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New York City just took a sharp left turn, voting for Muslim communist Zohran Mamdani over Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary.

And in a recent speech to conservative insiders, Vice President JD Vance succinctly explained how this happened — and why it signals a dangerous new phase for the American left.

“A 33-year-old communist, running an insurgent campaign, beat a multimillion-dollar establishment machine politician in the New York Democratic mayoral primary,” Vance said, noting that his win drove home “just how much the voters in each of the respective parties have changed.”

“If President Trump’s victory in 2024 was rooted in a broad, working- and middle-class coalition, Mamdani’s coalition is almost the inverse of that,” he continued, explaining that his voters reflect “a left that has completely left behind the broad middle of the United States of America.”

“This is a guy who won high-income and college educated New Yorkers … but he was weakest among black voters and weakest among those without a college degree. That’s an interesting coalition. Maybe it works in the New York Democratic primary. I don’t think it works particularly well in the United States at large,” he added.

Vance then called Mamdani’s voters “the party of highly educated but downwardly mobile elites.”

Blaze media senior politics editor and DC correspondent Christopher Bedford is impressed by Vance’s analysis.

“It was so spot-on,” Bedford tells BlazeTV hosts Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson on “Blaze News: The Mandate.” “A lot of what drives and unites them, if anything unites them much any more, is mutual loathing.”

“This is a coalition that’s not even largely driven by values. The working-class values, the green values, have gone by the wayside,” he continues, noting that their view of the world has become very observably bleak, as demonstrated by their response to the floods in Texas.

“A literal children’s doctor in Houston, Texas, earlier today posted on Facebook about how these children who were washed away from a girls’ Christian summer camp, from all ethnicities by the way, deserved it, because of the way their parents voted,” he explains.

“That is hate. That is pure, pure hate,” he adds.

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It has been five years since fans of Washington’s NFL team were robbed of their beloved moniker Redskins. Now, with new ownership since 2023, the team seems closer than ever to bringing the name and famous logo back.

In 2020, the franchise announced it would bend the knee to activism and retire the Redskins name as well as their logo, which bared the likeness of Blackfeet Chief John Two Guns White Calf.

It was even reported that the team would avoid using any Native American imagery at all. Now, as the walls of wokeness crumble all around, the team is slowly creeping toward a reintroduction of the old tradition.

‘We are excited to celebrate Washington’s incredible history.’

Washington’s NFL franchise used the embarrassing interim name of the Washington Football Team for 2020-2021, until becoming the Washington Commanders in 2022. When Josh Harris bought the team in 2023, the fire in fans to bring back the old name quickly started burning again.

For the upcoming 2025-2026 season, the Commanders took a step in that direction when they announced they would be bringing back their “Super Bowl Era” uniforms for three separate games. Celebrating their 1982, 1987, and 1991 Super Bowl wins, the team will bring back their iconic burgundy, white, and gold uniforms.

In a promotional video, the franchise showed off old footage featuring the Redskins logo, reliving the “grit” and the “glory” the fans felt in the 1980s and 1990s. Although, there was one obvious catch.

RELATED: Residents of Navajo reservation are asked if ‘cultural appropriation’ bothers them. Leftists won’t like their answers.

While mostly obscuring their “W” Commanders logo, the promo did make a point about embracing the future and will not feature the Redskins logo alongside their new jerseys.

The good news is that pressure, timing, and public opinion is definitely on the right side of history.

In April, the team announced plans to move back to the heart of D.C. with a new stadium. Then in early May, President Trump and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that D.C. would host the 2027 NFL Draft.

These moves coupled with the fact that the Blackfeet chief’s family actually wants the team to bring back the old logo, and it certainly seems like the momentum is moving in a positive direction.

In a press release about the throwback uniforms, team president Mark Clouse even said the team was trying to find ways to connect the past to the present.

RELATED: ‘The fans want him back’: Family of Blackfeet chief, the inspiration for Redskins’ logo, calls for logo’s return

Red Mesa Navaho High School, Teec Nos Pos, Arizona. Photo courtesy of Rob Eno.

“Ever since Josh Harris and our ownership group acquired the team back in 2023, they’ve placed great value in finding ways to connect the past and present and honor those that made the burgundy and gold what it is today,” Clouse said in a statement.

“These uniforms recognize the most successful era of our franchise — one that reflects a culture of excellence and encompasses many historical moments and special memories amongst our fanbase. Our coaches, players, and the entire organization could not be more excited to celebrate our team’s legacy while creating new memories in these uniforms this season,” Clouse added.

At the same time, these comments could be interpreted as the team being willing to address the past, without making it a future reality.

For instance, during a 2024 preseason press conference, owner Harris said that the old Redskins name “can’t come back.”

“We’ve been very clear, we can’t, for obvious reasons, the old name can’t come back,” Harris explained, per sports radio station the Team 980 AM.

Noting that he wanted to “honor” the team’s heritage and past, Harris said he was focusing on unity and “not things that might drive people apart.”

In 2025 and beyond, though, bringing back the old name seems to be exactly what would bring fans back together. Hopefully for Redskins supporters, a new stadium, the draft, and President Trump can be big enough catalysts to make their wishes come to fruition.

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Score one for Adam Sandler.

The “Saturday Night Live” alum appears, by all accounts, to be a genuine good guy in the Hollywood ecosystem. He proudly shares his Jewish faith on screen, something you don’t typically see in blockbuster comedies.

When it’s time to make a new project, he calls upon his famous pals. He and Rob Schneider are rarely seen apart on screen. Loyalty matters.

Now, we’re learning how Sandler defied Hollywood ageism on his newest project. “Happy Gilmore 2” reunites much of the 1996 film’s cast, including Christopher McDonald (Shooter McGavin). It’s also set to feature Sandler’s squeeze Virginia Venit, played then and now by Julie Bowen.

The 55-year-old “Modern Family” alum expected the sequel to cast a younger, hotter actress opposite Sandler this time ’round. That’s just how Hollywood rolls.

Instead, Bowen got the call to reprise her “Happy Gilmore” character. And while she doesn’t have as much screen time as in the original, Sandler assured her how vital she is to the project.

“You’re the heart of the movie,” Sandler told her.

While the “Jack and Jill” star may seem an unlikely crusader against the industry’s double standards, it should come as no surprise to those who know anything about Sandler’s personal life.

The SNL alum has been married to wife, Jackie Titone — with whom he shares two daughters — since 2003. And not a whiff of sleazy scandal.

Which is more than we can say for many an outspoken Hollywood “male feminist.”

Perry’s scary stage SNAFU

Can things get worse for Katy Perry?

Her latest album got crushed by critics, and clips of her current tour drew social media mockery. She dipped a manicured toe in space, a trip that also generated a digital drubbing. Plus, she and her longtime steady, Orlando Bloom, just split.

Her latest indignity? A stage prop misbehaved, leaving her clinging for life midair. Her stop in Adelaide, Australia, hit a snag when a stunt involving a suspended sphere went haywire. She clung to the sphere’s bars while technicians rushed to fix the issue.

She emerged unhurt, but her ego took another hit along the way …

Star Trek: Trump Derangement Syndrome

Oh, my!

George Takei has finally cut the cord on his iconic Sulu character from the original “Star Trek” series and multiple feature films. How? He’s now a full-time Trump critic, and he proved it anew with a pathetic performance on the immersive liberal holodeck known as CNN.

He compared ICE’s deportation efforts to the Japanese-Americans rounded up during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

They’re not remotely similar, of course. The worst part? Takei was one of those Japanese-Americans swept up in the country’s anti-Japanese fever in the 1940s. He even wrote a play about those memories.

Now, all he can do is summon them to smite Orange Man Bad. Set phasers on “stunned” …

RELATED: The technology of ‘Star Trek’

Sunset Boulevard/Getty Images

We’d ‘Rather’ not

The very last person who should speak out about CBS’ $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump over a selective editing scandal is Dan Rather.

