Mark Penn, a political pollster and former strategist for Hillary Clinton, predicted that Democrats will be facing another electoral “wipeout” during the 2026 congressional midterms.

In an op-ed, Penn argued that Democrats have deviated too far from their original party platform, costing them votes and popularity.

‘The New Republican Party is positioned to deepen its support with these lapsed Democratic voters.’

“Democrats are facing the worst ratings in decades in my polls and others, dropping to as low as 29% favorability in the CNN poll, down from 62% in 2008,” Penn said. “The reasons are pretty clear — after the 2024 election, voters re-evaluated the job that President Joe Biden did and began scratching their heads at the actions and positions of Democrats in Congress.”

“Unless there is a major reset, I expect they will have an unexpected wipeout in next year’s midterm elections.”

Penn pointed to policies that Democrats previously held, like tough immigration policies and shrinking the government, which they have since abandoned. Since then, the Democratic Party has become the face of DEI, open borders, and hypersensitive social values that embrace unpopular issues like transgenderism and climate change.

“Step by step, Democrats drifted from these policies that produced near 75% approval ratings for Clinton,” Penn said. “Tax and spend came back in the Obama years as tax rates went up and Obamacare kicked in, and he moved decisively to the left in the last two years of his presidency.”

What used to be considered radical became commonplace in the Democratic Party. This ideological shift crescendoed with the election of former President Joe Biden, who Penn says “seemed to abandon virtually every position he ever took in his over 50 years as a moderate senator.”

“By the time he departed the Oval Office, the left, and a set of extreme policies, had remade the Democratic Party from a working-class and middle-class party to a coalition of elites and Black voters,” Penn said.

As a result of this tremendous shift, President Donald Trump swept all seven swing states and secured the popular vote. Penn predicted that his historic victory in November 2024 will have a trickle-down effect in the 2026 midterms.

“The result is a Democratic Party in ruins which will have to wait for the next Bill Clinton to come along and reset it again and return it to its common-sense, middle-class roots,” Penn said. “Otherwise, the New Republican Party is positioned to deepen its support with these lapsed Democratic voters.”

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In an Orwellian move by former Speaker of the Texas House Rep. Dade Phelan (R), a bill has been filed that would criminalize political expression in Texas.

House Bill 366 would make it a crime to distribute altered media, including political memes, without a government-approved disclaimer. Violators of the proposed bill could face up to a year in jail for a political meme.

“Wait, I thought we wanted less government here in the state of Texas?” Sara Gonzales asks on “Come and Take It.” “I feel personally attacked. I’m not going to lie, I feel like this was written because Dade Phelan wants me in jail.”

The bill specifically targets political advertising that features an image, audio recording, or video recording of an office holder’s or candidate’s appearance, speech, or conduct that did not occur in reality.

This includes media altered using generative artificial intelligence technology.

“So like you can use AI to make any sort of memes, any sort of pictures, as ridiculous as they may be,” Gonzales says. “It doesn’t say, ‘Hey, if this is satire, you get a pass.’ This doesn’t say, ‘Hey, if this is so ridiculously absurd that any reasonable person would know that it’s clearly satire, that it is clearly made up, that it is clearly photoshopped’ — it doesn’t give a pass for any of that.”

Representative Phelan said in response to criticism, “I’m not coming for your memes. If you like your memes, you can keep your memes. This has nothing to do with X or Facebook or anything on social media.”

But Gonzales isn’t buying it.

“It’s just that the TEC general counsel James Tinley blatantly said that social media posts would be covered under this communist China-style law,” she says, noting that Phelan’s response was a play on something Barack Obama once said.

“‘If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, if you like your health care, you can keep your health care,’” Gonzales says. “So obviously, a throwback to that line. It’s just cute because in the same way that Obama was lying when he said that, Dade Phelan is also lying when he says, ‘If you like your memes, you can keep your memes.’”

“So the irony is not lost on me,” she adds.

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The beef between LeBron James and Stephen A. Smith just got more complicated. Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors power forward and James’ ride-or-die, has entered the chat.

