Democrats in Maine have swapped one radical U.S. Senate nominee with a whole lot of personal baggage for another — this time, a nominee who shares a great deal more in common with his romantic “partner” than a house and children.

Graham Platner advanced from the Maine Democratic primary on June 9 and enjoyed the continued support of various Democrats including Rep. Seth Moulton (Mass.), Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Sen. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), even after it was revealed that he sent at least six women sexually explicit texts while married; previously identified as a communist; branded rural white Americans as racists and all cops as “bastards”; mocked Jesus and the Virgin Mary; and adorned himself with an apparent Nazi tattoo.

Second cousins only share 3.125% of their DNA.

Platner’s campaign was nuked earlier this month by a sexual assault accusation made by a woman he dated several years ago. Platner officially withdrew from the race on July 10.

Troy Jackson — a former state senator who was rejected by voters in the Democratic gubernatorial primary on June 9 — won the nominating convention to replace Platner on Saturday.

Jackson was once a defender of the unborn and the institution of marriage. Now, like Platner, he is a bona fide leftist who supports Medicare for all, wealth redistribution, the radical LGBT agenda, the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, late-term abortion, and codifying abortion rights nationally.

And like Platner, Jackson has some skeletons in the closet.

Recent reports have, for instance, painted him as an individual with anger management issues, and his hot temper got the better of him on at least one occasion. His campaign confirmed that during a private meeting inside the state Capitol, he hurled a plastic water bottle. Multiple sources alleged to CNN that he was aiming at a female lawmaker at the time.

RELATED: Democrats have a MAJOR problem going into the midterms: Men

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The Maine Wire’s Steve Robinson, citing tipsters from Jackson’s hometown of Allagash and genealogical records, revealed on Thursday that the bottle-chucker is also a cousin-lover of sorts.

Troy Jackson and Lana Pelletier — his live-in significant other and the mother of his two sons — reportedly share the same great-grandparents: Thomas Pelletier and Edith Thibodeau. According to the Wire, Thomas and Edith’s daughter Albertine was Troy’s grandmother, and their son was Lana’s grandfather.

In other words, the Democrat and his romantic partner are second cousins.

These second cousins — reportedly identified in family records as the children of first cousins — have never legally married, although they could under Maine law, which allows first cousins to marry, but they must provide a doctor’s certificate of genetic counseling.

Whereas first cousins share, on average, 12.5% of their DNA from common relatives, second cousins share only 3.125% of their DNA, according to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy.

The Jackson campaign did not reply to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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​Us senate, Troy jackson, Graham platner, Maine, Democratic party, Politics 

Everyone knows cigarettes are full of chemicals: nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, and a long list of others you probably do not want anywhere near your lungs.

Now researchers are wondering whether smokers are also inhaling plastic.

A new study published in the European Heart Journal found that people with a history of smoking were almost six times as likely to have microplastics in their blood. Smoking was the only factor that still predicted the presence of microplastics after researchers adjusted for heart disease, inflammation, air pollution, and other variables.

The study looked at 61 patients undergoing heart procedures at two hospitals in Italy. Nineteen were suffering serious heart attacks, 20 had chronic coronary disease, and 22 had normal coronary arteries. Researchers found microplastics in 84.2% of the heart attack patients.

Microplastics are also in the air we breathe.

By comparison, they found plastic particles in 40% of the patients with chronic coronary disease and 31.8% of those with normal arteries.

But the smoking numbers were even harder to ignore. Every heart attack patient with a history of smoking had plastic in their blood. None of the nonsmokers with normal arteries did.

Patients who both smoked and had high long-term exposure to fine-particle air pollution all tested positive for microplastics. Among nonsmokers with lower pollution exposure, just 12.5% tested positive.

Not just the filters

That does not prove cigarettes are directly injecting plastic into your bloodstream. This was a small study, and the researchers cannot say exactly where the particles came from.

Still, the connection is strong enough to raise an uncomfortable question: Are smokers literally smoking plastic?

Cigarette filters are usually made from cellulose acetate, which is a type of plastic. Public health researchers have increasingly described discarded filters as a major source of microplastic pollution.

The World Health Organization has warned that cigarette filters contain microplastics and eventually break down into smaller particles after they are discarded.

RELATED: Can you trust a machine to decide if a human wrote this?

