Yesterday, John Harbaugh — longtime head coach of the Baltimore Ravens — was fired, ending his 18-year tenure with the team. The decision came just two days after the Ravens finished the 2025 season with an 8-9 record, missing the playoffs following a 26-24 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 18, where a missed field goal as time expired cost them the AFC North title.

In the two days between the Ravens’ season ender and Harbaugh’s firing, Jason Whitlock, BlazeTV’s resident NFL expert, predicted this would happen. He argued the game-ending play — where star running back Derrick Henry sat the bench while Lamar Jackson took a knee, forcing the team’s rookie kicker to attempt (and miss) a field goal — was a “fireable offense” for Harbaugh.

One day later, the team issued an official statement, confirmed by owner Steve Bisciotti, that the longtime coach had been fired.

On this episode of “Fearless,” Whitlock addresses the shocking news and explains the broader implications.

“[Harbaugh] and Lamar Jackson popularized the whole RPO offense that has overtaken the National Football League,” Whitlock says, calling the dynamic duo “the face of the run-pass option offense.”

“And this is the thanks [Harbaugh] gets? He gets fired because … Tyler Loop misses a kick? He gets fired … in a year where Lamar Jackson was injured and missed 4 to 5, 6 games?” he asks, stunned.

Whitlock says that according to reports he’s read, “The split wasn’t about John Harbaugh; it was about John Harbaugh’s loyalty to Todd Monken, the offensive coordinator.” Apparently, the Ravens wanted to fire Monken, but Harbaugh refused.

“According to the reports, Lamar Jackson had no problem … with John Harbaugh. His problem was with the OC,” Whitlock explains.

The next layer of Harbaugh’s firing is even more important, however.

“Harbaugh getting fired puts incredible pressure on [Pittsburgh Steelers head coach] Mike Tomlin,” Whitlock says.

“If John Harbaugh can get fired with that record and what he and Lamar Jackson have brought to the forefront with the RPO offense, Mike Tomlin has to be on the clock — has to be.”

“The pressure now switches to Tomlin,” he says, referring to the Steelers’ upcoming playoff game against the Houston Texans.

“The pressure on Mike Tomlin is now intensified incredibly. How is Mike Tomlin going to survive if he loses to the Houston Texans? If you can fire John Harbaugh, you can fire anybody,” he says.

To hear more of Whitlock’s analysis, watch the episode above.

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Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accused the federal government of being at war with his state after the fatal shooting during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation.

Tensions with the Trump administration escalated sharply Wednesday when an ICE agent shot a woman who appeared to be interrupting their operation with her vehicle. Video shows her swerving into an agent, who fired at her and killed her.

‘Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight. We will not take the bait.’

Walz blamed the Trump administration for the shooting by claiming the increased immigration enforcement actions were unnecessary.

“I said this yesterday, we’ve never been at war with our federal government,” the governor said during a media briefing.

He went on to suggest that he would order the Minnesota National Guard to oppose the federal government.

“We do not need any further help from the federal government. To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem: You’ve done enough. There’s nothing more important than Minnesotans’ safety,” he said.

“I’ve issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard. We have soldiers in training and prepared to be deployed if necessary. I remind you, a warning order is a heads-up for folks,” he added.

“These National Guard troops are our National Guard troops,” he emphasized. “They’re teachers in your community, they’re business owners, they’re construction professionals. They are Minnesotans. Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight. We will not take the bait.”

Homeland Security Assistant Sec. Tricia McLaughlin had previously blamed Democratic rhetoric for the shooting.

“This is the direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement,” she said. “These men and women who are simply enforcing the law on the books are facing 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.”

RELATED: DHS accuses Hilton Hotels of ‘siding with murderers and rapists’ over ICE — and the hotel chain responds

Other Democrats are using the shooting to call for the federal government to pull officers out of Minnesota.

“I have a message for ICE. To ICE, get the f**k out of Minneapolis!” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) said during an earlier media briefing.

“We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite,” he added. “People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized, and now somebody is dead.”

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A congressman from Texas crushed a Democratic witness in congressional testimony about the effect of large-scale Somali immigration on Minnesota.

Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas questioned former Justice Dept. prosecutor Brendan Ballou during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on fraud in Minnesota. Ballou was a witness for Democrats on the committee.

‘It doesn’t sound like something that makes our country stronger to me, and I think most Americans would agree with me on that.’

“Does large-scale Somali immigration make Minnesota stronger or weaker?” asked Gill.

“Certainly stronger,” Ballou responded.

“Certainly stronger,” Gill repeated. “Do you know what percentage of Somali-headed households in Minnesota are on food stamps?”