Here’s a recap for those who missed it: On March 6, James confronted Smith courtside during the Lakers’ matchup against the Knicks. Enraged by Smith’s previous comments that Bronny was pushed prematurely into the NBA by his father, James, according to Smith’s recounting the following day on “The Stephen A. Smith Show,” yelled “stop f**king with my son!” Smith called the public confrontation “weak” and “bulls**t.”

Last Saturday on “The Draymond Green Show,” Green involved himself in the feud, obviously taking LeBron’s side.

“You go on national TV calling out this African-American, this black father, who’s raised another successful black young man, and you go on TV calling him out as a father because his son plays in the NBA? That’s a**-backwards,” he told Baron Davis.

Jason Whitlock weighs in on this latest flare-up in the scandal.

“I’ve never seen a love affair quite like Draymond Green’s affinity for LeBron James,” he tells “Fearless” contributor Steve Kim. “We all know that Draymond Green would love to have LeBron James’ baby.”

“[Smith] gave an opinion that, by the way, most people agree with,” adds Steve, noting that “Stephen A. Smith’s job, whether we like his opinions or not, is to give his opinion.”

The fact that Smith is doing his job and catching so much flak for it has become “really unfair” to him, Steve argues.

Jason agrees that it’s unfair to Smith, but he also speculates that some of this feuding is “manufactured.”

Even so, he condemns Green’s comments as toxic — specifically the emphasis on LeBron being a black father, “as if there’s some special level of treatment that Stephen A. owes LeBron James because of the color of his skin.”

Whitlock can’t understand why having “more melanin in your skin” means “you’re not supposed to say certain things about people that share some level of your melanin.”

“For this to be normalized and sent out to young people that hey, there’s a special set of rules for black people that they have to adhere to or they’re outside the norm … I just can’t believe that’s where we are as a society,” he says. “LeBron James is a billionaire — a billionaire. He needs a special level of treatment” because of slavery and Jim Crow laws that ended decades ago?

Steve agrees and brings up a Thomas Sowell quote that captures the double standard Green is promoting: “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”

“A marvelous statement,” says Jason.

To hear more of their conversation and more about the LeBron-Stephen A. Smith-Draymond Green feud, watch the clip above.

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Jeanette Vizguerra is a leftist fugitive who illegally stole into the United States in December 1997. After her
criminal conviction for using fake documents in 2009, she was ordered out of the country — something the Obama administration evidently never got around to. While the first Trump administration similarly failed to eject her from the homeland, the president’s second administration is evidently not making the same mistake.

To the chagrin of open-borders activists, Democratic lawmakers, and other radicals, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement nabbed Vizguerra on Monday. ICE Denver indicated that the 53-year-old activist was arrested without incident and will remain in ICE custody until she is sent home to Mexico.

Over the years, Vizguerra routinely hid in the basements of churches to avoid the authorities. Jordan Garcia, a 15-year acquaintance of Vizguerra who works for the leftist
American Friends Service Committee, told the New York Times that immigration agents managed to catch her outside the Target store near Denver where she worked.

— (@)

Garcia, citing second-hand testimony from Vizguerra’s family, claimed that one of the agents told the illegal alien, “We finally got you.”

Mike Johnston, the Democratic mayor of Denver who
cut the city’s police budget in order to provide more services to illegal aliens, whined about the Trump administration’s faithful enforcement of immigration law, stating, “This is not immigration enforcement. This is Soviet-style political persecution of political dissidents under the guise of immigration enforcement.”

Johnston, among the sanctuary city mayors recently
referred by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation, falsely stated that “this is not someone with a criminal record.”

Vizguerra was charged in 2009 with not having a driver’s license or insurance, driving with an expired license plate, and using a false Social Security number on a job application. CNN
indicated the leftist activist who repeatedly violated immigration law ultimately pleaded guilty to “attempted possession of a forged instrument” in the second degree.

‘She is a subversive criminal who has abused the laws of the US over and over.’

