Category: blaze media

Tommy Robinson has long drawn the ire and attention of British establishmentarians by raising hell about the fallout of mass immigration, the failure of multiculturalism in England, the threats posed by radical Islam, and the cover-up of the Pakistani rape-gang scandal.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, various other politicians, and even some woke clergymen have condemned him; multiple social media platforms have banned him; and he was even told to stay clear of an entire city.

‘Thank you for raising the flag of England whilst so many cowards cowered.’

The desperation to shut Robinson up or, at the very least, make him go away manifested last year in the form of an unjustified police stop, which resulted in his indictment on a terrorism charge under the British equivalent of the Patriot Act.

To the likely chagrin of Robinson’s detractors in parliament and to the delight of his supporters on the scene, Judge Sam Goozee of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court cleared the 42-year-old activist on Tuesday, agreeing with the defense that the stop was unlawful and that police discriminated against Robinson because of what he stands for and his political beliefs.

“That judge’s verdict is a slam down against the police,” Robinson told reporters outside the courthouse. “Read what he says. Read about the evidence. It was corrupt. It was unlawful.”

“I’m frustrated still. I should be happy. I’m not happy because I shouldn’t be put through this time and time again,” Robinson added.

RELATED: The UK wants to enforce its censorship laws in the US. The First Amendment begs to differ.

photo by Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images

On July 28, 2024 — a day after organizing a political rally — Robinson was detained by Kent police under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act while attempting to travel to Spain, where he now lives. During his detention, Robinson was told to give police the PIN necessary to access his phone.

Robinson allegedly told police, “Not a chance, bruv. … You look like a c**t, so you ain’t having it,” adding that his phone contained sensitive “journalist material” regarding “vulnerable girls.”

Alisdair Williamson, Robinson’s lawyer, emphasized during the trial that Robinson “was stopped unlawfully, detained unlawfully for 40 minutes, and asked questions that were something to do with his political beliefs.”

Judge Goozee evidently agreed, finding on Tuesday that the stop did not appear motivated by any genuine suspicion of terrorism but rather by Robinson’s beliefs, which altogether qualify under the law as a protected characteristic. The judge also took issue with the police officers’ apparent selective amnesia regarding the incident and credibility.

Goozee said in his ruling, “I cannot put out of my mind that it was actually what you stood for and your beliefs that acted as the principle reason for the stop,” the Guardian reported.

“I cannot convict you,” the judge added.

In addition to questioning what happens now to the counterterrorism officers who unlawfully targeted him, Robinson thanked Elon Musk after the trial, stating, “I’m forever grateful. If you didn’t step in to fund my legal fight for this, then I’d probably be in jail. So today, free speech won!”

Elon Musk responded, “Thank you for raising the flag of England whilst so many cowards cowered.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Tommy robinson, United kingdom, Britain, England, Prison, Stitch up, Elon musk, Totalitarian, London, Uk, Terrorism, Politics 

A father-to-be reportedly slipped into a coma after being involved in a car accident while his girlfriend was driving on Super Bowl Sunday earlier this year.

But he eventually woke up from the coma just long enough before his death to give a chilling revelation to law enforcement about his girlfriend and the car crash, according to multiple reports.

‘I don’t care what happens, you’ll get what you deserve.’

Daniel Waterman, 22, was involved in a car crash on Interstate 95 in Flagler County on Feb. 9, Law & Crime reported, citing the warrant arrest affidavit. Waterman was in the car with his girlfriend — 24-year-old Leigha Mumby — who reportedly was driving a 2019 Honda Passport.

The car collided with a tree, police said, adding that no other vehicles were involved.

Mumby sustained serious injuries, according to police.

But Waterman suffered severe, life-threatening injuries, including a “C6-7 fracture, cervical spine injury, clavicle fracture, femur fracture, hip dislocation, epidural hematoma, pneumothorax with pulmonary contusion, zygomatic and temporal contusion, [and a] talus fracture,” according to the affidavit.

Waterman fell into a coma — but recovered enough to communicate with investigators on May 15.

Syracuse.com, citing Waterman’s mother, reported that he could barely speak, so police pointed to letters on a board while Waterman made sounds to indicate which letters he wanted to use.

The outlet reported that during the 90-minute interview with police, Waterman revealed that the car crash was not an accident.

While driving down the interstate, Waterman and Mumby got into an argument about a text message he received from a female friend in New York — and the fact that Leigha found out that day she was pregnant, according to the affidavit.

Waterman told the investigator who interviewed him that he and Mumby “exchanged expletives” and “Leigha began driving recklessly.”

Waterman’s mother, Heather Waterman, told Syracuse.com that her son was sending text messages to a friend about the Super Bowl the night of the crash because Waterman was a Kansas City Chiefs fan, and the friend was a Philadelphia Eagles fan.

Waterman’s cousin, Jessica Stappenbeck, told FlaglerLive.com that just minutes before the crash, Mumby texted her the following from Waterman’s phone: “This is what he gets for being a liar and a cheater.”

Stappenbeck said Waterman told her on the day of the crash that he didn’t know what to do about the pregnancy and that he “didn’t like how Leigha was handling the situation.”

Stappenbeck said Waterman and Mumby watched the Super Bowl at her home, but the couple left before the end of the game.

RELATED: Watch wild dashcam video of hit-and-run crash that led to bizarre chain of events culminating in arrest of rock star’s wife

According to the arrest affidavit, the last thing Waterman remembered before the crash was Mumby telling him, “I don’t care what happens, you’ll get what you deserve.”

The affidavit said the vehicle “swerved off the roadway, colliding with a tree, making Daniel incapacitated.”

An officer stated in the affidavit, “I have reason to believe Leigha made these statements and immediately swerved off the road to crash her car.”

The arrest affidavit said the car’s event data recorder found the vehicle was speeding between 93 and 95 miles per hour approximately three to five seconds before the crash.

“The brakes were not applied, ABS was inactive, and stability control was not engaged,” the affidavit read.

The affidavit also noted that the vehicle was “aggressively maneuvering” about four seconds before the collision.

In July, Mumby was arrested on charges of reckless driving causing serious bodily injury and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to the affidavit.

Mumby was booked into the Flagler County Jail and subsequently released after posting a $150,000 bond.

Syracuse.com reported that Waterman died from pneumonia Oct. 8 at the Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, New York.

Following Waterman’s death, prosecutors added vehicular homicide to Mumby’s previous charges on Oct. 24, according to People magazine.

John Hager, an attorney for Waterman’s family, told Fox News, “There are no real winners in this situation. It’s a terrible, horrible situation, and the fact that these charges were filed, I think were right and just, and the family is satisfied with how the state attorney’s office in Flagler County has been working diligently and is satisfied with the current charges being filed.”

Hager told WTVT-TV, “This was not an accident. Evidence showed she didn’t use the brakes — the car was speeding up at the time of impact.”

Hager added, “The family believes the new charge is appropriate and are relieved to see justice moving forward.”

What’s more, Waterman’s death has ignited a paternity battle over Mumby’s baby. Hager told WOFL-TV that Mumby recently gave birth to Waterman’s child.

Waterman’s mother told Syracuse.com that her son took online parenting courses in August, and his dying wish was for his parents to get custody of the child.

“We’ll do whatever we can do to bring her to us,” the mother told Syracuse.com. “He wanted her raised in New York with his family.” Hager told the Daytona Beach News-Journal that Waterman was visiting from New York at the time of the crash.

An obituary for Waterman posted to Syracuse.com said he “left this world on October 8th, far too soon following a tragic act of violence.”

“Daniel passed away after courageously fighting for eight months from injuries sustained in a crash,” the obituary added. “Daniel was an excited, soon-to-be father of a baby girl. He wanted nothing more than to come home to her and to the family who loved him so dearly.”

Mumby is scheduled to return to court on Nov. 19.

The Florida Highway Patrol and the Flagler County Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ requests for comment.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​True crime, True crime news, Daniel waterman, Homicide, Vehicular homicide, Florida crime, Car accident, Car crash, Leigha mumby, Crime, Super bowl sunday, Super bowl, New york state 

As the tight gubernatorial race in New Jersey reaches its final stretch, a deputy attorney general last week left his secure government career to speak out on pivotal political issues impacting his home state.

After a 14-year public service career, during which he worked on high-pressure cases as a deputy AG, assistant prosecutor, and defense attorney, William Holmes announced that he felt compelled to resign.

‘I cannot, in good conscience, work under someone who would label me a racist or white supremacist simply for sharing some of Kirk’s views.’

He referred to the celebration of the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, along with New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill’s comments about Kirk, as the final straw.

Holmes expressed deep concern that Sherrill would secure a victory against Republican rival Jack Ciattarelli on Tuesday.

“I disagree with her on many issues, but what troubles me most is her recent characterization of Charlie Kirk’s views as ‘racist’ and ‘anti-American,'” Holmes wrote in a post on Facebook addressing his recent decision to resign. He called Sherrill’s “reckless labels” of Kirk’s views “disqualifying.”

Holmes was referring to a statement released by Rep. Sherrill (D-N.J.) on Kirk’s murder. While she condemned the “horrific” assassination, she called Kirk’s views “vile” and accused him of trying to “roll back the rights of women and Black people.”

