Is this just another cycle, or is it the END? Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics published an article this week about the so-called Socrates program and how [more…]
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Big, beautiful bill advances after 18-hour markup marathon while SALT talks go south
The House’s big, beautiful bill passed through the Ways and Means Committee Wednesday morning along party lines after an 18-hour overnight markup. While this is a win for House Republicans, additional roadblocks appeared after negotiations with SALT Caucus members took a turn for the worse.
The SALT Caucus’ primary advocacy focuses on increasing and even eliminating the federal deduction cap on state and local taxes. The deduction was capped at $10,000 by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. While codifying many of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, like no tax on tips and overtime, the GOP tax bill also raises the SALT cap to $30,000.
‘They can sit and negotiate with themselves all they want, but there will be no changes unless I and the committee agree.’
Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, the only SALT Caucus member who sits on Ways and Means, was also the only SALT Caucus member who supported the committee bill.
RELATED: House Republicans to hike up Harvard endowment tax in reconciliation
Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
“These provisions will save individuals and families thousands of dollars annually, and with today’s passage out of committee, we are a step closer to delivering relief,” Malliotakis said.
However, other SALT Caucus members continue to dig their heels in as the tension ramps up behind closed doors.
During a late-night meeting with leadership and SALT Caucus members, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) attempted to negotiate a deal with Republicans in the SALT Caucus, all of whom represent blue states. The negotiations went south after the members booted Malliotakis from the meeting even though she is the only member with direct influence on tax policy.
“As the only SALT Caucus member on Ways and Means, all I know is they can sit and negotiate with themselves all they want, but there will be no changes unless I and the committee agree,” Malliotakis said.
RELATED: Exclusive: House Republicans debunk Medicaid misconceptions as reconciliation talks resume
Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Johnson, who initially went into the meeting hoping to strike a deal that night, later said he expects negotiations to continue through the weekend.
“This bill, as written, with a $30,000 cap for those making under $400,000, is just woefully inadequate,” Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said Wednesday of the bill. “So no, this does not have my support, it will not have my support, and if this bill comes to the floor for a vote, I will vote no.”
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Salt caucus, Salt members, Speaker mike johnson, Jason smith, Ways and means committee, Big beautiful bill, Donald trump, House republicans, Tax cuts and jobs act, Salt cap, Mike lawler, Nicole malliotakis, Tax cuts, No tax on tips, Tax relief, Reconciliation, Elise stefanik, Politics
‘He would bash me on my head’: Cassie Ventura testifies Diddy beat her, details ‘freak-offs’ with ‘dozens’ of prostitutes
Singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura hurled damning accusations against Sean “Diddy” Combs during the trial of the rapper turned fashion icon.
Ventura took the witness stand Tuesday in Manhattan federal court in the sex trafficking and racketeering trial against Combs.
Ventura claimed that Combs often videotaped these sexual encounters with ‘dozens and dozens’ of prostitutes, and she feared that he could ‘blackmail’ her by releasing the footage online.
Ventura — who dated the 55-year-old Combs from 2007 to 2018 — testified in court that she “only ever saw handguns” at his residences in Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, and Alpine, New Jersey.
When prosecutors asked whether she ever handled any of Combs’ firearms, the 38-year-old Ventura responded, “I was handed one. We were going to a club [gig] in downtown L.A.”
“I just remember we took mushrooms, and I was, like, really high. I was handed the gun just to hold in my bag, but I was freaking out the whole time [that] it was going to go off,” Ventura said in court, according to Page Six.
She allegedly admitted that she did not know how to operate the gun. She added that the firearm stayed in her bag for up to an hour and a half while they were at the nightclub.
Ventura — the prosecution’s star witness — recalled feeling “terrified.”
Diddy’s former girlfriend alleged that she later gave the firearm back to security.
“I have no idea why I had a loaded gun,” she told prosecutors.
Ventura said, “The guns were taken out here and there. I always felt like it was a little bit of a scare tactic. I didn’t know for what purpose.”
Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images for Sean “Diddy” Combs
Ventura accused Diddy of physically assaulting her.
The singer alleged, “He would bash me on my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me on the head if I was down. … [I would] make the wrong face, and the next thing I knew, I was getting hit in the face.”
She claimed the “violent” assaults became so severe that she would “get knots” on her forehead.
Ventura told the courtroom that she suffered daily “psychological abuse” during her relationship with Combs. She claimed Combs said he wanted “control” over every aspect of her life and career.
Ventura was asked about the infamous “freak-offs” — the reportedly drug-fueled, multiday marathons of sex with prostitutes.
Ventura replied, “It basically entails the hiring of an escort and setting up this experience so that I could perform for Sean.”
The singer said on the stand that she was given drugs so she could “perform” for Combs for hours during the alleged “freak-offs.”
“The ‘freak-offs’ became a job, where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and feel normal again,” Ventura alleged.
Cassie testified that the “freak-offs” quickly made her feel “disgusting,” “humiliated,” and “worthless” but that Combs was allegedly not concerned about her feelings.
Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
Ventura said she was a 19-year-old singer and model when she met the then-38-year-old Combs in Manhattan.
“There was a 17-year age difference,” Ventura stated. “I was really confused at the time, you know, new artist. I was pretty naive.”
Combs’ music label, Bad Boy Records, gave Cassie a 10-album deal. However, only one album was released.
Ventura said in court that she was initially drawn to Combs because he was “entertaining,” “fun,” and “larger than life,” Variety reported.
She added that Combs “happened to have my career in his hands.”
Prosecutor Elizabeth Johnson said in her opening argument, “This case is not about a celebrity’s private sexual preferences. It’s about coercive crimes.”
Combs’ defense attorney, Teny Geragos, admitted in her opening statement that Combs was “a jerk” and “mean.” Geragos also said Diddy has “a bad temper” and has issues with drug use, according to NPR.
On Monday, a security guard who allegedly witnessed Combs assaulting Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 gave testimony.
Another Monday witness was an alleged male escort who claimed to have been paid on several occasions over two years to have sex with Ventura while Combs watched.
Ventura allegedly told the court that she didn’t want to have “sex with strangers” for Combs’ enjoyment, but she “didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. I didn’t know what ‘no’ could be, or what ‘no’ could turn into.”
Ventura claimed that Combs often videotaped these sexual encounters with “dozens and dozens” of prostitutes, and she feared that he could “blackmail” her by releasing the footage online.
As Blaze News reported last May, a disturbing video surfaced allegedly showing an “extremely intoxicated” Diddy brutally assaulting Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel in 2016.
If convicted, Combs could spend the rest of his life in prison.
‘They’ve normalized a behavior that’s demonic.’
“Fearless” host Jason Whitlock delved into some of the salacious accusations from the Diddy trial.
“My first and initial takeaway is that this society that we’ve built, where entertainers — and particularly in the rap music world, but in the music industry in general — we shower millions upon millions of dollars on entertainers, and there’s a level of power that comes along with showering that much money on entertainers,” Whitlock declared.
He continued, “And when you build a particular form of music that’s based off of prison culture and prison values, what do you think they’re going to do with all this money and power you’ve handed over to them?”
The “Fearless with Jason Whitlock” host added that rappers use their money to “buy gold chains, to buy sex slaves, and to host lavish drug-filled drunken parties.”
“Anybody that wants to deny the wickedness, the evilness, the debauchery, the depravity, the nihilism of this music and the people that they’re putting up as, ‘Hey, take these people seriously. These are your leaders,’” Whitlock stated. “These are criminals, unrepentant criminals, and they’re degenerates.”
“They’ve normalized a behavior that’s demonic, and just following the early parts of this trial and what comes out of it, it just reconfirms in my mind, these people need to be called demons. That’s what they are,” Whitlock added.
– YouTube
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Sex trafficking, Sexual assault, Diddy, Sean combs, Diddy trial, Sean diddy combs, Entertainment, Celebrities, Crime, Cassie ventura, Hollywood, Music industry
Pete Rose reinstated as eligible for Hall of Fame — but new rule will revive MLB’s darkest era
The commissioner of Major League Baseball decided that former player Pete Rose will be eligible for Hall of Fame induction moving forward.
Rose played from 1963 to 1986 with the Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, and Montreal Expos. He has the most hits (4,256), most games (3,562), and most at-bats (14,053) in MLB history. Rose died in September 2024 at 83 years old.
However, in 1989, Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti banned Rose from MLB activities and therefore from the Hall of Fame for allegedly gambling on games, including those of his team, the Reds.
