Larry Summers, an economist and former treasury secretary, announced that he is stepping away from his role as a tenured professor at Harvard University following criticism for his association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In November, a document dump of 20,000 pages revealed that Summers communicated with Epstein in 2018 and 2019, including within weeks of Epstein’s arrest, the Wall Street Journal reported.

‘I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year.’

Epstein described himself as Summers’ “wing man” in one email. Summers and his wife reportedly briefly visited Epstein’s island during their 2005 honeymoon.

Summers served as the treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton from 1999 to 2001. He was also the director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama. Summers held a position as the president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.

Shortly after his messages with Epstein came to light, Summers lost his partnerships and positions with several organizations, including the New York Times, the Center for American Progress, BloombergTV, and the Yale Budget Lab. He also resigned from his seat on the OpenAI board.

RELATED: Epstein emails SHAME Obama/Clinton ally: Larry Summers quits public life amid calls for Harvard to cut ties

Larry Summers. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” Summers said in November. “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.”

Summers held onto his teaching and leadership positions at Harvard University amid the fallout. However, he has been on leave since November.

Summers announced Wednesday that he would retire at the end of the academic year.

RELATED: ‘The mistake I made’: Bill Gates reportedly admits to affairs with Russians, apologizes for Epstein fallout

Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images

“I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year,” Summers said. “I will always be grateful to the thousands of students and colleagues I have been privileged to teach and work with since coming to Harvard as a graduate student 50 years ago.”

“Free of formal responsibility, as President Emeritus and a retired professor, I look forward in time to engaging in research, analysis, and commentary on a range of global economic issues,” he added.

A spokesperson for Harvard told the WSJ that the school had accepted Summers’ resignation “in connection with the ongoing review by the university of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government.”

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President Donald Trump made waves when he invited the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team to his State of the Union address after the men struck gold at the Milan Cortina Olympics this Sunday.

But it’s not just Trump’s invitation that has the left up in arms.

FBI Director Kash Patel was also celebrating the win in the locker room with the team and held a phone up to the players on speakerphone so that Trump could deliver a message.

“We’re giving the State of the Union speech on Tuesday night,” Trump said. “I can send a military plane or something, but if you would like to, it’s the coolest night, it’s the biggest speech.”

As Trump spoke, one player interjected, “We’re in.”

“I must tell you: We’re going to have to bring the women’s team. You do know that. I do believe I probably would be impeached, okay?”

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock was thrilled with the men’s Olympic win and calls the outrage over Trump’s invitation “fool’s gold” and “phony outrage.”

“All of these feminists, all of these Marxists that are running around pretending that Donald Trump and the men’s hockey team have done something wrong. All of them running around pretending like, ‘Well, the women, they won gold too,’” he says.

“This whole controversy is a joke. Of course the women won gold in women’s hockey. What are there, like, three countries in the world that take hockey seriously for women?” he jokes.

Unlike women’s hockey, men’s hockey has been a staple of the Olympics since 1920.

“We’ve won three gold medals in men’s hockey over the course of 106 years. It’s a big deal when the men win. We’re not the most talented men’s team. Canada is. Don’t fall for the fool’s gold,” Whitlock says.

“And Donald Trump doesn’t have to apologize, and Kash Patel doesn’t have to apologize, and the men’s U.S. hockey team doesn’t have to apologize,” he continues, “because Trump lives in reality and was talking to a group of men who just accomplished something incredible.”

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, 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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The deranged response to a “girl dad” photo of a hockey player led the National Hockey League to delete a post completely unrelated to President Donald Trump.

The photo showed Washington Capitals center Dylan Strome with his 2-year-old daughter dressed up like a princess at a makeover boutique in Disneyland.

‘The comments and messages about my TWO YEAR OLD DAUGHTER are some of the most vile and disgusting things I have ever read in my life.’

While most people found the post adorable, some commenters tied it to the Olympic men’s hockey team accepting a call from President Donald Trump after its incredible gold-medal victory. Some of the players laughed when the president joked that he would be called misogynistic if he didn’t invite the women’s team to the White House as well.

