Month: May 2026

Nick Shirley completely humiliated a weird protester on the streets of New York City who did not appreciate the way he had exposed rampant government corruption for the past several months.

On Saturday, Shirley released footage of his interactions with people on New York City’s Canal Street. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman and social media influencer Joe Sweeny joined him.

The New York Post reported that this was part of an effort to show support for locals and business owners plagued by illegal street vendors, drug use, and rampant crime.

The Post also notes that Canal Street has become a magnet for illegal aliens selling counterfeit goods on the sidewalk.

Shirley and Sweeny later helped a group of volunteers in painting over a slew of storefronts and a nearby Broadway building defaced by graffiti.

At one point during his visit, Shirley ran into an odd protester who was apparently wearing a mask to disguise himself.

The man accused Shirley of targeting children with his form of journalism and called him creepy.

Shirley then dropped a seven-word truth bomb in response to the agitator’s assertion: “The point is, there were no kids.”

Indeed, the fraud Shirley exposed involved only grown adults.

The protester was not happy hearing this and started spiraling. He went from denying the truth to uttering nearly indecipherable nonsense, then back to calling Shirley’s actions creepy.

Then, he apologized at one point to Shirley before screaming at him as he walked away.

Talk about a person out of control.

WATCH:

HOLY SMOKES: Nick Shirley just DESTROYED this NYC Protester with only SEVEN WORDS:

Protestor: “If I showed up to your kids’ house with cameras demanding to see kids, would you think it’s creepy?”

SHIRLEY: “The point is there was no kids”

MIC DROP
pic.twitter.com/JebjKuj5Ve

— MAGA Voice (@MAGAVoice) May 30, 2026

The post WATCH: Independent Journalist Nick Shirley Sends Wacky Protester SPIRALING with a Seven-Word Truth Bomb During NYC Street Interview appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Nigeria’s population of roughly 240 million is divided almost equally between Muslims and Christians, with Muslims holding a probable plurality; no official religious census has been conducted since 1963. Nevertheless, several forces within the country are working toward jihad, Islamization, and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.

The various Islamist actors have different motivations and often conflict with one another over policy and procedure. At the same time, they share the objective of removing Christian presence through killing, displacement, coercion, or demographic replacement.

Boko Haram and ISWAP have fought each other directly and have distinct ideological and operational disputes. Fulani militias are driven primarily by land seizure and demographic expansion rather than a formal caliphate ideology. The Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), being Shia and Iranian-linked, is theologically at odds with the Sunni jihadist groups. These distinctions are documented and verifiable.

ISWAP and Boko Haram have explicit caliphate mandates and documented histories of forced conversion, making the elimination, subjugation, or absorption of Christian communities a stated component of their ideology. For Fulani militias, the objective is more accurately characterized as displacement, territorial control, and demographic replacement rather than forced conversion or extermination as an end in itself. However, forced conversion is one of the tools used to achieve this goal.

The caliphate question cannot be addressed without its historical baseline. Before the British colonial administration arrived in Nigeria, Usman dan Fodio, a Fulani Islamic scholar, launched a jihad in Gobir in 1804 and by 1808 had established the Sokoto Caliphate, having vowed to enforce Islam by the sword from the Sahara to the Atlantic. When the British dismantled it administratively in 1903, the caliphate was absorbed rather than destroyed ideologically.

A legal analysis by a senior Nigerian jurist described Dan Fodio’s jihad as a “full-blown Islamization agenda” aimed at “expanding the caliphate to other parts of Nigeria in the irrevocable bid to dip the Quran into the Atlantic Ocean in Lagos.” That goal, a caliphate reaching the southern coast, was never achieved, and the ambition, in the analysis of multiple researchers and interviewees, never disappeared.

Three distinct actor categories pursue that project today, with different methods and levels of ideological organization.

ISWAP is the clearest case. A formal affiliate of Islamic State, which declared a global caliphate in June 2014 under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISWAP requires bay’a, an oath of allegiance, and acceptance of the caliphate’s theological and political authority. Its 2016 split from Boko Haram was itself a caliphate-compliance move: Boko Haram’s indiscriminate killing of Muslims violated IS doctrine requiring governance and protection of Muslim populations under caliphate authority.

ISWAP controls villages in the Lake Chad Basin, administers sharia courts, collects taxes, and frames the Nigerian state as an apostate entity to be destroyed. It provides basic services in held territory, classic IS caliphate-building doctrine, and its stated, doctrinal, and operational goal is the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in West Africa as a province of the global Islamic State project. This is the group’s declared purpose, confirmed by its governance behavior.

Armed Fulani militias present a more contested but evidentially substantial case. According to the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa, the number of Christians killed by armed Fulani herdsmen between October 2019 and September 2023 was almost seven times the number killed by Boko Haram and ISWAP combined, a scale that demands explanation beyond random resource conflict.

Fulani massacres since 2015 follow a consistent pattern: Christian farmers are displaced, emptied villages are declared Fulani Emirates, and land transfers to Fulani cattle grazing. The use of emirate terminology maps directly onto the historical caliphate’s administrative structure.

Genocide Watch concluded that the Fulani jihad is organized and financed by large Fulani cattle owners with support from Fulani officers in the Nigerian Army, moving the analysis away from spontaneous ethnic conflict toward a directed campaign. There is additional evidence that Fulani militias are now in communication with Boko Haram and ISWAP. If confirmed, this would suggest that the violence is not merely localized or opportunistic but part of a broader networked insurgency.

