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The chain of investigations into the illegal investment scheme MBI International has continued to rattle Malaysia’s capital market,

by Ashley Hiruko, KUOW

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with KUOW public radio. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

When Brenna Poppe moved into the Civic Hotel off the damp streets of Seattle in late 2022, she cried with joy. During her next year at the city-sponsored homeless shelter, she’d meet other guests who felt the same way — overwhelmed by the sudden realization that tonight, they would not sleep outside.

The Civic got quieter last year, however. Rooms around her, their doors still painted bright yellow from when the hotel was a boutique property, started to empty out. A “deafening silence” crept in, she recalled.

The 53-room hotel was converted to a shelter in the early days of the pandemic, and the city of Seattle kept it going. After Poppe’s first year there, the city in February 2024 signed a $2.7 million lease extension to continue using rooms at the Civic and other buildings as shelter space through the end of the year. And yet, despite committing to pay the rent, the city stopped sending people there.

Existing residents moved on to permanent housing or elsewhere and no one took their place. Dozens of rooms went unfilled.

By December, Seattle taxpayers were paying a hefty $4,200 a month per empty room — at a time when thousands of Seattleites were without a roof over their heads.

City officials described their decision to leave the rooms vacant as simply a “pause” while they evaluated what to do about an anticipated budget deficit.

One-time federal funding was going away and, if the city eventually succeeded in securing long-term funding, officials wanted to find a cheaper location than the Civic. They said the uncertainty forced them to both hold onto the Civic and stop placing people there, to avoid later sending clients back to the street.

But internal records reveal more complicated motives. At the same time as the city was halting placements, it rejected a move to a cheaper shelter location, which the main advocate of the plan said would keep the program running without interruption. A top official in the office of Mayor Bruce Harrell, explaining the decision in private, voiced animosity toward the nonprofit leader who pitched the new location and signaled an end to city support for the leader’s program.

Regardless of the rationale, the outcome of the city’s decision was that for nearly a year, Seattle paid for just as many rooms as before yet helped fewer and fewer people off the street with them.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, whose plan to address homelessness promised to “better track shelter capacity and ensure beds do not go unfilled.”

(Megan Farmer/KUOW)

Placements resumed this year, in a new location, after a 16-month gap.

Many West Coast cities are struggling, as Seattle has, with a rise in homelessness in recent years. Before referrals were halted, the effort that placed people at the Civic had already moved hard-to-reach homeless people from the street to a shelter space and, in many cases, then on to long-term housing and stability.

Seattle’s decision to keep dollars flowing to an effort it had suspended comes as cities such as Los Angeles are facing criticism for failing to accurately track outcomes of their massive outlays on homelessness.

Allowing vacancies to grow at city-leased shelter space also seems to be at odds with a commitment by Harrell, whose 2022 plan to address homelessness promised efforts to “better track shelter capacity and ensure beds do not go unfilled.”

(A spokesperson for Harrell responded that it’s important to note city-funded shelters had 2,850 units in all last year, 87% of which were full on any given night. The city declined a request to interview Harrell.)

Poppe, who lived at the Civic through 2024, viewed its empty rooms as a squandered opportunity, and she told the shelter staff as much.

“Multiple times,” Poppe said, “I spoke to staff about this egregious amount of open rooms.”

After Initial Ramp-Up, Occupancy in City-Funded Rooms Plummets

Notes: Data unavailable for June 2024. “City-funded rooms” are defined as rooms reserved for the city of Seattle. Each bar represents a count taken on one day of the month.

(Source: CoLEAD, a nonprofit-led program that partnered with Seattle to fill city-funded rooms as shelter space)

The Blade
On any given day in a section of Third Avenue between Pike and Pine streets known as The Blade, disorder is commonplace. Some people are screaming at the air, their pants falling off their frail frames. Others are sleeping, huddled in doorways to keep warm and safe. This human suffering stands in contrast with neighboring symbols of Seattle’s affluence: Pike Place Market, Benaroya Hall and the downtown shopping district are within a five-minute stroll.

A walk-up-only McDonald’s on the corner has been dubbed “McStabby’s,” referencing violent crimes that have taken place nearby over the years.

In 2022, nonprofits and downtown businesses came up with a plan that would ultimately involve the Civic Hotel.

The Third Avenue Project was designed to reduce the violence and open drug use through extensive outreach and the deescalation of conflicts between people on the street. But housing was also on the minds of the organizers.

Many believed in a modified version of the “housing-first” approach, which is predicated on the idea that any issues people struggle with on the streets are best addressed if they first find shelter, with no requirements for sobriety. Despite Seattle’s shortage of shelter beds and affordable permanent housing, the nonprofit leaders involved with Third Avenue hoped to help at least some clients move indoors.

The concept seemed to line up with the priorities of Harrell, who on his campaign website the year before had promised “an accountable, ambitious plan with transparency and benchmarks to expand and provide housing and services on demand to every unsheltered neighbor.”

Third Avenue Project organizers got to work after Harrell took office, with significant funding from the city.

“Safety ambassadors” were the first step. They would reverse overdoses and intervene when scuffles broke out, but also develop relationships with people in the street and then connect them with shelter and services.

