Former MSNBC host Joy Reid defended Iran seeking nuclear weapons in a debate on CNN that devolved into a shouting match.

Iran struck U.S. bases in the Middle East with what was described as a “symbolic” and limited barrage meant to save face after the U.S. dropped a bunker-buster bomb in a daring mission that devastated Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities.

‘The reason they’re trying to get nukes … is because an expansionist power in their region keeps threatening them.’

On Tuesday, Reid defended Iran’s actions and went so far as to say Israel was at fault for the terrorist-supporting state’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons. She made the comments while on a CNN panel.

“The bottom line here is, the way that we know that Iran does not have nuclear weapons is that if they had nuclear weapons, Israel would not attack them,” said Reid.

“The reason they’re trying to get nukes, and probably Saudi Arabia is trying to get them, is because an expansionist power in their region keeps threatening them and actually bomb them,” she added.

The panel erupted into a loud yelling match.

“And actually bomb them! I don’t think it’s OK that Israel has nukes, either!” Reid added. “And so the bottom line is Israel doesn’t even subject its nuclear weapons to the IAEA. And so my question is should anyone in the region have nukes?”

“But Joy, this is not just about nukes,” replied CNN host Abby Phillip. “It’s also about Iran being a state sponsor of terrorism and chaos and violence and death around the world. There’s that, too!”

RELATED: Rubio warns Iran against ‘suicidal’ closing of Strait of Hormuz; Vance says retaliation will be met with ‘overwhelming force’

Criminal defense attorney Arthur Aidala then yelled at Reid that the issue also involved the U.S. helping a democratic ally in Israel.

“Their democracy is not like the United States of America,” Reid objected. “I’m sorry. In the United States, LGBTQ people can’t even serve in the military under the president you prefer.”

Aidala and Reid then entered into their own shouting match.

“The United States is not exactly a beacon of human rights for gay people!” Reid scoffed.

Reid’s low-rated show on MSNBC was canceled in February after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Reid posted a tearful goodbye where she lamented the end of her show. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow assailed her own network for the firing and suggested it was motivated by racism.

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

​Joy reid defends iran, Israel vs iran, Joy reid debate, Joy reid hates israel, Politics 

President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security warned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations are being thwarted by anti-ICE activists, allowing a child-rapist to remain at large.

A Wednesday press release from the DHS announced that it is searching for Jose Reyes Leon-Deras, a convicted child-rapist who was apparently able to evade ICE with alleged assistance from the Colorado Rapid Response Network.

‘Anyone responsible should be charged with interfering with a federal investigation.’

The agency stated that the group is “known for protesting with bullhorns to warn illegal aliens and shouting profanities at ICE law enforcement officers attempting to arrest dangerous criminal illegal aliens.”

ICE attempted to arrest Leon-Deras on June 20. However, CORRN allegedly alerted the suspect about the agency’s presence, effectively “facilitat[ing] his escape.”

RELATED: Trump’s ICE busts 11 illegal Iranian nationals: Terror suspect, ex-sniper, and another with Hezbollah ties

Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The DHS described Leon-Deras as a “safety threat,” warning the public not to approach him but to report sightings to law enforcement.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated, “The Colorado Rapid Response Network and its 760 members disrupt ICE operations targeting dangerous criminal illegal aliens. In this case, they helped Jose Reyes Leon-Deras, an international fugitive and convicted child-rapist, flee law enforcement. This dangerous monster is on the loose on American streets and could harm more innocent children.”

The DHS press release linked to a June 20 Facebook post from CORRN celebrating that ICE was unsuccessful in its arrest attempt.

The post read, “June 20 7:30am CONFIRMED AND ONGOING ICE presence near Longs Peak Venue and Martin St LONGMONT. The same agents that were shown in our video on Tuesday. Besides these two also a grey Malibu. We will update with a photo. Our volunteers are on site and assisting the people targeted.”

“No one detained,” a later update to the post stated, “Volunteers confronted the ICE agents and used a bullhorn to to [sic] share their rights, ICE called the police to try and intimidate our volunteers.”

The post included photographs of several alleged ICE vehicles, including their license plate numbers.

RELATED: Illegal aliens bust out of Colorado detention center — local authorities ‘declined to assist’ manhunt: ICE

Anti-ICE protestors demonstrate outside the ICE Processing Center on June 9, 2025, in Aurora, Colorado. Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

According to CORRN’s website, the group is “committed to responding to raids, deportation, and any Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity happening across the state in our communities.”

“This statewide network is intended to immediately respond to reported situations by confirming the existence of a raid or the presence of ICE, documenting the case — including using legal observers, and slowing down and controlling the public narrative of these events as we fight to keep our families together,” the website reads.

CORRN runs a 24/7 hotline where residents can report ICE sightings. The group responds by sending “trained volunteers to the scene” where they “record the event, identify the agents on the scene, and inform the people involved of their constitutional rights.”

ICE Denver stated, “Groups like this interfere with ICE’s ability to keep communities safe.”

Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.) called CORRN “a disgrace.”

“Anyone responsible should be charged with interfering with a federal investigation,” he remarked.