Now, MLB commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. has decided to institute a policy that allows Rose to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Pete Rose on the Philadelphia Phillies. Image via Bettmann/Getty Images
‘He’s said what he said publicly. I’m not going beyond that.’
Manfred issued the policy after the family of Rose filed an application that MLB said “made it incumbent upon the Office of the Commissioner to reach a policy decision” on whether or not deceased individuals will remain on the list of those permanently ineligible for the Hall of Fame.
In a letter to Rose’s attorney, Manfred said that while it is his preference “not to disturb decisions made by prior Commissioners, Mr. Rose was not placed on the permanently ineligible list by Commissioner action but rather as the result of a 1989 settlement of potential litigation with the Commissioner’s Office.
“My decision today is consistent with Commissioner Giamatti’s expectations of that agreement,” Manfred wrote.
At the same time, baseball analyst and podcaster Gary Sheffield Jr. pointed out that while Manfred may be finally making a decision, he fought for years to keep Rose out of the Hall of Fame.
“Manfred led the defense to keep Rose out since 2015,” Sheffield told Blaze News. “It’s embarrassing.”
In 2015, Manfred denied Pete Rose’s application for reinstatement. In 2020, Manfred said Rose “violated what is sort of rule one in baseball” and added that the MLB would continue “to abide by our own rules.”
The commissioner said the league has declared that permanent ineligibility “ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual.”
As a result of this policy, 17 people were affected, eight of whom were part of the infamous Black Sox scandal.
In that 1919 ordeal, eight Chicago White Sox players, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, accepted bribes from gamblers to intentionally lose games. All eight players were indicted for conspiracy and, despite acquittals, were banned for life by then-Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
In April, Manfred said he met with President Trump and specifically discussed Rose and his eligibility.
“I met with President Trump two weeks ago,” Manfred said. “One of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that.”
“He’s said what he said publicly. I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back-and-forth was.”
Some of Trump’s public comments involved a claim that he would sign a “complete pardon” for Rose, who he said “shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING.”
Trump continued on Truth Social, “Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy a**, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!”
Rose originally denied betting on baseball, but eventually admitted to it in a 2004 interview.
“I bet on baseball in 1987 and 1988,” he told ABC.
In his book, “My Prison Without Bars,” which was released in the same time frame, Rose also admitted to betting on his own team.
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Fearless, Mlb, Hall of fame, Trump, Joe jackson, Gambling, Betting, Pete rose, Sports
George Clooney helped cover up Biden’s decline — all while Biden didn’t even recognize him: Book
George Clooney was shocked when President Joe Biden did not recognize him at a 2024 fundraiser despite Clooney being one of the hosts of the event.
A June 15, 2024, star-studded fundraiser hosted by Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Barack Obama pulled in a whopping $28 million for the Biden campaign. Fans took pictures with the celebrities while late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was set to host Obama and President Biden on stage for a Q and A.
However, just a few weeks later, Clooney did a complete 180 turn and wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the president to step down. In his piece titled “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee,” the actor said the Biden he saw at the fundraiser was not the “Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020.”
Clooney added that he and others held their tongue about Biden’s obvious decline because they were “all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term.”
RELATED: Pretend newsman Clooney’s message to America: Trust journalists!
A new book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson purportedly revealed the details of Biden and Clooney’s interaction that caused the actor to do an about-face on the president’s re-election campaign.
George Clooney shakes President Joe Biden’s hand after receiving a lifetime artistic achievement award in 2022. Photographer: Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images
‘It was like watching someone who was not alive.’
According to an excerpt from the book provided to the New Yorker, Biden hobbled into the fundraising event after flying in from the G7 summit in Apulia, Italy, that morning.
The president allegedly appeared severely diminished as if he’d aged a decade since last seeing Clooney at the White House in 2022, when the actor received recognition from the John F. Kennedy Center. Biden was reportedly taking tiny steps and was seemingly guided by an aide.
“It was like watching someone who was not alive,” an unnamed source claimed. “It was startling. And we all looked at each other. It was so awful.”
Biden began to pass Clooney and said, “Thank you for being here.”
“Hi, Mr. President,” Clooney reportedly replied in greeting.
“How are ya?” Biden replied.
Clooney apparently then asked the president how his trip had gone, but it seemed clear by Biden’s generic “it was fine” reaction that he did not recognize Clooney, one of the hosts of his own fundraiser who he had met many times before.
The inside source described Clooney as being shaken to his core, although he was not the only person who noticed the president’s declined cognitive function. Biden reportedly had obvious brain freezes at the event and what were referred to as clear signs of a mental slide.
RELATED: George Clooney laments sale of ‘mom-and-pop’ shop Paramount
John F. Trent, editor for Fandom Pulse, said the new Biden revelations seemed to be a way for those who were running cover for the president’s decline to give penance.
“Anyone who had eyes to see could tell Joe Biden’s mental capabilities had completely declined,” Trent told Blaze News.
In fact, Tapper and Clooney both congratulated each other for their work on the topic. In an interview on CNN, after Clooney praised the bravery of journalists for “setting a standard,” the anchor told Clooney he felt the actor’s op-ed asking Biden to step down was “brave.”
“I don’t know if it was brave,” Clooney replied. “It was a civic duty. … The specific idea of [freedom of speech] is, you can’t demand freedom of speech then say, ‘You can’t say bad things about me.'”
The 64-year-old concluded, “That’s the deal. You have to take a stand if you believe in it.”
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News, George clooney, Joe biden, Barack obama, Jimmy kimmel, 2024 election, Politics
Shocking: Pro-life group kills bill that would criminalize abortion
The pro-life movement has been calling abortion “murder” as long as they’ve been around, which is why when a bill was introduced by Republican Rep. Brent Money in Texas that would finally treat abortion as murder, you would think pro-life groups would jump on their support for it.
However, the bill was stopped in its tracks by the very activists behind the pro-life movement.
“Essentially, it criminalizes the act of abortion,” Abby Johnson tells Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.” “So anyone — whether it is a parent, a boyfriend, a spouse, or the mother herself — if they act in a way that causes the death of a preborn child, then they can be found guilty of murder.”
“It makes sense to me. I would say it makes sense to the majority of the pro-life movement — makes sense to the majority of the conservative movement. But it is currently being blocked, and it’s being blocked in all states,” Johnson explains.
These states are Georgia, North Dakota, and Texas.
“In all three of these states, it is not pro-choicers blocking the bill — it is pro-life groups that are actually blocking the bill,” Johnson says, noting that the bill, H.B. 2197 in Texas, was submitted to the state jurisprudence committee.
The committee is a conservative one, headed by Rep. John Smithee, who ran on a pro-life platform and was endorsed by all of the pro-life legislative groups in the state of Texas.
“So we thought, ‘Great, this is going to be a slam dunk,’” Johnson says. “In the eleventh hour, John Smithee pulled the bill from the testimony, said, ‘This is not going to be heard in committee,’ and now it’s just sitting there. And within a week, the bill will die.”
“And that happened because one of the largest pro-life groups in the state, Texas Alliance for Life, which is supposedly a pro-life group, demanded and put pressure on John Smithee and said, ‘You better pull this bill. This bill does not need to be heard in committee,’” she continues.
“So he pulled the bill, and the bill that would actually make abortion murder in the state of Texas is now going to die because of a pro-life group in our state,” she adds.
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Meet the schmucks crippling the anti-woke alliance
Until recently, “woke” served as a useful term among anti-Marxist liberals, nationalists, and conservatives. It gave us a shared language in the post-2015 fight against the rise of a virulent neo-Marxist ideology. The term helped forge a broad coalition that seemed capable of resisting this aggressive cultural revolution.
That kind of unity, born from a single word, marked a real political achievement.
Now, a handful of anti-woke liberals have decided to weaponize the term, turning it against the very coalition that made resistance possible in the first place.
Some malicious liberals now use “woke right” to smear the entire nationalist right. Others — more naive — try to limit it to what used to be called the “alt-right” or “white nationalists.”
I understand. I really do. Some liberals pushing the term “woke right” are deceitful scoundrels who act in bad faith. Others, more earnest, seem to be nerdishly trying to solve abstract questions in political theory.
Once a rallying cry for a shared fight against neo-Marxist ideology, ‘woke’ has now become a poisoned well. That’s not an accident — it’s the goal.
But in this case, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a cynical manipulator or a confused theorist. Every liberal using “woke right” is being a schmuck. They’ve taken a term that, for a decade, helped unite anti-Marxist liberals, conservatives, and nationalists against a rising neo-left — and crushed it underfoot. They’ve made it unusable.
