Lewiston, Maine, the state’s second most populous city, has been dealing with a frightening amount of youth gun violence. The police reported that there have been 35 gun-related incidents so far in 2026, 22 of those involving juveniles.
The city is home to a sizable population of Somali refugees. There are also refugees from other African nations, too.
LEWISTON, Maine — A New England city transformed by an influx of refugees and immigrants is now grappling with a youth gun violence crisis after police reported 35 gun-related incidents this year, 22 involving juveniles.
“I don’t feel safe. I fear for my life,” Mohamed Muhumed, a Lewiston teenager, told Fox News Digital. “I saw someone get punched in the middle of the sidewalk over there. It’s crazy.”
The city, Maine’s second most populous and home to a large population of refugees from Somali and other African nations, is experiencing a serious youth gun violence problem.
“Lewiston Police Chief Carly Conley called gun violence ‘one of the most serious public safety challenges’ facing the city,” Fox News reported.
The police are consistent in arresting the offending youth who commit gun violence, but they are continually being released by the courts.
Rick LaChapelle, a Republican running for Mayor of Lewiston, explained that the police have been doing a good job of making arrests. He explained “It’s been a one-party rule forever that has instilled the rules that there’s no accountability.”
The current Mayor is Democrat Carl Sheline,. He has been outspoken against ICE operations in Maine.
There hasn’t been any official data by the city or the police department that ties Somali residents to the increase in violence, but Mayoral candidate Rick LaChapelle observed, “that seems to be who’s being arrested right now.”
One of the residents claimed that it was the general youth and not specifically Somalis. Another claimed it was tied to poverty within the city.
The city of Lewiston has been a focal point for fraud scandals involving the federal and state Medicaid program in Maine.
Lewiston’s demographics have changed significantly over the past 25 years, with a mass influx of Somalis into the city.
The city has one of the highest per capita Muslim populations in the US. It mostly consists of Somali refugees and refugees from other African countries.
Watch:
Lewiston, Maine, is grappling with a youth gun violence crisis — 22 of 35 gun-related incidents this year involved juveniles, most of them repeat offenders.
City officials approved $200,000 in additional police overtime funding, but critics say the real problem is a juvenile justice system that releases violent teens almost immediately after arrest.
The surge has reignited a fierce immigration debate in the city, which is home to one of the highest per capita Muslim populations in the country, largely Somali refugees who began arriving a quarter century ago.
Obama bragged about his diplomacy with Iran today – forgets to mention he gave them a pallet of cash in the middle of the night.
Democrats dragged out a stale, old Barack Obama on Saturday to slander President Trump and stump for far-left Democrats in Ohio.
Obama’s presentation was as expected: Lie and attack President Trump.
The former Democrat president has a lot of nerve poking at Trump considering he was running a coup against him in his first term!
During his speech on Saturday Obama bragged about his diplomacy with Iran, saying, “And I didn’t have to fire a missile to do it. I just had to engage in diplomacy.”
He’s lying again!
He forgot to mention he sent a pallet of US cash in the middle of the night to the terrorist regime!
As The Gateway Pundit reported in April, Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman revealed that President Obama gave Iran $150 billion when Obama was in office, and the regime did not even build a single street with that money.
Instead, they used the money to make missiles and drones and to fortify their proxy armies in the region like Hamas, Ansar Allah, and Hezbollah. With these funds, Iran offers a safe harbor to the leaders of Al Qaeda, including one of Osama Bin Laden’s sons, who was indoctrinated into jihadism.
Saudi Prince MbS reveals that President Obama gave Iran $150B, and the IRGC didn’t even build a single street with that money.
Instead, they used the money to make missiles and drones. And on top of that, they also used the funds Obama provided them to finance and arm… pic.twitter.com/1JTL1ExXml
This was Barack Obama’s way of destabilizing the Middle East. And Obama did this all in public view. Well, most of it.
This was a direct threat against Israel and American allies in the region. Obama always brought chaos with him and left a trail of destruction. He took actions to spread this chaos and evil across the Middle East.
The Gateway Pundit readers know that we have reported on Barack Obama’s pallets of cash sent to Iran in the dead of night.
A pallet of cash Barack Obama sent Iran in the dead of night.
Obama paid the terrorist regime billions.
It was such a dangerous move that the Saudi leader is now openly condemning Obama’s dangerous actions in the region.