“The hardest thing that we do is seeing people in the dire straits that they live in daily,” said Stephenie Wheeler-Smith, CEO of the company that hires the ambassadors, We Deliver Care. “This is not easy work. People don’t want to come out and touch these people or look at them or see their wounds or help them get health care.”

Safety ambassadors Trey Kendall, left, and Dee Stokes hand out water and snacks in July in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District.

(Megan Farmer/KUOW)

Importantly, safety ambassadors wouldn’t just move people along. They also could be a first point of contact on a path to permanent housing.

As one element of their $2.1 million contract with the city, the safety ambassadors referred homeless people on Third Avenue to housing and emergency shelter providers. The main one they’d use was a nonprofit-led program called CoLEAD, which had a $4.6 million contract with the city in 2023 that included placing people in temporary lodging and providing support services they needed.

The next step was the Civic Hotel. City officials signed a $1.1 million six-month lease with the Civic’s owners for its 53 guest rooms. CoLEAD would also let Third Avenue clients use rooms in any of the other shelters it managed, and at the same time the program would send clients from other referral sources to the Civic.

Unlike with some other shelters, these clients did not have to stop using drugs or alcohol, and they had access to their own space, which was ideal for people who may have struggled at traditional shelters.

The plan got results.

By November 2023, city-funded rooms at the Civic and other buildings were packed.

Marco Brydolf-Horwitz, who studied CoLEAD for nearly two years as part of a doctoral program, said he saw people transformed by the stability of temporary lodging.

“You can’t do much when people are on the street,” he said. “Once people are inside, then you can figure out what level of housing resources are needed.”

People shelter themselves along Third Avenue.

(Megan Farmer/KUOW)

The Halt
For all the success stories, the problem with the Civic was cost. The county had snapped it up as a temporary measure during the frenzy of the pandemic, and the city inherited it. After the initial lease, rent had risen to the equivalent of $2.6 million a year in 2023.

On Jan. 2, 2024, Lisa Daugaard, one of the nonprofit leaders managing the Third Avenue Project, pitched the city on a cheaper alternative: an apartment building in North Seattle with 11 more rooms the city could use for $1 million less.

The city’s obligations with the Civic had ended when its lease expired the month before. Daugaard could get the city’s clients moved by February. Daugaard simply needed some assurance the city would keep backing the project because she was considering a three-year lease on the new location.

Internal chat messages between Chief Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington and other staff in the mayor’s office. “DM Burgess” is Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess, who did not respond to a request for comment from KUOW and ProPublica.

(Obtained by KUOW)

A few weeks later, Daugaard had her answer: Stop placing Third Avenue clients in city-funded beds, cycle existing ones into permanent housing and “ramp down” the Civic Hotel shelter. It was couched as a “pause” in placements through CoLEAD, records show.

In emails to Daugaard — and, in at least one case, internally — city officials cited uncertainty created by a looming budget deficit as one of the main reasons for the new marching orders. They reiterated this explanation, along with an expected loss in one-time funding, in interviews and emails with KUOW and ProPublica.

The mayor’s press secretary, Callie Craighead, said the city was “committed to maintaining shelter investments” but had “no way to provide such confirmation” to Daugaard until the city developed its next budget. She said the North Seattle apartment building was also not move-in ready at the time. Extending the lease at the Civic was a stopgap to avoid sending clients back to homelessness.

Chief Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington described the halt in referrals as a way of “winding down” operations at the Civic in anticipation of a move to a new spot, a “best practice” among social services managers.

But a chat message from Washington to a colleague, released to KUOW and ProPublica last week through a public records request, spells out additional reasons for turning down Daugaard’s proposal. It says, in part: “because I want her out of the homelessness business. She is not good at it.”

Washington stated in the message, incorrectly, that the proposed North Seattle location was another hotel, “which is not cheap” and concluded, “This means we would be leasing hotels forever.”

She also asserted that CoLEAD had a high rate of returns to homelessness and a low rate of placements in permanent housing.

Data provided by the mayor’s office and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority shows otherwise. The year before, CoLEAD moved a far bigger share of its clients from its city-funded beds into permanent housing than emergency shelter operators as a whole: 65%, compared with 26%.

Contacted by KUOW and ProPublica last week, Washington said she’d known Daugaard for 10 years and that “I have nothing but respect for her work.” She said of her chat message about ending CoLEAD’s role in the city’s response to homelessness: “Discussions are different than decisions.” She noted that the city’s relationship with CoLEAD continues today.

Daugaard declined to comment on Washington’s private message naming her. The nonprofit that employs Daugaard and oversees CoLEAD issued a statement defending the program’s track record at placing people in permanent housing as “exceptional.”

The mayor’s proposed budget for next year supports programs that follow CoLEAD’s approach, the statement said, “and we greatly appreciate that, in the end, the City has backed this model which has proven to serve the interests of Seattle neighborhoods and chronically unsheltered individuals alike.”

As of February 2024, the North Seattle plan was formally off the table. The city extended its lease with the Civic.

Officials committed to spending $225,000 a month for 53 rooms through year’s end — despite having just told nonprofit shelter managers to ensure those rooms emptied out.

The Fallout
The disruption to the flow of clients off Third Avenue and into the city-funded rooms gradually became noticeable.

