You might call it a school bus ride from hell.

“Everybody was screaming and stuff because they were excited to get off the bus,” a 12-year-old student told KCRA-TV after his ride Monday aboard a homebound Calaveras (California) Unified School District bus.

‘Parents are now sending their children to school to be parented instead of parenting their children at home, and that is a concern.’

The student told KCRA the bus stopped when another student climbed out of the bus through a window.

“That’s when the bus driver was like, ‘Sit down, roll up the windows,'” the student noted to the station.

The student also noted to KCRA that the driver told those aboard the bus they would have to wait for law enforcement before getting off it.

Parents who spoke with the station said students remained on the stopped bus for about an hour as more parents began arriving.

Nichole Wellington told KCRA her son called her from the bus and was scared — and she drove to the bus and asked the driver to release her son.

“I went right to the door, and I was like, ‘Dude, open the door. Let me have my kid.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m not doing that,'” Wellington noted to the station.

Wellington added to KCRA that she soon gave her son permission to climb out of the bus through a window while she waited outside.

“If he would have handled that situation and gave the parents their kids that were there, I think it probably would have went a little bit differently than it did,” Wellington noted to the station.

KCRA said video provided by a student aboard the bus shows a student climbing out of the bus through a window and a parent later climbing into the bus through a window — and confronting the driver.

RELATED: Mom and her 17-year-old daughter board middle school bus, start slugging 8th-grade boy: Report

The Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office noted to the station that deputies responded to a disturbance involving a parent and the bus driver: “During the incident, the parent struck the bus door, breaking the glass. The parent was ultimately taken into custody at the School District’s request for vandalism.”

The sheriff’s office added to KCRA that some passengers also were reported to have exited the bus through open windows, and that students should only use a bus window as an exit during an emergency.

Another parent, Rebecca Glover, whose two children also were aboard the bus, told the station she instructed her kids to remain seated and wait — and that she believes the driver was trying to keep students safe.

“There was not just one child they had to think of,” Glover told KCRA. “They had to think of every single child on that bus at that time.”

The school district told the station that the incident began with concerns over student behavior but declined to provide additional details.

“Yesterday, student behavior concerns on a district bus escalated and ultimately required law enforcement involvement,” Superintendent Kassie Meeks said in a statement, according to KCRA. “As a result of the incident, one bus route has been impacted today, Tuesday, August 25, 2026.”

The station added that the incident also raised questions among parents regarding how similar situations should be handled in the future.

Wellington told KCRA she believes another adult aboard buses to manage student behavior could help drivers better focus on the roads.

“I do feel that maybe that bus driver, especially when he’s driving, should not have to deal with all those kids by himself,” Wellington also noted to the station.

But Glover told KCRA she believes more responsibility should fall on students and their families: “Parents are now sending their children to school to be parented instead of parenting their children at home, and that is a concern.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Arrest, California, Parents, Police, School bus, Students, Vandalism, Education, Crime 

As yet another U.S. bombing halt takes effect in the sixth month of the Iran war, the United States has demonstrated that it can smash Iran’s military piece by piece, but it continues to lose the information war in Iran, here at home, and around the world.

American forces can and do strike targets across Iran and hit Tehran’s regional allies, especially the Houthis in Yemen. By every conventional military measure, Iran is taking severe losses. Yet a growing domestic and international audience believes Tehran is fighting the United States to a standstill. Why?

Iran is gaining ground in the information war because it has adapted to the global media environment far more effectively than has Washington.

It is because too many senior American officials are still treating television as a record of an event rather than a battlefield in its own right. The Department of War treats global visual media as though it had forgotten about 1991’s Desert Storm media triumphs and as though there was no need for domestic and foreign public support. The little bit being tossed out is reminiscent of a kind of bureaucratic “let them eat cake.”

That strategy will work right up to the U.S. midterm elections when the Iranian influence campaign ever so slightly tips the balance the wrong way.

Iran is gaining ground in the information war because it has adapted to the global media environment far more effectively than has Washington.

U.S. military planners still tend to think in Clausewitzian terms: that war is the extension of politics that uses the controlled application of violence to constrain the enemy to accomplish our will. That formulation reflected the technology of the early 19th century. It does not account for an information age in which images cross the globe in milliseconds and political effects can precede, outweigh, or even replace battlefield effects.

I call this form of conflict “SOFTWAR”: the hostile use of global visual media to shape another society’s will by changing its view of reality. Three other like-minded colleagues and I have taught this kind of warfare to U.S. War College, Staff College, and Intelligence College graduate students since the early 1990s. But very few have actually adapted.

