In a move anticipated by many in the medical industry, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would reclassify marijuana as a seemingly less dangerous drug.

On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order that would reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug, in accordance with the Controlled Substances Act.

‘It’s never safe to use powerful controlled substances in recreational manners.’

“I’m pleased to announce that I will be signing an executive order to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III controlled substance with legitimate medical uses,” Trump announced from the Oval Office, surrounded by doctors, researchers, and others.

RELATED: RFK Jr. moves to ban transgender procedures for children: ‘This is not medicine; it is malpractice’

Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images

During the ceremony, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said that the executive order will allow “millions of Americans on Medicare to become eligible to receive CBD … at no charge if their doctors recommend them.”

According to a White House fact sheet, the reclassification of marijuana to Schedule III status will open up more opportunities for research to test the uses of medical marijuana.

Currently, marijuana is in the same classification as drugs like heroin, LSD, ecstasy, methaqualone, and peyote, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The reclassification will place marijuana in the same schedule as Tylenol with codeine, ketamine, anabolic steroids, and testosterone.

However, this executive order will have no impact on the recreational use of marijuana, as Trump clarified at the signing.

Trump added, “I want to emphasize that the order I am about to sign … doesn’t legalize marijuana in any way, shape, or form — and in no way sanctions its use as a recreational drug. … It’s never safe to use powerful controlled substances in recreational manners.”

“President Trump is committed to ensuring our seniors, our veterans, and all Americans have access to the best medical treatments and research infrastructure in the world,” the White House fact sheet said.

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More than 300 residents in Colorado received federal housing benefits despite being ineligible, including over 200 deceased individuals, according to an audit.

The New York Post reported on Thursday that an audit by the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that 221 deceased individuals and another 87 ineligible residents received taxpayer-funded housing benefits.

‘From deceased tenants to individuals receiving HUD housing benefits who were never supposed to, the Department has questions for HUD-supported housing providers in Colorado, and we expect prompt answers and enforcement action.’

The department is requiring an additional 2,519 beneficiaries to undergo verification to confirm their eligibility.

A source told the Post that HUD found that the fraud involved most of Colorado’s 59 public housing agencies and was “particularly pronounced in the Denver Housing Authority,” the news outlet wrote.

HUD provides approximately $440 million in taxpayer funds to Colorado’s PHAs, which oversee 38,000 leased units. These units are either public housing or covered by housing choice vouchers. Beneficiaries are typically required to contribute roughly 30% of their income toward housing.

HUD is expected to require PHAs to ramp up their beneficiary vetting efforts and remove ineligible recipients. Additionally, PHAs that provide benefits to ineligible beneficiaries will be required to reimburse the misused taxpayer funds. Those who fail to comply will face additional sanctions, the Post reported.

RELATED: Americans priced out while foreigners pour in: Trump admin report slams Biden for spike in rental costs

Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images

The department’s findings have reportedly prompted a federal investigation into Colorado’s housing providers.

“From deceased tenants to individuals receiving HUD housing benefits who were never supposed to, the Department has questions for HUD-supported housing providers in Colorado, and we expect prompt answers and enforcement action,” a HUD spokesperson told the Post.

RELATED: Democrat-led city’s alleged ‘race-based’ housing strategy prompts federal investigation

President Donald Trump, HUD Secretary Scott Turner. Photographer: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Earlier this week, the Washington Examiner reported that HUD sent federal investigators to Minnesota to look into potential housing fraud amid reports that $1 billion in taxpayer funds was funneled primarily to those of Somali descent.

HUD launched an investigation last week into Boston’s alleged “race-based” housing program, claiming that the city’s diversity, equity, and inclusion practices may “violate civil rights protections under the Fair Housing Act and Title VI.”

President Donald Trump unveiled a budget plan in May that proposed drastically cutting HUD’s discretionary funding by over 40%.

Denver Housing Authority did not respond to a request for comment.

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Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is leading the charge to protect children across America from life-shattering transgender procedures.

Kennedy announced a new declaration on Thursday moving to ban sex-altering operations, hormone replacement therapy, and other irreversible medical procedures that target children suffering from gender dysphoria. Rather than affirming tragic delusions and relying on taxpayers to subsidize these experimental interventions, Kennedy’s health department is working to pull funding and impose enforcement actions on the medical institutions that profit off of vulnerable children.

‘We’re done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits.’

“The Trump administration will not stand by while ideology, misinformation, and propaganda push vulnerable young people into decisions they cannot fully understand and that they can never reverse,” Kennedy said Thursday.

“There is divine worth in every person, and it shines most brightly in our children. That worth commands us to protect them.”

