A man who allegedly claimed to be an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was arrested after he assaulted workers at a McDonald’s restaurant in Southern California.

Joshua Cobb, 44, walked into the La Jolla McDonald’s on Nobel Drive on Thursday at about noon and put the manager in a headlock, according to a press release from the San Diego Police Department.

‘Why do you think I’m willing to take two punches in the motherf**king face with some illegal immigrants while I make an arrest for Immigration and Customs Enforcement?’

The manager was described as a Hispanic male by Lt. Cesar Jimenez, who said that Cobb accused him of being an illegal alien.

Cobb led the man outside the restaurant while claiming he was being arrested, but the other workers came to his aid and forced Cobb to release him.

Police were able to identify and arrest Cobb, according to Jimenez, who was charged with impersonating an officer as well as battery.

The manager, Daniel Martinez, spoke to KGTV-TV and described what happened.

“He grabbed me from the back, grabbed my neck, like, really hard,” Martinez said. “So when that happened, all my co-workers jumped on him, and he let go, but after that, he just punched me on the side.”

The employees at the McDonald’s said they didn’t believe the man was an ICE officer because he frequented the fast food place, would only order sodas, and would leave a mess.

“Why do you think your 911 phone calls aren’t f**king working?” said the man police identified as Cobb. “Why do you think I’m willing to take two punches in the motherf**king face with some illegal immigrants while I make an arrest for Immigration and Customs Enforcement?”

RELATED: Church worker pretended to be ICE agent to extort $500 from massage therapist, police say

Jimenez also addressed the videos circulating online about the incident.

“There are several videos of this incident circulating online,” he said. “We understand how concerning this can be for members of our community. We want to assure residents that impersonating a law enforcement officer is a crime and the San Diego Police Department takes any reports of this nature very seriously.”

Martinez said he was not hurt during the attack.

“At that moment, my first reaction was just to protect my crew because I’m in charge of all of them,” the manager said.

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A judge sided with the city of Philadelphia in its lawsuit to restore slavery exhibits that were removed in January to a presidential home site.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” which led to some exhibits at national monuments being taken down.

‘We encourage the City of Philadelphia to focus on getting their jobless rates down and ending their reckless cashless bail policy instead of filing frivolous lawsuits in the hopes of demeaning our brave Founding Fathers.’

The city of Philadelphia objected to the removal of slavery information from exhibits at the President’s House exhibit, where Presidents George Washington and John Adams once lived. The site is operated by the National Park Service.

The lawsuit cited a previous agreement with the NPS that said “communication and consultation” standards must be met between the parties for changes to the site.

On Monday, Senior Judge Cynthia M. Rufe ruled that the exhibits must be restored to their original state before the day of removal. She began the ruling with a quote from George Orwell’s “1984.”

The lawsuit listed the National Park Service as a defendant, as well as Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, the Department of the Interior, and National Park Service Acting Director Jessica Bowron.

“I strongly opposed the Trump administration’s decision to remove these exhibits, and I welcome the federal court’s ruling that they must be restored. … I will continue fighting to ensure these exhibits are fully restored and accessible to the public,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Penn.) said about the ruling.

A spokesperson for the NPS lambasted the city after the lawsuit was filed.

“All federal agencies are to review interpretive materials to ensure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared national values. Following completion of the required review, the National Park Service is now taking appropriate action in accordance with the Order,” reads the statement from the spokesperson.

“We encourage the City of Philadelphia to focus on getting their jobless rates down and ending their reckless cashless bail policy instead of filing frivolous lawsuits in the hopes of demeaning our brave Founding Fathers who set the brilliant road map for the greatest country in the world — the United States of America,” the statement continues.

RELATED: Actress Pam Grier gets demolished online for spewing nonsense claim about racial lynchings in Ohio on ‘The View’

Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia executive director Paul Steinke told CBS News that the removal was a “terrible day for American history.”

“The decision to do this appears to be made because the President’s House Site memorialized the nine enslaved individuals that were held there against their will by President Washington and his wife, Martha,” he said, “and this is the only federal historic site that commemorates the history of slavery in America.”

Rufe was appointed to the court by former President George W. Bush in 2002.

