Commentary Culture Investigations

The Elitist Media Evening News are continuing to do their level best to ignore the explosive details of both the Fauci Files and the Biden Tapes. None of the evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, NBC or PBS devoted any coverage to these two crucial and grossly undercovered stories.The consensus national story on tonight’s evening news appears to be…the squirrel that disrupted play at Detroit’s Comerica Park between the hometown Tigers and the Baltimore Orioles. Here is that report as aired on ABC World News Tonight on Tuesday, July 28th, 2026: WATCH: @ABCWorldNews had no time for the Fauci Diaries or Biden tapes tonight, but DID close the newscast out with the squirrel that disrupted play at Comerica Park pic.twitter.com/XfQ2RzQNNm— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) July 28, 2026 WHIT JOHNSON: Finally, tonight, baseball fans cheering for Major League’s newest star, the squirrel in the outfield. Bottom of the sixth inning in Detroit. Tigers versus Orioles when suddenly a surprise visitor.JASON BENETTI: Well.ANDY DIRKS: Uh oh.BENETTI: A squirrel. JOHNSON: A squirrel scampering through the outfield. BENETTI: Squirrel! Look out! JOHNSON: The announcers delivering the play-by-play.BENETTI: Down the stretch he comes. The squirrel getting to the finish line…JOHNSON: The grounds crew striking out.BENETTI: The squirrel is on the move. The door is open. The standoff is on. I’m not leaving. I’m staying for the stunning conclusion of this game.JOHNSON: And then a bird joining the chaos.BENETTI: Oh boy. Now we just have Wild Kingdom. This game’s been a zoo.JOHNSON: Next inning, the squirrel getting close to the players, watching the batter running past the pitcher’s mound. Finally, during the seventh inning stretch, more than a dozen groundskeepers in hot pursuit.BENETTI: The chase for the squirrel is on and the squirrel is in the corner, and the squirrel is still eluding an entire horde of grounds crew members and the squirrel’s free once again. Hemmed in? No, I won’t be hemmed in!JOHNSON: The squirrel evading them all.BENETTI: Trying to go between the legs. And eventually… he gets away again! And hops through the towel! And hops through another towel!JOHNSON: Fans joking online, “the squirrel has signed a ten year deal with the Lions…no one can catch him!” And, “stop showing the squirrel…my dog is going nuts!” Eventually, the crew using a towel to catch the critter. The Tigers’ team mascot holding up a sign: “Free the squirrel!” Later, to the relief of many, the team reporting the squirrel was released in fine health.ABC closed out the newscast with this story, as did the CBS Evening News, which appears to be one-and-done with Biden-Fauci. NBC ran the squirrel in the next-to-last block of the Nightly News, closing out with Tom Llamas’ tour of the grounds at the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo, in service of his upcoming interview with Pope Leo XIV and the Concert for Peace airing on NBC. PBS did neither the squirrel nor Biden-Fauci.The Comerica squirrel wasn’t the only filler story stuffing the channels on the broadcast network evening news. ABC showered viewers with items such as the San Diego man arrested after joyriding on a stolen backhoe, and the tale of coyotes taking over an abandoned West Hollywood construction site. In an inadvertent snapshot of California decline, we are told that there is a municipal “management and coexistence plan” that has been in place for several years. WATCH: @ABCWorldNews has still found no time to cover the Fauci Diaries or Biden Tapes, but did make time for the coyote invasion of an abandoned WeHo construction site pic.twitter.com/r8V838lfdN— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) July 28, 2026 CBS featured a nonlethal aviation mishap (small aircraft making a California beach landing) and a nonlethal traffic mishap (the fabricated home falling on top of a car as the result of a traffic accident in Georgia). NBC ran the squirrel and the prefab house crash but ran two unique Pope-related items as their filler. The only political story that ran across the board was the funeral for Senator Lindsey Graham, with its attendees and focus on President Trump’s eulogy. Nothing on the impending confirmation of Jay Clayton as Director of National Intelligence (vis-a-vis ample coverage of his contentious confirmation hearing), and definitely nothing on the Biden Tapes or Fauci Files. The Elitist Media want you to see what they want you to see- and nothing more. And when the news cycle is inconvenient, they reliably shout “SQUIRREL!”Exit question: How will they cover, if at all, Anthony Fauci’s hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs? We’ll be watching.