What remains unproven is a unified command structure directing all Fulani militia violence toward a single caliphate goal; the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point noted that nomadic patterns and significant cultural variation across the Fulani’s broad African range have worked against the development of any central leadership.

The Sokoto Sultanate still exists legally in Nigeria as a traditional institution, and politicians have exploited the collective memory of the 1804 jihad for political advantage. Whether this amounts to active caliphate-building or political instrumentalization of identity remains unresolved in the academic literature. The Sultan of Sokoto’s counter-claim — that the violence is purely economic — has grown untenable given the targeting patterns, the geographic expansion into the southeast, and the emirate terminology applied to captured villages.

The House Appropriations Committee’s joint report to the White House stated that “Fulani militant and bandit groups are seizing land and resources and obstructing religious freedom to exert control and coerce conversion to Islam” and that government had “failed to confront both the scale and the intent of these atrocities.”

The UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Belief formally concluded that radicalized Fulani militants demonstrate clear intent to target Christians and Christian symbols, adopting tactics comparable to Boko Haram and ISWAP.

Three distinct objectives are documentable across these actors, each supported by evidence of varying strength.

Land and resource seizure is the most provable. An economic warfare dimension runs alongside the killing: militants systematically kidnap Christians for ransom, forcing families to sell farmland, one Nigerian church paid $205,000 to recover 50 kidnapped members. By mid-2025, jihadist Fulani herdsmen occupied at least 950 locations across the largely Christian southeastern states of Abia, Enugu, Anambra, and Ebonyi, territory with no historical Fulani grazing rationale, which defeats the resource-conflict explanation.

Islamization of territory is strongly indicated. Genocide Watch documented attackers shouting religious declarations, targeting churches, and singling out clergy. The Nigerian Atrocities Documentation Project concluded that the religious dimension of the conflict holds sway over narratives tied to economic competition, climate change, or border porosity, and that the abundance of fertile land occupied by Christians in the North-Central region drives a sustained campaign to displace Christians and seize their lands.

Forced conversion is real but secondary. Forcible conversion of Christian girls is documented in Northwest Nigeria, and forced marriage into Muslim households functions as conversion in practice. The primary Fulani objective is displacement and land seizure, Islamized territory is the goal, and conversion of surviving persons is incidental. ISWAP maintains an explicit caliphate mandate and documented forced conversion policy.

For Fulani militias, the mechanism is demographic replacement, not mass conversion, although forced conversion is one of the means used to achieve demographic replacement.

The post Competing Jihadists, Shared Goal: Remaking Nigeria Through Islamization appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

By Wayne Allyn Root

I was the first and only conservative TV host and media personality to suggest this idea many weeks ago- including right here at The Gateway Pundit in a half dozen columns.

Now, finally, a few other influential conservative media stars are talking about this idea. Great! Soon, I hope to have the entire conservative and MAGA world talking about this idea.

And of course, the only conservative who matters, President Donald J. Trump, needs to officially adopt this idea.

President Trump lives by the philosophy of “Repetition is the key to success.” People need to hear something a dozen times before it sinks into their conscience. So, here we go again!

The SAVE America Act was first brought to the House floor on January 3rd, 2026. Republicans were gleaming and excited, because the SAVE Act would finally put a stop to Democrats rigging our elections, and end the travesty and tragedy of millions of illegal aliens voting in U.S. elections.

By the way, set aside Venezuela, or Serbia, or Iran, or China. The ultimate example of “foreign interference in US elections” is Democrats using the votes of millions of illegal aliens to rig and steal elections. And not just the presidency, but dozens of US Senate and US House seats too.

It turns out Democrats are living on stolen land in DC.

The majority of Republican and MAGA voters adopted The SAVE Act as a gospel, as the ultimate savior, as a “Godsend,” and were even more giddy when it passed the House.

President Trump had his own plan to stop the rigged elections, but was told that it wasn’t needed because the SAVE Act was sure to pass both chambers of Congress.

The SAVE Act was first brought to the Senate floor on March 17th, 2026, where it received hurricane-force headwinds.

Not a surprise if you’re a Democrat, but The SAVE Act was betrayed by a RINO Senate majority leader, and several bought-off-and-paid-off Republican RINO Senators, who sold out America and MAGA, and who will continue to sell out this country while collecting millions of dollars in bribes from China, the CCP, the Mexican Drug Cartels, and George Soros-type Super PACS.

Timing also destroyed the SAVE Act, because Republican leaders in Congress waited too late to start the process, not factoring in the months it would take to wind through legal challenges by Democrats, and rulings by the appeals courts, before finally making it to the Supreme Court.

Now there is no time for that to happen, and the Democrats are very satisfied with just running out the clock, with barely over 150 days until the election.

I support the SAVE America Act, and have supported it since it was first brought to the House for debate in January. I pushed and pushed for it to pass on all of my TV, radio, podcast, and online platforms, until I was blue in the face. Just like many of my Republican and conservative colleagues, we all really wanted it to succeed.

We all understood the raw truth: Democrats cannot win elections without massive cheating.

As I sit and think about the SAVE Act as of today, I have to be honest with myself- it will not pass, and if by miracle it did pass, it would not be in time to save the midterms this November. That’s a FACT.

I’m hoping that the SAVE Act will pass at some point in the future, as it can be a very valuable bill in the 2028 election and the 2030 census count, where the Democrats are going to push hard to count illegal aliens as American citizens. This is the difference between perhaps 20 to 30 U.S. House seats and 20+ electoral votes, too.

