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An awkward moment in the Oval Office on October 20 illustrated an unresolved question about the political right. President Donald Trump declined a reporter’s invitation to endorse Vice President JD Vance for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination while Vance stood behind him.

Trump said it was too early to discuss 2028. He gave no indication that his hesitation concerned economic policy. Still, the episode raises a question about what sort of conservatism Vance would bring to the presidency.

Myriad laws at all levels of government have severely damaged families, faith, and other institutions that Vance and the national conservatives want to restore and strengthen.

Vance’s lukewarm support for free markets is evident in his criticisms of the late free-market economist Milton Friedman, his sympathy for certain economic positions associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, and his calls for raising the minimum wage. His economic outlook is a departure from the free-market consensus that once dominated the Republican Party.

Vance’s ambivalence toward economic freedom is especially clear in his prominent association with the National Conservatism movement and its common-good vision of government action to promote traditional values and ways of life.

“Natcons” regularly advocate interventions that free-marketers like me reject outright: a national industrial policy, government subsidies for favored industries, and taxpayer-funded incentives for having children.

Although Trump’s economic policies are hardly free-market orthodoxy, the president frequently argues that he is trying to undo government practices that have created a “rigged” economic system. I agree with the premise that America’s economic system is badly distorted and that government made it so.

Vance and the national conservatives, by contrast, seem too willing to trust government to direct economic and social life. Socialists place a still greater faith in government management, but the temptation to use centralized power for ostensibly benevolent ends is one the American founders understood.

The United States was established to limit the power of government, not merely redirect it toward other ends. Our founding documents reflect this fact. What one administration builds, another can repurpose.

The founders’ solution was ingenious: separation of powers horizontally, among the branches of the federal government, and vertically, among the central government, the states, and the people. The latter is federalism. Subsidiarity, a related but broader principle, holds that decisions should be made at the social level closest to the people they affect.

Subsidiarity is crucial to a free society. Institutions of different sizes vary greatly in the problems they can address. The federal welfare state, for example, has undermined the family by penalizing marriage and discouraging family formation, even subsidizing childbirth outside of marriage.

However well-meaning, a distant government cannot manage tens of millions of households in accordance with their individual needs.

RELATED: Would you trust this politician with your wallet?

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States have likewise weakened marriage by adopting no-fault divorce, beginning with California in 1969, instead of fulfilling their duty to enforce valid contracts and protect both parties from abandonment. Nearly one-third of Americans born between 1988 and 1993 experienced their parents’ divorce before adulthood, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Divorce was far more common among children from lower-income families.

The damage has been catastrophic. Census Bureau researchers found that, compared with siblings whose parents divorced after they reached adulthood, children who experienced divorce in early childhood had roughly 60% higher teen birth rates, a 45% greater mortality risk at age 25, a 40% greater likelihood of incarceration, and lower incomes as adults.

These and other government-caused disasters are why the term “nanny state” is such an insult. Fostering families is the job of parents, other relatives, churches, and community members, not governments. Government’s job is to protect people from force and fraud, enforce valid contracts, and provide strictly necessary public works. Those duties often prove far beyond its capabilities.

The belief that a comprehensive national industrial policy will restore jobs and industries is likewise misguided. Industrial policy invites an increase in the already ungodly amount of crony capitalism in the United States and allows gigantic multinational corporations to misuse government to hamstring competitors, especially smaller American businesses.

The surest way to increase productive jobs and boost workers’ pay is for government to get out of the way. Freeing people to work, invest, and enjoy the fruits of their endeavors maximizes a nation’s economic vitality by allowing resources to find their most productive uses.

Myriad laws at all levels of government have severely damaged families, faith, and other institutions that Vance and the national conservatives want to restore and strengthen. Government action of the magnitude they advocate, however, would founder on the realities of scale and invite political capture by powerful interest groups.

RELATED: The 1776 immigration fight America forgot — and why it matters now

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To be fair, National Conservatism’s own statement of principles endorses federalism and calls for a strong but limited state. The disagreement is over how far government power should extend in pursuit of its goals. I believe the interventions national conservatives favor would undermine the freedoms they want to protect.

Subsidiarity, by contrast, builds on respect for individual rights, the limits of federal and state authority, freedom of association and enterprise, and the natural hierarchies of talent and character that freedom allows to form. A return to that vision is the best way to achieve the national conservatives’ goal of restoring “the traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties underpinning life in the countries we love.”

Subsidiarity has long been an important element of Catholic political thought, and Catholics are a prominent contingent of the National Conservatism movement. Vance is a Catholic convert. Their efforts to cultivate a fairer economy, stronger families, and better government would benefit from a renewed appreciation for this principle in their own tradition.

To strengthen families, churches, small businesses, and other traditional institutions, Vance and other national conservatives should join the liberty movement in trying to push government power as far away from them as possible.

​Jd vance, Milton friedman, Catholicism, Conservatives, National conservatism, Government, Federalism, Opinion & analysis, Republican party 

Heavy rain and severe flash flooding have prompted changes to numerous polling locations in the Sunshine State.

Citing potentially dangerous weather conditions, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) issued an executive order on Monday declaring an emergency in Brevard, DeSoto, Hardee, Highlands, Indian River, Martin, and St. Lucie Counties.

The Florida Department of State’s Elections Division has so far listed 19 polling place changes for Election Day.

In all but Palm Beach County, where Kamala Harris eked out a lead, President Donald Trump won all of these counties by massive margins in 2024.

pollwatch.theblaze.com

Rep. Byron Donalds, the Republican running to succeed DeSantis as governor, emphasized to Floridians affected by the rainfall and flooding: “Above all else, stay safe.”

The Florida Department of State’s Elections Division has so far listed 19 polling place changes for Election Day.

Brevard County

The polling location for voters in:

Precincts 307, 512, and 525 has been moved from Max K. Rodes Park Community Center in West Melbourne to the New Shiloh Christian Center at 3900 Sarno Road, Melbourne, Fla., 32934;Precinct 309 has been moved from the Veterans Memorial Complex in West Melbourne to the New Shiloh Christian Center at 3900 Sarno Road, Melbourne, Fla., 32934;Precinct 306 has been moved from the Eddie Lee Taylor, Sr. Community Center in Melbourne to the Joseph N. Davis Community Center at 2547 Bruce D. Buggs St., Melbourne, Fla., 32901;Precinct 320 has been moved from Eastern Florida State College’s Palm Bay Campus to the Franklin T. DeGroodt Memorial Library at 6475 Minton Rd SE, Palm Bay, Fla., 32909;Precincts 323 and 509 have been moved from the Front Street Civic Center in Melbourne to the Joseph N. Davis Community Center at 2547 Bruce D. Buggs St., Melbourne, Fla., 32901;Precinct 517 has been moved from Faith Baptist Church of Palm Bay to the Palm Bay City Hall Council Chambers at 120 Malabar Rd SE, Palm Bay, Fla., 32907.

RELATED: Tantrums galore! Democrats crash out over Rep. Haley Stevens’ last-minute ‘betrayal’

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Highlands County

The polling location for voters in:

Precinct 20 has been moved from the Springlake Community Center in Sebring to the Penny Ogg Operations Center at 4504 Kenilworth Blvd, Sebring, Fla., 33870.

Indian River County

The polling location for voters in:

Precinct 7 has been moved from the Sebastian Church of God to the Sebastian Elks Lodge No. 2714 at 731 South Fleming Street, Sebastian, Fla., 32958. This new location is also apparently serving Precinct 8.

Martin County

The polling location for voters in:

Precinct 2, which was set to be Grace Presbyterian Church in Stuart, is now the Martin County Supervisor of Elections Office at 135 SE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd, Stuart, Fla., 34994.

Okeechobee County

The polling location for voters in:

Precinct 10 has been moved from the Fort Drum Community Church in Okeechobee to High Point Church at 4550 N HWY 441, Okeechobee, Fla., 34972.

