Joe Biden has been out of office for almost two years now — so why does everything still feel so expensive?

As midterm elections draw nearer, that’s the question on the top of American minds, and BlazeTV host Ron Simmons has some answers.

While prices are up, Simmons points out that this all began under Biden, where “prices rose about 21%.”

“That’s over 5% a year. And since that time, since the second administration of President Trump, they’ve grown a little over 2% a year, about 2.5% a year,” he explains.

“When prices grew to 21%, so if something cost a dollar and then when Biden left it cost a $1.20, it didn’t go back down to a dollar when President Trump got elected,” he says.

“What he has done, and his administration have done, is they’ve just reduced how fast it’s increasing,” he adds.

Simmons explains that prices will go down when demand goes down.

“If you remember back to 2008, 2009, when they had the huge housing crisis, well, in 2007, do you know what interest rates were for mortgages at that time? Guess what they were. They’re right what they are right now, a little over 6%,” he explains.

“People lost their jobs and things, and there was more supply than there was demand,” he continues. “So they dropped interest rates and they brought interest rates down, probably too low, honestly — artificially low — and so you could buy a house at a 3% mortgage.”

“Then when the economy got better, and the fact that we pumped a lot of unnecessary money into the economy, interest rates went up because there ended up being more demand than there was supply,” he adds.

When the demand is high, the interest rates remain high.

“Now, what we don’t want to happen is another huge recession, obviously, but just remember how this happened,” he says, pointing out that Democrat policies have led us here.

“Housing has become dramatically more expensive during the Biden years,” he continues, noting that the Heritage Foundation has reported that the cost of financing a medium-priced home has risen 114% since 2021.

“At the same time, consumer prices have risen about 20%, which we talked about, and it costs about $13,300 more per year to purchase the same house, interest-rate-wise, than it did in 2021,” he says.

“Immigration was a part of this,” he explains. “When they opened the floodgates, more people coming into the country means there’s more demand for goods and services, and that increased the cost of living and housing.”

However, Simmons points out that the most expensive cities — San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, New York, and Boston — are all run by Democrats.

“So just remember when you’re voting this time,” he adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Biden administration, Donald trump, Economy, Housing crisis, Inflation, Prices, Recession, Ron simmons, Midterms, Blazetv show 

An interview to mark the start of the NHL season went off the rails when an activist reporter hammered one of the league’s greatest players of all time with political questions.

Almost two weeks before the games start to count, Washington Capitals forward Alexander Ovechkin was talking to the media when an ESPN reporter started pelting him with question regarding a recent political ad he had been a part of.

She’s ‘got an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for abducting Ukrainian children.’

Ovechkin, the NHL’s all-time goal-scoring leader — yes, he has scored even more goals than Wayne Gretzky — was featured in a pro-Russia ad for President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in the lead-up to the elections last weekend.

Although Ovechkin simply stood in the background during the ad, ESPN reporter Robert Klemko — who is half-Ukrainian — went after the hockey player about the details of the filming, asking if he informed his team before the video shoot.

“No,” Ovechkin replied, per Klemko’s recollection of the interview.

The reporter then told Ovechkin his appearance in the commercial “feels to people like a pro war stance.”

“I don’t think it’s a pro war,” Ovechkin reportedly replied. “I think it’s just support what’s happening in Russia. I want the peace and love for everybody. It doesn’t matter who you are, American, Russian, or Ukrainian.”

After Klemko claimed the war would “be done soon” if Putin stops the invasion, he later asked if Ovechkin would support Russia “no matter what.”

The 41-year-old replied, “Well, I’m gonna live there, yeah.”

This prompted the ESPN journalist to ask an inflammatory question: “So if they’re responsible for a genocide, you would support the genocide?”

Ovechkin asked for a translation of “genocide” from a member of his media team, a note corroborated by different outlets. He then replied, “Oh. I would say, like, I’m, I hope it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna be like that.”

RELATED: Sophie Cunningham defends Sydney Sweeney — but admits she ‘morally’ has a problem

In a clip from CTV News, Ovechkin told reporters he is going to move back to Russia when he retires from hockey.

“I’m going to stay there. I’m going to live there. My kids are going to live there.”

Regarding the political ad, Ovechkin stated that he’s “for peace and love” and that he hopes “everything’s going to be okay.”

He revealed when he was asked to do the commercial, he simply replied, “Yes.”

“So, simple as that,” Ovechkin said.

Outlet HockeyFeed said Klemko then “pressed” Ovechkin after the group press conference and attempted to tell the player what his involvement in the ad “really signals.”