CORRN did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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

​News, Immigration crisis, Illegal immigration crisis, Immigration, Illegal immigration, Colorado, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Donald trump, Trump, Trump administration, Trump admin, Politics 

FBI Director Kash Patel announced earlier this month that the bureau located an intelligence report from August 2020 that detailed “alarming allegations” regarding an apparent Chinese communist plot to interfere in the presidential election for the benefit of then-candidate Joe Biden.

Such allegations, if brought to light at the time, would have vindicated the concerns about voter fraud and foreign election interference then expressed by President Donald Trump and former Attorney General Bill Barr, which were written off by election officials, Democrats, and the liberal media as “unfounded” and “preposterous.”

Instead, elements of the intelligence community apparently covered up the alleged foreign election interference campaign.

“Former FBI leadership withheld the facts and misled the public on China’s 2020 election interference,” Patel stated on Thursday. “And they did so for political gain.”

Patel noted in a separate message, “We’re restoring trust — through transparency, not politics.”

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, sent a criminal referral for former FBI Director Christopher Wray to the Department of Justice on Thursday, seeking accountability not only for Wray’s alleged role in the apparent cover-up but for his alleged false or misleading statements to Congress regarding the infamous FBI memo targeting traditional Catholics.

Election interference cover-up

The referral obtained by Blaze News, which was also sent to Director Patel’s office on Thursday, alleges that Wray violated federal law by giving false and misleading testimony to Congress on the topic of known voter fraud efforts.

On Sept. 24, 2020, Wray told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the FBI had “not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it’s by mail or otherwise.”

On March 2, 2021, Wray suggested to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI was “not aware of any widespread evidence of voter fraud, much less that would have affected the outcome of the presidential election.”

RELATED: Vindicated? Patel’s FBI uncovers apparent Chinese communist plot to rig 2020 mail-in vote for Biden

Photo by LEAH MILLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

The trouble with both statements is that they fly in the face of what the FBI apparently knew about the alleged Chinese communist attempt to swing the election for Biden.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced on July 27, 2020, that between Jan. 1 and June 30 of that election year, CBP officers at the International Mail Facility at Chicago O’Hare International Airport had seized 1,513 shipments containing fraudulent documents, including 19,888 counterfeit U.S. driver’s licenses.

“The majority of these shipments were arriving from China and Hong Kong, with other seized shipments arriving from Great Britain and South Korea,” noted CBP.

Blaze News previously reported that the bulk of the licenses were intended for college-age students across numerous states and in many cases had functional barcodes.

The August 2020 FBI intelligence report helped make sense of this sudden glut of fake IDs, suggesting that the Chinese communist regime was mass-producing fake American driver’s licenses in order to create voter identities for Chinese nationals so that they could vote with fake mail-in ballots.

‘Accountability for the bad actors in government would be practically a case of first impression.’

Patel told Just the News that while substantiated, the allegations in the intelligence report “were abruptly recalled and never disclosed to the public.”

The Oversight Project made abundantly clear in its referral that it was highly unlikely Wray was unaware of this report and the allegations therein when he testified before Congress in 2020 and 2021.

After all, Wray apparently received routine briefings about threats to the integrity of the 2020 election from Nikki Floris, the FBI deputy assistant director for counterterrorism at the time, who had raised the alarm in October 2019 about China “aggressively pursuing foreign influence operations.”

RELATED: 1,004 days of betrayal for suspended FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Weaponization against Catholics

The House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government indicated in a December 2023 report that the FBI:

“abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists”; “relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment”; “proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership”; and would likely still be “violating the religious liberties of millions of Catholic Americans” were it not for former FBI special agent Kyle Seraphin’s disclosure.

Congressional investigators began looking closely at the bureau’s anti-Catholic animus after a memo from the bureau’s Richmond field office was leaked earlier that year, tying adherents of the Catholic faith to violent extremist views.

RELATED: The FBI was completely correct to keep an eye on Catholics

Nes/Getty Images

While Wray previously testified to Congress that the Richmond field office produced only a “single product,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has demonstrated that not to have been the case.

Grassley revealed earlier this month both that the memo was distributed to over 1,000 FBI employees across the country and that the FBI produced “at least 13 additional documents and five attachments that used anti-Catholic terminology and relied on information from the radical far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).”

— (@)

The Oversight Project’s criminal referral alleges that Wray repeatedly gave false testimony about the Richmond anti-Catholic memo, noting that his “testimony was inaccurate not only because it failed to reveal the scope of the memo’s production and dissemination, but also because it failed to reveal the existence of a second draft product on the same topic intended for external distribution to the whole FBI.”

“Furthermore, a query of Sentinel (the FBI’s case management system) identified 13 documents and 5 attachments that included the term, ‘radical traditionalist catholic’ or ‘Radical-Traditionalist Catholic’ in the FBI systems,” said the watchdog’s criminal referral. “The Intelligence Memo itself states on page 24 of the PDF — ‘(U) Prepared by the Richmond Division and the Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit; coordinated with FBI Milwaukee and FBI Portland Divisions.'”

