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Washington, DC, has become a hostile city-state
The District of Columbia wasn’t supposed to be like this. Hard as it is to believe today, the capital was set apart as its own district not to make it an untouchable bureaucratic citadel, but to make it work for all Americans. Unattached to any one state and free from the control of any one constituency, our government was supposed to serve the whole country.
Decades of misunderstanding, however, have muddled this design. Federalization gives us a fighting chance of restoring it.
Perhaps the most prudent solution would be to subsume the District’s entities into the federal government.
Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government resided in Philadelphia until a military mutiny prompted it to leave. With this in mind, the framers proposed an optional federal district.
Under the proposal, Congress could create a capital and be vested with “exclusive” legislative authority over it. This would put the government in a position to contemplate and sympathize equally with all Americans. The states approved. And so the framers’ proposal was ratified under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution. Congress then placed the capital along the Potomac River, and D.C. was organized in 1801.
Confusion soon followed. Congress tried many approaches to local governance and settled on a semi-independent model, enacted as the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973. This established a congressionally appointed judiciary and a popularly elected city council, mayor, and attorney general. Under home rule, D.C. could make its own law, albeit with congressional oversight.
The founders warned us about this model, however. They anticipated that self-governance would embarrass, impede, and endanger the federal government.
This failure predates Trump
Trump derangement syndrome has only vindicated this position. In 2017, D.C.’s attorney general joined litigation against Trump’s so-called Muslim ban. Then in 2020, D.C. painted a “Black Lives Matter” memorial along 16th Street NW, flipping an urban bird at the Trump White House. And in 2025, the District’s attorney general protested Trump’s public safety initiative, contesting his right to seize the Metropolitan Police Department and deploy the National Guard across the city.
One might overlook these obstructions if the District’s fierce independence enabled it to ensure safe and efficient self-governance. But that doesn’t describe D.C. In 2023, a Senate staffer traversing the northeast part of the city was knocked to the ground and repeatedly stabbed in the head and chest. Then in May 2025, two embassy interns were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum. The following month, a congressional intern was fatally shot in the Mount Vernon Square neighborhood.
Nor is partisanship the only problem. D.C. behaves almost as poorly when Democrats wield federal power. In April 2024, pro-Palestinian protesters erected an encampment at George Washington University (a federally chartered school). City officials refused to remove the protesters for two weeks even though their disruptions interfered with students’ final exam preparations.
Bringing the capital to heel will ultimately require legislation. There’s already a proposal to repeal home rule. It’s a great start, but the proposal doesn’t detail how D.C. would operate afterward — not a promising omission when Congress tends to be so ineffective.
Perhaps the most prudent solution would be to subsume the District’s entities into the federal government. Then Congress need not work from a blank slate by creating new bodies for local governance. Instead, D.C.’s city council could become an advisory body to recommend local laws. This would meet the Constitution’s requirement that Congress make the laws without requiring it to fuss over the minutiae of local governance.
This idea won’t appease locals who want equal electoral representation to that enjoyed by other Americans, if not greater. We know that D.C. residents (or, more accurately, the Democrats in their ears) seek D.C. statehood. But if it’s a state they’re after, then they should entertain retrocession or repeal the District’s charter. Illegitimatizing the Constitution to preserve the mock state is not the way to go.
Forcing the issue through the courts
Knowing that Democrats in Congress will object on these grounds to any discussion of federalization, we should use litigation to force a solution on this matter. The difficulty with litigation is finding a plaintiff — a D.C. resident who believes in a federal capital and whose case wouldn’t be easily dismissed by local judges seeking to avoid the issue. But with so many conservatives currently serving in D.C. under the Trump administration, now might be the time to bring a suit.
The right litigant has two ways to attack home rule — challenge D.C.’s lawmaking power or neutralize its prosecutorial authority. The lawmaking approach likely faces two objections. First, judges might question how Congress’ ultimate legislative authority under home rule meaningfully differs from exclusive authority under the Constitution. Second, they might raise the constitutional liquidation theory, which posits that the post-enactment tradition fleshes out constitutional indeterminacies.
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Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Neither objection holds water. For one thing, exclusive legislative authority means what it says — one body enacts the law. Using D.C.’s city council as a think tank wouldn’t violate this principle, because only Congress would oversee legislation from introduction to enactment. But home rule fails because Congress shares its authority with another body. In fact, a law could exist under home rule without Congress touching it at all. The Constitution doesn’t envision such an anomaly.