The kind of shelter that the Civic Hotel provided — individual rooms that came with services such as help in accessing health care — is a valuable resource, especially when it comes to people who may be struggling with mental illness or addiction, like many of those on Third Avenue. Traditional shelters lack privacy and personal space.

A typical guest room in the Civic Hotel, first image, and the building’s lobby area, pictured in 2019.

(Civic Hotel via TripAdvisor)

With the ending of placements at the Civic and city-funded rooms in other CoLEAD shelters, safety ambassadors who were paid to quell the violence on Third Avenue turned to other shelter organizations. But it wasn’t enough to fully offset the loss of CoLEAD’s buildings.

KUOW and ProPublica examined data from We Deliver Care for placements to organizations that provide shelter or housing, including the nonprofit that operates CoLEAD. The number went from 47 in 2023 to 30 in 2024.

Meanwhile, 35 rooms at the Civic and other shelters that CoLEAD managed sat empty as of December 2024.

Among the people who would have said yes to one of the rooms the city had left unused was Tiffany Fields, who at the time was struggling to stay safe outdoors.

“It ain’t no joke,” Fields said of life on the street. “It’s not fun. It’s not for play.”

Fields slept at downtown bus stops, often gathering with groups or pretending to have a firearm in her coat to stay safe. She spoke to herself out loud when she felt at risk in the hopes that feigning mental illness would ward others off.

“I’ve seen a lot of weird things,” Fields said. “They tend to prey on women by themselves, but I know how to hold my own.”

A 2023 University of Washington study of the Third Avenue Project found that of the 980 people contacted by We Deliver Care’s safety ambassadors through October 2023, 90% were unhoused.

“From a human perspective, people want to be inside and they want to be sheltered,” said Wheeler-Smith, leader of the outreach efforts to connect people on Third Avenue with services. “And unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of places to send people to be sheltered, period.”

Daugaard, whose group works alongside Wheeler-Smith’s safety ambassadors, said it was demoralizing for the outreach workers to keep talking to people on Third Avenue about their struggles with limited chances to fundamentally change the path they’re on.

Losing the rooms that the Civic provided meant that “all they’re doing is kind of keeping a lid on the level of disorder and its impact on other people,” Daugaard said.

(The University of Washington report, based on time spent on the street with the safety ambassadors, described reversed overdoses and defused conflicts.)

The kind of shelter that the Civic Hotel provided — individual rooms with supportive services such as help with healthcare and job training — is a hot commodity, especially when it comes to people who may be struggling with mental illness or addiction, like many of those on Third Avenue.

(Megan Farmer/KUOW)

Of the estimated 5,000 shelter beds available in Seattle’s city limits and on nearby Vashon Island during early 2024, only 3% were free, according to an annual point-in-time count. Another 4,600 people lived without shelter at the time.

Rachel Fyall, associate professor at the University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, said the cost of not housing people includes emergency room care, jail cells and police on the street.

“Philosophically,” Fyall said, “any room that is unused is too many rooms.”

But when organizers know a shelter is likely to close soon, does it then make sense to leave rooms unused so newcomers won’t have to relocate shortly after they arrive?

Noah Fay, senior director of housing programs at another nonprofit that runs homeless shelters, said the desire to avoid disruptions for residents has to be balanced against the desire to keep beds full when unmet demand in Seattle is enormous.

He said his organization recently prepared for a shelter shutdown by halting referrals two months ahead of time. The city did so 11 months before its lease ended.

A crowd of people gathers in Seattle’s Little Saigon neighborhood in March.

(Megan Farmer/KUOW)

“Pause” Lifted
In July, Fields was strolling through the Third Avenue area.

A safety ambassador called out to her and said Fields’ caseworker had been looking for her. The caseworker had good news. She was getting shelter.

“I said, ‘Are you kidding?’” Fields recalled. “‘Please tell me it’s not a sick joke.’”

The city had recently ended the “pause” on placing CoLEAD clients in temporary shelters.

The new venue was the North Seattle apartment building Daugaard had proposed more than a year earlier. The nonprofit running CoLEAD named it the Turina James.

Washington told KUOW and ProPublica CoLEAD had “significantly improved” its record of moving people to permanent housing since the pause, proving it was a good decision. (Data show CoLEAD’s success rate with city-funded clients declined from 65% in 2023 to 56% last year, while its success for all clients improved marginally, from 69% in 2023 to 71% last year. The city did not address the apparent discrepancy.)

Tiffany Fields

(Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source image: courtesy of Tiffany Fields.)

Fields’ intake was done over the phone, and an Uber was sent to pick her up and take her to her new temporary home. When she arrived, she said, she was welcomed with open arms. She was given gifts and a key.

“God, he works in mysterious ways,” Fields said. “Sometimes when you call on him, he may not come right then and there, but when he does come, when he does show up, he shows out.”

Fields said she’s felt much more stable since making it indoors.

“I’m happy. I’m in a very, very, very good place,” Fields said. “So I can, you know, get my life back on track, get my life back in order.”

Others on Third Avenue are still waiting for housing. But the paths available to them look much different now, even with referrals resuming, than they did in 2022 and 2023. When making placements at the Turina James, unlike at the Civic and other CoLEAD shelters, the city is no longer emphasizing Third Avenue clients but instead people from Seattle’s Chinatown-International District.

