I was living in Austin in May 2022 when a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, the town where I grew up. I had known some of the children. I had known the shooter. Four years later, I went to Israel still carrying that anger, expecting to find the same bitterness in people who had lost far more. I didn’t.
Growing up, I had known some of the children in Uvalde through relatives and tennis lessons. I had known Salvador Ramos. If we had not moved, my sister could have been a victim at Robb Elementary. When the news reached my high school in Austin that afternoon, I could not keep my composure. I was in a blinding panic, calling and texting family members and friends in Uvalde, trying to find out who was safe. 
In the middle of the chaos, false news rumors spread that Ramos was transgender. In my initial shock I repeated that to my peers. Friends whose politics differed from mine cut me off mid-sentence. They said they were sorry for my losses, but linking transgender identity to mental illness was transphobic and politically incorrect. 
While I was still trying to reach people I knew and the bodies of children I had grown up around were still being identified, my teachers and classmates in front of me chose to police language rather than condemn a mass murderer. 
I could not fathom how someone’s left-leaning politics could so egregiously erode their morals. Something snapped in me that day. My anger was acute, and it festered. From then on, I dedicated myself to politics and journalism with a hardened sense of purpose.
That is what I carried into Israel. I went with a group of journalists through the College Fix and Passages to see the region’s conflicts up close and to interact with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Oct. 7 survivors, and political leaders. 
War and terror attacks in the Middle East have long been the subjects that draw me most. For years Western coverage has portrayed Israelis as uniquely bloodthirsty. I never fully believed it, but the constant repetition of that narrative still shaped what I expected to encounter. What I found was different.
We spent a full day at sites of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. One of them was a kibbutz whose gate bordered Gaza. The kibbutz has remained untouched since Oct 7. The walls are riddled with bullet holes, rooms stay blackened by grenades, and children’s toys sit covered in dust among the rubble. Homes where families had lived ordinary lives became the rooms in which they were slaughtered. 
Hamas terrorists went from home to home without distinguishing between the young and the old, men and women, race or religion. They shot people in their beds and burned families alive. When I walked the grounds, I could feel the weight of the attack in my bones. 
Standing there, I found it hard to reconcile the remains of the village with the atrocities that had been carried out inside those houses. At that moment, all problems I carried from the United States felt insignificant in comparison.
At the Nova festival grounds we listened to Shalev Biton, a young man not much older than me, who shared with raw emotion the account of his survival on Oct. 7. He described fleeing as Hamas gunmen moved through the festival grounds hunting people down. 
A Bedouin Muslim farm worker hid him along with others. When the terrorists reached the farm, they shouted that they knew he was hiding Jews and demanded to know where they were, threatening to kill him if he refused. Biton told me, “I wouldn’t wish that horror on any human being, including civilians in Gaza.” He added, “In the eyes of Hamas, they don’t see Jew or Muslim; you’re just in their way.”
The Israelis I met were people who had every reason to hate. Many had lost friends, neighbors, and family members. Some had walked into their own homes and found them killed, or had survived by only a few minutes while others were taken or shot in front of them. They had endured atrocities most Americans cannot conceptualize.
I also spoke with others who asked to remain anonymous: Muslims, Christians, and Jews whose relatives had been brutally slain or tortured and who had been the ones to discover what was left of them. For many, this kind of loss is not limited to Oct. 7. In a region shaped by recurring geopolitical conflict, it has become a repeated fact of life.
Yet these people remained composed while they spoke. They wanted Hamas dismantled and had advocated for the safe return of the hostages. Some even said they hoped the people who carried out the attacks might one day change.
The difference was hard to grasp. Four years earlier, the murder of children I knew had left me with a sense of resentment. I had watched people around me defend abhorrent political correctness under the guise of inclusion, and something in me had shut down in response.
The restraint I witnessed in Israelis was the refusal to become what had tried to destroy them.
I left Israel with a deeper understanding of the conflict, but I was most struck by the people living through it. Their resilience was not performative; it was faithful and deeply human. Many had every reason to be consumed by anger and vitriol, yet what stayed with me most was their refusal to let grief harden into hatred.
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They Had Every Reason To Be Bitter. The Israelis I Met Weren’t.