Fox News reporter Bill Melugin noted that in addition to her
past criminality, Vizguerra apparently also wished ill on the democratically elected leader of the nation she had broken into, sharing an image of an Indian scalping President Donald Trump on her Facebook page with the caption, “This is how you Make America Great Again.”

“Jeanette Vizguerra is a mother and pillar in her community. I am deeply concerned about ICE’s actions to detain her without any due process, like a deportation order,”
stated Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.). “ICE should ensure Jeanette has legal counsel and immediately release her.”

ICE has reportedly confirmed that, contrary to Bennet’s suggestion, Vizguerra does have a deportation order — and she’s had one for many years.

National Domestic Workers Alliance, an advocacy group of which Vizguerra is a member, similarly bemoaned her arrest but refrained from similarly lying about the fugitive’s criminal history or her affordance of due process.

“After living, working, and contributing to her community in the U.S. for 30 years, Jeanette now faces deportation to Mexico and separation from her children,” the National Domestic Workers Alliance
said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: These attacks are intended to provoke fear and silence us, but we will protect each other.”

In 2017, Time magazine
claimed Vizguerra was one of the most influential people in the world. Apparently, what qualified her was her willingness to criticize a foreign nation’s immigration policy while living there illegally and doing her best to fight its application of the law. According to Time, it also helped Vizguerra’s case that she did not come to the U.S. “to rape, murder or sell drugs.”

Former ICE Denver Field Office Director John Fabbricatore
noted that in 2019, immigration authorities tried to remove Vizguerra, striking a deal with her attorney that she would depart voluntarily — something she had done before — thereby avoiding arrest.

“Plane tickets were purchased and we waited for her to show up at the airport. She left the church and instead fled to a different church to seek sanctuary violating the agreement she had with the government,” said Fabbricatore. “I had another plan in place to physically arrest her but unfortunately President Trump unfairly lost the election and when the Biden administration came onboard they shut me down and granted Vizguerra another Stay of Deportation.”

“President Trump is back and the immigration law is being taken seriously again,” continued Fabbricatore. “Once again, Vizguerra does not have a Stay and it is time to go. She is a subversive criminal who has abused the laws of the US over and over.”

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State representatives in Minnesota, one of the bluest states in the union, have just encouraged more abortion by voting against key bills that would have protected unborn babies and helped keep pro-life alternatives available for women.

To understand the full impact of the failed legislation, Blaze News spoke with Jessica Chastek, a member of the board of Options for Women East, a licensed pro-life medical clinic in St. Paul that offers an array of health care services for men, women, and babies from pregnancy until three years after birth.

Democrats vote against ‘Supporting Women’

In just the last week, the Minnesota House has voted down two major abortion-related bills. The first was the “Born Alive” bill, which would have “fully recognized as a human person” any infant who is “born alive,” including those who survive an abortion procedure.

The move to deny newborn infants personhood and all of its attending rights and protections comes just a few years after a district judge tossed six abortion restrictions, including 24-hour waiting periods and parental notification requirements, that helped protect unborn life in Minnesota.

“These abortion laws violate the right to privacy because they infringe upon the fundamental right under the Minnesota Constitution to access abortion care and do not withstand strict scrutiny,” Ramsey County District Judge Thomas Gilligan ruled in 2022.

‘The Democratic Party … will not support any institutional organization that does not counsel for abortion.’

The other bill that failed last week and that more directly affected pregnancy centers like Options for Women East was the Supporting Women Act. This bill would not have done anything new. Instead, it would merely have restored to pregnancy centers crucial state funding that was first authorized in 2005 but taken away in the wake of the Dobbs decision in 2022.

“We had a $150,000 grant thrown away overnight,” Chastek told Blaze News.

That sum represents roughly one-third of Options’ budget. With such a dramatic reduction in resources, Options has had to make cuts, especially in staffing.

“The paid positions have to go away. So you have fewer nurses, you have fewer sonographers, and so you can offer fewer programs, which means fewer babies and moms being supported,” Chastek explained.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the failure to restore the much-needed funding is that it represents a marked political lurch leftward on abortion in a state that already leans heavily left.