Ovechkin continuously gave statements like “I’m not in politics,” and “I don’t know who that is” in regard to certain people featured in the ad, but Klemko pressed forward and asked the Russian if he felt he was perpetuating propaganda.

“It mimics messaging Russians get that says Ukraine is responsible for being invaded by Russia,” Klemko wrote.

“I can’t say who’s right and who’s wrong,” Ovechkin responded soon thereafter.

Klemko said he told Ovechkin that one of the people in the ad is “Maria Lvova Belova,” who, he said, “got an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for abducting Ukrainian children.”

Ovechkin said he didn’t know who that person is.

RELATED: Charles Barkley defends WNBA, but says ‘race’ and ‘sexuality’ are behind Sophie Cunningham clashes

Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images

Klemko’s subsequent article for ESPN, published Thursday, cited University of Maryland “senior scholar” Sarah Oates, who directly stated that Russia is “perpetuating a genocide on Ukrainian people.”

“Putin has said Ukraine and Ukrainians have no right to exist. And this is a key reason for the invasion. Ovechkin supports Putin, he supports the Russian regime, and that means he supports genocide,” Oates claimed.

After his questions about genocide, Klemko said the media relations team ended his interview with Ovechkin.

Capitals general manager Chris Patrick later told ESPN that if Ovechkin had told the franchise about the ad, the organization would have “worked to avoid the situation very hard. And I doubt we’d be standing where we’re standing right now if he had run it by us.”

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​Nhl, Alexander ovechkin, Espn, Russia, Ukraine, Hockey, Sports 

Despite intense protests and warnings about a “slippery slope,” Canada’s liberal government legalized medically assisted suicide nationwide in 2016.

As critics predicted, the so-called Medical Assistance in Dying program — recognized by Canada’s Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer as a cost-saver for the country’s immigration-strained and eugenicist-founded health care system — has been grossly liberalized over the past decade, become a leading cause of death and claiming the lives of ineligible victims.

‘This is murder.’

The family of an 83-year-old Christian woman who was allegedly killed by lethal injection without proper consent in a MAID procedure has filed a complaint with the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario, sounding the alarm about the euthanasia regime.

Brigitte Kranendonk noted in a July 21 post on Facebook that her German-born grandmother, Brigitte Stegemann, a resident of the Pearl — a long-term care facility in Cannifton, Ontario — was diagnosed earlier this year with untreatable stage 4 stomach cancer.

While Stegemann could have potentially survived for years, a meeting was held several months ago to discuss the possibility of MAID, Kranendonk said.

“At that time, GG clearly stated that she did not wish to pursue it. As a devout Christian, she explicitly expressed that MAID conflicted with her personal beliefs and faith,” Kranendonk, who held legal power of attorney for Stegemann, claimed on Facebook.

The grandmother was approached on two occasions about pursuing MAID while her granddaughter was on a 10-day vacation, the Facebook post claimed, then visited on July 7 for a MAID assessment by a physician identified in Kranendonk’s complaint as Catherine Koester.

The Christian Canadian think tank Cardus noted in an August 31 report that unlike most first-world nations, Canada requires only one written request for euthanasia and one witness to that request and does not legally require communication with a patient’s family members about the patient’s medical history and state of mind.

RELATED: Priest breaks hip — now Canada apparently wants him dead

Universal Images Group/Getty Images

During the July 7 assessment, Stegemann allegedly failed to evidence soundness of mind — “GG repeatedly provided objectively incorrect answers to basic, factual questions about her own life and immediate family” — and signaled distress while family members protested the evaluation, Kranendonk claimed.

‘They saw an opportunity.’

Among the questions the elderly Canadian apparently got wrong was a query about how many siblings she had. While the actual answer was 13, Stegemann said that she had none, according to her granddaughter.

Despite Stegemann’s apparent disorientation, the physician allegedly found her fit to make the MAID decision, then informed the family that the procedure would take place just days later.

Kranendonk suggested to the Daily Mail that her grandmother’s final moments were a horror show, alleging that a gloveless nurse who supposedly treated the family members contemptuously had repeatedly failed to tap the right vein in one arm for the deadly IV before switching to the other arm and beginning the prodding anew.

“There was a phenomenal amount of blood,” said Kranendonk, who indicated that Stegemann had wept bitterly in the lead-up to her final day. “It is all over my Oma’s arm, it is all over her nightie, soaking through her pillow, all over the sheets, there is so much blood.”

According to Kranendonk, the doctor entered the room on July 10, explained to Stegemann that she was going to administer some “medicine,” and after 10 minutes, the woman was pronounced dead.

