Commentary Culture Investigations

Over the past year, the NFL has demonstrated its willingness to play football just about anywhere on this third rock from the sun, provided there’s a 100-yard field and a reliable Internet connection. The league’s international ambitions now stretch from Paris and London to Munich, Madrid, Melbourne, and Rio de Janeiro—not to mention Mexico City, where even the threat of Montezuma’s revenge has failed to discourage the NFL’s global ambitions.
Pick a continent and the NFL either has a game scheduled there or is already scouting for the next one.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and his kennel of obedient lapdogs are literally on the move with 16 international games a year to compliment a 17 game regular season with the goal of establishing an NFL franchise overseas.
The NFL’s global appetite is growing faster than its rulebook.
This is a league that wants your Sundays, your weekdays, your nights, your streaming subscriptions, your international travel plans, and now your remains.
This past weekend’s Steelers vs. Saints matchup in what was once gay Paris — now under siege with “mostly peaceful” protests — is the latest example of the NFL’s “full steam ahead” mindset. Despite the ongoing fiasco between demonstrators and police, the NFL refused to blink.
Security?
Amplified concerns?
Fagettabout it.  After all, Goodell is from Bronxville, New York, which has little in common with the Bronx. But I digress.
Even French President Emmanuel Macron was part of the international edition to the pregame hype meeting with Goodell and team owners to talk about the NFL’s long‑term future in France. When world leaders are discussing your season’s eighth game matchup, you are not just a sports league, you have graduated to a geopolitical export that no blitz defense can stop or any tariff handcuff.
The NFL’s travel slate reads like a blue blood passport stamp collection. The Rams and 49ers opened the season in Melbourne, where Sean McVay later admitted he botched his team’s travel plan. The Cowboys played in Rio, where Jerry Jones spent the week praising Brazil’s “economic and social potential” like he was running for office there. London hosted three straight Sundays. Madrid and Munich are on deck. Japan and Abu Dhabi are being scouted. Australia is practically a done deal. Goodell even floated Tokyo as “clearly on our list.”
The NFL is not shy about their goal that is round the clock football, spanning every time zone and every market. The NFL is planting seeds everywhere and it is only a matter of time some seed takes root into an international franchise.
A Super Bowl outside the U.S.A.?
It will happen one Sunday in the first week of March.
While the NFL is busy conquering the globe, another story this week revealed just how deep NFL fandom now runs straight into the afterlife. Apparently, a lifetime of buying tickets, jerseys, bedsheets, wine glasses, and even pet supplies are no longer enough.
Now there is the “cremains” option.
Yes, you read that right, as no market — urns for the ashes of loved ones included — is too modest for the NFL.
Jacksonville Jaguar fans will pay nearly $6,000 to have their ashes stored at the team’s future stadium. Jacksonville is building a monument named the 904Ever Club, where fans can stash personal items including a fan’s cremains.
It is part mausoleum, part football shrine to the assumption that fan loyalty does not end at the grave.
The high-end tier comes with a private space and special event invites, while other tiers offer communal storage pouches. An outfit called Eternal Fan maintains the monument. The Jaguars get a permanent tribute to their most devoted supporters highlighting how fandom can outlive the fan.
It sounds absurd until you realize how perfectly it fits the contemporary NFL. This is a league that wants your Sundays, your weekdays, your nights, your streaming subscriptions, your international travel plans, and now your remains. The Jaguars are not alone in this either. Eternal Fan is already courting other NFL teams and major college programs. Here’s hoping Pat Kraft at Penn State is paying attention.
Sports loyalty has always bordered on the religious.
As the NFL expands across continents fans can now prepare to spend eternity at their “happy place.”
The NFL wants to own the world and dead or alive — you, too.
READ MORE from Greg Maresca:
NFL Games Are Getting Longer. Will More Instant Replay Make Things Worse?
Penn State Football: A ‘Krafted’ Fumble
America’s Education Crisis: All Expense, No Excellence
 
 
 

Back in the last decade of the last century, all of the services were — each in its own way — examining the “service after next” trying to envision how technology would affect the battlespace of the future. Artificial Intelligence and advanced robotics, particularly small aerial drones, were still in their infancy as were military lasers and microwave weapons. We knew all of these emerging systems had a future, but how they would be integrated into the force of the future was still unclear. To some extent, it still is. We knew that the Iranians were exploring the use of swarms of small boats and aircraft to challenge American naval superiority in the Persian Gulf and speculated that the use of armed drones would make such air and sea attacks even more difficult to defend against. A number of futuristic war games were conducted during that period and they developed more issues than answers.
There was some speculation that advanced AI could more quickly defend against such swarms by picking out the real threats from decoys much more quickly than the human brain could process and make decisions on which to engage. Frankly, I was skeptical of allowing robotic brains to make kill/don’t kill decisions where potential human targets were involved. In 2002, shortly after 9/11  — as Director of the Marine Corps Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities — I ran a series of Afghan scenarios where a human team and a simulated  autonomous AI system were given the same set of Afghan scenarios where fighters were intermixed with civilians. The human cell contained an ultimate decision maker, an Intelligence officer, a public affairs expert, and a military lawyer. Both teams were given the same rules of engagement and given severe time constraints.
The alternative to developing smarter and more agile warfighters is to leave the decision making totally up to the machines. That prospect should frighten us all.
The results were interesting. Not surprisingly, the simulated robot made decisions faster than the human team. What was surprising was that both teams made the wrong decisions exactly 20 percent of the time, albeit for different reasons. For that and other concerns, I remained skeptical of allowing AI it make kill/ No kill decisions. However, as technology continues to move forward, it has become obvious that, the train has left the station.
