Karmelo Anthony has filed a notice of appeal in the wake of his murder conviction earlier this week in the stabbing death of Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas, last year, KDFW-TV reported.

Anthony, 19, was sentenced to 35 years in prison Tuesday — the same day he was found guilty of murder. He will be eligible for parole after he serves half that time behind bars. The Collin County jury that convicted him also sentenced him; the term of Anthony’s sentence open to jurors ranged from five years to 99 years behind bars.

‘It’s really, really tough to convince the Court of Appeals to overturn a jury verdict once the jury has sat through and heard all the evidence.’

Anthony’s attorneys formally filed the notice of appeal, KDFW said, adding that the filing is a routine procedure in serious felony cases, doesn’t mean a new trial has been granted, and that the appeal process can take months or even years to resolve.

Dallas appellate attorney David Coale told KTVT-TV that Anthony’s legal team could have several strong arguments on appeal — but that any appeal won’t be about what the jury heard; rather it would focus on whether the trial was handled correctly.

The case will be assigned to the 5th District Court of Appeals, which is in downtown Dallas, KTVT said, adding that the 5th District Court of Appeals hears all cases from Dallas County, Collin County, and several other metropolitan counties.

KTVT added that Anthony’s attorneys next will request that the Collin County District Clerk’s Office send documents to the Court of Appeals and that the court reporter prepare a transcript addressing the facts of the case and any legal issues.

The defense likely will argue that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict for murder, KTVT said.

But appellate attorney Chad Ruback told KTVT that may prove to be a difficult road.

RELATED: ‘You can’t look me in the eyes, but you can stab my f**king son?!’ Austin Metcalf’s dad humiliates Karmelo Anthony in court

“It’s really, really tough to convince the Court of Appeals to overturn a jury verdict once the jury has sat through and heard all the evidence,” Ruback noted to the station. “It’s entirely possible that the attorneys for Mr. Anthony could argue that maybe the trial court judge didn’t let in some evidence that would have swayed the jury, that would have persuaded the jury to render a not guilty verdict, or a manslaughter verdict, for example.”

A new mug shot of Anthony was taken Tuesday — the day of his conviction and sentencing — after he was placed in the custody of the Collin County Sheriff’s Office:

RELATED: Jury reaches verdict in Karmelo Anthony murder trial (UPDATE)

Karmelo Anthony. Image source: Collin County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office

On Wednesday, Anthony was transported to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice where another new booking photo was taken, KDFW reported.

Anthony was then transported to his unit of assignment at the Pack Unit near Navasota, KDFW added. Navasota is about three and a half hours south of Frisco.

In addition, Anthony’s GiveSendGo fundraiser — which took in around $630,000 for legal and living expenses — was shut down the day after his conviction and sentencing, the New York Post reported.

GiveSendGo differs from GoFundMe as it allows fundraisers for criminal cases, and the Post added that the platform confirmed the fundraiser closure in a statement to the paper.

“The fundraiser was supported to support pre-trial needs, and those funds were disbursed over the last year,” the statement read, according to the Post. “With that stated purpose complete, the fundraiser has been closed.”

However, Anthony’s mother — Kala Hayes — just launched a new GiveSendGo fundraiser dedicated to her son’s appeal.

The monetary goal is $425,000; as of noon Thursday $60 has been raised.

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​Karmelo anthony, Austin metcalf, Texas, Frisco, Murder conviction, Prison sentence, Appeal, Texas department of criminal justice, Crime 

A race agitator who has railed against the criminal justice system over the murder conviction of Karmelo Anthony has a criminal conviction that has resulted in a suspended law license.

Thelma Anderson has made multiple appearances on camera since Anthony was found guilty of murder on Tuesday in the stabbing of Austin Metcalf in April 2025. Anderson and others professed that Anthony, who is black, was the real victim, not Metcalf, who was white.

During this suspension, Anderson is prohibited from ‘practicing law in Texas.’

She told Roland Martin that the courthouse was a “slaughterhouse,” that Anthony and his family had been “legally lynched” by the system and the Metcalf family, and that “the energy right now is their white supremacy.”

Anderson also took aim at the prosecutor, characterizing him as “overzealous” and accusing him of lying during the trial. She even claimed he has an “unethical background.”

