Women have been fighting back for a long time now when confronted by crime, and the year 2025 was no exception.

In one instance, a woman was shopping in a store and used her Second Amendment rights against a male who reportedly was groping other customers and even pulled out a gun and threatened their lives … then we have a story about a mother who hid in a closet with her baby after a man broke into her home, and she permanently ended the threat … and then there was a tale that might make you smile about a woman who faced down a crook and took care of business with her bare hands, to the amazement of her husband.

Here are our top-five moments of 2025 when women decided to take matters into their own hands when facing down criminals:

Video: Woman pulls male intruder out of her car, throws him to the ground with ease — while her amazed husband watches

Astonishing surveillance video from a Hollywood gas station shows the moment when a woman pulled a male intruder out of her car and threw him to the ground with ease.

The woman, Star Carter, was sitting in the driver’s seat of her red Alfa Romeo at the gas station Nov. 4 when a male stranger walked up and tried to open her passenger door, KCBS-TV reported.

Her husband, Michael Carter, was pumping gas at the time and was on the other side of car — and initially thought he successfully told the guy to get lost.

But after Michael got back in the passenger seat, the crook sneaked back and opened the driver-side rear door closest to the gas pump and actually got into the back seat, video shows.

“I’m wrestling with him inside the car,” Michael told the station, “and I’m kinda pushing him and pushing him, and all I know is he just disappeared.”

With that, Star’s husband smiled and told KCBS that “I’m looking over the back, and I said, ‘Oh … ohhh!'”

Michael’s, shall we say, starstruck reaction was due to the fact that his wife got out of her driver’s seat, got to the back door, ripped the intruder right out the car, and tossed him to the ground.

“I don’t condone violence, but I do condone self-defense,” Star told KCBS in the aftermath.

Wisely, the intruder ran off after Star introduced him to the concrete. But she also had some parting advice for him: “I just said, ‘Don’t you ever do no stupid [word redacted in KCBS video] like this again!'”

The station said the Carters actually continued their night out, going to a comedy show at the Hollywood Improv. In the end, her husband was grateful that Star stood up to the crook.

“She is indeed my hero,” Michael noted to KCBS with a laugh in the aftermath. “Thank you, Star!”

Creep with violent past allegedly gropes store customer, threatens to kill others — so woman in store shoots him dead instead

A 42-year-old man followed another customer into the Pink Beauty Supply store in Compton, California, on Oct. 19 and “groped her once inside” the store, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lieut. DeJong told KCBS-TV.

When employees told him to leave, the man allegedly refused and began to verbally assault them and some customers before he started throwing objects inside the store, KCBS added.

Employees and customers noted that the male had an object in his hand that they believed was a knife, the sheriff’s department said, adding that the male made verbal threats that he was going to kill and harm everyone in the store.

With that, one of the customers — not the one he allegedly groped — pulled out a gun, KCBS said.

Fearing for the store employees, herself, and other customers, the sheriff’s department said she fired a warning shot at the male. But the male turned toward her, officials said — and fearing she was going to be attacked, she fired a second shot, striking the male.

DeJong noted to KCBS that “he went down.” The sheriff’s department said the male was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators noted to KCBS that the woman who pulled the trigger was a customer at the store, and she remained at the scene to cooperate with officials. Detectives added to the station that parking lot surveillance video indicates the man was loitering in the area and drinking alcohol.

“He alleged he was a gang member, and LASD says it appears he was a gang member; unknown if still active,” DeJong told KCBS while adding that the male had a lengthy criminal history that included assaults, robberies, thefts, and disturbing the peace.

KNBC-TV said the woman is in her 50s, that she surrendered the gun, and that no one was arrested.

Mother hid from home invader in closet with her baby — then shot thug in the head, police say

A man with a long criminal record faced the ultimate penalty for breaking into the wrong home after discovering an armed mother, according to Illinois police.

The Joliet Police Department said they responded to a residence on Hadrian Drive on the far west side of Joliet around 10:30 p.m. Aug. 15.

Police said they saw signs of forced entry at the home and found an unresponsive man on the second floor with gunshot wounds. Paramedics pronounced the man dead at the scene.

They also found a woman at the home with her baby. She told them she hid in a closet in her bedroom with her child after she heard the break in. She also had a handgun with her, and when the man entered the bedroom, she shot him in the head.