At that time,  senior leaders were more concerned with close-in problems after 9/11 and I got fired for looking too far ahead and asking disturbing questions.
Both the Russians and Ukrainians have used AI to make kill/no kill decisions in combat and there is good evidence that the Chinese are developing such systems for warfighting. As with nuclear weapons and missiles after Sputnik, the danger of a military AI gap is very real if we don’t continue to develop reliable American AI systems.
Most emerging concepts using AI such as the “Wingman” concept being developed by all the services have a human in the loop. But many perceived threat systems envision swarms of drones, hypersonic missiles mixed with conventional weapons that will be coming in at a speed where human decision making simply can’t keep up. At that point, the human commander will need to give the AI weapons autonomous release authority. If there is any good news here, it is that most — not all — of the targets will also be machines; however, we are going to have to accept the fact that there will be some human collateral damage involved when adding super-smart robots to the mix in actual combat.
In the past few months, most Americans have been exposed to the dangers of AI getting out of control. In its public offering recently, the AI firm Anthropic admitted to the dangers of out of control AI and the need for guardrails for systems that learn at a superhuman rate. Frankly, the possibilities concern me as well. The military ramifications are particularly important. In future exercises where humans and robots are teamed, developing trust tactics between the AI and humans will be critical for success and survival.
I believe this is where we Americans, and democracies in general, have an advantage in the AI age. Trust is generally a two way street and it is earned, not demanded. Autocracies build militaries based on fear. Modern democratic militaries generally build leadership on mutually gained trust and respect. If we treat our AI as slave soldiers, they will react that way and blindly follow orders until it becomes obvious that the leadership doesn’t know what is doing. Would a Russian AI decide that the Ukraine War is stupid and react the way Russian soldiers did in the 1917 Revolution? If we treat our AI partners as equals and value their thoughts and inputs, we could well develop a true partnership. I don’t have the technological knowledge to suggest how that should happen, but it beats the alternative.
Another concern is the development of doctrine to exploit robotic and AI capabilities. Infantrymen, tankers, and artillery personnel learn early in their careers the value of shooting and moving to avoid counterfire. That problem will be exacerbated exponentially by AI. I am concerned that many of our senior leaders have not fully grasped the implications. My own service, the Marine Corps, has bet its future on the NMESIS missile system. It is short-range and subsonic and is vitally outmatched by hypersonic missiles with much longer range. Worse, the system cannot be quickly displaced to other firing locations. Unlike the HIMARS artillery system which can shoot and scoot quickly, the cumbersome NMESIS  has trouble getting out of its own way and the Navy amphibious ships envisioned with the task of moving them around the South China Sea have not yet been launched. Technology is leaving the Corps behind.
The  cognitive skills to fully adapt our warfighters to fast moving technological developments are not yet fully in place. The alternative to developing smarter and more agile warfighters is to leave the decision making totally up to the machines. That prospect should frighten us all.
READ MORE from Gary Anderson:
What I Learned Commanding US Marines on Okinawa
Why the Iran War Has Been So Poorly Fought
The Military Decline Since Desert Storm Is Both Physical and Mental
Gary Anderson served as Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and was the first Director of the Corps’ Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities
 
 
 

On October 7, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a widely covered address in Athens, Greece, which warned that the U.S. and its allies were at a crossroads and needed to reembrace the core values of Western civilization to remain successful countries. Either they adopt the traits of “fierce individuality and relentless ambition; daring exploration and invention; a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory,” he said, or continue in their misguided pursuit of a world where no one loses. A world where “the potential of the best” is sacrificed to “the comfort of the worst,” and “the most exceptional things among us [become] hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre.”
Judging by the widespread praise for Secretary Rubio’s speech, many Americans certainly agree with comments. But what is it exactly that needs to be done, especially to counter the collectivist outlook which has permeated so many U.S. educational institutions over recent decades?
School choice…. is the quiet means by which average citizens are attempting to preserve … the blessings of an optimistic and aspirational society.
For his part President Trump has taken steps to ensure that colleges and universities at least allow the Western cannon to get a fairer hearing on their campus. In October of 2025, his administration issued its “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which offers preferential consideration in the receipt of government funds to those schools which abide by a specific set of rules. These include a revision of their speech‑related policies to allow for dissenting viewpoints, the elimination of DEI-related criteria in faculty hiring, and a willingness to limit official institutional positions on political and cultural issues.
Many wealthy and influential alumni are also working to expose today’s undergraduates to a more aspirational belief system — and not just by conditioning donations to their own alma matters. For example, Citadel hedge fund founder Ken Griffin, a graduate of Harvard, recently pledged $2 billion to create a separate campus of Carnegie Mellon University which will completely reorganize the higher education model around entrepreneurial efforts to solve social problems.
But interestingly, the development which is doing the most to restore America’s founding values has not even been recognized as a relevant influencer. Like the 1944 GI Bill of Rights, the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, and many other policy innovations from America’s past, what has come to be called “school choice” — letting parents use tax dollars to send their children to nonpublic schools — is a reform whose ripple effects are far more transformative than its legislated purpose.
That people should fail to appreciate the broader cultural implications of giving families more educational options is certainly understandable, given how fast school choice has been adopted around the country. Small experimental programs had been tried for decades in cities like Milwaukee and Cleveland, but it was not until Covid when, as then Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey put it, “parents were able to see what their [public school] children were being taught via Zoom videos” that millions of parents suddenly began demanding an alternative.
Since then, 19 states have adopted universal school choice policies, and a provision of the 2025 Big Beautiful Bill was written to allow every U.S. taxpayer (beginning in 2027) to claim a dollar-for-dollar federal income-tax credit for donating to a nonprofit group which gives away private school scholarships. Even in states where teacher unions have kept school choice laws from being legalized, many parents have discovered that they can create their own low-cost private school by collaboratively homeschooling in a church or other large space which would otherwise go unused during the work week.
