Blaze News readers spotted this problem from a mile away when we covered Ring’s creepy AI-powered surveillance features earlier this year. Ring should have seen it coming too, given the company’s penchant for spying on everything within viewing distance of its nearest camera — at least that’s what this new class-action lawsuit alleges. According to the suit, Amazon Ring is collecting and storing photos of passersby without their consent, and if the court finds for the plaintiff, the company will pay up to the tune of $5 million.

The lawsuit

In the class-action lawsuit filed by a Virginia man, Ring is charged with violating the privacy of millions of Americans through AI-powered facial recognition and analysis features included in many of its cameras embedded in video doorbells, mounted outdoors, and even placed inside homes.

The sad truth of the modern world is that mass surveillance is nothing new.

The suit specifically goes after Ring’s Familiar Faces feature, which is designed to detect the faces of “friends, family, and frequent visitors over time.” Once a familiar face is identified, Ring owners receive a notification that tells them which person is at the door.

In order to pull off this trick, Ring cameras allegedly must scan the faces of everyone who walks by and compare them with the facial images saved in its system. This includes friends and family members as well as complete strangers who have no idea that the camera mounted nearby is analyzing their likeness with AI. Just like that, a feature built for user personalization is now a potential tool for creating AI-generated profiles of vast numbers of unwitting Americans who did not agree to participate in Ring’s alleged public surveillance operation.

Even more problems for Ring

The lawsuit doesn’t even take into account Ring’s known spy-like feature called Search Party. Billed as a helpful tool to find lost pets, Search Party taps into a vast network of Ring cameras in a specific area to scan for lost dogs, cats, and other critters, identify them, and help owners bring them back home.

The concern here is that finding lost pets is merely the tip of the iceberg. If Ring’s surveillance dragnet can find animals, it can also scan for people, subverting privacy and crossing ethical boundaries. Even worse, a leaked email from Ring founder Jamie Siminoff admitted that mass surveillance was the true purpose of Search Party all along, concealed under the guise of stopping crime in neighborhoods.

According to Siminoff, Ring doesn’t use captured footage without users’ consent, stressing that “sharing has always been the camera owner’s choice.” This is only half true. While Familiar Faces is locked behind a manual setup process that requires users to opt in, Search Party is enabled on supported cameras by default; you must disable it manually in the Ring app to limit Ring’s spying capabilities.

RELATED: Shadowy companies are selling access to your smart TV — and its data

JDawnInk/Getty Images

Unfortunately, if the allegations are true, the anonymous people who walk in front of Ring cameras with Familiar Faces or Search Party enabled don’t get a choice in the matter, and images of these people are recorded, stored, and analyzed directly on Ring’s servers, often without their knowledge. Absent opt-in or opt-out options for these pedestrians, we come to the crux of the lawsuit.

Today’s spyware could be even more dangerous with AI

The sad truth of the modern world is that mass surveillance is nothing new. CCTV, which was first deployed in Nazi Germany to watch V-2 rocket launches from a safe distance during World War II, became a mainstay of American public security by the 1980s. Past is prologue. Fast-forward 40 years, and the powers that be have found an array of creative ways to spy on us — warrantless FISA investigations, smart TVs, smart glasses, and the list goes on.

Throughout these privacy violations, mass surveillance captured plenty of footage, but it used to take time and effort for real people to pore through it all and give it meaning. Today, AI can do all the image analyzing for governments, corporations, and bad actors in record time, allowing underground organizations to identify and monitor Americans so efficiently that it would make Communist China blush. The facade of privacy and online anonymity in America is effectively gone.

Thankfully, we still have some rights in this country, and one way we hold offenders accountable and test claims for truth is through our legal system. The class-action lawsuit against Ring was filed in June, and now the two parties have the option to settle or go to trial. While we wait, you can read the complete lawsuit here.

​Tech 

A Republican-sponsored bill wants to make sure no money goes toward censoring Americans’ speech online.

Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.) is credited with making key additions to the text that people who feel they have been blacklisted online will surely appreciate.

Prohibitions on any form of deplatforming, deboosting, demonetizing.

The appropriations bill, H.R. 8595, contains text specifically designed to prevent NGOs and nonprofits from aiding tech companies in online censorship.

This includes prohibitions on any form of deplatforming, deboosting, demonetizing, suppressing, or otherwise penalizing lawful speech online in the United States.

Funds also cannot be used to affect advertising, sponsorship, payment, or revenues on the basis of lawful online speech.

Additionally, no programs can help, directly or indirectly, “create, disseminate, share, or operationalize any blacklist or similar designation system.”

Mike Benz, director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, described portions of the bill as prohibiting NGOs, contractors, or subcontractors from supporting or helping a foreign government looking to wield censorship laws on platforms like X, Meta, Google, or YouTube.

RELATED: The empire cannot drone-strike its way out of decline

Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg/Getty Images

However, among many of the appropriations in the bill, which includes money to the Offices of Inspector General, the State Department, and the Treasury Department, are appropriations to a series of organizations most Americans are likely are not aware of.

Many of these organizations are spending money in a way most Republicans would not approve of either, even if they are not even in the realm of censorship.

This includes appropriations for the National Endowment for Democracy, which has a stated goal of supporting “projects of nongovernmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 100 countries.”

The organization’s board of directors includes several sitting U.S. House members and senators.

Appropriations also go to the Israeli Arab Scholarship Program, which “funds scholarships for Israeli Arabs to attend institutions of higher education in the United States.”

RELATED: DYSTOPIA NOW? UK will scan ‘all content’ on users’ phones without face scan or uploaded ID

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

The Center for Middle Eastern-Western Dialogue Trust Fund also gets support in the bill, an organization that has historically served as “a bridge between Iranian and U.S. scholars and experts by including Iranian citizens in its conferences when possible.”

It also pushes dialogue on topics including “the Caspian Sea and its neighbors, unity and diversity in Iraq, and the future of Afghanistan.”

Other appropriations are provided to the East-West Center, which has a “lush 21-acre campus” in Hawaii that “promotes better relations and understanding among the people and nations of the United States, Asia, and the Pacific.”

At the same time, the Asia Foundation has a “Strategy 2030” program that aims to “build inclusive, future-ready economies.”

The House will hold a final passage vote on the bill this week.

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​News, Gop, Republicans, Foreign aid, Ngos, Nonprofits, Social media, Tech 

A Florida man arrested for allegedly bragging about sexually abusing his young foster child also fostered 23 other young boys with his gay husband, police say.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in a media briefing that 51-year-old John David Ballard was arrested after police received a cyber tip on May 7.

‘By his own statements, he was using these kids for his sexual pleasure.’

Ballard had allegedly admitted on the messaging app Kik that he had been sexually abusing the 7-year-old boy in his care.

Gualtieri said the messages were explicit, graphic, and “gross.”

Ballard allegedly admitted to the conversations to deputies when they served a search warrant on his phone in June. He also told officers that he’s “into some really weird stuff” after they found videos of bestiality on his phone, according to police.

Deputies allegedly found dozens of graphic child pornography images that included victims as young as 2 months old.

The investigation expanded when investigators discovered that Ballard and his husband, Bradley Borsuk, were very active in the foster community. The couple had fostered 23 young boys between 2017 and 2023 and had adopted five children between 2015 and 2023, according to police.

All of those boys were between ages 4 and 12 years old.

Gualtieri said officers had spoken to most of the boys, some of whom were now young men, and said some had described “concerning behavior” in the ongoing investigation.

Some allegedly said that Ballard would punish them by making them undress and stand in front of a window, and others said Ballard watched them take baths or showers.

Gualtieri said Ballard and his husband had even authored a book described as an adoption journal.