The disgraced newsman used the “60 Minutes” brand to peddle fake news about then-President George W. Bush to sway the 2004 election. It failed, in part, because an army of citizen journalists rose up and debunked it step by step.

Rather never backed down, despite losing his plush anchor chair. A 2016 movie about the incident asked audiences to believe both that the newsman got the basic story right — and that he could be convincingly played by Robert Redford.

The title? “Truth.” That’s Hollywood.

So, naturally, Variety turned to Rather to weigh in on the Trump settlement.

“It’s a sad day for journalism. … It’s a sad day for ‘60 Minutes’ and CBS News. I hope people will read the details of this and understand what it was. It was distortion by the president and a kneeling down and saying, ‘Yes, sir,’ by billionaire corporate owners,” Rather said.

Variety couldn’t bother to tell readers who didn’t live through “Rathergate” why the Texas newsman is, to be kind, an unreliable narrator.

Then again, if anyone knows about fake news, it’s Danny Boy …

Putting the man in ‘romantic’

What can’t the patriarchy do?

Director Celine Song of “Past Lives” fame is blaming men for the death of the rom-com. Her latest film, “Materialists,” isn’t as frothy as most romantic comedies, but it loosely falls under that banner.

And it’s good!

That doesn’t mean Song’s approach to the subject is admirable. She says Hollywood stopped making rom-coms due to the patriarchy. Toxic men dismiss the genre as “chick flicks” and nothing more.

Except we never stopped loving rom-coms. The rom-com giants (Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan) aged out of the genre. The newer versions offered up strained, gimmick-laden plots (“How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”), and some focused on lust, not love (“Friends with Benefits,” “No Strings Attached”).

And when young, attractive stars get a chance at rom-com glory, they often hit the bull’s-eye. “Anyone But You” wasn’t “good,” but it boasted the attractive duo of Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney. And it made a whopping $220 million in global theaters.

Scapegoating the patriarchy is always a woke winner, but this time, the blame falls squarely on Hollywood’s stooped shoulders.

​Hollywood, Entertainment, Culture, Adam sandler, Fake news, Donald trump, George takei, Star trek, Tds, Dan rather, Katy perry, Toto recall 

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas could not resist another opportunity to shine the spotlight on herself.

In the midst of the Texas floods that have claimed the lives of at least 120 loved ones, the Democratic rising star posted a video pointing the finger at President Donald Trump and talking about how the tragedy will most affect her. Notably, Crockett’s district is roughly 300 miles away from where the floods raged through Kerr County, which is about the same distance between Boston and Philadelphia.

Despite her long history of tone deaf remarks, Crockett has emerged as one of the most popular Democrats in her party.

Crockett starts the video by saying her “heart is truly heavy for all these families,” before immediately making it about herself and how Trump is working around the clock to “hurt us.”

“The sad part is I think that my heart is going to carry a level of weight that will continue to weigh me down as we have to continue to do our best to survive an administration that literally is against us,” Crockett said in a post on Instagram. “An administration that is doing everything, in my mind, to hurt us and not help us, and it feels like we’re fending for ourselves.”

RELATED: Here are the top 3 LEAST patriotic members of Congress

In the same post about the Texas flooding, Crockett made sure to give a shoutout to her hairstylist.

“My staff said y’all are commenting about my BOB!” Crockett wrote in the post. She thanked her stylist for “orchestrating the look” followed by a kissy face emoji.

RELATED: Jasmine Crockett says Trump impeachment inquiry ‘absolutely’ on the table

Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Court Accountability

Despite her long history of tone deaf remarks, Crockett has emerged as one of the most popular Democrats in her party.

In a hypothetical Senate primary, Crockett is leading with 35% support among Democratic voters, followed by former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), who polled at 20% support, according to a poll conducted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) were also tied for 13% in the poll.

Although Crockett has secured a healthy lead in the primary, she has not formally announced or publicly signaled her interest in running to unseat Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

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The Trump administration, to its credit, is prioritizing the development of mining and critical minerals to protect U.S. economic and defense interests and secure a reliable domestic supply.

At the center of this effort is President Trump’s recent executive order “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production.” The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, now known as the Permitting Council, spearheads these administration efforts.

America needs to get real about sourcing its domestic critical mineral supply and supporting reliable mining partners in their operations abroad.

Thankfully, it’s now increasing “transparency, accountability, and predictability for the permitting review process for … critical mineral production projects.”

Abroad, the administration is also pursuing strategic deals, particularly by supporting mining operators in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A newly signed minerals agreement between the Congo and Rwanda — brokered as part of the U.S.-backed peace treaty — marks “a success for Trump against the backdrop of U.S.-China competition over critical minerals.”

With all this activity in the global mining sector, it’s essential that the U.S. government adhere to the following principle: Support and partner with real — and reliable — mining operators.

America can’t afford to gamble with startups backed by tech billionaires with no mining experience nor mining companies that are backed by China. We need to be realistic about supporting the mineral needs of “USA Inc.” Moreover, policymakers must not fall for the slick PR and flashy AI claims currently inundating the industry.

It’s time to stop the madness.

Flashy ‘mining’ startups

So who are the culprits driving this frenzy? The first is KoBold Metals, a California-based startup backed by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg. The company’s trio of green activist billionaire backers should raise significant concerns within the administration. Gates, for instance, was in Singapore recently touting the ill-advised return of support for “climate reform.”

A deeper problem lies in KoBold’s misleading image. The company calls itself a mining firm, but it has never run a mine.

Its strength lies in artificial intelligence and data harvesting, not excavation, logistics, or engineering. KoBold claims to lead “the world’s largest exploration R&D effort” using AI and novel hardware. The language sounds impressive. The reality is far less so.

KoBold lacks the infrastructure, operational know-how, and supply chain muscle needed for serious mineral exploration and production. At its core, it’s an AI platform masquerading as a mining company.

RELATED: Graham says Ukraine has trillions of dollars of ‘critical mineral assets’ and could be ‘the best business partner’

Temizyurek via iStock/Getty Images

Even more troubling, the administration appears to be assisting KoBold in advancing a lithium mine in the DRC. According to Bloomberg, the announcement came after the DRC’s President Felix Tshisekedi met with Massad Boulos, Trump’s senior adviser for African affairs, to discuss potential American investment and security assistance in the DRC’s fight against a rebel group in the east, which is backed by neighboring Rwanda.

I am confident Boulos, who also happens to be the father-in-law of President Trump’s youngest daughter, will soon come around and realize what’s real and what’s not.

Lining China’s pockets

Given the stakes, the administration must weigh reliability when deciding which mining companies to back. Rio Tinto doesn’t make the cut.

Yes, Rio Tinto is a real mining company. It’s been around since 1873 and operates on a global scale. But it doesn’t serve U.S. interests.

The Aluminum Corporation of China Ltd., or Chinalco, holds a 14.56% stake in Rio Tinto. Chinalco is a Chinese state-owned enterprise. That makes Beijing the company’s largest shareholder — and that alone should disqualify Rio Tinto as a potential partner.

Propping up Rio Tinto would only tighten China’s grip on the world’s critical minerals supply — at America’s expense. As international policy and trade analyst Dewardric McNeal recently wrote:

The United States must now treat critical minerals not as commodities but as instruments of geopolitical power. China already does. Escaping its grip will require more than mine permits and short-term funding. It demands a coherent, long-term strategy to build a complete supply chain that includes not only domestic capabilities but also reliable allies and partners.

Exactly right. The U.S. needs a strategic, grounded approach — not one riddled with internal contradictions.

America needs to get real about sourcing its domestic critical mineral supply and supporting reliable mining partners in their operations abroad. The clock is ticking, and neither flashy startups nor Chinese-backed companies are the keys to solving this puzzle.