Always remember: When Barry Obama opens his mouth, he lies.
L.A. TACO, the leftist outlet known for aggressive coverage of ICE raids in Southern California, has fired its high-profile journalist Memo Torres over allegations that Democratic state Sen. Sasha Renee Pérez was writing his articles during a secret affair.
Torres’ firing follows an internal investigation the publication said lasted nearly five months and found repeated violations of its policies and journalistic standards.
The 46-year-old landscaper-turned-ICE reporter became one of the outlet’s most visible faces in immigration reporting through his “Daily Memo” videos documenting enforcement actions across the region.
The outlet publicly stated that it fired him for “repeated violations of our policies and our basic journalistic standards,” while insisting the decision had nothing to do with scaling back ICE coverage.
Firing him was the last thing we wanted. On his final day, Memo told us himself he was ready to go independent, and that it was a better fit for what he wanted to do. We thought we left on good terms, and offered to publicly support his next chapter and give him a generous severance. We offered our support because we never stopped believing in his mission.
Instead, he told his followers a different story: that he was blindsided, which immediately led to speculation that L.A. TACO pushed him out to pull back on ICE coverage.
The rumor that we’ve turned our back on ICE coverage is a lie. And a dangerous one.
Memo built his name as a truth-teller and a community leader. But right now, a false narrative is being spread, and it’s dividing the very community he claims to serve.
However, according to a report from LA Material, citing sources close to the outlet, management concerns went beyond routine process issues and included Torres bypassing editors, making factual errors, and maintaining a romantic relationship with an elected official while covering her work.
The official, Pérez, 34, is the youngest member of the California Senate and a former mayor of Alhambra who has been outspoken against ICE operations.
The most serious allegation is that Pérez was allowed to edit and contribute written material to stories published under Torres’ byline.
Pérez issued a statement denying any role in the outlet’s editorial process.
“I did not write any articles or control the editorial decisions of L.A. Taco,” she said. “Any person suggesting I wrote pieces for L.A. Taco is attempting to undermine my work and attack Memo’s integrity.”
Pérez acknowledged a prior personal relationship with Torres and said L.A. TACO management asked the pair to limit their communication roughly six months earlier, a request she said they followed.
Another source told LA Material that executives were aware of the relationship by February and later used it as a pretext amid internal disagreements over the direction of immigration coverage.
Scoop from @antoniacere: Romantic relationship with California politician precipitated end of star journalist’s tenure at LA Taco
In comments to LA Material, Torres said, “I have no idea what they are talking about. I have never refused accountability about anything.”
Torres covered Pérez’s legislative efforts, including promoting an oversight bill she introduced in early February, attending and covering a press conference she held shortly afterward, and highlighting the legislation again the following month.
One of those stories was later updated with an editor’s note stating it had been amended to meet editorial standards.
The pair also appeared together in May at the Latino Spirit Awards, where Pérez presented L.A. TACO with a journalism award and, according to reports, walked arm-in-arm with Torres onto the state Assembly floor.
Pérez chairs the Senate Education Committee and has positioned herself as a defender of illegal aliens against federal enforcement.
Islamabad’s hopes for “Taliban 2.0” have turned into a nightmare.
(Sefa Karacan/Anadolu via Getty Images)
It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which Pakistan has buyer’s remorse following many years of supporting the Taliban insurgency against the previous Afghan government. Islamabad expected the Afghan Taliban’s return to power just over five years ago to make Afghan-Pakistani relations increasingly cooperative across many domains. But what Pakistan once saw as a valuable opportunity has become its nightmare.
When the Taliban reclaimed power in Afghanistan in August 2021, many took for granted that Pakistan would be the principal beneficiary. At that time, there was every reason to assume that Islamabad would have significant influence over the new authorities in Kabul and use it to further its national interests while serving as “big brother” to post-occupation Afghanistan. Right after the Taliban reclaimed Afghanistan, Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister Imran Khan declared that the Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery.”
Islamabad had clear expectations that the “Taliban 2.0” would cooperate against groups that threaten the Pakistani state and work to counter Indian influence in the region. But the bilateral relationship has basically moved in the completely opposite direction, exposing serious limits to Pakistani leverage vis-à-vis Afghanistan and highlighting just how much the Afghan Taliban’s own interests greatly diverge from Islamabad’s.