Moor Studio/Getty Images

But the plastic found in the patients’ blood was mostly polyethylene, the material commonly used in grocery bags, bottles, food packaging, and countless other everyday products. So the cigarette filter itself may not be the main source.

Another possibility is that smoking makes it easier for plastic particles already floating in the air to get into the body. Microplastics are not just in water and food. They are also in the air we breathe. Smoking repeatedly pulls particles deep into the lungs while damaging the body’s normal defenses. It harms the cilia and mucus-clearing systems that are supposed to catch and remove unwanted material.

In other words, cigarettes may not be creating all of the plastic. They may simply be opening the door.

A disturbing clue

Once the particles get through the lungs, they can enter the bloodstream.

Researchers found microplastics in blood taken directly from the coronary circulation, the blood vessels that feed the heart. Heart attack patients had the highest concentrations and the widest variety of plastic particles. They also had higher levels of inflammation.

That matters because one of the big questions surrounding microplastics is whether they are simply passing through the body or actively causing damage. Scientists suspect they may contribute to inflammation, oxidative stress, and damage to blood vessels. But human research is still in the early stages.

A 2024 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found microplastics and nanoplastics embedded in plaque removed from patients’ carotid arteries. Patients with plastic in their plaque were more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke, or death over the next three years.

That study did not prove that plastic caused those outcomes. Neither does this one. There are plenty of reasons to be cautious.

The new study involved only 61 people. Just 19 were having heart attacks. The researchers did not fully measure diet, drinking water, packaging exposure, occupation, or every other possible source of microplastics.

They also tracked whether someone had a history of smoking, not exactly how much he smoked or how recently.

So this is not proof that every drag from a cigarette fires plastic particles straight into your arteries, but it is a disturbing clue. Smokers in this study were far more likely to have plastic in their blood. Every smoker suffering a heart attack tested positive.

Cigarettes already come with enough reasons to quit. You can apparently add “possibly smoking plastic” to the list.

​Health, Microplastics, Cigarettes, Smoking 

Colorado’s Energy Code Board has published its Model Low Energy and Carbon Code. The standards are sold as an efficiency measure. In practice, they lock years of new mandates into every home built in the state — and every mandate raises the price of housing.

Colorado lawmakers and utilities increasingly blame AI data centers for rising electricity bills. Data centers consume enormous amounts of power, and their growth deserves scrutiny. But they are a convenient scapegoat for a broader and more durable source of higher housing costs: state and local building and energy codes.

Policymakers who genuinely want cheaper housing should stop pretending affordability can survive endless mandates.

Colorado’s 2022 Building Greenhouse Gas Emissions law required local governments to adopt “electric-ready” and “solar-ready” provisions beginning in 2023. The new low-carbon model code tightens those requirements further.

In practice, every new home must be wired for a 208/240-volt electric-vehicle charger and sized to accommodate a future heat pump, electric water heater, and induction stove — whether or not the buyer wants or ever installs them. Multifamily projects must reserve charging spaces as a matter of course.

These requirements arrive well ahead of consumer demand. Fewer than 2% of vehicles on American roads are fully electric, while EVs and plug-in hybrids combined accounted for only about 7% of new vehicle sales in early 2026. Yet builders must oversize electrical panels and run extra copper wiring for a future many buyers may never use.

Builders aren’t absorbing those costs. They’re added to the mortgage.

New York offers another example. In 2023, the state passed the All-Electric Buildings Act, banning fossil-fuel hookups in most new residential construction and extending the requirement to commercial buildings later in the decade. A legal challenge and pressure over housing affordability forced Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration last year to delay enforcement pending an appellate ruling.

The cost is substantial. New-construction electrification requires heat pumps, all-electric appliances, additional labor, and upgraded electrical systems. An analysis commissioned by the New York State Association of Realtors estimated an added cost of $12,000 to $23,000 per unit.

State regulators argue that all-electric homes may save money over time. Builders and realtors dispute those projections. Either way, long-term operating savings do not erase the upfront price. That initial cost determines whether a project can be financed, whether it gets built, and whether a buyer can qualify for the mortgage.

