Two years ago, high school freshman Colt Gray shot up Apalachee High School in Georgia, killing two teachers and two students and wounding nine others. School resource officers quickly ended the rampage, and Gray was taken into custody before the death toll climbed higher. His father, Colin Gray, who bought him the gun, was later convicted of manslaughter and second-degree murder.

Colin Gray’s prosecution drew much of the attention because it was a rare case of a parent being held criminally responsible for a child’s violence. But Colt Gray’s own punishment deserves attention too: life imprisonment without parole.

Healing is harder when justice is denied.

Gray’s age, troubled home life, and prior experience of being bullied could have been invoked as reasons for leniency. Instead, the judge concluded that his crime and his motives justified the harshest sentence available for a juvenile offender.

That’s significant because justice is not merely a tool for rehabilitation or deterrence. It also concerns what is owed to victims and to the community after an irreparable wrong.

Gray murdered four innocent people without anything resembling a justification. I would have no moral objection to the death penalty in a case like this. Because he committed the murders as a minor, however, life without parole is the most severe punishment available.

Even that cannot restore what was taken. As the older brother of one victim put it: “The defendant’s family will still get to see their son, talk to him, and know he is breathing. … My mother (and) my father don’t get that privilege. The only way to visit Christian now is by standing over his grave.”

Aristotle defined justice in terms of giving each person what he is properly owed. Whatever one makes of that formulation, it captures something modern criminal-justice debates often neglect: Punishment is not only about what might improve the offender. It is also about recognizing the gravity of the offense.

A sentence cannot bring the dead back. But a legal system that treats grave crimes with proportionate seriousness tells victims, families, and the broader community that what happened to them was not trivial and will not be waved away.

RELATED: ‘Why do we have an FBI?’ Georgia school shooter was on FBI’s radar months before attack

Jessica McGowan/Getty Images

Justice should also force us to confront the nature of the crime. As I wrote at the time, Gray displayed warning signs before he ever brought a gun to school. The lesson is not that every troubled teenager should be treated as a future murderer. It is that threats, fixation on mass killers, access to weapons, and other concrete warning signs should be taken seriously before tragedy makes hindsight easy.

The strongest objection to a sentence like this is that even terrible offenders, especially young ones, may be capable of change. That is a serious argument. But mercy and rehabilitation do not erase agency, nor do they undo the harm already done.

In Gray’s case, the record described an obsession with school shooters and a desire for notoriety. He was obsessed with school shooters. His home life may have been chaotic and his parents may have failed him badly. None of that means he lacked the capacity to understand that murdering classmates and teachers was wrong.

Judge Nicholas Primm made the point directly, saying the shooting “wasn’t done out of fear or anger” but “for the infamy of it.” As such, he doesn’t deserve another chance at living a “normal life.”

Gray may someday understand the evil of what he did. He may repent. He may even become, within prison, a radically different person. But none of those possibilities can make four murdered people less dead or obligate society to restore to him the freedom he deliberately took from others. Explanations are not the same as excuses.

This is where some accounts of restorative justice become inadequate. Restoration may have a place in criminal justice, especially where offenders can make meaningful amends. Murder imposes a limit on that logic because the central harm cannot be repaired.

RELATED: Jordan Salinas: Another ‘good guy with a gun’ ruins the gun control lobby’s narrative

Jason Armond/Getty Images; Facebook/JordanSalinas

The same caution applies beyond this case. It is a mistake to assume that every young violent offender is beyond redemption. It is equally mistaken to assume that redemption, if it occurs, necessarily entitles an offender to release. Recidivism among released prisoners is a real problem, though rates vary substantially by offense, age, and time horizon. The point is not that mercy is impossible. It is that mercy must be ordered to justice, not substituted for it.

By holding offenders accountable, courts can give victims and their families something no therapy program can supply on its own: a public judgment that the crime was real, grave, and deserving of punishment.

Assuming Gray’s punishment sticks, the Apalachee High School community will still have a long road ahead. Students and faculty can honor those they lost, support one another, and take warning signs more seriously in the future. None of that requires pretending punishment itself is healing. But healing is harder when justice is denied.

In this case, justice prevailed.

​Death penalty, School shooting, Criminal justice, Colt gray, Apalachee high school shooting, Mental health, Justice, Nicholas pimm, Restorative justice, Opinion & analysis 

For more than a year, Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) has survived one revelation after another.

Questions about his marriage. Questions about his military record. Questions about the stories he told about being wounded in Iraq. Allegations involving the abuse and blackmail of women. Questions surrounding his businesses and finances. A House Ethics Committee investigation.

Was the story Cory Mills told about Cory Mills true?

Through all of it, the Florida congressman remained defiant.

