Steven Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw, have left California and moved to Central Park West in Manhattan as politicians argue whether a billionaire tax will hurt the Golden State.

The legendary director became a resident of the Empire State as of Jan. 1, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

‘The billionaire class cannot have it all. This nation belongs to all of us.’

Spielberg’s relocation is sparking more fears about a tax proposal that has already driven out other billionaires, including Peter Thiel and others.

“Steven’s move to the East Coast is both long planned and driven purely by his and Kate Capshaw’s desire to be closer to their New York-based children and grandchildren,” said spokeswoman Terry Press to the Times.

The one-time tax has not yet qualified for the ballot, but if it passes, it would go into effect in 2027. It would apply to residents worth $1 billion or more.

The debate over the union-backed tax has led even some Democrats to back off from the proposal. Opponents say it will drive billionaires out of the state and potentially cripple tax revenues.

Although Spielberg denied that the billionaire tax has anything to do with his exit, he left the state just in time to avoid the tax, which would apply to those who were residents of California on Jan. 1, 2026.

Spielberg is estimated to be worth about $7.1 billion, which means he’d have to pay the state of California about $355 million if the tax passed.

His move was first reported by the New York Times.

Among those pushing the bill is independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who visited Los Angeles to advocate for it.

“Enough is enough,” said Sanders. “The billionaire class cannot have it all. This nation belongs to all of us.”

RELATED: LA Times gets obliterated online for scolding people wanting to leave high-tax California

Spielberg’s spokeswoman also refused to indicate whether he had any opinion on the possible tax.

Spielberg is known for numerous popular movies including “Schindler’s List,” “Jaws,” “Jurassic Park,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Catch Me if You Can,” and the “Indiana Jones” franchise.

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​Steven spielberg leaves california, Billionaire tax in california, Tax on billionaires, Wealthy abandon california, Politics 

Newly released police bodycam video from a 2024 alleged hazing incident at a University of Iowa fraternity house has been going viral.

A short clip of the incident posted on X was nearing 52 million views Friday evening, while a YouTube video clocking in at over an hour has eclipsed 250,000 views as the weekend commences.

‘We finally found a pledge class that isn’t the worst ever.’

The video shows dozens of shirtless pledges from the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity — some of them covered in ketchup and blindfolded — in a dark basement as police and firefighters converge on the bizarre scene after a fire alarm was activated, KCRG-TV reported.

RELATED: Oregon U. official reportedly says ‘go f*** yourself if you voted for Donald Trump.’ He’s also a hazing prevention speaker.

“This is the police department! This stops here! Who’s in charge?” one officer asks in the video, after which a voice is heard saying, “They’re upstairs.”

Another official asks the group as a flashlight shines on them, “Does anyone want to be forthcoming about what’s going on?”

But they’re mum on the matter.

“Looks like we have quite a bit of hazing,” one official is heard saying in the bodycam video.

One male wearing a white Iowa hoodie — and apparently drinking a beer and vaping — is seen in the raw clip apparently making life difficult for police at the scene.

RELATED: Unhinged student who flipped Turning Point USA table gets arrested and faces 5 charges

Image source: University of Iowa Police bodycam video screenshot, redacted

“You got f**kin’ nothin’,” he tells officers at one point. In another segment he tells a cop, “You guys can f**kin’ leave, how ’bout that?” and “there’s no hazing.”

Officers found 56 pledges in two dark rooms during the incident, KCRG said.

“They’re just messin’ with them,” one male, another apparent non-pledge, tells an officer after being asked what had been going on.

While no one appeared to reveal specifically who was in charge, the station did say the pledges “responded in unison” that no one was there against their will.

KCRG said prosecutors charged one arrestee with interference with official acts, but the charge was later dropped.

The University of Iowa suspended Alpha Delta Phi until the summer of 2029, the station said, adding that three fraternities presently are under suspension.

The “Circling Back” podcast, however, expressed quite a different perspective on the bodycam video, as one podcast participant noted, “We finally found a pledge class that isn’t the worst ever.”

The podcast crew also remarked that the frat pledges seemed decidedly less interested in obeying “actual law enforcement” than their frat leaders: “These guys need to be celebrated.”