“No,” Ballou replied.

“Fifty-four percent. Do you know what that number is for native Minnesota-headed households?” Gill asked.

Ballou disputed the term “native households,” which led to Gill interrupting to say that only 7% of non-Somali Minnesotan households were on food stamps.

“What percentage of Somali-headed households in Minnesota are on Medicaid?” Gill asked.

“I don’t know,” Ballou said.

Gill told him the figure was 73% and compared it to the number of non-Somalis on Medicaid.

“The number is 18%. That’s quite an astounding difference, I think we would agree,” Gill said.

Gill went on to say that 81% of Somali-headed households were on welfare in general, a figure Ballou did not know.

“Let me just ask you, after 10 years of being in the United States, what percentage of Somali-immigrant households continue to be on welfare?” Gill asked.

“I don’t know,” Ballou said.

“The number is 78%,” he replied.

Gill said that about half of working-age Somalis who have been in the U.S. for 10 years or more speak English “very well.”

“That seems pretty low, doesn’t it?” Gill asked rhetorically. “It doesn’t sound like something that makes our country stronger to me, and I think most Americans would agree with me on that.”

Video of the exchange was posted to social media by the Oversight Committee.

RELATED: Minnesota news outlet gets wrecked for story on Somali migrants’ economic impact

Ballou asserted in his testimony when questioned by Democrats that the incidents of Somali fraud were low compared to their population in Minnesota. While 82 Somalis have been indicted thus far, Ballou said that this represents about 0.07% of the 108,000 estimated Somalis in Minnesota.

“When you compare that to one-third of all Americans [who] have a criminal record, and I think it’s 40% approximately of white men under the age of 23 have been arrested, I don’t think the statistics really compare,” Ballou said.

Gill also posted the video of the interaction to his social media timeline.

“This Democrat witness claims large-scale Somali immigration makes Minnesota stronger. The numbers tell a different story,” he wrote.

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The Department of Health and Human Services cut off five Democrat-run states’ access to over $10 billion in federal child care and family assistance funds on Tuesday, citing “serious concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs.”

The New York Times joined Democrats in criticizing the Trump administration’s anti-fraud campaign — but bungled its execution.

The Times’ Minho Kim opened his Tuesday piece with the following sentence:

The Trump administration plans to freeze $10 billion in funding for child care subsidies, social services and cash support for low-income families in five states controlled by Democrats, claiming widespread fraud throughout those states, without citing evidence, after a major welfare fraud scheme in one of them.

The sentence was later rearranged without an editor’s note but without any significant alterations.

‘The first response of Democrats to instances like the Minnesota fraud findings should not be to criticize the other side.’

It was not lost on critics that immediately after asserting that the administration claimed widespread fraud “without citing evidence,” Kim himself proceeded to allude to the damning evidence of widespread fraud in one of the states facing the funding pause — fraud that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz acknowledged on Monday when giving up on his ambition of re-election.

Drew Holden, the managing editor at American Compass, suggested that the New York Times perhaps “got so used to saying that the Trump admin did something ‘without citing evidence’ that they didn’t realize they mention the ‘evidence’ in the same sentence.”

RELATED: Trump administration sends Democrats into hysterics by freezing funding to 5 blue states over fraud concerns

Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Later in the Times article, Kim acknowledged that the funding freeze builds on the HHS’ pause of $185 million in annual childcare funds in the wake of credible allegations of massive fraud in taxpayer-subsidized day care facilities in the Gopher State.

Minnesota has been home to historic fraud committed by members of the Somali community in relation to coronavirus relief funding and allegedly in relation to taxpayer-subsidized day care facilities. The COVID scams in Minnesota have resulted in dozens of criminal convictions and scores of indictments in recent years. Government officials are working to ensure similar graft is not impacting other jurisdictions.

Following the publication of Kim’s piece, American Enterprise Institute fellow Ruy Teixeira stressed that “the first response of Democrats to instances like the Minnesota fraud findings should not be to criticize the other side for attacking them and wave the bloody shirt of racism against President Trump but rather to stress the seriousness of the problem and how it will not be tolerated.”

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There has been a lot of panic, among the conservative commentariat especially, over the growing desire among younger white Americans to receive representation as a collective political bloc. At some level, that reaction is understandable. Race is not the healthiest fixation when it comes to identity.

But the way conservatives have responded to this trend is deeply misguided.

The only way to lower the salience of race is to stop importing ethnocentric cultures and to eliminate political carve-outs for minority communities already here.

