It was 1990, and I was in my final year of middle school. The Ultimate Warrior had just defeated Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania VI, Bon Jovi was poisoning the airwaves, and bubblegum still held its flavor.

The law of the jungle was merciless. The concrete schoolyard was just a warm-up for the clique wars to come — if you weren’t smoking Marlboro Reds or rocking Nike Air Max 90s, you didn’t stand a chance. If your parents picked you up in the “wrong” car, it was reputational suicide.

Back then, footballers looked like real blokes — sweaty, scruffy, and rough. Take Peter Beardsley: magic on the pitch, but no one was swapping stickers for his smile.

Summer break was just a few weeks away. While everyone else seemed ready to spend six weeks climbing trees, aimlessly riding their bikes from dawn till dusk, staring awkwardly at girls they liked, or searching for dead bodies in the woods, I had other plans.

Fever pitch

That summer, my true obsession was the Italia 90 World Cup sticker album — a glossy shrine to footballing glory, celebrating a tournament set in Italy and far more engrossing than my favorite comics. To top it off, England had an all-star lineup and, for once, stood a good chance of reliving the glory days of ’66, when we routed the Germans. I set myself a a mission worthy of Pelé himself: to fill every page with those adhesive, elusive footballers. Forget superheroes and cliff-hangers — completing that album was the only epic saga that mattered to this 11-year-old boy.

Mark Leech/Offside/Getty Images

Everyone wanted Maradona or one of the coveted shiny stickers. We devised what I can only describe as a unique system of exchange. Forget Wall Street; this was playground economics at its rawest. We would huddle around while each of us cycled through our spares, chanting “got, got, got,” until someone finally shouted, “NEED!”

The true value of a sticker seemed to rise in direct proportion to the volume of that shout — sometimes it seemed like it could be heard in the next city. The whole system was rooted in supply and demand, but deals were sweetened with chocolate, soda, or the promise of a date with someone’s older sister.

Mullet over

The Soviet Union was in its death throes. This was the era before German reunification. Although the Berlin Wall had technically fallen — famously serenaded by “Knight Rider’s” very own power balladeer, David Hasselhoff — Germany still played as West Germany in the World Cup.

For all the horror associated with the communist regime, the most haunting images in my young mind were those notorious mullets — that and the East German female athletes, so heavily doped on steroids that they looked more like men than women.

March Leech/Offside/Getty Images

Flicking through my album, the West German squad looked less like a football team and more like a group of metalheads heading to a Mötley Crüe concert. Still, some of our own lads were sporting that same achy-breaky hair — most famously Chris Waddle, who blasted the ball over the bar in England’s semifinal defeat against West Germany. Proof, if ever it was needed, that mullets make you miss penalties.

RELATED: The best pub in England might be this Norwich backstreet boozer

The Fat Cat pub

Blokes at work

This tournament’s sticker book hit the shelves at the end of April, ahead of the World Cup kicking off in North America — a whopping 980 stickers for obsessives to collect. The game has changed since those halcyon days — both financially and, perhaps most bizarrely, aesthetically.

Today, pampered millionaire footballers seem to look perma-tanned and Botoxed, more suited to the red carpet than the muddy touchline. Back then, footballers looked like real blokes — sweaty, scruffy, and rough. Take Peter Beardsley: magic on the pitch, but no one was swapping stickers for his smile. For Americans, imagine pulling a Don Mossi Topps card — bags of talent, but not much glamor.

L-R: Peter Beardsley, Don Mossi. Shaun Botterill/Betmann/Getty Images

Patience and hope

Of course, my mission failed spectacularly. I didn’t complete the album in a month. In fact, I never completed it. But maybe that was the point. I belonged to the last generation to grow up without the internet, when patience and hope were virtues and instant gratification had yet to rear its head. Now we’re kept constantly distracted, our attention fought over by algorithms, notifications, and endless scrolling.

Our sticker quests were slow-burn adventures, each new pack a lesson in anticipation, disappointment, and the long game. Trading and collecting weren’t just a playground pastime; they were a rite of passage, a physical reminder of a slower world where you couldn’t always have it all, all at once.

