The Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has endeavored to radically improve American nutrition and address those elements of the food system that are contributing to the chronic disease epidemic.

The department has, for instance, flipped the “corrupt food pyramid,” worked to remove petroleum-based synthetic dyes from America’s food supply, raised awareness about the health risks of eating ultra-processed foods, and expanded research into nutrition and metabolic health.

On Wednesday, Kennedy announced a new Make America Healthy Again initiative aimed at curbing chronic disease and improving nutrition: teaching Americans to cook.

‘Eating together as a family is a sacred ritual.’

Kennedy joined Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and USDA national nutrition adviser Dr. Ben Carson in announcing the commencement of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Strategic Partnerships, which the USDA characterized as an effort to encourage “the private sector to participate in educating the American people about the importance of the Guidelines and how they serve as the foundation to better eating.”

During the press conference Wednesday, Kennedy noted, “Every American can feed themselves cheaper than fast food.”

A YouGov survey taken last month found that 36% of Americans said they cook food daily; 40% said they cook a few times a week; 10% said they cook once a week; and 2% said they never cook.

A study published last year in the journal Current Developments in Nutrition noted:

Poor dietary quality, including high intakes of ultraprocessed food and food-away-from-home, is associated with an array of adverse health outcomes, including increased BMI, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Home food preparation, “cooking,” offers an affordable strategy for reducing ultraprocessed food intake and away-from-home intake.

The same study said that “the percentage of United States adults cooking has increased since 2003; however, the overall mean time spent cooking among cookers has remained relatively stable.”

RELATED: Cooking is easy; it’s our modern anxiety that makes it hard

Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Image

“One of the challenges that we’re facing and that we’re working on all kinds of innovative devices to solve is that Americans have forgotten how to cook,” said Kennedy. “The convenience of fast food is one of the things that attracts them, and many of them don’t have the cutlery, they don’t have the pots and pans, they don’t have the cutting boards, and they don’t know how to shop.”

The health secretary said that he and his team have been discussing possibly deploying the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service and/or other organizations within HHS “to go out and actually teach people to cook.”

Kennedy underscored that making and eating meals together is about far more than just bodily health.

“President Trump has talked about the spiritual malaise in our country. That spiritual malaise comes from the breakdown of families; it comes from the fragmentation, the atomization, the isolation — particularly in our children. They don’t feel connections any more,” said Kennedy.

“Cooking … and eating together as a family is a sacred ritual,” continued Kennedy, “and it’s something that brings families together for an hour or two hours a day, where they talk, where they interact, where they work together on an act of creation, and they eat together in this wonderful ritual that brings families together.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Usda, Robert f kennedy jr, Rfk, Kennedy, Hhs, Health, Human services, Diet, Food, Cooking, Family, Politics 

Kentucky is on track to become the first state where the legislature overrides a governor’s opposition and opts into President Trump’s new school-choice program, part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The federal initiative lets states opt in to tax-credit scholarships that expand options for families without tapping public school budgets.

The Kentucky Senate just passed House Bill 1 by a 33-5 vote. All Republicans backed it, joined by one Democrat. The House had already approved the bill 79-17, with two Democrats voting yes. Now it heads to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, a reliable opponent of school choice.

Governors don’t get a permanent veto over school choice when legislatures have the votes — and families are demanding options.

Kentucky’s override rules make this fight different. Lawmakers need only a simple majority in each chamber to overturn a veto — and the vote totals suggest they have it.

Beshear’s own education choices underscore the disconnect. He attended Capital Day School, a private school, for part of his education. He also enrolled his children in private schools for portions of their schooling. He wants those options for his family, but he resists expanding similar opportunities statewide.

North Carolina provides the contrast. Republicans there advanced an opt-in bill to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, but the state requires a 60% vote in each chamber to override a veto. The GOP lacks that margin, making success unlikely.

In Kentucky’s Senate debate, Majority Floor Leader Max Wise (R) singled out Democratic Rep. Tina Bojanowski for her yes vote. Another senator pointed to Colorado Gov. Jared Polis — the first Democratic governor to opt his state into Trump’s program. Polis called participation a “no-brainer” and said he “would be crazy not to” do it.

Here’s the key design feature: Any U.S. taxpayer can contribute to these scholarships and claim a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit. Families can access scholarships only if their state opts in. That means residents of opt-out states can fund scholarships in opt-in states — a built-in incentive for governors and lawmakers to join rather than watch their taxpayers’ dollars flow elsewhere.

The program relies on private contributions. It does not divert funds from public schools. That approach likely explains the bill’s wide support — more than 80% of members present and voting in each chamber backed it. Kentucky’s 2024 school choice constitutional amendment never came close to that kind of consensus.