Unfortunately, the entire Iranian military and intelligence structure has adapted, since at least 2003, and has even stolen the term “SOFTWAR” in its own publications!

The Iranian use of SOFTWAR helps explain why the United States has spent billions of dollars over five months while Iranian drone and missile attacks continue and Iranian defiance continues.

Washington is using Cold War systems and industrial-age doctrine against an asymmetric enemy that has organized itself for the infosphere.

RELATED: Want to squeeze Iran? Trump has one clear move

EDUARDO SOTERAS/AFP/Getty Images

Iran’s theocratic dictatorship is fighting a four-dimensional asymmetric war across land, sea, air, and information. Its military losses have reduced its ability to retaliate against U.S. forces directly.

Its remaining attacks are therefore selected less for battlefield effect than for global media impact: Oil tankers and cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a desalination facility and power plant in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil hub, a liquefied natural gas facility in Qatar, a U.S. communications center in Jordan, and American naval facilities in Bahrain all produce frightening images and headlines.

Iran times its “onesie-twosie” counterattacks in its own early-morning hours, so that the images arrive during the American prime-time news cycle. The objective is not merely to damage a target but to shape the story being told about the war here, there, and around the world.

Meanwhile, Iranian propagandists study the American audience, especially younger people hostile to the Trump administration, and target them with AI-generated Lego-character videos. The goal is to unite disparate American factions, erode domestic support for the war, and above all, influence the midterm elections.

When Iranian military officials such as Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Zolfaghari or IRGC spokesman Abolfazl Shekarchi speak, they are usually seated behind a desk with the Iranian flag visible. Their uniforms are immaculate, their beards trimmed, and their war faces dramatically lit. Most importantly, they look through the camera lens directly at the audience. This is television 101.

Viewers who speak no Farsi still receive the intended message: discipline, seriousness, and defiance.

American military spokesmen often squander the same opportunity. They ignore, disdain, or have never considered acquiring the skills to effectively communicate on television.

General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is informed and capable, but at his Pentagon press conferences, his televised manner is that of a serious squadron commander consulting his notes as he briefs the weather to the three rows in front of him.

He should instead address the millions watching beyond the room. Place the camera a few feet away, frame him from mid-bicep to just above the head, and have him look through the lens to establish and maintain direct eye contact with the intended audience. The reporters can sit on either side. The difference would be immediate.

The United States is not losing the military contest with Iran. It is losing the contest over what the world believes the military contest means.

Admiral Brad Cooper, the combatant commander of U.S. Central Command, makes a similar mistake. He often appears in a green camouflage uniform designed to defeat electro-optical observation — including television — rather than in the Navy service uniform designed to convey authority, experience, and command. He also stands too far from the camera for viewers to read his face. His folksy Ozzie Nelson manner may work before Congress or the Navy League. It does not put an enemy on his heels.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, whose warrior credentials are undisputed and whose television experience is well noted, knows more about television perception than his military subordinates but is underperforming. To quote from his address to general officers last year: “We just have to be honest. We have to say with our mouths what we see with our eyes … to point out the obvious things right in front of us.”

So Mr. Secretary, from an instructor who has been teaching strategic information warfare since you were in grade school, here are the obvious things in front of us: You are no longer pitching to the Fox demographic. You need a tighter camera shot, better lighting, and a visual style designed for wartime communication.

Your presentation is crowded with distractions: a tight European-cut suit, patterned tie, clashing flag pocket square, and hair product that makes your scalp appear to glisten under studio lights. Deep-set eyes require careful lighting. Without it, viewers may read strain or evasiveness where none exists. The Pentagon has fixed studio lighting for briefings at the podium, and it should be properly adjusted for you.

Alfred Hitchcock understood the rule: Dress the leading man simply and light him properly so the audience watches the man rather than the costume. Cary Grant in “North by Northwest” remains a timeless example.

Iranian officials would earn an “A” in my information warfare seminar, I’m sorry to say. Too many American officials are still treating television as a record of an event rather than a battlefield in its own right. The American officials bungling this information war would receive an “F” … and three hours of detention.

That needs to change. Now.

The United States inadvertently helps Tehran by concentrating almost exclusively on visible military targets while leaving the regime’s domestic television system intact.

Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting continues to broadcast dozens of TV channels across Iran giving only the mullahs’ view of the war. Thus, the only information that the vast majority of Iranians are getting comes from television and radio stations controlled by the Iranian government. With access to the internet long ago cut off by the regime, the only “news” the body politic receives is pure propaganda.

Meanwhile, Washington destroys weapons and commanders but fails to effectively contest the information environment that gives those losses political meaning. It seems no one has thought to bomb the TV transmitters and follow up with drones to broadcast information to the Iranian body politic.

Iran’s real engine is that selfsame body politic — a population that has endured repression and the reported killing of tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators. Yet today, outside of a small fraction of Iranians who may have Starlink receivers, the United States has no coherent means of speaking directly to those people.

It’s not as though the United States lacks the technological wherewithal; the military has simply weakened its own capacity to respond. In 2024, the military decommissioned the EC-130J aircraft of the 193rd Special Operations Wing, the only U.S. airborne radio and television broadcast platform.

The aircraft were judged too vulnerable for modern combat, but no announced drone replacement has assumed the mission.

RELATED: The Navy has a choice: Get better or become less relevant

HUGE PERALTA/AFP/Getty Images

The solution is simply to take any drones with the proper range and endurance, such as the dozen or so now-obsolete Predators sitting in the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, and strip them of their reconnaissance gear. Next, rewire the on-board Ku satellite antenna to optimize its broadband receive function and then hook that to any Phase Alternating Line TV transmitter and dipole antenna compatible with Iranian home TV receivers.

By flying the drones from semi-autonomous Kurd areas in eastern Iraq 300 miles to Tehran, each will have about a five-hour endurance over downtown. By orbiting at or above 15,000 feet, the drones will not be easy targets for shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles.

As the drones reach their selected orbit points, precision-guided munitions launched from distant attack aircraft take out all the transmissions towers in the area, leaving the airwaves clear for live programming from the drones.

The Iranian dictatorship, which absolutely must control information flow, will then be forced to turn on its radars so that its sophisticated antiaircraft missiles can shoot down the drones. Except that when they do, every U.S. air defense suppression weapon known to man will be directed at those sites.

Programming the video from the drones on a real-time basis can be fixed by reactivating the 1st Joint SOFTWAR Unit (Virtual) that I designed for the War Department’s Office of Net Assessment a decade ago. That unit, composed of some 50 men and women from the California Air and Army National Guard, used their state-of-the art civilian occupational skills from Hollywood and the Silicon Valley to pioneer new and effective methods of information warfare.

Unfortunately, the Obama sequestration chopped the 1st JSU(V) with the grace of a blunt meat ax. But fortunately, it could be up and running again in about two weeks.

At present, America possesses overwhelming kinetic power but lacks a direct means of reaching the Iranian public at scale: a doctrine that resembles a mechanic who responds to an engine warning light by cutting the wire to the bulb. The warning disappears. The failing engine problem remains.

The United States is not losing the military contest with Iran. It is losing the contest over what the world believes the military contest means.

A nation can destroy every designated military target and still lose the war if its enemy controls the images, the timing, and the story. Information warfare is not an optional elective. It is the core course. And America, so far, is failing.

The answer is a genuinely four-dimensional American military capable of operating on land, at sea, in the air, and throughout the infosphere. Information warfare should be driving the organization and the direction of the campaign, with kinetic operations supporting the strategic influence objectives — not the other way around. Iran already understands this hierarchy.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.

​Department of war, Desert storm, Information warfare, Iran war, Iranian drone, Iranian influence campaign, Missile attacks, Propaganda, Softwar, Tehran, United states, Opinion & analysis 

A Kentucky mother was arrested for her reaction to seeing her husband abusing their 3-month-old daughter from security cameras as she was working, according to police.

Carleena Webb returned from work on Aug. 21 to confront 36-year-old Shaun Webb about the alleged abuse but instead of removing the child, police said she went back to work.

Webb admitted to suffocating his daughter by covering her mouth and nose, not to harm but to deprive her of oxygen, as he put it, to ‘train the behavior.’

The 33-year-old mother was charged with first-degree criminal abuse for leaving the child in her husband’s care.

The mother did not report the abuse to police, nor did she seek medical treatment for her daughter.

Police were made aware of the alleged abuse by the parents’ family, who live out of state. They also provided video of the abuse.

“We get to the house as quickly as we can to get those children out of that environment and certainly separated from the person who is perpetuating some pretty horrific violence against them,” said Sheriff’s Major Philip Ridgel.