RELATED: Republican candidate narrows the gap in NJ governor race with the help of key Dem endorsements

Image source: William Holmes

“Any person who is trying to hold a position of great power should at the very least try to understand the arguments of their political opponents. The ignorant labeling by Sherrill shows she made no such attempt,” Holmes told Blaze News.

He further scrutinized Sherrill for remaining silent about Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones’ text message scandal, in which he wished death on a Republican rival and his children.

“I resigned because I want to urge people not to vote for Mikie Sherrill and to give Jack a chance. Her inflammatory comments, made before Kirk was even laid to rest, cannot be ignored,” he wrote. “I cannot, in good conscience, work under someone who would label me a racist or white supremacist simply for sharing some of Kirk’s views.”

Holmes acknowledged that resigning was a risky decision, but he emphasized the importance of freely discussing political matters.

“I’ve had to bite my tongue on many issues, such as how bail reform was implemented, the assassination attempt on President Trump and the coverage of it afterwards, and of course, Charlie Kirk’s recent death and the aftermath of it,” Holmes told Blaze News. “I understand some of the reasoning as to why a prosecutor needs to stay silent and how it could affect the public’s trust. However, I also know that if my co-workers knew I had strong conservative views, it would likely ruin any chances of a promotion while serving under a Democratic leadership.”

RELATED: NJ’s blue wall may be cracking in governor race, new poll shows — GOP hopeful racks up Democrat endorsements

Jack Ciattarelli. Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images. Mikie Sherrill. Photo by Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images

Holmes contended that “debate is the best forum for discovering truth.” He stated that labels like “Nazis,” “racists,” and “fascists” are used to dehumanize conservatives and discourage debate.

“I hope others are willing to come forward and speak out and defend their beliefs. The more people who are willing to speak out and criticize the ignorant labels by people who do not even bother trying to understand our beliefs, the harder it will be to silence us,” he said.

As of Saturday, RealClearPolling had Sherrill with an average advantage of just 3.3 points over Ciattarelli, and some recent polls show just a 1-point advantage.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​News, New jersey, William holmes, Attorney general, Ag, Mikie sherrill, Jack ciattarelli, New jersey governor race, New jersey gubernatorial race, Charlie kirk, Turning point usa, Politics 

Since last November, I’ve warned Republican voters not to believe the happy talk coming from friendly media. Nothing suggests the Democratic Party is collapsing — or that Donald Trump has “killed wokeness,” as Eric Trump claimed recently. The fight against the woke left and its Democratic Party embodiment continues, and the results remain mixed.

Trump has made real progress in removing DEI programs from the federal government and institutions that take federal funds. Yet schools, corporations, and other major organizations continue to find new ways to keep the ideology alive.

The Democratic Party is not collapsing. Its radicals are thriving. Black voters are not abandoning it. Conservatives need to stop pretending otherwise.

In blue and purple states, even the most extreme woke policies — like letting biological males compete in women’s sports or enter girls’ locker rooms — barely move voters. More than half the electorate in places like Virginia, New York, Illinois, California, and Oregon appear comfortable with positions that conservatives describe as “80-20 moral issues.” The electoral evidence for such optimism doesn’t exist.

Polls show Democrats holding barely a 30% approval rating — but Republicans don’t fare much better. A recent Gallup survey found the GOP only three points higher in popularity, while Democrats lead by 20 points on “acceptable philosophical positions.”

Democrats also hold a massive financial advantage and dominate the institutions that shape culture and opinion: public-sector unions, schools, universities, corporate media, and Hollywood. Their radical wing isn’t dragging them down; it’s defining them. Just ask Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, or the other progressive Democrats who keep winning elections.

As Ben Domenech recently noted, Democrats’ “bloodthirsty rage” keeps them united — even behind candidates like Jay Jones, the Virginia attorney general hopeful who once texted that he wanted to shoot a Republican lawmaker in the head and hoped the man’s children would die. Strategically, the Democrats may be right to stand by him. On the eve of Election Day, Jones was running neck-and-neck with incumbent Republican Jason Miyares, a capable and articulate attorney general trying to survive in an increasingly blue state.

Jones, who is black, will likely dominate the black vote — a reality Republicans must face. Black voters have come to view hostility toward the mostly white GOP as an expression of group identity. The small gains Trump made with black voters in 2020 haven’t changed that dynamic in a meaningful way.

Republicans should stop pretending they can transform black voting habits and instead focus on persuadable groups: white Christian men, Orthodox Jews, and Hispanics. Some subgroups, such as African immigrants and West Indian evangelicals, remain open to outreach — but the broader trend is clear.

The left’s cultural dominance was driven home for me recently when I learned that local elementary school students came home singing about “Daddy’s new boyfriend.” Teachers in our district overwhelmingly belong to the hard-left American Federation of Teachers and have no hesitation promoting its ideology. Even when warned against it, they keep injecting political dogma into the classroom.

RELATED: Pity equals power for the progressive class

Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Our borough’s school board still has a Christian majority, but it faces relentless pressure from activist feminists determined to take control of local education. The county newspaper, once a reliable conservative voice, now reads like an MSNBC transcript. And for the first time, our state representative is a progressive Democrat.

These are not isolated anecdotes. I live in a community that once voted Republican by habit — a borough in Pennsylvania’s traditionally red 11th Congressional District. Yet the signs of political drift are unmistakable. The left controls the institutions that shape belief, and that control gives it momentum. As a result, this place is turning purple.

Conservatives need to stop pretending otherwise. We are the weaker side in a long struggle against a relentless opponent. The Democratic Party is not collapsing. Its radicals are thriving. Black voters are not abandoning it. And wokeness, far from being “dead,” continues to define American life — from boardrooms to classrooms to city hall.

The first step toward winning any war is admitting you’re losing one.

​Opinion & analysis, Elections, Eric trump, Donald trump, Wokeness, Woke agenda, Leftism, Socialism, New york city mayoral race, Zohran mamdani, Islam, Virginia, Abigail spanberger, Jay jones, Political violence, New jersey, Democratic party, Republican party, Polls 

Using the revenue of some of the tariffs that liberal critics have fought vigorously, President Donald Trump has helped vulnerable American mothers and, in the process, neutralized some of Democrats’ supposed “leverage” in what is nearly the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) recently admitted that while the Democrat-induced government shutdown has been painful for families across the country, it is somehow necessary because “it is one of the few leverage times [Democrats] have.”

In their quest for leverage, Democrats have jeopardized critical food assistance and health care for the nearly seven million poor American pregnant mothers, breastfeeding mothers, infants, and at-risk children who rely on the special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children program known as WIC.

‘American families deserve certainty from their government.’

The WIC program, which received roughly $7 billion in fiscal year 2024, is federally funded through the annual appropriations process. The National WIC Association warned last month that unless additional funding was injected into the program, millions of families would lose their benefits as of Nov. 1.

“NWA is calling on the White House to make additional emergency funds available to avoid a short-term crisis for the millions of American families who count on WIC while Congress negotiates full-year funding for FY 2026,” Georgia Machell, president of the NWA, said in an Oct. 21 statement.

“WIC is a lifeline for nearly 7 million pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and young children. Even short-term disruption to WIC’s healthy food benefits, lactation support, nutrition education, screenings, and referrals can have long-term negative impacts on families,” added Machell.

On Friday, the Trump administration tapped a fund of unused Section 232 tariff revenue in order to make $450 million available for the WIC program, reported Reuters.

RELATED: Here are the 4 Republicans who betrayed Trump AGAIN, joining Democrats to undermine the MAGA agenda

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Federal funding records reportedly show that the money was transferred to the WIC program on Friday from the tariff revenue fund, which was made available to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for commodity disaster assistance. The USDA drew $300 million from the same fund last month to keep the WIC program liquid.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated last month, “The Trump White House will not allow impoverished mothers and their babies to go hungry because of the Democrats’ political games.”

Machell noted in the wake of the White House’s rescue of the program that “this additional funding is a welcome relief, but it is a stopgap, not a solution,” stressing the need for an end to the shutdown.

“American families deserve certainty from their government, not the constant anxiety of short-term fixes, especially when their children’s health is at stake,” said Machell.

While the administration swooped in to bolster the WIC program, it did not similarly drain its pool of tariff revenues to fully fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, having indicated that it lacks the authority to use emergency funds for SNAP.

Not only did the transfer temporarily deprive Democrats of the ability to use American pain as political leverage, it served as yet another point in favor of Trump’s tariffs.

House Democrats prophesied in April that Trump’s tariff policy would lead to economic collapse. Even though such calamity has yet to manifest, Senate Democrats passed resolutions last week to eliminate some of the president’s global and country-specific tariffs, namely those imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

According to an Oct. 31 report from the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank focused on tax policy, “Trump’s imposed tariffs will raise $2.4 trillion in revenue over the next decade on a conventional basis” and had raised $174 billion in revenue between January and September of this year.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Shutdown, Shut down, Usda, Snap, Wic, Benefits, Special supplemental nutrition program for women, Infants and children, Welfare, Donald trump, Trump, White house, Politics 

On October 21, Karine Jean-Pierre’s memoir, “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines,” was released. In the book, the former White House press secretary critiqued the Biden administration for its dysfunction, blamed Joe Biden’s abrupt withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race on a Democrat coup, publicly announced her departure from the Democrat Party, and advocated for political independence as a path forward for Americans.

And people absolutely hate it.