Anderson did not elaborate on what the prosecutor had supposedly done, but she also failed to mention some key details about her own background.

RELATED: Jasmine Crockett drops SHOCKING statement about parents of victim murdered by Karmelo Anthony

Though she implied to groups gathered outside the courthouse that she offered legal expertise “as a former prosecutor,” Anderson cannot currently practice law in the state of Texas. According to the State Bar of Texas, her license has been under “interlocutory suspension” since March 3 for “disciplinary reasons.”

Indeed, in May 2024, the DOJ charged Anderson with three counts related to a COVID-relief loan. She subsequently pled guilty to one count of wire fraud and was sentenced to four years of probation and ordered to pay nearly $21,000 in restitution to the U.S. Small Business Administration, according to the Board of Disciplinary Appeals appointed by the Texas Supreme Court.

Though Anderson has appealed her conviction, the federal charges alone led to her dismissal from her position as a part-time substitute municipal judge in Forth Worth. A month after they were filed, the Fort Worth City Council voted unanimously to remove her.

Earlier this year, a three-member panel of the Board of Disciplinary Appeals appointed by the Texas Supreme Court claimed that Anderson had attempted to game the system regarding her disciplinary hearing by “repeatedly” seeking to delay the board’s decision “through last-minute filings and tactics.”

According to the interlocutory order of suspension, Anderson filed at least seven motions between the afternoon of January 29 and just before midnight on February 26 requesting some type of delay or reconsideration.

Those motions may have slowed the progress of her case, but they ultimately did not prevent the board from suspending her license.

“Having been convicted of an intentional and serious crime and having appealed such conviction, respondent, Thelma M. Anderson, shall have her license to practice law in Texas suspended during the appeal of her criminal conviction,” the board decided.

Additionally, during this suspension, Anderson is prohibited from “practicing law in Texas, holding herself out as an attorney at law, performing any legal service for others, accepting any fee directly or indirectly for legal services not completed before the date of this order, appearing as counsel in any proceeding in any Texas court or before any Texas administrative body, or holding herself out to others or using her name, in any manner, in conjunction with the words ‘attorney at law,’ ‘attorney,’ ‘counselor at law,’ ‘Esquire,’ ‘Esq.’ or ‘lawyer,'” the board ruled.

In response to a request for comment about the wire fraud conviction, Anderson told Blaze News, “Continue to watch.” Anderson hung up after Blaze News requested comment about the suspended law license.

Bill Wirskye, who prosecuted the Anthony case, did not respond to a request for comment.

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​Austin metcalf, Criminal justice system, Karmelo anthony, Wire fraud, Politics 

On both sides of the Atlantic, men, especially young men, are dying by suicide at rates that should freeze governments in their tracks. But the powers that be don’t seem to notice.

The U.K. watches males of all ages go under — boys dropping out of school, men in their 20s drifting between short-term jobs and long nights alone, 30s lost to drink, dread, or sheer exhaustion. The U.S. watches its men go under, too. Their suicide rates dwarf those of women, and overdose deaths skew heavily male.

When a young man limps into therapy, he’s met with soft voices, polite nods, and vague talk about letting his guard down.

Whenever this comes up, we hear the same insufferable chorus: Why won’t these men just go to therapy?

As if it’s that simple. As if men are ignoring a perfectly functioning safety net. As if they’re being stubborn for sport.

Girl talk

Most men aren’t avoiding therapy because they fear healing, but because the entire system is built with someone else in mind.

Walk into the average psychology department, clinic, or counseling office and look around. The landscape is overwhelmingly female — in training, in staffing, in leadership, in tone. In both the U.K. and the U.S., the majority of therapists are women.

While that isn’t inherently bad — many of these therapists are excellent — it does mean the system has been shaped by female norms, female communication styles, and female emotional instincts.

This is not a conspiracy theory but just an honest acknowledgment of reality. Men and women don’t experience mental suffering the same way. They don’t express it the same way. They don’t process it the same way. A woman in distress tends to talk her way outward. A man tends to go inward until the pressure builds, then either falls silent or implodes. Women spiral verbally; men quietly.

So when a young man limps into therapy — desperate, numb, maybe half a step away from ending it all — he enters a world where the emotional rules weren’t written for him. He’s told to “open up,” “talk through it,” “share feelings,” “name the emotion.” He’s met with soft voices, polite nods, and vague talk about letting his guard down. What he’s not met with is someone who speaks his language.

