Category: Conservative Review
Federal Judges Uphold Massive Blow To GOP House Control In 2026 Midterms
Democrats regaining the House would significantly diminish his presidential powers.
Country Singer Jeffrey Steele’s New Song Gives ‘A Voice’ To The Forgotten American
‘I hope this song becomes a voice not only for people speaking up for others and themselves, but for these young kids and these young artists,’ Steele told The Federalist.
Biden’s faith attacks backfire: Support for religious liberties soars to record high under Trump, new report shows
Against a backdrop of mounting attacks on churches, the Biden administration worked ardently to curb religious liberties wherever they came into conflict with the left’s radical agenda.
For example:
- the Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission implemented a rule requiring employers — including Christian organizations — to accommodate workers’ efforts to abort their unborn children;
- the EEOC attempted to force Christians to pay for employees’ sex-rejection mutilations;
- the Biden Department of Health and Human Services attempted to bar Christian providers who hold biblical and scientifically grounded views about sex and marriage from the foster-care system; and
- under Biden, a Catholic, the FBI characterized conservative Catholics as potential domestic terrorists and proposed to infiltrate Catholic churches as “threat mitigation.”
It’s clear from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s latest Religious Freedom Index that unlike the administration voted out of power in 2024, the American people overwhelmingly — and increasingly — support religious liberties.
‘Our nation still believes that our first freedom belongs at the heart of our culture; not as a source of conflict, but as a foundation for overcoming it.’
Over the past six years, Becket has tracked public opinion on religious freedom. The legal group’s index for 2025 published on Friday registered the highest cumulative score for public support of religious freedom to-date — 71 on a scale from 0 to 100 where 0 indicates complete opposition to religious liberty and 100 indicates robust support.
This amounts to a dramatic shift, especially when compared to 2020, when the composite score was 66.
Whereas in 2020, 52% of respondents agreed that religious freedom is inherently public and that Americans should be able to share their faith in public spaces, that number jumped to 57% in the latest RFI.
There was an even bigger shift when it came to support for parents’ ability to opt out of public school curricula they believe to be inappropriate — a jump from 63% in 2021 to 73% in 2025.
RELATED: 6 ways I’m using 2026 to deepen my relationship with God
Photo by ANOEK DE GROOT/AFP via Getty Images
When asked specifically about the Supreme Court’s June 2025 ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, 62% of respondents signaled support for the high court’s decision to side with the Maryland parents who wanted to protect their children from LGBT propaganda in Montgomery County Public Schools.
On the question of whether public funding for education should be available to all families, including those who choose religious schools, 77% of respondents said they were mostly or completely in favor.
The report noted that “although this year’s Index found that Americans have cooled on the benefits of religion to society and are skeptical of institutions, they unify around the simple principles of religious freedom for all, even in difficult cases that invite scrutiny or controversy.”
A clear majority, 58%, of Americans said they support the right of a Christian baker to decline to make cakes that conflict with her sincere religious views.
Sixty-one percent of respondents said that the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion should protect Catholic priests from having to break the seal of confession as would have been required by Washington state Democrats’ now-enjoined Senate Bill 5375.
There was markedly less support for the Christian counselor in the case Chiles v. Salazar who challenged Colorado’s prohibition on so-called “conversion therapy” for non-straight youth. Only 47% expressed support for her ability to provide talk therapy to children to help them overcome their gender dysphoria.
“Year after year, the Index has made clear that religious liberty remains one of our most cherished values,” Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket, said in a statement obtained by Blaze News.
“Even amid deep divisions, our nation still believes that our first freedom belongs at the heart of our culture; not as a source of conflict, but as a foundation for overcoming it,” continued Rienzi. “The work before us is to see that freedom protected for our children and theirs in the years to come.”
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Orthodox saint meets Chicago gang life in gritty crime flick ‘Moses the Black’
50 Cent is going from sin to sanctity.
Hot on the heels of his recent Netflix documentary on the debauched downfall of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, the rapper turned producer is set to release an urban crime drama inspired by the life of fourth-century Ethiopian monk Moses the Black.
Even in our compromised state, saints remain scandalous and alluring precisely because they cut against our deepest desires and despair.