RELATED: ‘This is a must-win’: These 4 Republicans voted against banning trans surgeries on children

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Kennedy was flanked by numerous health officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, Republican lawmakers, and even Chloe Cole, a de-transitioner who described her own traumatic experience with the medical industry.

“It’s not too late to accept the beautiful way God has created you,” Cole said during her remarks.

Kennedy went on to describe the predatory nature of the medical institutions that convince American youth that sex is malleable and that a life-altering, irreversible medical procedure is a one-size-fits-all solution to the mental health struggles for these children.

RELATED: ‘Send in the next guy’: Nicki Minaj savages Newsom over his desire to ‘see trans kids’

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

“They betray the estimated 300,000 American youth ages 13 to 17 conditioned to believe that sex can be changed,” Kennedy said. “They betrayed their Hippocratic Oath to ‘do no harm.’ So-called gender affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people. This is not medicine; it is malpractice.”

“We’re done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the well-being of children.”

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While some conservatives believe we’ve won the battle against DEI, BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere thinks that couldn’t be further from the truth. And a new piece in Compact by Jacob Savage called “The Lost Generation” only echoes Burguiere’s sentiment — revealing that what has been done in the name of diversity has stolen livelihoods and ruined professional lives.

“In 2011, the year I moved to Los Angeles, white men were 48% of lower-level TV writers; by 2024, they accounted for just 11.9%. The Atlantic’s editorial staff went from 53% male and 89% white in 2013 to 36% male and 66% white in 2024,” Savage writes.

“White men fell from 39% of tenure-track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014 to 18% in 2023. In retrospect, 2014 was the hinge, the year DEI became institutionalized across American life,” he continues.

“I had not really ever honestly thought about it this way, is why it’s such an interesting piece,” Burguiere comments.

“As the Trump administration takes a chainsaw to the diversity, equity, and inclusion apparatus, there’s a tendency to portray DEI as a series of well-meaning but ineffectual HR modules. … This may be how Boomer and Gen X white men experienced DEI. But for white male Millennials, DEI wasn’t a gentle rebalancing — it was a profound shift in how power and prestige were distributed,” Savage writes.

“This isn’t a story about all white men. It’s a story about white male Millennials in professional America, about those who stayed, and who (mostly) stayed quiet. The same identity, a decade apart, meant entirely different professional fates,” he continues.

“If you were 40 in 2014 — born in 1974, beginning your career in the late ’90s — you were already established. If you were 30 in 2014, you hit the wall. Because the mandates to diversify didn’t fall on older white men, who in many cases still wield enormous power: They landed on us,” he adds.

When institutions who heralded diversity lost a person of color, they would only fill that position with another person of color — white men or women need not apply.

“That’s just racism,” Burguiere comments. “OK? If you’re taking someone who is one race and replacing them with a person of the same race, you are making a decision based on skin color, that’s racism. That’s what that is.”

After George Floyd’s death in 2020, several news outlets promised to make a massive change to the color of their workforce, with NPR declaring that “diversity was nothing less than its ‘North Star.’”

“Shouldn’t the truth be your North Star if you’re a journalistic organization?” Burguiere asks. “If you’re NPR and your taxpayers are paying for your entire organization or at least a giant chunk of it, maybe your North Star should be America, right?”

Want more from Stu?

To enjoy more of Stu’s lethal wit, wisdom, and mockery, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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During President Trump’s first term, he signed the First Step Act — the most comprehensive criminal justice reform bill in decades — into law. He now has a chance to take a “second step” by rightsizing federal supervision of people on probation — an often overlooked public safety gap — with the introduction of the Safer Supervision Act.

I worked with the president and many bipartisan leaders to pass the First Step Act. I have also been on supervision and spend time with law enforcement leaders across the country. The Safe Supervision Act will empower our federal probation officers and judges to devote previous supervision resources to the people most likely to commit more crimes.

The Safer Supervision Act is the smart, responsible way to make our communities safer — and it is a great ‘second step’ for President Trump.

Currently the federal system for supervised release — the period of monitoring that follows incarceration — is structured in a way that actively undermines this goal. By overwhelming federal probation officers with low-risk individuals, the current system diverts attention and resources away from the true threats.

Due to the sprawling, largely automatic application of supervised release, our federal system currently monitors more than 110,000 individuals. This policy forces federal probation officers to spread their time dangerously thin.

When officers must dedicate precious time and limited resources to tracking individuals who have already demonstrated a low risk of re-offending, they are left with insufficient bandwidth to provide the oversight and intervention required by high-risk, violent offenders.