For Kentucky families, the opt-in may be the only viable path right now. The Kentucky Supreme Court unanimously struck down the state’s tax-credit scholarship program in 2022. It also blocked charter schools last month. Unless and until the court’s composition changes, the Trump program offers a practical workaround.

RELATED: When parents pay twice to escape public schools, the verdict is in

kinakomochi / Getty Images

That matters because the 2024 ballot measure tried to amend the state constitution to sidestep the court. Teachers’ unions spent millions opposing it. The language confused voters, and constitutional amendments don’t deliver immediate, tangible benefits like scholarships. When ballot measures confuse people, they default to the status quo.

So far, 27 governors have opted their states into Trump’s school-choice program. That group includes 26 Republicans — all except Vermont Gov. Phil Scott — and one Democrat, Polis. Republican-led legislatures in other states are exploring opt-ins and, in some cases, overrides against Democratic governors.

In Arizona, the state senate passed an opt-in bill, but Republicans likely lack the votes to override a veto from Gov. Katie Hobbs. Kansas and Wisconsin are also in play. Wisconsin Republicans don’t have the votes for an override. In Kansas, it remains unclear whether Republicans will unify the way Kentucky’s did.

Kentucky’s move shows why this program has momentum. It expands options without reopening state-funding fights or running into the same court barriers. The tax-credit mechanism encourages private giving while keeping scholarship access tied to states that opt in.

If Kentucky lawmakers follow through, they won’t just deliver scholarships. They’ll set a precedent: Governors don’t get a permanent veto over school choice when legislatures have the votes — and families are demanding options.

​Kentucky, School choice, One big beautiful bill, Public schools, Kentucky schools, School tax credits, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Andy beshear, Veto override, Supreme court, Charter schools, Taxpayers, Opt in, North carolina, Josh stein, Arizona, Katie hobbs 

Ryan Reynolds has made an almost 50X return on a tiny Welsh soccer team.

When Reynolds and fellow actor Rob McElhenney, best known for “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” bought Wrexham AFC in 2021 for about $2.6 million, it played in England’s fifth-tier soccer league and placed eighth. Now, it is knocking on the door of the country’s top league and is worth around $130 million.

‘Home! Chelsea! Yes!’

It did not take long for the Hollywood owners to bring the team out of obscurity, even though Wrexham is known as being the third-oldest existing professional soccer team in the world. Wrexham was founded over 161 years ago, in October 1864.

Five years of success after success has brought the stars’ team to the fifth round of the FA Cup, the final 16 teams of England’s biggest tournament and the oldest national soccer competition in the world.

Wrexham plays Chelsea FC, a team from England’s top-flight English Premier League, on Saturday at 12:45 p.m. ET. Chelsea is one of the wealthiest teams in the world and would typically crush lower-tiered teams. However, Wrexham has had magic surrounding it lately.

RELATED: Chicago Bears GM calls NFL’s race-based hiring ‘strange’ as league struggles with DEI incentive

Photo by Oli SCARFF / AFP via Getty Images

It already defeated Premier League team Nottingham Forest in the third round of the FA Cup (3-3, won on penalties) and Ipswich Town, a team ahead of Wrexham in its own division, in the fourth round (1-0).

“Home! Chelsea! Yes!” Reynolds said in an X video after learning about his team’s opponent.

While Wrexham has played both Chelsea and world-famous Manchester United in exhibition games, this is by far the biggest team it has played in real competition since Reynolds took the helm. His time as owner has been nothing short of a fairy tale for supporters over the last five years.

In 2022-2023, Wrexham won the National League, gaining promotion to the fourth tier, English League Two. Finishing in second place in consecutive years has garnered Wrexham a promotion to the EFL Championship, England’s second-highest league, where the team currently sits.

RELATED: Michael Jordan shocks NASCAR by doing something no one has done in 77 years

Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images

After Saturday’s match, Wrexham will continue its push to make the Premier League. As it stands, the team is in sixth place with 11 games remaining. The top two teams in the league will gain automatic promotion to the Premier League, while third through sixth will play in a four-team, single-elimination tournament with the winner getting promoted.

Wrexham would likely have to beat other giant clubs after Chelsea to win the FA Cup, though, which seems an unlikely outcome.

However, a win against the Blues would still be the biggest in its history in a year in which bigger upsets have happened. In January, Macclesfield FC shocked Crystal Palace 2-1. Macclesfield is a sixth-tier team with part-time players, while Crystal Palace was the defending champion and is in the Premier League.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Fearless, Soccer, Hollywood, England, Wales, Television, Fx, Sports, Wrexham, Ryan reynolds, Rob mcelhenney 

Back in 2011, Glenn Beck started getting “very, very sick.” His symptoms were strange and severe — loss of feeling in his hands, tremors, macular degeneration in one eye and macular dystrophy in the other, chronic pain, brain fog, and a psychological phenomenon researchers called “time collapse,” where the distinction between past, present, and future blurs.