From the Washington Post to Politico and beyond, Jean-Pierre’s book has been met with relentless criticism, with reviewers slamming the memoir as cringeworthy, grievance-driven, and profoundly unconvincing.

But there’s one scathing review that stands out among the rest. In fact, it’s so unapologetically scorching, Glenn Beck read the entire critique aloud on an episode of “The Glenn Beck Program.”

Titled “A Book So Bad It Shattered Liberals’ Faith in DEI,” the review comes from journalist and editor Andrew Stiles at the Free Beacon, who pulled no punches in eviscerating Jean-Pierre’s memoir as a self-indulgent disaster wrapped in identity politics.

Stiles, calling the book “the worst political memoir ever written in the history of the English language,” opened his damning evaluation by mocking Jean-Pierre for being “the highest-ranking openly queer, French-born black woman with a hyphenated surname to publicly renounce the Democratic Party for being mean to Joe Biden.”

“Imagine writing a book so bad it could shame Democrats and liberals into second-guessing their cult-like devotion to DEI,” he wrote.

Stiles highlighted the irony of Jean-Pierre’s rise to prominence — something that was celebrated as “a triumph for diversity and representation” — only for reporters and colleagues to turn around and reveal that she was “ineffectual,” “unprepared,” “dumb,” and “the most incompetent and irrelevant White House press secretary ever.”

Her biggest accomplishment, said Stiles, is that she will forever be “a cautionary tale of what can happen when a desire to ‘make history’ takes precedence over everything else.”

He went on to address Jean-Pierre’s disastrous book tour, condemning the disgraced ex-spokeswoman for “[fumbling] her way through interviews, repeatedly invoking her lived experience as a trailblazing black woman and openly gay pioneer,” and blurting out so much “drivel” even liberals have renounced their support. He gave the example of Jean-Pierre’s interview with the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, during which she claimed the “broken White House” phrase in the subtitle of her book is “actually a reference to Donald Trump’s administration.”

Stiles then turned his unsparing eye to the content of “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines,” which he hilariously called “mercifully brief,” yet “intolerably long.” “Like her rambling press briefings, Jean-Pierre’s prose is riddled with contradictions that boggle the mind,” he penned.

“A more discerning editor could have whittled down her meandering attempts to explain why anyone should care that she’s an independent now, but they had to fill the pages somehow. In so many words, she explains that leaving the party was a tantrum-like plea for attention — a deeply personal quest for ‘new ways to be acknowledged’ that is ‘also about self-care.”’

Stiles noted Jean-Pierre’s hope that her memoir will spark “more nuanced political conversations.”

“It has certainly provoked a conversation — shockingly nuanced in the context of Democrat Party politics — just not the one she was expecting,” he concluded.

“I love this review. I want to hug the person who wrote this review,” laughs Glenn.

To hear Stiles’ full review and Glenn’s commentary, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Blazetv, Blaze media, Karine jean-pierre, Biden white house, White house press secretary, The free beacon, Andrew stiles 

In the span of less than 10 minutes after a huge crowd of protesters filled the U.S. Capitol West Plaza beneath the inauguration stage on Jan. 6, Capitol Police repeatedly used lethal force on the crowd, targeting people in the head, neck, face, and upper body — actions one use-of-force expert called “criminally negligent.”

During that brief span, at least 16 people were shot with kinetic-impact projectiles, including nine who took shots to the top of the head, face, and base of the neck, according to Capitol Police surveillance video obtained by Blaze News.

‘We need munitions! Unload! Unload it all! Take ’em out!’

The rounds are designed to be shot at or below the waist or skipped off pavement to strike the legs and cause trauma and “pain compliance.” None of the rounds observable on the surveillance footage struck below the belt, putting all of the observable rounds in dangerous and potentially lethal territory.

The targeting of the crowd and one graphic, bloody injury to a protester’s face enraged the crowd and appeared to lead to a large escalation of violence toward police, including the throwing of water bottles and flagpoles and the use of pepper spray and bear repellent, the video showed.

Deputy Police Chief Eric Waldow claimed in a U.S. Capitol Police radio dispatch about 1:11 p.m. that his officers were using “indirect firing,” but the department’s surveillance video contradicts that claim.

Waldow also said he gave “repeated warnings” to the crowd to disperse or face chemical munitions, but video shows he did not have a bullhorn, and no warnings could be heard on ground-level video or the USCP surveillance video.

He ordered Capitol Police grenadiers to open fire on the crowd at 1:06 p.m.

“I got a crowd fighting with officers, pushing, throwing projectiles,” he broadcast. “I have given warnings about chemical munitions. I need the less-than-lethal team positioned above me to identify the agitators and start deploying. Launch, launch, launch!“

Stan Kephart, an expert witness on police use of force who reviewed the Jan. 6 surveillance video, said firing crowd-control weapons from an elevated platform into a dense crowd and striking targets above the shoulders is both “criminally negligent” and “potentially a lethal act.”

“There is a wealth of clear and convincing evidence here that police were not trained or equipped to move, disperse, and arrest stragglers,” Kephart told Blaze News. “Instead they adopted a punishment tactic, inflaming the crowd and resulting in injury that they are responsible for.”

‘If you really want to start a riot, shoot them in the head.’

The grenadiers who fired on the crowd from the “crow’s nest” outcropping during the first hour included training officer Shauni Kerkhoff, Sgt. Adam Descamp, and Sgt. Gary Sprifke, Blaze News has learned. Officer Bret Sorrell stood in the crow’s nest holding a riot shield, video showed.

Blaze News asked for comment from Capitol Police Public Information Officer Timothy Barber and Capitol Police Chief Michael Sullivan, but did not receive a reply.

The number of protesters struck with deadly force by crowd-control weapons in the early minutes of Jan. 6 is much higher than previously known, the surveillance video showed.

The fusillade of so-called “less-lethal” crowd-control weapons came in response to thousands of protesters who streamed onto Capitol property after a lightly defended police line near the Peace Memorial was breached at 12:53 p.m. Most of the early crowd ended up on the West Plaza beneath the “crow’s nest” outcropping where presidents-elect take the oath of office.

The massive, amped-up crowd caught Capitol Police off guard. There was insufficient security to defend the Capitol — in part because many officers were diverted to respond to two pipe bombs discovered during a 25-minute span at the nearby Democratic National Committee building and the Capitol Hill Club next to the Republican National Committee building.

RELATED: BBC allegedly deceptively edited Trump’s Jan. 6 speech into riot lie

Protester Joshua Black of Leeds, Ala., is led away by a medic after being shot in the face with an FN 303 projectile launcher round at the U.S. Capitol about 1:06 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021.Metropolitan Police Department

Surveillance video captured from the Lower West Terrace captured the flight of .68-caliber yellow marking rounds and red pepper rounds from powerful FN 303 projectile launchers. Produced by FN America, the FN 303 is powered by 3,000-psi compressed air. Rounds travel at 300 feet per second. A Tippmann 98 pepper-ball rifle was also used on the crowd. Most of the rounds were fired from less than 50 feet away, video showed.

Targeting the head with kinetic-impact projectiles is prohibited by manufacturers and industry safety standards due to the risk of fatal injuries. It is considered lethal force. The website of FN Herstal, parent company of FN America, stresses the point, saying the company “forbids users from aiming at the head.”

“The primary effect of the projectile is trauma, which directly neutralizes the aggressor,” the FN America website says. “Secondary effects from the projectiles can be delivered via a chemical payload depending on mission requirements.”

Operators of less-lethal crowd-control weapons are trained not to aim at or strike the head, face, eyes, ears, throat, neck, spine, kidneys, or groin.

A retired U.S. Army special forces operative who has used the FN 303 launcher and other less-lethal weapons in overseas missions said firing at heads from an elevated perch “will cause such rage afterward.”

“If you really want to start a riot, shoot them in the head,” he told Blaze News.

The bombardment of the early crowd is the latest controversy on weapons and tactics used by Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department on Jan. 6.

Minutes after the less-lethal projectile launchers were unleashed, MPD flowed onto the West Plaza, spraying protesters with high-velocity oleoresin capsicum, commonly known as pepper spray.

After pushing protesters back and forming a police line with bicycle-rack barricades, MPD officers began lobbing dozens of suspected incendiary grenades into the crowd and firing 40mm shells containing plastic pellets, beanbags, and tear gas. Some 40 munitions were fired or lobbed into the packed crowd on the north side of the plaza over the course of an hour, video showed.

At 1:18 p.m., a Capitol Police supervisor broadcast instructions to keep firing at the crowds. “We need munitions!” he shouted to dispatch. “Unload. Unload it all! Take ’em out!”

Pain compliance

Kephart said the descriptor “less-lethal” weapon depends on the launchers being used in a proper and responsible manner as specified by the manufacturer. Otherwise they can easily be lethal weapons.

“All launchers and chemical munitions are ‘pain compliance’ devices first and predicated on compliance, with the pain of the launcher’s impact or the gas, or singularly the beanbag or dowel impact pain. That is why they are to be fired at the belt line or skipped off the ground.

“Additionally, the accuracy factor in deploying these launchers is poor,” Kephart said. “Unlike a rifled bullet, the projectile wobbles in flight due to the absence of rifling stabilizing it in flight.”

A U.S. Department of War less-lethal weapons expert and training instructor told Blaze News that firing into a tightly spaced crowd has great risks that he would not have taken that day. He examined the surveillance video at the request of Blaze News.

