Texas police officers said a home “smelled like death” when they were called to investigate after being alerted about the foul odor.

Inside they found two young children sitting in a bathtub halfway filled with dirty water and the home buried with feces, garbage, and maggots, according to an affidavit.

Police said the children smelled like ‘urine, feces, body odor, and stagnant water.’ The children said they didn’t know how to read or write and had never been to school.

Officers from the Temple Police Department said they were called to the home on Young Avenue on May 20 after a caller reported the odor and no sign of the residents.

They knocked on the doors and windows, but no one responded. Then they noted flies at the windows, which led them to believe someone had died inside.

Police made entry into the home and found 34-year-old Michael Robbins and 68-year-old John Robbins coming to the door.

They inspected the home and said every surface was filled with garbage, rodent and mouse droppings, rotting food, and maggots.

Then they found the two children.

The 8- and 10-year-old children had matted hair that was apparently infested with bugs. When they were told to get dressed, they returned in foul-smelling clothing with food stains.

Police said the children smelled like “urine, feces, body odor, and stagnant water.” The children said they didn’t know how to read or write and had never been to school.

One of the children had their adult teeth growing rotten in their mouth, an affidavit said.

Police determined that the men were not providing food for the children and that they were forced to fend for themselves.

The children were transported to McClane’s Children’s Hospital for treatment.

RELATED: Police rescue 2 children from freezing home with ‘overwhelming’ smell of dog feces and urine: ‘Like a punch to the face’

Neighbors told police they had not seen the children in years.

Both men were booked into the Bell County Jail on charges of abandoning or endangering a child with intent. They each have a bond of $60,000.

Temple is a city of about 82,000 residents located 80 miles north of Austin in central Texas.

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​Child endangerment, Child abuse, Child neglect, Filthy home, Crime 

“Backrooms” came out of internet lore to take down “The Mandalorian.” Perhaps audiences are turning on Disney. The film is now a smash hit theatrical release, but its story began online, where it grew from a 2019 4chan image and creepypasta into one of the most recognizable examples of liminal horror: familiar spaces that somehow make no sense.

The idea began on 4chan’s paranormal board, where a discussion about “disquieting spaces that just feel off” led to a user defining the Backrooms as spaces where you “noclip” out of reality. The term comes from video games, where a player slips outside the designed bounds of the game into unintended space. The Backrooms are marked by yellow wallpaper, buzzing lights, and seemingly infinite rooms.

‘Backrooms’ asks a question more terrifying than anything hiding under the fluorescent lights: What are you doing with your guilt?

These spaces are liminal, meaning they should function as transitions. Hallways, corridors, and waiting rooms are meant to have an entry point and a destination. What makes the Backrooms terrifying is that they do not go anywhere. The hallway has no destination. That is not merely inconvenient. It is a picture of purpose removed.

The movement, then, runs from liminal horror to cosmic horror. Liminal horror unsettles us because a familiar space no longer performs its purpose. Cosmic horror goes further. It asks whether all of reality is like that. The terror is not merely that something bad may happen inside reality. The terror is that reality itself may not make sense.

On the surface, life seems familiar and coherent. But as we move through it, life often becomes stranger and harder to explain. It does not turn out as we hoped. Our efforts fail. Our goals recede. Our explanations collapse. That is the fear beneath the fluorescent lights: not monsters, but meaninglessness.

We assume reality can be understood. When failure comes, we think we need more information, more self-help, more discipline, or a better method. Then we try again. We expect success. But we fail again. The failures accumulate. And life gets shorter.

That makes this horror different from a standard slasher or zombie film. In those stories, the threat is physical and animal-like. You cannot reason with the monster. You simply have to survive it. Cosmic horror raises the stakes. It asks: What if rationality is not built into reality at all? What if reason is merely man’s frantic attempt to impose order on chaos?

Clark, the film’s protagonist, embodies that question. He enters the Backrooms already looking for an explanation that will let him escape responsibility. His failures have left him with a ruined marriage and a failed career. He wants to be told that none of this is his fault. He refuses to see his obvious flaws as the cause of what happened to him. That makes him a perfect fit for the irrationality of the Backrooms.

