One underreported achievement of President Trump’s first administration was the support the Justice Department provided to religious-liberty litigants.

During those years, the federal government filed statements of interest and friend-of-the-court briefs defending conscience rights at a pace unmatched by either of Trump’s immediate predecessors. Cases involving memorial crosses, conscience protections, ministerial autonomy, and the rights of religious schools all reflected a broader shift in posture from the Obama administration.

Constitutional guarantees are only as durable as the institutions willing to enforce them.

The federal government no longer treated religion merely as a tolerated private exercise. It treated religious liberty as a constitutional good worthy of affirmative protection.

That shift has only strengthened under Trump 47.

At the time, critics dismissed many of the administration’s actions as symbolic or temporary. What looked then like a change in tone now appears to have been the beginning of an institutional realignment.

The Justice Department’s recently released report from the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias suggests that the second Trump administration intends not merely to defend religious liberty episodically, but to embed those protections throughout the administrative state.

The point is not simply the report’s conclusions, significant as they are. The point is the scope of the undertaking.

Drawing participation from 17 federal agencies, the report catalogs hundreds of pages of examples in which religious Americans — Christians in particular — faced adverse treatment from the federal government because of their views on life, sexuality, education, parental rights, and medical conscience. The report and its 1,200 footnotes present reams of evidence to support its central argument: During the Biden years, religious exercise was often treated less as a constitutional guarantee than as an obstacle to the ideological objectives of a political machine.

A major development of Trump’s second administration has therefore been the construction of infrastructure around religious liberty itself. The White House Faith Office, the Religious Liberty Commission, agency faith liaisons, and now the Task Force to Eliminate Anti-Christian Bias all reflect an effort to institutionalize protections that previously depended too heavily on presidential discretion.

This development is especially visible inside the Justice Department. During the first Trump administration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued welcome guidance for federal prosecutors handling religious-liberty matters and established the Place to Worship Initiative to address violence and discrimination directed at houses of worship.

RELATED: Trump’s Justice Department is shining a light on woke universities — finally

Angela Lewis/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The current report builds on that framework. Rather than focusing only on isolated incidents, it argues that anti-Christian bias — and therefore hostility to religious liberty — became embedded in regulatory enforcement itself, especially when religious convictions conflicted with prevailing doctrines on sexuality, gender identity, or pro-life Christian opposition to the progressive sacrament of abortion.

The report points, for example, to enforcement disparities under the FACE Act. Pro-life activists received aggressive federal scrutiny, while attacks against churches and pregnancy resource centers received comparatively limited attention. Even when political pressure left the Biden administration little choice, its enforcement of the FACE Act against actual vandals went only as far as necessary to stem rising public complaint.

The report goes further, identifying conflicts involving military chaplains, foster-care providers, health care workers, religious schools, and federal employees who sought accommodation for sincerely held religious beliefs.

Whether one agrees with every characterization in the report is almost beside the point. The broader constitutional question remains unavoidable: Can government remain neutral toward religion while treating orthodox religious belief as presumptively discriminatory?

Historically, the answer has been no.

Religious liberty in the American tradition has never meant mere freedom of inward belief. The founders protected religious exercise because they understood that belief inevitably shapes action: education, charity, worship, speech, commerce, and public participation. The First Amendment restrains government not because religion is politically useful, but because conscience stands beyond the state’s authority.

That understanding has often been obscured in recent decades by a truncated vision of religious freedom — one that permits worship inside sanctuary walls while treating religious conviction outside those walls as suspect. Many of the conflicts cataloged in the Justice Department report arise from that narrowing impulse. The fight is no longer over whether Americans may privately believe traditional religious teachings, even explicitly Christian ones. The fight is whether they may live according to them publicly.

Judging by this report and other promising signs, the latest version of the Trump administration recognizes this reality more clearly than any administration in modern memory.

Critics argue that these initiatives privilege Christianity or collapse the distinction between church and state. But that has always been their schtick. Trump’s direct confrontation and dismissive rhetoric have exposed many modern assumptions about the “separation of church and state” as political slogans rather than constitutional arguments.