​Opinion & analysis, Mining, Rare earth minerals, Deal, Treaty, China, Congo, Bill gates, Executive order, National security, Economy, Michael bloomberg, Jeff bezos, Artificial intelligence, Kobold metals, Startups, Business, Partnership, Felix tshisekedi, Massad boulos, Rio tinto, Aluminum, Strategy 

Earlier today, BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler of “The Liz Wheeler Show” made an appearance on Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s show to, in his words, “articulate and channel some of the frustrations that the base and the audience is feeling” in the wake of the DOJ and FBI’s announcement that the Epstein client list we were promised doesn’t exist.

Kirk picked the perfect person. Liz was hot out of the gate with her scathing condemnation of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.

“This has been an unforced error due to choices that Attorney General Pam Bondi has made,” Liz tells Kirk.

Back in February, Liz was invited to an exclusive White House event, during which she, along with other prominent conservative personalities, was given a binder by Pam Bondi labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.”

Unfortunately, this file contained virtually no new information. Bondi admitted to the group that the binders didn’t have any “juicy, dirty details” because the “SDNY [was] hiding truckloads of documents,” per a whistleblower’s report, but that she had sent FBI director Kash Patel a formal request to release the complete files, promising Liz and the others that the full story was coming down the pike.

Months later, now we’re told there is no story, meaning there will be no accountability for the untold numbers of elites who were complicit in Epstein’s trafficking of underage girls.

Liz is furious at what she perceives as a bald-faced lie from Pam Bondi. During the White House meeting, “she actually bragged about creating that [binder] cover sheet,” which read “the most transparent administration in history,” she scoffs.

This performative act in tandem with her February appearance on Fox News claiming that the Epstein list was sitting on her desk pending review simply doesn’t square with the DOJ’s final verdict that “there’s no Epstein client list; there’s no blackmail operation; Epstein definitively killed himself … and [Americans] are not getting any more of these documents,” says Liz.

“The reason that the American people are having such a visceral reaction to this … is because we voted for justice when we voted for President Trump,” she tells Kirk. “This does not seem like justice.”

“We have this evidence [of Epstein’s crimes] before our eyes, and then we’re being told by government officials … that we should discount and ignore what we’re seeing … and instead believe them, and they’re telling us things that contradict the evidence that we’ve seen,” she explains. “The simple fact of the matter is Pam Bondi said she had the client list on her desk and she promised to release it, and then she didn’t do it.”

“What could make this right in your estimation?” Kirk asks.

“She’s a liability to the Trump administration. It’s costing him tremendous goodwill among his base,” says Liz, “and I say this sorrowfully because there’s a lot of things Pam Bondi has done that I like and that I agree with, but it’s time to not allow her to have this be something that tarnishes President Trump’s legacy and office. It’s time to move on from her.”

“Are you calling for her resignation?” asks Kirk.

“Yes, I believe President Trump should give her the option to resign because she didn’t tell the truth to the American people,” she says. “It’s the right thing to do.”

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President Trump snapped at a reporter who asked him about Jeffrey Epstein on Tuesday.

Trump is massively misreading his base on this one — and it could cost him the midterms.

President Trump should not underestimate how much goodwill he’s lost among his base due to Pam Bondi’s mishandling of the Epstein files.

People care about the Epstein story, not only because of his sickening crimes against children but because evidence exists of a government cover-up.

Evidence like Epstein’s autopsy showing injuries incongruent with suicide; evidence like Buckingham Palace’s response to ABC’s nuked report on Epstein, Prince Andrew, and President Bill Clinton; evidence like former federal prosecutor Alex Acosta saying he was told to back off because Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and then discovering his Justice Department emails had mysteriously disappeared.

And now, government officials are telling us to ignore the evidence in front of our eyes and believe them — without evidence. Nope. Not happening. We voted for radical transparency and justice. We’re not letting it drop.

The president should not underestimate how much goodwill he’s lost among his base due to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s mishandling of the Epstein files. People are furious. I would know — I was collateral damage in Bondi’s infernal Epstein binder debacle. She should have been fired on the spot.

Country singer John Rich tells a story about eating dinner with Trump, who turned to him and asked — genuinely curious — “Why do people boo at my rallies when I brag about the COVID vaccine?” And then Trump listened to Rich’s answer: People were hurt by that jab.

President Trump should listen to his base about Epstein, too.

We have been hurt by the deep state weaponizing the government against us: calling us terrorists, censoring us when we questioned the outcome of the 2020 election, or the origin of COVID, or rejecting transgender ideology. Trump’s base has been insulted, targeted, subject to violence, arrest, and political persecution for supporting him and our America First agenda.

RELATED: The Epstein case proves one thing: The elites are protected

Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Forgive us if we refuse to believe government officials now who are asking us to accept a narrative that contradicts the evidence we can see. We will no longer be subject to gatekeepers. Don’t insult our intelligence. Don’t belittle us.

We voted for President Trump because he promised justice.

Justice for COVID.Justice for January 6 and the mysterious RNC and DNC pipe bombs.Justice for Russiagate.Justice for the phony Ukraine impeachment.Justice for the lawfare against Trump.Justice for censorship and Big Tech collusion.Justice for jailed pro-lifers.Justice for journalists targeted by the FBI.Justice for parents labeled domestic extremists.

Justice isn’t dismissing those crimes and moving on. Justice means arresting the swamp creatures who perpetrated the crimes and dismantling the corrupt institutions that enabled them to do so.

That’s why the Epstein case is foundational. That’s why Trump’s base has a visceral reaction to being told we would get the Epstein files — and now we are told we’re getting nothing.

Bondi didn’t tell us the truth. She seems more interested in being a Fox News star than keeping promises. Something is fishy about the Epstein stuff — his racket, his death, his friends, his alleged intelligence agency connections. Patting us on the head and telling us “nothing to see here” is infuriating. It will not do.

President Trump should not underestimate the significance of this moment. He’s losing goodwill by the day — and Bondi is to blame.

Trump is smart. He cares about his base. He listens. He should listen now, so that it doesn’t cost him the midterms.

​Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Trust, Credibility, Pam bondi, Kash patel, Dan bongino, Fbi, Department of justice, Jeffrey epstein, Suicide, Truckload, Evidence, Autopsy, Cover up, Prince andrew, Bill clinton, Epstein island, Blackmail, Justice, Truth, Transparency 

The catastrophic floods in Central Texas have claimed the lives of at least 120 people, including 46 children. As officials and volunteers continue their search for the 173 still believed missing, liberals continue to spin the tragedy, exploiting Texans’ loss and grief for political ends.

This was especially clear Wednesday on CNN, where talking head Dana Bash and Bill Nye “the Science Guy” suggested that the Trump administration and American energy were somehow culpable for the flooding in Texas and North Carolina as well as the rains in Chicago.

At the outset of the interview, Bash insinuated both that floods are becoming more frequent and that they are the result of climate change — even though in the case of Texas, they took place in a region that earned the nickname “flash flood alley” with a pattern of heavy flooding that apparently predates the combustion engine by many centuries.

Political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. recently directed the attention of USA Today to a 1940 historical text on American floods that indicates “the same region of Texas that experienced this week’s floods has long been known to be a bull’s-eye for flash flooding.”

A century before that text was published, German immigrants in New Braunfels, Texas, reportedly had to contend with the same problem — and faced a Guadalupe River that would consistently rise 15 feet above its normal stand following heavy rains.

“The documented record of extreme flooding in ‘flash flood alley’ goes back several centuries, with paleoclimatology records extending that record thousands of years into the past,” said Pielke.

RELATED: Liberal women quickly learn what happens when you say vile things about little girls killed in the floods

Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images

“It’s terrible,” said Bash, referring to footage of flooding. “You keep hearing ‘once in a lifetime,’ ‘once in a hundred years,’ ‘once in a thousand years.’ At this point, it’s not any more. It’s just where we are with the climate and the environment.”

After suggesting that “warm weather events are actually easier to tie to climate change,” Nye — who for all his honorary doctorates has not earned a doctorate in any scientific field — said, “‘What are we going to do about it?’ is the ancient question. And [the answer] would be to stop burning fossil fuels.”

“When you’re in a hole, stop digging, and so on,” continued Nye. “But the fossil fuel industry has been very successful in getting organizations like the U.S. Congress to think that it’s really not happening.”