RELATED: Holy cow, the climate crowd is full of bull

Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

California shows what happens when supply restrictions accumulate for decades. The state’s median home value exceeds $775,000, more than twice the roughly $370,000 national median. Restrictive zoning, prolonged approvals, high fees, and litigation risk have already constrained supply. California’s 2025 Energy Code, effective in 2026, pushes new buildings further toward electric systems and tighter performance standards.

Supporters argue that electrification lowers emissions, reduces utility costs, and is cheaper to install during construction than to retrofit later. Some of that may be true. It still does not justify forcing every buyer to pay for electrical capacity and equipment he may never use.

If EV readiness and full electrification reliably paid for themselves within a few years, builders in competitive markets would advertise them as selling points. Builders adopted granite and quartz countertops, recessed lighting, smart thermostats, and other features because buyers valued them enough to pay. The need for a statewide mandate suggests the economics remain unattractive for many households.

Mandates also erase trade-offs. A first-time buyer may prefer a smaller electrical panel and a lower price. A retiree may have no intention of owning an electric vehicle. A rural homeowner may rely on propane or natural gas because it is cheaper or more dependable. Energy codes deny those buyers the option to decide which features justify the cost.

RELATED: Unaffordable housing is still ruining the party

Cemile Bingol/iStock/Getty Images

Data centers are an easy villain because their electricity demand is visible, concentrated, and new. Building codes are quieter. They spread smaller costs across every new house, apartment, and commercial project for years. That makes them less dramatic — and potentially more damaging.

A data center may strain one region’s grid. A statewide building mandate raises the cost of every new unit built under it.

Policymakers who genuinely want cheaper housing should stop pretending affordability can survive endless mandates. Colorado, New York, and California are showing what happens when officials demand more equipment, more wiring, and more compliance while insisting that homes remain affordable.

Voters should hold lawmakers accountable for codes that raise construction costs long after the current AI buildout slows. Housing does not become affordable through promises. It becomes affordable when governments stop forcing buyers to purchase features they neither chose nor need.

​Data centers, Opinion & analysis, Affordable housing, Colorado, Green energy, Solar panels, Electric vehicles, California, New york 

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and LGBT activists in the Michigan legislature were dealt a massive defeat on Thursday after a lengthy battle over a law that threatened to ruin counselors who help gender-confused children by compassionately grounding them in reality, not affirming delusions.

Luke Goodrich, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and attorney for the counselors, said in a statement, “This is a major victory for children, counselors, and common sense.”

‘Michigan is now admitting its law is unconstitutional.’

“Kids who are hurting deserve compassion, not a one-way ticket to harmful drugs, hormones, and surgery,” added the attorney.

Democrats in Michigan and Colorado put smiles on fellow LGBT activists’ faces in recent years by passing laws prohibiting so-called “conversion therapy” for minors.

Under Democrats’ House Bills 4616 and 4617 in Michigan and House Bill 19-1172 in Colorado — which defined “conversion therapy” as efforts to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity” — psychiatrists and mental health care providers who failed to indulge delusions or affirm homosexual inclination could face disciplinary actions, lose their licenses, and/or receive enormous fines.

Of course, these laws did not similarly prohibit gender ideologues from encouraging confused kids in therapy sessions to embrace the delusion that they are actually members of the opposite sex or to undergo sex-rejection medical procedures.

RELATED: Oregon’s war on confused children, by the numbers: It’s REALLY bad

Alex Kraus/Bloomberg/Getty Images

After ratifying her state’s version of the prohibition on reality-affirming counseling in July 2023, Whitmer stated, “We are banning the horrific practice of conversion therapy in Michigan and ensuring this is a state where you can be who you are.”

“As a mom of a member of the community and a proud, lifelong ally, I am grateful that we are taking action to make Michigan a more welcoming, inclusive place,” added Whitmer, whose daughter identifies as a lesbian.

The following year, a licensed Catholic therapist living in Lansing, Emily McJones, and the Catholic Charities of Jackson, Lenawee, and Hillsdale Counties filed a federal lawsuit against Whitmer and the state of Michigan, arguing that HB 4616 constituted an attempt to control counselors’ speech that violates several constitutional protections.

“It violates the Free Speech Clause because it regulates speech based on its content and viewpoint and cannot satisfy strict scrutiny,” said the complaint. “It violates the Due Process Clause because it employs vague, undefined terms that invite arbitrary and selective enforcement. And it violates the Free Exercise Clause because it targets religious speech and interferes with the right of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children.”