Bilateral relations between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban have plunged to an all-time low. This month marks one year since Islamabad and Kabul began sustained hostilities over a border dispute and the presence of militant groups—chiefly Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)—on Afghan soil. Both the TTP and BLA have targeted Pakistan with a significantly increased frequency since 2024. With the two countries in an “open war” since February, the conflict has had a devastating impact on humanitarian crises along the Durand Line, while the prospects for deescalation remain very dim.
Islamabad has struggled to secure meaningful global support for its military operations against Afghanistan-based groups threatening Pakistan. Russia, China, and Western nations are all focused on their unique interests in post-occupation Afghanistan and the wider region, helping to explain why they are not currently applying greater pressure on Kabul anywhere close to the degree desired by Islamabad. Consequently, Pakistan sees itself as unsupported as it wages what it understands to be a necessary and morally righteous war against terrorism.
Today, Pakistan sees the Islamic Emirate regime in Kabul as anything but a counterterrorism ally. As Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary, the former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, stated at an international conference held earlier this month in Islamabad, Afghanistan is now reverting to its pre-9/11 ways. Other Pakistani officials go as far as describing the Kabul regime itself as a terrorist entity more than an actual government.
Kabul is increasingly engaging New Delhi, suggesting that post-occupation Afghanistan will become geopolitically aligned with India against Pakistan, rather than vice versa as Islamabad had planned years ago. This feeds into deep fears in Pakistan about an emerging anti-Pakistani partnership comprising its northern and eastern neighbors. The Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s week-long visit to India a year ago did much to inform this threat perception of a Taliban-India nexus. Pakistani officials also allege that India supports the TTP as part of an effort to destabilize Pakistan. Islamabad claims that concrete evidence backs up this accusation and resents what it considers the international community’s failure to hold India accountable.
Islamic Emirate officials deny providing sanctuary to these two groups. The de facto government in Kabul holds that Pakistan’s terrorism crisis is its own internal problem stemming from Islamabad’s failures, and that Pakistan is simply trying to pin the blame on external forces.
It is necessary to recognize that the Afghan Taliban is not a monolithic entity. A crackdown on the TTP could alienate hardline individuals and factions within the de facto government in Kabul, possibly pushing some toward joining Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Therefore, regime cohesion is an important consideration for Kabul, contributing to the Islamic Emirate’s reluctance to confront a group committed to toppling the Pakistani government. At the same time, the Afghan Taliban understands Pakistan’s military operations, including strikes far beyond the border regions and into Kabul, as acts of international aggression that violate Afghanistan’s sovereignty. Officials in Kabul find outrageous and unacceptable the loss of civilian life on the Afghan side of the border in this conflict.
Against this backdrop, it is difficult to imagine Islamabad and Kabul reaching a new understanding on their border dispute and terrorism. While Qatar, Turkey, and China have attempted to help broker a diplomatic settlement to the Pakistan–Afghan Taliban conflict since last year, such efforts have thus far proven futile.
Internationally, the growing trend is toward establishing relations with the Afghan Taliban, which gives the Islamic Emirate greater legitimacy. This alarms Pakistan.
Although Russia, at least so far, is the only country formally to recognize Afghanistan’s Taliban government, a host of other countries such as China, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and the Central Asian republics have established de facto ties with Kabul. Driven largely by commercial, trade, and security interests, these states will probably not support Pakistan’s military operations in Afghanistan at the level Islamabad believes it deserves. The TPP and BLA primarily threaten Pakistan. Meanwhile other countries in the neighborhood see the Islamic Emirate as a necessary partner (even if a very flawed one) in the fight against ISKP—seen by most states in West Asia and beyond as the most dangerous non-state actor currently operating in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, officials in Islamabad hold that if more regional and global support for Pakistan’s fight against the TTP and BLA doesn’t come through, more countries will eventually pay a price.
Pakistan is unlikely to find much of the support it seeks from the West, where many continue to view Pakistan through the lens of its own history with violent extremist groups. Washington continues to have a hangover from its nearly two-decade experience of occupying Afghanistan and fighting the Taliban, which consumed vast amounts of American resources and ended with immense frustration and humiliation in 2021. Therefore, although Washington does care about nonstate actors in Afghanistan, including ISKP, TTP, and BLA, and although the U.S. and Pakistan work closely on counterterrorism efforts, it is unrealistic to expect Washington to provide any direct military support for Pakistan’s operations against targets in Afghanistan.