Ridgel said that the man confessed to the abuse when he was questioned by officers.

Police said the video showed him slapping her with an open hand while she lay on the ground crying.

Webb allegedly told police that children are like dogs, explaining, “You have to train them and set boundaries.”

He also said that his daughter’s crying triggered him like “nails on a chalkboard.”

Webb admitted to suffocating his daughter by covering her mouth and nose, not to harm but to deprive her of oxygen, as he put it, to “train the behavior.”

The video allegedly showed him covering her face for 10-13 seconds at a time.

Police said he was arrested at the end of the interview and transported to the Boone County Jail.

RELATED: ‘Unfathomable’: Prosecutor unveils shocking details in ‘co-parent’ torture death of 7-year-old

He was charged with 10 class B felony counts of criminal abuse in the first degree.

The mother was arrested three days later and also transported to the same jail.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Child abuse, Surveillance video, Kentucky, Crime 

America is in a schizophrenic mash-up that reverses childhood innocence and adult licentiousness. We treat children as if they were louche, hedonistic adults while we treat grown-ups like they’re still learning primary colors on wooden blocks.

A visit to a restaurant in a tourist town in Vermont crystallized it for me. Stay with me while I set this up, then we’ll take a visit to an eatery I call There Will Be Pictures in Bright, Primary Colors!

I asked a kid of about 14 for a knife. He looked at me blankly. So I went native: ‘A sticky-downy sharpie?’

This may be a new thought for some people, this reversal of childhood and adulthood. But it’s easy to see once you have your eyes pointed to it.

‘Drag kids’

America is a country where it’s legal and socially praised to chemically and sexually mutilate abused children. We call these abused children “transgender kids.”

There’s a reason President Trump had to announce that public schools risk losing federal funding if they participate in this depraved farce. It has indeed become normalized to cry happy tears while we watch parents (nearly always mothers) destroy their children’s bodies and minds with hormones, surgeries, and the lie that they can become the opposite sex.

This brutality started with so-called “drag kids”: minor boys dressed up like female prostitutes and paraded in gay bars and before cameras shaking their “moneymakers.” Remember “Desmond Is Amazing,” the “drag kid” featured gyrating and affecting a transvestite hooker attitude? Adults started filming his abuse and putting it on social media in 2015. Within a few years, parents were going beyond dresses and all the way to chemical castration, cross-sex hormones, and actual surgical castration.

Hufflepuff hell

Let’s look at the other side, the childification of adulthood. I started noticing it in the 2010s when fully grown adults were putting bumper stickers on their cars telling everyone what Harry Potter “house” they belonged to. Since when did 30-year-olds cling to a series of children’s books about witches and wizards to “identify” themselves to their grown peers?

We used to look forward to adulthood. But something changed with the Millennial generation: Teenagers were begging to remain children for the first time in history. (Boomers and Gen Xers: This is our fault. We “raised” them.) Sixteen-year-olds once longed for the independence of a driver’s license. Today? Why learn to drive when Uber will cart you around like an entitled toddler (car seat not included)?

These two inversions — the adultification of childhood and the childification of adulthood — collide in a supernova at a restaurant I recently visited, a taco place in one of those Vermont tourist towns tucked between two peaks of the Green Mountains. Let’s call it Ms. Rachel’s Taqueria and Play-Skool.

‘Saccharine babble’

Why “Ms. Rachel’s”? Because the tone of the place is like that awful YouTube woman who sings saccharine babble to babies on YouTube and gets 20 million mothers watching it.

“Ms. Rachel’s” has a lot going for it. The food was great, and the staff were all friendly, which is a rarity in New England these days.

But it’s got a lot going against it too, and that starts with the staff’s stage names. Our waiter was a handsome Irish guy of about 19 years. He announced what I assume is his “Mexican name” to the table behind us.

“Hi there, I’m going to be taking care of you today,” he said to the party next to us. “My name is Hooley-Anne.”

Hooley-Anne’s name was obviously “Julian,” but I suppose that wouldn’t have been “authentic” enough. Hooley-Anne did a great job, but it was impossible to keep a straight face talking to him after this. OK, I confess: I had a giggle attack that had my hands over my face while I cried silently with shaking shoulders.

When the food got there, it arrived on an aluminum baking sheet without utensils.

I asked a kid of about 14 for a knife. He looked at me blankly. So I went native: “A sticky-downy sharpie?”

He brought me a butter knife.