Guilt is the bridge between the film’s horror and its spiritual meaning. Clark does not simply want to survive the Backrooms. He wants the Backrooms to explain him. He wants the maze to tell him that his failures were not really his fault.

RELATED: Indiana Jones found the lost ark of campus clichés

Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Paramount+

In that sense, the Backrooms can be read as an image of the unconscious mind. As in a dream, things feel familiar but not quite right. The spaces are recognizable and impossible at the same time. Clark searches there for something that will excuse him, but he cannot find anything intelligible. He wants the maze to justify him. Instead, it exposes him. He is trapped in the Backrooms because he is already trapped inside himself.

Director Kane Parsons has said the Backrooms are not purgatory or hell. In a literal sense, he is right. They are not presented as divine judgment according to a moral order. But that is exactly why they work as an image of a different terror: existence without moral order at all.

Christianity gives a name to this terror. It is life severed from the God who made reality intelligible. Hell is terrifying not merely because of punishment, but because those in hell have cut off communion with God the Creator. God made the world with wisdom. The world makes sense because God created it and gave man a rational soul by which to understand his creation.

When human beings reject God, they cut themselves off from the source of rationality and meaning. They then try to create their own smaller rationalities and meanings. All of them collapse because human beings cannot be God.

The person who has lost communion with God occupies a dreadful liminal space. He senses that he was created for a purpose, but he can no longer grasp that purpose. Reality feels familiar, but something is wrong. It has become unintelligible.

To be handed over to final meaninglessness while still possessing a mind that longs to understand is the greatest terror imaginable. You cannot understand reality. You cannot understand yourself. All lesser terrors frighten us because they echo this one.

One word often used to describe the Backrooms and their occupants is “deformity.” That’s key. Deformity is the attempted creation of someone who cannot create rightly. It is Lucifer’s counterfeit of what God made, and it turns out wrong. When man follows Lucifer by believing he can be his own god, he ends up in the Backrooms of his own unintelligible mind.

God created through the Logos. Lucifer deforms creation through the anti-Logos.

RELATED: When ‘be nice’ becomes the whole ethic, we’re in trouble

akinbostanci via iStock/Getty Images

The movement of the film is clear: A man burdened by guilt enters a world without meaning, seeks self-justification, and is destroyed by the irrationality he hoped would excuse him. That gives us good reason to consider our own guilt before God. Clark is gripped by guilt, but his solution is self-justification. He deceives himself about his failures and wants others to join the deception.

If we do not deal with guilt by turning in repentance to God through Christ, we are left with the same self-deception and the same liminal space of meaninglessness.

The Christian answer is not self-justification but repentance and reconciliation. In Christ, guilt is not hidden in a maze, explained away by trauma, or dissolved into meaninglessness. It is forgiven. Communion with God is restored. Reality becomes intelligible again because we are reconciled to the One who made it.

In the end, “Backrooms” asks a question more terrifying than anything hiding under the fluorescent lights: What are you doing with your guilt?

​Backrooms, Horror, Guilt, Religion, Faith, Christianity, Hollywood, Entertainment, Movies, Opinion & analysis 

Barney Frank spent his final months warning Democrats that the left had become a danger to itself.

Frank, the 16-term congressman from Massachusetts who died May 19 at 86, had been promoting a book scheduled for September publication: “The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy.”

The most effective revolutionaries do not always sound revolutionary. Sometimes they sound like men telling the revolutionaries to shut up, count the votes, and wait their turn.

That title says a great deal. Frank warned his fellow Democrats that they’re losing the electorate. But he was no mushy moderate. He was solidly a man of the left who understood that his party had developed habits that could cost it power — and, in his view, endanger the country.

Before anyone mistakes my point: This is not a eulogy for the co-author of Dodd-Frank, a man with more than his share of ethical lapses and scandals — male prostitution, anyone? — and a long record of expanding federal power and undermining American civilization. I am not here to praise Barney Frank’s life and career. I am here to draw a vital lesson about politics — how it works, who wins, and who loses.