The more I sat and thought about options to save the midterms, I kept thinking of the damage that will be done to President Trump, and this country, and the US economy, and the great American middle class, if Democrats are allowed to cheat their way into power in November.

So, understanding what a true life-and-death national emergency this is, I developed a plan; worked on it with an election integrity expert (my friend John Goodman); announced it on my TV, radio, and podcast platforms; published it on The Gateway Pundit; and then sent it to President Trump and his team, once I knew that it was 100% legal and foolproof, and would save our midterm elections without Democrat obstruction.

This idea stops the Democrat lawyers and communist-bribed and owned insurrection judges dead in their tracks.

For the last 7 weeks, I’ve been screaming from the highest rooftops for a “Presidential National Security Emergency for Elections.”

If you liked The SAVE Act, then you should love this one much more! Because this is…

The SAVE Act on steroids- TRUMP STYLE!

I recently interviewed Dr. Jerome Corsi- one of the main players tasked by President Trump to find the legal way to end corrupt, rigged elections in this country. According to Dr. Corsi, it appears that my call for a “Presidential National Security Emergency” has been heard loud and clear by President Trump and his legal team.

President Trump has the legal authority to declare a “Presidential National Security Emergency for Elections” based on millions of illegal aliens continuing to vote in U.S. elections.

The Democrat lawyers and radical communist insurrection judges cannot stop the President from fixing our elections once and for all if he declares this “national emergency.” That’s the “special power” that makes this idea so powerful.

This “emergency declaration” is 10,000 times more powerful than The SAVE Act.

The Supreme Court has already ruled on this exact situation. Back in 1983, they ruled that the only way for Democrats to overturn a “National Emergency” declaration by a President was by a 2/3rds majority vote in both chambers of Congress. Good luck. It won’t happen. Impossible. Zero chance.

This proposed “Presidential National Security Emergency for Elections” would address everything that was in The SAVE Act, but even stronger!

It has strict mandates on voter ID, voter registration, proof of citizenship, and takes millions of illegal aliens out of play from voting in our elections. It also ends the voting machine scam and mandates hand-counted paper ballots, an important piece of this puzzle that was not even included in The SAVE Act.

Here is the mistake of the year- it appears a majority of our own Republican and conservative politicians and media stars continue to publicly lobby for The SAVE Act. Which is delusional. The SAVE Act is DOA- Dead on Arrival. Anyone who understands math should understand that. We never had the votes, and we don’t have them now.

And with President Trump successfully ending the careers of backstabbing RINO U.S. Senators Cassidy and Coryn, it’s now doubly true. The Senate RINOS are on a bender. They still sit in their seats until January. They will never allow Trump to pass anything until their time is up. They’d rather see America destroyed than help President Trump.

I urge all Republicans and MAGA and patriotic independents to get behind President Trump signing a “Presidential National Security Emergency for Elections” declaration- which we know is the only way to secure our elections for this November’s midterms.

It’s the only way to take the Democrat lawyers and radical communist insurrection judges out of the picture, from stopping us from finally making US elections honest and fair again.

We are now hearing that this is the path President Trump is likely to take, as we get closer to the election. As my Yiddish grandmother used to say, “From your lips to God’s ears.”

I’m known as the “Biggest MAGA mouth in America.” I have a MAGA megaphone. As of this coming Monday June 1st, I add a nightly national TV show called “America Speaks with Wayne Allyn Root”- weeknights at 10 PM ET/7 PM Pacific on Real Americas Voice TV.

That’s just another national platform to promote this idea that can save the midterms. I will use every tool in my arsenal to continue to push this “Presidential National Security Emergency for Elections.”

I’m so proud and honored to have been the first to bring this creative and foolproof idea to the dinner table, and now the “Presidential National Security Emergency for Elections” looks like the main course.

Forget The SAVE Act for now. Because this idea is far better. This is…

The SAVE Act on steroids- TRUMP STYLE!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Wayne Allyn Root is a CEO, businessman, best-selling author, and national conservative TV and radio host, who has interviewed President Trump 16 times. Watch Wayne’s TV shows on Real Americas Voice TV- “America Speaks” weeknights at 10 PM ET/7 PM PT and “America’s Top Ten Countdown” on Saturdays at Noon ET/9 AM PT, and his 2-hour daily video podcast “WAR Zone Live presented by The Gateway Pundit” daily from 6 PM to 8 PM ET at TheGatewayPundit.com. His website is ROOTforAmerica.com. Read Wayne’s latest fun book, “How Illegal Immigrants Have Made America Great.” It’s 100+ blank pages. The joke is on Democrats!

The post WAYNE ROOT: Here is “The SAVE Act On Steroids- TRUMP STYLE.” And With This Idea, Congress No Longer Matters! appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

J6ers may be the most law-abiding group of inmates ever released from prison. Where are the criminology professors?

The post J6ers May Be the Most Law-Abiding Group of Inmates Ever appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Yet another horrific revelation has unfolded regarding far-left Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, and it might be the most shocking yet.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, informed campaign staff a year ago that her husband had exchanged sexually explicit text messages with at least a dozen women.

The Platner campaign, though, ultimately dismissed the texts as a private matter and moved on.

Now, the news gets worse. The Daily Wire has revealed on Saturday that Platner is a registered user on Kik, an anonymous messaging app.

