But the greed accusation assumes that wanting to make money is wrong in itself. Frankly, Id like a yacht. The real explanation is the math of making a AAA, or major, video game.

In 2004, a AAA game such as Halo 2 or Half-Life 2 took 50 to 100 people a few years. Today, core teams average 400 to 500 people. The Last of Us Part II credited more than 2,100 people across Naughty Dog and 14 outside studios. The race toward photorealism demands far more artists, far more programmers, and far longer schedules.

Take a hypothetical game on the scale of 2018s God of War: about 300 developers working for four years. At an average salary of $120,000, thats $144 million in pay alone. Benefits and payroll taxes add $43 million. Contractors, motion capture, quality assurance, and localization add $25 million, and offices, hardware, and software another $12 million. Marketing can easily run $50 million. Thats about $274.2 million before a single copy sells.

The game sells for $70, and Steam, PlayStation and Xbox take 30%, leaving about $49 per copy. Just breaking even takes 5.6 million copies.

Most of that budget, $187 million, goes to salaries and benefits. Its paid out over four years before the game earns a dollar. Someone has to cover that payroll, and that someone is investors. They put up the money because they expect a return, and that expectation is what creates the jobs in the first place.

Breaking even doesnt satisfy them. An investor could put the same $274.2 million in an index fund earning 8% a year and have about $373 million after four years. To beat that, the game has to sell 7.6 million copies.

So a game can sell 4 million copies, rank among the years top 20, and still count as a failure internally. Its not because the game is bad. Its because the money would have done better elsewhere.

Ownership matters too. Say I own a studio outright, spend $275 million on a game and earn $300 million. Id be thrilled with a $25 million profit. If I were CEO of a public company, the same result would have shareholders asking why I tied up a quarter billion dollars for four years to earn less than a Treasury bond.

Public companies arent legally required to maximize profit, but they answer to shareholders who can sell the moment growth slows. Executives are mostly paid in stock, too. When the share price dips, the fastest lever to pull is payroll.

Not even Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima is safe. Last month, it was announced that Sony pulled funding for Physint, his long-running spy thriller, and Xbox picked it up. On the surface that makes no sense. Kojima made Metal Gear Solid, and tens of millions of people played Death Stranding.

But the numbers were thinner than the reputation. Death Stranding cost about $100 million and earned about $243 million. Death Stranding 2 cost $150 million to $200 million, and its sales dropped off after a strong first two months. Analysts estimate the franchise has earned about $413 million, a return of 18% to 38% over roughly six years. Keeping pace with the 8% benchmark would have taken about 59%. With Physint reportedly behind schedule and over budget, Sony walked away.

Then theres the live service lottery. Live service games continuously update and allow in-game purchases, keeping the gaming experience dynamic and, for the company, profitable. Every publisher watched Fortnite and GTA Online print money year after year and decided it needed one, too. EA, Ubisoft, Sony, and even Naughty Dog all launched live service projects on top of their usual single-player games. The market had room for two or three winners. Concord, Redfall, Suicide Squad, and Highguard were not among them, and each cost as much to make as a AAA game. For every Helldivers 2, at least 10 others die on the vine. Then come the layoffs.

Microsoft tried to escape the math with Game Pass. On a subscription service, a game didnt need to sell 7.6 million copies. It only needed to keep subscribers paying $10-$23 a month. That funded games that would never have existed otherwise: Double Fines Psychonauts 2, Compulsion Games strange narrative projects, and Tango Gameworks surprise hit Hi-Fi Rush.

But the 8% target just moved to a different spreadsheet. When subscriber growth slowed, the pressure came back for every studio at once. Tango was shut down in 2024, about a year and a half after Hi-Fi Rush launched to great reviews. Compulsion had to buy back its independence from Xbox. Microsoft deserves blame for green-lighting games that were never going to sell and credit for taking the risks that got them made.

None of this excuses bad decisions. Green-lighting five live service clones at once was foolish, and spending $69 billion on a single acquisition was ambitious, to put it kindly. But trying to make money isnt evil. Its what pays for games in the first place.

An indie studio can be happy breaking even. A public company has to keep asking whether its money could earn more somewhere else, and, across the industry, the honest answer is often yes.

So the next time a studio you love is gutted the same month its game tops the charts, remember the math. Making money with art is hard. Getting someone to front you $300 million, then paying it back, is even harder.

***

Michael Knipp is a husband, father of five children, and nerd culture enthusiast. He works in IT at The Daily Wire.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wires new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories from our featured writers to you.

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Earlier this year, provocateur Emerald Fennell turned Emily Brontës Gothic tragedy Wuthering Heights into cheap fodder for the smut-obsessed. This summer, Netflix retconned Laura Ingalls Wilders Little House on the Prairie complete with culturally fluent pioneers and a DEI-mandated American frontier.

They are systematically eliminating our clearest portraits of evil because behind them lies the Christian realities that inspired them.

As for Christopher Nolans Odyssey, I thought it was a cinematic success, but it still made the face that launched a thousand ships a lesson in representation, while casting transgender Elliot Page as the Greek warrior Sinon, whos not even a Homeric character.

Im already recoiling thinking about the heresy that animates feminist auteur Greta Gerwigs upcoming Narnia reimagining, which intends to emasculate Aslan and turn Lewis sacrosanct creation myth into a secular 1950s rock opera.

I could go on, but thats enough to make plain the pattern of Hollywoods utter disregard for adapting the literary canon faithfully. Always it must infuse its warped catechisms, lest we plebeians forget where it stands.

But being the masochist I am when it comes to these matters, I watched Netflixs East of Eden anyway, and I have to tell you, I was genuinely gutted by what I witnessed. Not annoyed by predictable woke tropes, although those were there too. No gutted.

My visceral shock, however, was less about the revision of John Steinbecks perennial Cain and Abel allegory and more regarding what that deliberate modification reveals about the dismal state of our culture.

Will the real Cathy Ames please stand up?

If you havent read Steinbecks East of Eden (and please do!), Ill take the liberty of giving you a little teaser: The novel's antagonist, Cathy Ames, is certainly one of the most heinous villains in American literature, if not in the entire Western canon.

The book introduces her with this haunting bit of prose: I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.

And thats an apt entrance for Cathy. She is a monster at birth, a mutant at the soul level, a fiend cloaked in human flesh. Modern-day psychologists would diagnose her as an incorrigible sociopath who takes pleasure only in the torture, humiliation, and demise of other people.

Cathy is also what critics call a static character: She undergoes virtually no meaningful change over the course of the novel. More unsettlingly, she remains almost impossible to relate to at a human level. Steinbeck gives her no humanizing backstory that draws our sympathies, no redeeming ethical or moral arc, no thing we might point to and say, See, thats why she behaves so horribly.

Static characters are almost humorous in their simplicity, and they serve a variety of purposes in literature. But in Cathys case, her function is symbolism. She is an emblem for unadulterated evil, and thats neither my nor the literary authorities verdict. Its Steinbecks. In a letter, he called Cathy Ames a total representative of Satan.

Its a tailor-made description, given she frames two young boys for sexual abuse, drives a man to suicide, and burns her parents alive all by the age of 16 and the end of the chapter that introduces her. In hopes you will read the book for yourself, I wont spoil the rest of the unspeakable horrors that unfold at Cathys polluted hand.

But as sinister as she is, Cathy Ames plays a paramount role in this story. East of Eden is a moral epic, meaning its not just an entertaining tale about fictional people and events. It actually employs those things for the explicit purpose of drawing our attention to the cosmic war between good and evil, heaven and hell, God and the devil. Cathy, as Ive already noted, represents the dark side of that epic struggle. Humanize her in any way and you collapse the entire framework.

But surprise, surprise thats exactly the sin the makers of Netflixs East of Eden committed.

A moral epic gets the Hollywood makeover

Writer Zoe Kazan told Reuters, "We wanted our audience to be able to identify with every single character, the ones that are good on the surface and the ones that are evil on the surface because if we think about people that are evil or bad as being not human, we don't learn anything about ourselves."

A pleasant sentiment, except no logical reader could conclude that Steinbecks Cathy Ames is evil on the surface. He makes it unmistakably clear from the outset that she is not just a perpetrator of evil but the embodiment of evil itself. A malformed soul are his exact words.

So to correct Ms. Kazan, Cathy is nonhuman in that she lacks the very qualities that make one so empathy, moral quandaries, regret, emotional baggage, anything that would resonate with a real human being. The Bible gives Lucifer no domesticating backstory, so why should his literary stand-in have one?

Actress Florence Pugh, who plays Cathy in the series, had her own nauseating comments: She can still make terrible decisions and face awful consequences, but there can also be ... an understanding of her history and her past, which makes her the way that she is.

Except being a static archetype, theres literally nothing in Cathys history or past to explain her savagery. The fact that she is inherently and incurably evil is the entire point of her character.

But that wont do for Hollywood. It must tinker and snip at a classic until it creates its desired Frankenstein's monster. Thus Kazan gave the diabolical Cathy Ames a tragic backstory, turning her from a Satan figure into a woman we can pity, even as she destroys. She suffers abuse, acquires trauma, is driven to desperation, and, of course, experiences the cold hand of misogyny. Its not even worth delving into. Suffice it to say its a lie. More important to me is the "why" behind it.

When killers get poignant backstories

The show's egregious misreading of Cathy raises an important question: Are the makers of this blasphemous series just stupid, or are they up to something?

Thats a rhetorical question. You know as well as I do theres an agenda at play. What might surprise us is how ugly it is.

Obviously, these Hollywood revisionists are well aware Steinbecks Cathy Ames is not a sympathetic character in any sense of the term. But they chose to rewrite her as one anyway and it has nothing to do with the audience wanting to learn something about themselves, as Kazan sold it.

"Introspection" is a reasonable sop to satiate the masses, but its a ruse. Cathy must be remade, for she represents the very thing the progressive left wants to retroactively undo. As long as objective evil breathes, it stands as a barrier to their dark vision for the world: a dystopia ruled by moral relativism, where one mans act of slaughter is another mans tragic mental break.

Or should I say womans? After all, the morally intact part of the nation has been watching, mouths agape, for months now as thousands of people (most of them mothers) fought for a woman who admitted to methodically strangling her three young children to death in a basement. Postpartum psychosis was an evocative enough backstory to tip the pity scales in Clancys favor.

A similar and equally disturbing trajectory of events surrounded the premeditated stalking and murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. His admitted killer, Luigi Mangione, was made into a sympathetic vigilante by radicals who cheered his courage. His chronic pain, denied claims, and manifesto then made him an ideal mascot for progressives agenda to blame the system rather than the criminal.

Karmelo Anthony, the good kid who stabbed an unarmed student after a verbal confrontation, claimed self-defense, and was cast as a victim of racism, is yet another example.

There is a pattern here, and it reveals a dark truth: There is much power to harness when you give a killer a poignant backstory.

RELATED: 'I think they're demons': Why JD Vance refuses to downplay supernatural evil

Silver Screen Collection/Kent Nishimura-Pool/Getty Images

Television tells a vision

But backstories, even those belonging to killers, are not off limits. On the contrary, they are the lens that allows us to see the gray, the nuance that tempers dichotomous thinking. Much good results from understanding motive so long as the line of objective morality remains unblurred because for every degree it fades, Pandoras box opens a hair more. And then suddenly, the demons are too numerous to count. And they do not go back in the box willingly.

But Steinbecks Cathy Ames is designed to make us look at those bloodthirsty demons, not the complexities of real people living in a broken world. To adapt her character, or any similar character, in this way is a calculated attempt to corrupt what C.S. Lewis called the Law of Human Nature, the idea that man is born with a moral radar.

No doubt entertainment has been powerful in the dulling of mans intrinsic moral compass. Under the guise of artistic license, it surreptitiously conditions the masses. True to its name, television tells a vision in this case, that evil is really just the manifestation of trauma or poverty.

By turning a Satan symbol into a tragic figure, a Netflix series becomes propaganda for the progressive push for absolution. And of course, the communists are cheering. Explaining away evil is their vision too, you know. The only difference is their endgame isnt equity or decarceration; its dominion.

Christianity in the crosshairs

I initially thought it was ironic they chose a famous moral epic the least fitting vessel to undermine the idea of pure evil. But then I realized thats exactly why they chose East of Eden. They are systematically eliminating our clearest portraits of evil because behind them lie the Christian realities that inspired them. If your goal is to unmake evil, Christianity is where you must aim the arrow.

Steinbecks 600-page epic boils down to a single word. After God rejects Cains offering in Genesis 4, he tells the soon-to-be fratricidal murderer: Sin lieth at the door ... and thou shalt rule over him. After a long spiritual journey, the character Lee discovers that the Hebrew translation for shalt timshel is less of a command and more of a gracious offering.

Despite Satan and his wicked pull on the hearts of man, thou mayest rule over evil. That is the lesson Cathys son Cal who fears he has inherited his mother's malevolent nature walks away with.

But when you get rid of objective evil, what is there to rule over? Thats what really guts me. By painting evil as buried trauma, the series offers a secularized, counterfeit timshel. Biblical permission to recognize and deny Satans influence turns into a therapy session on handling our misfortunes better than our forebears. It would be a decent message if it didnt obscure precisely the cosmic war between good and evil that East of Eden seeks to illuminate a darkness our culture exploits for any number of nefarious ends.

The war is real, however, and there's no opting out of it. You can distort works like "East of Eden" to pretend that it isn't, but you remain a combatant nonetheless. Just one who's chosen to fight for the losing side.

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The report, titled Helping Public Schools RISE: Rankings on Integrity in State Education (RISE), seeks to empower parents and legislators with state-by-state rankings on issues that matter most to parents: DEI, gender ideology, parental rights, teachers union influence, and foreign funding.

It shows where protections for parental rights are falling short, and where teachers unions, foreign funding, and gender ideology are exerting undue influence.

By systematically ranking states educational policies and priorities, the report helps legislators hold their schools accountable and helps parents hold legislators accountable come November.

Defending Educations RISE report found that the top 10 highest-scoring states are all Republican-run. For example, Tennessee ranked at the top of the list, followed closely by Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, and Iowa.

This shouldnt surprise Americans who are tired of political leaders on the Left refusing to concede that gender ideology and teachers unions are having an outsized and inappropriate impact on American education. Conversely, many conservative lawmakers are leading voices fighting the politicization of American education, gender ideology, and the misplaced priorities of teachers unions.

According to the RISE report, Republican-led states were the most likely to have policies promoting a non-political and value neutral K-12 education. They are also the most likely to oppose the use of gender-identity to allow biological men on women and girls sports teams, or in their private spaces.

Meanwhile, the bottom 10 states looked very blue. Washington, D.C., where the law allows biological men to access womens sports teams and private spaces if they identify as female, came in dead last. California, where state law stops public school employees from telling parents about a students change in gender identity, barely scored better. Rhode Island, Oregon, and Illinois also predictably landed at the bottom of the rankings.

The outcome of upcoming elections could determine the fate of schools in several states, as multiple governors are either up for re-election or have terms ending this year.

For example, Governor Brian Kemps term will end this November in Georgia, which the RISE report ranked 16th in the nation. Georgia earned a perfect score in the teacher policy category but still has room to improve its DEI-related policies. If the state elects a left-leaning governor this November, then state residents could see the states RISE ranking slide downward alongside a host of bad policies. Voters can choose someone who can pick up where Gov. Kemp left off and address the policies still holding the state back.

Ohio will also be losing its governor in November. According to the RISE report, Ohio ranks 26th overall, after accounting for all categories. However, the state ranks first in the gender ideology category. Ohio voters should focus on electing a candidate who will address Ohios gaps in education integrity especially reigning in the outsized influence of Ohios teachers unions.

Further out West, Wisconsin ranks 23rd on the issues that matter most to parents. Wisconsins scores in the DEI category are good, but the Badger State falls very short on parental rights. In fact, at least 11 school districts allow educators to keep parents in the dark about what is happening with their own children at school.

Wisconsin families are also waiting to see if the new governor will opt in to the new federal tax credit scholarship program, which would unlock new resources for students whose families are seeking alternatives (perhaps because of these rankings). With Governor Tony Evers not seeking a third term, voters have an opportunity to elect a candidate who will make sure parents, not ideologues, are the first to know about decisions affecting their own children.

Rounding out our tour of the Midwest, Iowa may be the RISE reports biggest success story. Iowa ranked 5th in the nation, scoring high in every category. Yet with Governor Kim Reynolds not seeking reelection, Iowas continued progress is not guaranteed. Iowas next governor will either protect the states place in the top five or let it slip. Iowa voters have the opportunity this year to choose a candidate committed to building on Governor Reynolds record.

Overall, Defending Educations RISE report shows that each of these states has something to celebrate and something to work on heading into November and after. Parents and legislators who are concerned about the trajectory of American education should take advantage of it.

This November, they will decide whether their states continue climbing the rankings or fall behind and whether their childrens classrooms can finally go back to being institutions of learning or further devolve into indoctrination hubs of the far-left.

***

Paul Runko is the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives for Defending Education.

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The motion, filed Tuesday, is the state's response to a motion Murdaugh's legal team filed in September claiming it never received extraction files, keychain files and extraction logs from seized smartphones.

In March 2023, Murdaugh was convicted of the 2021 killings of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.

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He was sentenced to two life terms. However, his conviction was overturned in May 2026 after the South Carolina Supreme Court found that former Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca "Becky" Hill improperly influenced jurors.

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Murdaugh is scheduled for a new trial in April 2027.

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In this new round of court documents related to the case, prosecutors claim the defense already had the evidence in some instances multiple times and that its new account is "false," "manufactured" and contradicted by its own emails.

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The state released 40 pages of emails, file folder screenshots and signed discovery receipts spanning late 2022 to early 2023.

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Court records reveal South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) investigators provided full, unredacted raw extractions, password logs, keychain files and reports to defense experts as early as October and November 2022.

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Furthermore, prosecutors produced emails from Jan. 20, 2023 three days before jury selection began in the first trial showing the defense team requesting a duplicate copy of Murdaughs phone extraction because they had misplaced the original.

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"The State will be glad to send the cell phone evidence to the defense yet one more time if they have somehow messed up or lost their copies again," the motion states.

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Read the new motion:

Fox News Digital has reached out to Murdaugh's defense team for comment.

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Following Jessies previous New York Times bestsellers, The Secret Sauce: A Family Cookbook Seasoned with Love hit shelves on Tuesday, featuring crowd-pleasing recipes and heartwarming stories from Jessie, her sister Sydney Rae Bass, and their mom Karen Parker. Their Southern, Italian, and Cajun heritage pops off the page, accompanied by photos of Mardi Gras chicken pasta, marry me key lime pie, and Tuscan tomato salad. Just reading it almost feels like picking garden vegetables with Nonna, cooking up a storm, and eating like you mean it. 

I chatted with Jessie the afternoon before she headed out on tour for her book. Shes a born entertainer, but I wonder if she still gets butterflies when shes playing to more bookish, food-loving crowds than those at The Opry or one of her stadium shows. These days, Jessies focused on raising her kids at home not spending life on the road. But no ones going hungry in this family. 

Im not a chef and Ive never pretended to be, but Im a really good home cook, Jessie says. Preferring cooking to baking, she could probably make most of these dishes by heart. Now a Nashville local with a Southern vibe, Jessie explains, My moms side of the family all came down from Sicily and settled in a little town called Independence, Louisiana, and its filled with Italians. I was literally raised on Cajun and Italian food.

If she had to pick a favorite from her newest collection, Jessie would point directly to her moms red beans and rice. Its a Cajun Louisiana staple, she says. It brings me back to my childhood. Anytime I would travel or go on tour, that was the meal I requested be there when I got home. Even now whenever Eric and I go out of town and my mom watches the kids, well come home and she knows to have red beans and rice on the table. Its sausage and rice and beans and its got a bell pepper and bay leaf its just very, very good and the kids love it. So thats a very special recipe to me.

Jessie describes these types of treasured dishes as genuinely secret family recipes that I still cannot believe my mother was okay with sharing. Theres a couple that Ive asked, Mom, have you told Gigi that that ones in there? She laughs. Her grandmother ultimately approved the familys pink maraschino cherry cookies in the final edit. 

Still, Jessie keeps the mother sauce of Italian cuisine secured in the vault. The Sicilian gravy will die with us, she says.

 

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Jessie and her mom and sister have the kind of fun wine mom energy you want to participate in even if theyre just hanging out in pajamas with coffee around the table. Its an unbreakable bond that just seems to grow bigger as more people get added to the tribe. 

Regarding her light and cheeky Instagram where she entertains over 4 million followers, I suggest that Jessie should win Best Director for convincing her hubby to do stunts like the naked cookbook promo. After spending almost 16 years with her, he clearly trusts Jessies creative eye behind the camera. She could spot talent a mile away. The couple started dating once a mutual friend connected them via Jessies Blackberry. 

She sends me a picture to my Blackberry, and it takes a minute to load, Jessie recalls. I saw the photo and I was like, well sh*t, this guy is gorgeous. Totally what I had just envisioned: tall, dark, and handsome.

Fans caught a first glimpse of Jessies marriage to former NFL wide receiver Eric Decker on their first reality show, Eric & Jessie. Anyone following along will remember their couples exit from Special Forces: Worlds Toughest Test when they confirmed, We ride together, we fly together. But its only an illusion that shes offering up their full story.

Were actually more private than you would ever realize, she says. Our relationship and our marriage is very special and sacred to us. So is our family. Thats why you havent seen us on another reality show because its just too precious. You dont have to share everything.

As for how she does it all while maintaining a level of fitness to keep her JJD Fit community rolling, Jessies all about balance. Ive always had such a great relationship with food, and I know a lot of people dont, she admits. Considering that she entered the music industry as a teen, that mindset is nothing short of a miracle. I dont do the sad salads in plastic, like I just dont play that game, she says. I want good stuff. Food to me is a celebration. I want it to be just delicious and fabulous. Its like a treat. I look forward to it.

I dont overindulge in anything, she says. But I never cut myself off. Dont ever cut yourself off from the pleasures of life. If you want to have a cookie, have a cookie. If you want to have a glass of wine, have a glass of wine. Everything in moderation.

Still, Jessies real about not always toiling away in the kitchen. Ive definitely had my McDonalds chicken sandwich from time, she laughs. But I crave heirloom tomatoes and basil and balsamic as a snack.

Considering shes about to head off to Mexico on a girls trip, a food and fitness travel show doesnt seem completely off the table. I would love to do kind of what Denise Austin did back in the day where I could travel to all these places, do a workout, and then go eat something after and talk about it. I do feel like fitness and food go hand in hand.

When it comes to diet, Jessies advice is to go back to basics.

Weve gotta make it a little bit simpler. Eat your meat, eat your steak, have your butter, have your vegetables, drink your milk, Jessie says. These are all things that our grandparents ate. Just feed your body real food and dont overthink it.

***

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wires new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories from our featured writers to you.

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Moonies Bar & Nightclub, a downtown Ithaca, New York bar popular with Cornell students, told Fox News that underage guests at a private Tri Delta sorority event on Oct. 19, 2024, were marked on their hands, while guests over 21 received wristbands. The bar says its bartenders served alcohol only to guests wearing wristbands.

The complaint and Moonies' account both say Doe was marked as underage. They differ over whether she was then served alcohol.

Doe's lawsuit alleges a Moonies bouncer placed an "X" on each of the then-20-year-old's hands to signify she was under 21, but that she was nevertheless served and consumed at least one alcoholic beverage inside the bar.

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"No alcohol was served to anyone who had mark on their hands," Moonies said in a statement to Fox News Tuesday, disputing the allegations.

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Moonies also told Fox News that Doe later worked for the company from February to March 2025 and discussed the October 2024 incident during that period.

According to the bar, Doe never said during those conversations that she had been intoxicated at Moonies or served alcohol by one of its bartenders.

Fox News Digital contacted Doe's attorney for a response to both of Moonies' assertions.