I am giving some serious thought to picking up the 2026 album. But this time round, the sticking point isn’t patience; it’s money. With 48 teams and nearly 1,000 stickers to collect, completing the book is now estimated to cost at least £1,000, ($1,400) to complete. As tempting as it is to rekindle my childhood love affair, I may have to sit this one out. Still, I did get the Maradona sticker — maybe not a complete album, but a complete memory.

​Sports, Lifestyle, World cup, Soccer, Football, Diego maradona, 1990, Sports collectibles, West germany, England, Culture, Fifa, Letter from the uk 

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) provided state Democrats with a big win on Thursday in their ongoing war on the Second Amendment. Despite polls showing earlier this year that Virginians were overwhelmingly opposed, the former CIA officer ratified a ban on so-called “assault firearms.”

As of July 1, law-abiding Americans in the Old Dominion will be barred from importing, buying, selling, transferring, or manufacturing:

semiautomatic center-fire rifle or pistols with fixed magazine capacities in excess of 15 rounds;semiautomatic center-fire rifles chambered in calibers larger than .22 that have folding, telescoping, or collapsible stocks; thumb-hold stocks or pistol grips that protrude “conspicuously beneath the action of the rifle”; second hand grips that can be held by the non-trigger hand; grenade launchers; and/or threaded barrels capable of accepting a muzzle brake, muzzle compensator, sound suppressor, or a flash suppressor;semiautomatic shotguns that can accept detachable magazines, have a fixed magazine capacity of over 15 rounds, or have collapsible stocks; shotguns with revolving cylinders; andfirearms with the capacity to accept a belt ammunition feeding device.

A violation of the ban will be a Class 1 misdemeanor, the most serious misdemeanor level, and someone convicted of such a violation could face up to a year in jail, a $2,500 fine, and be barred from possessing or transporting such firearms for a period of three years.

‘Virginia has now joined the minority of radical states to ban these constitutionally protected firearms.’

Democrat state Sen. Saddam Azlan Salim, a Bangladeshi native who came to America in 2000 and served as the gun ban’s chief patron, said that “Spanberger’s signing of SB749 marks a monumental victory for public safety in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

Salim added that “this law saves lives, and together, we prove that people-powered progress prevails.”

The National Rifle Association took legal action just moments after Spanberger ratified the gun ban.

RELATED: Virginia Democrats trying to force through illegal power-grab make ANOTHER humiliating mistake

Win McNamee/Getty Images

John Commerford, executive director of the NRA-Institute for Legislative Action, announced on Thursday the filing of “two critical lawsuits in Virginia — one in federal court, with our friends at the Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition along with two NRA members, and one in state court, in Washington County, Virginia, along with our state association of Virginia Shooting Sports Association and Middleton Firearms and Training and two NRA members.”

“The NRA will not sit idly by while progressive politicians strip the rights of law-abiding citizens, and our world-class legal team is locked, loaded, and ready to shoot down this outrageous gun-control law,” said Commerford.

Second Amendment Foundation Executive Director Adam Kraut stated, “It’s wild that lawmakers who each take an oath to uphold the Constitution insist on passing bills purposefully designed to gut it.”

“The firearms and magazines banned in this law aren’t bizarre and unusual outliers; they’re among the most commonly owned guns and magazines in the country. They’re owned in the tens of millions by peaceable Americans who use them overwhelmingly lawfully,” continued Kraut. “Virginia has now joined the minority of radical states to ban these constitutionally protected firearms and, in so doing, joined the club of states we’re suing over it.”

The federal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by the SAF, FPC, and NRA asserts that the gun ban will infringe upon the Second and 14th Amendment rights of NRA members and other plaintiffs and asks the court to declare that the ban and all related laws, regulations, policies, and procedures violate the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed under the Constitution.

The Justice Department has also signaled that it will be challenging the gun ban in court.

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​Second amendment, 2nd amendment, 2a, Abigail spanberger, Democrat, Gun grab, Semi-automatic, Rifle, Weapon, Shotgun, Pistol, Right to bear arms, Gun ban, Assault rifles, Assault weapons, Confiscation, Virginia, Richmond, Politics 

When a new technology is developed, we initially try to adapt it to existing patterns. The programmer writes code. The installer runs scripts. The researcher indexes documents in a database to later retrieve them. These habits feel natural; then something shifts, and the habits turn out to have been contingent and temporary. They were, like many arrangements we mistake as permanent, just what we happened to be doing at the time.