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​University of iowa, Campus police, Campus safety, Fraternity, Hazing, Viral video, Arrest, Alpha delta phi, Suspended, Crime 

A former official of the Biden and Obama administrations threatened corporations and others who cooperate with the Trump administration during a podcast interview.

Rice made the comments while a guest on the “Stay Tuned with Preet” podcast with former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara.

‘This is not going to be an instance of, you know, forgive and forget. The damage that these people are doing is too severe to the American people and to our national interest.’

“It’s not gonna end well for them. For those that decided that it was, you know, that they would act in their perceived, very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore is very short-term self-interest, and take a knee to [President Donald] Trump, I think they’re now starting to realize, ‘Wait a minute, you know, this is not popular, Trump is not popular,'” Rice claimed.

“If these corporations think that the Democrats, when they come back in power, are going to, you know, play by the old rules, and, you know, say, ‘Oh, never mind. We’ll forgive you for all the people you fired, all the policies and principles you’ve violated, all, you know, the laws you’ve skirted.’ I think they’ve got another thing coming,” she added.

Rice said Democrats would have an “accountability agenda” if they make substantive gains in the midterm elections and curtail President Donald Trump’s power.

“You know, companies already are starting to hear they better preserve their documents,” Rice added. “They better be ready for subpoenas. If they’ve done something wrong, they’ll be held accountable, and if they haven’t broken the law, good for them.”

She pointed to some polling showing that Americans were souring on the president’s record on immigration and economics.

“This is not going to be an instance of, you know, forgive and forget. The damage that these people are doing is too severe to the American people and to our national interest,” she said.

RELATED: Majority of Americans approve of Trump’s response to anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Rice also praised the protest against the president’s immigration enforcement operations.

“The people of Minnesota, above all, have shown us how bravely … it is possible to come together and to have an impact, and to do so through peaceful, nonviolent, mass protest,” she added. “So I think that is a very important sign, and I think it will have knock-on effects in many other parts of the country.”

However, recent polling shows a majority of Americans approved of the president’s response to protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Back in the fall of 2025, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles and honors by King Charles III, due to ongoing controversy and persistent ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This week, on his 66th birthday, the ex-Duke of York was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office related to his Epstein ties but released just hours later.

When Glenn Beck heard the news of the disgraced former prince’s arrest, he was incredulous.

“Notice: Nobody is going to jail for actually having sex with children. … [Mountbatten-Windsor] was arrested for ‘wrongdoing,”’ he says mockingly. “Well, I think having sex with underage kids is wrongdoing.”

Glenn cites a recent Reuters poll that found that 69% of Americans strongly agree with the statement: “The files show that powerful people are rarely held accountable.” 17% somewhat agreed with the statement, and only 11% disagreed.

“This is universal,” says Glenn, “and yet all that we’re seeing is people playing politics with it.”

On February 16, a panel of independent U.N. human rights experts declared that the content within the Epstein files may constitute “crimes against humanity.”

“That’s the U.N. — crimes against humanity! But who was having sex with kids?” Glenn exclaims.

Every time more information about Epstein comes out, we’re left with “more questions,” never actual answers, he laments.

“They release stuff and you’re like, wait a minute. Well, that just opens up more. It’s not clarity. It’s fog. And it’s happening everywhere — both sides of the Atlantic,” he says, citing the U.K.’s long-running grooming-gangs scandal, where Parliament voted down a Conservative push for a national inquiry in January 2025, despite the massive scale of child exploitation.

Glenn mocks the politicians claiming that “we care so much about our children.”

“I don’t think you care about our children. I’m beginning to think you’re not really human,” he says.

But it’s not just politicians who are to blame; part of the problem, he says, is us.

“The outrage that we all have on any topic lasts about 72 hours, and then we move on. Have you noticed that one?” Glenn asks.

“I don’t know what that says about us. Does it say that we’re overwhelmed? That there’s just a new thing to be outraged on every 72 hours? That we’re exhausted? … Does it say that we’re fragmented into so many tribes that we’re only pursuing accountability when it hurts the other team?”

Glenn fears the answer may be far darker.

Perhaps “we’ve become totally accustomed to scandal,” he says, or worse — “Nothing’s real any more. Child rape is not real any more. Even our outrage isn’t real any more.”

He argues that social media is the only reason we’re even still talking about Epstein. Without X, Facebook, and other platforms artificially prolonging and amplifying the scandal, Glenn fears the public would have long forgotten the convicted sex offender and his countless victims.