After Nye smeared a critical source of American energy, Bash proved eager to tie its survival to President Donald Trump, stating, “And the first six months of the Trump administration, we’ve seen an end to some of the federal efforts on not just fossil fuel but other efforts that had been in place government-wide to promote alternative energy.”

‘If we harness our outrage and come together to fight like hell for our collective future, we will win.’

Failed presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg noted in a Tuesday op-ed that elected officials owe the Texas families who lost love ones “a sincere commitment to righting their deadly wrong, by tackling the problem they’ve turned their backs on for too long: climate change.”

RELATED: NY newspaper nailed with backlash over cartoon mocking MAGA victims of Texas floods: ‘Twisted, vile, and shameful’

Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

“The latest episode of horrific flooding isn’t just about a natural disaster in one state,” continued Bloomberg, who has poured cash into various climate alarmist initiatives. “It’s also about a political failure that’s been happening in states across the country, and most of all in Washington. The refusal to recognize that climate change carries a death penalty is sending innocent people, including far too many children, to early graves.”

Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club and former CEO of the NAACP, claimed in a Chicago Sun-Times piece that the Texas disaster “was a crisis written by the climate crisis and made far worse by the types of policies being pushed by this administration everyday [sic].”

Jealous, like Bloomberg and Nye, appears to think the flood a good enough excuse for Americans to join their war on fossil fuels, stating, “If we harness our outrage and come together to fight like hell for our collective future, we will win.”

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Over the course of George W. Bush’s entire presidency, 12 nationwide injunctions were issued by federal judges, halting or preventing the enforcement of executive branch policies. During Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s presidencies, 19 and 28 nationwide injunctions were issued, respectively.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the first Trump administration was slapped with 86 nationwide injunctions.

Meddlesome U.S. district court judges proved more than willing this year to oblige liberal litigants in arresting the MAGA agenda by slapping the second Trump administration with scores of additional universal injunctions — 25 in Trump’s first 100 days back in office and dozens more in subsequent months.

The U.S. Supreme Court finally put its foot down on June 27, determining in Trump v. CASA Inc. that the nationwide injunctions weaponized against the Trump administration by district court judges “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”

It didn’t take long — just hours, actually — for liberal litigants to seize upon a potential alternative means of achieving similar results, and once again, largely Democrat-appointed district court judges appear ready to deliver.

Dr. John C. Eastman, founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, told Blaze News that the new undemocratic game played by liberal activists and sympathetic U.S. district court judges will likely prompt further action from the U.S. Supreme Court.

While Eastman reckons the Trump administration will ultimately prevail — and a White House official told Blaze News that the administration is prepared for “all possible legal options” — its challengers will nevertheless attempt in the meantime to deny or postpone what Americans voted for in November.

RELATED: Even Sotomayor bewildered by Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion

Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In CASA Inc., the Supreme Court indicated that the nationwide injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh recognized in his concurring opinion, however, that district courts may still be able to “grant or deny the functional equivalent of a universal injunction — for example, by granting or denying a preliminary injunction to a putative nationwide class under Rule 23(b)(2).”

‘They’ve got to pay close attention to the guardrails that go along with the rule 23 class certification process.’

Hours after the high court’s ruling, CASA, the immigrant advocacy group involved in the litigation, filed a motion requesting that the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland certify as a class all persons born in the U.S. on or after Feb. 19 who would be ineligible for birthright citizenship under President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14160 and asked in an amended complaint that the court issue an injunction against the order on behalf of this supposed class.

In a corresponding request for a preliminary injunction, CASA noted that the “Supreme Court’s recent stay opinion acknowledges that courts may award injunctive relief beyond the named parties when the case is brought as a class action.”

CASA referred to both Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion and Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion, in which she noted that “the majority leaves untouched one important tool to provide broad relief to individuals subject to lawless Government conduct: Rule 23(b)(2) class actions for injunctive relief.”

“Justices Alito and Kavanaugh, in their concurring opinions, both tried to send a warning sign to the lower courts that this shouldn’t be an automatic brand of class certification; they’ve got to pay close attention to the guardrails that go along with the Rule 23 class certification process,” said Eastman. “One of those is commonality. You know, the members of the class have to have common issues, and with the preliminary injunction, that’s just not true.”

RELATED: Justice Alito issues reminder of what SCOTUS must do, even if unpopular

Photo by Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images

The government punched holes through CASA’s request on Monday, and among the issues it raised was precisely this: The plaintiffs cannot meet the requirements of Rule 23 because of a lack of commonality — “three plaintiffs have a pending asylum application; another is present in the United States on a tourist visa; another has TPS status; another is on a student visa; another is on an H-1B visa; and another fails to articulate her immigration status.”

Eastman, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stressed further that one of the key requirements for a preliminary injunction is irreparable harm.

It is certainly a giant leap to say all parties in the class are at risk of irreparable harm.

“If you stand back and ask yourself, ‘What’s the irreparable injury here?’ it’s hard to find one,” said Eastman. “If a baby is born and it’s a year or two before the litigation is resolved, and in the meantime they’re not deemed a citizen, but if Trump’s executive order is ruled illegal or unconstitutional, then they’re retroactively deemed a citizen, what’s the harm? Okay, they’ve lost some financial benefits as a citizen in the meantime. Well, financial benefits are by definition not irreparable harm because they can all be compensated after the fact with interest.”

“So the only way you get to irreparable harm is if, say, the parents are members of MS-13 and they’re going to be deported and the child will be deported with them because he’s not a citizen — then that could be an irreparable harm. But that’s very idiosyncratic, tied to each individual,” stressed Eastman. “There’s no commonality.”

‘The more they can throw barriers in the way of Trump accomplishing things, the more likely it is that they won’t have as much to rebuild after they ride it out.’

Regardless of whether CASA succeeds in this attempt, it’s clear that others will lean on class actions as an alternative. It has already begun.

The American Civil Liberties Union challenged Trump’s asylum ban in February on behalf of three radical activist groups and a handful of foreigners denied asylum.

Last week, the Obama judge overseeing the resulting case, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services v. Noem, certified all border-jumping asylum-seekers “who are now or will be present in the United States” as a protected class, then barred the administration from expelling members of the class — a ruling the government quickly appealed.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the ACLU who brought the case, told Reuters, “I think there’s going to be a lot more class actions.”

A senior White House official told Blaze News that in the wake of the CASA decision, “the Trump administration pushed aggressively against the nationwide injunctions by filing supplemental filings in the appellate courts and in the district courts,” requesting that the courts narrow the scope of the injunctions to the parties before it. As this is sure to prompt desperation on the part of the plaintiffs, the official added, “Of course, the parties involved are going to try and seek the biggest sort of net they can by filing class actions.”

The official noted, however, an inherent weakness in this strategy: “Class actions take a very long time — classes take a long time to certify.”

“So they’re going to be pushing, but that’s not a standard process,” continued the official. “Justice Alito discussed the dangers of sort of trying to create a nationwide injunction via class action, and so that’s not necessarily going to be a solution because the Supreme Court will push back to the extent that it’s not covering the affected party.”

Eastman anticipates another Supreme Court intervention.

He told Blaze News that the lower-court judges are likely going to ignore Alito’s warning — not to view the decision in CASA “as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors of Rule 23” — and “we’ll be back up to the Supreme Court, now with just the same issue but under a different name: not a nationwide injunction but a nationwide class injunction. It’s kind of a game of whack-a-mole, and it’s really causing great harm to the rule of law.”

Eastman outlined a likely course that will prompt action from the Supreme Court:

What I expect we’ll see in short order is a nationwide class action certified and then an injunction issued to every member of the class, and the Department of Justice will seek a stay of that. The court of appeals will deny it, and then [the government] will seek an emergency stay in the Supreme Court.