But there was a problem with that criticism — Strome had nothing to do with that call and didn’t play in the Olympics. Also, he’s Canadian.

A screenshot of some of the responses included:

“Laughing at a misogynistic joke a rapist and pedophile told — more like worst girl dad ever.” “Not using the daughter as a human shield my god today.” “A girl dad would put out a statement that he meant no harm by laughing along with a convicted rapist/pedophile mocking the women’s team who has meddled [sic] way more than the men.” “Oh yea suuuuucha lover of women, think he’ll laugh at her accomplishments too??” “I feel sorry for the kid … imagine having THAT as your dad.”

“Crazy being a ‘girl dad’ and worshipping a pedophile,” another response reads.

“No. Absolutely not. An ultimate girl dad would NOT disparage & laugh at a women’s team who is 10x better than his own. He is obviously a woman-hater, just like Trump. F**k those biggest losers,” another user responded.

“Don’t hide misogyny behind ‘girl dad.’ Being a girl dad means fighting for equal pay, equal respect, and equal opportunity — EVERYWHERE. I coach my daughter’s team. I elevate women’s sports. I fight for their bodily autonomy. That’s what it actually looks like. Shame on you, @NHL,” another crazed message reads.

“So he watches a video on his phone while wearing a ‘girl dad’ hat. That’s all a girl can ask for, right? Certainly not standing up against misogyny from a pedophile rapist who pooped his pants longer than she did,” another critic replied.

The NHL deleted the post from social media but has not indicated a reason for the deletion.

Strome’s wife, on the other hand, had much to say to those who irrationally attacked her husband and her daughter.

“We were placed into a narrative that we have absolutely nothing to do with, and we certainly did not choose to have our family used in it. You can debate adults all you want, but dragging my husband and especially my toddler into something that has nothing to do with us is beyond unacceptable,” she wrote.

RELATED: Raucous applause erupts for Olympic men’s hockey team at State of the Union: ‘What special champions you are!’

“The comments and messages about my TWO YEAR OLD DAUGHTER are some of the most vile and disgusting things I have ever read in my life,” she added. “This isn’t about politics. She is a child. Full stop. Do better. [And] to everyone who has reached out or addressed this situation with more than a single brain cell, thank you.”

The president invited the U.S. men’s team and the women’s team to his State of the Union speech Tuesday, and while the men attended, the women’s team declined.

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Republican and Democrat leaders alike entered Tuesday night anxiously. Each side feared its loudest members would turn the State of the Union into an ugly scene and poison the evening.

Democrats worried about the Squad and about 78-year-old Texas Rep. Al Green, who after 10 terms in Congress seems more comfortable waving signs than writing laws. Republicans worried about the president — specifically, whether he would get dragged into a nasty back-and-forth with congressional activists.

Trump does not pretend the country is more unified than it is. He ran as a builder and a wrecking ball: a candidate with a program and a man eager to force Democrats to defend their most radical positions.

President Donald Trump had another idea.

He had no reason to brawl from the podium, flanked by the vice president and the speaker of the House and standing at the most powerful pulpit in American politics. He set a trap instead. In front of more than 30 million ordinary Americans, Democrats walked into it.

Political junkies live inside the daily partisan trench war. They know the script. The fighting started not long after America’s founding and never really stopped.

Most Americans do not live that way.

They have jobs, kids, bills, errands, sports, church, aging parents, and whatever time remains at the end of the day. With the old monoculture mostly dead, they gather around only a handful of events: a few major sports broadcasts, presidential elections, and the State of the Union.

Viewership has fallen over the decades, but the speech still pulls a massive audience — usually somewhere between 30 million and 40 million people. In modern America, that is a huge number.

For perspective, the finale of “Game of Thrones” drew just under 20 million viewers. The USA-Canada hockey game pulled 18.6 million live viewers. The Super Bowl remains the true annual monocultural event, with around 60 million viewers, but even that scale only underscores the point: the State of the Union still reaches a country-sized audience.

