&#8220;Loyalty to a party should never require abandoning your values or judgment.&#8221;
Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens fired back at Democrats furious over her endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers in a statement posted just hours before midnight heading into Election Day, with control of Congress on the line. Stevens said Abdul El-Sayed shut her out and party leaders questioned her motives instead of asking one key question: Why could a lifelong Democrat no longer support their Senate nominee? Read her full <a href="https://x.com/HaleyforMI/status/2117442023682945033?s=46">statement</a> below.
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My decision to withdraw my endorsement of Abdul El-Sayed and support Mike Rogers has angered many Democrats. I understand why. But it was not impulsive, and it was not made for me by anyone else. It was a decision of conscience.
I am a proud Democrat and believe in a woman’s right to choose, in organized labor, in opportunity for working families, and in making government work for ordinary people. None of that has changed. I believe that no one making under $70,000 should pay any Federal Income Tax. We should have fixed rate utility bills. And every person in this country gets healthcare.
After losing the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, I did what I believed was right. Despite deep disappointment &#8211; mine and that of the thousands of people who worked so hard for our campaign &#8211; I endorsed Abdul. I put the party first and hoped we could move forward together.
Instead, I was shut out. The endorsement was welcomed; the people behind it seemed to be forgotten. There was little effort to listen to the voters who supported me or bridge the real disagreements our primary had exposed.
I was prepared to accept that. I had work to do serving Michigan, and I didn’t need a role in anyone else’s campaign.
Then came the ads.
One, from a group supporting Abdul, tied the cost of groceries to America’s support for Israel. Another, from Abdul’s own campaign, featured Tucker Carlson, whose racist and anti-Black rhetoric has no place in a Democratic campaign. I heard directly from Black voters, Jewish voters, and others about how deeply these messages hurt. They deserved to be heard, not dismissed.
Reasonable people can disagree about Israel, Gaza, and American foreign policy. But blaming Israel for the price of eggs and elevating Tucker Carlson are not the way to build trust or bring people together.
Abdul chose to campaign alongside Hasan Piker, whose rhetoric about Jewish Americans has been deeply disturbing. He took Piker to college campuses to tell our youth that Iran is not our enemy. Just days ago, Piker compared efforts to win over Jewish voters in West Bloomfield to canvassing a KKK neighborhood. Abdul condemned those remarks, but his decision to embrace Piker in the first place raised serious questions about his judgment and his ability to bring people together.
I asked Abdul to reject that rhetoric clearly. I wasn’t asking him to change his platform. I was offering him an opportunity to reassure people, reject division, and demonstrate the leadership required of a United States Senator.
He ultimately said he disagreed with the outside ad. I welcomed that. But by then, I had also been told I was no longer welcome at his campaign events.
That experience raised a bigger question. If a candidate cannot make room for people who supported his primary opponent, how will he represent an entire state filled with people who disagree with him?
Some critics have also dragged my fiancé into this, suggesting he or others must have made my decision for me.
Think about what that says. A woman can serve in Congress, run statewide, and fight for her convictions, and still be told that when she makes a choice people dislike, someone else must be pulling the strings.
That is sexism dressed up as political analysis. My fiancé has his own views. I have mine. I made this decision, and I am proud of it. Do not question my independence simply because you disagree with my conclusion.
Endorsing a Republican is no small thing. Mike Rogers and I disagree on many things. But Michigan has to elect a senator and there is no neutral choice that absolves me of responsibility. Once I concluded that Abdul El-Sayed is not fit to serve in the United States Senate, I had to confront who should.
I chose Mike Rogers, with the hope that he can serve in the tradition of John McCain: a senator willing to put country before party and stand up to his own side when conscience requires it.
What has troubled me almost as much as this experience is my party’s reaction.
Instead of asking why a lifelong Democrat reached this point, some leaders rushed to condemn me, question my motives, and push me out.
That response reveals something deeply troubling about what is missing in today’s Democratic Party.
We cannot preach inclusion while punishing dissent. We cannot promise to heal a divided country if we cannot tolerate disagreement among ourselves. And we cannot build a lasting majority by making Americans feel their concerns are unwelcome.
Loyalty to a party should never require abandoning your values or judgment.
I respect Democrats who disagree with my decision and ask for the same respect in return.
I still believe in the promise of the Democratic Party. But fulfilling that promise will require something more than loyalty tests and demands for blind obedience.
It will require true leadership. Leaders who listen, even when it is uncomfortable. Leaders who stand against hatred without calculating the political cost. Leaders who understand that bringing people together is more important than forcing them into line.
There is healing to be done in Michigan, in our party, and in our country.
We can build a stronger, more welcoming, more courageous Democratic Party.
And I plan to help lead that effort.
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GettyImages-2302614894

READ IT: Haley Stevens Responds Directly To Dems Angry About Her Rogers Endorsement

2026 midterm election

abdul el-sayed

democratic party

haley stevens

michigan senate race

mike rogers

politics

“When they&#8217;re done with the Jews,” Mike Rogers warned, Christians will be next.
Speaking on “The Ben Shapiro Show” a day before the midterm election and a day after Haley Stevens’ surprise endorsement, the Republican Senate hopeful accused Democratic opponent Abdul El-Sayed of demonizing Michigan’s Jewish community.
“As I keep telling my Christian friends, guess what? Guess who&#8217;s next, right?” Rogers said. “They&#8217;re going to come get you, because that government doesn&#8217;t like the competition of people who pray to someone else.”
Rogers called the Senate race a fight over “the heart and soul of America,” arguing that El-Sayed would spend his time in Washington pulling Democrats further left.
“He will be the leader of this democrat socialist movement. That has, you know, a special sauce of Muslim Brotherhood sprinkled through. That&#8217;s who he is.”
“And they&#8217;re looking at him to help move the Democrat Party further to the left, to to a place where I think common sense working Democrats, they&#8217;re not going to recognize their party here very long,” he said.
Rep. Haley Stevens has already refused to go along, breaking ranks to endorse Rogers after clashing with El-Sayed over an ad she wanted him to condemn.
“Well, first of all, let me just say about Haley that this was a courageous act. There was no backroom dealings. There was none of that,” Rogers said.
He says Stevens was still willing to show up at a church service with El-Sayed and help him win. All she wanted in return? For El-Sayed to call out an ad that blamed Jews for how much bananas cost, which was made by antisemite Hasan Piker’s uncle.
Piker, the far-left streamer who campaigned with El-Sayed, has said “America deserved 9/11” and compared Israel to “Jewish ISIS.” He also blamed pro-Israel Jews for making antisemitism worse, warning that someone would eventually take action against American Jews.
But El-Sayed wouldn&#8217;t blast the ad.
“He basically tossed her out, said, you&#8217;re no longer welcome. Get out. That&#8217;s what really sent her off,” he said.
Rogers recalled Stevens being booed at a Democratic convention over her support for Israel and Michigan Jews. Now, he said, her own party was attacking her for drawing a line on antisemitism.
“It was all about pushing back on anti-Semitism. And the party is now chastising her,” he said. “The party is veering off into this dark and dangerous place where they&#8217;re going to provide acceptance to this.”
He questioned why Democrats were so angry with Stevens when other people in their party had raised concerns about El-Sayed, too.
“Don&#8217;t let them bring this hate here,” Rogers recalled them saying.
“I mean, these are people who know him. You know how many people need to come out as Democrats and say, this guy is not right?”
“Maybe that guy is too extreme. If Cory Booker from New Jersey, the senator Democrat, says that he&#8217;s a fringe candidate. If Van Jones said his policies are insane, if the former chairman of the Democrat Party came out and said, I can&#8217;t vote for this guy, he&#8217;s too extreme, maybe the Democrat Party ought to have a little introspection here,” Rogers said.
Shapiro asked about polls showing Rogers behind. Rogers specifically disputed a New York Times poll and said his campaign was doing better with black voters in Detroit, Pontiac and Flint.
“And number two, we&#8217;re doing better than we have ever done with African Americans in the city of Detroit, Pontiac and Flint,” he said.
He accused El-Sayed of taking black voters for granted, citing conversations with pastors, business owners and neighborhood leaders. His campaign expects the Democrat to lose some of the support the party usually counts on, leaving him scrambling to make up those votes elsewhere.
Rogers also described meeting Chaldean Christians who had fled persecution in Iraq. Some hugged him and his wife and cried, pleading with them not to let the hatred they escaped follow them here, he said.
He acknowledged those conversations were anecdotal. But he said he was hearing concerns in other Arab communities as well, and rejected the idea that Muslim voters would automatically back his opponent.
“Some people think that all the Muslims, 100% are voting for this guy. They&#8217;re not. They don&#8217;t want this here either,” Rogers said.
“I think people are going to be surprised what this vote looks like tomorrow.”

Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Campaigns Across Michigan Ahead Of Midterms

Mike Rogers Warns Ben Shapiro: El-Sayed’s Hate Movement Would Come For Christians Next

antisemitism

hasan piker

“She was thick as thieves with these people.”
That’s how Minnesota Republican State Rep. Kristin Robbins described Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s ties to individuals embroiled in a massive fraud scandal during an exclusive interview with The Daily Wire.
I interviewed Robbins just hours after The New York Times blew the lid off another twist in Omar’s immigration controversy: an Obama-era FBI investigation into claims that the Minnesota Democrat entered into a fake marriage with a man suspected of being her brother. The newspaper reported that investigators found some evidence backing up those claims, but prosecutors never filed charges because the five-year deadline to bring a case had passed.
Robbins wasn’t letting that part slide.
“The Justice Department didn’t say she hadn’t committed a felony,” she said. “They said the statute had run out.”
Robbins had been trying to get answers out of Omar — whose real name is Ilhan Nur Said Elmi — according to the Department of Justice, for months before the latest bombshell landed, although her questions involved a different scandal.
I asked Robbins what she’d say if she were sitting across from the congresswoman face to face.
“Will you give us the documents that show your communication with everyone involved in Feeding Our Future?”
Feeding Our Future was a Minnesota nonprofit at the center of a $250 million fraud scheme that stole federal money meant to feed children. Robbins says six messages between Omar’s staff and people charged in the scheme showed up in federal court records. She’s been trying to get her hands on them ever since.
“We’ve asked her to come and testify voluntarily dozens of times, and she’s completely ghosted us,” Robbins told The Daily Wire.
Robbins leads a Minnesota House committee investigating fraud and state agencies. She’s spent months digging through records, grilling government officials, and talking to workers who say the state punished them for trying to expose people ripping off taxpayers.
<div id="attachment_1209821" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1209821" class="size-medium wp-image-1209821" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2254478518-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2254478518-300x200.jpg 300w, https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2254478518-864x576.jpg 864w, https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2254478518-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2254478518-1536x1024.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />(Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)</div>
Her investigation has uncovered questions about child care centers, autism care providers, sober homes, and businesses collecting Medicaid money.
And she has some questions for Omar, who introduced legislation during the pandemic that sought to loosen the rules for federal programs that feed children.
One of them: what was the congresswoman’s office telling people who later ended up charged in the Feeding Our Future scandal?
“Was she saying, here’s this new program, or this is how you do it?”
Robbins pointed to Abdikerm Eidleh, a man tied to the Feeding Our Future case who fled the country in 2022 before authorities brought him back to the United States in July 2026 to face charges. She said federal court records mentioned messages involving Omar’s staff.
She also brought up Omar’s ties to the owner of Safari Restaurant, whom a federal jury convicted in the fraud scandal. According to Robbins, Omar held campaign events at the restaurant and appeared in a video promoting the food program.
While Robbins hasn’t found proof that Omar knowingly took part in the fraud, she wants to know whether the congresswoman’s office helped any of the people involved and, if so, what kind of help they received.
Robbins says Omar could easily help clear up those questions by turning over the messages. So far though, her committee hasn’t gotten them.
“I don’t know what it was, but we should understand that’s part of our duty to unravel this.”
After asking for the records again and again, Robbins tried to force the issue with a subpoena, a legal order demanding the documents.
The three Democrats on the committee voted no.
After all the requests, the invitations for Omar to answer questions, and the failed vote, Robbins still didn’t have the messages.
“We didn’t get the information.”
Prosecutors have not charged Omar in the Feeding Our Future scandal. The congresswoman&#8217;s office did not respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.
The Daily Wire’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ilhan-omars-sister-linked-to-central-figures-in-minnesotas-fraud-scandal">Luke Rosiak</a> found that Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, registered her consulting business at a home tied to several Feeding Our Future convicts. His reporting traced overlapping addresses and business connections between the woman who lived there and people convicted in the scheme.
Robbins has also looked into Noor’s business dealings, although she acknowledged her committee hasn’t found any direct payments connecting Noor to people charged in Feeding Our Future.
“So the sister, my understanding is, doesn’t even live in the country, but yet her consulting business is still registered in Minnesota,” Robbins said, adding that Noor does her consulting work from Kenya.
Some of the government workers who came to Robbins with claims of fraud were so scared of losing their jobs that they wouldn’t even show their faces during meetings.
Robbins described setting up a Zoom call with about 20 whistleblowers who kept their cameras turned off.
“To this day, I don’t know who they are.”
A few eventually agreed to meet her in person. Others worried they’d lose their jobs or face punishment for speaking up.
Robbins pointed to Faye Bernstein and Scott Stillman, two whistleblowers who she said paid a price for reporting suspected fraud.
According to Robbins, the department put Bernstein on leave after accusing her of creating a hostile work environment. She eventually got her job back but with different duties.
Stillman, Robbins said, faced harassment and eventually moved out of Minnesota because he feared for his family’s safety.
“So people would keep their heads down and not report.”
Robbins said some government workers also feared others would call them racist for questioning suspected fraud involving Somali-owned businesses.
She described investigators who faced accusations of unfairly targeting Somali providers and had to attend diversity training.
And some of the people helping Robbins get to the bottom of the suspected fraud? Members of the Somali community itself.
“Like, there are good people who want to clean this up, and I hate what this has done to their community.”
Robbins said Democrats wanted her to send the whistleblowers’ complaints to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the very agency some of those workers were afraid would expose their identities.
She refused.
“The only reason they’re whistleblowing is because they know I will not rat them out to DHS.”
Robbins said her team checked the complaints and sent information they believed was credible to federal law enforcement. She also pushed for stronger protections for government workers who report fraud to lawmakers or police instead of going through their bosses.
Before becoming one of Minnesota’s most outspoken fraud investigators, Robbins worked as an economist and founded the Economic Club of Minnesota. Much of her career had been spent dealing with taxes, government rules, and the state’s economy.
She’s also a wife, a mom, and someone who actually enjoys digging through piles of government paperwork.
“I’ve always been honestly kind of a geek.”
Robbins took over the Minnesota House’s new fraud oversight committee in 2025, when questions about childcare centers collecting taxpayer money were starting to pile up.
One of her first investigations involved 65 child care centers the state said were under investigation.
Robbins thought Minnesota had dealt with child care fraud years earlier. Now she wanted to know why dozens of centers were back under the microscope. She arranged a meeting with then-Department of Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead before her committee held its first hearing.
Robbins said Harpstead didn’t appear to know about the investigations, even though her own department had put out a press release about them that morning.
“I thought this was resolved.”
Robbins recalled asking the commissioner about the new cases and getting a blank stare.
“She seemed unaware of it, which was stunning.”
Her staff had already visited several child care centers in the fall of 2024.
What did they find? Buildings that looked closed, windows covered up, and locations with no playgrounds or kids in sight.
The committee put together a list of about 72 providers whose payments and past violations raised questions.
Robbins asked state officials to look into the businesses and said officials told her the department had everything under control.
But government workers and county employees were coming forward with claims that officials had ignored fraud warnings.
In March 2025, committee Republicans launched MNFraud.com, a website where people could report suspected fraud. Robbins estimated that about 700 tips poured in during the first month.
“It was bonkers.”
Her staff tossed out tips they couldn’t back up and looked into complaints supported by records, including claims about businesses collecting taxpayer money from several different state programs.
Robbins described people running multiple companies from the same addresses, offices that appeared empty despite billing the state, and people connected to Feeding Our Future turning up in other taxpayer-funded programs.
Her committee began looking into autism services, sober homes, assisted living facilities, adult daycare programs, and rides Medicaid paid for.
Robbins said some of the same names and business tricks kept showing up.
“We started seeing this business model of how they were manipulating the Medicaid waiver services programs in Minnesota to scam the state.”
One case involved a man convicted in Feeding Our Future who Robbins said used a company tied to the scheme to buy two properties while facing criminal charges.
The properties later became assisted living facilities run by his wife, according to Robbins.
She said the facilities kept billing Minnesota taxpayers after his conviction.
Robbins also described a restaurant address showing up in records for several companies collecting Medicaid payments. She suspects some businesses may have helped move dirty money around, although she stressed that no one has proven that.
Her committee kept holding hearings throughout the summer and fall of 2025, even during months when Minnesota lawmakers usually aren’t holding committee meetings. Robbins said Democrats complained that the hearings were political and a waste of time.
“We didn’t care.”
Nick Shirley’s viral videos brought national attention to the child care fraud concerns Robbins’ committee had been investigating for months.
Robbins later traveled to Washington, D.C., to testify before the House and Senate about Minnesota’s fraud problems and the government workers who said the state punished them for speaking up.
She also worked with federal investigators and officials at the Justice Department, FBI, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as Minnesota’s taxpayer-funded programs came under closer watch.
Robbins said some Medicaid providers were passing state inspections even as whistleblowers described offices with matching paperwork, identical furniture, and computers that weren’t even plugged in.
She questioned how inspectors could sign off on those businesses without checking whether they were actually helping the people they were billing the state to serve.
Robbins isn’t running for re-election, so she believes some state officials are trying to wait her out rather than answer her questions.
“I have dozens of outstanding data requests that they just have ghosted me on because they just want to wait me out.”
She worries Democrats could shut down the oversight committee if they take control of the Minnesota House, leaving federal investigators to finish work her team hasn’t been able to complete.
Robbins wants the state to keep a closer eye on Medicaid providers, hand down tougher punishment to convicted fraudsters, and keep digging into businesses she believes took advantage of Minnesota’s taxpayer-funded programs.
She said she wishes she’d figured out sooner how closely some of the fraud schemes appeared to be connected.
“We were kind of picking different pieces of the elephant, not knowing it was an elephant for the first year.”
Robbins is leaving the Minnesota Legislature with dozens of unanswered requests for records, including the six messages involving Omar’s office that her committee never got.
She hopes federal investigators can get those records and find out whether they contain anything important to the Feeding Our Future case.
Near the end of our interview, Robbins invoked Ronald Reagan while explaining why she believes the work needs to continue after she leaves office.
“Democracy is not inherited in the bloodstream,&#8221; she said. “We have to protect it and pass it on to our children.”