Snapstream

The ongoing debt crisis within the Democratic National Committee has driven the wedge between establishment Democrats and their radical democratic socialist wing even further. This Tuesday, MS NOW Reports host Antonia Hylton invited ex-DNC vice chair David Hogg to discuss the crisis, despite him being a left-wing activist who built his career off the lost lives of his classmates and was ousted from his position in the DNC for using his position to promote radical politics.Hogg would spew progressive propaganda for nearly the entire segment, with virtually no pushback from Hylton. He began his monologue by slandering the Democratic establishment, portraying his DSA-aligned progressive movement as a stronger alternative: “Then you add on top of that that it’s now been 18 months and they had to put the building up as collateral, and they are $2 million in debt. And then you juxtapose that with the progressive movement and what’s going on out there.”After his resentment-fueled attacks on his former employer, Hogg pivoted to praising the Democratic primary system: “Ultimately we need to win Michigan. And this is part of why primaries are so important, so that people in our party are held to the highest standard possible.”According to Hogg’s logic, it follows that Graham Platner was held to the “highest standard possible.” Platner being the same Maine candidate who fell into scandal after scandal: his Nazi tattoo, his extramarital affairs, his extremist Reddit posts, and eventually his campaign-ending sexual assault allegations. Some high standards they’ve got there! According to leftist activist David Hogg, Democratic primaries hold candidates “to the highest standards possible.” Apparently, the Democrats’ highest standards include Graham Platner, who had to drop out of his race due to sexual assault accusations. Real high standards, guys! pic.twitter.com/GyyHfOzsIR— James Waterman (@jwatermaniv) July 28, 2026 Despite the incoherence of his statements, Hogg continued to extol the virtues of Democratic primaries, which he portrayed as necessary to elect radical Abdul El-Sayed instead of Rep. Haley Stevens:And we have these debates and ensure that whether it’s somebody going out there and saying that they’re not taking corporate money when they quite obviously are, like Stevens said last night in her debate, saying that she wasn’t taking money from a private utility when she literally took, I think it was $5,000 last year or different past comments that other people have made. There was a reason why we have a primary process in our party, and I’m thankful that people still care enough to actually engage in the process so that we have the best Democrats possible out there to get elected. And to the broader point that – I believe that Abdul is probably getting at there – I’m just seeing that comment now is we need to have a competitive primary process to ensure that Democrats are the best, have the best representation possible. It must be asked again, since Hylton refused to provide any pushback to Hogg’s monologue: is Platner one of these “best Democrats possible?” While the media tried their best to conceal them, Platner’s initial scandals were known to Maine voters when they chose them to represent them. Is Platner really the “best representation possible” of the Democratic Party?Even among candidates who haven’t dropped out due to disastrous, career-ending scandals, recent Democratic primaries seem poised to amplify radical voices rather than decent people. El-Sayed, who Hogg said he aligns with politically, has come under fire for radical statements of his own. James Talarico, in Texas, has struggled to gain traction due to his controversial religious and political stances. Mamdani-endorsed NY candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier was revealed to be a Marxist sympathizer and prison abolitionist.If these are the best candidates the Democrats have, one can only imagine what their worst ones look like!The transcript is below. Click “expand” to view.MS NOW ReportsJuly 28, 202611:40:20 a.m. Eastern(…)ANOTNIA HYLTON: Let’s bring in David Hogg, co-founder of Leaders We Deserve and former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. David, you were a part of the DNC until June of last year, when committee members voted to hold new elections for your post and a fellow vice chair. And this came after you told the New York Times that you plan to spend millions to bring generational change to the party, knowing what you know now about the committee, what you’ve seen from Ken Martin, are you surprised at all by these reports?DAVID HOGG: No, unfortunately. I am disappointed to see them, but I’m far from surprised. We— I saw the