RELATED: 5 countries where Christians face brutal persecution — and how you can help

EMMY IBU/AFP/Getty Images

The more important legal question is whether religious Americans — Christians and all people of faith — may participate fully in public life without surrendering core convictions as the price of admission. This report focuses on bias against a majoritarian religion. But imagine the damage if the state focused its ire on minority faiths. Religious liberty belongs to all Americans.

The administration’s trajectory is unmistakable. The president’s Religious Liberty Commission has been assigned with developing long-term recommendations for protecting religious exercise across education, health care, public funding, parental rights, and federal policy. The Justice Department report, which will continue to expand into 2027, serves as both justification and road map for that effort.

Critics will insist these measures are unnecessary because religious believers already possess constitutional protections. Only a cynic could look at the mountain of evidence in the Justice Department report and claim nothing happened. Those constitutional protections existed during the last administration, too, but we now know that officials chose political ideology over the foundational principles of the First Amendment.

Constitutional guarantees are only as durable as the institutions willing to enforce them.

The most important question, then, is not whether Trump personally embodies religious devotion. He plainly does not fit conventional expectations of religious statesmanship. The more consequential question is whether his administration understands the structural importance of religious liberty within the constitutional order.

Increasingly, the answer appears to be yes.

For religious Americans, Christians in particular, who spent much of the last decade defending themselves against the coercive power of administrative agencies, that distinction matters a great deal.

​Trump, Religious liberty, Federal government, Justice department, White house faith office, Religious liberty commission, First amendment, Christians, Opinion & analysis 

We are halfway into Pride Month, and I have already seen a year’s worth of cringeworthy behavior.

Take the recent viral video from Washington state. A local high school played host to a “drag show,” in which adult men twerked in front of children of all ages in the name of “Pride.”

What we are witnessing in June is no longer about tolerance. It is a full-throated campaign to reach children before they are old enough to think critically.

Not at a bar. Not at an adults-only venue. On a school campus, during a school-sponsored event, in front of kids. Parents who raised concerns were treated like the problem.

From ABC to LGBTQ

Nor is Pride limited to in-person parades or parties. The popular show “Blue’s Clues” — geared toward kids as young as 2 — has aired a Pride “sing-a-long,” featuring anthropomorphic “trans male” beavers with post-op “top surgery” scars. “Sesame Street” also introduces its young viewers to Pride Month, celebrating gay marriage for good measure. Parents who think these programs will help their kids learn to count and spell are in for a rude awakening.

I wish I could say this still surprises me. But it doesn’t — not after decades of watching an ideology inch its way closer and closer to children, first into universities, then high schools, then middle schools, and now into elementary classrooms and summer camps.

I have learned to recognize the pattern. What used to be shocking has become customary. And that normalization is precisely the point.

What we are witnessing in June is no longer about tolerance. It is a full-throated campaign to reach children before they are old enough to think critically about what they’re being told.

‘The girl experience’

Consider what is happening in Girl Scout camps this summer. The organization’s latest Camp Culture Code defines a child’s biological sex as “sex assigned at birth.” Not a gift from God. An assignment. As if the Creator made an error and a stranger in a lab coat had to correct it on his clipboard. This is how they’re talking to 9-year-olds at summer camp.

The code further states that this sex may differ from “how a person understands themselves to be.” Does this mean boys will be at Girl Scout camp? The answer may confuse you:

Our camps serve cisgender girls, gender-expansive youth, non-binary youth, and trans-girls and trans-boys. … We have expanded our understanding of who belongs at Girl Scouts, as well as our commitment to serving all youth who identify with the girl experience.

This is indoctrination, pure and simple — and it has been going on for a long time.

RELATED: ‘Even Elmo has fallen victim’: Sara Gonzales blasts ‘Sesame Street’ for ‘demonic’ Pride propaganda

Blaze Media

Defending God’s design

I know this firsthand, because it was watching exactly this kind of ideological drift that led me and a group of Cincinnati moms to found an alternative to Girl Scouts in 1995. Not because we wanted to shelter our girls from the world, but because we refused to let an organization entrusted with their formation use that trust to push an ideology that contradicted everything we believed to be true about womanhood, biology, and God’s design. We knew our daughters deserved better.

We started with just 10 troops; today, American Heritage Girls has over 70,000 members in all 50 states. That growth reflects tens of thousands of outraged parents who have voted with their feet, choosing an organization that tells girls the truth: that they are created female on purpose, that their femininity is a gift worth celebrating, and that God does not make mistakes.