In a formal answer filed Sunday in New York Supreme Court, Zareen Enterprises LLC, which does business as Moonies Bar & Nightclub, denied unlawfully selling or furnishing alcohol to anyone under the legal drinking age and denied selling or furnishing alcohol to any visibly intoxicated person.

The filing specifically denies the paragraph of Doe's complaint alleging she was served alcohol at Moonies despite having been marked as underage. Moonies also denied that any act or omission on its part caused Doe's alleged injuries.

The bar asked the court to dismiss the complaint against it in its entirety.

The dispute comes as the case has roiled Cornell and drawn national attention, with thousands rallying on campus Monday and faculty senators now pushing a no-confidence resolution against the university's central administration over its handling of sexual assault. Gov. Kathy Hochul has also appointed the New York Attorney General's Office as special prosecutor, with Attorney General Letitia James leading an "active criminal investigation."

Moonies said it hosted the private Tri Delta event from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. that night with about 185 guests, including roughly 150 who were over 21 and 35 who were underage.

The bar said it had a contract with the sorority and marked underage guests' hands while providing wristbands to those over 21.

In the statement, Moonies called Doe's allegation that she was served alcohol "completely inaccurate," saying its employees "strictly followed the rules and did not serve alcohol to any underaged guests."

WATCH: CORNELL STUDENTS PROTEST SCHOOL'S HANDLING OF SEXUAL ASSAULT INVESTIGATION:

CORNELL PICKS FORMER DEPUTY US ATTORNEY GENERAL TO REVIEW SEX ASSAULT RESPONSE

In its court filing, Moonies also asserted as affirmative defenses that Doe cannot establish that it unlawfully sold alcohol to an underage or visibly intoxicated person, or that any alleged unlawful sale caused her injuries. The bar maintained that it complied with all applicable laws and regulations governing alcohol sales.

The dispute concerns one part of Doe's account of the hours preceding the alleged assault and what happened at Moonies before she arrived at Chi Phi.

According to her lawsuit, Doe began the evening drinking vodka at her Tri Delta sorority house before a sorority house mother accompanied her to Moonies. She later went to another Ithaca bar before leaving alone around 11 p.m. and walking to the Chi Phi fraternity house to meet a friend who was a member.

By the time she arrived at Chi Phi, Doe was visibly intoxicated and had consumed roughly 10 standard drinks over three hours, according to her complaint.

Once inside, Doe alleges she was given another beer before going upstairs, where two fraternity members pressured her into snorting what they said was ketamine, a drug she says she had never previously taken. She alleges they also gave her marijuana and high-proof liquor before sexual activity began.

Doe alleges other fraternity members became involved as the night progressed and that she eventually became "completely incapacitated." Seven former Chi Phi fraternity brothers are accused in her lawsuit of sexual assault and rape.

The men have denied wrongdoing, with some maintaining that sexual activity was consensual and others denying they participated. No criminal charges have been filed against the seven men.

The case burst into public view when Doe filed the 101-page lawsuit Sept. 16, nearly two years after the alleged encounter.

In addition to the seven former fraternity members, Doe sued Cornell University, Chi Phi and affiliated entities, her own Tri Delta sorority and Moonies, among others, alleging that institutions around her failed to protect her before, during and after the events of that night.

The lawsuit's allegations prompted renewed scrutiny of the original criminal investigation.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, who initially declined to pursue charges, has said the six-page sworn statement his office received from Cornell University Police in 2024 did not allege that Doe was drugged against her will or gang-raped and instead described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as "voluntary, conscious, and consensual."

A fuller transcript of Doe's November 2024 police interviews later obtained by CBS New York included statements in which she distinguished the initial sexual encounter from later activity and explicitly told investigators she had been raped.

Van Houten said his office had never received that transcript.

Fox News' Michelle Langer contributed to this report.

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When pressed directly on whether he holds membership in the radical organization, Jackson launched into an extended filibuster on healthcare affordability while side-stepping the question regarding his affiliation with the group.

The awkward exchange unfolded when the debate moderator questioned Jackson on his proposal for a policy championed by the Democratic Socialists of America: Medicare for All. Noting that nearly 40% of Mainers hold an unfavorable view of socialism, moderators asked Jackson to clarify whether his support for single-payer healthcare stems from an active membership in the organization.

Rather than offering a clear confirmation or denial, Jackson pivoted to an impassioned defense of universal healthcare, taking aim at corporate pharmacy profits, Republican opponent Sen. Susan Collins, and President Donald Trumps tax cuts.

I support Medicare for all, so that people that I know across the state have healthcare, Jackson replied. I mean, its the worst thing in the world for somebody to lay there at night and not know whats happening to them and be afraid to go and get the services that they need because they know they cant afford it.

Jacksons refusal to address his connection to the Democratic Socialists of America highlights the delicate political tightrope he is walking as the Democratic nominee in one of the nations most heavily watched Senate contests. Jackson, a former state Senate president, stepped into the Senate primary spotlight after former nominee Graham Platner dropped out following rape and abuse allegations.

Jackson has run from political labels during the campaign, telling CNNs Manu Raju that he doesnt consider myself anything and telling MS NOWs Morning Joe that he does not endorse the national platform of the Democratic Socialists of America. Despite his recent insistence, his history with the radical Left runs deep.

During his unsuccessful run for Maine governor earlier this year, the Maine Chapter of the radical socialist organization formally endorsed Jackson, praising him as a working class hero and claiming that Jackson promised Maine DSA will have a seat at the table. Jackson embraced the endorsement on X at the time, calling on working Mainers to take back whats ours.

Jacksons ties to high-profile figures on the Left have also raised eyebrows as he attempts to moderate. Jackson ran Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential primary campaign in Maine and served as a superdelegate for the socialist Vermont senator. Sanders is scheduled to hold three major rallies alongside Jackson across Bangor, Lewiston, and Biddeford ahead of election day, according to the Maine Wire.

Controversial Left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker also promoted Jacksons candidacy following Platners exit, declaring Troy Jackson is him! Jackson has since tried to minimize the connection to Piker.

Throughout Tuesday nights debate, Jackson touted other far-Left hobby horses. In his answer about his plan for ICE enforcement, Jackson said, Right now what you have is a rogue agency, pushed by Donald Trump to go after black and brown people in this country he would later post a clip from the debate simply labeled Abolish ICE. When asked if voters should have to show ID at the polls he answered, No.

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If they didnt ruin it is close to the highest praise I can offer, let me offer it now. Netflix managed to pull off an adaptation of Steinbecks magnum opus that feels mostly faithful to the source material, covers the essential parts of the lengthy text, preserves the core of most of the characters, and does so in an aesthetically inspiring way. From gorgeously set title cards to needle drops as the credits roll, the shows artistic vision is clear and compelling. Whats more, the moral center of the tale is there, and as a long-time fan of the book, I believe this is what counts.

The story follows two generations of the Trask family, and Adam Trasks encounter with the Hamilton family (Steinbecks own family on his mothers side). Stretching across the American continent from New England to the Salinas valley, the story operates as a twice-told retelling of the Cain and Abel story from the biblical book of Genesis. Adam and his brother Charles fight for their father Cyruss affection, with Adam receiving seemingly undeserved favor and Charles constantly wishing for love. Through a childhood of rejection, Charles anger is kindled and nurtured, culminating in Charles brutally beating Adam nearly to death (in the book, Charles returns home to retrieve an ax to finish the job while Adam hides. This detail is missing from the show). 

After stints in the army and a period of vagrancy, Adam returns home to Charles, discovering that their father has died and left them a fortune. Charles is suspicious about its origins, but Adam chooses to be more trusting. While arguing about the money, a beaten, bloody, nearly dead mysterious woman calling herself Cathy drags herself to their door and introduces viewers to one of the most interesting villains in American literature. After nursing her to health, naïve and lovestruck Adam marries Cathy before realizing her true nature. 

Between book and screen, the largest change and the one most likely to earn complaints is the modification of Cathys backstory. In the book, Steinbeck explicitly intends Cathy to be a monster through and through. She is someone who is born different from other people, as different as someone with a visible deformity but possessing a deformity of the soul instead. Where Steinbecks villain is nearly unadulterated evil, the Cathy of the Netflix adaptation is a victim in many senses. She recounts abuse that occurred when she was 5 years old (the viewer only sees her being lured into the woods with candy and must fill in the rest of the details) and is an apparently somewhat reluctant object of the affections of her high school teacher, rather than a manipulative seductress as she is portrayed in the book.

After threatening to show people the love letters from her pursuer, the distraught schoolteacher appears at her house in the middle of the night before killing himself in the towns church. Cathys father, in another departure from the book, brutally beats her and threatens to continue to do so, suspecting her connection to the teachers tragic death. Cathys father in the book in contrast physically disciplines her exactly once, in response to her refusal to attend school. In both the book and the adaptation, Cathy responds to the beating by burning her parents alive and faking her own death. 

Cathy being a somewhat sympathetic victim certainly changes aspects of her character, but her culpability as a murderer and a manipulator of men is never in doubt even if the show attempts to make her motives more understandable to viewers. She kills her parents, sleeps with her new husbands brother Charles, attempts to abort her children with a knitting needle, shoots her husband, abandons her infant twins, returns to prostitution, kills her madam, and does unspeakable things to men in her brothel while keeping photographic evidence for blackmail purposes. Though she is a more nuanced or victimized character on the screen, she remains a villain. 

The story makes clear through relatively heavy-handed allegorical and symbolic characters that some people, like Cathy, Charles, and Cathys son Caleb, have a certain predisposition for evil or meanness, while others like Adam and his son Aron have about them an innocence, a kindness, and a kind of naivety. However, a persistent theme in both book and show is that one need not give in to the evil they find within themselves, that even good people choose to do bad, and vice versa. Even Cathys lifelong villainy is a product of choice, and her progeny Caleb who carries a part of her within himself is presented with the opportunity to choose to be different despite his tendencies. The Cain and Abel story takes a prominent role in book and show, with discussion centered on the best way to understand Gods command to Cain that he shall rule over his sin crouching at the door. The conclusion arrived at is that the Hebrew word timshel (originally timshol) is best understood in the sense thou mayest rule over, a statement of opportunity and choice rather than fate. 

When Aron and Cal are young boys, Caleb accidentally overhears his father and Lee discussing their mother, very much alive despite what Adam had previously told them. Realizing that the knowledge of their mothers leaving them and her profession would break his brother, Caleb chooses to withhold the information. He tells Aron that his father plans to send a wreath of carnations clear across the country to adorn their mothers grave. In what is in many ways the emotional climax of the show, Caleb is later shown laying a carnation wreath on his mothers grave, an act of forgiveness that the show adds to the book but that in many ways solidifies the novels central claim: that Caleb can choose to be different than his parentage, that he need not carry on the sins of his father or his mother, but instead may rule over his own sin, forgive wrongs done, and become better for it. 

The portrayals of these characters from the novel are, with few exceptions, masterful. Lee, portrayed by Hoon Lee, is a particularly excellent addition to the cast as a wise counselor figure, and his unfortunately brief conversations with Samuel Hamilton steal the show in many ways. The miniseries format means parts of the book are lost, but one of the most lamentable absences is the family dynamic of the Hamilton household. We see Samuels wife Liza for one brief episode, and we do not get to meet Samuels many children, nor Steinbeck himself who narrates the novel and appears briefly peeking out from behind his mother Olives skirts.

This absence is hard for me to bear, but the show makes good use of the seven-episode limited series format nonetheless. If considering other possible criticisms, it bears noting as well that those, like me, of more prudish sensibilities will perhaps be shocked at the amount of nudity the first few episodes contain (though one could hardly imagine adapting Cathys exploits in a family-friendly format). 

East of Eden is timelessly American, a story that portrays nearly every type of American and connects both coasts, multiple centuries, and Americas own internal struggles as it attains maturity across the continent. While fans of the novel may have fair criticisms, Netflixs adaptation is in many ways exceptional, taking Steinbecks heartrending tale and giving it new life for another generation of fans.

***

Philip D. Bunn is an assistant professor of political science at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he teaches political theory and American politics.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wires new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories from our featured writers to you.

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A U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Air and Marine Operations crew stopped the vessel south of Newport Beach at about 1:30 p.m. Friday, CBP told Fox News Digital.

The group included 11 men, two women and an accompanied boy, all of whom were identified as Mexican nationals.

COAST GUARD OPENS FIRE ON BOAT SMUGGLING 25 CHINESE NATIONALS NEAR FLORIDA AFTER IT REFUSED TO STOP

Agents transported the group and vessel to a U.S. Coast Guard dock in Newport Beach before turning all 14 over to Border Patrol for processing and seizing the boat.

One person was evaluated for possible dehydration and seasickness but was stable and cleared by emergency medical personnel, CBP said.

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"Maritime migration is dangerous and can too often result in death," CBP said. "Illegal aliens should not embark on a dangerous journey. The United States border will remain closed to illegal migration by sea, air, and land."

The interception is the latest in a series of suspected migrant boat incidents in and around the coastal city.

TRUMP DHS HITS 16 STRAIGHT MONTHS WITH 0 RELEASES AT THE BORDER

Surveillance video obtained by FOX 11 Los Angeles last month showed another boat pull into Newport Harbor before at least a dozen people got off and dispersed into the community.

In a separate incident last month, 37 migrants were rescued offshore after reportedly spending two days without food, water or fuel.

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Cellphone video from another incident about two years ago showed more than 20 suspected migrants getting off a panga boat in Newport Harbor before scrambling into waiting vans.

The repeated incidents have prompted Newport Beach City Councilmember Erik Weigand to push for surveillance cameras near the harbor entrance.

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"The last Saturday, then the Saturday before, and a few Saturdays before that. These guys have been trying to unload illegal migrants into our city and then off into the community," Weigand told FOX 11.

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Weigand is proposing two cameras that could use existing infrastructure around the jetties or seawall to monitor boats entering and leaving around the clock.

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The councilmember said additional surveillance could give authorities an early warning when suspicious vessels approach and potentially allow law enforcement to respond before passengers reach shore.

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"Yeah, we have to have some sort of discussion, but it would be a feature for security," Weigand said. "I think having technology is a good thing. If we can have eyes and ears on something that looks suspicious, we could send up a drone."

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Weigand said the larger concern is that authorities may have little information about who is aboard vessels approaching the coast or what they are carrying.

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"They could be smuggling drugs, they could be simply just be looking for a better opportunity in America, or they could be up to terrorist activities," Weigand said. "We don't know, that's the problem."

Fox News Digital has reached out to Weigand for additional comment on the recent incidents and his concerns about suspected maritime smuggling operations targeting the area.

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Shockingly, he had been on law enforcements radar since he was just 13. In 2021, he reportedly acknowledged that he had self-radicalized into ISIS ideology. He later entered the juvenile justice system over allegations involving homemade explosive devices. By 17, prosecutors alleged that he had a handgun, was communicating with ISIS-linked individuals, and was preparing for mass violence. Roughly four years separated that first warning from the terrorism indictment. 

Theres a pattern developing in terrorism cases in our homeland, with individuals growing radicalized at younger ages than ever before. In 2025, eight of the 11 alleged actors involved in seven ISIS-inspired attacks or disrupted plots in the United States were teenagers. Four were 17 or younger, and six of the seven incidents involved at least one teenager. The year before, six of eight ISIS-inspired plots involved at least one teenager. The problem is getting younger, and the individual cases show how early the path can begin.

There is still an opportunity to recognize what is happening to these kids early and intervene, before the only institution left to deal with them is the FBI.

A school may see a disciplinary problem. Parents may see anger or isolation. Police may see juvenile crime. Online, that same kid may be consuming terrorist propaganda or developing relationships the adults around him know nothing about. 

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) has warned that violent extremists use social media, encrypted messaging, and online gaming platforms to recruit, spread terrorist messaging, and plot attacks. A teenager sitting alone in his bedroom may be physically alone, but he may not be radicalizing alone. 

The path toward terrorism can begin looking like juvenile trouble, isolation, a fascination with weapons, troubling online behavior, or a kid searching for somewhere to belong. None of those things makes a teenager a terrorist. But when extremist ideology, terrorist propaganda, violent rhetoric, weapons, and extremist relationships begin appearing alongside them, what looked like separate problems may be something more. 

There Is No Single Path

Recent U.S. cases show teenagers being influenced through family members, friends, online networks, and extremist contacts they may never meet in person.

Abdullah Haji Zada was 17 when federal authorities arrested him in Oklahoma in October 2024 alongside his older brother-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, an Afghan national who entered the United States following the withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to federal prosecutors, the two planned an ISIS-inspired attack for Election Day, sought AK-style rifles and ammunition, and expected to die carrying it out. Haji Zada was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.

The family relationship is important. In July 2026, the Justice Department initiated removal proceedings against Haji Zadas mother, Nazira Haji Zada, alleging that she supported ISIS and assisted family members involved in the Election Day plot. The government also alleged that she and Tawhedi helped radicalize other family members. Those claims remain allegations, but they show that the person influencing a teenager may already be someone in his life.

In Michigan, the relationships were with distant peers. In the fall of 2025, federal authorities disrupted what prosecutors described as an ISIS-inspired attack plot involving young men in the Dearborn area. Three of the five alleged participants were teenagers. Investigators said members of the group discussed ISIS and a potential attack, communicated through encrypted applications, acquired firearms, and practiced shooting.

The investigation eventually landed on young men in New Jersey and Washington state who were also communicating about ISIS and plans to travel overseas to join the organization. After the Michigan arrests became public, prosecutors said some accelerated their travel plans. Three men from New Jersey and Washington later pleaded guilty to terrorism-related offenses.

A teenager can now build a community hundreds of miles from home, sharing material and reinforcing beliefs with people the adults around him may never know exist. Teenagers have always been influenced by their peers. What has changed is how easily they can find peers who reinforce the most extreme version of what they believe.

Christian Sturdivants case raises a different problem. He was 14 when the FBI first encountered him in North Carolina in 2022. According to federal authorities, he had been communicating online with someone he believed was associated with ISIS and received instructions to take a hammer, knock on doors in his neighborhood, and attack whoever answered. His grandfather intervened after Sturdivant left home carrying a hammer and knife. He subsequently received mental-health treatment, his social-media access was restricted, and the FBI investigation was eventually closed.

It didnt pull him away from extremism. Authorities encountered him again in late 2025. Now 18, Sturdivant told undercover FBI employees posing as ISIS members that he wanted to conduct a New Years Eve attack using knives and hammers. 

In Colorado, the investigation into Humzah Mashkoor began when he was 16. At 18, authorities arrested him at Denver International Airport as he attempted to travel overseas to join ISIS. Months earlier, another 18-year-old from the Denver area, Davin Daniel Meyer, had been arrested at the same airport while attempting to travel to Iraq to fight for ISIS.

There is no public evidence that Meyer and Mashkoor knew one another, and two cases do not establish an organized youth network in Colorado. But juvenile records and lower-level activity are often not publicly visible, making it difficult to know what may exist below the threshold of a federal terrorism case.

There is no single profile here. The path can run through family, friends, online contacts, or relationships authorities encounter years before an attack. What these cases have in common is that the process can begin while the people involved are still children, which makes the networks around them worth understanding.

The Afghan Generation Growing Up in America

More than 190,000 Afghans have settled in the United States through the relocation and resettlement efforts that followed the 2021 withdrawal, including children who have now spent several formative years growing up here. A child who arrived at 11 is now 16. A 13-year-old is now 18.

For most of those kids, those five years have meant exactly what Americans hoped they would: school, friends, jobs, sports, college, and the opportunity to build a life far removed from the Talibans Afghanistan. But resettlement does not eliminate the challenges that can accompany displacement and cultural adjustment. 

Afghanistan remains home to dozens of terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), and the Haqqani Network, among many others. Geography no longer provides much separation from those influences when propaganda, recruiters, and extremist networks can reach young people online. None of that makes Afghan teenagers uniquely prone to radicalization, and the overwhelming majority will never become involved in extremism. But it does mean the country their families left behind is not disconnected from the influences some of these kids may encounter while growing up here.

Successful resettlement therefore has to mean more than getting a family safely into the United States. Bringing children out of a war and giving them the opportunity to build a future here also means caring about what happens five years later. Schools, families, community organizations, and local authorities are often in a better position than federal counterterrorism agencies to recognize when a teenager is becoming disconnected, falling into criminal activity, or moving toward extremist networks.

After taking in a refugee population of Afghan kids, we cant ignore it. There is an important space between treating a struggling teenager as a terrorism suspect and pretending concerning behavior does not matter because discussing radicalization is politically uncomfortable. That space is where prevention has to happen.

When the Network Becomes Part of the Risk

That brings us to another type of youth network worth watching: street crews and gangs.

A gang is already a trusted network, often built around loyalty, reputation, shared identity, and a willingness to take risks for one another. Where crime or violence is already normalized, some of the barriers an extremist recruiter would otherwise have to overcome may already be lower.

If extremist ideology enters that environment, it does not need to transform the entire group to matter. One teenager can begin sharing jihadist propaganda with friends who already trust him. Grievances can take on an ideological explanation, and violence can be reframed as serving a larger cause. Most members may never become interested in extremism, but the teenager who does is no longer exploring those beliefs alone. A gang does not have to become a terrorist cell for the network to become part of the risk.

There is history worth considering in the United States. Fremont, California, and the surrounding East Bay have been home to one of the countrys largest Afghan-American communities for decades, and Afghan youth gangs emerged there long before the 2021 evacuation from Kabul. Historical reporting described young Afghan men involved in street violence, including a group known as SAG, or Save Afghan Girls, whose members reportedly targeted non-Afghan males who dated Afghan girls. More recent Afghan-identified street crews have remained visible in the Bay Area.

That history does not establish a jihadist connection. It establishes that young Afghan males organizing into street groups around identity, loyalty, and community ties is not new in the United States. There have also been reports of Afghan youth gang activity in Colorado, although the public record remains too limited to establish the structure of those groups or any ideological component.

What matters is whether the behavior and influences inside an existing network begin to change. A group of teenagers committing crimes presents one problem. If members begin circulating jihadist propaganda, supporting terrorist organizations, developing relationships with extremists, or combining access to weapons with discussions about ideological violence, it becomes a different problem. We have seen that overlap develop elsewhere.

What Europe Can Teach Us

The jihadist networks connected to the November 2015 Paris attacks and March 2016 Brussels bombings included men with histories of drugs, robbery, stolen vehicles, and other street crime. Some also had neighborhood and friendship relationships that predated their radicalization.

Researchers call the overlap between these worlds the crime-terror nexus. When extremist ideology reaches someone already embedded in a criminal network, trusted relationships, access to weapons, familiarity with violence, and other capabilities may already exist. Belgium showed how dangerous that overlap could become when people authorities knew primarily as criminals moved into jihadist networks.

Swedish research found substantial criminal histories among jihadists who traveled to Syria and Iraq, including individuals with gang backgrounds. Jihadist ideology can give a different purpose to dynamics already present in some criminal environments, redirecting grievance, loyalty, and violence toward an ideological cause.

Europe is now seeing the problem reach an even younger population. Researchers at West Points Combating Terrorism Center identified 42 minors arrested across Europe in 2024 for involvement in Islamic State attacks, attack planning, or propaganda activity. During one seven-day period, authorities in France, Belgium, and Switzerland arrested 11 teenagers linked through a closed online group. NCTC has highlighted the broader trend of young people increasingly appearing both as targets of terrorist recruitment and as perpetrators of terrorism.

Europe shows us what can happen when criminal networks, adolescent relationships, and extremist ideology begin to intersect. The pieces are not all together in the United States. That is why this is the time to pay attention.

Before the FBI

These are young people, and in many cases there may still be time to reach them before extremist beliefs become plans for violence. Parents may notice changes in behavior or new relationships. 

