Democratic senators finally capitulated to Republicans after the drawn-out, record-breaking government shutdown. Although Democrats didn’t actually accomplish anything, they maintain the shutdown was worth it.

Democrats originally shut down the government to force Republicans’ hand on extending health care subsidies from the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire at the end of the year. Over 40 days later, eight Democrats caved and voted with Republicans to reopen the government without securing a deal on health care.

‘We got people to pay attention.’

Republicans’ only concession to Democrats was to reverse reduction-in-force notices issued during the shutdown and a commitment to refrain from implementing any more through January 30, when the continuing resolution expires.

After eight Democrats flipped and voted with Republicans to pass the continuing resolution, many of their colleagues expressed outrage and disappointment. Even still, some Senate Democrats maintain that the record-breaking shutdown was worth it.

RELATED: ‘Pathetic’ Senate Democrats cave, advancing key shutdown vote and prompting intraparty uproar: ‘It’s a surrender’

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado told CNN that demonstrating the overwhelming reliance millions of Americans have on the federal government made the shutdown worth it.

“Yeah, I think so,” Hickenlooper said. “I hate it, but yeah, it was worth it. Definitely.”

“We got people to pay attention to the fact that this is a traumatic, in many cases, life-or-death situation all over this country.”

RELATED: Senate Republicans pass key deal with Democrat defectors as end to record-long shutdown draws near

Photo by Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images

Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island echoed Hickenlooper, saying the shutdown was worthwhile.

“I think it was,” Reed said after a long pause. “Because I think the perception, we made it clear that it’s not just a health care issue, but the whole issue. I think it was remarkable when the president tried to use SNAP as the punishment to force us to capitulate.”

Notably, Reed’s claim that President Donald Trump weaponized food assistance programs like SNAP to bully Democrats is inaccurate. Congress is the only political body responsible for appropriating SNAP, and Democrats intentionally shut down and refused to reopen the government for over 40 days.

Additionally, neither Hickenlooper nor Reed were among the eight Democrats who voted to reopen the government.

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The Islamification of the United States is in full swing, and BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is continuing to sound the alarm, warning Americans of what’s happening right under their noses.

“They want to use the tax-deductible mosques to build the voter bloc. They want to use their CAIR (c)(4) — this was the CAIR executive director saying they want to use the (c)(4) of their organization to lobby, draft, and fight laws. They want to use their PACs to fund candidates, and they want to use super PACs for unlimited money to flip races,” Gonzales explains.

“Now, there are not a lot of people who will actually stand up and call out corrupt organizations like CAIR and call out what is actually happening right before our very eyes, for fear of being called an Islamaphobe,” she continues.

“Oh, no, a mean name,” she says mockingly. “I guess I’ll just stand by and watch my civilization be completely destroyed.”

CAIR is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which Gonzales explains has “reported terrorist ties to organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, also Hamas.”

Which is why Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) — who is running for attorney general of Texas — has introduced a bill to strip tax-exempt status from charities with known terror ties.

“I think there’s a lot of folks who don’t realize, or haven’t realized until lately, how bad it truly is,” Roy tells Gonzales, explaining that once he started speaking out about the Islamic takeover happening not just in America but across the world, he started getting harassed.

“They were, you know, harassing my staff and basically trying to target us, which is what they’re going to do,” he says.

But he warns that it’s going to get worse, as what has happened with Mamdani in New York City is not the “canary in the coal mine” but the “four-alarm fire that’s currently raging right here, right now.”

“And you know it, and I know it. You know, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, with EPIC. But it’s not just EPIC … there’s this massive Islamic center in Houston. There’s 300 mosques throughout the state of Texas. There’s more mosques being built in Texas every day than any other state in the union,” Roy explains.

“And that’s the last point,” he continues. “There are organizations, deeply funded, widely funded, with ties back to Middle East funding, but also radical Marxists, because that’s what people don’t understand: This is the combination element of Marxism and Islamism.”