It’s a mismatch from the very first minute.

Manning up

And because therapy culture is so thoroughly feminized, a man struggling with anger, confusion, despair, or loss often feels like a stranger adrift in a foreign country — grappling with an unfamiliar language and baffling customs.

That’s not the therapist’s fault. But it is the system’s fault.

And this is the part no one wants to say out loud: Men respond better to men. Not because women are incompetent, but because no matter how skilled a female practitioner is, she will never fully understand what it means to move through the world as a man. Just as no man will ever fully understand the interior life of a woman.

A man who has lost his job, lost his marriage, or lost his sense of purpose doesn’t want to explain the weight of male shame to someone who has never carried it. A man who feels emasculated doesn’t want to define the word emasculated from scratch. A man drowning in a culture that treats masculinity as a pathology doesn’t want to walk into a room where he suspects that belief might subtly be shared.

And yes, he may be wrong. But suffering doesn’t make people clear-headed. If anything, it makes them cautious.

This is why men light up when paired with a male therapist — someone who knows the codes: the long pauses, the tight jaw, the clipped sentences, the jokes that aren’t jokes, the sudden confession buried in small talk. Someone who knows what it feels like to fail publicly and hurt privately. Someone who knows that “I’m fine” is never fine. Someone who understands that for men, emotional honesty often comes disguised as humor, deflection, or irritation.

But right now, the system expects men to adapt to it, not the other way around.

RELATED: How to find effective, no-nonsense therapy for men

Archive Photos/Getty Images

Pundit patriarchy

And so the suicide numbers climb. Young men continue to vanish. Fathers fade. Sons and brothers never return home. Journalists write “What’s Wrong with Men?” think pieces. And the cycle rolls on, as pathetic as it is predictable.

If this were happening to young women, the entire culture would pivot. Funding would pour in. Campaigns would explode. Universities would redesign programs overnight. Therapy models would be reimagined to match the needs of the group in crisis.

But because it’s men — the group everyone assumes will always be fine, always be strong, always survive — nothing moves.

Maybe the darkest irony is that the very qualities that make men decline therapy — the sense of being misunderstood, mismatched, and misplaced — are the same qualities pushing them to the edge in the first place.

And unless the mental health world learns to meet men where they are, with approaches shaped by men who understand men, the funerals will continue, and everyone will keep acting surprised.

​Mental health awareness, Suicide rates, Therapy culture, Young men, Culture, Uk, Suicide prevention, Therapy, Mental health, Depression, Lifestyle 

I grew up playing with Legos, and so did my kids. But when I told them the story of Bryan Mansell, Star Wars Legos, and Bricks & Minifigs, it sounded too strange to be true. It sounds like something written by a committee of internet pranksters, small-town cops, corporate lawyers, Lego collectors, and Kafka.

I did not expect this story at the start of the summer.

Where are the Legos? Who owes the Mansell family? And why did it take an internet firestorm to get anyone to listen?

At the center of it is not a culture-war symbol, a presidential scandal, classified documents, or some new university ideology. It is a Star Wars Lego collection.

And somehow, around this collection of plastic bricks, we now have lawsuits, arrests, temporary restraining orders, allegations of corporate misconduct, allegations of harassment, a YouTuber reportedly fleeing to Mexico, a police department under national scrutiny, and a family still asking the question that started the whole mess: Where are the Legos?

The collection

Act 1 begins in Keizer, Oregon.

Bryan Mansell says he took his 83-year-old father’s prized Star Wars Lego collection to a Bricks & Minifigs retail location in late 2023. His father was battling cancer, and the family wanted to sell the collection to help with medical expenses.

This was not a box of random toys found in an attic. By Mansell’s account, it was a massive collection assembled over many years, with hundreds of sets and more than a thousand minifigures. Some estimates put the value between $150,000 and $200,000. Some collectors described it as one of the most impressive private Star Wars Lego collections in the region.

The arrangement, according to reporting that reviewed the documents, was a written consignment agreement. The store would sell the collection, take its percentage, and pay the Mansell family. The important point is simple: Under the agreement, the collection remained Mansell’s property until sold.