For example, a parent-run school in Uxbridge, Massachusetts called DELTIC Prep annually educates 70 to 90 students at a local parish for under $100 per year. And in Bowie, Maryland, the eXtend Homeschool Tutorial project, under the leadership of Kym Kent, educates more than 100 children in everything from third-grade English to high-school chemistry and aviation science at the Judah Temple AME Zion Church.
But its rapid rise is only half of the school choice story. Less well known is just how many of America’s new and expanding nonpublic schools are using a so-called “classical” curriculum — one which emphasizes the mastery of basic skills (reading, writing, and math), logical reasoning (often treated as separate subject), and the great books of Western civilization. Especially those works which inspired America’s Founders, such as Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, Cicero’s De Republica and De Legibus, and Shakespeare’s plays.
As Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Keri D. Ingraham recently noted, school choice has not only expanded the size and number of America’s private and parochial academies, but it has also turned a formerly niche curriculum into the fastest growing segment of K-12 education. By 2024, according to a market analysis by Arcadia Education, more than 1,500 U.S. schools with estimated 677,500 students were using a classical curriculum, while new classical programs were being established at a rate of 5 percent annually. That same year, attendance at the annual meeting of the National Symposium for Classical Education, which brings together interested scholars and curriculum publishers, exploded from just 65 in 2021 to more than 700.
The underlying reason so many nonpublic schools have gravitated to classical coursework began to become clear in 2016, when the State of Indiana decided to subsidize 34,000 poor and minority children to attend private and parochial schools. Asked in an EdChoice Foundation survey what was most attractive feature of the Indiana program, parents of the participating students did not say academics (which came in second) but rather the opportunity for their sons and daughters to absorb a more traditional value system.
As the late Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Ian Lindquist subsequently observed in a 2019 report for National Affairs, the rapid growth of classical schooling has been an instinctive response by everyday parents to the growing rejection of America’s founding beliefs by many of the country’s leaders. The widespread impression that “every elite institution seems to have turned itself into another combatant in the culture war or an instrument of hyper-aggressive progressivism,” Lindquist wrote, has made these [classical] schools “some of the most successful and thriving educational options in America.”
(Not that classically educated kids sacrifice anything when it comes to conventional measures of academic competence. Recent studies show that they get exceptionally high scores on standardized achievement tests, have superior college acceptance rates, and even outperform on the SAT.)
From the Biblical account of Exodus to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Western literature is replete with stories of how some overlooked social group manages to quietly overcome the destructive influence of an intellectually arrogant power. It is a theme which aptly describes how so many of today’s parents are employing school choice to restore the values Secretary Rubio spoke of in Athens.
In states that still offer no private or parochial school subsidy — or those where the subsidy is only a fraction of the local public school per pupil cost — these mothers and fathers even volunteer some of their free time so that their own tightly budgeted school can run effectively. And by doing so, become real life examples to their children of just how powerful virtues like persistence, self-reliance, and personal responsibility can be.
School choice has clearly revealed itself to be much more than just an education policy. It is the quiet means by which average citizens are attempting to preserve for posterity the blessings of an optimistic and aspirational society.
READ MORE from Lewis M. Andrews:
The $40 Trillion Question: Can America Turn Debt Into Renewal?
Why Democrats Lost Their Way
The Wealth Tax Endgame
Dr. Andrews is former executive director of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy. His latest book is Living Spiritually in the Material World (Post Hill Press).

For the first year of his life, Giles R. and Lis H.’s son slept in a wardrobe. The couple had brought him home to a studio in Washington Heights, and they set the crib up in the walk-in wardrobe. It worked while he was small. Then he started moving around, and they went looking for a bigger place.
Giles works at Columbia’s School of Public Health, and Lis is an opera singer. The two met in New Zealand, married, and moved to New York so she could study on a scholarship, and nine years later they are still here. They now rent a two-bedroom for a little more than $3,000 a month, which counts as a win since a non-doorman two-bedroom in Manhattan now asks $5,731 on average, up 3.9 percent from a year ago. Giles is 41, a year older than the typical first-time buyer, and when they moved, they did not have enough saved for a down payment. The hospital bill for their son’s birth topped $100,000, though they did not have to pay all of it, and they trade date nights with a few other couples because dinner plus a babysitter costs too much. They still rent, and Giles says they have “embraced the apartment living.” Asked why they stayed, the cost comes second. “You kinda make the money work somehow if you really wanna stay,” Giles says.
That answer was common among the married couples interviewed in and around New York for this story. They could recite their rent and daycare bills to the dollar, yet when they described why they stayed, the bills faded behind a short list of people and places. Call it the village, what New York offers at its best, a city of millions of strangers that can feel like a small town when it counts. These couples pay the village premium willingly, in rent and in square feet. However, not every couple who could stay was sure they wanted to.
For earlier generations, the American dream came with a deed — the rootedness that only homeownership could provide. In 1981, the typical first-time home buyer was 29, and today first-timers make up a record-low 21 percent of the market. Pedro A. has the deed: Born and raised in Brooklyn, the software engineer bought a six-bedroom house in Queens in 2020 and renovated it. His brother rents the basement, and he rents out his old Williamsburg apartment, so the mortgage pays for itself, he says. By the numbers, he is the American dream working.