Between his statements to Congress about election interference and his statements about the FBI’s anti-Catholic memorandum, the Oversight Project figures that Wray committed several criminal violations, including obstruction of proceedings before Congress; corrupt conduct; and making false statements.

When asked to comment on whether he expects Wray to be held accountable for his alleged violations, Howell told Blaze News, “I don’t expect accountability, but we certainly deserve accountability.”

“Accountability for the bad actors in government would be practically a case of first impression,” continued Howell. “To expect it would be unrealistic optimism, but it should and could happen, and that’s why the Oversight Project is making the case publicly and doing everything we can to make it more likely to happen.”

Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.

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

​False statements, Christopher wray, Fbi, Bureau, Wray, Coverup, Cover up, Federal bureau of investigation, Patel, Oversight project, Mike howell, Criminal referral, Crime, Criminal, Donald trump, Trump, Joe biden, Politics 

When PETA representative Brittany Peet saw the conditions Netflix’s famous “Tiger King” tigers were living in, she was not pleased.

“I was at Joe’s Roadside Zoo multiple times, and I smelled the overwhelming stench of urine in that facility because the tigers were confined in such cramped quarters, they could barely take a few steps in any direction,” Peet tells BlazeTV host Alex Stein on “Prime Time with Alex Stein.”

“These are animals who run and jump and swim in the wild, and they were locked in prison cells, just like that one Joe is locked up in today,” she continues, adding, “He and his staff would hit animals, hit tigers with the blunt end of guns, they would spray them with fire extinguishers.”

Peet’s accusations are horrific, but Stein is giving Joe Exotic the chance to defend himself from his jail cell.

“OK, all right, look. My zoo was next to a horse farm that had 200 horses pissing and pooping in their field. OK, I didn’t change their litter, what are you talking about?” Exotic says. “They didn’t have litter boxes, they had two acre cages, some of them.”

“All I got to say is she needs to find God and tell the truth, because in October of 2017, when Travis died, I called her for help. And she helped me move most of my animals off that zoo, so I could close that zoo and leave, and I left Jeff Lowe in charge of everything else, and she knows that, and she’s the one who sued Jeff Lowe for violating the Endangered Species Act,” Exotic continues.

“Why didn’t Jeff Lowe go to jail? He was doing bad stuff, too,” he adds.

“That’s something that Joe and I agree on. I fully agree that Jeff Lowe should be sitting in prison right next to Joe. He is just as guilty, he has done things that are just as horrible to animals,” Peet says.

“Brittany, how many animals do you kill a month?” Exotic asks.

“The figures are available online, but the reality of that is PETA is a shelter of last resort. PETA offers euthanasia services to people who can’t afford to euthanize their sick dogs and cats, so that’s why the euthanasia numbers are so low, and PETA is open about that,” Peet responds.

“I don’t feel guilty that a well-documented animal abuser is in prison for the crimes of animal abuse that he committed against animals,” she adds.

Want more from Alex Stein?

To enjoy more of Alex’s culture jamming, comedic monologues, skits, and street segments, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Video, Free, Camera phone, Video phone, Upload, Sharing, Youtube.com, Prime time alex stein, Alex stein, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Joe exotic, Tiger king, Peta, Prime time with alex stein 

Founder of Primally Pure Bethany McDaniel has made it her mission to create efficient skincare products that do no harm in a market oversaturated with chemical poisons that do more harm than good.

Primally Pure sunscreen boasts all of the protection needed from the sun without the toxic chemicals and doesn’t rely on fearmongering about the sun as the main source of messaging, like most sunscreens do.

“The sun isn’t poison, but your sunscreen is,” reads one Primally Pure billboard.

However, that statement upset a lot of people and has now become the center of serious debate.

“The intention with it was to make a bold statement, get people’s attention,” McDaniel tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.” “There have been so many bold statements for decades from the side of ‘slather sunscreen all over your body every second of the day so that you won’t get skin cancer and die.’”

While McDaniel wanted to point out that there’s much more nuance to the topic of sun exposure and sunscreen than we’ve previously been told, when their ad was released, people didn’t see it that way.

Rather, they saw her ad as “fearmongering,” despite the sunscreen industry using skin cancer as a reason to avoid the sun.

“There’s a lot of misinterpretation of the campaign itself, a lot of anger, like some crazy people are saying some crazy things on social media. There was one post that I reposted of a very unhinged woman telling me to go to hell for saying this,” she tells Stuckey.

“How have we gotten to a point where that is such a controversial thing to say? Like we have demonized the sun and demonized creation so much,” she continues. “I know I’ve been accused of fearmongering, but I would argue that people have fearmongered the sun for so long.”

Since the negative impact of spending time in the sun has been discussed endlessly, very few people seem to be aware of how incredible the benefits are.

“It gives us Vitamin D, it helps with our moods. We all feel it when we’re outside in the sun — we feel better. It regulates our circadian rhythms so that we’re more awake during the day and that our bodies are ready to sleep when the sun falls at night,” McDaniel explains.

“There’s so much to living in tune with the sun. I think that’s how we’re designed to live, but I also think there are risks to uninhibited sun exposure,” she continues.

Which is why McDaniel created her own sunscreen that uses a formula with 25% zinc oxide and nontoxic natural ingredients.