‘The escalation of force totally amplified these small groups of people.’

“I know, myself, wouldn’t have felt comfortable sending those rounds into a crowd knowing they would impact face/head target areas and definitely not guaranteed for the intended target,” said the expert, who asked not to be identified by name or title. “Nor would I have advised those around me to do the same. As an instructor, you lead by example, especially being on the line and controlling those around you, and maintaining integrity/continuity/accountability for every round.”

One of the Capitol Police officers whom video showed firing on the crowd with a Tippmann 98 pepper-ball rifle was Shauni Kerkhoff, a certified trainer on the proper use of crowd-control weapons. Pepper balls struck protesters in the early crowd in the head and face. Two riot-gear-clad Capitol Police officers were also struck with pepper rounds, including one who took a shot to the rear of the helmet.

A now-former Capitol Police Civil Disturbance Unit officer who was on the police line beneath the grenadiers said verbal warnings would have been worthless with the extreme crowd noise and stiff winds on the West Plaza. Blaze News asked the former officer to review the surveillance video.

“You really think people were listening with all the noise?” asked the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “He [Waldow] probably saw everything that was going on and panicked, or at least that’s what I feel when I hear him say ‘launch!’ multiple times.”

The former Civil Disturbance Unit officer said repeated attempts to push through the early police line were made by small groups. “I think they could have been contained easily, but the escalation of force totally amplified these small groups of people,” he said.

RELATED: Analysis: FBI’s Jan. 6 pipe bomb update omits key evidence, withholds video

A bystander puts a compress on a bleeding wound punched in Joshua Black’s face by a crowd-control projectile on Jan. 6, while a protester registers his disapproval.Special to Blaze News

The Department of War expert said emotions can be inflamed when crowd-control weapons are used improperly.

“Some of the intended targets and where they hit enticed the crowd to react emotionally and feel they were being targeted or felt the need to protect themselves,” he said. “First aid for the crowd within the crowd was provided, but that’s also enough for an already emotional crowd at that point to [go] one of two ways: become louder and more emotional or take some type of action to start defending themselves.

“In my line of work, [that’s] something you want to avoid altogether,” he said. “It does not take much for a crowd to become unruly or violent.”

The FN 303 launcher was implicated in the 2004 killing of a Boston woman shot in the eye socket by police during a Boston Red Sox American League pennant celebration.

The fusillade of projectiles was fired by grenadiers from the Capitol Police Civil Disturbance Unit, the first of whom arrived in the “crow’s nest” outcropping at 1:01 p.m., security video showed.

Amped-up crowds

From the time the crowd filled in the plaza and police began to establish a hastily formed line, protesters were seen in animated, heated discussions with police. One man carried a sign that read “Expose Election Fraud” on the top and “Playing for Blood” on the bottom. A few rows behind him, a man held up a black baseball bat while another raised an empty axe handle.

A large man in a tan coat and black cap was pushed back by an officer with a riot shield, causing him to fall. As he began to get up, an officer under the scaffolding to the south tossed a tear-gas canister at the feet of protesters and the cloud of gas swirled out into the crowd.

Police used their shields to start pushing the crowd back. Scuffles broke out along the farthest southern police line, with protesters surging and then being pushed back by police. Two of the men in the scrum were a short time later targeted for less-lethal weapons fire.

‘They shot him in the f**king face!’

At approximately 1:06:29, a grenadier fired a .60-caliber fin-stabilized projectile from a compressed-air FN 303 launcher that struck a black-cap-clad protester in the head. The impact blew the man’s hat off, video showed. The round bounced off his head and struck a nearby riot officer.

Just prior, video showed the man was in the second row of a group surging toward the hastily assembled police line. As police pushed the group back, the projectile screamed past the Trump 2020 flag the man carried, striking him in the left side of the head.

Seven seconds later, a man in a tan jacket was struck by a projectile on the brim of his Make America Great Again cap. The round deflected off the cap and struck his upper right chest. He flinched, grabbed his head, and crouched down, video showed.

RELATED: FBI sent 55 agents to the Capitol Jan. 6, none for ‘crowd control,’ former Chief Steven Sund says

A crowd-control projectile fired by U.S. Capitol Police strikes a protester in the head on the U.S. Capitol West Plaza at 1:06 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. Capitol Police

Some 30 seconds later, a man wearing a light blue sweatshirt near the police line was struck in the back at the base of his neck. The projectile ricocheted into the crowd. When the man turned around, another round struck his upper chest and dropped to the ground.

A man in a blue sweatshirt who was pushing an officer was shot in the back at about 1:07 p.m., video showed. The projectile ricocheted west into the crowd. The man next to him, who was also scuffling with officers, was targeted for projectile fire, but the round struck his backpack and fell to the ground.

Joshua Black of Leeds, Ala., was the next person to take a potentially lethal shot from above. At 1:07 p.m., video showed the yellow FN 303 projectile striking him in the left cheek. Unlike some of the other projectiles, this one did not bounce off or ricochet. It punched through Black’s cheek and embedded in his mouth.

Black bled profusely, the blood forming a pool on the ground that was still visible hours later. Bystanders immediately tended to his wound. One of them turned to the crowd and shouted, “They shot him in the f**king face!”

“This is a peaceful protest,” a woman shouted, according to ground-level video obtained by Blaze News. “Peaceful!” Another bystander shouted, “We are witnessing tyranny. We are witnessing tyranny right now.”

While Black was getting attention for his wound, a pepper ball fired from above struck a Capitol Police CDU officer in the back of the helmet, sending a cloud of pepper powder into the air. A second shot narrowly missed another officer’s head and exploded on the officer’s riot shield, video showed.

‘Typically, I aim for the ground.’

The bloody scene surrounding Black caused numerous members of the crowd to begin shouting and pointing at the line of riot-gear-clad Civil Disturbance Unit officers on the plaza. Several pointed up to the inauguration balcony in an accusatory fashion, while others issued middle-finger salutes, video showed.

Waldow ordered the less-lethal unit to target a man wearing a baseball batting helmet and carrying an axe handle with an American flag attached to one end.

“Have the less-than-lethal target the subject with the baseball hat and the axe handle and the subject with the gas mask and the American shirt, the American flag shirt. He’s assaulting an officer now,” Waldow said on police radio.

Shortly, an FN 303 round zoomed at the man’s face, appearing to clip his chin before striking his gloved hand. Minutes later, video showed blood running down the man’s left cheek. The man was shown on surveillance video at the police line minutes earlier, but it’s not clear if he shoved or struck an officer.

RELATED: Judge allows Jan. 6 lawsuit alleging excessive force in DC jail to proceed

U.S. Capitol Police Officer Shauni Kerkhoff shows a rubber bullet to soldiers of the Maryland Army National Guard’s 115th Military Police Battalion, Salisbury, Md., during a joint training event in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 27, 2021.U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Arcadia Hammack

A short distance away, a man in a blue winter coat was struck in the right side of the neck or base of the skull by a projectile. The round bounced off his head and struck a nearby man in the leg.

The man in the blue jacket knelt down to lend aid to the man who had been shot in the back moments earlier. After he stood up, he realized he was tracking through Black’s blood on the ground. He pointed down at the huge bloodstain and looked at the police line. He then went to the line and began shoving officers.

At this point, a sizeable group was now battling with police. Several men in the crowd aimed liquid and foam pepper spray at the officers. Projectiles, including flagpoles, water bottles, and traffic cones, were heaved at the police line, video showed.

Police surged into the crowd in what appeared to be an attempt to check on the injured Black. While officers tried to help Black off the ground, a rioter in a bicycle helmet and a dark face covering aimed a stream of pepper spray at several officers and might have hit the supine Black as well, video showed.

Training officer testified

Kerkhoff, who joined the U.S. Capitol Police after college in 2018, was the first witness against Guy Wesley Reffitt in the first Jan. 6 federal criminal trial in March 2022. She told a jury that she fired pepper balls at Reffitt as he scaled the Northwest Steps. When that didn’t stop Reffitt, she said, another officer fired at Reffitt with the FN 303 launcher.

She testified that she was a trainer for the Tippmann 98 rifle and the FN 303 launcher. Three weeks after Jan. 6, Kerkhoff was a less-lethal weapons instructor at a joint training event with the Maryland Army National Guard’s 115th Military Police Battalion.

In her trial testimony, Kerkhoff said the pepper-ball rifle is meant to cause some pain to the target to coerce compliance.

“So it has a small amount of pain compliance. So it should hurt a little bit. So that should deter actions,” Kerkhoff said in her March 2, 2022, testimony. “As well as when the ball hits something, it will — it is filled with PAVA powder, so it will launch that PAVA powder into the air and will affect the nasal passages as well as the eyes, causing stinging, burning.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler asked her, “What do you aim for when you first start launching?”

“Typically, I aim for the ground,” Kerkhoff replied.

Noting her previous testimony about experience with the Tippman 98 rifle, Nestler asked Kerkhoff about her knowledge of the more powerful FN 303 launcher. “Was that something you were trying to use or are you just familiar with?” Nestler asked.

“No, I am an instructor on both of those weapons,” she replied.

The former Civil Disturbance Unit officer told Blaze News that Kerkhoff left the U.S. Capitol Police about six months after Jan. 6 and that he had since been unable to reach her. Her colleagues heard she went to work for a three-letter federal intelligence agency, he said.