Coding agents with large language models have arrived, and they are replacing some patterns with something that looks, on first encounter, suspiciously simple. You describe what you want in English, and the thing gets built.

The history of technology is in part one of faith placed, too quickly, in systems that did not warrant it.

Andrej Karpathy, who has thought about neural nets longer than most, built an application called MenuGen: You photograph a restaurant menu, and the system generates images to illustrate every dish. The application is functional, culturally fluent, and genuinely useful. More notable is the process. Karpathy did not write the code. He described the application, and an LLM wrote both front-end and back-end. He has said, with the equanimity of someone who has made peace with a strange fact, that he does not really know how MenuGen works in the conventional sense.

The AI is his programmer now.

A cyborg language

There is a temptation to read this as novelty, as spectacle, as one more iteration in the long carnival of Silicon Valley announcements. The change here is structural: The barrier between having an idea and building a thing has collapsed to something quite small. Karpathy suggests the barrier may soon be low enough for anyone to publish an AI-driven application as easily as one can now post a video on a social media site.

The installation script is another interesting case because it is modest enough to be revealing. Mintlify, the documentation company, proposed in early 2026 that software should ship with English files instead of shell scripts: install.md, a human-readable checklist that a coding agent can read and execute. The agent detects your operating system, detects your environment, proceeds through each step, and pauses for your approval before running commands. The process is more auditable than a Bash script because anyone can read it. More generally, software can support skill.md files, describing both installation and usage, served at well-known URLs so that any coding agent can load them. Developers are now writing documentation for machines, rather than humans, although humans can easily read and edit it.

Karpathy has noted that digital services could become LLM-friendly: documentation in Markdown, command-line interfaces exposed for commands, APIs that take English. The user and the AI have effectively merged into a single audience. Design for one, and you design for both.

LLMs address the knowledge problem in ways that Vannevar Bush, in 1945, could not imagine. Bush dreamed of the Memex, a personal filing system for all one’s books and communications, a mechanized memory that would allow fast and flexible recall. He was describing, in the vocabulary available to him, what we would now call a knowledge base. The LLM makes this capacity available to everyone without clever indexing.

RELATED: Social media scams are up 700%. Here’s how to stay safe.

Media Trading Ltd/Getty Images

Karpathy’s approach to personal knowledge management involves feeding raw sources to an LLM, which then writes a linked wiki of Markdown documents using summary pages, encyclopedia-style articles, connections between ideas. The AI performs a health check on its own wiki, looking for contradictions and gaps, refining the content. It is, as Karpathy has described it, a full-time research librarian. Any claim can be verified by a human who reads the file. The complexity of the database is bypassed through the simpler expedient of using words.

With great speed comes great care

This design is not infallible. An LLM can hallucinate, conflate, or extrapolate with confidence from insufficient evidence. The wiki it writes is plausible before it is accurate. Error-checking in these systems is not a solved problem. These are not small concerns. The history of technology is in part one of faith placed, too quickly, in systems that did not warrant it.

Yet the direction is clear. We are moving from an era in which computers required exact instruction to one in which they accept intention. Assembly language gave way to high-level languages; high-level languages gave way to graphical user interfaces; graphical user interfaces are giving way to conversation. Each transition lowered the barrier to software development. Each distributed power in its own way, with costs and distortions that took years to fully account for. This transition will be no different in that respect.

The medium, however, is different. Previous transitions expanded access to computation while keeping language in its ordinary role: a wrapper for technical instruction, a label on a button, a comment in a codebase. This transition makes language the primary interface. The program is the sentence. The installation script is the paragraph. The application is its description rendered executable by a model that has read more human text than any human could read in a thousand lifetimes. We have always known that words could build worlds. Such building used to route through human action in a way that is no longer true.

​Tech, Coding, Ai, Scripts, Llms 

A former chief of staff to Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has pled guilty in a corruption scandal that involves yet another top California Democrat who is now hoping to succeed Newsom in the governor’s mansion.

On Thursday, 53-year-old Dana Williamson, who worked as Newsom’s chief of staff from 2022 until 2024, pled guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud, subscribing to a false tax return, and making false statements to a federal agent.