“And it is purposeful, and they are targeting the United States of America specifically to take us over,” he adds.

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Police found a half-naked woman handcuffed in a Texas backyard who had been tortured for a considerable period of time by five people she knew for years, authorities said.

The Austin Police Department said in a statement that officers conducted a welfare check just after 9 a.m. Oct. 30 after a report regarding a “woman in distress who appeared to be restrained and calling for help.”

The woman told investigators she ‘got in trouble’ the night before police found her because her pants fell down, according to the affidavit.

Police said they discovered a woman outside a home who was “handcuffed to a piece of exercise equipment.”

“The woman showed signs of physical distress and had visible injuries consistent with prolonged restraint,” the press release read. “The woman told officers she had been held at the residence for several months and was not allowed to leave.”

Police said they had to cut through the “heavy metal links” to release the woman who soon was taken to a local hospital for treatment.

Officers discovered three children inside the house who were “safely removed and placed in the care of Child Protective Services for safety and support.”

Police arrested five people from the residence and charged them with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, injury to elderly or disabled, and unlawful restraint.

The suspects were identified as 51-year-old Michelle Garcia, 32-year-old Mache Carney, 30-year-old Juan Pablo Castro, 21-year-old Crystal Garcia, and 21-year-old Maynard Lefevers.

The Austin American-Statesman said it obtained the arrest affidavit, which indicated the woman told police she was friends with one of the females who lived in the house and visited often — but “one day they decided they didn’t like her anymore and no longer allowed her to leave.”

The suspects said they had known the woman for years, the affidavit stated.

Carney told police they started restraining the woman to stop her from stealing from neighbors, the affidavit said.

Several of the suspects claimed the woman suffers from mental health issues, according to the affidavit.

Crystal Garcia told investigators that the woman was only “50/50” capable of consent, the affidavit stated.

RELATED: Female reportedly orders her 5 lovers to kidnap, torture, and deprive man of food and sleep for a week at Red Roof Inn

Citing the affidavit, KVUE-TV reported that the woman had been at the home since July and had been “handcuffed inside and outside the house for months.”

Castro — the husband of Carney — admitted to purchasing the handcuffs, according to the affidavit.

According to the affidavit, the woman told detectives a male and a female repeatedly shot her with a BB gun and that she was beaten with a baseball bat and fed only once a day.

Michelle Garcia told investigators they fed the woman one meal a day because she had gotten “chunky,” according to the arrest affidavit. However, police noted that the woman appeared malnourished when she was found.

Police said the woman told them she was punished if she tried to leave and had open wounds, cuts, swollen wrists, missing flesh from her hands and feet, extensive scarring all over her body from BB gunshots, and a battered face, the American-Statesman reported, citing the affidavit.

KVUE, citing law enforcement, reported that the woman had “hundreds of small BB scars across her body and a swollen shut right eye from a pellet injury.”

The affidavit said the suspects confessed to shooting the woman with BB guns. Castro told police he bought an electric rifle-style BB gun “to shoot her” because he didn’t want to touch the woman.

According to the arrest affidavit, Castro told authorities he would come home from work, grab the BB gun from his closet, and “chase her around the yard,” firing pellets.

“I [expletive] hate her,” Castro told investigators when asked why he shot the victim, the affidavit stated.

A 4-year-old child who lived at the home told a specialist during a forensic interview that Castro — his father — shot the woman when she was “bad,” according to the affidavit. The child said he could hear the woman outside screaming, according to the affidavit.

The woman told investigators she “got in trouble” the night before police found her because her pants fell down, according to the affidavit.

The American-Statesman said as “punishment,” a number of suspects “allegedly shot her repeatedly with a BB gun,” secured her in the backyard with handcuffs, then left her there “overnight without pants or food as temperatures dipped into the 40s.” The paper, citing police, added that the woman said she “begged and cried to be released, but was threatened with more and worse violence” if she kept pleading.

The investigation is ongoing, and those with information about the case are urged to contact the Austin Police Department’s Human Trafficking Unit at 512-974-4786 or submit an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers at austincrimestoppers.org or 512-472-8477.

