Category: blaze media

There have been calls from both sides of the aisle for NYC Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa to drop out of the race, as he continues to lag far behind front-runner Zohran Mamdani.

While the argument from many is that Curtis Sliwa’s base would then vote for Andrew Cuomo — who they view as the lesser of two evils — BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler doesn’t think they’re right.

“While on paper, Andrew Cuomo is clearly less of a radical than Zohran Mamdani, might seem like he’s the lesser of two evils, that’s actually just hypothetical because Zohran Mamdani, even though he verbalizes these extremely radical, dangerous, anti-American viewpoints, he hasn’t been terribly effective in doing any of that stuff,” Wheeler explains.

“He just says it, and he has a large platform, and words matter. But his policies haven’t yet hurt people. But Andrew Cuomo’s have,” she continues, noting that Cuomo “presided over the tyrannical disaster of COVID in New York City.”

“Over 10,000 senior citizens in New York City were essentially sent to their deaths by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo because he forced them to go back to nursing homes, and they died of COVID there,” she says.

“And his record, Andrew Cuomo’s record, even if his words are less radical than Zohran’s, is Andrew Cuomo’s record not more deadly? And so, when I hear this argument coming from some people on the right that Curtis Sliwa should drop out, I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You’re thinking about this all wrong.’”

Wheeler believes Andrew Cuomo should drop out, not Curtis Sliwa.

“Andrew Cuomo’s voters obviously reject Zohran Mamdani. That’s why they’re choosing the independent Andrew Cuomo over the Democrat Zohran,” Wheeler says. “So, if Andrew Cuomo drops out, would his voters not migrate to Curtis Sliwa?”

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​Sharing, Free, Upload, Video, Video phone, Camera phone, Youtube.com, The liz wheeler show, Liz wheeler, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Curtis sliwa, Zohran mamdani, Andrew cuomo, Nyc mayoral race, Nyc mayoral campaign, Andrew cuomo covid record, Covid-19, New york city, Covid-19 tyranny 

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is claiming that he has no interest in going on Joe Rogan’s unbelievably popular podcast after demanding to be invited.

The governor was being interviewed on CNN’s “The Story Is with Elex Michaelson” when he made the comments criticizing Rogan. Newsom is widely considered to be campaigning for president since he will soon be termed out of the governor’s office.

‘With all due respect, if he has a big audience but he doesn’t have big enough confidence — I didn’t go there — to have me on.’

“For years and years he’s been attacking me, and it’s one way, and he won’t have me on. He’s consistently not having me on,” Newsom said. “By the way, I’m moving on. I have no interest. Joe Rogan is the Facebook of podcasting.”

Michaelson responded that Rogan has an enormous audience.

“With all due respect, if he has a big audience but he doesn’t have big enough confidence — I didn’t go there — to have me on,” Newsom responded.

“These guys, they all have something in common. It’s one way. They attack, they belittle, they demean, they take things out of context, but this is a serious thing. And so often we just sit back and go, ‘I really would love to go on.’ ‘Oh, if Kamala Harris just went on Joe Rogan, she would have won.’ It’s so much deeper than that,” he added.

“The unwillingness for a guy like that to even have the common courtesy to attack someone,” Newsom continued, “and not have the decency to say, ‘You know what? Why don’t you have a chance to come on? Let’s have a civil dialogue.'”

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

Rogan, who moved from Los Angeles to Texas over crime, the homeless crisis, and taxes, has used his platform to bash the liberal governor over his presidential ambitions.

“He’s a good bulls**t artist. … The things that he says when he gets confronted with anything — ‘We have the highest this and the highest that!'” Rogan replied.

“Like, everybody’s leaving! You have the highest unemployment,” he added. “You have the highest homelessness. Money’s missing. You killed Hollywood. Like, Hollywood doesn’t exist anymore. It’s literally gone!” he continued. “You mandated vaccines for kids that didn’t need them. You guys, he did horrible s**t!”

RELATED: DHS has a fiery message for Newsom after he bans masks for ICE: ‘We will NOT comply!’

Newsom previously accused Rogan of not being brave enough to have him on his show.

“Joe Rogan is too [chicken] to have me on his show and expose his listeners to the truth,” he posted on social media earlier this month.

“Invite me on any time,” he added.

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​Newsom vs rogan, Joe rogan, California failure, Newsom 2028, Politics 

A federal judge has ordered Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino to wear a body camera while conducting operations by Friday and to personally see her every day to provide updates on the arrests of illegal aliens in the Chicago area.

Tuesday’s decision by Judge Sara Ellis was in response to supposed violations of a restraining order on the use of tear gas. Tear gas had to be deployed during Border Patrol operations in recent weeks because crowds of locals became violent with agents.

‘The executive power belongs to the president of the United States — not to Article III judges.’

The Department of Homeland Security released footage, taken from body cameras and from drones, showing that when agents were in the Little Village neighborhood, some in the crowd attacked vehicles or threw objects at federal law enforcement. Ellis said she did not see agents giving the required two warnings before using crowd-control measures like tear gas.

Chicago-area activists have increasingly become more violent in their attempts to stop federal operations. Riots have taken place outside the processing facility in the village of Broadview, and personal vehicles have been used to ram federal vehicles.

With this ruling, Ellis appears to be in line with other federal judges exceeding their authority to stifle the Trump administration’s progress toward its goals.

“This ruling is ridiculous because it entails a district court judge becoming the supervisor of a senior DHS official on her own initiative. The executive power belongs to the president of the United States — not to Article III judges. Judges have the right to issue lawful injunctions; they do not have the right to micromanage law enforcement,” Will Chamberlain, senior counsel to the Article III Project, told Blaze News.

RELATED: ICE agents fear for their safety after security fence removed at Chicago-area facility amid sometimes violent protests

ICE agents fear for their safety after security fence was removed at a Chicago-area facility amid sometimes violent protests. Julio Rosas/Blaze News

Chamberlain further called for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to “put a stop to this immediately,” claiming Ellis’ ruling is a “massive separation of powers violation.”

For his part, Bovino told Fox News on Wednesday that Operation Midway Blitz will continue despite the roadblocks being thrown up by the judiciary.

“We’re going to go out there. We’re gonna accomplish the mission. We’re closing in on 3,000 apprehensions as we speak. … We’re even going to go even harder, and I’m not worried about it all,” Bovino explained.

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​Politics 

The government shutdown has not hindered the Trump administration’s federal agents from continuing nationwide immigration enforcement.

‘Nothing will slow us down from making America safe again — not even a government shutdown.’

On Tuesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more of the “worst of the worst” criminal illegal aliens, including pedophiles, abusers, and drug traffickers, according to a Department of Homeland Security press release exclusively obtained by Blaze News.

“The Democrats’ government shutdown will not stop DHS law enforcement from arresting and removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from American communities. Just yesterday, ICE arrested pedophiles, abusers, violent assailants, and drug traffickers from America’s streets,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated.

“Nothing will slow us down from making America safe again — not even a government shutdown,” McLaughlin added.

The DHS highlighted five of those arrests.

Elroy Smith, a Jamaican national, was previously convicted in Philadelphia of unlawful contact with a minor — sexual offenses and indecent assault of a person less than 13 years old. Court records show that he was sentenced in 2024 to a minimum of 11.5 months in jail.

RELATED: Major shake-up reportedly under way at DHS as Trump administration works to increase deportations

Elroy Smith. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

ICE nabbed Joel Ocampo-Martinez, a Mexican national with a criminal record in Vernal, Utah, for attempted forcible sexual abuse.