Becerra has had to answer tough questions about how he, the former top prosecutor in the state, did not know that hundreds of thousands of dollars were being stolen from him.

According to the plea agreement, Williamson participated in a money-laundering scheme involving two co-conspirators, Sean McCluskie and Greg Campbell. From February 2022 until November 2024, Williamson helped McCluskie steal money from the dormant campaign of McCluskie’s boss by billing the campaign for consulting services and then funneling that money to Campbell, who then passed it along to McCluskie under the guise of paying McCluskie’s spouse for “a no-show job.”

Once Williamson began working for Newsom, she managed to convince someone else to take over the scheme, though she remained involved in it, the agreement said.

McCluskie’s boss at that time was Xavier Becerra, the former California attorney general and Biden Health and Human Services secretary who is now running for governor. Becerra’s campaign account lost approximately $225,000 in the scheme, and Williamson has been ordered to pay that amount back in restitution as part of the agreement.

Becerra is not named in the plea agreement and has not been charged with any crime in connection with the case. However, he has had to answer tough questions about how he, the former top prosecutor in the state, did not know that hundreds of thousands of dollars were being stolen from him.

Becerra stated that he has cooperated fully with the investigation. He also described the betrayal of McCluskie, his former chief of staff, as a “gut punch.”

Newsom is also not mentioned by name in the plea agreement. When asked at a press conference Thursday about Williamson’s plea deal, Newsom expressed sympathy for her family but also claimed it was a matter of “accountability.”

A source linked to Newsom claimed that no one in the office ever witnessed any of Williamson’s criminal behavior but that the governor did place Williamson on administrative leave when the allegations first arose. Williamson left her government job shortly thereafter.

RELATED: Newsom lashes out at report of inmates using his tablet program to groom children — and Christopher Rufo fires back

Newsom and Becerra, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In addition to stealing from Becerra on McCluskie’s behalf, Williamson submitted a false tax return that claimed over $1.7 million in business expenses that were actually luxury items, food delivery services, private jet travel, veterinary care, and other nondeductible personal expenses, the agreement said.

She also lied to federal investigators, the Department of Justice said.

Williamson now faces a total of nearly 40 years in prison and over $2 million in fines and restitution. She is scheduled to be sentenced on July 9.

McCluskie pled guilty back in November to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud, while Campbell pled guilty the following month to one count of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to commit offenses against the United States. Both are scheduled to be sentenced June 4.

Becerra has surged in the California gubernatorial polls lately, especially after former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) dropped out of the race on account of his own scandals. The primary is scheduled for June 2, and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will advance to the general election in November.

RealClearPolitics polling average has Becerra running neck and neck with Republican candidate Steve Hilton.

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​Gavin newsom, California, Xavier becerra, Dana williamson, Politics 

Florida law enforcement officials are seeking who is responsible for vandalizing a historic cemetery that has ties to the black community.

Seventeen graves were vandalized at the Old Memphis Cemetery in Palmetto, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s office.

‘It’s evil, messing with death. … This is crazy and heartbreaking.’

Concrete was broken at some graves and others were spray-painted with red paint at the 122-year-old burial grounds.

“I’m outraged and furious,” said Manatee County NAACP president Tracey Washington. “I’m very disturbed.”

One concrete grave was completely cracked open and collapsed inward. Investigators said the vandalism was done in the past few weeks, and they’re seeking help from the public in their investigation.

Washington said that many of her relatives are buried at the cemetery.

“I have my brother, grandfather, and grandmother here,” she added.

Bizarrely, one of the messages spray-painted on a grave read, “Trump,” and another read, “Ron DeSantis.”

“It’s evil, messing with death,” said Xtavia Bailey, who also has relatives buried at the cemetery. “These people aren’t bothering anybody. This is crazy and heartbreaking.”

“We need to find out who did this and get to the bottom of this,” Washington added. “This is totally unacceptable.”

RELATED: ‘Horror movie come to life’: Man faces nearly 600 charges after 100 skulls and skeletons were allegedly found in his home

Officials announced a community cleanup event that included the offer from a Palmetto cement company to create new vault lids and install them at no charge.

“This place has a lot of history, and it should be protected just like any other history we’ve got,” said Christopher Mullinex, who volunteered to donate concrete work to the effort.

Palmetto is a town of about 13K residents in central Florida.