Rep. Omar Leaves Her Office To Speak On The House Floor

Ilhan Omar’s Fraudster Connections, Six Unanswered Messages, And One Fed-Up Republican

feeding our future

ilhan omar

kristin robbins

medicaid fraud

minnesota

More than a week after federal agents raided Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) home, the Justice Department says there’s still unfinished business.
In a new court <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/28827722/warrantexecution.pdf">filing</a>, prosecutors say they haven’t fully executed the search warrant for the Minnesota congresswoman’s D.C. residence.
The DOJ wants a judge to delay responding to requests to unseal the warrant records until the warrant is fully executed.
Fourteen news organizations filed separate requests on October 15 to make the records public.
Prosecutors are asking to update the court within 30 days after the warrant is fully executed, followed by another round of discussions about how to proceed. If the judge won’t agree, the DOJ wants until November 9 to respond to the news organizations&#8217; requests.
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The filing also lists Omar under another name: “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.” Prosecutors don’t explain why they used that name, raising another question as investigators look into her immigration history.
The Daily Wire is seeking clarification from the DOJ about the name and what remains to be done before the warrant is fully executed.
The October 12 raid came after investigators seized a phone belonging to Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, earlier this year. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/us/politics/ilhan-omar-investigation-phone.html">reported</a> that text messages between family members helped convince a judge to approve the search.
Investigators were reportedly looking into possible immigration fraud and searching for paperwork Omar and her father filled out when they came to America.
Omar says she became an American citizen at 17 when her father became a naturalized citizen in 2000. But critics have questioned her birth year after congressional staff changed it from 1981 to 1982 in official directories.
That year could make a difference in whether she qualified for citizenship through her father. Under the law at the time, Omar would have needed to be under 18 and meet other requirements to become a citizen through him.
A search for her father’s naturalization records in 2023 also came up empty, according to the New York Post.
Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/5-crimes-that-could-be-behind-the-ilhan-omar-raid">reported</a> that Omar’s father, Nur Omar Mohamed, served as a colonel in Somalia’s military under communist dictator Siad Barre. Omar has described her father as an educator.
Rosiak raised questions about whether Mohamed disclosed his military background when the family came to America as refugees.
Omar’s sister and another family member have also received subpoenas.
Homeland Security agents reportedly took documents and electronics from Omar’s home. She has since demanded that her passport, computers, and other belongings be returned.
Omar denies wrongdoing and says the investigation is politically motivated. She has accused President Trump of using the Justice Department to target her because she’s one of his critics.
On Wednesday, in a tearful video, Omar <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ilhan-omar-posts-tear-filled-plea-for-cash-its-going-to-be-an-expensive-time">asked supporters for money</a> to help fight the Trump administration.
“It is going to be a very expensive and challenging time,” she said, asking for donations of $5, $10, or $20.
The investigation into Omar’s finances and dealings with a foreign citizen began under the Biden administration in 2024, according to the Times.