Platner’s Kik account uses the username “phustle0331,” which is similar to his Instagram handle, Phustle0331, and to the username of his Reddit account.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation describes Kik as a “predator’s paradise,” due to features that allow minors to join the app and speak with adults.

Approximately 70% of the app’s users are between the ages of 13 and 24. Even more disturbingly, the app does not require official age verification.

The Daily Wire shared evidence that Kik enables adult users to not only target innocent women but also children.

A true sexual predator’s paradise, indeed.

From The Daily Wire:

A Forbes investigation found that Kik had a “huge child exploitation problem,” while the BBC found that the app was at the center of over 1,100 child sexual abuse cases in the United Kingdom between 2013 and 2018.

But even among consenting adult users, Kik is no ordinary messenger. The platform has been described as “the app with the most severe sexual content.” Kik offers sexually explicit live chats with women, and is often found at the center of “sexploitation” cases, wherein predators coax someone to send nude photos, and then use the images for blackmail, the New York Times reported in 2016.

That report — released four months before Platner created his Kik account — chronicles a litany of heinous acts perpetrated by predators on the app, including a man who used the app to distribute child pornography, several who sent and solicited sexually explicit messages from minors, and one instance where a man attempted to kidnap a 14-year-old girl.

Kik was also where 13-year-old Nicole Madison Lowell chatted with two Virginia Tech students who kidnapped and killed her.

Interestingly, Platner joined Kik in 2016 when it had been under fire for being a hotbed for child pornography, kidnapping, and more wicked sexual activities.

Was he not aware of this?

The post THE HITS KEEP COMING: Graham Platner Has an ACTIVE Account on “Predator’s Paradise” Messaging App with a “Huge Child Exploitation Problem” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Los Angeles quietly put a convicted killer and alleged active gang member on the city payroll as a “Peace Ambassador,” turning a program meant to prevent violence into a textbook case of why so many Americans no longer trust government gatekeepers.

Story Snapshot

• The City of Los Angeles funded a “Peace Ambassadors” violence-prevention program that put a convicted murderer on the public payroll.
• Federal prosecutors say the ambassador, an 18th Street gang member, was still active in gang life and illegally possessed body armor as a violent felon.
• The case exposes serious vetting and oversight gaps in local public-safety initiatives marketed as reform and “reimagining” policing.
• The controversy feeds a growing left-right belief that political leaders protect image and ideology first, public safety and accountability second.

How a Convicted Killer Became a Taxpayer-Funded ‘Peace Ambassador’

The City of Los Angeles’ Council District 1 launched the **Peace Ambassadors** program as part of a broader “reimagining public safety” agenda, promising to “prevent violence before it starts” and support residents during crises.^[3] City materials describe a civic, non-enforcement role aimed at mediation and outreach rather than policing.^[3] Against that backdrop, federal prosecutors now allege that one of these ambassadors was not just formerly violent, but an active 18th Street gang member and convicted killer working on the public payroll.^[3][4]

Federal charging documents name **Michael Angel Alvarez**, age 41, known as “Diablo,” from the Westlake area, as the Peace Ambassador at the center of the scandal.^[3] Prosecutors say Alvarez, while paid by the city for violence-prevention work, was arrested near MacArthur Park and charged with **possession of body armor by a violent felon**, a crime that directly conflicts with his supposed role as a bridge to peace.^[3][4] Reporting further notes that Alvarez previously killed a man and was convicted of second-degree murder before gaining parole and city-funded employment.^[4]

WTF is a Peace Ambassador?
And these are the same Marxists attacking Spencer Pratt for Mayor of Los Angeles https://t.co/Pk1y7iRo7J

— Doña de Commiefornia (@LaDonaDelValle) May 29, 2026

What Federal Prosecutors and Local Reporting Say About His Gang Ties

According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, Alvarez is an identified member of the **18th Street gang**, one of the largest and most violent street gangs in Los Angeles.^[3] The federal complaint alleges that even while serving as a Peace Ambassador, Alvarez remained active in the gang, undermining the core claim that he had turned away from violence.^[3][4] Local coverage underscores that the Federal Bureau of Investigation participated in the operation that led to his arrest, framing the case as part of a broader gang probe.^[4]

Press statements from federal authorities stress that Alvarez was found with **body armor he is legally barred from possessing as a violent felon**, which they present as evidence that he still expected or prepared for violent encounters.^[3] A city-funded role meant to calm tensions instead appears, in prosecutors’ telling, to have given a long-time gang figure public legitimacy and a paycheck.^[3][4] For many residents watching the case unfold, this looks less like “smart reform” and more like the government being the last to realize it has been duped.

City Branding, Thin Vetting, and the Politics of ‘Peace’ Titles

Los Angeles leaders framed the Peace Ambassadors as part of a modern, community-centered alternative to traditional policing, emphasizing early intervention, conflict mediation, and neighborhood trust.^[3] That language mirrors broader trends in which institutions hand out **“peace” titles**—from city ambassadors to the United Nations’ “Messengers of Peace”—to signal moral authority and progressive values. These labels carry strong reputational weight even when the roles are advisory, symbolic, or loosely supervised, which can encourage more focus on branding than on rigorous background screening.

Peace and conflict research organizations that track global violence warn that mislabeling or poorly vetting figures in “peace” roles can blur lines between genuine conflict resolution and reputational laundering.^[2][5] When the public later learns that a celebrated peace figure has serious unresolved ties to violence or extremism, trust in institutions erodes further, especially in societies already polarized over crime and public safety.^[2][5] The Alvarez case lands squarely in that danger zone, where lofty rhetoric about transformation collides with hard questions about who checked the facts.