Fans of Fox Nation’s “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” will remember the violent bandit turned desert-dwelling ascetic as one of the series’ most fascinating subjects. Officially recognized by Pope Leo XIII in 1887, the former slave has long been venerated as the patron saint of nonviolence and is widely praised as a symbol of the power of peace and repentance.
Out for blood
“Moses the Black,” a loose retelling of that story set against the backdrop of modern-day Chicago, follows Malik (Omar Epps), a gang leader fresh out of prison and seeking to avenge his murdered friend.
Complicating his quest his is grandmother, an Orthodox Christian who gives him an icon of St. Moses, whom she describes as a “saint who was also a gang member.” Haunted by frustration, loss, and a lifetime of sins, Malik starts having visions of the saint, who warns him that the bloody path he has embarked upon is one he will regret.
“Moses” — which also features hip-hop notables Wiz Khalifa and Quavo — makes for an interesting companion piece to director Yelena Popovic’s previous outing, 2021 St. Nektarios biopic “Man of God.” Where that film depicts sanctity as something preserved through obedience and suffering, “Moses” imagines it reclaimed from disorder.
Mean streets
Malik navigates an inner city filled with dealers and enforcers locked into violent criminal lives, casually killing rivals or shooting up funerals over petty grudges. These sequences are among the film’s darkest and do not soften their portrayal of brutality or drug use.
“Moses” is clearly a personal project for the platinum-selling artist born Curtis Jackson, whose own background mirrors Malik’s. Raised by a single mother in Jamaica, Queens — herself a drug dealer who was murdered when he was 8 — Jackson entered the drug trade at a young age. After barely surviving an attack by a rival in 2000, Jackson released his debut “Get Rich or Die Tryin'” in 2003.
Although that album cemented Jackson’s association with the violence and materialism of gangsta rap, its cover found him wearing a jewel-encrusted cross necklace. The tension between survival and transformation is one Jackson understands firsthand.
As he has said:
I believe in God. I didn’t survive being shot nine times for nothing. I didn’t claw my way out of the ‘hood just ’cause it was something to do. I know I’ve got a purpose, a reason for being on this planet. I don’t think I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do yet. But I do know this: I ain’t going nowhere ’til I’ve done it all.
Redemption song
There is something unsettling and compelling about the lives of saints. Even in our compromised state, they remain scandalous and alluring precisely because they cut against our deepest desires and despair. The film’s greatest strength is its depiction of how Catholics and Orthodox Christians turn to saints during moments of trial, seeking models of repentance and change — models Malik strains toward but does not easily inhabit.
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Steven Ferdman/GC Images/Getty Images
The film’s ambitions, however, exceed its budget. Extensive handheld camerawork — whether a stylistic or budgetary choice — sits uneasily beside green-screen flashbacks and CGI-heavy desert scenes. The rough Chicago footage clashes with these elements, and the film might have benefited from a tighter focus on Malik’s interior struggle. Exaggerated performances from the supporting cast further push many scenes into melodrama.
Despite its “faith-based” trappings, “Moses the Black” is emphatically not a family film. It includes graphic violence, coarse language, and crude sexual innuendo, narrowing its audience to those inclined to receive its warning. Still, its central claim — that mercy extends even to the gravest sinners — lands with force in a culture starved for hope.
“Moses the Black” will be released through Fathom Entertainment on January 30.
Venezuelan freedom fighter honors Trump: Machado insists ‘he deserves’ Nobel Prize after capture of dictator Maduro
While there have been mixed reactions to the January 3 capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro by the U.S., few have shown greater support for the move than opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
On Thursday, Machado visited President Donald Trump at the White House and presented him with her Nobel Peace Prize, which she won in October.
‘María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done.’
When asked in a Fox interview why she gave her medal to the president of the United States, Machado had a simple answer: “Because he deserves it.”
“It was a very emotional moment. I decided to present the Nobel Peace Prize medal on behalf of the people of Venezuela.”
Photo by Drew ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images
The medal was presented to Trump in a large golden frame with text that reads: “To President Donald J. Trump in Gratitude for Your Extraordinary Leadership in Promoting Peace Through Strength.” The text further calls the award a “Personal Symbol of Gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan People.”
After the meeting, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!”
A White House official confirmed to CNBC that Trump intends to keep the medal.
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California’s abortion ‘trauma’ sanctuary: Newsom refuses to extradite accused doctor to ‘pro-life’ Louisiana
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) blasted California officials this week for refusing to extradite a doctor facing abortion charges.