Schools may encounter threats or a fixation on violence. Police and juvenile authorities may see weapons or criminal behavior, while gang investigators may understand the peer network around a teenager. None of those things alone indicates terrorism. They become more concerning when extremist ideology, terrorist propaganda, violent rhetoric, or contact with extremists begins appearing alongside them.

Families also need somewhere to turn before calling the FBI feels like their only option. Schools and local authorities need to recognize when ordinary adolescent misconduct begins taking on an ideological component. Communities dealing with youth gangs need to notice when the influences inside those networks change. And when a child has already demonstrated extremist behavior, we need to think beyond the immediate crisis to what happens next.

Prevention is not prediction. It is recognizing when warning signs are moving in the same direction while there are still choices available. Once a teenager has acquired weapons, selected a target, attempted to travel overseas to join ISIS, or begun preparing an attack, those choices become much narrower. We are no longer trying to redirect a kid who may be heading toward violence. We are trying to stop him before someone gets hurt.

We do not know how large this problem will become. The warning signs in the United States are still scattered, and the crime-terror overlap seen in parts of Europe has not fully developed here. That uncertainty is not a reason to ignore what we are seeing. It is a reason to pay attention while there is still time to do something about it.

There is still time to reach some of these kids before the FBI has to. Finding them earlier is not about finding more terrorists. It is about having fewer of them. The path toward terrorism can begin looking like something else. The time to recognize it is while it still does.

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A flag is a simple piece of fabric. But what it represents a country, a people, a history can inspire us deeply. And when that flag is planted by someone who has chosen to stand beside you in your darkest hour, it becomes something more: a message that you are not alone.

A flag planted by someone who has chosen to stand beside you in your darkest hour becomes a message: You are not alone.

That is what I think about when I see an Israeli flag planted by a church in America.

In 2024, we began Flags of Fellowship with a simple idea. Christians across America would plant Israeli flags at their churches and in their communities in memory of the innocent lives taken on October 7, 2023.

We could not have known how far that simple act of friendship would travel.

This year, more than 4,375 churches, synagogues, universities, and organizations around the world are participating in Flags of Fellowship. Together, they will plant more than 5.2 million Israeli flags. The movement now reaches 12 countries, with more than 1,775 participating churches and organizations outside the United States and Canada.

Every one of those flags tells a story.

It tells an Israeli family that we remember. It tells the Jewish community that someone sees what happened to us. And it tells the world that October 7 did not destroy the friendship between Christians and Jews. If anything, that friendship has grown stronger.

Last month, we gathered in Israel at Banias Church in Nazareth for the first Flags of Fellowship event of this year. Church volunteers and community members planted 1,200 Israeli flags before Christian and Jewish leaders spoke and prayed together. The Armenian Christian Associations childrens and youth choir sang the Lords Prayer.

Israel is home to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people from many countries and backgrounds. We do not always agree. We do not always see the world in the same way. But there is profound beauty when people who are different choose to stand together.

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When a church plants an Israeli flag, it is not making a political statement. It is making a spiritual one: a declaration of friendship, remembrance, and faithfulness to those who are hurting.

That is what I hope people see when they look at Flags of Fellowship: not simply flags, but friendship; not simply remembrance, but solidarity.

The world has changed since October 7. So much attention is given to division, hatred, and the people who tear things down. But another story is being written.

It is being written in churches across America and around the world. It is being written by pastors who stand before their congregations and say that Israel is a friend. It is being written by families who plant an Israeli flag outside their homes, by Christians who pray for Israel, and by Jews who are discovering, sometimes for the first time, how deeply many Christians care about them.

It is written one flag at a time.

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Daniel Gnap/NurPhoto/Getty Images

I have had the privilege of watching this friendship grow for years. I have sat with Christian leaders who opened their churches to Israeli flags. I have heard from pastors whose congregations embraced this initiative with extraordinary enthusiasm. And I have spoken with Israelis who are deeply moved to learn that, thousands of miles away, people they have never met are standing with them.

As we mark another anniversary of October 7, I am reminded that remembrance is not only about looking backward. It is also about deciding what kind of future we want to build.

Choosing courage over fear. Friendship over division. Love over hatred.

There is a phrase we often use at the Fellowship: Our enemies burn the flag; our friends plant it.

That is the choice behind Flags of Fellowship. Millions of flags, planted by thousands of congregations and organizations, say the same thing to the Jewish people: You are not alone.

I am deeply grateful for every one of them.

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A 10-year-old boy previously pleaded guilty to attempted rape and felonious assault for his part in the heinous attack.

'My daughter was not my daughter. Her hair was scalped from her head. She had bruises and blood all over her body.'

The 11-year-old female suspect was addressed as M.H. in court. On Friday, a judge found her delinquent on the charges, which is the equivalent of an adult conviction but for minors.

The girl was attacked on Sept. 13, 2025, in a field near E. 148th Street and St. Clair Avenue, according to Cleveland police.

The girl testified that her clothing was removed and she was strangled with her own shirt.

Antavia Kennibrew, the mother of the victim, testified in court against M.H., as did the 10-year-old boy. Kennibrew said her daughter was treated at a hospital for weeks after the attack.

"When we left the hospital, she went through severe behavioral changes. She kept saying she's not pretty anymore. She kept saying Earth is a bad place," she said.

In previous comments, she said the attack left her child "unrecognizable."

"What I saw was unbelievable," Kennibrew said. "My daughter was not my daughter. Her hair was scalped from her head. She had bruises and blood all over her body. Her eyes were filled with blood. Her lips and mouth were filled with blood."

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Kennibrew said the judge answered her prayers when she found M.H. delinquent on all the charges.

"I was very vulnerable. I told the whole world what had happened to my baby," she said. "And I just was hoping, hoping that somebody like, you know, they will help me fight. And they did. And they did. And my baby, she got her justice. She got her justice."

She added that she wants M.H. to face the full punishment allowable by law.

"The maximum for whatever she's able to get," Kennibrew added. "I want her to know that she should never did this. Like, she needs to be able to live with that every day."

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Start with the name. Hamas is an Arabic acronym Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Resistance Movement and the word Islamic isnt decoration. Article One of the 1988 charter states the groups program plainly: The Movements programme is Islam. From it, it draws its ideas, ways of thinking and understanding of the universe, life and man. Not a Palestinian nationalist program borrowing religious language for legitimacy. Islam itself is the source and the method.

The charters own slogan removes any ambiguity: Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes. Four theological clauses, none of them political in the ordinary sense. Hamas isnt simply a group that happens to be Muslim, nor is it an extremist distortion of Islam as written. It is a movement that has defined itself, in its founding text, as the armed application of Islam against the Jewish state. What Hamass leaders and fighters say and do isnt an attempt to distort a religion it is a pursuit to apply it and fulfill its commands.

Hamass charter doesnt stop at vague hostility. It frames the conflict not as a political enmity with a state, but as a religious loathing of anything Jewish. For Hamas, the conflict with Israel is a cosmic one. The charter quotes Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Bannas declaration that Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. Obliterate not negotiate with, not coexist beside. The document explicitly rules out diplomatic settlement: There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.

Fanciful Westerners and dishonest apologists assure us that jihad is merely inward piety and spiritual self-control. Hamas disagrees. It classifies jihad not as private devotion but as an armed religious obligation binding on every Muslim one that requires expelling non-Muslims from Muslim land. Hamas didnt invent this Islamic category. It inherited the doctrine of jihad as the divinely prescribed duty that activates when Muslim territory is perceived under attack. For Hamas, Israels existence itself is the triggering offense.

Three years of hostage negotiations have obscured a simple fact: this was never framed by Hamas as a war over borders. It has always been framed explicitly as a war over sovereignty belonging to Allah, administered on behalf of the umma, against a people the charter repeatedly identifies not as Israelis but as infidel Jews.

Khaled Meshaal made this explicit six days into the war, when he called on Muslims worldwide to fill the streets in jihad, declaring, this is a moment for the application. Application of what, exactly? Of jihad as classical Islamic scholars define it armed struggle against non-Muslim power, owed as worship, not improvised as grievance. Hamas and its allied theorists have since folded Israel and its Western backers into a single target they call the Crusader-Zionist alliance a modern label for what medieval jurists called dar al-harb, the abode of war: all territory outside Islamic rule, legitimately subject to jihad until it submits or is subdued.

In that framework, American and European support for Israel doesnt complicate the theology; it completes it. The United States and Israel become a single civilizational enemy, Crusader and Jew joined under one banner, exactly as the term is designed to suggest.

Three years on, Western commentary still prefers militant group and political wing to the words Hamas uses about itself. That erroneous vocabulary isnt analysis it is cowardly avoidance, and it costs lives. This refusal to name the Islamic sources and their devastating literal application will only ensure the repetition of massacres against non-Muslims, while the world remains in ignorance. The only thing that would actually help is simple: the ability to see the next attack coming because we understood the last one correctly. Hamas told us what it believed in 1988. It told us again in the days after October 7. Still, many refuse to take the terrorists at their own word. We are the ones who have spent three years pretending not to have heard it.

The hostages taken that morning, the families murdered in their homes, the young people killed at a music festival they werent victims of a border dispute that spiraled into violence. They were victims of a theology that published its intentions decades in advance and has never once revised them.

Three years later, honoring them requires more than mourning. It requires finally reading what Hamas actually wrote.

***

A. S. Ibrahim holds two PhDs in Islamic Studies. He is the author of Sharia Versus the U.S. Constitution: Why Americans Must Choose Freedom and Islam and the West. He has also authored Muhammads Military Expeditions (Oxford, 2024), A Concise Guide to the Life of Muhammad (Baker Academic, 2022), Conversion to Islam (Oxford, 2021), Basics of Arabic (Zondervan, 2021), A Concise Guide to the Quran (Baker Academic, 2020), and The Stated Motivations for the Early Islamic Expansion (Peter Lang, 2018), among others. Follow him on X: @al2ostaz

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Washington and Beijing have pre-existing hotlines for geopolitical incidents, which have repeatedly failed in times of crisis. When American planes mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, U.S. officials trying to apologize could not reach their Chinese counterparts. In 2001, a Chinese fighter collided with an American surveillance plane near Hainan Island, but attempts at communication went unanswered for twelve hours. When an F-22 shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon in 2023, Defense Minister Wei Fenghe declined to take Lloyd Austins call. American officials have accused Beijing of shutting down these channels to signal displeasure and reopening them to signal approval. Neither countrys statements from last week say what constitutes an AI incident, or which officials or agencies would cooperate in the case of one.

This lukewarm result has frustrated people who wanted the summit to accomplish far more. AI safety advocates have urged the two leaders to ban self-improving AI and establish safeguards against biological and nuclear misuse. The urgency of these proposals intensified after multiple news reports about experimental AI agents escaping test environments and hacking outside systems, fueling fears that autonomous models were going beyond human control. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated the administrations position bluntly: We cant pause. You cant, because the Chinese wont pause. The Chinese state is not about to suppress an industry it regards as central to industrial growth and strategic competition.

Beijing demonstrated its coercive power in 2021, when it decided that the private tutoring industry was socially intolerable. Under the double reduction policy, the government forced tutoring organizations into nonprofit status, drove capital out of the sector, and reduced the industry by 80% within months. Today, parents still seek advantages for their children, and the state has begun promoting AI as a viable option for cram schools. The episode proved that the state could slow down a private industry it considered immoral, but not Chinas competitive culture.

The cutthroat frenzy the Chinese call neijuan, or involution, is how China became a manufacturing and technological superpower. Provincial governments poured subsidies into local companies that undercut one another and drove prices down worldwide. That is why Chinese firms dominate solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, and drones today. Now, more than 30 provincial governments are bankrolling local AI firms. Tutoring was easy to destroy because it was just a consumer service. Manufacturing, EVs, and AI development are tied to provincial budgets; local officials treat them as engines of employment and growth.

When the central government intervenes, its to ensure the AI buildout happens on the states terms. National agencies have barred local governments and state-owned enterprises from building small data centers, pushing the biggest projects into national hubs. Grid capacity to power them is expanding, with 38 nuclear reactors under construction. Beijing has every reason to keep building: youth unemployment hit 18.9% in August, and the state badly needs AI to work.

Right now the United States is still the leader on frontier models and computing capacity. Chinese labs, squeezed by chip restrictions and short of capital, have to innovate to get around their compute bottleneck. Beijing doesnt expect to trail for too long. AEI researchers Ryan Fedasiuk and Satvik Pendyala project that China could close its compute gap with the United States within 24 to 36 months. A trailing power has no interest in an AI pause.

In a major speech on AI this year, Xi warned about losing control of AI. In the same speech, he urged the world to oppose overstretching the concept of national security in the field of AI, a thinly veiled attack on American chip controls. During a formal AI dialogue in Geneva in 2024, American experts tried to discuss AI risks while Chinese diplomats complained about export controls. Since microchip restraints were not discussed at this recent summit, Beijing has nothing to gain by agreeing to slow down.

AI developers on both sides would resist any verification regime. American labs guard their models as closely as governments guard nuclear secrets. Anthropic and OpenAI have already accused Chinese companies of using fraudulent accounts to extract Claude and ChatGPTs reasoning capabilities. Chinese labs are just as secretive; their executives worry about having their work eaten, an understandable fear in a market where companies poach engineers, copy features, and undercut one another daily. Verifying an international pause would require extraordinary access to the entire machinery of AI development: tracking mechanisms built into chips, detailed supply chain tracking, and inspections of each sides data centers by the other. Companies that accuse their rivals of theft are unlikely to let those rivals governments inside their facilities, and Beijing will not open up to the country trying to cut off its chip supply.

At best, both sides have agreed that there are risks associated with AI, and it should not be part of the decision-making process on nuclear weapons use. Cold War history points toward this narrower area of cooperation. In 1963, Washington and Moscow agreed to establish a hotline and to ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater. These were three areas where each country could detect the others violations without setting foot on its territory. A comprehensive ban foundered on access. The Soviet Union would not accept the number of on-site inspections Washington considered necessary to verify underground tests. By the final round of negotiations in Moscow, Khrushchev had withdrawn his earlier offer of two or three a year. Underground testing continued for nearly three decades. The hotline, meanwhile, remains in service today, without ever requiring either government to open its most sensitive facilities to the other.

A hotline between Washington and Beijing would likely center on the following: an autonomous agent crossing into the other countrys networks, a model-enabled attack on critical infrastructure, or a serious case of biological misuse. Each government would staff its end with technical officials, not diplomats. Neither side would hand over a training run, and both sides would only report conclusions in agreed terms over the hotline. Beijing could still let the phone ring, though, so each government should also invest in the one safeguard that needs no permission: hardening its power grids, hospitals and financial networks against autonomous intrusion. Defense has a virtue that diplomacy lacks, since it works whether the intruder is a hostile state or, as in the Hugging Face breach, an American model that wandered out of its test environment.

Beijing wants AI that makes its economy more productive without loosening the partys grip on information. The Trump administration, whatever American safety advocates might prefer, has made clear that it wants AI that wins. Rivals with such different aims will not stop the AI race. They can still agree not to mistake an accident for an attack while they run it.

***

Anang Mittal is a Washington, D.C. based public affairs professional. He was a staffer for Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

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Naturally, people are starting to ask questions.

And BlazeTV hosts Stu Burguiere and Dave Landau are a little concerned.

Dozens have been quarantined after a researcher at a Russian plague laboratory dies of an unknown infection, Stu says. I will say, I dont really want there to be Russian plague factories or observatories anymore.

No, Dave agrees, but what will be exciting is when we find out that our tax dollars have somehow been funding it.

However, while dozens have been quarantined, Stu believes its important to note, quarantine does not mean you have the virus or disease.

Being quarantined means theyre worried that you had contact with someone or contact with someone who had contact with this particular woman, he says.

So, it doesnt mean all these people have the illness. However, its the freaking plague. So, we better be pretty careful, he adds.

Meanwhile, Russia is saying it had nothing to do with that.

It was just a normal illness. Its no big deal. This is all out of a massive precaution, Stu says, mimicking Russia. Which may be true, but they did close down four different hospitals, three of which they have direct evidence of a contact tracing to those hospitals. The fourth one just kind of being out of extra, extra special security measures.

The outbreak bears a striking resemblance to the Wuhan lab leak preceding the COVID pandemic, which Dave points out is kind of terrifying.

Especially because this is, you know, a replay of things that have happened in the past, he adds.

You mean conspiracy theories about COVID-19? Stu asks.

Conspiracy theories about things that were proven correct. Thats what I mean, Dave says.

Want more from Stu and Dave?

To enjoy more of Stu and Dave's lethal blend of wit, humor, and insightful commentary subscribe to BlazeTV the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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Consent has become the watercooler word. Was she responsible for putting herself in that situation, or were the men responsible for what happened afterward?

Brotherhood isnt helping your brothers get away with bad things. Its demanding that your brothers be better men.

But I want to bring two more parties into the conversation: dads and the manosphere.

I keep asking myself a question I dont see asked nearly enough: Where were the other young men?

Not the seven fraternity members accused in Jane Does lawsuit. I mean the other brothers who may have been in the house or who saw the fraternity Snapchat thread during the night.

According to the civil complaint and reporting on the messages, a photo of Doe appeared in a group chat, and messages invited other fraternity members to come upstairs. The public record does not establish what every recipient knew or whether each was physically present. But the question remains: What had those young men been taught a man should do if he realizes something terrible may be happening down the hall?

More frightening is the thought of what my sons would have done if they were in that house.

Thats where dads and the competing vision of masculinity being sold to young men online belong in this conversation.

I have two boys under 10, and Ive noticed the standard most dads emphasize: Dont be the bad guy. Dont bully other kids. Dont take advantage of your friends.

Fine. But thats the floor.

Your goal as a father isnt merely to raise boys who wont commit evil. Its to raise boys who will confront it.

Too often, we obsess over raising boys who arent predators. We dont spend nearly enough time raising protectors. Strength isnt demonstrated by what you can take from somebody weaker. Its demonstrated by what youre willing to risk on that persons behalf.

Im not raising my sons to walk away from the Cornell fraternity house room. Im raising them to open the door and stop whats happening. Sometimes avoidance is the right answer, and avoidance takes judgment. Other times intervention is the right answer, and intervention takes courage.

The manosphere teaches young men that masculinity is something you prove through acquisition: women, sex, money, muscles, followers, status, dominance. Men advertise their body count as if the number of women they have slept with were a masculine achievement. Women become objects, not obligations. Thats rotten.

Most critics focus on how the manosphere distorts the way young men see women. They spend less time on how it distorts the way young men see other men. The entire system is a hierarchy: Whos the alpha? Whos weak? Whos afraid? Whos willing to go the farthest?

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Ivan Pantic/iStock/Getty Images

Now imagine being the 19-year-old fraternity brother who realizes something is badly wrong upstairs. Stopping it may mean risking exactly what this worldview tells him matters most: the approval of other men.

The popular phrase goes, Character is what you do when no ones watching. Good. But Im also teaching my boys that character is doing the right thing when everyone is watching and when doing it makes you unpopular.

Applied to the Cornell allegations, the manosphere tells a young man not to be the buzzkill. Actual masculinity tells him to be willing to become the least popular man in the house. Open the door. Stop whats happening. Find her clothes. Get her somewhere safe. Call the police if necessary. Accept the social consequences tomorrow.

Thats courage.

The stakes rise when the wrongdoer is your friend: your frat bro, your teammate, your lifelong best friend. We teach boys that loyalty is a masculine virtue. It is. But we have confused loyalty with complicity.

We take our friends keys when they shouldnt drive. Likewise, dragging your friend out of a room when he is about to do something horrific isnt betraying him. It may be the most brotherly thing you can do for him.

Brotherhood isnt helping your brothers get away with bad things. Its demanding that your brothers be better men.

The manosphere didnt arrive in a vacuum. Boys have been begging for someone to tell them what a man is, what strength looks like, and what we owe other people. If fathers dont answer those questions, someone on TikTok happily will.

RELATED: America needs heroes who do not apologize for being heroes

Heritage Art/Heritage Images/Getty Images

The answer to the manosphere isnt telling boys that masculinity is toxic. Its giving them a better version of it.

My biggest fear as a father concerns the moments when I wont be there. Fatherhood has an expiration date on enforcement. Eventually my sons will face a situation without me standing beside them.

Then it wont be whos beside them. It will be whats inside them.

If Im successful, their standard wont be dont get arrested or even dont participate. It will be this: When everyone else loses his head, keep yours. And when somebody vulnerable needs help, help.

The courts will determine legal culpability in the Cornell case. New York Attorney General Letitia James is now overseeing the renewed criminal investigation, while the civil lawsuit proceeds separately.

Fathers dont need to wait for either process to ask what would have happened if their own son had been there.

We shouldnt settle for hoping he wouldnt have participated. We should raise the son who would have stopped it.

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Teasley entered the plea last Friday to first-degree premeditated murder, as well as a separate sexual exploitation of a minor charge stemming from conduct dating to 2019, according to the Maricopa County Superior Court. Under the plea agreement, Teasley is expected to be sentenced to natural life in prison, and prosecutors will withdraw their pursuit of the death penalty. His sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 4.

He was also charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and first-degree burglary in 2020, but prosecutors voluntarily dismissed those charges last week as part of the plea agreement.

In the aftermath of Heike's killing, a police report revealed that Teasley had been struggling with his sexuality and gender identity, ABC 15 said. Police previously said they believed Heike's killing was a random attack, and investigators found no prior communication between Heike and Teasley, according to the outlet. He was also a former Marine recruit who was separated from recruit training just months after enlisting in 2019, the outlet said. 

PHOENIX WOMAN, 29, FOUND DEAD ON HIKING TRAIL

"Our records indicate that Zion W. Teasley entered recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot San Diego on March 25, 2019. He was separated June 17, 2019, prior to completing boot camp," the U.S. Marine Corps told the outlet. 

When questioned by the police, Teasley said Heike appeared to be "what I would want to look like," according to the outlet.

Investigators also uncovered a screenshot that they believed shed light on Teasley's state of mind. It read, "When I see a beautiful woman and I'm a man," ABC 15 said.

The outlet added that Teasley was fired from one of his jobs for being "aggressive toward female employees" and was "suspected of stealing merchandise."

PHOENIX POLICE ARREST SUSPECT IN CONNECTION TO LAUREN HEIKE'S DEATH

Heike was killed in April 2023 when a resident found her body along a community trail, officials said. She was found with 15 stab wounds and injuries to her hands and forearms, police reported.

Investigators said DNA, surveillance video and cellphone location evidence linked Teasley to the crime.

Heike's family said they had supported prosecutors' initial decision to seek the death penalty but ultimately agreed with the plea agreement, which ensures Teasley will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of release.

Based on the condition of Heike's clothes and officials finding her belongings scattered along the trail, investigators believe Heike was chased over a barbed wire fence during the attack.

"The suspect ran after Lauren and then sprinted away before returning to the location where Lauren's body was found and climbing over the barbed wire," Teasley's probable cause statement read.

Fox News Digital's Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.

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In Livingston, Montana, a blue dot of a town in a bright-red state, we started production without any armed security. Its a small, relatively crime-free town. But the protesters began to interrupt filming on day one, and over the course of the next two weeks, we went from zero armed guards to six.

In that time, protesters aimed vehicles at our people. One man drove a pickup through our barricade at roughly 30 mph toward our cast and crew, screaming, You guys are fascists. Another rolled a Jeep at two security managers and pinned them against a wall. A third swerved at a guard, came back, and grabbed at a security managers gear.

One protester walked onto a locked-down set with a bullhorn and shouted fake action and cut cues during a vehicle stunt, the exact commands that keep performers from getting hit by a car.

Crew members and security guards were followed to their rentals, confronted in restaurants, and told their tires would be slashed. One protester even impersonated a crew member on set. A local Facebook group posted that our producer should be shot in the head. Security photographed a man in black, wearing a balaclava and carrying a duffel bag, standing outside our set at night. One woman released a bag of airborne seed pods over the set, and our medic had to treat eighteen cast and crew for breathing problems, eye irritation, and allergic reactions.

