A father fell asleep after bringing his toddler daughter into a hot tub with him in the middle of the night, and she drowned, police in Florida said.

Deputies and rescue personnel responded to a home on Nice Court in Kissimmee just after 3:30 a.m. Dec. 13 regarding an unresponsive child who appeared to have drowned in a hot tub, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said.

‘It’s very hard losing a niece this way, and then we have so much hurt for my brother because he’s just so distraught and tore up.’

A family from Washington, D.C., was staying at the residence, which was listed as an Airbnb, officials said.

The 20-month-old girl was transported to AdventHealth Celebration where she was pronounced dead shortly after 4:30 a.m., officials said.

Sheriff’s office detectives responded to the home to investigate the incident, officials said, and the father said he brought his daughter into the hot tub and fell asleep while holding her. The father reported waking up to find the child unresponsive in his arms while still in the hot tub, officials said. According to WUSA-TV, he said the child was face down when he awakened.

Following the investigation, detectives determined that the father — 33-year-old Reynard Tyrone Hough — was neglectful in the death of his daughter and arrested him on a charge of child neglect causing great bodily harm.

On Dec. 14, detectives added an additional charge of aggravated manslaughter of a child, officials said, adding that Hough was in custody at the Osceola County Jail.

Hough told detectives he was drinking that night, and police say alcohol likely contributed to him falling asleep, WESH-TV reported. Investigators told WUSA they saw various alcoholic drinks at the scene.

Hough also told detectives he ingested two different narcotics before getting into the hot tub with his daughter, WESH added.

RELATED: Dad visits ‘the Adult Shoppe’ while his kids sit in 125-degree car for almost an hour, cops say

“It’s very hard losing a niece this way, and then we have so much hurt for my brother because he’s just so distraught and tore up,” Angel Hough, the sister of Reynard Tyrone Hough, told WESH.

Capt. Kim Montes with the sheriff’s office added to WESH: “I feel bad for this mom and dad; they were devastated, and they had another 6-month-old child at the home. We do know that watching two small kids can be challenging.”

Hough appeared in court last Monday and was issued no bond, WESH noted.

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​Drowning, Florida, Hot tub, Father and daughter, Toddler, Alcohol, Drugs, Arrest, Child neglect causing great bodily harm, Aggravated manslaughter, Crime 

A Utah man pretending to be a woman has learned his fate after pleading guilty last month to murdering his parents and assaulting his brother in June 2024.

On Friday, 30-year-old Mia Bailey, born Collin Troy Bailey, received two consecutive sentences of 25 years to life plus an additional consecutive sentence of up to five years after pleading guilty to two counts of aggravated murder and one count of aggravated assault in connection with the gruesome shooting.

‘I would do it again. I hate them.’

“If only I had gotten help, this would have been preventable,” Bailey said in a statement read by his attorney, Ryan Stout, according to the New York Post. The statement added that Bailey was “sincerely, deeply sorry” and that his newfound “religious beliefs as a Muslim” would make the death penalty an “appropriate … atonement” for the crime.

“It makes me want to die because I can’t live with myself.”

Bailey had previously asked permission to skip the sentencing hearing, claiming that the stress of it might lead to a nervous breakdown, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. Judge Keith Barnes of the Fifth District Court of Utah denied that request.

On June 18, 2024, Bailey shot and killed his parents, 70-year-old Joseph Bailey and 69-year-old Gail Bailey, in their home in Washington City, Utah. Joseph Bailey was struck twice, and his wife was struck four times.

One of Mia Bailey’s brothers was also in the home at the time, barricaded inside a bedroom with his wife. Mia Bailey shot through the bedroom door but did not injure anyone inside, according to reports. The husband and wife then fled to a neighbor’s house to call police.

Following his arrest on June 19, Bailey allegedly told investigators: “I would do it again. I hate them.”

RELATED: Groomed for violence? The dark world of furries and transgenderism in America’s classrooms

Bill Oxford/Getty Images

Two of Bailey’s siblings spoke at the sentencing hearing, though whether either of them was the third victim in the attack is unclear.

