Roy Cooper Enraged Victims’ Families When He Took 15 Convicted Killers Off Death Row on His Final Day as Governor. Now He’s Pitching Himself as a Tough-on-Crime Senate Candidate.
On his final day as North Carolina governor, Senate hopeful Roy Cooper (D.) commuted the sentences of 15 convicted killers on death row, a move that blindsided and enraged the families of their victims. It’s another piece of his record on crime that Cooper will have to contend with as he attempts to sell himself as a tough-on-crime candidate.
The post Roy Cooper Enraged Victims’ Families When He Took 15 Convicted Killers Off Death Row on His Final Day as Governor. Now He’s Pitching Himself as a Tough-on-Crime Senate Candidate. appeared first on .
‘Mass slaughter’: Trump moves to help Nigerian Christians under attack
“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria a ‘COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN.'”
President Trump’s recent post to Trump Media-owned Truth Social focused attention on a crisis not known for being a priority of American foreign policy. But as much as the news out of Mexico and Ukraine may overshadow what’s happening in Nigeria, the situation there is no less severe. And it is indeed an “existential threat” that should especially concern Christians.
Just this past weekend, nine Christians — including a pastor — were killed by Fulani assailants in a terrorist attack.
Despite their well-observed decline in North America and Europe, the number of Christians worldwide is increasing, largely thanks to Asia and Africa. And in Africa, nowhere does the faith have a stronger presence than in Nigeria.
Christian stronghold
Africa’s most populous nation (238 million) is also its most Christian, with some 100 million believers — enough to rank Nigeria as the sixth-largest Christian population in the world. Concentrated in the country’s south, this population includes 21 million Catholics, 22 million Anglicans, 14 million Baptists, 6 million evangelicals, and 4.5 million Pentecostals, in the form of the Apostolic Church Nigeria.
Despite these numbers, Nigeria remains predominantly Muslim (53.5%), especially in the north, where Islamic terrorism is on the rise. According to a 2022 State Department report, groups like Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa — along with religiously unaffiliated criminal gangs — have killed thousands of Muslims and Christians, with both sides accusing the government of failing to intervene.
There continued to be frequent violent incidents, particularly in the northern part of the country, affecting both Muslims and Christians, resulting in numerous deaths. Kidnappings and armed robbery by criminal gangs increased in the South as well as the North West, the South South, and the South East. The international Christian organization Open Doors stated that terrorist groups, militant herdsmen, and criminal gangs were responsible for large numbers of fatalities, and Christians were particularly vulnerable.
In response to such persecution, the State Department listed Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” under the first Trump administration, in 2020; the Biden administration removed that designation in late 2021. This was despite protests from the independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which noted widespread “violence by militant Islamists and other non-state armed actors, as well as discrimination, arbitrary detentions, and capital blasphemy sentences by state authorities.”
Since then, USCIRF has continued to call for Nigeria’s Country of Particular Concern designation to be restored, warning as recently as July that “religious communities are facing ongoing, systematic, and egregious violations of their ability to practice their faith freely.”
High-profile attacks
This year alone, Nigeria has seen multiple high-profile attacks against Christians, including massacres in April and June that killed 40 and more than 100, respectively. In August, 50 Muslims were killed in an attack on a mosque. Just this past weekend, nine Christians — including a pastor — were killed by Fulani assailants in a terrorist attack.
On Saturday Trump followed up his initial statement with another post threatening to halt humanitarian aid and assistance to Nigeria until the killings stop. He also hinted at the possibility of military intervention, stating that he was prepared to enter the country “guns-a-blazing” in order to “wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”
While aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump made no effort to walk back his comments, telling reporters that deploying troops to Nigeria was still very much on the table. “I envisage a lot of things. They’re killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria … and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen.”
Nigeria responds
Nigerian spokesman Daniel Bwala subsequently responded to Reuters with a statement following Trump’s comments, stating that U.S. assistance would be welcomed so long as the U.S. respected Nigeria’s “territorial integrity.” “I am sure by the time these two leaders meet and sit, there would be better outcomes in our joint resolve to fight terrorism.” He similarly affirmed to the BBC that any anti-Jihadi efforts ought to be made jointly.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu also challenged Trump’s statements and defended Nigeria’s record on religious freedom in a post on X.
“Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so. Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.”
Photo (left): Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage; Photo (right): SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Image
Genocide or not?
While acknowledging the realities of Nigeria’s ongoing security crisis, the mainstream media has disputed characterizations of the violence as a genocide against Christians.
Time magazine dismissed such claims as an idea “circulating in right-wing circles” and amplified by politicians like Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.V.). It also cited statistics from independent watchdog Armed Conflict Location and Event Data suggesting that of the 20,409 estimated civilian deaths in the past five years, just 417 deaths were Muslim and 317 deaths were Christian.
CNN called the genocide narrative an “oversimplication” that blames religion for the violence while ignoring factors such as ethnicity and resource scarcity.
The Guardian cast Trump’s remarks as an attempt to pander to “his right-wing, evangelical base,” reflecting “renewed domestic political pressure to appear tough on the marginalization or persecution of Christians abroad.”
Methodological weakness
While ACLED rejects the claim of a Christian genocide in Nigeria, arguing that most violence stems from ethnic rivalries and competition over land and resources rather than religion, it has previously acknowledged the difficulty of ruling out religious persecution. In a note on its general methodology, the group has acknowledged that “disentangling the ethnic, communal, political, and religious dimensions of specific events … [proves] to be problematic — at times even impossible — and extremely time-consuming. As a result, religious repression and disorder … may be underrepresented in the dataset.”
Proponents of the genocide narrative say this could lead to systematic undercounting of Christian victims. In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month, Rep. Moore countered with significantly larger figures: “More than 7,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria in 2025 alone — an average of 35 per day — with hundreds more kidnapped, tortured, or displaced by extremist groups.”
‘This needs to stop’
Evangelical author, public speaker, and Christian apologist Dr. Alex McFarland agrees with Moore, noting that resistance to covering Christian persecution is the norm. Reached just prior to Trump’s statements over the weekend, he told Align that he believes that claims of a Christian genocide are accurate.
In an age when so many champion human rights and social justice, Nigeria is something that should be talked about. What’s going on there is tragic on an unimaginable scale. This needs to stop, and I pray the United States of America will do what it can to stop the killing of Christians and advocate for their human rights.
American Christians who want to to help should be relentless in speaking up to elected officials, advises McFarland, making it clear that they “ask and expect them to take a stand on this issue, just as we expect our elected officials to take a positive stand for Israel and against anti-Semitism.”
Supporting organizations like Samaritan’s Purse, Open Doors, and Voice of the Martyrs is also an option.
McFarland emphasizes that anti-Christian persecution extends well beyond Nigeria, pointing to similar ongoing persecutions in China, India, and Saudi Arabia. “We need to understand that Christians outside of the United States have a hard go of it.”
Finally, he cautions his fellow Christians not to overlook one of the most powerful ways they can effect change. “What Christians can do is pray,” he tells Align. “That might sound glib and easy to say, but prayer works and is quite significant.”
‘FIRE HOCHUL’: Stefanik officially launches bid to save New York from the ‘Worst Governor in America’
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik (R) on Friday officially announced her run for governor, challenging incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul (D).
Stefanik called Hochul the “Worst Governor in America” and slammed her for endorsing Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor-elect.
‘I have a record of flipping a district that was previously held by a Democrat.’
“Under her failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery bills,” Stefanik wrote Friday in a post on social media. “When New Yorkers were looking for leadership from our Governor, she bent the knee to the raging Defund the Police, Tax Hiking Communist causing catastrophe for New York families.”
Stefanik vowed that under her leadership, she would “make New York affordable and safe FOR ALL.”
“Democrats, Republicans, and Independents will unify to save our state,” she continued. “It’s time to: FIRE HOCHUL. SAVE NEW YORK.”
Stefanik released a campaign video highlighting New York’s affordability crisis and the influx of crime, prompting middle-class residents to flee the state, which she blamed on Hochul’s failed policies.
RELATED: SHOCK POLL: Republican leads NY Governor Hochul one year before the election
Elise Stefanik. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
On Friday, Stefanik told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” that “toxic” Hochul “bent the knee” to Mamdani “because she is hemorrhaging support, even in her own party.”