Why This Case Resonates with Americans Across the Political Spectrum

For conservatives who already distrust big-city criminal-justice experiments, a paid Peace Ambassador who is a convicted murderer and alleged active gang member looks like proof that political leaders value ideological narratives over basic safety.^[4] For liberals who fear state abuse yet also fear gun and gang violence, it raises a different worry: that officials are using “reform” language to cover up sloppy oversight that still leaves vulnerable communities exposed.^[2][3][5] In both camps, the episode reinforces a shared story line about **elites** managing appearances while ordinary people live with the consequences.

A convicted murderer who federal authorities say was working as a taxpayer-funded “Peace Ambassador” for the City of Los Angeles was arrested Friday for allegedly illegally possessing body armor near MacArthur Park. https://t.co/7F2UNdQw25 pic.twitter.com/A56kStaKUl

— KTLA (@KTLA) May 29, 2026

Against a national backdrop where the federal government highlights real terrorism threats, including detailed accounts of foreign-backed attacks on Americans, citizens see a striking contrast between how seriously Washington treats overseas danger and how casually some local governments appear to treat violent histories at home. The Alvarez appointment does not just raise questions about one council office; it underscores a larger crisis of confidence in vetting, transparency, and accountability inside institutions that claim to keep the peace.^[2][3][5]

Sources:

[2] Web – Security Council lifts terror-related sanctions on Syrian President

[3] Web – Institute for Economics & Peace | Experts in Peace, Conflict and …

[4] Web – Reimagining Public Safety | Council District 1 Welcome Site

[5] Web – Liev Schreiber, Kat Graham Honored as ‘Ambassadors of Peace’ at …

Martina McBride was, once upon a time, one of country’s biggest stars. The emphasis there is once upon a time; a long time, unless you’re one of those types who thinks it’s only yesterday that Pearl Jam and the Strokes were on the radio and any large group of people still listened to any of those three. (No shame in that; I’m in your numbers.)

McBride’s last album that appeared in the Billboard 200 was released in 2014. Her last album certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America — for between 500,000 to 1 million sales or equivalent streams — was released in 2007. Her last RIAA platinum record — over one million — was in 2005. In less than five months, people born on the day that album was released will be able to legally drink.

Nor is she an artist with a cult audience. We’re not talking Barbra Streisand, or Phish, or the Pet Shop Boys — singers or groups with dedicated fanbases despite a lack of commercial success. Nobody’s following her around the country in a VW Microbus with the lyrics to “Wild Angels” painted on the side.

Ergo, why is the media not only paying so much attention to the fact that she and other third-rate musicians are pulling out of an event that was being hailed as the “worst concert lineup ever assembled,” but painting it as an act of brave anti-Trump resistance?

McBride became the biggest name (already saying something) to pull out of a concert series on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for America’s semiquincentennial. (That’s “250th anniversary,” for those of you subjected to a Common Core education.)

“I was presented with an opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event but that turned out to be misleading,” McBride wrote on Instagram.

“I asked lots of questions and was assured this was a nonpartisan event that was meant to celebrate ALL 50 states.”

However, she stated that “things started changing.”

“I’ve spent my entire career singing songs about real people with real issues. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to be a voice for those who have felt like they didn’t have one,” she wrote in the post.

“It greatly upsets me that any fan who has been moved by my music may now feel like I’m abandoning the meaning behind those songs.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Martina McBride (@martinamcbride)

The reason behind this? Apparently the fact that the group putting on the bash is affiliated with President Donald Trump. She couldn’t have found this out through her agents — or by doing a Google search, or a ChatGPT prompt, like virtually anyone could have done.

Right, that excuse is totally believable. In the same way I find it believable that Jimmy Hoffa is alive and managing a Blockbuster Video on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Really! Some guy said it on a podcast somewhere. I think.

Nor, as The Hill pointed out, is McBride alone in the list of now-nobodies who are backing out.

Admit it: You can’t name anything Young MC has done since the song “Bust a Move,” which came out in 1989. But the media can name one more thing he’s done: Withdraw from the concert.

“I HAVE INFORMED MY AGENTS THAT I WILL NOT BE PERFORMING AT THE FREEDOM 250 EVENT,” Young MC said on Facebook. “The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event.”

“And despite the claims by the organizers that the event is non-partisan, SPIN magazine describes it as ‘Trump-backed’. I hope to perform in D.C. in the near future at an event that is not so politically charged.”

Celebrating America! So political! So charged!

Others to pull out include Poison singer Bret Michaels, Morris Day, C+C Music Factory, and The Commodores. And pretty much every iteration of this mentioned some version of how “divisive” this is all going to be.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Bret Michaels Official (@bretmichaelsofficial)

Dude, you’re the lead singer of Poison. If there’s anything divisive, it’s when “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” pops up on someone’s Spotify playlist during a long drive. If you’re the one in charge of the CarPlay, that’s an impeachable offense.

But herein lies the point: The Babylon Bee’s non-satire site, Not the Bee, had already asked, “What is up with the ‘worst concert lineup ever assembled’ for America’s 250th birthday celebration?” As in, who thought it was a good idea to invite Milli Vanilli and Vanilla Ice? Except if it was a way for them to obtain relevance again by loudly rejecting a gig they were wholly familiar with.

