A Democrat resigned from Congress Tuesday as her colleagues ramped up efforts to expel the lawmaker over her corruption scandal.

Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida avoided her imminent expulsion by simply resigning, claiming that the House Ethics Committee’s investigation was a “witch hunt” that violated her “due process rights.” The investigative subcommittee effectively found Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of dozens of campaign finance violations after she was accused of laundering millions of dollars worth of COVID-era FEMA funds into her campaign account.

‘That is a dangerous path.’

“This was not a fair process,” Cherfilus-McCormick said in a statement Tuesday. “The Ethics Committee refused my new attorney’s reasonable request for time to prepare my defense. By going forward with this process while a criminal indictment is pending, the Committee prevented me from defending myself. I will not stand by and pretend that this has been anything other than a witch hunt.”

“I simply cannot stand by and allow my due process rights to be trampled on, and my good name to be tarnished. Rather than play these political games, I choose to step away so that I can devote my time to fighting for my neighbors in Florida’s 20th district.”

RELATED: ‘Mutually assured destruction’: Another disgraced lawmaker to resign from Congress over sex scandal

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

​Campaign finance, Campaign finance violations, Corruption, Corruption scandal, Covid funds, Due process, Eric swalwell, Expulsion, Fema funds, House democrats, House ethics committee, Politics, Sex scandal, Sheila cherfilus-mccormick, Tony gonzales, Witch hunt 

A report has found that many servers have no idea that the Trump administration’s “no tax on tips” policy is the reason their tax refunds are larger this year.

President Donald Trump touted the policy last week in Las Vegas after a DoorDash driver delivered McDonald’s food to the White House.

The majority of hospitality workers she interviewed in Washington, DC, had no clue about the policy.

Despite such efforts, the Daily Wire found that many servers have no clue that the policy lowered their tax burden this year.

“Republicans have a messaging problem,” reporter Brecca Stoll said.

One waitress at Pearl Dive Oyster Bar said she had gotten a tax refund this year but did not receive one the year before. Stoll let her know that Trump was likely the reason she got a refund in taxes.

“Is that a good thing for us?” the woman asked skeptically.

“Well, if you got more money back!” Stoll replied.

“That’s one thing he’s done good, I guess,” she acknowledged reluctantly.

Another had no clue at all about the change.

“Did you know your tips weren’t taxed this year?” Stoll asked.

“I did not! Really? I did not know that. … Maybe that’s why we did good this year!” she responded while laughing.

Stoll posted a video compilation of her conversations with servers who had no clue their taxes had been cut by Trump.

A bartender told Stoll his reduced tax bill might have been from life changes.

“Because my son — I claim him — so, you know, it just boosted the profit,” he said. “Other than that, I wouldn’t have gotten too much at all.”

After Stoll informed him about the new no tax on tips policy, he laughed.

“Oh yes, I would definitely say that was it,” he admitted.

RELATED: Liberals SPEW hatred at DoorDash after marketing stunt with Trump at White House

Stoll said the majority of hospitality workers she interviewed in Washington, D.C., had no clue about the policy that lowered their tax burden significantly.

Some on social media responded that the culprit for the lack of awareness was the Democrat-aligned mainstream media and a lack of interest from the public.

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​No taxes on tips, Trump tax policies, Servers in washington dc, People benefit from trump policies, Politics 

A former elementary school teacher from Louisiana has been hit with 25 child sex-crime charges after accusations of illicit relationships with two students, according to authorities. In addition, a second Louisiana woman recently was arrested in connection with the eyebrow-raising case.

The St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that its deputies started an investigation into 31-year-old Marisa Noel on Jan. 28.

‘We will continue to support our partners across the state and bring to justice anyone who exploits or sexually abuses the children of Louisiana.’

Police said deputies launched the investigation after being tipped off about the teacher reportedly “having an inappropriate relationship with one of her former students.”

Police said at the time of the investigation, Noel was a fifth-grade teacher at Teche Elementary School in Breaux Bridge.

Noel was arrested and booked into the St. Martin Parish Correctional Center on April 13, according to jail records.

Noel originally was charged with four counts of indecent behavior with juveniles and four counts of computer-aided solicitation of a minor.

However, law enforcement said an additional victim was identified, which resulted in 17 more charges just two days after her arrest.

The sheriff’s office said Noel additionally was charged with 10 counts of indecent behavior with juveniles, three counts of computer-aided solicitation of a minor, two counts of child sexual abuse materials, one count of first-degree rape, and one count of unlawful communications.