This summer, we will continue to equip parents, Troop leaders, and faith communities with our Raising Godly Girls Guide to Gender and Identity, specifically to give parents language and tools to help their daughters navigate what has become a relentless ideological assault.

Biblical or bust

Because the hard truth is that if parents don’t arm their kids with a biblical worldview, other adults will be happy to step in with their own way of seeing things.

They will try to pass it off as “education” and label anyone who pushes back as bigoted. But parents speaking out to shield their impressionable young children from half-baked, politically motivated theories about sex deserve support, not scorn.

The moms I talk to across this country are not hateful. They are not afraid of people who are different from themselves. They are simply unwilling to hand their daughters over to a worldview that treats biology as a mistake and childhood as an opportunity for ideological recruitment. The good news is that they are not alone. I will keep speaking up. I hope every parent will, too.

​Lifestyle, Lgbtq, Pride month, Girl scouts, American heritage girls, Drag queens, Culture, Countering ‘pride’ 

Residents of Burlington are demanding answers from police after a gruesome discovery at a foreclosed home purchased at auction.

Connecticut state troopers said in a press release that they were called to the home on Stanwich Lane on Sunday at 4:46 p.m. for a report of human remains found in the home.

‘I’ve never heard of anything like that happening anywhere.’

The homeowner had recently purchased the home “as is” in an auction, according to police.

The remains of three people were found and described to be in a “skeletal” condition. Police said there was no indication of criminal conduct and that an investigation was being conducted by the State Police Western District Major Crime unit.

“This appears to be an isolated incident, and there is no danger to the public at this time,” they added.

Police said they would release updates after the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined the manner of death of the trio and their identities.

Neighbors in the area told WKYC-TV they were terrified by the discovery.

“It sounds very scary to see skeletons in a house,” said Vicky Havey, who bikes nearby. “It’s sad. Very sad.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that happening anywhere that I knew about personally,” Mark Chowaniec said.

RELATED: Suspect in ‘horrific, gruesome’ murder of family in Alabama is Salvadoran gang member and had been deported, police say

A profile of the home on Zillow indicated that the 2,800-square-foot home had been sold in 2019 for $535K and was currently estimated to be worth about $846K.

Video of the home in the WKYC report showed that the front lawn was neglected and overgrown with weeds.

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​Human remains, Police investigation, Skeletal remains, Foreclosed home, Crime 

Let me tell you about the very rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a century ago. “They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.”

Last week’s SpaceX initial public offering made company founder and CEO Elon Musk the world’s first publicly known trillionaire — very different from all of us, at least on paper.

Bad enough he became too rich. Worse, Elon Musk became too independent.

On paper is doing plenty of heavy lifting. We’ll get back to that.

If billionaires “shouldn’t exist,” as our boring socialist friends never tire of saying, then a trillionaire must be not merely obscene but downright apocalyptic. If the existence of billionaires is a policy failure, the arrival of a trillionaire is a crime scene. Call Congress! Summon the United Nations! Eat the rich!

Let me tell you about the very left-wing. They are different from you and me. They enjoy little, and it does something to them. It makes them covetous where normal people are merely curious, bitter where normal people are merely skeptical, and stupid where the rest of us are trying very hard to be charitable.

Musk’s gargantuan wealth is a test no leftist can pass.

“If we liquidated Elon Musk as a financial entity we could each pocket $3,000,” one frivolous X user wrote. “Just putting that out there. 3K. Not bad.”

“Elon Musk is a trillionaire but it’s def the people on SNAP ruining your life,” a tedious Democratic strategist posted.

“Right? He could fund SNAP himself and still have a boatload left to spare,” a pseudonymous Marxist replied.

This is what happens when resentment collides with arithmetic.

“Elon Musk could easily fund” makes for a terrific party game, especially if everyone playing has skipped high school civics, freshman economics, and the day in third grade when Mrs. Campbell broke the news that Monopoly money was not legal tender.