Yes, you schmucks, “woke” always meant one thing. It referred to the radical neo-leftism that sane liberals, conservatives, Christians, Jews, and nationalists could unite to fight. By repurposing it as an insult aimed within the coalition, you’ve turned it into gall in our mouths. You’ve stripped a common term of its meaning and made it a weapon to divide allies.
Targeting the anti-woke coalition
This explains the astonishment — and sense of betrayal — many on the nationalist right feel toward certain anti-Marxist liberals who invented and promoted the term “woke right.” It also explains their dismay at the credulous liberals who walked straight into the trap.
This isn’t just a matter of redefining an old term. It’s a betrayal. And if it sticks, it will destroy the anti-woke coalition that, for a brief moment, looked like it might actually win.
Of course, the right has always contained distinct factions. The “alt-right,” as Richard Spencer labeled it, and the narrower “white nationalist” fringe set themselves apart from more mainstream nationalist conservatives. The “dissident right” occupied a broader space. Then there were the “NatCons” — mainstream nationalist conservatives. These terms were familiar and reasonably accurate. And for those who couldn’t be bothered with accuracy, the liberal media always had ready-made labels like “illiberal right” or “Christian nationalist right” to lump together anyone right of center with a tone of condescension and alarm.
In short, anyone seeking to critique parts of the right already had a full vocabulary to choose from. The language existed. The definitions were known.
Poisoning the well
So why invent something new? Why did a handful of self-styled intellectuals in the anti-Marxist liberal camp decide they needed a new term — “woke right” — and then labor relentlessly to make it stick? What drove them to sabotage a shared language that had helped build a broad but fragile alliance?
Here’s the answer. A few anti-Marxist liberals saw strategic value in “woke right” that more precise terms like “alt-right” or “white nationalist right” lacked. Let’s count the advantages these aspiring poobahs aimed to squeeze from the phrase.
“Woke right” exists to humiliate. The term targets people who spent years — often at great personal and professional cost — building a serious opposition to the woke left. It tells them: You’re no better than the Maoist radicals you fought. And when that message comes from liberals who once stood beside them on the barricades, the insult cuts even deeper.
“Woke right” signals virtue. By turning on the very coalition they helped build, anti-Marxist liberals get to prove their ideological purity. Using “woke right” says: I’m not one of them. I’ll keep delegitimizing and canceling nationalists and conservatives forever.
“Woke right” provokes. Unlike clunky phrases like “illiberal right” or “Christian nationalism,” this one hits a nerve. It enrages the very people it targets. For a certain breed of liberal troll, that outrage is the entire point.
“Woke right” destroys the term “woke” as a coalition-builder. Once a rallying cry for a shared fight against neo-Marxist ideology, “woke” has now become a poisoned well. Nobody can use it without suspicion. That’s not an accident — it’s the goal.
“Woke right” ensures mutual hostility. The term injects humiliation, provocation, betrayal, and contempt into what was once a fragile alliance. That’s not just linguistic sabotage. It’s a deliberate strategy to guarantee that anti-Marxist liberals and nationalist conservatives despise each other — and never cooperate again.
So that’s why an anti-Marxist liberal might prefer “woke right” over all the existing, more accurate terms. But he’d only do so if he aimed to drive a wedge between liberals and the nationalist right, fuel mutual distrust and resentment, and cripple the two sides’ ability to work together.
That’s why I say every anti-Marxist liberal using this term acts like a schmuck. Because either you’re deliberately sabotaging the anti-woke coalition — snatching defeat from the jaws of victory — or you’re too politically clueless to see the damage you’re doing and too blind to recognize who’s playing you for a fool.
Either way, the political term fits: schmuck.
An agenda endangered
Plenty about working with liberals aggravates me. But nothing grates more than watching big-name liberals find new ways to express their disgust toward the very nationalists and conservatives who helped them advance a common cause, no matter how recently those alliances formed or how much those allies contributed.
Some readers may be too young to remember the end of the Cold War, so let me offer a bit of history. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a handful of liberal ideologues saw the moment not just as a triumph over communism, but as an opportunity to erase nationalists and real conservatives from public life. When they talked about a “unipolar” world, they didn’t mean global American leadership. They meant unchallenged liberal dominance — an order where no one with influence could deviate from liberal orthodoxy. Francis Fukuyama’s infamous fantasy of exiling anyone driven by “thymos” to the political wilderness captured this vision perfectly.
Today, we’re watching a smaller-scale attempt to rerun that liberal fantasy. A few ideological commissars — flushed with self-satisfaction — mistakenly believe they’ve won the war against wokeness. They’re eager to shift from fighting the woke left to purging their nationalist and conservative allies. They want another “end of history” — one where liberalism rules unopposed and everyone else disappears.
I’ll concede this much: For now, the campaign looks pathetic. Only a small group of fanatics in the anti-Marxist liberal camp genuinely believe this nonsense. But the speed with which they’ve duped others into turning their fire on their own coalition partners should make anyone’s head spin.
Donald Trump and JD Vance made the right call by bringing anti-Marxist liberals into the fold. Their victory depended on building a broader coalition, and that coalition remains essential if any part of the nationalist-conservative agenda stands a chance of becoming law.
But that coalition can’t hold — not for long — if a handful of ideological commissars keep advancing the lie that nationalist conservatives pose the same threat to decency and order as the radical left. That’s not coalition politics. That’s sabotage. And unless it stops, the people pushing this narrative won’t just fracture the alliance. They’ll ensure its collapse.
Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a post that appeared originally on X.
Opinion & analysis, Woke right, James lindsay, Coalition, Twitter, Conservatives, Nationalists, Liberals, Anti-woke, Alliance
Ashli Babbitt stood up to him — now J6er ‘Helmet Boy’ faces new charges
Zachary Jordan Alam, the Jan. 6 rioter who vandalized windows, taunted police, and incited chaos in the U.S. Capitol hallway where Ashli Babbitt was shot, was arrested in Virginia on a state felony burglary count and a misdemeanor destruction of property charge.
Just months removed from a pardon issued by President Donald J. Trump, Alam, 33, of Centreville, Virginia, was arrested and charged for burglary in Henrico County, southeast of Richmond, court records show.
Alam, who was serving an eight-year Jan. 6 prison sentence when he was pardoned, was charged with one count of entering a dwelling at night for the purpose of burglary, a Class 3 felony that carries a potential prison term between five and 20 years.
‘He was then taken by force to a psychiatric facility.’
He was also charged with one Commonwealth of Virginia count of destruction of property valued at less than $1,000, a Class 1 misdemeanor with potential jail time of one year.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for June 24 in Henrico General District Court.
Blaze News filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the police reports surrounding Alam’s arrest, but the County of Henrico Police Division denied the request because “the incident is still being investigated and/or the case has not been fully adjudicated.”
Alam was the central figure in the rioting that broke out in the hallway outside the Speaker’s Lobby on Jan. 6, 2021. He punched the glass panels in the entry door, narrowly missing the left side of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Christopher Lanciano’s face, video showed. He also punched at the glass panel behind Officer Kyle Yetter and Sgt. Timothy Lively.
He ended his spree using a black riot helmet to bash out panes of glass in the doors and side panels, according to video. That earned him the online nickname “Helmet Boy.”
RELATED: Federal judge explodes in Ashli Babbitt court hearing as wrongful-death case slows
Rioter Zachary Alam changes clothes in the Crypt at the U.S. Capitol shortly after entering the building on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. Capitol Police CCTV
“Alam intentionally put himself at the front of the mob, where he threatened the USCP officers, yelling, ‘I’m going to f*** you up!’ in their faces,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s sentencing memo and supplement.
“All said, in the course of just 25 seconds, Alam violently kicked the doors three times, then smashed the doors and glass panes with the helmet an additional nine times, breaking two glass panes completely out,” the DOJ memo said. “All the while, Alam’s actions exacerbated the chaos, inflaming the mob overall.”
A jury found Alam guilty of 10 charges on Sept. 12, 2023, including assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers; obstructing officers during a civil disorder; destruction of government property; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; and seven other counts.
‘We need guns, bro!’
He was sentenced on Nov. 7, 2024, to eight years in prison by U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee. Alam’s obstruction of an official proceeding verdict was tossed out based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark June 2024 decision in Fischer v. United States.
Alam’s sentencing was repeatedly delayed after the trial. His defense team filed some information about him under court seal. His mother, Karyn L. Alam, disclosed to defense attorney Steven Metcalf II and the court that Alam had a history of substance abuse and psychiatric troubles that were unknown to the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services office.