When the Positive Alternatives Grant Program to support pregnancy centers was first proposed two decades ago, Democrats joined Republicans to support it. In fact, two of those Democrats who voted in favor of Positive Alternatives — Reps. Melissa Hortman of Brooklyn Park and Tina Liebling of Rochester — remain in the state House today. Like the rest of their Democratic colleagues, both Hortman and Liebling voted against the Supporting Women Act.

Neither of them responded to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Polling indicates that the American people want some restrictions on abortion. Last year, Pew Research revealed that just 19% of adults think abortion should be legal in all cases, “no exceptions.” In Minnesota, that number is higher: 26%.

However, nearly the same percentage of Minnesotan adults, 24%, believe abortion should be illegal in most cases, demonstrating that the people in the state would likely favor some restrictions. They also likely support providing funding for abortion alternatives, like Options.

The Democratic party there — officially called the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party — does not seem to care. The votes against saving the lives of babies who survive abortion and to refuse pregnancy resource centers much-needed funding all came from the DFL.

“The Democratic Party is saying we will not support any institutional organization that does not counsel for abortion,” Chastek said. “That is the explicit outcome. That is their intention. They won’t fund us because we will not counsel for abortion.”

While Democrats used to call for abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare,” they now treat it as “a positive good,” she claimed.

Democrats “want abortion to be something that there’s no shame about,” she continued. They “want it to be seen as something that’s empowering.”

Trying to ‘trick … queer people’: Dems make wild accusations

What’s more, it seems the Democrats were aware that their votes may be unpopular, so they flailed about during debate to defend their opposition to restoring the funding. In some cases, they even apparently resorted to misleading and stoking fears about what such pregnancy resource centers do.

For instance, they repeatedly claimed that the funding would go toward “unlicensed” facilities that do not adhere to regulations regarding medical and personal privacy, even as many centers, including Options, have licensed medical professionals.

Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn (DFL) of Eden Prairie suggested that these pregnancy resource centers were secretly preying on “vulnerable” women. “There’s nothing in here … about making sure that the places that are opening themselves up to women in a very vulnerable state are getting protection and care without potentially being taken advantage of,” she railed.

“This is unbelievable.”

Democrats are ‘actively making abortion more attractive.’

Kotyza-Witthuhn also implied that the $4 million in proposed funding for pregnancy centers could be used for fraudulent purposes. Rep. Natalie Zeleznikar (R-Fredenberg Township), who sponsored the bill, shot back that in the 17 years the funding was granted to these pregnancy centers, not a single instance of fraud was ever alleged.

Rep. Leigh Finke (DFL-St. Paul), a man masquerading as a woman, even claimed that those who support pregnancy resource centers and maternity homes are trying to “trick … queer people” out of having an abortion.

Minnesota Democrats’ attacks on pregnancy resource centers are all part of a larger plan to make the state a destination for “abortion tourism” — and their apparent obsession with abortion starts at the top, Chastek said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — the goofy running mate for 2024 Democratic presidential candidate and radical abortion advocate Kamala Harris — has routinely sided with abortion activists and abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. Chastek described Walz’s political alignment with abortion causes “really gross and grisly.”

“Governor Walz … [is] going to every extreme to make Minnesota an abortion tourism state,” she reiterated, adding that he and other members of the DFL are “actively making abortion more attractive and more accessible than support to help women have babies.”

Blaze News reached out to Walz’s office for comment but did not receive a response.

Some pro-lifers hope that shining a national spotlight on the powerful pro-abortion movement in Minnesota will force some state lawmakers in purple districts to moderate. The House is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, and abortion could be a wedge issue that drives voters to the polls in 2026 and beyond.

Meanwhile, facilities like Options for Women East will continue to make the most of the private funding they do receive. “We need to open our checkbooks, and we need to support these clinics,” Chastek told Blaze News.

“We have to step up and do the work. We can’t rely on government.”