“She immediately wiped her social media, phone numbers, and email accounts,” he said. “Nobody was able to reach her after that.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​January 6 footage, Capitol police, News, Politics, January 6 

At first glance, it seems insane that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted breakthrough therapy designation to a nasal spray derived from the super-powered hallucinogenic excretions of an internet-famous desert toad. The experimental compound falls among an emerging class of market-extant and incoming drugs synthesized, inspired, extracted, or otherwise manipulated out of natural hallucinogens such datura, which gave us scopolamine, or simply drugs that have previously only been associated with recreational and illegal usage.

The Colorado River toad produces for its defense a highly toxic form of DMT, dimethyltryptamine, which you may have heard of from Joe Rogan, Miley Cyrus, or, if you live in Oregon, your dentist. While the toad has ties to many a celebrity comeback and is implicated in popular culture (see “The Simpsons” episode “Missionary: Impossible”), the Bufo, as the amphibian is often called, is now apparently the inspiration for a serious advance toward Aldous Huxley’s famous vision of a society teeming with, mediated by, and dependent upon a particular mind-altering substance.

It’s just a little bit close to Huxley’s ‘Brave New World,’ where drugs are state-issued.

Huxley called his fictional drug “soma,” but Atai Life Sciences project, which is producing the toad-venom derivative, calls their contribution “mebufotenin.” Note that Atai Life Sciences valuations among speculators shot up with the announcement of the FDA designation.

In a public release from the company, Atai states that the designation “is granted to expedite development of drugs targeting serious or life-threatening conditions where preliminary clinical evidence suggests that the drug may demonstrate substantial improvement on one or more clinically significant endpoints over existing therapies.”

In the wild, the toad produces the compound 5-MeO-DMT, substantially different from the drug most associated with recreational psychedelic endeavors such as those popularized by Joe Rogan and others. Among experienced “psychonauts” (psychedelic explorers), the toad-derived variety of DMT provides a radically more intense experience even than the already supercharged but standard-issue DMT experience.

In 2019, a ketamine-based nasal spray sold by Spravato, owned by Johnson & Johnson, hit the market. It’s hard at this point to quantify, but there was an impact. It was shortly afterward that ads for the drug swamped social media. We learned that no less a winner than Elon Musk was a big proponent of the drug. (The wave of interest slowed when “Friends” television star Matthew Perry died unceremoniously in his hot tub, evidently after a ketamine overdose.)

RELATED: LA County Medical Examiner reveals drugs that caused Matthew Perry’s death

Photo by Jason Krempin / Contributor via Getty Images

Is there a wink-wink nod aspect to all of this public systematizing of what were once compounds reserved for wild nights behind closed doors? Well, the nebulousness of the medical application customary to BTDs (“conditions … suggest the drug may demonstrate substantial improvement”) is hard to miss. Harder when it seems to contribute to a recurring theme among many of these drugs which isn’t so much “license to party” as it is “license to self-isolate.” Or, as the PR campaigns will have it, “The establishment is now cool, they get it, and it’s OK to smother (anoint?) your difficulties in drug miasma. We’re all doing it.”

Scopolamine, the datura-derived compound, is unpatented and sold in low-dose patches over the counter. A higher-grade dose is offered via prescription, ostensibly for various vertigo and travel sickness-related issues. And in the case of esketamine, the justification is “treatment-resistant depression,” said to afflict 300 million people globally. Pretty nice market.

It was a well-accepted fact that for many years, the “prescription” of medical marijuana in Oregon was just a cover. In the case of medical-to-legal marijuana, Big Pharma managed to extract, patent, and control the marijuana cash cow, or least control the market on a few sub-compounds or aspects of it. It’s Big Pharma money pushing all of these drugs through; nothing gets through the corporate-government-legal machine without great globs of financial, incentivizing, and buy-off grease. Celebrities, too, have an interest and, presumably, a price for their imprimatur.

It’s just a little bit close to Huxley’s “Brave New World,” where drugs are state-issued and, curiously, often understood as a combination of hallucinogenic and anti-depression compounds.

As with any other social category or special interest group in America, psychonauts aren’t in any sense monolithic in their opinions, alliances, or wisdom. Dennis McKenna, the legit-scientist brother of late author and psychedelic exponent Terence McKenna, long ago raised objections to the intermingling of Big Pharma and the psychedelic “community,” such as the former may be. For McKenna and others, it was a self-evident fact that the bottom-line logic native to corporate operation was antithetical to the perceived sacred nature of these hallucinogenic compounds.

Old-school psychonauts, whose informal and decentralized psychedelic church ideologically opposed “the establishment,” were convinced psychedelics would usher in utopia (even though LSD was invented by Swiss pharma giant Sandoz). They considered LSD and MDMA their sacraments. Yet, for them, combining LSD with mescaline, the active compound in peyote, was sacrilege. Yesterday, the internet crossed the streams of the establishment and the renegades with unnerving effects. Tomorrow, the same is about to happen with hallucinogens. After all, as Timothy Leary famously put it, “The PC is the LSD of the ’90s.”

​Tech, Big pharma, Dmt 

Teen Vogue was originally launched in 2003 as a teenage girl-targeting print counterpart to publisher Condé Nast’s fashion magazine Vogue. Since its quarterly print run was brought to an end in 2017, the leftist propaganda mill continued independently online — until now.

Radicals are clutching pearls as it is clear that the publication will survive in name but not in spirit.

’19 Best Anal Lubes for Slick and Pain-Free Insertion.’

Teen Vogue’s leftist editor in chief Versha Sharma is leaving the company, and Teen Vogue is being absorbed into Vogue.com.

According to Vogue, “the title will remain a distinct editorial property, with its own identity and mission”; however, it will now “focus its content on career development, cultural leadership, and other issues that matter most to young people.”

The union representing the propagandists at Teen Vogue condemned the decision to park the blog under the broader Vogue.com umbrella, complaining that the shake-up was “disproportionately impacting marginalized employees,” as the majority of those now allegedly facing termination are “BIPOC women or trans.”

Lex McMenamin, the plural-pronoun-providing radical who served as the blog’s news and politics editor since 2021, confirmed that she was laid off along with multiple other staffers on Monday, noting, “To my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.”

Condé United, the union representing writers at the blog, suggested that the move was “clearly designed to blunt the award-winning magazine’s insightful journalism at a time when it is needed the most.”

Some of the usual suspects have echoed this suggestion that the content published on the blog under Sharma’s leadership was of journalistic value.

Alejandra Caraballo, a transvestite activist and Harvard Law School clinical instructor, for instance, wrote, “They just gutted Teen Vogue which had top notch political journalism. The media is continuing to purge any sort of political dissent to Trump and the oligarchs.”

Caraballo added, “It’s resegregation in real time.”

Cross-dressing Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) stated, “The loss of the politics staff at Teen Vogue is an absolute travesty. In a media marketplace that has been decimated by billionaires, tepid takes, and AI slop, Teen Vogue often stood out as a bastion of principled, purposeful journalism.”

Here are a few examples of the supposed “principled, purposeful journalism” Teen Vogue has been churning out in recent years:

“How to Finger Someone (Including Yourself), According to Sexperts” — Oct. 31, 2025;”Anal Sex: Safety, How tos, Tips, and More” — Nov. 12, 2019;”The Polyamory Workbook: How I Discovered Nonmonogamy” — Nov. 15, 2022;”6 Intersex People on Why Gender-Affirming Care Bans Are Bad for Everyone” — June 13, 2025; and”19 Best Anal Lubes for Slick and Pain-Free Insertion” — June 3, 2023.

The publication has, in fairness, not limited itself to giving minors advice on sodomy and the latest in sex-toy technology.

It has also often promoted gender ideology and abortion — see the Jan. 23, 2025, piece titled “The Sex Lives of College Girls Needs an Abortion Storyline” — and pushed a significant amount of leftist agitprop.

RELATED: Assata Shakur and 6 more: A rogues’ gallery of leftist America’s heroes

Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images

For instance, in a piece published last month titled “Trump and Republicans Want to ‘Un-Cancel’ Columbus Day, Erasing Indigenous Peoples Day,” the blog suggested that Christopher Columbus was little more than an Italian “who brought disease, colonization, and enslavement” to the Americas.

Amid the deadly Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, Teen Vogue published a list of bail funds to which readers could contribute in order to spring rioters from jail.

In a politics article explaining how teens can “learn the legacy of Marx’s ideas and how they’re relevant to the current political climate,” the author emphasized to teens that they should think like pinkos even if they aren’t card-carrying communists: “While you may not necessarily identify as a Marxist, socialist, or communist, you can still use Karl Marx’s ideas to use history and class struggles to better understand how the current sociopolitical climate in America came to be.”

Teen Vogue made clear that thinking like Marx was acceptable but that conservative thought and lifestyles were beyond the pale.

A December Teen Vogue op-ed warned about the threat posed to America’s “progressive new future” by those young women who would dare embrace traditional gender roles and stay home to tend children.

“With clearly defined gender roles and responsibilities, trad wife and traditional masculine content in the manopshere works to convince a new generation of would-be population breeders and workers to embrace fundamentalist values,” said the piece. “This is not a new trend but an old belief system with worn methods that perform until people who know better, choose better.’

