Category: Conservative Review
Lone Democrat’s effort to impeach Trump fails miserably — because of his own party
Dozens of House Democrats turned their back on their colleague who led the latest impeachment effort against President Donald Trump.
Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green’s effort to force a vote to impeach Trump failed miserably on Thursday in a 237-140 vote. Forty-seven Democrats, including all of the Democratic leadership, voted present, while 23 Democrats joined Republicans to table to motion altogether.
‘None of that serious work has been done.’
Although Democrats are typically enthusiastic when given the opportunity to kneecap the administration, both the leadership and the rank-and-file blocked the vote.
“We can’t just impeach someone with no process, without any investigation,” Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California said following the vote.
RELATED: Senate tanks GOP solution to Obamacare subsidy problems
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Democratic leadership echoed this critique, admitting that there was no formal basis to levy the charges against Trump.
“Impeachment is a sacred constitutional vehicle designed to hold a corrupt executive accountable for abuse of power, breaking the law, and violating the public trust,” House Democratic leadership said in a joint statement Thursday. “The effort traditionally requires a comprehensive investigative process, the collection and review of thousands of documents, an exacting scrutiny of the facts, the examination of dozens of key witnesses, congressional hearings, sustained public organizing, and the marshaling of the forces of democracy to build a broad national consensus.”
“None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” the statement continues. “Accordingly, we will be voting ‘present’ on today’s motion to table the impeachment resolution as we continue our fight to make life more affordable for everyday Americans.”
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Green originally introduced the articles of impeachment for “Abuse of Presidential Power by Calling for the Execution of Members of Congress,” referencing Trump’s branding of the “Seditious Six” congressional Democrats who urged military servicemen to disobey supposedly “illegal” orders.
The second charge Green cited was the “Abuse of Presidential Power to Intimidate Federal Judges in Violation of the Separation of Powers and Independence of the Judiciary,” referring to Trump’s broad criticism of activist judges.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
‘Validated … paranoid delusions about his own mother’: Murder victim’s heirs file lawsuit against OpenAI
Stein-Erik Soelberg, a 56-year-old former Yahoo executive, killed his mother and then himself in early August in Old Greenwich. Now, his mother’s estate has sued OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its biggest investor, Microsoft, for ChatGPT’s alleged role in the killings.
On Thursday, the heirs of 83-year-old Suzanne Eberson Adams filed a wrongful death suit in California Superior Court in San Francisco, according to Fox News.
‘It fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies.’
The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI “designed and distributed a defective product that validated a user’s paranoid delusions about his own mother.”
Many of the allegations in the lawsuit, as reported by the Associated Press, revolve around sycophancy and affirming delusion, or rather, not declining to “engage in delusional content.”
RELATED: Cash-starved OpenAI BURNS $50M on ultra-woke causes — like world’s first ‘transgender district’
Cunaplus_M.Faba/Getty Images
“Throughout these conversations, ChatGPT reinforced a single, dangerous message: Stein-Erik could trust no one in his life — except ChatGPT itself,” the lawsuit says, according to the AP. “It fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies. It told him his mother was surveilling him. It told him delivery drivers, retail employees, police officers, and even friends were agents working against him. It told him that names on soda cans were threats from his ‘adversary circle.'”
ChatGPT also allegedly convinced Soelberg that his printer was a surveillance device and that his mother and her friend tried to poison him with psychedelic drugs through his car vents.
Soelberg also professed his love for the chatbot, which allegedly reciprocated the expression.
“In the artificial reality that ChatGPT built for Stein-Erik, Suzanne — the mother who raised, sheltered, and supported him — was no longer his protector. She was an enemy that posed an existential threat to his life,” the lawsuit says.
The publicly available chat logs do not show evidence of Soelberg planning to kill himself or his mother. OpenAI has reportedly declined to provide the plaintiffs with the full history of the chats.
OpenAI did not address specific allegations in a statement issued to the AP.
“This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details,” the statement reads. “We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We also continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”
Though there are several wrongful-death suits leveled against AI companies, this is the first lawsuit of its kind aimed at Microsoft. It is also the first to tie a chatbot to a homicide.
Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Gene Dodaro Stepping Down For New Leader As Trump Admin Faces Probes For Withholding Funding
Trump investigations continue
Georgetown prof starts running after realizing he’s talking to James O’Keefe — and his racial ‘slurs’ are on camera
Jonathan Franklin, a former race and identity correspondent for National Public Radio who now apparently serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, recently went into panic-mode after realizing he had made a series of damning remarks to investigative journalist James O’Keefe on hidden camera.