Relatedly, liquidation presupposes that a constitutional provision is ambiguous. But here, the framers couldn’t have written a clearer provision. Congressional authority over D.C. is exclusive; that means only Congress can exercise it. And so even though Congress has handed lawmaking power to D.C. on multiple occasions, viewing this abdication as indicative of the Constitution’s original meaning would only sanction congressional laziness and cowardice.
A limited win that still matters
The prosecutorial approach would open a more straightforward path to a more limited victory. The pitch is simple: The D.C. attorney general is a federal creation. And yet he is elected and can sue the federal government at will. This flouts the appointment process, as well as the president’s power to remove officers and direct executive-branch entities. Now would be the perfect time to press this argument, as the Supreme Court aims to clarify the president’s removal power later this term and the D.C. Circuit recently questioned whether “the District possesses an independent sovereignty that can give rise to an Article III injury from actions of the federal government.”
The only issue is that D.C. could still make law. But some of that law will be unenforceable if the attorney general cannot prosecute. Hence, a small win — but a win nonetheless.
Congress has subverted the Constitution by entertaining home rule. The results have been ugly and will get uglier. District residents will grow increasingly radical in their demands for self-governance. The framers, in their wisdom, didn’t create a sovereign D.C. — they bequeathed us a federal city to preserve a neutral national government. We should restore that vision.
Editor’s Note: A version of this article was published originally at the American Mind
Diversity quota allowed UK man with child rape accusations to become a cop — he then committed more horrific rapes
A man who was allowed to become a police officer despite child rape accusations was later convicted of a horrific campaign of rape that included a child under 13 years of age.
The victims of 24-year-old Cliff Mitchell described him as “the devil” and “a pathetic excuse of a man” over the horrific abuse he committed as a U.K. police officer.
‘You are the devil. You disgust me. I hope you suffer for the rest of your life.’
Even worse, Mitchell was allowed to become an officer despite the past child rape allegations because he fit a diversity quota when officials were driving to recruit more officers.
Mitchell’s application was denied in 2020 over the 2018 allegations, but an admission panel overturned the decision and allowed him to join the force.
Prosecutors said Mitchell used a knife to kidnap one of his victims in Sept. 2023. He tied her arms with cable ties and put tape over her mouth before raping her. Mitchell laughed at her cries and told her no one would believe her because he was an officer.
Mitchell was convicted of 10 counts of rape, 4 counts of rape of a child under 13, one count of kidnap, and a breach of a non-molestation order.
“You deserve to spend the rest of your life in a cell because you are a serious danger to every woman walking the streets,” one of the victims said to Mitchell in court. “You are the devil. You disgust me. I hope you suffer for the rest of your life.”
The other victim, who said she lives in fear, also excoriated him in court.
“I’m holding you to account for your actions; you took away my self-worth,” she said. “You are a pathetic excuse of a man.”
“Cliff Mitchell is clearly a deeply troubled young man. … (His) serious offending appears to have arisen for desire for control,” Mrs. Justice May said at his sentencing. “The fact he was a police officer, albeit for a short time, will make imprisonment a harsher experience for him.”
Astoundingly, the drive for diversity and an increased demand for recruitment led to other questionable people being allowed to become officers.
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The conspiracy that gave Liz Wheeler ‘chills’: Was there a FIFTH plane on 9/11?
September 11, 2001, remains the most tragic day in American history, but almost a quarter-century later, mysteries surrounding the events of the day have yet to be solved.
And one TMZ documentary that BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler admits shockingly gave her “chills” involves United Flight 23, which was grounded when the World Trade Center was hit. However, the plane may have been another one that hijackers were attempting to weaponize.
“I watched the creepiest — I’m talking chills up and down your arms — documentary recently. The absolute creepiest. It was actually a documentary done by TMZ, believe it or not. I’m not particularly into celebrity gossip,” Wheeler says.
“It’s actually quite a well-done piece of investigative journalism about September 11, 2001,” she adds.
The narrative that the documentary challenges claims that four planes were hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists on 9/11, and the documentary provides evidence that there was actually a fifth.
“What if I presented evidence to you today that there was actually another plane — another plane that was supposed to be hijacked too? And not only was there another plane that had hijackers on it, but the government found out about it afterward. And so did the airlines. They knew about it. And to this day, they’re covering it up,” Wheeler explains.
The documentary features the claim, according to a flight attendant, that one passenger on the plane was a man who was wearing a burka.