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A poll conducted ahead of the New York City mayoral election found that 9% of residents would “definitely” leave the city and another 25% would “consider” relocating if Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani proved victorious on Nov. 4.

It is yet to be seen whether NYC will ultimately hemorrhage millions of residents in the coming months. It appears, however, that Mamdani’s rise to power has already prompted departures at the New York Police Department.

‘How do you work for somebody who considers you racist and anti-queer and wants to defund the police?’

Citing sources familiar with the situation and Police Pension Fund data, the New York Post indicated that a surge of police officers quit in the weeks leading up to the mayoral election, when Mamdani was a clear favorite to win.

In October, the NYPD reportedly saw a 35% spike in police of all ranks leaving the force. Whereas 181 left the force in October 2024, this year 245 officers left during the same stretch.

Detectives Endowment Association president Scott Munro told the Post, “Morale is down because everyone is concerned about the policies Mamdani wants to put in place.”

“You have a person who is supposed to be running New York City that does not believe in law enforcement,” continued Munro. “What’s coming out of everyone’s mouth is, ‘We’re in trouble.'”

RELATED: Here’s what exit polls reveal about Tuesday’s electoral bloodbath

Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images

Mamdani, who takes office on Jan. 1, has made no secret in recent years of his antipathy toward the NYPD.

The mayor-elect suggested, for instance, in a June 28, 2020, tweet that the NYPD “is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety” and stressed that it was necessary to “defund the police.”

“How do you work for somebody who considers you racist and anti-queer and wants to defund the police?” said one retired cop. “Things are hard enough already. If you’re eligible to leave, why would you want to stay in that situation?”

Mamdani now claims that he doesn’t want to defund the police; however, he has indicated that he’s not interested in hiring more police to address the NYPD’s near-record-low numbers and appears keen to replace police in certain circumstances with social workers.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani proposed the creation of an agency aimed at preventing “violence before it happens by taking a public health approach to safety.” The so-called Department of Community Safety would have a budget of over $1 billion — drawing $605 million from existing programs — and would appropriate some of the responsibilities of police, including responding to mental health calls and dealing with erratic homeless individuals.

Some individuals with actual experience dealing with the city’s mentally ill and homeless have suggested that Mamdani’s proposal is disaster waiting to happen.

A Bronx cop told the Post, “How’s that going to work when the person pulls out a gun or a knife?”

“You can’t do this without police — it’s impossible,” Richard Perkins, a behavioral nurse with 14 years’ experience told the Gothamist. “No one in their right mind would do this alone. You’re going to get hurt.”

Mamdani’s appointment of Elle Bisgaard-Church as his chief of staff signals he’s likely serious about the DCS. Bisgaard-Church, who serves as Mamdani’s campaign manager, was reportedly the proposed agency’s “chief architect.”

In addition to effectively replacing police with social workers on certain calls, Mamdani has ruffled feathers by committing to both closing Rikers Island prison and shifting the final say on police disciplinary actions from the NYPD commissioner to the anti-police Civilian Complaint Review Board.

‘It seems to me like there may be people from there looking for jobs.’

“Nobody wants to be a New York City cop,” a police union consultant told the Post. “It’s not worth the money, the stress, the danger, especially working for a mayor who wants to take the department apart.”

Blaze News has reached out for comment to the New York City Police Benevolent Association and the Sergeants Benevolent Association of the NYPD as well as to the mayor’s office.

Retired NYPD Chief of Department John Chell recently told Newsmax that about 4,000 police officers of every rank are eligible for retirement in January but suggested that “it remains to be seen” whether there will ultimately be a mass exodus.

In the meantime, law enforcement organizations in other jurisdictions are extending offers to disenchanted NYPD officers.

The Houston Police Officers’ Union, for instance, released a flyer earlier his month telling New York cops “disgusted with the election of Zohran Mamdani” that the Houston Police Department is hiring and offering “competitive pay with [a] 36.5% pay raise just approved over 5 years.”