While happy to characterize conservatives as extremists, Teen Vogue routinely painted leftist radicals and thugs as saints, printing, for instance, a hagiography for convicted cop-killer and Marxist fugitive Assata Shakur.

Shakur was a member of a terrorist militant group, the Black Liberation Army. She was convicted in 1977 of the first-degree murder of New Jersey Trooper Werner Foerster. Although she was supposed to spend her life in prison, she escaped in 1979 to communist Cuba.

Teen Vogue’s obituary for the cop-killer, titled “Assata Shakur Was a Black Revolutionary Who Fought for Freedom Even in Exile,” cast doubt on her guilt and concluded, “To many, including those posting in honor of her after her death, Shakur will be remembered as a revolutionary who fought for her freedom and won.”

Chloe Malle, Vogue’s head of editorial content, said in a statement, “I remember when Teen Vogue launched. I read every page on the bus home from cross-country practice. I loved it then, and I love and respect it now and am committed to continuing and supporting its point of view and sensibility.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Teen vogue, Vogue, Conde nast, Propaganda, Leftism, Marxism, Magazine, Fake news, Radicalism, Communist, Socialist, Versha sharma, Politics 

Around 2 a.m. Oct. 16, a then-unidentified male reportedly broke the glass front door of a Baltimore jewelry store with a brick.

The problem for the male? The store owner was inside the building — and he was armed with a gun. The store owner fired a warning shot and said, “Freeze!” WJZ-TV reported, adding that the intruder ducked, then popped back up, and the store owner opened fire at him.

The jewelry store owner lives above his business, WJZ said in its video report.

Officers arrived at the scene in the 2200 block of Fleet Street to find a 39-year-old man suffering from gunshot wounds, WJZ said in a follow-up story, adding that police said he was taken to a hospital, where he later died.

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates on Monday identified the man as Richard Rolfe — and said no charges will be pursued, WJZ reported.

“Based on the facts of this case, we believe that this shooting meets the requirements of self-defense in the State of Maryland,” Bates said in a statement, according to the station.

RELATED: Male reportedly shatters glass front door of jewelry store in middle of night. His problem? Armed store owner is inside.

WJZ said Maryland law stipulates that self-defense or defense of habitation applies if use of force is accompanied by the following five factors:

the suspect attempted to enter a home or property;the property owner believed the suspect intended to commit a crime that would lead to death or serious injury;the property owner believed the suspect intended to commit a crime;the property owner believed that use of force was necessary to prevent death or serious injury;the property owner reasonably believed force was necessary.

RELATED: Video: Armed thugs who rush into jewelry store have fast change of heart when worker with gun sends them some smoke

The jewelry store owner lives above his business, WJZ said in its video report.

The state’s attorney’s investigation found that Rolfe entered or tried to enter a person’s home, and the homeowner believed Rolfe intended to commit a crime that would lead to injury or death, the station said.

The investigation also found the homeowner believed the force used against Rolfe was necessary to prevent death or injury, WJZ said.

The homeowner also believed Rolfe was armed, the station said, citing the findings of the investigation.

While it was later discovered that Rolfe did not have a gun, Bates said in a statement that “it is reasonable that the homeowner believed Mr. Rolfe was armed,” WJZ reported. Bates added that “it can be said that the homeowner was acting appropriately under the defense of the habitation doctrine,” the station added.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox.Sign up here!

​2nd amend., Suspected burglary, Baltimore, Crime thwarted, District attorney, Fatal shooting, Gun rights, Guns, Home invasion, Self-defense ruling, Crime 

Amid road dangers such as non-English-speaking foreigners behind the wheels of 18-wheelers across America, one Texas state representative claims to have discovered another abuse of the system, this time at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

On Monday, Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison (R) wrote a letter to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles demanding an investigation after his office received reports that illegal aliens were able to register vehicles despite their status.

‘It is past time the Texas government starts acting like we are in a battle for the future of western civilization, because we are.’

“My office recently received alarming reports of illegal immigrants being able to register their vehicles in the State of Texas. To my shock, upon investigation, my office has verified that these reports are in fact real,” Harrison said in the letter.

RELATED: Indiana driver dies in collision involving alleged unlicensed illegal alien trucker

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

The letter cites Texas Transportation Code section 502.040(b), which reads, “The application must be accompanied by personal identification as determined by department rule.”

The letter alleges that the “broad authority” given to the department may have been misused.

“I am writing today to inquire what steps, if any, the DMV has taken and is implementing to determine whether the owner of the vehicle is a citizen or lawfully in the country before issuing vehicle registrations,” the letter continues.

On the condition that the DMV doesn’t take “prompt and efficacious action,” Harrison threatened to introduce legislation requiring the DMV to verify legal status before issuing registrations.

Texas phased out temporary, paper license plates on July 1 of this year, perhaps as a measure against fraud related to the problem Harrison identified and complained about this week.

In his post, Harrison also emphasized the important role Texas politicians need to play in aiding the Trump administration: “It is past time the Texas government starts acting like we are in a battle for the future of western civilization, because we are.”

Blaze News reached out to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles but did not immediately receive a response.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Politics, Dmv, Texas, Brian harrison, Texas dmv, Trump, Illegal aliens, Foreigners, Transportation 

While over 40 million Americans rely on SNAP benefits to buy their groceries, the government shutdown has left them empty-handed — and BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey doesn’t think it’s a bad thing.

Especially considering the money that comes from the government does not actually come from the government, but from the millions of taxpayers who go to work every single day.

In one CBS interview, a SNAP recipient named Erin Annis told the interviewer that she needs SNAP in order to live independently, without requiring the assistance of her family.

“Having those resources, what does it mean to you and for your life?” the CBS interviewer asks.

“Everything. It means everything to me. I don’t know what I would do except have to rely on my family, and I don’t want to do that right now. There’ll be a time when I’ll probably have to live with one of my sons. But for now, I want to be independent; I want to be on my own,” Annis answers.

“Having these resources has allowed you to be independent?” the interviewer asks.

“Yes, it’s allowing me to be independent,” Annis answers.

“It’s like people forget where this money comes from. You’re not actually independent. You are completely dependent on the government. And it’s not on the government. I mean, the government doesn’t have its own money. The government has money from us,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says.

“And so you have people who are willing to sacrifice, who are trying to make ends meet, who are trying to provide for their families themselves who are paying for this woman to live quote-unquote ‘independently,’ to buy her groceries,” she continues.

“Our tax dollars are taken away from us in a compulsory way, like we have to — we will go to jail if we don’t pay our taxes. So the government is forcing the money that we earned out of our hands and is forcibly giving it to someone else who could rely on family to buy her groceries,” she explains.

“That’s not ethical. That’s not moral,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Free, Sharing, Video phone, Upload, Video, Camera phone, Youtube.com, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Snap benefits, Government aid, Government shutdown, Immoral, Groceries 

Dick Cheney, the former vice president under President George W. Bush, has died at the age of 84.

‘The death of Richard B. Cheney is a loss to the nation and a sorrow to his friends.’

Cheney passed away from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement issued by his family on Tuesday.

“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” his family stated. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”

Cheney, who was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1941, had a history of heart problems, including five heart attacks, with the first one at 37 years old. He received a heart transplant in 2012.

Bush issued a statement about his former vice president’s recent passing.

RELATED: Trump calls Nancy Pelosi ‘guilty as hell’ over J6, slams ‘lunatic’ Liz Cheney

Dick Cheney, George W. Bush. Photo by Pool Interagences/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

“The death of Richard B. Cheney is a loss to the nation and a sorrow to his friends. Laura and I will remember Dick Cheney for the decent, honorable man that he was. History will remember him as among the finest public servants of his generation – a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence, and seriousness of purpose to every position he held,” Bush wrote.

RELATED: Kamala repeats the line, says Trump ‘suggested rifles should be trained on’ Liz Cheney, calling her a ‘true patriot’

Dick Cheney, George H. W. Bush. Photo by Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Cheney, a Republican, has been a strong critic of President Donald Trump. He warned in a 2022 campaign video for his daughter then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) that no one has been a “greater threat to our republic” than Trump. He voted for Trump’s opponent, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, this past election.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​News, Dick cheney, Cheney, George w. bush, George w bush, George bush, Donald trump, Trump, Politics 

As the government shutdown drags on, media pundits warn about a looming “food insecurity crisis.” That’s liberal shorthand for hunger — and if government numbers are correct, some 42 million Americans are supposedly about to go hungry.

Wait a second. That means 1 in 7 Americans relies on food stamps — or, as Washington now calls it, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

If a family of illegal aliens shows up, feed them an MRE, then put them on a bus to the nearest deportation flight.

Try this simple test: Look around and count the next seven people you see. Does anyone resemble a refugee from a third-world famine? If so, check his green card. If not, hand him one of Kristi Noem’s “get home free” cards and move along.

Among those 42 million, a fair question arises: How many are genuinely hungry — and how many haven’t missed a free government meal in years, maybe decades?

Here’s a modest proposal. The government shutdown could serve an unexpected purpose — sorting the truly needy from the habitual scammers.

Once the electronic benefit transfer cards run dry, the president should declare a national emergency and order the military to help distribute food directly to Americans in need. Set up relief stations at National Guard armories and military bases in every state.

At each station, ask for a valid government-issued ID and the now-worthless EBT card. Record both, take a quick photo, and hand each applicant a copy of the U.S. dietary guidelines. Then provide meals ready to eat — MREs — from existing military stores. Ask recipients to return the next day for actual groceries, in quantities matching the recommended dietary plan.