Murrill said that it was “appalling” to see Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) “openly admitting that they will protect an individual from being held accountable for illegal, medically unethical, and dangerous conduct that led to a woman being coerced into terminating the life of her unborn child.”
Remy Coeytaux was charged on Jan. 8 in St. Tammany Parish with criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 50 years of hard labor.
‘The trauma of my chemical abortion still haunts me.’
Murrill announced on Tuesday — several months after indicating that she would “pursue anyone and use any legal means available” to hold accountable those who distribute abortion pills in the Bayou State — that a criminal arrest warrant had been signed for Coeytaux and his name had been entered into the National Crime Information Center.
Roughly an hour later, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry indicated that he was “signing the extradition paperwork to bring this California doctor to justice.”
“Louisiana has a zero tolerance policy for those who subvert our laws, seek to hurt women, and promote abortion,” said Landry. “I know Gavin Newsom supports abortion in all its forms, but that doesn’t work in Louisiana. We are unapologetically pro-life.”
Shuran Huang for the Washington Post via Getty Images
Newsom said in response that “Louisiana’s request is denied.”
“We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to reach into California and try to punish doctors based on allegations that they provided reproductive health care services. Not today. Not ever,” said Newsom. “We will never be complicit with Trump’s war on women.”
Newsom suggested that this frustration of Louisiana justice was consistent with his 2022 executive order directing California to decline extradition requests for doctors accused of providing or facilitating abortions.
Nancy Northup, the president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Coeytaux in a separate civil case, told the New York Times that the allegations “are unproven and should not be reported as fact.”
“Women should also be able to get safe and legal abortion care in their own state,” added Northup. “Thousands of women seek abortion pills via mail every year because abortion is banned in their state, and that will not change until abortion is legal everywhere.”
While characterized as safe, abortion pills not only kill unborn children but endanger women’s lives. The Ethics and Public Policy Center noted in a report last year that over 10% of women “experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion.”
Coeytaux is accused in a federal lawsuit of sending abortion pills to a Louisiana woman in 2023 — a woman who has indicated she was pressured to take the drugs and is now “haunt[ed]” by her chemical abortion.
Rosalie Markezich, the recipient of the drug and now suffering from the fallout of the abortion, claimed in a September court filing that despite initially celebrating her pregnancy, her boyfriend “soon changed his mind,” then used her personal email address and mailing address to obtain mifepristone and misoprostol “from an online provider that his sister has used multiple times before.”
A few days after allegedly forwarding to Coeytaux the $150 her boyfriend sent her, Markezich received the drugs by mail.
According to her declaration, Markezich changed her mind about killing her child, but her boyfriend, who “had anger issues and a criminal record,” allegedly coerced her into taking them — and she proved unable to throw them back up.
“The trauma of my chemical abortion still haunts me,” said Markezich.
Coeytaux is also named in a civil complaint filed in July with the federal court for the Southern District of Texas. The Texas complaint alleges that a woman, Kendal Garza, was pressured by her estranged husband to use abortion drugs allegedly obtained from Coeytaux “to murder” Garza’s unborn child by another man.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) ordered Coeytaux on Aug. 14 to cease and desist from mailing abortion drugs into the state of Texas and indicated such conduct not only violates Texas state law but the federal Comstock Act of 1873, which prohibits the mailing of abortion-related drugs.
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Did Trump use the ‘Havana syndrome’ weapon on Venezuela?
A Venezuelan security guard, speaking to the New York Post after the January 3 raid that captured Nicolás Maduro, described American forces using some kind of directed-energy weapon that left hundreds of defenders bleeding from their noses, vomiting blood, and unable to stand. According to this account, about 20 U.S. troops from roughly eight helicopters took down hundreds of Venezuelan soldiers without a single American death.
The basic facts are wild enough without the sci-fi angle. Delta Force conducted Operation Absolute Resolve in the predawn hours, capturing Maduro and his wife from Fort Tiuna in Caracas. More than 200 special operations forces participated, supported by about 150 aircraft that disabled Venezuelan air defenses and extracted Maduro to New York to face narco-terrorism charges. Venezuela reported over 100 casualties, with only seven U.S. troops injured.
That’s already one of the most audacious military operations since the bin Laden raid.
