President Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt resigned at the end of August and rejoined Trump-affiliated super PAC MAGA Inc. Shortly after, she was a featured speaker at the Republican Midterm Convention in early September. Now, just about a month later, she’s ready to start a new chapter in her professional life.

On Monday, Fox News announced that Leavitt will join the network as a contributor starting on November 1. According to the network’s reporting, she is scheduled to “provide commentary across the Fox News lineup.”

‘I look forward to bringing my unique perspective from my experience as White House press secretary, along with the same energy and candor that defined my tenure, to Fox’s millions of viewers across their many platforms.’

While Leavitt interned at local news organizations when she was a student at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College, this is the first time Leavitt will work directly with a major news organization in her professional career.

She began that career shortly after graduating college, as a deputy press secretary during President Trump’s first administration. Then she ran for Congress, worked for Trump’s super PAC, joined his 2024 campaign, and ended up back at the White House as press secretary.

In a press release announcing the signing of Leavitt, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said, “Karoline’s firsthand experience in the White House and on the presidential campaign trail gives her a distinct understanding of today’s political landscape. We look forward to her providing our audience with authentic and sharp insight across all FOX News Media platforms.”

“I am grateful for the opportunity to continue appearing on Fox News Channel as an official member of the extraordinary team at FOX News Media,” Leavitt said in that same press release. “I look forward to bringing my unique perspective from my experience as White House press secretary, along with the same energy and candor that defined my tenure, to Fox’s millions of viewers across their many platforms.”

RELATED: 3 moments that will make you miss Karoline Leavitt

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Trump has not yet weighed in on Leavitt’s new job on social media, though liberal media critics were quick to pounce on the news and pivoted to attack Trump’s current relationship with Fox.

CNN’s Brian Stelter called Leavitt’s new gig “the least surprising headline of the day” in his daily Reliable Sources newsletter. He used the announcement as a pivot point to attack President Trump for noticing that Fox is no longer covering his full rallies.

Leavitt joins another former Trump press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, at the network.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Brian stelter, Donald trump, Fox news, Karoline leavitt, Kayleigh mcenany, Politics 

Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom whined that Joe Rogan wouldn’t have him on his incredibly popular podcast to hash out their disagreements.

Rogan has been especially critical of Newsom and his presidential aspirations after the podcaster moved away from California to escape the high taxes and dysfunction of the local and state government.

‘He won’t have me on. I told him it’d be 10 against 1. Get all your guys, get the ear things. You can have people ask the questions and follow-ups for you. But he won’t do it.’

During an interview with Shelby Church on her YouTube channel, the governor fired back.

“[The] problem with Rogan, he won’t have me on. He doesn’t want to be confronted with the bulls**t that he spews, particularly in the political sense. He’s a bulls**t artist in political terms. Sorry, just is,” Newsom said.

“I’m happy to confront him, but he won’t do it. Now I’m not even interested because it’s been two years of him just bashing me on a weekly basis. Well done, tough guy!” he said while clapping sarcastically.

He went on to say he would even allow Rogan to have others debate alongside Rogan with the governor.

“But he won’t have me on. I told him it’d be 10 against 1. Get all your guys, get the ear things. You can have people ask the questions and follow-ups for you. But he won’t do it.”

He went on to say that Rogan had some kind of “anxiety” about being confronted by Newsom, but admitted that he used to listen to Rogan’s podcast and even admired him before he turned to the right.

Rogan eviscerated Newsom on his podcast in Oct. 2025 and said even Democrats didn’t want him to be president.

“[Democrats] don’t have any faith in Gavin Newsom, which is kind of funny because he wants to be president so bad,” Rogan said, laughing.

“You can’t ruin a city and then go on to ruin a state and say, ‘Guys, that was just practice. Once I get in as president, I’m gonna fix it. Fix it all,” he added.

RELATED: Newsom lashes out at report of MASSIVE fraud in California

Ironically, Rogan used the same insult against Newsom that the governor lobbed at him in the current rant.

“He’s a good bulls**t artist. … The things that he says when he gets confronted with anything — ‘We have the highest this and the highest that!'” Rogan continued.

“Like, everybody’s leaving! You have the highest unemployment. You have the highest homelessness. Money’s missing. You killed Hollywood. Like, Hollywood doesn’t exist anymore. It’s literally gone!” he concluded. “You mandated vaccines for kids that didn’t need them. You guys, he did horrible s**t!”

Newsom responded by calling Rogan too cowardly to defend his position in a debate with the governor.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Gavin newsom, Joe rogan, California, Presidential election, Politics 

The president vehemently denied reports in the New York Times and other outlets that the Ohio Arena was not full for his rally on Saturday.

President Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social that reporters should be arrested for relaying what he called fake news.

‘The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country.’

“The Ohio Arena was already full to the brim — And yet these people were still trying to get in,” he wrote Monday.

