It’s now dawning on some liberals that there’s nothing funny about the clowns taking over the Democratic circus.

MS NOW talking head Joe Scarborough, for instance, was left momentarily speechless on Monday after sharing a video in which Megan Romer, the national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, not only blames Israel for its attack by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, but notes that she would have stood in solidarity with Hamas in the immediate aftermath of the massacres.

‘I really don’t want to hear from the DSA anymore.’

In an interview with the New Yorker’s David Remnick released Friday, Romer detailed the DSA’s platform, including its views on Israel. Romer condemned Israel and expressed support for a “one-state solution”: a “free Palestine with the capital in Jerusalem.”

Remnick noted that Darializa Avila Chevalier — the Islamic anti-police, anti-Israel, anti-border socialist now poised to win a congressional seat in New York as a Democrat — attended the pro-Hamas rally held in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023, which featured signs justifying the terror attacks and was organized by radical groups, including Al-Awda New York.

When asked whether she supports Chevalier attending the rally, Romer said, “Yeah, I do,” and noted that she too would have attended the rally had she been able.

“One day after the slaughter of 1,200 people and taking of over 200 hostages, you would’ve come and rallied behind Hamas?” asked Remnick.

“I think that October 7 was largely inevitable,” answered Romer. “If you put people in an open-air concentration camp, and you deprive them of rights, of dignity, of food, of the ability to live in safety, you have to expect that they are going to not take that for that long.”

“You cannot put people in a cage and expect them not to revolt,” added the socialist.

RELATED: Mike Rowe nukes DSA commies, then takes a moment to bask in the fallout

Spencer Platt/Getty Images (R)

After playing a clip of the exchange on “Morning Joe” on Monday, Scarborough appeared stunned.

He broke the silence to state, “The co-chair of the DSA supported going to a pro-Hamas rally the day after Hamas gleefully slaughtered more Jews on October 7 than any day the Jews were slaughtered since the Holocaust. Women raped. Young children shot in front of their parents. Parents shot in front of young children. The DSA co-chair, which means the DSA, supports that.”

‘This is about the Democrats once again fumbling the football on the 2-yard line.’

“I really don’t want to hear from the DSA anymore,” added the liberal host, “that they’re about economic justice or health care. This would be like going to a pro-Al-Qaeda rally on September 12, which I’m sure many people in the DSA would say, ‘Well, that would be perfectly fine because look at the U.S. policies throughout the years.'”

The talking head who officially left the GOP in October 2017 — for supposedly abandoning its fiscal principles — implored the Democratic Party to reject the DSA ahead of the primary elections on Tuesday in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

In Wisconsin, Francesca Hong — a card-carrying DSA member who has expressed a desire to abolish the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Senate — is likely to win the Democratic Party’s nomination in the state’s gubernatorial race.

In Minnesota, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan — who does not identify as a socialist but is nevertheless a leftist similarly extreme in her views — is up against establishment Democratic Rep. Angie Craig in the Gopher State’s Democratic Senate primary.

“There’s nothing wrong with the Democrats supporting economic justice. There’s nothing wrong with the Democrats supporting, you know, cutting taxes, or getting rid of the Trump taxes and making billionaires pay more in taxes,” said Scarborough. “That’s a legitimate mainstream debate for people to have.”

He suggested, however, “I don’t need people telling me, ‘Oh, you have to just turn a blind eye to people saying that women getting raped on October 7 didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.’ Americans aren’t going to support that.”

“This is about the Democrats once again fumbling the football on the two-yard line when they have the chance to make great gains but being … too woke to call out the obvious,” said Scarborough.

Scarborough underscored that it’s prudent for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to call out the extremism of the DSA and those socialists making inroads in the Democratic Party — or to, at the very least, call pro-terrorist rape apologetics “despicable.”

“It’s crazy that we’re even having this conversation!” he shouted.

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​Joe scarborough, Ms now, Democratic socialists of america, Megan romer, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Politics 

“What is a reverse ATM?”

This question has been asked ad nauseum for the last few years, and the answer is somewhere between an unnecessary step and a cashless society.

‘Hardly-user friendly.’

Money walks

An early August post asked, “What in the Davos,” referring to the home base of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where undoubtedly the most controversial world figures come together to coordinate, undoubtedly, the most controversial policies.

The “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” meme apparently extends to physical money, as well, as one X user’s photo read, “reverse ATMs are available throughout the concourse for your convenience.”

According to BluePoint ATM Solutions, a “Reverse ATM” is a cash-to-card kiosk that allows users to convert physical cash into a prepaid card.