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Elon Musk pledged in September to help fund murals in remembrance of Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian woman who was randomly murdered on a public train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

One such mural has appeared in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, as part of the Remember Iryna memorial project, led by Elizabeth Trykin. The mural measures 147 feet wide and 20 feet tall and is located near the intersection at Charleston and Las Vegas Boulevards.

‘Evil doesn’t see policy. Evil doesn’t see left or right. Evil doesn’t see any of that. Evil is just evil.’

“The project has completed over 20 large-scale murals across multiple U.S. cities, now in Las Vegas, with many more installations under way. More than 900 artists have reached out to us to participate,” Trykin said in a statement to KLAS-TV.

Musk joined in the effort after it was proposed by Intercom CEO Eoghan McCabe, who also gave $500,000 of his own money. Many on the right have decried the lack of coverage for the brutal murder and aired suspicions that a political bias was to blame.

“I will contribute $1M,” Musk said at the time.

A spokesperson for McCabe later confirmed to the New York Post that McCabe and Musk both made good on their financial pledges.

Graffiti artist Gear Duran, who painted the Vegas mural, says it’s not meant to be a partisan political statement.

“I think it’s, like, unfortunate that everybody has to make things politicized and divisive and all that stuff,” Duran said.

“What we really need is just to be able to come together and stop politicizing everything so much as far as, like, the demise of someone losing their life like that,” he added. “It’s like, why does that got to be political? It’s like, that’s just evil.”

RELATED: New butterfly species named in honor of Ukrainian woman brutally murdered on Charlotte light rail

Decarlos Brown, 34, was charged with Zarutska’s murder and could face the death penalty if he’s found guilty. The horrific attack was captured on surveillance video from the public transit system.

“Evil doesn’t see policy. Evil doesn’t see left or right. Evil doesn’t see any of that. Evil is just evil,” Duran continued. “I’m here trying to combat that, to bring awareness with this mural, just to bring some positivity and light to what happened.”

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A prominent Catholic leader took on criticism against Western culture from Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and exposed its Marxist underpinnings.

Bishop Robert Barron posted a video to the X platform where he first applauded Sec. of State Marco Rubio on his speech defending Western culture at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.

‘Your argument is, well, because cultures always change? Well, that’s a banality!’

“He was talking about the shared culture of Europe and America. He referenced gothic cathedrals and Dante and Shakespeare and even the Beatles,” Barron said.

“And his point was, we gotta get beyond just our political differences and find our sources in the great culture that unites us,” he added. “Then he took a further step that was very much in line with Pope Benedict XVI and Christopher Dawson, namely that culture is grounded in ‘cult’ — at the root of all culture is something like religion. And so he wasn’t afraid to reference the Christian faith as a key element in giving rise to the shared culture of Europe and America.”

Barron then turned his attention to Ocasio-Cortez, who tried to respond to Rubio’s speech by belittling the idea of a Western culture at all.

“I think it’s also important to note how thin that foundation is. … And so, the response that we have to have is, again, it’s material. It’s class-based. It’s common interest,” the congresswoman said.

“I was very struck by her answer. I thought it was very illuminating,” Barron responded.

“She said, ‘Oh, you know, this appeal to culture, it’s so ‘thin’ because culture is ephemeral. It’s always changing, and so we shouldn’t pay attention to the culture. We should just pay attention to the material foundations in the class struggle,'” he added.

“Well, all of that, everybody, is right out of the Marxist playbook,” Barron chuckled.

RELATED: AOC flaunts her historical illiteracy in ‘cowboys’ critique of Rubio’s speech in Munich

Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images

“First of all, that Western culture, as Rubio invoked it, is ‘thin’? The culture that gave us all those great figures, that gave us the rule of law, that gave us respect for the rights of the individual, that gave us our democratic political system, that gave us the university system, that’s thin?” he asked rhetorically.

“And your argument is, well, because cultures always change? Well, that’s a banality!” Barron added.

“I mean, of course cultures are alive. They change and evolve. It doesn’t mean for a second we can’t identify the key elements within a culture that gives it its character. But also this, to characterize culture as ‘thin’ is a Marxist move,” he explained.

“Marx said that culture is simply an epiphenomenal superstructure on top of the economic substructure, and don’t be distracted therefore by ‘the culture.’ That’s just protecting the economics at bottom,” Barron added. “Well, again, listen to her. ‘Let’s pay attention to material conditions and to class struggle.’ Again, that’s the Marxist playbook.”