Louisiana law states that those convicted of first-degree rape can be sentenced to life in prison without the benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence.

However, if a victim is younger than 13 years old, the district attorney can seek the death penalty.

Law enforcement did not reveal the ages of the alleged victims. However, the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation said at least one of the alleged victims was younger than 13 years old.

Police noted that Noel is no longer a teacher at Teche Elementary School.

RELATED: Special-ed teacher accused of sexually assaulting students in her home, giving them alcohol; 1 victim said he ‘felt trapped’

The Louisiana Bureau of Investigation said in a press release that a second woman was arrested in connection with the case involving Noel.

The news release said the Breaux Bridge woman was arrested as “part of an ongoing joint investigation with the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office after a former fifth-grade teacher in the parish was arrested for first-degree rape and other crimes against children.”

Cortney Burleigh, 37, was arrested Thursday and charged with felony counts of cruelty to juveniles, obstruction of justice, and indecent behavior with juveniles/accessory after the fact.

The news release did not specify Burleigh’s role in the case but noted that she was not a teacher at the school.

Attorney General Liz Murrill stated, “We will continue to support our partners across the state and bring to justice anyone who exploits or sexually abuses the children of Louisiana.”

The Louisiana Bureau of Investigation, the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office, and Homeland Security Investigations are conducting the ongoing joint investigation.

The LBI, the sheriff’s office, the elementary school, and St. Martin Parish School District didn’t immediately respond to Blaze News‘ requests for comment.

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​Bad teacher, Child sex crimes, Louisiana, Marisa noel, Rape, Teacher arrested, Crime 

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has obtained new documents revealing that the Biden FBI’s targeting of GOP lawmakers in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, protests was not limited to Operation Arctic Frost but was rather “part of a pattern of political weaponization.”

The documents obtained by Grassley and published by the Daily Caller provide insights into the nature and baselessness of the Biden FBI’s “Rampart Twelve” investigation, which was initially pursued against Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), and Andy Biggs (Ariz.), as well as against former Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), by the bureau’s Washington field office.

‘My Democrat colleagues want to ignore these facts and evidence and defend the fired officials who participated in Biden’s lawfare.’

As with Arctic Frost, this Biden FBI lawfare campaign saw investigators obtain toll records, at least for Boebert and Gosar. Toll records provide investigators with identifying information of callers along with the date, time, location, and length of a call.

The Rampart Twelve probe was launched on Jan. 22, 2021, two days after Biden took office, on the basis of bogus claims made by then-Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) as well as by Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen (Tenn.). These claims specifically alleged that the Republicans “may have assisted or conspired with persons, groups, or organizations who planned or organized the unlawful entry on January 6, 2021, of the United States Capitol Building.”

For instance, Sherrill, now the governor of New Jersey, alleged in a January 2021 video shared to Facebook that some lawmakers had brought groups of people into the Capitol ahead of Jan. 6 to conduct “reconnaissance for the next day.”

Text messages between prosecutors reveal a desire by elements at the Biden Justice Department to advance the case despite an awareness that proving the Republicans intended harm when supposedly bringing people to the Capitol “might be impossible” and that some of the imagery cited by the complainants “does not look suspicious.”

There was a clear desire to avoid additional levels of scrutiny when executing this lawfare campaign against the Biden administration’s political opponents.

After concern was apparently expressed about secretly investigating members of Congress, J.P. Cooney, a prosecutor who ultimately served as a top deputy to special counsel Jack Smith in two criminal prosecutions of President Donald Trump, provided some reassurance to Timothy Thibault, an anti-Trump FBI agent then with the the bureau, that doing so was OK.

RELATED: Kash Patel says 2020 election fraud arrests are ‘coming soon’

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Cooney noted in a Feb. 3, 2021, letter to Thibault that Attorney General Bill Barr did issue a memorandum in February 2020 requiring prior written notification and consultation with the assistant attorney general and the U.S. attorney with jurisdiction before investigating “declared candidates” for Congress. However, Cooney claimed that the Republican targets were fair game as they were no longer candidates but rather newly sworn-in members of the House.

The FBI appears to have kept Rampart Twelve alive until at least January 2022, when Thibault informed a Washington field office FBI agent who wanted to interview Boebert and Gosar that “direction from FBIHQ is to close the case.”

“Rampart Twelve appears to be a predecessor case to Arctic Frost,” Grassley said in a statement read by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) during the hearing on Tuesday.