The lawsuit noted further that the law harms children, not only because it deprived them of the compassionate counseling they need but forced counselors “to ‘affirm’ children in the belief that they were born in the wrong body and help them undergo permanent, life-altering medical procedures that many will come to regret.”

The plaintiffs suffered an initial setback in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, where Judge Jane Beckering — an appointee of former President Joe Biden — denied their motion for a preliminary injunction and claimed that therapy amounts to conduct rather than protected speech.

In December 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed the Biden judge’s decision. The case was subsequently kicked back to the district court, which issued a preliminary injunction against the law.

The final resolution of the matter was, however, put on the back burner pending the result of the Supreme Court’s decision in Chiles v. Salazar regarding the law in Colorado. On March 31, SCOTUS determined that Colorado’s ban “regulates speech based on viewpoint” in violation of the First Amendment.

In light of the decisions by the Supreme Court and the Sixth Circuit, the district court in Michigan delivered a final ruling on Thursday, permanently banning the enforcement of Whitmer’s controversial law.

“The Court hereby DECLARES that HB 4616, as applied to licensed mental health professionals engaged in therapy that consists exclusively of talking, violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Beckering wrote in her final judgment. “The Court hereby PROHIBITS Defendants, their successors, agents, and all those acting in concert with them from enforcing HB 4616 against licensed professionals who engage in therapy that consists exclusively of talking.”

“Michigan is now admitting its law is unconstitutional,” said Goodrich. “Its surrender confirms that the Constitution and the best available science are on the side of counselors who help children find peace with their bodies. States still trying to censor that care should take note.”

Whitmer’s office did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

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​Colorado, First amendment, Gretchen whitmer, Lgbt, Michigan, Politics 

Congress just passed one of the most significant housing reforms in decades, but the fine print tells a more complicated story.

While the new law prevents large corporate landlords from purchasing additional existing single-family homes, it leaves a major exception intact: Companies can still build and own entire rental communities from the ground up.

And Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is sounding the alarm.

“Two weeks ago, the biggest housing bill in decades became law,” he begins.

“Here’s what it does do,” he explains, “If you’re a company and you own more than 350 single-family homes, you are not allowed to buy up any more of America’s existing houses. Wall Street is now barred from bidding against your daughter on a starter home. That is really good news.”

However, there is an exception.

“If a company builds a neighborhood of houses designed as rentals from the foundation up, it can own every last one of them,” he says. “So American Homes for Rent now expects every dollar of its growth this year to come from new construction.”

And while the bill comes with good news, Glenn points out that the bad is enough to keep Americans down.

“Go to a home auction, and watch two bidders on the same house. A family and a company, the same house, same price. May the best offer win. Who’s going to win? The company is,” he explains.

“The company wins every time. Every single time. And the starter home disappears. And the people who are doing this, they’re not evil. All they’re doing is arithmetic,” he continues.

“Now, that’s not a moral failure of the buyer, it’s a design feature of the tax code,” he adds.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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​Congress, Glenn beck, Housing bill, Housing reforms, New construction, Wall street, Blazetv show 

Political campaigns have a rhythm. At first, the questions are easy: Who raised the most money? Who landed the biggest endorsement? Who dominates the headlines? Consultants love this stage because it allows them to declare winners before most voters have begun paying attention.

Then the race changes.

The primary is no longer simply a contest over money, endorsements, or online attention. It is becoming a test of who understands what comes next — and who has prepared to govern through it.

Momentum gives way to scrutiny. Personality must give way to policy. Candidates who looked inevitable begin answering questions about their records, judgment, and ability to govern.

Florida’s Republican primary for governor has reached that stage.

Only a few months ago, the race appeared nearly settled. U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds had President Donald Trump’s endorsement, national attention, and a fundraising operation that dwarfed the rest of the field. Political insiders spoke of inevitability as though Republican voters had already rendered their verdict.

Donalds remains the front-runner. That position deserves acknowledgment — and scrutiny. Increased attention has brought new questions about his record, campaign, and legal controversies. Voters and the courts, where appropriate, will decide those issues. But they are now part of the race, whether his supporters welcome them or not.