“What’s best for us and what’s best for Mia is probably staying in prison for as long as possible,” Cory Bailey said.

Dustin Bailey went farther, noting that the family fully supports “LGBTQ rights,” but that the “powerful hormones” Mia Bailey had taken exacerbated his “psychiatric crisis.”

“Providing powerful hormones to a person in a psychiatric crisis without proper psychiatric safeguards is not affirming care. It is reckless. … It acted as an accelerant, intensifying instability, impairing judgment, and compounding risk. That failure harmed Mia, and it endangered our parents,” Dustin Bailey said.

In arguing for concurrent rather than consecutive sentences, attorney Ryan Stout noted that Mia Bailey had been diagnosed with several mental illnesses: autism, psychosis, schizophrenia, ADHD, OCD.

While Judge Barnes issued consecutive sentences, the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole will ultimately determine how much time Bailey serves.

Washington City is also the home of Tyler Robinson, the suspect accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk in September. Robinson’s alleged romantic partner, Lance Twiggs, reportedly identifies as transgender.

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Several forces are converging right now, and the result is a perfect storm of confusion, misinformation, apathy, and — most dangerously — runaway conspiracy thinking.

For a long time, I was consumed by true crime: real-life stories filled with mystery, fear, and emotional whiplash. I wasn’t alone. The genre became a full-blown cottage industry, complete with massive conferences, prestige documentaries, podcasts, and feature films.

The problem isn’t asking questions. It is speculation and insinuation masquerading as insight.

At first, I saw little harm in it — especially when victims or family members were included in the storytelling. But once Hollywood began churning out sensationalized, “based on a true story” dramatizations of real-life horrors, something felt wrong.

Then I heard the victims’ loved ones speak out.

They described the pain these projects inflicted — how strangers dissected their trauma, speculated about their grief, and turned the worst moments of their lives into consumable entertainment. In some cases, families practically begged studios to stop profiting from their suffering. The pleas went unanswered.

There is little sign that Tinseltown plans to slow down. Personal tragedy is no longer treated as personal. We’ve crossed a line into a world where strangers don’t just demand access to these stories — they claim ownership of them.

That entitlement hardens quickly. It manifests as amateur investigations, armchair sleuthing, and the conviction that someone online can solve what professionals could not. Too often, that obsession mutates into wild conspiracy theories — narratives untethered from evidence that deepen the damage inflicted on real people already living with loss.

Fueling all of this is another force: social media addiction.

Millions of Americans live on their phones. Filters are gone. Boundaries between public and private have crumbled. Every tragedy becomes content. Every rumor becomes a reel. Every high-profile event risks turning into a true-crime nightmare, complete with TikTok theories and Instagram speculation.

Not all of it is malicious. But much of it is steeped in a moral carelessness that should unsettle us. And while content creators deserve scrutiny, they aren’t the only culprits. Plenty of us are liking, sharing, and amplifying the madness.

That dynamic reached a horrifying peak on September 10, when conservative and Christian commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

Almost immediately, conspiracy theories spread — many debunked within hours. In one case, a popular Christian apologist, a friend of Kirk who had been filming him speaking at Utah Valley University that day, was falsely accused of signaling the shooter through hand gestures. The claim was nonsense. It collapsed under minimal scrutiny.

No matter. The damage was done.

Other theories followed. Some insinuated betrayal by those closest to Kirk. Others implied inside involvement without evidence. Each claim compounded the grief of a family and community already reeling from an unspeakable loss.

The problem isn’t asking questions. It’s speculation and insinuation masquerading as insight.

If someone is going to promote conspiracy theories, basic decency demands evidence. To date, none has been produced. And yet the claims persist — entertained, shared, and believed.

RELATED: ‘Conspiracy theory’ is just media code for ‘we hope this never comes out’

Photo by Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images

I can’t entirely blame people for their skepticism. In 2016, I wrote a book called “Fault Line” warning that media bias carries real-world consequences. When trust erodes, people stop listening to official narratives altogether. Combine that with the government’s incoherent and often dishonest messaging during COVID, and the ground was primed for disbelief.