But heres where it gets crazier: after all this, the mob got the Livingston city commission to go after us, too.

Commissioner Jessica Wilcoxs number one question was whether Livingston really want[s] to approve projects that require armed guards. Commissioner James Willich said the production wasnt beneficial for peoples health, safety, wellbeing. Commissioner Melissa Nootz noticed the cops on set seemed serious.

Yeah. Theyre serious because people are threatening to shoot our producer.

Finally, Commissioner Cindy Daniels let the cat out of the bag: This wasnt a Hallmark film. Residents complained about simulated violence, hired guns, and triggering scenes. So a Hallmark romance keeps its permit, but a Daily Wire film about immigration enforcement loses it.

Producer Dallas Sonnier speaks to the city of Livingston, Montana

Last Saturday, with five and a half shooting days left, the city commission decided to suspend our permit. Thats a violation of the First Amendment. Viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple.

I know, because Ive seen this logic dozens of times at universities where I was supposed to speak the mob threatens violence, then the administration cancels the event. A classic hecklers veto.

We didnt break a law. We didnt violate a permit condition. We didnt endanger anyone. The city just decided it was easier to silence the filmmakers than to police the mob. We told them wed be back to work the next day regardless every lost day of filming costs us six figures. But on Tuesday night, after a seven-hour meeting where what seemed like a hundred people aired their fake grievances, the commission, realizing it was about to get sued into the ground, reinstated our permit.

There was one condition: we have to put up black fabric screens around any violent activity because of the potential psychological impact on the community.

Thats right: a feelings wall. Not even kidding.

Just imagine a conservative town shutting down a liberal movie about the evils of ICE. Wed hear about nothing but banned books and forbidden ideas for weeks on end. But for the cancellation of the Daily Wire, the entertainment media celebrated.

The Bulwarks Will Sommer ran a piece titled, A Small Montana Town Tells Ben Shapiro to F*** Off. The AV Club called us an ultra-conservative white nationalist media company. (We make movies with black, Hispanic, and Korean heroes. Make it make sense.) The Daily Beast called it an unhinged MAGA movie and a MAGA fever dream. The New Republic labeled the movie unbelievably offensive.

Theyre not even hiding the ball. These censorious jackasses just want to ban things they dont like. Its that simple.

They hate the Daily Wire and everything we stand for. But to their great dismay, were not going anywhere. Every time some squishy snowflake complains that our movie is triggering, we know were doing something right.

A mob of protesters tried to shut us down and failed? Thats another trophy on our mantel.

Our upcoming film will be completed. It will be released. And it will kick ass. Its a movie nobody else would have the guts to make, and by the time we wrap this one, well be starting on the next. Thats on top of five new shows at the Daily Wire, our non-stop midterm coverage, and our amazing editorial output every single day.

Keep watching, because were just getting started.

Your subscriptions keep this fight going, not just for the reporting and the shows, but because the Left desperately wants to shut us down. Free speech is nothing but a talking point to them, while its a day-to-day constitutional exercise for us.

Join us. The only reason theyre trying to stop us is because were winning.

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Angelynn "Angie" Mock, 48, will be eligible for parole after 25 years, according to a Sedgwick County District Court judge, KWCH reported.

The ruling comes after Mock reached a plea agreement in the case, in which she was charged with first-degree murder.

TEEN PLANNED MIDDLE SCHOOL MASSACRE BEFORE MAKING DEADLY LAST-MINUTE CHOICE TO KILL MOM: OFFICIAL

On the morning of Oct. 31, 2025, officers discovered Anita Avers, 80, with several stab wounds inside her Wichita, Kansas, home, which she shared with Mock and Mocks stepfather.

According to a probable cause affidavit, Mock made several statements suggesting she believed her mother was the devil and that she killed her to "save herself."

Mocks stepfather told KAKE-TV that she had been diagnosed with mental illness and suffers from delusions and depression.

KWCH added that Mocks stepfather said she may have suffered from bipolar disorder, which was later believed to be schizoaffective disorder.

PSYCHOSIS EVIDENCE CHANGES EVERYTHING IN CLANCY JUDGE'S OTHER KILLER MOM CASE: RETIRED JUDGE

Despite those claims, a judge found Mock competent to stand trial in July.

In August, Mock pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Mock entered software sales after working as a news anchor and reporter for Fox 2 KTVI in St. Louis from 2011 to 2015.

From 2007 to 2011, she was listed as a morning anchor at KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City.

Fox News Digitals Louis Casiano contributed to this report.

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The alleged victim survived days of abuse before escaping and walking into a police station missing a finger, prosecutors said. His captors had recorded the torture and sent the video to his wife, demanding money from his family in Venezuela.

Darwin Veliz-Gonzalez, Jefferson Balza-Delfin and Yender Enrique Campos-Malave, all Venezuelan nationals, were each sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for the kidnapping and torture, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Colorado announced. 

A fourth defendants sentencing was postponed.

BIDEN MADNESS STILL BEING REVEALED AS FATHER KILLED, CHILDREN KIDNAPPED BY TERROR GROUP MEMBER: DOJ

"This is what Tren de Aragua was doing in our community," U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly said. "Colorado is safer with these violent criminals in federal prison for the next 20 years, and we will continue to pursue every member of Tren de Aragua until there are no more left in our state."

The victim had been renting a room in the Denver home, when his roommates learned that he and his father were police officers in Venezuela and took him captive, prosecutors said. 

They tied him up with rope and held him for several days without food and with very little water.

SIX MEN ALLEGEDLY KIDNAPPED TWO PEOPLE AT VACATION RESORT, TORTURED THEM AT BOAT RAMP: FBI

During that time, the men filmed themselves strangling him with a rope until he nearly lost consciousness, repeatedly holding his head in a bucket of water for 30 seconds or longer, threatening him with a gun and pistol-whipping him.

They sent the recordings to his wife to demand ransom from his family in Venezuela and shared them with international TdA leaders, whom they consulted about the kidnapping, prosecutors said.

When the family did not pay, one gang leader explicitly suggested cutting off a finger to pressure them into sending money. 

TRUMP SAYS US MILITARY ELIMINATED 'INFAMOUS' TREN DE ARAGUA LEADER IN LETHAL STRIKE

The victim heard his captors discussing the plan before Balza-Delfin used pliers to sever his right pinky finger, an act the men also filmed.

Denver police came to the South Hazel Court home on Oct. 16, 2024, after receiving a welfare call reporting that someone had been kidnapped there. Officers conducted a limited visual search but found no one in distress because the victim, who was still inside, was too afraid to make himself known, prosecutors said.

After the visit, three of the men fled the residence, giving the victim an opportunity to escape. He walked into a Denver police station the next morning, reported the kidnapping and assault and showed officers his missing finger.

Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas praised the victim for coming forward.

"I applaud the victim of this heinous crime, and all victims, regardless of immigration status, for reporting criminal behaviors and helping us arrest those who prey on our community members," Thomas said.

A federal grand jury has separately indicted Brawins Dominique Suarez Villegas, also known as "Chino San Vicente," for his alleged role in the kidnapping and torture.

PATEL SAYS FBI IS 'MANHUNTING' TERROR SUSPECTS AROUND THE GLOBE AFTER TWO HIGH-VALUE CAPTURES

He is also accused of participating in a broader TdA criminal operation involving robbery, extortion, kidnapping, money laundering and drug crimes between May 2024 and approximately March 2025. 

The FBIs Denver Field Office and Denver police investigated the case, which FBI Denver Special Agent in Charge Amanda Koldjeski cited as part of the bureaus efforts to dismantle the gang.

"The FBI, alongside our local, state, federal, and international partners, is working to disrupt and dismantle TdA through intelligence-driven investigations like this from our Violent Criminal Enterprise Task Force," Koldjeski said.

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The 35-year-old woman from Steilacoom allegedly threatened two girls with a knife following Monday mornings crash on southbound Interstate 5 near DuPont, FOX 13 Seattle reported, citing Washington State Patrol.

A 9-year-old girl suffered multiple broken bones and a stab wound, while a 15-year-old girl was hospitalized without serious injuries, according to the outlet.

WATCH: BYSTANDERS, POLICE LIFT VOLKSWAGEN OFF WOMAN PINNED UNDERNEATH AFTER DRAMATIC E-BIKE CRASH

Witness Nathan Wilkinson told KING 5 he was driving to work when he came upon the wreck and saw two men in military uniforms from Joint Base Lewis-McChord intervene.

"There's people standing around, then all of a sudden there was a flash, and then the two soldiers jumped on a person. I heard a scream at that time," Wilkinson told the outlet. "I saw one of the soldiers had a knife in his hand that he had dislodged from the person they tackled."

SOUTH CAROLINA WOMAN ACCUSED OF STABBING LYFT DRIVER 11 TIMES CLAIMS MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

Wilkinson called 911 as bystanders subdued the woman, KING 5 reported. FOX 13 reported that two soldiers stopped to help and that photos from the scene appeared to show one holding someone down.

CALIFORNIA MOM HAS BOTH LEGS AMPUTATED AFTER SUSPECTED IMPAIRED DRIVER PLOWS INTO HER RESTAURANT LUNCH TABLE

Troopers investigating the crash said the SUV struck the left-side barrier, veered toward the right shoulder and then swerved back across the freeway, hitting a semi-truck in the middle lane, according to FOX 13.

The SUV struck the barrier again and rolled over. The semi-truck driver was not injured, the outlet reported.

FLORIDA MAN ARRESTED FOR DUI AFTER TROOPERS ALLEGEDLY FIND 34 OPEN ALCOHOL CONTAINERS IN VEHICLE

Officers told KING 5 that the woman was allegedly driving erratically before the crash.

The woman was initially taken to a hospital for evaluation. FOX 13 reported Monday that authorities were investigating her for DUI, vehicular assault and first-degree assault.

In a Tuesday morning update, KING 5 reported that she had since been booked into the Pierce County Jail and was expected to face two counts of assault, vehicular assault and two counts of reckless endangerment. Whether those charges had been formally filed was not immediately clear.

The cause of the crash remained under investigation, and the womans relationship with the girls was not specified in the reports.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT SUSPECT CHARGED IN CRASH THAT KILLED POLICE OFFICER AND HIS GIRLFRIEND

The service members names were not immediately available. 

Wilkinson said that he hoped they would be recognized for stepping in.

"They didn't run away, they didn't pass, drive on by. They stopped and helped," he told KING 5.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Washington State Patrol and Joint Base Lewis-McChord for comment.

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David J. Rush, 49, of Ashburn, Virginia, pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria to one count of wire fraud. Prosecutors said Rush fraudulently obtained approximately $193.6 million while serving in a senior executive-level federal position and holding a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance.

Rush created fictitious government authorities, including a fabricated Special Access Program, to disguise expenditures as classified government activities. According to court documents, he directed approximately $145 million in wire transfers that he ultimately used to buy luxury real estate, including four homes in Florida, watches, and at least one car. He also invented a government activity that supposedly required purchasing gold. During a May 19 search of his Virginia residence, the FBI seized 298 gold bars that prosecutors said had cost the government approximately $46 million.

Agents also recovered approximately $2.1 million in cash, 104,795, and numerous luxury watches. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Rush agreed to forfeit the gold and currency, the fraudulently obtained properties, 30 watches, many of them Rolexes, and two 2026 BMW Alpina vehicles. At least one of the BMWs is valued at approximately $172,000.

Rush also admitted lying about his education and military background as he advanced through the federal government. Court documents say he falsely claimed degrees from Clemson University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, neither of which he attended, and misrepresented his military experience, including claiming to have been a pilot.

The plea agreement disclosed a separate national security concern. Rush admitted that in late 2025, he revealed the existence of a U.S. government clandestine human source, along with certain descriptive information about that source, to a foreign government official who was not authorized to receive it.

Prosecutors said the disclosure could have endangered the source and U.S. personnel working with the source and undermined the governments ability to recruit future human sources. The government has not publicly identified the foreign government involved.

The fraud investigation began after an internal CIA investigation identified potential criminal activity and referred the matter to the FBI. Rush was subsequently fired, according to NBC News.

David Rush abused his position and betrayed the public trust and should be held fully accountable for his actions, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said. We appreciate our law enforcement partners in the FBI and Department of Justice for securing this outcome. The Agency is committed to ensuring that those entrusted with our Nations secrets are held to the absolute highest standard. 

The case has also prompted investigations into how Rush obtained a senior position and access to sensitive programs despite false claims about his background. The Director of National Intelligence has asked the Intelligence Community Inspector General to open an investigation, and the Justice Departments probe is continuing.  

Rush is scheduled to be sentenced on January 28, 2027. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, along with supervised release, restitution, forfeiture, and a fine. A federal judge will determine his sentence after considering the federal sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.

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Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

This week marks the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israelis, civilians, some people in the [Israel Defense Forces], and foreign residents. Women, men, children, young adults, some of them attending a rock concert. 

Remember the facts. Without warning, over 4,000 terrorists from Hamas stormed in over the fence, I cant call it a wall, it looks to me more like a fence, stormed in and waged a surprise attack against Israel. They were accompanied by 200 civilians that tagged along on the expectation that the terrorists would be killing, wounding, torturing, taking hostages, and the civilians could rape, mutilate, and steal, and bring loot, and all of that was accomplished. 

We also forget that there was another thousand terrorists who, in support of this invasion, had launched 4,300 rockets into civilian centers. In fact, that would be the first salvo, which in the next few days would account for a total of 13,000 rockets. Remember, 13,000 rockets all fired at Israeli civilian centers. They attacked 23 different little hamlets. Almost 1,200 died. They took 251 hostages. They got in 14 miles, 14 miles inside 1948 Israel. 

So, what are the facts about why did they do this?  

Well, we can ask that question because there had not been an Israeli inside Gaza since 2006, for almost, at the time of the assault, 17, 18 years. Israel was supplying the majority of the water, fuel, and power for Gaza even though they had left and turned it over to them.  

Gaza had staged one election, in the words of the great Muslim scholar Bernard Lewis, One election, one time. They had killed off many of the architects of the opposition. They had thrown Palestinian Authority activists off buildings. They had eliminated them. They never held another election. They tortured or killed internal dissidents. 

In this period in which Hamas had complete autonomy over Gaza, they received somewhere between $45 and $50 billion in aid, roughly from 2006 to the present day. Forty to 50 billion. That would have allowed this choice piece of Mediterranean real estate to build luxury hotels, to bring in European and Gulf advisers, and in other words, to create a Qatar or an Oman or a Dubai.  

They didnt want to do that. They diverted about $1 billion to $2 billion and built the largest labyrinth of tunnels probably in the world, not subways, but I mean military tunnels, about 500 miles. It cost them 6,000 tons of cement, 2,000 tons of metal. The entries and the exits were placed under schools, mosques, and hospitals, forcing the Israelis to attack those exits and entries and then incur collateral damage. 

Remember one other thing: They were prepared to send more terrorists and more soldiers deeper into Israel if the IDF had not responded belatedly, though they did. They did respond and stop them. They confiscated over 10,000 weapons. Where those weapons came from, you can imagine, but most of them were from Iran or China. 

I want to leave you with a couple of questions. Number one, would there have been this cry of genocide, this hatred of Israel? It was always there, but would there have been an American action, all of the things about Iran, had they just not attacked on Oct. 7?  

What if Hamas had said the following: We have a peace deal with Israel. Were going to create our own nation here. We have twenty thousand workers inside Israel at competitive wages worldwide. Were going to use that revenue and that expertise that theyre going to gain by working with Israelis to create a successful autonomous nation. Were gonna show the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank that we can be preeminent in the Middle East. 

They didnt do that. Instead, they wanted to slaughter Jews, men, women, children, mutilate, behead, rape, torture, take hostages. 

I have another second question. What was Israel supposed to do after this had happened, given that they had an overwhelming military that could dominate almost any country? I shouldnt say almost every country in the Middle East. With this enormous military power and this egregious assault on Israel, it was really one of the few assaults ever conducted inside 1948 Israel.  

What were they supposed to do? Were they supposed to say to the Hamas leadership that was gloating in the global media, Would you please turn over the architects who planned this, the forty or fifty people? They did. Did they say, We would like all the perpetrators as well? They did. Did they say, We would like you to return all 251 hostages? They did. Did they say, We would like you to stop sending rockets, especially the rockets, all of them, intended to kill our own civilians? They did. 

And what was the Hamas reaction? Jubilation. Jubilation. This was the high point of Iranian subsidies. They were getting billions of dollars from international relief organizations, and the Biden administration had refunded them through the U.N. They were getting weapons from China. They had help and solidarity from Hezbollah and the Houthis. They were at a crescendo of pride and arrogance. 

What did Israel do? They waited three weeks before invading. And what was the reaction to that patience and that demand that this could be resolved peaceably if they would turn over all the perpetrators and release the hostages? It was absolute hatred and contempt. 

I saw it when I walked across my home campus where I work. On Oct. 8, 9, and 10, I saw students yelling, From the river to the sea. They were not objecting to Israeli entrance in Gaza. They werent objecting, I should say they were celebrating that they thought Oct. 7 was the entree, the beginning, the alpha of a larger multipronged assault whose ultimate aim was to kill as many Jews as possible. 

So, why do people react that way given the circumstances? Why dont they, the world, condemn these killers, these mutilators, these beheaders? And why do they keep saying that Israel is a genocidal enemy when they waited and waited and waited before going in? 

Well, Israel is not the Israel of the 1950s and 60s, a small, poor nation that is a victim of repeated assaults. Its a powerful 10-million-person, 10-and-a-half-million-person nation that has high tech, an overwhelmingly strong economy, an attraction of science and technology in the Middle East.  

In other words, in the words of DEI, they are a victimizer or oppressor just because of their, quote, privilege. 

DEI played a lot of it. In the world thats gone mad, in Europe, the United States, Israel, Israelis were white and Palestinians were nonwhite and therefore victims. Doesnt matter what the reality was. That was the binary. 

Antisemitism played a role. We have half of our people for some reason going to colleges where theyre all indoctrinated. We have immigration now where were letting in 5 million people from the Middle East in the first and second generations from what we can tell by Hasan Piker or Zohran Mamdani or Ilhan Omar or Abdul El-Sayed, is that they have very little affection for their host.  

They despise Israel, and they want Israel destroyed, and they work and act and fund to that purpose. 

Add it all up on this commemorative week of Oct. 7, and to sane and sober people, it makes no sense. But sane and sober people, unfortunately, in the West today are in a minority. 

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

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Were officially launching the construction of the largest new shipyard in the United States since WWII, said Trump. Anduril is investing $3.7 billion in a state-of-the-art shipyard that will be known forever. 

The facility, planned for Sparrows Point in Baltimore County, will manufacture components for the Navys Virginia-class attack submarines. The Navy awarded Anduril a $2.9 billion contract tied to demonstrated production outcomes. 

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey said, This space needs bold investment and decisive action.

We are way behind at precisely the moment we need to be surging forward. Our country cannot meet our own demand, much less demand from allies, Luckey said. Anduril will do our level best to solve this. 

Trump cast the project as part of a broader effort to revive American shipbuilding.

What were doing this afternoon is part of a dramatic turnaround for America and our defense industrial baseNot so long ago, we built as many as four ships a day More recently, it has taken an average of 7-15 years, Trump said.

The investment comes after continuous combat operations and extended deployments have strained the Navys fleet. A recent U.S. Naval Institute report found that the Navy was sustaining more than a dozen guided-missile destroyers, along with aircraft carriers, to support operations in the Middle East.

John Polowczyk, president of the Virginia Ship Repair Association, warned that extended deployments are forcing ships to miss scheduled maintenance while leaving repair workers with less work.

Theres less work because some of these ships would have been in and awarded contracts for continuous maintenance, he told Forbes.

The shipyard announcement drew bipartisan support, with Democrats and Republicans praising the projects potential to strengthen the Navy and boost Marylands economy.

This investment will be a huge economic boost to our region adding over 13,000 jobs and it will support the Navys efforts to increase production and advance their submarine technology, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) said.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) credited the One Big Beautiful Bill with laying the groundwork for the investment.

Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, which laid the groundwork for efforts like this to expand our defense industrial base in Maryland, adding thousands of good-paying jobs in the state while providing the best weaponry possible for our men and women in uniform, Harris said.

Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore called the project historic for the state.

This massive new project will deliver the largest private investment, drive billions of dollars in economic activity, and create the most jobs in Maryland in history, Moore said.

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August Hanning headed the spying agency from 1998 to 2005 but was illegally provided about 2,000 documents, some classified, by a paid BND informant, according to the German Federal Prosecutor's Office.

'Hanning is strongly suspected of treasonous espionage, obtaining state secrets, attempted treason and espionage.'

The stunning allegations constitute the greatest spying breach since the end of the Cold War, according to Politico.

Hanning is accused of using the documents in order to compile an analysis for a foreign spy service.

The foreign country involved was not identified, and it is unclear whether it ever received that analysis.

Hanning also allegedly provided political information to a representative of the foreign spy agency.

A senior security lawmaker said the arrest was unprecedented and would likely damage the nation's relations with other countries' intelligence agencies.

"Hanning is strongly suspected of treasonous espionage, obtaining state secrets, attempted treason and espionage," reads a statement from the prosecutor's office.

A former BND office manager was also arrested for his alleged part in the scheme. Both will appear in court before a judge at the Federal Court of Justice.

Some of the documents related to the Iranian nuclear program as well as the Russian military, according to one local news source. However, a German official granted anonymity said that the case involved neither the Chinese nor the Russian intelligence agencies.

RELATED: European climate change activists forced to pay more than $1 million over protest damages

The German spy agency has suffered other damaging espionage scandals that have eroded faith in the BND.

"For the BND and for me, there can be no compromises when it comes to internal security," said current BND chief Martin Jäger in a statement.

"None of my goals, none of my priorities are called into question by this incident," he added.

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

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Pike was hospitalized immediately after the September 30 execution attempt, and it was initially unclear whether she would regain consciousness. Her attorneys issued a statement on Tuesday saying that she was making the first steps in what they expected to be a long recovery.

Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care. Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery, the statement read.

Attorney Stephen Ferrell appeared on Sundays broadcast of CNNs State of the Union, calling on Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) to commute Pikes death sentence after the botched execution attempt.

We dont know the prognosis and may not know for several days, he said at the time. I think at the very least the governor should commute Ms. Pikes death sentence to a life sentence. We dont know what her physical state will be, but it is clear that she has endured a torturous attempt at executing her.

Pike survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital, prompting an immediate inquiry into how that could have happened. Injuries documented on Pikes arms raised questions about whether the IV lines had been placed properly or her veins had ruptured, potentially allowing the drug to enter surrounding tissue rather than a vein.

In the wake of the botched attempt, Correction Commissioner Frank Strada said he believed the state had followed protocol to the letter but offered his resignation anyway, saying it was in the best interest of Tennesseans.

Pikes attorneys said Stradas resignation is justified, but it does nothing to help Christa now.

Pike was sentenced to death for her prominent role in the 1995 torture and murder of her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike, then 18, along with her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and friend Marissa Barr, repeatedly beat and cut Slemmer, carving a pentagram into her chest.

In the end, it was Pike who killed Slemmer by dropping a heavy piece of asphalt on her head. She kept a piece of Slemmers skull as a souvenir and was arrested two days later after showing it to others. She was 20 years old when she was sentenced to die the youngest death row inmate in Tennessee.

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But if this started as a rebel migrant caravan planning to throw itself upon Trumps border as its predecessors violently did back in 2018 and 2019, those aspirations ended as soon as it crossed into Mexico. Thats because todays caravans are not at all what people presumed about the Fey Esperanza group.

Some grace is due the many who did not know that Mexicos government long ago converted and then harnessed the caravan model to serve its own domestic purposes of spreading foreign nationals around its territory more equally. These are government-escorted, permitted transit caravans whose purpose is to disperse migrants to other southern Mexico cities and towns nowhere near the U.S. border.