James Fishback entered the race as an energetic outsider with a strong social media operation and a talent for commanding attention. He has proved capable of generating enthusiasm and headlines. Campaigns, however, eventually demand more than velocity.

Voters begin asking harder questions: Can this candidate govern? What’s the plan? How would bold promises become legislation and administration?

Those questions have become more urgent as Fishback defends himself against a legal challenge to his eligibility under Florida’s constitutional residency requirement. Fellow Republican candidate Jay Collins brought the challenge. Fishback disputes the allegations and says he meets the requirement. Whatever the outcome, the case has introduced uncertainty into a campaign built largely on momentum and personality.

Collins faces a different test.

A decorated Green Beret with a compelling personal story, Collins entered the race with credentials few could dismiss. Yet campaigns turn on trust as much as biography. Critics have questioned whether his rhetoric and financial support align, particularly on hyperscale data centers and real estate development. Collins has defended his positions, but the dispute illustrates how quickly Republican voters now demand consistency between campaign language and governing priorities.

That leaves the most overlooked candidate in the field: Paul Renner.

Renner lacks Donalds’ financial advantage and has not relied on celebrity, inevitability, or viral attention. Instead, he has offered voters something less theatrical and potentially more consequential: a governing program.

Voters may disagree with parts of his First 100 Days agenda, but it is a road map rather than a collection of applause lines.

Renner has addressed property insurance, affordability, infrastructure, parental rights, election integrity, illegal immigration, and Florida’s response to the emerging artificial intelligence economy. More important, he has tried to show how those priorities connect.

RELATED: ‘It’s past time’: Florida launches investigation into Fauci

Pedro Portal/El Nuevo Herald/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

That is where the race is changing.

Florida Republicans have spent years fighting over freedom. They are now asking how to preserve the quality of life that freedom was supposed to protect.

How does Florida keep teachers, firefighters, nurses, sheriff’s deputies, and young families from being priced out of the communities they serve? How can the state welcome investment without overwhelming roads, utilities, and water supplies? How should it embrace artificial intelligence while protecting property rights, local communities, and natural resources? How can growth enrich Floridians rather than merely raise their cost of living?

Those are real governing questions, not merely campaign slogans.

The next governor will inherit one of America’s fastest-growing states and most dynamic economies. He will also inherit rising insurance costs, strained infrastructure, rapid population growth, technological disruption, and mounting pressure on the affordability that helped make Florida attractive.

The primary is therefore no longer simply a contest over money, endorsements, or online attention. It is becoming a test of who understands what comes next — and who has prepared to govern through it.

Momentum changes. Fundraising advantages narrow. Polls rise and fall. Eventually, voters stop asking which candidate can win and start asking which candidate should govern.

Florida’s Republican primary has finally reached that question. The candidate who answers it most convincingly may discover that the race was never as settled as the consultants claimed.

​Governor, Opinion & analysis, Trust, Primary, Florida, Byron donalds, James fishback, Jay collins, Paul renner 

In 1993, I moved to an industrial city north of Prague, about 30 miles from the Czech/German border. Usti nad Labem had been around for almost a thousand years, but after half a century of socialist dictatorship, anything old had been replaced with hideous prefab housing estates and pollution-spewing chemical plants. It did have an old church from the 14th century, but I never went inside. It was just a relic of a time when being stupid and superstitious was the only option.

I had gotten a job teaching English to engineers at a local natural gas distribution company. I was a 22-year-old Ivy League liberal arts graduate. I had no experience or knowledge worth sharing, of course, and my students were older, with careers and families, and they treated me with deference anyway, as well as with kindness and hospitality. In return, I pitied them as hopelessly trapped in their small lives. I was meant for something bigger. I had no idea what, but I figured it would announce itself eventually.

Within seconds of meeting a girl at a party, he realized they had been lovers in prerevolutionary France, until he was garroted for trying to rescue her from prostitution.

East of Eden

I fell in with the small community of foreigners in town — about 10 Americans along with a few Brits and Canadians — but kept my distance. They weren’t the kind of friends I had in mind for myself — they were too provincial and unsophisticated.

Especially strange to me was a hulking gentle giant from Los Angeles named Chad. He was pushing 30 and lived off savings he had accumulated from a series of showbiz-adjacent jobs, including sales for a porn video distributer and caretaking an old Beverly Hills mansion now used for film shoots.