“The New York Times said, ‘There were empty seats’ when, in fact, there were none, and thousands of people had to be turned away. The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country,” he added.

“When Bernie Sanders has 500 to 1,000 people, they make it sound like it’s the biggest event that ever took place,” Trump concluded. “When PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP has 50,000 people, they make it sound like nobody showed up!”

He continued in a second post to explain that some of the upper seats were empty because of the migration effect, whereupon people move down to the main floor.

“In actuality, thousands of people were unable to get in. The Arena was totally MAXED OUT, including all upper sections,” he said in the second post.

RELATED: Trump slams ‘sick, treasonous, and demented’ journalists after berating CNN’s Kaitlan Collins

“The ‘migration’ process always happens! The Times knows this, and so does everyone else. I never have empty seats — Never have, and never will!” Trump added.

The White House has been engaged in a feud with various news outlets after they sued to have their access restored. Fox News Media, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and NBC News released a joint statement saying they would forgo all pool reporting duties unless the outlets were allowed back.

Trump added that he was going to Nebraska for a rally in Grand Island on the first day of early in-person voting.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Fake news, New york times, President donald trump, Politics 

A high-end restaurant in Portland, Oregon, had to shut down after it served a group accused by left-wing protesters of being white supremacist.

Clarklewis was vandalized on Sunday after leftist activists allegedly confronted the group. A window was broken, and employees at the restaurant were traumatized.

‘I totally support the protest. … I support what they’re doing, but they totally misplaced it on this restaurant.’

Joe Rogers, one of the owners of the restaurant, said the establishment doesn’t support white supremacy and did not know anything about the group because it had a nondescript name.

“We knew people were coming for brunch, and we knew they were called the Oregon Group,” he said, according to the Oregonian. “We knew that they had some Christian affiliation, which, of course, we allow Christians into our business.”

He told KOIN: “Sure, if they walk in and they’re awful, and they’re obviously somebody that’s not going to be kind to our staff or to other guests, we’re going to ask them to leave.”

The left-wing activists reportedly planned a protest against the group in part because of flyers they saw online.

The confrontation between the allegedly racist group and the left-wing protesters led to one worker quitting on the spot and others going home for the day, according to Rogers. Some also hid upstairs, he added, according to the Oregonian.

He said the group paid about $2,000 to rent a space but that he would be donating the money to a charity in order to show goodwill to the community.

RELATED: Liberals are lashing out at Guy Fieri after he was photographed with Donald Trump at UFC event

Even more ironic is that the restaurant is LGBTQ+-owned and has displayed a Pride flag for many years.

A spokesperson for the Portland Police Bureau said that police initially responded to the restaurant at about 2 p.m. that day but that there was no property damage, so they left. They were called once again, and when they returned, they found a window broken.

Rogers said one person in the group wore a shirt with a white nationalist slogan.

“Nobody was paying attention to what their T-shirt said,” he added. “And I think at the end, when they were handing out pamphlets, I think the reason if they’re handing out pamphlets at the end, it’s because they knew they had started doing it before they would have been kicked out.”

Police said they tried to determine who broke the window but were unsuccessful, and no arrests were made.

“I totally support the protest,” Rogers said to the Oregonian. “I support what they’re doing, but they totally misplaced it on this restaurant.”

It is unclear whether the restaurant has reopened.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Oregon, Politics, Pride flag, White supremacy 

A resurfaced video showing a Democrat U.S. Senator waving an upside-down American flag at a 2017 rally with the Somalian community is going viral online.

The video on social media is taken from a speech Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) gave at a Somalian celebration for a presidential election in the African country.

‘We have more to do, but we will continue to fight for you!’

In the video she promises to remove restrictions on cash remittances to Somalia and uses a traditional Somalian phrase to show her support for the interests of the Somalian community in Minnesota.

“As you know, we are home to the largest Somali population in the United States, and we are so proud of that fact in Minnesota!” she yells to loud applause.

At one point someone hands her the upside-down U.S. flag, and she waves it haphazardly.

“Oh, thank you. Very good!” she says.

While it might have been an oversight on her part, the video shows Somalian attendees waving U.S. flags upside down. Mostly, they wave the Somalian flag and others wave the U.S. flag right side up.

One apparently upside-down U.S. flag can even be seen in the background of a photo Klobuchar posted from the event on social media.

“Congressman [Keith] Ellison and Senator [Al] Frankin and I worked so hard to reduce the redundant regulations on remittances to Somalia, lessening the burden for banks!” she added, referring to other Democrat officials. “We have more to do, but we will continue to fight for you!”

A short clip on social media showed the objectionable parts spliced together, but the longer video is available for context on the YouTube channel for Somali TV of Minnesota.

A Blaze News request for comment from the Klobuchar campaign was not returned before time of publication.