For decades, whites have watched every other group in America successfully demand political action as a bloc from both the left and the right. Democrats build their entire coalition around racial grievance, but even conservatives regularly address the needs of minority communities as collective groups. Despite their hostility to “identity politics,” Republicans eagerly cater to it — just not for their core constituency, white Americans.

If conservatives genuinely worry about the rise of white identitarianism, they should stop lecturing young white Americans and start addressing the behavior of the communities they currently pander to.

First, it helps to define terms. “Race” and “ethnicity” are often treated as interchangeable, but they are not. Race is a broad macro category, while ethnicity operates at a more granular level. Swedes, Italians, Irish, and French are all considered white. Ethiopians, Nigerians, African Pygmies, and Somalis are all considered black.

These categories matter, but ethnos is often a more organic and useful way to understand group behavior.

Ironically ethnocentrism varies widely across populations and tends to be particularly low among white Europeans and their descendants. A society composed primarily of people of European extraction, even with some immigration, tends to be relatively tolerant and open. New arrivals who may initially carry ethnocentric instincts are less able to sustain them when they lack a large co-ethnic base.

Assimilation follows naturally under those conditions.

Identity is also not binary. It consists of nested loyalties that rise or fall in importance depending on scale. In small societies, tribe or ethnos dominates. As civilizations expand and absorb new members, identity shifts toward broader categories — often religion or nationality.

White Americans once lived in sharply defined ethnic enclaves. Irish, Italian, Dutch, and German neighborhoods were common. In some cases, the U.S. government actively broke up German-language communities, forcing children into English-speaking schools. Over time, those European ethnoses dissolved into a shared American identity.

That process breaks down when the government imports large, concentrated populations that share a common ethnicity and have not gone through the same scaling process. These groups face no incentive to abandon ethnocentrism because they can successfully deploy it. Co-ethnics ensure access to jobs, education, marriage, and community without assimilation.

In a system where one group must compete on pure individual merit while others are allowed to operate on collective ethnocentrism, tribalism wins. Once it proves effective, the salience of race explodes. When young whites see every other group using the winning strategy, the question becomes unavoidable: Why are we the only group forbidden from doing so?

The problem is not just that tribalism works. The system has been actively rigged against white males.

RELATED: How anti-fascism became the West’s civil religion

Blaze Media Illustration

Jacob Savage’s recent article “The Lost Generation” detailed the extent to which universities, media institutions, and corporations have systematically excluded white men. The piece gained attention partly because it came from the left, but conservatives like Jeremy Carl and Heather Mac Donald have been warning about the same dynamics for years.

Whites — especially young white men — are barred from advocating as a group. At the same time, they are punished as a group. Telling them identity politics is immoral while allowing explicit anti-white discrimination guarantees a predictable response.

The conservative establishment’s answer has been a vague denunciation of ethnocentrism that somehow applies only to whites. Conservatives pay lip service to opposing identity politics while courting explicitly racial organizations. They speak seriously to black, Indian, Hispanic, and Jewish advocacy groups and treat their leaders as legitimate representatives.

Donald Trump recently hosted the American Hindu-Jewish Congress at Mar-a-Lago to discuss combating bigotry. You will not see a dinner honoring representatives of a “White American Congress” to discuss anti-white discrimination — despite overwhelming evidence that such bias is widespread.

That double standard is too obvious for young whites to ignore forever.

If conservatives were serious about halting the rise of collective white identity politics, they would stop scolding young whites for noticing reality. They would confront systemic bias in academia and corporate hiring. To its credit, the Trump administration has signaled an intent to act — but far more is required.

RELATED: Culture’s great subversion machine has broken down at last

Blaze Media Illustration

A serious response would include an immigration moratorium and aggressive prosecution of ethnic cartels. And yes, every tech department staffed entirely by one ethnic group is not evidence that “there were no qualified white applicants.” Conservatives should lecture blacks, Indians, Hispanics, and Jews about ethnocentrism with the same intensity they reserve for whites.

If for no other reason, whites actually vote Republican. Most of the other groups do not.

If conservatives truly fear the rise of collective white politics, they should reduce the number of ethnocentric populations young whites are forced to compete against on pure merit. The only way to lower the salience of race is to stop importing ethnocentric cultures and to eliminate political carve-outs for minority communities already here.

In short, show young whites they can succeed without tribalism by actually punishing the tribalism practiced by everyone else. Summon the courage to confront the behavior you claim to fear — in the groups already practicing it.