Joel Ocampo-Martinez. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

Federal agents arrested Oscar Hernandez-Aguire, a Salvadoran national who was convicted in Los Angeles for inflicting corporal injury on a spouse.

Oscar Hernandez-Aguire. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

Luis Mario Martinez-Gonzalez, a Mexican national, was found guilty in El Paso County, Texas, for assault on a public servant.

Luis Mario Martinez-Gonzalez. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

ICE also captured Osiris Alexander Rodriguez-Guzman, a national from the Dominican Republic, who was convicted in Essex Superior Court in Massachusetts for trafficking 200 grams or more of fentanyl. Gov. Maura Healey’s administration announced Rodriguez-Guzman’s drug trafficking arrest in 2022 as part of a state and federal takedown operation that resulted in a dozen arrests.

RELATED: House Democrats’ ICE ‘tracker’ will ‘put our lives in danger’: DHS agent

Osiris Alexander Rodriguez-Guzman. Image source: Department of Homeland Security

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​News, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Immigration crisis, Illegal immigration crisis, Immigration, Illegal immigration, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Utah, Texas, Los angeles, El paso, Massachusetts, Politics 

The Democrats’ narrative pinning blame for the government shutdown on Republicans is losing steam.

Left-leaning lawmakers have openly admitted that they are using the impending expiration of SNAP benefits as “leverage” against their GOP counterparts. This tactic has ignited significant backlash, even from those who typically align with them, including CNN anchor Jake Tapper and the American Federation of Government Employees.

‘Who’s winning, who’s losing? Well, 100% America loses with this.’

The fallout is increasing the pressure on congressional Democrats to work across the aisle to pass a clean continuing resolution, averting disruptions for SNAP recipients as benefits are set to lapse this Saturday.

“Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. Frankly, this is our only moment of leverage,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told C-SPAN on Thursday in reference to the government shutdown. Coons admitted that it was “a very unpleasant tool to use.”

Senate Republicans called Coons’ comments “absolutely deranged.”

“Chris Coons believes that denying Americans their SNAP benefits may be ‘unpleasant,’ but it’s worth doing because it gives Democrats political ‘leverage,’” Republicans wrote.

RELATED: Democrats’ shutdown blame game backfires — even Jake Tapper calls them out on SNAP benefits

John Fetterman. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.) similarly admitted during an interview in mid-October that her party was using the shutdown as leverage.

“Shutdowns are terrible, and of course, there will be families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously. But it is one of the few leverage times we have,” Clark stated.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told journalist Nicholas Ballasy this week that the shutdown is “the only lever we have.”

Ballasy also asked Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) for his thoughts on the ongoing stalemate. Fetterman was one of the few Democrats to break ranks and vote for Republicans’ proposed continuing resolution.

“I’m not going to describe the lives of millions of Americans as, like, a euphemism, as ‘leverage.’ I mean, this isn’t a political game,” Fetterman told Ballasy on Tuesday.

“Who’s winning, who’s losing? Well, 100% America loses with this,” he concluded.

RELATED: Democrats brush off pressure from federal workers’ union to end government shutdown

John Thune. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) used his time on the Senate floor on Wednesday to call out Democrat lawmakers for their controversial admissions.

Thune mentioned a comment from Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who previously said, “Every day gets better for us,” when referring to the shutdown.

“Lest there be any question about who is responsible for shutting the government down, make no mistake about it: These guys are the ones who are out there bragging about it ‘getting better for us every single day,’ or, ‘we have more leverage now,’” Thune stated.

Thune explained that 60 votes are required to pass the clean continuing resolution, noting that it has failed 13 times with only 55 votes.

“So, the question is, are there five people over there with a backbone? Five courageous Democrats?” he added.

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​News, John thune, Chuck schumer, John fetterman, Sheldon whitehouse, Katherine clark, Chris coons, Government shutdown, Snap, Snap benefits, Politics 

Burglars not only stole from a restaurant in Arizona but also engaged in “bizarre” sexual relations on the premises, according to multiple reports.

A spokesperson for the Scottsdale Police Department told Blaze News that officers responded to a burglary report at the Mon Chéri restaurant around 10:00 a.m. Saturday.

‘It’s such a happy and positive place, so the fact that they did that on our establishment is just so disturbing.’

“Employees from the business called the police to report that two subjects were seen on camera around 3:50 a.m. forcing entry into the restaurant,” police said.

Mon Chéri restaurant owner, Lexi Caliskan, told KSAZ-TV, “The first thing I noticed was that the whole stand was totally, like, torn apart. There were things all over.”

“They damaged my two doors. So two doors need to be repaired or replaced. The actual registers are, like, just torn apart,” the owner added.

Caliskan added to KSAZ that the suspects stole $450 in cash, the restaurant’s iPhone, and a bottle of Bacardi rum.

Photo by U. Ozel Images via iStock / Getty Images Plus

However, before the couple broke into the restaurant, they reportedly had sex in a romantic floral display on the patio.

Caliskan told People magazine that the sexual acts were committed in a “romantic spot.”

“We have a heart installation there, where our customers take Instagram photos,” Caliskan explained, adding that the risqué incident was a “quick interaction” at the eye-catching rose display.

Caitlyn Sorensen, a Mon Chéri employee, told KPHO-TV, “We pulled up the surveillance, and we were disturbed, and who would do that? That’s just gross. We don’t want that here. And yeah, just, like, ‘Why would you do that?'”

Sorenson continued, “It’s such a happy and positive place, so the fact that they did that on our establishment is just so disturbing. Like, this isn’t the place for it. Yes, we’re full of romance and happiness, but that’s not what we want here.”

RELATED: Woman, 34, entices Florida man, 73, to her home for romantic date only for him to be pummeled by her ex-boyfriend in planned robbery: Police

Video of the couple near the floral display at the restaurant was posted on the Mon Chéri Instagram page.

The security video was captioned, “Two love birds broke into our restaurant in Scottsdale this morning.”

The couple reportedly got frisky in a heart-shaped display made of roses.

Caliskan told KNXV-TV, “They got caught in the moment, there’s roses everywhere, maybe it was kind of romantic, but modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.”

Caliskan added, “I was just blown away by a man and a woman, what he had done, he ate afterward, then continued to break into the property.”

Bailee Turner, the assistant general manager at Mon Chéri, said of the alleged incident, “Bizarre, violating — really just weird.”

Caliskan told KPNX-TV, “They violated our roses, and we’re just not OK with that.”

The restaurant is asking the public to help identify the burglars.

Police have yet to apprehend any suspects and said the investigation is still active.

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​Bonnie and clyde, Arizona, Arizona crime, True crime, Open case, Bizarre sex act, Crime, Mon cheri, Scottsdale, Police, Burglary 

Although elites like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates have been pushing climate alarmism on the masses for decades, most people have never bought what they were selling. In fact, data shows that climate change has not been a defining issue for many people for a long time, one CNN analyst argued.

CNN data analyst Harry Enten demonstrated that the American people’s concern about climate change has remained surprisingly consistent for decades and has even possibly declined in more recent years.

“What are we talking about? Greatly worried about climate. You go all the way back to 1989, it was 35%. 2000, 40%. 2020, 46%. And in 2025, look at that — it’s 40%, the same number as we had 25 years ago back in 2000, and then only just five points higher than we had back in 1989. Really we’ve just seen consistency on this issue,” Enten explained.

‘It will not lead to humanity’s demise.’

Enten showed that the number of Americans who see climate change as a top issue is and has been negligible for roughly the past four years. One 2025 poll indicated that just 17% of Democrats believe climate change will make staying in their home area “harder,” Enten revealed.