RELATED: ICE deports Somali man accused of torture and war crimes who was found driving for Uber in DC

In 2025, BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo and his colleague at City Journal reported on how some of the remittances to Somalia have ended up funding terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab.

This is not the only time Somalians in Minnesota have seemingly treated the American flag with irreverence. For example, a similar incident unfolded years later when community leaders accidentally raised a large U.S. flag that was upside down during a Somali Independence Day event in July in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The St. Cloud Police Department told Fox News they were alerted to the incident and an officer was sent to the event. The officer was able to correct the flag “without objection,” and the event’s organizers “indicated to City staff that the flag being flown upside down was not intentional.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Amy klobuchar, Minnesota, Somalia, Us flag, Politics 

Lea Martin arrived in America expecting to find the country she’d heard about her entire life: uncultured, superficial, and different from Europe in all the wrong ways.

Instead, she found something she never anticipated.

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck has read her new book, “Dear Land of the Free,” and he calls it “almost like a love letter” about his beloved country.

Martin explains that she wrote the book after she broke up with her ex-boyfriend and felt “disassociated.”

“I felt like, oh my god, I need to write this love letter to this country that gave me so much and helped me transform so much,” she tells Glenn.

“So, it’s just my whole love for this country that gave me so, so much,” she adds.

“What was it that flipped you … because I know what people say in Europe about America, and it’s almost a cartoon version of us. But what was it that you either saw that you were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have this all wrong,’ and what flipped you to this?” Glenn asks.

“When I arrived in the U.S., I had so many cliches, and I’ve never dreamed about moving to the U.S. It just happened because of my ex,” she explains. “And then when I arrived here, I realized how wrong I was because we have so many cliches around food, around Americans, around so many things here.”

“And I realized I was so wrong,” she says, noting that “one of the biggest cliches” is that Americans are “uncultured” because they don’t travel as much as Europeans.

“And I’ve realized there’s a lot of nuance in this cliche,” she says.

“It’s so easy for us to travel because also the flight tickets there are way cheaper, while in the U.S. it’s more complicated. This country is so huge. Like, when even I was in Pennsylvania, I did a road trip in Pennsylvania, and I was like, I’m still in the same state, but I can drive hours and hours and hours,” she explains.

When she road-tripped through Texas, she found the same thing, calling it “endless.”

“Each state has its own specialties, people, mindset. It’s so interesting,” she adds.

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.

​America, Europe, Glenn beck, Lea martin, Love letter, Pennsylvania, Texas, Blazetv show 

The Republican Party in Michigan issued a mocking response after Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said former President Barack Obama will be joining him on the campaign trail.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) announced his retirement 18 months ago, and El-Sayed is trying to win the seat to keep it in Democrat control. Losing it to Republicans would significantly bolster the GOP’s efforts to maintain control of the U.S. Senate.

‘President Obama is parachuting into Michigan, in a desperate to attempt revive Conman Abdul’s floundering campaign.’

On Monday, El-Sayed said Obama would attend a rally in Detroit at the end of October in his campaign to defeat Republican Mike Rogers. Black voters in Detroit have expressed misgivings about El-Sayed.

“It is my honor and privilege to announce that President @BarackObama is joining us on the trail in Detroit,” wrote El-Sayed on social media.

If El-Sayed wins, he would become the first Muslim to hold office in the U.S. Senate. Republicans have lambasted him for extremist statements he has made in the past and for his associations with anti-American extremists like influencer Hasan Piker.

Greg Manz, the senior communications adviser of the Michigan GOP, mocked the development in a statement to Blaze News.

“President Obama’s upcoming trip to Detroit proves Conman Abdul El-Sayed has a severe base problem. It’s no surprise to us that Democrats are playing defense in the very city where ‘Democrats for Rogers’ launched — Motor City voters are abandoning the Conman because working families have zero interest in having their taxes hiked to pay for a government-controlled health care scheme that costs $32 trillion,” he said.

“President Obama is parachuting into Michigan, in a desperate to attempt revive Conman Abdul’s floundering campaign,” Manz added, “because Democrat support is evaporating daily in Detroit — it’s a Hail Mary for an extreme candidate who can’t even energize his own base.”

The Democrats for Rogers group also released a statement including comments from El-Sayed slamming Obama when he was re-elected in 2012.

RELATED: WATCH: 9/11 hero’s father narrates powerful ad against Abdul El-Sayed

“[Obama] has perpetuated war, violated our civil liberties, deported more people from our shores than any other president before him, and the list of his failures goes on,” said El-Sayed at the time.

Failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris has already campaigned for El-Sayed.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Abdul el-sayed, Islam, Muslim, Us senate, Barack obama, Politics 

Christa Pike was sentenced to death for one of Tennessee’s most brutal murders — she led her roommate into the woods, tortured her, and killed her. Three decades later, the state attempted to carry out that sentence.