Then the store changed hands. Records became contested. Corporate Bricks & Minifigs says the consignment arrangement was unauthorized, poorly disclosed, and mishandled before corporate officials or later owners had enough information to sort it out. Former franchise owners dispute parts of that account. Mansell says much of the collection was not returned and he was not properly paid.

That should have been a civil dispute. It might have been messy, but it should have been boring: contracts, inventory, accounting, receipts, lawyers, and maybe a settlement.

The YouTuber

Instead, Act 2 arrived in the person of Benjamin “Reckless Ben” Schneider.

Schneider is a YouTuber, which meant the story would not stay in the file cabinets. He began making videos about the dispute and tried to help Mansell recover what he claimed was owed. Millions watched. A local disagreement about consignment inventory became an internet crusade.

Then the saga became even stranger.

Schneider went to Utah, where Bricks & Minifigs is based, and tried to confront or serve people connected to the company. American Fork police got involved. Schneider was arrested twice and later charged with stalking and targeted residential picketing. Bricks & Minifigs and its owners also filed a civil lawsuit accusing Schneider, Mansell, and others of defamation, disparagement, conspiracy, stalking, trespass, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

RELATED: ‘Backrooms’ is horror for a self-justifying age

A24

Then came the temporary restraining order. On May 28, a Utah judge ordered that videos related to the underlying dispute and allegedly defamatory or unlawful content be taken down. The order also restricted contact with Bricks & Minifigs employees and prohibited conduct such as threats, doxxing, trespass, and interference with the business.

That raises an obvious constitutional problem. Courts can punish defamation after proper process. They can restrain threats and harassment. They can enforce trespass laws. But when a court orders videos removed before a final judgment, and when the surrounding legal process appears unclear to the public watching online, ordinary Americans have reason to ask whether the case has drifted into something darker.

We are not talking about a terrorist cell. We are talking about a YouTuber and a Lego dispute. Yet suddenly there are allegations of prior restraint, questions about due process, and a police response many viewers found hard to square with ordinary law enforcement neutrality.

Schneider reportedly fled to Mexico, while the online world tried to piece together what was happening. It is the kind of plot turn that would get rejected by a screenwriter for being too ridiculous. “The YouTuber investigating the missing Star Wars Lego collection fled the country after Utah police arrested him.”

That sentence should not exist. Yet here we are.

The cleanup

Act 3 is the attempted corporate cleanup.

Bricks & Minifigs has now closed the Salem-area store and parted ways with the most recent franchise owners. CEO Ammon McNeff has said he wants to sit down with Mansell, review the spreadsheets, consignment agreement, and point-of-sale data, return any remaining Star Wars Lego items in the store, and compensate Mansell for anything shown to be unaccounted for.

That sounds like progress. It also raises the central question again: Where are the Star Wars Legos?

If they were mostly sold, where is the full accounting? If some remain, why has it taken this long to identify and return them? If the consignment agreement was unauthorized, why should that eliminate the duty to account for property that belonged to someone else? If multiple versions of inventory records exist, who created them, and why do they differ? If corporate now says it wants to make Mansell whole, why did that require months of public pressure, lawsuits, arrests, and internet outrage?

The guardrails

Here is the larger question: Why did a Lego dispute produce behavior that looks to many observers like constitutional overreach? What was really at stake in this collection that allowed a consignment dispute to spiral into lawsuits, arrests, and First Amendment questions?

America is supposed to have guardrails. Police are not supposed to look like private security for the well connected. Courts are not supposed to silence speech merely because it embarrasses a company. Citizens are supposed to know the charges against them. Journalists, creators, and ordinary people are supposed to be able to ask uncomfortable questions without being treated like criminals.

Of course, there are limits. No one has a right to threaten, stalk, trespass, or defame. If Schneider or anyone else crossed those lines, the law can address it. But the same standard must apply in the other direction. If police abused their authority, if a court order went too far, or if a company used litigation to silence criticism rather than answer legitimate questions, that also demands accountability.

RELATED: Rainbow Batman from LEGO sparks outrage: ‘We don’t need gay Batman!’

Mark Kerrison/In Pictures/Getty Images

The question

The Bricks & Minifigs saga is not over. It may still end with a full accounting, a settlement, and the Mansell family receiving what it is owed.

But the damage has already been done.