Rioter Zachary Jordan Alam (wearing helmet) is confronted by protesters minutes after the fatal shooting of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021.
U.S. Capitol Police CCTV
Karyn Alam said her son attempted suicide while he was a student at the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine in Dothan, Alabama.
“I was notified by the school that Zachary was found in a bathroom stall with a belt around his neck,” she wrote. “This is around the same time that we made the decision for him to withdraw from medical school. Based on my best recollection, he was then taken by force to a psychiatric facility.”
Alam’s attorney appealed his case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Dec. 2, 2024. The appeals court, citing Trump’s pardon declaration issued shortly after he was sworn in on Jan. 20, vacated Alam’s convictions on April 14, 2025. The federal district court in D.C. then dismissed Alam’s Jan. 6 case as moot.
Babbitt, who was the first protester to reach the Speaker’s Lobby entrance at 2:36 p.m., grew visibly worried as a large crowd filled in around her. She shouted at the three officers to “call f***ing help” when they made no moves to de-escalate the crowd or subdue Alam during his violent spree.
After the three officers abandoned their post, other rioters joined in the attack on the doorway, using a flagpole, karate kicks, and the kinetic force of their bodies in failed attempts to breach the doors.
After Alam smashed out the window in the side panel, Babbitt grabbed him by the backpack, spun him toward her, and punched him in the face with a left hook, according to video discovered by the Epoch Times. The blow knocked off his glasses. An instant later, Babbitt jumped up in the now-empty sidelight window and was immediately shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.
Seeing Babbitt bleeding after she fell back to the floor, Alam jumped back and bolted down a nearby staircase, brushing past a four-man Capitol Police SWAT team coming up the stairs. He was seen on the landing with his hand on his head, looking distressed.
After the shooting, protesters vented anger at the police, who told the crowd to get back so medical help could reach Babbitt.
“She’s going to f***ing die!” Officer Yetter roared at the crowd. “You want to be next?”
As Alam left the building, he was heard on a protester’s video stating, “We need guns, bro … we need guns,” the DOJ said.
Zachary Jordan Alam (in black Pirelli T-shirt), takes an elevator from the Crypt in the U.S. Capitol to the fourth floor before walking down an interior staircase to the second floor, where he joined a large contingent of protesters near the main House door.U.S. Capitol Police CCTV
Alam was one of the most active provocateurs on Jan. 6. Wearing a floppy-ear Canada Goose cap, he became one of the most recognizable Jan. 6 figures. Video showed he helped protesters climb makeshift ladders leaned against the Northwest Steps so they could access the Upper Terrace and the Senate Wing Door entrance to the Capitol.
Once inside the Crypt level of the Capitol, Alam changed his clothes, then took an elevator to the fourth floor. He accessed a back stairway and descended two levels. While on the third floor, video shot by Paul Kovacik showed, Alam took a velvet theater rope with weighted brass ends and threw it down an open area at police standing below.
‘We’d love to f***ing revolutionize the whole world!’
Once Alam reached the second floor, he walked toward the main House entrance and was trailed by Jason Gandolph, an officer with the House Sergeant at Arms office. Widely shared video showed that Alam walked from behind the police line to join the swelling crowd in the Will Rogers Corridor near Statuary Hall.
Alam immediately started trouble, shouting so loudly that an elderly man slapped him on the side of the head and told him, “Shut up!”
Alam photo-bombed journalist Tayler Hansen’s livestream inside the Capitol.
“This is insane, bro. We’d love to f***ing revolutionize the whole world!” Alam said. “It’s the repetition of what happened decades and centuries ago, and it’s repeating itself. It’s going down right now!”
Alam was arrested by the FBI on Jan. 30, 2021, in Denver, Pennsylvania, after he spent weeks on the the lam. When agents raided his room at the Penn Amish Motel, they reportedly found more than $5,600 in antiques stolen from Stoudt’s Antique Mall in nearby Adamstown. In August 2021, he was charged by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with one count of burglary and one count of theft by unlawful taking of movable property.
The Pennsylvania case was held in abeyance for more than three years while the U.S. Department of Justice prosecuted Alam for Jan. 6 crimes. It’s not clear if he will ever face the Pennsylvania charges. According to the criminal docket, Alam’s burglary case is listed as “closed.” There is no indication in court records of a dismissal or other case disposition.
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Crime, January 6, Zachary alam, Ashli babbitt, Politics
Despite Democrat hysteria, Wisconsin judge accused of thwarting ICE faces 6 years in prison after grand jury indictment
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ Democratic administration
issued guidance on April 18 directing state employees not to immediately cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other federal agents. That same day, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan allegedly helped a previously deported illegal alien facing three misdemeanor counts of battery get away from ICE.
In what proved to be a shock to some Americans now accustomed to seeing judicial activism go unchecked, the FBI arrested Dugan on April 25. The arrest sent
Democratic lawmakers, former judges, and liberal activists into a frenzy.
The indictment alleges that Dugan committed multiple ‘affirmative acts’ to assist Eduardo Flores-Ruiz evade arrest.
Following weeks of
Democratic accusations of judicial intimidation and claims about an improper arrest, a federal grand jury determined Tuesday that there was, after all, sufficient evidence to indict Dugan on charges of concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of the law.
The
indictment alleges that Dugan committed multiple “affirmative acts” to assist Eduardo Flores-Ruiz evade arrest following his pre-trial April 18 appearance in her courtroom, including:
confronting members of an ICE task force and “falsely telling them they needed a judicial warrant to effectuate the arrest of E.F.R.”;
directing all members of the task force to leave the public hallway outside her courtroom and to go to the chief judge’s office;
addressing the illegal alien’s criminal case off the record while ICE agents were waiting in the chief judge’s office;
“directing E.F.R. and his counsel to exit Courtroom 615 through a non-public jury door”; and
advising Flores-Ruiz’s lawyer that the illegal alien could appear by Zoom for his next court date.
Despite Dugan’s alleged efforts, law enforcement was ultimately able to capture Flores-Ruiz, an illegal alien from Mexico who was previously deported in 2013, after a brief foot chase. Flores-Ruiz’s battery charges reportedly include modifiers for domestic violence and reflect that he allegedly punched one individual 30 times, then brutalized the woman who attempted to intervene.
Attorney General Pam Bondi
noted in an interview last month that both of Flores-Ruiz’s alleged victims had to be hospitalized.
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
Dugan indicated through a lawyer that she will fight the charges,
reported the New York Times.
“Judge Hannah C. Dugan has committed herself to the rule of law and the principles of due process for her entire career as a lawyer and a judge,” said Dugan’s lawyers. “Judge Dugan asserts her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court.”
If convicted, Dugan could reportedly land up to six years in prison.
The judge turned defendant is expected to enter a plea at her Thursday hearing.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman will preside over Dugan’s case. That bodes well for the meddlesome judge.
After all, Adelman, a Clinton appointee who long served in the Wisconsin state Senate as a Democrat, has a history of attacking President Donald Trump, claiming, for instance, that the president makes no effort “to enact policies beneficial to the general public” and behaves like an “autocrat.” The Heritage Foundation
noted that Lynn has also compared Republicans to “the ‘fireaters,’ [sic] those fervent defenders of slavery who pushed the South into the Civil War.”
The Department of Homeland Security told Blaze News, “Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected ICE agents away from this criminal illegal alien to obstruct the arrest and try to help him evade arrest. Thankfully, our FBI partners chased down this illegal alien, arrested him and removed him from American communities.”
Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for public affairs, stated, “Since President Trump was inaugurated, activist judges have tried to obstruct President Trump and the American people’s mandate to make America safe and secure our homeland — but this judge’s actions to shield an accused violent criminal illegal alien from justice is shocking and shameful.”
“We are thankful for our partners at the FBI for helping remove this accused criminal from America’s streets,” continued McLaughlin. “If you are here illegally and break the law, we will hunt you down, arrest you and lock you up. That’s a promise.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem
told Fox News’ Jesse Watters Tuesday, “I’m grateful that the judicial system recognized that Judge Duggan let down the court, the country, and the authority that her position held and that she will be held accountable. That [the indictment] was a great decision to recognize that nobody can facilitate breaking the law. We should not be able to allow that in this country. We need to make sure that even judges are held accountable for their actions.”
Shortly after Dugan’s arrest last month, FBI Director Kash Patel posted to social media: “We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest.”
In response to a request for comment about Dugan’s grand jury indictment, the FBI told Blaze News: “We don’t have anything to add to Director Patel’s public statements posted on social media.”