hamas

israel

nova music festival massacre

october 7 attack

uvalde shooting

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AUSTIN, Texas — Student Democrats at the University of Texas at Austin spent weeks promoting Hasan Piker’s Wednesday appearance at the school, boasting a standing-room-only crowd for the leftist podcaster.
But when Piker took the stage, about half the seats in the William C. Powers Student Activity Center were empty. University Democrats had said more than 2,400 people RSVPed or joined a waitlist. That crowd did not show.
Outside, Austin Young Republicans held a demonstration in front of a statue of George Washington. In a letter to school administrators, the group said that Piker was advancing a communist ideology that was incompatible with American liberty.
Benjamin Shrader, chair of Austin Young Republicans, told The Daily Wire that the school was initially receptive. That changed the morning of the protest, when the school informed the group it would pursue criminal trespassing charges against its hired security guards. 
The Young Republicans stayed. Security never showed.
The Daily Wire and others who said they had tickets were denied entry and told the room was overcrowded. But footage recorded inside by a University of Texas student and Turning Point USA chapter member who was allowed in showed about half the seats empty.
Piker, a commentator and Twitch streamer, has risen to prominence in recent months due to his association with Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. Critics have called on El-Sayed to disavow Piker for a number of extreme statements, including the claim that the United States deserved the September 11 attacks.
Shrader said Piker “represents the new Left” and that Democrats cannot cut him loose. He also criticized Piker’s framing of Hamas terrorists as resistance fighters battling Israeli oppression.
“If the Jewish community put down their weapons, Israel would cease to exist,” he said. “If the Palestinian community, those that are participating in this terror, put down their weapons, there would be peace.”
Austin Young Republicans member and commentator Ben Williams invited Piker to formally debate him at the Austin event. He also sent the invitation to the University Democrats, which said they were not interested in hosting a debate, and to the Austin For Palestine Coalition, which on September 25 told Williams to “Go f*ck yourself.”
“I debate a lot of communists,” Williams said. “So I figured, since Hasan is coming to my city, I should issue a debate challenge to him, which I did with the Austin Young Republicans. Unfortunately, he wasn’t down with it.”
Kyle Hayes, speaking for the <a href="https://tx.acp.us/">American Communist Party’s Central Texas</a> chapter, told The Daily Wire he came to talk to Piker’s audience. He called Piker “a bit of a watered-down version of what a real leftist looks like,” brushing off the 9/11 remark as “a dumb example of him speaking.” 
Asked about Piker’s defense of communist rulers like Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, Hayes said that the reported death counts under the Chinese and Cuban leaders are inflated.
“There’s a lot of money on the line to make sure that we don’t take any examples from figures and movements and history that successfully won a class war,” Hayes said, claiming that people were better off under both Mao and Castro than under President Donald Trump. Hayes also claimed that aggressive anti-communism was “a mental disease.”

Web Summit Vancouver 2026 – Day Two

I Wasn’t Allowed Into A Hasan Piker Event, So I Talked To A Communist On The Sidewalk Instead

abdul el-sayed

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A questionable consensus has hardened on the Democratic Left. Israel, we are told with certainty, sits at the eye of American political power, its lobby the most potent, its money the most corrosive, and its influence the real reason United States policy bends and folds the way it does. The claim is repeated so often, and with such confidence, that it has begun to pass for common knowledge. It is also being deployed, quite deliberately, as a midterm strategy.
According to the <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/fara">OpenSecrets</a> compilation of Foreign Agents Registration Act filings since 2016, Israel ranks tenth in total foreign lobbying spending. China, Qatar, Japan, Liberia, and Saudi Arabia all stand higher, and several other states outrank it as well. 
<a href="https://aipac.org/truth-lobbying">Israel</a> is not the largest foreign lobbyist operating in the United States by this measure.
<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/22/mamdani-called-aipac-dark-money-monsters-none-of-the-candidates-seem-to-care-00970873">Zohran Mamdani</a> has called AIPAC “monsters” who move “millions in dark money” to preserve their power, turn Americans against one another, and obstruct an end to what he terms genocide. <a href="https://www.memri.org/tv/abdul-el-sayed-michigan-aipac-two-masters-israel-most-egregious-example">Abdul El-Sayed</a> has described Israel as “the most egregious” foreign government shaping American politics and declared that “our foreign policy has been handed to us by the likes of the State of Israel and AIPAC.”
<a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/10/24/axios-show-bernie-sanders-aipac-oligarchy">Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)</a> has cast the same organization as part of a billionaire oligarchy that systematically defeats progressive critics while shielding Netanyahu. <a href="https://allisraelnews.com/rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-says-us-congress-is-overly-influenced-by-aipac">Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)</a> has said Congress is “overly influenced” by AIPAC and labeled it an extremist organization that destabilizes American democracy. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/aipac-congress-democrats.html">Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)</a> has asked why other interest groups may be scrutinized while the most “powerful lobbying group” pushing “allegiance to a foreign country” remains insulated, reducing the entire relationship to “all about the Benjamins.”
These statements are more than isolated criticisms. They form a working political agenda that turns policy disagreement into a story of external control and compromised government institutions.
Sixty percent of U.S. adults now hold an <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/07/negative-views-of-israel-netanyahu-continue-to-rise-among-americans-especially-young-people/">unfavorable</a> view of Israel, up from 53% last year. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the number is far higher: eight in 10 view Israel unfavorably, up from 69% a year ago and 53% in 2022. Democrats under 50 years old are especially negative, with nearly half saying their view is very unfavorable. One recent survey also found that nearly three in 10 young Americans now view Jews as a <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/nearly-one-third-of-young-americans-view-jews-as-a-threat-to-society-poll/">threat</a> to society. 
Candidates who keep calling Israel the biggest foreign lobby are both speaking to and helping expand an audience that has already moved sharply against the Middle East nation, especially among younger Democrats. The claim encourages the belief that the American government itself is aligned with and controlled by Israel. For socialist and DSA-aligned activists, that picture is unifying. Their attitude is encapsulated by the Faust quote: &#8220;For all that comes into being deserves to perish.&#8221; It is a way of seeing the world that takes less intellectual effort and is more seductive.
That concentration of attention is harder to justify when larger foreign influences are taken into account. Qatar has directed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/qatars-billions-raise-new-questions-about-foreign-influence-on-campus">billions</a> into American universities, financing socialist student organizations on campuses, research centers, and academic programming that shape how students understand the Middle East and the Jewish state. 
At the same time, a longer-running network with documented ties to the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-hearing-pulls-back-curtain-on-muslim-brotherhoods-ties-to-hamas">Muslim Brotherhood</a> and Hamas-supporting infrastructure has spent decades building influence through nonprofits, campus organizing, and educational programming. The 2008 Holy Land Foundation case and later Senate testimony showed this network continuing to operate. This operation helps produce a younger cohort already primed to see Israel as uniquely illegitimate and powerful, which makes the progressive claim that Israel is the top foreign lobby land more easily and turn more readily into votes.
China has spent heavily through its own channels, advancing influence that frequently aligns with socialist and communist political ideologies, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act database shows multiple countries exceeding Israel’s registered foreign agent spending. A movement truly focused on foreign influence would examine the largest spenders and the most embedded ideological networks with equal criticism.
In a midterm cycle in which Democrats are still trying to take back the House, calling Israel the biggest foreign lobby remains useful even when the numbers say otherwise. If they win the chamber, they regain the power to investigate and, if the politics allow it, try to <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/4539460/republicans-cant-take-2026-midterm-elections-for-granted/">impeach</a> President Trump again. That is why the claim continues. It is not sustained by the data; it’s sustained by what it can still deliver in an election year.