RELATED: A child’s guide to why billionaires should, in fact, exist

RapidEye/iStock/Getty Images

With $1 trillion, Musk could buy every major carmaker in America, Europe, and Japan. With $1 trillion, Musk could fund global famine relief dozens of times over, provide clean water to the world, rebuild Gaza, or hand every person on earth a modest cash gift. With $1 trillion, Musk could cover the United Nations’ humanitarian appeals, the Australian budget, or — according to my friend Mac Owens — roughly 3.5 miles of Gavin Newsom’s high-speed rail system.

Cool. Put it all on the board. Have fun. Pour another drink. (Maybe pour me one, too.)

But Musk does not have $1 trillion in a checking account. He is not Scrooge McDuck swan-diving into a vault of gold coins (not that it would even work that way). He owns shares in companies that other people believe are valuable because those companies build things, launch things, connect things, sell things, and promise things investors think may be worth a lot more later.

His wealth is not a pile of cash. It is a claim on productive enterprise.

The socialist imagination never really gets past the pile. The left sees wealth and pictures a dragon atop a hoard. It sees equity and imagines stolen bread. It sees a balance sheet and imagines a pantry that can be raided without consequence.

But Musk’s wealth cannot be “liquidated” without destroying much of the value the envious wish to seize. Sell enough shares, and the price falls. Seize the company, and watch the engineers leave. Convert capital into consumption, and the thing that made the wealth possible begins to disappear.

Welcome to Economics 102. Economics 101 teaches scarcity. Economics 102 teaches that capital is not loot.

None of this makes Musk a saint. I don’t know if he is a good man. I don’t know if any man should have as much influence as he has, and neither do his fanboys. Musk is erratic, strange, reckless, sometimes brilliant, and often his own worst enemy. But he is not a political theory. He is not a catechism. He is not your dad.

I know do this much, though: If Musk had not bought Twitter in 2022 for the eye-watering sum of $44 billion, Americans would know less about their own country and less about the people who presume to manage it.

That purchase did not make him richer. It made him more dangerous.

Dangerous to whom? To the people who think “misinformation” means information they cannot control. To governments that prefer pressure campaigns to open censorship. To NGOs that discovered a business model in laundering political speech control through the language of “safety.” To journalists who miss the days when a few institutions could decide which scandals were real and which ones respectable people were expected not to notice.

RELATED: Democrats love free speech — until conservatives get some

mikkelwilliam/iStock/Getty Images

This is why the hatred aimed at Musk is never really about money. The money supplies the moral pretext. Control supplies the motive.

The left does not hate Musk because he could “fund SNAP.” The federal government already spends enormous sums on SNAP, and no serious person believes American nutrition policy should depend on one weird rich guy hawking rocket shares. The left hates Musk because he took a portion of his unrealized fortune and bought a speech platform that was supposed to belong forever to the consensus managers.

Bad enough he became too rich. Worse, he became too independent.

A billionaire who funds the approved foundations may be vulgar, but he can be managed. A billionaire who underwrites lawsuits, climate conferences, university centers, “democracy” initiatives, and grants for people who use the word “equity” as an incantation may still be welcomed at the proper tables. His money can be baptized.

Musk’s money did something else. It bought the key to a door the regime wanted to remain locked.

No wonder they want to eat him.

​Opinion & analysis, Trillionaire, Elon musk, Twitter.com, Billionaires, Spacex, Freedom of speech, Leftists, Socialism, Snap, Funding, Economics 

On June 16, independent journalist and BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo published a detailed exposé on California’s “gay certification program” in City Journal. The report blew the lid off the progressive state’s initiative to pressure utility companies into awarding $633 million in contracts to businesses officially certified as LGBT-owned — complete with a bizarre state-run process requiring proof of sexual orientation.

To qualify, business owners must submit documents such as same-sex marriage licenses, letters from LGBT organizations, or even affidavits from personal contacts attesting to their sexual orientation, with stiff penalties including up to a year in jail for false claims.

Glenn Beck was astounded by the news.

“It’s insane,” he says.

The California bureaucrats hired to vet the applicants use a “gay certification checklist,” says Glenn’s chief researcher and writer Jason Buttrill.

“One of the checklist items is three letters of reference from personal contacts … who have known … for over one year and can vouch to the status of the individual’s gayness,” he laughs.

Glenn can’t help but laugh at what these types of conversations entail. “I mean what are the questions?” he chuckles.