Noting Gates’ recent tone shift on the issue, Enten said most people would “agree” with Gates’ new assessment that climate change won’t be the end of humanity.

RELATED: Bill Gates quietly retires climate terror as AI takes the throne

Photo by Patrick van Katwijk/Getty Images

“The bottom line is that the climate change message that folks who, of course, believe that climate change is real and is quite worrisome, simply put, has not really worked with the American people,” Enten said.

Just this week, Gates altered his approach to climate change, one of his trademark issues.

“Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future,” Gates wrote in his October 28 essay, “Three tough truths about climate.”

“The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been,” Gates continued.

While Gates did not completely dismiss his emphasis on climate change, this shift comes after at least 20 years of efforts to raise concern in the public consciousness about an existential threat. Gates famously warned that the climate was a bigger issue than COVID in the midst of the pandemic in 2020.

“Whether or not he’s following the science or public opinion, there does seem to be a shift here,” CNN anchor John Berman told Enten.

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Glenn Beck started TheBlaze because he wanted to chart a new path in the media industry. Disturbed by the media’s agenda-driven distortion of facts and glossing over critical stories, he set out with a mission to build around truth-telling and America-first values.

Today, he looks at Blaze Media and the blossoming alternative media industry and says: mission accomplished.

“I wanted to create this ecosystem, and we did. Media now has really capable voices, minds, and hands to do things.”

But now Glenn is bringing that same visionary spirit to a different industry — one that is suffering greatly from bias, indoctrination, and corruption: education.

For 20 years, Glenn has been slowly and deliberately “collecting the physical evidence of America’s soul — the documents, the letters, the artifacts that tell the true story of who we are.”

Today, he boasts “the third largest private collection of founding documents in the world,” surpassed only by the public holdings of the Library of Congress and the National Archives.

Glenn’s collection has amassed “well over a million documents and items of evidence of the greatness of the American experiment as well as our scars and our mistakes.”

“This library is proof that America was founded on Judeo-Christian values. It is proof that our mission was not slavery but freedom for all mankind. It is proof that while we have committed terrible wrongs, we have also accomplished miraculous things. It is proof that our story began not in Jamestown but in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It is proof that when science divorces itself from moral truth, darkness follows and usually profound darkness,” he says.

And this collection will soon be available to you.

After three years of blood, sweat, and tears, Glenn’s historical archive has been compiled, preserved, and digitized into something “the world has never seen before.”

“We have now created the first independent, proprietary, AI-driven American historical library,” says Glenn.

Called the Torch, which will be overseen by the Glenn and Tania Beck Foundation for American History, the program is complete with a librarian named George, whose voice is “built from the writings of George Washington himself, the writings of the founders, the thousands of sermons that they heard from their church pulpits, the books that they read, and the principles they lived by.”

George, Glenn says, “can find any artifact, any document, any speech, and deliver it to you as evidence that what you were taught in school was either misguided, out of ignorance, a half-truth, or most likely an out-and-out lie” — an expert in everything from the Constitution and Federalist Papers to American civics and history.

And the best part is: He’s incapable of being influenced by other AI programs, the internet, or any other resource out there. “It is all contained in a secure, isolated server where every document is memorized verbatim. … This is verified, factual, memorized first-source truth,” says Glenn.

With the Torch igniting a flame of unfiltered truth in America’s classrooms and homes, Glenn Beck isn’t just preserving history — he’s reigniting the soul of a nation, one artifact and one revelation at a time.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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​Glenn beck, The glenn beck program, Blazetv, Blaze media, Woke education, Academia, Indoctrination in schools, The torch 

An acting U.S. attorney in California was disqualified from prosecuting several cases after a judge ruled that he overstayed his temporary status in that role. However, the Trump appointee will continue to serve as the district’s top prosecutor.

A judge ruled that Bill Essayli has overstayed his temporary tenure as the acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California — the largest attorney’s office outside of D.C. — since July 29, the AP reported. Essayli was sworn in on April 2 of this year.

‘I do the American People’s bidding at the direction of their duly elected President. That’s how our Constitution works.’

The ruling relates to three criminal defendants who sought to have their cases dismissed on the grounds that Essayli was illegally serving as acting U.S. attorney.

U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright wrote in his ruling on the case, “Simply stated: Essayli unlawfully assumed the role of Acting United States Attorney for the Central District of California. He has been unlawfully serving in that capacity since his resignation from the interim role on July 29, Essayli may not perform the functions and duties of the United States Attorney as Acting United States Attorney. He is disqualified from serving in that role.”

However, NBC Los Angeles reported that Seabright declined to remove Essayli fully from the prosecutor’s office.

RELATED: Federal judge rules Alina Habba is not lawfully acting as US attorney for NJ

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

According to the order, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Essayli as first assistant U.S. attorney, or FAUSA, on July 29, effective upon his resignation as interim U.S. attorney. This allowed him to remain in the prosecutor’s office and to perform FAUSA duties, as Judge Seabright affirmed.

Seabright concluded that the criminal cases against the three defendants would not be dismissed because other attorneys legitimately co-signed next to Essayli, though Essayli would not be allowed to continue prosecuting those cases in his former capacity as acting U.S. attorney.

However, Seabright noted this case does not remove Essayli from his current role as FAUSA: “Essayli remains the FAUSA and may perform the functions and duties of that office.”

“For those who didn’t read the entire order, nothing is changing. I continue serving as the top federal prosecutor in the Central District of California. It’s an honor and privilege to serve President Trump and Attorney General Bondi, and I look forward to advancing their agenda for the American People,” Essayli, whose X profile still calls him the “Acting U.S. Attorney” for the district, said in a Tuesday post that included a portion of the opinion.

Late Tuesday, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) attacked Essayli in light of the judge’s opinion. “’Unlawfully serving’ in his role. Acting illegally. But left in place? While this Administration continues to replace career professionals with illegitimate political allies eager to do Trump’s bidding, Californians need better relief than this,” he said.

In response, Essayli posted, “I do the American People’s bidding at the direction of their duly elected President. That’s how our Constitution works. Try reading and abiding by it sometime.”

Acting U.S. Attorney of Nevada Sigal Chattah and acting U.S. Attorney of New Jersey Alina Habba have faced similar attacks in recent months.

Blaze News contacted Essayli’s office for comment.

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​Politics, California, J. michael seabright, Bill essayli, Adam schiff, Acting u.s. attorney bill essayli, Fausa, Sigal chattah, Alina habba 

NBC News in the San Francisco Bay area got a brutal fact-check after publishing a story about an “undocumented father,” identified only as Gerardo, being arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside his home before going to work.

While 42-year-old Gerardo was being arrested, Idalia, his wife and a U.S. citizen, ran out to try to stop the arrest, NBC Bay Area reported. She claimed a female agent hit her 22-year-old daughter with a baton but did not capture the moment on camera, nor is it seen on the Ring security camera.

His ‘rap sheet’ includes lewd and lascivious acts with a child.

Idalia said she immediately contacted the Mexican Consulate in San Jose and a hotline for immigration legal services.

The Department of Homeland Security responded to the sob story, revealing that Gerardo has been accused of heinous crimes. According to DHS, his “rap sheet” includes:

Lewd and lascivious acts with a child,Battery of a spouse,Domestic battery,Compensation for prostitution, andFelony re-entry after removal.

Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images

The Bay Area was expected to see a surge in federal immigration agents, but that deployment was put on pause. Despite the lack of extra agents, anti-DHS protesters blocked access to Coast Guard Island in Alameda. After most protesters had left, a driver allegedly attempted to use a U-Haul to ram the security checkpoint, forcing the Coast Guardsmen to fire upon the truck.