RELATED: The food pyramid big lie: How flawed science fed America a toxic diet

Photo by Joe Raedle / Contributor via Getty Images

That’s how you end food insecurity overnight — while also eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.” It’s a win-win!

While they’re there, run basic checks for outstanding warrants, duplicate or fake IDs, and phony EBT cards. In this way, every needy American gets fed, and every scammer gets flagged.

If a family of illegal aliens shows up, feed them an MRE, then put them on a bus to the nearest deportation flight.

If the system works, maybe it’s time to replace the SNAP credit-card model entirely. Instead of government-issued plastic that funds junk food and fraud, Americans in need would receive actual food — efficiently and fairly.

The result? Less waste, lower costs, and fewer excuses for corruption disguised as compassion.

And if this plan exposes just how dependent Democrats have become on managing poverty rather than solving it, so much the better. Once it’s clear that the Bad Orange Man can feed Americans and deport freeloaders in a single stroke, watch how fast Chuck Schumer and company rush to vote for that continuing resolution.

​Mre, Snap, Shutdown, Illegal immigrants, Opinion & analysis, Food stamps, Fraud waste and abuse, Fraud, National guard, Ebt 

The big economic headlines about OpenAI are unlike any in history, and so is the company’s performance: Sam Altman’s behemoth is eyeing a monster IPO at up to a trillion-dollar valuation, off the strength of the unprecedented circular money pump it has built with Oracle, Microsoft, Nvidia, and AMD, the tech firms at the core of America’s all-in strategic bid for global AI dominance.

The abstruse details can make OpenAI seem to ordinary Americans like one of several titans forging our destiny in the sky. But down here on ground level, the main touchpoint in our everyday lives — ChatGPT, on track for a billion users by year’s end — is being rebuilt to extract value from billions more in the lowest of ways: pornography. In December, OpenAI will branch into erotica, allowing adults to generate sexual content through ChatGPT.

We don’t need another sermon on smut. Everyone knows what porn does to a mind, a marriage, and a man. But what does this shift mean for a company that once vowed to benefit “all of humanity”? It began with talk of productivity and progress. Now it’s about pleasure on demand. The future of work has become the future of want — degraded, automated, and alienated from true human connection.

Mass automation and mass lobotomization are two sides of the same silicon coin.

It’s easy to call it moral decline, but it’s really market design. When automation stops astonishing, appetite becomes the next asset. When machines can’t wow us with intellect, they woo us with instinct. The shift from algorithms that think to algorithms that tease goes from detour to destination. A company built to conquer productive labor, it seems, must pivot to fruitless longing.

OpenAI’s machines mastered our spreadsheets more quickly than any normal person anticipated. But the real acceleration is now aimed straight into our subconscious. The same technology that writes code can now whisper sweet nothings — or worse, learn exactly which nothings you’ll pay to hear. That debilitating kink you never knew you had is ready to become your life. Every click a confession, every prompt a prayer, the machine rapt with the attention of a priest and the greed of a pimp.

For all the talk of progress, automation has mainly made life easier for corporations than for citizens. Big business can’t really optimize for your liberation. Its ideal is lubrication: systems so smooth that people stop noticing they’re the raw material. Machines handle the manufacturing while humans are trained to consume, scroll, sigh, and occasionally remember to shower.

The human brain, once a tool of invention, is now a target for invasion. Mass automation and mass lobotomization are two sides of the same silicon coin. The first replaces our labor; the second replaces our longing. The rise of the robots is a perfect excuse for the humans to retreat — first from work, then from will, and finally from wonder. When every craving can be coded, curiosity becomes a casualty.

RELATED: FINALLY: Here’s how to stop smartphone spam calls

Photo by Bloomberg/Getty Images

In doubt? Look around. Men who once built bridges now build playlists. Women who once raised children now raise engagement metrics. The world hums with productivity, yet feels profoundly empty. This is what happens when an economy stops serving people and starts sculpting them.

AI was supposed to free humanity from drudgery. Instead, it’s freeing humanity from … humanity. OpenAI’s move into digital desire is only the latest proof. What began as an effort to improve efficiency has morphed into an enterprise to perfect escape. A machine that can mimic love makes us forget what humanity feels like. And once that happens, we’re ready to surrender our very existence to the machines.

Of course, the pitch will sound noble: connection, expression, inclusivity, all the buzzwords that sell bondage as belonging. The same pitches that sold social media will sell the new and “improved” synthetic intimacy. Beneath this sweet talk sits a steel trap. If you can automate labor, you can monetize loneliness. If you can predict consumption, you can prescribe desire. The human heart, the real core of who we are, becomes just another input field, our smut of choice the last echo of our identity.

How long can it last? In this brave new marketplace, pleasure is both a product and a punishment. It numbs the pain it creates.

Sure, it’s tempting to laugh it off — what’s a little digital flirtation among consenting adults? But this isn’t really about sex. It’s about surrendering real, embodied intimacy for a shadow. The more we hand our inner lives to machines, the less we remember how to live without them.

A new AI economy built on reducing us all to skin suits will not build monuments or miracles, but mirrors — endless, glowing screens that feed our urges until we forget what restraint ever was. It’s extinction by pacification: the calm convergence of technology and tranquilization.

Ten years from now, the American workforce may be remembered, not relied upon. Its labor automated, its pride outsourced, its purpose repackaged as “upskilling.” Politicians will preach “resilience,” corporations will promise “retraining,” and millions will sit through their days bone-idle, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. They’ll be told the future is full of “opportunity,” yet find themselves waiting for a purpose that never arrives. I might be wrong — I hope I am — but every sign points one way: toward a nation drifting into digital dependency, where the only thing still working is one big machine.

In his prophetic book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Neil Postman warned that societies don’t collapse under tyranny but triviality. AI offers malevolent opportunists the chance to make that death spiral a business model. It can memorize your wants, mimic your worries, and leverage them all in a blink. OpenAI’s porn pivot is the hook, line, and sinker of this new economy of control: desire the lure, data the hook, the soul the catch. As Adam and Eve remind us, what begins as curiosity ends in captivity.

And this is why all Americans should care, whether or not they understand AI. Because AI doesn’t need permission to know you. It already does — your habits, your hungers, your hesitations. And in the hands of power, that knowledge becomes possession.

​Tech 

A former Arizona teacher was sentenced to almost two centuries in prison for having sex with numerous underage students while he taught at the Arizona Agribusiness and Equine Center public charter school in Mesa.

Cory Kapahulehua, 44, was convicted on 17 charges related to the accusations made against him by two students who said he had sex with them, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

‘I’m proud of these girls for having the courage to come forward and stop him from victimizing any children ever again.’

“Both victims, a 14-year-old girl and [a] 17-year-old girl, met Kapahulehua in August 2021 while he was teaching at Arizona Agribusiness and Equine Center, Mesa campus,” the office said.

The younger victim said that she had sex with Kapahulehua on school grounds until she reported him and he lost his job in Jan. 2022. Then they had sex at a hotel near the school and also at a parking complex.

The older victim testified that Kapahulehua brought her to his apartment, where they had sex when she was underage.

“At one point, the defendant started an online fundraiser to help move her out of her parent’s home at age 17. They eventually moved in together after she turned 18,” the prosecutors wrote.

RELATED: 63-year-old woman allegedly created images of molestation of children she was babysitting

Kapahulehua was convicted on seven counts of sexual conduct with a minor, one count of child molestation, two counts of sexual abuse, and one count of aggravated assault, among other charges.

He was sentenced to serve the sentences consecutively, which added up to 187 years in prison.

“This defendant used his position as a teacher to groom these students and take advantage of their trust,” Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said. “I’m proud of these girls for having the courage to come forward and stop him from victimizing any children ever again.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Cory kapahulehua, Child sex conviction, Arizona agribusiness and equine center public charter school, Maricopa county sheriff’s office, Politics 

Kim Kardashian has been spotted adjusting her tinfoil hat on one of the latest episodes of “The Kardashians” while telling her co-star Sarah Paulson that she thought the moon landing “didn’t happen.”

In the episode, Kardashian shows Paulson an interview with astronaut Buzz Aldrin — who took the first steps on the lunar surface during the Apollo 11 mission alongside Neil Armstrong.

“I’m sending you a million articles with both Buzz Aldrin and the other one,” Kardashian says, before reading a quote allegedly from Aldrin.

In the clip, Kardashian explains the clip of Buzz Aldrin speaking to a young girl.

“This girl says, ‘What was the scariest moment?’ And he goes, ‘There was no scary moment, ’cause it didn’t happen. It could’ve been scary, but it wasn’t, because it didn’t happen,’” she explained, as Paulson’s jaw dropped in amazement.

In another clip, Kardashian is asked, “For the record, you don’t think we walked on the moon?”

“I don’t think we did. I think it was fake,” Kardashian responds.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray isn’t sure Kardashian is an authority whose opinion should be given weight — especially on this particular conspiracy.

“This is where I turn for all wisdom in life, is to Kim Kardashian,” Gray says on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“’Cause she’s really, really intelligent,” he adds.