But it failed.

Pike survived two lethal injection attempts and was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, and BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is not happy about it.

“So now you have this headline I can’t wrap my brain around, actually. ‘Christa Pike getting lifesaving medical care after surviving Tennessee execution,’” Gonzales says, noting that Tennessee taxpayers are footing the bill.

“[They’ve] paid for her to live up until this point, and the point of that, I guess, was that she needed to go through all of her appeals or whatever until the state found that they could execute her in good conscience,” she explains.

“And now Tennessee taxpayers are spending more money and more resources to try to save the life of the person who was on death row who was supposed to be executed,” she says.

Gonzales also points out that the execution squad was all women.

“This actually was a DEI execution squad. It was an all-female execution squad,” Gonzales says. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” she says, answering herself. “But they injected her twice with pentobarbital. And they couldn’t find the vein. I don’t know. They tried to establish an IV line for an hour, using at least seven needles.”

“So maybe, instead of figuring out how we can get all-female execution squads, we should just get people who understand how to put an IV line in, because now this chick is in the hospital in critical condition,” she explains.

“And her attorney is arguing, like, ‘Oh, actually … this should all just be canceled and she should just be allowed to go home because of what she’s been through,’” she continues.

“So all I’m saying is I think we need to bring back the firing squad,” she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Sara gonzales, Christa pike, Tennessee, Taxpayers, Execution, Lethal injection, Blazetv show 

The Justice Department published a damning report from the Weaponization Working Group on Monday detailing how elements of the Biden administration allegedly conspired during the pandemic to characterize concerned parents as domestic terrorists.

How it started

Parents around the country made their voices heard during the pandemic about various matters impacting their children, including COVID-19 restrictions, mask mandates, anti-white propaganda in the classroom, and the abuse that inevitably followed districts’ embrace of gender ideology-formed school policies.

‘Find a reason to suggest that such protests could be federal crimes regardless of the initial skepticism.’

This exertion of political agency by parents apparently enraged the powers that be.

On Sept. 29, 2021, the National School Boards Association claimed in a letter to then-President Joe Biden, “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat. The National School Boards Association respectfully asks for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.”

In addition to complaining about the alleged dissemination of “misinformation,” the NSBA suggested in the letter that school officials and educators around the country were “susceptible to acts of violence” and faced threats over their role in pushing COVID-19 and leftist measures.

From the NSBA’s Sept. 29, 2021, letter. Justice Department

The NSBA letter also asked the Biden administration to:

“investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials”; consider treating alleged “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials” as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes”; and”examine appropriate enforceable actions” against the supposed crimes under the PATRIOT Act and other statutes.

The NSBA also insinuated that certain individuals who attended school board meetings were potential terrorists, the DOJ Weaponization Working Group noted in its report.

Among those referenced was Scott Smith of Virginia. Smith criticized Loudoun County Public Schools officials after his disabled daughter was anally raped by a trans-identifying man in the girls’ restroom at Stone Bridge High School.

RELATED: Parents weren’t asked. Many still don’t know. Inside the new school surveillance nightmare.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The DOJ’s new WWG report makes mince meat of the NSBA’s letter, which was recognized at the time by Republican state attorneys general as a “massive fraud” and “designed to intimidate parents into giving up their constitutional rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”

The WWG report claims, for instance, that the NSBA identified “numerous instances of constitutionally protected speech and protest as ‘threats'”; implored the Biden administration to treat such protected speech as criminal; and falsely suggested that school boards generally faced “angry mobs” and disruptions.

In an Oct. 22, 2021, letter, the NSBA board of directors walked back some of the claims and admitted that “there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.” The damage was, however, done.

The NSBA did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Despite its political bent and inaccuracies, the NSBA’s Sept. 29, 2021, letter set the stage for the October 4, 2021, memo sent from then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to relevant Biden officials in the FBI and the DOJ, treating the association’s claims as fact and their concerns as warranted.

From Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4, 2021, memo.

According documents reviewed by the WWG, Garland’s subsequent memo “and its suggestion that such protests could constitute federal criminal activity, including domestic terrorism, was the product of pressure by the White House and high-ranking Department of Justice officials to find a reason to suggest that such protests could be federal crimes regardless of the initial skepticism.”

Elements inside the Justice Department and the FBI strongly doubted whether school-directed protest and criticism from parents qualified as criminal conduct.

An attorney in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division noted in an Oct. 3, 2021, email, “I read the letter from NSBA, and looked at the links for a handful of the footnotes, and it appears to me that the vast, vast majority of the behavior cited cannot be reached by federal law.”

Justice Department.

One attorney in the DOJ’s Criminal Division reportedly noted that an early version of the Garland memo tied supposed school board threats to election threats and would therefore be regarded “as a partisan exercise aimed at those who do not support the Administration.”

