Former students of a performing arts teacher in Warren, Michigan, are saying that he had regularly crossed boundaries with his students after his arrest on Aug. 18.

37-year-old Mark Michael Sharrow is a teacher at the Warren Consolidated School of Performing Arts, which is a nationally recognized magnet school for students in grades 9 through 12.

Investigators allegedly found sexually explicit videos of children on Sharrow’s phone.

He was initially arrested for a charge of third-degree criminal sexual conduct from Houton Lake, according to the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office.

“What we had uncovered in the course of our investigation was accusations that involved former students after they had graduated,” said John Bernia, a school superintendent.

Sharrow’s home and phone were searched following his arrest. Investigators allegedly found sexually explicit videos of children on Sharrow’s phone and also discovered methamphetamine and LSD at his house.

He was charged with five counts of aggravated possession of child sexually abusive material, five counts of using a computer to commit a crime, one count of possession of methamphetamine, and one count of possession of a Schedule 5 controlled substance and LSD.

A judge set Sharrow’s bond at $1 million cash or surety during his arraignment hearing on Wednesday.

Warren Consolidated Schools released a letter to parents and staff about the arrest and indicated that Sharrow was on administrative leave when he was arrested.

“I want to thank the young people who reported difficult information to members of our staff. It is never easy to bring forward serious information, and the bravery of these individuals is commendable,” the letter stated.

“As always, we cooperate fully and work closely with law enforcement and the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office,” the letter continued.

RELATED: Police find hundreds of thousands of child porn files after man drops memory card at store

A former student of the school told WXYZ-TV that the arrest was not surprising because Sharrow’s behavior with the students had raised red flags.

“I wasn’t fully shocked. We all thought he was weird with students,” said Mary Bonkowski, who graduated just a few months ago from the school.

She said she was glad that officials took the accusations seriously.

“I’m very glad that they had the courage to say something, because that’s extremely difficult, especially because you don’t know if you’re going to be believed,” she said. “I mean, historically, a lot of these things have been swept under the rug, so I’m glad that they finally listened and that it was taken seriously.”

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​Child porn, Methamphetamine, Performing arts, Teacher, Crime 

By now, most Americans have figured out that the push for the SAVE America Act is performative — perhaps even more than the usual Washington standards.

Republicans have a closing window of unified control of the House, Senate, and White House. Yet the structural advantages Democrats spent decades building remain largely untouched outside temporary executive action. The SAVE America Act is one way to answer that problem with basic election rules such as voter ID and limits on mail-in voting.

John Thune understands leverage perfectly well. It is time for Republicans who say they want this bill to pass to prove they do, too.

Elections remain vulnerable to the same disputes over identification, mail voting, and administration that Republicans have spent years denouncing, while other institutional fights — immigration enforcement and reform of the FBI among them — remain unfinished. If Republicans lose unified control without locking in durable changes, a future Democrat administration can reverse much of what has been done by executive order.

Despite what the D.C. consultant class says, Republican success in the midterms will hinge on base motivation. Voters need something to vote for. Democrats are already portraying Republicans as the party of their own DEI: data centers, the Epstein class, and the Iran war.

Fair or not, those are political anchors. Without a positive agenda, the charge will stick.

The consultant class responds with the usual sermon about unity, which in practice means: Get in line and do what leadership says. But voters do not want WWE. They want UFC.

The Republican Party is already in an internal fight over what it will become after Trump, and only one side seems willing to use leverage. Some will call that destructive infighting. But the fight is already happening, and it will shape the party for decades. The question is not whether Republicans should have an internal struggle. It’s whether conservatives intend to participate in it as effectively as the senators and institutions working against them.

Recent Senate fights make the point. Republicans have held up ICE funding to block an Anti-Weaponization Fund and delayed Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) used leverage to extract millions for Alaska nonprofits.

Politics is, at bottom, the acquisition and use of leverage. The Senate’s left-wing Republicans understand that. The right too often makes threats it will not carry out — and loses.

The real show is not on the Senate floor. It is in the bank accounts.

The money controlled by Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, led by Tim Scott (R-S.C.), explains more than another ideological taxonomy ever could. Hundreds of millions of dollars flow through leadership-aligned committees and outside groups from interests that want something from Washington. That money becomes both carrot and stick: protect friendly incumbents, discipline troublesome ones, and keep conservative senators talking rather than acting.

RELATED: Drain the swamp? Meet the refill.

Sam Wolfe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

That’s how Thune and Scott can go on television praising the SAVE America Act while the leadership machine supports senators who stand in its way. My friends and I call this the head pat: Give conservatives a little rhetorical affection while making sure nothing they want actually happens. And it works. All the time.