“The evidence to support the investigation didn’t exist. Even so, J.P. Cooney personally concurred with opening the investigation even though his text messages told a different tale.”

Schmitt told the Daily Caller, “These bombshell documents reveal that bad actors at the highest levels of our government and intelligence agencies targeted broad swaths of the America[n] right and sitting members of Congress with no evidence of wrongdoing.”

“This fishing expedition was nothing more than a political agenda. Finally under the leadership of Chairman Grassley and the work of this committee, we are shining a light on this corruption that the Democrats ignored under Biden, and we will not stop until there is full accountability for those involved,” added Schmitt.

As of midday Tuesday, no liberal media outfit appears to have touched the story of the Biden FBI’s Rampart Twelve fishing expedition.

“If not for my investigative work and brave whistleblowers, we wouldn’t know about FBI agents’ and DOJ prosecutors’ disgraceful efforts to try and destroy Republicans,” Grassley told the Caller. “My Democrat colleagues want to ignore these facts and evidence and defend the fired officials who participated in Biden’s lawfare. I’ll continue working to expose the widespread constitutional abuses that occurred under the Biden administration, because transparency brings accountability.”

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​Andy biggs, Capitol building, Chuck grassley, Corruption, Daily caller, Donald trump, Election fraud, Fbi, Jack smith, Justice department, Lauren boebert, Mikie sherrill, Mo brooks, Operation arctic frost, Paul gosar, Political weaponization, Rampart 12, Rampart twelve, Steve cohen, Timothy thibault, Whistleblowers, Accountability, Lawfare, Weaponization, Schmitt, Politics 

In April 2026, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense announced that ground robots had completed more than 9,000 frontline missions in the previous month. The number was offered without fanfare, embedded in a press release alongside procurement timelines and delivery metrics, as though the figure were perfectly ordinary, which by then it was. Nearly 24,500 missions in the first quarter of the year; 167 units using uncrewed ground vehicles, up from 67 the previous November. The ministry did not dwell on what this meant.

Ukrainian soldiers who complete verified missions using robots earn e-points through a digital platform that tracks, authenticates, and tallies their work. Those points can then be exchanged, through an online marketplace, for additional equipment. Orders reach frontline units in roughly 10 days. The whole apparatus, in its architecture and its assumptions about human motivation, looks less like a combat system and more like a loyalty program.

The state understands its soldiers as participants in a platform, and it is engineering their behavior accordingly.

The UGV itself is not a new idea. The Germans fielded the Goliath tracked mine in World War II, a remotely controlled demolition device that failed, in the end, because its control cable could be cut. The Soviets experimented with teletanks in the 1930s, aiming to spare soldiers from exposure that was otherwise certain to kill them. The problem of controlling a machine at distance through contested terrain, under fire, with limited bandwidth and imperfect video, is not a problem the 21st century invented. What the 21st century has done is make it cheap.

The ultimate cannon fodder

Ukraine’s UGVs are designed, above all, to be expendable. The country operates under mass artillery and persistent drone surveillance, which creates a specific engineering pressure that earlier Western robotics programs never faced. American explosive ordnance disposal robots in Iraq were conserved, repaired, and mourned in a way that revealed something about how their operators understood them. Ukraine’s systems are produced in the thousands, iterated rapidly, accepted as losses, and replaced like ammunition.

The substitution principle drives everything. The state’s explicit purpose, reiterated in every official channel, is to move the most dangerous tasks (ammunition resupply, casualty evacuation, mining and demining, certain forms of direct contact) away from human bodies and onto machines. The missions are logged. The ministry’s argument is that somewhere in those 9,000 March missions is a corresponding number of soldiers who did not die. The robot went; the human did not.

RELATED: The US military needs to adapt to modern warfare

The US military needs to adapt to modern warfareUSAF/Getty Images

What makes Ukraine’s system interesting, and practically consequential, is the way it distributes agency. A UGV mission is not performed by a soldier or a robot, but by a network: the operator watching a video feed, the encoder compressing that feed under bandwidth constraints that determine whether the latency is tolerable or fatal, the repair crew, the procurement pipeline, the verification interface that converts the mission into a data object, the points system that converts the data object into future capability.

The human is present throughout this chain and is, in some sense, responsible for it. However, responsibility, in this architecture, is not the same as when a soldier carries ammunition through a kill zone but is cast as clicking, uploading, or watching a screen.