The mansion had been the site of a lurid, high-society murder-suicide in the ’20s and was haunted. He told us of strange encounters he’d had there alone late at night, the distant sound of piano music, which abruptly stopped as he moved toward it; a heavy, nauseating feeling of malice that descended upon him in certain rooms, the eerie sensation of being shoved.

These stories held our attention, but they didn’t seem like a big deal to him. He had always been particularly sensitive to the supernatural, he said, and he had an endless supply of anecdotes bearing this out.

‘Star 80’

There was overwhelming mutual attraction he shared with a girl within seconds of meeting her a party, only to realize they had been lovers in prerevolutionary France, until he was garroted for trying to rescue her from prostitution. He had vivid explorations of the lost city of Atlantis in lucid dreams, leaving him with an aching sense of being in exile. He was a connoisseur of 1970s femininity and could talk at length about the unearthly beauty and spiritual depth of murdered Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten, whose distinct presence he could often feel, no matter where he was in the world.

I found all this unforgivably hokey. And I felt it reflected badly on me and my future. But I had to admit he was funny and intelligent. We became friends, even though I secretly regarded him with detached, ironic amusement. I enjoyed the matter-of-fact, unpretentious way he delivered even his boldest claims. Once, in one of my regular hungover tailspins of anxiety, I asked him if he wasn’t afraid of nuclear war. He sighed with slight exasperation and explained that obviously the higher beings protecting Earth would never allow it.

This idea didn’t reassure me, but his relaxed, confident demeanor did. And I began to realize that maybe thinking crystals were nonsense didn’t make me a better person. Even if Chad weren’t the conduit to the spirit world he claimed to be, he was uncommonly empathetic and perceptive when it came to other people, which is why we all liked to be around him. Whereas my constantly shifting sense of who I was and what it all meant kept me in a state of agitated self-obsession.

RELATED: Jesus in the temple (of progressivism): What I learned watching Portlanders debate a street preacher

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Under the bridge

I was too educated to believe that evil left some kind of spiritual mark on a place, but just 50 years ago, this city I used as the backdrop for my inner drama had been ceded to Hitler. Then, it was bombed by Americans. And just after the war, it was the site of a brutal massacre, in which a mob of Czechs attacked their ethnic German neighbors, shooting and stabbing some 100 men, women, and children and throwing them off the town bridge. Maybe Chad was a kook, but at least he made me consider that there might be something at stake in this world. That it mattered what we did and even what we thought. That transcendent good and evil were real and could touch us.

These abstract musings lost their appeal when Chad moved back to California and I moved to Prague. I was finally where the action was. Here the visionaries weren’t so gauche as to talk about communing with the dead or the melancholy of old souls lost in the slipstream of time. They were there to summon the coming techno utopia, which required optimism and an eagerness to let go of the past.

I was on board, but I was also undisciplined and easily discouraged. Everywhere I looked I saw monuments to martyrs: the heretic priest burned at the stake, the ordinary civilians killed in the doomed uprising against the Nazis, the young medical student who set himself on fire to protest the Soviet occupation. Their resolve, like my frantic strivings, seemed meaningless in the face of oblivion.

Settling down

The obvious cure for this self-indulgent, existential dread was to move to New York City and get serious about my life. I temped and lived in cramped apartments in cool neighborhoods and got a low-paying but status-signaling media job. I ran into an old college girlfriend with a sensible career and many of the same friends I’d had. We got married and had children, and we relocated to her hometown of L.A., which I’d heard so much about from Chad.

Chad had moved to a small town outside Sacramento with a wife and son. My wife and I were still in the thick of it, upwardly mobile and cultured, with high expectations for ourselves and our kids. It went without saying that we were good, tolerant people. Church was an occasional, unobtrusive reminder to be grateful and give back. We didn’t have any commitments that might make things awkward with our friends or put us at odds with our community.

I was comfortably settled but still imagined myself as on the verge of transformative, clarifying success. Until one day I didn’t. I wasn’t special, my kids would soon abandon me, and I was going to die. I tried to ease the panic with therapy, running, and Ram Dass videos on YouTube.