A family tried to sell a beloved collection to help an elderly father with medical bills. A YouTuber turned the dispute into a national spectacle. A company tried to contain the fallout. Police and courts entered the story. Now everyone is asking what should have been answered at the beginning.

Where are the Legos?

Who owes the Mansell family?

And why did it take an internet firestorm to get anyone to listen?

​Lego, First amendment, Bricks & minifigs, Star wars, Utah, Corporate corruption, Courts, Opinion & analysis 

“Our earth in 1969 / Is not the planet I call mine,” W.H. Auden declares at the outset of his late poem “Doggerel by a Senior Citizen.” While acutely aware of the youth revolt then transforming the culture around him, Auden makes it clear that he is perfectly happy being stuck in the past:

Then Speech was mannerly, an Art,
Like learning not to belch or fart:
I cannot settle which is worse,
The Anti-Novel or Free Verse.

Nor are those Ph.D’s my kith,
Who dig the symbol and the myth:
I count myself a man of letters
Who writes, or hopes to, for his betters.

Dare any call Permissiveness
An educational success?
Saner those class-rooms which I sat in,
Compelled to study Greek and Latin.

Though I suspect the term is crap,
There is a Generation Gap,
Who is to blame? Those, old or young,
Who will not learn their Mother-Tongue.

These verses display a quality seldom found among today’s aging cultural figures: a complete lack of interest in courting the approval of the young. Auden was 62 when he wrote the poem; how many sexagenarians in 2026 would willingly describe themselves as “senior citizens”?

Even as counterfeit youthfulness fails to convince actual young people, it can offer them a useful warning signal.

Nor did the legendary poet make much effort to conceal the fact of his age. By then his face had become famously craggy and weathered, prompting him to quip that it resembled “a wedding cake left out in the rain.”

Perpetual maidenhood

As it happens, it was a wedding cake that helped launch pop star Madonna to worldwide fame. At the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, the then-relatively unknown 26-year-old emerged from a 17-foot-tall, three-tiered prop cake in bridal white to perform “Like a Virgin.”

Today, Madonna is five years older than Auden was when he wrote “Doggerel.” It goes without saying that as a celebrity of a certain age, she has availed herself of the surgical remedies available to those with sufficient means. And she has achieved the familiar effect: She does not look old, exactly, though neither would anyone mistake her for young. Nor does she look particularly like Madonna.

In keeping with this perpetually “youthful” image, Madge continues to perform in the same kind of skimpy stage lingerie she wore in her 20s. Perhaps aware that the effect of such outfits is now more nostalgic than erotic, she has increasingly devoted herself to courting her sizeable gay male fan base. Yet even here she appears reluctant to surrender her claim on youth culture, recently “taking over” the gay hookup app Grindr to promote her latest album.

Withered wisdom

Whatever one thinks of her music, Madonna long ago secured her place in the cultural pantheon. She has nothing left to prove. On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine that she doesn’t have something to teach. You don’t survive five decades in the public eye — weathering shifts in fashion, technology, and taste that bring lesser stars crashing back to earth — without learning a few things. But imparting the wisdom that comes with age and accomplishment would require shedding the past-its-sell-by-date “boy toy” packaging.

Many of us who aren’t famous must contend with this dilemma too. Even as a child, I cringed at the efforts of some adults to be “relatable” to me, abdicating their natural authority as if it would gain them back a few lost years.

Now, as a teacher slowly approaching my own Auden/Madonna crossroads, I hate to admit that I’ve at times found myself tempted to play the “cool” adult. Experience has taught me, however, that this pose has diminishing returns — especially in the classroom.

It also indicates a deeper moral and spiritual rot, as the late historian Christopher Lasch reminds us in his 1979 book “The Culture of Narcissism.”

RELATED: Botoxic femininity? ‘Titanic’ star bashes ‘cartoon’-faced plastic surgery addicts

Jo Hale/Getty Images

Cult of youth

Lasch’s thesis — which remains all too relevant almost half a century later — is that our modern “cult of youth” is emblematic of the nihilism and anxious obsession with the present that has overtaken so many. As he writes:

In a society that dreads old age and death, aging holds a special terror for those who fear dependence and whose self-esteem requires the admiration usually reserved for youth, beauty, celebrity, or charm. The usual defenses against the ravages of age — identification with ethical or artistic values beyond one’s immediate interests, intellectual curiosity, the consoling emotional warmth derived from happy relationships in the past — can do nothing for the narcissist.