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​Black community, Graves vandalized, Trump vandalism, Historic palmetto cemetery, Politics 

It’s been almost two months since President Trump took the bold step of officially forming the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.

Since then, we have already uncovered tens of billions of dollars in defrauded taxpayer money, prosecuted dozens of fraudsters, and stopped billions in suspicious payments.

And we’re just getting started.

If you are defrauding the American taxpayer, we will find you and take you to court.

Our success raises an obvious question: Why has it taken the federal government until now to finally tackle fraud? Because Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson and I are taking a new approach.

Until President Trump’s inauguration, federal anti-fraud efforts have been defined by a “pay-and-chase” approach: Federal agencies like the Health and Human Services issue payments and then only take steps to identify fraud on the back end. The federal government might prosecute the alleged fraudsters — but only if the fraud is big enough.

It’s a flawed approach that has been predictably exploited. Every year, the United States loses about $250 billion to fraud but recovers only about $10 billion. Put plainly, “pay and chase” does nothing to actually stop fraud.

Our new approach starts with close coordination. We are orchestrating all federal agencies’ anti-fraud efforts from the White House. Rather than haphazard fraud mitigation, the task force is focusing agencies’ efforts on target programs where spending is high but anti-fraud protections are low. Using this approach, we are already uncovering major fraud scandals across a range of federal programs.

Kelly Loeffler at the Small Business Administration has referred $22 billion in fraudulent loans for collection. At the Department of Education, Linda McMahon has identified $1 billion in fraudulent student loans from “ghost students.” Brooke Rollins at the Department of Agriculture has identified 14,000 luxury-car owners receiving SNAP benefits in just one state.

We aren’t just identifying these fraudsters. We are ramping up federal prosecutions against them as well — not just because American taxpayers deserve justice, but because active enforcement holds fraudsters accountable and deters fraud in the first place.

Our message is simple: No fraud is too big or too small to prosecute. If you are defrauding the American taxpayer, we will find you and take you to court.

RELATED: Trump’s antitrust policy is working for everyday Americans

Aaron Schwartz/Sipa/Bloomberg/Getty Images

To do so, we established a new Fraud Division at the Department of Justice led by Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald.

In just the last two months, the division has executed 22 search warrants against fraudulent day-care centers in Minnesota, including the Quality Learing Center. It has also launched a major crackdown in Los Angeles against Medicare fraudsters who stole over $50 million and secured multiyear prison sentences against fraudsters in a $522 million health care scheme.

All across the country, fraudsters have been put on notice.

We are also ordering states to hold up their end of the bargain and prosecute fraudsters in the federal programs they oversee. We have sent letters to the governors in all 50 states instructing them to use their existing resources to identify and prosecute fraudsters in the Medicaid program.

Alongside aggressive prosecution, the task force is preventing fraud before taxpayer money leaves the federal government. Agencies will now release funds only when they are confident that a payment is legitimate and lawful.

As a result, Trump administration agencies are now establishing fraud indicators and analyzing data to detect patterns of fraud — things like unreasonable growth, impossible services, and other hallmarks of fraud. When an unacceptable risk of fraud is identified, the money stops.

We’re seeing this approach pay dividends already in one of the biggest federal programs: Medicare.

Dr. Mehmet Oz has identified nearly 800 suspected fraudulent providers of hospice and home health care services and withheld payment for their questionable services. So far, we have saved $1.4 billion in potentially fraudulent payments and have paused enrollment of additional providers.

This is an approach that works and will be scaled to other federal programs. The days of “pay and chase” are over. It’s time to prevent and prosecute.

Editor’s note: This op-ed was adapted from an X post by Vice President JD Vance.

​Fraud, Fraud prevention task force, Jd vance, Dr. oz, Medicare fraud, Quality learing center, Hhs, Snap benefits, Prosecuting fraud, Medicaid, Trump administration, Opinion & analysis 

You might not know it by watching algorithmically approved conservative media, but we are in the thick of primary season, with important red-state primaries taking place nearly every Tuesday. In most states, the primary outcomes these weeks will be of greater consequence than the general election in November.

Sadly, special interest-supporting liberal Republicans will likely win most races — often thanks to Trump’s support. However, last week’s Indiana Senate elections demonstrated that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Trump has scared away quality challengers in every single congressional primary by reflexively endorsing incumbents.