Chastek said that the pro-life cause is not just about saving unborn children. It is also about helping women have lives filled with purpose and meaning.

“When we let them kill their kids, we kill their hope. And we can’t do that,” she said.

“We have to be able to encourage these women and support them and not just walk away from them.”

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For over a decade, I have argued with Wikipedia curators about the biographical sketch covering my life and work. Each time a surrogate or I correct false or slanderous details, the misinformation reappears within weeks — often with even greater distortions. Friends who have helped me in this thankless effort suggest giving up, believing that no matter how many corrections we make, the falsehoods will always reappear.

Christopher Rufo has assured me that anyone paying attention knows Wikipedia leans left and misrepresents those with views deemed unacceptable. However, after decades of acquiring unfriendly critics, I doubt most readers will dismiss Wikipedia’s misrepresentations in my case.

One position I will never conceal is my contempt for peddlers of what George Orwell called ‘smelly little orthodoxies.’ One can’t despise such people enough.

I have also observed Wikipedia’s double standard in editing biographical sketches. Friends with technical expertise have spent weeks trying to correct inaccurate statements about me. Each time, they must provide excessive documentation and navigate endless disputes before even minor corrections are approved. No matter how often they succeed, new distortions inevitably replace the old ones.

When left-leaning contributors make unsubstantiated claims about figures they associate with the political “dark side,” those assertions often go unchecked. The most recent version of my Wikipedia entry falsely states that I oppose Israel’s existence. I have never expressed any sentiment remotely resembling that.

While I have criticized AIPAC for unfairly attacking Israel’s critics, I have consistently defended Israel’s right to protect itself. Yet my biographer offers flimsy evidence to suggest otherwise. One supposed indicator is my past friendship with the late Murray Rothbard, who was explicitly anti-Zionist. But why assume I shared all his views, including his stance on Israel?

Another so-called proof is that I once wrote a review essay for the American Conservative about Elmer Berger, a Reform rabbi critical of Israel’s founding as a Jewish state. Although I described Berger’s position as unrealistic, I apparently didn’t denounce him strongly enough to satisfy those eager to paint me as anti-Israel.

Guilt by association

Wikipedia contributors also attempt to discredit me by linking me to white nationalism. They note that I spoke at an American Renaissance conference in the 1990s but fail to mention that my remarks focused solely on my research on American conservatism — without endorsing white nationalism in any form.

The entry also highlights my past acquaintance with Richard Spencer, though that relationship largely predated his public embrace of white nationalism. Even more tenuously, it refers to an attack from the ADF against an organization I once led, claiming it was “friendly” to white racists. However, even the Wikipedia entry admits that our group was never identified as inherently racist.

These misrepresentations follow a familiar pattern. When leftist editors shape a narrative, they demand exhaustive proof to correct errors. Meanwhile, baseless smears against those they oppose remain unchallenged.

The Wikipedia entry omits that I spent years writing for leftist magazines and that members of the conservative establishment once attacked me as a “right-wing Marxist.” Over decades, I have engaged with a wide range of political groups — both right and left — but rarely with establishments. My work does not focus on race, as it is not my field of study. Instead, my scholarship examines European and American political movements.

Despite this, Wikipedia and Tablet’s Jacob Siegel claim that I have written extensively on Latin fascism and seek to create a “post-fascist” imitation of it for the present age. Nothing in my research on changing concepts of fascism supports that bizarre conclusion. I have consistently argued that fascism belonged to a past historical era and should be viewed as an archaic, failed political model.

Opposite of reality

One of the weirdest, most glaring errors about my work appears not in Wikipedia’s biography but in its discussion of “cultural Marxism” as a supposed Jewish conspiracy. There, I am falsely listed as a major source of this ugly, pervasive, anti-Semitic accusation — an assertion that conveniently aligns with the misleading portrayal of me in my biographical sketch.

This charge is entirely baseless. Not only have I never held the views Wikipedia attributes to me, but my books explicitly reject them. The reality is the opposite of what my critics claim.