The driver was shot in the stomach, and another bystander was slightly wounded. Both are expected to recover.

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​Politics 

Karine Jean-Pierre has been hawking a new book in a desperate attempt to cash in on her time as White House press secretary — and it’s not going well.

Whereas fellow lesbian and propagandist Rachel Maddow of MSNBC suggested that the book was a “truly new and valuable contribution to our understanding of the Biden presidency,” the Washington Post shredded “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House Outside the Party Lines,” noting that it was a “fascinating book for all the wrong reasons.”

‘Sorry, I’m not trying to be dense. I’m a little unclear about what this has to do with Democratic leaders.’

The reviewer — confronted with 180 pages’ worth of Jean-Pierre’s thoughts “written in the outmoded register of one of those lawn signs proclaiming that ‘in this house, we believe kindness is everything'” — expressed amazement “that someone who writes in such feel-good, thought-repelling clichés was hired to communicate with the nation from its highest podium.”

The Post concluded on the basis of the book that Jean-Pierre is a “blinkered” establishmentarian whose recent departure from the Democratic Party and identification as an independent “seems to be less of a strategy than a style”; whose “thinking remains so decidedly in the box”; and who “appears to have little authentic understanding of why her erstwhile party’s approval rating has cratered.”

Journalist Matt Taibbi’s review of the book for the Free Press was similarly damning, dubbing it “history’s most incoherent memoir.”

“Jean-Pierre had over a year to think about what to say about all this, and instead of writing the book the whole world wanted, the true story (complete with photos of Biden’s used-bib collection and pictorial toilet guides) of her frustration at having to be the public face of one of the most obvious and legally perilous cons in American political history, she denied there was anything to cover up, much less that she had responsibility for it,” wrote Taibbi.

RELATED: Black lesbian former White House press secretary says Democrats lost because they ignored black women

Photo by Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images

In the book, Jean-Pierre reportedly rejects the obvious justification for Biden’s ouster — the mental and physical decrepitude that had him tumbling, mumbling, and bumbling — and claims that she “saw Biden every day and saw no such decline.” As for Biden’s humiliating performance in his TV debate with President Donald Trump, Jean-Pierre blamed a cold and travel-related exhaustion.

Perhaps worse than the reviews for the book are Jean-Pierre’s efforts to sell it on tour.

For instance, Jean-Pierre befuddled a sympathetic journalist with a series of word salads in her recent interview with the New Yorker.

Isaac Chotiner repeatedly pressed Jean-Pierre on her explanation for how and why the Democratic Party supposedly undermined former President Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 election.

When asked the second time why the Democrats had it out for Biden, Jean-Pierre said — in an interview the New Yorker indicated was edited for length and clarity — that:

they believed that he needed to step aside. There’s more to this than just that period of time. This is very layered, right? There’s a period of time that I questioned what was happening and how do we treat our own, how do we treat people who are decent people. And then you also have to think about how I’m thinking about this as a black woman who is part of the LGBTQ community, and living in this time where I also don’t think Democrats right now, Democrats’ leadership, is protecting vulnerable people in the way that it should.

The interviewer responded, “Sorry, I’m not trying to be dense. I’m a little unclear about what this has to do with Democratic leaders and many Democrats in the country thinking that Joe Biden was going to lose to Donald Trump — which was what the polls all showed — and therefore thinking that he should be replaced.”

After Jean-Pierre launched into a rant about how “nobody knows” about what could have alternatively happened, Chotiner indicated that he had no idea what the former Biden spox was trying to say.

Toward the end of the viral interview, Jean-Pierre — who had made sure to mention her LGBTQ status and race numerous times and suggested the subtitle of her book, “Inside a Broken White House,” was referring to the Trump White House — accused Chotiner of pushing Democratic Party talking points.

David Weigel, a political writer for Semafor who was among the multitude of critics awestruck by how badly the interview went, said, “Turns out you can do a career-ending interview even after your career is over.”

Even Jean-Pierre’s interview with Stephen Colbert — a liberal propagandist who helped raise millions for Biden’s campaign last year — went off the rails when the CBS late-night host proved unwilling to buy what the former White House spox was selling.

Colbert, like Chotiner, asked Jean-Pierre to explain how the Democratic Party betrayed Biden. Even though that’s a core claim in the former press secretary’s book, she appeared unable to answer, launching into a speech about Biden’s perceived accomplishments and how he was still “engaging, understood policy, and was always putting the American people first.”

The late-night host pointed out that “it takes more than that to be the president of the United States, and in a moment of great pressure on stage, we saw someone shock us and worry us. And nothing could assuage that worry. So I don’t think it was necessarily a betrayal of Joe Biden as other people saying, ‘We don’t think we were shown the Joe Biden that you saw.'”

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​Karine, Jean-pierre, Karine jean-pierre, Leftist, Democrat, White house, Joe biden, Biden, Independent, Book tour, Book, Lesbian, Woke, Retarded, Politics 

About 13 years ago, I decided to leave Chicago and intentionally “forgot” a full suitcase at my uncle’s house in Evanston. He had this huge house with a sprawling basement that resembled some kind of ancient catacomb, and I only had a couple arms and one train ticket. So I left my big, green suitcase in a dark, quiet corner where it wouldn’t be any trouble to anyone while I was away.

About seven years later, that old suitcase ended up at my parents’ house. My aunt and uncle found it somewhere in that underground labyrinth, loaded it in the car, and dropped it off at my mom and dad’s house on the way to their cabin.

When I left that suitcase in Evanston, I didn’t really have a plan. But the timeline for when I would finally retrieve the 150-pound bag was in flux.

Then two years after that, the old, green suitcase finally made its way back to its proper owner via my parents’ Subaru. It sat outside in our messy garage for about a year until my wife finally implored me to take it downstairs to the basement, which I did. Now it’s sitting in my office, a few feet away, staring at me, waiting for its next stop.

Do not reply

That green suitcase is probably about 150 pounds. I haven’t opened it since the last time I zipped it up 13 years ago, so I’m not sure exactly what it contains. It’s been so long. I think it might be sheet music. What else would be so heavy? Bricks? Sure, but I wasn’t a mason or a bricklayer. I was a musician.

That green suitcase is kind of like an email. You know the kind I am talking about. The email that you get, but you don’t open. Or maybe you do open it, but you don’t respond. You tell yourself that you’re going to respond later when you have a moment to sit down and think, or maybe tomorrow morning after you eat breakfast.

But you don’t respond later that night, and you don’t respond the next morning either. You don’t respond the day after that, the week that comes next, or the month around the corner, and the longer you wait, the harder it gets. You forget about the email for weeks at a time, and then you remember it all of a sudden and kind of secretly wish it would just sort of fade away.

Bachelor’s baggage

That green suitcase is like the box of crap from college: old papers, T-shirts, Nokia cell phones, hard drives, fake IDs, the old textbooks you never read, and everything that reminds you of your stupid, cringe-inducing youth.

That box follows you from one apartment to the next, to your bedroom, to your basement office, to your storage facility, to the attic above the garage. You don’t want the stuff anymore, you don’t even want to go through it, you don’t want to see it(!), but disposing of it somehow feels wrong. “I can’t just throw it away,” you mumble to yourself as you put off sorting though that box for another six months.

That green suitcase is like all the junk in your basement that just keeps adding up. Every year, the stacks of boxes get a little higher and the floor space a little smaller. You tell yourself you’re finally going to get the basement clean, that all you have to do is get a bunch of this stuff out and off to Goodwill, and once that’s done, it’s going to be nice down there. But you don’t do it. Spring cleaning comes and goes, and the basement heap grows.