The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office was one of the outfits in Florida that is similarly trying to recruit from the NYPD, reported WMBB-TV.

“With the changing of what’s going on in New York City with a new mayor and probably a different way of doing things for law enforcement up there, it seems to me like there may be people from there looking for jobs,” said Sheriff A.J. Smith. “And I have jobs. And I would love to have anybody from the NYPD or anywhere up that way that may be affected by the change to apply here.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is also seizing on the opportunity to recruit New York cops alienated by the incoming mayor.

ICE shared a recruitment poster to social media last month captioned, “NYPD OFFICERS: Work for a President and a Secretary who support and defend law enforcement — not defund or demonize it.”

— (@)

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A group of former military officers says human Space Force missions could tilt the scales against America’s enemies.

In a new report, the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies advocated the integration of man in space as the next step required to gain a tactical edge.

‘Astronaut guardians may be necessary to execute and secure missions that cannot be accomplished through remote operations.’

The Mitchell Institute calls itself an “independent, nonpartisan research organization” and consists of a plethora of retired military personnel. This includes a former Air Force brigadier general, general, and lieutenant general. Notably, the staff boasts retired Space Force Colonel Charles Galbreath, who serves as a director and senior resident fellow for space studies.

It was Galbreath who concluded the recent study that determined dynamic space operations with the Space Force will need to encompass orbital and terrestrial links, and establish space infrastructure in the future.

One of the most important areas of focus, Galbreath wrote, should be the need for crewed missions.

Labeling humans as the “most flexible system ever launched into space,” the former Space Force colonel said that “guardians in space” may be essential for future operations.

RELATED: Why Mars is America’s next strategic imperative

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“Today, the Space Force does not have guardians operating in the space domain for military missions. However, as humanity’s interests in space go further from the Earth, astronaut guardians may be necessary to execute and secure missions that cannot be accomplished through remote operations,” Galbreath wrote.

The adaptability of human decision-making could present “fundamental challenges” to enemy decision-making procedures, he argued. For example, adding humans into a spacecraft would “raise the threshold” of acceptable hostile actions from foreign governments.

“Harming an uncrewed satellite is one thing; harming a space station with military crew on it is a completely different risk calculus for an adversary to consider,” Galbreath hypothesized.

RELATED: Comet or alien? NASA-led group ramping efforts to track mysterious city-size object in our solar system

As reported by Defense One, John Shaw, the former deputy leader of U.S. Space Command, recently appeared on a virtual event for the Mitchell Institute, where he expressed skepticism about putting troops in space in the immediate future.

“It’s probably when we’re projecting power across great distances, and it’s probably so they can be closer to an intense command and control capability where you need humans in the decision-making,” Shaw said.

Describing the placement of guardians in space as “inevitable,” Galbreath said during the same event that it’s going to take about 10 years to get the idea into practice due to the time it takes to develop the pipeline and training that would enable such a program.

“We can’t wake up one day and say, ‘My gosh, we need guardians in space.’ … We needed to make that decision 10 years ago,” Galbreath claimed.

According to the Mitchell report, there also exists a need for the Space Force to use alternate forms of propulsion, conduct in-space assembly, and create a supply chain for parts and infrastructure in order to fix satellites, for example.

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A New Mexico chief of police published a video asking the public to speak out against the courts continuing to release a man who has allegedly committed many violent crimes.

Police Chief Jeremy Story of the Las Cruces Police Department said that Neal Garcia had committed dozens of crimes but was released because he was found incompetent to stand trial.

‘I would argue that he poses a clear danger to the public and the community. And the people he is victimizing are people who are just working and trying to live their lives.’

“That means the cases were dismissed without any consequences, without treatment or resources,” said Story in the three-minute video.

He listed the many incidents for which Garcia was arrested.

In 2022, Garcia allegedly threatened and punched a security guard after being caught shoplifting.