Brenna Poppe, the woman who lived in the Civic as it emptied out, was still sleeping indoors as of July. She was staying at the North Seattle property, still thankful to have a roof over her head.

Around her, the rooms were starting to fill up.

by Duaa Eldeib

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

When a health insurance company refuses to pay for treatment, most people begrudgingly accept the decision.

Few patients appeal; some don’t trust the insurer to reverse its own decision.

But a little-known process that requires insurers and plans to seek an independent opinion outside their walls can force insurers to pay for what can be lifesaving treatment. External reviews are one of the industry’s best-kept secrets, and only a tiny fraction of those eligible actually use them.

ProPublica recently reported the story of a North Carolina couple, Teressa Sutton-Schulman and her husband, who we identified in the story by his middle initial, L, to protect his privacy. Last year, L suffered escalating mental health issues and needed intensive psychiatric care. Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield issued the couple multiple denials in their case, even after Sutton-Schulman’s husband attempted suicide twice in the span of 11 days.

The instructions for an external review were buried on page seven of one of the denial letters.

“You can now request that your case be reviewed by a health care provider who is totally independent of your health plan or insurance carrier,” read the letter from the state insurance department in Texas, where the treatment occurred.

Skeptical but hopeful, Sutton-Schulman submitted the request for the external review. Their case was assigned to Dr. Neal Goldenberg, an Ohio doctor who works for a third-party review company as a side job. After reading the extensive appeal, Goldenberg overturned Highmark’s denial to cover treatment that had cost Sutton-Schulman and L more than $70,000.

Highmark previously said in a statement that the company was “passionate about providing appropriate and timely care” to its members. It acknowledged that “small errors made by physicians and/or members can lead to delays and initial denials” but said that those are corrected on appeals.

The lesson is simple, explained Kaye Pestaina, a vice president at the nonprofit health policy think tank KFF, who has studied external appeals.

“Appeal, appeal, appeal, appeal,” she said. “That’s all you have.”

External appeals have been around for decades at the state level, but in 2010, the Affordable Care Act expanded access to the reviews for the majority of people who get their health insurance through work. The details around the external review process vary depending on whether an insurance plan is regulated by state or federal laws.

Karen Pollitz helped draft the federal regulations around external reviews during the Obama administration, but she said an extensive lobbying effort on behalf of insurance companies and employers weakened the initial protections. Now, only a fraction of denials are eligible for an external review, and the health insurance plan gets to hire the reviewers.

Transparency requirements that called for insurers to report data around denials and other metrics, she said, also were largely not implemented.

“There are all kinds of ways they could strengthen the laws and the regulations to hold health plans more accountable,” said Pollitz, who left the administration after the rollbacks and worked at KFF before retiring.

But for now, Pollitz said, filing external appeals is sometimes the only recourse patients have. An advantage of the Affordable Care Act, she added, was that it established state consumer assistance programs to help people get the coverage they were promised.

Federal funding for those programs dried up a couple of years later, but about 30 states decided to find other ways to pay for the programs. (Want to find out if your state has one? Here’s a list from federal officials.) If the remaining 20 or so states — including Wisconsin and Ohio — established programs, families would reap the benefits, according to Cheryl Fish-Parcham, director of private coverage at the consumer health care advocacy organization Families USA.

“Every state needs one of these programs,” she said. “Health care is so complicated, and people really need experts to turn to.”

Fish-Parcham meets with representatives from consumer assistance programs across the country every month. The models differ from state to state. Programs are housed in state attorney general offices, in nonprofits and even as independent agencies. Helping patients or their providers with external appeals is a key part of the programs’ role. The first step often is simply letting them know that appeals — both internal and external — are options.

“The numbers are low because some people just give up. They’re frustrated. They’re tired. They’re battling cancer,” said Kimberly Cammarata, director of Maryland’s Health Education and Advocacy Unit, the state’s consumer assistance program. “And sometimes the information about why the claim was denied or about how to appeal is terribly unclear. A lot of these outcome letters will say you have a right to an external appeal, but they don’t exactly tell you where to go.”

Some states have enacted legislation to combat that confusion. For example, insurers in Maryland are no longer able to bury information on appeals deep in their denial letters. Beginning this month, a new state law requires insurers to include information at the top of all denial letters in “prominent bold print” that states the member has the right to appeal or file a complaint to the insurance commissioner. That declaration advises consumers that the letter contains information on how to file an appeal and reach the Health Education and Advocacy Unit. The unit’s address, phone number, fax and email must also be included in the body of the notice.

Connecticut added similar information at the top of denial letters in a box on the front page in 2023. The office saw an almost immediate effect. In the two years that followed, more than 40% of referrals to the state’s Office of the Healthcare Advocate came from people who received denial letters with the new language.

The office isn’t funded through taxpayer money. It’s paid for entirely by state assessments on insurance companies.

“We want to help people,” said Kathleen Holt, who was nominated in 2024 by Connecticut’s governor to lead the office as the state health care advocate. “The insurance companies know that people don’t appeal, and in some ways I think they can be more aggressive with their denials. They don’t expect people to come back, and when they do that very small percentage of the time, it’s the cost of doing business for them.”