“In my opinion, zinc oxide is the safest option for sun protection. There are a lot of chemical filters out there, but the FDA now does not recognize any of them as being safe. The EPA also just came out with a study and found that only 25% of sunscreens on the market are both safe and effective,” she explains.

“So these chemical filters — there’s a lot of issues with them. They absorb, and then they are in the bloodstream at much higher limits than is considered safe. A lot of them are known to be hormone-disrupting and carcinogenic, or cancer-causing. They actually create a chemical reaction in the skin when the sun hits it,” she continues.

“The fearmongering thing really gets me, because this is just sharing information,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Video, Free, Camera phone, Video phone, Upload, Sharing, Youtube.com, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Bethany mcdaniel, Primally pure, Primal pastures, Sunscreen toxic, Toxic skincare, Toxic sunscreen, Zinc oxide sunscreen, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

The way suspended FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle sees it, he has lived through 1,004 betrayals — and counting.

O’Boyle was rewarded for his whistleblower disclosures to Congress with a loss of pay and benefits, attempted character assassination, and what he said is a malicious FBI effort to destroy him and his family.

‘I thought he was going to do the right thing.’

“If the FBI is trying to make you do something that is wrong or illegal or against policy or against rule, you’re supposed to be able to push back and be protected for doing so,” O’Boyle told Blaze News. “But then look what happens. You get suspended for a thousand days with no paycheck.”

What hurts as much as, if not more than, what was dished out by the Christopher Wray-led FBI is knowing the new FBI director, his friend Kash Patel, seems to have done nothing to repair the breach or bring justice to the case.

O’Boyle was suspended in September 2022 based on a provably false allegation that he leaked materials to Project Veritas.

O’Boyle well remembers that Patel and his foundation helped him financially in December 2022 so that the O’Boyle children could have a nice Christmas.

He recalls with clarity how Patel promised to fix the unjust suspension after he was nominated as FBI director in November 2024. O’Boyle said he was told he would be brought back to the FBI, have his security clearance restored, and be provided more than 140 weeks of back pay.

RELATED: Kash Patel’s surprising appointment of a top J6 inquisitor to head DC FBI office

Suspended FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle says he trusted that new FBI Director Kash Patel would end his prolonged whistleblower nightmare.Photo by Chris Duzynski for Blaze News

As recently as March 2025, O’Boyle said, he was in communication with Patel, who had been relying on several FBI whistleblowers for advice and feedback as he got himself established as the ninth director of the FBI.

But now the silence from the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., is deafening.

No solution. No decisions. No communication. And most recently, word through a third party from Patel: There would be no job restoration for O’Boyle.

“Initially we were still corresponding,” O’Boyle said in an interview. “I even had a few people who would send me information that they thought he should know, and I passed some of that on to him. The bit of communication I [last] got was just a thumbs-up emoji.”

As O’Boyle’s suspension flew past the 1,000-day mark on June 22, it appears that thumbs-up emoji might as well feature a different finger.

“I thought he was going to do the right thing,” O’Boyle said. “I’ve known him for almost three years now, and he told me — he told all of us — that he was going to bring us back. Now it’s the end of June. The last I heard was that that’s not going to be happening.”

‘There’s something in your file that is preventing him from bringing you back.’

O’Boyle said he has heard that Patel and podcaster turned Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino have been stung by sharp criticism of them on social media. They have been blasted for allegedly not doing enough to clean house of agents who took part in the weaponized abuses of the Jan. 6 investigation.

Patel once famously said if he were ever FBI director, on day one he would shut down the Hoover Building and turn it into a deep state museum.

O’Boyle said he has been restrained on social media when it comes to Patel and Bongino. He teams up with former Agent Steve Friend on a thrice-weekly show, “The American Radicals Podcast.” He is a founding member of “The Suspendables,” a tight-knit group of former whistleblowers.

‘Just trust me, bro’

Others have taken a more in-your-face approach, including former FBI Special Agent Kyle Seraphin in his daily podcast, “The Kyle Seraphin Show.” Seraphin doesn’t hold his fire when criticizing the FBI. He mockingly refers to the two top leaders as “Dash Pongino.” He has ridiculed their reason for delays in reforming the FBI and says their attitude is one of, “Just trust me, bro.”

O’Boyle said it’s ironic that of the suspended FBI employees who testified before Congress in May 2023, one, Marcus Allen, was given his job back by the Biden administration. Now, with Donald J. Trump in the White House and an ostensible friendly running the FBI, it appears there is no plan to make O’Boyle and his family whole.

“You can argue the point that Joe Biden and Christopher Wray did more for FBI whistleblowers than Donald Trump and Kash Patel,” O’Boyle said.

O’Boyle’s whistleblower disclosures were a litany of alleged FBI wrongdoing, including COVID testing requirements and vaccine policies with no basic exemptions for religious objections. He said the FBI was targeting employees who refused to take the experimental, gene-modifying COVID shots. In all, O’Boyle reported 19 disclosures alleging that the FBI’s COVID policies violated the law.