For two entire years, he sought help from multiple doctors and specialists, all of whom concluded that he was “being poisoned.”

Except all his tests kept coming back clean.

“I wasn’t ingesting chemicals,” he says, noting that “no foreign agents” were ever found in any of his medical tests.

More time passed and Glenn continued getting sicker until one day, the root of his problem suddenly stared back at him: He was poisoning himself.

“I was being poisoned, but I was poisoning myself … I was consuming poison with the relentless diet of ‘the republic is dying,’ the news, the history, the media, everything that was going on for nearly a decade, ” he says.

“From 2001 to 2010, I barely slept. … I worked from 5:00 a.m. until well past midnight every day. Each day I was on stage, off stage, back on stage multiple times. By 2009, I wasn’t just battling what I believed were forces trying to reverse American freedom and evil; I was fighting for my life — in business, in media, in smears; physically, I was under threat all the time,” he recounts.

Eventually, Glenn got a proper diagnosis: “Adrenal fatigue.”

“I had been in fight or flight mode for over a decade — all day, every day — and your body is not built to live under constant siege like that. Mine broke, and I still pay the price for it,” he recounts.

Glenn shares this story today because he’s concerned that people are making the same mistake he made with the media content they constantly consume.

“We are poisoning ourselves,” he warns, “and I’m not speaking theoretically; I’m speaking from experience.”

“When you constantly call on your body to produce more cortisol, you’re not just stressed, you’re rewiring the brain; you’re reshaping your body; you’re altering the outlook on life.”

While cortisol is the body’s life-saving “alarm system,” it was “designed for dinosaurs and lions, not headlines and social media,” he says.

Sadly, because of the digital age’s insatiable appetite for virtual content, most of us are hooked up to a feeding tube that pumps us full of “outrage, catastrophe framing, existential politics … Nazis, pedophiles,” and every other form of soul-sucking content out there, Glenn warns.

When this happens, “cortisol stops being a tool and starts to become a poison” that throws our nervous system into a state of chaos, makes our bodies susceptible to chronic diseases, and causes emotional dysregulation, memory loss, decreased impulse control, and overactive fear triggers in the brain.

What can we do to avoid this pitfall?

To hear Glenn’s answer, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Blazetv, Blaze media, Stress levels, Adrenal fatigue, Media consumption 

Utah police were quickly able to identify and arrest a 22-year-old Iowa man who allegedly confessed to the random murder of three women after he hit an elk with his car.

The beginning of the alleged murder spree was first reported on Wednesday when the bodies of two women were found on a hiking trail, according to the Utah Department of Public Safety.

‘Miller confessed that it “had to be done” but he did not like to do it.’

DPS said the two women’s husbands found their bodies and reported it to police.

As they were investigating that crime scene, another dead woman was reportedly found in the nearby town of Torrey.

Investigators then asked help from the public to find a 2022 white Subaru Outback, which belonged to the hikers. Police warned residents in the area to be vigilant and cautious.

The vehicle was tracked through the use of license plate readers as it was driven into southern Utah, to Northern Arizona, and then into Colorado.

Colorado law enforcement officers were able to find the vehicle after it was abandoned and were able to locate a suspect nearby. He was taken into custody without incident.

He was identified as Ivan Miller and allegedly admitted to shooting the three women and stabbing one of them. He said he did so after hitting an elk with his truck on Feb. 28, which made him unable to return home. He sold the truck to the towing company and hid out in a shed.

Police said they believe he killed the first woman at her home and used her vehicle to get to the hiking trail.

He said he stabbed one of the women hikers multiple times in her heart after shooting them both and finding she was still alive. He called the women “lesbians” because one of them had blue or purple hair.

“Miller confessed that it ‘had to be done’ but he did not like to do it,” the complaint claimed.

Police said they found credit and debit cards belonging to the victims in his possession. Investigators also said that when they asked Miller about the knife he used, he produced it during their interview.

The man was charged with three counts of aggravated murder. Arrest records indicate he was also booked on carrying a concealed weapon and motor vehicle theft.

RELATED: California couple sentenced for ‘monstrous’ abuse of sons after decapitating other two children

On Thursday, the DPS reported that the victims were identified as 65-year-old Linda Dewey, her 34-year-old niece Natalie Graves, and 86-year-old Margaret Oldroyd. There is no evidence that Dewey and Graves had any connection to Oldroyd.

Miller had a previous criminal record that included burglary, theft, possession of marijuana, and a weapons charge.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Ivan miller triple murder, Three women murdered utah, Utah crime, Murder after hitting elk, Crime 

Britain once had more pubs than anywhere else in the world. Today, thousands have vanished — closed, converted into flats, or replaced by chain bars selling cocktails in jam jars.