Notwithstanding such internal criticism, Garland apparently rushed out his memo. The Biden administration then took steps to implement it, subjecting multiple parents to federal investigation.

The FBI previously confirmed to congressional investigators that it had opened at least 25 counterterrorism “Guardian assessments” based on alleged school board threats. Six of these probes were run by the bureau’s Counterterrorism Division.

How it’s going

The WWG concluded that the Garland memo “was the product of pressure by senior leadership to support the NSBA and to bring federal pressure to bear on parents protesting school districts that had enacted certain policies.”

The WWG emphasized that by suggesting that concerned parents were breaking federal law or on the verge of doing so had a chilling effect on First Amendment rights.

While the Trump DOJ cannot turn back the clock and undo the damage generated by the previous administration, it is offering several remedies.

It will, for instance, enable those Americans targeted by the Biden administration for their participation in school board meetings to see the FBI Guardian assessments that were created for them.

The DOJ will also add a disclaimer to every Guardian assessment associated with the Garland memo, noting that “the Garland Memorandum raised serious constitutional concerns, and so any Guardian assessment resulting from it should be read with caution.”

Additionally, the department will review the files of all persons investigated pursuant to the Garland memo to determine if their constitutional rights were trampled.

“Parents are children’s natural providers and protectors,” stated Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. “The Biden-Harris DOJ labeled concerned parents as threats for exercising their right to know what was happening at their kids’ schools. This Civil Rights Division stands with parents, and we will continue to partner with the Department of Education to enforce parents’ rights under federal law.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Biden administration, Domestic terrorists, Gender ideology, Justice department, Parental rights, Loudoun county, Politics 

If a rock concert in 2026 isn’t overtly political, is it really a rock concert?

Apparently not if the Strokes are involved.

‘As we as we fight fascism and genocide, raise wages, and guarantee health care to everyone.’

Fight the Powers

The New York band performed before roughly 40,000 fans at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens on Friday, with a lineup that included Beach House, TV on the Radio, and Fcukers — plus a couple of considerably more political special guests.

One famous audience member made sure everyone knew he was there.

“Austin Powers” star Mike Myers posted several photos from the concert to Instagram while wearing a black T-shirt reading “FIGHT FASCISM,” emblazoned with the familiar red raised fist of left-wing protest movements.

Myers described the Strokes with fire emojis before writing, “#voteinnovember #fightfascism.”

The leftist love wasn’t limited to the crowd.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) took the stage before the Strokes’ set and heaped praise on the band.

“The greatest city in the world is now welcoming the greatest rock band of our generation, who have always been committed to a better future for all of us,” Ocasio-Cortez declared, “as we fight fascism and genocide, raise wages, and guarantee health care to everyone,” she continued, as the crowd cheered.

The audience got even louder when AOC introduced the next guest: Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.

RELATED: GRAVE ‘DIGGER’: Will Tom Cruise’s $100 million eco-flop bury Warner Bros.?

Bern there, done that

AOC escorted Sanders to the microphone, the two raising their arms together as the crowd roared.

Sanders opened by joking that he had come to sing a few songs.

“You wouldn’t want to hear that,” he added.

He then thanked the Strokes for “standing up for economic justice” and “fighting racism,” while praising the band’s “understanding that health care is a human right.”

Sanders closed by urging the audience to vote and to “stand up to authoritarianism” in November.

The Strokes have been “feeling the Bern” for a few years now. The band performed at a Sanders campaign rally in New Hampshire during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, with frontman Julian Casablancas calling Sanders America’s “only truly non-corporate candidate” and declaring, “This is why we support him.”

Friday’s event — which the band’s website noted was taking place in “one of the most culturally diverse neighborhoods in the world” — also featured a live edition of Casablancas’ podcast, “S.O.S. Earth Is a Mess,” devoted to climate change.

RELATED: Did these 6 movies about Satan accidentally summon him to their sets?

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Citizen Mike

As for Myers, this was hardly his first recent political outing.

The Canadian-born actor endorsed Liberal Party leader Mark Carney during Canada’s 2025 federal election and helped popularize “Elbows Up,” a hockey-derived rallying cry that Canadians adopted while pushing back against President Donald Trump’s tariff threats and repeated talk of making Canada the 51st state.

Myers is also an American citizen. In a previous interview, he spoke about being grateful for that citizenship and described living in the United States as a privilege.

Apparently dual citizenship also means never having to choose just one country’s politics.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Mike myers, Elbows up, The strokes, Alexandria ocasio-cortez, Bernie sanders, New york city, Entertainment 

When it comes to educating your children, never go full woke.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times writer best known for “The 1619 Project” and her work on school segregation, apparently learned that lesson the expensive way. In a lengthy New York Times Magazine essay, she recounts how she deliberately enrolled her daughter, Najya, in struggling Brooklyn public schools because she believed families like hers should live their integrationist principles instead of seeking out better schools.