In all likelihood, Washington will provide Islamabad selective cooperation in Pakistan’s campaign against the TTP and BLA without taking any action that could risk pulling the U.S. back into a protracted conflict in this region, especially so long as the Trump administration’s focus remains on the Iran War, now approaching its ninth month.
Russia, meanwhile, sees its relationship with the “Taliban 2.0” as essential to fighting ISKP, which poses a serious threat to Russia and Central Asian republics where Moscow has vested interests. Concerns related to drug trafficking also factor into Russia’s interests in maintaining a formal relationship with the Islamic Emirate. Consequently, Moscow is at odds with Islamabad on how to deal with Afghanistan’s new realities. Russia seeks greater regional influence and trade connectivity while wanting to prevent post-occupation Afghanistan from returning to the West’s orbit of geopolitical influence.
Within this context, Moscow has invested diplomatic capital in post-2021 Kabul, and Pakistan should not expect the Russians to subject the Islamic Emirate to any heavy-handed pressure that could undermine Moscow’s relationships with the Afghan Taliban. The most recent meeting of the Moscow Format—a multilateral platform for discussing security in Afghanistan—on October 5 revealed such disagreements between Russia and Pakistan regarding terrorism-related issues in Afghanistan. Looking ahead, while the Russians might be counted on to try to apply some degree of pressure on Kabul privately while providing Islamabad with intelligence cooperation, Moscow is unlikely to impose serious costs on the Islamic Emirate over TTP and BLA sanctuaries in Afghanistan.
Aside from Pakistan, perhaps no country in the world is as concerned about the TTP and BLA’s activities as China, whose citizens, investments, and infrastructure linked to the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor have been targeted by these groups. Yet Beijing’s de facto relationship with the Afghan Taliban will shape its approach to challenges posed by violent anti-state organizations that attack Pakistan while China continues playing a bridging role between Islamabad and Kabul. These factors help explain why China will probably not become directly involved in Pakistan’s military operations against groups in Afghanistan. It is more likely that Beijing’s foreign policy toward the Pakistan–Afghan Taliban war will rest on diplomatic pressure, mediation, security assistance, and intelligence cooperation with Islamabad.
Pakistan’s war with the Afghan Taliban shows the folly of Islamabad’s past expectations that a former ally could be counted on to help advance its interests. While Islamabad greatly contributed to the circumstances that restored the Islamic Emirate’s rule, it lacks the means to dictate Kabul’s priorities, policies toward nonstate actors, and regional foreign policy. The de facto Afghan authorities’ reluctance to crack down on the TTP and BLA, combined with Kabul’s growing engagement with New Delhi, has left Pakistan facing a nightmarish dilemma that will not be easy to resolve.
In one way or another, Pakistan must reconcile its grave security concerns about post-occupation Afghanistan with new geopolitical realities in which regional and global powers’ broader interests are not aligned with Islamabad’s top priorities. Without Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban reaching a new understanding, this war risks raging on and becoming a protracted conflict that will lead to much more human suffering on both sides of the restive Afghan–Pakistani frontier.
When Republicans Won on an Antiwar Platform—and Delivered
In 1952, the GOP ran on ending war and inflation. Sound familiar?
Getty Images.
In their final poll ahead of the 2026 midterms, NYT/Siena found that the Democratic Party holds an 11-point lead over Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, suggesting the GOP is all but certain to lose its congressional majorities. The same poll found that President Donald Trump’s approval rating has dipped to a new low of 34 percent.
A rebuke of this magnitude should be understood as more than the cyclical expression of displeasure at an incumbent. Rather, it represents a deep rejection of the direction the second Trump administration has taken since the heady days of spring 2025.
Earlier this month, AP-NORC polled Americans about their top issues going into the midterms. To no one’s surprise, the most significant was the economy and cost of living at 84 percent. But not far behind is the war with Iran, cited by 64 percent of respondents—20 points more than the number who said immigration, and five times more than said transgender issues.
On February 28, the United States, together with Israel, launched a surprise attack on Iran. This failed to produce regime change, but it did lead to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and the destruction of Gulf energy infrastructure. Voters are reminded how intimately this war of choice impacts the cost of living every time they visit the pump, where (as of writing) a gallon of gas averages $4.26 per gallon nationally and diesel an unsustainable $6.32.