He went on to warn that Marxism is gaining popularity among politicians and cited New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) and his comments about collectivism.

“What’s worrying me, everybody, is the extent to which political leadership on the left in America is becoming unapologetically Marxist,” Barron continued.

“Might I encourage followers of Mayor Mamdani and AOC: Talk to some of them — they’re still alive, some of them — the people that fled Marxist tyranny in Europe. People laboring under it to this day in Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, et cetera.”

RELATED: Socialist Minneapolis councilwoman calls Trump a ‘domestic terrorist’ — and proposes rental assistance over ICE surge

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

He went on to point out that religion was the first target of Marxism.

“It concerns me not just as someone who follows politics but as a bishop of the Catholic Church. Marx himself said the first critique is a critique of religion. And his political adepts followed him. The first thing the Marxist tyrannies went after in most cases was religion,” he continued.

“I am getting a little concerned that in some of these leading figures in our own politics, a Marxist philosophy is taking hold. As a religious leader, this is concerning me quite a bit,” Barron added.

“Take a look, everybody. Attend to the language. In a way, they’re telling us who they are and what they’re for. And I think that should be very concerning to everybody,” he concluded. “God bless you.”

Barron is the bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota.

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He may be a serial killer who wants to wear his victim’s skin, but “The Silence of the Lambs” sicko Buffalo Bill is no transphobe.

At least according to Ted Levine, who portrayed the troubled womenswear enthusiast — real name Jame Gumb — in 1991 Best Picture winner “The Silence of the Lambs.”

‘We all know more, and I’m a lot wiser about transgender issues.’

“There are certain aspects of the movie that don’t hold up too well,” the actor recently told the Hollywood Reporter. “We all know more, and I’m a lot wiser about transgender issues. There are some lines in that script and movie that are unfortunate.”

He added, “It’s unfortunate that the film vilified that, and it’s f**king wrong. And you can quote me on that.”

Basket case

At the same time, the 68-year-old Hollywood vet denied that his character was ever meant to be understood as transgender in the first place.

RELATED: ‘I wasn’t invited to those parties’: Kelsey Grammer mocks woke Hollywood hypocrisy

“I didn’t play him as being gay or trans. I think he was just a f**ked-up heterosexual man. That’s what I was doing,” Levine insisted.

Sick puppy

This interpretation was backed up by “Lambs” producer Edward Saxon.

“We were really loyal to the book,” Saxon said. “As we made the film, there was just no question in our minds that Buffalo Bill was a completely aberrant personality — that he wasn’t gay or trans. He was sick.”

Any connection to transgenderism was an oversight by the production, the producer explained.

“We missed it. From my point of view, we weren’t sensitive enough to the legacy of a lot of stereotypes and their ability to harm.”

Saxon said that given the fact those involved in the movie had “friends and family who were gay,” they thought it would be clear that Buffalo Bill is simply “incredibly sick,” not practicing some form of homosexuality.

RELATED: B is for butthead: Raunchy rapper threatens ‘bear mace’ for ICE agents

Photo by Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic

‘It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.’

Skin in the game

Levine’s remarks came as the actor reflected on the 35th anniversary of his breakout role — and the staying power of a certain famous line.

“Pain in the ass, but it’s OK. Kind of put me on the map,” Levine laughed, “But [the annoyance recently] is less so. The edges have worn off. It’s not a big deal. It’s fine.”

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Reporter Steve Cortes’ new documentary, “China’s College Takeover,” takes on the influx of Chinese nationals infiltrating American colleges and universities — which BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales notes is yet another form of immigration that needs to be put under the microscope.

“The issue of immigration is something that, once you see the issue, once you see the real problems, you can’t unsee it. It’s peeling back the layers of an onion, and it just gets worse and worse and worse,” Gonzales says.

“We are kind of the laughingstock of the globe at this point. … All of these other countries are just like, ‘Hey, hey, we’re just going to utilize and abuse their system, and we’re just going to take over,’” she adds.

“I’m sure there are times when some of the party bosses at the CCP’s buildings in Beijing just laugh to themselves. They cannot believe how willingly the United States will act as a victim, will volunteer for victimhood at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party,” Cortes agrees.

“And in this case, I think it’s absolutely outrageous that our most selective universities, our top flagship public schools across the United States are inundated with foreign students,” he says.