The White House did not respond by deadline.
Dugan’s indictment comes two weeks after the Supreme Court of Wisconsin
relieved her of her official duties “in order to uphold the public’s confidence in the courts of this state.” As a result, Dugan — who appears to have flouted the Wisconsin Code of Judicial Conduct, particularly its requirement that “a judge shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of the judge’s activities” — is now prohibited from exercising the powers of a circuit court judge in the state until further order from the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
In the wake of her arrest, Democratic lawmakers and their allies in the media ran with the
narrative that the FBI’s enforcement of the law amounted to the Trump administration “making an example of the Milwaukee judge to intimidate critics and opponents.”
For instance, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.)
stated, “We have a system of checks and balances and separations of power for damn good reasons. The President’s administration arresting a sitting judge is a gravely serious and drastic move, and it threatens to breach those very separations of power.”
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.)
told Axios, “It is remarkable that the Administration would dare to start arresting state court judges.”
RELATED: How biblical justice finally caught up to a leftist judge
Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said, “They arrested a judge?! They can no longer claim to be a party of law and order.”
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D)
stated on the day of the arrest, “We have seen in recent months the president and the Trump Administration repeatedly use dangerous rhetoric to attack and attempt to undermine our judiciary at every level.”
While some Democratic lawmakers issued their condemnations, others celebrated Dugan’s alleged obstruction and concealment of a person from arrest.
Wisconsin state Rep. Ryan Clancy (D)
stated, “I commend Judge Hannah Dugan’s defense of due process by preventing ICE from shamefully using her courtroom as an ad hoc holding area for deportations.”
Hundreds of former state and federal judges also leaned into the narrative, stating in a recent letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi — who had
noted on X, “No one is above the law” — that “the circumstances of Judge Dugan’s arrest make it clear that it was nothing but an effort to threaten and intimidate the state and federal judiciaries into submitting to the Administration, instead of interpreting the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
This is a developing story.
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Hannah dugan, Wisconsin judge, Wisconsin, Obstruction, Judge, Activist judges, Tony evers, Democrat, Democratic, Attorney general, Fbi, Immigration, Illegal immigration, Illegal alien, Deportation, Politics
‘These people are demons’: Day 1 of the Diddy trial has exposed rap culture
Rap mogul and Bad Boy Records founder Sean “Diddy” Combs’ trial has finally begun.
The rapper has pleaded not guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy; two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
“Opening statements from both the prosecution and the defense, some testimony from two, I believe, male strippers/escorts. It was pretty salacious,” Jason Whitlock of “Jason Whitlock Harmony” comments.
While the trial and its contents thus far have been disturbing, Whitlock believes it exposes not just Diddy, but rap culture in general.
“My first and initial takeaway is that this society that we’ve built, where entertainers — and particularly in the rap music world — but in the music industry in general, we shower millions upon millions of dollars on entertainers, and there’s a level of power that comes along with showering that much money on entertainers,” he explains.
“And this is the issue with showering all this great wealth on athletes and entertainers. We’re not showering it on scientists and inventors and doctors and people that contribute,” he continues. “We’re showering it on people that entertain. And so now they spend all their time trying to entertain themselves — a lot of times sexually.”
“And so none of this is surprising,” he says. “And when you build a particular form of music that’s based off of prison culture and prison values, what do you think they’re going to do with all this money and power you’ve handed over to them?”
They’re not going to use that money and power to build homes for the poor or serve their communities.
“No, they’re going to use their money to buy gold chains, to buy sex slaves, and to host lavish drug-filled drunken parties,” Whitlock says.
“Anybody that wants to deny the wickedness, the evilness, the debauchery, the depravity, the nihilism of this music and the people that they’re putting up as, ‘Hey, take these people seriously. These are your leaders,’” he continues. “These are criminals, unrepentant criminals, and they’re degenerates.”
“They’ve normalized a behavior that’s demonic, and just following the early parts of this trial and what comes out of it, it just reconfirms in my mind, these people need to be called demons. That’s what they are,” he adds.
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The Great Biden Book War has finally begun
Everyone saw the Great Biden Book War coming. It loomed the moment Joe Biden left the presidential race last year. When Vice President Kamala Harris lost the popular vote to a resurgent Donald Trump, the storm became unavoidable. Now it’s here. Reporters, former aides, and opportunistic authors are scrambling to soothe their consciences, pad their wallets, and secure their place in the historical record. Even the Biden family
has taken notice — hence last week’s cringeworthy media tour. Washington can’t stop talking about it.
The first major book on President Biden’s cognitive decline since his abrupt withdrawal comes from CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson. “
Original Sin,” based on more than 200 interviews with senior Democrats inside and around the White House and Harris’ campaign, delivers a damning account of Biden’s mental deterioration — and the elaborate cover-up engineered by both his staff and his family.
This isn’t the first time hyper-partisan media have struggled with a reckoning of their own cover-ups and obfuscations after they were quickly proven fools.
Some gems published
in Axios thus far include that the White House was preparing to use a wheelchair if Biden won a second term (and put it off because of the campaign). Britain’s left-wing nonprofit Guardian website notes:
Since at least 2022 Biden has been increasingly prone to lose his train of thought and struggle to remember the names of top aides. His speeches can be incoherent and difficult to hear. When he proved incapable of delivering a two-minute video address without stumbling, aides filmed him with two cameras so the edit would be less obvious.
Weren’t Biden’s speeches, his constant struggles to remember names of people, places, and countries — and his tendency to refer to conversations with long-dead public figures — already out in the open?
The authors — both fixtures of corporate media — admit to bearing “some responsibility” for years of willful silence and misleading spin. But they devote little ink to their own complicity. Before the disastrous Biden-Trump debate, Thompson reported on behind-the-scenes campaign dynamics without once confronting Biden’s mental decline.
The book also skips over Tapper’s
2020 performance, when he berated GOP surrogate Lara Trump for raising concerns about Biden’s obvious deterioration. “How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they hear you make a comment like that?” he demanded.
When she fired back with what “is very clearly a cognitive decline,” he cut her off. “I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose someone’s cognitive decline,” he chastised her. “I would think someone in the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who do not have medical licenses diagnosing people from afar,” he added, referring to CNN’s constant coverage of Trump’s mental state. Amazing stuff!
It’s amazing because anyone who followed Biden on the 2020 campaign trail — and remembered him at his peak just a few years earlier — could see and hear the difference. His decline didn’t happen overnight. Some aging relatives fade slowly, others more quickly, but pretending Biden’s deterioration was sudden and invisible amounts to a willful denial of reality.
Tapper and Thompson aren’t the only ones struggling to justify their silence. During his damage-control appearance on “The View” last week,
Biden rambled for nearly a minute before punting the question to his wife. Jill Biden jumped in with a few party-line deflections, prompting cheers from the studio crowd while the president stood awkwardly beside her, like an animatronic figure running low on power.
This isn’t the first time hyper-partisan media have struggled with a reckoning of their own cover-ups and obfuscations after they were quickly proven fools. After years of running interference for Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos confessed in his 1999 memoir “All Too Human”: “I didn’t want our enemies to win. They’d stop at nothing to defeat him, so nothing would stop me from defending him. Now I was a true true believer.”
Stephanopoulos’ 2024 campaign reporting notedly never questioned Biden’s very clear problems until after the Trump debate. Old habits die hard.
It’s too late for the press. It’s too late for the former president, too, despite Jill Biden’s ignoble efforts to save him. The New York Times accidentally (and ironically) nailed the issue in
its review, which opens with a laughably incorrect explanation of the ancient Christian doctrine of original sin as a “biblical story … about the danger of innocent curiosity,” contrasting Eve’s apparent innocence with the guilt of the Biden White House.
“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye,” Christ asked in the Gospel of Matthew, “but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”
And it’s all just beginning, too. This is the first book salvo, and there is always return fire when one person starts spilling the goods on a failure of this proportion. Expect more to try to cash in, just as those they blame hit back. The Bidens may be over, but the Biden Book War has only just begun.
Byron York, March 2024: ‘The best Biden ever’
The Mandate: RFK Jr. BLASTS COVID-era response; promises new chapter
Blaze News: DNC moves to oust rising star David Hogg just months after he was elected
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America last? Not anymore as Trump targets Big Pharma
President Trump’s executive order on Monday turned a harsh spotlight on pharmaceutical companies’ long-standing practice of charging Americans far more for prescription drugs than they charge consumers in other countries.