Backtracking on a core campaign promise of “no new wars,” unilaterally launching an aggressive war without a vote by Congress or public debate, and allowing it to continue for eight months and counting without a clear exit strategy are decisions that have irrevocably split Trump’s winning 2024 coalition and reenergized what had been an aimless Democratic Party.
As many have pointed out, including in The American Conservative, war with Iran was a destructive but deliberate policy choice, not an inevitability or a response to an urgent national security crisis. The coming massacre of the GOP did not have to happen.
There once was an era, in the not too distant past, when Republicans campaigned against endless war and unnecessary military spending with huge electoral dividends (and then kept their promises).
In 1952, the country was aching after 20 years of Democratic presidents. The Korean War was then in its third year, victory still out of reach despite tens of thousands of American casualties. Corruption scandals plagued officials in the Truman administration. And Truman himself, facing polling numbers even lower than Donald Trump’s, had bowed out of the Democratic primaries and was not running for reelection.
Under these circumstances, the Indiana Republican State Central Committee produced a brochure proclaiming that “THE ONE ALTERNATIVE to the warmongering, Socialistic scandals of the Truman administration is to vote straight Republican on November 4!” (Emphasis in original.)
The brochure encouraged support for every Indiana Republican under this antiwar, Old Right framing, but spotlighted the top of the ticket and statewide races. It urged voters to give former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower “the assignment of pulling America out of her mad, rocketing inflation… and of developing for America a foreign policy that is sane and secure, instead of rash and reckless!”
How many voters today would use that same terminology, “rash and reckless,” to describe the decision to outsource decision-making to the Israeli prime minister’s office?
The brochure, issued officially by the state party, also demanded an end to chronic overseas intervention in terms that will be familiar to the generation that came of age during the Global War on Terror:
3 WARS IN 35 YEARS (!) is the tragic record of the 3 Democrat Presidents of this century. Death, destruction and despair for millions of Americans. The unprecedented peacetime draft continues. More and more young Americans into bloody foreign battles. And at a cost which is bankrupting us all.
As a horrifying mirror image, in the past 35 years the last three Republican presidents have all entered wars in the Persian Gulf.
And while today the Trump White House attempts to dodge the economic fallout of the Iran War, which has cost taxpayers over $43 billion as of September and worsened inflation by roiling global energy markets, the Republican Party of 1952 had no trouble discerning the connection between government spending on empire and economic woes at home:
THE WAR BOOM continues only because the war is extended. This unholy conflict, producing only inflated dollars soaked in our young men’s blood, pushes our high prices, soaring taxes and monstrous national debt higher and higher and HIGHER!
No hesitation in recognizing the gruesomeness of war, or in emphasizing how dire a political issue becomes when you begin measuring the cost in blood. Contrast that healthy emotionalism with the distant obtuseness presented by today’s Republicans.
When a man whose wife was killed in action in March questioned Vice President J.D. Vance during a CNN townhall about the “failure in the leadership” responsible for his loss, the man tasked with publicly defending the administration pleaded ignorance.
After offering condolences, Vance said, “When you talk about failures that we were—the administration, the Department of War, whoever you want to say—was implicated in, I want to know about that stuff. Because if there were failures, and I don’t doubt that there were, I just, literally the first time I’ve heard about this is this conversation, and I want to fix that stuff.”
The differences in Republican messaging between 1952 and 2026 are not purely reducible to the distinction between incumbent and challenger. Donald Trump and his surrogates used similar language campaigning in 2024 against Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their involvement in the Ukraine War. And after his election—again, by an 11-point margin—Dwight D. Eisenhower, while admittedly an internationalist, did achieve an armistice in Korea and a decrease in military spending.
The Republican Party may have changed, but the American voter hasn’t. When presented with a clear choice, and given the opportunity to vote for less war overseas and a prioritization of American concerns, he takes it, no matter which party makes the promise.
That is why anti-war conservatives won in 1952, and it’s why pro-war conservatives will lose today.
Compared with riots and revolutions, literary controversies might seem like small beer, but for those who live through books, as I largely do, it is the riots and revolutions that are the epiphenomena. So while Paris burns, at least in part, I concern myself with the really important question, namely whether Thélyson Orélien’s novel, C’était ça ou mourir (It Was That or Die), was written wholly or in large part by artificial intelligence.