More important than the raw number is who those viewers are.

Many of them do not follow politics closely. They caught the big campaign ads, such as “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” and responded. They saw headlines about riots, crime, and immigration. Maybe they saw footage of crackdowns. Then they went back to their lives.

On Tuesday night, they tuned in again — and watched Trump stage a live study in contrasts.

After spending the first hour of the speech reciting accomplishments and laying out goals, Trump turned toward the increasingly agitated Democrat side of the chamber and began forcing choices.

He challenged them to stand if they put American citizens ahead of illegal immigrants and foreign nationals. They sat.

He put a grieving mother before them — the mother of a young Ukrainian woman murdered on a train in North Carolina — and dared them to remain frozen. They did. Iryna Zarutska may be the only Ukrainian in the world Democrats won’t cheer for.

He highlighted a young woman torn from her family as a child by transgender ideology and the institutions that privilege bureaucrats over parents. Democrats reacted exactly as he wanted.

Even when he managed to draw applause from them — despite every congressional instinct telling members to show nothing — he flipped the moment and used it to needle the institution itself, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the chamber’s most famous suspected symbol of insider trading.

State of the Union speeches are usually built for broad appeal. Presidents of both parties use them to sound larger than their coalition. Barack Obama did this well. However radical his policies, he often sounded like Ronald Reagan in these addresses. He studied the Great Communicator, and it showed. Republicans could call him a liar and an ideologue — and did — but many Americans liked the version of Obama they saw on that stage each year.

Trump operates in a different register and in a different era.

He does not pretend the country is more unified than it is. In both 2016 and 2024, he ran as a builder and a wrecking ball: a candidate with a program and a man eager to force Democrats to defend their most radical positions.

That formula worked in both victories. He laid out a positive vision while tying Democrats to policies many voters reject — open borders, soft-on-crime governance, and transgender ideology aimed at children.

Tuesday night, he did not need a campaign ad buy to run the same play.

He had the pomp, the circumstance, and, most importantly, the audience.

And with the instincts of a once-in-a-generation political talent, he let Democrats supply the contrast for him.

​Opinion & analysis 

In his nearly two-hour State of the Union address last night, President Trump celebrated what he described as an extraordinary “turnaround for the ages” in his leadership, declaring America now “bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever” amid a booming economy marked by declining inflation, reduced gas and mortgage rates, rising wages, and a tightly secured border with no illegal entries reported in recent months.

He spotlighted aggressive immigration enforcement measures, stood firm on his tariff strategy, cautioned Iran against pursuing nuclear weapons while favoring diplomatic paths, floated new proposals like universal retirement savings access and curbs on institutional home buying, paid tribute to military veterans and the Olympic hockey squad, delivered pointed critiques of Democrats and previous administrations, and painted an optimistic picture of renewed national strength heading into the midterm elections.

But there was one singular moment that BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre says was genuinely unforgettable.

“The moment that’s going to stay with me for the rest of my life is watching Iryna Zarutska’s mother with Erica Kirk and just the pain on her face in that moment and the fact that Democrats could not even in that moment summon a shred of humanity,” he says.

“I still don’t think that we have dealt with the psychic trauma again of that one-two punch of Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska, and so I think that [Trump] highlighting that and, you know, showing the grief that is still there for that mother and knowing that we need justice, we need to end political violence, we need to end the soft-on-crime policy — I think those were all incredibly strong moments for him,” he adds.

Fellow BlazeTV host and SOTU panel member Steve Deace agrees that this was one of the most powerful, albeit enraging, moments of the entire event.

He points to a viral tweet from Turning Point USA Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer that shined a spotlight on the depths of Democrats’ hypocrisy.

Deace calls the close-up snapshot a “devastating” blow to Democrats.

“It’s a post of one of the Democrat members of Congress who did not want to stand during [the honoring of Anna Zarutska], and he’s got a Ukraine flag on his lapel. If that is not a portrait of where we are,” he scoffs.

“This is what the Democrats actually think of the Ukrainian people,” says guest and senior editor at Human Events Jack Posobiec.