Police said they found a screwdriver in the man’s possession and noted he was wearing gloves at the time of the shooting.

The Will County Coroner’s Office identified the man as 36-year-old Shelby Hurd of Chicago. Hurd had been convicted of burglaries in 2022 and 2023 as well as identity theft and burglary in another county. He had been paroled on Feb. 24.

Stalker shows up at woman’s workplace, begins punching her, cops say. But victim has a gun — and she uses it.

A stalker showed up at a woman’s workplace in Pensacola, Florida, on the morning of Feb. 10 and began punching her, police said.

But the victim had a gun on her and shot the male once in the leg in self-defense, police added.

Marquise James, 35, was arrested in connection with the 11:30 a.m. incident at the Downtown Pensacola Holiday Inn, WEAR-TV reported.

Records show James was in the Escambia County Jail on charges of stalking, battery, smuggle contraband, possession of cocaine, possession of marijuana, resisting an officer, and simple assault. His bond is set at $26,500.

Pensacola Police Officer Mike Wood told WEAR that the stalking “has been going on for quite some time” and that “this male individual has been … using social media, using phones” to do so.

Wood added to the station that “he’s come to her place of employment before, and she told him to leave, and he did. But this time when he came, he saw her in the laundry room, he approached her and began punching her.”

With that, Wood told WEAR that the victim “drew a handgun that she had legally and shot him once in the leg.”

“He’s much larger than she is, and she did what she had to do,” Wood noted to the station, adding that “she did nothing wrong. She was protecting herself like she should have done.”

Police told WEAR that no charges are being filed against the woman.

Wood added to the station that when James “was at the hospital, he kicked one of our officers.” Wood also told WEAR that James “had cocaine and marijuana on him.”

Thug allegedly recorded himself raping woman at gunpoint — before she shot him

A woman said she was sexually assaulted at gunpoint before she was able to retrieve her own gun and shoot the accused rapist, according to Indiana police.

The victim said she was assaulted on the afternoon of Sept. 16 at her home on Meadowlark Drive on the northeast side of Indianapolis, according to court documents.

She said that she was forced to have sex at gunpoint with the male, who was also recording the assault on his cell phone. When the man left the home, she got her gun and shot at him. She appeared to have shot the back window of a blue Toyota that was parked on an adjacent street.

A neighbor called police, and the victim identified the alleged attacker as 23-year-old Trevon Haynes.

About an hour later, a police officer noticed a car with its hazard lights flashing and saw that the driver had been shot in the leg. Haynes was arrested, and police said they found a firearm in the car.

He was charged with rape, intimidation, and burglary, while being armed with a deadly weapon.

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​2025, 2nd amend., Crime, Fighting back, Women 

Millions of Americans fled deep-blue states like California and New York because they believed the rules were different elsewhere. They moved to places like Alabama to escape lockdowns, mandates, and ideological capture of public institutions. They believed red states meant red lines.

That belief is proving dangerously naïve.

If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.

Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country. It has a Republican supermajority and some of the strongest parental rights laws on the books: bans on gender-transition procedures for minors, curriculum transparency requirements, legal definitions of male and female, protections for girls’ sports, and a rare requirement that parents must opt in before schools provide any mental health services, including discussions of suicide or bullying.

And yet those protections are now being quietly hollowed out — not by legislators, but by bureaucratic subversion.

The footnote loophole

The Alabama State Department of Education is undermining parental consent by inserting exceptions into the fine print of a required opt-in form distributed after a new parental consent law took effect Oct. 1.

The law itself is unambiguous. Parents must provide prior written consent before schools offer mental health services, including discussions related to suicide or bullying. But the department claims in the footnotes that mental health-related conversations may still occur “as appropriate” in other school settings — and that these interactions do not require parental permission.

The ALSDE has stated that “instruction, advisement, and occasional interventions are not subject to opt-in requirements, as these are regular duties of school counselors and other educators.”

That language does more than stretch the statute. It appears designed to bypass it entirely. When schools engage minors in discussions with clear psychological or therapeutic implications — trauma, gender identity, suicidal ideation — without parental consent, they move into legally and constitutionally questionable territory.

Same playbook, new label

Parents have seen this before. During COVID, mandates were imposed first and justified later. Dissent was sidelined. Authority flowed downward, not outward.