We’ve all got the emails, the boxes, and the junk that we just don’t have the heart, or time, to address. Logically, we know it would be easier to take care of everything the first moment we think to do it, but we don’t. Going through old things is hard in a way that we don’t want to admit. We don’t want to be forced to confront what it is that we’ll be throwing away, if we are to be throwing it away. So we just let it sit.

RELATED: It took months to find the skeletal remains of retired detective through ‘mountains’ of trash at her home, police say

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

Facing the music

When I left that suitcase in Evanston, I didn’t really have a plan. I wasn’t leaving it for good, or at least not intentionally. But the timeline for when I would finally retrieve the 150-pound bag was in flux. I didn’t really have a need for whatever was in it, and I didn’t think about my plan to get it back. I just wanted to leave, so that’s what I did.

I’m sure that when I finally open it one of these days, I’ll find that old sheet music. Etudes, solos, and various studies. I’ll find my old handwriting, some from my professors too, ones I should have kept in touch with better and ones I haven’t thought about since I was a kid. I’ll sit there on the floor, and I’ll remember all the things I haven’t remembered in so long.

I’ll think of my younger years and smile, and then I’ll be forced to decide what I want to do with the yellowing sheet music laying on the blue-and-white carpet in my office. I won’t be able to throw it out. I know that. Who throws out music anyway? My dad never did, and then I used his. Maybe my kids will use mine? Or maybe that’s what I’ll tell myself so I don’t have to throw it out. I’ll take it all and put it back in that big, green suitcase not knowing when I’ll see it again.

​Men’s style, Lifestyle, Luggage, Clutter, The root of the matter 

A trans-identifying teen accused of plotting a Valentine’s Day massacre at an Indiana high school reportedly has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit murder.

Trinity Shockley — an 18-year-old female who identifies as a male — was arrested Feb. 12 after someone notified an FBI tip line that an acquaintance was planning a school shooting, had access to an AR-15 rifle, and had just ordered a bulletproof vest.

‘Everyone lives to die. I am a loser.’

The FBI — which ultimately alerted the Mooresville Metropolitan Police Department about the possible shooting plot — investigated Shockley’s accounts on the Discord instant messaging app and Snapchat and found multiple correspondences in which the suspect appeared to confirm she had it in mind to shoot up her school, according to the probable cause affidavit.

In one conversation on Discord, Shockley allegedly said she had been planning a “Parkland part two” for at least a year, referring to the Feb. 14, 2018, mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The affidavit indicated that Shockley confided in her school counselor on Feb. 11 that she was sexually infatuated with Nikolas Cruz — the convicted shooter who murdered 17 people at Parkland — wanted to have his children, and had written to him several times since his incarceration.

During a search of Shockley’s family home, police indicated they found what appeared to be a framed photo of Dylann Roof — the white identitarian responsible for the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina — in the student’s bedroom along with other images of mass shooters, including Cruz.

RELATED: Groomed for violence? The dark world of furries and transgenderism in America’s classrooms

Photo by SAMANTHA LAUREY/AFP via Getty Images

In addition to locating a soft armor vest and ammunition in the house, police found multiple notebooks allegedly belonging to the teen containing damning entries. In one notebook, Shockley allegedly wrote on Dec. 16, 2024, “I am aslo [sic] a transgender male. I have a lot of homicidal thoughts. In all honesty, I want to be just like Elliot Rodger. He is my main influencer along with Nikolas Cruz.”

Rodger is a mass murderer who killed six and injured 14 in a 2014 attack near the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Shockley allegedly wrote in an entry dated Jan. 9, “All of these minorities are useless. I bleieve [sic] others dont desreve [sic] to live. Everyone lives to die. I am a loser.”

The agreement filed Monday and confirmed by chief deputy prosecutor Cassie Mellady would have Shockley plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder — a level 2 felony — and the state drop the other two charges of terroristic intimidation, the Indiana Star reported.

Although a conviction on the single count could net Shockley a sentence of 10 to 30 years behind bars, her attorney reportedly has requested that she serve no more than 12.5 years in prison and fewer than five years on probation.

In addition to having to regularly meet with mental health professionals, Shockley’s probation per the proposed terms of the plea deal would be conditional on her prohibition from visiting all Morgan County school properties and searching for any material related to school shootings.

Dakota VanLeeuwen, the Morgan County judge overseeing the case, reportedly has taken the plea agreement under advisement and will issue a ruling on the matter next month.

Mellady told WIBC-FM that Shockley’s trans-identification has no bearing on the case.

There has been a rash of trans-identifying mass shooters and would-be mass shooters in recent years.

For instance:

a trans-identifying man shot up a Catholic church full of children in Minneapolis on Aug. 27, killing two children and injuring 30;a male-identifying woman planned to shoot up an elementary school and a high school in Maryland in April 2024 but was stopped in time by police — then later convicted;a trans-identifying teen stalked the halls of a school in Perry, Iowa, on Jan. 4, 2024, ultimately murdering a child and an adult and wounding several others; anda trans-identifying woman stormed into a Presbyterian school in Nashville on March 27, 2023, murdering three children and three adults.

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In a shocking defeat that left Colorado coach Deion Sanders dumbfounded, his team suffered an embarrassing 53-7 loss to Utah — but unlike everyone else, BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock isn’t surprised.

“Deion Sanders is who I thought he was and who I said he was. And the reason I’m celebratory of this is because Deion sets a bad example. He leads through racial idolatry. He leads through a victimhood mentality,” Whitlock says.

“Deion definitely loves to play the race card. Deion definitely sees himself as a victim. Deion definitely wants to be a race soldier,” he continues, likening Sanders to Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin.

“They’re lathered in so much over-the-top praise. They’re lathered in so much idolatry and people rallying around them and people excusing any and everything about their coaching that it undermines their success,” he explains.

Whitlock also points out that after Sanders’ winning streak last year, people like Stephen A. Smith were ”running around pretending like Deion Sanders has set the world on fire.”

“He can get all the money without putting in the same level of effort as other coaches. They’ve been running around with Deion Sanders on these Aflac commercials with Nick Saban as if Deion Sanders is the second coming of Eddie Robinson. Deion skipped over everybody, and the next thing you know he’s right next to Nick Saban,” he says.

“He’s not on that level, but we gave him all the rewards as if he had,” he adds, pointing out that this is common in the black community.

“There’s a burden to being black in America that black people have participated in and helped create. The removing of standards, the lowering of standards is crippling black Americans. And you can see it in football,” he says.

“You can see what’s happening at Colorado with Deion Sanders where he was anointed and appointed and celebrated as this great coach even though it hadn’t been earned. And now we’re seeing the proof of it,” he adds.

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Democratic lawmakers’ narrative on the government shutdown is beginning to crumble, as even traditionally friendly media outlets and personalities are starting to turn on them.

‘If you feel so strongly, Congresswoman, why not ask the Senate Democrats from New Mexico to vote to open the government?’

On Tuesday, CNN’s Jake Tapper got into a tense back-and-forth with Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) over SNAP benefits drying up.

Tapper challenged Stansbury, questioning whether Democratic senators from New Mexico should consider reopening the government to ensure Americans on SNAP continue to receive those benefits without interruption.

“Let me be clear, the administration is choosing to starve American children with money that they already have appropriated,” Stansbury replied.

“I’m not applauding their tactics,” Tapper clarified.

Stansbury reiterated that the government shutdown was “a choice by the White House.”