The kiosks are everywhere now, especially in New York, where they are seen at venues like MVP Arena and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. In Texas, the San Antonio Zoo says a cashless experience ensures that guests “spend less time in line.”

If there is any question as to whether or not the kiosks are connected to the WEF-prescribed future, there are a plethora of horror stories floating around online that confirm the theory.

RELATED: Elderly Air Force veteran assaulted, robbed after withdrawing cash from ATM; video shows juvenile taking victim’s wallet

Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Peasant problems

One traveler to Brussels — the home of European Parliament — panicked when she realized she was nearly out of gas and zero locations in the area “employed an actual human attendant.”

Her credit cards didn’t work anywhere, but her payments weren’t being declined, either. Instead, she realized the pumps operate through reverse ATMs: insert cash, get a ticket, scan the ticket at the pump to get gas.

Turns out this was the case in France, too, Ashley Smith wrote. The blogger noted that in many EU states, paying with a credit card forces a €120 deposit, which refunds the difference depending on gas consumption. At the same time, this is disincentivized given that a signature is required for purchases over €100.

With no humans in sight, it’s back to the reverse ATM for the peasantry.

Fintech Finance News reported in 2024 that the reverse ATMs are “hardly-user friendly,” and one New York location provided no receipt, the card was not reloadable, and users must go through a “time-consuming process” to reclaim any remaining balances.

Similar experiences have been widely discussed online.

RELATED: Violent punks caught on video ganging up on, brutally beating elderly man by Baltimore 7-Eleven — while wielding rifle, sword

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Card sharks

One Reddit post discussed an ice cream shop in Philadelphia that refused a $10 bill, opting for a reverse ATM payment instead. The card didn’t work, and an employee told the customer it wasn’t his fault before gifting him the treat anyway.

On another thread, users discussed how much money is left unclaimed on the ATM cards. One user said he left $9 on a card at an amusement park because “everything in the park” costs more than that.

Another said the New York MTA had made $100 from his unused cards in just one year.

Detractors say to use the card elsewhere, as it is likely a prepaid VISA or Mastercard. Companies will say it prevents cash theft and reduces labor. This is of course for the business, not the customer, who has to whip out cash at a less secure location and then take extra steps simply to spare the establishment a few minutes of work.

“Minimize pathogen concerns associated with cash,” BluePoint ATM says on its website.

Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve says there is no federal statute mandating that a private business, person, or organization “must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services.”

Instead, citizens must rely on bylaws, like that of Philadelphia, where under the city’s cashless retail prohibition, establishments “may not refuse to accept cash.”

It is unclear whether that extends to the ice cream experience, though.

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​Reverse atm, Davos, World economic forum, European union, Cashless, Lifestyle 

A homeowner in Richmond, New York, noticed something on his home security system Sunday night that prompted him to call 911 — and also to grab his shotgun and confront the disturbance himself.

“He was receiving live surveillance footage of two individuals entering a property that he owns,” Undersheriff Michael Rago of the Ontario County Sheriff’s Office told WHAM-TV. “He lives close by, and while he remained on the phone with the 911 center, he responded to the location.”

‘We actually received a 911 call from one of the occupants in the residence.’

The homeowner arrived to find a suspicious vehicle parked discreetly on the property and lights flickering inside the home, Rago added to the station.

With that, the homeowner called out to those inside his property and shot out the vehicle’s tires, WHAM said.

“At that time, we actually received a 911 call from one of the occupants in the residence, stating that they were in there and that they were going to cooperatively exit with their hands up,” Rago added to the station.

When deputies arrived, they took 19-year-old Alexandria Mosher and 22-year-old Dominick Wood, both of Lima, into custody, WHAM reported.

Deputies found Mosher and Wood in possession of items from inside the home, the sheriff’s office told the station, adding that the pair were charged with second-degree burglary before being released after their arraignment.

RELATED: Homeowner opens fire on burglar who was on parole for previous burglary conviction, cops say. There won’t be future offenses.

The homeowner has not been charged, the station said.

“A word to the wise is to understand … when you can and can’t use deadly physical force,” Rago noted to WHAM. “This wouldn’t be considered deadly physical force. …”

The undersheriff also offered the following advice, according to the station: “At the end of the day, you know … we don’t need more victims. We don’t need victims injured. We don’t need suspects or defendants, you know, injured. … I come back to being a being a good witness for law enforcement.”

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​New york, 2nd amendment, Guns, Gun rights, Defending property, Homeowner shoots, Burglary, Crime 

Automotive safety technology was supposed to help you keep your eyes on the road. Increasingly, it is keeping its eyes on you.