Last week, we were entreated to what it looks like to finally have a unified and organized movement. A group of liberal Republicans in the Indiana Senate blocked a core party initiative; in this case, it was redistricting, and all but one target was defeated.

Thanks to Trump endorsements and support from Turning Point USA, the Club for Growth, and Indiana Sen. Jim Banks (R), six or seven state senators were defeated. Along with two more conservatives who won in open districts, a quarter of the entire Senate GOP conference shifted to the right, meaning they will likely have the votes to replace the Senate president.

This victory raises an obvious question: How come we don’t see united movements in other red states to replace entrenched groups of liberal Republicans who buck the party platform and betray their voters?

Instead, we often see Trump endorse those incumbents, who then attack the few conservatives we currently have in legislative chambers. If Trump would only endorse the way he did in Indiana, we’d change the party in one election cycle. Unfortunately, in almost every other primary, the president has been a net liability.

Even in Indiana, the president was something of a double-edged sword, as he successfully re-elected two Senate RINOs — Liz Brown and Ron Alting — simply because they voted for redistricting, but they were horrible on numerous other issues. Jim Banks himself opposed Alting because he was a champion of transgenderism and illegal aliens.

In Congress, both Reps. Jefferson Shreve (Ind. 6) and Jim Baird (Ind. 4) were vulnerable. Shreve only won his race by five points, which means Trump’s endorsement likely made a difference. Baird is one of the original sponsors of Florida Republican Rep. Maria Salazar’s amnesty bill.

RELATED: Trump needs to denounce the Dignity Act

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Looking ahead to Idaho’s upcoming primary, conservatives are outraged over a video surfacing from Gov. Brad Little (R) lambasting those who oppose illegal immigration. The Freedom Caucus in the state has tried to shut off illegal labor, but Little and his allies are not only blocking those bills, they are funding challengers against the conservatives.

Little has been a thorn in the side of conservatives for years and only received 60% in his re-election during the 2022 primary. It was well understood that he’d have a hard time running for a third term in 2026, but he preemptively secured Trump’s endorsement, which all but ensured that quality candidates like Attorney General Raul Labrador could not get into the race.

Numerous primaries have already been canceled because of Trump’s endorsements.

Before he was assassinated, Charlie Kirk had endorsed Nate Morris for Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat in Kentucky. Earlier this month, Trump endorsed establishment Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), forcing Morris out of the race in exchange for an ambassadorship.

Meanwhile, Trump has scared away quality challengers in every single congressional primary by reflexively endorsing incumbents. The only incumbent he is trying to unseat is Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). As a conservative, I have some disagreements with Massie on Hamas, Islam, crime, drugs, and immigration in general, but we all know that Trump singling him out has more to do with Massie’s dissent on the issues we do agree on.

Then, of course, there is Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who just won yet another term thanks to a Trump endorsement. Conservatives complain bitterly about RINO senators wasting deep red states and undermining our ability to accomplish anything. Well, Capito is ground zero for this mismatch.

RELATED: How Republicans have failed to defund sanctuary cities for a generation

J. David Ake/Getty Images

In a state Trump won by 40 points, Capito is liberal on both fiscal and social issues and embodies the special interest and lack of heart, brain, and soul of the geriatric Senate GOP Conference that was led by Mitch McConnell.

Tom Willis, who was a state senator and Green Beret, was a viable challenger. Trump could have easily endorsed him and kept the seat in conservative hands, but he handed Capito another term. Capito also bankrolled a number of RINOs in the legislature who successfully fended off conservative challengers.

As conservatives scramble to push redistricting in southern states in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling, those who have slept through 10 years of Trump’s primary sabotage are surprised to find many RINOs in these supermajority Republican states who are recalcitrant to fully eliminate Democrat districts.

Tyler Bowyer, CEO of Turning Point Action, observed, “In deep red states like Indiana, Mississippi, Alabama — a large percentage of ‘moderate republicans’ are actually Democrats.”

The State Freedom Caucus Network has been valiantly fighting these people who have consistently been buttressed by Trump endorsements. The water is warm. It would be nice for conservative leaders with large followers or millions of dollars in PAC money to actually lead Trump rather than follow him and support the foot soldiers who are risking their livelihoods and careers to fight for the issues they post about.