US Currency One Hundred Dollar Bill in a circle on USA Red

The Left’s Israel Obsession And The Fiction Of Its Foreign Influence

2026 midterm election

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DSA leader and rent abolitionist Gustavo Gordillo is being <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/08/22/us-news/embattled-nyc-dsa-leader-gustavo-gordillo-sued-for-eviction/">sued</a> for eviction after he stopped paying rent on a Brooklyn apartment, <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/08/22/us-news/embattled-nyc-dsa-leader-gustavo-gordillo-sued-for-eviction/">according</a> to the New York Post.
The New York City Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) co-chair signed a lease on a one-bedroom place in Crown Heights for $2,500 a month in May 2025. He skipped payments for months at a time and only occasionally caught up with a larger sum once the arrears reached three months, the outlet reported.
His landlord took him to housing court in March seeking $5,000 for the missed December and January payments. He did not file an answer, the Post reported, which let the landlord seek a default judgment. The case remains open and the apartment has already been rented to someone else.
His parents bought the Bedford-Stuyvesant row house in 2019 through Chucuito LLC for just under $1 million. It carries a fair market value of $1.4 million. Renovation plans filed in 2023 cover the facade, the interior, new landscaping and two decks, and work was still going on at the house this week.
Gordillo said housing court only mitigates harm and does not abolish landlords and rent which he calls the long-term socialist goals. He has also argued that no one should have a constitutional right to double digit returns on real estate investments.
Gordillo, who built a public profile as a blue-collar tradesman under the handle @unionGustavo, was terminated from his IBEW Local 3 apprenticeship in March after what the union <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/08/20/spoiled-brats-leadership-of-progressive-left/">called</a> &#8220;prolonged absence from and failure to participate in work and classes.&#8221; He never completed the program and is separately three months behind on his union dues.
Last month, without mentioning he had already been fired from the apprenticeship, Gordillo asked NYC-DSA members to convert his unpaid leadership role into a paid position, according to the Post. The group approved $95,000 a year plus benefits for him and co-chair Grace Mausser, both of whom took no salary in 2025.
“This should be surprising, but it isn’t,&#8221; City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino told the Post. &#8220;The entitlement of these rich DSA kids is bottomless. Even when his parents are paying his bills, he still stiffed his landlord.” 
“It’s really appalling that these brats are in charge of our city now, when they’re so quick to screw over working people and can’t even manage their own lives,&#8221; she added.
Attorney Maud Maron noted that he has a luxury home to go with his luxury beliefs while DSA policies raise costs for everyone else without rich parents.
The housing court case against Gordillo remains open.