I have argued that critical theory’s success in the United States stems from its compatibility with the country’s evolution into a managerial state engaged in social engineering. I have also repeatedly noted that today’s woke ideology — promoted by the media, educators, and public administrators — is far more radical and far less insightful than anything the Frankfurt School theorists proposed. Compared to modern woke activists and even some so-called conservatives, early Frankfurt School thinkers could be considered homophobic and sexist.

Wikipedia also claims that Telos, originally a defender of critical theory, was a legitimate leftist magazine until I supposedly took control and transformed it into a “far-right” publication. The entry falsely states, “Under Gottfried’s tenure, Telos became far-right in its outlook.” In reality, I never served as the magazine’s editor in chief; Paul Piccone held that role. I was one of many contributors on the editorial board and played only a minor role in the publication’s engagement with European right-wing thought.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Telos began exploring critiques of centralized managerial regimes, including perspectives from “decentralist” thinkers on the right. This shift was not the result of my supposed influence but rather part of a broader intellectual evolution within the publication.

Of course, I have no expectation that Wikipedia will ever portray me fairly, but I hope others won’t judge me based on its fabrications. One position I will never conceal is my contempt for those who defame me and others like them — peddlers of what George Orwell aptly called “smelly little orthodoxies.” One can’t despise such people enough.

“It’s closed. Let’s get out of here.”

My Israeli friend had picked me up from Woodland Hills and parked in the dimly lit back lot of a seedy hookah lounge in Canoga Park, a Los Angeles neighborhood where one doesn’t want to be caught on the wrong street at the wrong time.

These moments of frustration shattered trust in government and reignited a core American belief: Those in power should not live by a different set of rules than the people they govern.

It was June 2020. “Two weeks to flatten the curve” had overstayed its welcome by three months, and my friend was one of many Angelenos who refused to accept that empty streets, boarded-up businesses, and “parking lot hangouts” were the “new normal.” We were both in need of a hit of normalcy, and he said he knew a place.

“Just wait,” he assured me.

I was skeptical. Restaurants didn’t have the luxury of attempting to accommodate California’s stringent social distancing standards like Target, Walmart, and other big-name “essential” businesses. Opening their doors was illegal — and had been for months.

After we knocked on the side door, an enormous Lebanese bouncer poked his furrowed brow over the threshold.

“Welcome,” he said quickly, ushering us in.

Lockdown speakeasies

Lebanese, Israelis, and Jordanians packed the place front to back as menthol- and mango-scented smoke curled toward the dimly lit ceiling. Who knew a shared frustration over California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lockdowns could forge such peaceful relations?

“My gosh,” I thought. “This is a legit speakeasy” — and it wasn’t the only one.

Newsom’s draconian lockdown orders forged a slew of COVID-era speakeasies, welcoming customers through word of mouth, usually via Signal groups created by other Angelenos who craved a return to routine.

This evening of blissful familiarity — albeit with a Middle Eastern twist — was interrupted by a visit from the police. Their visit lasted all of 30 seconds. “Hey, guys. Someone reported you, so we had to show up. You all have a wonderful evening.”

The degree to which law enforcement enforced Newsom’s COVID restrictions varied from county to county, even within the same departments. Thankfully, the police in Canoga Park refused to force small-business owners to choose between putting food on their families’ tables and obeying Newsom’s dictates.

The price of defiance

Other neighborhoods weren’t so lucky. Novo, an Italian restaurant just 10 minutes north in Westlake Village, had to choose between remaining closed under Newsom’s indefinite restrictions or shutting down permanently due to lack of revenue. The owners risked defying the former to avoid the latter. Every day they remained open, Los Angeles County slapped them with a hefty fine — but the community rallied around them. Every night, the restaurant was packed with locals risking fines themselves to keep the business afloat — refusing to watch another small business in their community go under.

Five miles up the road from the Italian restaurant, a local pastor, Rob McCoy, was held in contempt and fined for illegally holding a church service with fewer congregants than people frequenting the Target across the freeway.