Hannah-Jones deserves some credit for publishing an unusually candid account of what happened to her daughter. But that candor should lead somewhere.

The experiment did not go well for Najya. Hannah-Jones describes weak instruction, assignments that went ungraded, little homework, disorderly classrooms, and large gaps in basic math. Her parents paid for tutoring and repeatedly intervened on her behalf, but the academic deficiencies accumulated.

By eighth grade, Najya insisted on choosing her own high school. She selected a rigorous screened school, mostly white and Asian, and initially struggled because she had not received the same preparation as many of her classmates. With tutoring and help from her new teachers, she caught up.

Her verdict on the experience was brutal: “Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me. I never really got the education I wanted.” Hannah-Jones apologized. “I feel like you got cheated,” she told her daughter. She also wrote that, in the end, “I had not chosen her.”

So Hannah-Jones does recognize that she failed her daughter. What she does not abandon is the larger diagnosis that led her there.

Her essay still treats segregation, school choice, and the sorting of affluent and high-performing students as central explanations for why schools like Najya’s struggle. She closes by arguing that there is “no absolution” as long as families rescue their own children from failing schools while poor black children remain behind.

But her own story points toward a more basic problem: Schools do not become good because more high-performing children are assigned to them. High-performing families are attracted to schools that teach well, maintain order, set clear standards, and hold adults and students accountable.

Money does not explain away what happened, either. New York City Public Schools reports a $45 billion budget and $34,717 in per-student spending for fiscal 2026 — and that per-student figure excludes debt service, transportation, and food. Whatever else New York City schools lack, they are not operating on starvation rations.

The harder question is competence.

In my experience teaching high school English, failing schools are often terribly run. Principals avoid disciplining disruptive students, teachers lower expectations to keep everyone moving, grades cease to mean much, and administrators explain away poor results instead of correcting them. The result is a campus where good teachers burn out, serious students learn to keep their heads down, and everyone gets passed along.

RELATED: Portland schools turned one mom into a culture-war enemy

Lindsey Nicholson/Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Hannah-Jones’ reporting describes many of those symptoms, yet she can’t seem to connect the dots. Najya said students received little homework, grades did not reflect mastery, and classrooms could be loud and chaotic. When Hannah-Jones played those complaints for Unison Principal Emily Paige, Paige cried and blamed the larger system: “This is the reality of a segregated system, and it’s not just segregation by race and class; it’s by ability. This is the reality of school-choice systems.”

That answer is revealing. If a school needs an influx of stronger students to make the classrooms function, then sorting may explain who attends the school, but it does not explain why the adults failed to teach the students already there.

To Paige’s credit, she also told Hannah-Jones something far more important: “It is important to not, in our pursuit of being antiracist, lower expectations. Because this is what happens, right? It’s racism under the guise of antiracism.”

That is much closer to the lesson Hannah-Jones’ story actually teaches.

Freddie deBoer, writing from the left, takes the argument in almost the opposite direction. In a response to the Hannah-Jones essay, he argues that schools and teachers have relatively little influence over a student’s long-term academic outcome and that prior performance and innate academic ability matter far more.

Yet Hannah-Jones’ own account makes that hard to dismiss as irrelevant. Najya entered high school with serious gaps in algebra and basic math. Intensive tutoring and direct help from teachers followed. By the end of the semester, she was earning mostly A’s and B’s and later passed the state algebra exam. Whatever one thinks about the size of school effects in the aggregate, instruction and intervention plainly mattered to this particular student.

RELATED: How to fix the woke teacher problem

H. Rick Bamman/Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Mississippi offers another useful comparison. Since the state enacted its Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2013, its fourth-grade reading score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose from 209 to 219, while the share of fourth-graders scoring proficient or advanced rose from 21% to 32%. In 2024, Mississippi ranked ninth nationally in fourth-grade reading.

Those gains did not come from simply throwing more money at schools or rearranging their racial composition. Mississippi combined early screening, teacher training and coaching, evidence-based reading instruction, intensive intervention, clear promotion standards, and retention for third-graders who could not meet the reading threshold, with exemptions for specified cases. The state now touts the nation’s largest fourth-grade reading gains since 2013.

The lesson is not mysterious. Schools that insist on order, competent instruction, meaningful grades, and high expectations give students a better chance to learn. Schools that make excuses for disorder and disguise failure with inflated grades do not.

Hannah-Jones deserves some credit for publishing an unusually candid account of what happened to her daughter. But that candor should lead somewhere.

If a child can earn honors grades without learning algebra, if parents must hire tutors to repair years of missing instruction, and if a principal’s first explanation is that the school lacked enough high-performing students, the problem is not that too many families exercised choice.

The problem is that the school was failing the children who were already there.