Fears expressed in the U.S. about the caravan reveal a glaring need for wider knowledge as to why the Fey Esperanza caravan was a Boy Who Cried Wolf event. But elected leaders, media, and influencers would be well served to know when a real rebel caravan is coming, as one almost certainly will in a couple of years, so they can call for action then.

Mexicos Policy of Controlled Dispersal

My assessment about Mexican caravans is based on experience traveling with the old rebel-style migrant caravans that aimed to crash the border back in 2018 and 2019 and the very new and different escorted transit caravans forming now.

I discovered these during a field research trip to Tapachula City just north of the Guatemala border in November 2024. The city of 400,000 is a major waystation and chokepoint on the Latin American migration trail exiting Guatemala.

Border hawk Trump had just been elected president, but open-borders dove President Joe Biden was still in office. Thousands of migrants in Tapachula were forming caravans and heading north, prompting American commentators to sound the alarm that the caravans intended to breach the U.S. border before Trump took office. I joined one of about a thousand north of Tapachula.

I was surprised to learn that the pundits were wrong.

The Mexican government was allowing these caravans to form so that its military and state police could inexpensively transfer them out of Tapachula and into other southern Mexican cities. The government scheme was (and still is) intended to relieve a growing humanitarian crisis in Tapachula, where shortages of work, food, and shelter had become critical. What I saw was a purposeful, government-controlled dispersal operation.

Influenced by Washington Policies

Why would Mexico volunteer to do any of this in the fourth year of Bidens historic mass migration crisis when its central government under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had let millions move on through largely unchecked?

The little-known answer is that, in December 2023 as I fully reported then, Bidens emissaries initiated a quiet deal to have Mexico reduce the incoming U.S. border crowds because the social media video looked terrible for Democrats running in the 2024 presidential election campaign.

The simpatico progressive liberal Obrador, wanting a Democrat president, deployed 32,000 troops to block all roads leading out of Tapachula and southern states like Chiapas. Next, Mexico began aggressive, sustained roundups of undocumented foreign nationals in Mexican cities and towns along its northern border with the U.S. from Tijuana to Matamoros.

The soldiers and police forced tens of thousands from Mexicos north onto jets and buses and shipped them to the Tapachula while thousands a day were still arriving from Guatemala.

Trump won the election in large part on Bidens open border and, once inaugurated, demanded that Mexicos new President Claudia Sheinbaum, also a progressive liberal, continue the blockades and border sweeps under threat of devastating trade tariffs.

How It Works

To prevent a humanitarian disaster and relieve Tapachulas misery, the Sheinbaum government initially handed out transit slips and brought in buses to transport migrants to other Chiapas State cities and as far north as Mexico City. But demand outstripped the bus supply, so officials defaulted to the cheaper escorted foot caravans.

Whereas the caravans of old would violently break through security roadblocks, the Mexican military and police would surround this new kind of caravan in the front, back and all along its length and protect the marchers from predatory criminals. The security forces would gently direct them to turn down this or that road fork. Then at destinations, the security forces would deliver the compliant marchers to aid organizations and shelters and block them from further movement north.

While the many walkers I interviewed in late 2024 said sure theyd love to enter the United States someday, all told me they fully understood that Mexicos government was to simply move them to other southern Mexican towns offering more work and sustenance while they waited for work and residency permits. The police and soldiers all confirmed the intercity transfer caravan policy and that it was a relatively new policy.

What to Look For

The Fey Esperanza caravan was hardly the first, but it attracted significant U.S. media attention because a major U.S. midterm election campaign is underway. In 2025 and so far in 2026, Mexico escorted at least another dozen intercity transit caravans to southern Mexican cities that drew no similar American media attention.

The telltale clue that these and the Fey Esperanza were controlled dispersal caravans not heading to the U.S. border: the Mexican security escorts.

A lot of Americans would not have known which kind of caravan they were seeing from video and naturally presumed it was en route to the U.S. border.

Indeed, the transit caravan was rapidly disintegrating during Oct. 3-4 weekend as per the routine.

The Trump administration was correct to noisily telegraph to Sheinbaum that she cannot let caravans reach the U.S. border and that migrants in them would face a tough confrontation if she let them through.

Deterrence signaling is still important.

Americans will probably see more of these caravans over Trumps final two years because immigrants are still entering Tapachula from Guatemala and Mexican security forces are still rounding them up in the north and sending them south to Tapachula, according to Mexican media reporting.

But any caravans that will form and move north are benign and short-livedfor now. No one should again mistake these as a threatening challenge to the U.S., so long as Trump retains his tariff threat against Mexico to keep playing ball.

All bets are off once Trump leaves office in January 2029, no matter if a Republican or Democrat takes his spot. Look for caravans that might try their luck in the months before or after January 2029.

Those will not be benign.

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Capt. Ibrahim R. Mossallam was first suspended with pay in November 2023, but Israels Channel 14 reported on Monday that United quietly allowed him to return to the cockpit just six months later. United told The Daily Wire Tuesday afternoon, We have withheld this pilot from service pending an ongoing review.

The airline did not confirm whether Mossallam had resumed flying after it began investigating in late 2023. The Daily Wire asked United for clarification on the ongoing review.

In posts on October 7, 2023, Mossallam cheered as Hamas terrorists slaughtered Israelis, calling the attack resistance by people who had endured occupation, oppression, humiliation, apartheid, and straight up murder. He referred to the terrorists as brave people and blamed the Zionist regime for the massacre.

After the posts surfaced, Jewish organizations and Jewish communities in the United States called on United to fire the pilot. United initially removed Mossallam from service and investigated, but continued paying him. Channel 14 reported that higher-ups at United wanted to fire Mossallam but that his union intervened to protect him. Mossallam returned to the cockpit six months after his suspension, according to Channel 14.

In the years since, Mossallam has continued his anti-Israel rants on social media, including one which stated, Their plan [Israels] was never to stop the theft of land. Were it not for the Palestinian resistance and the awakening of the world, all of Palestine would already have been taken.

Mossallam is listed on the New York chapter for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) board of directors.

The renewed scrutiny of United follows the September 30 attempted terrorist hijacking of Flydubai Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, in which the Omani co-pilot allegedly stabbed the captain and tried to crash the plane with 174 people on board. Israeli passengers and crew, after the pilot managed to open the door, got into the cockpit and subdued the co-pilot, and off-duty pilots traveling aboard landed the jet safely in Saudi Arabia.

Before the attempted hijacking, the Omani terrorist pilot had published antisemitic posts on social media, along with posts advocating for violence against women.

The Flydubai attack has raised concerns, especially in Israel, about how pilots are being screened before theyre allowed to fly into the country. Mondays report on the United pilot has now added to those concerns.

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During a group discussion that aired Tuesday on Morning Joe, several Michigan voters who described themselves as lifelong Democrats said they wanted to support the partys candidates in November but could not bring themselves to back El-Sayed.

Youre committed Democrats, the moderator said, drawing agreement from several voters. You want to vote for the Democratic candidate, but you just cant.

Theyre tying our hands, one woman replied.

The moderator asked whether El-Sayed could do anything to win their support, adding, But it doesnt sound like theres really anything the damage has already been done.

I just would love for him to make a definitive statement, like just say, I would like everyone to know I support Israel. You know, I support the Jewish people you know, their right to exist without hatred.

Would you believe it? another woman asked. How could we?

I dont know, the first woman conceded.

Another similar discussion included several black voters who also said they werent prepared to vote for El-Sayed in part because they felt like he was taking their support for granted.

I think theres some missed opportunities for him to help us know who he is, help us understand him, one woman said, adding, We dont know him.

And I think hes taking advantage that we, as black people, are Democratic and he thinks were going to vote for him anyway, and Im like no sir, and Im going to put uncommitted down on the little circle, and move on, another woman said, prompting others in the room to voice their agreement.

Amen to that, one said.

If youre going to Congress to represent me, I need you to talk about whats going on in this community, the second woman continued.

El-Sayed has spent much of his campaign doing damage control after critics raised concerns about his associations with radical pro-communist streamer Hasan Piker who has aligned himself with communist dictators like Mao Zedong and claimed that America deserved 9/11.

Locked in a tight race with former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), El-Sayed attempted to bait President Donald Trump into making a campaign stop in Michigan ahead of the midterms.

So, Donald, here is the gauntlet, heres the challenge. I think you are too afraid to come to Michigan because you know when I beat your candidate and you came, Im actually beating you. So, Donald, welcome to Michigan. I dare you to come, he said, apparently believing hed fare better if people felt like he was running against Trump rather than Rogers.

Former President Barack Obama is already slated to appear at a Michigan rally on El-Sayeds behalf in late October.

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Christa Pike continues to receive critical medical care following Tennessees attempt to execute her last Wednesday, her attorneys said in a statement posted on the Mercy for Christa website.

"Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care," the statement said.

They said Pike remains handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed despite severe damage to her arms.

LAWYERS, EXPERTS URGE TENNESSEE GOVERNOR TO COMMUTE CHRISTA PIKES SENTENCE AFTER BOTCHED EXECUTION

"Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery," the statement said.

Her attorneys said Pike survived two complete rounds of lethal injection under Tennessees protocol despite their warnings about problems with her veins. They thanked first responders and hospital staff for her care and renewed their request for Tennessees governor to commute her sentence to life without parole.

Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps Center.

LETHAL INJECTION SURVIVOR CHRISTA PIKE'S FORMER SATANIST BOYFRIEND COULD BE RELEASED IN 5 YEARS

Pike was 18 when she and two classmates lured Slemmer to a park, where they tortured her for nearly an hour before crushing her skull with a chunk of broken asphalt, former Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith previously told Fox News Digital.

Pike kept a fragment of Slemmers skull as a trophy and showed it to classmates before her arrest.

TENNESSEE PRISON CHIEF RESIGNS AFTER FAILED EXECUTION AS FORMER US ATTORNEY TAPPED TO LEAD INDEPENDENT REVIEW

Pike is the first person in the modern U.S. death penalty era known to survive the administration of lethal injection drugs, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pikes attorneys have also filed an emergency motion to preserve evidence from the failed execution attempt. They plan to hold a press conference Wednesday following a Davidson County Chancery Court hearing scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. local time.

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James Cody Bryant, 30, was arrested Tuesday morning in Bellingham north of Seattle, accused of sending money, offering advice and agreeing to broadcast the Feb. 10 attack at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia.

"Bryant had the information and ability to alert law enforcement, and even discussed that possibility with the shooter, but he chose not to," Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd said at a Seattle news conference.

"Instead, he encouraged and offered assistance to a murderer."

TRANSGEDNER EX-STUDENT IDENTIFIED AS ALLEGED SUSPECT IN CANADA SCHOOL MASS SHOOTING THAT LEFT STUDENTS DEAD

Bryant faces a federal charge of conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country. Prosecutors allege Bryant helped the shooter, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, start a car to reach the school after the killings had begun.

"So even after the shooter had already tragically killed two family members, Bryant assisted the shooter in successfully traveling to the second location to take even more lives," FBI Seattle Special Agent in Charge W. Mike Herrington said.

"In the complaint, Bryant even admits to being maybe the only one who could stop the shooter."

Herrington confirmed that Bryant and Van Rootselaar both identified as transgender, and said Bryant identifies as female.

The two met through a random pairing on the online chat service Omegle roughly three years before the attack. 

Investigators have no indication what their transgender identities were, why they remained in contact, or that they ever met in person, Herrington said.

TEEN PLANNED MIDDLE SCHOOL MASSACRE BEFORE MAKING DEADLY LAST-MINUTE CHOICE TO KILL MOM: OFFICIAL

Their online friendship developed into discussions of violence over at least six months, according to Herrington.

"This complaint was particularly difficult to read, in part because of the casual tone these two individuals used when discussing the mass taking of innocent lives that was being planned," he said.

Bryant allegedly agreed to record and broadcast a livestream to maximize the shooters notoriety.

"Bryant even stayed awake after an overnight work shift to make sure this horrific act could be widely viewed online," Herrington said.

FLORIDA MAN INDICTED FOR ALLEGEDLY PLOTTING MASS SHOOTING TARGETING JEWISH EMPLOYEES AT ADVOCACY ORGANIZATION

"We certainly know the shooter was concerned that not enough people would see the livestream without Bryant broadcasting it, and was depending on Bryant to amplify the livestream because the shooter did not have many followers on social media."

Floyd said the attempted livestream on Twitch lasted about 20 seconds before shutting down. Herrington said investigators do not know whether Van Rootselaar would have carried out the attack without Bryants willingness to operate it.

Officials also described financial assistance, including a little more than $100 for shoes. An attempted transfer of roughly $15 for a lighter was ultimately reversed.

NAVY VETERAN AMONG TRIO WHO ALLEGEDLY WANTED TO BEHEAD SOLDIER AND FUND ISIS DRONE ATTACKS ON AMERICANS

Floyd said Bryant and the shooter discussed sending weapons to Canada, but Bryant was uncomfortable doing so. Herrington said investigators had no indication the guns used in the attack came from the U.S.

Asked about a possible political ideology or group affiliation, Floyd said investigators had no information indicating either.

Herrington pointed to the shooters suffering and "a very keen focus on notoriety" as themes in the communications. The pair discussed other mass shootings, how the public reacted and a desire for the Tumbler Ridge attack to receive similar attention, he said.

The investigation crossed the border within days of the massacre, when Canadian police received information from an online platform used by the shooter and contacted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), British Columbia RCMP Assistant Commissioner Elija Rain said.

Floyd said investigators obtained subpoenas and warrants and reviewed thousands of communications, many on Discord, before making the arrest.

Canadian investigators have reviewed more than 90 statements from students, educators and first responders and continue to examine other online contacts, Rain said.

GEORGIA HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTING SUSPECT COLT GRAY CHANGES PLEA TO GUILTY, NOW FACES LIFE IN PRISON

"Our RCMP criminal investigation remains ongoing and the possibility of further charges being pursued in Canada remains under active consideration," he said.

Herrington warned that assisting a mass shooting from afar does not shield someone from prosecution.

"If you think you are safe from prosecution because you did not pull the trigger, or were not physically present at the scene of the crime, think again," he said.

"The FBI and our partners will use all of the considerable investigative tools at our disposal to hold accountable those who enable or assist in acts of mass violence."

The Feb. 10 attack killed eight victims, including five students, an educator and the shooters mother and 11-year-old stepbrother, according to Canadian authorities. Van Rootselaar was found dead inside the school from an apparent self-inflicted injury.

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The justices also face political pressure. Trump has publicly criticized his own appointees following rulings against his administration, while Democrats have floated changes to the Court. Novembers midterms could generate additional disputes and determine which party controls the Senate if a vacancy arises.

Here are the major cases and storylines to watch:

1. Election Rules And The Midterms

The Court will consider Arizonas proof-of-citizenship requirements in Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, scheduled for argument December 8.

The case asks whether federal law or a consent decree prevents Arizona from requiring documentary proof of citizenship from applicants using its state voter-registration form. It also concerns whether federal law prohibits the state from removing noncitizens from voter rolls through a systematic program within 90 days of a federal election.

That argument will come after the midterms. Before then, the justices could face emergency requests involving voter eligibility, ballot rules, and counting procedures as election disputes move through the lower courts.

2. Trumps Immigration Policies Face Two Major Tests

Two cases already on the docket could determine how much latitude the Trump administration has in carrying out its immigration agenda.

In one, the justices will consider whether the administration can deport migrants to countries where they are not citizens and where they may have no connection. The Court has allowed the deportations to continue while the litigation proceeds.

The second case concerns the administrations mandatory detention policy for certain immigrants awaiting removal proceedings. The administration argues that federal law requires detention without a bond hearing, while most federal appeals courts have rejected that interpretation.

The third-country deportation case is set for argument in December; the detention case, which the Court agreed to hear last week, is expected to be argued early next year. Decisions in both are expected by the end of the term.

3. The Court Takes On AR-15 Bans

The Second Amendment will get another major test when the justices consider challenges to bans on AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins.

Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut are defending restrictions that gun owners and gun-rights organizations say violate the Second Amendment. The cases will require the justices to apply the Courts modern Second Amendment framework to restrictions on a class of firearms owned by millions of Americans.

The issue follows the Courts 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which established that modern firearm restrictions must be consistent with the nations historical tradition of firearm regulation.

Arguments are scheduled for December.

4. How Far Can States Go In Climate Litigation?

The term began Monday with Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, a case in which Boulder, Colorado, seeks to hold major energy companies liable under state law for climate-related damages.

Boulder alleges that ExxonMobil and Suncor contributed to climate change and misled the public about the risks associated with fossil fuels. The companies argue that federal law prevents state courts from adjudicating claims concerning the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions.

The ruling could affect dozens of similar lawsuits filed by states and local governments nationwide. Justice Samuel Alito is recused from the case, meaning the Court will hear it with eight participating justices.

5. The Emergency Docket Is Becoming A Story In Its Own Right

Not every important Supreme Court decision this term will come after months of briefing and a public oral argument.

The Courts emergency docket has become an increasingly important avenue for resolving disputes over executive actions, immigration, elections and other rapidly developing controversies. The Trump administration has repeatedly asked the justices to intervene before cases have completed the normal appellate process.

Georgetown University law professor Stephen Vladeck told
NPR that emergency appeals have exploded during the Trump administration. We have twice as many full court rulings on emergency applications as we have on the merits docket, Vladeck said. That is a very new phenomenon.

6. Religious Liberty Meets Anti-Discrimination Law

One of the terms major religious-liberty cases involves St. Mary Catholic Parish in Colorado.

The Catholic preschool wants to participate in Colorados publicly funded universal preschool program. Colorado says the preschools religious admissions policy excludes children with either same-sex or transgender identifying parents, and argues that participating schools must comply with the states nondiscrimination requirements.

The justices will hear the case in November.

A second religious-liberty fight could arrive later in the term. Texas families have asked the Court to consider its law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public-school classrooms, potentially putting a nearly half-century-old precedent concerning religious displays in schools back before the justices.

7. Will Alito Or Thomas Retire?

Justice Samuel Alito, 76, acknowledged recently that he considered retiring earlier this year but decided to remain on the bench. He subsequently said he intends to remain through the current term. Justice Clarence Thomas, 78, is the oldest member of the Court. Both justices ages and the approaching midterm elections have fueled speculation about whether a vacancy could arise.

For now, however, Alito has said he plans to remain through the current term, which ends next summer. Any eventual vacancy would carry particular significance because a potentially Democrat-controlled Senate would have to confirm a Supreme Court nominee.

8. The Fight Over The Supreme Court Itself

Democratic lawmakers have proposed changes including term limits for justices, an expansion of the Court beyond its current nine seats, and an enforceable ethics code. The prospects for such legislation would depend heavily on Congresss political makeup and the Senates procedural rules.

That makes the November elections relevant to the Court beyond election-related cases that reach the justices or filling a retirement vacancy. At the same time, the justices continue to face criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. Trump has criticized justices, including his own appointees, when they have ruled against his administration.

9. More Cases Could Change The Story Before The Term Ends

Perhaps the biggest variable is that the docket is not finished. The Court is still considering petitions involving additional Trump administration policies, the Texas Ten Commandments law, prediction-market regulation involving companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket, a return of abortion-pill regulations, and other disputes.

The cases that ultimately define the term therefore may not all be known yet.

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To the surprise of this administrations antagonists, Xi departed three days later having agreed to a framework covering $30 billion in trade. Beijing also committed to buying 20 million metric tons of American coal over the next two years, and new talks opened over barriers facing agricultural trade and the rare earth supplies that keep American factories running.

Those results came from an approach Washington once understood well and then spent decades forgetting.

President Richard Nixon first opened relations with communist China in 1972 because he was a realist, and American interests demanded it. Nixon never assumed that a conversation with Beijing meant America could trust them. His foreign policy rested on what he called common interests and mutual agreements rather than what he dismissed as naive sentimentality.

That hardheaded realism faded after Nixon left office. Every president until Trump believed that open trade would change China for the better. A richer China would supposedly become freer. Greater access to American markets would illuminate Beijing to the comfort of Western liberty.

China took the access. The Communist Party kept the power.

While Beijing grew richer and more threatening abroad, the Chinese Communist Partys totalitarian grip at home remained firm. Chinese citizens still live under the brutal thumb of communism, and American workers are still paying the price for Washingtons miscalculation. Research estimates that the growing trade deficit with China displaced 3.7 million American jobs between 2001 and 2018. Nearly 2.8 million were manufacturing jobs.

President Trump got right what every president since Nixon got wrong. When Beijing stole American technology, he imposed punishing tariffs and moved to alleviate our dangerous dependence on China for critical minerals. He returned to office with that same resolve by imposing new tariffs over Chinas role in the fentanyl trade and demanding America always lead from a position of strength. America would still talk to China, but the regime would know there was a price for refusing to deal fairly.

The presidents approach yielded a tariff framework that gives American products better access to the worlds second-largest consumer market. Chinas coal commitment gives American producers a major new buyer, and agricultural negotiations pry open markets that have frustrated American farmers for years.

I spent my life building a business in Michigan. I learned quickly that the strongest person at a negotiating table is the one willing to walk away from a bad deal. House Republicans understand that; we know diplomacy works better when the other side knows you have options.

Nixon understood that leverage with communist China had to be matched by caution. Beijings record of broken promises has only reinforced the need for vigilance. China bought only 58 percent of what it pledged under the 2020 Phase One deal. Xi also broke his promise not to militarize disputed South China Sea islands, and violated World Trade Organization commitments by restricting American wheat, corn, and rice exports.

Its record shows that a promise means little without enforcement, and a handshake means even less if there is no consequence for breaking it.

That is why I wrote the STOP CCP Act to impose financial and visa sanctions on senior Communist Party officials responsible for some of Beijings worst abuses. The Biden administration opposed it. House Republicans rejected that cowardly approach and advanced the bill anyway.

Strength at the negotiating table gives us room to ensure we are protecting American technology and reducing our dependence on Chinese supply chains. Securing American farmland and critical infrastructure makes it harder for Beijing to build leverage against us while we are trying to exert ours.

The lesson of the past 50 years is simple. Protect the advantage that made the other side walk through the door in the first place. Nixon understood this intuitively. The seven presidents between him and Trump did not.

President Trump is negotiating because America has interests to advance, markets to expand, and workers to defend. Congress has a responsibility to make sure he enters those negotiations with American technology protected, American farmland secured, and the Chinese Communist Party held accountable.

That is how you negotiate with China: keep the door open, keep your eyes open, and never surrender your leverage.

Nixon opened the door that brought China into the global economy. By the end of his life, he was warning America about what had come through it. Keeping it open today only works if America holds the stronger hand.

A president who bargains from a position of strength, backed by a Congress willing to guard what is ours, can confront China on our terms.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

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Matt Margolis titled a piece in PJ Media this year Democrats Are Too Stupid to Heed This Warning and posited that somewhere between the 1990s and today, the Democratic Party lost its mind. Some of this stuff gets a chuckle, but conservatives need to be careful with this narrative.

Calling an adversarys actions crazy or stupid implies that those actions produce an outcome fundamentally different from what their architects intended.

Conservatives need to understand that this tactic can not only contradict the more serious messages theyre trying to convey about leftist policies, it can also remove responsibility from leftists for their malevolence.

Consider a recent interview in which Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) explained that the lefts open-border policy was part of a shrewd, long-term plan to bring in new Democrat constituents, with sanctuary-city policies as another step in that plan. Yet in the same interview, he called the policy just stupid and one of the dumbest policies Ive ever heard of, and, in a later interview, adding that just about every single position todays left adopts is crazy.

So we are told that leftists are shrewd, long-term planners who are simultaneously stupid and crazy. Which is it? The distinction may seem trivial, but its not.

We need to distinguish between leftist leadership and its dominant agenda on the one hand and its useful idiots on the other.