I am not fully, or even marginally, competent to answer this question. The book was put through the Pangram program, which supposedly detects writing by AI with a high degree of certainty, and which found that it was written wholly by AI. But AI itself says Pangram is not wholly reliable. Is AI itself reliable on this question? As Michel de Montaigne asked, Que sais-je? (“What do I know?”) though I think more accurately I would put it, “What do I know?”, which is a slightly different question.
An online French literary magazine asked me to review the book after the allegations were made, and as my review has yet to appear, I will not reveal my judgment on it here as a literary artifact. I will concern myself only with peripheral questions about the whole controversy.
Thélyson Orélien is a 38-year-old Haitian refugee now living in Montreal. He had published articles, poetry, and short stories before he published this novel, an account of the travails of a Haitian refugee who finally reaches Canada as a safe haven. The book was a sensation overnight, won some prizes, and was up for the Prix Goncourt, the premier literary prize in France that guarantees huge sales—though the book had already sold extremely well, in the tens of thousands. Then a journalist at Le Figaro called Samuel Fitoussi revealed, or perhaps I should say alleged, that it had been written by AI, which Orélien strenuously denied.
The controversy that followed strongly resembles that which followed the revelation that Jason Arday, the professor of the sociology of education at Cambridge, was a plagiarist and fantasist. As in the case of Arday, it was claimed by Orélien’s defenders that those who put his book to the test were motivated by racism, and that, as a corollary, their findings or allegations were worthless, and could and should be ignored.
This, of course, implies that the truth or otherwise of a statement is unimportant by comparison with the motivation of him who utters it. If Fitoussi was a racist, then what he said about the novel could and should be disregarded. Indeed, one leftist-leaning publication, Les Inrockuptibles, carried an article to the effect that the most important question was not whether Fitoussi’s allegations were well-founded or true, and said, among other things:
Suspicions and doubts [of the use of AI in their writing] weigh most heavily on authors and authoresses who are already in a minority in a publishing landscape that is in the majority white.
In other words, even if it were true that Orélien’s work was the product of AI, he should have been allowed to get away with it—just as Arday, according to some, should have been allowed to get away with his plagiarism, the low quality of his work, and his publicly-expressed fantasies. This carte blanche is what so-called racial justice both demands and amounts to. (To those with any historical imagination, the very term “racial justice” should send shivers down the spine.)
Here let me mention as an aside, a curious but revealing difference between the effect of militant feminism on the English and French languages. In English there is a demand that female forms of words such as actress be abandoned in favor of actor. In French, there is precisely the opposite demand, that traditionally masculine forms of words such as écrivain (writer) that have traditionally been used indiscriminately for female writers should be feminized to écrivaine. This suggests to me that the reform in usage has nothing to do with justice or bringing about equality but is simply an exercise of intimidatory power; the exercise of power is increasingly regarded as the highest good of human life and activity.
Now of course, if Fitoussi is mistaken, he owes Orélien an abject apology; if, to the contrary, Orélien posed as an author when he acted only as a stimulus to AI, and perhaps as a corrector of its work, he deserves opprobrium. But I am agnostic as to which is the case, and it is perfectly possible that we shall never know the truth beyond all dispute. The listing of the book for the possible award of the Prix Goncourt has in the meantime been abandoned, but that is no more than a precautionary measure and is not evidence one way or the other. I suppose it must be some consolation for Orélien that sales have held up.
The author has vehemently denied Fitoussi’s allegations, but his reliability as a witness in his own defense or as a man of probity has been rather undermined by the fact that he has been forced to acknowledge another discovery, that some of this earlier work was plagiarized. This he puts down as a regrettable youthful mistake, and it is true that he was only in his 20s when he plagiarized. Let him who was never foolish in his 20s cast the first stone.
In English law, in any case, the prosecution is not allowed to introduce evidence of previous convictions in support of a new accusation, on the grounds that to do so would be prejudicial. The fact that a man has been a burglar does not mean that he must have committed the burglary under present consideration, but the minds of the jury would be unfairly swayed in favor of the prosecution if it knew that this was precisely the kind of crime that the accused had committed in the past.
That a man has undoubtedly committed plagiarism in the past does not go to prove that he employed AI to “write” his book (or should it be, to write “his” book?). But we should not be human if, because he has admitted to plagiarism that was also detected by AI, we lent less credence to his protestations of innocence.