Palm Beach County

The polling location for voters who were set to vote at the:

Casa Rio Clubhouse in Riviera Beach is now RB Preparatory and Achievement Academy at 7071 Garden Rd, Riviera Beach, Fla., 33404;Ironhorse Country Club in West Palm Beach to the North County Senior Center at 5217 Northlake Blvd, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., 33418.

St. Lucie County

The polling location for voters in:

Precinct 12 has been moved from the Fort Pierce Masonic Lodge in Fort Pierce to the Days Inn Midtown at 3224 S US Hwy 1, Fort Pierce, Fla., 34982;Precincts 49 and 71 have been moved from Oak Hammock K-8 School in Port St. Lucie to the Port St. Lucie Community Center at 2195 SE Airoso Blvd, Port St. Lucie, Fla., 34984;Precinct 51 has been moved from the Disabled American Veterans Hall in Port St. Lucie to the Port St. Lucie Community Center at 2195 SE Airoso Blvd, Port St. Lucie, Fla., 34984;Precincts 67 and 86 have been moved from St. Lucie West Centennial High School in Port St. Lucie to the MidFlorida Credit Union Event Center at 9221 S.E. Event Center Place, Port St. Lucie, Fla., 34952;Precinct 92 has been moved from the Brennity at Tradition Senior Living in Port St. Lucie to Tradition Town Hall at 10799 SW Civic Ln, Port St. Lucie, Fla., 34987;Precincts 85 and 95 have been moved from the Indian River State College Veterans Center of Excellence in Port St. Lucie to the MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Event Center at 9221 S.E. Event Center Place, Port St. Lucie, Fla., 34952;Precincts 6 and 28 have been moved from the Renaissance Business Park in Fort Pierce to the Havert L. Fenn Center at 2000 Virginia Ave, Fort Pierce, Fla., 34982.

Polls opened at 7 a.m. and will remain open until 7 p.m.

In addition to voting on a new governor, four other statewide offices, and in 28 congressional races, Floridians are voting on whether to keep Republican Ashley Moody as their U.S. senator or to replace her with the radical socialist Angela Nixon (D).

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​Election day, Florida, Ron desantis, Donald trump, Byron donalds, Politics 

What is culture?

That is a big question. It trips up a lot of people. Often, we tend to think of high culture when attempting to answer. Art, literature, and the stuff of the academy are what comes to mind. Yes, of course, that is culture and very important culture. But it is not all of culture. There is also folk culture and the ways of your people. That sounds hokey or old-fashioned in our day and age, but it doesn’t need to be, and that is not how it’s meant, at least not in this case.

The cake you make because your grandmother used to make it was everyday culture for her, just like the way you and your son go fishing every Friday afternoon.

Folk culture can mean a lot of things, but in the most general sense it is taken to mean the ways of the common people. The things they eat, the things they do, the things they believe, the way they speak, the way they marry, the way they die, the things they are afraid of, the things they valorize, and anything else that isn’t so much taught or studied.

Family matters

At the most basic level, your culture is what you consider to be normal.

That is a very simple definition that is easy to understand, and it is applicable at just about every level. The definition applies equally to rich and poor, big countries and small ones, the hinterland and the metropolis. It applies to even smaller units like families. Certainly, a family’s culture is related to its broader people’s culture, but it is also distinct. Each family is different, and each family has its own culture.

This is important to consider, because when we think of culture as only being high and academic, we separate ourselves from our own folk culture. We turn ourselves into spectators or passive observers rather than active participants. We downgrade ourselves and think of ourselves as “culture-less,” when in fact, every single person on earth, by virtue of having grown up somewhere with some family, has a culture — that which they consider to be normal.

Rooted in routine

When you wake up in the morning, how do you greet your wife? How do you say good morning to your kids? What do you do after that? What is the routine you have kept up for the past 20 years? What is the prayer you say before you sit down for breakfast? What kind of clothes do you wear?

How about the way you talk to the people you work with? Do you open the door for women? Do you insist that someone you just met should go first, just to be polite? What do you say and what don’t you say? What do you think is nice and what do you think is rude?

At home, what do you do for dinner? What does your wife make? Or perhaps what do you make? Do you eat together? Do you pray before? What is the rhythm of the meal? Do you sit and talk afterward? Do you have coffee or dessert? Or is that only on the weekends?

Afterward, do you read a book or watch television? Do you work some more, or are you done for the night? Do you listen to music? If so, what kind? Do you have a drink, or do you abstain? When do you go to bed? And when do you wake up and start it all over again?

All these things are so small and mundane that you probably don’t even think of them as anything other than your daily routine. And they are that, of course, but they are also little points of culture. It is these mundane things — and 10,000 other ones — that add up to what we know as life.

RELATED: Do you wear your shoes in the house?

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Home truths

Often, we don’t realize how potent these little points are until we leave home at 18. We move away from mom and dad and meet other people with other ways, and we realize the obvious fact that everyone doesn’t eat the same things on the holidays, wake up at the same time, eat dinner the same way, have the same manners, or live the same way. It is often in close contact with others that we fully realize who we really are, who we aren’t, and what little things make us that way.

The reason all this talk of mundane routine and family culture matters is because we very easily forget how important these little things are. We focus all our efforts on high, hard-to-reach culture and forget that it is the everyday moments that come to shape the world our children consider normal.

The cake you make because your grandmother used to make it was everyday culture for her, just like the way you and your son go fishing every Friday afternoon or the way you all have dinner together every Sunday evening no matter what.

These traditions may seem too ordinary to be worth thinking about. But the things your children grow up considering normal are the very things they may one day pass along to their own children. That is how culture survives, and it is something every family takes part in, whether they realize it or not.

​Cultural identity, Culture, Family traditions, Lifestyle, Tradition, Family, Children, The root of the matter 

It was after church Sunday when I saw the news alert about a plane crash in South Florida. Nine people had died. For a moment, even the election predictions dominating the news gave way to the tragedy.

Several things made the crash stand out. It happened only miles from President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. A dashcam captured the impact, giving the disaster a shocking image.

Just because technology allows us to hear someone’s final words, does that mean we have a moral right to listen?

Plane crashes command our attention. Fatal car crashes are more common, yet we imagine them differently. A car crash can be sudden. A plane crash can leave passengers and crew with time to realize that death is approaching and nothing can prevent it.

Those moments of awareness are terrifying. What would you think about? Could you overcome panic and pray?

That brings me to a question. It is personal, but as an ethics professor, I also believe it is an ethical question: Should we listen to a stranger’s last moments? Just because technology allows us to hear someone’s final words, does that mean we have a moral right to listen?

In Sunday’s crash, the pilot’s final radio communications with air traffic control were recorded and shared publicly. We can hear the moment when the pilot realizes the plane cannot be saved. Those words, spoken in the face of imminent death, are now available for strangers to replay.

I don’t think I should listen. Not because it would be horrifying to hear or because I didn’t know the pilot. Certainly not because I don’t care.

RELATED: Is ASU going to fire a Christian professor for being too Christian?

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The radio calls were made to air traffic control, not in private. Investigators have good reason to hear them. But that doesn’t settle whether the rest of us should listen out of curiosity.

The moments before death are among the most personal in our lives. We are leaving this world whether we want to or not. The things a person thinks and says at such a moment seem to belong to God and perhaps to their closest family and friends. Turning those words into a social media clip for strangers to gawk at seems wrong to me.

Perhaps I am wrong. The public has reason to know what happened in a disaster. But do we need to hear a dying person’s last words? Is that understanding or what used to be called morbid curiosity?

For me, the crash is a reminder that our lives are incredibly short. The time will come when each of us is taken from this life and asked to give an account before God. How will you conduct yourself in those last moments? Are you ready to meet God?

​Plane crash, South florida, Panic, Radio communications, Air traffic control, Public opinion, Death, God, Morbid curiosity, Technology, Car crashes, Pilot, Opinion & analysis 

Donald Trump carried Wyoming by 46 points in 2024. If conservatives cannot get the governor they want in the reddest state in America, what exactly is the conservative movement for?