​Antiracist, Education, High school, New york times, School choice, Segregation, Woke, Children, Nikole hannah-jones, Mississippi, Public education, Math, New york city, Opinion & analysis 

On a recent episode of “The Drive,” my co-host Karl Brauer and I got into a discussion about a pair of bills being considered in my home state of New York.

One sets a goal of reducing driving across the entire state by 20%. The other would tax certain fuel-efficient vehicles by the mile and require an electronic device in the car to keep track.

To calculate the tax, qualifying vehicles would be required to have an onboard electronic unit installed when the vehicle is registered, re-registered, or renewed.

I had a fairly basic question: This might work for New York City, but how exactly are the rest of us supposed to drive 20% less?

Even a Californian like Karl saw the problem immediately.

“There’s this whole area, the politicians might have heard of it,” he joked. “It’s called Upstate New York.”

Exactly.

If you live in Brooklyn, you may have a subway station a few blocks away. Where I live near Buffalo, and across huge stretches of Upstate New York, your car isn’t some luxury you can casually replace with a subway, bicycle, or comfortable pair of walking shoes.

You drive to work. You drive your kids to school. You drive to buy groceries or see family.

For millions of New Yorkers, driving isn’t optional.

Miles to go

So what exactly is Albany proposing?

The Get Around NY Act, sponsored in the Senate by Brooklyn Democrat state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, would establish a goal of reducing the total number of vehicle miles traveled in New York state by 20% by 2050.

Now let’s be precise about what the bill does, because it’s important. Nobody is proposing that a police officer check your odometer on Dec. 31 and issue you a ticket because you drove 12,000 miles instead of 9,600. The 20% target applies statewide, not to individual drivers. The bill would instead use transportation policy to push the state’s total mileage downward.

Under the legislation, state and local highway projects that expand road capacity would have to undergo a “vehicle miles traveled impact assessment.” If a project doesn’t align with the state’s 20% reduction goal, officials would have to change the project or offset its effects through measures designed to reduce driving.

Those measures could include expanded public transportation, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, “micro-mobility” infrastructure, parking-demand management, transit-oriented development, and other land-use changes.

What are the alternatives?

Gounardes has been very clear about the idea behind it. “If we measure VMT, we can work to reduce it,” he said while criticizing the state’s transportation master plan. He added that this doesn’t mean New Yorkers need to travel less because the state can create better ways for them to get to work, school, and everywhere else.

I’ll bite. What exactly are these better options for people who don’t live in New York City?

Even New York’s own climate planners acknowledge the problem. State climate materials say many New Yorkers depend on single-occupancy vehicles because they have limited access to public transit.

Of course they do. New York is a huge state. Once you get beyond its dense urban centers, the transportation equation changes quickly. The state itself administers rural transit programs specifically to help people in smaller communities reach jobs, schools, health care, and stores.

That doesn’t mean nobody should build better public transportation. Build it. If you can give somebody a faster, cheaper, and more convenient way to get where he needs to go, he’ll probably use it.

But you can’t create a subway by passing a mileage target.

Pay as you go

And this isn’t the only vehicle-miles proposal Gounardes has introduced. A separate bill, S4196, would replace some of the gas-tax burden on fuel-efficient vehicles with something entirely different: a tax on every mile they travel on New York’s public roads.

The proposal would apply to vehicles rated at least 30 miles per gallon or 30 MPGe. Owners would pay 1.9 cents for every taxable mile driven.

Drive 10,000 miles in New York and that’s $190. Drive 15,000 and it’s $285.

But here’s the part that really caught my attention. To calculate the tax, qualifying vehicles would be required to have an onboard electronic unit installed when the vehicle is registered, re-registered, or renewed. The device would use GPS or comparable technology to determine how many miles the vehicle travels on New York public roads and regularly transmit the taxable mileage to the Department of Taxation and Finance.

The legislation includes privacy protections. It says the unit would report aggregate taxable mileage rather than your exact location, travel times, or individual trips. Drivers of fuel-efficient gasoline vehicles could also claim a credit for the gasoline taxes they continue to pay.

RELATED: Automakers were ready to kill the gas car. Buyers had other ideas.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Unwanted passenger

Good to know — but we’re still talking about the state requiring a GPS-capable electronic device in your private vehicle so it can calculate a tax based on how much you drive.

And New York would make sure it’s there. The bill would add the device to the equipment checked during the state’s annual vehicle inspection. The inspector would record both your odometer mileage and the mileage reported by the onboard unit. Tampering with or disconnecting the device with the intent to evade the tax could bring penalties.

The rationale for a mileage tax isn’t difficult to understand. Gasoline taxes help pay for roads. As vehicles become more efficient and EVs buy no gasoline at all, states collect less fuel-tax revenue even though those vehicles still use — and wear — the roads.