“There was a time in Great Britain … in the entire West, if there was a whiff of corruption at high levels: national reckoning,” he says.

But today, we just “wait it out,” and scandal after scandal just quietly “goes away.”

To hear Glenn’s full monologue, 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, Beck, Prince andrew, Andrew mountbatten-windsor, Royal family, Epstein, Epstein files, Prince andrew epstein 

Mere hours after the Supreme Court handed down its decision on Trump’s tariffs under the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, President Trump responded with a lengthy Truth Social post. Though the court ruled against him, Trump was not nearly as angry with the decision as might be expected.

On Friday afternoon, President Trump posted an unexpectedly optimistic message in the wake of SCOTUS’ decision. Trump’s layered response, which echoed very closely his live reaction in a press conference, spilled into two separate posts.

‘Today I will sign an Order to impose a 10% GLOBAL TARIFF, under Section 122, over and above our normal TARIFFS already being charged.’

Trump began by praising the “Strength, Wisdom, and Love of our Country” exhibited by dissenting Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh before attacking those in the majority:

“The Democrats on the Court are thrilled, but they will automatically vote ‘NO’ against ANYTHING that makes America Strong and Healthy Again. They, also, are a Disgrace to our Nation. Others think they’re being ‘politically correct,’ which has happened before, far too often, with certain Members of this Court when, in fact, they’re just FOOLS and ‘LAPDOGS’ for the RINOS and Radical Left Democrats and, not that this should have anything to do with it, very unpatriotic, and disloyal to the Constitution.”

RELATED: Trump finally gets his answer on legality of tariffs in new SCOTUS decision

Trump then suggested that the court “has been swayed by foreign interests” who are “dancing in the streets” as a result of the ruling.

However, Trump then said that the decision was largely a positive development because it clarified the president’s authority under the IEEPA only, while leaving open several other avenues for imposing tariffs: “All of those TARIFFS remain, but other alternatives will now be used to replace the ones that the Court incorrectly rejected.”

He drew from Justice Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion to illustrate the “different direction” that he will pursue, “which is even stronger than our original choice.” As Trump noted, Kavanaugh wrote,

Although I firmly disagree with the Court’s holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward. That is because numerous other federal statutes authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs issued in this case. … Those statutes include, for example, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (Section 232); the Trade Act of 1974 (Sections 122, 201, and 301); and the Tariff Act of 1930 (Section 338).

Trump omitted Kavanaugh’s mention of “a few procedural steps” that may be required with these other avenues for tariffs that the IEEPA does not require.

Nearing the end of his post, Trump argued that the Supreme Court had unintentionally made the president’s “ability to both regulate TRADE, and impost TARIFFS, more powerful and crystal clear, rather than less.”

As a result, Trump issued several orders at the end of his post, indicating his intention to continue the tariffs, including a “10% GLOBAL TARIFF,” under the existing statutory authorities cited earlier in the post:

“Therefore, effective immediately, all National Security TARIFFS, Section 232 and existing Section 301 TARIFFS, remain in place, and in full force and effect. Today I will sign an Order to impose a 10% GLOBAL TARIFF, under Section 122, over and above our normal TARIFFS already being charged, and we are also initiating several Section 301 and other Investigations to protect our Country from unfair Trading practices,” Trump wrote.

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So-called “ghost students” are reportedly fueling a growing financial aid fraud crisis in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system and across the country.

These ghost students allegedly steal identities to enroll online and apply for taxpayer-funded financial aid.

‘These fraudsters are very well organized and well financed.’

KSTP reported in October that the Minnesota State system, which consists of 33 colleges and universities, had flagged over 7,700 “fraudulent” or “potentially fraudulent” financial aid applications in the 2024-2025 academic year. In nearly 95% of those cases, the ghost students had applied to two-year community colleges. The fraud was identified before any money was distributed.

KSTP discovered two cases in which funds were distributed to fraudsters who had enrolled in a community college. The cases came to light after a man in Hutchinson, Kansas, reported that someone had used his name and Social Security number to collect $13,000. Another individual stated that his information was used to take out two student loans worth over $6,700.

A Minnesota State spokesperson told KSTP in October that at least three schools had paid between $9,500 and $63,500 back to the federal government after discovering ghost students.