writing on the wall early on. I remember talking about some of the issues that were going on that helped to decide the election. Let’s remember here, you know, one of the main things that Chair Ken Martin ran on releasing was an autopsy report that would bring real accountability to the DNC, and that was totally fumbled where there was no mention of Gaza, there was no mention of inflation. There was no mention of the president’s age or any actual issues that decided the election. And they couldn’t even be bothered to include a conclusion in that. Then you add on top of that that it’s now been 18 months and they had to put the building up as collateral, and they are $2 million in debt. And then you juxtapose that with the progressive movement and what’s going on out there. It’s incredibly sad to see the DNC and the committee at this point, and it could not be more clear that he’s unfit to lead. We need somebody who can actually raise money and also not throw his phone at staff.(…) 11:43:47 a.m.HOGG: Voters want an affirmative vision for the future of this country. And that’s part of why Ken Martin is having these fundraising woes. There is no vision for the future of the party. That’s what voters are really craving.(…)11:45:10 a.m.HOGG: Ultimately, we got to focus on winning Michigan regardless of, you know, what’s happening in these primaries. Whoever wins here, we need to consolidate behind and make sure we get them across the finish line.As you can imagine, my politics are much more aligned with Abdul’s because I, I don’t want to support people who are taking corporate PAC money like Stevens is, but ultimately we need to win Michigan. And this is part of why primaries are so important, so that people in our party are held to the highest standard possible. And we have these debates and ensure that whether it’s somebody going out there and saying that they’re not taking corporate money when they quite obviously are, like Stevens said last night in her debate, saying that she wasn’t taking money from a private utility when she literally took, I think it was $5,000 last year or different past comments that other people have made. There was a reason why we have a primary process in our party, and I’m thankful that people still care enough to actually engage in the process so that we have the best Democrats possible out there to get elected. And to the broader point that – I believe that Abdul is probably getting at there – I’m just seeing that comment now – is we need to have a competitive primary process to ensure that Democrats are the best, have the best representation possible. And I think the overall idea that it’s unacceptable to challenge anybody because they’re just a sitting incumbent is ridiculous and hurts us as a party.Imagine where we would be right now if we didn’t have AOC. Look at how she was treated when she was first brought into the House. But that is because when incumbents are successfully defeated, far more often than not, it’s because they weren’t really doing their job. And a lot of people in the Democratic base and the American people, generally speaking, are hungry for something new from Democrats that they’re not getting from the establishment.

“Woke Smithsonian,” editorial cartoon by Yogi Love for The American Spectator on Jul. 28, 2026.

A France without Islamic headscarves on its streets is one of the Rassemblement National’s promises to its ever-increasing electorate. But with polls indicating that its presidential candidate Marine Le Pen could well enter the Elysée Palace in May next year, the lady should perhaps be careful what she wishes for. Even her young running mate, Jordan Bardella, has warned her against maintaining a promise that, if fulfilled, risks inflaming the largely Islamized suburbs.
French media have reported on the alleged split with astonishment, as the Rassemblement National (RN), formerly known as the National Front, passes for an authoritarian party of the radical right where challenging the leader is frowned upon.
French law already prohibits Islamic headdresses in public schools and for civil servants at their places of work. But the RN wishes to get rid of them “in the public domain,” where until now only burkas are banned, as well as other Islamic garments totally covering a woman’s face.
To be sure, Mr. Bardella also is in favor of a much larger ban, according to the magazine L’Express, which broke the story of the alleged spat at the top of France’s largest party. But he prefers a softly-softly approach, removing the issue from its list of priorities. Ms. Le Pen, who made Bardella leader of the party in 2022, gave the idea short shrift, however, when he put it to her at a recent gathering of RN brass.
