Mike Johnson eyes Wednesday vote with end of government shutdown in sight
House Speaker Mike Johnson expects a Wednesday vote to end government shutdown as GOP lawmakers rush back to Washington for a critical session.
College pre-med student killed in hit-and-run while jogging: authorities
University of Kansas pre-med student Elsa McGrain tragically killed in hit-and-run while jogging near Lawrence airport. Suspect William Klingler arrested days later.
Out to Lunch? Sen. Tim Kaine Says He Was So Distracted by Virginia Elections That He Couldn’t Pay Attention to Shutdown Negotiations.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D.) told a reporter he wasn’t giving his full attention to shutdown negotiations before Sunday because he was so focused on the elections in his home state of Virginia.
The post Out to Lunch? Sen. Tim Kaine Says He Was So Distracted by Virginia Elections That He Couldn’t Pay Attention to Shutdown Negotiations. appeared first on .
‘Furry’ Democrat running for Congress celebrated Kirk assassination, wants to put MAGA voters in ‘hard labor camps’
Graham Platner, the oyster farmer running for the U.S. Senate in Maine, was exposed last month for making a number of damning comments on social media — including posts where he apparently identified as a communist, branded rural white Americans as racists, suggested that service members worried about being raped should buy “Kevlar underwear,” and smeared all police officers as “bastards.”
Although he has since covered it up, Platner was also outed for having a tattoo of a skull image similar to that popularized by Adolf Hitler’s SS elite Nazi guard.
It appears that Platner, who enjoys the continued support from lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), is far from the most radical candidate seeking election as a Democrat in 2026.
The homosexual socialist running as a Democrat to represent Michigan’s 7th district in Congress has engaged in bloodthirsty and inflammatory rhetoric that makes Platner’s remarks seem tame by comparison.
‘Radical far-left lunatics like Samuel Smeltzer expose the liberal brain rot that is now the current state of the Democrat Party.’
Samuel Smeltzer, a 36-year-old IT contractor who calls himself Elyon Badger and dresses up in an anthropomorphic “furry” costume, has not only stated that “America deserved 9/11,” called Jesus “a communist,” recommended killing billionaires, labeled Israel as “an enemy of the United States,” advocated the imprisonment of all U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and repeatedly celebrated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination, calling him a “massive loser.”
Within an hour of Kirk’s passing, Smeltzer wrote on the liberal X knockoff Bluesky, “Good things can happen.” Days later, he shared an image of the murdered father of two with the caption, “How can we defeat evil, if evil is mourned when it’s defeated?”
RELATED: The left isn’t collapsing — it’s consolidating power
Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images
To ensure there was no mistaking his antipathy for the murder victim, the Democratic candidate smeared Kirk as a “white supremacist who preached stochastic terrorism” in an official campaign statement, blaming the shooting on “gun loving Conservative Christians.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee called Smeltzer’s remarks about Kirk both “dangerous and disgusting” but noted they were unsurprising when only 38% of Democrats think it’s always unacceptable to feel joy about the death of a public figure they oppose.
Despite his website promising “compassionate leadership for a just future,” Smeltzer vowed in a recent post to “round up EVER [sic] SINGLE red hat wearing MAGA and put them in hard labor camps for the rest of their lives.”
While locking up those with whom he disagrees appears to be one of his key objectives, Smeltzer told the Washington Free Beacon that he is running a “health care and tax-the-rich campaign” and would use a role in Congress to advocate for his fellow “furry” fetishists.
“The furry community is the ultimate form of freedom in America, and that’s why conservatives hate it and the queer community so much,” he told the Beacon.
Smeltzer recently told the LGBT magazine Between the Lines, “The reason I’m leaning into the furry side of things is the Heritage Foundation has targeted the furry community.”
“They’re going after the queer spaces and organizations where we are allowed to express creative freedom,” the self-identified Democratic socialist added.