For years, progressives dismissed concerns about institutional credibility. Now we’re living with the consequences. A toxic cocktail of distrust, trauma, and algorithmic amplification has left many people — especially the young — drunk with suspicion and untethered from reality.

Add in social media saturation, obsession with true crime, collapsing trust in institutions, and the undeniable presence of evil in the world, and you have a generation raised inside a pressure cooker of dysfunction.

We need to cling to truth. We need to model discernment. We need to help people learn how to question responsibly — without tumbling into conspiracism — and how to rebuild boundaries that preserve perspective and humanity.

Truth-seeking should guide us, not digital frenzy or the dark impulses of the human soul. If we fail to make that distinction, the damage will only deepen.

We must be better.

​Opinion & analysis, Conspiracy theory, Charlie kirk, Truth, Lies, Question, Social media, Media bias, Conservatives, Tpusa, Am fest 

While the Trump administration continues to target illegal alien criminal offenders, gang members, and national security threats as the primary focus of its mass deportation initiative, it has recently begun zeroing in on two other groups: Somalis and Afghans.

Earlier this year, President Trump terminated Temporary Protected Status for Afghans, and in late November, he announced his intention to do the same for Somalis after reports of mass fraud were exposed in Minnesota’s Somali communities.

Mark Levin is overjoyed that the Trump administration is targeting these two groups. Both, he reminds us, are “Islamists,” meaning assimilation is impossible.

Islamists, he says, are people “who have no intention of having allegiance to our country [and] no intention of joining our culture.”

“Islamism is incompatible with Americanism. It’s incompatible with the Judeo-Christian system,” he says, noting that peaceful Muslims are not the same as Islamists.

Unfortunately, there are many people with platforms in our country who are spreading the narrative that America does not have a Judeo-Christian foundation, but these people are “on the Qatar payroll,” says Levin.

Combine this with the spreading false narrative bolstered by America-hating Democrats who want to import blue voters with the massive influx of Islamists, and we’ve got a situation that is “very diabolical,” he warns.

These immigrants are “not vetted” and are “from war-torn countries with terrorist activity,” and yet because a large portion of the nation doesn’t believe that America is built on principles incompatible with Islamism, there’s a massive fight to keep these immigrants here.

President Trump’s unapologetic efforts to stop this disastrous immigration are valiant, says Levin. “He’s done things that no other president in my mind would even think about doing — no more third-world entrance into this country until we get this figured out. That is genius. That is courageous.”

The left is, of course, framing him as a racist, xenophobic bigot, but none of that is true. President Trump simply understands the disastrous outcomes of welcoming people who come from economically failing, violence-ridden, regime-controlled countries into America.

“[Trump is] saying, ‘Look, I can’t fix that, but we’re not going to bring those people into this country,”’ says Levin.

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Mark Levin?

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​Levintv, Mark levin, Blazetv, Blaze media, Illegal immigration, Somalians, Afghans, Tps, Revoked tps, Immigration reform, Mass deportations, Levin 

Several speakers at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest offered competing and ostensibly irreconcilable views of the way forward for the MAGA coalition, in some cases identifying one another as cowards, saboteurs, or worse.

In his speech closing out the conference in Phoenix, Vice President JD Vance emphasized that “President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests.”

‘Do I have disagreements with Tucker Carlson? Sure. I have disagreements with most of my friends.’

Vance, the Republican front-runner going into 2028 whom TPUSA CEO Erika Kirk endorsed last week for president, faces mounting public pressure to throw Tucker Carlson under the bus over his criticism of Israel and perceived bigotry as well as to censure Nicholas Fuentes, the head of the so-called Groypers who has been particularly critical of the vice president.

Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” told the Washington Post, “The reasonable actors can see that JD is being a reasonable arbiter of this debate, and that’s a really important signal to send out — that Israel is our ally. They’re an important ally. They’re not our only concern, though.”

“I think JD understands the needs, wants, and concerns of young Americans as well, if not better than, any other leading politician in the country,” added Kolvet.