When asked about the likelihood of this going back to the Supreme Court, the senior White House official said, “It totally could. Obviously, we would hope not for that to happen. But you know, Justice Alito made clear to litigants that they shouldn’t abuse class certification in order to circumvent this CASA decision, so it’s kind of indicating that the Supreme Court would not take lightly if district courts were doing the same thing that they were just doing, but it’s totally possible.”

If the class action strategy does become a pattern, the senior White House official indicated the Trump administration is apparently “ready to go immediately. We’re prepared for every outcome.”

Concerning the broader campaign to neutralize the Trump agenda in the courts, Eastman stressed to Blaze News that the American left doesn’t “have the White House, they don’t have either branch of Congress, they don’t have the Supreme Court, but they do have a lot of activist judges that were appointed on the lower courts.”

RELATED: Vance identifies the perfect mascot for the Democrats — then outlines what America actually needs

Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

“They’re using that base of power to thwart the agenda of the president that the American people overwhelmingly elected,” continued Eastman. “What’s most interesting is they claim that Trump is undermining democracy when they are trying to thwart the results of the last democratic election.”

While Eastman figures the Trump administration will come out on top in court, these efforts by activist judges and leftist litigants may nevertheless delay implementation of the president’s agenda long enough for the left to recapture power and neutralize his executive actions by other means.

“They hope to be able to slow it down enough that they run out the clock, at least until after the midterm elections, with their hope that they will then control one or both branches of Congress to be able to stop them legislatively rather than judicially — but at the very least try and run the clock out all the way through the next term,” said Eastman.

“Their view is that millions of people that work in the federal government are so overwhelmingly on the left-of-center side of the political aisle that once they get past the four years of Trump, it’ll be back to business as usual, and they just need to ride it out,” he continued. “The more they can throw barriers in the way of Trump accomplishing things, the more likely it is that they won’t have as much to rebuild after they ride it out.”

The White House official noted that “if the judicial branch doesn’t collect itself and get better, then it’s going to be the detriment of the American people who wanted these policies implemented.”

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​National injunction, Injunction, Class certification, Class action, Class action lawsuit, Maga, Donald trump, District judges, Politics 

New video shows a teen attempting an armed carjacking in crime-ridden Baltimore, but the intended victim — a prominent pastor — fought back and turned the tables on the crook.

Rev. Kenneth Moales Jr. — pastor of Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Bridgeport, Connecticut — was in Baltimore for a funeral in late June.

‘I knew my life was at stake.’

Moales parked his car outside a seafood restaurant in the city’s Upper Fells Point neighborhood just before 9 p.m. June 29, WBAL-TV reported.

A teen wearing a ski mask approached Moales’ vehicle while the pastor was still inside it, the station said, adding that the teenager allegedly asked the pastor for help regarding his dead cell phone.

The teen — armed with a gun — ordered the pastor to exit his vehicle, WBAL said.

“When I looked at him, I knew like something about this wasn’t right. I was looking to kind of drive away, and he immediately pulls up his ski mask,” Moales told WBFF-TV. “Puts it up over his face, whips out the Glock, points it at the car, like, ‘Get out the car.'”

Moales added to WJZ-TV, “He’s placed materialism over my life, and unfortunate[ly] for him, he picked the wrong car.”

The pastor made a split-second decision to fight back against the young carjacker.

“I immediately got into a fight. So I just punched him in the face. I reach out for the gun,” Moales recalled to WBFF.

Surveillance video shows Moales tackling the teen and slamming him on the wet pavement for approximately 20 seconds.

Moales also told WBFF, “I really believe I was fighting for my life and, more importantly, trying to get home to my wife and children.”

Citing charging documents, WBAL reported that the carjacker pistol-whipped the pastor in the head.

RELATED: Watch a California family unleash a paintball barrage to thwart thieves from stealing catalytic converters from cars in their driveway

During the melee, Moales recounted to WJZ that he was able to wrestle the gun away from the teenager.

What’s more, the pastor offered the teen an opportunity to get away.

Moales recalled to WBFF, “I realize how young he is, and that’s when I tell him, ‘Hey, I’m a pastor. Relax, calm down. I’m a pastor. I’m not going to press charges. You know, I’m going to let you go, but you’ve got to get out of here.'”

However, the carjacker didn’t accept the offer — and proceeded to steal the pastor’s vehicle.

“I told him, ‘I’m a father, a husband, and a pastor, and you can just go now, and I won’t press charges,'” Moales recounted to WVIT-TV. “But even after all of that — after I had let him go and given him a chance to not face charges — he still drove off in my car.”

He added to WBFF, “You would think once I let him know I was a pastor that there would be, in one way or another, some level of remorse, and there was neither, none at all. He [couldn’t] care less. And that’s what’s left me hurt — I’m not going to say broken — [but] hurt, concerned, and knowing what my new mission is.”

The pastor suffered non-life-threatening injuries, according to a statement from his congregation.

WJZ reported that within hours of the carjacking, officers with the Baltimore Police Department located the pastor’s vehicle with three suspects inside — ages 15, 16, and 19.

All three teenagers were arrested and charged with auto theft, WBAL said.

The two minors were not identified because they are underage, but WBAL identified the 19-year-old suspect as Mehkai Tindal, according to charging documents. It isn’t clear which of the three attacked Moales.

RELATED: Alabama churchgoer in his 70s hailed as a hero for bludgeoning, apprehending gunman in deadly church shooting

The harrowing experience provided the pastor with an eye-opening perspective — and a new mission.

Moales told WVIT, “I have forgiven the young man — but this violent crime just shows me that I need to work even harder to help young people right here in Bridgeport, because a lot of these kids are hopeless and this problem is not unique to Baltimore.”

The pastor added to WBFF, “If we don’t commit to educating this generation in a significant way, what happened to me is just a beginning. If they’ll, if they’ll pistol-whip a pastor, you about know what they’ll do to my members.”

Moales noted to WBAL, “My prayer today is, ‘God, thank you for covering me. Thank you for my life.'”

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​Self defense, Baltimore, Baltimore crime, Gun violence, Crime, Fighting back, Pastor, Faith, Abide, Christianity, Carjacking, Teen suspects, Arrests 

Actress, writer, and former leftist “It girl” Lena Dunham is back — older, wiser, and ready to confront the biggest mistake she made with the hit HBO show that put her on the map: It simply wasn’t woke enough.

Dunham vows this won’t happen with her latest venture, the romantic comedy “Too Much.” The Netflix series comes more than a decade after the 2012 debut of “Girls,” which brought instant acclaim — and near-instant backlash — for star and creator Dunham.

‘The funny thing is that she would probably still be under fire if her cast was more diverse.’

“Girls” wrapped up its sixth and final season in April 2017; since then, Dunham has starred in or written one-off television episodes while acting in about a dozen films.

But after all this time, the legacy of “Girls” has returned to haunt her.

White what you know

While conservatives dismissed “Girls” for its self-indulgent depiction of promiscuity as “sexual empowerment,” its harshest critics were arguably liberals.

As soon as it aired, “Girls” was heckled from the far corners of leftism for its apparent lack of “diversity.” Dunham admitted at the time that the nearly all-white skin tones in the show were simply a reflection of her life, since she is “half-Jew, half-WASP.”

This time around, Dunham is determined to affirm her loyalty to progressive ideology before anyone can question it.

In 2012, Dunham did damage control by going on NPR’s “Fresh Air” to say she was trying to avoid “tokenism in [her] casting” and opted for her chosen actresses because she assumed the “experience of an African American girl and a white girl” were “drastically different.”

You see, it wasn’t indifference that made her exclude black characters — but respect.

Pre-emptive apology

While that may have worked almost a decade ago, it’s not going to fly in 2025 — and Dunham knows it. That’s why she’s doing a kind of pre-emptive apology tour before “Too Much” even premieres.

RELATED: ‘Superman’ director faces backlash for ‘racist’ India mention; responds with heroic backpedaling

Lena Dunham (Photo by J. Countess/Getty Images)

In a recent interview with the Independent, Dunham suggested that the real culprit in the “Girls” diversity imbroglio was the entertainment industry as a whole.