Auto-da-Facebook

A goth girl I did plays with in high school re-emerged on Facebook as a devout Catholic stay-at-home mom and pro-life activist. After a few pointless arguments, I calmed down and started reading everything she posted without comment. It was fascinating to imagine being so gullible and narrow-minded. I watched videos she linked to and read books she mentioned. I embedded myself in this bizarre, backwards culture.

A few months later, I was sitting in my car, saying the rosary for the first time, just to see what would happen. I guess I showed her.

I entered the Catholic Church about a year later. Just before the COVID lockdowns, I got a call that Chad had had a massive stroke. We hadn’t been in touch for years. I gave money to his recovery fund and got added to a text group of friends and family who unselfconsciously offered their prayers and invoked the healing power of God’s mercy. I was surprised at how natural I felt doing the same. And how praying actually felt like doing something helpful. I still include him in my daily rosary.

Maybe it’s just guilt that I haven’t written or called, but I like to think he can pick up on it somehow. If so, I hope he humors me, like I humored him 30 years ago.

​California, Catholic, Ivy league, Los angeles, Rosary, Therapy, Culture, Lifestyle, Faith 

The peace and quiet of a residential street in Southern California was shattered on Wednesday evening when police shot and killed a man they watched allegedly shoot and kill a kidnapped victim after a car chase.

Video captured of the shocking incident shows the driver of the car getting out of his vehicle after being pulled over by police, then calmly walking back to the trunk and shooting someone lying inside.

‘It is disturbing. … Apparently there was a victim inside there who had been kidnapped.’

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department deputies were dispatched to a home on Monteverde Drive in Chino Hills at about 10:14 p.m. over a report of gunshots and screaming, according to a press release.

While they were responding, they saw the suspect driving away at a high speed and attempted to pull him over.

He refused and led them on a chase that ended on Wandering Ridge Drive. Officers ordered the occupants out of the car, and a passenger complied and was taken into custody.

The driver did not comply.

After the driver fired into the open trunk, he was shot and killed by deputies.

“It is disturbing,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Gloria Orejel said. “Apparently there was a victim inside there who had been kidnapped from the previous Monteverde address.”

Police found a male victim in the trunk and attempted to revive him and the shooter, but they were both declared dead at the scene. They indicated that the officers were not aware of the person in the trunk before the shooting.

An investigation found that the victim had been shot and kidnapped from the Monteverde Drive address. No deputies were injured in the incident.

RELATED: Florida man who allegedly abducted 13-year-old gets shot and killed by 9 officers

The vehicle involved was a Nissan Altima with an Oregon license plate.

“I was shocked, to be honest,” said Gregory Uthus, a resident of the neighborhood. “This doesn’t happen in Chino Hills.”

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​High speed chase, Surveillance video, Police shooting, Kidnapping, Crime 

In “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Oscar Wilde imagines a portrait that records the corruption its subject refuses to see in himself. Dorian hides the picture because its truth is unbearable. The concealment is physical, but the deeper act is spiritual: Self-deception protects him from self-knowledge.

Anthony Fauci’s Wednesday appearance before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs supplied a modern version of Wilde’s image. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times.

The legal questions are serious. The philosophical question is more intimate: How does Fauci live with himself?

The constitutional privilege against self-incrimination is fundamental. The government bears the burden of proving guilt. A witness need not assist the prosecution by supplying evidence against himself, and a jury ordinarily may not treat a criminal defendant’s silence as proof of guilt.

But Fauci’s silence invites a question larger than criminal liability. What does a public official do when the legal right not to answer collides with the moral obligation to confront his own record?

Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have raised a narrower legal question. If President Biden’s pardon protects Fauci from prosecution for the conduct under examination, the basis for invoking the Fifth Amendment may be considerably weaker. Congress can also compel testimony after an appropriate grant of immunity. Those questions belong to lawyers and courts.

Cruz, meanwhile, accused Fauci of showing “contempt for Congress and contempt for the American people.” He argued that Fauci’s diaries reveal private doubts about the “wet market” explanation for COVID-19 and private satisfaction over persuading Democrat officials to keep schools closed while publicly distancing himself from those decisions. The consequences for millions of children, Cruz said, will last a lifetime.