The order’s language remains vague — it mentions only future “price targets” and possible enforcement mechanisms — but the message is unmistakable: The U.S. government will no longer tolerate paying inflated prices for drugs when European governments negotiate far lower ones.
Americans crushed by high drug costs also vote — and they can elect a president and Congress willing to rewrite the rules.
Trump’s order addresses just one part of a larger, deeply rooted problem: the runaway cost of prescription drugs in the United States. A major contributor to that cost is the pricing of patent-protected drugs, which face no competition and often come with astronomical price tags.
Pharmaceutical companies now operate under a politically dangerous business model. They enjoy government-granted patent protections to block competition, while squeezing insurers and patients to extract maximum profit. This isn’t capitalism. It’s a merger of legal monopoly and short-sighted corporate greed — a textbook example of protectionism paired with profit-maximization stripped of ethical restraint.
Legally, these companies act within their rights. But politically, they’re playing with fire. Americans crushed by high drug costs also vote — and they can elect a president and Congress willing to rewrite the rules. Trump’s executive order sends a warning. If the pressure builds, Congress will follow with legislation.
In a free-market ideal, companies compete to win consumers by offering better, cheaper products. That’s good. But when a company invents something new — especially something as vital as a life-saving drug — it deserves a temporary monopoly to recoup research and development costs. That’s why the government issues patents. This, too, is good.
Yet, once the government grants monopoly rights, we’re no longer in a purely free market. The question then becomes: What responsibility does the government have not just to the patent-holder but also to the consumers who depend on that drug for survival?
Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, recently addressed one side of the debate in the Washington Times. He criticized so-called “compounders” — companies that tweak existing drugs and resell them without going through the same research-and-development and FDA approval process. Moore called these copycats unsafe and accused them of free-riding on innovation.
Compounders clearly respond to market demand but so do pharmaceutical companies charging monopoly prices under government protection. Both “cash in.” One simply does so with fewer legal barriers.
If the government takes seriously its role in enforcing patents, it must also consider whether those monopolies serve the public good — or exploit it. Monopoly pricing for essential drugs carries moral consequences. Government can’t ignore them.
This brings us to another, equally troubling aspect of the problem: the “America last” approach embedded in current drug pricing practices.
Many Americans struggle to afford life-changing medications, while pharmaceutical companies sell those same drugs overseas — at a fraction of the U.S. price. Industry defenders argue that American consumers must bear the brunt of R and D costs, allowing foreign countries to buy at lower “incremental” prices. Without those sales, they say, U.S. prices would rise even higher.
But that argument wears thin.
Charles Rotter recently posted on X that U.S. drug pricing amounts to backdoor foreign aid. “Other countries’ healthcare systems stay sustainable and affordable because American patients bankroll the difference,” he wrote. “Why should a senior in the U.S. pay dramatically more for the same pill than a senior in France, effectively subsidizing France’s national health system?”
Pharmaceutical pricing isn’t just a pocketbook problem. It reflects a broader failure to prioritize American citizens. Companies obeying the letter of the law still fail the test of loyalty and common sense. The system persists only because voters haven’t yet forced change. Trump’s executive order signals they’re starting to.
Congress could go further by revisiting patent protections and demanding greater price transparency. The message to Big Pharma should be clear: You can choose to act like responsible corporate citizens and stop bleeding patients dry, or you can wait for the government to do it for you.
If drug companies continue to exploit their monopolies, they shouldn’t be surprised when voters — and their elected representatives — decide to break them.
Opinion & analysis, Big pharma, Donald trump, Executive order, Drug prices, Prescription drugs, Costs, Europe, America first, America last, Heritage foundation, Stephen moore, Compounders, Copycats, Congress, Patents, Monopoly
War on faith: How anti-Catholic violence is exploding almost unnoticed
As Catholics around the world eagerly awaited white smoke from the Sistine Chapel, a pastor in rural Pennsylvania watched a very different kind of white smoke pouring from a humble chapel at his church.
At 9:02 p.m. May 6, a 32-year-old man named Kyle Kuczynski allegedly detonated a stick of dynamite on the altar of the chapel at St. Teresa of Calcutta Church — so named because Mother Teresa once visited it — in Mahanoy City. Surveillance footage turned over to law enforcement revealed that Kuczynski had been casing the chapel, entering at least three other times earlier in the week.
It is high time for the federal government to take real action that will deter violence and ensure the safety of its churches.
The bombing marked the 500th documented act of violence or vandalism against a Catholic church in the United States in the last five years.
CatholicVote, the nation’s largest lay Catholic advocacy organization, has tracked each incident, from the destruction of a Nativity scene at a church in the Florida Keys to the smashing of the crucifix at a church in Emmonak, Alaska.
The disturbing long-term pattern of attacks began in May 2020.
As civil unrest gripped the country, Catholic churches were caught up in the chaos, with incidents like satanic graffiti spray-painted on walls and bricks thrown through stained-glass windows. A historic church in California, built in 1790, was burned to the ground.
But even as the national climate calmed down, the attacks against Catholic churches accelerated.
The first wave of attacks was usually tied to loosely related left-wing movements. Others had more broadly spiritual themes. Statutes of Jesus, Mary, and saints were destroyed, often in eerie ways such as beheadings. Altars were ransacked. Nativity scenes were vandalized. More churches were set on fire.
The violence took a darker turn when the draft of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision was leaked in May 2022.
Dozens of Catholic churches were attacked by pro-abortion activists working under the banners of Jane’s Revenge, Ruth Sent Us, and other domestic extremist networks. In one incident, pro-abortion rioters attempted to storm a Catholic church in Manhattan; when they were thwarted by parishioners guarding the doors, the rioters resorted to hurling profanities and performing a strange stunt involving a baby doll.
In one particularly sinister case, someone posted a note threatening a mass shooting if abortion were banned on the door of a college dormitory for Catholic students at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
The tracker specifically excludes cases that are clearly motivated by material gain, like thefts of cash from the poor box. The attacks have common threads of politically and spiritually tinged hatred. Take, for example, a 2023 incident in rural Arkansas in which an intoxicated man took a sledgehammer to a stone altar at an abbey and extracted 1,500-year-old relics of saints that were sealed inside and not externally visible.
Hundreds of statues have been damaged or destroyed. Bricks have been thrown through stained-glass windows in acts of hate that hearken back to the civil rights era. Dozens of altars have been ransacked. Five cases involved gunshots fired at churches, including a remote abbey in Missouri in which nuns were sleeping. A few holy water fonts have been sabotaged with urine and feces. Children have been traumatized by threatening messages.
An estimated $36 million in damages has been caused by the attacks. Fifty of the attacks involved arson, with several churches declared a total loss.
But the price tag does not tell the full story. Some of the damages are not quantifiable, such as irreplaceable antique stained-glass windows or consecrated hosts and relics that have been stolen. Plus, the need to hire security guards or install new security equipment — costs that are usually not covered by insurance — far exceeds repair and replacement price tags.
Precious artifacts donated by immigrants or grandmothers, or slaved over by parishioners, have been lost. In several cases, clergy and parishioners have been physically attacked, including one priest in Kansas who was killed last month.
The violence hearkens back to grim periods in the 19th and 20th centuries when Catholics faced similar attacks and had their loyalties constantly questioned.
This violence was completely unabated during the Biden administration.
The second Catholic president dedicated zero federal resources to combatting the problem. Not a single federal arrest or prosecution was made in any of the cases. No task forces were convened, and no strong statements of condemnation came from the Biden White House. Local arrests have been recorded in only about 30% of the incidents. Pastors have reported that local law enforcement are diligent but hamstrung by a lack of resources that the federal government could have provided.
Fortunately, there is some hope on the horizon.
The Trump administration has vowed to combat anti-religious violence, and Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, recently pledged to prosecute perpetrators of attacks on churches, which can be federal crimes under the FACE Act.
As all eyes are on the Catholic Church, it is high time for the federal government to take real action that will deter violence and ensure the safety of its churches. Anti-Catholic bigotry cannot be tolerated any longer.
Catholic, Catholic church, Violence, War on faith, War on christianity, Faith
Oregon university ordered to pay $400K to PETA over experiment that made rodents ingest copious amounts of wine
The Oregon Health & Science University has been ordered to pay $400,000 to an animal rights organization after they refused to comply with public information requests related to a bizarre experiment involving drunk rodents.
The experiment involved making prairie voles ingest the equivalent of 15 bottles of wine a day and then measuring the infidelity of the rodents afterward. The scientists tested the voles for “partner preference” and then killed them and dissected the animals.