Now the same model is being applied to school-based mental health. Whether embedded in social-emotional learning, “student wellness,” or character education, the result is the same: psychological interventions delivered by school employees, not licensed physicians, without parental oversight.

This is not a gray area. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed parents’ fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children. When school systems create end runs around opt-in requirements — especially on matters involving suicide or gender ideology — they invite serious legal and civil rights challenges.

No state is immune

This is not an Alabama anomaly.

Illinois now mandates mental health screenings for public school students, with no opt-in. Mississippi is rolling out a statewide “youth wellness platform.” Tennessee is placing mental health clinicians in every public school through a $250 million trust fund. Ohio is expanding school-based health centers that embed mental health treatment directly on campus.

These programs erase the line between education and health care. They normalize a system in which children’s emotions are monitored, recorded, and interpreted by the state without parental consent. That is state-sponsored emotional profiling.

Who decides what helps?

This debate is not about whether children need support. It is about who decides what support looks like — and who has the authority to provide it.

Parents possess a fundamental right to make decisions about their children’s mental and physical health. The Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor reaffirmed that when schools impose ideologically loaded services or content without notice or opt-out, they burden parental rights and religious liberty.

RELATED: ‘Incredible victory’: Federal judge prohibits trans-related grooming efforts in California schools

Photo by Luis Soto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Alabama’s counseling framework includes DEI-driven language encouraging students to “identify individual differences” and “describe and respect differences among individuals.” In practice, that language provides a vehicle for embedding gender ideology and values-based content into guidance lessons.

When that content is paired with school-based interventions, the issue is no longer education. It is ideological formation funded by taxpayers and imposed without consent.

Alabama’s warning

If this can happen in Alabama — arguably the most pro-parental-rights state in the country — then no state is safe.

Agencies should not be allowed to bury statutes in footnotes, reinterpret laws by memo, or use therapeutic language to bypass parental authority. These are not technical disagreements. They are unconstitutional and demand legal pushback.

If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.

Strong laws matter, but enforcement matters more. Parents must demand both.

​Opinion & analysis, Education, Administrative state, Public schools, Alabama, Parental consent, Parental rights, Mental health, Counseling, Student wellness, Red states, Blue states, Bullying, Loophole 

A dystopian surveillance state is what so many Americans fear their country is becoming, while some have just accepted that a surveillance state is our past, present, and future.

“There comes a point where, as a society, we just end up getting used to the massive surveillance state that we live in,” Glenn Beck’s head researcher and former DOD intelligence analyst Jason Buttrill tells Glenn.

However, while we’re used to the surveillance state, it doesn’t appear to be doing its job — especially when you look at the response to the recent shooting at Brown University.

On Saturday, Dec. 13, a gunman opened fire inside a first-floor classroom at the Barus and Holley building on Brown’s campus — and the gunman remains elusive.

“If you go back to around 2021, there were people writing about how Brown University was one of the most surveilled campuses in the United States,” Buttrill explains.

“How is it we only have one picture of this guy from the back?” Glenn interjects, adding, “Apparently the one thing that will help you get away with any crime is a hoodie.”

“Yeah, wear something over your head and a coat. Apparently that foils the entire surveillance state, y’all,” Buttrill agrees. “So I guess we have nothing to worry about with surveillance.”

“And on top of that, Kash Patel, the FBI director, said that, you know, they sprung into action and they activated their cellular monitoring system to help identify the person that has now been let go,” he continues.

“Again, that’s another layer of this surveillance state that I think a lot of us should be worried about, and that didn’t do anything either,” he says, adding, “That helped give us the wrong suspect.”

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​Video, Video phone, Upload, Camera phone, Sharing, Free, Youtube.com, The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Surveillance state, Brown university shooting, Dystopian, Fbi cellphone tracking, Kash patel, Jason buttrill 

The top songs this Christmas should certainly offend anyone who thought “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was worthy of outrage.

At the height of the woke era, media outlets argued over whether the 1944 Frank Loesser classic should be banned, as radio stations pulled the song because its lyrics allegedly alluded to “date rape.”

‘Baby, I’m a dog, I’m a mutt.’