The same network is lining up behind Senator Darline Graham Nordone (R-S.C.), rather than original SAVE America Act co-sponsor Ralph Norman. The scale is enormous. As of June 30, the Thune-aligned Senate Leadership Fund reported $238 million cash on hand, while its allied network, including One Nation, said it had raised more than half a billion dollars for the midterms. Those are obscene sums for a party that increasingly presents itself as the vehicle of working-class voters.

More important, the money is not politically neutral. It is a mechanism for deciding which senators get protected, which challengers get starved, and which legislative priorities receive serious attention.

Some of that war chest will protect senators most resistant to the SAVE America Act. Leadership gives them money and political lifelines while they deny the bill a vote. Those dollars do not come with strings attached for Republican voters. They come from donors and industries that need things from the Senate.

That is the leverage SAVE America Act supporters have ignored. If leadership can use money and floor time to reward compliance, conservatives can make leadership pay a price for blocking their priorities. Until they do, they have not begun to fight.

The absence of pressure is itself revealing. If leadership truly regarded passage of the SAVE America Act as a must-have priority, it would be using every institutional tool at its disposal to find votes and impose costs on holdouts. It is not.

The Senate made the problem obvious on August 8. Instead of forcing a vote on the full SAVE America Act, it took up a narrower photo-ID bill from Senator Jon Husted (R-Ohio). It failed 52-46. Then, that same morning, Thune filed cloture on the CLARITY Act crypto bill — a leadership priority that could consume much of the Senate’s limited September floor time before the midterm campaign takes over.

Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), one of four Republicans who refuses to back the SAVE America Act, said the quiet part out loud: Unless its supporters find 60 votes, “they know it’s dead, and so all this is theater.” Thune says the Senate is “bound by arithmetic.” But arithmetic is not an alibi. Leadership chooses where to spend its money, floor time, and pressure.

So stop asking nicely.

RELATED: How Kamala Harris accidentally sold the SAVE America Act

Christian Bruna/Getty Images

Senate leadership routinely holds unrelated priorities hostage to get what it wants. Republicans who actually want the SAVE America Act should do the same. When the Senate returns in September, it will face a college sports bill, Thune’s CLARITY Act, and the National Defense Authorization Act. Those are leverage points.

A team sport works only if everyone is playing the same sport, wearing the same jersey, on the same field. Senate leadership is not behaving like it is on your team. Treating it as though it is only guarantees another round of speeches, cable hits, and failure.

The base needs to see a cage fight. Give the people what they want.

Refuse to hand leadership what it wants until the SAVE America Act gets an up-or-down vote at a 51-vote threshold. That is the same kind of hostage-taking the Senate’s left flank uses successfully. Thune understands leverage perfectly well. It is time for Republicans who say they want this bill to pass to prove they do, too.

​Attorney general, Ice, John thune, Lisa murkowski, Majority leader, Midterms, Save america act, Senate, Ice funding, Immigration, Thom tillis, Opinion & analysis 

America may be entering a period of extraordinary economic opportunity. Artificial intelligence could drive a wave of investment, construction, productivity, and growth. The question is whether ordinary Americans will own enough of that growth to benefit from it.

That makes tax policy about more than rates and revenue. If Washington wants Americans to build wealth, it should make it easier to own appreciating assets — stocks, funds, homes, and businesses — and keep more of the gains they earn over time.

Building wealth requires more than rising wages. Americans need the ability to acquire assets, hold them, and benefit from compounding over decades.

President Donald Trump is reportedly looking for new policy wins ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, including capital gains reform. The White House and congressional allies are considering indexing capital gains for inflation and creating a new exemption for certain home sales, reportedly including homes worth $2 million or less.

Both ideas move in the right direction. They would let Americans keep more of the returns on investments they have held for years and reduce tax penalties that can discourage people from selling appreciated assets.

The usual objection is that capital gains reform is a giveaway to the rich. But IRS data cited by Americans for Tax Reform show that 74% of tax returns reporting capital gains come from households with incomes below $200,000. Millions of Americans own stocks through brokerage accounts, mutual funds, and retirement plans. The tax code should not treat long-term wealth building as something reserved for the affluent.

Inflation makes the problem worse. A taxpayer can owe capital gains tax even when part of the apparent gain simply reflects a dollar that has lost purchasing power. Indexing gains for inflation would make the tax apply more closely to real economic profit rather than paper gains created by rising prices.