Craig Munson, the chief information security officer for the Minnesota State system, addressed the ongoing fraud issues during a Thursday Minnesota House hearing.

“These fraudsters are very well organized and well financed,” Munson said. “Stealing money that was intended for real students in need of financial aid.”

RELATED: The insane little story that failed to warn America about the depth of Somali fraud

Photo by JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado/Getty Images

When questioned about how much the fraud scheme has cost the Minnesota State system, Munson did not provide a dollar amount but noted that he believes “we are making very good progress” in addressing the issue.

Munson explained that the school system is still seeing a similar number of fraud cases, but that ghost students are now targeting more four-year colleges and universities.

RELATED: Tim Walz’s nightmare continues as HHS shuts off $185M to Minnesota amid allegedly ‘fake’ Somali day care centers

Photo by: Jumping Rocks/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

“It used to be more of the two-year [colleges], we’re starting to see they’re looking at all colleges and universities,” he said. “It could be a couple of reasons — that they’ve learned the system to its extent, and they want to extend their stay in the system and transfer to a four-year possibly. We’re also seeing some positive reports that many of our two-year colleges are seeing a little bit of a reduction in these fraud attempts.”

During Thursday’s hearing, Munson presented a fraud report detailing the growing threat and recommendations to address it, including implementing an automated identity-proofing system that would cost $1 million to $1.5 million per year.

A spokesperson for the Minnesota State system told Blaze News that enrollment fraud is a problem for colleges and universities across the nation.

“The Minnesota State IT Services team has implemented a variety of safeguards to protect against this threat,” the spokesperson stated. “Nationally, there has been a significant rise in this activity and we have been working to install additional safeguards and provide guidance to our 33 colleges and universities for the last two years. Our schools, in partnership with faculty, have been actively managing this problem, identifying ghost students early in each semester and removing them from our systems to ensure only real students can get the classes they need and financial aid is distributed to the students who need it to achieve their academic goals.”

“In addition, this last fall a more formal Enrollment Fraud Working Group that includes experts in IT, Academic and Student Affairs, and Audit from the Minnesota State system office, as well as faculty, staff, and student representatives from throughout the system was formed. The goal of the group is to identify additional safeguards the colleges and universities of Minnesota State can put in place to keep ghost students out,” the spokesperson added.

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​News, Minnesota, Minnesota state colleges and universities system, Minnesota state system, Ghost students, Financial aid, Fraud, Financial aid fraud, Craig munson, Politics 

Idaho police are trying to identify and locate a man who allegedly stole an ambulance and rammed it into a building housing a Department of Homeland Security office before failing to light it all on fire.

The incident began at St. Luke’s Hospital, where the suspect stole an ambulance, then crashed it into the lobby of the building on Wednesday at about 11 p.m. in Meridian, according to Meridian police. Meridian is a suburb of Boise.

‘If the suspect had not been interrupted, there is no doubt this building would have been burned, putting the lives of first responders and others at risk.’

After he crashed the ambulance, the suspect retrieved cans with some sort of accelerant that were hidden in bushes and doused the vehicle with the substance, according to police.

“It appears the suspect was unable to ignite the accelerant before being scared off by responding agencies,” said Meridian Police Chief Tracy Basterrechea in a statement.

Police said the suspect was wearing a medical mask as well as a black shirt and tan pants.

Basterrechea noted that there had been chatter online criticizing the presence of DHS at the building and called the incident a “serious criminal act.”

He also addressed “absolutely false” comments on social media denying that property damage is violence.

“This was absolutely an act of violence, and if the suspect had not been interrupted, there is no doubt this building would have been burned, putting the lives of first responders and others at risk,” he added.

Because the suspect had apparently planted the accelerant before stealing the ambulance and had driven about a quarter of a mile to the building with the DHS office, police believe the attack was intentional.

Canyon County Paramedics issued a statement about the incident.

RELATED: Video shows brawl after walkout student hits pro-ICE man — who is charged with child abuse

“No Canyon County Paramedics personnel were inside the ambulance at the time of the incident,” read the statement. “There are currently no confirmed injuries to members of the public or first responders connected to this event.”

Basterrechea said his department was leading the investigation, but they were cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as DHS and other agencies.

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