a fire commissioner, a prominent minister, and a major political party treasurer, just to name but a dozen. These people were black, white, male, and female. Doesn’t matter to me.

We cannot have two sets of rules: one for the elites who scam their way into favorable financial terms and another for the rest of us who endure audits, foreclosures, and repossession.

Cook has three basic questions to answer:

Was she renting the properties when she was supposed to be sleeping at them?Did she claim rental income on her tax forms?And where does she actually live?

Because it sure the heck ain’t Ann Arbor.

Editor’s note: A version of article appeared originally in the Michigan Enjoyer.

​Politics, Charlie leduff, Lisa cook, Fed governor, Federal reserve, Ann arbor, Trump, Doj, Donald trump, Mortgage fraud 

When investigative journalist Gina Keating first dove into the Raven 23 case, she found something incredibly unexpected.

Under the Obama administration, the government — whom she initially trusted to do its job — alongside Hillary Clinton attempted to imprison a group of four American veterans by any means necessary in order to help guarantee that Iraq elect the president the American government wanted.

“You write, ‘Thanks to Wikileaks, we know that behind the scenes, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder pushed for convictions because of political pressure from a corrupt Iraqi government that they wanted to make appear legitimate,” Blaze media co-founder Glenn Beck reads to investigative journalist Gina Keating from her own book, “Raven 23.”

The official story went that Blackwater employees Dustin Heard, Paul Slough, Nick Slatten, and Evan Liberty fired “unprovoked” into a crowd of civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad. But the story was a lie.

“We didn’t know for sure that that’s what was going on until Christin Slough’s attorney, Dave Harrison, checked Wikileaks and found those emails between Hillary Clinton and, I think his name is Harold Koh, who was her chief legal counsel,” Keating tells Glenn.

“And it was literally the day after … the dismissal of the case was made public in Iraq. It was, I think, January 2 or 3. She immediately emailed him and said, ‘How can we make this case come back?’” she says.

“And that’s literally it. … So she did that, and then Joe Biden goes to Iraq about two weeks later and guarantees the Iraqis that, you know, they’re going to get justice. … The second most powerful man in the world is going on TV and saying essentially that you’re guilty and you got away with it,” she continues.

Through Keating’s investigation, she found that those four former servicemen had actually been fired on by insurgents and had engaged according to the rules of war — despite the government’s refusal to acknowledge the truth in favor of its own agenda.

“So, essentially,” Keating says, “American domestic policy and criminal justice is being decided by Nouri al-Maliki and the desire to have him as the prime minister of Iraq.”

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A man who was caught taking photos of children in a movie theater bathroom was discovered to be a middle school teacher, according to Virginia police.

Colonial Heights Police said they were called to the Regal Cinemas at Southpark Mall on July 22 on a report that a man was taking the photos of children. Shaun Jason Adams, 49, was arrested for child pornography after police viewed material on his phone.

Court documents said they messaged each other about sexually abusing children in their care.

Police said they found a “thread of sexually explicit messages about children” from the data on the phone, and that information led to the arrest of 33-year-old Richard Franklin Troshak III of Chesterfield County.

“Once, of course, we look at a phone, you start leading to where people have sent messages, sent pictures, and those are the ones that led to the other investigation,” said Gray Collins, attorney for the commonwealth of Colonial Heights.

Court documents said they messaged each other about sexually abusing children in their care.

Adams faces 25 counts of felony manufacturing of child pornography and five felony counts of indecent liberties with a child, while Troshak faces eight counts of felony manufacturing of child pornography and two felony counts of indecent liberties with a child.

Both Adams and Troshak worked for Chesterfield County Schools, the former for Elizabeth Davis Middle School and the latter for the Chesterfield Early Childhood Learning Academy.

Police said Troshak was arrested at the learning academy without incident.

Chesterfield Superintendent Dr. John Murray said he immediately ordered both to be terminated from the district.

The investigation also found that both men had previously worked at the Tuckaway day care. At least one message referenced abuse at the day care.

RELATED: Missing 12-year-old was killed by alligators — and records show horrific prior conviction against his mother

Petersburg Police Deputy Chief Emanuel Chambliss said a third investigation has opened up where Adams lived.

“If they recognize the teacher involved and suspect he might be involved in any activity here in the city, please contact us,” he said.