It’s not that fillers and facelifts can’t be used with subtlety and restraint — although this rarely seems to be the case. It’s that even the most imperceptible plastic surgery suggests surrender to this nihilistic worldview. The passage of time doesn’t lead us to some greater meaning; it can only offer us decay. Where these fragile vessels take us is either unknowable or irrelevant; the important thing is to keep the paint fresh.

God’s design

This approach to physical decline may be dominant, but there remains another way. For every Madonna, we have the counter example of women like Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, and Meryl Streep, who embrace their age with elegance. The cliché rings true: Real physical attractiveness begins with inner confidence and manifests outwardly from within.

Even as counterfeit youthfulness fails to convince actual young people, it can offer them a useful warning signal. “Don’t look to me for guidance,” it seems to say. “I’m as clueless as you are.” When I need advice, when I need someone to help me view the everyday grind from a broader perspective, wrinkles and gray hair offer a certain guarantee.

They also offer me hope, especially as my own glances in the mirror become more fraught — hope that I, too, will find the serenity to resist the course of nature and the grace to accept God’s design.

​Aging, Christopher lasch, Culture, Education, Entertainment, First-person, Madonna, Meaning, Meryl streep, Nihilism, Plastic surgery, W.h. auden, Lifestyle, Narcissism 

In November, X began displaying each account’s country of origin. Unsurprisingly, this caused an uproar. Users rushed to prove that their online enemies were foreign interlopers. Many accounts that claimed to be from one country were, in fact, from another.

It was funny. But it also revealed a serious problem.

Politically engaged Americans should understand that large online followings may not reflect genuine American support.

As the developing world gains broader access to the internet, American political and cultural discourse becomes increasingly vulnerable to foreign influence.

According to the International Telecommunication Union, 5.4 billion people had internet access in 2023, roughly 67% of the world’s population. That marked a 4.7% increase from 2022. Because 93% of people in high-income countries already had internet access, most of the growth is now coming from poorer countries. The ITU reports that internet access in low-income countries increased 44.1% from 2020 to 2023. From 2022 to 2023 alone, the number of internet users in low-income countries rose 14.3%.

Simply put, the internet becomes more global every day.

What does that mean for Americans? After all, foreign users do not vote in our elections. Why should anyone care what people in slums halfway across the world say about American politics?

That objection misses the nature of the problem.

In the age of social media, clicks are king. To be important online is to have a large following. All of us, to some degree, are tempted to think this way. We see a big number on someone’s profile and assume, “This person matters.”

Audience size has always mattered in media. Television executives obsessed over ratings. But when American television dominated American culture, a large American audience usually meant actual Americans were watching. Access outside the country was limited.

That is no longer true. The internet has democratized and globalized the distribution of information. English remains the world’s dominant online language, creating a new path to political and cultural relevance. If your business is clicks, it doesn’t really matter whether those clicks come from Nigeria or Wisconsin.

There is nothing inherently wrong with appealing to an international audience. The problem comes when influencers convert foreign support into domestic political capital. Credulous observers see a large following and conclude that someone must be expressing the voice of America’s silent majority.

The silent majority of Jakarta, perhaps.

RELATED: The one word that can help you use technology — without letting it use you

VCG/VCG/Getty Images

Foreign bot networks make the problem worse by artificially boosting narratives and talking points that serve non-American interests. But even organic foreign engagement threatens the coherence of American political discourse when it is mistaken for domestic opinion.

The rise of the so-called “anti-Zionist right” offers a useful example. Since October 7, a collection of questionable internet personalities has tried to steer American right-wing discourse away from domestic concerns and toward the Israel-Palestine conflict. As with any foreign country, Israel is open to valid criticism. But the monomaniacal focus on Gaza demanded by this crowd goes far beyond normal foreign-policy debate.

Domestic support for Israel has declined, especially among Democrats and younger Americans. But anyone using social media as the primary barometer would likely assume the decline is far greater than it is. Why? Because anti-Israel content appeals to large foreign audiences, especially in the developing world. Bot networks amplify it as well.