Look at the two proposals together. One bill establishes a state policy of reducing the number of miles New Yorkers drive by 20%. Another creates the infrastructure to measure the miles driven by a growing share of cars and charge their owners for every one.

They’re separate bills with separate purposes. The Get Around NY Act is aimed at transportation planning and emissions. The mileage-tax bill is aimed at replacing declining gasoline-tax revenue. But if you’re a driver, they meet at exactly the same place: your odometer.

And that brings me back to life outside New York City. What happens when you can’t reduce your mileage?

Maybe your job is 30 miles away. Maybe the closest specialist your child needs is an hour away. Maybe you’re caring for an elderly parent in another town. Maybe your kids play sports. Maybe you live somewhere where “take public transit” means arranging your entire day around a bus that comes a few times rather than every few minutes.

Those miles aren’t indulgences. They’re life.

There’s an enormous difference between giving people alternatives to driving and designing policy around the assumption that they’ll drive less.

Give me better public transportation. Give me roads that are safe. Give me communities where people who want to walk or bicycle can do it safely. Give consumers choices.

But before Albany decides New Yorkers should collectively drive 20% fewer miles, I’d like lawmakers to spend some time asking why we’re driving those miles in the first place.

Because outside the five boroughs, the answer is often pretty simple. We have somewhere we need to be.

​Andrew gounardes, Evs, Gasoline tax, Lifestyle, Mileage tax, New york city, Public transit, Upstate new york, Automotive 

A female Arizona State University senior allegedly punched a police officer and interfered in an arrest over the summer — after which police used force against her and criminally charged her.

Eryn Bonner was criminally charged in connection with a violent July arrest on Mill Avenue in Tempe, KNXV-TV reported.

‘The female is actually striking the police officer with her fists and her legs. That fits that definition of aggravated assault.’

A Tempe spokesperson confirmed to KNXV that Bonner faces two misdemeanor charges in Tempe City Court: disorderly conduct under state law and interfering with police under city code.

The city previously told KNXV that Bonner punched a police officer several times, and the station added that video of the incident appears to show that moment in question, with the officer sitting over Bonner before striking her.

The Tempe Officers Association shared the following statement supporting the charging decision and standing by officers’ actions, the station said:

The filing of charges against Ms. Bonner aligns with what the complete video evidence has shown from the beginning: This incident was far different from the brief clip circulated on social media and her attorney’s repeated misstatements about the facts of the case.

The video shows Ms. Bonner repeatedly ignoring officers’ commands to step back while they were attempting to control an active arrest. TOA remains confident that the officers acted appropriately under difficult circumstances. The relevant video has been released. The case remains under internal review and, when that is complete, the full facts and analysis will be available for public review. We see no basis for a third-party investigation.

KNXV said the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office declined to pursue felony charges and that an initial misdemeanor charge was filed and later dismissed before Tempe refiled the case with additional misdemeanor charges.

A city spokesperson previously said the original charge was dropped to allow prosecutors to refile it alongside additional charges after reviewing all available evidence, the station said.

Josh Logan — a former Chandler police officer and founder of Guardian Training and Consulting who has worked shifts on Mill Avenue — told KNXV in a previous story that his review of the video shows Bonner re-approaching officers after they told her to get back and that she did more than that.

“The female is actually striking the police officer with her fists and her legs,” Logan added to the station. “That fits that definition of aggravated assault.”

Logan also told KNXV that if the officer’s account of Bonner striking the officer multiple times is true, the force used against Bonner is justified in most police department’s policies: “If you reach that level of active aggression, you’re within policy to perform closed fist strikes to the face.”

The station said Bonner — a member of the ASU stunt team — was left with bruises for days following the incident.

Her attorney, Benjamin Taylor, told KNXV that the officer who took Bonner to the ground should be fired, calling his actions “very excessive” and accusing the city of targeting his client: “This is the way to try to cover up the officer’s wrongdoing. Two months later to pursue these charges seems very vindictive.”

Taylor added to the station that civil action typically cannot be filed when someone is convicted of a crime: “Usually, when cities bring charges months later, [they’re] trying to cover up for their civil liability.”

A Tempe Police Department spokesperson told KNXV that an internal review of the incident is still ongoing.

RELATED: July 4 mob attack on female cops: 3 adults, 4 kids charged with possession of machine gun, theft of Taser, assault on police

Taylor also repeatedly has called for an external review of the arrest, saying the sergeant overseeing Tempe’s investigation was previously suspended in a use-of-force case, the station said.

However, the city’s police union has pushed back, calling the move an attack on the investigation’s integrity, KNXV added.

Taylor said Bonner has pleaded not guilty, the station said, adding that a pretrial conference is scheduled for Nov. 4 in Tempe City Court.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​College student, Criminal charges, Physical attack, Punching cop, Arizona state university, Arrest, Interfering with police, Tempe, Crime