WRIC-TV reported that Troshak has been named the “Overall CCPS Beginning Teacher of the Year” just months before his arrest. The learning academy’s principal and assistant principal were placed on administrative leave, according to WRIC.

Collins went on to say that many times, victims and witnesses don’t want to come forward in these kinds of cases.

“Even if you don’t want to come forward in court, we still need to hear your story so we can make sure that this doesn’t happened again to other people,” he continued.

“We’ve done initial meetings with parents without the children present so we can go over the facts of what we’ve heard, what we know, and then they can make a more informed decision if they want to actually try to keep going forward with the charges,” Collins added.

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​Child sex abuse materials, Chesterfield teacher abuse, Troshak and adams, Crime, Day care child sex abuse 

Donald Trump’s base has reached a clear conclusion: The entire importation of white-collar workers from India was a scam. It replaced American workers, fueled outsourcing to India, and boosted its economy at the expense of our own.

The labor market is so weak that even legal visa programs should be suspended under Trump’s 212(f) authority. Yet the H-1B and L visa pipelines remain open, and worse, the Trump Justice Department is defending one of Obama’s most lawless expansions: the H-4 spousal work program.

Defending Obama’s H-4 visa scheme undermines both the law and the American workforce.

Save Jobs USA, representing American workers, has sued the government for continuing Obama’s program that grants work permits to H-1B spouses on H-4 visas. Congress authorized the H-4 visa, but it never authorized work permits. Obama simply created them in 2015 by executive fiat.

Because the program is untethered from statutory limits, it has no cap. While the U.S. still issues around 120,000 H-1B visas each year — including under Trump — hundreds of thousands of spouses now work illegally in the same industries, displacing Americans. Most are funneled into the tech sector, overwhelmingly from India.

This lawsuit has been winding through the courts for nearly a decade. It began after Southern California Edison fired American workers and replaced them with H-1B visa holders. Both district and appellate courts in D.C. sided with the government. Now, as the case reaches the Supreme Court, Trump’s Justice Department filed a brief — signed off by Pam Bondi — arguing that plaintiffs lack standing to sue.

“Petitioner did not identify a single member who is ‘suffering immediate or threatened injury’ that is fairly traceable to the 2015 rule,” government lawyers wrote last month.

Even if one debates the technicalities of standing, why would Bondi waste resources defending a program that is plainly illegal and harmful to American workers — the opposite of what Trump promised in 2015?

A broader failure on foreign labor

Seven months into the new administration, the broader picture looks grim. The White House has failed to slow worker visa programs outside of narrow national security concerns. Trump has not invoked his 212(f) authority to halt needless foreign labor. Instead, he has floated the idea of importing 600,000 Chinese students — an economic and national security risk rolled into one.

This is the worst possible time to flood the market with foreign workers. The economy has averaged just 35,000 new jobs a month, the weakest pace since the Great Recession. Entry-level job listings are down 15% while applications are up 30%. The class of 2024 is still struggling: 41% underemployed, 58% still searching.

Tech companies, meanwhile, continue layoffs by the tens of thousands this year even as they lobby for more H-1Bs:

Intel: 21,000Panasonic: 10,000Meta: 3,600Hewlett-Packard: 2,000Hewlett Packard Enterprise: 2,500IBM: 8,000PayPal: 2,500Dell: 12,500TCS: 12,000

Why would they seek more visas in the middle of layoffs? Because nearly half of H-1Bs go to outsourcing and staffing firms, which feed India’s tech industry while hollowing out our own. Each expansion of the visa pipeline means more outsourcing, not more prosperity for Americans.

RELATED: American universities should be for Americans

Blaze Media illustration

The corporate capture

The deeper problem is the growing partnership between this administration and multinational tech giants. The government even owns a 10% equity stake in Intel. Palantir, which holds sensitive defense and health databases, has been allowed to staff up with foreign workers who now handle American taxpayers’ critical data.

Against this backdrop, Bondi’s defense of Obama’s illegal spousal work program looks less like a legal technicality and more like a political signal: This administration is drifting from Trump’s 2015 America First promises and closer to the “America Last” priorities of multinational corporations.

Back to 2015’s warning

The case against foreign workers is even stronger now than when Trump rode down that golden escalator a decade ago. The economy is weaker, the job market tighter, and the outsourcing racket more blatant. Defending Obama’s H-4 visa scheme undermines both the law and the American workforce.