More new vehicles are equipped with cameras pointed directly at the driver, tracking where you look, whether your eyes are open, and whether the computer thinks you’re paying enough attention. Look down at the touch screen too long and you may hear a warning. Turn your head away from the windshield and the steering wheel may vibrate.

There is a major difference between a sensor detecting that you’re drifting out of your lane and a camera continuously observing your face.

This technology is no longer simply an optional gadget dreamed up by automakers. In Europe, regulators now require new vehicles to include systems capable of detecting driver distraction.

On a recent episode of “The Drive,” co-host Karl Brauer and I spoke with longtime automotive journalist Michael Harley of Forbes about where this technology is heading.

The stated purpose is safety, and there are good reasons for that. But once a camera is installed inside your car, watching you every second you’re behind the wheel, another question becomes unavoidable: Who else eventually gets to watch?

Stay focused

Subaru provides a good example of how quickly driver monitoring has moved into ordinary cars.

Its DriverFocus system uses a near-infrared camera aimed at the driver’s eyes and head. Subaru says the system can identify signs of distraction or drowsiness and warn the driver accordingly. Because the camera is infrared, it can continue monitoring the driver even when the cabin is dark.

The intention is easy to understand. Distracted driving kills people, and so does falling asleep behind the wheel.

There is also evidence that many drivers appreciate the technology. An Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study of nearly 3,500 Subaru owners found that 87% used DriverFocus most or every time they drove, while about 70% said they would want the system on their next vehicle.

But that same research identified the downside. Drivers reported false alarms, and some said the warnings came too frequently. Annoyance was one of the main reasons owners switched the system off.

Karl and I have each experienced this ourselves in new vehicles. Modern cars increasingly offer automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane-centering systems, and other technology specifically designed to compensate when a driver makes a mistake. Yet some of those same cars are becoming more aggressive about policing exactly where the driver is looking.

RELATED: Lucid makes one of the best EVs in America. That may not be enough to save it.

Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images

Nanny cam

This isn’t only about automakers deciding what features customers might like.

Europe is turning driver monitoring into regulation.

Under the European Union’s General Safety Regulation, all newly sold vehicles have been required since July 2024 to include technology warning drivers about drowsiness. Beginning in July 2026, additional rules require advanced systems designed to detect driver distraction as well.

The EU doesn’t explicitly say every manufacturer must put an infrared camera in your face. The regulation is based on what the system must accomplish rather than specifying one particular piece of hardware.

In practice, however, camera-based systems are an obvious way to meet those requirements, and they’re already becoming common.

Once these systems become mandatory in a market as enormous as Europe, automakers have another incentive to design them into vehicles everywhere rather than engineer completely different cars for different countries. That’s why American drivers should pay attention.

Close quarters

Here is where I become uncomfortable.

There is a major difference between a sensor detecting that you’re drifting out of your lane and a camera continuously observing your face.

Michael explained just how capable these systems already are:

“They’re [infrared] cameras … watching every single thing in real time inside the car, and it’s triggering verbal, audible and/or haptic alarms,” he said.

“And you cannot defeat it. Some of them you can turn off, but the second you restart the car, it starts all over again. … It’s just a memory chip … away from being able to record the telemetry.”

Today’s camera may simply analyze the information inside the vehicle and generate an alert. Technologically, however, there isn’t an enormous distance between a camera that sees what you’re doing and a system that stores or transmits what it sees.

Modern cars are already rolling computers connected to manufacturer servers through cellular networks. Automakers have collected driving data and shared information with third parties, while insurance companies increasingly offer policies based on telematics.

Cars can already record enormous amounts of information about speed, location, braking, acceleration, and crashes. Add an interior camera, and the vehicle potentially knows not only where you went and how you drove, but what you were doing while you drove there.

Were you looking at the road or at your phone? Were you yawning? Did you appear sleepy? Who else was inside the vehicle?

Manufacturers will tell us these systems have privacy safeguards, and many of them do. But privacy policies can change. So can software, regulations, and the circumstances under which information can be demanded by law enforcement or other third parties.

The hardware remains pointed at you.

Eyes have it

This is usually how intrusive technology arrives: not through some grand announcement that everybody will now be monitored, but through a series of individually reasonable steps.

It’s there to detect drowsiness. It’s there to make sure you’re paying attention. It’s there to prevent crashes.

Each argument has merit. I don’t want a sleepy driver drifting across the center line any more than anyone else does. Consumers should nevertheless ask where the boundary lies.