If recent polls are to be believed, 66 percent of the French are in favor of a cityscape free of the veil…
Scrapping her traditional promise would be “disastrous,” she is alleged to have told him and others brave enough to challenge the 59-year-old up for her fourth attempt at the Elysée. Her voters may have forgiven her for abandoning earlier promises meant to make her party electable, such as reintroducing the death penalty and the French franc, dropped when France introduced the euro in 1999. She no longer vows to take France out of the European Union, a promise considered a threat by elderly conservatives loath to see their country lose its leading role in the EU, and the generous subsidies that go with it. Ms. Le Pen’s initial enthusiasm for Brexit never caught on in her own country.
But scrapping the idea, in the short term, of French cities, towns and villages shorn of the headdresses, niqabs and hijabs viewed by many as symbols on France’s creeping Islamization would be considered one concession or treason, according to the left-leaning newspaper Le Monde, which dislikes her and gets ever more jittery at the thought of a “right-wing extremist” taking over from President Emmanuel Macron. (RELATED: Power, Islamism, and the Crisis of Western Rationality)
So Ms. Le Pen has stubbornly entered the election campaign with the promise that, in case of victory, she will not introduce a bill in Parliament, but instead put the proposed headscarf ban to the public in a referendum.
If recent polls are to be believed, 66 percent of the French are in favor of a cityscape free of the veil, feared and loathed in equal measure. Unsurprisingly, 94 percent of RN voters yearn for it. Add to that the whopping 34 percent of the electorate which intends to vote for her, with centre-right politician Edouard Philippe in second place with a paltry 19 percent, and the hard-right’s dream seems on the verge of coming true.
Well, not so fast. It is far from certain that France’s highest Court, the Cour Constitutionnelle, considers the ban, essentially a dress code for women of an ethnic and religious minority, worthy of being put to the nation. Le Monde gleefully predicts that there is little chance of the Court’s approval, which also goes for the far more important promise by Ms. Le Pen: changing the Constitution so that autochthonous French are automatically prioritized over aliens in matters like social housing, benefits, filling of vacancies for jobs, and other measures judged scandalous and racist by the left.
Jordan Bardella, too, thinks that in time the headscarf must disappear from places like Saint-Denis, the northern Paris suburb where he grew up. But, according to French media, he considers implementing the ban by force a recipe for disaster. Marine Le Pen, leader of her party’s caucus in Parliament, would immediately get embroiled in a struggle with France’s highest court. A ban could also be at odds with the concept of freedom of religion, enshrined in the Constitution, and provoke the ire of the Arab and Islamic world.
On the condition of anonymity, Mr. Bardella’s supporters at the top of the party also vent their fears that in many Islamized suburbs and neighborhoods a ban would be considered a stigmatization of Muslims at best, a declaration of war at worst.
The recently elected mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko, the son of immigrants from Mali, has predicted an “uprising” in towns like his if Le Pen becomes president. Others have accused Mr. Bardella of wanting to “tear the headscarves” off women’s heads in his former home town, where he witnessed Islamization and drug-related criminality at his doorstep. Mr. Bagayoko, a Muslim, is a prominent member of the ultra-left wing party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed). Its presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is the most popular politician in many places where veils dominate the cityscape. He is sure to call for “resistance” as police officers in, say, Saint-Denis, try to enforce the ban. And run a serious risk of being lynched. A “save the veil” campaign risks literally enflaming the whole country; what kind of an impression would that give the world of an officially secular France? (RELATED: France’s Mélenchon and the Politics of Replacement)
Has the matter indeed driven a wedge between Le Pen and 30-year-old Bardella apart? The other day, he looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable on a walkabout with her in a small town in the west of the country, where she smiled, chatted with admirers and posed for selfies; he remained aloof and seemed in a hurry to get it over with.