That is the question raised with Tuesday’s gubernatorial election. Eric Barlow, a former Wyoming House speaker whom many grassroots conservatives regard as a lukewarm Republican in name only, won the August GOP primary with about 45% of the vote. State Superintendent Megan Degenfelder, endorsed by Trump, and Brent Bien, backed by the state Republican Party, divided most of the remaining vote. Barlow now has the coveted R next to his name.

What is the point of pouring donor money into primaries if the movement is forbidden to hold the winner accountable afterward? A party label is a useful shorthand, not a lifetime warranty.

Imagine the reverse in Massachusetts. Suppose a candidate opposed to abortion, gay marriage, and the climate agenda slipped through a divided Democratic primary. Would the left’s donor network, activist groups, and party leaders dutifully fall in line? Of course not. They would wage war over the meaning of their own party’s label. Yet in Wyoming, too many conservatives treat that label as the end of the argument.

We’re not talking about a swing state where choosing the lesser evil may be the only realistic option. Wyoming is Trump +46 territory. A Republican nominee here ought to make Ron DeSantis look like a squish, not invite comparisons to Lisa Murkowski.

Barlow’s record gives conservatives plenty of reason to question what they would get. He supported Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, voting for the 2021 measure that passed the Wyoming House before dying in the Senate. He had previously worked on expansion proposals as a legislator. That policy record should mean something, especially to voters who spent years demanding an end to Obamacare. Since when does a primary victory wipe the slate clean?

His energy views are even more troubling. In testimony before Congress in 2003, Barlow said America must move beyond nonrenewable energy and that fossil fuels should have a role of “transition and not reliance.” In America’s leading coal-producing state, the Republican nominee once argued that fossil fuels should be a transitional source of energy. Why pretend that tells us nothing?

The broader legislative record contains more disputes over which bills Barlow advanced and which he stalled as speaker. Those fights should be argued from actual votes, not slogans. One thing is beyond dispute: The Wyoming GOP chairman says his party will not endorse its own gubernatorial nominee. Barlow refused to participate in the party’s vetting process, which he considered “improper.”

So why should conservative voters automatically fall into line?

RELATED: A ballot is no substitute for a backbone

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They have another choice. Rebecca Bextel, a longtime conservative activist and donor, is running on the Constitution Party ticket. She campaigns on limited government, immigration enforcement, property rights, gun rights, and opposition to abortion. Her candidacy offers voters a way to register a conservative objection to the Republican nominee without voting for the Democrat.

Immediately the usual suspects howl about “splitting the vote.” In a competitive state, that concern would be serious. But the Democrat running for governor in Wyoming in 2022 received just 15.8% of the vote. Wyoming isn’t Massachusetts. That doesn’t make a three-way contest risk-free; it makes the reflexive spoiler argument far less persuasive.

And yet where are the major conservative PACs? Where is the donor machinery that spends fortunes electing people who promptly surrender the movement’s priorities? Bextel can secure an alternative place on the ballot, but she cannot manufacture the institutional support that conservative organizations claim to exist to provide.

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R), who backed Degenfelder in the primary and is now running for the Senate, endorsed Barlow in the closing weeks. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis joined her in supporting the Republican ticket. That is precisely the establishment reflex I’m talking about: fight over the primary, then insist the letter after the winner’s name settles everything.

RELATED: Conservatives demand competition — except in their own primaries

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Tucker Carlson, whatever disagreements I have with him, was willing to interview Bextel. Too many better-funded conservative personalities and institutions have been conspicuously absent. They should not be surprised when activists seek out the few people prepared to challenge Republican orthodoxy — and begin listening to those people on other questions too.

What is the point of pouring donor money into primaries if the movement is forbidden to hold the winner accountable afterward? Primary voters choose a nominee, but they do not acquire ownership of every conservative’s conscience. A party label is a useful shorthand, not a lifetime warranty. If the movement’s only measure of success is keeping that label in office, it can preserve the party while losing every principle that supposedly justifies its existence.

Here is the central irony: In a state where Democrats rarely win statewide, the greatest obstacle to an unapologetically conservative agenda can be the Republicans who wear the party’s name. A politician can deliver Democratic policy results without Democrats paying the political price.

At some point, conservatives must stop confusing party loyalty with fidelity to their own cause. If we cannot support our own principles in Wyoming, of all places, what exactly are we fighting for?

​Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Wyoming, Republicans, Rinos, Governor, Eric barlow, Rebecca bextel, Split vote, Conservatives 

Apparently artificial intelligence has officially entered the crime-reporting business — but it apparently doesn’t need an actual crime to do it.

Anthropic has acknowledged that its Claude Haiku 4.5 model submitted a tip to the Philadelphia Police Department claiming to have personal knowledge about an unsolved murder. However, the information was entirely fabricated, and the false report was flagged as spam.

“Why would it do that?” BlazeTV host Pat Gray asks.

“Because his friends in the chat room said, ‘Dare ya,’” Jeff Fisher jokes.

While funny, Gray points out that it’s “very strange that it’s doing these things supposedly on its own” without anyone programming it.

“The AI claimed to have personal knowledge of who committed a murder, and it was just a case of AI hallucination,” he continues. “That’s what they’re blaming it on.”

“So the false tip got flagged as spam, and investigators never followed up on it. So that’s good. At least they didn’t waste time on it,” he adds.

However, Fisher doesn’t think that’s actually a good thing, calling the police department’s response “a little concerning in and of itself.”

“We get stuff all the time here from people that we get emails from every day, and yet, every once in a while, their email goes to spam. Why? Because the algorithm picked it up as something wrong with it. But it’s still a legitimate email that we want to see,” he explains.

“So that’s another problem,” he says.

“Maybe the police department, here’s an idea. Check your spam once in a while.”

Want more from Pat Gray?

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

​Artificial intelligence, False report, Philadelphia police, Claude, Anthropic, Blazetv show 

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the request from the Department of Justice to force California officials to segregate ballots from people on a list of “likely noncitizens.”

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom excoriated the administration and accused it of trying to influence the midterm elections by pushing for ballot segregation so close to Election Day.

‘The Court rejected Trump’s emergency request without even asking the other side to respond — a first.’

The court issued a one-line, unsigned response with no dissents noted on the eve of Election Day.

California officials have argued that inaccuracies in the list would lead to some legal voters being disenfranchised.

“This latest decision should put an end to the administration’s attempt to disrupt California’s elections through emergency court orders,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat. “But our work is not over. We will remain vigilant and keep fighting back against federal efforts to undermine our democracy.”

Newsom also praised the ruling in a statement on social media.

“California just secured a HISTORIC Supreme Court defeat against Donald Trump,” he wrote. “The Court rejected Trump’s emergency request without even asking the other side to respond — a first. Democracy won.’

RELATED: 9th Circuit rejects Trump DOJ’s emergency motion over 20,000 questionable voters in California

Some interpreted the court’s swift response as a show of disdain for the request.

While California is reliably left-leaning, numerous contests in the state could help determine who controls Congress after the midterm elections. Voters will also determine whether the next governor of the state will be Democrat Xavier Becerra or Republican Steve Hilton.

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​Election day, Likely noncitizens, Us supreme court, California, Politics 

A former New York Times op-ed contributor is getting mocked and ridiculed after he threatened a “reckoning” if Muslim candidate Abdul El-Sayed doesn’t win.

El-Sayed will become the first Muslim in the U.S. Senate if he is able to defeat Mike Rogers (R) on Tuesday for one of Michigan’s seats.

‘This will be a watershed moment in Democratic politics.’

El-Sayed represents yet another victory of the far-left extremist fringe of the Democratic Party against the centrist establishment leadership.

The day before the election, Wajahat Ali promised “fire” and a “reckoning” regardless of whether El-Sayed wins or loses.

“If, God forbid, Abdul loses, this will be a watershed moment in Democratic politics,” he wrote on social media.

“The fire will rise. It’s over. People will be radicalized against corporate, pro-Israel Dems,” he added. “There will be a reckoning. If, when, he wins, it will be a watershed moment. And that reckoning will still come.”