Smeltzer claimed that other candidates in the Democratic primary like former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink “can only trudge along and drag this broken cart through the mud; they can’t fix it.”
Brink reportedly did not respond to the Beacon’s request for comment.
NRCC spokesman Zach Bannon noted earlier this year, “Radical far-left lunatics like Samuel Smeltzer expose the liberal brain rot that is now the current state of the Democrat Party.”
Blaze News has reached out to the Michigan Democratic Party as well as Rep. Tom Barrett, the Republican who presently represents Michigan’s 7th congressional district and is running for a second term, for comment.
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The scariest thing about Zohran Mamdani isn’t his socialism
Last Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani — a Muslim Democrat socialist — won the New York City mayoral election in a landslide victory over disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Like all socialists, he seduced the city’s financially crushed population, which is nearly everyone in tax-choked NYC, with a mountain of “free” promises: free buses, free childcare, rent freezes, and city-run grocery stores.
Of course, anyone with half a brain knows socialism bleeds cities dry every time. It’s death by a thousand tax hikes, crime waves, and empty storefronts.
The fiscal meltdown has dominated headlines since Mamdani’s win — but is economic suicide really the Big Apple’s most pressing threat?
Lomez, in the debut episode of BlazeTV’s “Rufo and Lomez,” says no. It’s what the radical symbolizes that should really scare us.
While Lomez “[doesn’t] like him at all,” he doesn’t think Mamdani’s economic reform or his other progressive policies will be as revolutionary as people are saying.
“If I’m looking for the sort of policy daylight between what he might do in New York City versus [former mayor] de Blasio, I think it’s pretty thin,” he says.
“Do I think Zohran Mamdani is going to impose a kind of communist authoritarianism on New York City? No, I don’t. I think things will just kind of get incrementally worse in ways that aren’t good,” he predicts.
The “key thing” that makes Mamdani scary, he says, is what the radical symbolizes.
“Mamdani represents above all else a kind of post-Americanness, a post-white Americanness in particular. I think that’s really important,” he says.
Lomez points to a clip of Mamdani’s victory speech on election night as evidence of this. In this segment that’s gone viral, he repeatedly thanked not Americans but immigrants for powering his campaign.
“Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city, who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas! Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses! Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties!” he boomed from the podium.
“He’s praising the Mexican abuelas and the Senegalese Door Dash drivers … not Mexican-American, not Senegalese-American, just those things without the hyphen at all,” says Lomez, reminding listeners that “Zohran Mamdani made explicitly anti-white statements during his campaign,” like pitching taxes for white people specifically.
“I think that kind of normalization, which is something we’ve seen from the Democratic Party sort of escalating over the last decade, is the most important part of this, and it’s the thing that gives me the most concern.”
To hear more, watch the full episode above.
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Supreme Court punts on revisiting landmark gay marriage decision
The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal that was thought to be the only case that had standing to challenge the landmark 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized so-called same-sex marriage.
On Monday, Supreme Court justices denied a petition for a writ of certiorari for the case Kim Davis v. David Ermold, et al., according to court documents.
‘If ever a case deserved review, the first individual who was thrown in jail post-Obergefell for seeking accommodation for her religious beliefs should be it.’
There were no notable dissents in the order, and no justices recused themselves.
Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images
The appeal was brought by Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who was briefly jailed after refusing to issue marriage licenses for a homosexual couple who are party to the suit.
Davis was also ordered to pay $100,000 in damages plus another $260,000 in legal fees, according to her attorneys.
Her refusal to issue the marriage license was on religious grounds, raising serious First Amendment questions.
Davis’ appeal opens: “If ever a case deserved review, the first individual who was thrown in jail post-Obergefell for seeking accommodation for her religious beliefs should be it.”
Of the three questions presented in the petition, the last reads: “Whether Obergefell v. Hodges … and the legal fiction of substantive due process, should be overturned.”