On June 17, Ballard was arrested and charged with 20 counts of possession of child pornography and five counts of sexual activity involving animals.

Ballard’s husband has not yet been arrested, and authorities are still considering what to do with the four adoptive children they have living in their home.

RELATED: Woman admits to horrific child sex abuse charges and bestiality — will testify against husband

“This is really a very difficult case, because it involved the betrayal of trust that the Child Welfare System puts into people who volunteer to help the most vulnerable among us. And those are children who have been abused, abandoned, and neglected,” the sheriff said.

“One thing that is really maddening about the situation is the fraud that Ballard committed on others by holding himself out as this model foster and adoptive parent,” Gualtieri added. “By his own statements, he was using these kids for his sexual pleasure.

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​Florida man, Foster children, Foster child abuse, Child sex abuse, Gay couple, Lgbtq, Crime 

The day-to-day status of negotiations may be uncertain, but the Trump administration appears to be doing everything it can to reach a deal and end the conflict with Iran.

The war had solid support from Trump’s more Fox News-oriented voters, but it remained unpopular with much of the country. It cost Trump several high-profile supporters. It also earned him the favor of political operators who previously despised him. Several figures who had declared themselves “Never Trump” suddenly discovered a strange new respect for the president once they believed he was willing to launch another regime-change war in the Middle East.

Stop allying with neoconservatives. They will always betray you in the end.

Those fair-weather allies are now melting down over the prospect of peace between America and Iran.

In his farewell address, George Washington warned the fledgling republic that foreign entanglements were dangerous to freedom and independence. He encouraged commerce with all nations but cautioned against permanent alliances and favored nations. Washington understood that favoritism toward a foreign power would invite foreign influence and lead some citizens to mistake loyalty to an ally for loyalty to the United States.

No event has vindicated that warning more clearly than the war with Iran.

Trump immediately stood out in conservative politics by taking three positions that were popular with the base and dangerous to the establishment. He opposed open borders, unfettered trade, and endless regime-change wars.

Republican politicians, conservative pundits, and Washington think tanks loathed him for all three positions, but especially for the third. Endless conflict created job security and enormous income streams for permanent Washington. The war class did not appreciate a reality television star barging in and threatening the gravy train.

Many neoconservatives abandoned the GOP once they realized Trump was not going away. Others stayed because the war-hawk establishment had deep roots in the Republican Party. They realized they could gain more influence by pretending to convert to the MAGA movement and working from within to steer policy.

Several figures who swore they would never support Trump began presenting themselves as his greatest champions, hoping they could define what MAGA should become.

When the war with Iran began, these neoconservative champions viciously attacked anyone who pointed out that the conflict contradicted Trump’s previous foreign policy. They invented slurs to brand opponents as traitors to the president and insisted that total ideological conformity was the only acceptable position.

RELATED: The empire cannot drone-strike its way out of decline

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

The strategy worked for a time. It drove many anti-interventionists away from their previous support for Trump. That made it even more revealing when Trump moved to end the conflict and his new allies suddenly attacked him in blind rage.

America and Israel entered the conflict with very different goals. For the United States, the only real concern was preventing Iran from gaining the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. It is unlikely an Iranian nuke could threaten the U.S. directly, but keeping hostile regimes from obtaining that capacity is a legitimate goal.

Israel saw Iran differently. For Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran was an existential threat that had to be taken off the table entirely. His goal was always to collapse the current Iranian regime, replace it, or let the country become a failed state.

As Marco Rubio indicated after the war began, Israel insisted on starting the fight knowing it would force the United States to join. The two allies were out of step from the beginning, so it is no surprise that Netanyahu has done everything possible to disrupt the peace process and achieve every military objective he can while still under the protection of American arms.

The reaction in Israel to Trump’s pursuit of peace has not been gratitude. The president’s popularity there has plummeted, and headlines accusing him of betraying Israel have appeared across the country’s newspapers. One Israeli media figure even suggested America deserved another 9/11-style terror attack so the public would be frightened back into fighting Iran.