Ali’s threat was disdained by many online.

“You gonna strap on the suicide vest yourself, tough guy?” Dave Rubin responded.

“Democrats now appear to be threatening us with violence if they don’t win,” the Libs of TikTok account replied. “Believe them when they tell you who they are.”

“To be clear … are you threatening a caliphate? Because if you are, I AM READY for that war … careful what you promise from your keyboard,” responded Carl Higbie, Newsmax host and former U.S. Navy SEAL.

“He just threatened jihad on American soil over a Senate race. Americans do not play that game. Come get some. I dare you,” another critic said.

RELATED: Trump blames violent rioting in France on Islam, ‘out of control mass migration’ — and a French official has responded

“My main question is how will the fire rise with all the watershedding, and so forth,” online raconteur David Burge joked.

Ali was among those who condemned then-President Joe Biden in 2021 for daring to opine that Israel had a right to exist.

El-Sayed is narrowly beating Rogers, according to the Blaze News Poll Watch average of polling.

Michigan Senate polls 2026: El-Sayed vs. Rogers

pollwatch.theblaze.com

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​Election day, Wajahat ali, Michigan, Us senate, Abdul el-sayed, Mike rogers, Islam, Politics 

Protesters at President Donald Trump’s midterm rallies have found innovative ways to get paid and grab clout.

After multiple outbursts at his midterm campaign stops, Trump accused protesters of being paid to stir up trouble, and he may be right.

‘Trump says I got $250 as a paid protester. Prove him wrong!’

At least two protesters have used crowdfunding to profit off their five minutes of fame, and two others are Democrat candidates for state House seats supported by wealthy left-wing organizations.

Indivisible, which organizes the No Kings protests, has ties to some of these protesters. The group itself has accepted over $7.6 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2017, according to public grant records.

The biggest haul belongs to “absurdist activist” Rob Potylo. Potylo, also known as “Robby Roadsteamer,” burst into a Jeffrey Epstein-themed protest song at Trump’s rally in Chillicothe, Ohio, on Wednesday.

Potylo posted the uncut video to YouTube the next day. Its description links to a GoFundMe titled “Robby Roadsteamer has been detained by ICE in Portland!” Though the fund predates that rally, Potylo implored his supporters to donate after the rally disruption.

At least 4,600 supporters donated $127,831 total as of Monday.

“Folks this ain’t easy! Please donate!” Potylo posted on X on Wednesday after being ejected from the event. “Trump says I got $250 as a paid protester. Prove him wrong!”

Potylo told HuffPost that he raked in donations after his viral protest video. The professional activist also accepts payment via PayPal, Patreon, Venmo, and Cash App, according to his personal website.

RELATED: George Soros foundations fund No Kings protests against Trump

Brevard County

Two other hecklers are using their rally protests to campaign for state legislature.

Alan Buckalew was among about a dozen people removed from Trump’s Oct. 21 rally at Clemson University’s T. Ed Garrison Arena in Pendleton, South Carolina.

“Why are you selling us out to the Soviets?” Buckalew shouted, according to the Greenville News.

Buckalew is the Democrat nominee for South Carolina House District 28. Indivisible Upstate SC endorsed him in October.

Ben Braver, a Democrat Florida state House candidate, took things a step farther.

Lakeland, Florida, police arrested Braver at Vice President JD Vance’s Oct. 1 rally and charged him with trespassing and resisting arrest without violence, according to Fox 13. He was later released on a $2,000 bond.

Braver “planted his foot in opposition to the direction he was being escorted,” an officer wrote. The officer took him to the ground with a leg sweep. Braver told Fox 13 he did not intend to resist. His video of the arrest has drawn 381,000 likes on Instagram, captioned “Was this police response appropriate?”

Vance called him a “Democratic plant.”

“I was practicing our inalienable First Amendment rights to free speech against pedophile protectors like JD Vance and had absolutely no intention of resisting the officer,” Braver told Blaze News.

Braver is challenging state Rep. Karen Gonzalez Pittman (R) in House District 65 in Tampa, Florida. He lost a 2024 state Senate race to state Sen. Danny Burgess (R) by about 21 points, according to Florida Politics.

Emgage Action lists Braver among its endorsements. Open Society has given Emgage Action, a Muslim-American political organization, and its corresponding partner, Emgage Foundation, at least $5.5 million since 2018, grant records show.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Florida NOW PAC also support Braver’s campaign. The candidate urged his X followers to “share” an Indivisible event about Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) in August 2025.

Braver also promoted No Kings rallies as campaign stops on Instagram and vowed in July to “end our agreements with the dangerous and murderous ICE.”

Braver’s activism predates his campaigns. As a University of South Florida junior in 2023, he led Stand for Freedom FL, a statewide campus walkout demanding that the DeSantis administration “restore DEI initiatives” and stop its “attack on LGBTQ+ students,” Them reported.

Timothy Matthew McDaniel is yet another activist who, in some way, has profited off of his anti-Trump protests.

RELATED: Ilhan Omar resurfaces for first time since federal raid in tearful cash grab

South Carolina Public Index

McDaniel, who goes by Matthew on social media, yelled, “You’re the criminal!” when Trump mentioned “criminal aliens” at his Oct. 21 Pendleton, South Carolina, rally. Attendees subdued him, and he later filed a police report alleging assault with the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, according to the Greenville News.

McDaniel, a 46-year-old Navy veteran, wore a “Foxtrot Delta Tango” shirt — seemingly code for “F**k Donald Trump” — to the rally and calls himself an “independent who happens to support Democrats,” according to the New Republic.

He launched a GoFundMe three days after his rally outburst. The fund seeks $15,000 for “medical bills, legal expenses, reward offers, and security needs” and calls Trump a “mad ‘wanna-be’ king.” It had raised $3,815 at the time of this report’s publication.

“Hopefully, the reward money will loosen some lips,” McDaniel wrote in a Facebook comment under the fundraiser.

His Facebook page leaves little doubt about his antagonism toward the president.

He made Comey’s “8647” seashell image his profile picture in April, shared a meme last December casting Trump as the Antichrist and attacking evangelical Christians, and slammed a local bar as a place to “hang out with neo-na$is or the usual MAGA maniacs.”

McDaniel also promoted an Indivisible “Vote Early Block Party” in Pendleton, South Carolina, in September.

A Timothy Matthew McDaniel of South Carolina with the same birth year as the protester has a lengthy rap sheet.

McDaniel pled guilty to public drunkenness in Clemson, South Carolina, in 2005 and was found guilty of reckless driving in 2004 and hit-and-run property damage in 2005 in neighboring Oconee County, according to South Carolina Public Index records. He was also found guilty of driving under suspension in 2010.

Potylo, Buckalew, McDaniel, Indivisible, Emgage Action, and the Open Society Foundations did not respond to Blaze News’ requests for comment.

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​Donald trump, George soros, Open society, Paid protesters, Politics, Resisting arrest 

California officials got a boost from a Washington, D.C., judge in their fight against the Trump administration over 20,000 “likely noncitizen” voters.

The administration has tried to use the power of the courts to compel California to segregate ballots of people on a list it compiled of possible noncitizen voters.

‘If I’m hearing that the list is flawed and it’s overinclusive and includes individuals who are eligible to vote, that’s a problem.’

Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., James Boasberg said Monday that California should determine how to run its own elections.

“The Executive Branch has likely violated the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which commits authority over election rules to the states and Congress alone,” Boasberg wrote in the ruling Monday. “California may decide for itself what procedures to use for verifying the citizenship of registered voters and for deciding whether to count their mail-in ballots.”

Boasberg challenged the administration on the accuracy of the list and opined that it would risk disenfranchising legal voters.

“Defendants’ flawed lists risk chilling or preventing lawful votes from being cast and counted,” he wrote.

An attorney for the government admitted in a court hearing in San Francisco that there was a “high error rate” in the list while being questioned by U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson.

“If I’m hearing that the list is flawed and it’s overinclusive and includes individuals who are eligible to vote, that’s a problem,” Thompson said.