Housing presents a second opportunity. Expanding or exempting capital gains treatment for certain home sales could encourage more owners to put appreciated properties on the market. Many older Americans remain in homes that no longer fit their needs, in part because selling can result in a sizable tax bill.

RELATED: Big Tech gets the network. You get the bill.

Baona/Getty Images

Reducing that penalty could make downsizing more attractive and free larger homes for younger families. It wouldn’t solve the housing shortage — America still needs to build more homes — but it could help the existing housing stock move to people who need it.

The broader principle is more important than either proposal. Building wealth requires more than rising wages. Americans need the ability to acquire assets, hold them, and benefit from compounding over decades. Ownership is how economic growth becomes personal.

The White House should therefore think bigger than a handful of tax tweaks. The next phase of Trump’s economic agenda should aim to turn more Americans into owners.

A serious capital gains overhaul could encourage people to invest, save, start businesses, sell homes when it makes sense, and accumulate wealth over time. If the coming AI boom creates enormous new fortunes, ordinary Americans should have a better chance to own a piece of it — not merely watch Sam Altman get richer.

​America, Artificial intelligence, Economic growth, Tax code, Tax policy, Wages, Investments, Economy, Housing crisis, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump 

A recent picnic in the park turned violent when a child allegedly called a transgender-identifying person named Leanne Lawson a name he didn’t like — and he reacted by allegedly hitting the child.

Rather than expressing regret, he doubled down in multiple follow-up TikTok videos, arguing that anyone who uses certain language toward him should expect a violent response.

“So I was just minding my business here in Lewis Park, just having a little picnic, you know, just minding my own business, having a picnic. And then this group of kids came up and started hassling me,” Lawson began in the first video.

“Talking s**t to me, calling me a t*****,” he explained.

“They used words they weren’t supposed to, and I smacked one of them upside the head. And yeah, they didn’t like that,” he added.

In a second video, he continued, saying, “I smacked a couple kids upside the head for saying words they shouldn’t be saying.”

“But I’m going to be honest with you: It wouldn’t have mattered if they were kids. Anybody talks to me like that now, and I’m going to react like that. Any person that starts using language that requires me to justify my existence for just sitting there, eating some charcuterie in the f**king park,” he said.

“I’m going to smack them upside the head,” he added.

“Sir … are you denying that you are a t*****?” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” she adds.

Lawson even posted a follow-up video, explaining that the “kid’s mom came up and apologized” to him.

“This kid’s mom came up and like, ‘I’m so sorry about my son,’ and I was just like, ‘Yo, your son better not talk crazy like that or he’s going to get his head knocked off.’ Like, I didn’t lie about what I did,” he said.

“Who could have predicted that maybe trans and mentally ill people could be violent, right?” Gonzales asks. “Like, boy, we’ve never seen that happen before.”

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​Sara gonzales, Leanne lawson, Transgender, Tiktok, Trans, Woman, Mental illness, Violence, Blazetv show 

The thought of China making it to the moon likely left a lot of Americans with an uneasy feeling.

To make matters worse, the communist giant was primed to make a first-of-its-kind discovery.

China’s boots-on-the-ground mission was set for 2030.

The China National Space Administration’s Chang’e‑7 has taken aim at the moon’s south pole, where the darkest and most barren parts of the surface are located. Particularly, China has focused on the Shackleton Crater, whose large rims provide permanently shadow regions where researchers believe water ice could exist.

Chang’e‑7’s launch, complete with lander, rover, and mobile probe, was scheduled to take place before the end of August, but China’s entire lunar exploration roadmap has now been blown out of the water after the space program officially delayed its launch on Sunday.

The Chinese government announced that the Chang’e-7 mission has been delayed until at least 2027.

“Based on the principles of safety, reliability, and infallibility, after comprehensive analysis and judgment, the Chang’e-7 mission does not meet the launch conditions and cannot be implemented in the scheduled window this year,” the space administration said, per a translation.

And so far, at least, the United States government has not made any comment on the momentous development.

No reason for the delay was provided by Beijing, but the most circulated scenario has been that Typhoon Narra and its 45 mph winds were the cause for disruption.

Singapore outlet the Straight Times reported that 54,000 Chinese were displaced by rising flood waters, including more than 8,000 being moved to emergency shelters.

RELATED: LIFE ON MARS? Bizarre formation in NASA photo sparks red planet conspiracy theory

CN-STR/AFP/Getty Images

Ars Technica reported on a typhoon warning center that warned the storm is expected to persist for several days, preventing workable launch conditions at China’s Wenchang site. This would cause the Chinese space authorities to miss their launch window to hit the underside of the moon.