Omarlead

Ilhan Omar’s REAL Name Revealed In Explosive DOJ Filing

citizenship

department of justice

immigration fraud

“Out of the dining experiences, this one I was legitimately sad not to share with the girls.”
That was left-wing YouTuber <a href="https://x.com/RefinedPopulist/status/2108530168843178380">Lindsay Ellis</a> talking about the “Frozen”-themed dinner she attended on a Disney cruise without her two young daughters. She was surrounded by princesses, watching the entertainment, and thinking about how much her girls would have loved it.
I actually felt sad hearing her say that. As a mom, I couldn&#8217;t imagine being surrounded by all that Disney magic without my daughter there to experience it with me. Especially knowing how much she would have loved every second of it.
I grew up in South Florida, so I was lucky enough to go to Disney all the time. My parents were Disney parents, and now they’re Disney grandparents. I genuinely thought it was the most magical place on earth as a kid, but I had no idea how much better it would get when I became a mom.
I’m completely obsessed with watching my daughter experience it. I’ve been on the rides, met the princesses, and seen the castle more times than I can count, but watching her do those things is better than anything I remember from my own childhood. Our favorite part is Happily Ever After, the fireworks show at Magic Kingdom. We practice singing and dancing to it at home at least once a week, and when we’re standing in front of Cinderella&#8217;s Castle watching the real thing, I spend more time looking at her face than the fireworks.
So I understood Ellis wishing her daughters were there. What I couldn’t understand was why she chose to take a Disney cruise without them to begin with?!?
Ellis apparently hated her first cruise with her family so much that she decided to take five more to investigate the industry. I have to say, that’s a pretty interesting way to respond to a vacation you couldn’t stand.
I’m a working mom of two and I can’t imagine choosing to take a Disney cruise without mine. Especially when you get to the “Frozen” dinner and admit how much your daughters would have loved it. I’d have been thinking about my daughter the second I stepped onto that ship.
Ellis can do whatever she wants, and I’m not suggesting she doesn’t love her children. But I’m also allowed to think it’s strange to spend that much time traveling around reviewing vacations, complaining about nearly everything, and then realizing your kids would have loved the experience you’re having.
And apparently, cruising was so miserable that Ellis needed more than two hours to explain everything wrong with it. Her video goes after corporate profits, working conditions, expensive drinks, gratuities, and just about everything else these companies charge money for.
If cruise lines are screwing over workers or ripping off passengers, by all means, expose them. But spare me the anti-capitalist lecture from a leftist who spent weeks bouncing between luxury cruises, enjoying the perks, and then acting disgusted that the companies footing the bill for all that luxury actually want to make money. Give me a break.
Especially when she seems to enjoy those excesses herself.
Ellis gets an unexpected upgrade to concierge accommodations on the Disney Wish, which she says can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $32,000 for four nights. She wonders aloud whether Disney knows who she is and whether the upgrade is an attempt to influence her review.
“Do they know who I am? Do they know that I’m making a hit piece?” she asks, before joking, “Because it is working!”
She clearly loved the upgrade, too. The beautiful room, the private lounge, the amenities, and the VIP treatment. At another point, she jokes that “the bribe is working.”
I’m sure it was! Who wouldn’t love that kind of treatment?
There’s no evidence Disney knew who Ellis was or upgraded her because of her audience, but the irony of someone criticizing corporate excess while enjoying accommodations that cost more than some families spend on an entire vacation apparently escaped her.
What really got under my skin was her condescending attitude toward people who actually enjoy cruising. Ellis mocks entertainment she apparently considers beneath her and seems baffled that other passengers are having a good time. At one point, she&#8217;s watching a comedian whose jokes she doesn&#8217;t find funny, despite the audience clearly enjoying themselves, and actually wonders whether she&#8217;s the problem.
YES, LINDSAY. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
God forbid ordinary people enjoy a comedy show on a vacation they paid for without getting a lecture from some left-wing YouTuber who apparently thinks she&#8217;s too sophisticated to laugh along with everyone else.
Not everyone boards a cruise ship looking for a sophisticated cultural experience. Some parents have been working their tails off all year and would love nothing more than to turn their brains off for a few days, have a couple of drinks, and watch their kids enjoy themselves. Why does that seem so offensive to people who insist on turning every enjoyable experience into a political argument?
I’ve never been on a Disney cruise, although I’d love to take my children on one someday. And from everything I’ve heard, Disney really knows how to do cruising right. But I know what it’s like to save for a vacation that matters to you.
A few summers ago, I saved for an entire year so I could take my family to Zermatt, Switzerland, for six weeks. My daughter was just a year old at the time. Switzerland isn’t cheap, especially for six weeks, but I wanted that experience with my family, so I worked, saved, and made it happen.
I didn’t spend the trip complaining about how much money hotels, restaurants, and businesses made off tourists. I knew what it would cost before I booked it, and I was happy to spend the money because the trip was worth it to me.
I’m not sure when making money became something businesses were supposed to apologize for. Disney charges a fortune because people are willing to pay it. If I think something is too expensive, I don’t buy it. If I really want it, I save for it.
What I don’t do is book five more vacations without my kids and spend two hours complaining that the companies providing them are making money.
And that’s what I find so irritating about this kind of left-wing criticism of capitalism. The people delivering the lectures seem perfectly comfortable enjoying everything the system provides, but apparently the rest of us are supposed to feel guilty about it.
Ellis even concludes that Disney offered the best overall experience of the cruise lines she tried, praising the company for being more transparent about how it distributes employee gratuities. So Disney did something better than its competitors, and she noticed. That’s exactly what happens when businesses have to compete for customers.
I don’t need a YouTuber to tell me corporations aren’t perfect. Disney has made plenty of political and cultural decisions I disagree with, and being a Disney mom doesn’t mean I have to defend them.
But I’m also not going to pretend there’s something wrong with enjoying Disney because the company makes money. And I certainly don’t think families who’ve worked and saved to take their children on vacation need a lecture about capitalism while they’re doing it.
Ellis is free to criticize the cruise industry, make a video about it, and earn money from that video. That’s another nice benefit of capitalism, by the way.
In an era where it&#8217;s difficult for many families to carve out time and money for vacations, Ellis&#8217;s glib approach to her five cruises isn&#8217;t just distasteful; it&#8217;s an affront to those of us who spend months, even years, sacrificing for these getaways and hoping for the magic moments Ellis so casually scoffs at. It must be nice to have that luxury. 
 But what&#8217;s most offensive is her waving off the very magic we want to share as families, especially those of us with young kids. This chapter in life is so painfully short that every adventure, discovery, and moment of awe is as nourishing to a parent&#8217;s soul as drinking from the Fountain of Youth. Cherish these moments, even if they come with a little help from the House of Mouse.
Frankly, her attitude toward her daughter hints at the Lindsay Clancy-adjacent mom pathology that kids are obstructions to enjoying life, rather than a necessary part of it. As much as we enjoy these experiences as kids and as adults, they don&#8217;t compare to seeing the world through your children&#8217;s eyes and sharing the wonder and magic they see.
But the part of her video that actually stuck with me wasn’t anything she said about corporate profits or cruise line business practices. It was that “Frozen” dinner, when she admitted she wished her daughters were there.
I know exactly how she felt because watching my daughter experience Disney is my favorite part of going. I don’t care what Disney’s profit margins look like when we’re standing in front of Cinderella Castle singing along to Happily Ever After. I’m too busy enjoying the little girl beside me, knowing she won’t be this age forever.
And if I ever take my kids on a Disney cruise, I’m going to enjoy every second of watching them experience it. I’ll probably be the mom crying at the “Frozen” dinner while my daughter sings along.

watercolor castle

The Disney Experience That Exposed Everything

capitalism

disney

disney cruise line

lifestyle

lindsay ellis

parenting

I’m not going to litigate the &#8220;Cornell 7&#8221; case here.
There are police interviews, text messages, conflicting accounts, and serious allegations. Everyone has already picked through the evidence and decided what they think happened inside that fraternity house.
If you want to know where I stand on that part, my colleague Chloe Trapanotto has a pretty good hot take you can watch <a href="https://x.com/ItsAllPoliticss/status/2105368863932047823">here</a>.
But come back, because my hot take is about the parents.
Why are we still paying for our kids to join fraternities and sororities?
The woman at the center of the Cornell case says she was drugged and sexually assaulted by multiple men at the Chi Phi fraternity house. Whatever you think happened that night, Cornell’s own numbers on Greek life should make every parent uncomfortable.
In Cornell’s 2025 survey, 52% of undergraduate women affiliated with Greek life who responded said they had experienced sexual assault since arriving at the university. Among women who weren’t affiliated with Greek life, it was 29%. The survey had a low response rate, so no, that does not mean 52% of every sorority at Cornell has been sexually assaulted. But Cornell’s own task force highlighted the difference. It also found that 20% of reported assaults occurred at fraternity chapter houses.
I have a daughter and a son.
There is not a chance in hell I’m paying for either of them to join one.
We spend their entire childhood warning them about alcohol, drugs, peer pressure, dangerous situations, and making stupid decisions that can change their lives. Then they turn 18 and somehow parents are expected to write another check so they can join a social club where drinking and parties are a pretty significant part of the culture.
Make that make sense.
And yes, I know there is value in some of it. People make lifelong friends in Greek life. They find a community away from home.
I’m sure plenty of people met the person who later helped them land a job. But as a parent, I still have to look at what I’m paying for and ask whether it’s worth it.
It&#8217;s also worth asking if Greek life — what that looks like in terms of priorities, goals, and skills — matches not only what employers are looking for, but what makes for a nourished soul. What happens if a college student invests time and money building a &#8220;network&#8221; they end up not using? There&#8217;s no guarantee a graduate even uses his degree in his eventual career, let alone a Greek affiliation.
And when it comes to shaping a whole person, are questions like where to get the best deal on a keg or what outfit coordinates with the school colors more crucial to personal development, or is exploring your faith or deeper questions about humanity a better use of your time? College used to be about preparing young people to enter society as better-developed, well-rounded people, not about how many stories you can accumulate about Saturday night ragers or reprimands from the House Mother. And if it&#8217;s structure or discipline your kids are after, might I suggest the nearest military recruiting office?
I’m not so sure about paying thousands of dollars for my kid to spend more time at parties, around more alcohol, in a culture where Cornell’s own numbers show Greek-affiliated women reported sexual assault at a much higher rate than their peers. And if I have a son, I’m supposed to pay for him to put himself in that same environment where one drunken night can blow up his life too?
Why would I pay extra for any of that when those are the exact years my kids could be getting a head start on becoming adults?
And I say this as someone who desperately wanted to join a sorority.
I went to a tiny liberal arts college where Greek life was basically the social life. It was also, truth be told, where I started wondering whether liberals and I were actually living on the same planet.
I wasn’t raised in some conservative bubble. My parents are Democrats. One of my sisters is very far Left. Our family group chat is exactly as enjoyable as you’re imagining.
When I got to college, though, I wasn’t thinking about politics. I was thinking, &#8220;How am I going to make friends?&#8221;
I found a little group of girls pretty quickly, and they were all joining the same sorority. I wanted in.
But of course, one upperclassman who just happened to be the Queen Bee of the popular sorority didn’t like me.
So that was that. And yes, I was devastated and embarrassed.
Fast forward, and now I should probably send her a thank-you card.
My friends suddenly had meetings, mandatory events, mixers, themed outfits, and rules about which fraternity they were partying with that night. Think &#8220;Mean Girls,&#8221; liberal arts college edition, except you’re paying dues for the privilege.
And that’s what I still don’t understand.
Everyone who loved Greek life will tell me, “You’re not paying for friends. You’re paying for connections.”
Are you?
Because I didn’t pay for either.
Once I got over feeling left out, I put my time into broadcast journalism. I landed internships at networks in New York City and London. I met lawmakers. During spring break senior year, I spent five days driving to local television stations with résumés in my car, walking through the front door and asking if I could see the news director.
Sometimes I made it past the receptionist. Sometimes I didn’t.
By graduation, I was the only person in my class with a job already lined up in my field.
So forgive me if I don’t think my parents needed to pay a sorority to help me network.
Looking back, I didn’t miss out on four years of college. I got a four-year head start on my life. While my friends were spending hours every week on meetings, mixers, and sorority obligations, I was figuring out how to get someone at a television station to hire me.
And parents are paying real money for this.
At Cornell, costs vary by chapter, but some run into the thousands before housing and dining. For spring 2026, Pi Kappa Alpha listed $3,200 in current-member dues and a $2,300 initiation fee. Alpha Delta Phi listed $4,850 in dues and $2,700 in other new-member fees.
“They’re adults. You can’t tell them they can’t join.”
Correct.
But you can tell them they can pay for it themselves.
If I’m financing school, my daughter isn’t joining a sorority and my son isn’t joining a fraternity.
Although that assumes I’m financing a four-year college in the first place.
I’d rather my kids go to trade school.
We’ve watched tuition explode while universities built massive bureaucracies that have nothing to do with teaching kids how to make a living. DEI has become its own campus industry. We watched speakers get shouted down and political activism seep into classrooms. Parents are expected to hand over tens of thousands of dollars and trust that the people teaching their 18-year-olds share their definition of an education.
Not so fast.
Gallup found in 2026 that just 23% of Republicans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education. Cost, political agendas, and concerns about what colleges are teaching were among the reasons Americans gave for this lack of confidence.
I get it.
If my son wants to become an electrician, make good money, and eventually start his own business, I’ll be thrilled. If my daughter finds a trade she loves and can start her adult life without drowning in student loans, I’ll help her pack.
If either wants a career that actually requires college, fine. We’ll have that conversation.
But I’m done with the idea that every successful 18-year-old needs four years on a college campus.
And I’m definitely not paying extra to extend my kid’s adolescence with four more years of mixers and house parties when they could be getting a head start on an actual life.
At 18, I thought getting rejected from that sorority was awful.
It turned out I had more time to work, intern, make actual connections, and figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
That queen bee did me a favor.
My kids won’t have to wait around to see if theirs does too.
If I’m paying the bill, there won’t be a rush week to begin with.