What Cortes finds “particularly awful” is the CCP “sending its princelings … over here so that we can educate our enemies so that many of them can spy on us and commit espionage.”

“We know that’s happening. There have been charges and convictions already. And then take those skills that they learned at some of our top schools like University of Illinois and go back to Beijing so they can make our adversary more powerful, more wealthy, and better able to continue to take advantage of the United States,” Cortes says.

“So, I’m trying to expose this, as you are, and say, ‘Enough.’ Of course, illegal immigration is a scourge to this country, but even the way we’re tolerating legal migration, including the student issue, is just inexcusable, and I think it needs to be exposed,” he adds.

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Millions of modern Westerners are chained up in self-imposed terrors that prevent them from living in the real world. We’re terrified of “expired” food. We consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website while we peer at our digital meat thermometers to make sure we hit the government-approved specific temperature that reassures us that we won’t kill our families.

You can just cook things. Do you know that? Really. You can do the same things, with the same basic tools, that humans have been doing for countless tens of thousands of years before programmable stoves, digital scales, and tenth-of-a-degree meat thermometers came along. The only thing stopping you is unnecessary fear.

There is no reason to be reliant on complicated devices and prissy little scales in order to make bread. How do you think Laura Ingalls managed it?

It’s not just cooking that’s fallen prey to modern hysteria either. Alleged adults in the 2020s are skittish about checking the oil in their car or topping up the antifreeze (if they even think it’s “safe” to do without professional supervision).

Food for thought

But I can only focus on one thing in this piece, and that’s going to be food. Between the time I was a kid learning to cook in the ’80s and today, adult Americans have retreated into a mental padded cell where they quake with overblown fears about food technique and food safety.

I come from the Before Times, a land where children walked a mile each way to school, a land where kids could ride their bikes anywhere in town as long as they were home by dark. Now we have a new traffic jam at 3 p.m. around public schools. It’s not normal. It’s also not sane, necessary, or proportionate. Today only one in 10 children walk to school. Read that again. If that sounds normal, you’re the person I’m writing for.

I was taught to use a stove for simple meals by the time I was 8. Today? Fourteen-year-olds on average have never even made a box of macaroni and cheese on the stove top. A few years later, they become 25-year-olds who complain about the cost of eating because they think — yes, really — that DoorDash is the normal way to get supper.

I’m with soup-id

I knew something was happening to adult minds back in 1991 in the staff room of Perkins Family Restaurant in Camillus, New York. It was 2 p.m., and I was struggling to stay awake for an all-hands meeting on food safety (I worked the overnight shift).

District manager Phil was telling us about the dangers of poultry and salmonella. You have to know there was no raw poultry in the kitchen of this restaurant ever. Every chicken product we served had been pre-cooked, which means that any salmonella had already been killed. We merely reheated plastic-bagged refrigerated food from a factory.

Phil opened a bag of fully cooked chicken and dumpling soup and poured it into the steam table. Whipping out a thermometer, he stuck it into the next pot, which already had the same soup brought to serving temperature.

“This pot is not hot enough, and if we don’t keep it up to temperature, we risk giving our guests salmonella poisoning,” he said.

I bit my hand to stop myself from responding.

In case you don’t know why this is wrong: Once poultry has been fully cooked, all salmonella gets killed. It does not “regenerate” if the temperature falls. Sure, other microbes might get a foothold, but this guy really did believe that letting chicken cool off a few degrees would magically re-salmonellize it. I wonder if he believed the old tale about how raw meat spontaneously generates flies.

RELATED: How I stopped hating guns — and embraced self-reliance

Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The d’oy of cooking

As a longtime home cook, I’ve watched cookery become hystericized over the past four decades. As fewer parents cooked themselves, and as even fewer of them taught their children, I watched recipes get dumbed down. What would have taken a paragraph to explain to a person in 1985 now required 15 numbered steps: “Pour water into clear container. Bending down, use your eye to see if it hits the line that says ‘one cup.’ Then carefully pick up the cup, and tilt it so that the water falls out into the bowl. This is called ‘pouring.’”