Unless the matter be resolved irrefutably one way or the other, most people will believe what they were already inclined to believe anyway, and ignorant armies will continue to clash by night.
Steve Hilton, the Republican gubernatorial candidate for California, appeared on the Bill Maher show on Friday night, and managed to get a round of applause from Maher’s liberal audience when he vowed to clean up the streets in the state.
There is no denying that California needs to be cleaned up. Years of one-party rule by Democrats ha turned the once beautiful state into a disgraceful mess.
Hilton has even been campaigning in the notorious homeless area of Los Angeles known as Skid Row, pointing out how bad things there have become.
If Hilton can get applause form the Maher crowd on this point, does he have a shot? At least he is making an honest effort.
Republican California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton LAYS OUT his common-sense plans to Bill Maher and why everyone should get out and vote for him.
“I’m going to give you $3 gas… Right now you’ve got states where gas starts with a $3. Your first $150,000, tax-free, no state income… We’re going to have that here. We’re going to clean up the streets, finally, in California. We’re going to END MASS homelessness.
“And also, the regulations, so you can build sh*t in your yard, like, and not have to go through the insane regulations.”
Watch the video below:
Republican California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton LAYS OUT his common-sense plans to Bill Maher and why everyone should get out and vote for him.
“I’m going to give you $3 gas… Right now you’ve got states where gas starts with a $3. Your first $150,000, tax-free, no… pic.twitter.com/XiFQ6V85Rs
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton tours Los Angeles’ Skid Row with Fox News Digital, passing sprawling homeless encampments, trash-covered sidewalks and signs of drug use as he questions where billions in taxpayer funding have gone.
Hilton spoke to one homeless woman who recounts going to jail “a few times.”
But Hilton isn’t the only one demanding answers. A local volunteer who says she voted for Mayor Karen Bass accuses her of failing to deliver on promises to address homelessness.
Watch:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton tours Los Angeles’ Skid Row with Fox News Digital, passing sprawling homeless encampments, trash-covered sidewalks and signs of drug use as he questions where billions in taxpayer funding have gone.
While Christians are easy targets in other countries, U.S. churches are protected by professional security and armed parishioners. Photo courtesy of Gentle Response.
Christians are experiencing some of the worst persecution of modern times, with believers around the world being killed because they are easy targets. Outside the United States, many have no weapons and have been taught that being a Christian means being a pacifist who turns the other cheek and does not defend himself.
Less than two days ago, on October 23, 2026, gunmen carrying pistols and a long gun opened fire on a funeral at a Greek Orthodox church in Jordan’s Karak governorate. They killed seven people and wounded 34 others.
In Damascus in June 2025, an Islamic State suicide bomber entered Mar Elias Church, opened fire on worshippers and detonated his explosive vest. The attack killed 22 people, according to Syria’s Ministry of Health, and Islamists have repeatedly targeted Syria’s Christians since. In July 2025, Allied Democratic Forces rebels stormed a Catholic church in Komanda, Congo, during a vigil, killing at least 38 people inside with guns and machetes. The rebels are affiliated with the Islamic State.
In Nigeria, Christians are killed on a daily basis. According to Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List, 3,490 Christians were killed for their faith in Nigeria between October 2024 and September 2025. That is an average of more than nine per day and 72 percent of the 4,849 Christians killed worldwide.
Massacres followed by mass burials have become the norm for Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. On Easter Sunday 2026, gunmen raided a Catholic church and an evangelical church in Ariko, in Kaduna State, killing worshippers and abducting dozens.
In April, Islamic State West Africa Province gunmen killed 29 Christians. On June 22, 2026, Fulani gunmen killed 28 Christians, including Rev. Markus Nyam of the Church of Christ in Nations, in Kawel village in Bokkos County.
In October, Boko Haram fighters locked an evangelist inside his house in Adamawa State and set it on fire.
In Jordan, Syria, Congo and Nigeria, the attackers were armed and the worshippers were not.
Islamists have also killed Christians in Europe, where civilian gun ownership is a fraction of the American rate. The Small Arms Survey estimated 120.5 civilian firearms per 100 residents in the United States in 2017, compared with 19.6 in both France and Germany.
In July 2016, two 19-year-old men slit the throat of Father Jacques Hamel, 85, at the foot of the altar during morning Mass in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, France. Police shot both attackers dead as they left the church. The Islamic State claimed the attack.