Trump wants adversaries, particularly in Latin America, to believe the US has these capabilities.
But then comes the guard’s testimony, shared publicly by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on X. He describes radar systems simultaneously shutting down, swarms of drones, and then this mysterious weapon that made his “head feel like it was exploding from the inside.” Mass collapse. Internal bleeding. Complete incapacitation.
To those of us with long memories, it sounded strangely familiar, hearkening back to the “Havana syndrome” attacks on American personnel starting in Havana in 2016. Those attacks were suspected to have been caused by a secret energy weapon. Now, the United States has its own.
Whether we actually used that weapon or the White House just wants you to believe it did, either way, the strategic effect is the same.
The Havana syndrome connection
Starting in late 2016, U.S. diplomats and CIA officers in Cuba began experiencing bizarre symptoms: sudden onset of severe headaches, hearing strange sounds, vertigo, cognitive issues, and what appeared to be actual brain injuries. Over the next several years, hundreds of American personnel reported similar incidents in China, Russia, Austria, and even Washington, D.C.
The National Academies of Sciences concluded in 2020 that “pulsed electromagnetic energy” was the most plausible explanation for at least some cases. Multiple intelligence panels agreed: Directed-energy weapons were the leading theory. In 2024, investigative reporting linked Russia’s GRU Unit 29155 to research on “non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
For years, American officials have suspected, but couldn’t prove, that hostile actors used these weapons against U.S. personnel. The attacks hit diplomats inside embassy compounds, in hotels, and even at home. Invisible, deniable, and devastating.
Now fast-forward to the January 3, 2026, raid and its darkly ironic twist: 32 Cuban military advisers were killed defending Maduro’s compound, possibly hit with the same type of weapon that may have been used against Americans in Cuba.
If true, it sends a message: We know what you did to our people in Havana, and now you’ve experienced it yourselves.
The Pentagon just bought the Havana syndrome weapon
CNN reported on January 13 that Homeland Security Investigations acquired a device through an undercover operation for tens of millions of dollars in the waning days of the Biden administration, using Pentagon funding. The backpack-size device produces pulsed radio waves and contains Russian components.
That portability matters. One of the long-standing questions about Havana syndrome was how you could make a weapon powerful enough to cause brain injuries that’s also portable enough to deploy against specific targets in embassy compounds, hotels, and homes.
The Pentagon tested it for more than a year and considered it serious enough to brief the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in late 2024. There’s still debate within the government about its actual link to Havana syndrome cases, but the acquisition has, according to CNN, “reignited a painful and contentious debate” about whether foreign adversaries have been attacking U.S. officials with directed-energy weapons.
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who went public about injuries he sustained in what he believes was an attack in Moscow in 2017, told CNN: “If the [U.S. government] has indeed uncovered such devices, then the CIA owes all the victims a f**king major and public apology for how we have been treated as pariahs.”
This news breaks days after Venezuelan guards described similar symptoms during the Maduro raid. Interesting timing.
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Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
But did they actually use it?
The Venezuelan guard’s account describes mass nosebleeds, vomiting blood, and hundreds incapacitated simultaneously. These are more extreme than documented Havana syndrome cases, which typically involved headaches, vertigo, and cognitive issues rather than acute internal bleeding. Could blast overpressure from conventional explosives cause similar effects? Yes. Could shrapnel, concussive force, and chemical irritants from 150 aircraft’s worth of ordnance produce these symptoms? Absolutely.
Here’s what makes me skeptical: Both Maduro and his wife claimed injuries, but they survived and appeared in a Manhattan courtroom days later. The injuries reported (Maduro falling while fleeing, his wife struck in the head) sound like conventional combat trauma, not internal organ damage from directed energy.
And the biggest tell: The White House press secretary amplified this story. The Pentagon just spent tens of millions on a device they suspect is behind Havana syndrome attacks, briefed Congress, and now CNN is reporting on it publicly. If U.S. special forces had actually deployed a classified weapons system and some guard blew the secret, the response would be aggressive operational security and plausible deniability. Instead, we’re getting transparency.
That’s not how you handle a genuine security breach. That’s how you handle a psychological operation.
Why ambiguity is the weapon
The Trump administration wants adversaries, particularly in Latin America, to believe the U.S. has these capabilities. And here’s the brilliance: The technology is real (we have the receipts), but whether it was used remains ambiguous. Venezuela can’t prove it didn’t happen. The U.S. won’t confirm or deny. Adversaries now have to plan for worst-case scenarios.