NYC-DSA holds a rally to tax the rich

DSA Leader And ‘Rent Abolitionist’ Sued For Failing To Pay Rent

brooklyn

democratic socialists of america

eviction

gustavo gordillo

vickie paladino

The oldest surviving copies of biblical texts are on view for a final few weeks at the Museum of the Bible in Washington. <a href="https://www.museumofthebible.org/exhibits/dead-sea-scrolls-the-exhibition?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=paidperformancemax&amp;utm_campaign=cqr&amp;utm_content=pre_dss&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=23086097899&amp;gbraid=0AAAAADn6_nIDOICSo6jhJQGOtoovTnfUC&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwkaXUBhASEiwAZI3ds2g1quLXuRKg7dGTHaUnBof4HRYJZTQmtN_2cnsGj3Y6lQgJLakZZhoCdfkQAvD_BwE">Dead Sea Scrolls: The Exhibition,</a> now in its last rotation on the museum’s fifth floor, closes September 7. The fragments recovered from the caves near Qumran remain among the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century, offering a direct window into the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jewish world of the Second Temple period.
Dr. Carlos Campo, President and CEO of the Museum of the Bible, walked The Daily Wire through the galleries and spoke about what the manuscripts still make clear.
By Campo&#8217;s breakdown, roughly a third of the collection is biblical, another third covers the life and rules of the community that preserved the texts, and the rest concerns ancient practice. The people who lived at Qumran are usually called Essenes. They were Jewish separatists who withdrew to a remote place by the Dead Sea, studied the texts with care, and followed strict rules of purification. Campo explains that many scholars believe they settled there to prepare for the coming of the Messiah.
“There was an emphasis on the Messiah,” he says. “So very often, you think of Messiahship only as something related to Christianity, but that’s not true. Matter of fact, not just this scroll, of course, but if you look at the scrolls that were retained by these men in this community, a lot of them talked about the Messiah and the coming of the Messiah. And so while there’s clear debate between Jews and Christians about who was the Messiah, or has the Messiah come, there was no debate about the emphasis on the Messiah, and how he is pointed to in the Hebrew scriptures.”
The same collection shows how varied Jewish life already was. Pharisees and Sadducees appear often in the New Testament. The Qumran group stood outside both. “These men probably were Essenes,” Campo says. 
“If they were the Essenes, and that’s what we generally see, they would make up a whole different sect that are outside of those two. And so I think that’s the other thing that these scrolls demonstrate is that, certainly, as within Christianity, that many denominations and beliefs within those denominations, the same is true in Judaism. It’s a very diverse faith.”
One of the fragments on display comes from the Book of Isaiah and includes part of the Suffering Servant passage. Campo returns to the reliability of the text. Before 1947, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible available to scholars were medieval, copied in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Qumran material pushed that horizon back by roughly a thousand years.
“We’re looking at a text even though this was a later Isaiah text, it’ll probably, you know, first century. So, AD. But still, the remarkable similarity between these texts and the text that we have today. So this is at least 1,000 years older than the oldest text that we had. And if you were to compare these texts to those texts, it’s extraordinary how similar they were. I mean, it’s not every jot and tittle, but it’s pretty darn close. So I think that’s one. The whole idea of the reliability of scripture, the Dead Sea Scrolls do many things, but for Jews and Christians today, it’s the reliability of the text.”
A Damascus Document fragment makes the historical texture concrete. It rules that an animal which falls into a well or ditch on the Sabbath should not be pulled out. Jesus spoke of the same situation and took the opposite view. “There’s actually a passage in the one that we have that talks about, what do you do if your animal falls into a well or falls into a ditch. This idea that, which of you, if your animal falls into a ditch, do you not pull it out. Even on the Sabbath. Well, this Damascus scroll actually says, You shouldn’t do that.”
Nearby sits the Magdala Stone, uncovered on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in 2009. Israeli antiquities officials were running a required salvage dig ahead of construction on a Catholic retreat center when a tractor turned up carved limestone barely a foot below the surface.
The stone came out of a first-century synagogue at Magdala, the town most scholars take to be Mary Magdalene&#8217;s home. Campo says she would have known the building. Archeologists have since uncovered a second synagogue at the same site.
The museum has its own history with these texts. In 2020, an outside investigation it commissioned and paid for found that all 16 fragments it had purchased and displayed as Dead Sea Scrolls were modern forgeries, manufactured on scraps of old leather to pass for antiquities. Nothing in the current exhibition comes from that collection. The fragments on the fifth floor are on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority, which holds the authentic corpus recovered from the caves.
 Each fragment may stay in the light for only three months. After that it must spend at least five years in complete darkness so the material does not break down further. “They treat these with the utmost care,” Campo says. “They see these as the most important relics in all Jewish history.”
Yet in a time of rising antisemitism the scrolls still function as texts that Jews and Christians both receive, manuscripts capable of closing distance rather than widening it. He reaches for an African saying. “When you’re really far away, you seem to me to be a wild beast. As you get closer, I can see you’re a human being. When you get closer, still, I see you’re a member of my family, and when I feel your breath upon me, I know you are my brother. And to me, that&#8217;s a message that is biblical.” He adds, “You have to atomize a human being into something less than human before you can hate them.”
What he hopes visitors take away is a desire to keep reading the written word. “We say that the Bible is one of the few documents in the world where the deeper you go, actually, the more you feel that you know about yourself. The more you know, the more you realize how little you know. That’s one of the things we believe about scripture. The deeper you go, the more you realize my goodness. This document is so much more complex than I thought it was. And to me, the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal some of that.”
The fragments remain on the fifth floor through early September. Then they must return to five years of darkness. Campo hopes people leave with a clearer sense of the continuity these texts have maintained from the Second Temple period to the present.