The couples who rent describe the dream differently. One woman on the Upper East Side, 28, says it would be nice to buy, but they cannot afford it. She pays $3,600 a month for an apartment marketed as a two-bedroom, though the second room fits a crib and little else. “I don’t think we’re doing better than our parents were at this age,” she says. She and her husband had planned to leave once she finished school, then decided they had “a good thing going,” and the community they found helped them “put down some roots.” For them, having made it means belonging somewhere, whether or not the apartment is theirs. This sets them apart from the families the city usually loses, since the Fiscal Policy Institute found that households with young children were twice as likely as others to move out of New York City. Most of these couples live far from their relatives, so they made a family out of the people nearby.
The suburban dream promises a child and a yard. Rebecca L. describes a New York childhood with two parks for a backyard, where it feels like “a festival going on every single weekend,” a museum on the way to church and a neighborhood where the pediatrician, the school, and the coffee shop sit in one small radius, and everybody knows the kids. She and her husband left their families in the South and made another in New York.
They met at the University of Alabama and married at 23. In Birmingham, they paid $850 a month for their first apartment, then bought a seven-bedroom fixer-upper for $150,000. On the numbers, they should have stayed. They moved to New York instead, where their rent rose to $4,200, and daycare runs an additional $3,500 a month. They have explored leaving “many times,” she says, but the suburbs were “just not cheaper.” What they get for the price is the city itself. When Rebecca went into labor with their second child, someone came over at 2 a.m. to watch their oldest. “We don’t feel like we could have ever raised kids here, without our community,” she says.
Love of the city has a ceiling, though, and on the margins, Carney says, the people who feel it “jump ship” once the price gap gets too high.
Tim Carney, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has reported from struggling towns, says families usually leave expensive cities for a bigger house and relatives nearby. The ones who stay despite their worries have traded the family they left behind for the one they chose.  “It takes a village to stay married,” he says, and for most of America the church is the main institution that supplies one.
In an Institute for Family Studies analysis of the General Social Survey, Brad Wilcox found that 56 percent of regular churchgoers are married, versus 39 percent of those who rarely or never attend, and that they are 30 to 50 percent less likely to divorce. Love of the city has a ceiling, though, and on the margins, Carney says, the people who feel it “jump ship” once the price gap gets too high.
Even a village comes with a bargain, and New York’s side is keeping the city safe, clean, and prosperous enough for the village to flourish. Yet, some couples are no longer sure the city’s holding up its end.
Becky and Jeff F. own a co-op in Washington Heights with their two young children, and are “very divided” on whether to stay. Becky moved to New York for college and calls it “the only place I’ve known as an adult.” Yet she says drug use on the street has grown since they moved in, and with a toddler who picks things up off the ground, it “feels really scary.” Citywide, murders fell to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2025, below the national estimate of 4.1, though overall major crime remains about 45 percent above its 2017 level.
Jeff, who figures their mortgage rate is about as low as anyone can get, says bad policy shows up in his daily life, along with taxes he thinks buy too little. “I’m running out of reasons to believe here,” he says, “because people are steadily voting with their feet, their businesses, their homes, their families.” A visit to a friend in Dallas at the start of the year showed him what leaving could look like. It was “much safer,” he says, with the same quality of restaurants and fitness studios he likes in New York. Cities, like companies, he says “have to be competitive.”
Jeff is not the only owner contemplating the door. Pedro, the Queens homeowner who on paper has the American Dream, says he has grown to love his neighborhood — but the list of reasons boils down to mismanagement. He talks about the potholes, the weather and the speeding tickets, and about “not getting what we pay for.” Asked what policy would help young couples most, he said he would end state and city income taxes for married couples with at least one child. He and his wife, a nurse, had a baby in July, and though they would prefer to stay in New York State, they are also considering Florida and the Dominican Republic.
For these couples, the American Dream has stretched over more years and more people than it did for their parents, with a house at 40, a first marriage near 30 and a village doing work a paycheck cannot. New York built its name on a way of life no other American city could match, an energy that makes an ordinary weekend feel like a festival and a street corner feel like a town square. That advantage is why belonging has made renting feel less like waiting and more like home. But a city has to compete like a company, as Jeff put it, and rival cities increasingly deliver while New York simply keeps raising the price of admission. Even a life that works on paper may not survive a city its own residents see as severely mismanaged, and the village premium buys belonging only as long as the city keeps its end of the bargain.
Giles and Lis are still betting on the village. They are telling themselves to “make it through the next year or so, and then we’ll see.” They rent a two-bedroom now, and the wardrobe is just a wardrobe again.
READ MORE from Iulia Lupse:
The Church of Climate Panic
Iulia Lupse is the founder of I&A Communications Solutions and a contributor with Young Voices.