This practice is not unique to Ukraine. Mediated violence is familiar from drone programs and earlier remote weapons systems. What Ukraine has done is extend the logic farther into the supply chain, the metrics, and the incentive design, making explicit what other militaries have left tacit. The gamification is structural. The state is acknowledging, through the design of the e-points system, that it understands its soldiers as participants in a platform, and it is engineering their behavior accordingly.

Us or them

The Ukrainian government is aware of the genuine tension in this design. Goodhart’s law holds that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. If points are awarded for confirmed hits, soldiers will pursue confirmed hits. Ukraine’s system tries to counteract this by assigning points also for evacuation missions, for the lifesaving work that does not produce the bright flash of verification. Whether this framework works, whether the incentive categories actually reshape behavior or merely sit alongside it, is an empirical question.

By early 2026, seven UGV models from six Ukrainian manufacturers were available for direct order through the DOT-Chain Defence marketplace. Foreign platforms have entered the ecosystem too: Estonian-built THeMIS vehicles, first delivered in 2022, were absorbed into Ukraine’s logistics environment alongside the domestically produced systems. NATO was also watching. Its UNITE initiative, announced in late 2025, proposed to scale prototyped battlefield innovations among alliance members, with unmanned ground systems explicitly named as a future focus.

Ukraine’s particular answer to a particular problem — how to fight at scale under conditions of acute manpower constraint — is becoming a transmissible model. The rapid iteration, the platform-mediated procurement, the tight loop between battlefield data and design revision are not incidental features of Ukraine’s approach. Other militaries, in more comfortable circumstances, studying this from a distance, may conclude that they want something like it.

What they would be acquiring is a way of knowing, a way of governing through metrics and incentives and interfaces, that treats war as a system to be optimized. The appeal is obvious. Systems can be improved. Metrics can be refined. Platforms can be updated. The facts that cannot be put into the system — the exhaustion, the fog — remain outside the data. They do not affect the point calculations. They do not appear in the quarterly mission totals, which continue to rise.

In March 2026, the machines completed 9,000 missions. The ministry reported this statistic as progress. It was surely also something else, something that does not yet have a name.

​Tech 

On April 1, when Artemis II launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to embark on its historic 10-day lunar flyby, Glenn Beck was sitting in the audience section designated for people who work in the space program and journalists invited to attend the launch.

As he chatted with various scientists and fellow journalists, he noticed a husband and wife sitting among the group who were clearly not part of either world. He soon struck up a conversation with them and inquired about how they received an invitation.

“They started telling me a story that was as impressive as the rocket going off itself,” he says.

The story was about their 15-year daughter Olivia “Liv” Perrotto, who died of a rare and aggressive childhood cancer in January this year.

A bright, space-obsessed girl who dreamed of becoming an astronaut or fighter pilot, Liv’s illness didn’t quell her courage to pursue her passions.

“That 15-year-old lived more of a life than most of us could ever dream of,” says Glenn.

Elon Musk and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman are largely to thank for that.

On this heart-wrenching episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn shares a little-known story he says will “break your heart and then heal it right back up.”

“This is a story that neither [Musk nor Isaacman] … would tell you. They didn’t do it for the credit, and I didn’t ask [them] for permission to tell,” says Glenn, noting that it was Liv’s mother who “wanted the world to know what they did and what it meant.”

When Liv was just 10 years old, she was diagnosed with undifferentiated sarcoma — a rare and malignant cancer. Overnight, her life went from normal childhood circumstances to “chemo, radiation, surgeries, [and] clinical trials.”

“It was a really dark time until she heard about a SpaceX mission … called Inspiration 4. This one was commanded by a guy that most people didn’t know at the time named Jared Isaacman,” says Glenn.

“The crew of Inspiration 4 heard about this little girl with cancer, and Jared Isaacman paid to bring her and her family to the launch.”

“And this was the beginning of just a life-changing relationship,” he recounts.

Isaacman’s involvement with Liv didn’t conclude with her attendance at the Inspiration 4 launch. “He became committed to her care and to her dreams,” says Glenn. “Without anyone knowing, without anyone asking, much to the family’s surprise, this guy just threw himself in.”

A few months after the Inspiration 4 launch, Isaacman asked Liv to design a “zero-gravity indicator” for his next mission. She quickly sent in a sketch of a Shiba Inu dog in an astronaut suit named Asteroid.

The Polaris Dawn team, commanded by Isaacman, took Liv’s hand-drawn sketch and turned it into an actual plush toy that they brought with them on the mission. A video taken by the team captured Asteroid floating in the cabin as the crew reached microgravity.