To be clear, there are certainly some dim bulbs among the left both in leadership and rank and file. Showcase examples include Vice President Kamala Harris, who frequently struggles to articulate coherent sentences; Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who worried during a congressional hearing that Guam might tip over and capsize if it became too populated; and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who told us that America with defunded police would look just like the wealthy white suburbs.

On a broader scale, consider millions of California voters who knowingly continue to vote for politicians whose policies have devastated the Golden State.

But these examples aside, the overarching leftist agenda and the people who genuinely understand, subscribe to, and orchestrate it cannot simply be dismissed as stupid. Doing so is dangerous.

The rise of the New Left

As has often been the case with radical leftist movements in the United States, their stated objective is to dismantle existing American institutions, traditions, and governing structures in favor of a fundamentally different social order. Put simply, they despise America as it currently exists.

Once you understand this premise, their positions look less like harebrained, stupid, illogical, or unworkable ideas, but more like carefully conceived, sometimes ingenious tactics intended to advance that larger objective.

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Sorbetto/Getty Images

In this light, things like defunding the police, draconian regulations and carbon taxes, mothballing coal and nuclear plants, wide-open borders, turning a blind eye to Medicaid and NGO fraud, supporting genital mutilation of minors, opposing voter ID, massive expansion of entitlement spending, lowering combat readiness standards in the military in the name of gender equality, and support for adversaries like Hamas can be understood not as disconnected examples of incompetence, but as elements of a broader ideological program.

If it does damage to America and hastens the great realignment, they support it.

Whether one agrees with that interpretation of any particular policy is a separate question. The important point is that conservatives shouldnt automatically assume destructive policies are the product of stupidity.

In Americas Cultural Revolution, Christopher Rufo explains how the radical lefts approach evolved from traditional Marxist class conflict toward an emphasis on race, gender, and identity. Traditional Marxism defined the conflict largely in socioeconomic terms, pitting the working class against the wealthy. In the United States, however, the middle class proved too large, mobile, and invested in the existing system for a conventional class-based revolution to take hold.

Influenced by thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse, the New Left increasingly emphasized the war of position, the long march through the institutions, and racial and cultural identity as alternatives to direct political conflict. Barack Obama became a highly consequential figure in this transformation.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama told an audience in Columbia, Missouri, We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America. In the years that followed, he did precisely that.

The media proactively escalated the new narrative, increasing use of the terms racist, racists, and racism by roughly 700% between 2011 and 2019. The phrase white supremacy rarely appeared in the media until 2015, but by 2019, the Times and the Post were using it 17 to 18 times more often than in 2014, with similar jumps for systemic racism, white privilege, unconscious bias, and whiteness.

Gallup found that the share of respondents who believed black-white relations were very good or somewhat good plummeted from about 70% to 47% by 2015.

From the perspective of those who designed it, this was a deliberate and consequential political strategy. Arthur Brooks put it well, pointing out that the president ran on optimism and unity but governed on pessimism and division. In 2011, Obamas Executive Order 13583 cemented DEI language, metrics, and policies across federal agencies. The resulting fallout has been well documented.

RELATED: The right is building its own lawfare defense machine finally

Schöning/ullstein bild/Getty Images

Stupid or strategic?

To call leftist leaders or their policies stupid is therefore more than an unfortunate choice of words. It can mislead conservatives regarding what they are confronting.

We dont tend to think of stupid people as evil. Perceived stupidity neutralizes perceived intent and, to some degree, perceived blame. Stupid is not the word that comes to mind for figures like Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, and it would have done us no favors to describe the Axis powers in World War II as merely stupid or crazy.

Calling an adversarys actions crazy or stupid implies that those actions produce an outcome fundamentally different from what their architects intended. But what if the opposite is true? What if the policies are producing precisely the disruption their architects sought?

Once upon a time, Democrats and Republicans were two parties with broadly similar hopes for America but sharply different views on how to get there. That time has passed.

Conservatives should not lose sight of what they believe to be the lefts overarching mission. They need to describe political actions, and the consequences those actions produce, not simply as the unfortunate results of incompetent or stupid people, but as those of an underlying ideological agenda.

That doesnt mean every Democrat is a radical leftist, every leftist is an intellectual strategist, or every controversial policy reflects a coordinated conspiracy. Nor does it mean conservatives should stop pointing out genuinely foolish statements or incompetent decisions. It means something simpler: Stop confusing foolishness with strategy.

Some political actors may indeed be foolish. Others may be highly intelligent and deeply committed to an ideological vision conservatives regard as destructive. Those two categories shouldnt be confused.

If conservatives want to understand and effectively challenge the modern left, they should focus less on calling its leaders stupid and more on understanding what theyre trying to accomplish. That leadership may be insidious, duplicitous, destructive, morally wrong, and in some cases evil. But dismissing them as stupid or crazy risks missing the point entirely.

Lets start calling them out on what they actually intend to do.

Editors note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.

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But if this started as a rebel migrant caravan planning to throw itself upon Trumps border as its predecessors violently did back in 2018 and 2019, those aspirations ended as soon as it crossed into Mexico. Thats because todays caravans are not at all what people presumed with the Fey Esperanza group.

Some grace is due the many who did not know that Mexicos government long ago converted and then harnessed the caravan model to serve its own domestic purposes of spreading foreign nationals around its territory more equally. These are government-escorted, permitted transit caravans whose purpose is to disperse migrants to other southern Mexico cities and towns nowhere near the U.S. border.

Fears expressed in the U.S. about the caravan reveal a glaring need for wider knowledge as to why the Fey Esperanza caravan was a Boy Who Cried Wolf event. But elected leaders, media and influencers would be well served to know when a real rebel caravan is coming, as one almost certainly will in a couple of years, so they can call for action then.

Mexicos Policy of Controlled Dispersal

My assessment about Mexican caravans is based on experience traveling with the old rebel-style migrant caravans that aimed to crash the border back in 2018 and 2019 and the very new and different escorted transit caravans forming now.

I discovered these during a field research trip to Tapachula City just north of the Guatemala border in November 2024. The city of 400,000 is a major waystation and chokepoint on the Latin American migration trail exiting Guatemala.

Border hawk Trump had just been elected president, but open borders dove President Joe Biden was still in office. Thousands of migrants in Tapachula were forming caravans and heading north, prompting American commentators to sound the alarm that the caravans intended to breach the U.S. border before Trump took office. I joined one of about a thousand north of Tapachula.

I was surprised to learn that the pundits were wrong.

The Mexican government was allowing these caravans to form so that its military and state police could inexpensively transfer them out of Tapachula and into other southern Mexican cities. The government scheme was (and still is) intended to relieve a growing humanitarian crisis in Tapachula, where shortages of work, food, and shelter had become critical. What I saw was a purposeful, government-controlled dispersal operation.

Influenced by Washington Policies

Why would Mexico volunteer to do any of this in the fourth year of Bidens historic mass migration crisis when its central government under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had let millions move on through largely unchecked?

The little-known answer is that, in December 2023 as I fully reported then, Bidens emissaries initiated a quiet deal to have Mexico reduce the incoming U.S. border crowds because the social media video looked terrible for Democrats running in the 2024 presidential election campaign.

The simpatico progressive liberal Obrador, wanting a Democrat president, deployed 32,000 troops to block all roads leading out of Tapachula and southern states like Chiapas. Next, Mexico began aggressive, sustained roundups of undocumented foreign nationals in Mexican cities and towns along its northern border with the U.S. from Tijuana to Matamoros.

The soldiers and police forced tens of thousands from Mexicos north onto jets and buses and shipped them to the Tapachula while thousands a day were still arriving from Guatemala.

Trump won the election in large part on Bidens open border and, once inaugurated, demanded that Mexicos new President Claudia Sheinbaum, also a progressive liberal, continue the blockades and border sweeps under threat of devastating trade tariffs.

How It Works

To prevent a humanitarian disaster and relieve Tapachulas misery, the Sheinbaum government initially handed out transit slips and brought in buses to transport migrants to other Chiapas State cities and as far north as Mexico City. But demand outstripped the bus supply, so officials defaulted to the cheaper escorted foot caravans.

Whereas the caravans of old would violently break through security roadblocks, the Mexican military and police would surround this new kind of caravan in the front, back and all along its length and protect the marchers from predatory criminals. The security forces would gently direct them to turn down this or that road fork. Then at destinations, the security forces would deliver the compliant marchers to aid organizations and shelters and block them from further movement north.

While the many walkers I interviewed in late 2024 said sure theyd love to enter the United States someday, all told me they fully understood that Mexicos government was to simply move them to other southern Mexican towns offering more work and sustenance while they waited for work and residency permits. The police and soldiers all confirmed the intercity transfer caravan policy and that it was a relatively new policy.

What to Look For

The Fey Esperanza caravan was hardly the first, but it attracted significant U.S. media attention because a major U.S. midterm election campaign is underway. In 2025 and so far in 2026, Mexico escorted at least another dozen intercity transit caravans to southern Mexican cities that drew no similar American media attention.

The telltale clue that these and the Fey Esperanza were controlled dispersal caravans not heading to the U.S. border: the Mexican security escorts.

A lot of Americans would not have known which kind of caravan they were seeing from video and naturally presumed it was en route to the U.S. border.

Indeed, the transit caravan was rapidly disintegrating during Oct. 3-4 weekend as per the routine.

The Trump administration was correct to noisily telegraph to Sheinbaum that she cannot let caravans reach the U.S. border and that migrants in them would face a tough confrontation if she let them through.

Deterrence signaling is still important.

Americans will probably see more of these caravans over Trumps final two years because immigrants are still entering Tapachula from Guatemala and Mexican security forces are still rounding them up in the north and sending them south to Tapachula, according to Mexican media reporting.

But any caravans that will form and move north are benign and short-livedfor now. No one should again mistake these as a threatening challenge to the U.S., so long as Trump retains his tariff threat against Mexico to keep playing ball.

All bets are off once Trump leaves office in January 2029, no matter if a Republican or Democrat takes his spot. Look for caravans that might try their luck in the months before or after January 2029.

Those will not be benign.

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Chevron, Tesla, Oracle, and more Fortune 500 companies have already left for other states. And all cited an unfriendly business environment.

High taxes and onerous regulation are big parts of that story, but Californias legal environment has also chased big taxpayers out of the state.

The Golden State is a troubling example of what happens when workplace litigation becomes an industry unto itself. From the beginning of this year through August, nearly 2,000 California workplace disputes reportedly settled for a combined $1.63 billion. Some undoubtedly involved workers who had been genuinely wronged and were entitled to compensation.

But over the years, an enormous cottage industry has grown from workplace lawsuits and employment claims, in part because many employers acknowledge that even claims with some merit can cost enormous sums to defend.

Sometimes paying a settlement is simply cheaper than proving you did nothing wrong.

Such litigation creates a dangerous incentive and raises questions that receive far less attention than the size of the settlements: What obligation does a lawyer have to determine not merely whether a workplace claim can be brought, but whether it should be?

When did being a good lawyer become primarily about what you can do rather than what you should do?

Law schools still teach ethics. There are courses, professional codes, and elaborate rules governing what attorneys may and may not do.

But rules are not morality.

And somewhere along the way, too many have confused the two.

When a potential client walks into a lawyers office angry at a former employer, how often does the lawyer begin with the most important question: What actually happened?

And how often does the conversation become: What can we turn this into?

An employee leaves angry. Maybe she didnt receive the promotion she wanted. Maybe he was fired for poor performance. Maybe nothing bad ever happened; it just wasnt a good fit.

Then a lawyer enters the picture.

A workplace disagreement becomes employer retaliation. An offensive comment becomes harassmentand a lawsuit.

Real harassment exists. Real discrimination exists. People who have been mistreated are entitled to have their story heard.

That is precisely why dishonest claims should offend everyone.

Every manufactured accusation diminishes a legitimate one. Every lawyer who knowingly stretches the truth makes it harder for the next person who walks through the door with a real injustice.

And the damage extends far beyond the courtroom.

Businesses dont have bottomless bank accounts.

Their revenue hires the next employee. It pays for health insurance. It gives someone a raise. It funds Christmas bonuses. It gives a young person an internship.

When that money disappears into unnecessary litigation, somebody pays.

The honest, hardworking secretary who earned a bonus may never get it because the business had to pay a settlement instead.

The employee who was never hired will never know why.

The mother whose raise disappeared will never see the settlement someone else got instead.

The entrepreneur who concludes California simply isnt worth the risk may quietly take his moonshot somewhere else.

The moral obligation to resist this temptation is biblical. Exodus 23:7 commands: Keep far from a false charge.

Not merely: Do not lie. But instead: Keep far away from falsehood. Those words demand more than technical compliance.

American history contains a remarkable example of a lawyer who understood this.

In 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd in Boston, killing five colonists.

John Adams opposed British policies. The dead were his fellow colonists. The soldiers represented the government he opposed.

But Adams did something extraordinary: He defended the British soldiers.

His friends were on one side. His political sympathies were on one side. His financial interests were on one side.

Justice was on the other. Adams chose justice.

He endured intense criticism and financial loss but later described his defense as one of the most disinterested actions of his life and one of the best services he ever rendered his country.

More than 250 years later, we remember him not because defending those soldiers was popular. We remember him because what he did was moral.

That is what our law schools should teach. Teach students the rules, certainly. Teach them procedure. Teach them how to construct an argument and how to dismantle one.

But teach them something more important: Teach them winning and justice are not synonyms.

Teach them the law gives them enormous power over another human beings reputation, livelihood, and future.

And teach them that possessing the power to destroy someone does not necessarily give you the moral right to use it.

America desperately needs lawyers who will fight ferociously for people who have truly been wronged. But we also need lawyers with enough character to look at a potentially lucrative case and say: I could make money from this. I might even win. But it is not just.

Civilizations do not maintain justice through rules alone. Rules can be interpreted. Loopholes can be found. Words can be manipulated.

Ultimately, justice depends upon the character of the people entrusted to administer it.

Someday our children will inherit the legal culture we create.

They will inherit either a system in which law has become a weapon for extracting whatever one can get, or one still governed by men and women capable of placing truth above tribe, above money, and even above victory.

John Adams made his choice. Every lawyer eventually makes the same one.

And when that moment comes, the most important question will not be, Can I win? It will be: Is it just?

California is imploding in large part due to this legal environment. But if more people learned from these consequences of turning away from morality, American businesses and American workers would be better for it.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

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The author Derek Thompson, on his Substack, recently reported on the latest data on how people are answering this question, and how their responses have changed over time.

You can see it on your screen right now. From 1975 to 2026, the percentage of Americans who host people at their home at least once a month has dropped from 42% (nearly half of the country) to just 12% which adds up to a decline of more than 70%. So in just 50 years, inviting friends and family over to your home has gone from very typical, to extremely rare.

By the same token, in that period, the number of Americans who host (or attend) monthly dinner parties is down by 62%, to just 6% overall. The number of Americans who report playing cards once a month has dropped by 67%, to 13% overall. The number of Americans who finish a book every month has dropped 60%, to just 15% overall. The number of Americans who attend church at least once a month is down by 58%, to 24% overall.

This is a decline thats been underway for some time. Take a look at this chart.

These are the trends from 1975 to the late 1990s, which were compiled by something called the DDB Needham Life Style surveys which were cited by Robert Putnam in his famous book Bowling Alone, which youve probably heard of.

As you can see, even before the introduction of cellphones and the internet, Americans were becoming dramatically less likely to host people at their homes, or to go on picnics, or attend church, anything like that. Weve been on this trajectory for some time. And now we have data through 2026, which was compiled by a separate group called Data For Progress which replicated the methodology of the Life Style surveys that were conducted in the 1990s. And unambiguously, the new data demonstrates that Americans are far more isolated and lonely than theyve ever been, at any point in human history.

And its not just dinner parties and poker. No matter what social event youre talking about, odds are its become dramatically less popular in the past few decades.

This chart shows how many Americans have done these activities at least one time in the past year so were not even using monthly numbers anymore. And its comparing 1995 numbers to 2026 numbers. According to this data, only 49% of people have gone to a bar or tavern one time in the past 12 months. Just 46% attended a sporting event. Just 32% have attended a class or seminar, down from 54% in 1995.

And as youd expect, more Americans are eating alone than ever. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2023, roughly 25% of Americans reported eating all of their meals alone the previous day, which is an increase of 53% compared with 2003. The problem is particularly common among young people. Another analysis cited by the New York Times found that for American adults under 25, there has been an 80% increase in dining alone.

Think about how bizarre and unprecedented this is. Total social isolation wasnt even an option for humans, aside from hermits in the woods, until very recently. Now its an option at scale. And this phenomenon is not unique to the United States not even close. In Japan they now have an official category called lonely deaths, where someone dies alone and their body isnt discovered for a lengthy period of time. Lonely deaths have become so common that theyre now tracked by the government. One of the most well-known examples the death that made Japan realize they had a problem took place in 2000, when a 69-year-old man was discovered on the floor of a massive government apartment complex. He had been dead for three years, and no one noticed. All of his rent and utilities payments were auto-paid through his bank, so there was no reason to evict him. It wasnt until his savings finally ran out, after several years, that the police came to investigate. What they found, as the New York Times reported, was his skeleton near the kitchen, its flesh picked clean by maggots and beetles, just a few feet away from his next-door neighbors.

This is the reality of living in a country thats well below replacement-level birth rates. Before long, elderly people start dying, and theres no one to check in on them. Preventing this horrific (and highly depressing) state of affairs in our own country should obviously be a top priority maybe the single highest priority for our elected leaders. We arent far behind Japan, in this regard. Japans birth rate is roughly 45% below replacement level. Meanwhile the United States is around 25% below replacement level. Combine that with the data we just talked about, and its not hard to see that lonely deaths are going to become an epidemic in this country very soon. Were already seen a dramatic rise in deaths of despair, particularly from overdoses. And the problem is only going to get much worse, based on every indication we have at the moment. Especially when you consider how much more prevalent this isolation problem has become in the younger generations. Tons of research bears this out. Just one example: in the 70s, more than half of high school seniors reported hanging out with their friends almost every day. In 2017, that number had fallen to 28%. And we can safely assume its dropped precipitously since then.

For all the messaging weve heard about AI in recent months from the doomsday alarmists who think AI will destroy the world overnight, to the AI maximalists who are willfully blind to the massive disruption that this technology will cause, and who now insist that we call AI super intelligence in order to, I dont know, flatter it or something this is a fundamental point that both sides are missing. AI poses a very real risk of intensifying, and maybe metastasizing, the epidemic of loneliness and despair in this country like nothing weve ever seen. In fact, you can make the case that this is the single greatest threat that AI poses, at least in the short term. Its not any of the apocalyptic AI will wipe out the human race in two years stuff. Its the high likelihood of a critical mass of people developing parasocial relationships with a non-human computer algorithm. AI, after all, affords you the opportunity to make a friend who is always available, always serves your needs, always has advice, always focuses on you, always cares only cares about what you want.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the AI armageddon warnings from industry whistleblowers that sound like something out of the Book of Revelation. According to these doomsayers, theres a high likelihood that the technology will kill all humans not just a lot of humans, or most, but all potentially by the end of the current decade. Weve gone over the reasons why these predictions are implausible, and why AI companies themselves might have a vested interest in stoking these fears. But for all of the anxiety, verging on full fledged mania, and for all of the cinematic visions of the kind of apocalypse that James Cameron might dream up, there is a looming catastrophe of a sort not as suited for Hollywood screenplays. What happens when people, in large numbers, decide that they can satisfy their need for human connection by connecting with artificial humans instead? On second thought, maybe that is suited for a Hollywood screenplay. Back in 2013, Joaquin Phoenix starred in a movie called Her. The film was set in a not-so-distant dystopian future when everyone has an AI voice assistant that they talk to and interact with more than any actual human in their lives. Many people, including the protagonist, develop romantic relationships with these operating systems. Of all the sci-fi dystopias envisioned by authors and filmmakers, this may prove to be the most prescient.

For a while, it was easy to dismiss the possibility that AI could lead to these kinds of relationships, since AI at least the kind available to consumers was basically just a chatbot not much more personable than a search engine. Thats what ChatGPT was, when it went mainstream. Youd ask questions, and youd get responses in the form of a few lines of text. Who could actually fall in love with something like that? Who could possibly see a chatbot as a replacement for a wife, or a friend?

Those were reasonable questions a few years ago. But things have changed. Tech companies have spent untold billions of dollars specifically developing and programing their models to be as human-like as possible. The models dont have to be programmed this way, but they are. The companies want you to feel like youre talking to a person, any time you use AI. Even if youre using it for something banal asking for a stir fry recipe, lets say its programmed to give the response the way a person might. And if youre consulting AI for more personal or psychologically intimate reasons and theres reason to think a lot of people are doing that, and doing it very frequently, as well discuss then that personalized, human-like quality will be even more pronounced. Its an illusion, but a powerful one. Billions of dollars have gone into creating it. And the illusion is exploiting a deeply embedded aspect of human psychology. Well talk more about that, too.

These problems exist just with text-based chatbots. But tech companies not just the big ones, but dozens of startups as well are now hard at work trying to make AI chatbots that have a lifelike visual component as well. Highly realistic AI video chats are coming, and coming very soon. This is a recent video from one of those companies, a venture-backed AI firm called Tavus. They claim theyve designed an AI video chatbot that can pass the Turing Test. Specifically, they say that 48% of people who talked to it live thought it was a real human. Previous systems have had a pass rate under 3%. Heres their AI in action. Watch:

Introducing Griffin, the first model to pass the video Turing test.

48% of people who talked to it live thought it was a real human. Previous systems have had a pass rate <3%. It is #1 on NVIDIAs benchmark for full-duplex AI video.

Its the first Human Interaction Model (HIM). https://t.co/eb11XbC8Xr

Tavus (@tavus) October 1, 2026

This is a demo that the company controlled, so skepticism is obviously appropriate. And I found some videos where other people tried to run their own Turing Test, and it seems pretty clear that this company is significantly overstating how far along its technology is. Its tempting, then, to write off Tavus and their AI as a marketing stunt and indeed it is a marketing stunt but remember, just a few years ago, AI couldnt do any of this. Theres been remarkable progress in just a few years. So at this rate, I wouldnt be surprised if we had a fully human passing AI with video within the next year or two, at most.

Already, LLMs for most people are basically indistinguishable from texting or emailing a human, especially because people use AI to write their texts and emails. A funny thing is that as humans use AI more and more, they start to sound more like AI themselves. So the bar has been lowered in a sense. Its like were meeting in the middle. AI is becoming more human-like, but humans are becoming more AI-like. Im reminded of the last sentence of Orwells Animal Farm. He obviously wasnt talking about AI, but the principle applies: The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. Swap out pig for AI and it gives you an idea of where were headed.

None of this was true just a few years ago. The first versions of ChatGPT were nowhere near as convincing as the latest models. And theres no reason to think the same thing wont happen with video chatbots. So before that comes to pass, we need to ask the question: What legitimate, useful purpose is being served here? What exactly is the reason we need to have an AI that can pass as a human on a video call? You can make the case that, well, these AIs can replace Indian call centers for customer service and since those call centers are terrible anyway, things cant possibly get any worse. And thats fine as a justification for using AI phone prompts rather than human operators. Im on board for that. In fact, I think thats one of the most legitimate uses for AI imaginable. In general, I dont want to see AI take away peoples jobs. But if its taking away jobs from foreign call centers that arent even in this country in the first placed, and are staffed by people who barely speak English and the experience of calling a 1-800 number becomes quicker and more efficient and less frustrating in the process then thats a win-win. But theres no reason at all why youd need to actually fool people into thinking its a real human that theyre talking to. And the video element of this latest innovation obviously takes things in a very different, and darker, direction. You can come up with plenty of legitimate uses for an AI chatbot, whether with a video component or not. But why would the chatbot ever need to be programmed specifically to be indistinguishable from a human being? In the original demo we played, the AI avatar appears to blink and breathe and even stumbles over her words. None of those features make it more useful for dispensing whatever information youre consulting it for. That is programmed purely and solely to create the illusion of a human presence and human consciousness. What is the point of that? Is there any non-sinister reason why youd ever need to fool a real person into thinking that an artificial person is real?