DSC09670-lowres

The Oldest Biblical Fragments On Earth Leave Washington In Two Weeks — Then Return To The Dark

arts

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Smart ring maker Oura was hit Thursday with a proposed class action <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/21/oura-faces-lawsuit-accusing-it-of-misleading-consumers-about-sleep-tracking-accuracy/?utm_medium=organic_social&amp;utm_source=TWITTER">lawsuit</a> alleging it misled customers about how accurately its $500 ring tracks sleep.
Clarkson Law Firm filed the suit on behalf of Madison Surber, a California woman who says she paid roughly $514 for an Oura Ring 4 in May 2025. The <a href="https://clarksonlawfirm.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/COMPLAINT-26-cv-08686-Surber-v.-Oura-Inc.-et-al.pdf">complaint</a> alleges the ring lacks any sensor capable of picking up the biological signals that define sleep stages, and that Oura instead runs the wearer&#8217;s heart rate, movement and skin temperature through a machine-learning model that produces an estimate — one with what the filing calls &#8220;a coin flip&#8217;s chance of being correct.&#8221;
Complaints about the ring&#8217;s sleep readings have circulated among owners for years, and the filing leans on them. It reproduces screenshots of complaints pulled from a Facebook owners&#8217; group and the Oura subreddit, including users who describe waking up exhausted and then being handed a high score by the app.
Oura <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/08/21/oura-rings-sleep-lawsuit/91402959007/">told</a> USA Today it rejects the claims. &#8220;We dispute the allegations in this complaint and intend to defend against them,&#8221; the company said. Oura did not immediately respond to the Daily Wire&#8217;s request for comment.
According to the complaint, Oura marketed its rings, priced at $300 and higher, as able to do what only a hospital sleep lab can do: identify the four different stages of sleep. 
Oura&#8217;s marketing has described the ring as &#8220;[b]uilt for accuracy&#8221; and promised &#8220;Unparalleled Accuracy,&#8221; according to the filing, which cites the company&#8217;s product pages and blog. The complaint says Oura has advertised 79% agreement with polysomnography — the overnight lab study that is the clinical benchmark — in sorting wake, light, deep and REM sleep, and more recently has promoted &#8220;95% Sleep Staging Accuracy compared to clinical sleep lab&#8221; on the Oura Ring 5 product page.
The suit argues the hardware makes the promise impossible to keep. &#8220;Sleep happens in the brain, not on one&#8217;s finger,&#8221; the complaint states. Sleep staging is defined by brain wave activity, eye movement, and muscle tone, it argues, signals captured through scalp electrodes and leads placed near the eyes and chin — none of which fit on a ring.
Ryan Clarkson, co-founder and managing partner at Clarkson Law Firm, said in a statement: “When people rely on a device to guide decisions about their health, misinformation cannot be tolerated. Oura users trust that the numbers on their screen reflect reality. 
&#8220;People structure their days, interpret the way they feel, and design their lives around inaccurate figures spit out by these devices. Marketing an inaccurate sleep tracker as precise and reliable is dangerous because people believe it — and change their behavior accordingly.”
The complaint asks the court to order Oura to stop advertising capabilities the firm says the rings do not deliver, to prevent further alleged misrepresentations, and to provide restitution to customers who bought the products based on those claims.

3d rendering futuristic Abstract background, Neon Colored Motion Striped line texture for Business science and Technology advertising,