“I think one of the profound issues around ‘‘Girls’ … was that there was so little real estate for women in television that if you had a show called ‘Girls,’ which is such a monolithic name, it sounds like it’s describing all the girls in all the places.”

Dunham added that she understands how it would be “really disappointing to people” if they felt the show did not reflect “a multitude of experiences.”

The 39-year-old went on to explain that she did “like the conversation” about how woke her show needs to be and said it would not be a problem for the new Netflix series.

I spy … DEI

To that end, Dunham revealed she has pledged her allegiance to diversity in both the production and casting of “Too Much.”

Yes, like “Girls,” “Too Much” puts white, affluent characters front and center, with little to no room for people of color. But Dunham urges viewers to think of all the non-whites working behind the scenes to bring this vision to the screen.

“The thing I have really come to believe is that one of the most important things is not just diversity in front of the camera, but it’s diversity behind the camera,” she told the Independent. “As a producer, one of my goals is to bring a lot of different voices into a position where they can tell their story.”

RELATED: All in the family: Hollywood golden boy Pedro Pascal’s loony leftist pedigree

Lena Dunham (L) and Megan Stalter (Photo by Ben Montgomery/Getty Images)

Nice try

While impressive, Dunham’s deft butt-covering may not be enough to satisfy a baying leftist mob always on the hunt for a new victim, warns culture writer Natasha Biase.

“The funny thing is that she would probably still be under fire if her cast was more diverse,” Biase told Blaze News.

If anything, Dunham is trying too hard, continued Biase.

“I understand that we live in a diverse world, and film and television are supposed to be a reflection of that, but we are also often told to write what we know, and that’s exactly what Lena Dunham did.”

Dunham bending the knee and “forcing herself” to write characters to which she can’t relate would arguably be seen as “more controversial and irresponsible,” Biase added, implying that Dunham is in a no-win situation.

“Our girl’s about to learn that you can’t please the mob!”

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​Align, News, Netflix, Woke, Progressive, Lebsians, Jewish, Diversity, Dei, Entertainment 

A South Dakota man was charged with murder for allegedly killing his mother and then beheading her, according to prosecutors.

Bowen Fladland, 34, was charged with first-degree murder as well as second-degree murder in the death of Marlene Fladland, his mother.

‘It is fairly common for us to see, in a criminal activity, when somebody begins a pathway of violence, how it escalates.’

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley told KXLG-TV that the victim’s body was discovered at about 6 p.m. on Tuesday at their residence on 601 N. Cloud St. in the city of Clark.

Court documents said that Bowen admitted to kneeling on his mother’s neck until she died. He then allegedly cut off her head with a tool.

The victim’s body was found in the front yard of the residence.

KELO-TV reported that Bowen had a long criminal history including assault. In a prior incident, court documents said that the son had choked his mother and that she had become lightheaded during the assault. He also threatened to kill her while holding two butter knives, according to police.

He was convicted of aggravated assault in that case but was given a suspended sentence of 10 years.

RELATED: Concealed carry holder ends teenager’s brief crime spree in a spray of bullets, police say

“It is fairly common for us to see, in a criminal activity, when somebody begins a pathway of violence, how it escalates. Which is why I feel it’s so important that these issues are addressed early on in a criminal history,” said Jackley. “We need to make sure we do everything to make sure we keep the public safe.”

Jackley said the investigation is ongoing and that an autopsy will be conducted.

Bowen is being held at the Codington County jail in Watertown.

Clark is a small city of just over 1,000 residents located in the northeastern part of South Dakota.

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​Man beheads mother, Mother beheaded by son, South dakota crime, Son kills mother, Crime 

Glenn Beck isn’t one to make knee-jerk accusations or rush to judgment. He gives people the benefit of the doubt until they’ve proven they don’t deserve it.

And that’s exactly what Attorney General Pam Bondi has done, in his opinion. “I want Pam Bondi fired,” Glenn says frankly.

The memo released by the Department of Justice and the FBI claiming Epstein’s client list doesn’t exist was enough for many to call for her resignation. However, the final straw for Glenn was the DOJ’s release of prison cell surveillance footage from the night Jeffery Epstein supposedly committed suicide that includes a one-minute gap.

“Do you release a tape and then let the public find out for themselves that there’s an edit in the tape?” asks Glenn, adding that even if we were to give the DOJ “every benefit of the doubt” and assume that the time gap is legitimately “a digital jump in the tape,” it still speaks of incredible incompetence on the part of the department and Pam Bondi. “Do you not put an intern on it just to say, ‘Watch the clock and make sure there’s no jumps or edit in the tape because we know 300 million people are going to be watching it’?”

Co-host Stu Burguiere agrees: “It would be very easy to edit in a minute of footage” or at least release the video with a caveat noting that there is an “error.”

“Correct,” says Glenn. “This is incompetence.”

But the “jump in the tape” isn’t the only evidence of incompetence. Glenn’s head writer and researcher, Jason Buttrill, found something else in the tape: “This camera doesn’t even have eyes on Epstein’s cell at all.”

Jason shares the following graphic, which shows the location of Epstein’s cell in relation to the camera’s vantage point (yellow).

“I’ve spent years and years and years looking at surveillance and security camera footage, as you know, in my previous job,” says Jason. “I’ve never seen an over-one-minute jump right at a time that would be very, very, I don’t know, just convenient.”

“Sixty seconds would be perfect for if you wanted to conceal the fact that someone walked across that area,” he adds.

However, someone trying to reach Epstein’s cell might not have even needed to enter the camera’s frame at all. “The camera doesn’t actually show 100% of the potential paths to get there,” says Stu.

In other words, if Epstein was indeed killed, his murderer could have reached his door undetected while the camera was rolling.

Glenn can only come to one conclusion: “Pam Bondi needs to be fired.”

To hear more, watch the clip above.

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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, Jason buttrill, Stu burguiere, Epstein, Jeffery epstein, Pam bondi, Epstein files, Doj, Fbi, Donald trump 

As Syria’s Christian community mourns its dead, we are compelled to confront the barbaric act committed against the Orthodox Christian community and the persistent dangers facing other minorities in the region. To understand this tragedy and chart a path forward, we must first revisit the turbulent history of Syria and the Levant.

In the early 20th century, Syria stood at the crossroads of empire and identity. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I gave way to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which carved up the Levant into spheres of European influence.

In Syria, federalism could succeed if implemented with fairness, robust minority protections, and international support to prevent external meddling.

Syria fell under French mandate in 1920, a betrayal of promises for an independent Arab kingdom. Instead, it became a colonial outpost shaped by European interests rather than the aspirations of its diverse peoples: Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Druze, and others. The French exploited sectarian divisions to maintain control, sowing seeds of mistrust that would linger for generations.

When Syria gained independence in 1946, it inherited a fragmented society with no clear framework for governing its complex population. The decades that followed were marked by coups, political instability, and the rise of the Ba’ath Party, which promised secular socialism but delivered authoritarianism instead.

Hafez al-Assad’s ascent in 1970 cemented a dynastic rule that concentrated power in a narrow, Alawite-dominated elite. While the regime claimed to protect minorities, it often sidelined or suppressed other ethnic and religious groups, fostering resentment beneath a veneer of secular nationalism.

A brutal turning point

The Arab Spring of 2011 shattered this fragile order. Peaceful protests against authoritarianism were met with brutal repression, igniting a civil war that drew in foreign powers and fractured the nation.

Amid the chaos, extremist factions like ISIS emerged, targeting religious minorities as enemies of their radical vision. Christians, whose presence in Syria dates back two millennia, faced systematic persecution, with historic churches destroyed and communities displaced.

This past year, the trauma deepened. Last month, a suicide bomber opened fire during Sunday mass in a small church in western Syria, killing 22 worshippers and wounding 63 in an attack reminiscent of ISIS’ atrocities in Qaraqosh and Maaloula.