Not only French people on the right think the veil has no place in their country, at least not as massively as in places like Saint-Denis and parts of Marseille and other cities. But they deem the subject too hot to handle, fear being branded Islamophobic, or balk at the consequences of a ban well-nigh impossible to impose. So, as a somewhat cynical French saying goes: It is urgent to do nothing…  Ms. Le Pen begs to differ. In her view, tolerance of a symbol of the subjugation of women and the growing influence of Islamists, who have done France so much harm, has gone too far. The buck stops with her; she has promised the French. (RELATED: Drug Gangs, Child Gunmen and Antisemitic Abuse — Welcome to Marseille)
Indeed, the creeping Islamization is ever more apparent in places like Saint-Denis, whose cathedral hosts the graves of French kings and that of the Frankish leader Charles Martel, venerated for beating back the invading Muslim armies at the battle of Poitiers in 732 A.D. In his book The Strange Death of Europe, British author Douglas Murray describes his visit to the town and its cathedral: “Today a visitor … may well wonder whether Martel did indeed succeed. To wander the district of Saint-Denis today is to see a district more resembling North Africa than France. The market square outside the basilica is a souk more than a market. Stalls sell different styles of hijabs and radical groups hand out literature against the state.”
READ MORE from René ter Steege:
France’s Mélenchon and the Politics of Replacement
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Nobody wants to be stuck defending white people who use the N-word at black people. Since the 1970s, if not further back than that, to do so indicates poor breeding, poor manners, and poor character. We should all know better.
And in Rochester, Minnesota, last year, a woman named Shiloh Hendrix committed exactly that social transgression.

BREAKING: Shiloh Hendrix found guilty by a MN jury for “using the n-word” pic.twitter.com/CDdhhWvbuF
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 24, 2026

Yes, this is terrible. And why is it always the people with the arm full of tattoos?
Ms. Hendrix isn’t a particularly sympathetic defendant. On the video showing the incident for which she’s become infamous, she comes off as vulgar, unpleasant, and low-class. As such, she isn’t up for any civic prizes.
It’s the opposite end of the spectrum, actually.
Because last week, after a trial which — to be charitable — could have been better-run, Shiloh Hendrix was convicted on a misdemeanor count of disturbing the peace for having dropped an N-bomb on someone who was filming her.
And now we’ve got people talking about Shiloh Hendrix and having a debate over the use of the N-word and just how unacceptable it is.
Do we need this debate? Maybe a little more than we thought. And the vagaries of Minnesota’s judicial system and the people who populate it have foisted this on us. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Minnesota Goes to Hell (Again))
The facts of the Hendrix case make for a bit more complicated story than that of the angry fishwife spouting invective at dark-skinned bystanders, which was originally pitched to the public by the corporate media.
The setting? A public playground, where Ms. Hendrix and her young child were enjoying an afternoon along with others in Rochester.
But a 9-year-old Somali immigrant boy, whom we’re told is autistic, was caught rummaging through Ms. Hendrix’ diaper bag for a portion of applesauce. It was alleged, and likely, though apparently not proven given the jury’s verdict, that she dropped an N-bomb on the autistic Somali kid as she chased him and recovered the stolen food.
This occasioned objections from the Somalis in the park, including one who turned his camera on Shiloh Hendrix and followed her around. It’s fair to say she didn’t handle that well, flipping him the bird and dropping N-bombs on him as well, as you can see on the video above.
She was the only one charged with disturbing the peace, in two counts — one for supposedly using the N-word on the applesauce thief, and the other for dropping it on the cameraman — and the jury convicted her in the second incident. The judge levied a 90-day suspended jail sentence, strict probation, a $1,000 fine, and 200 hours of community service; Hendrix’s attorney, the exceptionally colorful Brian Karalus, immediately vowed to appeal the case on what he said were multiple grounds, in one of the all-time greatest post-trial rants delivered outside of the courthouse…

Brian Karalus, defense attorney for Shiloh Hendrix, shares just some of his thoughts on the case. https://t.co/bT3o1HgQv8 pic.twitter.com/srh7N8l6gB
— Tom Hennessy (@Tomhennessey69) July 24, 2026

The GiveSendGo account for Hendrix’s legal defense has now run near $900,000, following word that she’s been doxxed and repeatedly harassed after the incident; that’s nearly triple the $330,000 the NAACP raised for the boy’s family.