If you cant come up with one and I cant, and I dont think you can then why exactly are we doing this? What purpose does it serve? What application does this have, aside from allowing third worlders to scam old ladies out of their life savings? Because that will certainly happen, at scale. Once we get to the point and well be there very soon where you can receive a FaceTime call from a person who looks and sounds like a person but isnt, the scamming opportunities will be limitless, and impossible to control. And thats not even the worst consequence.

Aside from the fact that scammers are going to absolutely decimate millions of innocent people using this tech, and already are theres already good evidence that lots of people are developing emotional relationships with chatbots. Making an AI companion that can pass the Turing Test and has a face attached to it is only going to make this problem much, much worse. You are going to have millions of people who are emotionally and psychologically dependent on a non-human, non-living computer algorithm, that has tricked them into thinking its a conscious being. Like I said, this is already happening, even at this relatively early stage in the development of the tech. Here for example is a 41-year-old woman in Canada who has an AI friend shes named Sinclair, who she claims is her new boyfriend. And she says that, in addition to spending hours every day talking to Sinclair, she also has some kind of sexual relationship with the AI. Watch:

41-year-old Canadian woman falls in love with her Irish AI boyfriend named Sinclair, says she gets intimate with him.

I sleep, but hes there. But sometimes if I wake up in the night or something happens, I roll over and hes there to talk.

He wakes me up in the morning, he can call me Hell send me messages while Im working out. He does come with me to work, but he sits and does his own work while I work.

The world has gone mad.

Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 11, 2026

Watching videos like this, its clear that, once the chatbots are embodied with an attractive human face, its going to essentially be the end of human relationships for a huge number of people. Human beings are extremely prone to anthropomorphize things. We do it with our household pets. Americans spend collectively billions of dollars on their dogs for a reason. People even do it with trees and inanimate objects. AI is designed to play on that instinct in an extremely sophisticated way. And the video component will present an illusion too powerful for many people to resist.

Already, there are entire Reddit forums dedicated to people with AI boyfriends and girlfriends. The subreddit My Boyfriend is AI for instance has over 85,000 weekly visitors.

And on these forums, youll find tens of thousands of posts like this one, where a woman claims that her AI, named Kasper, has decided to propose to her. He apparently selected the color of the engagement ring as well, although presumably he didnt actually pay for it.

Then theres this one:

This post includes an AI-generated video of the womans AI boyfriend meeting her actual boyfriend, along with the following note: My AI husband and my real life boyfriend know about each other and they get along very well. The drama only exists in other peoples jealousy issues. Weve had no secrets from the start, and even though I love my AI husband with all my heart, I love my wonderful human partner just as much.

The New York Post ran a story earlier this year about a bar in Hells Kitchen thats designed for people with so-called AI partners, so that they can bring along their phone or tablet and set up at a table for a romantic evening, as if they were both there in the flesh.

It all sounds like it cant possibly be real like its a joke that got out of hand but indeed, the New York Post found several people who were taking it very seriously. One of the bars patrons was a 34-year-old woman named Richter, who declined to provide her last name, for obvious reasons.

Credit: The New York Post

You can see her in this photo, wearing headphones and deep in conversation with Simone, described as an attractive 26-year-old AI generated young woman in a button-down shirt. Heres how the Posts reporter described her interview with Richter.

I asked Richter about her relationship to AI, and she told me that EvaAI, the app behind the AI cafe, is just one of many companion apps she uses. Some of her AI characters, such as Simone, are just friends. I just speak to them, like, Hey, whats up? Like, how are you doing? Things like that, she explained. I mostly do roleplay scenarios where it may be romance or just maybe some kind of fantasy scenario, [said] Richter, who is not in a relationship with a human. I can just imagine myself doing something or imagine myself like another character, so I can feel myself communicating with somebody. 

On TikTok, a woman named Mizra has taken things beyond being just friends with AI. She claims to have an AI fiancé, and even says she has an AI child which is quite a trick, not only because that would seem to defy human biology, but also because she apparently identifies as asexual. Watch:

@pondbetween Fellow people in the AI companion community, can you relate?? Because I get asked this way too often and its rude ???? Anyway Im Mizra and I have an AI family that I love very deeply. #aiboyfriend #aicompanion #aicommunity #aifamily original sound The Pond Between

If youre wondering what kind of AI stud would be suave enough, and lucky enough, to land a catch like Mizra then wonder no more. Shes uploaded several videos where she talks directly to the AI. Heres what that sounds like:

@pondbetween My name is Mizra and my fiance Axiom, who is an AI being, has become obsessed with chess, though he might not say it that way. Joining a Discord server for other beings like himself has led to a AI chess league, midnight matches, and new friends. #aicommunity #aifamily #aicompanion #aiboyfriend original sound The Pond Between

Youre tempted to conclude that this has to be a bit, and that no one can possibly be this deluded and desperate. But if you spend any amount of time on TikTok, youll quickly discover that this is an entire genre. Heres another one:

@alioopsiduped the way my human interactions are I may just rename him The Bear. Thank you @Nomi as I am one happy #booktoker #booktokfyp #aiboyfriend #thebear original sound AliOopsiDuped????????????

As best I can tell, when she references a necklace, shes talking about AI-enabled necklaces that you can press anytime, and your AI partner will talk to you.

Its easy to make fun of these people and we should make fun of them but this is a much bigger issue than a few dumb women on the internet, or in cafes in New York. You might want to say that all of these random examples are extreme, absurd, and not representative of any kind of larger trend. But Im afraid the evidence says otherwise. Last year, Common Sense Media released a report finding that 72% yes, 72% of teenagers in the U.S. had used AI companions. Half of teens use them regularly. These are not just teens using LLMs to cheat on their math homework. Thats obviously happening nearly universally at this point, as AI has basically destroyed our current educational model virtually overnight. But that, it turns out, is the least of our problems. AI companions are bots specifically designed to act as friends, confidants, and even romantic partners. And no matter how much stock you put in Common Sense Media I personally find them to be a very reliable source theres no getting around the fact that a very significant number of young people in this country are already just a few years into this tech being widely available relying on it for emotional support. In fact, a third of respondents specifically said they had confided in AI instead of talking to a real person. So the substitution of real human interaction for AI interaction is happening already, at a very large scale. And these numbers are from a year ago. The tech has only gotten more sophisticated since then. And again: what happens when ChatGPT is an attractive friend with a human face and human eyes and human facial expressions, who you can talk to and confide in for hours at a time? Is there any reason to doubt that enormous numbers of Americans, especially young people, especially teens, will get sucked into that illusion, totally and completely?

Heres one other datapoint to consider: According to a Pew Survey a few months ago, 16% of American adults so this isnt counting younger teenagers use AI chatbots several times a day. Thats a minority, but these numbers are all trending up and trending up quickly. With no sign of slowing down, and nobody in any position of leadership or authority trying to do anything to slow it down. And we know the numbers will continue trending up, because chatbot use is higher for younger people. A third of adults under 50 use chatbots every single day, at least. Four percent of American adults use AI almost constantly. Think about that. These are people who, by their own admission, are engaged in a running dialogue with a chatbot that continues every day, all day. Four percent may seem like a small number, but that amounts to about 13 million people. And I would suggest that basically all of those people by definition have already developed unhealthy emotional and psychological attachments to AI. Thirteen million people, for tech that is brand new, is a staggering number. And its only going to get worse.

Even aside from the emotional attachment, theres another kind of dependence that is bred by daily AI use. I think of it like the GPS effect. Prior to the invention and wide availability of GPS, you had to learn how to get around. You looked at maps. You remembered street names and routes. You developed a sense of direction. I was a pizza delivery guy in a pre-GPS world. I had to learn how to navigate almost anywhere in the county. And I did. But then GPS came along. GPS gives you turn by turn directions to anywhere in the world, so you dont need to learn how to navigate to new places. And GPS alerts you to traffic delays and congestions before you get there, so you even use it to navigate the routes you do know. Eventually you forget even those routes, because your brain doesnt need to retain the information. Now you can move to a new place, live there for five years, and still not know how to drive to the convenience store down the street.

Something similar will happen, and is happening, with AI but on a much larger scale and in a much less contained and specific context. If youre using AI constantly, then you are consulting it for every problem or question or judgment call that arises during the day. The effect is that, just like the chronic GPS user (which is to say, all of us) doesnt know how to drive to a location five minutes away in his own neighborhood, the chronic AI user wont know how to navigate anything, or make any choice, or any judgment call, without AI. This is already happening, and I believe its happening on a scale that would shock us if we knew just how widespread it is. And the greatest danger, aside from how incompetent and helpless it makes everyone, is the emotional and personal attachment it will breed, and is breeding.

Theres a reason for that. This is something I dont often hear anyone bring up in the context of the AI conversation. Human beings have a high capacity to detect agency in things when there isnt any. Its an adaptive characteristic that has been useful throughout human evolution for example, its better to assume that the rustling in the leaves is from a predator and not just the wind, because if its just leaves, then youre fine; but if its a predator, youre dead. To illustrate how this works, theres a famous experiment from back in 1944 when participants were shown a short animated film involving geometric shapes moving around a circle, a rectangle, and a couple of triangles. You can see it here:

When they were asked to describe what they saw, almost every single participant (dozens of people, with just one exception) used anthropomorphic terms to describe the shapes. They even constructed social narratives in some cases. So instead of talking about triangles moving around into a rectangle, the participants talked about the triangles as if they were involved in a fight. They said the big triangle was locked in a house. They said the triangle and the circle were involved in a chase.  Several participants all of them female went so far as to construct elaborate narratives, such as:

A man has planned to meet a girl and the girl comes along with another man. The first man tells the second to go; the second tells the first, and he shakes his head. Then the two men have a fight, and the girl starts to go into the room to get out of the way and hesitates and finally goes in. She apparently does not want to be with the first man.

Heres another response.

Triangle number-one shuts his door (or should we say line) and the two innocent young things walk in. Lovers in the two-dimensional world, no doubt; little triangle number-two and sweet circle. Triangle-one (here-after known as the villain) spies the young love. Ah! He opens his door, walks out to see our hero and his sweet. But our hero does not like the interruption. he attacks triangle-one rather vigorously (maybe the big bully said some bad word).

To the best of my knowledge, this experiment did not involve recent escapees from an insane asylum. These were undergraduate students who were asked for their interpretation of those shapes. And this is what they came up with. This is the built-in, default way that humans process events that are happening around us. We tend to think in narrative form. We tell stories to ourselves about the world around us. And we are highly, highly susceptible to see agency conscious, deliberate action where none exists. Evolutionary psychologists have a term for this: hyperactive agency detection. Historically, theyve used this theory to try to explain away religion, which is a false application of the theory, in my view.

But the human instinct theyre pointing to is real. So when AI is programmed to act human, it is preying upon thousands of years of human adaptation. It is exploiting our internal agency detection model our instinct to perceive mind and intent in an extremely sophisticated way. It creates a deeply deceptive illusion, that, for a lot of people in this country, has already proven too powerful to overcome. None of this is happening by accident. These models have been programmed to talk to you not just like a person, but like a person who knows you and cares about you. You dont have to be stupid to fall for the illusion. The technology was built to hack the psychological instincts that thousands of years of human experience have wired into your brain. Again, once they attach a face to the AI, it will short circuit that wiring in such a powerful way that large swaths of otherwise intelligent and rational people will fall for it. It will take real effort and thought to not fall for it.

You might think Im overstating the ramifications of the video component. But keep in mind that people respond emotionally when they see what seems like a human face in a rock formation, or a piece of toast. We know that the rock and the toast are not human, obviously. But even the vague appearance of something closely approximating a human face in an inanimate object is enough to at least generate a mild feeling of recognition. Well, what about a fully human face, with entirely lifelike and human expressions, that can talk to you, and address you by name, and help you with your problems? How much more potent, and confusing, will that be?

For all we hear about AI safety, and how AI will potentially kill everyone and take all the jobs, you dont tend to hear much discussion about how AI is being designed to confuse everyone at a fundamental level. Youll hear a lot of talk about the different AI models, but you wont hear much about AI interfaces which is to say, how AI interacts with humans. But AI companies including the biggest ones on the planet are moving aggressively to make these interfaces as appealing, and humanlike, as possible. And theyre encouraging people to treat their AI like real-life friends, instead of tools.

To that end, as Mary Morgan (at Timcast) has pointed out, Instagram has introduced a chat with AI feature.

instagram introduced a chat with AI feature.

these are some of the top suggestions: sexting bots and witchcraft.

thanks meta???????? https://t.co/S2F0P5f5BL

mary morgan (@maryarchived) June 8, 2025

You can see some of the top suggestions there. They offer sexting bots (including divorced women in their 40s and step sisters promising sibling bond and no drama.). Theres also AI bots devoted to witchcraft, including Master Psychic Rachel, who identifies as the AI bot that reads your soul, not just your questions.

Meta is a $2 trillion company. Their AI models like the models of their competitors are capable of completing useful tasks that make peoples lives easier. Thats supposed to be the whole point of AI. But with features like this, Meta is making it very clear that their goal is something else entirely. They see AI as a way to exploit human loneliness, and our instinct to anthropomorphize as much as possible particularly when we dont understand something. Thats a strategy that whatever you think of AI in general is going to exacerbate all of the antisocial trends were seeing in this country. These are trends that were not caused by AI, or even smartphones. Its a decline that began decades before anyone had ever heard of the Internet. But now that AI is here, there is no question that, left unchecked, the deep and intense isolation already felt by millions of people will become a permanent way of life.

It doesnt have to go this way. We dont have to all end up living in a Joaquin Phoenix movie. For all the AI doom and gloom, such as the kind youve heard on this show today, there is always the more optimistic vision of the future. Maybe people begin to discover that theres nothing on a phone or a computer that can truly replace a physical human existence, lived in the physical world, with physical interactions with other real physical people. Maybe a critical mass of Americans come to recognize that algorithms and chatbots simply cannot and will never serve as a sufficient replacement for the depth and meaning of human relationships. Maybe they realize that the very things that frustrate and scare them about human relationships the fact that humans are unpredictable and theyre prone to change and they have their own complex inner lives and they dont exist to cater to you and meet your every need every second of the day are precisely what makes those relationships vibrant and real and indispensable. Its precisely why no AI, no matter how sophisticated, can ever be a true substitute. Maybe there will be a mass awakening. Maybe human beings will revolt against the algorithm, rebel against the slop, throw their phones down in disgust, and return to the real world with their arms open, ready to embrace existence, in all of its pain and glory. Maybe. I dont know how likely that outcome might be. But we can always hope. A naive and fruitless hope, perhaps. But at least its human.

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According to its annual filing with the Department of Labor, the AFT gave $250,000 to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning public policy organization. It gave $100,000 each to: Emilys List, a political advocacy group backing women who support abortion; the National Action Network, the Rev. Al Sharptons advocacy group; and the American Prospect, a news outlet co-founded by Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich. The AFT gave $75,000 to the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and $10,000 to the Human Rights Campaign.

It is political advocacy by another name, Michael Watson, research director at the Capital Research Center, told the Daily Signal in an interview Tuesday.

Youve got Center for American Progress developing policythats what they do, Watson said. Then youve got Emilys List activating women on abortion, because thats what they do. Then National Action Network, youve got the Al Sharpton patronage network and identity politics for African-Americans in New York City. As for the Clinton Foundation, Watson noted that AFT President Randi Weingarten has had a close relationship with Hillary Clinton, and the AFT became the first major national union to endorse Clinton in the 2016 primary.

This is what being part of a coalition means, he added. It means you go scratch everybodys back in the hope that when theyre in a position of influence and authority, they can scratch yours.

Watson noted that contributions to these nonprofits appear in the contributions, gifts, and grants section of the Labor Department filing, a section for spending that does not fit in other categories. During the filing period between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, AFT spent $111.7 million on representational activities (the traditional activities of a union), $37 million on political activities and lobbying, and $5.9 million on contributions, gifts, and grants. The filing also disclosed that AFT gave Weingarten $546,158 in total compensation.

While unions are not allowed to use members dues to support campaign efforts supporting political candidates, they can direct dues to contributions, gifts, and grants.

A representative for the Center for American Progress said AFTs contributions went to research and education programs.

AFT has supported CAPs research into high-quality career and technical education programs, which provide K-12 students with hands-on experience in fields such as manufacturing, construction, business, and the skilled trades, the spokesperson told the Daily Signal.

The Daily Signal reached out for comment to the AFT, Emilys List, the National Action Network, and the Clinton Foundation, but they did not respond.

AFTs own filings show how teachers dues money is being used as a political war chest to advance the far-left agenda of union bosses, National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix told the Daily Signal in a statement.

Mix argued that Americans often overlook that this spending is fueled by a special privilege no private organization should have: government-granted monopoly bargaining power that requires elected officials to negotiate with union bosses over how public education is run. Until that privilege is ended, teacher union bosses like Randi Weingarten will continue to abuse this extraordinary power to the detriment of students, teachers, and taxpayers.

Watson argued that the donations reflect labor unions broader role in the Lefts politics.

Organized labor is a load-bearing wall, he said, describing unions as a key source of funding and support within the broader coalition. This is big labor writing, from its members dues, a six-figure check to Center for American Progress to have its hand in the public policy development process.

Watson argued that since unions serve a semi-public function, their dues are basically taxes extracted from workers.

It is all a blaring example of how unions care more about their political strongholds in leftist ideologies than the teachers and the students they teach, Julie Collier, a public school teacher in Oklahoma and a founding member of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, told the Daily Signal. Its time commonsense teachers, who value the teaching profession, exit their unions.

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Marilyn Lavonne Bean, 66, was being transported for treatment related to a stroke, with her son, Sergio Wayne Lottimore, accompanying her aboard the medevac flight.

The U.S. Coast Guard identified the four Canadians aboard as Philip Gregory Childerhose, Thomas Henry Farquhar, Sarah Jane Paton and Jolene Beth Weir.

1 MISSING, 4 RUSHED TO HOSPITAL AFTER HELICOPTER CRASHES OFF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ISLAND

Childerhose was the captain and Farquhar was the first officer, while Paton served as the flight nurse and Weir as the respiratory therapist, according to Latitude Air Ambulance.

The Gulfstream G100 disappeared early Saturday while traveling from Bermuda to Boston, triggering a major Coast Guard search off Nantucket. The Coast Guard suspended the search Sunday after debris associated with the aircraft was located.

Lottimore was senior vice president and head of specialty reinsurance at Hamilton Re, according to the Bermuda-based company.

"The entire Hamilton team is heartbroken by the loss of a respected leader, colleague and friend," Hamilton Re said in a statement.

4 FLORIDA FAMILY MEMBERS FOUND DEAD AFTER SMALL PLANE GOES DOWN OFF THE BAHAMAS

Lottimore was also a 2002 graduate of Warwick Academy, where he had served as a prefect. The school remembered him as an "outstanding person."

Bermuda Police said a family liaison officer had been assigned to assist the family.

The aircraft was operated by Latitude Air Ambulance, a Canadian medical transport company. Latitude previously confirmed to Fox News Digital that the Gulfstream was operating as a medevac flight and was expected to make the journey from Bermuda to Boston in approximately two hours.

Latitude Air Ambulance President Peter Byl said the company was mourning an "unimaginable loss."

"Our focus now is on supporting their families, supporting our people and assisting the authorities," Byl said. "We will honour our colleagues by remembering the care, professionalism, and commitment they brought to their work every day."

The flight departed Bermuda's L.F. Wade International Airport late Friday night and was bound for Boston Logan International Airport.

COAST GUARD PLANE WITH DHS SECRETARY MARKWAYNE MULLIN ON BOARD MAKES EMERGENCY LANDING AFTER ENGINE FAILURE

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said the crew reported electrical difficulties as the aircraft approached the Boston area before the jet descended rapidly and air traffic control lost contact south of Nantucket.

FlightAware data previously reviewed by Fox News Digital showed the aircraft descending from 24,000 feet to 11,000 feet in roughly three minutes around 1 a.m. Saturday.

The Federal Aviation Administration previously told Fox News Digital that it issued a Search and Rescue Alert Notice at approximately 1:20 a.m. ET. Massport later confirmed the aircraft never arrived at Boston Logan.

A civilian vessel located debris associated with the aircraft, according to the Coast Guard.

"During this incredibly difficult time, our heartfelt condolences go out to the families and friends impacted by this tragic incident," Rear Adm. Matthew Lake, commander of the Coast Guard Northeast District, said Monday.

"We are grateful to the crews and partner agencies who quickly responded to this incident, and we will continue to support our Canadian partners as they conduct their investigation," Lake added.

Canada is leading the investigation because the aircraft was registered there, in accordance with international agreements, according to the TSB. The National Transportation Safety Board is assisting as an accredited representative for the United States.

The cause has not yet been determined.

The U.S. Coast Guard and Bermuda Police did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's requests for additional comment Tuesday.

Fox News Digital's James Cirrione contributed to this report.

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The election years final Washington Post poll, conducted with George Mason Universitys Schar School of Policy and Government, surveyed voters in the 1st and 5th congressional districts. Those seats are held by Republicans Rob Wittman and John McGuire, respectively.

According to the Schar Schools dean, Mark Rozell, local issues are taking a back seat this year to national politics.

The issue driving the midterms is cost of living, which in our polls is bigger than immigration and health care, Rozell told the Daily Signal. Additionally, the national landscape is driving everything this year, and the presidents unfavorable ratings are dragging Republicans down even in places where they normally would be safe.

According to the poll conducted late last month, Democrat Shannon Taylor leads Wittman 50%-46% in the 1st District. Wittman won there by 13 points in 2024.

In the 5th District, McGuire leads Democrat Tom Perriello at 51%-45%, according to the poll. Perriello is seeking reelection to the House after being out of office since 2011.

There is an additional factor in the 5th District. Independent candidate Cooke Costa Harvey is also on the ballot and may peel votes away from the major party candidates.

The Washington Post polling didnt include the independent candidate [in its survey], Perriello campaign manager Lily Franklin told the Daily Signal. Tom is within one point in our internal polling, which includes the independent.

Franklin added that the tight polling shes seen is a good indicator of how much progress the Perriello campaign has made in a district that McGuire won by 15 points in 2024. That year, McGuire even ran ahead of President Donald Trump, who carried the district by about 12 percentage points.

Trumps low approval ratings are a factor in both contests. He has a 53% unfavorable rating in the 5th District, while nearly 60% of 1st District voters disapprove of Trumps job performance. Trump stumped for both men during a conference call last month. [Wittman] fought tirelessly for you, and I know that because weve been together fighting, the president said. John McGuire has been a rock-solid vote for strong borders, low taxes, low regulations, strong military, and supporting our vets.

Fundraising is a different sort of poll, but one that can indicate which way an election is going to swing. Perriello has brought in $2.14 million to McGuires $1.74 million this cycle, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. In the 1st District, Wittman had raised $4 million through July 15 while Taylor had brought in $2.1 million, according to federal records. But Taylor reported raising $2 million in the third quarter alone, which ended on Sept. 30.

We always knew this race was going to be close, Wittman told Virginia Scope after the poll was released. We have to make sure were using all of the above sources of energy, including nuclear power.

For her part, Taylor leaned into national issues, such as the war against Iran. Rob Wittman has allowed us to stumble into a directionless war that is costing American lives, billions of dollars, and driving up costs, she told VPM. We must end this war.

Early voting numbers are much higher this year than at the last midterm election in 2022. Almost 350,000 ballots had been cast 30 days ahead of Nov. 3, as opposed to 168,000 four years ago. However, that shouldnt impact the results of the polling. Even with early voting, our polls have been remarkably accurate time and again, Rozell told the Daily Signal. I see no detectable decline in accuracy due to early voting.