In 2023, Garcia allegedly assaulted an employee after shoplifting at a Dollar General and also punched a manager at Lowe’s Fiesta Foods after shoplifting there.

In 2024, Garcia allegedly tried to hit two people with a golf club after shoplifting at Harbor Freight.

In 2025, Garcia allegedly punched a Walmart employee after he was caught shoplifting.

Story said that Garcia was even charged with breaking windows at city hall in June, but a judge found him “incompetent and not dangerous” and released him.

“I would argue that he poses a clear danger to the public and the community. And the people he is victimizing are people who are just working and trying to live their lives in the community that we all share,” the police chief added.

The police chief said Garcia had been arrested at least 108 times. At least 15 of those were felony arrests.

Garcia is currently being held for robbery, though jail records indicate the federal government has intervened in his case.

In an email statement to Blaze News, Story confirmed the federal intervention was a response to his video.

“The federal charges were a direct response to the video we did and a partnership with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. We plan to do an update together on Wednesday,” he wrote. “Thank you for covering this important topic.”

Story did not clarify which “federal charges” Garcia may be facing.

RELATED: Elderly woman beaten to death with a rock — police said they found her daughter ‘covered in blood’

Story added in his video that the entire system needed to be changed, as Garcia was not a solitary example of this kind of injustice.

“The District Attorney’s Office has petitioned for involuntary commitment and assisted outpatient treatment, but neither was granted by the court,” he added. “I wish this was an outliner, but it’s not. This is not an exception. This is the rule.”

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Despite Democrats celebrating victories in states like Virginia, New Jersey, and New York, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey’s father, Ron Simmons, believes it’s a blessing in disguise that will force more “woke” and identity-based policies.

“I think there’s a silver lining in all of this,” Simmons says.

“Virginia, New Jersey, some other places — New York City and some others elected probably the furthest-left candidates they could have elected. And that means that in their mind, they’re thinking they have a mandate to govern as far left as possible,” he continues.

“So you’re going to see even more woke policies being put into place or trying to be put into place. You’re going to see an upping of the rhetoric on the trans, on all of those types of things. And in my opinion, that is going to help us in 2026, because it’s just going to more and more expose the radicalness that’s taken over the Democrat Party,” he adds.

While he doesn’t believe that conservatives should be worried, he does believe that the few moderate Democrats left are.

“And so I believe that, assuming that the economy does well, we get past all this tariff stuff, that what these elections will do for us is it will help people realize just how crazy some of these policies are that these new elected officials are going to put in,” Simmons explains.

And as soon as the clock strikes midnight on January 1, Simmons believes “we have got to get really engaged in the political process of getting the people that we believe have the right policies elected.”

“We’ve got to make sure next November that we get them through the elections, because we need to keep the House and the Senate. There’s no question about that,” he adds.

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A 21-year-old leader of a violent extremist group involved in “unthinkably depraved” extortion of child sex abuse material faces multiple sentences of life in prison if convicted.

Baron Cain Martin of Tucson, Arizona, allegedly ran the online network “764” under the moniker “Convict” after joining the group around 2019 — when he would have been just 15 years old.

‘His alleged actions targeting children as part of the 764 online terror network are so depraved they defy comprehension.’

The Department of Justice at the time of his December 2024 arrest described the 764 organization as a “dangerous network of violent extremists who systematically target children and weaponize child sexual abuse material” in order to support an “accelerationist agenda” to destroy civilized society and the U.S. government.

The DOJ revealed in late October that Martin now is charged with dozens of crimes, including:

Five counts of producing child pornography;Eleven counts of distributing child pornography;Three counts of coercing and enticing minors to engage in sexual activity;Three counts of cyberstalking;Animal crushing;Distribution of animal crush videos; andConspiracy to commit wire fraud.

He’s also charged with participating in a child exploitation enterprise, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, and conspiring to kill, kidnap, or maim persons in a foreign country, officials said.