“She was a vulnerable human being, and they saw an opportunity,” added Kranendonk.

Kranendonk’s complaint to the province’s chief coroner, which was obtained by Canadian combat veteran and MAID critic Kelsi Sheren, states that in the case of her grandmother’s demise, there was a “severe failure of statutory safeguards, procedural requirements, and patient consent protocols.”

In addition to Stegemann allegedly lacking the capacity to make the decision to pursue MAID, the complaint alleges that “care home staff actively initiated private MAID discussions and facilitated the completion and witnessing of official application paperwork in secret, deliberately bypassing” the patient’s legal power of attorney. It also alleges that the euthanasia took place without verbal confirmation from Stegemann.

“One of our greatest ethical concerns is that GG [Stegemann] had explicitly declined MAID, stating it violated her Christian faith,” Kranendonk said in her Facebook post. “Once a vulnerable patient explicitly declines this path, the facility should never have targeted her for re-evaluation behind closed doors while her primary advocate was away — especially when the facility had no trouble contacting [Kranendonk] daily for minor, routine care decisions.”

Blaze News did not immediately receive comment from Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s office, Ontario Health at Home, the Pearl, or Dr. Koester.

While the Office of the Chief Coroner told Blaze News that it “does not share details related to any death investigation,” it noted that “the MAiD Review Team (MRT) reviews every MAiD death reported in the province to ensure compliance with all federal legislative and regulatory requirements. This includes reviewing the MAiD Death Report submitted by the practitioner, confirming completeness and accuracy of the information, and directly contacting a representative of the deceased to identify any issues or concerns.”

Kranendonk — who greatly regrets not applying for a legal injunction to halt the procedure — told the Daily Mail that she is also appealing to the Patient Ombudsman and Belleville Police in an effort to determine whether what happened to her grandmother was legal.

A spokesman for Belleville Police told the Daily Mail, “This incident is currently open and under investigation with our Criminal Investigations Division. We are unable to provide any additional information at this time.”

The death of Brigitte Stegemann has attracted international attention, especially in the United States.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) wrote, “The intersection of assisted suicide and socialized medicine results in state-led horrors, treating the young, old, infirm, and distressed as disposable people. We must never allow this barbarity to spread in America.”

“This … is … evil,” tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican born in a Canadian province that has recently taken some steps to rein in Canada’s sick experiment.

Normalcy advocate Robby Starbuck emphasized that “this is murder. Canada murdered this woman.”

Jason Kenney, Canada’s former conservative defense minister and Alberta’s 18th premier, said that the tale of Stegemann’s demise is an indictment of the Canadian Supreme Court’s “decision to trample on its own precedent, and the democratic decisions of Parliament, by opening the floodgates to killing the elderly and the infirm. If the claims made here are credible, the Crown must charge those responsible for the murder of Brigitte Stegemann.”

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​Canada, Euthanasia, Health care, Medical assistance in dying, Mike lee, Ontario, Socialized medicine, Ted cruz, Politics 

Various news outlets, including Fox News, have agreed to suspend pool reporting at the White House as a way to protest the president’s news ban.

On Friday, President Donald Trump accused CNN, MS NOW, and Politico of peddling fake news and banned them all from the White House.

‘If they had credibility, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.’

In response, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News announced on Monday that they had suspended White House TV pool reporting.

“This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton wrote in an email obtained by Politico.

“This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place,” he added.

Fox News Media, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and NBC News also released a joint statement about the suspension.

“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting,” the group wrote.

Many noted that CNN had defended Fox News in 2009 when former President Barack Obama had limited its access. Fox News returned the favor in 2018 when Trump shut out a CNN reporter.

The president justified his ban in comments to reporters Friday.

“I don’t want them in my office. I don’t want them here,” he said.

“The ban is because they are fake news, they cannot write the truth,” he added. “If they had credibility, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

RELATED: CNN says Trump press ban is illegal — then the Trump team THROWS DOWN fiery response

The president had also threatened to expand the ban to include other outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

In a post Monday on Truth Social, the president compared fake news to a “cancer” afflicting the country.

“It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control,” he wrote. “It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”

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​Fake news, Fox news, White house, Politics, Donald trump 

Feminism has sold women the lie that “patriarchy” is a crisis that’s followed their female ancestors throughout the centuries — but BlazeTV host Nick Freitas believes the real crisis isn’t too many men ruling.

Rather, it’s those who refuse to.

And author Jeremy Pryor couldn’t agree more.

“The word patriarchy is actually very recent,” Pryor tells Freitas. “It’s sort of like less than 100 years old. It was actually invented by people on the left to really attack the idea of there’s too many men. And so they came up with this word.”

