Commentary Culture Investigations

Reflection, an AI startup supported by chip manufacturer Nvidia, is currently in discussions to raise $2.5 billion at a valuation of $25 billion, with plans to take on China’s open source approach to artificial intelligence popularized by DeepSeek.
The post AI Startup Backed by Nvidia Plans to Take on China’s DeepSeek appeared first on Breitbart.

Michigan Democrats have a gun control legislation package that includes a ban on magazines holding more than ten rounds, a three-day waiting period for gun purchases, and an increased minimum firearm purchase age, among other things.
The post Michigan Democrats Push Magazine Ban, Waiting Period, Increased Minimum Firearm Purchase Age appeared first on Breitbart.

Comedian Drew Desbordes, better known as Druski, sparked outrage for dressing as Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk in a skit mocking the widow of slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk.
The post Comedian Druski Sparks Outrage for Dressing as Erika Kirk In Skit Mocking Widow appeared first on Breitbart.

But they think their unpopularity is fixed because of the current unpopularity of Trump.

Status founder and former CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy took to his newsletter site Tuesday night for a psychotic tut-tutting over the supposed grave of CBS News under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, claiming Weiss’s “catastrophic,” “turbulent” tenure’s “five-alarm fire” has “destroyed” the “trust” “smart” viewers have in the brand in favor of acknowledging humanity in “the MAGA movement.”

With networks looking to promote their allies and spoil their opponents using first-quarter ratings, Darcy chose to take this ball and run with it, starting in the second sentence:

But through a series of actions over her turbulent six-month tenure as editor in chief, it appears the proud anti-woke warrior has instead helped destroy that trust—something that is now laid bare in the network’s rapidly shrinking ratings. Indeed, new ratings data obtained by Status isn’t just bad for Weiss. It is catastrophic.

This pompous prick then boasted Dokoupil’s poised to have the network’s “lowest-rated first quarter of the 21st century in both total viewers and the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic” at “4.3 million viewers” and “just 541,000 viewers” in the “35-54 audience.” Notice the accounting gimmick he deployed. Unless it was a typo, talk about some shuffling of the deck.

He also argued Weiss’s presence has caused Dokoupil’s former show in CBS Mornings to also tank (although Weiss has not exerted any reported influence over) to record-lows of “1.8 million total viewers” and “35-54 audience…to 268,000.”

“[T]he network’s two flagship daily news programs are seeing their audiences collapse. It’s a remarkable feat, given the unrelenting torrent of headlines emerging from Washington and–now thanks to a war…[T]he numbers from CBS News are an anomaly…where ABC News and NBC News, are both set to post year-over-year gains in total audience in both the mornings and evenings,” he added.

Of course, Darcy purposefully left out the sad-but-true fact about why NBC’s newscasts — and Today (plus 15 percent total viewers) in particular — have seen a gain in ratings for 2026: Nancy Guthrie.

Weiss’s wife Nellie Bowles mocked a chart showing the last seven months of evening news ratings (which, not-so-coincidentally, The Wrap and others have also taken up to bash Dokoupil):

Simply a catastrophe!!! https://t.co/E6FbBmc6JY
— Nellie Bowles (@NellieBowles) March 26, 2026

In other words, all three network evening newscasts have seen a drop in March.

That didn’t stop Darcy from piling on his vindictive gruel, mocking Dokoupil’s ratings as “an especially brutal outcome because the bar was so low for him to begin with” given the struggles of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois and his “high-profile launch–complete with…an expensive “Live From America” tour[.]”

A chieftain of the Bluesky Brigade, Darcy tried to have it both ways by both mocking Dokoupil’s numbers and then arguing CBS is chasing away valuable viewers: “Of course, it is not hard to see why. Viewers are smart. They understand that under David Ellison’s ownershoip, and with Weiss at the helm, CBS News has charted a new course for the network–one that is friendlier to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement he leads.”

Yes, Oliver. The whole world thinks like you.

Like seemingly all of CBS News’s critics on the left (and right), none of them actually watch CBS News to begin with. Case in point: Darcy’s Dokoupil examples were all from the first two weeks and the 60 Minutes item was from January:

That has played out in a string of high-profile incidents in recent months: Dokoupil’s cringe-inducing on-air “salute” to Marco Rubio; the ride-along segment with Kristi Noem during an immigration raid; the both-sides report marking the January 6 insurrection; the softball Trump interview, in which the supposedly transparent broadcast did not report a brazen legal threat Karoline Leavitt delivered on behalf of the president to the program; and so much more.