scream queens

The College Risk Parents Are Literally Paying For

campus sexual assault

college tuition

cornell university

greek life

higher education

opinion

Former Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off a Democratic get-out-the-vote push ahead of the midterms with one of her favorite pieces of political wisdom: If you feel powerless, you are powerless. And if you feel powerful, you guessed it, you are powerful.
Harris joined the GOTV event Monday, with 29 days until Election Day, urging Democrats to get “back out in the streets,” knock on doors, make calls, and turn out voters.
“And you know I have a saying, I have many sayings, but one of them is, ‘You know when you feel powerless you are powerless. When you feel powerful you are powerful,’” Harris said.
“And we are powerful.”
There was plenty more power to come&#8230;
“We are right now in that phase where we can remind folks that we are all in this together and that the voice of the people is powerful and that the power is with the people,” she said.
Harris said Americans have spent the last year and a half feeling “hopeless” and “powerless,” while arguing that the midterms give voters a chance to change the direction of the country.
“We are in the phase where we can do something to change the course of where this stuff has been going,” Harris said.
She called President Trump’s administration “the most callous, the corrupt and incompetent presidential administration we’ve ever experienced.”
Harris also blamed the Iran war for causing “at least a 50% increase in the cost of gas” and said she has met people struggling to buy enough groceries to get their families through the week.
The former vice president who lost the 2024 election to Trump told Democrats they have opportunities to flip House and Senate seats, governorships, and state legislatures. She named Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Harris later called Trump a “tyrant” while arguing that the Founders anticipated a president abusing his power.
“Our founders, they imagined a moment like this,” Harris said. “They imagined that there would be a moment where there may be a tyrant occupying the White House.”
“They imagined a moment I suppose where there would be a bunch of people bending the knee at the foot of the tyrant,” she said.
Harris said the Founders created three co-equal branches of government to provide checks and balances, but argued Democrats cannot rely on the Supreme Court.
“We know we can’t count on the Supreme Court,” Harris said.
She instead pointed to Congress and the chance for voters to change its makeup in November.
“And again this is a moment where we have to remember the founders understood that the people will kick in with their power if we are seeing an abuse of power from the executive or any other branch,” Harris said.
Harris ended by thanking the people taking part in the GOTV effort and giving them one final push.
“This work matters. You matter,” Harris said. “Please take care of yourselves and know that we have so much to do that is good work and yes hard work is good work.”

Kamala Harris Speaks At SHE LEADS Conference In Southern California

The Midterm Sprint Gets The Full Kamala Treatment With A ‘Powerful’ Pep Talk

donald trump

get out the vote

kamala harris

Grown adults are acting like the children they never bothered to have. And the toy industry is making a killing off it.
After years of liberals telling young people that marriage is a trap, children are a burden, and giving up a little freedom for somebody else is practically a death sentence, people are taking their advice.
Well, congratulations. We&#8217;ve got adults who don&#8217;t want the responsibilities of raising children but are apparently more than happy to keep buying the toys made for them.
A new report from market research firm Circana found that households without children now account for more than half of U.S. toy sales. Grown-ups are buying LEGO sets, collectibles, trading cards, and whatever else reminds them of being eight years old.
We also have grown adults dressing up as animals and calling themselves furries. Apparently, some people don&#8217;t even want to act like humans, let alone adults. And now we&#8217;re surprised that childhood has become such a lucrative business?
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
~Today’s adults increasingly behave like the children they never have~ feels like a rude thing to say about people. And yet:
“Toy sales among adult-only households have now outpaced households with children for toy sales, growing 16% through June, equivalent to 55% of total toy… <a href="https://t.co/LU2sOrSrlH">https://t.co/LU2sOrSrlH</a>
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) <a href="https://x.com/DKThomp/status/2102408766264111367?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 22, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I&#8217;m not saying everyone who buys a LEGO set needs to grow up. I don&#8217;t care if you collect Pokémon cards or have a room full of Star Wars memorabilia. And not having children doesn&#8217;t automatically mean someone is avoiding responsibility. Plenty of people want families but can&#8217;t. But I do think we&#8217;ve created a culture where being an adult sounds so miserable that people would rather spend their money trying to feel like children than actually have them.
Think about the way the Left talks to young people: Don&#8217;t get married too early. Don&#8217;t have kids until you&#8217;ve traveled and done everything you want to do. Don&#8217;t let anyone interfere with your freedom. Find yourself. Protect your peace.
At what point are you supposed to stop finding yourself and actually build a life? And why have we decided that building a life around somebody other than yourself is such a terrible thing?
I have two children, and they&#8217;ve been traveling since they were three months old. I didn&#8217;t change how I enjoy my life, but now I enjoy it a million times more because they&#8217;re along for the ride.
And here&#8217;s what really gets me. The same people telling adults to embrace their inner child seem hell-bent on making actual children grow up overnight. Little kids are being introduced to adult conversations about sexuality and changing their gender before they&#8217;ve even figured out who they are. They&#8217;re being told the planet is dying and that it&#8217;s somehow their responsibility to save it. Can we let them learn to tie their shoes first? Apparently, childhood is something to be protected only after you&#8217;ve already lived it.
Yes, having kids means you play with toys together. My daughter and I set up scenes in her dollhouse, rearrange furniture, and play dinosaurs. I genuinely enjoy it. Sometimes I&#8217;m more invested in where the furniture goes than she is.
But I&#8217;m not playing with her toys because I want to be a little girl again. I&#8217;m playing with them because I&#8217;m her mother. I want her to have a wonderful childhood. I also want her to grow up believing there&#8217;s something worth looking forward to afterward.
Instead, we&#8217;ve created an entire market around selling childhood back to people who have already lived it. Toys “R” Us is planning to open 120 new standalone stores across the country. Adult collectors are a growing part of the toy market, and companies have every reason to pursue customers with considerably more spending money than children.
Entrepreneur and virtual reality pioneer Palmer Luckey made an observation about LEGO that stuck with me during his recent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/why-its-good-for-your-kids-to-play-video-games">Punch interview</a> with Ben Domenech, “Why It&#8217;s Good For Your Kids To Play Video Games.”
“The company is building collectible knickknacks for adults,” Luckey said.
He criticized LEGO&#8217;s increasing reliance on specialized pieces that make sets less configurable than they used to be. Older bricks gave children more freedom to build whatever they imagined. Some newer sets are designed around creating a particular object that an adult can assemble and display.
I thought about my daughter dumping out her toys and deciding what we&#8217;d build that afternoon. She would never try to build something based on the picture on the box. She&#8217;s actually the opposite and has her own vivid imagination. And that&#8217;s part of what makes playing so wonderful for children. They get to create something entirely their own.
If adults have become such valuable customers that companies are changing toys to suit them, I think it&#8217;s fair to ask what happens to the kids. But I&#8217;m even more concerned about what happens when we convince those kids that adult responsibilities are chapters in life to avoid.
Why do we talk about marriage and children almost exclusively in terms of what they take away?
I hear plenty about how expensive children are. I know. I buy the diapers.
I hear that marriage requires compromise and that parenthood means you can&#8217;t just do whatever you want, whenever you want.
All true.
But where&#8217;s the enthusiasm for what those things can give you?
Being a mother has demanded more of me than anything else. My time isn&#8217;t entirely mine anymore. I make decisions every day based on what my children need. I wouldn&#8217;t trade that life for the freedom I had before it.
Before I say what I&#8217;m about to say next, I want to make something very clear: I had the best childhood thanks to my wonderful parents. But my favorite chapter of my life has been marriage and kids, and honestly, I wish I&#8217;d started sooner.
I don&#8217;t want my daughter growing up believing that the best years of her life are the ones before anyone depends on her.
I want her to know that loving someone enough to sacrifice for them can make life better than she ever imagined. That building a family isn&#8217;t the end of her happiness. It only makes you happier. That being needed by someone you love can be a privilege.
We&#8217;ve spent so much time warning young people about the cost of responsibility that I wonder whether we&#8217;ve forgotten to tell them what it&#8217;s worth.
At some point, I think we ought to ask whether we&#8217;re building the lives we wanted or just buying back the childhoods we miss.
I want my daughter to enjoy every minute of being little. One day, she won&#8217;t need me to sit on the floor and play dinosaurs with her.
I hope by then I&#8217;ve given her plenty of reasons to be excited about growing up and buying toys for her own kids someday. Because as wonderful as Christmas morning was when I was little, nothing compares to experiencing it as a mom and watching the magic through my children&#8217;s eyes.