This is the very definition of manufacturing air-quotes “resistance.” You can almost taste the astroturf.

And it’s not as if America is clamoring for a show like this. Let’s say my aforementioned teenaged heroes were included, along with some of today’s better artists. I still don’t think, for our semiquincentennial, this is appropriate stuff. Get a band playing Sousa. Shoot off some fireworks. Save some money.

But no. Instead, we have what some are calling the “worst concert lineup ever assembled” and some members of that contingent bowing out to get a bit of coinage in the attention economy. Great work, everybody.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Why Does the Media Care That Has-Beens Are Withdrawing From ‘Freedom 250’ DC Event? appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire

By Susan Crabtree

Xavier Becerra, the frontrunner in the race for California governor, has frequently drawn a line between deporting illegal migrants with criminal records and those without – at least in theory.

Even as the Trump administration has softened its deportation rhetoric in recent months, Becerra has continued to hit immigration officials for targeting those he says are  “on the verge” of getting their green cards. “These are not the criminals,” he says, “These are not the people that Donald Trump always talks about trying to go after.”

Becerra says the administration’s policies prove that President Trump was never really interested in going after only the criminals and the people who were “doing harm in California.”

Yet, Becerra, the son of Mexican-American immigrants who became a member of Congress, state attorney general, and secretary of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration, has avoided taking a position on whether taxpayer-funded nonprofits should be shielding serious criminals from deportation.

Becerra again this week took aim at Trump and promised to fight the administration’s deportation policies.

“We will do everything we can to make sure that we show the federal government that we’re not participating in their ICE raids and their ICE actions,” he said.

Yet Becerra has been far more reticent about how he would treat illegal immigrants with serious criminal records. The question is a pressing one for all California Democrats after Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, wife of state Attorney General Rob Bonta, sponsored a bill that would require the state to pay for an attorney for every illegal immigrant. She has declined to say whether the bill would bar people with violent felony convictions from accessing taxpayer-funded legal aid to fight deportation.

A recent investigation by the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal found that California Democrats have steered at least $1 billion in taxpayer-funded grants and contracts to more than 80 nonprofits that provide myriad services to illegal immigrants during Gavin Newsom’s time as governor.

Some of those funds underwrite basics: food, clothing, water, and shelter for migrants crossing from Mexico. But a substantial portion – at least $100 million – went to legal aid organizations whose explicit purpose is to keep undocumented immigrants, whatever their criminal history, from being deported.

Many of those organizations operate under what they call a “merits-blind” policy. They do not screen clients by the severity of their crimes. They take the cases California law says should result in deportation – serious felonies, violent offenses – and they litigate them anyway. The work unfolds largely out of public view, shielded by a state law that bars courts from disclosing a defendant’s immigration status without judicial permission.

State lawmakers tried to close this gap last year. Under pressure from Republicans, the Democrat-controlled legislature prohibited state funds from being used on legal defense for immigrant felons. The problem is that the law has no reliable enforcement mechanism, leaving the prohibition largely symbolic.

Becerra’s relationship to the nonprofits doing this work is not peripheral. It is central to his political identity.

His closest organizational ally is the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, known as CHIRLA, which received more than $100 million in state funds. The group uses those resources not only for legal aid but to organize street protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and to maintain a rapid-response network that alerts undocumented immigrants across California to deportation raids. Becerra has called CHIRLA “my family.” The group’s political arm endorsed his gubernatorial campaign. Republican Steve Hilton, his closest opponent in the governor’s race, has accused CHIRLA of deploying undocumented immigrants to canvass against him.

The ties go deeper still. UnidosUS – formerly the National Council of La Raza and among the most powerful Latino advocacy organizations in the country – has maintained close relationships with Becerra for decades. UnidosUS maintains a group of 50 affiliates that provide legal services to immigrants, with some of the affiliates providing this legal aid to illegal immigrants with criminal records.

Becerra’s daughter interned there in 2012. The group helped shepherd his Senate confirmation as Biden’s Health and Human Services secretary. It paid at least $600 for him to attend a Philadelphia conference in 2005, as JusttheNews.com reported. He has appeared repeatedly at its events.

Then there is the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, which has received more than $146 million in California taxpayer funds over the past decade, according to a RealClearPolitics review of state contracts and grants. Becerra partnered with the group on immigration detention policy and at least one legal case during his tenure as state attorney general.

The ILRC’s current work offers a window into how legal advocacy can reshape the practical consequences of criminal conviction. On its website, the organization markets a how-to manual for “conviction relief” – a guide to erasing “the immigration consequences of crimes” – sold to lawyers and nonprofits for $140. On the same page, it highlights a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from earlier this year holding that assault with a deadly weapon no longer automatically qualifies as a violent crime warranting deportation. The ILRC notes that the ruling applies to domestic violence cases and aggravated felony cases alike, and it urges attorneys to use the decision to reopen removal orders for clients convicted of that offense.

“Advocates should consider filing motions to reconsider/reopen and motions to remand for cases where a person was ordered removed because of [an assault with a deadly weapon] conviction,” the group writes on its site.

The ILRC was not a direct party to the underlying case, United States v. Gomez, which was litigated by public defenders’ offices across the country, including one in San Diego. But the organization received at least $540,000 in state funds in 2020 specifically to “provide legal training and technical assistance” to public defenders’ offices and other state contractors, according to grant records. Neither Becerra’s campaign nor the ILRC responded to questions about whether state funds are being used in connection with those efforts.