Although Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have previously indicated a willingness to reconsider Obergefell, Davis’ case was always considered to be an uphill battle since four justices would need to assent to hearing it.
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Olympics committee expected to reverse course on men in women’s sports
The International Olympic Committee is set to make some significant changes to its rules about men participating in women’s sports categories.
According to the Times, the IOC will likely announce a ban on so-called “transgender women” competing in female sports.
‘We have to do that to ensure fairness. And we have to do it with scientific approach.’
This policy change comes after a “science-based” study led by Dr. Jane Thornton showed that men have significant physical advantages over biological women.
“It was a very scientific, factual, and unemotional presentation which quite clearly laid out the evidence,” one source told the Times.
RELATED: Medical exam reveals Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif has testicles, a penis, and XY chromosomes
Photo by Li Jing/Xinhua via Getty Images
Last year, the committee faced heated controversy after Algerian trans-identifying boxer Imane Khelif beat a woman to tears in the ring. A report later revealed a medical document showing that Khelif, who took home the gold medal after dominating the 66 kg women’s competition, has XY chromosomes.
The IOC’s shift in opinion on the issue of trans-identifying athletes follows a change in leadership in June of this year. The new president of the IOC, Kirsty Coventry, indicated that there was “overwhelming support” for changing the rules to “protect the female category.”
“We have to do that to ensure fairness. And we have to do it with scientific approach and with the inclusion of the international federations who have done a lot of work in that area. So we have to bring in the experts — that will take a little bit of time — and the international federations so that we have full buy-in and cohesion on this specific topic,” Coventry said at a press conference shortly after becoming president.
Coventry said the rules will not have a retroactive effect, indicating an unwillingness to revisit the Khelif controversy: “We are not going to be doing anything retrospectively. We are going to be looking forward. And again, from the members that were here, it was: What are we learning from the past, and how are we going to leverage that and move that forward to the future, and how are we going to strengthen the movement as we move into the future?”
The policy change will likely be announced in early February before the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy, according to Fox News.
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79-year-old landlord opens fire on naked intruder who body-slammed him to ground, breaking his legs
A 79-year-old landlord opened fire on a naked male intruder who body-slammed him to the ground Friday morning, breaking his legs, authorities said.
The incident occurred around 7:15 a.m. in the 4500 block of Tujunga Avenue at a Studio City apartment in Los Angeles, authorities told KABC-TV.
‘Why is he out here naked?’
Surveillance video captured the intruder walking naked around the neighborhood, the station said, adding that video also shows him at the front door of a home and grabbing a sign and then continuing to walk.
The suspect soon entered an apartment, after which two women who were home at the time confronted him, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson told KABC.
More from the station:
The women yelled at the trespasser to get out, prompting the landlord to rush to their aid, the LAPD said.
The intruder body-slammed the landlord, breaking both of the victim’s legs, police said.
The 79-year-old man “at this time, in self-defense, shoots the suspect three times,” said Capt. Warner Castillo of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Castillo added to KTTV-TV that the victim gave the naked man every opportunity to stop what he was doing before shots were fired.
“The 79-year-old man tells the suspect to leave, tells him I have a gun, and I will shoot you. The suspect grabs the 79-year-old man, lifts him, throws him on the ground, and that’s where the 79-year-old man suffered two broken legs,” Castillo noted to KTTV.
What’s more, Castillo added to KTTV that “the suspect got shot one time, and the suspect still approached the 79-year-old [who] shot the suspect again, killing him.”
KTTV noted that the victim, identified only as George, was taken to a hospital and underwent surgery. A neighbor added to KTTV the 79-year-old man is a Vietnam veteran.
The name of the suspect has not been released, KTTV noted. No injuries to the women were reported, KABC said.
“I heard commotion, like a lady yelling,” a woman who witnessed the incident and declined to be identified by name told KABC. “Then I looked over, and it was a naked guy. At first I thought it was just like, maybe it’s a house fire. Like, why is he out here naked?”
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