Category: Blaze Media
Live updates: Senate passes massive government funding package
The Senate voted overwhelmingly Friday night to pass a major funding package, but the legislation won’t become law before parts of the government shut down at midnight. In a 71-29 vote, the Senate approved the package consisting of five regular appropriations bills and a two-week stopgap measure for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The…
Sydney Sweeney spurns Cosmo girl’s desperate ‘MAGA Barbie’ bait
Feminist glossy “Cosmopolitian” could use a reminder: No means no.
When it comes to the media’s attempts to use Sydney Sweeney as a political pawn, the star has made it clear that she does not consent.
‘I’ve never been here to talk about politics.’
From claims that a jeans ad is a product of white supremacy to outrage over her use of a firearm, the 28-year-old is asked by reporters to reveal her politics nearly every time she is put in front of a camera.
And every time, she refuses.
Private parts
That didn’t stop a pushy writer from Cosmopolitan — single gal lifestyle mag turned leftist propaganda organ — from doing her best to wear Sweeney down.
After discussing body image and Sweeney’s new lingerie line, writer Alexandra Whittaker took an abrupt turn toward politics by bringing up what she called the star’s “charged nickname”: MAGA Barbie.
“I see it in Instagram comments constantly. How do you understand this label, given that you’ve been private about your politics?” Whittaker asked.
“I’ve never been here to talk about politics,” Sweeney plainly replied. “I’ve always been here to make art, so this is just not a conversation I want to be at the forefront of. And I think because of that, people want to take it even further and use me as their own pawn. But it’s somebody else assigning something to me, and I can’t control that.”
RELATED: Sydney Sweeney is rebuilding Americana — one Bronco at a time
Party lines
The reporter then asked why Sweeney would not want to correct any untrue labels.
“Where is the line for you?”
“I haven’t figured it out. I’m not a hateful person. If I say, ‘That’s not true,’ they’ll come at me like, ‘You’re just saying that to look better.’ There’s no winning. There’s never any winning. I just have to continue being who I am, because I know who I am. I can’t make everyone love me. I know what I stand for.”
Trying a different angle, Whittaker — executive director of Cosmopolitan’s website — asked Sweeney to define some of her values, “not party affiliations,” that she wants people to understand.
Sweeney simply described leading with “love” and being “kind to whoever you meet.”
American ogle
Despite Sweeney’s clear lack of interest, the reporter kept on pressing, asking Sweeney about not talking about politics and if she ever will.
“You don’t speak to your fans directly about your political beliefs. … Is there a future in which people will get to see what you believe, politically?”
The Spokane, Washington, native completely shut the idea down.
“No. I’m not a political person. I’m in the arts. I’m not here to speak on politics. That’s not an area I’ve ever even imagined getting into. It’s not why I became who I am.”
Readers will have to check out the full interview to see other attempts to discuss the “culture war” and separate online narratives that Sweeney is asked to answer to.
The actress was consistent in saying she does not have any control over what others print, say, or claim about her for their own gain.
“It’s been a weird thing having to navigate and digest, because it’s not me. None of it is me. And I’m having to watch it happen. I’m online and I see things, but I’m slowly pulling myself away,” she explained.
Unsealed indictment against Don Lemon cites his own comments on livestream from ‘takeover’ at church
The allegations against former CNN anchor Don Lemon were unsealed Friday from an indictment over his participation in a protest at a church that terrified churchgoers.
The document, screenshots of which were shared by CNN’s Jake Tapper, sets out the evidence against Lemon and the other defendants in the “takeover” of the Cities Church in St. Paul on Jan. 18 at about 10:30 a.m.
He referred to the experience as ‘traumatic and uncomfortable’ … and admitted that was the purpose of the takeover.
Lemon has claimed that he was in attendance at the incident only as a journalist, but the indictment sets forth evidence that he participated as an aggressor to threaten and intimidate church members and clergy.
“After the service commenced, a group of approximately 20-40 agitators, including all of the defendants named in this Indictment, entered the Church in a coordinated takeover-style attack and engaged in acts of oppression, intimidation, threats, interference, and physical obstruction alleged herein,” prosecutors said.
The indictment said that church leaders were forced to shut down the church service as some congregants fled, but others “took steps to implement an emergency plan.”