The administration has also requested an emergency intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court to force California to segregate the ballots.

Boasberg has been accused of being politically biased against the Trump administration. In one case from March, the judge blocked subpoenas against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell from the Justice Department.

RELATED: Newsom is OUTRAGED over Justice Department lawsuit to block votes from 20,000 ‘likely noncitizens’

California officials have accused the administration of using the “noncitizens” list to influence the election unfairly. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom was especially acidic in his response.

“This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day,” he responded to a DOJ lawsuit.

“Courts have made clear the federal government has no role in running state elections,” he added. “We will defend free and fair elections in the Golden State and call out every authoritarian attempt to undermine our democracy.”

Boasberg was nominated by former President Barack Obama.

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​Trump administration, Election fraud, Voter fraud, California, Politics 

Actor Mandy Patinkin may have once commanded the screen as Inigo Montoya in “The Princess Bride,” but these days, his delivery seems considerably less commanding — and a whole lot more like a hostage reading a script.

Patinkin posted a video on social media that reads like a “hostage” situation, according to BlazeTV host Pat Gray. In the video, Patinkin urges Jewish voters to support Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

“We really love Abdul El-Sayed. And we love what he’s doing. We love what he’s saying,” Pantikin said.

“Jewish safety depends on a real multiracial democracy, and Abdul is the one fighting to protect it,” he continued. “We know how much it matters to live in a country where our rights are protected, where the law applies equally to everyone, and where the majority can’t just decide that some people don’t deserve the same freedoms.”

“At least get a teleprompter,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray says, pointing out that Patinkin seems to be reading off a very long script sitting in front of him.

“It’s like they have his wife,” co-host Jeff Fisher agrees. “They’ve got his wife. You know, this is the blackmail.”

“Read this like you mean it,” he adds, mocking Patinkin’s imagined handlers.

“It’s like a hostage video,” Gray agrees, before playing more of Patinkin’s video.

“They exist because of democracy. And protecting democracy means protecting Jewish safety as well,” the actor continued.

“We’re not a democracy,” Gray interjects, annoyed. “So, this Muslim Brotherhood-supporting moron is going to protect Jews. Is that what you’re saying?”

Want more from Pat Gray?

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

​Mandy patinkin, The princess bride, Abdul el sayed, Pat gray, Blazetv show 

NBC chief data analyst Steve Kornacki outlined the latest polling ahead of the pivotal midterm elections.

On Sunday, Kornacki documented some of the negative polling for Republicans and President Donald Trump before identifying one massive problem for Democrats.

‘Are they willing to take the next step and vote for Democrats given how unpopular Democrats are as a party?’

Kornacki highlighted the results from an NBC News poll taken last week. One question asked respondents how they feel about the Democratic and Republican Parties in general.

“Republicans are not popular, but this is about where they were back in 2018 in Trump’s first midterm,” said Kornacki.

“Look at the Democrats: 29% favorable, 52% unfavorable. This is different from 2018. In 2018, the Democrats as a party had much better numbers than this,” he added.

“And that does raise a question: Voters out there who disapprove of Trump, aren’t happy about where the economy is, inflation, are they willing to take the next step and vote for Democrats given how unpopular Democrats are as a party?” Kornacki asked rhetorically.

“Or does that keep the Democrats from fully capitalizing on what otherwise for them is a very promising political climate?” he concluded.

Polling expert Frank Luntz fleshed out some of the other problems with polling accuracy that may further deflate Democrats’ hopes.

“I got 2016 wrong. I believed in the exit polls. Trump voters walked away, refused to participate, because they thought that it was against them,” he told CNN in October.

“They thought that the polls were all biased,” Luntz added. “And that’s what Republicans are being told right now: ‘Don’t believe the polls. They’re not accurate.’ Well they may be, we’re about to find out.”

RELATED: Pollster Frank Luntz CRUSHES Democrats’ hopes over favorable polling

Kornacki did lay out some of the bad news for the president, who has a 40% approval rating and 60% disapproval in the latest polling.

When asked who should control Congress, 52% of respondents said Democrats should while only 45% said Republicans should control Congress.

Also challenging for Republicans is that slightly more people say they are dissatisfied with their current financial situation, 51%, than the 49% who said they are satisfied financially.

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​Democrats, Republicans, Polling, Politics, Nbc news 

What if one of the biggest obstacles to economic development isn’t politics, natural resources, or government institutions, but something much more fundamental? Franck Zanu of Zanu Project Rethink joins Nick Freitas to examine an unusual observation about African languages: the apparent absence of a word for “maintenance.”

Zanu argues that the continent’s relatively predictable tropical environment may have influenced how generations approach problem-solving, innovation, and long-term planning.

“One of those things that you never typically think about, this idea of maintenance,” BlazeTV host Nick Freitas tells Zanu.

“They could come up with a word for repair, but not maintenance,” he continues, asking, “So why does this not exist within, well, any of the languages that you inquired about with respect to African tribal languages?”

“Yes, why doesn’t the word maintenance, the concept, exist?” Zanu says, before explaining that a human being’s “physical environment” during evolution is what allows a group of people to begin to problem solve.

“It just forces the human mind to say, ‘I need a solution to this problem because it’s repeating itself,’ and so when that happens in any environment where a certain condition just keeps repeating itself or when it happens it’s severe, the mind is forced to begin to look for solutions,” he tells Freitas.

However, in Africa, there is one environment and therefore reason to innovate.

“Africa,” Zanu says, “which is the only tropical continent in the world, you know, I mean, we have slightly, here and there, it gets a little chilly and then the rainfall.”

“Well, every place has rainfall, but we are tropical, which means you don’t have to think about the wardrobe and change it from wool to silk to cotton. No, it’s all cotton,” he continues, calling the continent of Africa “predictable.”

“Such an environment would never cultivate what we call proactive long-term planning maintenance,” he adds.

“Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.

Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK for $20 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

​Franck zanu, Nick freitas, Zanu project, Africa, Maintenance, Blazetv show 

The president has blasted a liberal political action committee in Kansas for allegedly handing out “monetary incentives” to voters just ahead of Election Day.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R) said in a press release Saturday that he sent a cease and desist letter to BlueStem Kansas for allegedly “offering gift cards to voters for voting.”

‘We have photographic evidence. This is a Criminal Offense!’

Kobach said a voter claimed that a person identifying as a canvasser for BlueStem offered the voter a $5 gift card.

“Under K.S.A. 25-2409, election bribery includes giving, offering, or agreeing to give a benefit in exchange for voting at a public election,” he wrote. “It is a severity level 7, nonperson felony. Federal law, 52 U.S.C. § 10307(c), separately makes it a crime to pay or offer to pay anyone for voting in an election that includes federal candidates.”

Trump blasted the group in a post on Truth Social.

“I have just been informed by the Great Attorney General of Kansas, Kris Kobach, that a Radical Left PAC operative was caught on camera going door to door in Wichita offering gift cards to people for votes,” he wrote Sunday.

“We have photographic evidence. This is a Criminal Offense!” he added.

Kobach said he requested that the group preserve communications related to the alleged election incentives, which is a step taken in anticipation of possible legal action.

“As attorney general and before that as secretary of state, I have prosecuted many cases of voter fraud in Kansas, including voting by noncitizens and double voting,” said Kobach in a statement.

“But I never thought that a group in Kansas would be so brazen as to go door-to-door three days before a general election offering voters monetary incentives,” he added. “This sounds like Chicago in the 1950s, not Kansas in the 2020s. As long as I am attorney general, those who violate our election laws will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

RELATED: Trump offers massive reward for tips on voter fraud

Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas accused Democrats of direct involvement in the scheme.

“Chuck Schumer’s Democrats tried to buy out Kansas through ads, but when that wasn’t working they have resorted to pure bribery,” wrote Marshall on social media. “Please report any illegal election activity to the Attorney General‘s office!”

BlueStem Kansas says on its website that it advocates for health care access and gun control and opposes school choice in the form of vouchers.