Stories were dismissed as attacks while reporters were accused of spreading falsehoods. When Blaze News began asking questions about his marriage and religious history, Mills became combative and raised the prospect of litigation. When we later assembled 10 of the most significant contradictions in his public record, his spokeswoman offered a two-word response: “All gossip.”

On Tuesday night, the voters of Florida’s 7th Congressional District rendered a different verdict.

Mills lost the Republican primary to former television anchor Ryan Elijah, who took roughly 47% of the vote to Mills’ 34%. A two-term Republican congressman who once appeared to have a promising future in the party will now leave Congress in humiliating fashion.

The result cannot be credited to any single news organization or investigation. Mills faced scrutiny from law enforcement, congressional investigators, political opponents, local and national journalists, and ultimately members of his own party.

But long before his political support collapsed, Blaze News had begun asking a simple question: Was the story Cory Mills told about Cory Mills true?

What followed became one of the most extensive investigations Blaze News has ever undertaken.

Our reporters interviewed former soldiers and military contractors who had served alongside Mills. We tracked down records. We spoke with former girlfriends, business associates, political figures, and people who had known Mills before he entered Congress. We confronted Mills directly with what we found and gave him repeated opportunities to explain himself.

Again and again, the answers produced more questions.

Here is what we reported.

The marriage certificate

The investigation began after a February 2025 domestic disturbance call involving Mills, which drew attention to a fact that surprised even some people around him: Mills was still legally married and going through a divorce.

That led Blaze News to a 2014 Virginia marriage record. We obtained and verified the certificate. It showed that Mills and Rana Al Saadi had been married by Mohammed Al-Hanooti, a radical Islamic cleric who had been identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas financing case and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot.

Mills confirmed the marriage to Blaze News in an interview. He denied converting to Islam and said he had not known about Al-Hanooti’s background. However, the questions did not end there. Five former associates subsequently told Blaze News that Mills had told them he converted to Islam. Mills continued to deny that account.

The story also opened another avenue of inquiry: Mills and Al Saadi had gone into the international arms business together after their marriage, eventually building the company PACEM into a substantial defense interest. That raised questions about Mills’ relationship with the company after he entered Congress and about his financial disclosures, matters already attracting scrutiny from congressional ethics investigators.

RELATED: GOP Rep. Cory Mills explains why he was married by a radical Islamic cleric

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The soldiers who remembered a different Cory Mills

Mills had built much of his political identity around his military and defense contracting experience. He presented himself as a battle-tested veteran and private military operative. His campaign told voters that he had been “WOUNDED TWICE WHILE DEPLOYED.” He repeatedly described himself as having been “blown up twice” in Iraq.

Several former colleagues disputed important portions of Mills’ account, including descriptions of his military qualifications and what happened during two roadside-bomb incidents in Iraq.

That is how investigative journalism is supposed to work.

Scott Kempkins, who was actually wounded in one of the attacks Mills referred to, told Blaze News that Mills could not have been wounded in that explosion because Mills’ vehicle was already about 50 yards away. Chase Nash, who was riding in Mills’ vehicle, likewise told Blaze News: “Cory was not wounded.”

That distinction would become enormously important.

RELATED: Stolen valor? Veterans dispute Cory Mills’ record: ‘He fooled a lot of us’

Anadolu/Contributor/Getty Images

Mills blows up his own ‘wounded twice’ story

Eventually, Mills himself provided perhaps the most damaging evidence against one of his signature biographical claims. His 2022 campaign advertisement had declared in enormous letters that Mills was “WOUNDED TWICE WHILE DEPLOYED.”

Blaze News pressed him on both incidents.

Mills said that during the first explosion, he hit his head inside an armored vehicle. He described suffering a concussion and being evaluated before returning to work roughly three days later. When Blaze News asked whether he had actually suffered a traumatic brain injury, Mills said he had been examined and was told to monitor himself.

Then came the second explosion. Mills acknowledged that he wasn’t inside the vehicle that was struck.

Blaze News asked the obvious question: Was he wounded?

“No, I wasn’t wounded on that,” Mills answered.

It was an extraordinary admission because Mills wasn’t contradicting some hostile characterization invented by a political opponent. He seemed to contradict the words in his own campaign advertisement.

The allegations from Miss United States

Then the investigation took a much darker turn.

Lindsey Langston, then the reigning Miss United States and a Republican official in Florida, told Blaze News in July 2025 that she had been romantically involved with Mills. After the relationship ended, Langston accused Mills of threatening to distribute intimate videos of her to men she might date.

Her allegations resulted in an investigation by the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement also becoming involved. A Florida judge even eventually granted Langston a restraining order against Mills.

Langston also made allegations about Mills’ finances. She described people arriving at the home they shared with what she characterized as bags of cash and another incident involving money after a dinner.