Those acts by the defendants deprived the church members of their constitutional right to religious freedom, according to prosecutors.
Lemon was present at a briefing before the incident and began streaming live online on his channel but took steps to conceal information of the plot, livestream video showed.
“We’re going to head to the operation. Again, we’re not going to give any of the information away,” he is quoted as saying in the indictment.
“Don’t give anything away,” he said to one of the other defendants on the livestream. “We can’t say too much. We don’t want to give it up.”
Lemon said to his audience that he saw a “young man” who was “frightened,” “scared,” and “crying.” He referred to the experience as “traumatic and uncomfortable” for those Christians attending the service and admitted that was the purpose of the takeover, according to screenshots of the indictment.
He also questioned the church’s pastor while other defendants “largely surrounded” the pastor in an attempt to “oppress and intimidate him,” the indictment claimed. They “physically obstructed his freedom of movement while Lemon peppered him with questions to promote the operation’s message,” it added.
RELATED: Don Lemon nailed with fierce backlash for ‘trans’ slur against Megyn Kelly
Lemon was arrested by federal agents on Thursday evening, leading to wide condemnation from many on the left who repeated his claims that he was merely acting as a journalist during the incident.
“Don Lemon is an accomplished journalist whose urgent work is protected by the First Amendment. There is zero basis to arrest him and he should be freed immediately,” wrote House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). “The Trump Justice Department is illegitimate and these extremists will all be held accountable for their crimes against the Constitution.”
The charges against Lemon were rejected by a Minnesota federal magistrate judge before he was charged with federal civil rights violations.
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Trump offers hilarious rebuttal to Tim Walz’s absurd Civil War analogy
President Donald Trump gave a hilarious response to Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s attempt to compare the conflicts in Minnesota to the Civil War.
Blaze News asked Trump to address Walz’s remarks likening the hostilities at Fort Sumter that sparked the Civil War to the heightened tensions seen on the ground in Minneapolis in recent weeks. When asked if he agreed with the characterization, Trump gave Blaze News a viral response.
‘I was elected to do a job.’
“Does he know what Fort Sumter was, or do you think somebody wrote it out for him?”
“I was elected on law and order,” Trump told Blaze News. “I was elected on a strong border. We had a border that allowed 25 million people to come in. Many were murderers. … We had open borders.”
RELATED: Trump’s unusual Cabinet meeting may reveal which officials are on thin ice
Trump brushed off Walz’s remarks, differentiating his tough-on-crime track record from the Democrat governor’s state that is rampant with fraud and violent crime.
“I was elected on a lot of reasons, because when I took over we inherited a mess,” Trump told Blaze News.
“When I was elected, I was elected to do a job, and one of the big things I was elected to do is law and order.”
RELATED: ‘Horrifying situation’: Some Republicans retreat following Minneapolis shooting of anti-ICE agitator
Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Trump criticized Democrats’ refusal to embrace law enforcement, pondering if they really want criminals to remain in their cities.
“If you look at Minnesota, Minneapolis, we have crime down there because we took out thousands of people, despite all the mess and everything else,” Trump told Blaze News.
“But do these people really want to have rapists? Do they really want to have drug dealers and people from prisons and murderers?”
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Hillary Clinton baselessly attacks Allie Beth Stuckey in desperate op-ed — accuses MAGA Christians of ‘war on empathy’
Failed presidential candidate and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote an op-ed in the Atlantic on Thursday, claiming to be a devout follower of Jesus Christ and accusing BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey of promoting a distorted version of Christianity that, Clinton asserted, has led to violence in Minneapolis.
The desperate op-ed demonstrated that Stuckey’s warnings about “toxic empathy” are pushing through left-wing efforts to guilt-trip Christians — which Stuckey made a point of in a special episode of her “Relatable” podcast. The reason Hillary Clinton attacked her, Stuckey said, “is so incredibly clear to me, and that is that we are over the target. We have gotten to the heart of progressive manipulation.”
‘When Hillary Clinton is writing 6,000 word op-eds in the Atlantic attacking warnings against toxic empathy, you know you’re over the target. Keep. Going.’
Clinton claimed that “hard-right ‘Christian influencers’” have waged a “war on empathy” and rejected bedrock values, including “dignity, mercy, and compassion.” She appeared to depict true Christian faith as nothing more than “love thy neighbor.”