Within this context, I got my first gig as a writer — five years ago this very week — interviewing small businesses in the service industry for a local newspaper in the months following their government’s broken promise that they needed to close their doors for only “two weeks to flatten the curve.”

Some, like the owners of a small deli in Dos Vientos, tried to toe the line by serving burritos to customers in their parking lot. Others, like a cigar lounge in Thousand Oaks, became a hub for police officers who refused to enforce Newsom’s restrictions.

Regardless of their posturing during lockdown, one-third of all restaurants in Los Angeles County met the same fate: permanently closing their doors.

A double standard

Business owners — from both sides of the political aisle — already felt cheated by their government. But government officials’ partisan double standard for themselves rubbed salt in the wound.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti joined thousands of protesters against the death of George Floyd, marching through the streets of downtown during the height of lockdown — while his administration issued crippling fines for small businesses serving their clientele.

The protests turned violent during the infamous “Summer of Love.” National Guard troops patrolled the streets at night while the rest of Los Angeles County was under strict curfew. A family-owned Indian food store in Thousand Oaks boarded up the business with plywood ahead of an imminent Black Lives Matter protest, which had been the catalyst for mass looting and millions of dollars in damages in neighboring Los Angeles suburbs. A gym in Agoura Hills reopened after BLM-affiliated rioters stormed and looted stores across Santa Monica en masse.

“Does the virus skip over the rioters?” the gym owner asked, tongue in cheek.

Despite the chaos erupting out of California’s major city centers, the most scathing image to emerge during lockdown was Gavin Newsom and California’s Democratic elite dining — maskless — at the French Laundry, one of America’s most acclaimed restaurants.

“Let them eat cake” didn’t work for the French, and it certainly didn’t work for California’s small-business owners, even longtime Democratic loyalists.

Turning point in American politics

“Two weeks to flatten the curve” became arguably the most transformative cultural moment in modern American history. Partisan lines blurred — even in deep-blue Los Angeles County — uniting people around the definitively American sentiment: What gives you the right to tell me what to do?

These moments of frustration weren’t just passing irritations. They fundamentally shattered trust in government and reignited a core American belief: Those in power should not live by a different set of rules than the people they govern.

And now, five years later, Newsom wants the country to forget he was the man behind the lockdowns. Embarking on a desperate campaign to depict himself as a moderate — likely with eyes on the White House — Newsom has never once fessed up to his failed leadership during the pandemic.

But small-business owners haven’t forgotten. The families who lost everything haven’t forgotten. And voters shouldn’t either.

If history tells us anything, it’s that those who trample on freedom once will do it again — especially if they think no one is paying attention.

Four females were caught on a viral video brawling — reportedly over a parking space — at a Florida beach, and two of them have been arrested.

According to WEAR-TV, the fight at Pensacola Beach occurred over the weekend.

‘Hahaha that’s not how parking lots work, sweetheart.’

The station said a Facebook video of the melee attracted over 7 million views as of Wednesday morning. You can view an apparently different video of the fight here.

It all went down at the Mommy Beach parking lot on Pensacola Beach Boulevard, WEAR reported.

The misdemeanor arrestees are:

• Victoria Posey, 18, of Pensacola. She was booked around 5 p.m. Sunday on a battery charge and released from Escambia County Jail at 7:45 p.m. the same day on a $1,000 bond, jail records state.
• Allanaha Hills, 20, of Pensacola. She was booked at 8:55 p.m. Tuesday on a battery charge and released just 10 minutes later from Escambia County Jail on a $2,500 bond, jail records state. WEAR added that Hills turned herself in.

The sheriff’s office said it all started when Posey was holding a parking spot by standing in it., the station reported.

Deputies noted that a verbal argument between Posey and another female soon turned physical when Posey began hitting the female, WEAR said.

“It started over a parking spot,” sheriff’s Lt. James Barnes told the station. “The lady arrived to park, but [Posey] was standing in the spot holding it. So when she gets out to say, ‘Hey, I’m trying to park here,’ an argument started — and then they started fighting over the parking spot.”