Do Oura Rings Work? Lawsuit Says Metrics From $500 Smart Ring Are Guesswork

class action lawsuit

consumer protection

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wearable technology

City council members in Dearborn, Michigan, refused to denounce Sharia law when a local pastor demanded each of them do so at a town hall meeting Tuesday.
Lorenzo Sewell, who leads 180 Church in Detroit, had told the council members earlier that the city was no longer governed by American law. &#8220;America, we have lost this city. This is a city that is no longer up under American laws; we are up under Sharia law. We will not have it anymore,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Enough is enough.&#8221; Looking at the members seated in front of him, he added: &#8220;You are only 1% of this nation. We are not a nation of Muslims.&#8221;
&#8220;None of them denounced Sharia,&#8221; Sewell told the Daily Wire. &#8220;They laughed at me.&#8221;
None of them took up his demand. The crowd&#8217;s reaction that followed made the moment feel to Sewell, like something that should not have been happening in an American city. He later told the Daily Wire that walking into the Dearborn city council meeting “felt like walking into Iran.”
Dearborn officials reject the premise. Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, speaking at the same meeting, argued that casting the city as overtaken by Muslims erases its Christian residents and those of other faiths.
Dearborn&#8217;s demographics changed how the confrontation landed. The 2020 count was the first in which the Census Bureau designated Middle Eastern and North African origins as their own category, and the results showed 54.5% of the city&#8217;s roughly 110,000 residents claiming MENA ancestry — enough to make Dearborn the first majority-Arab city in the country, the Detroit Free Press <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2023/09/26/arab-americans-now-a-majority-in-dearborn-new-census-data-shows/70929525007/?gnt-cfr=1&amp;gca-cat=p&amp;gca-uir=false&amp;gca-epti=z1175xxu003361e1175xxv002161&amp;gca-ft=173&amp;gca-ds=sophi">reported</a>.
The confrontation did not emerge abruptly. Sewell has spent years watching the same reality unfold around him in Dearborn. “I cannot go to a place right now where I’m sitting and not encounter Muslims,” he said. The encounters are ordinary and constant, he said. Gas stations, car washes, oil-change shops, the places that sell candy bars, cookies, and chips. “Multiply that by 700,000 people,” he said. “This is what people don’t understand.”
To Sewell the town hall reassured what he said to be commonplace for a long time. What struck him most was how ordinary the moment should have been. “A pastor in a Christian country talking about Jesus,” he said. “What did I do? I did what the Bible says to do.” 
Since the town hall incident, the public response has been different. People stop Sewell on the street, they call him, and send emails. Many tell him they share the same concerns about the direction of the city but are too scared to say so in public. 
Sewell noted that the video of him at the town hall went more viral than the prayer he once delivered at a presidential inauguration. He told the Daily Wire he found it crazy that a black pastor simply talking about Jesus in a place still called a Christian country would spread that far and draw that kind of reaction.
Sewell tied the town hall to what he sees as a global pattern of Christian persecution, and faulted Pope Leo XIV for how the pontiff has described the killing of Christians in Nigeria. Leo has addressed Nigeria more than once — in June 2025 he <a href="https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=66019">condemned</a> the killing of roughly 200 people in Benue State, most of them displaced families sheltering at a Catholic mission — but in November he <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-leo-xiv-on-nigeria-christians-and-muslims-have-been-slaughtered">told reporters</a> that both Christians and Muslims have been slaughtered there and attributed the violence largely to terrorism and fights over land and money. That framing is what Sewell rejects. &#8220;He would never say anything against Sharia law. Never,&#8221; Sewell told the Daily Wire. &#8220;He should be an imam, not a pope.&#8221;
The Dearborn town hall ended with no council member denouncing Sharia law. The video of the exchange has continued to circulate.

Screen Shot: Dearborn TCD News

Dearborn City Council Laughs As Pastor Demands They Denounce Sharia Law

abdullah hammoud

dearborn

lorenzo sewell

pope leo xiv

sharia law

Seventeen members of an Iran-based hacking operation have been <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/17-iranians-charged-conducting-massive-cyber-theft-campaign-behalf-islamic-revolutionary">charged</a> in a massive cyber theft campaign that prosecutors say targeted hundreds of universities and other institutions around the world, stealing more than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property in attacks conducted in part on behalf of Iran&#8217;s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
A 14-count superseding indictment unsealed Tuesday in New York describes a campaign that began around 2013 and continued through at least late 2017. Prosecutors say the Mabna Institute targeted more than 100,000 professor accounts and successfully compromised roughly 8,000 of them at 144 U.S. universities and 178 universities in other countries.
Once inside the accounts, the hackers allegedly stole research papers, theses, dissertations, academic journals, and other materials. U.S. universities spent more than $3.4 billion to license and obtain the kind of research and intellectual property taken by the defendants, according to prosecutors.
Nine of the defendants were first charged in 2018. The new filing adds eight more defendants and, according to the Justice Department, reveals a broader network behind the operation.
“[A]t the behest of entities including the IRGC, these defendants hacked into universities and other research institutions worldwide, including the United States, stealing at least 31 terabytes of information and intellectual property of untold value,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said. 
According to the indictment, Gholamreza Rafatnejad and Ehsan Mohammadi founded the Mabna Institute around 2013 “to assist Iranian universities and scientific and research organizations in stealing access to non-Iranian scientific resources.” The company later contracted with a network of hackers for hire to carry out the intrusions.
The hackers allegedly used stolen credentials to access university library systems and moved the stolen academic material to servers outside the United States.
Some of the stolen information was later sold to customers inside Iran through two websites connected to one of the defendants. One site offered the stolen materials directly, while another allowed customers to use compromised professor accounts to access university library systems.
The alleged operation extended beyond universities. Members of the network also compromised employee email accounts at private companies and government offices, with victims including at least 42 U.S. companies, 11 foreign companies, five U.S. federal and state agencies, and two non-governmental organizations. 
Targets included the Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the states of Hawaii and Indiana, the United Nations, and the United Nations Children&#8217;s Fund.
Several of the defendants were also allegedly involved in the 2017 hack of HBO, in which hackers stole proprietary data and attempted to extort the company for roughly $6 million in bitcoin. Behzad Mesri was previously charged in connection with hacking HBO systems.
In other attacks against private companies and government entities, prosecutors say some of the defendants used techniques that caused victims to rack up more than $20 million in investigation and remediation costs. 
The State Department’s Rewards for Justice program is offering up to $10 million for any information leading to the location of five of the defendants.