Yet in a quiet residential corner of Norwich, one pub has stubbornly refused to change. Many beer lovers believe it may be the best pub in England.

Hand pumps line the wooden bar, serving real ale directly from the cask — traditional British beer poured without modern carbonation.

Drinking has long been woven into the fabric of British culture. Whether bonding with strangers or catching up with old friends, few leisure pursuits rival the pleasure of enjoying an ice-cold pint by the river on a summer evening. Alcohol is deeply ingrained in our traditions — an essential pastime as iconic as queuing, complaining, or swapping increasingly outrageous stories with friends. It has long served as the social lubricant for first dates and awkward encounters alike.

A pub for every day

Nowhere is this drinking tradition more evident than in a city with a well-known — if possibly apocryphal — saying that it once had a pub for every day of the year and a church for every week. Despite the steady pressures that have forced thousands of British pubs to close in recent years, Norwich still offers plenty of choice.

Yet the modern pub landscape is increasingly dominated by chains and themed bars backed by large capital. They offer cheap drinks but little else — you couldn’t buy a conversation for all the bottomless shots served by young, telegenic, and relentlessly enthusiastic bar staff.

For tourists — or anyone over 25 — finding a proper pint can sometimes feel daunting. But fear not: Nil desperandum. Beyond the blinding neon signs, loud music, and rowdy hen parties, traditional pubs still exist.

In the world of British pubs, “legendary” is a term thrown around with reckless abandon. Yet in a quiet residential corner of Norwich, there is a backstreet boozer that has truly earned the title.

RELATED: God save the English pub

Joseph McKeown/Getty Images

Holy grail of beer

The Fat Cat on West End Street is more than just a great pub. Many real ale enthusiasts consider it the holy grail of beer in England.

In 1991, Colin and Marjie Keatley took charge of a dilapidated, bomb-damaged Victorian pub called the New Inn, marking the beginning of the Fat Cat legend. Deceptively spacious, this pub sits just a mile from the city center in a quiet Norwich neighborhood. With its traditional street-corner exterior, this little slice of British pub life has lasted more than 30 years. In an age of enthusiastic “heritage inflation,” one could easily imagine it claiming three centuries.

With its traditional decor, the Fat Cat feels more like a 19th-century ale house than a modern business. There are no fruit machines, jukeboxes, or pool tables in any of its series of small, winding rooms, each offering a quiet, intimate seating area.

Stained-glass windows celebrating local brewing history add to its Victorian charm. At the heart of the pub, a real fireplace is flanked by church pews, creating a space that feels almost sacred — a warm communal refuge where simple wooden tables and benches invite conversation rather than distraction. The only soundtrack is the low hum of voices and the clinking of glasses.

A simpler tradition

Don’t expect to find a menu on your table. The Fat Cat proudly rejects the modern gastropub craze. There are no elaborate tasting menus or trendy dishes served in theatrical ways. In fact, the pub barely has a kitchen.

Instead, they champion a simpler tradition: Enjoy one of their excellent pork pies or bring your own takeaway — provided you buy a drink.

Alongside antique beer signs, the walls are covered with awards. The Fat Cat is one of the most decorated pubs in Britain, having won National Pub of the Year twice and the “Good Pub Guide” Beer Pub of the Year a record 11 times. In 2025, Lonely Planet even named it the best pub in England.

Stepping inside can feel like entering a miniature beer festival. A long chalkboard lists an impressive rotating selection of British ales, inviting visitors to try something new. Hand pumps line the wooden bar, serving real ale directly from the cask — traditional British beer poured without modern carbonation.

Whether it’s one of the pub’s award-winning house favourites — such as Tom Cat or Marmalade Cat — or a rare Belgian import, the knowledgeable staff treat every pint with care. Here, beer is valued not as a commodity but as an old friend.

Ask for a lager and lime, however, and the barman is likely to tell you that they don’t do cocktails.

Rule, Britannia!

In an era when thousands of pubs are closing or being converted into generic chains, the Fat Cat stands as a reminder of what makes the British pub special. Serve excellent beer in a beautiful, no-nonsense setting, and people will travel from across the country to experience it.

Indeed, the Fat Cat has become something of a pilgrimage site for beer lovers.

Yet despite its international reputation, the pub remains quintessentially local. Its relaxed atmosphere draws people from every walk of life. Truck drivers and retired professors sit side by side. Strangers strike up conversations with ease.

It’s usually best to avoid politics — Norwich, after all, leans rather left-wing — but that hardly matters once the conversation turns to beer, football, or the weather.

Whether you are a dedicated ale enthusiast or simply someone looking for a warm fireplace and a friendly face, the Fat Cat represents the gold standard.

It is not merely one of the best pubs in Norwich.

It may well be the best pub in England.

​Lifestyle, Drinking, Culture, England, The fat cat, Pubs, Beer, Letter from the uk