Frank spent more than three decades in Congress advancing left-wing causes, from gay rights and anti-discrimination law to financial regulation and a more aggressive federal role in American life.

But not too aggressive too soon.

In one of his final interviews, Frank told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Democrats had succeeded in moving inequality to the center of the party’s agenda. But that success, he said, had “enabled people who wanted to use that as a platform for a wide range of social and cultural changes, some of which the public isn’t ready for.”

That little caveat — what “the public isn’t ready for” — carries a lot of weight.

To the activist mind, public reluctance often looks like bigotry, cowardice, or false consciousness. To Frank, it looked like politics. Voters were not clay to be molded by professors, nonprofits, and online scolds. They had to be persuaded, reassured, pressured, and moved over time.

Politics is persuasion — and persuasion can be the work of a lifetime.

Frank never confused delay with defeat. He treated delay as part of the cost of lasting victory. That was the real meaning of his final, misunderstood calls to “moderation” — something his irritating leftist critics missed or chose to ignore. He did not ask the left to abandon its goals. He asked the left to stop endangering them.

RELATED: Inside the left’s push to reshape 2028 with ranked-choice voting

Michael Blackshire/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

His career offers a useful correction to our political vocabulary. We tend to call politicians “moderate” when they sound less insane than their allies. But Frank was not moderate in his ends. He was moderate only in his sense of timing, sequencing, and risk.

Consider same-sex marriage. Frank supported gay rights long before they became fashionable in elite institutions. But he understood that the movement first had to win more basic fights against discrimination before asking the public to redefine marriage.

“When we were fighting for gay rights — a fight I think we have essentially won — we knew that some issues were more popular than others,” Frank told the New York Times a week before his death. “So we tended to start by trying to win the ones that were most popular. Gays in the military. Employment. We didn’t go after same-sex marriage, we didn’t make marriage a litmus test, until the very end.”

Then he drew the analogy to biological males competing in women’s sports. “That is the most controversial part of the agenda — the equivalent of gay marriage — so put it at the end. If you go at it that way, you build support for it. But if you insist on the most controversial parts all at once, you make it harder.”

Notice what he did not say. He did not say men in women’s sports had crossed an uncrossable line. He said the left had mistimed the fight. Prepare the ground, then advance. Move the public, then consolidate the gain. Do not force every question at once and then denounce the electorate for failing to keep pace.

Call that whatever you like, but don’t call it mushy moderation. That’s professional politics.

The same instinct shaped Frank’s conduct in Congress. In 2007, he supported removing gender identity protections from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act because he believed the votes did not exist to pass the broader bill. Activists accused him of betrayal. Frank’s answer was coldly practical: Do what you can now, and return later for the rest.

Frank was a patient institutional leftist. He understood committees, votes, caucuses, and public opinion. He could be abrasive, partisan, and arrogant. But he did not mistake moral intensity for legislative power.

That separated him from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whom Frank often criticized as a politician with little to show for decades in Congress. Sanders treats politics as indictment. The system is corrupt. The billionaires are guilty. The people have been betrayed. Some of that rhetoric can move voters, but rhetoric alone does not write statutes, build coalitions, or hold fragile majorities together.

Sanders rages against the system. Frank learned how to use it.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complicates the picture. She entered Congress as a democratic socialist insurgent in the Sanders mold. But she has grown in office — not toward the center, exactly, but toward machinery. Frank would not have mistaken her for one of his own. But he might have recognized the beginning of her political education.

RELATED: Your enemies aren’t mentally ill. They apparently just want to kill you.

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A better comparison might be Jerry Brown.

California Republicans never got past the late-1970s caricature of “Governor Moonbeam,” and it cost them. “Moonbeam” was Jerry 1.0. The man who left the governor’s office in 2019 was Jerry 7.0, maybe 7.5: older, harder, more disciplined, more fiscally cautious, and vastly more dangerous. Brown was no conservative, though he possessed certain conservative instincts. Brown succeeded because he understood California’s currents better than the Republicans who mocked him.