“The word patriarch is extremely old. The word patriarchal is very old. The word patriarchy, that’s a fairly new word,” he explains, noting that he’s “wrestled” with whether or not to “embrace” it.

“Because part of what they mean by that is the oppression of a class of people, primarily powerful men over women and over everyone else in society, and we got to smash the patriarchy,” Pryor says.

The word means “ruling father,” and he says he “cannot imagine something more important” than “helping fathers understand that they need to begin to rule families.”

“There’s nothing better for women and for children,” he tells Freitas. “The worst thing that happens to women and children is when men decide to abandon that responsibility.”

“And so what a patriarch is, is somebody who takes that responsibility very personally and very seriously, somebody who doesn’t just protect and provide but also sets a vision for the family,” he adds.

And this is a natural way for men to behave, as Freitas notes that “men crave legacy.”

However, modern culture has seen family legacies take a hit.

“When you turn the family into something that basically is a temporary occupation,” Freitas says, “that eventually breaks down, and then your kids put you in a home. … If I want to build something that’s going to last, well then I build where I think it’s going to last, not where I know it’s by design supposed to break apart and do its own thing.”

“Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.

Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK40 for $40 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

​Jeremy pryor, Legacy, Nick freitas, Patriarchy, Feminism, Patriarch, Men, Fatherhood, Blazetv show 

Patrick Clancy held out hope for his 8-month-old son Callan after Lindsay Clancy strangled him and his siblings — 5-year-old Cora and 3-year-old Dawson — in January 2023, according to a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday.

He said he returned to his Duxbury, Massachusetts, home from an errand to find Lindsay lying in the back yard; her throat and wrists were cut — and she was paralyzed after jumping from an upstairs window, CBS News reported.

‘There was a time where I didn’t think I would live to see my 35th birthday. And I was completely fine with it.’

Patrick, 36, said he found his children strangled in the basement; Cora and Dawson were dead — but Callan was hanging on and was airlifted to Boston Children’s Hospital, the news network noted.

“I really thought there was a chance that Callan would live,” Patrick said in the interview. “I remember just thinking, ‘Just give me one. Just give me one kid, and I would raise him as best I could, and I would give him the best life I possibly could. I’d tell him about his brother and sister.’ And I was holding out hope for that.”

Callan’s heart continued to beat for four days, according to “60 Minutes.”

“I got to hold him. I got to lay down next to him,” Patrick revealed. “And he died in my arms.”

In the following days, CBS News said Patrick wrote tributes to each of his three children — and decided to publicly forgive Lindsay, who’s now his ex-wife.

“I saw headlines that said, you know, ‘Killer Mom,’ and ‘Baby Murderer,’ ‘Monster.’ And none of them were accurate,” Patrick noted in the interview. “I believe that it was her mental illness that caused that. So I shared those words.”

The news network said Lindsay never asked Patrick for forgiveness, but Patrick gave it to her anyway.

CBS News said Patrick and Lindsay both brought medical malpractice lawsuits against health care providers who treated Lindsay — and while some have denied wrongdoing, others haven’t yet responded to the claims.

Patrick noted to “60 Minutes” that he believes he “did the best I could with what I had at the time. And I live with the outcome. I live with it every day.”

He also shared that shortly after his children’s deaths “there was a day where I, really without thinking, I drove by their school, and it was at the exact time that all of their friends were getting dropped off, and I … just couldn’t be there anymore.”

RELATED: Lindsay Clancy murder trial hits huge speed bump (UPDATE)

JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Images

Patrick was asked in the interview if he had suicidal thoughts. His reply? “There was a time where I didn’t think I would live to see my 35th birthday. And I was completely fine with it.”

He added that he no longer could stay in Duxbury, and in April 2023, he moved to New York City where he sought anonymity, CBS News reported.

“Five weeks after I moved to New York, on May 26, I had to figure out how I’m going to celebrate Callan’s first birthday,” Patrick shared in the interview, his eyes welling up. “And how do you celebrate your son’s first birthday months after he’s passed away? And so I go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I light a candle, and I said, ‘I love you buddy.’ And I walk out on 5th Avenue, and I stared crying my eyes out. And nobody cared … and I thought, ‘This is where I need to be. I can grieve.'”

Patrick added that before moving from the family house in Duxbury, he kept a number of items that reminded him of his children: Interviewer Ross Douthat mentioned a stuffed “baby sloth that Cora carried everywhere; a photo of Callan wearing a bow tie almost bigger than him; [and] Dawson’s battered and beloved helicopter.”