Iran, Pro-government Protest Rally In Tehran

17 Iranian Hackers Charged In Massive U.S. University Cybertheft Scheme

cybersecurity

department of justice

hacking

iran

islamic revolutionary guard corps

An experimental cancer vaccine has kept high-risk melanoma from returning for longer and reduced the risk of it spreading in a late-stage trial.
Moderna and Merck said Wednesday in a <a href="https://www.merck.com/news/merck-and-moderna-announce-phase-3-interpath-001-trial-of-intismeran-autogene-plus-keytruda-met-endpoints-of-recurrence-free-survival-rfs-and-distant-metastasis-free-survival-dmfs-in-patient/">press release</a> that their experimental personalized mRNA vaccine, Intismeran, combined with Merck’s Keytruda, met both its primary and secondary goals in a late-stage trial of high-risk melanoma patients who had already undergone surgery. The coupling prolonged the time before the cancer returned and reduced the chance it would spread to other organs.
The late-stage trial was conducted on more than 1,000 people, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/moderna-merck-vaccine-succeeds-in-preventing-melanoma-from-returning-540e9e18">according</a> to The Wall Street Journal. Every participant had already undergone surgery to remove a melanoma. Roughly half received the personalized vaccine along with Keytruda. The rest received Keytruda by itself. Treatment lasted about a year. The aim was to lower the odds that the cancer would return after the tumor was gone.
“I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of a new field,” Jane Healy, a vice president of oncology at Merck, told The Wall Street Journal. The goal for patients, she said, is “to give them longer without having to worry about treatments for cancer.”
The companies withheld their exact figures on the duration patients stayed free of progressing disease and how long they lived overall. Those numbers are scheduled to be presented at a medical meeting later this year. How strong and how well tolerated the benefit proves to be will shape both regulatory chances and eventual use.
No personalized mRNA cancer vaccine had previously succeeded in a late-stage trial. The outcome follows prolonged efforts to design treatments that target the unique mutations present in each patient’s tumor.
The outcome gives Moderna a potential entry into the cancer-drug market, which exceeds $240 billion, at a time when its COVID-19 vaccine revenue has been falling. Merck, meanwhile, could gain another product to help offset the coming loss of exclusivity on Keytruda.
Moderna’s stock jumped  &#8220;more than doubled&#8221; Wednesday morning, and Merck shares rose more than 10%, per the Journal.
“We are now an oncology company,” Moderna Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel said. “By Christmas, you could have a company that’s going back into sales growth for the first time in four years.”
Each dose is made personalized to the patient. Once the melanoma is surgically removed, a blood sample and tumor biopsy are sent for analysis. Researchers pin down mutations specific to that patient’s cancer cells that are most likely to be noticed by the immune system. Those genetic targets are then written into mRNA and turned into a vaccine. Manufacturing takes about six weeks from the time of the biopsy. In the meantime, patients begin Keytruda to keep the disease in check, WSJ reported.
The two companies started working together on these types of vaccines in 2016. They chose melanoma first because the tumors typically contain many mutations. Additional trials are already running in bladder cancer, a frequent type of lung cancer, and kidney cancer.