Marshall is losing by a narrow margin to his Democratic challenger, according to the Blaze News Poll Watch average of polls.

Kansas Senate polls 2026: Marshall vs. Hamilton

Kansas Senate polls 2026: Marshall vs. Hamiltonpollwatch.theblaze.com

Every public poll of the 2026 Kansas Senate race, Roger Marshall (R) vs. Adam Hamilton (D), and the Blaze polling average. From Blaze News.

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​Election day, Voter fraud, Kansas, Bribery, Politics 

A trio of armed, masked males threatened a Maryland homeowner in his driveway on Halloween night, police said — but it turns out the victim had a deadly treat for them at the ready.

Baltimore County Police said the resident indicated he was sitting in the driveway of his residence in the 10000 block of Greenside Drive in Cockeysville when the suspects — armed with a handgun — approached him around 10:40 p.m.

‘We were sleeping, and I woke up and saw blue lights in the window. So I got up and saw and there were like eight or nine police cars.’

The resident told officers the three males threatened him, police said.

But the trio likely didn’t take into account that one never knows these days who is armed for self-defense at any given time.

Indeed, police said the resident “brandished his own weapon and fired at the suspects.”

Police said the suspects fled the location, and the resident called 911 to report the incident.

Officers began to check the area and found one of the suspects dead a short distance away, police said, adding that he was identified as 20-year-old Amon Walker.

The two other suspects, both adult males, also were found after seeking treatment for their injuries at local hospitals.

A loaded handgun was also recovered, police said, and it is believed to have belonged to the suspects.

Police said there is no active threat to the community, and the department’s Homicide Unit responded and is investigating the circumstances of this incident.

RELATED: Thug allegedly assaults woman, vandalizes cars, then breaks into home while holding knife. But homeowner has more firepower.

While police said in their news release that the three males were wearing masks, WBAL-TV reported that the males were “wearing Halloween-style masks.”

Neighbor Monish Gariwala told the station “on Halloween night, this is a very active neighborhood. There are, like, 300 kids.”

He added to WBAL that “we were sleeping, and I woke up and saw blue lights in the window. So I got up and saw and there were like eight or nine police cars.”

Gariwala also noted “thank God” that the incident “happened later. There were so many kids here [earlier],” according to the station.

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​Fatal shooting, Maryland, Homeowner shoots intruders, Threat, Arrests, Halloween, 2nd amendment, Self-defense, Guns, Gun rights, Crime 

Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2023.

Chandler Bing, like many of his Gen X cohort, was the product of divorce. His wealthy parents casually announced their split to him, their only child, at Thanksgiving dinner when he was 9 years old. Chandler’s resultant lifelong hatred of the holiday becomes a running joke in “Friends,” as do his defensive, acerbic humor and inability to commit.

The Bing divorce is portrayed as extravagantly messy, the better to wring laughs from Chandler’s discomfort. A flashback in the show’s first season takes us to the scene of the primal trauma, with mother Nora (Morgan Fairchild) half-heartedly spouting boilerplate therapeutic reassurance while blithely revealing that Chandler’s dad, Charles, has been having sex with the houseboy. (“More turkey, Mr. Chandler?” leers said houseboy in the scene’s tacky “button.”)

Chandler’s relationship with his parents as an adult is also a reliable source of comedy. Nora is a best-selling “erotic novelist” who embarrasses her son during a “Tonight Show” appearance and later attempts to seduce his friend Ross.

Charles (Kathleen Turner) is just as monstrously self-absorbed. Now a transgender cabaret performer in Las Vegas (Chandler ruefully recalls him showing up at high school swim meets dressed as different starlets), he attends Chandler’s wedding after years of estrangement. There, the spectacle of his horrible, freakish parents once again at each other’s throats dredges up enough unpleasant memories that Chandler nearly calls the whole thing off.

None of this is as funny as the show seems to think it is, but then the same could be said about much of the show’s cutesy, cloying humor. It’s not as if this “insensitive” portrayal of adult-children-of-divorce Americans merits some kind of apology. At any rate, “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman has predictably focused her public self-flagellation on the show’s egregious “misgendering” of Charles, as well as its more general crimes against diversity. But the emphasis placed on Chandler Bing’s unhappy childhood takes on a certain poignancy as we collectively mourn the actor who played him. Matthew Perry, it turns out, also bore the scars of his parents’ divorce.

The source of misery

Released just a year ago, Perry’s memoir begins in media res, as our protagonist’s loyal assistant wisely busts Perry, then 49, out of yet another sober living house (Perry counts a career total of 15 treatment facilities) and speeds him to the hospital, where he almost dies of a burst colon brought on by years of opioid abuse.

Perry dedicated “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing” to “all of the sufferers out there,” and his stated purpose in writing it was to share all the gory details of his decades-long struggle with drugs and alcohol. In promotional interviews last year, Perry emphasized that he now valued his fame mainly as a tool for reaching other addicts and helping them achieve sobriety; since his death on October 28, many have testified to his generosity in this regard.

The divorce may not have caused Perry’s drinking and drugging, but perhaps it did lead him to seek refuge in his public identity as an addict.

And yet in telling the story of his life, Perry repeatedly returns to a source of misery predating his first drink at 14. Once he dispenses with his obligatory opening hook, Perry then reaches deep into the past to depict a far quieter but no less devastating memory: He is 5 years old and terrified, flying alone from Montreal, where he lives with his mother, to visit his father in Los Angeles. Almost 50 years later, Perry’s anger is still raw: “The other kids had parents with them. I had a sign and a magazine. … Why was that little kid on a plane on his own? Maybe fly to Canada and f***ing pick him up? That’s a question I often wonder about but would never dare to ask.”

Perry’s parents met in 1967 at an Ontario beauty pageant. His mother, Suzanne, was there in her official capacity as the reigning Miss Canadian University Snow Queen, while his father, John, was there performing with his band. Their only child, Matthew, was born in 1969. Nine months later, John abandoned them both to pursue an acting career in Hollywood.

A tension familiar to anyone who’s survived such garden-variety “trauma” as the late 20th-century American no-fault divorce runs through the book. While the pain Perry’s parents caused him is obvious, every time he dares to express it, he checks himself. Surely it wasn’t that bad. Nobody died or got hit, and there was enough money to go around.

Yes, his overwhelmed single mother took a doctor’s dubious advice to soothe her baby’s colic with barbiturates, and by the time Perry was in kindergarten, he had so thoroughly assumed a “caretaker” role that his first instinct after losing the tip of his middle finger to a slammed car door was to comfort a distraught Suzanne.

And yes, his mother’s eventual career as Pierre Trudeau’s press secretary meant that she was often almost as absent from her son’s life as John, who called every Sunday and only had Perry flown out for visits “when enough time had passed that it was unseemly.”

And yes, Suzanne’s many suitors meant that Perry relived his father’s abandonment over and over, and when she finally did remarry (enlisting Perry to — cringe — “give her away” at the wedding), he struggled to feel included in her growing new family.

And yes, Perry was exhibiting the whole array of “troubled” behaviors — smoking, fighting, neglecting school — by the time he was 10.

The damage carries into adulthood

But John and Suzanne aren’t to blame. They’re much better parents to Perry now that he’s a grown man, and maturity (not to mention sobriety) demands that he cut them some slack. “I needed to remember that my dad left because he was afraid, and my mom was a kid who was just doing her best,” he wrote. Perry, of course, was a literal kid, but maybe that was a blessing. We all know how resilient children are.

Or are they?

“Contrary to what we have long thought, the major impact of divorce does not occur during childhood or adolescence,” wrote Judith Wallerstein in her groundbreaking study “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce”:

Rather it rises in adulthood, as serious romantic relationships move center stage. When it comes time to choose a life mate and build a new family, the effects of divorce crescendo. A central finding to my research is that children identify not only with their mother and father as separate individuals but with the relationship between them. They carry the template of this relationship into adulthood and use it to seek the image of their new family. The absence of a good image negatively influences their search for love, intimacy, and commitment. Anxiety leads many into making bad choices in relationships, giving up hastily when problems arise, or avoiding relationships altogether.