Hochul won by 5.8 points in 2022 against Republican candidate Lee Zeldin, who is now the Environmental Protection Agency administrator under President Donald Trump. The last time New Yorkers elected a Republican governor was in 2002. Despite the long streak of Democrat wins, Stefanik remains unfazed.
“I have a record of flipping a district that was previously held by a Democrat,” Stefanik stated. “I’ve won every primary and general election, and we’ve overperformed — winning not just Republicans but independents and a fair share of Democrats as well — because my record has been delivering results for families, for small businesses, for our veterans, for our farmers.”
Stefanik has secured endorsements from 34 Republican state assembly members and 12 state senators, according to her campaign. New York GOP Chairman Ed Cox also endorsed Stefanik, calling her “a unifier and a party builder with the brains, the guts, and the resources to win statewide next year.”
RELATED: Trump slams Hochul’s endorsement of ‘communist’ Mamdani: ‘No reason to be sending good money’
Kathy Hochul. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Hochul’s campaign fired back at Stefanik, describing her as a “sellout” because she has been Trump’s “number-one cheerleader in Congress and his right-hand woman in his war on New York.” The governor’s campaign accused the lawmaker of “gutting health care, jacking up costs with expensive tariffs, and cutting funding for our police, schools, and hospitals.”
“Apparently, screwing over New Yorkers in Congress wasn’t enough — now she’s trying to bring Trump’s chaos and skyrocketing costs to our state. While Stefanik puts Trump first and New York last, Governor Hochul is lowering costs, cutting middle-class taxes, and fighting for the New Yorkers Stefanik abandoned,” Hochul’s campaign communications director Sarafina Chitika said.
Blaze News contacted the campaigns of Stefanik and Hochul for comment but did not receive a response.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
‘Patently inequitable’: Ketanji Brown Jackson whines after SCOTUS stays Biden judge’s order in trans passport case
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered the Trump administration a victory on Thursday, prompting bitterness not only from trans activists but from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who suggested that the “regrettable” ruling might leave transgender-identifying individuals at risk of “harassment and bodily invasions.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 directing his secretaries of state and homeland security to ensure that government-issued identification documents, including passports and visas, “accurately reflect the holder’s sex.”
‘Today, the Court refuses to answer equity’s call.’
The Trump administration’s reversal of the Biden-era policy that enabled people to choose their own sex marker as well as a third marker, “X,” instead of an “M” or an “F” marker, was poorly received by some radicals.
Keen to have the government continue indulging their delusions, several transvestites joined the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and Covington & Burling LLP in a lawsuit over the passport policy in February.
In April, U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, a Biden appointee, granted them a preliminary injunction preventing the State Department’s enforcement of Trump’s Executive Order 14168 while the lawsuit played out — but only as it applied to six of the plaintiffs. Months later, Kobick granted a class certification request and expanded the scope of her injunction.
After its appeal was rejected by the First Circuit Court of Appeals, the Trump administration filed an emergency stay request to the Supreme Court.
To the chagrin of non-straight activists, the high court granted the stay on Thursday, stating, “Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth — in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”
RELATED: Trans-identifying teen agrees to plead guilty to plotting Valentine’s Day massacre at high school
Photo by Hyoung Chang/Denver Post/Getty Images
The court noted further in its unsigned order, which was opposed by all three liberal justices, that the “respondents have failed to establish that the Government’s choice to display biological sex ‘lack[s] any purpose other than a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group.’ … Nor are respondents likely to prevail in arguing that the State Department acted arbitrarily and capriciously by declining to depart from Presidential rules that Congress expressly required it to follow.”
The high court concluded that absent a stay, the government would suffer a form of irreparable injury as the Biden judge’s injunction could lead to foreign affairs implications.
Justice Jackson noted in her dissenting opinion that “as is becoming routine, the Government seeks an emergency stay of a District Court’s preliminary injunction pending appeal. As is also becoming routine, this Court misunderstands the assignment.”
After casting doubt on her “obliging” colleagues’ comprehension skills, Jackson — whose past opinions have bewildered her conservative and liberal peers alike — characterized the reality-affirming passport policy as “new” and legally questionable. Then sentences later, she acknowledged that it was not new so much as a reversion to the government’s long-standing policy as it existed until at least the early 1990s.