We’ve Got A Generation Of Peter Pans. Guess Who’s Cashing In.

declining birth rate

lego

marriage

parenthood

toy industry

I had to read this sentence twice:
“A lot of early miscarriages happen as part of a natural process of discarding ‘errors.’”
Discarding &#8220;errors.&#8221;
We&#8217;re talking about unborn babies. A life created by God.
I’m a mom of two, and maybe that’s why I was honestly disgusted when I read it.
I’ve taken the pregnancy tests. I’ve stared at the faint line, wondering if it was actually there or if I was imagining it. And then took about 20 more tests after the first one. I’ve sat through the early ultrasounds waiting to hear a heartbeat. I know the excitement. I also know the fear that comes with realizing how much can go wrong and how little control you actually have, especially for someone who has a type A personality like me.
But at no point did I think of what was growing inside of me as some potential &#8216;error&#8217; my body might need to &#8220;discard.&#8221;
That was my baby.
And I think it says a lot about how we’ve gotten to a place where writing about unborn human life this way can be passed off as clinical or scientific. DISGUSTING.
The <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-unsettling-ambiguity-of-early-pregnancy?_sp=de48b8af-cff3-4a8b-937a-5042a9ce6cc6.1789661986742">New Yorker piece</a>, which discusses anthropologist Kate Clancy’s book “Pregnancy Interrupted,” spends a lot of time talking about the uncertainty of early pregnancy.
Yes, there is a ton of uncertainty!!!
Doctors can get gestational age wrong. I know that firsthand. I had two different doctors give me due dates that were two weeks apart. Measurements can differ. Standards for diagnosing a miscarriage can even differ depending on where a woman lives.
The article itself points to research involving pregnancies classified as having “unknown viability.” About one-fifth of those pregnancies eventually turned out to be viable.
So doctors don&#8217;t always know.
Which is one of the main points of the article.
And then, somehow, we go from acknowledging how much we don&#8217;t know about an unborn child&#8217;s future to describing embryos as &#8220;errors&#8221; that can be &#8220;discarded.&#8221;
I&#8217;m sorry, but that&#8217;s sick. Yes, SICK. Actually, I’m not sorry.
And I think there&#8217;s something much bigger going on here than a couple of gross words.
The more I read, the more the baby seemed to disappear altogether. Pregnancy became something happening to a woman’s body. A medical condition.
Where did the baby go?
Because ask basically any woman who desperately wants a baby what happens when she sees two lines on a pregnancy test.
She doesn&#8217;t wait for somebody to officially declare the pregnancy “viable” before she starts imagining a future.
First, I thanked God. Try calculating my due date. Of course, I wondered if it&#8217;s a boy or a girl and didn&#8217;t know how I could possibly wait another day without knowing. Then came the names. How old will my baby be at his or her first Christmas?
Then, I start worrying about everything I ate, drank, lifted, touched, or even looked at in the past two weeks.
Maybe the woman comes up with some elaborate way to tell her husband. Or maybe she&#8217;s like me and has absolutely no ability to keep something like that to herself. I start screaming with excitement, blurt it out loud, and then tell everyone and anyone. And I mean anyone. I’d probably roll down my window and tell the random driver next to me if given the chance.
The relationship has already started.
I am my baby&#8217;s mother.
And God forbid the woman miscarries, nobody needs to sit her down and explain to her that she lost something.
She knows exactly who she lost.
Nobody would dream of telling a grieving mother that her body successfully “discarded an error.” And if you do, you are a psychopath.
But use basically the same language inside a discussion about reproductive biology and suddenly we&#8217;re supposed to nod along because it sounds scientific.
No! Words matter.
And there was another line in the piece that was also vile.
After going through the biological and environmental reasons a pregnancy might end, the author writes that pregnancy can also be interrupted “by a woman’s choice.”
Just like that, miscarriage and abortion wrapped up in the same word.
“Interrupted.”
A woman losing a baby she desperately wanted did not “interrupt” her pregnancy in the same way another person intentionally murdered an innocent human being God created.
And pretending they fall under the same language doesn&#8217;t make them the same thing.
It’s just trying to make abortion sound, what? Nicer? Sick.
And have you ever noticed how fast the language changes depending on whether the baby is wanted?
Think about how normal people talk about desperately wanting to get pregnant: We throw baby showers. We post ultrasound pictures. We decorate a nursery. We talk to the baby, my baby.
We put our hands on our stomachs when the baby kicks. I actually had my hand on my stomach 24/7 — you know, the same way, dare I say it, narcissist Meghan Markle was ridiculed for doing. It’s probably the only thing I can relate to her about. Sue me, but I loved it.
Nobody walks up to an excited pregnant woman and says, “Actually, you&#8217;re experiencing a developing medical condition of uncertain viability.”
Why? Um, because that would be INSANE.
We know what she means when she says, “my baby.”
But suddenly, when abortion enters the conversation, nobody wants to say “baby” anymore. It&#8217;s an embryo or a fetus. Abortion is a “choice.” Now apparently it&#8217;s an “interruption.” Funny how that works&#8230; right?! Actually, it&#8217;s anything but funny.
And yes, I know that miscarriage is natural. I know chromosomal abnormalities are a major reason miscarriages happen. I know there are pregnancies that, tragically, will never result in a healthy baby being born.
None of that means we have to talk about the child who dies as if he or she were a defective product.
If doctors themselves don’t always know what’s going to happen, you’d think we’d be a little more careful with the way we talk about the baby.
Maybe a little humility is warranted.
We might not know whether that baby is going to survive. That doesn&#8217;t mean the baby isn&#8217;t there. I don&#8217;t understand why we&#8217;re acting like those are the same thing.
Like every woman, I didn’t know anything about either of my children when I first found out I was pregnant.
I didn&#8217;t know what they would look like. What their personalities would be. Whether they would be healthy. Would I make it through nine months without something going terribly wrong? I didn&#8217;t even know if I&#8217;d make it through the first trimester.
But here&#8217;s what I did know. I knew they were THERE.
And from that moment on, I wasn&#8217;t the only person involved anymore.
That’s the part that disappears when pregnancy becomes nothing more than a condition happening to a woman’s body.
The baby disappears from the language. And once the baby is gone, I guess you can call what happens next whatever you want.
And suddenly we’re back to talking about “errors” being “discarded” and pregnancies being “interrupted.”
Motherhood does begin with uncertainty. And it doesn&#8217;t exactly get better from there.
First you&#8217;re worried about every little thing during pregnancy. Then the baby arrives and you’ve got 10,000 new things that can terrify you. Then they&#8217;re toddlers and climbing on things they absolutely should not be climbing on while you&#8217;re yelling, “GET DOWN,” for the 47th time that day.
The fear about what you’re worried about changes as they get older. But they&#8217;re still your kid and always will be.
That&#8217;s why that sentence about &#8216;discarding errors&#8217; makes me so angry.
An unborn child is NOT an error.
A miscarriage is NOT a successful disposal of defective material.
And a woman who loses her baby didn&#8217;t simply have a pregnancy that was ‘interrupted.’
We’re talking about an innocent human life that God created.
So&#8230; start talking like it!