A seatbelt protects me without needing to know where I’m looking. An airbag doesn’t watch my face. Anti-lock brakes don’t care who is sitting beside me.

Driver-monitoring cameras are different because they introduce something automobiles never historically required: a machine observing the occupants of the car in real time.

Governments are now beginning to require the systems capable of doing that.

New normal

There is one more irony.

Cars are becoming more capable of assisting the driver at precisely the moment manufacturers and regulators are becoming more insistent about monitoring the human being behind the wheel.

Your vehicle can steer, brake, maintain its distance from the car ahead, and in some cases even change lanes and navigate highway interchanges. But glance away for a little too long, and the same car starts scolding you.

Maybe these systems will save lives. I hope they do.

Before Americans normalize cameras watching drivers in every new automobile, however, we deserve clear answers about what those systems collect, whether any information leaves the vehicle, how long it can be retained, and who can obtain it.

Once the camera becomes standard equipment, the question is no longer whether the car can watch you. It’s who gets access to what it sees.

​Driver assistance technology, Driver distraction detection, Infrared camera, Vehicle monitoring systems, Subaru driverfocus, Big tech, Auto industry, European union, Privacy, Lifestyle, Automotive 

I have watched more of Charlie Kirk since his death than I ever did while he was alive. I do not say that proudly.

While Kirk traveled from campus to campus inviting hostile students to challenge him, I was only vaguely aware of what he was building. In the months since his assassination, I have watched hours of those encounters and wished I had paid closer attention.

Charlie Kirk offered a vision of adulthood built upon duty, sacrifice, personal responsibility, and devotion to something worth defending. Hasan Piker offers a different vision.

As Hasan Piker’s influence has expanded across the American left, I have begun to see him as a kind of anti-Charlie Kirk.

That requires some explanation.

Piker publicly condemned Kirk’s assassination and called it horrific. Nor am I suggesting that Piker avoids debate. He and Kirk debated in 2018 and were scheduled to meet again at Dartmouth College on September 25, 2025.

Charlie Kirk was assassinated 15 days before that debate.

The difference between the two men lies less in whether they were willing to argue than in how they exercised influence, the lives they presented, and what their methods taught young people to do with disagreement.

Charlie Kirk’s signature gesture was to share the microphone.

Hasan Piker’s is to control it.

Kirk went where he was disliked. On campuses where much of the student body opposed nearly everything he believed, he invited students to tell him why he was wrong.

He could be abrasive, overly confident, and eager for the devastating clip. But he entered the arena and allowed his opponents to enter with him. They stood a few feet away and spoke in their own voices. Kirk had to listen, think, and respond in real time.

The person disagreeing with him remained visibly a person.

Piker has mastered the internet’s preferred form of political communication: the reaction. From his studio, he watches clips, interrupts them, mocks them, and turns opponents into material for an audience already disposed to applaud. He selects the clip, stops it when he wishes, interprets the opponent’s motives, and delivers the verdict.

RELATED: The internet makes monsters and saints before the body is cold

PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP/Getty Images

The opponent is present, but only as content.

Media does more than transmit ideas. It trains habits.

Kirk’s format taught his audience that an opponent should receive a microphone, finish a question, and expect an answer. Piker’s format more often teaches an audience to classify, ridicule, and dismiss.

Kirk tried to win converts. Piker identifies enemies.

There is another difference, and it has less to do with politics than with adulthood.

Piker is not publicly known to be married, and his private relationships are his business. It would be unfair to speculate about what we do not know. The relevant distinction is not his marital status but the vision of life he presents publicly.

Charlie Kirk made no mystery of his.

He spoke openly about his wife, Erika, his children, his Christian faith, and the joys and responsibilities of building a family. He did not merely tell young people how to vote. He urged them to marry, have children, accept responsibility, and build something durable.

Kirk offered a vision of adulthood built upon duty, sacrifice, personal responsibility, and devotion to something worth defending.

Piker offers a different vision. His public rhetoric is saturated with rage, profanity, grievance, and the promise that political power can remedy injustice, real or perceived. Speaking to the College Democrats this summer, he described himself as “an outsider currently pushing for an insurgency.” After condemning Democrats he considers collaborators, he declared, “We don’t need those Democrats anymore.”

Kirk called young people to govern themselves. Piker calls them to join a political insurgency against those he blames.

Rage, once summoned, does not always respect political boundaries.

Nearly a year after Kirk’s murder, Piker is alive, broadcasting, and shaping the politics of a generation. That is how a free country is supposed to work. Conservatives should criticize him, answer his arguments, and oppose the candidates he supports.

They must also defend his right to keep talking.