The former secretary of state contended that President Donald Trump and his allies have altogether abandoned empathy, instead aiming to “spread fear,” particularly among “undocumented immigrants,” through “inhumane” treatment.
Clinton called out recent events in Minneapolis, claiming that Trump’s federal agents killed Alex Pretti while he was trying “help a woman they had thrown to the ground and pepper-sprayed.”
“Christian nationalism” is threatening to “replace democracy with theocracy in America,” according to Clinton.
She criticized Stuckey for calling a sermon by Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, “toxic empathy that is in complete opposition to God’s Word and in support of the most satanic, destructive ideas ever conjured up.”
RELATED: Anti-ICE influencers explained: How women get radicalized
Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Clinton mentioned Stuckey’s book, “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion,” and mocked the concept that empathy could ever be “toxic,” calling it an “oxymoron.”
“I don’t know if the phrase reflects moral blindness or moral bankruptcy, but either way it’s appalling,” she wrote.
Clinton argued that the “mainstream Christian view” of welcoming illegal immigrants “enrages” Stuckey.
“The author of Toxic Empathy, who styles herself a voice for Christian women, has more than a million followers on social media. In between lifestyle pitter-patter and her demonization of IVF treatments, she warns women not to listen to their soft hearts,” Clinton continued. “This commissar of MAGA morality targets other evangelicals whose empathy, she warns, has left them open to manipulation. Maybe they recognize the humanity of an undocumented immigrant family and decide that mass deportation has gone too far. Or they make space in their heart for a young rape survivor forced to carry a pregnancy to term and start questioning the wisdom and morality of total abortion bans. It’s all toxic to Stuckey.”
Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
Clinton’s call to action to her Christian supporters was to “follow the example of courageous faith leaders standing up to the Trump administration’s abuses.” She urged Democrats to fill the gaps of “compassion and community” that conservatives “give up.”
“I hope grassroots faith leaders across the country who are appalled by what they see from an immoral administration and an extremist political right also find their voice. It is understandable that some stay silent out of fear. Influencers like Stuckey are zealously policing any deviation from the party line. But speaking truth to power has been part of the Christian tradition since the very beginning. The Christian community — and the country — would be stronger and healthier if we heard these voices,” Clinton said.
Stuckey responded to the hit piece in a post on X, writing, “When Hillary Clinton is writing 6,000 word op-eds in the Atlantic attacking warnings against toxic empathy, you know you’re over the target. Keep. Going.”
“I’m not being sarcastic when I say I’m glad to hear that Hillary Clinton identifies as a Christian,” Stuckey stated on her podcast. “I did not know that we had that in common, sincerely, but for her to position herself as someone who is an authority on faith, when she admits here that she’s never been public about her faith, that’s a problem. That’s actually not something that’s an option within Christianity.”
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Trump must NEVER cave to Walz and the mob demanding ICE’s elimination
President Trump is continuing to explain that he’s willing to work with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) in order to stop the chaos unfolding in Minnesota — but BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales warns it is important that he does not give into the left’s demands.
“I’d like to know more of what that means, because you can’t reason with the left,” Gonzales says.
“Tim Walz is over there saying, ‘We have to protect our Somalian neighbors. Go take to the streets.’ And you see that reflected in the leftist response to President Trump. I mean, like, kind of giving them what they want, almost. They kind of got a W here, and they’re still fighting, carrying on, and demanding more, because they’re actually swarming Minnesota’s Capitol and chanting outside Tim Walz’s office,” she explains.
The protesters outside Walz’s office have been chanting “justice now,” despite Walz doing everything he can to make sure they know he’s on their side.
“Tim Walz has been very clear that he is not going to cooperate with President Trump. And even if he does, it’s like he’s trying to make your community safer; what is going to be good enough for you guys?” Gonzales asks.
“I don’t think there is anything. Nothing is going to be good enough until they see total elimination of ICE and of Republicans, basically,” she adds.
And one Minneapolis council member confirmed this in an interview with CNN.
“We want the 2,000-plus agents that are still here today occupying our communities and putting them at harm’s risk for being abducted or even shot and killed — we want them out. We don’t want ‘swatzis.’ So until that demand is fulfilled, there is simply not a satisfying moment in this change,” council member Robin Wonsley said.