The administration needs to remember what brought Trump to power in the first place. Stop importing foreign labor. Shut down lawless programs. Put American workers first.

​Opinion & analysis, H-1b visas, H-4 visas, Legal immigration, Ban, Immigration, Outsourcing, Jobs, Technology, Big tech, Donald trump, Pam bondi, Lawsuit, Save jobs usa, Barack obama, India, Intel, Panasonic, Meta, Hewlett packard enterprise, Ibm, Paypal, Dell, Tcs, Southern california edison, Scam 

Police in Frisco, Texas, said they responded on Aug. 16 to a hospital and learned that earlier that day a 27-year-old mother arrived at her place of employment around 2 p.m.

Detectives believe the mother at that time “intentionally left her 15-month-old child for over two hours in a vehicle she knew did not have working air conditioning with an outside temperature of at least 95 degrees,” police said.

Police said Esquivel’s bond was set at $250,000.

Based on information gathered during the investigation, police said Frisco detectives believe probable cause existed that Vanessa Esquivel committed murder since “intentionally leaving the child in the car caused injury/endangered the child, which is a felony.”

Police added that the suspect’s actions resulted in the child’s death and met the statutory requirements of murder.

Police said detectives obtained a warrant for her arrest, and Dallas police on Aug. 20 took Esquivel into custody and transferred her that same day to Frisco officers’ custody.

RELATED: 3-year-old boy dies after woman working for Alabama state agency left him in car that may have reached 140 degrees: Attorney

Police said Esquivel later was transferred to the Collin County Jail; its records on Tuesday indicate Esquivel was charged with murder.

Police said Esquivel’s bond was set at $250,000, adding that the offense in this case is a first-degree felony that carries a punishment of five years to life in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

RELATED: Dad visits ‘the Adult Shoppe’ while his kids sit in 125-degree car for almost an hour, cops say

Vanessa Esquivel. Image source: Frisco (Texas) Police

Esquivel’s attorney listed in jail records — Katheryn H. Haywood — on Tuesday told Blaze News that she was appointed Saturday but that Esquivel’s family hired another attorney. Blaze News on Tuesday afternoon left a message with the office of the new attorney, Kenneth Onyenah of Dallas. The office confirmed to Blaze News that Onyenah is indeed Esquivel’s new attorney but added that he wasn’t available for comment at the time about the case.

Police said those with information about the case are asked to contact the Frisco Police Department’s non-emergency number — 972-292-6010 — or submit a tip using Tip411 (text FRISCOPD and the tip to 847411).

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​Murder charge, Mother, Texas, Frisco, Hot car, Toddler dies, Arrest, Crime 

The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee said that some “persons of interest” in the Jeffrey Epstein case had been named by victims during a meeting Monday.

The members met with the six victims for over two hours in a closed-door meeting, according to Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky. Afterward, he told reporters that they had “learned of some additional names today.”

‘There was outrage. It was both — I would describe it as heartbreaking and infuriating.’

A representative for the committee said the people identified “possess information” about Epstein or those who allegedly participated in his sex trafficking ring.

“Some of the ladies have shared these stories publicly before, but at least two of the women had never told their stories before, one for the very first time in the room, and so there were tears in the room,” said Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

“There was outrage. It was both — I would describe it as heartbreaking and infuriating,” he added. “That justice has been delayed so long.”

Also on Monday, the committee released a trove of 33,295 pages from the Epstein files, though it was unclear what percentage of the release was new material.

“DOJ has indicated it will continue producing records while ensuring the redaction of victim identities & child abuse material,” Comer said on social media.

RELATED: Trump denies report of letter and drawing sent to Jeffrey Epstein on his 50th birthday, threatens to sue Wall Street Journal

“It was as bipartisan as anything I’ve seen in the nine years I’ve been here,” Comer added about the meeting with victims.

“Some of the women in the room began to be groomed by Epstein and his accomplices, Ghislaine Maxwell and the others, 30 years ago,” Johnson added.

“Some of them began civil litigation against Epstein and the Epstein evils and everything associated with it 20 years ago,” he continued. “This has gone on for a long, long time, and they, they shared their stories.”

President Donald Trump has lashed out at his supporters who continue to demand more information about the Epstein case and accused them of falling for a Democratic scheme.

“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bulls**t,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump said in July. “They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”

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​Epstein victims meet with congress, Persons of interest epstein, Epstein files, Epstein controversy, Politics