Becerra built much of his relationship with the ILRC during his years as state attorney general. In 2017, the group praised him and Gov. Jerry Brown for supporting legislation that froze the expansion of private immigration detention facilities in California and allocated the attorney general’s office $1 million per year for a decade to monitor such facilities. Two years later, ILRC applauded a report from Becerra’s office detailing alleged abuses in detention conditions. The following year, the group joined an amicus brief alongside faith-based and immigrant justice organizations defending California’s restrictions on private detention when a private prison company sued to overturn them.

A subsequent Gavin Newsom-era law banning private detention facilities statewide was eventually struck down by a federal district court in 2023 as unconstitutional.

Despite that setback, Becerra signaled this week that he would revive the effort if elected governor.

“We would take every action we can to move away from having any facilities that are privately owned detention facilities located in California,” he said, while acknowledging that federal authority limits what the state can do. “We will do everything we can to make sure if there’s a facility in California, it meets California standards.”

The post Becerra’s Nonprofit Network and the Deportation Debate appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Takimag

The Problem of Painful Socks

The great abstractions of good and evil, pleasure and pain, are sometimes sliding down our shin.

TakiMag

Somewhat to my surprise, I have developed for the first time in my life an allergy to the elastic in my socks. I suppose it serves me right for having bought cheap pairs on the internet, which are probably manufactured in conditions of the utmost pollution and the cheapest labor. 

At any rate, I wake up in the night with an intense itching just above my ankle, exactly where the tops of my socks reach. Of course, I then do exactly what any doctor would tell me not to do, namely scratch the itch vigorously. Such scratching is supposed to make itching worse in the long run, but I find that if I scratch for long enough, it subsides. 

There is more to it than that, however. Although I don’t like being woken in the night (I won’t mention the other cause of my interrupted sleep), the fact is that I derive considerable pleasure from scratching the itch. I find it truly enjoyable and sometimes am even slightly disappointed that I feel the itch no more. Not all my socks cause the itch, and then I am disappointed to have none to scratch. 

This causes me to reflect nocturnally on the relationship between pleasure and pain, or at least discomfort, and good and evil. Normally, of course, we assume that pleasure will eventually result in its opposite, if for no other reason than that any given pleasure has to cease. Some of my favorite lines in Keats are from the Ode to Melancholy: 

Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine….”

This is surely true. When, for example, you have a plate of fresh asparagus before you, you are aware, from the very first spear, that the asparagus, ecstatically delicious at the first mouthful, will not last, that it will soon be finished, and that, moreover, the solution to the end of the pleasure it gives you is not simply to have more asparagus: for pleasure, with a growing quantity of whatever is its source, is a declining response. There is a kind of law of marginal utility that applies to the hedonistic calculus.  

Moreover, pleasure, when carried to excess, is very like time, whose whirligig brings in his revenges. More of a good thing is, alas, not necessarily a good, much less a better, thing: The dose-response curve of pleasure is, like stock market prices, not ever upwards. Even the pleasure of scratching an itch has its limits: too vigorous, and it can excoriate the skin, excoriation being much slower to heal than to produce. 

In fact, I find it hard to imagine unalloyed pleasure (or happiness) that lasts eternally, or even for a lifetime. The reverse is not true, alas: while it is difficult to imagine a single heaven, it is all too easy to imagine a thousand hells. Likewise, a world without suffering is inconceivable, to me at least, while a world only of suffering, at least for individuals, seems perfectly feasible.

If suffering in the abstract is an inevitable accompaniment of human existence, it does not follow that the sum total of suffering in the world must remain constant or that attempts at alleviation are futile. Moreover, it is a common observation that suffering is not awarded according to demerit. Every doctor has encountered patients or families whose suffering has been deep, repeated, and undeserved. While eventually suffering comes to those who deserve it, because it comes eventually to everyone irrespective of desert, it does not necessarily do so proportionately to that desert. Many a villain has died peacefully in his bed, while many a benefactor of humanity has suffered a lingering and horrible death.

Of course, it might be said that the relationship between suffering and pleasure in the case of my allergy to the elastic in my socks was inverted: first came the suffering, then the pleasure. It might also be said that the suffering was punishment for having bought the socks in the first place, in the implicit knowledge that they were the fruit of exploitation (though it is not certain that the exploited would be any better off if they were not exploited, and might even be worse off), but in my defense or extenuation let me say that, living in a small town in England, it is not easy to come by twelve pairs of identical, allegedly pure cotton socks for $7.50—and it is important to have identical socks because, I don’t know how or why, the washing machine has a built-in knack of mixing socks up so that, however carefully paired they entered, they always leave with some unpaired orphans, a problem obviated if all the socks are the same. 

But in any case, I do not believe in suffering as educative, as the teacher’s rap over the knuckles with a wooden ruler was believed to be in my childhood, and therefore there is no reason why the order of pleasure and pain should always be the same, from pleasure to pain. When I look up at the stars on a clear night and in a clear atmosphere (in an area where such a thing exists), with my minimal astronomical knowledge of the vastness of the universe and the pullulation of its objects, I cannot help but feel that my suffering, such as it is, cannot in any case be of much significance. Theodicy, the attempt to explain the existence of evil and unmerited suffering in a world created by an all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful and benevolent deity has always seemed to me a form of whistling in the wind. At least one of those attributes would have to go to explain what is to be observed daily. 