That is not to mention Weiss’ unprecedented intervention stalling the “60 Minutes” story on the notorious CECOT prison in Venezuela, her failed attempts to recruit Fox News and MAGA personalities, her chasing away of talent like Anderson Cooper and Scott MacFarlane, and more.

Darcy made one factual error. In the Noem mention, it was homeland security and justice correspondent Nicole Sganga, not Dokoupil (although he interviewed here for CBS Mornings in April 2025).

An anonymous smear later from “a television news veteran” he quoted twice, Darcy excitedly said “CBS News’ new direction…does not appear to be pleasing the CBS News audience” and thus been “driving loyal viewers away” that “should” be “a five-alarm fire for Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski.”

He closed by openly rooting for an end to their tenures (and thus a pivot to a glorified MeidasTouch or TV version of The Atlantic), arguing they face “a brutal uphill battle” and continued “bleeding” since the world sees CBS as “no longer reflect[ing] their values or delivers the kind of aggressive journalism they expect[.]”

In 2026, the CBS Evening News has not been spared of incoming fire from NewsBusters as we’ve penned dozens of stories calling out liberal narratives. So, no matter how hard Darcy and his ilk insist its “MAGA-coded” TV, we’ll continue to call balls and strikes and praise them when they show a commitment to all Americans and slam them when they fall short.

We’ll see if this gets our Status account suspended.

The attempted bombing at MacDill AFB is consistent with the pattern of behavior of a certain activist class committed to political violence.

A Georgia judge set bail at $1 on Monday for a woman who is charged with using chemical abortion pills and oxycodone to murder her newborn daughter. 
Alexia Moore, a 31-year-old U.S. Army veteran, was accused of taking misoprostol around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. On Dec. 30, she arrived at Camden County hospital with abdominal pain. According to the Washington Times, she told medical staff she had taken about eight misoprostol pills obtained from Access Aid as well as unprescribed oxycodone from a family member. Doctors delivered Moore’s baby, who was born alive and died after roughly an hour.
Moore told nurses, “I know my infant is suffering, because I am the one who did the abortion. I want her to die,” FOX 5 Atlanta reported. 
Kingsland Police arrested Moore on March 4; they charged her with murder and possession of two dangerous drugs after concluding she was pregnant longer than six weeks “based on the medical staff’s knowledge that the baby had a beating heart and was struggling to breathe.” Authorities said she “unlawfully and with malice aforethought, caused the death of baby girl Moore, a human being who was born alive.” 
Georgia passed the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act in 2019, which stated, “No abortion is authorized or shall be performed if an unborn child has been determined … to have a detectable human heartbeat.” While the law included exceptions for rape, incest, and medical emergencies, it stated “as early as six weeks’ gestation, an unborn child may have a detectable human heartbeat,” which effectively banned abortion after 6 weeks.
Moore’s mother, Rosalyn Jones, commented on the case. “Have you ever heard of someone having a murder charge with $1 bail? … From looking at the evidence, I’m not the judge or the jury. All I can see is God has given her favor, that’s all I know,” she said.
At Monday’s bond hearing, Superior Court Judge Steven Blackerby called the murder charge “extremely problematic” and added, “That is going to be a hard charge to convict upon.” The judge set Moore’s total bond at $2,001: $1,000 for each drug charge and $1 for the murder charge. She was held in Camden County jail for three weeks.
Dana Sussman of Pregnancy Justice said in a statement, “No one should be criminalized for having an abortion.” A study from Pregnancy Justice found,“There were at least 210 pregnancy-related prosecutions in the first year after Dobbs … the highest number of pregnancy-related prosecutions documented in a single year.” 
Elizabeth Edmonds, executive director of Georgia Life Alliance, said, “Ms. Moore is not being charged with crimes under Georgia’s LIFE Act. This innocent baby girl was born alive and under Georgia law, her death is being investigated and prosecuted like any other.” She argued, instead, that this case is about risks posed by online drug distributors. “What this case highlights is the danger posed by illegal online abortion pill distributors operating outside the medical system,” Edmonds explained.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, 21 states have enacted major restrictions on abortion by either banning or limiting the procedure to early stages in pregnancy, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. 
READ MORE by Dylan Kresak:
UK Lawmakers Make ‘Unutterably Grim’ Move to Decriminalize Abortion
Oregon Predator Principal Sentenced in Child Pornography Case, Said ‘Good Riddance’ to Charlie Kirk
Court Stalls Trump’s Effort to Enforce Affirmative Action Ban