“How would you react if you were on an airline and there was not only a person in a full burka — not just a hijab, a full burka with just the eye slits — but a person with hairy hands, a person that the flight crew were pretty certain was a man?” Wheeler asks.
There was a male “bodyguard” sitting next to the man in the burka, who flight attendants recalled was “sweating profusely.”
But these were not the only Middle Eastern passengers of note aboard the flight.
“So we have four Middle Eastern passengers in first class. Someone, an individual dressed in a full burka with just eye slits. … The other man in the tan suit was trying to peer into the cockpit using his son as an excuse,” Wheeler explains.
These same passengers argued with the flight crew about taking off quickly instead of being delayed to hand out food.
“As if that’s not creepy enough, once the news broke that the plane was not going to be taking off because the other planes on 9/11 had hit the towers, had hit the Pentagon, these same passengers asked a question of the flight crew,” she continues.
One of them asked, “Did they get the White House?”
Once they were all deplaned and the airport was being evacuated, someone on the ground noticed that there were people back on the aircraft, 20 minutes after the plane was locked.
When it was investigated, it was discovered that the hatches to the plane had been reopened.
“So, what does that mean? Did someone enter the airplane through the floor hatch to remove, I don’t know what, evidence, weapons after everyone exited the plane?” Wheeler asks. “Well, that’s not just a hypothetical question. A weapon that had been planted on a plane was found at JFK.”
When TMZ reached out and even filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the organization was ignored.
“How can you not think that this is a government cover-up?” Wheeler asks, shocked. “The 9/11 commission didn’t even interview the pilot of that plane.”
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Police shoot New Jersey man who allegedly charged them with machete — then find gruesome scene inside his home
The shooting of a machete-armed man led to a horrific discovery inside his home, according to New Jersey police.
Piscataway police said they were called to the residence on River Road on Monday at about 5:30 p.m. on a report of a man with a knife.
‘I just want to let the general public know this is not somebody coming in, knocking on the door. This is all folks that all knew each other.’
Police said they found a man armed with a machete and tried unsuccessfully to stop him with the use of tasers. When he lunged at them with the machete, they shot him and killed him.
When officers entered the residence, they found three bodies.
The bodies are believed to belong to the man’s grandparents and his mother.
Piscataway Mayor Brian Wahler spoke to reporters outside of the home and said that the 911 caller was the suspect’s father, who was the sole survivor.
“You have to understand, there is a husband that is about to bury a wife, parents, and a son,” the mayor said.
“So out of respect to the household, for the rest of the family members, but they were all related,” he added. “I just want to let the general public know this is not somebody coming in, knocking on the door. This is all folks that all knew each other and were related to each other blood-wise.”
Officials said there had been no prior incidents at the house involving police. A later report said the mother was 60 years old, the grandparents were 86 and 84 years old, and the suspect was 29 years old.
Police indicated that they died of stabbing wounds.
Neighbors of the family told WABC-TV that their previous interactions with them had been all been pleasant.
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“Very nice lady. Very nice, quiet neighborhood. It’s so tragic that something like this happens,” said Keith Heron, a neighbor of the family’s.
The deaths are being investigated by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office as well as the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.
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I joined a cult — and I’m not leaving
A few years ago, I went all in on CrossFit.
Not casually. Not “a couple of sessions a week.” I mean fully immersed. Dawn classes. Protein evangelism. Callused palms held up like merit badges. A vocabulary that slowly became unintelligible to my friends and family.
Effort has been engineered out of daily existence. The result isn’t ease but restlessness. So people voluntarily buy pain.
It worked, too. I got strong. Very strong. But eventually, the thing that had promised discipline started to feel devotional. The workouts were brutal, yes, but the culture grew insistent — about identity, about belonging, about the strange idea that redemption could be loaded onto a barbell.
I left CrossFit because it started to feel like a cult. Manson family vibes, minus the desert and the murders. It had a creed, but a shallow one: Pain conferred status, while rest felt vaguely shameful. And like most people who escape one intense, borderline insane tribe, I did the most predictable thing imaginable. I joined another.
Enter Hyrox.
20 miserable meters
If CrossFit thrives on variety, Hyrox runs on ritual. The same test. Every time. Everywhere. Eight one-kilometer runs, each broken by a workout station designed to sap dignity and drain glycogen in equal measure.