Brown had his canoe theory of politics: Paddle a little to the left, paddle a little to the right, and you get where you need to go — ultimately, the to left bank of the river. Brown was smart enough and steady enough not to tip the canoe on the way there.

Conservatives should study politicians like Brown and Frank, not because we should admire or emulate their goals, but because we should understand their methods. A political movement that cannot describe its opponents accurately cannot defeat them. Worse, it cannot learn from them.

Frank’s final warning to Democrats was simple: Stop letting the loudest voices on the left turn every unpopular cultural demand into a test of moral seriousness. Read the room. Build consensus. Move when the ground can hold.

That warning should stir conservatives, too. The most effective revolutionaries do not always sound revolutionary. Sometimes they sound like men telling the revolutionaries to shut up, count the votes, and wait their turn.

​Barney frank, Bernie sanders, Democrats, Jerry brown, Opinion & analysis, The left, Alexandria ocasio-cortez, Gay marriage, Transgender agenda, Transgender athletes, Sports, Elections, Conservatives, Jake tapper, New york times, Moderate 

For years, Glenn Beck has warned that artificial general intelligence — a true master of all human intellectual tasks — will completely upend society by the year 2030.

But according to internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, AGI is already here. On a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” he claimed that we quietly crossed the threshold with the latest chatbot models like GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.6, Grok 4.3, and Gemini 3. Andreessen declared that these models now outperform top human experts in many domains.

Glenn believes this is critical information. Like electricity, telephones, television, the internet, and other general-purpose technologies that are so powerful and broad they fundamentally reshape how society, economies, and daily life function, AGI will revolutionize the world.

Is humanity ready to navigate the rapids, or will it crash on the rocks of blind trust and indiscrimination?

Unlike the aforementioned technologies whose transformative powers were slow, AI is “coming at the speed of light,” Glenn says.

“And because of that, there will be almost no chance to adapt or to stop and think, ‘Wait a minute, what is it we’re losing? And what is it we’re gaining here?’” he warns.

AGI, Glenn explains, will render much of the world’s experts obsolete.

“This is a tool that touches every single field at once: medicine, law, education, programming, finance, therapy, research, media, art, science — everything,” he says.

In his conversation with Rogan, Andreessen claimed that medical doctors are already relying heavily on AI models to assist in diagnosing and treating patients.

“When doctors are using this in examination rooms, you need to pay attention,” Glenn says, “because it’ll reveal something really important that always comes first in history, and that’s this: The experts themselves already know.”

“While we’re sitting here using it as a toy and debating whether AI is useful, the professionals, the ones who have those deep credentials, they’ve already quietly moved on to depending on it,” he continues.

Adoption before disruption, Glenn says, has long been the pattern.

“Factories automate before workers hear about it; banks digitize before the tellers disappear; retailers optimize before the storefronts close. The future arrives inside the institution first,” he explains.

While this seems like apocalyptic news, he acknowledges the bright side: People who learn how to use AGI to their genuine advantage by employing it as their own personal “staff” will not only avoid being replaced; they’ll create new opportunities that were impossible before.

“With AI, if you know how to prompt, a small company can compete against giant corporations. A teenager can launch a product that used to have millions in capital behind it. … A single mom can get tutoring, legal explanations, business advice, health analysis … free,” Glenn says. “The upside of this is staggering.”

But there is a dark side that “matters just as much,” he warns.

While access to information has been democratized, judgment remains a skill that must be cultivated with care.

“When everyone has access to infinite information, discernment becomes priceless,” Glenn says.

He fears that those who never learned how to think critically and ask questions will blindly follow whatever AI tells them, perhaps to their demise.

“I can ask AI how to treat symptoms, but do I know the right questions to ask to see if that analysis of what I’m treating is wrong? … You can ask it legal advice, but do you know when you need a real, actual, physical attorney?” Glenn comments.

When people lose that “living moral compass” inside them — the one that detects manipulation, corruption, and ill advice — we’re in a dark age indeed.