RELATED: The Democrat civil war is real — and it is happening in Wisconsin

Joshua Lott/Getty Images

The harder question is whether the political culture gathering around Piker would extend that protection to people such as Charlie Kirk.

A culture can make violence more plausible long before anyone commits it. It begins by stripping opponents of their individuality and treating their presence as a threat.

A person becomes a category. A category becomes an enemy. An enemy becomes an obstacle.

Eventually, someone decides the obstacle should be removed.

Charlie Kirk’s importance was not that he was always right. It was that he kept showing up where people believed he was wrong. He asked for the next question. He believed opponents could be confronted without being erased.

Then, he went home to the wife and children he loved.

Kirk and Piker were supposed to meet on a stage at Dartmouth. We will never know what Charlie would have said that night.

But as the anniversary of his murder approaches, we should remember what he had already said through the manner of his life: Bring your argument. Take the microphone. Prove me wrong. Then, go home and build something worth defending.

Just leave the rifle behind.

​Assassination, Charlie kirk, Debate, Hasan piker, Opinion & analysis, Democratic socialists of america, Turning point usa 

Michigan Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar’s political career took a major hit when voters rejected him in favor of a democratic socialist — but it’s not a loss that was hard to see coming.

In a campaign video posted to social media by Shri himself, he’s standing in downtown Detroit wearing bright red sneakers, shorts, and a black shirt with a photo of himself on it with red laser eyes.

“I’m meeting people asking them to make sure they vote on August 4 in the primary election. I’m asking for your vote so I can continue fighting the Trump administration, continue fighting their corruption and their lawlessness,” Thanedar said in his thick accent.

“He is not a real person,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“He’s like, ‘What do the people in downtown Detroit wear?’ And he’s like, ‘I know,’ except the shirt is just him with laser beams coming out of his eyes, and it says ‘Shri,’ which I just don’t think is relatable,” she adds.

And interviews that have surfaced of Shri didn’t help his case.

“What are the five Grosse Pointe cities?” an interviewer asked Shri.

“Look, I’m not here to answer a quiz. I’m here to say that I’m going to fight for the people of Detroit,” he said, before the interviewer rattled off the five cities.

The interviewer then called Shri out for abandoning beagles and leaving them “to die in their cages at your pharmaceutical testing.”

“I love animals,” Shri responded.

“I mean, some of them died under my neglect, but other than the ones that I killed, I love animals,” Gonzales mocks.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Congress, Democratic socialist, Donald trump, Michigan, Sara gonzales, Shri thanedar, Blazetv show 

President Donald Trump has decided that the U.S. should no longer be a “global outlier” in how many jabs it foists on kids, and medical establishmentarians are not happy about it.

Dropping a few jabs

When Trump took office for the second time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all American children get vaccines for 18 diseases, sticking them with more than twice as many doses as their European counterparts were receiving.

‘What this does is it restores … autonomy of families and parents.’

In December, the president tasked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and then-acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill with reviewing the best practices from other first-world countries for core childhood vaccination recommendations along with scientific evidence that informs those practices.

After conducting a comprehensive scientific assessment and concluding that the U.S. was indeed a global outlier, the CDC reduced its list to 11 diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis (whooping cough), Haemophilus influenzae type B, pneumococcal conjugate, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, human papillomavirus, and chickenpox.

RELATED: STUNNING admission about vaccine found in newly released Fauci text — while he told public it was safe

JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Images

The agency recommended numerous other vaccines either for “high-risk groups” or on an individual basis.

Trump stated after the embrace of the new vaccine schedule on Jan. 5, “Effective today, America will no longer require 72 ‘jabs’ for our beautiful, healthy children.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups, which had sued the administration in July 2025 over its termination of COVID vaccine recommendations for healthy kids and pregnant women, amended their complaint in January to incorporate a legal challenge to the immunization schedule updates.

On March 16, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy — a Boston-area Biden appointee who previously barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting illegal aliens — obliged the plaintiffs and blocked the administration’s revision of the CDC’s vaccine.

Litigation in the case is ongoing.

The order

On Monday, Trump issued an executive order reaffirming that “it is the policy of the United States that the core childhood vaccine recommendations should be aligned with scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries while preserving access to vaccines currently available to Americans.”

The order:

reinforces the vaccination recommendations adopted by the CDC earlier this year; recommends splitting up the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine into three separate single-disease shots once such vaccines are domestically available; advises states and territories to update their relevant laws and regulations pertaining to immunization requirements — especially for school enrollment and attendance — where necessary; andrecommends that “all childhood immunizations should be administered at separate medical visits.”