You can view the entire “60 Minutes” interview here; the below clip is a summary of its content:

RELATED: Lindsay Clancy murder trial fireworks: Defense attorney wants 1 juror kicked out, tells judge his jury instruction is ‘soft’

By this April, Patrick was remarried to Rachel Danis, a New York City fertility doctor, CBS News said.

Danis told the news network that she met Patrick in January 2024 in a New York City run club and got to know each other over coffee.

“Pat pulled out his phone to pay, and I noticed this adorable photo of children as the wallpaper,” Danis shared with CBS News. “And I just asked, ‘Who are those cuties?’ And Pat said, ‘Those are my kids.’ And then I think I asked if they live in Massachusetts, and Pat said, ‘They died.’ And this is just at the cashier.”

Danis noted in the “60 Minutes” interview that she tried to “take some of the weight from Pat.”

“I can’t bring his kids back,” she noted. “But if I can honor them and allow Pat to grieve but also just continue to honor them in the present, I guess that’s all I can do.”

What’s more, the couple shared with “60 Minutes” that they’re starting a family — and Patrick is preparing to one day tell his future child about their older siblings, Cora, Dawson, and Callan.

“I think every parent can agree, you have different relationships with your kids, but they’re all your kids,” Patrick said, according to CBS News. “And I can’t wait to tell them about their brothers and sister.”

During Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial over the summer, Patrick testified and found himself at the center of an online swarm of sleuths and influencers dissecting every detail of the case, developing theories that portray him as uncaring, unfaithful — and even the murderer of his children, CBS News reported.

“It’s painful to see. And it makes it difficult to be in public, and it’s possible that some of those people, after seeing lie after lie after lie, they start to believe it, and that’s what we’re left with,” Patrick said in the “60 Minutes” interview.

CBS News reported that one of the catalysts for theories about Patrick was his apparent stoicism on the witness stand, but Patrick said testifying was difficult — and that he experienced a “massive, traumatic panic attack” on the second day of his testimony.

“They put me in an ambulance,” Patrick noted in the interview. “They offered me some medication, but I said, ‘I don’t want it, because I want to go back, and I want to finish this so I can be done with this.’ And I went back, and I finished the testimony.”

Lindsay Clancy’s trial ended with a hung jury earlier this month.

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​Lindsay clancy, Patrick clancy, 60 minutes, Mom killed children, Massachusetts, Murder, Crime 

Did an ICE agent spin up a wild story after shooting a Venezuelan national in Minnesota early this year? Or has he been scapegoated by a state filled with “rage” over immigration law enforcement in general?

Both federal and Hennepin County prosecutors have formally charged Christian Castro, 52, for allegedly lying to investigators, but one of his attorneys, David Lindenmuth, told Blaze News that his client has been unfairly targeted by “rabid” officials looking for someone to blame for other controversies associated with Operation Metro Surge.

‘He was in pursuit of people in a vehicle who fled. … There was a person on that porch that apparently had a weapon at some point.’

“They went through some pretty serious things up there with the federal law enforcement being sent up there. There’s a couple of high-profile deaths,” Lindenmuth said. “And because of that, I think that what happened, to be quite honest … [is] Mr. Castro is basically the one that they chose to prosecute.”

Lindenmuth did not name names regarding the “high-profile deaths,” but the incident involving Castro occurred just one week after Renee Good was fatally shot on January 7.

On January 14, the Department of Homeland Security reported that an unnamed federal immigration officer had “fired a defensive shot to defend his life” during an immigration operation in Minnesota.

The officer had sustained a brutal attack, during which three individuals “ambushed” him and struck him with a “broom handle” and a “snow shovel,” the DHS claimed on January 14.

Now, however, the Department of Justice claims the officer made the whole thing up. On September 2, a federal grand jury indicted Castro on six counts of making a materially false statement.

RELATED: Trump threatens Insurrection Act after ambushed ICE agent shoots illegal alien: ‘Put an end to the travesty’

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

The federal indictment claims that on January 14, Castro told the FBI that while he was attempting to arrest one man, a second “unknown man grabbed a red broom off the front porch,” “a third unknown man came out of the house, grabbed a black snow shovel,” and all three ganged up on him.

Castro then claimed that “he tried to block strikes from the broom to his face with his left hand and reached for his gun,” according to the indictment. The men then bolted for a nearby residence, and Castro “lifted his back off the ground and fired one round from his gun in the general direction of the men at the same time they started running.”

Castro estimated to the FBI that he struggled on the ground with the original subject, identified as “A.A.,” for “approximately three minutes,” the indictment said.