This is the modern version of Reagan’s Star Wars program. Most scientists knew it couldn’t work as advertised, but the Soviets spent billions trying to counter it anyway. Sometimes the belief in a capability is more valuable than the capability itself.
The United States just demonstrated it can reach into a fortified compound in a hostile capital, extract a head of state, and fly him to New York to face trial, all while suffering minimal casualties. That capability needs no embellishment. But the embellishment serves a purpose: forcing every tin-pot dictator and mid-level drug trafficker in the Western Hemisphere to wonder if they’re next and whether their security forces can protect them from weapons they can’t see or hear.
And for anyone involved in Havana syndrome attacks, whether Cuban, Russian, or anyone else, there’s now a very clear message: If you hit our people with invisible weapons, don’t be surprised when we return the favor. The 32 dead Cuban advisers make that point unmistakably clear, regardless of what weapon actually killed them.
Power projection isn’t just about what you can do; it’s about what others believe you can do.
The bottom line
The truth about Venezuela is probably somewhere in the middle. Electronic warfare to knock out radar and communications? Almost certainly. That’s standard doctrine. Directed-energy weapons causing mass internal bleeding? The technology exists, but the extreme symptoms described don’t match documented effects. Whether they were actually used? Strategically ambiguous.
And that’s the point. The ambiguity itself is the weapon. If they used it, adversaries know America will deploy it. If they didn’t, adversaries still believe they might next time, and uncertainty is often more powerful than certainty.
Here’s a story: Cuba helps Russia attack American diplomats with invisible weapons starting in 2016. Years later, Cuban advisers die defending a dictator when the U.S. raids his compound with technology that sounds awfully familiar. Whether that’s coincidence, retaliation, or just good storytelling doesn’t really matter. The message landed.
That’s worth understanding because we’re going to see more of it in this fifth generation of warfare. The age of warfare where you could independently verify what happened on the battlefield is over. In the era of psychological operations, classified capabilities, and information warfare, the story about the battle matters as much as the battle itself.
Maybe more.
Trump promised ‘retribution.’ Congress keeps funding the machine.
Courts can block executive action, so Congress must cut funding. Yet Republicans refuse, leaving the Justice Department and FBI with the same tools Democrats will use again.
That gap between rhetoric and action now threatens to erase everything President Trump promised. In March 2023, he vowed, “For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” and pledged to “obliterate the deep state” and fire the bureaucrats who turned federal law enforcement into a political weapon. Those words land with force. Appropriations decide whether they mean anything.
Trump’s ‘retribution’ pledge will collapse into another campaign slogan if Republicans keep funding the same Department of Justice and FBI they claim to oppose.
But if Trump relies on executive action alone, courts will block key moves and the next Democrat in the White House will reverse the rest. Only structural reforms written into law can stop the next round of weaponization.
That reality hits hardest at the Department of Justice and the FBI. A Congress that keeps funding these agencies under the Biden-era architecture keeps the weaponization machine intact.
Yet Republicans just pushed through a Justice funding bill that drew more Democrat support than conservative support.
That vote captures the GOP Congress since 2017. Leadership passes budget bills with less resistance from Democrats than from Republicans. Spending is the battlefield. Everything else fades fast. If your own side opposes your funding bills more than the other side, you are not changing the country. You are managing the status quo.
Here’s the brutal truth: Congress has not structurally defanged the Justice Department’s weaponization or taken a sledgehammer to the FBI’s open-ended mandate. The same deep-state actors who drove January 6 abuses, FACE Act prosecutions of pro-life activists, and FBI operations like Arctic Frost still collect paychecks.
Republicans had one last chance to shrink this machinery before Democrats likely regain the House. The final Justice Department appropriations bill should have cut off funding for the most abusive programs and permanently reduced the department’s ability to target Americans. Instead, Republicans passed a status quo bill that effectively codifies Biden’s DOJ.
The vote breakdown exposes the scam. All but six House Democrats supported the minibus package that included full-year DOJ funding. Meanwhile, 22 House conservatives opposed it.