In May 2022, O’Boyle disclosed that the FBI was using the public leak of the Supreme Court decision in the landmark abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization as a pretext to target pro-life individuals, who were tagged as potential risks for abortion-clinic bombings.

O’Boyle said an official who has spoken to Patel told him he will not get his job back. Word has leaked out of the FBI that there are suddenly “character issues,” not just with O’Boyle but with former special agents like Steve Friend, who was driven out of the FBI for making whistleblower disclosures about Jan. 6 and other issues.

RELATED: Faith continues to drive long-suspended FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle as he waits for justice

Suspended FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle tells the House Judiciary Committee on May 18, 2023: “The FBI will crush you. This government will crush you and your family.”Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

“There’s something in your file that is preventing him from bringing you back,” O’Boyle said he was told.

If that’s true, O’Boyle said, that “something” must have been added to his personnel file recently. O’Boyle said earlier this year that he obtained the full contents of his FBI file as part of his appeal. Nothing was flagged as a “character issue,” nor was that term used by the FBI in falsely accusing him of leaking to the media, he said.

“There weren’t any character issues when we got hired,” he said. “There were no character issues when I was getting awards for cases I was working on or the highest annual rating an employee can get. Or when getting selected for specialty units like a SWAT team or the surveillance unit I was headed to.

“Suddenly, once Kash Patel and Dan Bongino get there, there are character issues,” O’Boyle said. “That doesn’t make sense or add up. It tells me that either Kash or Dan or both have decided for whatever reason to not make things right.”

‘You’re accusing me of leaking those to the media, which I didn’t do.’

Back in summer 2022, O’Boyle was looking forward to moving his family from Kansas to Virginia to take a new FBI job on a special surveillance team. He and his wife, Heidi, had found their dream house, sold their old home, and were packed up and ready to go.

When O’Boyle showed up for the new job in Manassas, Va., instead of taking part in a new-job orientation, he had his badge, credentials, and service weapon taken. Two agents asked him about Project Veritas and a May 2022 broadcast featuring James O’Keefe interviewing an FBI agent hidden in shadow with his voice disguised. It wasn’t O’Boyle who did the Veritas interview but rather Kyle Seraphin.

“I just was basically telling them, ‘Look, I was whistleblowing to Congress about these things.’ And they’re like, ‘Well, that’s separate.’ And I’m like, ‘Pretty sure it’s not, because you’re accusing me of leaking things that I took to Congress. You’re accusing me of leaking those to the media, which I didn’t do.’”

Within an hour of showing up for his new job, O’Boyle was back out in the parking lot. His security clearance was suspended — and so was he.

RELATED: Going rogue? FBI agent gathered information from private citizens questioning Rep. Cory Mills’ record

Kash Patel, director of the FBI, attends the funeral of former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernard Kerik at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on June 6, 2025, in New York City.Photo by NDZ/Star Max/GC Images

O’Boyle has since learned that the FBI knew it wasn’t him on the Project Veritas video. Yet officials allowed him to get far into a move halfway across the country, only to suspend him. Worse yet, according to whistleblower disclosures given to Empower Oversight, it was done on purpose.

Thus began an open-ended suspension without pay. The family’s belongings were in storage in Virginia. The FBI initially would not allow O’Boyle to access them, he said. Then the bureau stuck him with the $30,000 cost of the move to Virginia. The mortgage loan on the new house was canceled. Before long, the O’Boyle family members were back in their home state of Wisconsin, living in an RV.

During the 1,004 days since the suspension began, O’Boyle was not allowed to look for work even though he had no income. The family’s FBI-paid health insurance was canceled. A short time after that, Heidi had a miscarriage. The O’Boyles said they believe the stress from being persecuted by the FBI was a factor in losing their fifth child.

Unbeknownst to the O’Boyles at the time, the FBI had gotten a grand jury subpoena for Heidi’s iPhone. That gave the bureau access to texts, photos, and call logs. For what? They never found out.

If all of this were not bad enough, O’Boyle later learned that he was targeted by his own government for this treatment. On purpose.

The head of the West Coast office that reviews security clearances “bragged to at least one other FBI employee that he was going to really ‘screw’ O’Boyle,” according to an FBI whistleblower disclosure made to Empower Oversight. O’Boyle said he has it “on strong authority” that clearance review agent actually said, “We’re going to f**k the motherf**ker.”

“They didn’t do it because they thought it would hurt me,” O’Boyle said. “They did it because they knew it would. That was their intent.”

Congress does little

Although O’Boyle testified before a subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary in 2023, nothing ever came of it. Aside from a letter or two, no lawmaker intervened to help. And for all of the difficult days since, O’Boyle has been left to twist in the wind.

Empower Oversight investigated O’Boyle’s suspension and prepared a detailed 22-page letter refuting every point made by the FBI to suspend and later revoke O’Boyle’s security clearance. That document was sent to the FBI in March 2025. Nothing has happened since.

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), pressed Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi for action on the whistleblower cases.

“The Biden administration’s political weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI has caused significant damage to these institutions and its employees, but you’re in the position to right the ship,” Grassley wrote in a March 2025 letter to Bondi and Patel.

It all has been enough to make O’Boyle question whether he should ever have spoken up and made whistleblower disclosures to Congress.