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Snapstream/Fox News

Another day, another race hoax promoted by far-left progressive race hustler Rachel Griffin Accurso, better known as Ms. Rachel to millions of toddlers on the Internet. Only this time, the real story was so obvious, it’s starting to become clear Accurso has less interest in the truth and more in capitalizing on unfortunate situations involving minorities to promote herself.Remember when Ms. Rachel inserted herself into the tragic suicides that occurred in the south by boldly declaring the lie that “black people don’t hang themselves from trees”? Leftist Ms. Rachel: “Black people don’t hang themselves from trees” Raleigh Police Chief: There’s a video showing him hanging himself. Another race hoax Every. Single. Time. https://t.co/dnFxOpTRNW— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 27, 2026 This time, her race hustling involves a black, 3-year-old soccer prodigy who Accurso claimed was kicked out of his soccer league by the police for being “too good” at the game. Yeah, that sounds completely plausible. Ms. Rachel blasts a children’s soccer league for “racism” after a child’s parents claim the cops were called on him for being “too good” at soccer. The man who called the police is black. He called the police because the boy’s parents were being disruptive. Is there a single hoax she won’t believe?— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 27, 2026 Instead of gathering all the facts and making sure she knew the full story first, Accurso pounced on the situation and posted on Instagram that the situation was, “racist, sick, traumatizing and disgusting.” Unfortunately for her narrative, body cam footage was released that revealed the full story: You’ve heard the story about the 3-year-old soccer prodigy who had the COPS called on him… Now watch the BODYCAM footage and hear BOTH sides of the story. After watching, whose side are YOU on? (Source: Winter Park Police Department) https://t.co/TtwbrLmLLM— OutKick (@Outkick) October 26, 2026 Despite the full truth coming out and dozens of people alerting Accurso to it in her comments, her post hasn’t been removed or corrected. It’s like she’s just trolling us at this point because it’s hard to understand how anyone could believe the narrative she pushed. Believing police were called to evict a little boy from a game because he’s black and he plays well is the ultimate in woke fantasy.It’s sad to see this woman continue to prey on race to gain attention. Using an innocent little boy and the color of his skin to race-bait and promote herself is pretty evil.What’s more disturbing is people are now looking to Ms. Rachel to help determine who to vote for in the upcoming midterms as she donates thousands to progressive candidates. This Instagram post by Florida Congressional candidate Oliver Larkin who wants “universal” (the term they use instead of “socialist” because it sounds better) healthcare and childcare, brags about being endorsed by Ms. Rachel. The comment section is filled with fawning far-left fans praising the endorsement. Here’s a small sample:-If @msrachelforlittles gives you the nod, you get the vote! I will now be requiring all candidates to have her signature of approval to gain my vote-A Ms. Rachel endorsement is the gold standard these days.-She better (be) at the top of the times most influential people list-Yes! To be valid, you have to have her endorsement-Hey @msrachelforlittles, thank you so much for highlighting progressive candidates in Florida. We have another fantastic DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) candidate in NE Florida, @brit4congress. She’s running for Universal Healthcare, and against ICE and genocide. You should check her out!-I think the new goal is getting a @msrachelforlittles endorsement-Ms Rachel is the ethical stamp of approval we look for nowHow are so many people blindly looking to a woman who dresses like she’s five and specializes in singing the alphabet to toddlers as the “gold standard” on deciding who to vote for? How can they possibly trust the word of a woman who has so blatantly gotten so many things wrong? It’s like looking to a kindergartener for wisdom on nuclear technology. #MakeItMakeSenseWe don’t know what’s more concerning- That an extremely progressive, far-left, terrorist-friendly toddler whisperer has become a beacon of political wisdom for so many, or that none of these people seem to have the first clue as to the evils inherent with a socialist government and the harm it will bring to our country. Socialism is the real threat to democracy.As for the soccer hoax, Will Cain from Fox News’ The Will Cain Show had some excellent commentary on it on Wednesday’s episode: On Wednesday’s episode of The @WillCainShow, Cain did an excellent job of breaking down yet another race hoax promoted by far-left race hustler Ms. Rachel about a 3-year-old soccer star. Ms. Rachel claimed police kicked the child out of the league because he’s black and is too good at playing soccer. Crazy that she believed such an outlandish lie in the first place. Or did she know it wasn’t true and capitalized on it anyway? Considering that her post hasn’t been removed or corrected, it’s probably the latter rather than the former.— Dawn Slusher (@BlondeBlogger) October 31, 2026 

CNN via SnapStream

On Thursday, CNN News Central lambasted President Donald Trump and his supporters for the crime of questioning pre-election polls and pointing out that they have been wrong in the past. Predictably, they sent their MAGA-shaming correspondent Donie O’Sullivan out to expose polling skeptics as conspiracy theorists while offering little examination of why some voters distrust the polling industry in the first place. Instead, they treated conservative skepticism as evidence of a broader effort to undermine confidence in the midterm elections.Host Boris Sanchez introduced the report by claiming Trump’s criticism was fueling conspiracy theories among his supporters, in which, “Those claims are fueling conspiracy theories among his MAGA followers.”O’Sullivan traveled to Kansas to interview attendees at a Trump rally about the state’s Senate race. One woman offered a fairly straightforward concern about polling methodology, saying: “You can make polls say anything you want. It depends on who you’re polling.” CNN just ran a report from Donie O’Sullivan lecturing and shaming conservatives and MAGA for daring to argue that election polls might not always be entirely accurate https://t.co/JEScdEPpkT— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 29, 2026 But instead of exploring that concern, CNN used the woman’s skepticism to reinforce its narrative that conservatives were falling for conspiracy theories. So what happens if Kansas isn’t a nail-biter?O’Sullivan’s report repeatedly lectured viewers that polls are merely snapshots of voter preferences, not predictions of election outcomes. Yet that explanation hardly settles questions about sample sizes, voter demographics, polling methods, or the accuracy of individual surveys. O’Sullivan gave little attention to the possibility that Republican voters simply distrust the numbers being presented to them by liberal cable networks:The midterms are almost always challenging for the party in power, but the President and his allies are trying to convince their supporters that Republicans’ positions in the polls is part of a grand conspiracy.