According to federal prosecutors, none of Castro’s claims are true. Instead, prosecutors claim: No one struck Castro with a broom or a snow shovel at that time; there was no third person involved; Castro was standing when he shot through the front door of the duplex residence, where the two men had already hidden themselves; and the scuffle on the ground lasted only 11 seconds.

A probable cause statement from Hennepin County indicated that, following a 911 call, Minneapolis police took “remote-control of a city camera” and angled it at the residence in time to capture much of the incident.

Castro’s bullet struck one subject, identified as Julio Sosa-Celis in news reports but referred to as “J.S.-C.” in the federal indictment. Sosa-Celis was wounded in the leg but has recovered from his injury.

The indictment describes J.S.-C. as a 24-year-old “citizen of Venezuela” who resided in the duplex.

The probable cause statement claimed that at the time of the shooting, Sosa-Celis and A.A. “were residing in Minnesota lawfully, having been granted ‘Temporary Protected Status’ by the United States Department of Homeland Security.”

Sosa-Celis was arrested shortly after the incident, but all charges against him have since been dropped.

Though Lindenmuth admits that Castro “fired his weapon” that fateful night, Lindenmuth insisted that Castro is “innocent” and “had no intent to lie to federal agents.”

“The federal government has to prove that Mr. Castro lied to them, and then the state government has to prove that he actually committed a crime,” he explained to Blaze News. “The facts as I understand them is that he was in pursuit of people in a vehicle who fled, right? They fled. Then they fled on foot. There was a person on that porch that apparently had a weapon at some point.”

In the county probable cause statement, the original subject of the operation — whom the federal indictment referred to as “A.A.” — admitted to investigators on January 14 that he fled from the agents in his vehicle because “he feared for his life” and led them on a 25-minute chase. Once he arrived at his residence, he made a run for the front door but “slipped on the ice” and was then “tackled” by the ICE agent.

Video of the incident also shows that prior to the shooting, Sosa-Celis “stepped onto the front lawn of the home holding a snow shovel,” the probable cause statement indicated.

Castro was originally indicted by the Hennepin County district attorney back in May on four counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

He was arrested following the federal indictment and booked into Hennepin County Jail. Jail records show only the state charges.

Castro pled not guilty to the federal charges on Friday. He was released from jail after posting a $200,000 bond.

Castro is scheduled to appear in court again for the state charges on November 3. The DHS has suspended him without pay, Lindenmuth confirmed.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, the DHS, the Hennepin County Prosecutor’s Office, and the office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (DFL) did not respond to requests for comment from Blaze News.

RELATED: Anti-ICE aid fund in Minnesota shuts down — and you can probably guess the reason why

Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Lindenmuth characterized the charges as a miscarriage of justice against a devoted American patriot who has been turned into a “political pawn” by bad actors.

“Mr. Castro was a 13-year veteran in the Army, a combat veteran deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he received a 100% disability rating as a result of his service for 70% for PTSD, 30% for traumatic brain injury, where he was hit by the last wave of a suicide bomber on the American embassy over there. And so this is a person who was injured serving his country,” Lindenmuth claimed, adding that Castro has also spent a decade as an immigration officer.

“He has given his life to serving this country, and he’s not [been given] the benefit of the protections of the presumption of innocence. … Basically he’s being tried out in public by the state of Minnesota, and it’s sad to see.

“That’s not how we’re supposed to operate.”

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​Department of homeland security, Minnesota, Department of justice, Immigration and customs enforcement, Politics 

More school districts are banning smartphones and AI use in classrooms, and more parents are understandably pleased. They picture learning environments returning to the good old days of pen and paper and actual eye contact.

But don’t pop the champagne just yet. Behind the crackdown, school administrators are building a corporate surveillance dragnet that would make a Cold War spy agency blush.

This diabolical system routinely harvests sensitive personal details about your home life.

American children are growing up inside an all-knowing, all-seeing system bankrolled directly by local tax dollars. A recent report from the Brookings Institution reveals that 88% of teachers report their schools use student monitoring tools on classroom devices.

Worse yet, 42% of those teachers confirm the tracking follows kids right out the front door and directly into their bedrooms after the final bell rings. The local school board effectively installed electronic ankle monitors on America’s children — all in the name of educational progress and student safety, of course.

A secret scandal

The process usually starts with a sneaky sales representative who convinces a school board to purchase thousands of cheap laptops or tablets for daily use. To keep kids off video game sites, administrators install intrusive software like GoGuardian, Bark, or Gaggle. These platforms record search histories. They read private messages and log physical coordinates. They track keystrokes in real time. Digital hall pass apps log the exact minute a child leaves a classroom to use the drinking fountain or restroom, generating a permanent, timestamped record of students’ daily body functions. Although America is not China, what’s happening in Beijing is now happening in Boston.