Connecticut’s data shows that the health care advocate office has been able to resolve or overturn denials in the patient’s favor about 80% of the time, Holt said. Some plans may charge up to $25 per external appeal, but Connecticut did away with that fee several years ago. Some states, including New York, have been tracking the outcomes of their external appeals online, which the public can review.

“We can help people write their appeals,” Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society, said of New York residents. “We write appeals for them, sometimes going through thousands of pages of medical records and writing 15- to 20-page appeals.”

Experts say these six things can help patients and providers after a denial. Since we are journalists and not lawyers, we are unable to provide any legal advice about this process.

Gather your information: Experts suggest not throwing out any letters or notices from your insurer, including denial notices, explanation of benefits, correspondence and plan documents. If you’ve misplaced them, they said you can contact your insurer for additional copies. They also recommend downloading or requesting your medical records. You can request your claim file, which most people have a right to under federal regulations.
Does your state have a consumer assistance program? Not all states have consumer assistance programs. Here’s a list of those that do. Advocates recommend reaching out and asking them to explain the denial. It might be as simple as a missing or incorrect code. Their job is to use their time, experience and resources to explain the process. Their services are free. Other programs and nonprofits also offer assistance.
Why were you denied, and what are your timelines to appeal? Are you being denied because the insurer determined the treatment was not medically necessary or because your plan didn’t cover it? Does your plan follow federal or state regulations? Experts say these distinctions may determine if and how you appeal your denial. Most plans give you about 180 days from the date of the denial notice to appeal internally, but experts say not to wait. If you’re not sure about the answers to any of these questions, you can call your insurer and ask. They are required to provide you the reason for denial.
Can your health care provider help? Experts suggest reaching out to your doctor or therapist. They said some providers will file the appeal on your behalf. Others will write a letter of support. At the very least, advocates agree, most should help you understand why your treatment was denied and what additional steps you can take.
Filing an internal appeal: Before you can file an external appeal, you typically have to attempt to resolve the dispute internally with the insurance company. This step may involve one or two levels of internal appeals.
How to request an external appeal: This is your last shot before considering a lawsuit. After you’ve exhausted your internal appeals, you can contact your insurer to request an external appeal. When you file a request for a federal external review, your plan usually has five days to consider your request.

If the insurer agrees that your denial is eligible, it will provide directions on where to file the appeal. Experts say to make sure to read the notice all the way through.

Remember that only certain denials are eligible for external appeals. These denials typically involve medical judgment, surprise medical bills, or an insurer deciding to retroactively cancel coverage or determining that a treatment was experimental. Denials based on the terms of the plan or because the service was out of network generally are not eligible.

Under federal rules, third-party review companies typically have between 45 and 60 days to decide the outcome of an external review. You may ask for an expedited appeal if the situation is urgent. In those situations, you may also be eligible to request an external review without exhausting your internal appeals or even file both internal and external appeals at the same time. Federal requirements typically call for expedited external appeals to occur as quickly as your condition requires but not take longer than 72 hours.

If the external reviewer decides to overturn your denial, the determination is binding. Your insurer is required by law to accept the decision and pay for treatment. If the reviewer rules against you, you may be able to file a lawsuit.