The media apparatus sprung into action with parody after cross-dressing parody. Few defended the song — surprisingly, Variety was one of the biggest outliers — and the “Me Too” mantra carried on looking for more scalps to take.

Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” soon received similar treatment, despite garnering almost a billion views on YouTube. With featured artist Pharrell saying the song he profited off of was evidence of a prominent “chauvinist culture,” that art was not allowed to exist as art.

While offense can be taken in any generation’s music, it seems appropriate to note that it seemingly goes one direction, and progressive cookie-cutter sexual content cannot be questioned.

This has not changed in 2025, as slop tops the charts with stereotypical soft-core imagery.

Sombr, ‘Back to Friends’

Topping the Billboard charts in the rock and alternative category as of Dec. 17 is “Back to Friends” by Sombr. In this song by New Yorker Shane Michael Boose, he talks about the difficulty of returning to a normal friendship with some one he has slept with.

The song about being forgotten by a presumed love one remains fairly generic until the music video is taken into account, which features multiple gay make-out scenes juxtaposed with explosions of lava.

RELATED: Taylor Swift isn’t a role model — and it’s time for moms to stop pretending she is

Leon Thomas, ‘Mutt’

The R&B and hip-hop category is led by Leon Thomas’ “Mutt.”

Although the song came out in 2024, it is hitting new highs for the 2025 Christmas season, with lyrics about Thomas convincing a woman that there is no need for them to wait to have sex, because, “Baby, I’m a dog, I’m a mutt.”

Thomas notes that he wishes for him and his new lady to “break in” his new apartment, while adding that he believes in the Second Amendment, with the lyrics: “Thirty-two, like my pants size ’cause a n***a tried breaking in.”

The song is really not offensive, but neither are lyrics from the 1940s saying, “My mother will start to worry.”

RELATED: The viral country anthem that has girlboss Twitter melting down and trad women cheering

Kehlani, ‘Folded’

Not to be forgotten at No. 2 on the R&B list is Kehlani’s “Folded.”

Kehlani Ashley Parrish, an Oakland-born singer who once aspired to be a Juilliard-trained dancer, shows off her moves in the video, where she sports a completely see-through dress and essentially dances naked alongside women in their underwear.

Again, while this is not a new phenomenon for a music video, it seems extremely egregious when placed next to the 1949 film “Neptune’s Daughter” that popularized “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

While Kehlani carries laundry and talks about folding clothes in her music video, the obvious inference is that she is talking about her preferred sexual position.

The lyrics website Genius states, “Here, Kehlani seems to be implying she can ‘fold’ her body for her lover if they decide they want to become romantic again.”

Taylor Swift, ‘The Fate of Ophelia’

It comes as no surprise that Taylor Swift is topping the pop charts with “The Fate of Ophelia,” even though the music video came out in October. Swift obviously sexualizes herself — maybe Dean Martin did too? — as a 1950s showgirl, but the song centers on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and has Swift nearly dying from heartbreak in the lyrics.

Some lyrics are almost direct lifts from “Hamlet,” but the song as a whole is light-years away in terms of degeneracy in comparison to the other items on this list.

However, it is hard to imagine how it is conceivable that Swift dancing in lingerie and being groped on a pirate ship is less controversial than, “My sister will be suspicious (Gosh, your lips look delicious).”

While music lovers may notice that wild offense-taking now skips the industry unless it serves a political purpose, that equilibrium rarely holds forever. Cultural pendulums do swing.

When they do, the correction sometimes arrives loudly — through provocation, politics, or spectacle. But just as often, it comes quietly, in the form of art that refuses to scandalize at all.

Ella Langley, ‘Choosin’ Texas’

Which brings us to Ella Langley. Topping the country charts this Christmas with “Choosin’ Texas,” the Alabama native commits a far subtler transgression: She sings plainly about heartbreak, drinking alone, and the ache of love gone wrong — without sexual exhibitionism, ideological signaling, or manufactured outrage. She even manages to say a few positive things about Texas and Tennessee. In 2025, that kind of restraint may be the most disruptive posture left.

​Align, Christmas, Carols, Holidays, Christmas song, Pop, Country, Hip hop, Rap, R&b, Rock music, Lifestyle 

A certain smug comfort belongs to people who have never stood between a riot line and a camera, never smelled accelerant on the wind, never watched their phones lose signal while fire chewed through an entire neighborhood. They talk about “heated rhetoric” and “charged atmospheres” as if danger were theoretical. For women reporters on the ground, it isn’t.