John Cleese causes outrage at 86. He did at 36, too.
But many of the people who laughed then grumble a frown-faced “that’s not funny” now.
In response to London Mayor Sadiq Khan proclaiming, “British people love having diversity,” Cleese responded on X: “The British do not like the kind of diversity that intends to take over Britain and kill any infidel that does not convert to Islam.”
The comments pertained to Muslims flooding Trafalgar Square to bow prostrate on the ground as prayers in Arabic blared over a loudspeaker. For a country with three crosses on its flag ruled by a “Defender of the Faith,” the scene exemplified the destruction of an England for English people. If Bobby Bare recruited Alabama to relocate to Mecca to sing “Dropkick Me Jesus (Through the Goalposts of Life)” in unison five times a day, some of those face-down on prayer mats in Trafalgar Square might appreciate Cleese’s concern.
London contains more Muslims than Dallas does people. When Monty Python’s Flying Circus premiered, fewer Muslims lived in the entire United Kingdom than people now live in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Cleese’s notice of the importation of the Third World into the capital city of Western Civilization itself draws notice. Cultural guardians regard it as a cardinal sin to notice aloud (except when they notice us noticing).
“There is something uniquely deflating about watching a figure once synonymous with sharp, absurdist brilliance slip into reactionary cliché,” reflects Brooke Ivey Johnson, a pop-culture writer with zero tweets but a rainbow flag and she/her pronouns on her X account.
She confesses to wincing at his post and to a preference for a “broader, more inclusive” comedy, such as that delivered “by the multicultural cast of the uproariously funny new UK Saturday Night Live,” which had aired exactly one episode when Miss Johnson issued this judgment.
She writes, “Cleese is a comedian whose work helped build the foundations of modern British comedy — a foundation that often included mocking the kind of closed-minded, isolationist, pompous Brit with whom he now seems to earnestly identify.”
Cleese and his confederates, whether in the Ministry of Silly Walks or Upper Class Twit of the Year skit, ridiculed authority. In the Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson sketch, they mocked pretension (and maybe mocked the pretensions of anti-pretentious people, too). And in everything, they found the absurd in the normal.
One struggles not to find the absurdity of so much that passes for normal in 2026. And the authorities, as pretentious as ever, even if they do not wear a badge or a collar or a top hat and tails, still impose shibboleths that make little sense to common people. As Miss Johnson demonstrates, the authorities still hate mockery, which, as any child upsetting the headmaster knows, just makes the joke funnier.
John Cleese still mocks authority. Johnson and so many others who once enjoyed his comedy struggle to grasp that they became the punchline at which they once laughed.
And yet, one does find a grain of truth, even if unintentional, in the cottage industry of lover-scorned critiques of Cleese. For years, Monty Python’s Oxonians and Cantabrigians pilloried Christianity. The false messiah in Life of Brian, the attack on Christian symbolism in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the song “Every Sperm Is Sacred” in The Meaning of Life all played a role in hollowing out Christian belief in Great Britain (and beyond), even if laughter and not undermining faith served as the intention.
When you discredit Jesus, what did you expect to replace Him? John Cleese found out late in life.
The current conversation evokes memories of the famous debate about Life of Brian between Pythons Cleese and Michael Palin, on the one hand, and professional curmudgeon Malcolm Muggeridge and Church of England Bishop Mervyn Stockwood, on the other. In real time, the larger-than-life Bishop Stockwood stood out as the guy truly meant for stage and screen, and Cleese and Palin, mainly by turning so much into jokes, appeared as the victors.
In hindsight, Muggeridge looks like the victor.
“If you had made that film about Mohamet, you see, there would have been an absolute hullabaloo in this country,” he explains to the Pythons. “All the sort of anti-racialist people would have risen up in their might — the same people who would approve of this.”
Palin and Cleese, in weasel-like manner, reject the idea that their film about a crucified man with 12 apostles was really about Jesus. And then, angrily, they blame Christianity for so many of history’s great evils and wonder why Christians do not join them in taking leftist positions. They could not help themselves in rebutting their own point in the naked display of anti-Christian animus.
Muggeridge laments the end of Western Civilization and implores: “Remember, that that story of the incarnation was what our civilization began with.”
Alas, comedians should concern themselves with the ensuing laughter and not the cultural consequences of jokes. Anything else would be a corruption of purpose. When Cleese gets stoned to death for saying “Jehovah” in Life of Brian, it was funny. Cleese’s critics loved the cultural consequences of those earlier gags. But did they ever truly get the joke?
The people who laugh out of ideological solidarity rather than the inherent funniness of a joke ultimately become the punchline.
READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn:
Cesar Chavez, Rapist, Pedophile, Progressive Icon
Reuters Outs Banksy and Makes the World Less Interesting
Morrissey Is Too Big to Cancel