“This is also a choice by Senate Democrats to not vote to open the government,” Tapper replied.

RELATED: Democrats brush off pressure from federal workers’ union to end government shutdown

Representative Melanie Stansbury. Photographer: Kayla Bartkowski/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Stansbury rejected Tapper’s assertion.

“Let me just be clear, the money for contingency plans is sitting there,” she stated. “The White House is withholding funds from children to have food.”

Tapper, again, was not buying it. He explained that the contingency plans covered only two to three weeks’ worth of SNAP funds and did not offer a long-term solution for Americans who depend on the benefits.

RELATED: Trump admin blames Senate Democrats for SNAP debacle: ‘The well has run dry’

US President Donald Trump, Rep. Melanie Stansbury. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Stansbury tried to turn the tables on Tapper, stating that the funds “may not be a big deal to you,” noting that families need all the relief they can get. She further claimed that it “doesn’t matter” that it was only a short-term solution.

“People need to be able to feed their families, and Saturday is when those funds run out,” she told Tapper.

“If you feel so strongly, Congresswoman, why not ask the Senate Democrats from New Mexico to vote to open the government?” Tapper fired back.

Stansbury claimed she is “fighting to get the government reopened.”

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A handful of Senate Republicans defied President Donald Trump in a contentious vote to block the administration’s tariffs on Brazil.

The Senate narrowly passed a resolution Tuesday night to zero out Trump’s 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports in a 52-48 vote. Five Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — aided all 47 Democrats to pass the resolution.

The resolution is likely to die in the House before ever making it to Trump’s desk.

This rebuke comes from Trump’s most vocal critics in the Senate, all of whom have bucked the administration in the past.

Paul has repeatedly voted against Republican funding bills, including the continuing resolution that would reopen the government, all but guaranteeing he is disinvited from many White House events his colleagues attend. Tillis, who announced he would be retiring following this term, also voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell have been a thorn in Trump’s side, repeatedly voting against key nominees.

RELATED: Vance casts tiebreaking Senate vote after Republicans join Democrats to tank Trump’s tariffs

Anna Rose Layden/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The resolution is likely to die in the House before ever making it to Trump’s desk. Even if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) were to hold a vote on the resolution, the Republican majority would likely side with the administration.

Notably, this is not the first time Republicans defied the White House to block Trump’s tariffs.

Vice President JD Vance had to cast a tiebreaking vote back in May to block a similar resolution that would have halted Trump’s tariffs. At the time, Murkowski, Collins, and Paul were the three lawmakers who went against the grain.

RELATED: Vance casts tiebreaking vote after Republicans betray Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

“Farmers are hurting. Inflation is squeezing every worker. And tariffs are making it worse,” Paul said in a recent post on X. “We can’t print enough money to paper over bad policy.”

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​Susan collins, Lisa murkowski, Thom tillis, Rand paul, Mitch mcconnell, John thune, Mike johnson, Donald trump, Trump administration, White house, Tariffs, Jd vance, Senate republicans, Senate democrats, Brazil, Brazil tariffs, One big beautiful bill, Trump nominees, Politics 

The campaign to throw out the Biden-era pardons for Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the Biden clan, former members of the House Jan. 6 select committee, and other controversial figures appears to be gaining momentum — and the Office of the Pardon Attorney made clear this week that it’s onboard.

The House Oversight Committee alleged in its damning 100-page report on Tuesday that senior Biden staffers not only worked desperately to conceal the former president’s rapid mental deterioration but usurped his authority with the help of the presidential autopen — a machine used to affix Biden’s signature to a host of controversial executive actions and pardons.

‘In theory, a court invalidation could result in restoration of penalties.’

“As President Biden was losing command of himself throughout his time in office, his executive actions — especially pardons, of which there are many — cannot all be deemed his own,” said the report. “The authority to grant pardons is not provided to the president’s inner circle. Nor can it be delegated to particular staff when a president’s competency is in question.”

Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) concluded that unauthorized executive actions signed by autopen were “null and void,” then asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to review the validity of all executive actions taken during Biden’s time in office.

Bondi confirmed on Tuesday that a review of the autopen use for pardons during the Biden era is underway.

Ed Martin, the U.S. pardon attorney at the DOJ, suggested in a letter on Monday to Comer that his investigation into the matter has turned up “disturbing findings” such that his office “cannot support the validity and ongoing legal effect of pardons and commutations issued during the Biden administration without further examination.”

In the letter obtained by CNN, Martin suggested that Biden’s admission to the New York Times that he “did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people” by itself “seems to raise serious questions of whether those commutations are valid.”

RELATED: Biden freed killers with a pen he didn’t even hold

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Martin indicated that doubt over the validity of the commutations is further compounded by the suggestion in former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer’s communications with the Biden White House that the autopenned commutations issued on Jan. 17 in the former president’s name were legally flawed.

The pardon attorney raised other “defects” concerning the pardon process, particularly in the final weeks of the administration.

“My office cannot support the validity of AutoPen pardons for individuals such as Anthony Fauci, Adam Schiff, Mark Milley, and many more without further examination and fact-finding,” wrote Martin. “In my tenure here, I have not seen any evidence supporting the theory that President Biden was personally aware and authorized these AutoPen’d pardons.”

Martin, who alluded to a court ultimately weighing in on the validity of the pardons, told Comer, “If these pardons or commutations are challenged in any way, I recognize serious difficulties in defending them.”

The Oversight Committee similarly foreshadowed a court voiding the pardons in its report, stating that “the Constitution is clear: ‘The President shall … have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States.'”

The committee further quoted from a recent essay by constitutional scholar Philip Hamburger, a professor at Columbia Law School, which concluded, “The history confirms that the Constitution’s location of the pardon power is significant. The president must make the decisions, and the courts can hold pardons void if the decisions are made by others.”

While the nullification campaign’s success in the courts could spell disaster for Fauci, Milley, and others, some scholars have cast doubt on the likelihood of that outcome.

When asked whether the pardonees’ convictions and legal vulnerabilities would be fully restored should their pardons be ruled invalid, Jeremy Paul, a professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law, told Blaze News, “In theory, a court invalidation could result in restoration of penalties. I see this as extremely unlikely.”

“If the DOJ attempted to impose punishment upon the affected individuals, the individuals would raise the pardons as a defense in federal court,” continued Paul. “Lower courts would issue rulings. The case could end up in the Supreme Court but that Court would not be required to hear the case.”

Paul expressed doubt about whether the pardons could be invalidated in the first place, stating, “Unless evidence emerges that DOJ officials granted pardons in express opposition to President Biden’s wishes, which seems highly unlikely, I cannot see any basis on which pardons could be deemed invalid.”

Bernadette Meyler, a Stanford Law School professor, suggested to CNN that one way to go about trying to void a pardon would be for Attorney General Bondi to “sue for a declaratory judgment that the pardons were invalid because of some form of impropriety in the signing of them, or in the giving of the pardon.”

Blaze News has reached out to the Office of the Pardon Attorney for comment.

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​Ed martin, Joe biden, Pardons, Commutations, Fauci, Jan. 6, J6 committee, Pardon attorney, Department of justice, Pam bondi, Pardon, Clemency, Biden, Autopen, Milley, Politics 

A shocking new lawsuit claims Celina ISD in Texas covered up allegations that its middle school football coach Caleb Elliot was a sexual predator — before he got the job as a middle school football coach.

Elliot is alleged to have been moved to the middle school after an “improper” relationship with a high school senior, instead of being fired and labeled as a predator.