Hardcore Israel supporters in America have reacted no better. Figures such as Ben Shapiro, who briefly departed the Never Trump camp to push for war, are now turning back against Trump. At times they try to hide their anger by blaming Vice President JD Vance for the peace deal, but no one is fooled.

Neocons pushed relentlessly for a conflict that had little to do with American interests. Once they got their war, they expected military escalation to force Trump into the wider regime-change conflict they desperately desired.

Very few presidents would have had the fortitude to exit the Iran war after realizing it was unwise. Trump did. The neoconservatives will never forgive him for that outrage.

It turns out all the rhetoric about loyalty to Trump was a farce. The neoconservatives always hated Trump and his voters, despite their change in tone after his second election. Many pundits who praised Trump’s decision to bomb Iran had tried to replace him with Ron DeSantis in the primary. The people who believed their rhetoric and followed their lead were foolish. They are notably silent now that the neoconservatives are losing their minds and turning on the president.

RELATED: A real nation knows who is in and who is out

Blaze Media Illustration

What should we learn from this unwise detour into foreign adventurism?

First, Americans have little interest in extended foreign conflicts. They elected Trump to address crises at home, not to fix the Middle East.

Second, Washington was right about entangling alliances. Israel is its own country with its own priorities. It cares about the United States to the extent that America helps advance those priorities. Entering a war with an ally that does not share your interests is foolish.

Third, neoconservatives are not domestic political allies. They have no loyalty to Trump or the MAGA base and will turn on both the moment either stops serving their purposes.

The lesson is not complicated, but it is expensive. Movements that cannot distinguish temporary agreement from real alliance eventually wake up serving someone else’s agenda in wars they never wanted to fight at all.

Stop allying with neoconservatives. They will always betray you in the end.

​Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Iran, War, Peace, Negotiation, Neocons, George washington, Farewell address, Congress, Maga, America first, Foreign policy 

Preserving the continuity, vitality, and quality of life of exurban and rural red America should be a top priority for conservative policymakers.

Instead, red America faces a multifront assault on land use and development. Corrupt local Republican politicians and their developer donors are pushing data centers, solar and wind farms, and Section 8 housing for foreign labor. Now, Congress has sent President Trump a uniparty housing bill — the Obamacare of housing — that will open the floodgates for the federal government, globalists, and special interests to force more of that transformation on red communities.

Conservatives need communities that remain intact, counties that can govern themselves, and neighborhoods that are not remade by federal bribes and developer schemes.

After years of negotiations, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) just sent the largest housing bill in recent memory to the president’s desk. Only five Senate Republicans voted against it. Every Democrat supported it. Trump had signaled he would sign the bill — but only after Congress passes the SAVE America Act.

The bill is being sold as a magic wand to lower housing prices. In reality, it expands the Housing and Urban Development and Federal Housing Administration programs that helped fuel the housing bubble through artificial subsidies.

Conservatives are being told the bill bars corporate ownership of residential homes. But that provision was tacked on at the 11th hour, accounts for only 19 of the bill’s 381 pages, and is riddled with loopholes. Worse, the bill’s main provisions incentivize overdevelopment and Section 8 expansion in red America, negating whatever limited utility the corporate ownership provision might have.

The result is more social transformation than the partial corporate ownership ban claims to prevent.

Obama-style zoning incentives

Section 107 sets the tone by creating a federal zoning standard for “directing local reforms,” including “mechanisms to encourage adoption” of loose zoning rules — all in the name of increasing housing inventory. It also creates a national standard for developers and builders to request special zoning and appeal denials of variances.

That may sound appealing when discussing onerous regulations in blue states. But in red America, already overbuilt since COVID, this bill will create a federal standard that pressures communities to drop one of their few remaining tools of self-defense against the transformation of their neighborhoods.