‘Is there going to be an end?’

“For the longest time, I used to say I did the right thing,” he said. “I still think I did the right thing. But to have no conclusion at this point, no restoration of anything: position, back pay, health care, you name it.”

O’Boyle said he initially heard that even with Patel in charge at the FBI, his case would take some time.

“He [Patel] did say that it’s going to take a couple months or it’s going to take a few months,” O’Boyle said. “And I suppose looking back on that, I should have known then that it wasn’t going to happen.

“It really shouldn’t take a couple months. Why would it? Anybody who is familiar with the intimate details of my case, they know that the FBI did this intentionally.”

RELATED: Blaze News original: FBI agents: True servants of justice — or bullies ‘just following orders’?

Former FBI Special Agent Steve Friend and suspended Special Agent Garret O’Boyle host “The American Radicals Podcast.”Screenshot/Rumble via Garret O’Boyle

O’Boyle questioned why the FBI doesn’t just fire him.

“I’m still technically an employee, so fire me then,” O’Boyle said. “If you’re not going to reinstate me, then the only other option is for you to fire me. So why hasn’t that happened either? I don’t know what they’re waiting for. I don’t know what they’re trying to determine.”

O’Boyle does not believe he can get a similar job in law enforcement because of the beating his reputation has taken at the hands of the FBI. He recently interviewed for a police officer position at a smaller department. He was honest about his situation and explained the FBI suspension and whistleblower disclosures.

“They called me back a couple days later, and they led with — and I recorded it; I have the call recorded — they led with, ‘Hey Garret, it’s got nothing to do with what you got going on with the FBI, but we’re going to be moving in a different direction.’

“I’m a whistleblower, so no city or state or federal entity is going to hire me again.”

Garret and Heidi O’Boyle have leaned heavily on their faith to get through the 1,004 days.

“As the months have ticked by, it’s like, what do we do? Lean into our faith and trust in that,” he said. “But even that has become a monumental task because we just are like, ‘Hey, Lord, when is this going to end? Is there going to be an end?’

“We just feel like we’ve been forgotten. We don’t know what to do,” he said. “We don’t know how to take care of our family. And we’re crying out, ‘Lord, when is enough enough?’”

Blaze News reached out to the FBI for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

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

​Politics 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers “breached his constitutional boundaries” when he partially vetoed and modified substantive portions of a bill in a literacy package last year.

Evers clearly did not appreciate being put in his place.

In the wake of the ruling, Evers claimed that the majority-liberal court’s decision was “unconscionable.”

Republicans, meanwhile, celebrated the ruling, in one instance throwing leftists’ NoKings hashtag back at them.

State Sen. Julian Bradley (R) noted that the governor’s “ridiculous and unlawful veto that held up money to teach kids to read has been UNANIMOUSLY ruled unconstitutional,” adding that “even the far left-wing justices couldn’t find a way to justify @GovEvers’ actions. #NoKings.”

Shot

Wisconsin’s Republican-led legislature sued Evers in April 2024 over his partial veto of a bill intended to help fund literacy programs in the Badger State.

RELATED: Democrat governor brutally mocked on social media for posting video of himself trying to throw a football

Daniel Steinle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Senate Bill 971 empowered the GOP-controlled state Joint Committee on Finance to direct $50 million set aside in the biennial budget to specific Department of Public Instruction programs created after the budget bill passed, including the literacy coaching program, the DPI’s Office of Literacy, and grants for early literacy curriculum.

While Evers approved SB 971, he improperly exercised partial-veto power to strike certain sections of the legislation in part and others in full that he claimed overly complicated “the allocation of funding related to literacy programs in Wisconsin by creating multiple appropriations for what could be accomplished with one.”

‘Wisconsin families are the real winners here.’

The Democratic governor suggested further that his actions would ensure greater flexibility in meeting the “investment needs for coaches, grants, and professional development alike.”

While Evers may partially veto an appropriation bill under Article V, Section 10(1)(b) of the Wisconsin Constitution, this was not an appropriations bill.

The Republican legislators’ complaint noted that if the governor mistakenly believed SB 971 was an appropriations bill, “he should have requested the legislature recall the bill in order to pass both houses of the legislature with the proper vote.” After all, any bill that appropriates funds must pass both chambers with a roll-call vote — something that had not taken place in this case.

The complaint noted further that the unconstitutional partial veto of SB 971 left the legislature in a dilemma: While the JCF wanted to fund the appropriate literacy programs, “any money directed under the partially vetoed version of [SB 971] might (but should not) be treated by DPI as money that can be used by the Office of Literacy for any nondescript ‘literacy program’ of DPI’s invention.”

Chaser

The Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with the Republican legislature against Evers Wednesday and torpedoed his narrative concerning the JCF, which he suggested had been wrong to withhold funds.

The court noted that the Wisconsin Constitution “does not authorize the governor to partially veto a non-appropriation bill, which the governor may veto only in its entirety.”

“We hold the governor breached his constitutional boundaries because the bill he partially vetoed was not an appropriation bill,” said the ruling. “We also hold JCF did not improperly withhold funds the legislature appropriated to JCF.”