Parents were never asked for their consent. Under federal law, they don’t have to be. School boards signed multiyear software contracts with private operators without sending a single permission slip home to mom and dad. Intoxicated by their own sense of importance, administrators assumed absolute authority over your child’s digital activity, completely bypassing traditional parental rights.

This diabolical system operates under the wonderful promise of keeping kids safe, yet it routinely harvests sensitive personal details about your home life. Powerful algorithms scan student emails, private documents, and home web searches for keywords related to mental health, domestic arguments, and more. When an automated system flags a few words typed late on a Sunday night, it generates an instant alert sent directly to school officials or local police departments. A teen typing out a frustrated diary entry on a school-issued laptop suddenly finds a police car parked in the driveway for a late-night wellness check.

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The information these devices generate doesn’t stay safely locked inside the principal’s office file cabinet. Third-party software companies store student location records and behavioral histories on commercial cloud servers. Many of these tech vendors reserve the right to share broad student metrics with data brokers, software developers, and research institutions of questionable merit. The private details of your child’s daily routine become valuable fuel for commercial products, helping train corporate algorithms on your family’s personal habits without your knowledge.

Restoring privacy

Few things in life are guaranteed, but one certainty is that surveillance tech always expands beyond its original purpose. Systems initially built to block bad websites now use computer cameras to track eye movements and score attention levels during standardized state tests. Automated systems process this data to generate risk scores for individual students, flagging kids as potential troublemakers before they even finish middle school. A minor behavioral mark recorded on a classroom tablet can become a permanent digital footprint that follows a child throughout his academic years.

This is not healthy, and it’s certainly not an environment that any sane parent should want his child educated in. It must stop, but it won’t happen without a clear plan and the will to enforce it.

Restoring privacy to the American classroom requires direct, decisive action from parents and local communities. Parents can immediately opt their kids out of school-issued laptops by submitting formal written requests to school principals. They are well within their rights to demand traditional paper textbooks, physical workbooks, and standard notebooks instead. Concerned voters must show up at local school board meetings to demand strict district rules that ban student tracking outside school hours, forbid third-party data sharing, and require mandatory written parental consent before any new software enters a building.

Genuine freedom depends on raising independent children who know what it means to live without an overseer monitoring their every move. If parents fail to draw a firm line now, the public school system will help raise a generation of compliant citizens who accept constant surveillance as just another part of everyday life. Again, America is not China. But step inside schools across America, and the comparison suddenly looks far less absurd.

​Surveillance, Tech 

Arizona Cardinals defensive back Kei’Trel Clark became the second Muslim player to receive a fine from the NFL in the past week or so.

Following a letter from the league, the 25-year-old is searching for answers, but he probably doesn’t have to look too hard.

‘I got to report to God at the end of my days on the day of judgement!’

Clark posted the NFL’s correspondence on his Instagram page, telling him he was “in violation of the NFL Uniform and Equipment Rules.”

“Specifically, you displayed a personal message on your eye black,” the letter continued, per the Instagram story cited by the Daily Mail.

Clark was spotted on the field on September 13 against the Los Angeles Chargers wearing the message “Glory Be 2 God …” with a peace sign in the middle.

This message appears to directly violate Rule 5, Section 4, Article 8 of the NFL rulebook, which states, “Players are prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages” during game day when the player is visible to the stadium or television audience.

As a result, Clark was fined $6,651.

Clark shared a screenshot of the letter with a picture of himself, writing, “I need answers. 6.6k for Giving God the Glory.”

He later added, “I got to report to God at the end of my days on the day of judgement! I’ll always give God the Glory and out loud. All good.”

RELATED: The NFL says it could expand with multiple teams — and you won’t like where they’re going

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At the same time, Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair was fined following a loss to the Buffalo Bills for having the name “Hind Rajab” written on his eye black during the game on September 13, per Fox News.

Hind Rajab is the name of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl who was allegedly shot and killed in her family’s car by Israeli forces in 2024 during the Israel-Palestine war.

For that, Al-Shaair received an $11,492 fine.

On Sunday, Al-Shaair was spotted during warm-ups wearing a different message on his eye black: “Wafaa Akila.” A translation through Arabic123.com says Wafaa means “completeness, fulfillment, and loyalty,” while Akila means “a woman who is thoughtful and articulate in expressing her views and opinions on important matters.”

Any fines for that message could be announced later this week.