Sled pushes that turn legs to jelly. Burpee broad jumps that make grown adults negotiate with God. Farmer’s carries that compress your entire life into 20 miserable meters. Lunges, rowing, wall balls, the works. No mystery. No surprises. No excuses. You know exactly what’s coming. Which somehow makes it worse.
What began as a handful of lunatics in a warehouse now stretches from Boston to Brisbane. Americans, in particular, go absolutely gaga for this brand of glorified self-flogging. Last year, some 70,000 Americans lined up to compete in Hyrox races.
It’s measurable. It’s standardized. It has timing chips, age brackets, and leaderboards that humiliate you with forensic precision. And as a fully indoctrinated Hyroxer, I can’t pretend I’m above it. I get it.
Something primal
I’ve raced in the U.K., Ireland, and Thailand. Thailand, in particular, feels surreal. You’re preparing for an event designed to dismantle your nervous system while palm trees nod approvingly, someone hawks knockoff iPhones nearby, and ladyboys shout suggestive comments. And yet amid the madness, something primal asserts itself. Suffering, it turns out, is a universal language.
Hyrox isn’t “for everyone,” and it shouldn’t be sold that way. There’s a strange modern habit of presenting extreme physical challenges as all-purpose answers. As if every personal demon can be exorcised with sprints. For some people, this stuff is genuinely stabilizing. Structure helps. Training gives shape to days that might otherwise dissolve. Discipline can be a lifeline.
For others, though, it’s avoidance, plain and simple. I’ve met men and women who, without an outlet this intense, would almost certainly be annoying their lawyers or alarming psychiatrists. Not everything can be lifted, lunged, or rowed into submission. Eventually the joints revolt and the scoreboard stops flattering you.
Comfortably numb
The global popularity tells us something slightly uncomfortable about the moment we’re living in. Modern life is comfortable to the point of numbness. Effort has been engineered out of daily existence. The result isn’t ease but restlessness. So people voluntarily buy pain. They pay for race entries, overpriced shoes, and punishing workouts simply to feel alive again. Hyrox doesn’t negotiate. You run, or you don’t. You move the sled, or it doesn’t move. The feedback is immediate and unforgiving.
And it’s precisely that simplicity that has prompted the next, inevitable escalation: Olympic ambition.
Hyrox’s new Science Advisory Council, a small army of researchers from New Zealand, the U.K., and Europe, signals a sport that wants legitimacy. Standardization, data, physiology, performance analysis — the entire scientific kitchen sink has been thrown at the 2032 dream. On paper, it makes sense. The format is fixed. The judging is clean. The variables are controlled. If breakdancing can make it into the Olympic ecosystem, why not a race that looks like a PE teacher’s revenge fantasy?
Why not, indeed.
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Wundervisuals/Getty Images
Going mainstream
The Olympics have always been a little ridiculous. They celebrate niche obsessions elevated to national honor. People dedicate their lives to throwing things, jumping over things, sliding on ice in improbable positions. Hyrox fits right in. It’s absurd, yes, but so is speed-walking. So is synchronized swimming. Absurdity has never been a barrier to inclusion.
The more interesting question isn’t whether Hyrox deserves Olympic status. It’s what happens to a cult when it goes mainstream, when something built in warehouses and back alleys gets handed a global spotlight. Like an underground punk band suddenly piped through stadium speakers, intensity changes when scale takes over. What once thrived on proximity starts to lose its edge.
Whatever happens, I’ll line up again. Dublin. Bangkok. London. I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, I know what’s in it, and I’m still reaching for another cup. There’s no exit interview. No recovery program. I’m not a philosopher. I just know that in a world drowning in opinions and moral lectures, it’s a relief to face a problem that can only be solved by putting one foot in front of the other, until you can’t.
MEDIA MOB MALPRACTICE! Press Sec. Blasts Reporters for ‘Smearing’ ICE Agent After New Vid Drops — ‘Media Trust at All-Time Low!’
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back Friday against media coverage of the ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis, insisting the ICE agent “properly defended himself.
FOOTAGE RELEASED: Cellphone Video Shows POV of Minneapolis ICE Agent Moments Before Shooting [WATCH]
![FOOTAGE RELEASED: Cellphone Video Shows POV of Minneapolis ICE Agent Moments Before Shooting [WATCH]](https://hannity.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Footage-300x229.png "Footage")
A conservative Minnesota outlet, Alpha News, has released newly surfaced cellphone footage that appears to show the confrontation from an ICE agent’s perspective during the Jan.