“Nobody on that mission forgot about this little girl in Pennsylvania. They sent her a birthday cake on her birthday. They sent flowers to the hospital. They all got together on a Zoom call just days before she died,” says Glenn through tears.

“Jared chartered his own plane to fly Liv cross-country so she could get treatments, personally called St. Jude to review her case,” he continues.

But that was just the beginning.

Isaacman also took Liv “up in a fighter jet, which he flew,” and introduced her to Charlie Duke, William Shatner, and many other big names from the broader space community.

“The whole space world opened its arms to this little girl — somebody you’ve never heard of,” says Glenn, “and they didn’t do it for the press; they just did it because her passion was contagious, so full of love.”

Because of the kindness of Isaacman and others, “the space world was [Liv’s] world, not hospitals.”

One of Liv’s other dreams was to speak to Elon Musk. At a town hall event he hosted in October 2024, she briefly got the chance. Liv had just learned earlier that day that her cancer had returned aggressively, but that didn’t deter her from standing in line all night just to ask Musk when he planned to send kids to space.

After learning of her worsening condition, Musk planned a phone call with Liv in January 2026 so that she could ask him all her pressing questions. But the night he arranged to call her, Liv was too exhausted to carry on a conversation, so she requested that the call be moved to the next day. Musk agreed and immediately sent flowers and a kind note to the hospital.

Tragically, Liv passed before the call came.

“Both the notes and the flowers were put in this little girl’s casket,” says Glenn.

Liv’s legacy lives on through the courage she showed in the face of unimaginable pain, the Asteroid plush toy that now flies on SpaceX missions as the company’s official mascot, thanks to Elon Musk honoring her final wish, and the way her story continues to remind the world that acts of kindness and compassion are happening all around us — even when we can’t see them.

Liv’s mother published her own article about the life of her courageous daughter. You can read it on glennbeck.com.

To hear Glenn’s version of Liv’s beautiful story, grab your tissue box and 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.

​Artemis ii, Blaze media, Blazetv, Childhood cancer, Elon musk, Glenn beck, Inspiration 4 mission, Jared isaacman, Jared isaacman involvement, Liv perotto, Liv perrotto story, Nasa, Nasa kennedy space, Space community support, Spacex, The glenn beck program 

Seven females and two males are accused of physically attacking one train passenger in Chicago last week, police said.

Police called the crime an aggravated battery.

‘If confronted by an assailant/offender, remain calm and never pursue. Press the emergency button and alert the transit attendant,’ police said.

The incident took place just after 9:30 p.m. last Tuesday in the 600 block of South State Street aboard a train in the Chicago Loop neighborhood, police said.

Police provided photos of the suspects. (Note: One of the suspects is shown twice — in the bottom far-right photos of the composite image next to the headline.)

Police also provided the following descriptions of each suspect:

Black male wearing a black T-shirt with white lettering and denim shortsBlack male wearing a black long-sleeved shirtBlack female wearing a blue T-shirt and blue shortsBlack female with red hair wearing a white topBlack female wearing a purple sweaterBlack female wearing a black flower-print sweaterBlack female wearing a black zip-up sweater and black shortsBlack female wearing a black hooded sweater and black pantsBlack female wearing a black T-shirt with white lettering and black pants

Police cautioned citizens to “be aware of your surroundings and remember your location, bus/train car number, route or train line, train car number, and direction of travel. If confronted by an assailant/offender, remain calm and never pursue. Press the emergency button and alert the transit attendant. Call 911 immediately, provide detailed description of location and assailant.”

Police added that those with any information about this incident should contact Public Transportation Detectives at 312-745-4447 or submit anonymous tips at CPDTIP.com and use reference RD #JK189284.

Police said another transit-related aggravated battery took place just after 4 p.m. Friday — this time on a CTA Red Line platform in the 1200 block of North Clark Street.

RELATED: Gang of juvenile males chase college student into dorm, physically attack victim, go on rampage. It all happens around 3 a.m.

Image source: Chicago Police

Police said the victim — a 23-year-old female — was waiting on the train platform when one of the individuals pictured above pulled her to the ground by her hair, struck her on her face with a closed fist, and kicked her head and body.

Another one of the females pictured above assisted the other female by blocking bystander attempts to help the victim, police said.

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​Chicago, Physical attack, Police, Suspects at large, Train, Aggravated battery, Crime