Other controversies surrounding Fauci’s tenure at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases deepen the moral inquiry. NIAID funded research using human fetal tissue derived from elective abortions, including projects intended to create “humanized” mice for disease research. The Trump administration later restricted NIH scientists from acquiring new fetal tissue. One widely discussed study involved grafting fetal scalp tissue onto mice. The study appeared in Scientific Reports in 2020.

The legal questions are serious. The philosophical question is more intimate: How does Fauci live with himself?

The answer may be that he does so by dividing himself. There is the public Fauci, who speaks with certainty and moral authority, and the private Fauci, whose diaries preserve doubts, calculations, resentments, and self-justifications.

Self-deception tells a person that he has done nothing wrong. Self-justification supplies the explanation for everyone else. The first lie protects the conscience. The second protects the reputation.

“Taking the Fifth” can therefore become more than a legal act. The constitutional privilege is legitimate. The existential temptation it symbolizes is not: the desire to avoid the truth because the truth would collapse the identity one has built.

RELATED: ‘It’s past time’: Florida launches investigation into Fauci

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

A divided person does not merely conceal himself from others. Eventually, he loses the ability to recognize himself. Public statements serve one purpose, private reflections another, and the distance between them becomes a permanent feature of the soul.

Why keep a diary at all? Even teenagers know that diary locks are flimsy and private pages may someday be read. The impulse to record what one cannot say publicly suggests that self-deception never quite succeeds. A person may hide the portrait, but he still returns to the attic.

Fauci’s diary resembles a secular confessional. He did not confess to God or seek absolution from anyone beyond himself. He recorded his private account before the highest authority his worldview appears to recognize: Anthony Fauci.

That arrangement offers no forgiveness because it requires no repentance. The same man supplies the accusation, the defense, the verdict, and the pardon.

Wilde understood that self-deception cannot preserve the soul forever. The portrait keeps changing even when no one looks at it. The mind can suppress guilt, rename pride as duty, and call self-protection public service. But every evasion leaves another mark.

At some point, only two paths remain. One leads through truth, repentance, and the surrender of the false self. The other leads deeper into silence, because every answer threatens the structure of excuses holding the person together.

That is the existential Fifth: not the lawful refusal to incriminate oneself before the state, but the lifelong refusal to testify honestly before one’s own conscience.

​Anthony fauci, Fifth amendment, Ted cruz, Rand paul, Covid, Lockdowns, Picture of dorian gray, Niaid, Plead the fifth, Fauci diaries, Opinion & analysis 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) promised to tax the rich, and he is keeping that promise. His newly announced pied-à-terre tax would impose an annual levy on many pricey second homes — and comes with a dose of public shaming.

“In true commie fashion — Muslim commie fashion — the new mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani … he’s like, ‘How can I go further and further commie?’ And so he just keeps outdoing himself,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments on “Sara Gonzales Filtered,” before playing Mamdani’s initial announcement of the tax.

“When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today we’re taxing the rich. I’m thrilled to announce we’ve secured a pied-a-terre tax. The first in New York’s history. This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million whose owners do not live full-time in the city,” Mamdani said in a promotional video.

“They’re not actually taxing you for land and for homes that are supposed to be yours once. They’re taxing you twice, because who are you to have so much wealth that you have two homes? Who are you to work hard and enjoy the rewards of all of your hard work?” Gonzales asks, adding that “in true Muslim commie fashion, he’s gloating about it.”

In a post on X, Mamdani wrote: “If you have a second home in New York City worth more than $5M, check your mailbox when you’re back in the five boroughs — because you’ve got mail.”

“Today, we sent notification letters to property owners, letting them know that our new pied-a-terre tax is coming soon. The best city in the world deserves the best parks, libraries, and schools in the world. That’s only possible when we all pay our fair share,” he added.

“This certainly is going to put a bow on the destruction of New York City,” Gonzales says.

But Mamdani didn’t just notify the property owners. He “actually put out a hit list,” including all the names and addresses of those who could be hit with the new tax in a searchable database.

“He is doxxing you guys for the world to see,” Gonzales comments, noting that on the list are celebrities like Anna Wintour, Cynthia Nixon, and Woody Allen.

“It’s just insane how badly he wants to just doxx these people for working hard,” she adds.

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​Sara gonzales, Zohran mamdani, Muslim, Tax the rich, New york city, Cynthia nixon, Woody allen, Anna wintour, Piedterre tax, Communism, Blazetv show