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Sharing, Video phone, Camera phone, Upload, Free, Video, Youtube.com, Pat gray unleashed, Pat gray, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Kim kardashian, Moon landing, Apollo 11, Buzz aldrin, Neil armstrong 

If the polls are right, New York City is about to elect Zohran Mamdani as its next mayor. An avowed socialist, he’s riding a wave of “free stuff” politics to victory. Mamdani also describes himself as a proud Muslim who says his faith will no longer “hide in the shadows” of American life.

It’s hard to know what he means. Mosques exist in every major city. Muslims worship freely under the same First Amendment protections as everyone else. What Mamdani seems to want isn’t tolerance but cultural submission — not coexistence, but acceptance. To dissent from his worldview, he insists, is “Islamophobia.”

The choice remains what it has always been: guilt or grace, grievance or truth.

That accusation follows the left’s familiar playbook: disagreement equals bigotry. Americans, however, don’t need to fear Islam to reject its false claims about reality.

The politics of pity

Recently, Mamdani told a story — sometimes about an aunt, sometimes about a cousin — who supposedly stopped riding the subway after 9/11 out of fear. The details change, but the purpose doesn’t: to draw sympathy and votes through emotional appeal.

We’re meant to respond, “How cruel Americans are!” The fact that this narrative works says something profound about the collapse of moral imagination among American voters.

“Never forget,” New York once vowed. Now the city seems to say, “We forgot — remind us again, and where’s our free handout?”

After a terrorist attack that killed more than 3,000 people — planned and carried out by Islamic extremists targeting symbols of American capitalism — one might expect some soul-searching. Shame could have led to repentance, reflection, or even conversion. Instead, Mamdani invites Americans to feel guilty for making a Muslim feel uncomfortable after 9/11. The villain becomes America itself.

This is textbook DARVO — deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender. It’s the same intersectional ideology that now dominates universities and city halls. Mamdani’s campaign is its political expression: Islam as the newest “oppressed” identity, ready to claim power in the name of liberation from “whiteness.”

Selective shame

Christians, by contrast, are told to feel shame constantly. From kindergarten to college, they are lectured about crusades, inquisitions, and colonialism — most of them centuries past, all of them endlessly exaggerated. Professors call it “deconstruction.” The goal is to make young Christians feel guilty enough to abandon their faith.

So shame is permitted and even celebrated — but only when it weakens Christianity. The moment it might challenge Islam, it becomes taboo.

Why? Because the modern left keeps a hierarchy of sacred victims. In that moral pecking order, Islam isn’t a religion but a protected identity, immune from criticism. That’s why progressives can champion Islam while rejecting Christianity, even though no Islamic society on earth practices the liberal values the left claims to cherish.

The contradiction is glaring, but ideology blinds them. The left despises both Christianity and capitalism, so a Muslim socialist like Mamdani suits prgressive purposes perfectly.

Rival gods, rival visions

Religion isn’t like ice cream. You can enjoy multiple flavors of dessert, but not multiple visions of truth or multiple gods. Religions offer rival accounts of reality: who God is, what man is, and what the good life requires.

Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God whose atoning sacrifice restores sinners to communion with their Creator. Islam denies that. It teaches that Jesus was only a prophet and that salvation comes through works — keeping the Five Pillars — without assurance of grace.

In the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Islam’s Quran insists that Jesus was merely a messenger. Yet Islam also claims that the Quran itself is eternal and uncreated — the word of God manifested in a book, not a person. Christians believe the Word became flesh. Muslims revere a text instead.

Even the Quran, in 5:68, tells Muslims to uphold the Torah and the gospel. But those very texts affirm Christ’s divinity and the atonement — the truths Islam rejects. This “Islamic dilemma” reveals the irreconcilable divide between the two faiths.

A society built on Islam will not resemble one shaped by Christianity. The two produce fundamentally different understandings of law, grace, family, and freedom — and therefore of government itself. Mamdani has already made clear that his Islamic convictions will shape how he governs.

RELATED: Evil never announces itself — it seduces the hearts of the blind

Photo by Omar Qattaa / Contributor via Getty Images

The only cure for confusion

In “Healing the Open Wounds of Islam,” Vishal Mangalwadi reminds readers that it was Christianity — not secular philosophy — that transformed Europe from barbarism to liberty. Only the Bible’s message of redemption through Christ can do the same today.

This is a moment for American Christians to recover moral clarity and preach the gospel boldly to Muslim neighbors. Only biblical truth, not multicultural sentimentality, can sustain freedom.

So let’s return to Mamdani’s changing subway story — the aunt, or cousin, or whoever she was supposed to be. Shame can serve a noble purpose when it leads to repentance. After 9/11, the right response to evil wasn’t self-pity but the words of Christ:

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

The choice remains what it has always been: guilt or grace, grievance or truth.

Never forget which one leads to freedom.

​Zohran mamdani, New york city, Mayor, Democrat, Muslim, Socialism, Opinion & analysis, Jesus christ, Mohammad, Quran, Gospel, Islam, Christianity, Leftism 

A video showing a woman complaining about her lack of food aid benefits is going viral because she admitted that she’s been on the dole for 30 years.

Maggie Aragon of New Mexico was interviewed on a KOAT-TV news story intending to drum up sympathy for the tens of millions of Americans who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. The program was facing suspension over the ongoing government shutdown.

‘Welfare was meant to lift people up, not trap them forever. When do we start rewarding work again?’

“The first thing I did was grab my phone and call, and when I heard ‘zero dollars,’ my chest went into my throat!” Aragon said to KOAT. “I have depended on those benefits since the 1990s, and it’s detrimental to my life if I don’t get them.”

She told the outlet that she often had to rely on food banks in addition to SNAP in order to survive.

Video of Aragon’s comments went viral on social media, where it garnered millions of views.

Many pounced on the admission to criticize the program.

“I can barely afford my own bills and this useless eater has been on food stamps for 30 f**king years. She’s been living off MY taxes for 30 f**king years. Cut it off. Let them suffer,” author Matt Forney replied.

“Millions of people live entirely as wards of the state, completely disconnected from the world of work and self-sufficiency. How can this be sustainable?” writer Brian Almon responded.

“Look, I feel sympathy for people like this on a human level. But she hasn’t been able to get a job in three decades? This smells of manufactured dependency, not unavoidable hardship,” one user responded.

“Let’s say this woman is 65, which maybe she is … she has good skin, so possibly younger … that means she’s been on food stamps since she was in her early 30s or maybe younger. That is literally insane,” commentator Ryan Girdusky said.

“Thirty years on food stamps says everything about the system, not the person. Welfare was meant to lift people up, not trap them forever. When do we start rewarding work again?” another user said.

Others defended Aragon on the possibility that she was suffering from a disability and was unable to work.

RELATED: Judges rule that food stamp benefits cannot be suspended over shutdown — and Trump responds

At least one police department said it had increased patrols around grocery stores and food banks to avoid robbery and unrest.

“These increased patrols are not in response to any specific incident, but are a preventive measure to maintain public safety, deter theft, and reassure the community that law enforcement is present and ready to help,” reads a statement from the Barstow Police Department.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Snap benefits to end, Government shutdown, Maggie aragon, Viral video, Politics 

Police in Glassboro, New Jersey, said two males were caught on video throwing a chair at officers — hitting one in the back of the head — during an early Saturday morning brawl inside a Domino’s Pizza store.

Police said after officers responded to the large fight around 2:44 a.m. and were making arrests, two black males — one wearing a gray jacket and the other a light blue sweatshirt — “picked up a chair and threw it at our officers, striking one of them in the back of the head. Not only was this intentional, they found it extremely hysterical while they ran from the scene.”

‘Out of nowhere I looked to my left, [and] there’s a chair just flying right down this hallway.’

WTXF-TV reported that the officer who was hit was treated at the scene and is expected to recover.

While police said in their original Facebook post that “we need your help in identifying them,” a Monday afternoon update indicates that suspects have been identified.

However, surveillance video showing the brawl — including the moment the chair was thrown — is no longer on the police department’s Facebook post. Also no longer visible on the post are the four still images of the two suspects.

Police did indicate in their 1:30 p.m. Monday update that a “news release will be made available when feasible.”

RELATED: Girl, 15, accused of throwing chair that clobbered teacher in head, knocked her to floor, and sent her to hospital is arrested, charged with felonious assault

A Domino’s employee interviewed at the scene told WTXF that “there was so much chaos up there … just a bunch of people, like, throwing punches at each other, even at my co-workers. … I saw … one girl turn around and just deck another girl in the face. Out of nowhere I looked to my left, [and] there’s a chair just flying right down this hallway.”

Glassboro is about 40 minutes south of Philadelphia. The station added that the Domino’s Pizza store is located near Rowan University, which also is in Glassboro.

As you might expect, a number of reactions to the incident weren’t exactly sympathetic to the brawlers and chair throwers. To wit:

“These MFs need an old-school ass whooping,” one commenter wrote. “Maybe I am better off out the game now. S**t is ridiculous nowadays.””Time to get rid of no bail and minimum prison sentences,” another user said, adding that it’s the “only way you’re gonna cut it out — or at least cut it down.””They should all be arrested and charged!!” another commenter declared. “The ones standing around watching and recording are no better than the others.””This is disgusting,” another user opined. “Absolute animals that need to be locked up.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Fight, Glassboro, New jersey, Police, Suspects throw chair at police officer, Cop hit by thrown chair, Suspects identified, Rowan university, Domino’s pizza, Brawl, Arrests, Crime