In the footage published on Wednesday by the O’Keefe Media Group, Franklin — whose personal website is now password-protected, Instagram profile has been set to private, and page on the Georgetown University was largely scrubbed — appears to call various black conservatives a “coon,” including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens, and U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas Herschel Walker.
‘Well, the thing is that I actually am James O’Keefe.’
When pressed by O’Keefe on why he hasn’t shared such views publicly, Franklin, who is set to teach a journalism course on sourcing and interviews, appears to say, “I’d have to stop being a journalist for me to say what I really want to say.”
At one point in his conversation with O’Keefe — whom he evidently did not recognize on account of a pair of glasses — Franklin appears to say, “I work with a bunch of stupid white people.”
Franklin declined to comment on the situation involving the video published by O’Keefe, a representative told Blaze News.
RELATED: University of Minnesota faces backlash over project that seeks to cure the ‘Whiteness Pandemic’
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Georgetown University did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.
After hearing enough racially charged rhetoric, O’Keefe asks Franklin in the video what he thinks about James O’Keefe.
Franklin answers, “I’ve heard from people he’s an a**h**e.”
“Well, he does, like, the undercover stuff and, like, exposes people, you know?” says O’Keefe. “He exposes people, you know, telling people, like, what they really think.”
“There’s a way to do that sort of watchdog, gotcha, ambush journalism but doing in a way that doesn’t disrespect the person that you’re trying to catch or yourself as a reporter,” says Franklin.
O’Keefe then takes off his glasses, points to the hidden camera, and announces to Franklin, “Well, the thing is that I actually am James O’Keefe.”
“No, you’re not,” responds Franklin.
Upon realizing the man he’d been talking to is in fact James O’Keefe, Franklin gets up and begins to run away. Outside the building, Franklin can be seen falling to the ground. After asking whether the adjunct was all right, O’Keefe tries asking him clarifying questions about his apparent “coon” comments, to which Franklin responds, “I will sue.”
O’Keefe and his team subsequently took Franklin to a pharmacy to get him Band-Aids for the cuts he sustained in his tumble. After cooling off, Franklin appeared to confirm to O’Keefe on camera that while he did work for NPR, he had lied during their earlier conversation about working for CBS News.
When later discussing the encounter, O’Keefe questioned whether an individual who allegedly harbors racist views and would share them with a stranger should be teaching journalism classes at an institution like Georgetown University.
“That type of racism is not just his personal opinion,” said O’Keefe. “It is a bias about a group of people that directly affects fairness, credibility and judgment. Why? Because he’s a professor who is using these slurs. He is revealing a framework that shapes how he interprets information.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Blue-state ‘Grinches’ are stealing your tax relief, says Treasury Secretary Bessent
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent mocked blue-state leaders as “the Grinches Who Stole Christmas” for blocking tax relief for Americans.
On Wednesday, Bessent posted an AI-generated image of Democrat Governors Kathy Hochul of New York, Jared Polis of Colorado, and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois as grinches.
‘This partisan stonewalling is a direct assault on the very families and workers liberal politicians claim to champion.’
“Thanks to @POTUS, ’tis the season to be jolly — unless you’re a taxpayer in New York, Colorado, Illinois, or the District of Columbia,” Bessent wrote. “For millions of hardworking Americans, @GovKathyHochul, @GovofCO @jaredpolis, and @GovPritzker are The Grinches Who Stole Christmas.”
“Courtesy of their Scrooge-like tendencies, America’s seniors, along with all workers who would benefit from No Tax on Tips and No Tax on Overtime, will be robbed of the tax relief they deserve,” Bessent continued. “The Christmas season should be a time of great cheer. But due to the Trump Derangement Syndrome of these Governors and other radical leftists, too many low- and middle-income households will receive nothing but coal in their state tax stockings.”
President Donald Trump’s July 4 bill eliminates taxes on tips for service-industry workers and on overtime for linemen and factory workers. It also provides a tax deduction for seniors receiving Social Security.
A Wednesday press release from the Treasury Department accused the Democrat leaders of “political obstructionism” for “deliberately blocking their own residents from receiving these historic benefits at the state level.”