Trump’s Venezuela Operation Deals Blow to Another Dangerous Trade: Iranian Drones
The Trump administration has pointed to stymieing the Venezuelan drug trade as a central motivation behind its operation to capture dictator Nicolás Maduro. But narcotics are not the only dangerous export the operation crippled: Taking out Maduro and asserting U.S. authority in the country means delivering a big hit to Iranian drone production, U.S. officials and regional analysts told the Washington Free Beacon.
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This media spin on the ICE shooting will make you sick
Mainstream media is spinning the ICE shooting incident to paint Renee Nicole Good as a hero instead of an agitator, and while BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales admits that life lost is “always a tragedy” — she’s not pleased with the media’s biased reaction.
“When life is lost, it’s always tragedy. But this is one of those things that’s like, guys, I don’t know. Don’t do that. Don’t commit crimes. Don’t impede ICE’s work. Don’t do that,” Gonzales says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”
Good was a mother of three who was attending a protest with her wife, who, following the tragic death, was seen yelling that it was her fault for forcing her wife to join her.
“This is a woman who unfortunately lost her life due to the consequences of her own actions. And so it’s just incredible to see the media slobbering all over her as if she were some hero, as if she didn’t do this to herself,” Gonzales says.
One article from NBC News on the story is headlined, “Woman fatally shot by ICE agent remembered as ‘one of the kindest people.’”
Another article from the Washington Post is titled, “Woman killed by ICE in Minneapolis was a mother of 3 and a poet.”
“She could rhyme well, so you know, she must have been a good gal. Now she was a mother of three, only apparently had one of them living with her. We don’t know why, but she was a mother, and she was basically Dr. Seuss, and also she was an avid writer and hobby guitarist who won a poetry prize in 2020,” Gonzales comments.
“I don’t gloat in her death,” she continues. “I don’t mock her death. I don’t wish ill will on her family. In fact, I find it absolutely tragic. I find it absolutely tragic that this child that she had custody of ‘cause the dad was dead, her 6-year-old is now an orphan.”
“I find that horribly sad. But I find the coverage of this in the mainstream media to just be absolutely disgusting,” she says, pointing out that the mainstream media’s coverage of Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by Capitol Police officers on January 6, couldn’t have been less favorable to the victim.
“NBC News,” Gonzales reads, “Woman killed in Capitol was Trump supporter who embraced conspiracy theories.”
The subhead that followed wasn’t any better, reading, “Social media profiles connected to Ashli Babbitt were almost singularly focused on radical conservative topics and conspiracy theories.”
“Oh, she was just a crazy right-wing nut job who had it coming,” Gonzales says.
The L.A. times called the January 6 protest a “deadly insurrection” when it reported on it.
“Here’s the funny thing,” Gonzales says, “the deadly part of it was Ashli Babbitt.”
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Arkansas mayor who was praised as youngest black mayor accused of inappropriate Snapchat messages with 14-year-old boy
The mayor of an Arkansas town who was praised as the youngest black mayor in history has been accused of paying off a 14-year-old boy to keep quiet about inappropriate Snapchat messages.
Earle Mayor Jaylen Smith, 21, is being investigated by the Arkansas State Police after receiving a tip from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
‘The mayor did pay my son $500 to not tell me, but he ended up telling me anyway.’
A woman told WREG-TV that the mayor had met her son in 2024 at Earle High School, where her son attended. The mayor gave her son clothes and money, according to the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, and then made sexual advances via Snapchat messages.
She provided correspondence from a person she said was the mayor, but WREG said it was not able to independently verify that the account belonged to the mayor.
She said that she told her son to tell the man to stop contacting him but that he persisted. She alleges that the man then paid him money to keep it quiet.
“The mayor did pay my son $500 to not tell me, but he ended up telling me anyway,” she said.
Smith denied the claims vehemently in a statement Friday.
“I want to speak directly and clearly to the people of Earle: the accusations being reported are false. I am innocent. Truth matters, and in time, the truth will stand on its own,” reads the statement in part.
“While I would like to directly and unequivocally address the allegations against me, I have been advised to reserve any substantive statements regarding the allegations until a later date,” he added.
WREG reported that the superintendent of Earle Schools expressed concern in Nov. 2024 over the mayor visiting the campus. The district’s attorney sent a letter asking the mayor to ask permission prior to visits and to express the purpose of those visits.
Smith had been elected in 2022 just months after graduating from high school when he was 18 years old. He is not currently facing charges.
Earle is a town of about 1,700 residents located 30 minutes west of Memphis.
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