Trump’s order also tasks Attorney General Todd Blanche with challenging state laws that conflict with state and federal statutory obligations “related to parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under the law.”

RELATED: Fauci is yesterday’s fight. Medical freedom is today’s.

Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

HHS Secretary Kennedy lauded Trump for taking this step and pledged at the signing ceremony, “We will preserve access to vaccines, strengthen safety monitoring, expand research, give doctors and parents better information, and restore informed consent and parental choice to their rightful place in American medicine.”

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, said, “What this does is it restores … autonomy of families and parents to make good decisions for their kids. It allows and continues to emphasize the importance of science in the recommendations about vaccines, and fundamentally restores a sort of healthy relationship between public health and parents.”

Outrage from the usual suspects

Andrew Racine, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was among those who lashed out over Trump’s executive order.

‘Vaccines DO NOT cause autism.’

“Today’s executive order on vaccines is not only disheartening but dangerous,” said Racine Monday. “Instead of ensuring every family can access life-saving vaccines for measles, influenza, RSV and more, federal leaders are once again spreading misleading claims.”

After claiming that there “is not new evidence to justify significant changes to childhood immunization guidance,” Racine downplayed the possibility of a link between vaccines and autism, and he expressed concern that some people may now “doubt the importance of vaccines.”

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said in a statement obtained by WTOP News, “If it wasn’t such a serious affront to the health of Americans and their children, it would be laughable.”

Benjamin claimed that breaking up immunizations into individual visits as opposed to loading kids with multiple vaccines all at once “creates more of a burden for parents, and more discomfort for kids.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the anti-Trump Louisiana Republican who lost his re-election bid but who still chairs the Senate Health Committee, joined the chorus of concern-mongers, stating, “I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The President does not have the expertise to make these changes. Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism.”

“Breaking up vaccines will mean children have to get more shots to get the same protection, not fewer shots. It will increase hesitancy and make children less safe,” added Cassidy.

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​Donald trump, Joe biden, Centers for disease control and prevention, Health and human services, Robert f kennedy jr, Vaccination, Politics 

Here in Portland, we’ve had a bad week of wildfire smoke. It’s been at DON’T GO OUTSIDE levels. You literally feel the ache in your chest. Your eyes begin to burn.

This recent event brought to mind the Great Portland Smoke-Out of 2020, which followed the most devastating and deadly wildfires in Oregon history.

I went to relax in a lounge chair by the hotel pool. But as I lay there, I noticed the sky slowly change from blue, to a dull yellow, and then to a reddish gray.

Thanks to that ordeal, people know what to do during smoke events. They stay inside. They wear masks. They seal their doors and windows.

One thing I noticed during this year’s wildfire emergency: There’s been little talk about what anyone could have done to prevent it.

After 2020, Oregon spent nearly $200 million on wildfire prevention and preparedness. The state promised more prescribed burns, more fuel reduction, and more resilient forests. Six years later, there’s plenty of bureaucracy devoted to wildfire, but it’s hard to tell what any of it has accomplished.

Liberals hardly even talk about “climate change” anymore. Whatever you thought of that explanation, at least it implied there was a problem to fix.

Now, we just call it “wildfire season.” As if it’s an inevitable part of the cycle of life. It comes every year. Like the snow melts in the mountains. Or the leaves change in the fall.

We’ve normalized the burning of our state.

Worst year ever

In 2020, we were already dealing with riots; and then COVID lockdowns; and then terrible fires; and then dense walls of smoke descended on Portland.

The first day of smoke was bad. The second day was nightmarish.

I woke up that day at 6 a.m. I could already feel the burning in my lungs. I’d had serious respiratory problems in the past, so I made the immediate decision to evade the coming smoke by whatever means necessary. I jumped out of bed and quickly packed a bag.

I clicked on the radio and consulted various smoke maps on my laptop. Northeastern Oregon still looked clear, so I got in my car and started driving east toward Pendleton, 200 miles away.

Surely that was far enough. I could stay there for a couple days, until the smoke cleared.

As I passed through downtown Portland, the smoke was as thick as fog. As I continued east, through the Columbia Gorge, the smoke was so dense you couldn’t see the Columbia River, 50 yards to your left.

The air smelled toxic. The smoke blocked out the sun. You couldn’t tell what time it was by the ambient light. You had to look at your watch.

They didn’t see it coming

In Pendleton, I could finally see blue sky. But according to the weather radar on my phone, the smoke was right behind me. I remember that the teenage employees at the Pendleton Burger King didn’t know anything about it. I had to explain to them that in an hour they’d be engulfed.