“That’s why I have said you will be lost without the spirit to guide you,” Glenn says, “because [AI arguments are] going to be so overwhelmingly well-crafted, you may not know what is true.”

“The whole thing is not whether machines can think. Yes. The real question is whether humans can still think, and I’m not sure about that.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Artificial general intelligence, Joe rogan, Marc andreessen 

New York state officials are facing a subpoena from the Trump administration after they refused to cooperate with the investigation into a horrific lethal bus crash.

Five people were killed, including two children, when the North Carolina-based travel bus plowed into cars that had slowed down for a construction zone on Friday at about 2:35 a.m. Dozens were injured in the Stafford County, Virginia, crash.

‘This is one of the most tragic things I’ve ever seen. Absolutely tragic.’

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy identified the driver as 48-year-old Jing Shen Dong, a man originally from China who could not speak English.

The agency has now indicated that Dong had a commercial driver’s license from the state of New York but is accusing the state of refusing to cooperate with its investigation.

Investigators are seeking information about what driving school Dong attended, his entry-level driver training, and other records related to his license.

The Transportation Department demanded that the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles produce the records by 10 a.m. on Wednesday or suffer consequences that could include criminal or civil contempt proceedings.

About 48 people were transported to local hospitals over injuries from the wreck, at least three of which were in critical condition.

Four of the victims killed in the crash were identified as a family of four from Massachusetts that was traveling to a wedding with homemade desserts. They had emigrated to the U.S. from Moldova in 2008.

Dong was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, but other charges are expected as the investigation continues.

Duffy vowed to uncover what agencies and companies were responsible for putting Dong on the road.

“Unacceptable. This is exactly why we are holding states accountable, enforcing the rules of the road, and cracking down on drivers who can’t speak English,” he said Friday. “If you can’t be properly trained, read our road signs, or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus.”

RELATED: Security camera shows school bus blow through stop sign and get hit by city bus, 6 people hurt

Thirty-four travelers were on the bus that originated in New York City and was headed to Charlotte, North Carolina.

“I’ve got to say, this is one of the most tragic things I’ve ever seen. Absolutely tragic,” said Federal Transit Administration spokesperson Peyton Vogel on the day of the crash.

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​Chinese driver, Commercial drivers license, Lethal bus crash, Subpoena, Politics 

A split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that War Secretary Pete Hegseth had acted unconstitutionally when he ordered a ban on transgender-identifying members of the military.

Two of the three judges said a preliminary injunction could stay in force against the Pentagon keeping transgender-identifying plaintiffs out of the military.

‘We have direct evidence in this case that animus motivated the classifications in the Hegseth Policy.’

The two judges said the order was likely a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

“The government’s stated reason for issuing the Hegseth Policy as based solely upon gender dysphoria was pretextual, and that instead, the Hegseth Policy was premised, at least in part, on a non-legitimate state interest to harm the politically unpopular group of transgender persons,” Judge Robert Wilkins wrote in the ruling.

Judge Judith Rogers agreed with Wilkins about the constitutionality of the order.

However, Wilkins and Judge Justin Walker agreed separately that the Trump administration would be allowed to block transgender-identifying plaintiffs who wanted to join the military as the case progressed through the courts.

In the first days of President Donald Trump’s second term, he issued an executive order declaring that the military’s “high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity” were not compatible with the “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.”

In Feb. 2025, the Defense Department issued the new restrictions on transgender-identifying military members.

Wilkins pointed out in his ruling that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit had collectively garnered more than 80 commendations in the military and served a combined 130 years.

“This is not a case where we are left to speculate why the government drafted such broad, undifferentiated classifications,” he said. “Unless we are going to fall for the old Groucho Marx line — ‘Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?’ — we have direct evidence in this case that animus motivated the classifications in the Hegseth Policy.”

RELATED: Transgender military members sue Trump, Hegseth over trans ban

Wilkins also argued that the Trump administration had “conceded” that there was “no evidence to establish that persons with gender dysphoria are not honest, humble, and full of integrity.”

A defense official said that about 4,200 troops had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by Dec. 2024.