Karolus’ post-trial explosion centered on the “victim” of the conduct Hendrix was found guilty of — namely, dropping N-bombs on the cameraman, a Somali named Sharmake Beyle Omar. As Karolus noted, Omar had set up his own GoFundMe, which would point toward a juicy little scam.
We don’t know this to be the case, but the basic contours aren’t hard to spot: send a kid out to rob the white lady, and either she does nothing, and you make off with a little bit of swag, or she fights back. And if she fights back, you escalate the confrontation, a camera running, until you can get her to do something to incriminate herself — which Shiloh Hendrix did. Once that happens, you create a media incident you can monetize. Or, if she turns out to have any money, you extort or blackmail her using the video you have.
And when you find out who Sharmake Beyle Omar is, you realize that the scam is as likely as not to be the case here.
Why?
Per The Federalist’s reporting, in January 2022, a 16-year-old girl who had run away from foster care alleged that Omar and another man, Mohamed Hussein Omer, picked her up, brought her to a trailer, held her there for days, and sexually assaulted her — charges included third-degree criminal sexual conduct and use of coercion. The Federalist reports the Olmsted County Attorney’s Office dropped these charges “in the interest of justice” in March 2025 — about a month before the playground incident.
And Omar has raised some $40,000 from his own GoFundMe.
And while it’s usually poor form to make assumptions about people based on their heritage, let’s just say that it’s not unknown for Minnesota Somalis to exhibit dishonesty in pursuit of monetary gain. (RELATED: Keeping Up With the Congresswoman)
None of that made it into the evidence in the Hendrix case. Karolus and the judge, a woman named Christa Daly, clashed repeatedly over that refusal.
Karolus also vigorously objected to Daly’s refusal to include a jury instruction involving the First Amendment; namely, that … people do have the right to use words to express themselves…
Karolus also vigorously objected to Daly’s refusal to include a jury instruction involving the First Amendment; namely, that whether you think the racial slur Hendrix used is extremely bad manners or not, people do have the right to use words to express themselves, and that has to be taken into consideration in a legal case which could involve their physical freedom.
The question here isn’t whether Shiloh Hendrix was justified or upstanding in her actions. Hot debates generally don’t come from blameless conduct. At minimum, she’s an idiot for having said that word in front of somebody who was filming her.
But had she called Sharmake Beyle Omar an “asshole” or a “sonofabitch” while flashing her middle finger at him, there isn’t a person in America who would believe that to be plausible criminal conduct under the concept of disturbing the peace. The “fighting words” exemption to the First Amendment is, after all, exceptionally narrow in what’s fairly settled law.
No, it’s the presence of that magic word, a word which only carries magic when uttered by people vaguely resembling Shiloh Hendrix. And that, according to leftists like Judge Christa Daly, must be punishable at law. On the video which started this fiasco, Omar is also using the word.
Equal protection under the law either means everybody gets to use that word without judicial consequences, or nobody does.
Equal protection under the law either means everybody gets to use that word without judicial consequences, or nobody does. As the latter is impossible to enforce, it’s obviously the former which constitutes the correct outcome.
Which is absolutely not an endorsement of its use. We’ll be better off as a society if everyone agrees to leave off with the racial slurs.
And in this case, Sharmake Beyle Omar appears to be something a whole lot worse than the N-word.
It would be great if we don’t hear anything more about Shiloh Hendrix and her community relations exploits in Rochester, Minnesota. But it’s an excellent bet that this case will continue up the appellate process, and it might well impact our understanding of free speech in America.
Which doesn’t have as much to do with Shiloh Hendrix’s trashy playground behavior as it does with Christa Daly’s trashy performance as a judge.
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