The stunning and ominous rise in anti-Semitism in the United States cannot be disputed, but can be resisted. It is particularly the obligation of genuine Christians to participate in the repression through education of the ancient evil. It is the particular obligation of Christian institutions — churches, colleges, publishers and more — to do their part in making this sin once again an obvious source of shame and to help cure those who suffer from it and, where it cannot be cured, to force it back by shaming and shunning into the deepest shadows where it belongs.Christianity didn’t invent anti-Semitism. It existed before Christ and the empires of the ancient world would target Jews for many reasons. But, once Christianity rose to dominate Europe, anti-Semitism spread alongside and within a vast portion of the Church.Some, but not enough, of the Church always spoke out against anti-Semitism and its costumed version of today — anti-Zionism — and continues to do so. Saint John Paul the Great and Pope Benedict were the most visible and outspoken opponents of anti-Semitism from within the Catholic Church of my lifetime, but many others have noted the obvious intractable hostility of real Christianity to the sin of hatred embedded in hatred of Jews or their country.JEWISH SAFETY IN NEW YORK DEPENDS ON CLEAR LINES AND MORAL COURAGE FROM MAMDANIWhen Colorado Christian University — originally founded in 1914 as Denver Bible College, but now a flourishing university in Lakewood, Colorado — invited me to a day of teaching, feasting and lectures, I chose as my topic the reasons why Americans of all faiths, or none at all, ought to support Israel. I included in those remarks the obvious: It is sinful for Christians to hate Jews or Israel.That’s hardly a lightning bolt for even the “slightly churched.” But. I wanted primarily to stress that America is an ally of Israel for non-theological reasons — reasons with which Christians ought to be familiar. It is bad writing to reproduce speeches and brand them columns, but here in condensed form is the argument I made.First, in a dangerous world, even the dominant superpower — the United States — needs allies, especially as the People’s Republic of China stretches to become a peer in military and intelligence matters as well as economic influence.The State of Israel is, objectively, the most important ally of the United States. It is a nuclear power. It is the equal of any military on the globe in its ability to strike far and hard and to dominate its region. It’s an intelligence superpower and an engine of technological excellence and ever-increasing breakthroughs. If any country had to pick one strong ally not named the United States, it would pick Israel.PARENTS ARE FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THE SYSTEMIC ANTISEMITISM POISONING CLASSROOMSIsrael is also a reliable and fully-integrated-into-our-military ally. Israel takes what the United States makes and improves on it, as had been the case with the F-35 fighter. It sometimes takes the rudiments of a technology and develops them to scale and deploys them, as with Iron Dome and soon Iron Beam. Those advancements will return to America as the Golden Dome and the Golden Beam. Would that Israel got into the ship building business at scale, but we have allies in South Korea and Japan that are doing just that.Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Israel shares America’s founding values of individual liberty and democratic governance. Israel is as politically fractious as the U.S., but freedom of speech is as robust there as it is here. Human rights are respected there as they are here. It is a “Western nation” in every respect, despite having to have fought for its very life since the state’s modern founding in 1948.I also reminded the audience in quick fashion that, as a matter of American law, both constitutional, statutory and treaty-based law, that the United States recognizes Israel as a nation state with all the rights and responsibilities of a nation state.THE FIREBOMBING OF BETH ISRAEL IN MISSISSIPPI STRIKES AT THE HEART OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, DIGNITY AND PEACE”Zionism” — the term originated in the late 19th century movement to re-establish the Jewish homeland in the ancestral lands of the Jews — is not some ideological outlier, but very much a historical movement that culminated in the United Nations’ recognition of Israel as a nation state via actions of both that body’s General Assembly and Security Council. The United States participated in that process and voted for it. While theology might underlay some Americans’ support for Israel, belief in the rule of law is the best and enduring case for most Americans to stand by and with Israel because American law is pledged to respect Israeli nationhood.After the invasion of Israel by Hamas from Gaza on October 7, 2023, and the massacre and kidnapping that followed, one would have predicted the death of much of anti-Semitism in the West, so awful was the cruelty of that day and so evil and hideous the unmasked face of Jew-hatred.Instead, and to the shock of many, Israel’s just war to recover its captives and destroy the threat to the state posed by Hamas triggered not just more attacks on it from Hezbollah nested in Lebanon, the Houthis embedded in Yemen and the “head of the snake” in the Islamic Republic of Iran, but also a geyser of Jew-hatred in the United States.CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONWhat had been marginal and a marginalized, weird, cultish, and conspiracist belief system suddenly went mainstream and apparently became a much larger phenomenon than most Americans believed possible (or at least seemed that world in the funhouse mirrors of the web.) Antisemitism and the subset of the ancient evil under the name of anti-Zionism is still very much an outlier in American public opinion, but the damage this loathsome ideology has wrought post 10/7 to the collective American psyche is significant as those possessed by this repugnant hatred feel free to express it in public.So it is long past time for Americans, and especially mainstream Christian Americans, to make the theological case against anti-Semitism — it is a grave sin, indeed, for Catholics, a “mortal sin” — and just as importantly if not more so, the secular case for being pro-Zionist laid out in brief above.America needs a healthy polity, one free of all racial and religion-based hatred, and it needs allies as strong and reliable as Israel. The two arguments cannot be made often enough in too many places, but both ought to be made especially on and within any institution identifying itself as “Christian.” I thank Colorado Christian University for giving me the opportunity to do so.Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT

Tourism has been taking a hit in Sin City — and now comes news of another poker room closure on the Las Vegas Strip.A Resorts World representative confirmed to Fox News Digital that its poker rooms will be discontinued on March 30. “However, we will be introducing new gaming opportunities to replace the poker room,” the representative said.LAS VEGAS TOURISM PLUMMETS AS OFFICIALS CONSIDER $6M PLAN TO WIN BACK CANADIAN VISITORSThe representative did not elaborate on what new gaming offerings would take the room’s place. It currently features No Limit Texas Hold’em, Pot Limit Omaha and mixed games.The closure will leave just eight poker rooms open on the Las Vegas Strip, according to the blog “Vital Vegas.”Robby Starbuck, a conservative activist and the host of “The Robby Starbuck Show,” previously told Fox News Digital that in-person gambling is becoming less popular. “Now nearly everyone under 40 who bets seems to do it online,” Starbuck said.CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER”I don’t know one person under age 40 who goes to Vegas regularly to bet or play slots,” he added. “This trend will continue with younger people because, honestly, our minds are wired differently.”Las Vegas Strip gaming revenue fell 11% year over year, from $840,093,428 in January 2025 to $747,655,527 in January 2026, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB).Nevada’s nonrestricted gaming licensees reported a total gaming win of roughly $1.35 billion in January of this year, dropping 6.55% compared to the same month last year, according to the NGCB.CLICK HERE FOR MORE LIFESTYLE STORIESThe online gambling market is expected to reach a projected revenue of $22.2 million by 2030, according to Grand View Research.Meanwhile, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LCVA) recently released its year-end summary for 2025 as well — and those numbers are worrisome to many.There were 38,545,700 people who visited Sin City — down 7.5% from 2024, the report said. The highest visitation year ever recorded in Las Vegas was in 2019 — with 42,523,700 people coming by.That was before a dip during the COVID pandemic, according to data that LCVA posted on its website.TEST YOURSELF WITH OUR LATEST LIFESTYLE QUIZThe noted visitor volume in 2025 closely mirrors the levels seen in 2000, 2002 and 2003.