The rest of the bill offers incentives to communities that follow this national standard. Inevitably, that will encourage localities to rezone not just for housing but also for other uses, including data centers.

HUD should not exist. It certainly should not dictate zoning policy to rural America.

The zoning guidelines would push communities to “reduce minimum lot sizes and setbacks,” increase the number of “duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes,” and promote “transit-oriented development.” Nothing good will come from federal incentives that effectively impose Section 8-style housing and density mandates on suburbs, exurbs, and rural towns.

RELATED: Another tax credit won’t fix what Sunday schools used to teach

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Grant money as a weapon

Ask any conservative living in red America under RINO leadership — which describes much of America — and he will tell you that one of the greatest threats to the character of his county comes from developers working with corporatist GOP politicians, usually their donors, to transform the neighborhood through overdevelopment.

This bill does not directly mandate adoption of the zoning standards. It does something almost as dangerous: It offers local communities and developers incentives that will function like a mandate.

Section 207, written by pro-Hamas Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), creates new competitive HUD grants for states, localities, tribes, and other entities for planning, zoning reform, barrier reduction, and implementation to increase “affordable” housing supply.

Some grants will go toward reducing environmental barriers, which is how Warren got Republicans to support the bill. But much of the remaining criteria is rooted in urbanizing more of America.

The funds are contingent on adopting plans to rezone and “increase the availability of affordable housing and access to affordable housing.” In practice, this provision places a loaded gun to the head of communities that want to keep out Section 8. Nothing gets between local politicians and grant funds.

Section 208 goes further by granting funds to communities that have already demonstrated measurable progress in expanding housing supply at all costs. Eligibility criteria include localities that build more multiunit housing, reduce lot sizes, create “zoning overlays for mixed-income housing,” and use “local tax incentives or public financing for attainable housing.”

Want to densify your suburb and destroy single-family neighborhoods? This bill is for you.

Then comes the Community Development Block Grant program. Rather than following through on every Trump budget proposal’s promise to abolish this program, the bill expands it. Worse, it creates a zero-sum reallocation within the existing CDBG formula by shifting money from low-growth communities to high-growth communities.

Build more homes, and you get rewarded. Build fewer, and you get punished.

That will either shift more money to blue areas, which make up the lion’s share of places needing more inventory, or incentivize red areas to overdevelop.

Subsidizing the next bubble

No bad housing bill would be complete without provisions expanding the FHA’s authority to extend even more loans to people who cannot afford houses, thereby fueling the next housing bubble.

Section 213 allows the FHA to insure larger loans for apartment buildings, enabling more and bigger multifamily projects to be financed with FHA insurance.

Outside the Northeast, home prices are already beginning to tumble from COVID-era overbuilding, and builders are desperate to sell. In June, 35% of builders cut prices, while 62% used sales incentives to attract buyers. America does not need to expand HUD’s reach into local communities to incentivize what is already happening.

Ironically, this bill is being sold as a way to prevent corporations from transforming neighborhoods by purchasing too many homes. But almost every other provision accelerates an even greater transformation.

Section 1001 supposedly bans very large corporate investors from buying more single-family houses. But it carves out practical exceptions for new construction, build-to-rent developments, meaningful renovation programs, and certain pathways that help renters eventually buy homes.

In other words, the same corporations will enjoy even more subsidies to build Section 8 rentals in the suburbs under the bill’s extremely limited ban than they enjoyed before it.

RELATED: Home builders say immigration reform is essential to ease housing affordability crisis

Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

No one is home

This is why Congress should not rush through a bill of this magnitude on the suspension calendar without debate.

Then again, nobody is home in the so-called conservative movement to flag a bill this large. Obamacare could pass overnight, and the loudest voices on the right might not even notice.

The bill’s supporters claim they are solving a housing crisis. In reality, they are giving HUD, developers, corporate investors, and local Republican sellouts more tools to transform red America.