RELATED: Want yesterday’s quality today? Stop ‘upgrading’ your appliances

Found Image Holdings Inc./smartstock/Getty Images

Tummy trouble

The problems continued with the menus.

“Greens and other fun colors.” “Bevs.”

It got worse when you flipped it over. Apparently adult diners need to be guided through concepts like “appetizers” and “tacos” and “burritos.”

Get it? “Horizontal eats”? In case you didn’t understand special-needs-ese, that means “tacos.” But what about the vertical “eats”?

Tee-hee-giggle-coo! Isn’t it just adorable?

No, it’s insulting. If you’re at least 45 years old, cast your mind back 20 years. I don’t think you remember being regularly spoken to (or written to) in the tone of voice we associate with a “Romper Room” hostess.

Now it’s everywhere. You see it in the ugly faux-cubist “art style” that dominates pamphlets and announcements called “Corporate Memphis.” It’s all over chain restaurant menus that call sandwiches “sammies” (giggle-coo!) or “hand-helds.”

How long until it’s just “eatables”?

Potty humor

The other side of this coin showed up when I went to the bathroom at “Ms. Rachel’s.” Remember, these are the same bathrooms that adults and children use.

There are multiple problems.

1. The restaurant is showing off its woke credentials by conspicuously bragging that it doesn’t care what “gender” you are — you can even be a Sasquatch or an alien (giggle-coo)!

2. “Cute” vulgarity — a cartoon depiction of feces shaped like soft-serve ice cream in a kiddy drawing style — tells children there’s no such thing as respectable public behavior. Potty humor is just normal now, even in a place where you eat.

Yes, I am saying that I think this kind of display harms children. This is the cultural, visual, and conceptual background that is forming children’s character. The adults have abandoned propriety, and they’re shoving it in children’s faces. This may be less extreme than the broad daylight displays of sexual depravity that people call “Pride parades” for “families,” but it’s only a matter of degree.

But what do I know? I’m just a stupid old Boomer, even though I’m only 52 (everyone goes from hip-mod-with-it-youth to “stupid Boomer” without stopping at Gen X these days). Why can’t I just let people enjoy things?

Hope I haven’t yucked your yum.

​Chemical castration, Culture, Donald trump, Drag kids, Gen x, Harry potter, Lgbtq, Lifestyle, Millennials, Transgender kids, Vermont, Intervention 

A televangelist named Katie Souza, whose show “Healing Your Soul” airs on the Faith Broadcasting Network, recently made a claim that turned a lot of heads.

Earlier this month on her YouTube channel, Souza said that the reason she and her husband are childless is because when she was a young girl, aliens (which she views as demonic/fallen angel beings) implanted an “interdimensional device” in her that harvested her eggs over her lifetime. She says the beings used those eggs to create a “hybrid child” named Starburst.

BlazeTV host Rick Burgess agrees with Souza’s assessment that what secular society calls aliens are actually demonic beings — but that’s where their alignment ends.

On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” Rick examines Souza’s shocking claim — and her equally stunning prediction about the return of the Nephilim.

In the same episode, Souza also claimed that thousands of other women have had their eggs harvested by demonic beings, but that many of them remain unaware of it.

Her newly released book, “Star Gods: Unmasking the Alien Agenda, Fallen Angels, and End-Time Deception,” expands on this hypothesis. In it she claims that modern “alien”/UAP encounters are not extraterrestrials from other planets, but fallen angels (the “star gods”/watchers from Genesis 6 and related texts) engaged in an ongoing “seed war.”

According to the book’s central claim, these beings have been harvesting human eggs, sperm, and DNA to create hybrid offspring as part of a long-running agenda to corrupt the human bloodline, seize legal dominion over the earth, and prepare a major end-time deception.

“She’s talking Nephilim here, OK?” says Rick. “This is Genesis 6. Modern-day Nephilim is what she’s talking about.”

But is a new era of Nephilim really a possibility?

Rick is not willing to answer definitively. While he acknowledges that he does not know what happened to Souza when she was a child, her claim that demons are harvesting reproductive material to create a new era of Nephilim is biblically “shaky.”

“I don’t see anything like this that is prophesied in the end-times,” he says.

“Do I think it would probably sell a lot of books and get a lot of attention? Yes. Am I leery of televangelists? Yes. Does that mean that I’m right? No, it doesn’t.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

To enjoy more bold talk and big laughs, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Rick burgess, Spiritual warfare, Demons, Aliens, Ufos, Blazetv show