My Democratic colleagues have opposed President Donald Trump’s agenda at every turn, and that’s their right. But their decision to shut down the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) isn’t some harmless act of political gamesmanship; it’s incredibly dangerous.In the one month since Democrats voted to deny funding to DHS, the United States has faced at least four apparent terrorist attacks.On March 1, a gunman wearing a “Property of Allah” shirt killed three Americans and wounded 13 others outside Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden in Austin, Texas. On March 7, two men tossed explosives into a crowd of protesters near Gracie Mansion in New York City. The men told the New York Police Department that they had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. They had hoped to kill more people than the Boston bombers, but the courageous acts of NYPD officers on the scene foiled their attack.DHS HAMMERS DEMS OVER AIRPORT SECURITY LINES AMID FUNDING LAPSEOn March 12, a gunman — who had been released from prison after providing material support to ISIS — entered a classroom on the campus of Old Dominion University, shouted “Allahu Akbar,” and opened fire. He killed an ROTC instructor before brave students stopped him. That same day, a man in West Bloomfield, Michigan, injured one security guard when he rammed his vehicle into the Temple Israel synagogue while preschool was in session. According to the Israeli government, the suspect — who apparently shot himself amid a shootout with the Temple’s security — had a brother who was a member of the terrorist group Hezbollah.These terrorists killed four Americans and injured dozens more. It makes me nauseous to imagine how many more could have died if not for the bravery of local law enforcement officers, the Temple’s armed security and Old Dominion’s ROTC students.These attacks on American soil all occurred against the backdrop of President Trump’s decisive action in Iran. To be clear: President Trump had no choice but to strike Iran. He wasn’t trying to start a war; he is trying to end one. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who shared the same affinity for killing Americans as the terrorists who just struck within the United States — wanted to resume building nuclear weapons, and he would have been able to do that if we didn’t stop Iran’s missile and drone production soon.I’m confident our airmen will annihilate Iran’s missile supply, but that won’t eliminate the threat to the American people. The Ayatollah may have used his last rotten breath to trigger sleeper cells within the United States. These lone-wolf terrorists may be plotting additional attacks here at home, and we have no clue how many terrorists may be living among us because President Biden left our border wide open for four years.During that time, the Biden administration released at least 99 known individuals from the terrorist watchlist into the country — and those are just the suspects we know about. It will take an all-hands-on-deck effort to find and deport every terrorist lurking among the estimated millions of unvetted people that the Biden administration released into our country.Yet DHS, which employs the very people who should be hunting these lone wolves, is shut down because my Democratic colleagues have been throwing a month-long temper tantrum.At the heart of this meltdown is the fact that many of my Democratic colleagues want open borders. They don’t think we should deport anybody, and they’re holding funding for DHS hostage because they hate the idea that officers at Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) might actually enforce our immigration laws.CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONIn turn, they’ve made a series of demands to resume funding. Some of the requests were reasonable, and the Trump administration agreed to implement them as soon as possible. For example, all ICE officers will wear body cameras during future operations. They’d do it right now, but it’s hard to buy cameras when Democrats won’t approve their funding.The remaining Democratic demands are weapons-grade stupid. For example, they want to forbid ICE officers from wearing masks and force them to display their names on their uniforms. These policies would endanger the lives of ICE agents and their families. We can’t expect these law enforcement officers to focus on hunting terrorists when anti-ICE lunatics are following their vehicles or showing up at their churches.We all know some Democrats hate President Trump more than the Devil hates holy water, but we’ve seen four apparent terrorist attacks in two weeks. The Department of Homeland Security isn’t a pawn in a political game. We need these officers focused on spotting sleeper cells, not their missing paychecks. To my Democratic colleagues: Don’t wait for another attack to get serious about protecting America’s security. Reopen DHS today.CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM SEN JOHN KENNEDY

U.S. President Trump warns of devastating response if Tehran persists in targeting the region’s oil and gas production.

UK Lawmakers Seek Moratorium On Crypto Donations To Political Parties

Authored by Zoltan Vardai via CoinTelegraph.com,

A cross-party parliamentary committee in the United Kingdom has urged the government to impose an immediate moratorium on cryptocurrency donations to political parties until stronger safeguards are in place.

In a report published on Wednesday, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy said the government should amend the Representation of the People Bill to impose an “immediate moratorium on crypto donations” until the Electoral Commission produces statutory guidance ahead of the next general election, due by August 2029.

The committee also called for the creation of a Political Finance Enforcement Unit to oversee these activities and reduce the minimum threshold for declaring political donations from 11,180 British pounds ($14,900) to 500 pounds ($668), and proposed increasing the maximum custodial sentences to three years for wrongdoing involving foreign financing.

The committee cited growing foreign-state threats and efforts to influence the UK’s positions on critical issues, including its relations with the US, the European Union and Ukraine.

The recommendation comes amid rising scrutiny of crypto-linked money in British politics. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK became the first party to start accepting crypto donations in 2025. Reform UK recently disclosed a $4 million donation from crypto investor Christopher Harborne in the fourth quarter of 2025, after a record $12 million gift in the previous quarter.