Al-Shaair was also fined $11,593 in January for wearing “Stop the Genocide” on his eye black during a playoff game. He told reporters at the time he knew he was in violation of the rules.

“I knew that that was a fine. I understood what I was doing,” he said before expressing some confusion.

“But I was told that if I wore that in the game I would be pulled out the game, so I think that was probably the part I was confused about.”

RELATED: Travis Kelce duped by Indian illegal immigrant in massive Ponzi scheme

Brooke Sutton/Getty Images

Clark did not appear to be fined for wearing eye black in September 2025 that read, “Inshallah …,” one of his many public expressions of his Muslim faith.

In a 2025 Instagram post he wrote, “I put my heart into this $h!t, it’s always been bigger then me. Only Allah Knows.”

As well, the front of his Instagram page contains Arabic writing that, when translated by Google, reads, “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.”

It also features links to photos of Quranic passages.

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​Nfl, Football, Islam, Muslim, Sports 

Pollsters and prediction markets are prophesying overwhelming Democratic success in the midterm election, which is now seven weeks away. CNN admitted in a recent analysis, however, that those hoping for a blue tidal wave might be left greatly disappointed in November.

Doom and gloom for the GOP

Polymarket presently suggests that Democrats have a 62% chance of taking the U.S. Senate and a 92% chance of taking the House. Kalshi similarly forecasts Democrats taking over the House and Senate.

‘It’s going to be close.’

According to the Economist’s latest midterm forecast, Democrats have a 93% chance of flipping the House and securing a 238-197 majority, and a 59% chance of taking the Senate.

The latest New York Times/Siena poll shows Democrats enjoying an eight-point edge on the generic ballot.

A recent NBC News poll found that while the Democratic Party is viewed more negatively than both President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, 50% of respondents favored Democratic control of Congress.

RELATED: The cost of living is coming for Congress

The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Pollster Nate Silver argued on Sunday that the idea of the Senate as a “toss-up” is “misaligned with the long history of strong opposition performance in midterm elections, especially when the incumbent president is as unpopular as Trump.”

Blue disappointment?

In light of recent polling, the average price of gasoline sitting at an estimated $4.44 per gallon, and the sense that the midterm vote serves as a referendum on Trump’s policies, hope is mounting on the left that a blue wave will wash away the Republican trifecta in Washington.

That hope may, however, be unfounded.

CNN political analyst Ronald Brownstein suggested just over a week ago that Democrats might not be in a position to exploit the president’s waning public approval, Americans’ economic woes, and growing political discontent.

In addition to noting that many Democratic candidates are not attracting the numbers of voters who disapproved of Trump in 2018 and 2020, Brownstein wrote that despite disenchantment among some voters on the right, few appear willing to turn coat.

“The share of non-MAGA Republicans who say they are still voting for Republicans this fall is about 20 points higher than the portion who approve of Trump’s performance,” Brownstein wrote, citing GOP pollster Micah Roberts’ analysis of CNBC survey data.

“There are a lot of people who may think, ‘I don’t like Trump but … I don’t agree with the policies of the other party and where they would take us,'” said Roberts.

While Republican voters might not cast votes for Democratic candidates, Brownstein noted that the GOP still faces the possibility that disenchanted Republican voters might decide not to vote at all — a big problem given the enthusiasm among likely Democratic voters.

Voter enthusiasm might threaten Republicans’ hold on power; however, the GOP’s redistricting efforts have placed breakers before any blue wave.

After all, far fewer House seats are competitive now than were in 2018, and 13 House Democrats must now defend districts where Trump netted at least five points more than his share of the national vote, said Brownstein.

The CNN analyst cast greater doubt on Democrats’ senatorial ambitions, noting that “of the Republican-held seats Democrats are most seriously contesting, Maine is the only one in a state that supported Harris; North Carolina is the sole other state on the Senate map where Harris even came close. Trump prevailed by double digits in every other state whose Senate seat Democrats are targeting.”

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the GOP — not similarly hard up for cash like the Democrats — also enjoys a financial advantage Brownstein reckons could be wielded to limit Democratic gains.

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson told the New York Post earlier this month that instead of a blue or red wave this November, there will be “30 knife fights in 30 dark alleys.”

“It’s just a handful of races, but every one of them will be decided by a few thousand votes. It’s going to be close,” added Hudson.

The Cook Political Report projects that the GOP and the Democratic Party are set to win 208 and 205 House seats, respectively, and marked 21 seats as toss-ups.

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​Cnn, Polling, Midterm election, Blue wave, Senate, House, Republican party, Democratic party, Donald trump, Politics