“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform,” Vance told the crowd of thousands gathered on Sunday.

“We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”

The vice president underscored that the “America First movement” constitutes a big tent welcoming those who seek to make America “richer, stronger, safer, and prouder.”

In a recent interview with Sohrab Ahmari, the U.S. editor of UnHerd, Vance provided some insights into why he refused to denounce Carlson or waste any time discussing Fuentes.

“Tucker’s a friend of mine,” he told Ahmari. “And do I have disagreements with Tucker Carlson? Sure. I have disagreements with most of my friends, especially those who work in politics. You know this. Most people who know me know this. I’m [also] a very loyal person, and I am not going to get into the business of throwing friends under the bus.”

RELATED: Poll provides clear idea of who’s poised to sweep 2028 Republican presidential primary

Photo by Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images

Vance noted further that “the idea that Tucker Carlson — who has one of the largest podcasts in the world, who has millions of listeners, who supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election, who supported me in the 2024 election — the idea that his views are somehow completely anathema to conservatism, that he has no place in the conservative movement, is frankly absurd.”

As for Fuentes, Vance intimated that a condemnation of the 27-year-old host of “America First” podcast wasn’t worthwhile.

“[Fuentes’] influence within Donald Trump’s administration, and within a whole host of institutions on the right, is vastly overstated, and frankly, it’s overstated by people who want to avoid having a foreign-policy conversation about America’s relationship with Israel,” Vance said in the interview.

‘Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat s**t.’

While the vice president maintains that Israel is an “important ally,” he indicated that he welcomes substantive disagreements with the Middle Eastern nation as well as debates at home about American foreign policy.

Vance told Ahmari that anti-Semitism and all forms of ethnic hatred “have no place in the conservative movement” but noted that “if you believe racism is bad, Fuentes should occupy one second of your focus, and the people with actual political power who worked so hard to discriminate against white men should occupy many hours of it.”

RELATED: DEI hustlers lash out after Trump official solicits discrimination complaints from white men

Photo by Caylo Seals/Getty Images

Although recognizing Fuentes as an apparent sideshow to an important conversation, Vance did make a point of telling Ahmari, “Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is [former Biden press secretary] Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat s**t.”

On the theme of America First’s genuine spirit of inclusion, the vice president made clear in his AmericaFest speech that the Trump administration and the broader movement supporting it has “relegated DEI to the dustbin of history, which is exactly where it belongs.”

“In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white any more. And if you’re an Asian, you don’t have to talk around your skin color when you’re applying for college, because we judge people based on who they are, not on ethnicity and things they can’t control,” said Vance. “We don’t persecute you for being male, for being straight, for being gay, for being anything. The only thing that we demand is that you be a great American patriot.”

‘It is better to die a patriot than live a coward.’

In addition to risking offense with his acknowledgement that white Americans needn’t apologize for their pigmentation and with his refusal to betray a friend, Vance realized the fears articulated in recent years by liberals and anti-Christian activists by noting in his speech that “the only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation.”

For the benefit of those who might strategically misconstrue his meaning, Vance clarified that Americans don’t have to be Christian but that “Christianity is America’s creed,” despite the decades-long campaign by the left to remove Christianity from public life.

“That creed motivated our understanding of natural law and rights, our sense of duty to one’s neighbor, the conviction that the strong must protect the weak, and the belief in individual conscience,” continued the vice president. “Even our famously American idea of religious liberty is a Christian concept.”

The vice president noted further that the “fruits of true Christianity” are good men like his murdered friend, Charlie Kirk.

“The fruits of true Christianity are good husbands, patient fathers, builders of great things, and slayers of dragons,” said Vance. “And yes, men who are willing to die for a principle if that’s what God asks them to do. Because so many of us recognize that it is better to die a patriot than live a coward.”

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​Jd vance, Vance, Amfest, Americafest, Maga, America first, Dei, Diversity equity inclusion, Vice president, Election 2028, Republican, Conservative, Culture war, Christianity, Faith, Politics