Foetus ultrasound

I Read Two Words About Unborn Babies That Stopped Me Cold

abortion

miscarriage

motherhood

new yorker

pregnancy

I know writing this is going to generate some not-so-nice comments, so let&#8217;s just get it out of the way: I&#8217;m a beige mom. I do not want my house covered in fire-engine red, electric blue, highlighter yellow, and that particular shade of green apparently reserved exclusively for children&#8217;s plastic toys. I don&#8217;t understand why becoming a mother was supposed to mean surrendering every room of my house to something that looks like a preschool classroom circa 1997. And before anyone starts typing furiously: My children are fine. Actually, they&#8217;re more than fine. They&#8217;re spoiled rotten.
I&#8217;m a mom of two: a four-year-old girl and an almost three-month-old baby. We have toys. So many toys. We have colorful toys, too. I simply don&#8217;t want every single thing my children touch to look like a rainbow threw up on it. Which is why I have a bone to pick with Little Tikes.
Of course, now that my daughter is four and I have already purchased virtually every toy a small child could possibly require, Little Tikes decides to release its gorgeous &#8220;Cloud&#8221; line. White. Beige. Soft, muted colors. Where were you people four years ago?
When my daughter was younger, finding a basketball hoop or play structure that didn&#8217;t come in Ronald McDonald colors was practically an archaeological expedition. And when you did find one? Prepare to refinance your house. Parents who have gone searching for &#8220;aesthetic&#8221; toys know exactly what I&#8217;m talking about.
Take children&#8217;s brand Smol, which bills itself as &#8220;a fun company with good taste.&#8221; Its products are beautiful. Slides, sensory tables, and a basketball hoop that won&#8217;t make your living room look like a Chuck E. Cheese. There&#8217;s just one small problem: A chic basketball hoop can <a href="https://www.playsmol.com/collections/play/products/basketball-hoop">run</a> you around $200.
Would I ever spend that much money on a white basketball hoop just because it was aesthetically pleasing? Absolutely not. Did I put it in my cart multiple times? Absolutely.
Thankfully, somewhere between &#8220;add to cart&#8221; and &#8220;check out,&#8221; the functioning portion of my brain would wake up, smack some sense into me, and remind me that I was contemplating spending hundreds of dollars so my toddler could miss baskets in a more aesthetically pleasing environment. I resisted.
And now Little Tikes strolls in years later with a beige-and-white basketball hoop for <a href="https://parade.com/living/little-tikes-cloud-collection">around</a> $35. That&#8217;s less than a quarter of the price of the luxury baby items I stared at for years.
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What took so long? To be clear, this isn&#8217;t a hit on Little Tikes. Quite the opposite; I love Little Tikes. Its stuff lasts forever. I love the look of those gorgeous wooden outdoor toys as much as anyone, but plastic wins outside. It survives rain, mud, toddlers, forgotten juice cups, winters, and whatever unidentified substance your child has smeared across it. Hose it down and move on with your life.
Little Tikes just needed better colors, and I told it as much for approximately four years. I emailed the company multiple times asking some version of: When are you going to make white and beige toys? Or at least give us colors that don&#8217;t assault the eyeballs? Give me a light pink. A sage green. A soft blue. Anything.
Every time, I&#8217;d get a polite response along the lines of, &#8220;Thank you, we&#8217;ll take that into consideration.&#8221; Well, apparently the company did. It only took four years. You&#8217;re welcome, America.
But here&#8217;s the part of the beige-mom debate that drives me crazy: Somewhere along the way, not wanting a neon orange slide in your family room became evidence that you&#8217;re depriving your children of a childhood. I&#8217;m not a bad mom because I don&#8217;t like obnoxiously colored toys. My daughter has colorful things. I just prefer those things to have a home when we&#8217;re done playing with them. If a toy is going to permanently live in my family room, kitchen, or backyard, yes, I&#8217;d rather it not scream &#8220;DAYCARE&#8221; from across the street.
And that&#8217;s not just about being picky. Not every family has a designated playroom where they can close the door on the Fisher-Price explosion. Plenty of parents live in apartments, city homes, townhouses, or smaller houses where the living room is also the playroom. Why shouldn&#8217;t they be able to buy a play kitchen or basketball hoop that can sit in the corner without taking over the entire room? If I want to invite my girlfriends over last-minute, I don&#8217;t want to perform an emergency evacuation of every toy my children own. A little beige camouflage goes a long way.
And no, I don&#8217;t buy the argument that my daughter&#8217;s imagination is somehow suffering because her toys aren&#8217;t fluorescent. My child could entertain herself with three sticks, a tissue, and a rock. Her imagination has always amazed me. I bought her a dollhouse (the black and white one from Joanna Gaines&#8217; Hearth &amp; Hand line at Target) when she was about one, and by two years old, she was creating elaborate little scenes that made me wonder what exactly was happening inside that tiny head. She&#8217;d position everyone, invent relationships, create stories, and keep herself occupied forever.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1179951" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7450-300x225.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7450-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7450-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7450-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7450-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />.         <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1179947" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7446-300x225.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7446-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7446-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7446-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7446-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />         <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1179941" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-225x300.jpg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-432x576.jpg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-scaled.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />    <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1179943" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/CEBA5F8D-CF9D-48D1-A46B-5E869450BD9A-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/CEBA5F8D-CF9D-48D1-A46B-5E869450BD9A-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/CEBA5F8D-CF9D-48D1-A46B-5E869450BD9A-768x576.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/CEBA5F8D-CF9D-48D1-A46B-5E869450BD9A-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/CEBA5F8D-CF9D-48D1-A46B-5E869450BD9A-2048x1536.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />.                                    <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1179945" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-225x300.jpg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-432x576.jpg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-scaled.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" /></div>
We also never relied on screens to entertain her, and I&#8217;m incredibly thankful for that now. She learned how to be bored and then figure out how not to be bored. She can entertain herself. She can sit nicely at a restaurant. She can turn practically anything around her into a game. None of that required a neon green plastic table.
I&#8217;m not trying to raise beige children. I&#8217;m not banning color. I&#8217;m not standing over my daughter with a Sherwin-Williams swatch and confiscating anything above a certain saturation level. I just don&#8217;t understand why children&#8217;s toys spent decades operating under the assumption that kids can only experience joy when an object contains every color of the rainbow simultaneously.
Children bring enough chaos into a house on their own. There are Goldfish crumbs in places that defy physics. Someone or something is always sticky. If I can make even a small portion of that chaos sage green instead of radioactive lime? I&#8217;m going to.
And apparently a lot of other parents feel the same way. For years, &#8220;aesthetic&#8221; children&#8217;s toys were treated like a weird luxury niche. If you wanted something in softer colors, you had to hunt for it, pay more for it, or accept that the primary-colored version was your only reasonable option. That&#8217;s changing. Mainstream toy companies are finally giving parents something incredibly simple: choices. And that&#8217;s all I ever wanted.
If you love the classic red, yellow, and blue toys, buy them. Fill your house with them. Build a primary-colored kingdom. Your kid will have a blast. But so is mine with whites, dusty pinks and sage greens. My daughter isn&#8217;t experiencing some color-deprived childhood because Mommy prefers neutrals. She has imagination. She has creativity. She has plenty of color.
She also has grandparents. Trust me, she&#8217;s getting enough neon.
So yes, I&#8217;m a beige mom. Get over it.
***
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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I’m A Beige Mom. Get Over It.