RELATED: ‘Inseminated person’: Wisconsin Gov. Evers tries to erase mothers with gender-neutral language overhaul

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

As a result of the court’s decision, SB 971 as passed by the state legislature — without Evers’ changes — is the law.

The Associated Press suggested that the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling might also result in the legislature pushing budget and other spending bills in a similar manner to get around Evers’ future partial vetoes, thereby securing greater control over spending.

State Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R) and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) said in a joint statement that the ruling “is a rebuke of the Governor’s attempt to break apart a bipartisan literacy-funding bill and JCF’s constitutional authority to give supplemental funding to agencies.”

“While the governor wanted to play politics with money earmarked for kids’ reading programs, it is encouraging to see the court put an end to this game. Wisconsin families are the real winners here,” they added.

Evers did his best to spin his efforts and pin the holdup of funds on Republicans, writing, “I will never apologize for fighting for our kids and our schools. Not today, not ever.”

“Twelve lawmakers should not be able to obstruct resources that were already approved by the full legislature and the governor to help get our kids up to speed and ensure they have the skills they need to be successful,” continued Evers. “It is unconscionable that the Wisconsin Supreme Court is allowing the legislature’s indefinite obstruction to go unchecked.”

The Democratic governor urged the JCF to immediately release the $50 million before the money goes back into the state’s general fund next week.

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

​Tony evers, Wisconsin, Wisconsin supreme court, Veto, Republican, Democrat, Evers, Badger state, Education, Funding, Politics 

The New York Post last week chided President Trump for not “getting it right” on deportations. But its real target wasn’t Trump. It was Stephen Miller, the president’s longtime immigration adviser and current White House deputy chief of staff. The Post’s editorial board warned that Miller’s plan to apprehend 3,000 illegal aliens per day is “asking for trouble.”

The Post argued the number is unrealistic. Even if Immigration and Customs Enforcement focuses on “the worst of the worst,” the roundup will still trigger media-fueled hysteria and nationwide riots. Mass arrests, it claimed, carry the “highest risk public-opinion-wise.”

If we concede to street violence, we let the enemy set the terms. That’s not leadership. That’s surrender.

The Post envisioned a wave of anti-ICE demonstrations, media pearl-clutching, and chaos. It feared ICE would be stretched too thin trying to hit its daily targets. Worse still, agents might apprehend illegal immigrants who entered before Biden — or even before Obama — and have “put down some roots.” That, we’re told, would create “economic problems,” particularly for agriculture.

The solution? The Post recommended a “scalpel, not a hammer.” Encourage illegal immigrants to self-deport. Offer incentives. Go soft. Supposedly, a million have already left on their own. And if Trump continues gently urging them out, the paper claims, many more will go peacefully.

The problem? We don’t even know if that number is real. The Department of Homeland Security doesn’t systematically track self-deportations. It’s possible some of the exits happened during the Trump years or even before. Regardless, they’ve hardly made a dent in the 11 million people Homeland Security says are here illegally.

But more troubling than the questionable data is the message Trump would send if he adopted the Post’s approach: that he’s willing to pull back on deportations — not because it’s the right policy, but because it might provoke the left. It would mean ICE can’t arrest even violent felons if it risks upsetting the street mobs funded by Democrats. And because the left treats all illegal immigrants as future voters, that would effectively shut down enforcement altogether.

As a historian, I’ll offer a provocative but fitting comparison: Today’s leftist thugs resemble the Nazi brownshirts of the Weimar era. Back then, many thought the nationalists could harness the street violence for political gain. They were wrong. The brownshirts brought chaos, not order. I see nothing morally or politically superior about the rioters in Los Angeles. They may call themselves anti-fascists. But their behavior — and their impact — is the same.

RELATED: Police union calls on Cudahy vice mayor to resign over video taunting violent street gangs to defend LA from ICE agents

Photo by MARVIN RECINOS/AFP via Getty Images

Those who excuse or encourage this violence, or who blame the government for trying to remove violent criminals, don’t care about law and order. They don’t care about stopping murderers, rapists, or cartel operatives. They care about power.

If some illegal immigrants have lived here for years and become productive members of society, the government can evaluate those cases once the criminals are gone. Prioritizing felons doesn’t mean abandoning discretion. But it does mean enforcing the law — despite the noise.

Trump’s crackdown will also encourage more self-deportation. If illegal immigrants know there’s a new sheriff in town, they’ll think twice about staying. As for the rioters and their wealthy enablers? Perhaps, we could find a way to help them self-deport to Antarctica. At a minimum, they deserve the same accommodations the left gave to January 6 protesters.

Even if Miller’s 3,000-a-day goal can’t be fully met, the effort matters. Laura Ingraham is right: We won’t deport all of the Democrats’ future voters. But that’s no reason not to try. The street violence and intimidation are designed to cow Republicans into submission. They’re a threat — not just to policy but to republican government itself.

If we concede to street violence, we let the enemy set the terms. That’s not leadership. That’s surrender.

No more accommodation. Crush the coup.