The front line is not a metaphor. It is a place. And it is getting more dangerous by the year.

This is not a gadget story. It is a survival story.

I have covered Antifa riots where the mob knew my name before I reached the sidewalk. I have been screamed at, followed, and threatened by people who publicly denounce violence while privately practicing it. I have watched law enforcement stand down under progressive policies that place the comfort of agitators above the safety of citizens. And I have learned, the hard way, that when cities become unlivable, women pay first.

The left loves to talk about “lived experience.” Here is mine: Democrat governance has made America’s major cities objectively less safe, and being a female independent journalist in them now requires the mindset of a survivalist.

That became brutally clear during the Los Angeles wildfires of 2025.

I was there when the sky turned orange and evacuation orders contradicted one another. Cell towers failed. Emergency lines were overwhelmed. Friends and family lost homes — not hypothetically, not statistically, but completely. In that chaos, the only reason I was able to coordinate help, locate people, and call for assistance was a satellite phone. While 911 systems collapsed, that device worked. No signal dependency. No excuses.

That is not a gadget story. It is a survival story.

The same lesson repeats itself elsewhere. In Washington, D.C., shootings now occur in places that once felt immune — near offices, events, and corridors of power. I was at Butler. I have been steps away from moments that could have gone very differently. Anyone insisting that “these things don’t happen here” is either lying or sheltered by privilege.

When whistleblowers reach out to me, they do not do it over casual cell calls. They use secure satellite communications, because they understand something our leaders prefer not to acknowledge: privacy is safety. Satellite phones are resistant to interception, independent of fragile infrastructure, and immune to spam and shutdowns. When people have something dangerous to say, they choose tools that help keep them alive.

This is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition.

People have died hiking because there was no signal. Boaters have vanished because help could not be reached. Hurricanes do not care about ideology. Fires do not check voter registration. Yet one party consistently opposes disaster preparedness, energy independence, and resilient infrastructure — while demanding blind trust in systems that fail precisely when they are needed most.

Preparedness is not extremism. It is common sense.

Redundancy in communication is not political. Neither are solar-powered backups or hardened devices. Nor is concern about electromagnetic vulnerabilities when our lives run through centralized, fragile networks. Thinking ahead does not make you radical. It makes you female in a country that keeps telling women to be brave while stripping away the tools that make bravery survivable.

And yes, it matters who builds those tools.

If I am calling for help, I want American customer service — American voices, American-owned companies. Safety should not come with a foreign accent and a hold button. Trust is part of security.

This is why satellite phones, solar chargers, emergency kits, and hardened cases are no longer niche products. They are rational responses to an increasingly unstable political and physical environment. They are also meaningful gifts — because nothing says you care like giving someone a way to come home alive.

RELATED: A nation without trust is a nation on borrowed time

Photo by Jay L Clendenin/Getty Images

Which brings us to 2026.

Around President Trump, TPUSA events, or Republican members of Congress, the threat environment is asymmetric. The left has normalized political violence while denying it exists. Media figures excuse it. Politicians minimize it. Prosecutors decline to prosecute it. And women journalists who refuse to conform are expected to absorb the consequences quietly.

I won’t.

The question voters should ask heading into the midterms is not which party sounds kinder on cable news. It is which party acknowledges reality — and equips Americans, especially women, to survive it.

One side treats chaos as a political tool. The other treats safety as the foundation of freedom.

I know which one kept me connected when the fires closed in. I know which one refuses to pretend riots are “mostly peaceful.” And I know which one understands that strong borders, strong policing, resilient infrastructure, and personal preparedness are not luxuries in dangerous times.

The front line is expanding. It runs through our cities, our forests, our streets, and our inboxes. Women are already on it — whether policymakers realize it or not.

The only question left is whether America will choose leaders who take our safety seriously or continue sacrificing us to ideology.

Because the danger is real. And pretending otherwise is the most reckless policy of all.

​Opinion & analysis, Disorder, Law and order, Civil unrest, Riots, Natural disasters, Wildfires, Floods, Emergency, Preparation, Supplies, Satellite, Power grid, Mostly peaceful protests, Anarchy, Border security