Martin — who’s been in federal custody since his arrest — also is accused of coercing underage victims to harm themselves numerous times, officials said. The 764 group produces “extreme gore media and child sexual abuse material” and shares the content with members; the group also grooms underage females to mutilate themselves while recording or streaming video online, officials said.

A criminal complaint said Martin allegedly admitted to using the “Convict” moniker and bragged about being the “catalyst for thousands of extortions” under 764. Investigators said he referred himself as the “king of extortion.”

In one alleged incident, Martin coerced a 13-year-old child to cut designs into her body that included satanic symbols and swastikas. He also made her cut his name into “every possible place” on her body.

In another alleged incident described in the complaint, Martin coerced a 16-year-old on Discord to scratch herself until she drew blood and then pour alcohol over the wounds.

He is indicted for alleged crimes against nine victims — eight of whom were between the ages of 11 and 15 at the time of the abuse. He is believed to have other victims.

“His alleged actions targeting children as part of the 764 online terror network are so depraved they defy comprehension,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. “We will use every available tool to protect our children and ensure that those who perpetrate such acts of pure evil face the full force of justice.”

RELATED: A 2021 gun arrest in NYC put investigators on the trail of a global satanic pedophile cult

The DOJ in April announced the arrest of two alleged members of 764 in North Carolina and Greece.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the case was a warning to parents about monitoring their online behavior.

“This man’s alleged crimes are unthinkably depraved and reflect the horrific danger of 764 — if convicted, he will face severe consequences as we work to dismantle this evil network,” Bondi said. “I urge parents to remain vigilant about the threats their children face online.”

Experts say that parents should limit their children’s access to social media and other online sites, especially those which allow strangers to contact and interact with their accounts.

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A middle school lesson is reportedly promoting the idea of “gender identity” and being “assigned” sex at birth.

Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland allegedly has an assignment designed for grade-seven students that pulls directly from pro-transgender sources.

‘Embrace family diversity, create LGBTQ+ and gender inclusive schools.’

The alleged assignment, provided to Defending Education, asks students to match a list of terms with a list of possible definitions. The terms are “sex assigned at birth,” “gender identity,” “transgender,” “gender expression,” and “cisgender.”

One of the definitions allegedly given refers to a person’s “internal sense of being male, female, or transgender,” further explaining that is “how you feel. Girl, boy, both or neither.”

Another definition refers to an “individual’s presentation,” which includes appearance and clothing as they relate to how the individual communicates “aspects of gender or gender role,” according to a screenshot on Defending Education’s site.

A person’s sex is also referred to as what “doctors/midwives” assign to someone when they are born, while gender identity is “how you feel,” the alleged exercise indicated.

Four of the definitions directly cite a program from the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that promotes transgender surgery and hormone therapy for children.

RELATED: Indiana sues woke school district that allegedly tried to prevent illegal alien from self-deporting with his kid

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The lesson references WelcomingSchools.org, which describes itself as the “most comprehensive bias-based bullying prevention program” in the United States, meant to provide “LGBTQ+ and gender inclusive professional development training, lesson plans, booklists and resources” for educators who have access to children.

“We uplift school communities with critical tools to embrace family diversity, create LGBTQ+ and gender inclusive schools, prevent bias-based bullying, and support transgender and non-binary students,” the website says.

Erika Sanzi, senior director of communications for Defending Education, told Blaze News in a statement that the apparent vocabulary lesson requires students to “buy into an ideology that many reject.”

“Does MCPS require that students subscribe to gender ideology in order to fulfill the district’s family life requirements for middle schoolers? Because if so, that seems like viewpoint discrimination in a public school,” Sanzi stated.

RELATED: ‘Patently inequitable’: Ketanji Brown Jackson whines after SCOTUS stays Biden judge’s order in trans passport case

— (@)

At the same time, MCPS recently introduced harsher penalties into its code of conduct, which include suspension and expulsion for incidents involving drug possession, for example.

At least one local activist group said the new rules were detrimental to “black and brown students.”

“When we talk about intersecting into experiences of these black and brown students, they intersect to then lead them to be out of the classrooms, which means less time with academic study,” said Dorien Rogers from Young People for Progress, a Maryland group.