I only slightly exaggerate. About 15 years ago, I looked up a recipe for chicken paprikash and made the mistake of reading the comments. This is a pretty accurate reconstruction:

“I made this recipe exactly as the author described, but she never told me that there were BONES in the chicken. I was appalled! I actually served my family chicken with bones inside it, and I was so embarrassed. My kids wouldn’t eat it. You should WARN PEOPLE.”

No, I don’t think this commenter was a troll. I’ve seen enough in real life to know there are millions of Americans walking around so disconnected from basic household tasks that they literally do not know that meat always comes with bones and that bones are normal.

Getting medieval

Last week, I got inspired to start baking again. That inspiration came from a YouTube channel I recommend called “Medieval Way.” The British guy behind it takes you through the simple, manual, methods of raising bread, stewing meat, and preserving foods that people did from muscle memory and common sense. And wouldn’t you know, their foodways (which were the foodways for all of us for thousands of years before the late 19th century) produce more nutritious meals than most of us eat today.

It’s a myth, and a damned scurrilous one, that a noticeable number of people died all the time in “the old days” from food poisoning because they didn’t have refrigerators or meat thermometers or the CDC. Pardon my frankness, but all humans who lived before us weren’t stupid.

I decided I was going to resume sourdough baking from natural leaven, no commercial yeast. But I also decided I wasn’t going to buy any special equipment like scales or filtered water or any of that. And I wasn’t going to measure anything.

I want to master my craft with my hands and heart and eyes. There is no reason to be reliant on complicated devices and prissy little scales in order to make bread. How do you think Laura Ingalls managed it? She learned how dough felt in the hand and gauged proper hydration and texture through feel and experience. I can too. So can you.

Maybe my project will inspire you. Here’s what I did. Don’t expect precise measurements or special tips: Get in there with your hands and learn it yourself.

For the starter

Stoneground organic whole rye flour. I’m not a hippie leftist; it’s just true that stone-ground flours without pesticides are nutritionally superior and give better results for this. Rye works faster than white flour.Water. I’m lucky enough to live on clean well water without chlorine. If you have city water, pour out a jug and set it on the counter to let the chlorine evaporate. That chemical will inhibit the bacteria and yeast you want to grow.

I put some flour in a bowl. Then I put some water in. Then I stirred it. Then I set it on the counter under a towel. Every day, I dumped half out and added back water and flour to give the nascent yeast new starch to grow on.

After a week, I wasn’t seeing much. I was on the verge of throwing it out and starting again when I lifted the towel and saw this:

Josh Slocum

That’s a thriving, frothing stew of natural yeast and accompanying bacteria that will leaven your loaf and give you a flavor you can’t get from commercial bread. It costs literally pennies and time.

For the bread

I put some all-purpose flour (again, organic, so no chemical traces to interfere) in a bowl. I added some lukewarm water. Then I dumped some of the starter in. How much? I don’t know. Maybe half a cup?

I mixed it all together and kneaded it just a few times until everything was incorporated. Tip: You don’t have to knead your dough at all if you’re willing to be patient. If you set a sourdough loaf to ferment in a room of about 60 degrees with a loose cover and wait 24 hours, the bacteria and yeast will do everything for you, and it’s better than hand kneading.

Here’s the loaf 12 hours later:

Josh Slocum

It’s only risen about 20% to 30% in size so far, but that’s because sourdough is slower than commercial yeast, and my house is on the cool side. I’m going to put it in the oven with just the oven light on to speed it up.

How long will it take to double in size? I don’t know. It might do so by 24 hours, or it might take 36 hours. The longer the fermentation, the more digestible the bread, the better the texture, and the better the flavor. Sooner or later, it will fully rise, and I’ll pop it in a preheated, covered dutch oven at 500 degrees, and I’ll get a beautiful loaf with that crisp, glass-shattering crust.

My hope is that you’ll find something — bread, cakes, roast meats, whatever you like — and just cook it. Put down your cookbook. Turn off the phone. Stop looking for a “foolproof” recipe for bolognese sauce. Stop watching step-by-step videos.

Learn it in your hands and in your mind. Even most “mistakes” in cooking aren’t fatal to the meal. We don’t have to be slaves to expert directions. None of this is arcane knowledge beyond mere 21st-century mortals. Peasants who lived quite literally on one penny a day turned out two or three meals a day for their families without any of the gee-gaws and expert hand-holding that we moderns have become dependent upon.

Just go cook things!

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