‘PETA urges OHSU to see the writing on the wall, get out of the animal business, and switch to state-of-the-art testing methods that actually help humans.’
PETA sued when OHSU refused to turn over videos and photographs from the vole infidelity experiments, and a Multnomah County Circuit Court ruled in favor of the animal rights group in 2023. The university was ordered to pay costs and fees to PETA for violating Oregon’s public records laws.
OHSU appealed the decision at the Oregon Court of Appeals on Monday, according to KATU-TV.
The university also defended the bizarre experiment in a statement from July 22.
“Excessive alcohol can lead to serious health consequences and often is associated with devastating effects on social relationships. Specifically, heavy alcohol use is associated with increased rates of separation, divorce, and intimate partner violence,” read the statement from OHSU.
“Because evaluating what is the cause and what is the effect in this association (the heavy alcohol use or the problems in the social relationship) is practically impossible in humans, the laboratory of Andrey Ryabinin, Ph.D., works with prairie voles,” they added.
Photo by Osmancan Gurdogan/Anadolu via Getty Images
PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo excoriated the university in a statement.
“OHSU has already wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to hide these indefensible experiments from the public eye,” she said. “PETA urges OHSU to see the writing on the wall, get out of the animal business, and switch to state-of-the-art testing methods that actually help humans.”
“This victory sends a strong message to OHSU and similar entities that accountability is paramount,” said PETA vice president of laboratory investigation cases Dr. Alka Chandna.
A similar study was mocked in 2012 for suggesting that single mothers raise less loving children, based on experiments on prairie voles.
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How a ‘lovers’ spat’ nearly sparked a second pandemic in Biden-era high-security virus lab
The Department of Health and Human Services has paused work at certain laboratories, most notably at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) Integrated Research Facility, which studies high-risk pathogens.
The pause is in response to repeated safety incidents.
The incident gaining the most attention, however, involves a dispute between researchers that turned physical when one worker intentionally compromised another worker’s personal protective equipment.
To get the scoop, Glenn Beck invited the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, on “The Glenn Beck Program.”
“A contractor actually punched a hole in the other person’s biolab suit, I don’t know, to get them sick? I mean, is that what happened at that biolab?” asks Glenn in shock.
“That is exactly what happened,” says Dr. Bhattacharya. “A lab worker cut a hole in a biocontainment suit of a fellow worker with the express intention of getting that worker infected.”
The lab where the incident took place, he says, is “a BSL-4 lab, which is the highest biosecurity level lab.” According to Dr. Bhattacharya, the lab conducts experiments on highly infectious viruses and pathogens, including Ebola. A security breach could mean deadly consequences, not just for workers but for quite literally the world.
But it wasn’t just a “lovers’ spat” that compromised the safety of the lab. The contractor who was overseeing the facility “did a very lax job.”
“I learned that this goes back to the Biden administration — that the safety environment in the lab essentially downplayed these kinds of security problems,” says Dr. Bhattacharya. “Personally, I’m not sold that all of these experiments are worth doing, but in any case, if you’re going to run them, you have an absolute responsibility to have zero tolerance for safety problems.”
“Shouldn’t that person be punished?” asks Glenn. “I mean, that really is attempted murder and maybe even on a mass scale.”
Because there’s an “ongoing investigation,” Dr. Bhattacharya can’t reveal much, but he does admit that the incident “scared” him deeply.
“I think Americans are actively scared because none of this stuff should be happening. I mean, we are just an accident or a stupid move or an intentional leak away from mass death,” says Glenn, noting that Bill Gates has been warning that “we’re on the verge of another pandemic.”
“Pandemics happen; they’ve happened all throughout history. The key thing to me though, Glenn, is we don’t want to cause one. … The irony of this past pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic, is that it was very likely caused by actions aimed at stopping pandemics from happening,” Dr. Bhattacharya explains.
To hear his plan for creating a new framework for scientific research that involves the approval of the American public, watch the clip above.
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Trump’s pharma fix might make Reagan squirm — but it’s needed
President Trump on Monday signed an executive order to lower prescription drug prices for Americans by up to 80%. The move — called the “most favored nations” pricing policy — seeks to require pharmaceutical companies to charge U.S. consumers no more than what they charge consumers in other developed nations.
To many Americans, this may sound like simple fairness. After all, why should U.S. citizens pay two, three, or even four times more for the exact same medication than citizens in countries like France, Japan, or Canada?
When the market has been effectively captured, Trump’s executive order is not government overreach but rather a corrective intervention.
But this price disparity is not accidental — it’s systemic. For decades, the United States has quietly subsidized the rest of the world’s access to pharmaceuticals.
Global drug manufacturers earn their profits not in Berlin or Brussels, but in Des Moines and Dallas. In effect, Americans have been the financial backbone of an international pricing scheme that benefits other nations at our expense.
President Trump’s executive order directly challenges this arrangement. It stipulates that if a drug company offers a product to another country at a lower price, the United States should receive the same rate. It’s a reciprocal principle: no more preferential treatment for foreign buyers.
This is a significant departure from business as usual in Washington, and it’s not hard to see why the policy is resonating with the public. At face value, it offers a rare and overdue measure of accountability in a system where Americans are consistently overcharged for lifesaving medication. For anyone who has ever had to ration insulin, split pills, or go without treatment due to cost, this action likely feels like justice.
What free market?
But for those of us who believe strongly in the free market — and I count myself among them — this executive order raises uncomfortable questions.
In principle, I oppose government interference in pricing. I’ve long warned that when the government inserts itself into private industry, the result is usually distortion, inefficiency, and unintended consequences. History offers plenty of examples. In the 1990s, then-first lady Hillary Clinton’s health care proposals — including a federal mandate that vaccine manufacturers sell to the government at deeply discounted prices — led to supply shortages and industry retreat. When profit disappears, so does innovation and availability. That pattern tends to repeat.
So why am I not condemning President Trump’s latest move outright?
Because we no longer operate in a truly free market. In the pharmaceutical industry, the system is already so burdened with lobbying, regulation, and insurance complexity that the idea of unencumbered market exchange is little more than a fiction. Prices are not driven by consumer choice or transparent competition. Instead, they are the product of negotiations between drug companies, insurance providers, and governments — while the average American is left footing the bill without a seat at the table.
In this environment, where the market has been effectively captured, Trump’s executive order can be seen not as government overreach but as a corrective intervention. It’s an attempt to level a playing field that was rigged long ago. The United States is the single largest buyer of pharmaceuticals in the world, and yet we have consistently refused to leverage that bargaining power.
Every other country negotiates drug prices. We don’t. That isn’t capitalism; it’s capitulation.
A necessary disruption
To be clear, I am not advocating long-term price controls. The risks of such policies are well-documented: reduced innovation, fewer treatment options, and deeper government dependency. But I also refuse to pretend that what we currently have is a functioning free market. It isn’t. And continuing to prop up a broken system in the name of “principle” is not conservatism — it’s negligence.
We should still scrutinize the details. We should remain skeptical. But we should also acknowledge this: The current system is unsustainable. Americans are being overcharged for medications so that other countries can pay less. Call it what you want, but don’t call it capitalism — or justice. I’d call it a redistribution scheme masquerading as market logic.
President Trump is right on one crucial point: America has been getting ripped off for far too long. His executive order is a necessary disruption to a system that has failed the very people it was supposed to serve.
It’s time we stopped playing the chump.
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Opinion & analysis, Big pharma, Executive order, Drug prices, Prescription costs, Donald trump, Drug manufacturers, Europe, Costs, Free market
Elderly army veteran dies after being dragged for half a mile in horrific carjacking, California police say
An elderly man who was simply vacuuming his vehicle was killed during a horrific carjacking incident in Southern California, police say.
78-year-old James Norman was cleaning his Chevy Trailblazer at about 12:30 p.m. at a gas station on Hidden Valley Parkway in Corona when someone hopped into the vehicle and drove off. He backed up and trapped Norman, who was hanging from the back seat.
‘He knew my dad was hanging, but just panicked and kept going until he fell out of the car.’
Norman was dragged for about a half mile by the vehicle before being ejected onto the street.
Corona police said they responded to a call about a carjacking at the gas station. They said they found Norman, and he was transported to a hospital but was later declared dead.
Police reviewed surveillance video, interviewed several people, and detained one suspect in the case after finding the car abandoned. The suspect was identified as 29-year-old Ryan Hewitt from Corona.
Hewitt was charged for carjacking and murder and is scheduled for a hearing on May 14.