home decor

“We’re gonna be in search for a downed plane.”
Those chilling words over emergency dispatch audio kicked off the nighttime search for Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany and his pilot after their powerless plane crashed into Lake Wausau in Wisconsin and began sinking beneath the water.
The radio traffic captures the uncertain minutes that followed as first responders scrambled Saturday night to figure out where the plane had gone down and, more importantly, where the two men had gone after getting out.
Tiffany was heading home from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner when the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza lost power as it approached Wausau Downtown Airport shortly before 9 p.m. Pilot Leonard “Len” Boltz had only seconds to react before making an emergency landing in the lake.
Tiffany and Boltz survived the impact and were able to call 911, but there was another problem almost immediately: the plane was going under.
Dispatchers knew the two men planned to get out and swim, but then contact with them disappeared.
“I was talking to the pilot. It sounds like they made plans to swim to the nearest shore after it went under and then I lost contact with them. I believe his phone is underwater so they may be swimming south I believe.”
That meant rescuers were now looking for two men somewhere in the dark water, with the plane itself sinking out of sight.
And this was no small pond. Lake Wausau stretches across roughly 1,900 acres, giving rescuers a massive area to contend with as they tried to pinpoint where Tiffany and Boltz had ended up.
The conditions weren’t exactly on their side either.
Temperatures were already dropping Saturday night and were headed toward the 50s, with overnight temperatures expected to fall to around 50 degrees.
Meanwhile, Tiffany and Boltz were in the lake waiting for rescuers to find them.
Crews were sent toward the area where a witness reported seeing the aircraft go down as boats joined the search.
Then came the call everyone had been waiting for.
“We have two victims in the water. We’re just pulling them out now.”
Dispatch quickly checked that there was nobody else left to find.
“Are all victims accounted for?”
The answer was exactly what rescuers wanted to hear.
“Yes, it’s two on board.”
Both Tiffany and Boltz were pulled from the water and taken to Aspirus Wausau Hospital with minor injuries.
Tiffany later revealed just how quickly the flight had gone from routine to terrifying.
“Len said to me, ‘We are going down. Pull your seatbelt tight,’” Tiffany recalled Sunday. “And that’s exactly what I did. I gave it a yank and pulled it good and tight.”
Tiffany said they hit the water roughly 10 seconds later.
The impact sent his head into the dashboard, leaving him with a gash above his right eye that required 12 stitches. Boltz also suffered cuts and needed four stitches.
After checking on each other, the two men escaped through the passenger-side door as water began filling the aircraft. 
Tiffany searched for his phone but couldn’t find it. Boltz still had his and called 911.
The two climbed on top of the plane and waited as it slowly sank beneath them. Tiffany said they could see emergency lights appearing around the lake, but help had not reached them before the aircraft disappeared underwater.
With nothing left to stand on, they started swimming.
Tiffany said they made it roughly 100 to 150 feet before reaching a higher spot in the lake where the water was about five feet deep.
“I said to Len, ‘Let’s just stay right here until help can come,’ because we could see the sirens,” Tiffany said.
The gravity of the close call appeared to hit Tiffany as he recounted what happened Sunday.
“We are just really fortunate,” Tiffany said. “We’re really fortunate that God was looking after us last night.”
Tiffany credited Boltz’s experience with keeping the crash from becoming far worse. The retired Air Force pilot raised the plane’s landing gear before hitting the lake, a move Tiffany said may have prevented the aircraft from flipping.
“We’re fortunate the plane didn’t flip,” Tiffany said. “I just take that to the skill of the pilot.”
The two men were rescued by a Wausau Fire Department airboat shortly after 9 p.m., roughly 15 minutes after the plane went down.
The single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza remained submerged Sunday as the Federal Aviation Administration investigated what caused it to lose power.
Tiffany, meanwhile, said the crash, which comes less than two months before he&#8217;s set to face voters in Wisconsin’s governor’s race, would not keep him off the campaign trail.
“This will not deter me in my efforts that I started a year ago to become the next governor of the state of Wisconsin,” he said.
Tiffany has represented Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District in the House since 2020 after previously serving in both chambers of the Wisconsin Legislature. He grew up on a dairy farm in western Wisconsin and later became a small-business owner, operating a Northwoods excursion business with his wife, Chris.
Tiffany is now the Republican nominee for governor and will face Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in November. President Donald Trump has endorsed Tiffany in the race.
Crowley responded to the crash by saying he was relieved Tiffany and the pilot were safe and wished them a speedy recovery.

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Hear Desperate Search For Battleground GOP Candidate After Plane Crash

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wisconsin governor election

“God was watching over us tonight.”
That’s how Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany described surviving a plane crash Saturday night that ended with him swimming out of a sinking aircraft in Lake Wausau.
<div id="attachment_1177349" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1177349" class="wp-image-1177349 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/Bluegill-Bay-County-Park_D984BF45-5056-A36A-08B2A4B17E38EF36-d984be3a5056a36_d984c5c4-5056-a36a-08a910e9ce9c65ff.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="768" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/Bluegill-Bay-County-Park_D984BF45-5056-A36A-08B2A4B17E38EF36-d984be3a5056a36_d984c5c4-5056-a36a-08a910e9ce9c65ff.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/Bluegill-Bay-County-Park_D984BF45-5056-A36A-08B2A4B17E38EF36-d984be3a5056a36_d984c5c4-5056-a36a-08a910e9ce9c65ff-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/Bluegill-Bay-County-Park_D984BF45-5056-A36A-08B2A4B17E38EF36-d984be3a5056a36_d984c5c4-5056-a36a-08a910e9ce9c65ff-768x576.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />VisitWausau.com</div>
Tiffany was heading home from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner when the plane he was traveling in lost power as it approached Wausau Downtown Airport.
The pilot was forced to make an emergency water landing in Lake Wausau.
Tiffany said they called 911 after landing, but soon had to get out of the aircraft as it began sinking.
“As the plane began to submerge, we exited the aircraft and swam to a shallow area, where we waited until emergency responders reached us by boat,” Tiffany said.
Making the ordeal even more harrowing, temperatures in Wausau were already in the low 60s Saturday night and were expected to plunge into the upper 40s overnight.
The two waited in the water until emergency responders arrived by boat. Both Tiffany and the pilot escaped with only minor injuries and were taken to Aspirus Wausau Hospital.
Tiffany thanked the pilot, the Wausau Fire Department, and all of the first responders who rushed to their aid.
“I want to express my deepest gratitude to the pilot, the Wausau Fire Department, and all of the first responders who came to our aid so quickly. They got us safely off the water and transported us to Aspirus Wausau Hospital, where we received excellent care. Thankfully, both the pilot and I sustained only minor injuries,” Tiffany said.
“God was watching over us tonight, and I am incredibly grateful to be here in the hospital with my wife, Chris, by my side. An experience like this reminds you just how precious life is.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
While returning home from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner tonight, the plane I was traveling in lost power as we approached the Wausau Downtown Airport. The pilot made an emergency water landing in Lake Wausau.
After landing, we called 911. As the plane began to…
— Tom Tiffany (@TomTiffanyWI) <a href="https://x.com/TomTiffanyWI/status/2099000759450837456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 13, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The crash comes less than two months before Tiffany is set to face voters in Wisconsin’s governor’s race.
Tiffany has represented Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District in the House since 2020 after previously serving in both chambers of the Wisconsin Legislature. He grew up on a dairy farm in western Wisconsin and later became a small-business owner, operating a Northwoods excursion business with his wife, Chris.
Tiffany is now the Republican nominee for governor and will face Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in November. President Donald Trump has endorsed Tiffany in the race.
Crowley responded to the crash by saying he was relieved Tiffany and the pilot were safe and wished them a speedy recovery.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I’m grateful to God that Congressman Tiffany and no one else was hurt in this horrifying incident, which could have been a tragedy if not for the heroism of the pilot.
I wish them and the Congressman a quick recovery and that they can find solace with their loved ones. <a href="https://t.co/WUcbFU8FY0">https://t.co/WUcbFU8FY0</a>
— David Crowley (@DavidCCrowley) <a href="https://x.com/DavidCCrowley/status/2099013085470380290?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 13, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Battleground GOP Candidate Survives Overnight Plane Crash Over Lake

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Jordan Schroeder