Buttrill adds that another requirement is “one letter from a recognized LGBT organization attesting to the gay status and signed by the organization leader.”

“Now, you have to go not to a friend but to a sanctioned gay organization, so now they’ve given that gay organization power,” says Glenn. “Wow is that bad.”

Perhaps the strangest item on the checklist is “proof of media coverage, including publications, newspapers, or articles explicitly stating the LGBT status of the owners of the business.”

“You have to be kind of an activist. I mean, because if you’re just a quiet gay couple and you own a restaurant, you know, I guess that’s not good enough. You have to be out in the media, literally out in the media, declaring your gayness,” scoffs Glenn.

Another prerequisite is “a copy of valid municipal or state license, certificate of marriage, civil union, or domestic partnership,” adds Buttrill.

“You don’t need a license or any kind of identification to vote, but if you want to work as a gay person with the state, we have to have all kinds of ID — but gay ID,” laughs Glenn, calling it “ridiculous.”

“I would think the California gay community would be outraged over this. I wouldn’t think that they would want some kind of official list with some kind of certification program with their names,” says Buttrill.

Glenn agrees, highlighting how potentially dangerous such a list could be.

“I mean if things, God forbid, ever went horribly wrong — the Islamists or some crazy religious whatever or just somebody who … just doesn’t like gay people [gets in power], you want a list of people that are gay?” he asks.

“People are so blind and so stupid. … Well, good luck with that, California.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, California, Voter id, Lgbt 

Thomas Jefferson warned that factions could subvert the public good once they captured the public councils. “Bribery corrupts them,” he wrote, and, “Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents.”

That warning fits the data center fight now spreading across America. On this issue, the establishments of both parties have largely sided with Big Tech against communities that do not want their land, power, water, and quality of life sacrificed for the artificial intelligence gold rush.

Politicians who continue following the flow of corporate election cash may serve their puppet masters a little while longer. But the grassroots rebellion beneath them is growing.

The politicians appear to be betting that the campaign cash will outweigh voter anger. Are they right?

When I began covering the data center issue, opposition mostly came from scattered homeowners in rural communities. They fought these surveillance centers at county council meetings with rudimentary petition websites, homemade lawn signs, and four-figure local budgets.

Two years later, data center proposals have spread into nearly every corner of the country. So has the opposition. It is passionate, surprisingly bipartisan, and increasingly organized. A national election is also approaching.

Politico analyzed several dozen of the most competitive House races that will determine control of the chamber and found more than 200 data centers planned in those districts alone. In total, 1,500 data centers are planned or under construction in 232 congressional districts, although in my estimation, more of the mega-hyperscale facilities are in Republican districts.

That scale shows how ubiquitous the land grab has become. It also shows how potent this issue could be in the most consequential federal races.

Most competitive seats are held by Republicans, but many GOP incumbents have been cagey, even oleaginous, when asked about data centers. They avoid the issue as long as possible. When pressed at a town hall or by the media, they offer boilerplate about the need to “beat China” in innovation, then toss out an empty and impossible promise to protect consumers from higher electricity rates.

U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad (R-Minn.) gave Politico the cookie-cutter, split-the-baby response.

“AI data centers, like those proposed in southern Minnesota, can play an important role in both our economic future and our national security,” Finstad said. “At the same time, it’s important that communities have a full understanding of what these projects mean locally — including their energy demands, environmental impacts, job creation, and potential tax benefits. As we look toward the future of data-center development, we also need an honest conversation about whether our current energy infrastructure and power grid are prepared to support the growing demands of AI technology.”

OK, Brad. Seven projects are proposed in your district alone. Tell voters where you stand. Yes or no: Are you fine with Big Tech owning and repurposing this much farmland?

RELATED: The AI boom is turning public meetings into crime scenes

Moor Studio/Getty Images

Republicans face major headwinds this November. But if any issue could help them power through that adversity, it would be standing with their constituents against the Big Tech land grab.

The reason they do not is obvious. The campaign cash has to come from somewhere.

“They’re between a rock and a hard place,” Texas-based GOP consultant Brendan Steinhauser, whose clients have included Sen. John Cornyn (R) and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R), told Politico. “Politically, it’s not a very smart move to come out and be seen as too close to Big Tech or doing the bidding of Big Tech, but a lot of the money is flying to them through that.”