The package included three appropriations bills: Commerce-Justice-Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment. Freedom Caucus pressure forced leadership to hold a separate vote on the Commerce-Justice-Science portion first, and even then, it drew 40 Republican “no” votes. Leadership tried to quiet the revolt by swapping out a $1 million earmark for a Somali-led nonprofit after a welfare fraud scandal in that state. That move changed nothing about the bill’s core failures.
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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Democrats voted for this bill despite calling Trump a dictator because the bill left the regime’s tools in place. On the issues that matter most, it stayed silent.
It did not:
- Bar funding for future January 6 prosecutions.
- Bar funding for FACE Act prosecutions of pro-life activists.
- Address the FBI’s Arctic Frost overreach.
- Defund sanctuary cities, even though sanctuary policies endanger federal agents and courts have repeatedly blocked Trump’s efforts to punish them. If Congress refuses to codify enforcement policy, courts will keep neutralizing it.
- Cut off grants to NGOs that help illegal aliens evade deportation. Other appropriations bills even fund refugee resettlement contractors.
- End incentives for blue states to implement red-flag laws. The bill keeps the $740 million slush fund that bribes states to expand them. It also fails to defund Biden’s pistol brace ban, the “engaged in the business” rule, and the Justice Department’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
- Fund an Election Integrity Office to implement Trump’s executive order on election integrity, even while the bill keeps money flowing to offices that persecute Americans.
- Rein in the Office of Inspector General, which receives $139 million despite lacking an appointed inspector general and operating under an acting career bureaucrat.
The FBI budget barely took a haircut from its record Biden-era levels. Keep the scale in mind: The bureau has more than 35,000 employees, yet only 138 have been fired so far.
Republicans also promised fiscal discipline. This minibus package totals roughly $180 billion and rejects steeper cuts conservatives proposed in committee. It includes nearly $5.6 billion in earmarks for 3,030 projects. Leadership found room for parochial spending while refusing to squeeze the agencies that turned federal power against the public.
Congress holds one real lever to change the regime without begging courts for permission: the power of the purse. If Republicans won’t pass transformative legislation, they must at least defund odious policies through appropriations.
Trump’s “retribution” pledge will collapse into another campaign slogan if Republicans keep funding the same Department of Justice and FBI they claim to oppose. When Democrats vote happily to fund the very departments that targeted Americans under Biden, the conclusion writes itself. Washington will not dismantle the machine. It will keep it humming until Democrats take power again and aim it at us with even fewer restraints.
‘I killed Daddy’: Adopted 11-year-old boy killed his father for taking away his Nintendo game, police say
A wife sleeping next to her husband said she was awakened by a loud noise and heard some liquid dripping before turning on the light and finding out it was blood, according to Pennsylvania police.
Court documents say 42-year-old Douglas Dietz was shot and killed by their adopted son, an 11-year-old boy, over a Nintendo Switch gaming console.
He allegedly described opening the safe, removing the gun, and walking to his father’s side of the bed.
Even more shocking, the incident occurred after the family celebrated the boy’s birthday.
Police said they responded to the home on South Market Street in the borough of Duncannon early on Tuesday morning at about 3:20 a.m. They found Dietz dead from a shot in the head in his bedroom.
Police noted that the parents’ bedroom was connected through a closet to their son’s bedroom.
Dietz’s wife told them she had smelled a strong scent like fireworks when she awoke to discover her husband shot after turning on the lights.
Their son, Clayton Dietz, allegedly entered the room and said, “Daddy’s dead.”
Police also reported that they heard the boy say, “I killed Daddy,” to their mother.
When police questioned him, he said that the family had a good time but that he grew angry at his father when he was told to go to bed.
“He admitted that he had someone in mind whom he was going to shoot, whom he identified as his father,” police wrote in their report.
The boy said that he found the key to their gun safe when he was looking for his Nintendo Switch that had been previously taken away. He allegedly described opening the safe, removing the gun, and walking to his father’s side of the bed.
“He pulled back the hammer and fired the gun at his father,” police said.
The boy faces homicide charges.
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A neighbor named Jesse Weldon told WGAL-TV that he was shocked by the incident.
“They’re very kind. I mean, I didn’t talk to them much. They, you know, kept to themselves over there and just seemed pretty nice. I didn’t expect this,” Weldon said.
The boy was booked into the Perry County Prison, where he is being held without bail.
The couple adopted the boy in 2018, when he would have been about 3 years old.
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