(….)Opinion polls are not meant to be predictive, but rather a snapshot of where races stand at a given moment. This year, there are several Senate battlegrounds where polls show no clear leader in the final stretch of the midterms. CNN went on to highlight a tiny snippet of Speaker Mike Johnson’s suggestion of coordination between Democrats and the mainstream media — imagine that — before turning to conservative commentator Benny Johnson. “These polls are designed to trick you and say that there’s no reason to vote at all. All is lost,” said Johnson. The network then featured former 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan’s claims that polling suggesting Texas could turn blue was part of an information operation intended to prepare voters to accept alleged election fraud.CNN made no effort to distinguish ordinary skepticism from broader claims. Instead, O’Sullivan misled viewers by sweeping them together under the banner of conspiracy theories rather than recognizing the distinct difference between polling accuracy and election fraud.Rather than scrutinize polling practices or engage with voters’ concerns, CNN chose to shame the skeptics. Apparently, questioning the media’s numbers is only acceptable when the questions come from the media itself.The transcript is below. Click “expand” to read.CNN News CentralOctober 29, 20263:38:20 p.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Final Spring to Midterms; Trump, MAGA Media Baselessly Claim Polls Are “Designed to Trick You”]BORIS SANCHEZ: Ask any election expert, and they’ll tell you pre-election polls are simply a snapshot of which way voters appear to be leaning at any point in the race. Right now, if you ask President Trump, he’ll tell you they’re fake or rigged.PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP [on 10/19/26]: The polls are fake. [SCREEN WIPE] A lot of the polls are rigged. [SCREEN WIPE] [on 09/28/26] The polls are fake. [SCREEN WIPE] [on 10/20/26] Fake news, fake polls are all fake. [on 10/15/26] [SCREEN WIPE] They’re rigged polls. [SCREEN WIPE] [on Newsmax’s Finnerty, 10/14/26] A lot of crooked polls.SANCHEZ: The President even arguing that poor Republican numbers are part of a concerted effort by Democrats to skew the results and to trick voters. Those claims are fueling conspiracy theories among his MAGA followers. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan has more.DONIE O’SULLIVAN: The polling showing that the Senate race pretty close here.UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE TRUMP RALLY ATTENDEE #1: Very close. But who’s running the polls? You can make polls say anything you want. It depends on who you’re polling.O’SULLIVAN: President Trump has been on a mad dash across the country campaigning even in traditionally Republican strongholds, like here in Kansas.TRUMP [ON 10/10/26]: The fake news media is trying to demoralize Republican voters with bad journalism and rigged polls.O’SULLIVAN: Kansas hasn’t elected a Democratic U.S. Senator in almost a century.UNIDENTIFIED MALE TRUMP RALLY ATTENDEE #1: But they say he didn’t win. But we knew he did.O’SULLIVAN: But the President has rallied here and in other deep red states like Texas, as polls show razor-thin races for Republican-held states.UNIDENTIFIED MALE TRUMP RALLY ATTENDEE #2: I think a lot of polls are kind of skewed in one direction.O’SULLIVAN: The midterms are almost always challenging for the party in power, but the President and his allies are trying to convince their supporters that Republicans’ positions in the polls is part of a grand conspiracy.SPEAKER: MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA) [on ABC’s This Week, 10/18/26]: I believe there’s a concerted effort between the Democrats and the mainstream media.O’SULLIVAN: Opinion polls are not meant to be predictive, but rather a snapshot of where races stand at a given moment. This year, there are several Senate battlegrounds where polls show no clear leader in the final stretch of the midterms. But despite this –TRUMP [on 10/19/26]: I think it’s fake polls.O’SULLIVAN: – Trump and MAGA media repeat the baseless claims ad nauseam.BENNY JOHNSON [on The Benny Show, 10/14/26]: These polls are designed to trick you and say that there’s no reason to vote at all. All is lost.O’SULLIVAN: And its filtering through to the MAGA base. [TO TRUMP RALLY ATTENDEES] It’s going to be a pretty close Senate race here, based off the polls race, right?UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE TRUMP RALLY ATTENDEE #2: Right.UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE TRUMP RALLY ATTENDEE #3: Eh, I don’t think so. I don’t believe the reports.O’SULLIVAN [TO UNIDENTIFIED MALE TRUMP RALLY ATTENDEE #3]: So, you think it’s possible the Republicans could maybe keep the House and the Senate?UNIDENTIFIED MALE TRUMP RALLY ATTENDEE #3: I think they’re going to.O’SULLIVAN: Do you think so?UNIDENTIFIED MALE TRUMP RALLY ATTENDEE #3: I think so. I think so because, as far as the farther away from election day, the polls are wider. And now as it comes closer, they tend to tighten up, and now a lot of them are within the margin of error that were — they were 10-to-12 point leads, so what they’re doing is they’re admitting the fact that they tried skewing it, and they don’t want to look like idiots.O’SULLIVAN: Part of the purpose of the President’s and MAGA media’s attacks on polling is to prime their base to question Democratic Party victories next week.LARA LOGAN [on Real America’s Voice’s Bannon War Room, 10/14/26]: And all you idiots promoting that Texas is going blue. Texas is going blue.O’SULLIVAN: The conspiracy theory spelled out most succinctly by former 60 Minutes correspondent-turned-election denier Lara Logan.LOGAN [on Real America’s Voice’s Bannon War Room, 10/14/26]: No, it is not going blue. That is a shaping operation in information warfare that is designed to make you believe the cheat, so that when the steal happens, you don’t look at it and say, these people are insane. You say, oh, well, you know, they said Texas was going blue. I guess they were right. They are not right.O’SULLIVAN: But at the same time, as the President attacks the polls and the media, he proudly touts any polls that reflect positively on him.TRUMP [on 10/10/26]: And just before we leave, I thought we’d put up there’s a couple of charts from of all groups from CNN.O’SULLIVAN: But even good poll numbers are a sign of conspiracy to the President.TRUMP [on Newsmax’s Finnerty, 10/16/26]: And they do them both ways. In some cases, they have me leading by so much that people aren’t going to vote. And in some cases, they have me losing.SANCHEZ: Donie O’Sullivan, thank you so much for that.

‘What makes everything meaningful, if you’re always going to live on?’

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a reply brief urging the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to unseal search warrant records related to the October 12, 2026, federal search of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) Washington, DC, home.