​Conservative movement, Race, Ethnicity, Assimilation, American conservatives, Opinion & analysis, Identity politics, White people, Ethnocentrism, Tribalism, Jacob savage, The lost generation, Jeremy carl, Heather mac donald, American hindu-jewish congress, Donald trump, Jews, Germans, Irish, Dutch, Italians, Indians, Chinese 

As the journalist who exposed the rampant Somalian fraud in Minnesota, Nick Shirley, pointed out, he has “ended” Governor Tim Walz’s career after the governor announced he would not be seeking re-election following the media attention.

And BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere couldn’t be happier.

“I think it’s a really positive thing for the nation, for our world. He should go somewhere where we don’t have to see him anymore. Now, his family seems to love him, … but the bottom line here is that he sucks, and I’m glad he’s out of my life,” Stu says, happily.

“Minnesota has to come first — always. Today, I’m proud of the work we’ve done to make Minnesota the best place to live and raise kids,” Walz wrote in a post on X, to which Stu interjects to laugh, “Especially if you need day care.”

“I’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work,” Walz added.

And Stu is not surprised that the left’s attempt at pushing what they thought was a more masculine man on the American people failed.

“Someone pointed this out, and I think it’s a great observation, that Tim Walz is the idea that, like, a leftist DEI person would have of what a manly man from the Midwest was, right? Like this person that in their head they’re like, ‘Wow, that guy, he coaches football,’ right?” Stu comments.

Stu also points out that the Harris-Walz campaign also ran an ad that made this belief of theirs crystal clear.

The ad focused on the saying “man enough,” where a group of men talked about what made them “man enough” — like cooking their steak “rare” — before pivoting to what political beliefs they’re “man enough” to hold.

“Woman wants to be president? Well, I hope she has the guts to look me right in the eye and accept my full-throated endorsement,” one man featured in the campaign ad said, adding, “because I’m man enough to support women.”

“If your vision of what men are is that ad, you think that’s going to work, well, yeah, you picked Tim Walz,” Stu laughs. “Unbelievable.”

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. momentarily interrupted Wednesday’s White House briefing, revealing his hilarious ringtone.

Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins were flanked by other administration officials to announce new and improved dietary guidance for Americans. Reporters and attendees erupted in laughter when Kennedy’s phone rang during the briefing, revealing a duck quack sound effect.

‘Kennedy grinned and quickly silenced his phone.’

While Kennedy’s phone let out some quacks, Rollins quipped that “duck is also high in protein.”

“Duck is a good thing to eat, everybody,” Rollins said.

RELATED: Trump administration finds a creative new way to mock Democrats amid shutdown

Kennedy grinned and quickly silenced his phone, continuing the press conference and addressing the latest changes in health standards from the department.

Kennedy reaffirmed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s amended childhood vaccine schedule, which minimized the number of required immunizations for kids.

Kennedy and his MAHA team also unveiled a new food pyramid that focuses on whole foods, protein, healthy fats, whole grains, and fresh produce. Kennedy’s updated dietary guidance also urges Americans to stay away from “ultra-processed” and refined foods.

“The new guidelines recognize that whole, nutrient-dense food is the most effective path to better health and lower health care costs,” Kennedy said. “Protein and healthy fats are essential and were wrongly discouraged in prior dietary guidelines. We are ending the war on saturated fats.”

RELATED: Vance makes Jeffries a hilarious promise if Democrats end the shutdown

Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“If a foreign adversary sought to destroy the health of our children, to cripple our economy, to weaken our national security, there would be no better strategy than to addict us to ultra-processed foods,” Kennedy said.

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President Donald Trump said in a statement on social media that he is moving to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes and that he wants Congress to “codify” the ban into law.

The president has made easing the housing crisis a goal of his second term, and many have pointed to institutional investors as a large source of the problem.

‘People live in homes, not corporations.’

In a post on Truth Social Wednesday, Trump mentioned banning institutional housing purchases and hinted at other solutions to ease the housing crisis.

“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans,” he wrote.

“It is for that reason, and much more, that I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it,” the president added. “People live in homes, not corporations.”

Trump did not provide details about these “steps” in the post.

He went on to say that he would discuss the policy at a speech in Davos, Switzerland, during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Housing prices skyrocketed during the pandemic, when interest rates were lowered to encourage economic activity and many Americans moved to larger homes to take advantage of work-from-home policies. While interest rates have returned to historic averages, housing prices continued to climb, albeit at a slower pace.

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Many have blamed companies like BlackRock for purchasing single-family homes as part of their investment portfolios, but some say institutional investors make up a small portion of the market.

Others say that encouraging more housing construction would lower housing costs by easing regulations and increasing supply to meet the demand.

BlackRock’s stock slid by 2.3% in the wake of the announcement.

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