RELATED: Trump gives American farmers $12 billion boost to overcome inflation, trade wars
J.B. Pritzker, Kathy Hochul. Photo: Allison Robbert/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“This partisan stonewalling is a direct assault on the very families and workers liberal politicians claim to champion. By denying their residents access to these important tax cuts, these governors and legislators are forcing hardworking Americans to shoulder higher state tax burdens, robbing them of the relief they deserve and exacerbating the financial squeeze on low- and middle-income households,” the department’s press release read.
States are not required to adhere to all federal tax provisions. New York is introducing new codes to its tax form, requiring residents to pay taxes on tips and overtime. Colorado plans to require residents to report the amount of overtime pay that was deducted federally and then add it back for state tax purposes. Illinois is expected to adopt similar updates to its tax form to add pay deducted federally.
New York has been ranked the worst state in the country for taxes. The state’s overall tax burden is estimated at 12.02%, while Illinois’ is 9.67% and Colorado’s is 8.42%.
Jared Polis. Photo by Hyoung Chang/Denver Post/Getty Images
Polis responded to Bessent’s comments in a post on X, claiming that Colorado has reduced taxes.
“Colorado has cut our income tax three times, and unlike these measures in Trump’s law, those cuts are permanent,” Polis wrote. “While the Secretary is supporting Trump’s tariff taxes, we are delivering real relief through the most generous child tax credit in the nation and cutting poverty. Spend less time talking about tips, which Colorado conforms to and won’t be subject to state or federal income tax up to the level designated in HR1 and instead focus on lowering interest rates, costs and bringing down the price of goods ahead of Christmas by eliminating these draconian tariffs. Happy holidays, Secretary — may your stockings be full of facts, not coal.”
In response to Bessent’s post, Hochul wrote, “Remarkable that an office once held by Alexander Hamilton is now tweeting Grinch fanfic at governors.”
Pritzker’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary faces anti-Zionism head-on
I must admit to having a complicated relationship with Dinesh D’Souza’s documentaries.
As much as I have enjoyed several of them, I find that they falter in a few ways: They often lack staying power, offering little incentive to return to them after the moment has passed; they are too self-referential — filtering every issue through D’Souza’s own perspective; and they are preoccupied with energizing sympathetic audiences rather than persuading skeptical ones.
Where the film is likely to receive its fiercest pushback is on the subject of eschatology — the theology of the end times.
This last flaw is especially frustrating. Catering to the conservative base is easy, but with D’Souza’s resources and backing, his films could be far sharper — and far more enduring — if they focused on timeless themes rather than re-litigating the 2020 election or attacking whoever happens to be running for president that year.
Chasing the ‘Dragon’
It was with this in mind that I went into D’Souza’s newest effort, “The Dragon’s Prophecy.” A loose adaptation of the Jonathan Cahn book of the same name, the Angel Studios production examines the fallout of the October 7 terrorist attacks and the subsequent two-year war between Israel and Hamas (which effectively ended with a ceasefire on October 10).
Sharpness, at least, is not a problem this time. The film arrives at a harrowing moment. Tucker Carlson is condemning “Christian Zionism” as heresy; New York City has just elected a mayor who wants to arrest the prime minister of Israel; and bipartisan resentment toward American Jews hasn’t been this pronounced since Pat Buchanan implicitly blamed them for supporting the Gulf War.
Anti-Zionism — and its adjacent anti-Semitism — is enjoying a fashionable resurgence, while support for the Israeli government sits at an all-time low.
D’Souza confronts these trends head-on. He calls out Carlson — as well as the far-left bloc of House Democrats known as “the Squad” — by name, even integrating footage from Carlson’s combative June interview with Ted Cruz. The result is a forthright defense of Israel, one that bluntly characterizes Hamas as rapists, murderers, and terrorists — and depicts the group’s atrocities in unflinching detail, including phone calls in which militants boast to their parents about their killings.
Intentional shock
It’s a grisly watch. The film includes insurgents shooting dogs and civilians, and it lingers on the aftermath of violence. But the shock is intentional. As Ambassador Mike Huckabee tells D’Souza, the war is “an eternal battle between good and evil,” with Israel on the side of the angels and Hamas aligned with “the Dragon.”
Amid this devastation, D’Souza wanders the Holy Land and laments that Israel is a place where “nothing is ever solved or resolved,” a region with “no solutions and no idea what the problems even are.” Yet his moral clarity never wavers. He even calls the construction of the Islamic Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount “the true colonialism.”
His mission is to locate meaning in the conflict. To that end, he speaks with Jewish victims, archeologists uncovering evidence of ancient Israelite history, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who uses the occasion to swat at his American critics and to praise Donald Trump.