As reported by WJLA-TV, Rogers was also disappointed that the code of conduct was written only in English. The school system told WJLA that the new rules would soon be available in six languages.

MCPS did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Blaze News.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent set the record straight when MSNBC claimed that the Trump administration is providing a “bailout” to Argentina.

‘In most bailouts, you don’t make money. The US government made money.’

News broke in October that the Trump administration would implement a $20 billion currency swap with Argentina, which legacy media outlets have repeatedly described as a “bailout” for the Latin American country. Democrats criticized the plan, arguing that the administration had strayed from its America First agenda and failed to prioritize American farmers, citing trade negotiations with China that led to China temporarily suspending purchases of U.S. soybeans.

During a Friday morning interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” correspondent Jonathan Lemire asked Bessent, “How does a $20 billion bailout of Argentina help Americans?”

“Do you know what a swap line is?” Bessent replied to Lemire.

“It’s a currency swap, yes,” Lemire responded.

“Yes, but what is that?” Bessent asked.

RELATED: Trump’s ‘chainsaw’ ally wins key election in South America

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

“You’re the treasury secretary,” Lemire stated.

“Yes, but why would you call it a bailout?” Bessent questioned. “In most bailouts, you don’t make money. The U.S. government made money. We used our financial balance sheet to stabilize the government, one of our great allies in Latin America, during an election.”

He reiterated that the U.S. would make money from the arrangement, adding that he “would rather use peace through economic strength than have to be shooting at narco boats coming offshore if the [Argentinian] government collapsed.” Bessent called the situation a “generational opportunity in Latin America to create allies.”

RELATED: Trump scores win for American farmers as China commits to ‘massive’ soybean purchases

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“By stabilizing the economy there and making a profit, then that’s a very good deal for the American people,” Bessent continued. “There’s a lot we could have been doing for the American farmers, but Democrats closed the government.”

He clarified that the arrangement with Argentina was a $20 billion credit line and that the U.S. has already made a profit on the swap line, which involved exchanging U.S. dollars for pesos.

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September 2, 1945. The mighty battleship USS Missouri and an armada of hundreds of ships waited patiently for the end of the biggest, most destructive conflict the world had ever seen.

The American forces had been anchored in Tokyo Bay for a few days. They were surrounded by naval mines, having been carefully escorted into the port of the enemy they’d devastated with two nuclear bombs just weeks before. Many suspected it was a trap.

‘This is a permanent memorial so that anybody walking up to that grave site can read their story for decades to come on their phones.’

But just after 9 a.m. local time, Japanese and American delegations met on the ship’s deck to sign documents formalizing the unconditional surrender of the Empire of the Sun. The war was over.

As part of the surrender ceremony, 1,500 Allied aircraft flew in formation over Tokyo Bay as a massive show of force mere minutes after the signing. The weight of the moment was obvious to everybody involved, so much so that many Americans went out of their way to see it firsthand.

One last mission

Meanwhile, the business of war continued. The 16th Bombardment Group in Guam was scheduled to participate in the flyover, but American prisoners of war were still in need of supplies. Lt. George R. Hutchison’s B-29B bomber had been grounded due to mechanical issues, and so he volunteered for a mercy mission aboard another bomber to drop goods on Osaka.

Hutchison would not live to celebrate with his fellow soldiers. Two hours into the mission, a low-speed runway crash shredded and burnt the plane, taking his life and the lives of eight others. Only three men survived.

Lt. Hutchison was one of 30 servicemen to give their lives on the day World War II ended. He would be buried in Honolulu, Hawaii, and leave behind a widow, Eleanor.

Honoring the fallen

The tragic fate of Lt. Hutchison is one of nearly 78,000 stories that have been carefully preserved by Stories Behind the Stars, a volunteer group that has spent nearly a decade researching and cataloging the life stories of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in World War II.