Conservatives do need homes. They need communities that remain intact, counties that can govern themselves, and neighborhoods that are not remade by federal bribes and developer schemes.

That is the home conservatives must ultimately construct. Where is the bill to expedite that construction?

​Affordable housing, Donald trump, Elizabeth warren, Housing and urban development, Obamacare, Opinion & analysis, Rural america, Section 8, Senate, Tim scott, Red america, Development, Grants 

When Trump won the presidency in 2024, several celebrities made good on their promise to evacuate the United States — but that’s not stopping them from coming back.

Rosie O’Donnell famously fled to Ireland with her 13-year-old child, Clay, immediately after Trump’s win, and returned this June for the Tony Awards.

While O’Donnell had no issues getting back into the States, she made it clear that she was “worried” that it would be “problematic” the first time she returned on a secret trip in February.

“I worried the first time I came back, whether that would be problematic, and I came alone without my child, who is 13 and has autism. She’s my youngest of five,” she told Page Six in an interview. “I wanted to make sure that if anything happened, it didn’t happen in her presence, so it was fine — as it should be.”

O’Donnell explained that Trump “can’t really arrest American citizens without cause” and speaking out against him is “using freedom speech” and “is not a reason to be arrested in America.”

BlazeTV host Jeff Fisher points out that O’Donnell also called Trump an “a-hole and a con man.”

“That’s so surprising for her,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray adds.

But O’Donnell isn’t the only one.

While Ellen DeGeneres also made a big show of moving to the U.K. after Trump’s election, she purchased land in California after the move.

“They’d already sold both their homes in Los Angeles, both their mansions in L.A.,” Gray explains, “and so they had to go back home, and they bought a new mansion in Los Angeles where she spent her birthday this year.”

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Pat gray, Jeff fisher, Ellen degeneres, Donald trump, Rosie o’donnell, America, Liberal, Pat gray unleashed 

Second lady Usha Vance had a humorous rejoinder to a fashion critic politicizing her pregnancy style in the New York Times.

The vice president’s wife was the subject of fashion scrutiny over the dress she wore and how it related to the “paradigm-shifting” politics of the administration.

Fashion critic Vanessa Friedman described Vance’s ‘stretchy coral dress that hugs her stomach’ before launching full-bore into the deep end.

Vance responded by ridiculing the attempt to find deep political significance in her fashion choices.

“Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what the New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks!” she joked in the post on the X platform.

“In the meantime, enjoy my pregnancy fashion (or lack thereof) and a good story with your kids,” she added, with a video link to a storybook reading with her husband.

New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman described Vance’s “stretchy coral dress that hugs her stomach” before launching full-bore into the deep end.

“That three such prominent women in the MAGA movement were pregnant at pretty much the same time was, indubitably, a coincidence. But for an administration that has such an intuitive and strategic understanding of the power of aesthetics that an unspoken dress code in which men outfit themselves in the image of the president has developed, it has also become a telling one,” Friedman wrote.

“Together, the women have created a notably consistent, and somewhat paradigm-shifting, picture of the White House’s family and fertility platform,” she added.

Vance also posted the receipt proving she paid $8.75 for the bright coral-colored Old Navy dress — on sale from $49.99 to $12.49 and reduced further with a discount.

Paradigms have rarely been shifted at such bargain prices.

RELATED: White House hammers Jen Psaki over comments on Usha Vance: ‘Circle back on that, moron’

In this round, the second lady easily knocked out the Gray Lady.

Vance announced in January her pregnancy with the couple’s fourth child. The baby will be the first to be born to a sitting vice president.

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​New york times, White house, Usha vance, Usha vance pregnant, Fashion critic, Politics 

The MyPillow founder and CEO is sleeping easy after reaching a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over allegations regarding the 2020 election.

Dominion, which is now known as Liberty Vote, filed the defamation lawsuit against Mike Lindell in 2021 and sought $1.3 billion in damages.