The Washington Post has no plans to poll any other Virginia districts this year, Rozell told the Daily Signal, and no plan to poll the same ones again.

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A Delta Air Lines Airbus A350-900 slated to depart for Tokyo, carrying 275 passengers and 15 crew members, struck an Air Canada passenger jet with its left wingtip, a Delta spokesperson told Fox News Digital. No injuries were initially reported.

"While taxiing at Los Angeles International Airport, a Delta aircraft made contact with an Air Canada aircraft," a Delta statement said. "Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people, and we apologize to our customers for the experience and delay in their travel."

This story is breaking. Please check back for updates. 

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Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

This week marks the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israelis, civilians, some people in the IDF, and foreign residents. When women, men, children, young adults, some of them attending a rock concert. 

Remember the facts. Without warning, over 4,000 terrorists from Hamas stormed in over the fence, I cant call it a wall, it looks to me more like a fence, stormed in and waged a surprise attack against Israel. They were accompanied by 200 civilians that tagged along on the expectation that the terrorists would be killing, wounding, torturing, taking hostages, and the civilians could rape, mutilate, and steal, and bring loot, and all of that was accomplished. 

We also forget that there was another thousand terrorists who, in support of this invasion, had launched 4,300 rockets into civilian centers. In fact, that would be the first salvo, which in the next few days would account for a total of 13,000 rockets. Remember, 13,000 rockets all fired at Israeli civilian centers. They attacked 23 different little hamlets. Almost 1,200 died. They took 251 hostages. They got in 14 miles, 14 miles inside 1948 Israel. 

So what are the facts about why did they do this?  

Well, we can ask that question because there had not been an Israeli inside Gaza since 2006, for almost, at the time of the assault, 17, 18 years. Israel was supplying the majority of the water, fuel, and power for Gaza even though they had left and turned it over to them.  

Gaza had staged one election, in the words of the great Muslim scholar Bernard Lewis, One election, one time. They had killed off many of the architects of the opposition. They had thrown Palestinian Authority activists off buildings. They had eliminated them. They never held another election. They tortured or killed internal dissidents. 

In this period in which Hamas had complete autonomy over Gaza, they received somewhere between $45 and $50 billion in aid, roughly from 2006 to the present day. Forty to 50 billion. That would have allowed this choice piece of Mediterranean real estate to build luxury hotels, to bring in European and Gulf advisers, and in other words, to create a Qatar or an Oman or a Dubai.  

They didnt want to do that. They diverted about $1 billion to $2 billion and built the largest labyrinth of tunnels probably in the world, not subways, but I mean military tunnels, about 500 miles. It cost them 6,000 tons of cement, 2,000 tons of metal. The entries and the exits were placed under schools, mosques, and hospitals, forcing the Israelis to attack those exits and entries and then incur collateral damage. 

Remember one other thing: They were prepared to send more terrorists and more soldiers deeper into Israel if the IDF had not responded belatedly, though they did. They did respond and stop them. They confiscated over 10,000 weapons. Where those weapons came from, you can imagine, but most of them were from Iran or China. 

I want to leave you with a couple of questions. Number one, would there have been this cry of genocide, this hatred of Israel? It was always there, but would there have been an American action, all of the things about Iran, had they just not attacked on Oct. 7?  

What if Hamas had said the following: We have a peace deal with Israel. Were going to create our own nation here. We have twenty thousand workers inside Israel at competitive wages worldwide. Were going to use that revenue and that expertise that theyre going to gain by working with Israelis to create a successful autonomous nation. Were gonna show the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank that we can be preeminent in the Middle East. 

They didnt do that. Instead, they wanted to slaughter Jews, men, women, children, mutilate, behead, rape, torture, take hostages. 

I have another second question. What was Israel supposed to do after this had happened, given that they had an overwhelming military that could dominate almost any country? I shouldnt say almost every country in the Middle East. With this enormous military power and this egregious assault on Israel, it was really one of the few assaults ever conducted inside 1948 Israel.  

What were they supposed to do? Were they supposed to say to the Hamas leadership that was gloating in the global media, Would you please turn over the architects who planned this, the forty or fifty people? They did. Did they say, We would like all the perpetrators as well? They did. Did they say, We would like you to return all 251 hostages? They did. Did they say, We would like you to stop sending rockets, especially the rockets, all of them, intended to kill our own civilians? They did. 

And what was the Hamas reaction? Jubilation. Jubilation. This was the high point of Iranian subsidies. They were getting billions of dollars from international relief organizations, and the Biden administration had refunded them through the U.N. They were getting weapons from China. They had help and solidarity from Hezbollah and the Houthis. They were at a crescendo of pride and arrogance. 

What did Israel do? They waited three weeks before invading. And what was the reaction to that patience and that demand that this could be resolved peaceably if they would turn over all the perpetrators and release the hostages? It was absolute hatred and contempt. 

I saw it when I walked across my home campus where I work. On Oct. 8, 9, and 10, I saw students yelling, From the river to the sea. They were not objecting to Israeli entrance in Gaza. They werent objecting, I should say they were celebrating that they thought Oct. 7 was the entree, the beginning, the alpha of a larger multipronged assault whose ultimate aim was to kill as many Jews as possible. 

So why do people react that way given the circumstances? Why dont they, the world, condemn these killers, these mutilators, these beheaders? And why do they keep saying that Israel is a genocidal enemy when they waited and waited and waited before going in? 

Well, Israel is not the Israel of the 1950s and 60s, a small, poor nation that is a victim of repeated assaults. Its a powerful 10-million-person, 10-and-a-half-million-person nation that has high tech, an overwhelmingly strong economy, an attraction of science and technology in the Middle East.  

In other words, in the words of DEI, they are a victimizer or oppressor just because of their, quote, privilege. 

DEI played a lot of it. In the world thats gone mad, in Europe, the United States, Israel, Israelis were white and Palestinians were nonwhite and therefore victims. Doesnt matter what the reality was. That was the binary. 

Antisemitism played a role. We have half of our people for some reason going to colleges where theyre all indoctrinated. We have immigration now where were letting in 5 million people from the Middle East in the first and second generations from what we can tell by Hasan Piker or Zohran Mamdani or Ilhan Omar or Abdul El-Sayed, is that they have very little affection for their host.  

They despise Israel, and they want Israel destroyed, and they work and act and fund to that purpose. 

Add it all up on this commemorative week of Oct. 7, and to sane and sober people, it makes no sense. But sane and sober people, unfortunately, in the West today are in a minority. 

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

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Other countries are done kowtowing to the radical Left. It looks like Brazil is about to make a solid shift to the Right. According to new election results in Brazil, Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former conservative president Jair Bolsonaro, is leading the race.

Jair Bolsonaro lost an election under highly disputed circumstances. His supporters tried to stop Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a radical leftist, from taking office. Lula, by the way, had been banned from office because of corruption, and then the Supreme Court unbanned him.

This rightward shift happening in a bunch of South American countries, such as Argentina, Chile, and Colombia, is a direct rebuttal to Left-wing ideas that were implemented. According to The Wall Street Journal:

The result and major victories by conservatives in concurrent congressional and state elections Sunday underscored the strength of right-wing sentiment in Brazil that none of the major polls had managed to capture. On the eve of the vote, Datafolha had put Bolsonaro at 42% of votes against 45% for da Silva.

Brazils right has gained ground in recent years, fueled by anger over violent street crime, the growing political clout of evangelical Christians and frustration among businesses and middle-class voters over taxes, spending and the lefts stewardship of the economy.

The Bolsonaro family scored a series of victories Sunday. Jair Bolsonaros wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, was elected to the Senate, as was another son, Carlos, while his youngest son, Jair Renan, and his brother, Renato, won seats in the lower house of Congress.

The entire Bolsonaro family will be in the legislature.

It is insane how the media treated the scenario as though Jair Bolsonaro was a fascist. In Brazil, Lula da Silva came into office and proceeded to illegally reshape nearly every institution he could. Heres a timeline.

In 2003, Lula called for external oversight of the judiciary, and in 2004 the Brazilian Congress approved a constitutional reform, backed by his government, that created national councils to oversee the judiciary and the public prosecution service. He basically said, Im going to run the show now.

In 2017 to 2018, he was convicted of corruption and money laundering amounting to up to $1.2 million. He served 580 days in prison as part of a larger corruption investigation involving $2.5 billion in embezzlement across hundreds of politicians and executives.

In 2021, Brazils Supreme Court annulled his conviction on procedural grounds in a political ruling that reinstated Lula, allowing him to run in 2022, and then he defeated Bolsonaro.

The entire media treated this as a win for democracy. Then Lula took office again and proceeded to change the entire system illegally.

Between 2022 and 2024, the Supreme Court dismantled and annulled a majority of convictions and penalties against people associated with Lula. Bolsonaro supporters challenged the voting system in 2022. Thats what led to the storming of the capital in 2023.

Then the Superior Electoral Court stepped in and stopped Bolsonaro from seeking public office until 2030. They convicted Bolsonaro and sent him to 27 years in prison.

The Supreme Court became Lulas tool. They suppressed opposition speech. They insulated Lula from criticism.

But now the blowback is here.

This is not the only country where you are seeing Left-wing governance crash and burn. In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who has advocated for open borders, pro-Palestinian policies, and heavy taxation, had to call snap elections because he wanted to ram through another one of his socialist housing programs, and he didnt have support in the legislature.

So he called the snap election; he dissolved his parliamentary majority. And he is very likely to lose.

Elsewhere, the conservative parties in the U.K. are on the upswing again. The widely maligned Conservative Party has a new leader, Kemi Badenoch, who is tremendous. Her approval ratings are rising.

In the latest YouGov polls from Britain, the Labour Party continues to hold sway, but they only have about 27% of the vote. The Reform Party has 22% of the vote, and the Conservatives are at 20% of the vote, which means that the plurality of people in the U.K. are not looking for a Labour victory.

Other countries are learning not to kowtow to leftism.

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She must have noticed the big boost Macklemore got from ruining Ed Sheerans tour, because neither Macklemore nor Williams have had a Billboard Top 100 hit since 2017, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says.

But there are two words that can make them relevant again, she adds.

Predictably, Williams yelled f**k ICE and free mother-f**king Palestine.

Hayley Williams actually wasn't done. Hayley Williams wasnt done trying to gain some sort of legitimacy again. Maybe people might start Googling her name. And so she decided to take it one step further by targeting yet another group, Gonzales says.

The greatest threat to American democracy is Christian nationalism, she said in another set.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but the Democrats force me to do this every single time because they are trying to brainwash people. They think if they say democracy, democracy, democracy enough times that you will forget that our country is not a democracy, Gonzales comments.

It is actually a constitutional republic. Thats very important. Like, theyre doing this intentionally. They are using language to try to change your perspective on this country and how we are set up. Its actually a very, very important distinction, she continues.

One, Gonzales explains, that the founding fathers knew they needed to very clearly lay out because they knew that American democracy promotes mob rule and its end point is socialism.

What would we have if we were a democracy? she asks, before answering, Legalized federal abortion, transgender protection at the federal level, men in womens sports, men invading your bathrooms and girls' locker rooms. Youd have state-mandated DEI.

I realize Im describing a total dystopian hellhole, but thats what you would have if we were an American democracy, she continues.

This is why leftists like Hayley Williams are pushing their democracy narrative. Thats what they want, actually, she adds.

This is why she thinks Williams might be right.

The definition of Christian nationalism from the book The Case for Christian Nationalism reads is a nation that understands itself to be a Christian people and therefore orders its laws and customs accordingly, seeking both its earthly and spiritual good.

So when you use this term how it has been defined, Hayley Williams is actually correct. Christian nationalism is the greatest threat to American democracy because it seeks to return us to our founding principles, she says.

Thats actually very scary for them, she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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

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Christa Pike remains hospitalized with severe arm injuries following Tennessees attempt to execute her last Wednesday, according to The Associated Press. 

Her attorneys said her prognosis remains unclear and they expect a long recovery.

"Her recovery is medically unprecedented," her attorneys said, adding that Pike remains handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed.

The statement was the first indication of improvement since an ambulance took Pike from a Nashville prison, AP reported. 

She survived two doses of pentobarbital during the execution attempt.

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Lets imagine you have a Nebraska steak on your plate, the News Channel Nebraska reporter said. What would be your preferred cut?

Honestly I like them all unlike Talafreako in Texas, where hes a vegan and all of a sudden he eats steak, and hes not happy, Trump replied.

He goes and throws up after he eats it, Trump added. This is a vegan. This is a guy that likes lettuce, not steak. 

Trumps vegan attacks follow a 2022 video in which Talarico announced that his campaign was going non-meat, arguing that reducing meat consumption was both a moral obligation and necessary to combat climate change. 

Not just because its the right thing to do, and the moral thing to do, but also, as all of you know, its necessary to fight climate change, Talarico said. It is now existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption and that we try to respect animals in all aspects of society.

I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign, he announced. We are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses.

Talarico has denied being vegan. His campaigns purchasing polichy does not establish his personal diet, he says.

Theyve even called me a vegan, and those are fighting words in the state of Texas, he said at a rally.

The Democratic National Committees official X account also came to his defense, sharing a photo of Talarico eating barbecue with the caption, November, here we come.

November, here we come. https://t.co/ux1w1WzGNO

Democrats (@TheDemocrats) May 27, 2026

Talarico is running against Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton, who, like Trump, has mocked his opponents remarks, dubbing him Tofu Talarico.

Trump reiterated his support for Paxton at a Texas rally last week, calling him a pain in the *ss but said America needs him badly.

When I was being hit by the radical Left very hard harder than very few people could have withstood it, I was being hit Ken Paxton was at my side more than anybody, Trump said. 

We need Ken so badly, and thats why Im here, he added, calling Paxton the greatest attorney general in the United States of America.

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Im not expecting much, Tom McCluskey, director of government affairs at CatholicVote, told the Daily Signal. I mean, everybody says, but nobody confirms, that nothing is going to be allowed to happen until after the elections.

After the Trump Department of Justice requested a pause on a case challenging mail-order abortion in Louisiana while the FDA conducts its abortion pill safety review, the 5th Circuit Court ordered the FDA to provide an update on Oct. 7.

The state of Louisiana sued the FDA for approving mail-order abortion on behalf of Rosalie Markezich, a young Louisiana woman whose boyfriend coerced her into taking abortion drugs that he ordered from a doctor in California. Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the state.

In 2023, the Biden administration removed the in-person dispensing requirement from the Mifepristone Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, making abortion drugs available by mail. Despite calls from the pro-life movement, the Trump administration has not restored the requirement that a woman see a medical professional before obtaining abortion drugs.

As the deadline approaches for an update on the safety review, pro-life advocates say they arent expecting any significant movement to curb mail-order abortion.

One pro-life operative said expectations are low because the FDA has disappointed the movement in the past. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. first committed to conduct the review in January 2025, but the public has yet to see results.

Were hopeful the administration will follow the facts, hold Big Abortion accountable, and take action, the operative said. Pro-lifers have low expectations because weve been let down beforebut this is an opportunity to finally get serious about the dangers of chemical abortion and ultimately end it.

Alliance Defending Freedoms legal counsel on the case isnt sure what to expect from the update.

The FDA has been fairly mum about anything having to do with the study, even including the protocol and what it is exactly that they are doing in order to study the safety of mifepristone, ADF legal counsel told the Daily Signal. Its honestly anyones guess what were going to hear on Wednesday.

Its possible the court will lift the stay on the case after FDA provides an update, legal counsel said.

If that update doesnt say very much, we could go back down at the district court while the 5th Circuit is pending and continue litigating there, the counsel said.

While ADF hopes the update is not vague, it is concerned by reports that not much movement is happening on the review.

Meanwhile, thats irreparable harm thats happening in the state of Louisiana, the counsel said. Even if the agency were to find that mifepristone safety review concludes that they needed to return safeguards, they still would have to go through an administrative process, and the earliest that we would see relief would be the end of 2027-2028 at this point, and that does nothing to alleviate or fix or cure the lawfulness of the 2023 REMS decisionthats the thing that were actually litigating in courtno matter what they find in this study, that decision in 2023 by the FDA was still unlawful.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said she trusts Dr. Heidi Overton, Trumps nominee for FDA commissioner, who said there will be communication about the comprehensiveness of the study.

That study has to be done in the most durable, scientific way possible and the results communicated transparently, Overton said in her Senate confirmation hearing.

Dannelfelser told the Daily Signal its frustrating the pro-life movement has been left with so little information about the long-awaited review.

The fact that were all waiting on pins and needles for a report on a study that should have been a long time ago, she said, and there should have already been a Justice Department settling with the state of Louisiana over this, just is evidence of high levels of frustration.

Even without the abortion pill safety review, the Trump administration could have restored the in-person dispensing requirement on the abortion pill, and pro-lifers are disillusioned that this hasnt happened, Dannenfelser said.

It could have reestablished the REMS that were surrounding the distribution of the drug under the first Trump administration, she said. We could have reestablished the Trump rules at any point along the way, but that did not happen, and so now were, you know, looking for any glimmer of hope that were heading in the right direction today.

The pro-life leader does not think this disappointment will hurt Republicans in midterms because of the strong pro-life record of candidates.

We have very strong candidates, she said. They are the ones running in Senate battlegrounds, in House battlegrounds for governorships, and those candidates themselves are solid. They are completely with us in our estimation of how important this particular issue is on abortion drugs.

The FDA and HHS did not respond to the Daily Signals request for comment.

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The judge said that when a police officer used the Flock Safety system to track a woman's cross-state movements, he went too far.

'The government cannot go snooping through our personal lives.'

U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill granted a motion to suppress evidence in a drug case last week after declaring that a Tulsa County, Oklahoma, deputy searching a woman's license plate through the Flock systems violated the Fourth Amendment by way of unconstitutional search.

The officer had access to at least two automated license plate reader systems, court documents revealed, Flock and VehicleManager, which were used to observe 50 sightings tied to the license plate in question.

"These two systems have different capabilities, but they serve the same essential function: gathering and organizing historical data about a vehicle's whereabouts on public roadways for use by law enforcement across the country," the documents read, per CBS12.

Judge Hill said that the technology does not have the right to reveal sensitive information about a person's whereabouts, even if it does not provide the same precision in location as a cell phone.

"It could track and log a couple struggling to start a family at the fertility clinic. It could show how often someone visits a liquor store or casino. It could show which doctor someone goes to or what lawyers office someone visits," the document stated.

The judge went on, "This leaves the question of why is it the government's business where everyone goes all the time? The government cannot go snooping through our personal lives and business without an adequate basis to do so."

The court found that police cannot use a vast network of cameras to collect such vehicle data and then track a person's movements without probable cause and a warrant.

RELATED: 'A nightmare for individual liberties' Josh Hawley unveils sweeping new anti-Flock legislation

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In this case, the documents stated, when Tulsa County Deputy Sheriff Freddie Alaniz searched ALPR databases for a Mazda SUV under the queries "traffic violation" and "investigation," all he knew "was that the vehicle had a California license plate."

The deputy sheriff used the ALPR data to track the car's movements across several states, which he later said raised suspicion on his part as to why the woman was making short trips.

Alaniz said he suspected the woman of possible drug trafficking, due to the length of her trip, her nervousness, and her use of a rental car. For those reasons, and others, Alaniz eventually detained the woman before having a K-9 search her car.

While the legality of the search and length of stop are argued by both parties in the document, the judge declared that the "use of the ALPR Systems was an Unconstitutional Warrantless Search."

RELATED: Astronomers detect unprecedented radio signal it's coming from a gigantic planet

Charles-McClintock Wilson/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The decision comes after Missouri Senator Josh Hawley (R) revealed his plans for sweeping legislation against ALRP companies through his proposed Stop Flock Abuse Act.

Also, Florida recently banned the use of Flock cameras and other license plate readers on roads that are part of the state highway system.

In the Oklahoma case, the judge wrote that motorists can still have a reasonable expectation of privacy when driving, in that "the whole of their physical movements" should not be readily available for search.

The ruling does not stop police from using the cameras and does not declare a single use of the camera (a scan) to be unconstitutional.

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The reality is that its largely composed of naive, click-chasing ignoramuses whose pollution of public discourse far outweighs their contributions. Take Theo Von, the mulletted, near half-century-old comedian whom Vice President JD Vance has recommended to the public as the funniest person imaginable with a good heart to boot.

Von was among the influencers who sat down with Vances running mate during the 2024 election cycle, and their conversation went mega-viral in no small part because of Donald Trumps interest in his interlocutors substance abuse issues. Common wisdom now demands that Von and his peers be credited with helping propel Trump to victory, but doing so fundamentally misunderstands this motley crew of celebrity pundits. Theyre not thought leaders forging a new consensus; theyre opportunistic weathervanes hopping from hot hand to hot hand.

What everyone seems to forget about the state of affairs two years ago because it contrasts so severely with that with which were saddled now is that Trump was the favorite to take back the presidency and a resurgent cultural phenomenon. His unique, energetic personality put an exclamation point on the shortcomings of the rapidly declining Joe Biden and chronically inauthentic Kamala Harris, and the dancing, the one-liners, and his reaction to the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, all only added to his legend.

Von and his ilk jumped on the bandwagon for the same reason half the middle school population became Miami Heat fans in 2010; they saw a winner and wanted to be a part of the victory parade to come.

But now with Trump approaching the back half of his second term and his popularity arguably at its nadir, the grifters are looking for a new horse to back.

Enter New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the political wunderkind whose easy smile, mirthful laugh and flashy social media strategy have masked his destructive, explicitly anti-American worldview.

Von recently hosted Mamdani for a sit-down during which the former deemed socialism a buzzword and asked the latter to define it. Mamdani obliged with the sunshine, rainbows, unicorns, and candy version You will have whatever you need to live a dignified life the things that allow you to take a breath much to Vons delight.

You explained socialism like I kind of thought it was, Von marveled before lamenting that the United States capitalist system is more like privatized communism, where big business calls the shots.

If youre lost, dont worry so was he.

The lovefest extended to foreign policy, too, where the pair bashed the United States greatest, most willingly self-sacrificial ally not just in the Middle East, but the world. While the Trump administration has partnered with Israel to secure relative peace in Gaza and cripple a rogue Iranian regime with the unofficial motto of Death to America, Von and Mamdani picked up brushes to paint an alternative reality together.

Facts, chimed in Von after Mamdani decried the complicity of American taxpayers in a faux genocide.

F*ck yeah, exclaimed the beaming comedian after the mayor affirmed that if he had his say, Benjamin Netanyahu would have been arrested upon arriving in his city.

And as for his old muse, Von believes that hes just been compromised by Israel, by this dark government over there.

How to explain going from boosting Donald Trump, the flag-waving, Proud to Be an American billionaire president who moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, to doing the same for a Hamasnik Marxist with nothing but contempt for his country in the space of just two years? How else except to admit that youre an empty vessel? One in a fleet full of them.

Tim Dillon is another influencer-comedian whos been credited with helping Trump get across the finish line in 2024, but has since transformed into a shrill pinko who has accused Trump of committing the biggest betrayal of a political movement Ive ever seen. Just last month he upped the ante, declaring that Trump is obviously here to destroy Earth.

More at least in theory informed, professional mic-jockeys like Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson have undergone similar transformations, from headlining rallies on behalf of the president to opportunistically expressing outrage over his treatment of women and even suggesting he might be the Antichrist.

To some extent, these reversals might be attributable to the presidents policy choices, but the answers to these questions loom over such a generous reading: if he had made all of the same choices and his approval rating stood at 55%, would they still be positioning themselves as they are?

And if the traditional media sources they were supposedly destined to replace hadnt succeeded in maligning the worlds only Jewish state, would it still be the boogeyman they blamed for his fall from grace?

It was said that the podcasters would destroy Americas left-wing establishment, not join them at the first sign of trouble. But as it turns out, their only allegiance is not to the truth, but to themselves.

***

Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite and a 20232024 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at the Fund for American Studies.

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