“‘We don’t want swatzis,’” Gonzales mocks. “Oh, it’s just so funny to just throw around the term ‘Nazi.’ … I mean, what could possibly go wrong if you spend the better part of a decade calling people who are pro-America Nazis and literally Hitler?”
“It’s not like anyone of note recently got assassinated. It’s not like that rhetoric contributed at all,” she adds.
Want more from Sara Gonzales?
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Hawaii tells Supreme Court our rights should exist only with permission
Something shocking just happened between Hawaii — a state that already has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation — and the Supreme Court, and Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is sounding the alarm.
In defense of a sweeping gun restriction, Hawaii argued that Americans’ rights only exist if someone else gives permission, citing “Black Codes” written to disarm freed slaves as “historical tradition.”
This means that gun owners can’t carry on private property, unless the owner explicitly allows it.
“That means your constitutional right only exists if somebody else says yes. And the judges are like, ‘I’m sorry, how are you doing the math on this one?’ And Hawaii steps up to the microphone and says, ‘Yeah, your honor, don’t worry, history supports us on this,’” Glenn says.
The initial Black Code law that Hawaii’s new law is modeled after was written after the Civil War, and it was meant to disarm newly freed slaves so they were unable to defend themselves from mobs, the clan, or corrupt authorities.
“People who normally recoil from Black Codes, you know, like garlic with a vampire, suddenly embrace them because it helps restrict guns,” Glenn explains.
“But the case isn’t really about guns,” he says. “And that’s what I think everybody who is analyzing this case is missing. It is not about guns. It’s about whether your rights exist before government or only after permission is granted.”
“Hawaii says your right exists if someone else allows it. The Constitution says no, no, your rights exist because you exist and you’re free. And the court’s being asked to answer the question, do we define American liberty by its highest principles? Or by its darkest moments?” he continues.
“And once you use poisoned history to limit rights, rights stop being rights,” he adds.
Want more from Glenn Beck?
To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Local sheriff refuses to help ICE with immigration enforcement around the Super Bowl
Santa Clara County Sheriff Bob Jonsen bizarrely pledged not to work with federal agents while claiming such non-cooperation would result in increased safety for residents.
Ahead of Super Bowl LX at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, California, the local sheriff said he is refusing to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
‘We will not be working or supporting ICE immigration enforcement.’
The Trump administration has warned illegal aliens that there would still be enforcement around the Super Bowl, which takes place on February 8, but Sheriff Jonsen told residents he will not assist the Department of Homeland Security or its agents.
“We are gonna be here for you, side by side,” Jonsen said about his own officers. “So as you’re getting off those trains, … high probability you’re going to see somebody in uniform. But if they’re not masked, if they’re wearing tan and green or blue or black, trust me, they are there for your protection.”
Jonsen told reporters on Thursday that if residents or visitors see masked law enforcement who are “trying to hide their identity,” that means “somebody hasn’t communicated” with his department.
“We’ve made it very clear to our officers — our workforce is to be open, transparent, and engaged with this community for the next few weeks,” the sheriff added.
At that point, Jonsen made it clear to his constituents that his department would not be working alongside the immigration enforcement officers.
RELATED: Former Vikings player says ‘demonic’ Minnesota Democrats are upset ICE is ‘deporting their voters’
“I urge our federal partners — if there is something that you’re planning to do in our community, please be transparent and reach out to your local officials so we can work as best we can,” Jonsen announced to federal authorities.
“As mentioned, we are not going to be changing our policies or protocols. We will not be working or supporting ICE immigration enforcement,” he added.
In October, special adviser to Homeland Security Corey Lewandowski warned illegal aliens that if they went to the Super Bowl, there would be “repercussions to that.”
He added, “Just as there are if you are in any other neighborhood in this great country.”
DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin told TMZ this week that her department is still “committed to working with” local partners to ensure safety around the Super Bowl.
“Our mission remains unchanged,” McLaughlin noted.
RELATED: Wife of Super Bowl champion launches GOP campaign for Democrat-controlled NJ congressional seat
Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
The Santa Clara sheriff positioned his department as wanting to protect the level of trust it has built with its community over “decades” and expressed that he wants federal authorities to communicate their plans to him so he can relay it to his city.
Jonsen urged his constituents to contact “somebody wearing a uniform” if they see ICE operations unfolding.
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