This helps explain why Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback has put anti-Zionism at the center of his campaign. In an ad posted to X, Fishback referenced claims that Israel is committing genocide and that Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal — claims he suggested could land people in jail. Florida does have anti-Semitism laws, and while such legislation should raise concerns, asking those questions will not send Floridians to prison.

The ad drew three million views and 30,000 likes. That is more traction than most campaign ads receive online. Based on those numbers alone, you might conclude Fishback is going places.

There is only one problem: He is polling at 7%.

As it turns out, catering to the anti-Israel online sphere is not a clear path to electoral success as a Republican. A poll of attendees at the recent Turning Point USA America Fest conference found that only 13.3% did not believe Israel is an ally of the United States.

Fishback’s campaign shows what happens when political actors mistake the internet for real life. The size of your reach matters, but so does its composition. It is not only how many people you reach; it is who they are.

Larger influencers have made the same mistake. Candace Owens has bragged about her sizable international audience. She once claimed that her documentary on Brigitte Macron went viral in China. I believe it. But millions of Chinese viewers watching an American political broadcaster does not mean Americans should treat her as a serious representative of domestic public opinion.

RELATED: Can we have online safety without total surveillance? Yes. Here’s how.

Deagreez/Getty Images

So what can be done?

First, every social media platform should follow X’s lead and display a user’s country of origin. The method is not foolproof, but it is better than nothing. For accounts above a certain size, platforms should also show a breakdown of the audience’s countries of origin.

Second, platforms should consider allowing users to region-lock their accounts. A region-locking feature would let users prevent people outside approved countries from seeing or engaging with their posts. Such a tool would reduce engagement, but many users would gladly trade raw reach for the ability to discuss contentious domestic issues with their countrymen without being swarmed by foreign accounts.

These measures would mitigate some of the downsides of an increasingly non-Western internet. But the problem cannot be solved entirely through platform policy.

What conservatives need most is awareness. Politically engaged Americans should understand that large online followings may not reflect genuine American support. They should be skeptical of influencers whose apparent domestic relevance depends heavily on foreign audiences.

There is no going back. The international cat is out of the bag. We cannot stop social media figures from catering to foreign audiences.

But we can stop pretending those audiences speak for America.

​Foreign influence, International audience, October 7, Israel, America, Internet security, X, Zionists, Opinion & analysis 

After the extremely popular Spencer Pratt fell behind no-name Nithya Raman in the Los Angeles mayoral race, BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler believed there was possible election fraud.

Now, she’s sure of it.

“Today we have crimes detected for you,” Wheeler says. “But let’s make one thing very clear first. The California election system is completely rigged. And you and I have zero obligation to simply accept that because California is ‘Commie-fornia.’”

These “crimes detected” were covered in a recent report by the New York Post, where it found that “thousands of homeless voters … were registered to vote at L.A. shelters, despite many not living there or the facilities not having any beds.”

And in an interview this week with Will Chamberlain, he theorized to Wheeler that “there was going to be some centralized location where an unreasonable amount of these homeless people all had their ballots sent.”

“That’s exactly what the New York Post found,” Wheeler says.

“As Spencer Pratt was eliminated by Nithya Raman in the mayor’s race on Monday night, it can be revealed that one drop-in center … that received $600,000 from the socialist candidate … had 185 voters at the address but offers no accommodations,” the article reads.

“So not only is this one of the centralized locations that Will speculated about yesterday, 185 people registered here, doesn’t even have beds, and it’s tied monetarily to Nithya Raman. The New York Post says the revelations have prompted U.S. Attorney [for the Central District of California] Bill Essayli to say that he will investigate the concerns uncovered by the Post,” Wheeler comments.

The Post also uncovered that the drop-in center that received $600,000 from Raman was taxpayer funded.

“The corruption of these people, it can never be overstated,” Wheeler says.

When the Post contacted Raman’s campaign as well as the L.A. shelter, not only did the campaign not respond — but a photograph of Raman presenting a check was taken down from the shelter’s website.

“This is taxpayer money that Nithya Raman gave to this place,” Wheeler says, adding, “Your money if you live in the city of Los Angeles.”

Want more from Liz Wheeler?

To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Blazetv host, California election, Election fraud, Liz wheeler, New york post, Nithya raman, Spencer pratt, The liz wheeler show