Disputed dispensation
Where the film is likely to receive its fiercest pushback is on the subject of eschatology — the theology of the end times.
Because D’Souza’s target audience is predominantly Christian, the most vocal critics may be anti-dispensationalists, whose views have become increasingly common among Catholics and mainline Protestants. They correctly note that dispensationalism is a 19th-century American theological development and that the popular notion of a “rapture” is relatively recent.
As the Protestant theologian Brian Mattson writes, “In the grand historical sweep of Christian theology, Dispensationalism is a new arrival.” He explains that its architects argued that salvation unfolds across distinct dispensations, meaning that God’s promises to Israel remain intact for ethnic Jews even as the New Testament opens salvation to Gentiles. “God has two separate ‘tracks’ for the salvation of humanity,” he writes. Thus the national promises to Israel persist in perpetuity.
This is the framework behind the “Left Behind” franchise — 16 books and five films — and it places the modern state of Israel at the center of Revelation in a way that traditional Christian readings do not.
There are legitimate biblical critiques of dispensationalism, just as there are bad-faith motives for attacking it. Mattson notes that many Gen Z “America First” Catholic converts now regard Israel as an unnecessary “foreign entanglement,” while others deploy “heresy” language as a thin veil for anti-Semitism.
RELATED: Haunting play ‘October 7’ lets Hamas terror survivors speak
Phelim McAleer
End-times evidence
Still, D’Souza’s film is thoroughly dispensationalist. Israel’s present turmoil is portrayed as evidence that the end times are near, that evil is intensifying, and that God is making Himself more visible through signs and miracles. The fate of Israel, in this reading, is inseparable from the fate of the world.
The film’s second half is a series of interviews with Israeli archeologists who discuss evidence for figures like King David and Pontius Pilate, treating their discoveries as confirmations of Scripture. When combined with commentary from a Messianic Jew such as Jonathan Cahn, the Israeli-Gaza conflict becomes a mystical drama between cosmic good and cosmic evil.
That argument rests on a contested theological system. However one responds to the film’s defense of Israel, it must be filtered through the angular lenses of American dispensationalism — a hurdle many viewers may be unwilling to clear.
Centrist appeal
There are smaller criticisms as well: The film appears to lean heavily on AI-generated imagery, which raises its own questions about execution. But in the main, the film is preaching to the broad American center — those who support Israel without belonging to either extreme.
Despite these theological quirks, the film ultimately does something I have long wished D’Souza’s documentaries would do: It speaks clearly and with conviction about an issue that possesses lasting moral weight.
Israel will remain a defining struggle for decades. October 7 is only one chapter of that broader conflict. In taking it on, D’Souza presents a moral argument to a conservative audience that is increasingly drifting from him. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, he is operating on the level of enduring questions of faith rather than the transitory skirmishes of electoral politics. For once, he isn’t simply preaching to the choir.
Jasmine Crockett dared anyone to find examples of Democrats championing violence — and the GOP delivered
Days after Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) did her apparent best on “The Breakfast Club” radio show to downplay the link between Democrats’ incendiary rhetoric and political violence.
Crockett said, “Me disagreeing with you, me calling you ‘wannabe Hitler,’ all those things are not necessarily saying, ‘Go out and hurt somebody.'”
“I literally have never said anything to invoke violence,” claimed Crockett. “I challenge somebody to go and find a clip of a Democrat invoking violence.”
‘Not only are we gonna punch back, but we about to beat you down.’
The Republican Party has finally obliged Crockett, providing her with a compilation of various instances where Democrats made remarks that could be construed as calls for or rationalizations of political violence.
The video, released in the wake of Crockett’s announcement on Monday that she is running for a U.S. Senate seat, includes 20 provocative statements from Democrats including:
- former Biden Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo’s September 2024 remark to liberal talking head Mika Brzezinski, “Let’s extinguish him for good,” referring to President Donald Trump. Brzezinski pressed Raimondo for clarification, asking, “And ‘extinguish,’ you mean vote him out?” to which Raimondo said, “Yes, absolutely. Vote him out. Banish him from American politics.”
- California Rep. Maxine Waters’ suggestion to a mob in June 2018, “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up, and if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out, and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (N.Y.) suggestion to fellow travelers in January that when it comes to the Trump agenda, “We are going to fight it legislatively, we are going to fight it in the courts, and we’re going to fight it in the streets.”
- California Rep. Eric Swalwell’s suggestion to CNN in August that “when they go low, we are going to bury them below the Capitol.”