Walker was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2020, Wilkins was nominated by former President Barack Obama, and Rogers was nominated by former President Bill Clinton.

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​Pete hegseth, Transgender military members, Us court of appeals, Lgbtq, Politics 

James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, has been distancing himself from some of his more provocative past statements now that he’s in the general election against Republican candidate Ken Paxton.

On this episode of “Pat Gray Unleashed,” Pat and the panel revisit one of Talarico’s wildest statements and criticize his convenient backtracking.

In 2021 during a Texas House floor/committee debate on transgender issues, Talarico claimed that “God is nonbinary.”

“God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary,” he began.

He then used Scripture to justify supporting trans rights.

“In Genesis 1:26, God speaks of God’s self in the plural, saying, ‘Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.’ That’s the infinite multitude of God. The masculine, the feminine, and everything in between,” Talarico continued. “Trans children are God’s children made in God’s own image. There’s nothing wrong with them. Nothing at all. They are perfect. They are beautiful, and they are sacred.”

This highly controversial claim, which many Christians called heretical, has been hammered by Attorney General Ken Paxton and Republicans as powerful proof of just how radical Talarico really is. The clip has resurfaced in force during the 2026 Senate race, with Paxton using it to expose Talarico’s extreme views on gender and Christianity that are wildly out of step with Texas values and mainstream biblical theology.

It appears Talarico knows his “God is nonbinary” statement isn’t helping him in the Senate race. In a recent interview with CBS’ Ed O’Keefe, he softened his former statement.

“I was being intentionally provocative with that statement. But what it means is that God can’t be defined by human categories. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians says that in Christ there is neither male nor female,” he said, blaming Paxton for “intentionally clipping [his] cringy comments to distract from his career of corruption.”

“Oh, so it’s Ken Paxton’s fault that you’re twisting the word of God?” scoffs co-host Keith Malinak, calling Talarico “insufferable.”

In an earlier interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Talarico shared similar sentiments.

“I understand that that comment is a little provocative. I said it on the House floor when the extremists in the Republican legislature were picking on school kids who were different. But I don’t think it’s controversial theologically. Most Christians would acknowledge that God is beyond gender,” he said.

Pat notes how “bizarre” it is that a trans advocate like Talarico claims to be “a champion of women’s rights” but only seems to care about the feelings of transgender-identifying people — never the women who suffer from their spaces and sports being invaded by biological males.

“If they want to play sports, let’s come up with a way to let them engage in sports. Like with their own biological gender, they could compete, or we create a separate category for trans people,” Pat argues. “But you don’t stick them against the females. It doesn’t make any sense.”

To hear more of the panel’s analysis and commentary, watch the episode above.

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, Pay gray unleashed, James talarico, Pat gray unleashed 

The crowded California gubernatorial race, which started with 61 candidates, has now apparently narrowed to just three: former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra (D), climate advocate and businessman Tom Steyer (D), and former Fox News host and small-business owner Steve Hilton (R), according to the latest polling.

‘If we don’t get together as a party, if we don’t unite, then we could have Tom Steyer and Xavier Becerra in the general election.’

With California’s primary election operating on a nonpartisan basis, which allows the top two candidates regardless of party affiliation to advance, there had previously been speculation that the Democratic Party’s failure to coalesce behind a single candidate could result in two Republicans, Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, advancing to the November 3 general election.

One month out from the election, polling showed 26% of voters were undecided, with votes split among the Democrat candidates.

However, polls conducted in the final days before the primary election revealed a significant decrease in undecided voters, an increase in support for Becerra, a close contest for second place between Steyer and Hilton, and Bianco falling behind.

An Emerson College poll conducted May 27-28 reported that 4% were still undecided. Of those surveyed, 28% stated they were likely to vote for Becerra, 22% for Steyer, 21% for Hilton, and 12% for Bianco.

A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll completed May 19-24 showed a similarly close race, with 25% supporting Becerra, 21% supporting Hilton, and 19% supporting Steyer. Bianco trailed with 11%.