This now puts China’s entire timeline into question, as Chang’e‑7’s mission was the crucial first step toward getting more robots, and eventually humans and engineering and military equipment, onto the moon’s surface.

Chang’e-8, another probing mission, was set for 2029, while China’s boots-on-the-ground mission was set for 2030. Beijing had stated that it had its space station “steadily in orbit” to serve as a platform for its manned lunar landings.

These steps would have put the communist nation’s preparatory framework ahead of the United States’ Artemis program but still would have had its manned-landing come after NASA’s.

RELATED: Vast secrets hide below the moon’s surface — and China is about to find them out before we do

CN-STR/AFP/Getty Images

Now China finds itself at risk of falling permanently behind America’s Artemis program.

After the Artemis II flyby, Artemis III will serve to monitor the lunar surface for future landings while testing U.S. systems associated with the fourth mission. Artemis III has a window of 2027, now the same as Chang’e-7.

Artemis IV astronauts have a goal of landing on the moon in “early 2028” to establish permanent residency on the satellite.

The Chinese shake-up now could put NASA and team USA considerably ahead of China, whose lunar landers were said to be large and impressive.

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​China, Chang’e-7, Nasa, Artemis, Tech, Moon 

A Thursday night WNBA game between the Atlanta Dream and the Los Angeles Sparks was briefly interrupted when one fan gave the players a blast from the recent past.

Strangely enough, green dildos were thrown onto WNBA courts last season in the middle of games. Now a fan is bringing the viral trend back by launching yet another sex toy onto the court.

In a video of the incident, Sparks star Cameron Brink kicked the toy away after it dropped in front of Jihyun Park, who was in the middle of a free throw. Dream star Angel Reese then pointed out the perpetrator, who was trying to flee the scene of his crime.

Security was able to stop the man from leaving, but BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock doesn’t see the trend going away anytime soon.

“I’m saying this in all seriousness. I have a source that says that will not be the last dildo thrown in the WNBA games as we close out the regular season and that dildos may start appearing in other sports,” Whitlock says, stifling laughter.

“This is a protest of the heat that Sophie Cunningham’s been taking and the whole transgender issue,” he continues. “I’m seriously saying that, because I was told by this source yesterday … ‘dildos will fly tonight,’ and they did,” he explains.

“And they say they’re not going away,” he adds.

Steve Kim notes that Reese was on top of it.

“I’ve seen political assassination attempts where people weren’t that adamant about pointing out the shooter,” Kim says.

“It’s really too bad she wasn’t in Dallas back in ‘63. We would have found out who killed JFK,” he adds.

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​Jason whitlock, Wnba, Angel reese, Steve kim, Dildo, Blazetv show 

The U.S. Supreme Court sided Monday with President Donald Trump against a collection of Democrat-controlled states who sued to oppose his executive order restricting mail-in ballots.

The highest court of the land found in a partisan 5-3 ruling that the states did not have standing to sue against the president’s order and overturned a lower court order to block the restrictions in 23 states.

‘Only Democrat politicians and operatives would be upset about lawful efforts to secure American elections.’

“This internal directive does not regulate the States’ voter registration processes,” read the order from the Supreme Court. “Nor does it impinge on the States’ authority ‘to create and enforce a legal code’ for elections.”

However, the majority ruling warned that not all measures taken by the executive to implement the order will be necessarily lawful.

“On that score, time will tell,” the majority said.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the ruling.

The executive order from March directed the Department of Homeland Security to tabulate a list of citizens eligible to vote. It then called on the U.S. Postal Service to only accept ballots from people on the list.

U.S. attorneys general from several Democrat states sued to stop the order on the basis that it would disenfranchise some voters who could vote lawfully.

“Only Democrat politicians and operatives would be upset about lawful efforts to secure American elections and ensure only eligible American citizens are casting ballots,” read a statement from White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson in April.

In her dissent Monday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accused the president of seeking to “foment chaos ahead of the November elections.”

Justice Sonya Sotomayor said the ruling only “postpones” the adjudication of the president’s order.

“Today’s decision does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful,” wrote Sotomayor in a dissent joined by Justice Elena Kagan.

RELATED: Appeals court unanimous in pivotal ruling on undated or misdated mail-in ballots

“Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives,” they added.

New York Attorney General Letitia James agreed with Sotomayor in her own statement on the ruling.

“This decision is a painful setback, but it will not be the final word,” she wrote. “The right to vote is sacred, and no administration should be allowed to put that right in jeopardy by making it harder for eligible voters to cast their ballots.”

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​President donald trump, Us supreme court, Executive order, Mail in voting, Politics