- U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s assertion in August that when it comes to “Trump and his ghouls,” “when they go low, we don’t go high. We take them to the mud and choke them out.”
- The August 2020 suggestion by Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who is one of the 58 Democrats who voted against a resolution condemning Charlie Kirk’s assassination, that “there needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives.”
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s suggestion on a podcast in August that “we’re fighting fire with fire, and we’re going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.” Newsom was referring to Republicans whom he suggested moments earlier were radicals working to rig the 2026 midterm elections.
- California Rep. Derek Tran’s suggestion in August, “It’s time for us as a party to get together and fight back, punch back, and make sure that they stay down. And you know what? Kick them when they’re down because they deserve it.”
RELATED: Liberals’ twisted views on Charlie Kirk assassination, censorship captured by a damning poll
Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
The Republican compilation also included some of Crockett’s own best hits.
One of the excerpts in the compilation was taken from Crockett’s March interview with KXAS-TV’s Phil Prazan where she said that in order to win an election in Texas, “You punch. I think you punch. I think you’re OK with — you OK with punching.”
In the same interview, Crockett referenced former Rep. Colin Allred’s electoral defeat last year by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and suggested the Democrat should have been more combative with his Republican opponent, saying, “I mean, like, this dude [Cruz] has to be knocked over the head, like, hard, right. Like, there is no niceties with him — like, at all. Like, you go clean off on him.”
Crockett — who has rooted for foreign nations engaged in trade disputes with the U.S.; told radicals that Elon Musk must be “taken down” amid firebombs; characterized Republican voters as stupid; issued racist remarks; mocked the handicapped; and dubbed the commander in chief “an enemy to the United States” — had another instance of violent rhetoric featured in the GOP’s compilation.
The second excerpt, taken from a press conference in August, shows Crockett say, “I am here to tell you: Not only are we gonna punch back, but we about to beat you down.”
NOTUS reported this week that the National Republican Senatorial Committee “has actively worked behind the scenes to encourage Rep. Jasmine Crockett to jump into the Senate Democratic primary in Texas, believing she will be the easiest opponent to beat.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
School bus driver for special-needs students allegedly shared brutal child sex abuse material online
New Mexico law enforcement says an online tip about child sex abuse material led to the arrest of a school bus driver for special-needs students.
Patrick Bilbo was arrested Friday at the Albuquerque Public Schools bus depot, and his phone was confiscated at that time.
‘This case is especially disturbing because it involves someone who was entrusted with the care of some of our most vulnerable children.’
A criminal complaint said that Bilbo’s phone had been signed into email accounts that were associated with the dissemination of child sex abuse material, including the graphic rape of young children.
Bilbo was identified through information associated with the accounts that included his birth date and his last name, according to a press release from the New Mexico Department of Justice.
He was charged with two counts of distribution of visual medium of sexual exploitation of a child under 13 years of age and one count of possession of visual medium of sexual exploitation of a child under 13 years of age.
One of the videos allegedly associated with Bilbo included the text, “All pedophiles should rape kids,” while the bottom of the video had the text, “#pedopride.”
Each charge carries a possible prison sentence of 11 years, if he’s convicted.
Albuquerque Public Schools senior director of communications Martin Salazar said in a statement that Bilbo had been placed on administrative leave.
“We are deeply disturbed by the charges brought against Patrick Bilbo,” Salazar said. “We became aware of the criminal case against him this morning and immediately began the process of placing him on administrative leave. He was taken into custody by authorities at our west-side transportation center early this morning.”
Salazar said that Bilbo passed a background check when he was hired in Sept. 2024 and that there were no reports of “inappropriate behavior” about him during his time as a bus driver.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez posted video footage from the police arrest.
RELATED: Elementary school teacher allegedly possessed thousands of files of child sex abuse material
“This case is especially disturbing because it involves someone who was entrusted with the care of some of our most vulnerable children,” Torrez said in a statement.
“We will pursue offenders like this with absolute urgency and relentless focus,” he added. “Our message is simple: If you target or exploit children in New Mexico, you will be found, you will be arrested, and you will be held accountable.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Harvard Ousts Director of Human Rights Center Targeted By Trump Admin Over Rampant Anti-Semitism
Harvard University ousted Mary T. Bassett as director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights, which has been a prime target in the Trump administration’s campaign against anti-Semitism at the Ivy League school.
The post Harvard Ousts Director of Human Rights Center Targeted By Trump Admin Over Rampant Anti-Semitism appeared first on .