​Freedom caucus, Illegal immigration, Red state, Thomas massie, Trump, Trump endorsements, Rino, Indiana, Gop primaries, State freedom caucus network, Opinion & analysis 

Christians face persecution across the globe — but one country has made it almost impossible for them to practice their faith, threatening torture, imprisonment, and execution simply because they believe in Jesus Christ.

That country is North Korea.

“If you’re even found to be in possession of a Bible, you and your entire family are likely going to be thrown into a concentration camp — a work camp — for the rest of your days, never to be heard of, never to be seen again,” CEO of Open Doors Ryan Brown tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey.

“To be identified as a Christian — to be found as a Christian — is the equivalent of a death sentence,” he says, pointing out that in North Korea, the highest authority isn’t God, but the state.

“And so, for Christians, who have a higher authority than the state — Christians are immediately seen as enemies of the state. They’re assumed to be enemies of the state or, in some cases, assumed to be allies of the West,” he explains.

There are also public executions of Christians.

“In many cases, if they feel like, OK, it’s been a little too long; we need to remind people that we’re in charge; we need to remind people what the consequences are,” he says.

However, despite the threat Christians face in North Korea, they refuse to give up.

“There are about 400,000 Christians in North Korea … and it is growing,” Brown says, explaining that Open Doors has set up safe houses across the border where “individuals are able to come be nursed back to physical health.”

“It … humbles me to see that there are men and women that have, in essence, escaped from North Korea, come to these safe houses, been nursed back to health, and their goal and their intent and what they have done is to go back to North Korea so they can continue to minister,” he explains.

“They’ve … taken a posture of ‘How can I be equipped so that I can go back and continue to share the gospel with my friends and neighbors?'” he adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Allie beth stuckey, Allie beth stuckey candace cameron bure, Bible, Blazetv, Christians, Concentration camp, Country, Execution, Faith, Globe, Imprisonment, Jesus christ, North korea, Open doors, Persecution, Relatable, Ryan brown, Torture, Death sentence, The blaze, Blazetev, Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

Bodycam video caught the moment when a 38-year-old male ambushed and repeatedly stabbed a Florida deputy Wednesday.

The Marion County Sheriff’s Office said Deputy Robert Fitch responded around 5 p.m. to the area of 11775 NW 10th Place in Dunnellon in reference to a suspicious person.

‘I should have killed you. You’re lucky I didn’t.’

Dunnellon is located on the west coast of Florida; it’s about an hour south of Gainesville and about an hour and a half north of Tampa.

As the deputy exited his vehicle, Heriberto Medina Marquez immediately ambushed him, causing the deputy to fall to the ground, officials said.

Marquez then climbed atop the deputy and repeatedly stabbed him in the chest before fleeing into a nearby wooded area, officials said.

RELATED: Female slashes face of 3-year-old boy she kidnapped at Walmart — and officers open fire: Police

Image source: Marion County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office bodycam video screenshot

But after another deputy arrived on the scene, Marquez emerged from the woods, and the deputies were able to take him into custody without further incident, officials said.

RELATED: ‘Despicable’ homicide suspect caught on body cam pointing gun at Florida deputy — and pulling trigger, cops say

Image source: Marion County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office bodycam video screenshot

Detectives arrested Marquez for attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, the sheriff’s office said.

After being placed in a patrol vehicle, Marquez was heard saying, “I should have killed you, bitch. You know that, right?”

He added, “I should have killed you. You’re lucky I didn’t.”

The following is bodycam video of the attack and arrest. Content warning: Language.

RELATED: Knifed for ‘being a Christian’? Suspect allegedly stabs man and his dog after asking about victim’s religion

Officials said the deputy suffered minor injuries during the attack — and that his bulletproof vest “saved his life.”

Following interviews and evidence gathering, major crimes detectives from the sheriff’s office determined Marquez intentionally attempted to take the life of Deputy Fitch.

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Medina Marquez. Image source: Marion County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office

Investigators recovered two folding knives at the scene, both with suspected fresh blood on them, the sheriff’s office told WKMG-TV.

Marquez was taken to the Marion County Jail, where he was being held without bond, officials said. WKMG said he also was charged with providing a false name to law enforcement and resisting without violence.

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