RELATED: Miss United States accuses Rep. Cory Mills of sextortion, accepting ‘money bags’

Photos courtesy of Lake City Reporter

The political walls come down

With the 2026 midterms on the horizon, Mills appeared capable of surviving all of it. He was a Republican incumbent in a red district. He had built a national profile, and President Donald Trump endorsed him earlier this year. But political support began to disappear as the controversies accumulated.

Mills entered the primary under an active House Ethics Committee investigation, while prominent Florida Republicans, like Anna Paulina Luna, began abandoning him and backing his opponent. Trump, despite his earlier endorsement, conspicuously omitted Mills when he issued a new slate of Florida endorsements shortly before the Republican primary.

Then came Tuesday.

Our readers deserved better. So did Mills’ constituents.

Ryan Elijah defeated him decisively. It would be easy for a newsroom to take a victory lap after an election result like that. That would miss the point. Journalists do not get to remove members of Congress. Our job was never to defeat Cory Mills.

Our job was to find out whether what he told voters was true.

That required months of work that was often considerably less glamorous than the final headlines. Our reporters tracked down people who had worked with Mills decades earlier. We compared recollections against records. We went back to sources. And when evidence contradicted something we had been told, they kept digging.

A congressman who had constructed much of his political appeal around an extraordinary personal biography increasingly found that biography subjected to ordinary scrutiny.

Mills had every opportunity to answer. Sometimes his explanations became part of our stories. Sometimes he denied the allegations, and his representatives attacked the reporting. And sometimes, as with the claim that he had been wounded twice, his answers created problems larger than the original question.

That is how investigative journalism is supposed to work.

Not by beginning with a verdict and searching for evidence to support it, but by refusing to stop asking questions because the subject is powerful, popular, politically useful, or on your own side.

Cory Mills is not a Democrat being investigated by a conservative news organization. He is a Republican congressman, a Trump-backed candidate, a fixture of conservative television, and a politician whose public positions often aligned with those of Blaze News’ audience.

None of that made the questions less important. It made them more important.

Our readers deserved better. So did Mills’ constituents. He was a rising star who reached the heights of political fame, power, and wealth in an extraordinarily short period of time. Unfortunately, it seems he never could escape his demons.

On Tuesday, those constituents got the final word.

Cory Mills spent years building a remarkable story about himself. Blaze News spent more than a year checking it. What was uncovered was a man with a serial allergy to the truth.

In the end, the truth proved harder to outrun than any political opponent.

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​Cory mills, House ethics committee, Miss united states, Politics 

When organizers began preparing for a Jesus March in Chicago, they were shocked to find a large Muslim demonstration already taking place at the same location.

“We’ve got Muslims conquering Chicago as well now. They haven’t conquered the entire country, just most of it,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments. “So it’s good to see that they’re infiltrating Chicago as well.”

In a video posted to Instagram, Christian Sean Feucht revealed what he stumbled upon when he went to get ready for the Jesus March.

“Can’t make this up, guys, I am standing in the exact place where we are doing a Jesus March in one hour. And look who’s here. A massive march, a massive Muslim march where right now they’re singing over Chicago, ‘Muhammad is the only one. May Allah be lifted up,’” Feucht said.

“They’re declaring that all Jews and all Christians would be removed from this city,” he explained.

“Our cities in our nation are being fought for in the spirit. I don’t know if you need any more example than this right here. We didn’t make this happen,” he continued. “We literally just walked up to the exact place where we’re doing a Jesus March today in Chicago. There’s a massive Muslim march where they have been declaring over the city.

“And you know what? The church in America is asleep. I’ve been saying it over the last week. This is a perfect example. The church in America is asleep. We need to wake up,” he added.

“Makes me want to vomit,” executive producer Keith Malinak says on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“Yeah, we should wake up here,” Gray adds.

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, Sean feucht, Jesus march, Islam, Chicago, Muslims, Jews, Christian, Blazetv show 

A viral video of a high school soccer player’s alleged attack on another player in South Dakota led to a police investigation.

The match between the Brookings High School Bobcats and Rapid City Central Cobblers spiraled into chaos after one player retaliated against another for a defensive play.

The viral video of the incident garnered over 18 million views on the X platform.

The game was being streamed online as the incident unfolded just before the end of the first half on Friday.

A Cobblers player shoves the Bobcats player out of bounds onto the ground and then kicks him in the back before raining punches down on the boy.

The recipient of the blows tries to shield his face as other players and adults run toward them to break up the beating.

A second later, another Bobcats player rushes in and starts punching as well.

The Cobblers player was issued a red card violation and ejected from the game. According to league rules, he will have to undergo sportsmanship training.

He might also face criminal charges.

Brookings Police Chief Michael Drake told KELO-TV that police were investigating the incident and would interview more than a hundred witnesses. They are also reviewing at numerous videos beyond the viral footage.