I got back in my car and drove farther east to Boise, another 200 miles. When I got there, the skies were clear. I had outrun the smoke. And hopefully outdistanced it as well.

I checked into a hotel. I thought, OK, I’ll just hang out here for a couple days.

I went to relax in a lounge chair by the hotel pool. But as I lay there, I noticed the sky slowly change from blue, to a dull yellow, and then to a reddish gray.

How could the smoke have caught up with me? I had driven here at 80 mph!

The next day I drove to Pocatello and the day after that to Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake was a ghost town because of COVID. There, I checked into an eccentric-looking two-star hotel. It was the only place open.

RELATED: Is America still a ‘first world’ country? Not compared to Japan

UCG/Bloomberg

Salt Lake City

The smoke eventually arrived in Salt Lake City too, but only faintly. It wasn’t the suffocating soup it was in Oregon.

I kept thinking, One more day, and I’ll head back. But then I’d check the air quality in Portland, and it was still “extremely hazardous.”

On Facebook, my Portland friends were hunkered down, taping up their windows, sealing their homes. They were stuck inside with their kids, their pets; nobody was going outside. They put on brave fronts on Facebook, but I could tell they were losing their minds.

In SLC, I was just bored. I walked around a lot. My hotel was full of weirdos. Some of them lived there. They appeared unaware that the world was on fire.

In my room, I had the Weather Channel on continuously. By now, I was an expert at tracking smoke. My laptop bookmarks were everything from obscure NOAA wind maps to meticulous air quality websites based in Switzerland.

Throughout all of this, I kept thinking: This can’t last more than another couple days. But in fact, it lasted eight more days.

Finally, when the sky was visible in Portland, I began the long drive home.

Homecoming

It took days to air my apartment out. At first, I felt survivor’s guilt. My traumatized friends and neighbors looked like they’d been through a war.

Of course, this recent smoke event wasn’t nearly as bad as the Great Portland Smoke-Out of 2020. This one only lasted four days. Most people didn’t bother to tape their doors and windows shut. But they could have. They know how. They’ve done it before.

Like I said, Portlanders are accepting this. Like they accepted mask mandates. Like they accepted transgender children.

They even named our new WNBA team the Portland Fire. It’s almost like they’re asking for it.

​Climate change, Mask mandates, Transgender children, Portland fire, Oregon, Lifestyle, Blake’s progress, Wildfire 

As a professor who has spent his career among left- and far-left academics, I have watched them justify discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and political outlook for decades. So I was not surprised by the Jason Arday story.

Cambridge professor Jason Arday resigned from his tenured position last week, and almost immediately the academic left began demonstrating why the controversy matters far beyond one professor.

Human beings need redemption. Redemption does not come from DEI administrators or university bureaucracies proposing to cure discrimination with more discrimination.

Arday became an academic celebrity when Cambridge appointed him professor of sociology of education in 2023. He was celebrated as the youngest black professor ever appointed at the university.

Now he has resigned amid allegations of plagiarism and serious questions about claims concerning his academic and professional record.

Arday disputes the broadest accusations against him and has acknowledged some errors. Cambridge, meanwhile, is reviewing the process by which he was appointed. The obvious question is whether ordinary safeguards failed — and whether the university’s diversity priorities had anything to do with that failure.

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion” is not simply the old affirmative-action idea of giving a candidate a chance. Equity ideology goes further. It treats unequal outcomes as presumptive evidence of injustice and then demands institutional action to manufacture more equal outcomes, even when differences in interest, preparation, achievement, or merit may explain the disparity.

But something even more revealing happened after Arday’s resignation: the defense of the system that produced him.

The Guardian interviewed black British academics who acknowledged problems with Arday’s conduct but argued that the extraordinary attention paid to his case reflected something darker. White academics commit misconduct too, they argued. Why, then, had Arday become a national story? Some suggested that the political right was weaponizing his case against diversity and black academics more broadly.

Professor Kehinde Andrews went further, connecting the controversy to what he considered a more important story: black academics losing jobs as British universities make cuts.

That response illustrates the DEI worldview almost perfectly.

Andrews himself is among five black academics threatened with redundancy at Birmingham City University as it moves to eliminate its master’s program in black studies and global justice. He has described the move as an “erasure” of black studies.

RELATED: Cambridge star Jason Arday was the perfect DEI success story. Is that why nobody questioned him?

Simon & Schuster; Anselm Ebulue/Bloomberg/Getty Images

But notice what is actually being eliminated: a specific degree program, not black students as a class.