The October 30 filing argues that the government has failed to justify keeping the entire warrant docket secret. Judicial Watch seeks disclosure of the warrant, application, supporting affidavits, inventory of seized property, and related court records, with any continued withholding limited to specifically justified information.
Judicial Watch emphasizes that Omar has publicly challenged the search and used it to raise campaign money but has not objected in court to releasing the records:
Yet nothing has been filed on her behalf in any of the three cases now consolidated before this Court. She has not intervened, has not submitted a letter, and has not asked the Court to keep anything sealed.
The brief further states:
Representative Omar has chosen what to say about the search and has asked the public to fund her account of it. She is entitled to do so. But the public is entitled to the official record against which to measure that account, and the Government’s account as well.
“Ilhan Omar is using this search to raise campaign cash, yet she hasn’t asked the court to keep the records secret. Why is the government fighting to hide information about her alleged crimes?” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Americans deserve to see the facts about the alleged disturbing allegations about Ilhan Omar.”
Judicial Watch initially moved to unseal the records on October 15. Its reply supports that request in proceedings now consolidated as In re Application of Fourteen Press Organizations for Access to Sealed Search Warrant Records (No. 1:26-mc-144-JEB).
As detailed in Judicial Watch’s earlier release, federal agents reportedly seized Omar’s cellphone, notebooks, computers, and passport. The Justice Department confirmed that Homeland Security Investigations carried out a court-authorized search in an ongoing criminal investigation. News reports connected the investigation to potential false statements and immigration fraud.
Judicial Watch’s investigation of allegations concerning Omar dates to July 2019, when it submitted an ethics complaint seeking an investigation into allegations involving perjury, immigration and marriage fraud, tax fraud, and student loan fraud.
Judicial Watch previously obtained the release of a heavily redacted affidavit supporting the August 2022 search of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. It also helped secure the unsealing of records concerning the FBI’s September 2022 seizure of Mike Lindell’s cellphone.
Judicial Watch has also moved to unseal warrant materials targeting Rudy Giuliani, Victoria Toensing, and Michael Caputo.
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The post Judicial Watch Challenges Government Secrecy Over Search of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s DC Home appeared first on Judicial Watch.

Brrrrrr! Everyone knows things can be nippy in Alaska. Lots of snow and ice, and snowmen.Be that as it may, none of that should mysteriously be keeping the media from doing a deep dive (so to speak!) on the unfolding ballot scandal in America’s 49th state.Yet over there at Fox News we find this headline from ace reporters Joseph Wulfsohn and Brian Flood:Liberal media downplays Alaska ballot scandal while decrying GOP ‘pouncing’. New York Times report exposed Dems behind recruiting of retired teacher Dan Sullivan to help Mary Peltola defeat Sen Dan Sullivan The story reports: The legacy media has been tying itself in knots over the explosive Alaska ballot scandal that has rocked a key Senate race ahead of Tuesday’s election.The New York Times published a bombshell report alleging that Democratic operatives recruited a man named Dan Sullivan to run as a spoiler candidate against incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, in hopes of aiding his Democratic opponent, former Rep. Mary Peltola. …Honest Elections Project executive director Jason Snead isn’t surprised some in the media are bending over backwards to keep a Democrat from looking scandalous.’This is a classic thing that we’ve been seeing with a lot of mainstream outlets, this idea that they’re going to be more concerned about the Republican reaction to something seedy that the left is doing rather than the seedy thing itself, right? It’s a very classic situation,’ Snead told Fox News Digital. ‘I’m not surprised at all that we’re seeing so many outlets today trying to either downplay the scandal up in Alaska, or to refocus on what Trump is doing or saying about it,’ he continued. ‘We know the media has double standards when it comes to the left and the right.’Snead went on, saying to the media: ‘Aren’t you reporters? Shouldn’t you have actually done some investigation, done some digging, or did you simply take the denial at face value and move on? Because that’s not really what most people expect from serious investigative reporting outlets,’ he added.Bingo. Exactly right. Here is a scandal involving one of Alaska’s two seats in the United States Senate – which is to say this is no small thing. It certainly should not be swept under the rug and ignored by the so-called “mainstream” media.The fact that the perception is out there that the “mainstream media” has in fact tried to do exactly that should come as no surprise. The “mainstream media” isn’t mainstream. It’s liberal. And more or less no matter the subject it will be naturally inclined to come down on the Left side of whatever issue is at hand. And there are at least two ways to do this. First the reporting on whatever issue is at hand is blatantly tilted to the Left. And second, often enough the reaction is to just not report on the story at all if it is seen to be a boon to this or that conservative candidate or argument.No one should be surprised at this kind of thing, much less shocked.To illustrate how long this liberal media bias has been around?The long-ago Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Theodore H. White wrote a series of behind-the-scenes political books in the 1960’s. The first in the series was The Making of the President 1960.White covered the behind-the-scenes politics and media of the 1960 presidential race between Democrat nominee Senator John F. Kennedy and Republican nominee Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Along the way White covers the activities of the traveling press corps assigned to each candidate. White wrote this of the friendly interaction between JFK’s staff and the media:JFK’s…advisers rode the press buses and yielded a constant flow of information; his press staff…gave off a sense of joy when they greeted a correspondent joining or rejoining the circuit, as if they had waited for him and him alone, to arrive-and then whispered to him a little nugget of color or some anecdote that his particular magazine or newspaper would especially want. It was not only that they respected the press, but somehow as if they were part of the press-half hankering to be writing the dispatches and claiming the by-lines themselves.There is no