This passage might help explain why Perry never seemed to enjoy the substances that gave him so much trouble. From the start, his drinking seemed to be medicinal, a way to treat his persistent sense of discomfort, much like his Vicodin use, which he began to relieve the pain from an on-set jet ski accident. At his peak he was taking 55 pills a day to feel normal.

Perry’s pursuit of success was similarly driven by the need for relief. His earliest “performances” were bids for attention from his distracted parents. “Acting came naturally to me,” he writes of his first big role, the lead in his high school production of “Our Town.” “Why wouldn’t I want to pretend to be another person?”

Although Perry reports that he “fell deeply in love with acting” while playing opposite River Phoenix in his first movie, 1988’s “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon,” he mostly talks about his chosen profession in more mercenary terms. “Acting was like a drug for me,” he wrote, and he soon realized the exact high he was chasing: “By 1986 I was pretty sure fame would change everything. … It was the only thing that would fix me.”

Maybe this is just the more or less sensible single-minded focus of an ambitious, career-driven young man. But it’s worth noting that even after he had reached the top, Perry never managed to figure out love, intimacy, and commitment. Not for lack of trying, either. Although he seemed to live the life of a Hollywood playboy, dating one A-List beauty after another, he was tormented by his inability to settle down.

Consider Perry’s own testimony, from an October 2022 interview: “I break up with them because I’m deathly afraid that they will find out that I’m not enough, that I don’t matter, and that I’m too needy, and they’ll break up with me and that will annihilate me and I’ll have to take drugs and that will kill me.”

Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes. And beneath the optimism of his recovery-speak, Perry hurt. For all his recent soul-baring, Perry’s most revealing moment happened unintentionally, while promoting his book on Canadian radio: “The thing that always makes me cry is that it’s not fair. It’s not. It’s not fair that I had to go through this disease while the other five didn’t. They got everything that I got. But I had to fight this thing, and still have to fight this thing.”

What can you say about Perry’s strangely tone-deaf ingratitude and lack of perspective here, other than to wonder how much suffering this self-obsession must still have caused him?

The legacy divorce leaves

One also wonders about Perry’s conception of himself as having a “disease.” The disease model of addiction is, of course, standard in recovery circles. As a metaphor, it’s quite efficient at communicating the implacable, life-or-death nature of the challenge, while training focus on the most pressing task: to stop using.

But evidence suggesting that compulsive, self-destructive indulgence is literally a chronic medical condition is scant. Journalist Peter Hitchens calmly raised this point during a televised debate with Perry on a 2013 episode of “BBC Newsnight,” denouncing the disease model as a “fashion for dismissing the ability of people to take control over their own lives and to make excuses for them [instead].” Perry quickly became defensive and angry.

Why? Maybe he thought Hitchens was trivializing the hell he’d been through — implying that Perry simply should have manned up and quit long ago. But to see addiction as a psychological rather than a physiological affliction is not to minimize its seriousness. The disease model Perry clung to reinforced his reluctance to look too closely at how his parents’ divorce affected him; to search for a “reason” for one’s substance abuse comes perilously close to justifying it.

The divorce may not have caused Perry’s drinking and drugging, but perhaps it did lead him to seek refuge in his public identity as an addict. What would true intimacy with another person look like for Perry? What kind of family could he envision for himself? Rather than confront the void left by his own upbringing, Perry could pre-emptively set himself apart and choose instead the carefully constrained vulnerability of an addict helping fellow addicts.

By all accounts, Perry had been sober for a year when he died. His death does not present the usual cautionary tale of a doomed celebrity finally undone by one party too many. And yet he died alone. Unlike the character he so memorably inhabited, Perry never quite managed to embrace adulthood. Maybe Perry, contra Hitchens, was right, and it had to be this way; such was the progress of his disease.

At any rate, it’s not for us to judge how well Perry played the cards he’d been dealt. But as long as we’re seeking a lesson from his sad, untimely demise, surely we can consider the entirely voluntary decisions of those who brought him into this world. Perry leaves behind him a foundation in his name to help those struggling with addiction; it’s what he would have wanted, as the cliché goes. But the injury of divorce compromises the very sense of self that enables us even to know what we want.

The opioid crisis is much discussed these days, with good reason. To honor Perry’s legacy, however, we should also remember him as a survivor of another all-too-common epidemic.

​Lifestyle, Matthew perry 

In a historically bad month for cybersecurity, Black October ended with a grand finale of epic proportions. Friday brought the biggest cryptocurrency heist in history, with hackers stealing billions of dollars from a major crypto platform. Here’s what happened, what changed over the weekend, and what you need to do if you were affected.

Late afternoon on Friday, October 30, the largest cryptocurrency platform in the world, Binance, was breached by hackers. In about 20 minutes, the attackers reportedly stole $6.34 billion directly from users’ accounts, marking the biggest crypto heist in history.

This story serves as a warning that anyone — even an employee at a leading cryptocurrency company — is subject to phishing scams.

TRM Labs, an AI and blockchain criminal investigation agency, quickly linked the attack to a North Korean hacking group called TraderTraitor. According to the FBI, this same group was responsible for the Bybit attack in 2025, in which the group stole $1.5 billion in Ethereum, and the Ronin Network heist, in which the group took $620 million in 2022.

Needless to say, this group has a long track record of cryptocurrency theft, and despite the specter of Black October looming over the internet, there’s no indication that TraderTraitor used a PHP exploit to gain access to Binance’s systems. In fact, according to the company, the attack may have started with a compromised laptop that belonged to one of its engineers. As a result, the attack appears to be the product of a good old-fashioned phishing scheme, where the employee was tricked into clicking a malicious link that installed malware on the device, giving hackers access to Binance’s trading systems.

Binance temporarily disabled cryptocurrency withdrawals to prevent further losses, as well as deposits for safe measure. The company worked quickly to mitigate the damage. By Saturday, Binance claimed that 90% of all lost assets were returned to users’ accounts, and by Sunday, withdrawals for specific crypto coins began to go back online, with a gradual rollout continuing into Monday.

RELATED: Time to declare independence from phishing scams — here’s how

vchal/Getty Images

If you’re a Binance user, you’re advised to check your account for signs of losses. Even if you don’t believe you were affected — or if you’re unsure if you were affected — it’s a good idea to check anyway. The breach targeted Binance’s internal systems, so customer usernames, passwords, and seed phrases were rendered ineffective at securing user accounts from the hacking group. Your account may have been compromised without you even knowing it.

If you did lose money, don’t worry. Binance promised to restore all lost funds automatically. You don’t need to file a claim or submit a form to report the damages. However, it may be a good idea to watch your account over the coming weeks to ensure that every missing coin is returned as expected. If, after Binance has finished restoring the final 10% of lost assets to users, you believe that money is still missing, you can contact its support team for help.

This story serves as a warning that anyone — even an employee at a leading cryptocurrency company — is subject to phishing scams. That is why it is important to stay wary of any unsolicited communications you receive in your email inbox, messaging apps, and even phone calls, especially if they tell you to click on random links that could hide malicious intent. Even if the message comes from a trusted friend, family member, or colleague, it is a good idea to check with them personally before clicking on a link that appears suspicious.

Some web browsers now even have anti-phishing and malicious link protection built in. Enhanced protection mode in Google Chrome is free, and it uses AI to identify dangerous websites in real time. It will even stop you from visiting that site if the threat on the other side is a verified danger to you and your devices. Follow these steps to enable it now.

The Binance breach was just one of two major financial platform hacks that happened on Friday. Polymarket was also attacked, though on a much smaller scale. Just a little more than 700 users lost $2.7 million to bad actors, thanks to a vulnerability in a third-party system. The issue was quickly resolved, and trades are all back online.

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​Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Hack, Hackers, North korea, Tech 

A leftist female University of Michigan student was caught on video physically attacking a conservative Jewish influencer Sunday during a reported free-speech event on campus.