To hear more, watch the video below.

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While President Donald Trump gave the first State of the Union address of his second term on Tuesday night, many Democrats boycotted the speech and opted to engage in some unconventional counterprogramming.

For example, some Democrats attended an event organized by Defiance.org at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C, and at least one of them was joined on stage by some … special guests.

‘Tonight I defy Trump and his authoritarian project by standing in joyful, radical, peaceful resistance with the Portland Frog Brigade!’

Video emerged on Tuesday night showing Oregon Rep. Maxine Dexter (D) speaking at the event, while six inflatable frogs stood beside her and many more stood off to the side.

“Tonight I defy Trump and his authoritarian project by standing in joyful, radical, peaceful resistance with the Portland Frog Brigade!” Dexter said as the frogs jumped around and waved small American flags.

RELATED: VIDEO: Federal agents clash with mob of Antifa-fueled, anti-ICE protesters in Portland

Defiance.org describes itself as a “club for courageous Americans — people willing to take peaceful, lawful, defiant action to defend democracy from a wannabe dictator.” The organization partnered with the Portland Frog Brigade for this event, though the group has been making its anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement stance known since last year.

According to its “about” page, the Portland Frog Brigade was created after an anti-ICE activist — apparently known by several names such as Toad, Toad Todd, and antifascistfrog — was sprayed by federal law enforcement outside Portland’s ICE facility. The organization emphasizes that the “absurdity” is core to the idea behind the group:

The image of a cartoon frog facing off against a wall of heavily armored men was so strikingly absurd that it cut straight through the noise and brought home the reality that our government is treating peaceful citizens as enemies.

From that moment, the frog became a symbol of resistance that refuses to lose its joy. The Brigade took inspiration from Toad and grew as so many others donned inflatable animal suits and joined actions across the country and around the world.

However, not all is well in inflatable paradise.

The partnership between Defiance.org and Portland Frog Brigade has apparently caused infighting with an adjacent group called Operation Inflation.

Operation Inflation posted a video on Instagram criticizing the partnership and distancing itself from the other organization: “The frog brigade, however, saw the frog and emptied it of context, taking the image without the work, the aesthetic without the politics, and shared it with an establishment that can only function through neutralizing resistance.”

“When the loudest voices take the safest route, do not trust them,” the spokesperson in a red frog suit said.

Toad, the figurehead, reposted the video on his own Instagram account, seemingly attempting to likewise distance the symbol from the Portland Frog Brigade. He has also previously called the brigade a “business of grifters seeking to piggy off the backs of actual activists.”

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Federal authorities confirmed media reports that the home and office of the Los Angeles School District superintendent were raided Wednesday but could not offer additional details.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho oversees the second-largest school district in the U.S., with over 420,000 students.

‘We can confirm that the FBI is serving a court-authorized warrant.’

Sources told KNBC-TV that Carvalho’s home in San Pedro was searched on a warrant. One neighbor reportedly saw as many as 20 agents at the residence.

“We can confirm that the FBI is serving a court-authorized warrant at those locations,” said the Los Angeles office of the FBI in a statement. “However, the affidavit in support of the warrant has been sealed by the court and we, therefore, have no further comment.”

Carvalho has been a frequent and vocal critic of the Trump administration, especially with regard to Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations near his schools.

In June, he said that school police would be deployed to protect the families of students from federal law enforcement agents at graduation ceremonies.

“We stand strongly on the right side of law,” said Carvalho at the time. “Every student in our community, every student across the country, has a constitutional right to a free public education of high quality, without threat.”

RELATED: LA schools to set up police perimeters to keep ICE away from students and their families

“Every one of our students, independently of their immigration status, has a right to a free meal in our schools. Every one of our children, no questions asked, has a right to counseling, social-emotional support, mental support,” he added.

Carvalho has been the LAUSD superintendent since 2022 and previously managed the Miami-Dade School District. He has often cited his experience as a former illegal alien from Portugal when criticizing the Trump administration.

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