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced Thursday that it has eliminated three heads of Iranian military forces in its war, supported by the U.S. Operation Epic Fury, against the radical, anti-America Islamist regime.

In three posts on its X.com page, IDF reported that it has killed an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) Navy commander, the head of the IRGC Intelligence Directorate and a senior commander of anti-tank operations:

“ELIMINATED: The IRGC Navy Commander Alireza Tangsiri, in a precise IDF strike in Bandar Abbas.”

“Additionally, the IDF eliminated the Head of the IRGC Navy Intelligence Directorate, Behnam Rezaei. Rezaei was responsible for intelligence collection on regional countries and led cooperation with various intelligence organizations.”

“ELIMINATED: Hassan Mohammad Bashir, a senior commander in Hezbollah’s anti-tank array in the Hajir area. Bashir advanced hundreds of terror attacks against IDF troops and Israeli civilians. He commanded several terrorist cells & recently, he had begun integrating into the anti-tank array north of the Litani River.”

The U.S. declared IRGC Admiral Tangsiri a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2019 and his death at the hands of an Israeli airstrike “makes the region safer,” U.S. CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper wrote Thursday in a post on X.com.

The House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce is investigating whether Columbia University is honoring its deal with the Trump administration, according to a letter sent to the university on Tuesday.
The letter, from committee chairman Brett Guthrie (R., Ky.), comes as Columbia is under fire for allegedly withholding information from a federal monitor, Bart Schwartz, who had been charged with overseeing compliance.
“Columbia ‘repeatedly failed to provide Schwartz with the policies relating to DEI and antisemitism for the vast majority of schools within Columbia,'” Guthrie wrote, quoting a Free Press report on the deal. “In its agreement with the U.S. government, Columbia was required to ‘ensure that the Resolution Monitor will have access to all Columbia documents and data related to the Agreement.'”
The letter also notes that Katrina Armstrong, the CEO of Columbia’s medical center and the university’s former president, could not recall a single incident of anti-Semitism when she was deposed by the Trump administration last year. Armstrong took a sabbatical after the Washington Free Beacon published a transcript of the deposition. She has since returned to her role at the medical center, which in 2024 hosted a speaker who had praised the “martyrdom” of a Hamas leader, Ahmad Jarrar, accused of orchestrating a rabbi’s murder.
“That sabbatical could have been an opportunity for … Dr. Armstrong to reflect on the way Columbia has addressed antisemitism on campus and ways to reform and improve Columbia’s record of compliance with federal civil rights laws,” the letter reads. “Questions remain as to whether Dr. Armstrong has become a better leader capable of helping oversee the implementation of the agreement.”
A university spokesman said Columbia was “reviewing Chairman Guthrie’s letter and will cooperate with the request.”
“Columbia is committed to maintaining a safe campus environment for all members of our community,” the school said. “Consistent with that commitment, Columbia has prioritized the recommendations of the University’s Task Force on Antisemitism, focusing on enhancing reporting mechanisms for bias incidents, enforcing campus protest policies to ensure non-discriminatory environments, and fostering classroom settings where Jewish students can engage in academic life without fear of harassment.”
The deal, which included a $200 million fine, restored more than $400 million in grant funding that the Trump administration paused last March. Though the deal forced Columbia to beef up its anti-discrimination bureaucracy, it did not include some of the more far-reaching reforms Jewish leaders had hoped for, prompting concerns about its long-term impact.
“The Committee is troubled by recent reports and allegations raising questions about Columbia University’s willingness to uphold its commitments to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff,” Guthrie told the Free Beacon. “The fact that Columbia receives hundreds of millions of dollars from HHS and its subagencies, coupled with the serious concerns regarding its compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws, demonstrates that further oversight is needed.”
The post House Energy Committee To Investigate Columbia’s Compliance With Trump Deal appeared first on .