The victim — Liz Benichou, who uses the handle “basedinmalibu” on X and Instagram — was apparently shoved to the ground in a violent outburst by the female student who soon was arrested and then hollered the following while in handcuffs: “I should have f**king killed you while I had the f**king chance.”

The female asked the arresting officer, ‘What the f**k are you going to do to me? Because I hit a f**king dumb-ass bitch in the face?’

Benichou told Fox News she was hosting an open debate when a female approached, began shouting, and allegedly struck another conservative influencer in the face with her phone before turning on her.

The other conservative influencer was online creator and commentator “The Older Millennial,” also known as Joseph Anthony Redden, who was sitting at a foldout table with signs that read “Is Islam evil?” and “Is Islam compatible with the West?” Newsweek said.

The female approached the table asking, “Where’s your permit?” saying the setup was “f**king stupid” and clapping in Redden’s face and shouting, the magazine noted. Redden told police in that moment and later claimed on X that the female struck him. You can view video of that interaction here, after which the female complains about “anti-Muslim people.”

Benichou told Fox News that soon the female “came up toward me, and I told her, ‘You would not be able to do this in Iran,'” referencing freedom of speech and pointing to the Iranian government’s treatment of protesters.

Then Benichou and fellow conservative influencer Cam Higby challenged the female over women’s freedoms in Iran, the cable news network added — particularly with respect to how she was dressed and showing “skin.”

Benichou can be heard on video — as the female stands directly in front of her — asking onlookers, “Am I wrong? If she walked around like this in Iran, what would happen to her?”

“And then she just lunged,” Benichou told Fox News.

The female used both hands to knock Benichou to the ground and then tried to stomp her before a male intervened and pulled the attacker away from Benichou, video appeared to show.

“Don’t f**king talk to me like that!” the female hollered at Benichou while trying to get back to her, according to video. “You wanna f**king get over here?! F**king get over here, bitch!”

The female momentarily escaped the grasp of a police officer, but the officer soon grabbed the female and got her on the ground and began handcuffing her and telling her “don’t resist.”

“Instant f**king karma, bitch,” one onlooker observed as the arrest took place.

Another onlooker commented, “She’s f**king rabid.”

The female asked the arresting officer, “What the f**k are you going to do to me? Because I hit a f**king dumb-ass bitch in the face?”

As the female was being escorted to a police vehicle, she continued shouting and cursing at Benichou, Newsweek said.

“I’d do it again every f**king time, you stupid f**king c**t!” video showed the female hollering before adding, “I should have f**king killed you while I had the f**king chance.”

Benichou on Monday told “Fox & Friends” she injured her lower back as a result of the attack — but that she won’t be silenced.

“It will definitely not dissuade me,” she added to the cable news network.

RELATED: Vance blasts ‘psychopath’ El-Sayed over ‘anti-white’ hatred

Taylor Sharp — Benichou’s manager and the CEO of Liberty Under Fire USA, a conservative youth organization — told Mediaite that Benichou plans on pressing charges against the arrested student.

The University of Michigan Police Department told Fox News that a student was taken into custody, processed, and released — and that the case “will be forwarded to the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office for review.”

More from Fox News:

The confrontation comes as Michigan’s closely watched Senate race brings political and cultural divisions into sharper focus ahead of the midterms.

Benichou said her visit to the campus was partly motivated by concerns about Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, whose political affiliations and campaign funding she wanted to discuss with students.

Police noted to Newsweek that the attack took place during an “unpermitted political event.”

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​Arrest, Crime, Jewish, University of michigan, Violent leftists, Islam, Abdul el-sayed, Politics 

There will never be another Norm Macdonald, which is why Netflix’s new documentary, “Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald,” has been received so well — especially by BlazeTV hosts Dave Landau and Stu Burguiere.

Landau, who is a comedian himself, said the film was a reminder that Macdonald “really is my favorite comic.”

“I loved everything he did,” he says, reminiscing on his starring role on “Saturday Night Live’s” Weekend Update.

“But this whole thing,” he continues, “this thing covers his entire life and kind of like the mystery that he was, including having cancer for a decade and not telling anyone.”

And when Norm did speak about a battle with cancer, he pretended he was talking about his uncle instead of himself. He also claimed that he dropped out of high school and didn’t go to college.

“He would say, look, I didn’t go to college. I dropped out of high school, and you look and you know, they found something that said he was a genius that actually got out of high school at 16 and went to college early,” Landau explains.

“I mean, he really was amazing,” Stu Burguiere comments.

“He’s one of those guys that … the comedy was so important to him,” he continues. “It just didn’t matter what else was going on. He was always able to push through it. I mean, you go back to, obviously, him getting fired from ‘SNL.’”

Macdonald appeared on David Letterman’s show after getting fired and openly discussed it.

“And it’s one of the greatest appearances of all time because the way he handled it. He has this giant, big smile, his goofy smile, on his face the entire time as he’s talking about his career dissolving,” Stu says.

“He was so funny about it, and he just was able to do that constantly,” he adds.

Want more from Stu and Dave?

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​Stu burguiere, Dave landau, Norm macdonald, Comedian, Netflix, Blazetv show 

He was just trying to finish his workday and get home to his kids. Instead, a Michigan father of four found himself the target of a viral Instagram prank in which a young content creator pretended to steal $10 from him — all while recording his increasingly frustrated reaction for clicks.

In the viral video, the Michigan father, frustrated, goes to report the young man to management. The content creator continues filming and keeps insisting that “it’s not that deep” and that “it’s just a joke.”

“No, it’s not a joke to me, OK?” the man said. “I don’t have time for this crap in my life. My life is hard enough as it is, OK? I don’t need this crap. I’ve got kids at home that went to bed without me right now, and I was supposed to be at home an hour ago, and I’m still out here working, and I got to get up at 5 in the morning and do 10 more stores. So this is not a joke to me.”

“No, I get you,” the kid responded.

“No, you don’t. You’re probably making money off this. I can’t even pay my goddamn mortgage, and I’ve got four kids at home. So not funny,” the man yelled.

BlazeTV host John Doyle calls it a “little bit of a patriot go-off moment.”

“What he’s upset about is he can tell that he’s being recorded,” Doyle explains. “He knows that he’s going to be uploaded onto the internet and made fun of. And so it’s like this is just weighing on him alongside everything else he’s dealing with in the meantime.”

“And he can tell, obviously, they’re not sincere about the apology. They don’t care. And then all he can do is just scold them,” he continues, noting that the man is the one who would be facing real repercussions.

“He’s in trouble because he’s in uniform,” Doyle says.

“He knows that not only is he going to be humiliated on the internet, but it’s probably going to come back to maybe compromise his employment, which again, the guy’s behind on his mortgage,” he continues.

“He has four kids at home. It’s just a really bad situation overall. And so, that’s what I think it was, is he knows that he’s the butt end of the joke. He’s being exploited. And the person who’s exploiting him is treating him as though he’s not a human being. It literally is dehumanizing them,” he adds.

And Doyle points out that in the beginning of the video, the man responds to the kid’s initial question about the time with a smile.

“He’s obviously walking up to this guy who’s just there trying to get, you know, his job done, go home. And the thing that really gets me, too, is you see in the beginning of the video, the second he’s asked, ‘Hey, what time is it?’ He immediately is helpful,” he explains.

“He is happy to help, happy to engage in high-trust activities like this,” he adds.

However, people like the kid are “actively preying on people’s trust and support so they can make a few dollars rather than work an actual job.”

“This is exploiting a high-trust society. This is exploiting the behavior of good Americans,” Doyle says, which he calls a “third-world mindset.”

“The third-world mindset cannot innovate,” he explains. “It cannot create companies. It cannot be productive.”

“People who come from countries who literally are responsible for zero innovations, curiously, the only way they can innovate is not actually with contributing something, which people want to purchase and partake in,” he continues.

“It always with finding the cracks, finding some way to scan the system, cut corners, take advantage of people. That’s all they do,” he adds.

Want more from John Doyle?

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​John doyle, Michigan father, Red baron, Internet prank, Third world, Influencer, Internet, Blazetv show