A female in a pink outfit — Posey — punches a female numerous times and pulls her hair while the victim is on the ground, WEAR said.

A female in a blue outfit — Hills — hits another female who approaches and hits Posey as Posey is punching the first victim, the station said.

No further details have been released, WEAR reported.

You can view WEAR’s video report about the dust-up here.

How are people reacting?

As you might imagine, a number of comments underneath the news station’s video weren’t terribly complimentary — such as:

• “Hahaha that’s not how parking lots work, sweetheart.”
• “This is why I don’t go to beach anymore. Invasion of rude people.”
• “First nice day of the season…imagine that!”

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Trump may have won the presidency, but he’s only the president until 2028. After that, the Republican Party must figure out how to keep the MAGA momentum going.

Matthew Peterson of “Blaze News Tonight” believes that the ideologically different types of Americans who have banded together behind Trump are the key.

“What’s going to happen over the next few years is you’re going to see tensions arise, health tensions, between different parts of this new coalition on the right,” he says.

“I mean, just think about the voters. Some people are sort of Joe Rogan listeners, not very political per se, but they are against the wokeness. They don’t like what’s going on there. You have the tech bros, who are about excellence and merit and are very angry about Elon not being able to go to Mars if we keep DEI.”

“You see the classic on the right, the religious conservatives and the rise of young trads who are very pro-Trump. You see also the MAHA moms,” he continues, “people talking about all these chemicals.”

“This is a broad and varied coalition, and this is also what winning looks like,” he adds.

However, as Peterson said, this will create debates within the party.

“For instance, even now in the HHS, when it comes to health and administration, you have some people who are filling appointments who are more on the tech bro side,” Peterson explains.

“And you also have people who are full MAHA, very much about moving against big corporate and a lot of the poisons and questioning a lot of the scientific research in the past, which was funded by big corporations,” he continues.

“Now, those two sides won’t always agree. I like them both; they both have great qualities; and if they’re debating things internally, that’s good, that’s healthy, that’s what we want. And so it’s not going to be just one big, happy party moving forward.”

“In order to build a new coalition of the future, we’re going to have a lot of exciting debates amongst ourselves about where this should go, and again, that is a sign of winning,” he adds.

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Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts berated his own party and said other politicians agreed with him but were afraid of criticism from the far left of the party.

Moulton made the comments while being interviewed by Pamela Brown on CNN.

‘I think we need to stop preaching and start listening, start meeting Americans where they are.’

“We lost this election across the board, an election that should have been easy for us to win. I mean, when in our history have we ever run against a convicted felon sitting at the top of the ticket? So this past election should have been an easy one for Democrats,” Moulton explained.

“We lost across the board because so many Americans said, ‘You guys are just out of touch. You‘re just out of touch,'” he added. “I mean, this other guy might be crazy, but you guys are not in touch with the majority of Americans,’ which is kind of, by definition, what we showed by losing this election.”

He went on to say that the messaging from Democrats was far too negative.

“We‘ve become a party of people who preach down to others, you know, who scold them, who say, ‘If you don‘t agree with me, you‘re not only wrong, but you‘re a bad person,’” Moulton continued. “I mean, I think all of us have heard that attitude from many national Democrats in the past couple of years. So I think we need to stop preaching and start listening, start meeting Americans where they are.”

Moulton also said that many in the party agreed with his criticism but were afraid to go public with those sentiments because of the far-left fringe of the Democratic Party.

“I‘ve heard from so many colleagues behind the scenes, ‘You’re right, Seth, you’re right,’” he added. “But they all say it whispering because they’re so afraid to say it out in public, lest they be accosted by, you know, the liberal left in our party.”

Others in the party have blamed former President Joe Biden for staying in the race too long and forcing them to install Kamala Harris as their candidate without a proper primary election.

Moulton’s comments can be viewed on video posted to social media.

Editor’s note: This article has been corrected. It originally identified Seth Moulton as a U.S. senator rather than a representative. Blaze News regrets the error.

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