The Druze minority in the south faced similar threats from Islamic groups within the coalition that ousted the Assad regime. To their credit, the Druze, with support from Israel, armed and defended their communities. The Alawite minority endured revenge killings in the wake of regime change, while the Kurds, battle-hardened but geopolitically isolated, remain vulnerable due to Turkey’s hostility.

These incidents underscore a grim reality: Syria’s minorities are pawns in a larger geopolitical game, their survival perpetually at risk.

A new solution: Federalism

This is not a moment for empty platitudes. Syria needs to confront a painful truth: A unitary, centrally governed state has repeatedly failed to protect its people, especially its minorities. The alternative, however, is federalism.

A federal Syria would not mean partition but rather an organized decentralization of power. Regions could govern themselves according to their cultural, ethnic, or religious identities, while national unity would be preserved for issues like foreign policy and defense. Christians, Druze, Alawites, and Kurds could administer their affairs, ensure their security, preserve their heritage, and rebuild trust in governance.

Such a system would empower local communities to protect Christian populations, preventing the decimation of ancient communities as seen in Iraq after 2003. A federal structure would foster resilience against external threats, allowing minorities to safeguard their futures.

RELATED: Syria’s new rulers: From jihadist terror to ‘moderate’ media rebrand

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Federalism, though imperfect, has stabilized other post-conflict, multiethnic societies. Iraq’s Kurdish region, despite challenges, enjoys significant autonomy. Bosnia’s power-sharing model, while complex, has maintained peace. Even Switzerland’s federal system, rooted in linguistic and cultural diversity, provides a blueprint for striking a balance between local autonomy and national cohesion.

In Syria, federalism could succeed if implemented with fairness, robust minority protections, and international support to prevent external meddling.

A break from the past

Pan-Arab nationalism and centralized rule, imposed after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, failed to deliver either stability or pluralism. Syria’s latest church attack adds to a long history of betrayals against its minority populations.

To survive as more than a failed state, Syria must adopt a structure that protects the vulnerable and manages its divisions, not one that tries to crush them. Federalism won’t solve everything, and many will resist it. But Syria has already tested the alternative — consolidated power, endless violence — and that path led to ruin.

​Opinion & analysis, Syria, Civil war, Religious persecution, Minorities, Orthodox christian, Massacre, Alawite, Assad, Ba’ath party, Pan-arabism, Socialism, Arab spring, Druze, Kurds, Islam, Muslims, Terrorism 

America’s largest power grid is under strain, and its operators are passing on the costs to the consumer.

PJM Interconnection provides power to about 67 million Americans on the East Coast, servicing Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and more.

Other states that rely on PJM’s power, like Maryland and Virginia, are also home to some of the biggest data centers in the country. These data centers, which often service large online companies that operate artificial intelligence programs and chatbots, are allegedly at the center of power price increases that PJM says might be here to stay.

‘Prices will remain high as long as demand growth is outstripping supply.’

PJM’s prices went up by 800% in 2024 after auctions proved the demand for power was greater than the supply. According to Reuters, prices for the power plants went from $28.92 per megawatt-day to $269.92 per megawatt-day.

“Prices will remain high as long as demand growth is outstripping supply — this is a basic economic policy,” said PJM spokesman Jeffrey Shields, per Reuters. “Right now, we need every megawatt we can get.”

While PJM blames outside sources, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) has threatened that his state would abandon the power provider if it could not find a way to lower costs.

In June, Shapiro told Reuters that leaving PJM is definitely on the table, with the outlet reporting that according to over two dozen members of the industry (including power developers and regulators), PJM has made the situation worse by delaying auctions and pausing applications for new plants.

RELATED: Microsoft’s billion-dollar plan to reopen Three Mile Island for AI data centers

Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, Middletown, Pennsylvania. Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg via Getty Images

While the real answer is likely somewhere in between, PJM did stop processing new applications for power plants in 2022, all while the industry is revitalizing itself around them.

Last September, Microsoft announced it would reopen Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island to power its data centers.

Amazon said in October it was building small modular nuclear reactors in Virginia for its cloud computing and AI.

Oracle also announced three reactors of its own, while the state of Texas announced $50 billion worth of nuclear upgrades in November.

It seems both facts are true: PJM is being outpaced by private industry, and the quest for power is indeed very real.

“We’ve been underinvesting in American power infrastructure for about 50 years due to bad industrial policy and environmental laws,” Isaiah Taylor, founder of Valar Atomics, told Blaze News.

“It’s a five-alarm fire,” the nuclear reactor manufacturer continued.

Taylor explained that energy demands in the United States have been kept low by exporting manufacturing power to China, while restricting power consumption domestically.

“Both have been terrible for America,” he said. “We now have a weakened industrial base, nerfed ‘energy efficient’ consumer products, and a 50-year-old grid.”

RELATED: One town got a nuke plant; the other got a prison … and regret

— (@)

The Department of Energy agrees. A new government report analyzed by The Hill noted that 104 gigawatts’ worth of power will go offline by 2030. The report suggested that the annual outage time for consumers could increase from eight hours per year to a shocking 800 hours per year if the problem goes unaddressed.

“This report affirms what we already know: The United States cannot afford to continue down the unstable and dangerous path of energy subtraction previous leaders pursued, forcing the closure of baseload power sources like coal and natural gas,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement to The Hill.

“In the coming years, America’s reindustrialization and the AI race will require a significantly larger [power] supply of around-the-clock, reliable, and uninterrupted power,” Wright added. “President Trump’s administration is committed to advancing a strategy of energy addition, and supporting all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure.”

The solution, according to Valar Atomics, is to rapidly deregulate and “unleash capitalism.”

So far, that solution has seemingly worked for private industry, even for states like Texas. On the East Coast, however, a nuclear nudge would need to come sooner rather than later.

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​Return, Nuclear energy, Power plant, Pjm, East coast, Three mile island, Energy, Environmentalism, Tech 

After being fired by Disney in 2018 for pedophilia and rape comments spotlighted on social media, “Superman” director James Gunn is no stranger to cancel culture.

However, this time, he’s facing backlash from conservatives after calling Superman “an immigrant that came from other places” in a new interview.

“I’m not here to judge people,” he told Variety magazine at the “Superman” premiere at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre. “I think this is a movie about kindness, and I think that’s something everyone can relate to.”

Gunn’s brother, Sean Gunn, who plays Maxwell Lord in the film, also took issue with the backlash.

“We support our people, you know? We love our immigrants. Yes, Superman is an immigrant, and yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants, and if you don’t like that, you’re not American. People who say no to immigrants are against the American way,” his brother said.

BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere is disappointed that yet another Hollywood film is going the woke route.

“Did you follow what happened with ‘Snow White’? Did you see that whole situation? Did you not notice that people don’t want this type of messaging inside their movies? And if you’re going to do it, just shut up about it. Let people, you know, lead the horse to water, if you will. You don’t need to take the horse’s head and jam it under the liquid,” Burguiere says on “Stu Does America.”

According to Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of the Federalist, the outlook for the film isn’t bright anyway — and he has an interesting theory as to why they’re already jamming the immigration story down America’s throats.

“The movie is terrible, test audiences hated it, and they’re now running the Lady Ghostbusters marketing op so they can blame bigotry for their movie tanking instead of taking responsibility for making a garbage movie,” Davis said in a post on X.

“I kind of like that idea,” Burguiere comments, adding, “It’s certainly possible.”

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The Buffalo News published a political cartoon appearing to mock right-wing victims in the lethal flooding disaster in Texas, and many on social media were outraged at the news outlet.

The cartoon showed a man with a MAGA hat being swept away in the flood holding a “HELP” sign, while behind him, a word bubble has the famous conservative phrase, “Gov’t is the problem not the solution.”

‘Why would you publish such an offensive and vile cartoon. Your artist needs to be fired.’

The cartoon by Adam Zyglis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, appeared to accuse conservatives of hypocrisy for asking for help from the federal government during a natural disaster while criticizing the government during brighter times.

Among those who criticized the cartoon was Michael Kracker, the chairman of the Erie County Republican Committee.