The lawsuit also alleges that Elliot was caught during the 2024–2025 school year placing cameras in the Moore Middle School locker room and captured the teenage boys as they undressed — which resulted in the coach being banned from the locker room.

In defense of himself, Elliot claimed that “he did not know it was illegal and was trying to deter theft.”

“Now obviously, we know that’s not the case because again, predator is going to predator. Obviously, this child predator was only enabled and emboldened by this district. And he decided to just get more brazen with his exploitation,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says, disgusted.

“Should have been fired but once again was not. He still was not fired. Instead, Celina ISD continued to harbor a child predator, because football, man,” Gonzales continues, noting that Elliot was a very successful coach’s son.

“It is unfathomable and unconscionable that this district would have covered up multiple instances of sexual exploitation of children because of football, because they wanted to win games, because they wanted to be the state champs,” she adds.

After Elliot’s cameras and footage were discovered, he was banned from the locker rooms.

“You’re going to be shocked to hear this, as a child predator would do. Caleb ignored the rule. And since the rule was never communicated, allegedly, according to the lawsuit, the rule was never communicated to the eighth grade team, they didn’t know that Caleb wasn’t supposed to go in there,” Gonzales explains.

“He just started entering the locker room after the coaches had left and returned to their offices,” she adds, noting that it gets even more disturbing.

“I’m going to read this directly from the lawsuit,” Gonzales says. “‘Beginning in September, the boys noticed Elliot standing around the locker room and staring as they undressed and showered, often holding his cell phone with the camera pointed toward the students.’”

“Plaintiffs allege that Elliot took one of the boys’ backpacks and said that he had to quote ‘do jumping jacks fully nude,’ end quote, to get it back. ‘The boy complied while Elliot watched the child’s penis,’ end quote,” Gonzales reads.

“I would probably be in jail if anyone had engaged in this sort of conduct with my son,” she says.

“These are young boys who have been traumatized, who’ve been exploited in their most vulnerable time by a sick ass pervert freak,” she adds.

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The devil and his minions have haunted me all my life.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been visited by the unquiet dead, the hungry ghosts, and even Old Scratch himself in my dreams. Perhaps these nighttime visitations were spiritual attacks, perhaps they were the predictable manifestation of the violence and instability of my upbringing.

Like Piper Laurie in ‘Carrie,’ my mother forced me to kneel while she stood above me bellowing. ‘Humble yourself before me!’ she shrieked. ‘GodDAMN you, humble yourself!’

Maybe they were both; maybe the kind of moral derangement that afflicted my parents was a kind of demonic possession.

The devil I know

I’m not sure I believe in God, but I’m getting closer to believing in the devil. That’s a confused position, admittedly, but that’s what you get from a guy who believed as a child until it was punished out of him and then spent too many years as an obnoxious “new atheist” adult.

Whatever the answer may be, I’ve been terrified and fascinated by the supernatural, the uncanny, and the grotesque all my life. The kinds of spooky stories that gripped me were the type you find in Victorian English ghost story anthologies. Authors like E.F. Benson, M.R. James, and Elizabeth Gaskell.

If you like these too, no one reads them better than English podcaster Tony Walker. His “Classic Ghost Stories Podcast” is one of the few I find so good that I voluntarily pay for it. This is no amateur sideshow; Walker’s narration is professional grade. Why he’s not rich reading books for Audible, I’ll never know.

Weeping and wailing women in veils who glide down hallways. Rain-bedraggled brides hitchhiking on the side of the road who disappear from their ride’s passenger seat as he drives past Resurrection Cemetery. Fingerprints that appear on the windows of automobiles that cross the railroad tracks where a locomotive hit a school bus long ago killing the children on board. Their spirit fingers gently push your car along to make sure you don’t meet their sad and untimely fate.

In search of … belief

Like many kids of the 1970s and 1980s, I grew up watching shows like the cryptid/aliens/spook-filled “In Search Of,” narrated by Leonard Nimoy. My library card was full many times over with every book on Bigfoot, extra-sensory perception, telekinesis, poltergeists, and the Bermuda Triangle.

Have you heard about the moving coffins of Barbados? That’s top-quality spine tingles. As the story goes, a wealthy family living on the Caribbean island built a family vault in the cemetery. Every time a member died, the crypt was opened to accept a new coffin. And every time the crypt was opened, the coffins that were already there were tossed about helter-skelter.

Maybe it was flood waters. Except that there was no evidence of water incursion. Maybe pranksters did it. But the family sealed the stone door and sprinkled sand on the floor, and there was never a footprint betraying a (living) human presence.

For a proper classic haunting, you can’t beat the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall. Nearly everyone with a passing familiarity with the spirit world of 20th-century popular culture has seen the photograph of this long dead woman, a translucent, begowned figure descending the grand staircase of the palatial home in Norfolk, England, built during the reign of James I in 1620.

According to two photographers who were documenting the inside of the estate in 1936, as they were setting up a shot, they looked up at the stairs in astonishment. A veiled specter was float-walking silently down the stair treads, and they had just enough time to open the shutter on their plate camera and capture the most famous ghost photograph of all time.

Was she the shade of Lady Dorothy Walpole? Lady Walpole was said to have been immured in a room in Raynham Hall for the rest of her life at the hands of her husband, Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, who was angered by her unfaithful dalliances.

Or was this just the first and best example of trick-ghost photography, a double-exposed photographic plate? In the early days of photography, the public was not wise to the trickery available to a skilled image-maker. Long before Photoshop and AI, the public believed the camera never lies.

I want to believe. There’s something magnetic, romantic, and almost erotic about the possibility that a curtain separates us from the realm of the dead and that it thins at certain times, like now. As a child, I delighted in being scared so badly I didn’t dare turn off the flashlight under the covers I used for my clandestine and very-much-not-allowed post-bedtime reading.

Joy interrupted

Yet the possibility of an ethereal realm where the dead who refuse to acknowledge their condition “live,” a plane where real devil cavorts are not merely fun and games. If that plane exists, and if it’s populated by any of the henchmen attributed to Satan, then the other side is very serious business indeed. I’m not so sure I want to believe, in that case, but I’m also not so sure that I don’t.

When I was 8 years old, my family took a rare trip to a sit-down restaurant on Christmas Eve. We were poor, and a night out at Demicelli’s Italian Restaurant was so special that Christmas would have been joyful even if we didn’t get a single present. As we walked toward Placentia Boulevard in Fullerton, California, I looked at the night sky and saw the brightest star I’d ever seen.

“Mommy, look!” I said, tugging at my mother’s sleeve. I pulled on her cigarette hand, which annoyed her. “It’s the star of Jesus, Mommy. It’s the star that guided the Wise Men to the baby Jesus!”

It was wondrous. It made me feel light-headed with a joy I’d never felt.

My mother made a derisive sniggering noise as she blew out smoke. “Oh, no it isn’t, Josh,” she mocked. “It’s just a star. Probably Venus.”

My face went red with embarrassment, and I stayed quiet the rest of the night. I felt stupid. Unsophisticated. Dumb. Childlike. Naive. And substandard. This was a problem that repeated itself over the years. My mother was the resentful “victim” type, and she was at war with God.

I convinced her to take us to the Presbyterian church where I’d been (to her reluctance, as she recalled it) baptized as an infant for Christmas Eve services in 1986. Mother spent the walk home railing about those “Goddamned hypocritical Christians! Where were they for this single mother when I needed a little help to put food on the table?”

I can’t repeat the rest of what she said in a respectable publication.