The bipartisan Safer Supervision Act is a targeted piece of legislation that corrects this dangerous imbalance. It is a genuine public safety bill that has earned the strong endorsement of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Major Cities Chiefs Association, and the National District Attorneys Association, among others. This bill’s promise is simple: More efficient use of law enforcement resources will reduce repeat crimes.

The core mechanism of the act is the restoration of individualized assessment. Under the current system, supervision is imposed in virtually every case. The Safer Supervision Act requires courts to conduct an individualized risk assessment before imposing supervision.

By reserving supervised release for cases that genuinely warrant it, this change moves toward a gold standard of effective supervision endorsed by professional associations such as the American Probation and Parole Association.

The strongest supervision model ensures that intensive supervision and rehabilitation efforts are directed to the highest-risk areas. The bill would allow federal law enforcement to operate as true risk managers, directing resources where they can have the most effect on those who pose the greatest public threat.

RELATED: Mexico has cartel armies. Blue America has cartel politics.

Photo by HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images

The bill helps break the cycle of recidivism by providing a strong incentive for successful rehabilitation. For low-risk individuals who have served their time and demonstrated good conduct, unnecessarily prolonged supervision terms become a counterproductive barrier. They inhibit successful re-entry by making it difficult to find stable employment and housing, which paradoxically increases the likelihood that the individual will re-offend.

The Safer Supervision Act establishes a process for early termination of supervision for individuals who have served half their term (or two-thirds for violent offenses) and have maintained good behavior. By giving people a clear finish line and rewarding sustained compliance, it dramatically increases the incentive for positive life changes. A successfully terminated supervision term means one less individual returning to crime, thereby enhancing the overall safety of their neighborhood.

Finally the act shows intelligence in addressing substance-use violations, treating them as opportunities for intervention rather than instant triggers for renewed incarceration. The bill creates an extremely narrow carve-out, giving judges discretion for minor offenses.

Under current law, mandatory re-imprisonment is required for these minor violations, often derailing successful rehabilitation and costing taxpayers significantly. The Safer Supervision Act empowers judges to prioritize treatment, counseling, and swift rehabilitation over immediate, expensive, and ineffective re-incarceration.

The support for the Safer Supervision Act is the most bipartisan coalition we have seen since the First Step Act. It is endorsed by police chiefs and prosecutors who understand the operational realities of crime and by fiscal conservatives demanding accountability for federal spending.

By adopting this bill, Congress can deliver a modern, evidence-based supervision system that ensures limited resources go to our highest-risk individuals, minimizes government waste, and delivers lasting public safety improvements.

The Safer Supervision Act is the smart, responsible way to make our communities safer — and it is a great “second step” for President Trump.

​Trump, Public safety, Prison reform, First step act, Safer supervision act, Repeat offenders, Probation, Opinion & analysis, Recidivism 

The Trump administration is taking aim at some naturalized Americans who committed fraud, according to a New York Times report.

The report says new guidance was sent to the field offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Tuesday ordering them to “supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month.” The report says that in the last eight years, only about 120 such cases have been filed.

‘I don’t think we’re anywhere close to denaturalizing too many people.’

Legally, naturalized immigrants can have their citizenship taken away if they commit fraud, though the report suggests that the Trump administration could clamp down on other cases that include applicants making mistakes on their paperwork.

“It’s no secret that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ war on fraud includes prioritizing those who’ve unlawfully obtained U.S. citizenship — especially under the previous administration,” said USCIS spokesperson Matthew Tragesser, according to the Times.

“We will pursue denaturalization proceedings for those individuals lying or misrepresenting themselves during the naturalization process,” he added. “We look forward to continuing to work with the Department of Justice to restore integrity to America’s immigration system.”

Amanda Baran, a former USCIS senior official in the Biden administration, criticized the order.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that citizenship and naturalization are too precious and fundamental to our democracy for the government to take it away on their whim,” she said. “Instead of wasting resources digging through Americans’ files, USCIS should do its job of processing applications, as Congress mandated.”

RELATED: AOC claims ICE targets 6-year-olds in her district during crazed speech on immigration

Others who support further restrictions on immigration say the order isn’t enough.

“I don’t think we’re anywhere close to denaturalizing too many people,” said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies.

About 800,000 people are naturalized every year, according to the report. Those who have their citizenship stripped usually become permanent legal residents.

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A Texas male with 37 prior arrests was released from jail, cut off his ankle monitor, then went on a crime spree, stealing over $200,000 in jewelry, KSAT-TV reported, citing the San Antonio Police Department and new documents.

Michael Allen Loving, 38, was arrested again Tuesday after being accused in connection with a string of recent robberies and thefts, namely from pawn shops and mall jewelry stores, the station said.