Norman’s daughter, Nicole Lauritsen, said that her father was an Army veteran and probably didn’t hear what happened over the sound of the vacuum and because of his hearing aids.
RELATED: Armed woman foils alleged carjacking attempt by three teens, and an 11-year-old
“He was too old and frail to get out before the door slammed on him,” she said. “He knew my dad was hanging, but just panicked and kept going until he fell out of the car.”
A GoFundMe account was set up to help the family with Norman’s expenses.
Corona is a suburb of Los Angeles about 36 miles inland from the coast.
A news report about the incident can be viewed on the YouTube channel for KABC-TV.
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‘No one’s intimidated by this dude’: Dem Leader Jeffries warns Trump against arresting Democrats over ICE trespassing
Democrat House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries of New York issued a warning against President Donald Trump after numerous demands that Democrats be arrested for allegedly trespassing onto ICE detention centers.
Jeffries lashed out at the administration while speaking to reporters in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. He cited some falling poll numbers for the president while claiming that Trump was trying to intimidate his political opponents.
‘We’re not going to be intimidated by their tactics to try to force principled opposition from not standing up to their extremism.’
“It’s a red line,” said Jeffries. “They know better than to go down that road.”
Some Democratic members of the U.S. House tried to gain entry into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainment center in Newark, New Jersey, on Friday. The scene turned to chaos when they were refused entry, and some agents were allegedly assaulted.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, also a Democrat, was arrested after allegedly trespassing with activists and Democrats. He argued that the center was refusing entry to fire officials to check for safety and fire ordinance compliance.
Jeffries has rejected calls from many that the Democrats deserve to be arrested or censured for their actions.
“We’re not going to be intimidated by their tactics to try to force principled opposition from not standing up to their extremism,” he continued.
“It didn’t happen when Donald Trump temporarily was sitting high in the immediate aftermath of the election. Do you think it’s going to happen now, when he’s the most unpopular president in American history after his first 100 days? Give me a break. No one’s intimidated by this dude — no one,” Jeffries reiterated.
“And so there are clear lines that they just dare not cross,” he concluded.
RELATED: Trump-appointed judge OKs Trump use of Alien Enemies Act to deport Tren de Aragua gang members
Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images
Democrats have also argued that they had authority to access any federal center under their oversight authority.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN that the lawmakers had assaulted the ICE officers, and accused one Democrat of “body-slamming a female ICE officer.”
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White House official addresses criticism of Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’
President Donald Trump has promised Americans he’ll be teaming up with congressional Republicans to pass a “big, beautiful bill” that’s chock full of campaign promises.
Of those campaign promises, “no tax on tips,” “no tax on overtime,” and major spending cuts stand out. However, the bill’s progress is dragging on — and the country is beginning to wonder what’s really going on.
Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, has some answers.
“I want to talk to you about the Republicans, because I believe they’re kind of a waste of space. They are not doing the things that I think the president promised, and that is, cut the budget and cut regulation in dramatic ways,” Glenn Beck tells Vought on “The Glenn Beck Program.”
“We’re working through it right now. The House, they’re trying to meet their instructions. They basically passed a budget that would have $1.5 trillion in savings and about $4.5 trillion in tax relief, and they are working through to get a bill that can pass,” Vought explains.
“So when are we expecting this to be voted on and possibly go through?” Glenn asks.
“My hope is next week that they pass it out of committee, the two big committees of ways and means and energy and commerce, and then go to budget and set up a vote thereafter on the house floor. That’s our hope, that’s what we’re working towards,” Vought says.
“We’re going to move as much as we can within the parameters of the law and the Constitution, we’re going to move as fast and aggressively as possible to change the reality on the ground with reductions in force, with reorganizations, with doing programmatic review of spending that doesn’t have to go out through the use of recisions,” he continues.
“There’s a whole set of tools in our box that we’re going to use aggressively to get Congress moving in our direction, because we cannot be in a normal situation as an administration where we just kind of send bills up and wait on them,” he adds.
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Trump-appointed judge OKs Trump use of Alien Enemies Act to deport Tren de Aragua gang members
A federal judge ruled in favor of the Trump administration using the Alien Enemies Act to deport members of the vicious Tren de Aragua gang but also said the accused must be given sufficient notice.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Haines is the first judge to rule in favor of President Donald Trump invoking the AEA to target members of a Foreign Terrorist Organization, a label that the president has applied to the Tren de Aragua group.
Haines’ order allowed deportations of suspected gang members to resume, but she added that the administration must give the migrants 21 days’ notice.
“Having done its job, the Court now leaves it to the Political Branches of the government, and ultimately to the people who elect those individuals, to decide whether the laws and those executing them continue to reflect their will,” wrote Haines in the 43-page ruling on Tuesday.
Other judges have ruled that the administration is misapplying the act to a transnational gang when it should be applied to invading militaries of foreign governments.
“The Proclamation makes no reference to and in no manner suggests that a threat exists of an organized, armed group of individuals entering the United States at the direction of Venezuela to conquer the country or assume control over a portion of the nation,” said U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. in Texas, also a Trump appointee.
“Thus, the Proclamation’s language cannot be read as describing conduct that falls within the meaning of ‘invasion’ for purposes of the AEA,” he added.
Haines’ order allowed deportations of suspected gang members to resume, but she added that the administration must give the migrants 21 days’ notice in English as well as Spanish of their impending deportation.
“The Court recognizes that it may need to conduct further analysis and consider additional issues related to the specifics of notice in the future,” Haines added. “However, at this preliminary stage of this case, the Court finds that the foregoing is appropriate and complies with the law.”
Photo by El Salvador Press Presidency Office/Anadolu via Getty Images
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in April that migrants to be deported under the AEA have some due process rights that the administration must comply with.
The American Civil Liberties Union has called for the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a final decision on the president’s use of the AEA after the ACLU filed numerous lawsuits against his policies.
Haines was appointed to the court by Trump in 2019.
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‘Death of women’s sports’: Male track runner shocks viewers with massive size advantage over female competitors
Yet another male athlete won a female high school athletic event, outpacing girls in a 200-meter race last weekend.
States continue to disregard President Trump’s executive order to keep men out of women’s sports, including Pennsylvania, the pivotal swing state that Trump won in 2024.
Over the weekend, the Suburban One League, an athletic conference in Southeastern Pennsylvania, hosted the SOL American Conference Championships in Horsham. During the Liberty Girls’ 200-meter race, viewers quickly noticed that one of the runners had distinct physical qualities.
“His shoulder width is twice the size of the girls,” one viewer wrote.
“He’s got big quads,” reporter Beth Bourne wrote alongside a photo of the athlete.
A video of the event, taken from near the finish line, showed high school male Sean “Luce” Allen take the victory in the girls’ 200-meter race, winning by just over one-tenth of a second.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and President Donald Trump in 2018. Photo by Oliver Contreras/Getty Images
After the race was concluded, and a brief meeting with an athletic official, a group of four girls were seen celebrating with the third-place finisher — whom they may have assumed came in second place due to the close results — right in front of the student purporting to be a female.
It should also be noted that with the male athlete taking first place in the event, a victory was taken away from a girl who is technically the fastest female in the category despite being in just the ninth grade.
In March, the male athlete released a statement claiming transgender athletes are stripped of their “opportunity to develop as people” if forced to compete in their actual gender category.
Allen said that “trans athletes, like any other high school athlete, are just kids who want to compete.”
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Allen’s parents said it would be “cruel” to have their son compete against other males.
‘Female athletes are being ignored, injured, and erased.’
Recently, males in women’s’ sports have sparked protests across the country from those unwilling to compete in unfair competitive settings.
For example, a group of four female high jumpers forfeited their spots at a competition in Oregon over the participation of a male. The male in question ended up winning the competition by out-jumping 18 female competitors.
Former NCAA swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler spoke to Blaze News about the increased pressure states are coming under for allowing these competitions to go unchecked.
“If Congress doesn’t intervene now, we’re not just watching the death of women’s sports; we’re watching the collapse of basic truth and fairness in America,” Wheeler claimed. “Female athletes are being ignored, injured, and erased, while the very institutions designed to protect us, like the NCAA, USA Fencing, and even public schools, are actively violating Title IX and spitting in the face of common sense.”
Wheeler noted there is a moral question in play and urged Congress to act upon its “constitutional duty” to provide oversight, uphold federal laws, and “protect the rights of every American girl.”
She added, “If they don’t step in, they’re complicit. And let’s be honest — if we can’t even agree that men don’t belong in women’s locker rooms, how can the American people trust anything our institutions say?”
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