‘I can now run for governor, win governor.’

On Monday, five years later, Lindell’s attorneys and the company filed to end the lawsuit with prejudice after settling out of court. The “with prejudice” condition restricts the same lawsuit from being filed in the future.

Liberty Vote said in a statement only that “the parties have agreed to a confidential settlement to this matter.”

Lindell is running for governor of Minnesota, and the latest polling showed that he is the leading Republican in the race. In March the party endorsed Kendall Qualls, an Army veteran and former health care executive.

Lindell said in a statement to WCCO-TV that the end of the lawsuit was a “big relief” for him.

“I can now run for governor, win governor, and not have to have in the back of my mind a worry about a $1.3 billion lawsuit,” he added.

Lindell was previously ordered to pay $2.3 million to a Dominion employee for defamation and ordered to pay DHL $780,000 in Jan. 2025. A federal judge also ruled that Lindell had defamed the Smartmatic voting machine company. A court has yet to determine if the case meets the “actual malice” standard that could lead to Lindell paying damages to Smartmatic.

He issued a defiant response in Jan. 2021 to the Dominion lawsuit threat.

Dominion had similarly sued former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and ended the lawsuit in Sept. 2025 with an undisclosed settlement.

RELATED: Mike Lindell says the FBI confiscated his cell phone at drive-thru of a Hardee’s

The three top Republican primary candidates are all seeking the endorsement from President Donald Trump, who has said only that Lindell “deserves” to be governor.

Whoever wins the Republican primary on August 11 will run against Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in the general election.

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​Mike lindell, Politics, Minnesota, 2020 election, Defamation, Dominion voting systems 

FIFA officials are refusing to back down on their first “Pride Match” for the World Cup despite objections from Iran and Egypt, Islamic nations where homosexuality is illegal.

The two countries are scheduled to compete in the match at Seattle Stadium on Friday, which will also include soccer- and rainbow-themed events with the LGBTQ+ community.

‘Whether that is Iran, Egypt, Qatar, Bosnia … or, frankly, the United States of America, we can all do better when it comes to inclusion’

“We are here to ensure that everybody who comes to visit, and anybody who’s watching this game, understands that we celebrate people, their sexual identity, their sexual orientation, and we are an inclusive and safe place to visit and live in,” said Pride Match co-chair Jen Barnes to the Seattle Times.

The match will be followed by the Seattle Pride Parade the following day in the downtown of the city.

FIFA says that fans will be allowed to bring in Pride flags to the stadium, as well as other flags advocating sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Iranian regime considers homosexuality a crime punishable up to death, while Egypt outlaws homosexual activities under laws banning “indecency.”

In December both Iran and Egypt objected to participating in the LGBTQ+ match, but neither pulled out of the contest.

Hedda McLendon, the senior vice president of legacy for the host committee in Seattle, told the Times that they were not pressured by FIFA to change their planned celebration.

“It was always about inclusion and visibility,” she said, “and whether that is Iran, Egypt, Qatar, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Australia, or, frankly, the United States of America, we can all do better when it comes to inclusion and LGBTQ visibility.”

According to California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D), both of the countries demanded that Pride flags be banned from the Pride match, but FIFA denied the demands.

RELATED: Pride activist outraged at CA city officials for canceling festival — then officials fire back

“Hard no to these violent, repressive regimes,” he added. “And huge gratitude & respect to the LGBTQ Egyptians & Iranians — in these countries & in diaspora — who fight so hard, putting their lives at risk, to shed light on & to end this violent repression.”

“If Iran and Egypt don’t want to see Pride flags at their match in Seattle, that’s just too damn bad,” responded transgender activist Charlotte Clymer on social media. “LGBTQ folks were intentionally erased in Qatar in 2022 due to ‘respect for local culture.’ Seattle supports LGBTQ people. Respect the local culture.”

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​World cup, Homosexuality, Lgbtq agenda, Pride parade, Seattle, Politics