Jackson argued that the cross-dressing plaintiffs face greater harm absent injunctive relief than the government would face absent a stay, and expressed doubt whether the government faces any irreparable harm at all.
“But the Court somehow sees fit to grant the Government’s stay request regardless, waving away its abject failure to show any irreparable harm and promoting a patently inequitable outcome to boot,” wrote Jackson.
Jackson suggested further that the indication of an individual’s actual sex on a passport amounts to a concrete injury and echoed the Biden-appointed district court judge, writing that “transgender people who encounter obstacles to obtaining gender-congruent identity documents are almost twice as likely to experience suicidal ideation, and report more severe psychological distress, than transgender people who do not face such barriers.”
In her conclusion, the leftist justice complained that “today, the Court refuses to answer equity’s call.”
Jon Davidson, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, joined Jackson in complaining about the court’s decision, stating, “This is a heartbreaking setback for the freedom of all people to be themselves and fuel on the fire the Trump administration is stoking against transgender people and their constitutional rights.”
“This decision will cause immediate, widespread, and irreparable harm to all those who are being denied accurate identity documents,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. “The Trump administration’s policy is an unlawful attempt to dehumanize, humiliate, and endanger transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans, and we will continue to seek its ultimate reversal in the courts.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi referred to the court’s ruling as the administration’s “24th victory at the Supreme Court’s emergency docket” and noted, “Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport. In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
FAA cancels hundreds of flights, sparking holiday travel concerns amid ongoing Democrat shutdown
With Americans preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas travel this year, the government shutdown is beginning to affect travel plans. With operation cuts going into effect over the next week, pressure is mounting for Democrats to come to the table and reopen the government.
According to multiple reports, between 700 and 800 flights at major travel hubs have been canceled as a Federal Aviation Administration emergency order went into effect on Friday.
‘This level of cancellation is going to grow over time, and that’s something that is going to be problematic.’
Forty major airports are affected by the order, though increased stress has been noted at other airports as well.
Many people in the transportation sector have expressed their frustration with the shutdown, particularly as the holiday travel season looms on the horizon.
RELATED: CNN analyst: Public opinion has shifted amid shutdown — but not for the party you’d expect
Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
On CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom called the government shutdown’s impact on flights “frustrating”: “What we’ve done today is we tried to minimize the impact on all of our customers. There’s only 220 flights out of 6,200 flights, and we’ve done it in a way that really impacts our smaller aircraft.”
“This level of cancellation is going to grow over time, and that’s something that is going to be problematic,” Isom added.
According to the FAA’s emergency order, cuts in operations began November 7 to ensure the safe and efficient use of airspace and aircraft. The reductions will gradually increase over the next week with a planned 10% reduction at “high impact airports” from Anchorage to Orlando by November 10.
Air traffic controllers have been working without pay since October 3, according to the order.
As of Wednesday, this government shutdown surpassed the previous record of 35 days, which took place in 2018.
On Friday, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy responded to the increased stress on air travel: “I have done all I can to minimize disruption in the airspace. I’m trying to get people where they want to go and to get there safely.”
Noting that the situation is not ideal, Duffy called for the government to reopen: “We are taking unprecedented action at @USDOT because we are in an unprecedented shutdown,” he added.
Democrats have signaled that they are unwilling to cooperate with Republicans to fund the government on Friday without more health care concessions, likely extending the 38-day shutdown.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
The kids aren’t all right — they’re being seduced by socialism
Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.
For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.
Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.
In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.
The appeal of a broken dream
When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.
For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.
That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.
We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.
But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.
The bridge that never ends
Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.
History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.
Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.
RELATED: The triumph — for now — of New York’s Muslim socialist mayor
Photo by Angela Weiss / Contributor via Getty Images
The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.
This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.
What young America deserves
Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.
Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.
It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.
Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.
Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.
The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.
Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.
Want more from Glenn Beck? Get Glenn’s FREE email newsletter with his latest insights, top stories, show prep, and more delivered to your inbox.
Dingdong Dantes, may dokyu ukol sa mga ‘di natapos na gov’t projects
May upcoming GMA Public Affairs documentary si Dingdong Dantes na “Broken Roads, Broken Promises,” na tatalakay sa mga hindi natapos at hindi natupad na proyektong pang-imprastraktura sa iba”t ibang bahagi ng bansa ng pamahalaan.