Meanwhile, in one of the few districts where an incumbent Democrat is vulnerable this cycle, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) has actually listened to her communities.

“There’s more political signs against AI in our region than for candidates in the upcoming races,” Kaptur said during a hearing this spring. “The public opposition that is arising, it’s spontaneous combustion coming up from the grassroots.”

But no one should mistake that for Democratic seriousness. Nothing is as righteous as a Democrat in the minority.

Virginia is the first state this cycle where Democrats have already flipped the levers of government and taken power. Abigail Spanberger ran on reining in the shocking colonization of Virginia by data centers. Now that she is governor, her urgency has faded.

Some backbenchers in both parties have pushed bills to limit tax breaks, but Spanberger and her allies in House leadership are blocking real reforms. So far, she has created a blue-ribbon commission to study the issue — a panel stacked with industry hired hands.

In Ohio, lawmakers recently learned that Big Tech tax breaks cost the state $2 billion in just one year, exponentially more than originally projected. Despite the GOP promise to repeal those tax breaks, the relevant committee adjourned for the last time until November without taking action. Even the proposal on the table would only have reduced the abatement prospectively, yet the industry still lobbied against it.

That “rock and hard place” keeps doing its work.

RELATED: OpenAI wants to make its losses public property

Brendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

At the top of the political food chain, leaders of both parties are selling out to data centers. At the grassroots, voters on the right and left are fighting back.

In blue Maine and New York, legislative majorities passed versions of data center moratoriums. But Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) vetoed the bill, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) has so far declined to sign hers. The squeeze from corporate money gets tighter the higher a politician climbs and the more money it takes to win.

Conversely, small counties and cities have begun enacting local bans. Coffee County, Tennessee, and the city of McMinnville in adjacent Warren County recently passed 18-month data center moratoriums. Warren County, Knox County, and Nashville are debating similar measures.

Again, the opposition is bipartisan. Nashville is deep blue, but Trump won Coffee County by 55 points and Warren County by 56 points.

Left-wing environmentalists tend to oppose growth and therefore naturally oppose this sort of resource stripping. But grassroots conservatives also understand that farmland, rural heritage, local sovereignty, and digital privacy are worth defending. Sometimes those interests converge.

Politicians who continue following the flow of corporate election cash may serve their puppet masters a little while longer. But the grassroots rebellion beneath them is growing. It is bipartisan, local, organized, and increasingly impossible to contain.

​Thomas jefferson, Ai, Data centers, Land grab, Gop, Politico, Republicans, Virginia, Ohio, Big tech, Data center ban, Opinion & analysis 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now looking into allegations of election fraud on Skid Row in Los Angeles.

The California Post reported that plainclothes federal agents are interviewing homeless people about the claims made in a video of votes exchanged for payment.

‘Yeah, they come out here all the time,’ said an unidentified woman who claimed she had been paid $2 to vote for Bass.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is also involved in the probe, according to the report.

The Justice Department only confirmed an investigation into a criminal matter and refused to offer additional information. The Post said its report determined the investigation was related to election fraud.

The investigation comes after a stunning video posted to TikTok that documented interviews with homeless people claiming they had been paid to vote for the Democrats in the Los Angeles mayoral election.

Republican mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt initially won second place in the jungle election, but after more votes came in, he slipped into third place and was boxed out of the general. Many suspected that his campaign was the victim of election fraud.

“Yeah, they come out here all the time,” said an unidentified woman who claimed she had been paid $2 to vote for Bass.

“They gave you an optional choice,” said a man calling himself Kevin Shepherd and claiming to have been paid $4 to vote for Bass.

He said they also would have paid him to vote for Nithya Raman, the other Democrat, but not for Pratt.

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

Another woman said she was paid $5 to vote for Bass, but a separate investigation found that she was likely not a voter in the mayoral election.

The Post also admitted it could not independently confirm the claims in the video, which has since been deleted.

Pratt has said he is moving on to another phase of saving Los Angeles, which has less to do with running for election and more to do with exposing corruption of the Democrats in charge.

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​Election fraud, Homeless people, Justice department, Los angeles, Mayoral election, Skid row, Politics