​Opinion & analysis, Los angeles, Ice, Immigration and customs enforcement, Riots, Gangs, Antifa, Donald trump, Stephen miller, Protests, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Mob rule, Laura ingraham, Mass deportations, Law and order, Self-deportation 

The Supreme Court upheld South Carolina’s decision to bar Planned Parenthood from accessing federal Medicaid funding for non-abortion-related services on Thursday.

The court voted 6-3 with Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting.

The decision allows other states to implement similar policies that would prevent reimbursements for services not related to abortions, such as screenings or acquiring contraceptives.

As NPR reported, federal law has prohibited using federal Medicaid for abortion services for decades, except in the cases of rape, incest, and life-threatening complications.

As reported by Detroit News, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) had said that no taxpayer money should go to Planned Parenthood, with the new budget bill, coined the “big, beautiful bill” by President Donald Trump, looking to cut federal Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood all together.

RELATED: Republicans to watch when Trump’s $9.4 billion cut comes to the Senate

— (@)

Planned Parenthood said that this would have “catastrophic consequences” on it since one-third of its revenue is funded by the government, according to an X post from law professor Jonathan Turley.

Detroit News noted that this could result in a close of about 200 locations for the abortion provider, most in states where abortions are legal.

This is a developing story.

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

​News, Abortion, Planned parenthood, Medicaid, South carolina, Scotus, Supreme court, Politics 

Republican lawmakers are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Senate as the parliamentarian continues to hack away at key provisions in President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

The latest ruling from the Senate parliamentarian has sent Republicans into a tailspin. It struck several Medicaid-related reforms that many conservatives fought for. Some of these provisions include limiting federal funds to states that allow illegal aliens to receive Medicaid benefits, prohibiting federal funds for “gender-affirming care,” and preventing non-expansion states from increasing their current provider tax rates.

‘The Senate should know better than to send a bill with this waste of taxpayer money back to the House.’

RELATED: Republican support wanes as Senate overhauls key provisions in ‘big, beautiful bill’

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

“How is it that an unelected swamp bureaucrat, who was appointed by Harry Reid over a decade ago, gets to decide what can and cannot go in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill? The Senate Parliamentarian is not elected,” Republican Rep. Greg Steube of Florida said in a post on X. “She is not accountable to the American people. Yet she holds veto power over legislation supported by millions of voters.”

“We are trying to undo the America LAST insanity from the Democrats by kicking illegals off of Medicare and Medicaid and stopping taxpayer subsidies from being used for genital mutilation of children!!” Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said in a post on X.

Although the parliamentarian is able to issue advisory rulings over which provisions are in violation of the Byrd Rule, they can be overruled, which is what Republican Rep. Keith Self of Texas is calling for.

“The rogue Senate Parliamentarian should be overruled, just like activist judges.”

RELATED: Republican senator makes a stunning admission: ‘I can’t be somebody that I’m not’

Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images

It’s not just the Medicaid provisions that have sparked outrage amongs Republican lawmakers. The Senate has hardly rolled back Biden-era green-energy subsidies that were implemented through the Inflation Reduction Act. Many Republicans in the House made it clear that aggressive cuts were nonnegotiable, yet the Senate is extending certain solar and wind subsidies through at least 2030 and in some cases through 2040.

“The American people are sick and tired of their tax dollars funding Chinese solar panels and inefficient wind turbines that are destroying our land,” Republican Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois told Blaze News. “President Trump made it clear he wants no Green New Scam tax credits in the big, beautiful bill. The Senate must follow the House’s lead and get it done — this is our opportunity to protect our farmland, our food supply, and our energy independence.”

RELATED: SALT Republicans left seething after Senate makes major changes to the ‘big, beautiful bill’

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

“Congress has a chance to end the left’s Green New Scam for good, but if Senate Republicans swap the House’s firm ‘placed in service’ deadline for the vague ‘construction begins’ standard, we will fail to deliver on President Trump’s promise,” Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin told Blaze News. “This loophole would let wind and solar subsidies drag on for years — long after Trump’s second term — destroying American farmland and threatening our power grid.”

“Americans didn’t elect Republicans to rubber-stamp Joe Biden’s radical Green New Deal scam,” Self said in a post on X. “The Senate’s watered-down ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ wastes billions on climate schemes.”

Republicans maintained that if the Senate punts this “watered-down” bill back to the House, they will likely not have the votes to pass the bill before the July 4 deadline.

“Biden’s Green New Scam offers massive, unchecked subsidies to billion-dollar corporations and Chinese manufacturers, undermining American energy independence and economic freedom,” Republican Rep. Mark Harris of North Carolina told Blaze News. “Yet the Senate is reportedly gutting our hard-fought House measures to stop these tax giveaways. President Trump wants them gone, and so do I. The Senate should know better than to send a bill with this waste of taxpayer money back to the House.”

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

​Donald trump, Big beautiful bill, Reconciliation, Senate republicans, Senate democrats, House republicans, House democrats, House freedom caucus, Senate parliamentarian, Medicaid, Marjorie taylor greene, Greg steube, Keith self, Joe biden, Inflation reduction act, Green energy subsidies, Mary miller, Tom tiffany, Mark harris, Unelected bureaucrats, Politics