There is also another relevant fact. The university says the program suffers from low recruitment. The master’s program reportedly has eight students.

If a university eliminates a program that attracts too few students to justify its costs, we do not need racism to explain what happened. We have economics.

British universities are facing a serious financial crisis. Programs and faculty positions are being cut across numerous disciplines.

Yet the circular logic of oppression studies kicks in immediately: Elimination is proof of racism, and racism is proven by the elimination. No other explanation is allowed.

DEI reverses the burden of proof. If members of a designated oppressed group suffer an adverse outcome, the outcome itself becomes evidence of oppression.

That is precisely the intellectual habit that created many of these programs in the first place.

For decades, universities created entire academic programs around increasingly specialized forms of identity studies. Taxpayers and students subsidized them. The programs produced graduates, some of whom became professors who taught the next generation why universities needed those same programs.

The reasoning became wonderfully circular: We need professors in these programs because we have these programs, and we need these programs because professors in these programs tell us how urgently society needs them.

There are two inconvenient participants in this arrangement: the student and the taxpayer.

Students eventually ask what they are receiving in exchange for tuition, years of their lives, and often considerable debt. If the degree will not improve their prospects, why not study the same subjects independently for the price of a library card?

Taxpayers eventually ask why they should subsidize programs unable to attract enough students to sustain themselves.

Calling the resulting budget cuts “racism” does not answer either question.

Nobody is prohibited from studying whatever subject he wishes. If there is enormous demand for these programs, their advocates are free to establish private institutions devoted to them.

But that would expose the programs to a test they have largely avoided: persuading enough people voluntarily to pay for what they offer. If they fail that test, they go bankrupt.

Public subsidy is more comfortable than market judgment, especially when the program can always explain its own weakness as further proof that society needs more of it.

The Arday controversy therefore reveals something deeper than questionable hiring practices or plagiarism allegations. It exposes the circular reasoning at the heart of DEI.

RELATED: Warning: This college course may be bad for your brain

Andi Purnomo/Getty Images

But there is an even deeper mistake.

DEI correctly senses that something is wrong with human beings. People really do hate. They really do discriminate. They really do exploit one another. Human history provides more than enough evidence. Human beings hate their neighbors.

Where DEI goes wrong is in believing that the human heart can be remade by dividing people into oppressors and oppressed, redistributing positions and honors among groups, and endlessly rehearsing grievances about historical injustice.

That experiment cannot redeem humanity. At best, it rearranges power. At worst, it gives old human vices a new moral vocabulary.

And we are watching it fail.

The problem is not merely institutional. It is human.

If the problem is the human heart, the solution will not be found in another diversity office, another identity-studies program, or another attempt to manufacture equity.

Christianity has always offered a more radical diagnosis and a more radical cure.

Human beings need redemption. Redemption does not come from DEI administrators or university bureaucracies proposing to cure discrimination with more discrimination.

It comes from Christ.

​Black british academics, Discrimination on race, Diversity priorities, Identity studies, Plagiarism allegations, Professor jason arday, Academic left, Cambridge university, Opinion & analysis 

New York police said they were able to identify and arrest the suspect of a brutal rape of a 90-year-old woman only five hours after the horrific assault.

29-year-old Jonathon Rivaldo allegedly broke into the woman’s unit at the Dayspring Apartments in Corning on July 13 at about 2 a.m.

‘He’s been in prison for the better part of the past 12 years for nonviolent offenses.’

Steuben County District Attorney Brooks Baker said it was the most disturbing case of his entire career.

Rivaldo is from Rochester originally, and police said they believed he was in the Corning area to visit his family. He had served more than four years for aggravated vehicular assault in Monroe County.

He had also been released from prison for only three days before the horrific attack, according to police.

Baker said it was a random attack and that Rivaldo did not know the victim prior to the incident.

A week after the alleged assault, the woman died from her injuries.

Prosecutors added a second-degree murder charge to the slew of charges he already faced: first-degree assault, second-degree assault, robbery, third-degree intimidating a victim and petit larceny.

“He’s been in prison for the better part of the past 12 years for nonviolent offenses,” Baker added. “He has no prior sex crimes.”

Baker said there had only been two stranger rapes in Corning during his career, which began in 1994.

RELATED: ‘Completely evil’ man sentenced to decades for tying up and raping elderly Ohio woman

Rivaldo allegedly got in more trouble while awaiting trial.

He was additionally charged with possessing a makeshift cutting instrument at the Steuben County Jail, a felony.

He will be represented by Steuben County public defender Terry Baxter.

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​Brutal rape, Elderly woman, Murder, New york, Crime