“I would say that it’s brazen that he just walks in, in the middle of the day,” said Camelia Juarez, a SAPD public information officer, according to KSAT. “He will just smash the glass, break it and take off with [the jewelry].”

More from the station:

Arrest affidavits related to Loving’s most recent arrests detail how he used that “smash and grab” technique at JCPenney at North Star Mall in October and at an EZ Pawn shop on West Woodlawn Avenue earlier this month.

The affidavits said that he stole more than $37,000 worth of gold chains from JCPenney and another $45,000-plus in jewelry from the EZ Pawn shop.

In both cases, Loving walked in and specifically asked employees to show him what he referred to as “cubans,” some of the most expensive jewelry in the display cases, the affidavit said.

Loving smashed the glass cases in both businesses, grabbed the jewelry, and ran off, KSAT said, citing the arrest affidavits.

Loving also threatened EZ Pawn shop workers with a gun, police told the station.

“After he threatened those two employees at the EZ Pawn, he went to dozens of other jewelry stores,” Juarez added to KSAT.

Juarez said Loving went on to steal more than $150,000 in jewelry from another business, the station said.

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

Prior to his crime spree, Loving was arrested in connection with a smash-and-grab theft at an H-E-B on South Zarzamora Street, KSAT said, adding that police said he hit someone with his car as he fled. Officers later found the vehicle abandoned and found Loving — who had removed all of his clothing, the station said.

He was soon released from the Bexar County jail with an ankle monitor — then just days later, he cut off the ankle monitor and went on his crime spree, police told KSAT.

The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office told Blaze News on Wednesday morning that Loving is behind bars.

Juarez said investigators believe Loving has targeted other business owners who have not yet reported crimes, the station said, adding that other potential victims should call SAPD’s Property Crimes Division at 210-207-8326.

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Two Haitian men have been accused of using their small Boston-based retail stores as a front for a $7 million food stamp fraud scheme.

The United States Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts announced charges against 74-year-old Antonio Bonheur and 21-year-old Saul Alisme. Authorities arrested both men on Wednesday and charged them with one count of food stamp fraud, which carries a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

‘The fraud was shocking and glaring.’

Court documents revealed Bonheur is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Alisme is a Haitian citizen with lawful permanent residence in the U.S.

Bonheur owned Jesula Variety Store, a 150 square-foot retail space, and Alisme owned Saul Mache Mixe Store, a 500 square-foot location. Both establishments were located in Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood.

Despite the stores’ small footprints, they redeemed millions of dollars’ worth of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, ranging from $100,000 to $500,000 per month. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the redeemed funds outpaced those of a nearby full-service supermarket, which redeems approximately $82,000 per month.

Bonheur was allegedly receiving his own SNAP benefits, which he used to transfer for cash at his store.

RELATED: $500 million in SNAP funds is reportedly spent on fast food because of state program

Jesula Variety Store. Image source: United States Attorney’s Office criminal complaint

Despite 70% of the stores’ SNAP transactions exceeding $95, they stocked “little legitimate food inventory,” the attorney’s office found.

“During undercover operations conducted at both businesses over the course of the investigation, SNAP benefits were allegedly trafficked for cash on four occasions from Jesula Variety Store and on two occasions from Saul Mache Mixe Store,” the attorney’s office wrote. “In each instance, the defendants themselves allegedly worked the cash registers and personally exchanged SNAP benefits for cash. Both stores were also allegedly observed selling liquor in exchange for SNAP benefits.”

Additionally, the stores allegedly sold a donated food product intended for food-insecure children overseas and not authorized for retail sale.

RELATED: Trump admin drops hammer on SNAP scammers after finding 186K dead people collecting benefits

Saul Mache Mixe Store. Image source: United States Attorney’s Office criminal complaint

“To be certain, these were not supermarkets. They were not full-service grocers. It would be a huge stretch to even call them convenience stores,” said U.S. Attorney Leah Foley during a Wednesday press conference. “There is no plausible way SNAP-eligible food could have been purchased from these stores for this long. Yet these two stores are alleged to have illicitly trafficked nearly $7 million in SNAP benefits.”

“The fraud was shocking and glaring,” she added.

Foley explained that the investigation also uncovered alleged “financial manipulations.”

“Because the stores had little legitimate inventory, and almost no lawful income, the defendants relied almost entirely on [U.S. Department of Agriculture]-funded SNAP redemptions,” Foley continued. “To conceal their fraud, they used numerous bank accounts to transfer the SNAP benefits around between the accounts they controlled to create the illusion of legitimate business activity.”

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