RELATED: California Democrats’ search for a front-runner: Polls show 26% of voters undecided in fast-approaching gubernatorial race

Steve Hilton. Jason Henry/Nexstar/Bloomberg – Pool/Getty Images

The latest polling prompted Hilton to call on Bianco to drop out of the race. He encouraged Bianco supporters to vote for him to avoid two Democrat candidates advancing to the general election to succeed California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

“These polls are looking very concerning. Yes, it’s true that I’m leading in some of them, but it’s also true that it’s a very, very tight race,” Hilton stated on Saturday in a video published to social media.

“If we don’t get together as a party, if we don’t unite, then we could have Tom Steyer and Xavier Becerra in the general election. That is a disaster for California. That means no change.”

RELATED: Katie Porter’s new ad jokes about one of her worst moments — and she’s getting CRUSHED online for it

Chad Bianco. Leon Bennett/Getty Images

“There’s one person who could stop this doomsday scenario, and that is my friend Chad Bianco,” Hilton continued. “Chad, the best time to have dropped out would have been a couple of weeks ago, but the second-best time is right now.”

The following day, Bianco dismissed Hilton’s comments by calling on Hilton’s supporters to unite behind him instead.

“It’s clear that Steve Hilton supporters should unite and support me,” Bianco wrote.

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​News, Steve hilton, Xavier becerra, California, Gavin newsom, Tom steyer, Chad bianco, Politics 

Bill Maher says that Spencer Pratt needs to stop crying about his house burning down.

On the latest episode of his podcast “Club Random,” Maher also called Pratt a “douchebag” while the two discussed Pratt’s run for mayor of Los Angeles.

‘They’re not going to have any money to take from these people to give to you.’

However, while Maher joked that being unliked meant Pratt should have no problem facing off against unfettered California bureaucracy, the duo were in overwhelming agreement when it came to the fiscal waste that cripples L.A. and the surrounding area.

About three-quarters of the way into their discussion, Maher claimed that “douchebag guys” who are in debt from gambling websites represent Pratt’s core audience.

While Pratt joked in response about having “more voters” than he realized, he immediately asserted that his true voting block consists of mothers who are concerned about the safety of their children in the city. Pratt used that talking point as a launchpad to warn young voters about opening the door to socialism.

“Socialism has captivated people. … I feel like people are all hyped on socialism because they’re like, ‘Everything’s so expensive. America’s failed. Give me money,'” Pratt explained. “But what they’re forgetting is all the people that these socialists are saying they’re taking the money and giving it, they’re gonna leave.”

Pratt added, “Then they’re not going to have any money to take from these people to give to you.”

RELATED: Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman shrink Karen Bass’ lead in tight race for LA mayor: Poll

Maher and Pratt largely agreed there is far too much red tape in Los Angeles, and furthermore, in the state, but it was Maher’s anecdote about needing three city inspections to change his garage door that perfectly framed the issue.

The 70-year-old then warned Pratt that if he becomes mayor, the “special interests” representatives are going to eat him alive by demanding policies just like those that ruined his garage revamp.

“What you’re going to go up against is a state that is just full of special interests, all of which are very, very powerful. I mean, you can’t do anything in this state without, like, getting a license or an inspection.”

At this point, Maher pointed to Pratt being a “douchebag” as a positive trait that would help him deal with the bureaucrats, whom Pratt described as “champagne socialists” who are stealing taxpayer dollars.

“This state is all these f**king pigs at the trough,” Maher lamented.

RELATED: Socialist mayoral candidate is outraged at encampment outside her LA home — but it’s not what it seems

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Pratt told the host his modus operandi has been to get into office so he can stop theft at the government level, which means letting the “successful rich people build businesses, build restaurants,” and put money into the citizens’ pockets.

The former star of “The Hills” said his leadership would get the money in the hands of the people without increasing taxes, because those “champagne socialists scammers steal” the money that is already coming in from wealthy L.A. residents.

“I can’t even comprehend taxing more,” Pratt announced.

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​Align, Bill maher, Spencer pratt, Los angeles, Karen bass, California, Entertainment