Since 2016, hundreds of volunteers from across the United States and several international volunteers have collaborated to document stories like this to honor the fallen.

Drawing upon military records from Ancestry.com, headstone applications, census records, and newspaper archives, project volunteers have contributed obituary-length short essays on thousands of profiles in a publicly available database. These trained volunteers are usually able to pull together a profile in two or three hours, and many contribute hundreds per year.

Among the project’s greatest feats has been a complete catalogue of all WWII veterans at Arlington National Cemetery and Pearl Harbor’s USS Arizona Memorial, two of America’s largest memorial sites. Users can find the history of every serviceman listed at both memorials.

“When you look at flowers on a grave, they disappear after a week,” Stories Behind the Stars founder Don Milne tells Align. “This is a permanent memorial so that anybody walking up to that grave site can read their story for decades to come on their phones.”

RELATED: John J. Pinder Jr.: Baseball hero who chose greater sacrifice

Army Tech. 5th Grade John J. Pinder Jr. (right) and his brother Harold, 1943. U.S. Dept. of Defense

Lunchtime hobby

Milne, a Kentucky-based bank examiner and member of the Church of Latter-day Saints, never expected the project to gain as much traction as it did; it began in 2016 as something to do on his lunch break, he tells Align.

The father of six and grandfather of 15 launched Stories Behind the Stars on the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and planned to end the project with the 75th anniversary of VJ Day in 2020.

But as Milne continued at a consistent pace, writing one story per day, what began as a humble, personal blog was soon attracting millions of views. Dozens of volunteers contacted Milne, wanting to help. It quickly grew into a much larger project, one that Milne ultimately handed off to other leaders. (He remains a part-time contributor.)

“It really took off during COVID, when a lot of people were stuck in their houses,” he says. “They heard about this project and thought it was something to do while stuck in their home. And year after year, we’ve done more and more projects. We’re not professionals. We’re not getting paid to do this.”

New recruits

Milne and the other volunteers soon realized they needed more help to do the project justice:

We did the math and said if we did one story per day, it would take us 1,000 years to write this many stories, but said, why one per day? Why not get more volunteers? We brainstormed and thought that if we put everything into this blogspot, nobody would know it’s there, so we need to save it in a database. We reached out to Ancestry.com, which has billions of records and military records, and asked them if they would host this database for us. They agreed and put it outside their firewall, so nobody has to pay to look at these records.

Volunteers wanted

The need to gather and document firsthand accounts of World War II grows more urgent with each passing day. Of the 16 million Americans who served in the global conflict, fewer than 50,000 are still alive. Most of them are in their late 90s or 100s, and it is expected that they will all be gone by 2035.

The need to memorialize those who never grew old is no less urgent — and no less daunting. Stories Behind the Stars intends to record all of the nearly half a million service members who died between 1941 and 1946 — a massive undertaking that could take decades. At its current pace, the organization anticipates having 25% of the project complete by the end of 2026.

Grassroots efforts such as Stories Behind the Stars are doubly important considering the gaps in government recordkeeping, says Milne:

There isn’t an official tally of how many people died in World War II. Our organization is probably going to find it eventually when we add up all the names by the time we’re done. But even the organization that runs the national WWII memorial in DC doesn’t know what the total is. They didn’t have computers in 1946 when they put the records together. They did their best with index cards, but they didn’t get everyone.

The project’s stable of regular volunteers includes a group of devoted veterans, retirees, and researchers, and they are always looking for more help! Even if it’s just a single article, they appreciate the contributions of people who step up to tell their family’s stories as much as devotees who make a hobby out of regularly assisting.

“Visit our website, and we’ll send you information on how to volunteer!” says Milne. “We provide free training and free access to tools. There’s never any financial obligation to participate. We’re lean and mean! We just need bodies to sit at a computer.”

Stories Behind the Stars can be reached through its website and Facebook page. Check out its YouTube and completed projects pages to learn more.

​Stories behind the stars, World war 2, Wwii, Honoring the fallen, Lifestyle, Veteran’s day