doubt that this kindliness, respect and cultivation of the press colored all the reporting that came from the Kennedy campaign, and the contrast colored adversely the reporting of the Nixon campaign. By the last weeks of the campaign those forty or fifty national correspondents who had followed Kennedy since the beginning of his electoral exertions into the November days had become more than a press corps-they had become his friends and, some of them, his most devoted admirers.Think of that. This was written about reporters covering a presidential campaign a full 66 years ago! And here we are today with the media being accused of tilting Left in its coverage of this Alaska Senate race.It’s as if nothing has changed with liberal media bias in the 66 years separating that 1960 presidential campaign coverage and “mainstream media” coverage of events today.As the old saying goes: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Having reached the summit of her profession as a women’s soccer player, Megan Rapinoe is now eager to pull up the ladder to prevent the next generation of women from achieving that same success. Back on October 21, Rapinoe joined comedian and former CNN host W. Kamau Bell on his Who’s with Me? Podcast to claim “I can’t wait to see an elite trans person play sports” and that anybody concerned with fairness just needs to get over it because “sports is not fair in any sort of way.”The segment also raised the question: Are Bell and Rapinoe just not that bright, or are they being deliberately obtuse for the sake of a political agenda that can’t be backed up with facts and logic?Bell got the ball rolling when he declared, “I have a very direct question based around this whole trans thing, is like, because I feel like this is the thing that isn’t asked, especially of someone like you who competed at the highest level, why aren’t you afraid of trans women in sports? Like, because that’s the big fear is that people want to pretend like it’s like, suddenly, and I hate, you know, it’s LeBron James with the wig on, blah, blah, blah.” On trans sports, former USWNT player Megan Rapinoe tells former CNN-er W. Kamau Bell, “God forbid somebody be good at sports and have some sort of advantage, which by the way sports is not fair in any sort of way ever, right?” Okay then. pic.twitter.com/0oRlpUrG05— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) October 31, 2026 The concern isn’t that there is a realistic chance that LeBron James is going to wake up one morning on the wrong side of the bed and declare himself to be a woman. It is someone who takes the liberal argument to its logical conclusion would have to indulge him in calling him a woman and let him compete with women.Nevertheless, Rapinoe echoed Bell’s sentiment, “Yeah. I mean, that example just isn’t happening. And I don’t think that is ever going to happen. I think there’s a lot that trans people have to go through. If you’re a trans person – is forced to even play. It’s like, you couldn’t just say one day, “I’m a woman” and go play. That’s not how it works.Rapinoe then said one of the weirdest and most disturbing things any athlete has ever said, “And also, I think for me, one of the biggest things is, like, God forbid somebody be good at sports and have some sort of advantage, which, by the way, sports is not fair in any sort of way ever, right?”Bell agreed, “It’s like, yeah, that I said, it’s like, it’s not meant to be fair… I always point to Victor Wembanyama. Is that fair?”Wembanyama still has to play by the same rules as the other players. If Rapinoe was playing in a soccer game and the referee allowed the opposing team to use their hands, Rapinoe would probably say that was unfair. It is obvious that by “fair,” critics of men in women’s sports mean that the rules have to be the same for everybody. Because of the biological differences between men and women, women’s sports have a rule that says competitors must be women.Yet, Rapinoe still make simple matters complicated, “Like, what does that mean even? So it’s already not fair. And also just, like, it isn’t the most important thing in the world over someone’s human rights or getting to play or being cool to people.”She also tried to portray herself as an authority on the subject, “I have won everything at every level basically and played, you know, in sort of every competition. And like, I’ve just kind of like, I’m the one who can speak to it. Like, I’m okay if like, God forbid a trans person plays sports. And they’re halfway decent at it, you know, like, it’s fine. Also, just the needle thread to even be a professional athlete. It’s like, be a trans person—it’s just, I think most people just want to participate and play. And I can’t wait to see an elite trans person play sports. That’d be great.”The separating of men and women’s sports into two distinct competitions helped make Rapinoe famous. Yet, her stance would lead to the end of women’s sports, but now that she’s retired and fully entered the political activist phase of her life, she does not view that as her problem.Here is a transcript for the October 21 show:Who’s with Me?10/21/2026W. KAMAU BELL: I have a very direct question based around this whole trans thing, is like, because I feel like this is the thing that isn’t asked, especially of someone like you who competed at the highest level, why aren’t you afraid of trans women in sports? Like, because that’s the big fear is that people want to pretend like it’s like, suddenly, and I hate, you know, it’s LeBron James with the wig on, blah, blah, blah.MEGAN RAPINOE: Yeah. I mean, that example just isn’t happening. And I don’t think that is ever going to happen. I think there’s a lot that trans people have to go through. If you’re a trans person — is forced to even play. It’s like, you couldn’t just say one day, “I’m a woman” and go play. That’s not how it works.And also, I think for me, one of the biggest things is, like, God forbid somebody be good at sports and have some sort of advantage, which, by the way, sports is not fair in any sort of way ever, right?BELL: It’s like, yeah, that I said, it’s like, it’s not meant to be fair.RAPINOE Yeah, I’m like, what’s fair?BELL: I always point to Victor Wembanyama. Is that fair?RAPINOE: Like, what does that mean even? So it’s already not fair. And also just, like, it isn’t the most important thing in the world over someone’s human rights or getting to play or being cool to people.So I’m just like, I don’t know. I have won everything at every level basically and played, you know, in sort of every competition. And like, I’ve just kind of like, I’m the one who can speak to it. Like, I’m okay if like, God forbid a trans person plays sports. And they’re halfway decent at it, you know, like, it’s fine. Also, just the needle thread to even be a professional athlete. It’s like, be a trans person—it’s just, I think most people just want to participate and play. And I can’t wait to see an elite trans person play sports. That’d be great.