“Political finance and foreign influence” report. Source: The UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy

Crypto donations pose “unnecessary” risk for UK politics

Crypto donations pose an “unnecessary and unacceptably high risk” to the integrity of the political finance system and public trust, without robust regulator guardrails, the report states.

“We see no democratic imperative to permit the use of crypto in political finance until adequate safeguards are in place.”

The committee also cited jurisdictions, such as Ireland, that have banned party members from accepting political cryptocurrency donations due to concerns about foreign interference.

The report comes shortly after Matt Western, chair of the committee, urged the government to put a temporary halt on crypto donations to political parties, citing foreign interference risks, Cointelegraph reported on Feb. 26.

Crypto donations raise concern in the UK

Political cryptocurrency donations are legal in the UK, subject to permissible rules under the Electoral Commission guidance. UK lawmakers reportedly started considering a ban on political cryptocurrency donations in December 2025.

In January, seven senior UK Labour Party MPs urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to ban crypto donations to political parties.

“Crypto can obscure the true source of funds, enable thousands of micro donations below disclosure thresholds, and expose UK politics to foreign interference,” wrote business and trade committee chair Liam Byrne, one of the seven signatories of the letter.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/19/2026 – 05:00

Former FBI Director James Comey has been called many things by critics and fans alike. However, it appears that his stab at being a pop singer did not pan out. Comey recently raised eyebrows with an account of his singing Beyoncé’s “Sandcastles” to FBI officials in a classified briefing … only to be met by a stony silence.It appears that some of his agents may have viewed the occasion as grounds for intervention rather than for rendition. In fairness to the agents, they were likely unaware of Comey’s use of beaches to uncover hidden intelligence and messages.Comey has periodically popped up in the press with bizarre or self-edifying posts. However, this one left many scratching their heads. Yet, it was vintage Comey, including a surprising admission about his handling of classified information.Comey recalled the moment from a classified FBI briefing when he realized that a secret program being discussed was named after a favorite song. He wrote:JAMES COMEY ADMITS TO SINGING BEYONCÉ SONG DURING SENSITIVE FBI BRIEFING”One morning, I was sitting at the head of a big table in a crowded room to get briefed on a particular piece of work. The briefer started by saying, the operation was codenamed ‘Sandcastles.’ Now, this was 2016, and you may know that Beyoncé’s album ‘Lemonade’ had come out with a track called ‘Sandcastles.’ So, I said, ‘Oh, like the Beyoncé song.’ Blank stares all around the FBI conference room. So, I did the natural thing. I think I sang, ‘We rebuild sand castles that washed away.’ Nope, nothing — dead silence. ‘Never mind,’ I said, “‘continue.’ Only when I got home and told my family the story did I get the reaction I was looking for. When I write, I listen to classical or jazz because, in ways I can’t explain, the music unlocks something. It frees me.”It also apparently freed Comey from security protocols. His charming story included the fact that, disappointed by his audience at the FBI, he decided to repeat it to his family. In doing so, he may have revealed the code name of a classified FBI program to uncleared individuals in an unsecured location. This is no indication from Comey whether the code name was considered sensitive information by the FBI before his encore performance.The Justice Department has fought in court to withhold code names as sensitive national security matters, including during Comey’s tenure as director.FORMER TRUMP LAWYER HALLIGAN DEFENDS US PROSECUTOR STATUS IN WAKE OF COMEY, JAMES DISMISSALSFor example, in N.Y. Times v. DOJ, 2023, it was uncontested that the FBI could withhold code names because “specific code names that [the] FBI used for certain FBI programs’ and that disclosure of these things ‘would risk circumvention of the law by revealing FBI processes and potential issues related to relationships with foreign countries.”This is not the first time Comey has raised concerns of his violation of FBI protocols and procedures regarding classified material. The Justice Department inspector general issued a scathing account of how, after being fired by President Donald Trump, Comey improperly removed FBI files and then arranged for the information to be leaked to the media to undermine Trump.The media immediately came to his defense despite his having led investigations into leakers in the past. On CNN and MSNBC, legal experts dismissed the arguments that this was improper or FBI material.The memos clearly reveal that Comey was likely aware they contained possible classified information. Comey wrote in a Jan. 7, 2017, memo that “I am  not sure of the proper classification, so I have chosen secret.” The four memos, including two given to his friend to leak to the media, were later found to be classified.CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONWhat was notable about the leaks was Comey’s obsession with his own public persona. He took FBI material to bolster his image with the media. He later published “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” which portrayed him in heroic terms without addressing allegations that he was a leaker. During his term as director, the Justice Department investigated and prosecuted FBI personnel for leaks. The “higher loyalty” shown by Comey often seemed to be his blind loyalty to his own image.  Comey has previously recounted his obsession with Taylor Swift as well as Beyoncé, but insists that “I can’t explain, the music unlocks something. It frees me.”Given his history of leaks and other violations, it may be time to try a new musical genre. It appears that pop is a bit too liberating for James Comey.In the meantime, Comey may be misinterpreting tears of joy rather than regret when he made it to the line from “Sandcastles”: “I made you cry when I walked away.”CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JONATHAN TURLEY