In October 2020, a Tunisian man armed with a knife killed three people at the Notre-Dame Basilica in Nice.
In December 2016, Anis Amri, a Tunisian, hijacked a truck and drove it into the Christmas market beside Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, killing 12 people. A 13th victim later died of his injuries. The Islamic State claimed that attack as well. Amri fled to Italy, where police shot him dead days later.
Christmas markets in Europe have been targeted by jihadist attacks and foiled plots every year since. The Islamic State has promoted vehicle ramming as a tactic in its propaganda.
While Christians in other countries have been taught that carrying weapons or serving as soldiers conflicts with their religion, Americans have been taught the opposite. American Christians, particularly evangelicals, link defense of one’s country, one’s loved ones and certainly one’s church to their faith, with ample examples to encourage them.
Most notably, in the Bible, King David, one of God’s most favored sons, killed countless warriors on the battlefield. In American history, the image of George Washington praying at Valley Forge, whether the event actually happened or not, has become a symbol for American Christian soldiers of how their faith fits with military service.
Eisenhower, Patton and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt each have at least one famous wartime prayer associated with their names. More recently, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has made prayer a regular feature of military life.
In the United States, armed church members and security teams have ended attacks at churches in Colorado, Texas and Michigan.
Armed church members are part of the security plan at most Protestant churches in the country. In a 2022 Lifeway Research survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors, 54 percent said armed church members were part of their security measures, up from 45 percent in 2019. The figure rose to 65 percent among pastors in the South and 74 percent among churches with 250 or more in attendance.
In the 2019 survey, 71 percent of Pentecostal pastors, 65 percent of Baptist pastors and 53 percent of Church of Christ pastors said armed church members were part of their security measures. Only about one in five pastors reported a no-firearms policy at worship services.
It is generally believed that a robber’s worst nightmare is when his intended victim turns out to be armed. An interesting demographic data point about churches is that the people in the pews are more likely than other Americans to own guns and vote Republican.
According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 32 percent of American adults personally own a gun, including 45 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of conservative Republicans, compared with 20 percent of Democrats. A 2022 Public Religion Research Institute survey found that 54 percent of white evangelical Protestants and 58 percent of white Republicans have guns in their homes or garages. Pew’s most recent breakdown by religion, from 2017, found that 41 percent of white evangelicals owned a gun, more than any other religious group.
PRRI also found that white evangelical Protestants were the only religious group in which a majority did not support gun control measures.
According to Pew, 62 percent of registered voters who attended religious services at least monthly aligned with Republicans in 2023, compared with 41 percent of those who attended less often.
A church security industry has grown to train church members to serve as security volunteers in their own congregations, and some of its founders describe the work as a ministry. Training programs now operate in all 50 states and have trained thousands of people in hundreds of churches to build safety teams. Some courses run more than 70 hours, incorporate Christian principles, and cover conflict resolution, self-defense, threat assessment, firearm handling, trauma medicine, and local laws.
For these congregations, defending the church is part of serving it. The people protecting the worshippers are often the worshippers themselves.
Incidents like the January 18, 2026, disruption of worship at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, led by Don Lemon, as well as the political left’s assaults on everything from Christmas decorations to crosses on churches and public prayer, remind Christians that maintaining the Second Amendment is necessary to ensure that the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom is upheld.
President Trump on Saturday slammed former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton for taking shots at him on the campaign trail.
Earlier this week, Bill Clinton hit the campaign trail in Florida and took a shot at Trump over his Rose Garden renovations.
“I think Congress made a mistake not protesting turning the Rose Garden into what looks like the entrance to Liberace’s bathroom,” Clinton said in Hollywood, Florida, on Tuesday.
WATCH:
Barack Obama hit the campaign trail on Saturday and stumped for Ohio Democrats in Cleveland.
Obama also trashed President Trump’s White House renovations.
“[Trump] has got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory. It’s gold everywhere,” Obama said.
On Saturday afternoon, President Trump and First Lady Melania were spotted walking into a polling station in Palm Beach.
President Trump was asked about Slick Willie and Barack Obama’s harsh criticism of his presidency.
“They’re critical because we beat them,” Trump said.
“I would be out there fighting, too,” he said of Obama and Clinton.
“Obama was a lousy president. Clinton was not bad, but he got caught up in a lot of scandals,” Trump said.
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