On the other hand, significance is not a natural quality; something can have significance only if there is a thinking mind to attribute it. If there were no thinking beings in the universe, it—the universe—would be of no significance whatever. Similarly, nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so: By which I mean not that there is no intrinsic difference between good and bad but that, again, if there were no thinking beings in the world, there would be no good or evil. The leopard is not evil because it eats the antelope.   

I think it is a fact of our nature that there could be no pleasure without pain, no goodness without evil, and no beauty without ugliness, though their precise proportions are not fixed. A perfect world would be imperfect, deprived of meaning or significance: Therefore, there is no such possibility as a perfect world. That is why depictions or descriptions of heaven are so much less vivid than those of hell, which are always very lively, if horrifying.

The post The Problem of Painful Socks appeared first on The American Conservative.

Culture

A Young Letter-Writer’s Sound and Fury

As a budding writer, getting my name in a newspaper meant more than getting paid for the article.

Credit: Triff/Shutterstock

Many think of the letters-to-the-editor page in local newspapers as the place where those with deep-seated opinions and agendas (and infinite confidence in the same) are invited to let loose. It’s just a soapbox, right?

For me, however, the page provided something more serious and lasting: an early, and essential, access point to journalism.

When I was a teenager in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the print media still had an aura of incomparable prestige, and to win publication of a letter to the editor seemed about as momentous a feat to me as selling an article outright. That the writer was paid for one contribution and not for the other struck me as an insignificant distinction. In either case, I reckoned, sentences I crafted with care for their impact and insight would be printed for hundreds of thousands (or tens of thousands, or at least more than hundreds) to marvel at. 

My debut among the ranks of letter-writers was auspicious: In the summer of 1999, when I was 16, a rather pointed missive I wrote in defense of my then-favorite filmmaker, the recently deceased Stanley Kubrick, was published in The New York Times—the first of three times in which my name was affixed in the Gray Lady to something I had written. (Happily, the other two, many years later, were for articles I wrote on assignment.)

Yet, living in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, I had no real sense that my Kubrick letter, pithy and punchy though it was, had made an impact. Consequently, I strove to make my presence felt on the letters-to-the-editor page in my own backyard or, more precisely, in the paper that collided with my pavement each morning: The Columbus Dispatch. In January 2000, I found my first subject: the recent retirement of Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz, whose greatness I extolled over seven short, surprisingly readable paragraphs. Cleverly, I appended my age (I had not yet turned 17) beside my name so that readers would take note of my youthful brilliance.

My Schulz letter, though, was pretty meek and mild stuff. I soon found within myself the urge to stake out positions in print—controversial positions.  

In January 2001, Ohio State University—the institution whose athletic programs dominate and at times seem to all but consume my hometown—had given the heave-ho to football coach John Cooper and, after what I took to be an overdone search, imported Jim Tressel, who proceeded to lead the Buckeyes to all manner of gridiron greatness (and, seemingly a lifetime later, became the state’s lieutenant governor under Gov. Mike DeWine).

Being a bookish sort, I rolled my eyes at the incessant coverage that accompanied the transition from Cooper to Tressel. 

I dashed off another letter to The Columbus Dispatch—this one, far more aggrieved than my warm-and-fuzzy paean to the practitioner of Peanuts. (I would later discover how much newspaper editors admire the art of alliteration. See? I did it again.) The headline chosen for my letter reflects something of its spirit: “Media went overboard in search for football coach.” “The local media would be well-advised to resume their rule as the bearer of news and information, unless they truly believe that football is more important than the inauguration of a new president,” I wrote. 

I wonder: Do I still sound this strident when I write? I also note that my letter, written on the heels of Bush v. Gore, was an early example of my willingness to shoehorn politics into any conversation and to subtly hint that I was not just another liberal—hence my subtly respectful reference to the “new president,” George W. Bush.)  

This letter begat another letter in much the same tone: In August 2001, I wrote to complain about a column in which the newspaper’s book critic and one of its regular correspondents had taken what I regarded as an insufficiently reverent tone towards James Joyce’s Ulysses, which, I guess, I then regarded as an unassailable masterpiece. This letter, too, was printed, though in rereading it, I can tell that I was starting to bristle at the confines of the letter-to-the-editor form — that is, a few short paragraphs laser-focused on a single topic. Instead, I ranged rather freely, comparing Ulysses to King Lear and The Sound and the Fury. “One can take on the challenges posed by these works and be humble enough to admit that, in some instances, the reader just maybe is not up to the level of the author,” I wrote, huffily. 

To my eyes now, the real sound and fury in this letter came courtesy of its author. 

Back then, I was mighty pleased with myself for arguing in print with a newspaper’s bylined writers, though in time I learned that this was no great distinction. In my experience, newspapers take some delight in running letters in which readers express annoyance with their writers. In 2013, I began freelancing for my hometown paper, and in the years that followed, several letters were printed in which my judgment and taste as a critic was called into question. 

But I shrugged off these critiques since I had graduated from being a pro bono writer of letters to a moderately well-compensated writer for hire. My credo had become that of Truman Capote, who once told The Paris Review that he was “physically incapable . . . of writing anything that I don’t think will be paid for.” 

Yet, pay notwithstanding, sometimes I wonder if what I am doing today is all that different from what I was doing then. Those early experiences proved that I could write in response to timely topics, and do well enough to clear the bar of making it into print. You might say that once I climbed onto my soapbox, and that I never quite climbed off.

The post A Young Letter-Writer’s Sound and Fury appeared first on The American Conservative.