The viral video of the incident garnered over 18 million views on the X platform.

The Rapid City Area School District released a statement about the incident to Dakota News Now.

“Rapid City Area Schools is aware of an incident involving a player from Central High School’s soccer program and players from another South Dakota team during a soccer match,” read the statement.

“We expect all students to demonstrate respect, sportsmanship, and appropriate behavior at all times, both on and off the field,” the district added. “We do not condone behavior that does not meet these expectations. Appropriate actions will be taken in accordance with RCAS policies and procedures.”

RELATED: Viral video shows middle school officials barely react as 13-year-old is viciously beaten

The South Dakota High School Athletic Association also released a statement calling the incident “unacceptable” and said it was cooperating with school officials.

“In general, disciplinary actions beyond our general ejection policy are worked through more on the school side, and Rapid City Central is currently doing that within the framework of their own training rules and district policies,” the statement read. “They will keep us up to date on that work and we will support them in whatever is needed.”

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​Viral video, South dakota, High school, Soccer, Assault, Crime 

The family of a student in a viral video of a disturbing high school wrestling match with a transgender-identifying opponent has filed a lawsuit to end the policies at the school.

The alarming video showed the female student suddenly appear distressed during the match and yell to her mother for help.

‘Despite mandatory reporter laws, officials ignored the incident until it became a national news story weeks later. Even now, they refuse to take it seriously.’

She later said that the opponent had sexually assaulted her during the match.

According to the lawsuit, the student did not know she was competing with a transgender-identifying athlete during the Dec. 2025 match at Rogers High School in Puyallup, Washington.

Pierce County prosecutors declined to prosecute the student on the basis that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

The principal and athletic director of the school are facing separate charges because they failed to report the allegation for two months to law enforcement officials.

The school has claimed the two acted in accordance with the information known at the time and that the district launched an investigation immediately upon learning about the incident.

The mother said that the school did nothing about the allegation despite her presenting them with the video of the incident. They only responded, according to her, after the issue gained national attention.

“Despite mandatory reporter laws, officials ignored the incident until it became a national news story weeks later,” read the lawsuit. “Even now, they refuse to take it seriously — to deal with the assault, to reserve girls sports for girls, or even to give parents the necessary notice so they can keep their daughters safe.”

The family is being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom.

On Tuesday the family’s attorneys appeared in court asking for an injunction to stop the school from making females compete with biological males.

RELATED: LA Times hit with vicious online backlash for bizarre headline about trans-identifying athlete

“The most important thing is that parents have a right to know if their child is going to be put in an unsafe situation, like being on a wrestling mat with a male athlete,” said Hal Frampton of the ADF. “They deserve notice and the right to opt out of that situation.”

While some reports describe the alleged assault as “groping,” the lawsuit asserts that the victim’s vagina was digitally penetrated.

Attorneys for the district say the incident is being investigated, but they dispute that the student’s Title IX protections were violated.

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​Alliance defending freedom, Title ix, Sexual assault, Transgender-identifying athlete, Politics 

A Chinese national was arrested Wednesday in Massachusetts for orchestrating a bizarre scheme involving the alleged framing of another national for voter fraud.

33-year-old Yupeng Sun impersonated another Chinese person who had legal permanent status and tried to frame the victim for voting in the 2024 election, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release.

He then submitted numerous anonymous tips to Homeland Security Investigations and US Citizenship and Immigration Services accusing the victim of illegally voting.

Sun also allegedly submitted two fraudulent immigration forms in the name of the victim and his wife, which led to their green cards being confiscated. They were also entered into removal proceedings.

Prosecutors said Sun impersonated the victim in order to register online to vote and then submitted an early voting ballot at Malden City Hall.

He then submitted numerous anonymous tips to Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services accusing the victim of illegally voting in the presidential election.

Sun went on to impersonate the couple in order to request the abandonment of their legal permanent status.

The couple discovered the scheme when they returned to the U.S. from an international trip in June 2024 and their green cards were confiscated during secondary inspection at the airport in Boston.

The DOJ said the Lexington Police Department and the Andover Police Department were instrumental in the investigation to unravel Sun’s alleged scheme.

Sun was charged with one count of fraudulent voter registration and one count of fraudulent voting.

RELATED: Convicted scammer and former aide to Minneapolis mayor arrested… AGAIN

United States Attorney General charging documents online

The charging documents indicated that the victims told police Sun was their tenant but had been evicted and retaliated by harassing them and ultimately trying to get them deported. Sun had been arrested for allegedly attacking the victims’ daughter, but the charges were dropped.

Sun admitted that he was “very, very” angry at both the victim and his daughter in an interview with police and appeared to confess to signing some of the documents.

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​Chinese national, Voter fraud, Immigration, Deportations, Politics