Maternal monster

It wasn’t until my 40s that I realized why I had been captivated to the point of obsession with certain dark characters in disturbing films like 1976’s “Carrie.” This was an adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel of the same name, a book that still ranks among his finest work. It’s only nominally about a teen girl with telekinesis, the psychic ability to move objects with her mind. The story is really about a frightened girl who grew up with a maternal monster.

If you’ve seen the movie, you remember Piper Laurie’s almost kabuki performance as Margaret White, a religious fanatic tormented by her own sense of failure and sin. Seeing herself as a fallen woman who fornicated with a man, she uses extreme interpretations of scripture to berate and subjugate the result of that union, her daughter, Carrie. Just as Margaret believes she can never be forgiven, she can never forgive her daughter for being born, for embodying her mother’s sin in too-real flesh.

So she screams at Carrie, beats her, forces her to confess sins the girl has never committed (they were Margaret’s sins), and worst of all, locks her in a “prayer closet.” The scene that terrified me the most was the vignette in the dining room when Margaret forces Carrie to her knees as she intones about how God had loosed the raven on the world, and the raven was called sin.

“Say it, woman! Say it!” Margaret screams. “Eve was weak. Eve was weak!”

She drags Carrie to the prayer closet, a black cloak whirling about her like the wings of the raven, and babbles insanely while her daughter screams for mercy. Lighting a candle in the dark, Carrie looks up to a figure of St. Sebastian on the wall, a grotesque effigy with agonized eyes reflecting the pain of his arrow wounds.

Fascinated by fear

Margaret White obviously had a severe condition called Borderline Personality Disorder, which also afflicted my mother. While my mother was not a religious fanatic, she treated me the way Margaret White treats Carrie. Just as in the movie’s dining room scene, my mother forced me to kneel while she stood above me bellowing. “Humble yourself before me!” she shrieked. “GodDAMN you, humble yourself!”

My mother did not want what she claimed she wanted: respect and filial piety. She wanted to be worshiped. My mother created herself God in her own image.

So I prayed to God to be delivered from my mother’s prison, but I never got an answer, or one I recognized. I was more certain that the world was full of angry entities, though, and to say I felt haunted wouldn’t go far enough.

That which terrorizes also fascinates. Over my life, I’ve tasted and re-tasted the fear through movies like “Carrie” and “Mommie Dearest.” Fictional versions of my real-life horror were a poison candy; they hurt so good, like the compulsion to thrust the tongue repeatedly into a canker sore that won’t heal.

I still don’t know what I believe about God, the soul, heaven, or hell.

I knew what I saw

No Halloween story would be complete without a personal anecdote of an encounter with the unexplained. This is the first time I’ve told this story to anyone, let alone in print. Like I do myself, you may doubt me. I admit that I was halfway to drunk when it happened. But in the moment, I knew what I saw and heard, I knew I was only buzzed on three beers, not falling-down drunk. I wasn’t hallucinating pink elephants or anything else.

It was 1992. I was 18 years old and sharing an apartment with my best friend, Lisa. It was movie night in the living room, and it was my turn to fetch fresh Molson Goldens from the refrigerator. I put the sweating bottles on a round cocktail tray with a rubber no-slip bottom I’d brought home from the restaurant I worked at.

I was a skilled waiter who could hold a tray with four entrees and several cocktails without spilling. And though I’d had a few beers, I was not drunk. In the hallway as I was about to enter the living room, one of the standing beer bottles on the tray violently flipped over to the horizontal with a thud. It wasn’t the kind of soft thud that happens when something tips over. It was a THUD, as if someone had thrown the bottle into the tray.

Remember, it was a rubberized tray. It was actually difficult for a glass on such a tray to slide, let alone tip over. I had not tilted the tray; I was not weaving drunkenly as I walked. The other beer bottle didn’t tip over. The two mugs on the same tray didn’t move. More, the same thing happened a few minutes later in the living room. My (replaced) beer bottle on the side table, three feet from reach, loudly tipped over on a perfectly level table and made a loud rap.

I remember so clearly stopping still as the blood drained from my head. Did I really just see what I thought I saw? I did. And I felt it, too.

In that moment in the hall, I said this in my head: “What you just saw and heard really happened. You’re not drunk, and you’re not hallucinating. But no one will believe you, and over time, you will not believe you either. Your memory will soften, and you will convince yourself that you were drunk and that you somehow caused these bottles to tip over in apparent defiance of the laws of physics and friction.”

That’s exactly what happened. As I tell you this story, I doubt myself. At the same time, I remember the warning I spoke to myself in my head about doubt there, in the moment, and I know I wasn’t crazy.

Happy Halloween.

​Haunting, Lifestyle, Family, First-person, Halloween 2025, Carrie, Movies, Borderline personality disorder, Mothers, Mental illness, Spooky, Ghosts, Demonic, God, Intervention 

Nearly 20 people were shot — three of them fatally — in Chicago over the weekend, police told WBBM-TV.

The station said the shooting victims’ ages range from 18 to 70.

A woman of an unknown age was found unresponsive in an alley behind the 11000 block of South Mackinaw Avenue at 10:18 a.m., WBBM said. She had been shot twice in the head and was pronounced dead at the scene, the station said.

Police reported only one shooting on Friday. It took place just before 6:30 p.m. in the 5500 block of South Lafayette Avenue where police said an unknown person shot a 43-year-old woman on the street multiple times, WBBM noted. The woman was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition, the station said.

The shootings ramped up on Saturday, as police said a dozen people were hit by gunfire — two of them fatally, the station said.

In one of the fatal shootings, police told WBBM that individuals in a red Dodge Charger were traveling westbound in the 4400 block of West Augusta Boulevard just before 5:30 a.m. when they were struck by gunfire, after which the vehicle crashed. The driver, a 37-year-old man, was shot in the back while his 29-year-old male passenger was shot multiple times in the head, the station said. Both victims were taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital where the 29-year-old was in critical condition — but the 37-year-old, later identified as Mauro Josemartin, was pronounced dead, WBBM said.

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Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune

In the other fatal shooting, a 23-year-old man was in a vehicle in the 4100 block of West Jackson Boulevard at 3:10 p.m. when he was hit in the chest by gunfire, the station said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital of Cook County where he was pronounced dead, WBBM noted.

On Sunday, six people were shot, one of them fatally, the station said. In the fatal shooting, a woman of an unknown age was found unresponsive in an alley behind the 11000 block of South Mackinaw Avenue at 10:18 a.m., WBBM said. She had been shot twice in the head and was pronounced dead at the scene, the station said.

Among the nonfatal shootings, four unknown gunmen approached a 43-year-old man in the 1500 block of East 75th Street just before 4 p.m. Saturday and opened fire at him, WBBM said. The man was hit in the ankle area and taken to a hospital in good condition, the station said.

On Sunday, two men — ages 18 and 19 — were in a business in the 100 block of East 51st Street just before 6 a.m. when a man came up and shot them both, WBBM said. The 18-year-old was shot in the upper right leg and transported himself to Provident Hospital of Cook County, the station said, adding that the 19-year-old was shot in the left calf and was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center; both were in fair condition. Police told WBBM that the shooter was wearing a gray jumpsuit and fled east on foot.

Also on Sunday, police told the station that multiple people exited a dark-colored SUV outside a business in the 800 block of East 79th Street around 10:45 a.m. and shot two men, ages 66 and 70. The 66-year-old was hit in the right wrist, chest, and groin, police told WBBM, adding that the 70-year-old was hit once in the buttocks. Both victims were taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where the 66-year-old was reported in critical condition, and the 70-year-old was in fair condition.

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​Chicago, Chicago police, Fatal shootings, Police, Shootings, Crime