“[The Buffalo News] ran a cartoon mocking Texas families who lost loved ones in a tragedy, just because they might’ve voted Republican,” Kracker wrote. “Twisted, vile, and shameful. They owe those families an apology and should pull this filth immediately.”

Others were just as upset at the news outlet.

“Our nation has always had political parties, but historically we put partisan politics aside during times of major tragedy or crisis. Unfortunately, the Buffalo News did the opposite with this depraved partisan cartoon,” replied former New York state Rep. Chris Jacobs.

“Whoever approved this is mentally ill. Deranged,” read another popular tweet.

“Disgusting. And to think it wasn’t just the cartoonist who made this, but this was okayed by the editor and where no one there apparently tried to stop it from being published,” another detractor said.

“Why would you publish such an offensive and vile cartoon. Your artist needs to be fired. Lives were lost — children for heaven’s sake. Despicable,” another account said.

RELATED: Scott Adams says his ‘Dilbert’ cartoon has been canceled from society after his comments about black people

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

The death toll from the flooding in Texas has risen to over 100, and search and rescue efforts continue. Those who want to donate or volunteer to help victims of the flooding can find information here.

Blaze News reached out to the cartoonist as well as the editor of the Buffalo News for comment, but neither responded by time of publishing.

Zyglis won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2015. He is known for left-wing cartoons, including a recent one where he drew MAGA officers arresting a newly born baby.

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A Republican Florida lawmaker referred to Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota as a terrorist in a missive on social media, and he’s definitely not backing down to criticism.

Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Fine of Florida made the comments after Omar referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal and said it was shameful for Congress to invite him to speak.

‘The Hamas Caucus is upset. Boo hoo.’

“I’m sure it is difficult to see us welcome the killer of so many of your fellow Muslim terrorists,” Fine responded on social media. “The only shame is that you serve in Congress.”

In response, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York posted a statement demanding an apology from Fine.

“The unhinged, racist and Islamophobic comments made by Randy Fine about Rep. Ilhan Omar are bigoted and disgusting. We are just weeks removed from heinous acts of political violence targeting elected officials in Minnesota for assassination,” the statement reads.

“This is an incredibly difficult time for our nation and Members of Congress should be solving problems for the American people, not inciting violence,” the statement continues. “Randy Fine must apologize immediately.”

The criticism was also signed by Democratic House Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California.

Fine responded by ridiculing the Democrats.

“The Hamas Caucus is upset. Boo hoo. I guess they weren’t listening when I said the Hebrew Hammer was coming,” the congressman responded on social media.

RELATED: The US is now ‘one of the worst countries’ because of Trump’s actions, says Ilhan Omar

In a statement to Politico, a spokesperson for Omar described Fine as a “dangerous hateful man, whose only purpose in Congress thus far has been advocating for nuking Gaza, celebrating the death of children, and calling anyone who disagrees with his genocidal mindset a terrorist.”

Fine had been criticized as a “squish” by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, for underperforming in the district he won to gain a seat in the U.S. Congress.

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A popular social media troll who was prosecuted for meme-based election interference had his conviction tossed out for lack of evidence.

Douglass Mackey ran a popular right-wing account on social media that posted memes in 2016 telling supporters of then-candidate Hillary Clinton that they could vote for her by sending a text message on their phones. Prosecutors alleged that the posts constituted election interference.

There was a lack of evidence that Mackey communicated directly with other accounts that conspired to deprive others of their voting privilege.

Two days after Biden was inaugurated in 2021, Mackey was indicted for the scheme, and a jury later found him guilty in 2023. He was sentenced to seven months in prison.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned the conviction on the basis that there was not enough evidence to support the allegation.

“The jury’s verdict and the resulting judgment of conviction must be set aside,” Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston wrote.

Among the evidence shown to the jury was a meme of a black woman in front of a sign for African-Americans supporting Clinton. The text on the meme read, “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” and “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,” as well as, “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”

Prosecutors said that thousands of texts were sent to the number, ostensibly from those fooled by memes like the one posted by Mackey. His account had 58,000 followers at the time and was considered one of the more influential accounts in the election.

However, the appeals court found that no evidence showed that any voter was influenced by the memes that Mackey posted to his account. The court also said there was a lack of evidence that Mackey communicated directly with other accounts that conspired to deprive others of their voting privilege.

RELATED: Trump-supporting social media figure convicted of election interference, conspiracy over 2016 tweets

“Praise God. God is good. Now we sue,” Mackey responded in a series of posts on social media.

Mackey was accused of posting racist and anti-Semitic messages in his campaign to support then-candidate Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign. His account had a profile image of “Ricky Vaughn,” the fictional Cleveland Indians pitcher from the “Major League” movie franchise.

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Over the Fourth of July weekend, Matthew Peterson, Blaze Media editor in chief and co-host of “Blaze News: The Mandate,” celebrated true Americanism by attending the Claremont Institute’s 2025 Statesmanship Award ceremony, which honored Vice President JD Vance.

“This is an award they don’t give out every year because, as you may surmise … there aren’t a lot of statesmen out there,” says Peterson, who’s long been associated with the Claremont Institute. “So the Statesmanship Award is a special one, and the fact that they gave it to the vice president, JD Vance, who is so young in his career, is notable.”

During his keynote speech, Vance beautifully defined what it means to be an American and warned what will happen if we lose sight of this definition.

“American citizenship must mean belonging to a nation that guards the sovereignty of its people, especially from a modern world that’s hellbent on dissolving borders and differences in national character,” he said. “That means having a government that vigorously defends the basic qualities of sovereignty, that secures the border from foreign invasion, that protects its citizens and their enterprises against unfair foreign tax schemes, that erects tariff walls and similar barriers to protect its people’s industry, that avoids needlessly entangling them in prolonged distant wars.”

“It also means preserving the basic legal privileges of citizenship — things like voting, including in state and local elections, or access to benefits, like certain state-run health care programs for citizens,” he continued, noting that “most of the howling about the Big Beautiful Bill reduces to the fundamental fact that President Trump believes that Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security ought to go to the American people, not to illegal aliens.”

“When states … start handing out these benefits to illegal aliens, they cheapen the very meaning of citizenship, and a nation that refuses to make that distinction will not stay a nation for very long,” he warned.

However, he clarified that citizenship isn’t just about what Americans get; it’s also about what they give.

“Citizenship in the 21st century necessarily means building. … Our ancestors realized that to carve a successful nation from new land meant creating new tangible things — new homes, new towns, new infrastructure — to tame a wild continent. That is our heritage as Americans,” he said, noting that this American innovation not only blossomed here in the United States, it spread across the globe.

“Our innovations — American innovations — revolutionized communications, medicine, and agriculture, extending human lifespan decades at a time, and none of that would be possible if our citizens believed we lived in a postindustrial era.”

Sadly, there are many today who believe that very thing — that we live in a time of irreversible decline in American manufacturing and industry.

Vance made it clear that he rejects this notion.

“The 21st century is a time to build. We need to make great things here for the betterment of our fellow Americans but also for our posterity. We need to continue to invent groundbreaking innovations and to leave homes and libraries and factories that our descendants will look at someday and feel a sense of awe,” he encouraged.

However, if we want to get back to this place of American building, our nation needs to return to being the kind of place where creators and dreamers can thrive. “Getting to the moon required a lot of brilliant scientists” and “very talented engineers and welders and custodians,” but “it also required a national system of education that produced that level of genius, that fostered that level of genius, that inspired young graduates to look to the stars and want to go there on behalf of their nation,” said Vance.

“To be a citizen in the 21st century must mean that we should be thinking about the future in similar ways and building similar projects as an American family,” he said, clarifying that this can be done without “importing millions and millions of low-wage surfs,” contrary to what “Democrat politicians” and “corporate oligarchs” argue.

“We can do it with American citizens. We’ve just got to have the will to actually try.”

To hear more of Vance’s speech and the Blaze News panel’s analysis, watch the video above.

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