Tumour infiltrating lymphocyte therapy, illustration

New Vaccine Shows Early Signs Of Stopping Cancer Spread

cancer vaccine

melanoma

merck

moderna

mrna vaccine

Dr. David Morens, the longtime senior science adviser to Anthony Fauci, pleaded guilty this week to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States.
The 78-year-old former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases official entered the plea after an April indictment. He faces a maximum of five years in federal prison as well as a $250,000 fine, The Washington Examiner <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/investigations/4692082/former-fauci-aide-pleads-guilty-covid-19-conspiracy/">reported.</a> 
Morens first garnered backlash in 2023. The House Oversight Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic found that he had conducted official business on his personal Gmail account specifically to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2021, he told colleagues to contact him on that personal email and said he would “delete anything [he did not] want to see in the New York Times,” per the Examiner.
The same investigation showed a personal friendship between Morens and then- EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak. That private organization received government funding for bat coronavirus research carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The $3.1 million grant titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” included a $600,000 subaward to the Wuhan lab. Some researchers who reject the animal-to-human spillover explanation have referenced that work as a possible source of SARS-CoV-2. 
Prosecutors charged Morens with concealing records related to that grant, alleging he acted with at least two other unindicted co-conspirators.  According to the case, the group worked to reinstate the funding after it was terminated and to push back against the idea that COVID-19 resulted from a laboratory incident.
Although Daszak is not named in the plea agreement, the document identifies “Co-Conspirator 1” as the author of an April 2020 email that the Washington Examiner previously reported as coming from Daszak. 
In that message, EcoHealth Alliance staff confirmed they would “communicate with [Morens] via Gmail from now on.” The plea agreement says that Morens and his co-conspirators then “plotted and repeatedly expressed their intention to conceal federal records to evade FOIA and provided information to Senior NIAID Official 1 that was favorable to Co-Conspirator 1 and Company #1.”
That senior NIAID official is widely speculated to be Fauci, who at the time was the public figure of the federal COVID-19 response.
When Fauci testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2024, he distanced himself from Morens’ email practices, saying “he should not have been doing that.” Yet, the two men co-authored more than 50 scientific papers during Morens’ tenure at the agency from 2006 to 2022. Morens also briefed Fauci ahead of key White House Coronavirus Task Force meetings in his role as top scientific adviser.
Fauci himself appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on July 29 and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times. 
Republicans voted to hold Fauci in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fauci-held-in-contempt-after-refusing-to-answer-questions-about-bombshell-diary">contempt</a> of Congress after he refused to answer questions despite a pardon from former President Joe Biden that covered the relevant period. The contempt resolution has been forwarded to the Department of Justice, which will decide whether to prosecute. 
A federal judge is scheduled to sentence Morens on November 12.

Dr. Fauci Testifies In House On COVID Origins

Fauci Adviser Pleads Guilty In COVID Records Case

anthony fauci

covid19 origins

david morens

national institutes of health

peter daszak

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War Secretary Pete Hegseth&#8217;s visit to Iowa is fueling speculation that he could be testing the waters for a 2028 presidential run.
Officials familiar with Hegseth’s thinking told the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/17/hegseth-travels-iowa-his-personal-capacity-amid-2028-speculation/">Washington Post</a> that the Iowa visit fits the actions of someone considering a run for president after his time in the Trump administration ends. One of those officials, speaking anonymously, described the trip as something of a test run for a possible 2028 bid.
Iowa&#8217;s longstanding role as an early presidential proving ground has added to the speculation surrounding Hegseth&#8217;s visit.
Hegseth traveled to the state in his personal capacity and appeared with several House and Senate Republicans. The Pentagon confirmed that he traveled aboard a U.S. military aircraft because he is designated a “required use” traveler.
That status requires Hegseth to use military aircraft for official and personal travel because of the need for secure communications and transportation associated with his national security responsibilities.
Hegseth appeared Monday alongside Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA), where he praised Nunn and defended continued American involvement in the war with Iran.
He also appeared alongside Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), the Republican nominee for the open Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Joni Ernst, and was expected to appear with Rep. Mariannette Miller Meeks (R-IA).
The appearances come as Republicans work to hold ground in a state where recent polling has shown tighter races than in previous cycles.
<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/hegseth-iowa-campaign-midterms-2028-b3035168.html">The Independent</a> noted that previous defense secretaries largely stayed out of overt political campaigning while in the job. Hegseth has aligned himself closely with President Donald Trump’s policy goals and has taken a more active role supporting Republican candidates while continuing to promote the administration’s national security priorities.
Other administration figures were also in Iowa this week, including U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, and Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler. Their visits coincided with the Iowa State Fair, a traditional gathering that draws both statewide candidates and national political figures.
The fair routinely attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors and has long served as an important stop for politicians looking to connect with Iowa voters.
Ernst’s decision to retire has made Iowa&#8217;s Senate race a major focus this year. Hinson is running against Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medalist, as both parties battle for control of the Senate.
Hegseth has not publicly announced plans to run for president in 2028.
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Defense Secretary Hegseth And Joint Chiefs Chairman Caine Brief Media At Pentagon

Hegseth’s Iowa Trip Raises Early Questions About 2028

ashley hinson

iowa

joni ernst

pete hegseth

zach nunn

A black man wearing a Chucky-style mask <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/08/18/us-news/philadelphia-man-wearing-chucky-mask-allegedly-targeted-six-people/">asked</a> a female jogger if she was ready to die before chasing her through Center City Philadelphia as she screamed for help, police said.
Philadelphia <a href="https://www.phillypolice.com/news-blotter/wanted-suspect-for-assault-in-the-9th-district-video-3/">police</a> say the masked suspect spent about 15 minutes early Wednesday morning targeting at least six people at random near Philadelphia City Hall. The suspect remains at large.
The incidents began shortly after 5:20 a.m. on August 12, Philadelphia Police Capt. Jason Smith said.
The suspect first walked into a Dunkin&#8217; Donuts wearing a distinctive white, Chucky-style Halloween mask with black hair. Staff refused him service because he was behaving erratically, according to police. He then began approaching people nearby while holding a cell phone in front of them and appearing to record the encounters.
One of those people was a 40-year-old woman jogging near 1500 JFK Boulevard. Smith said the masked man stopped in front of her, held his phone toward her face, and asked, “Are you ready to die?”
When she looked startled, he asked the same question again. She ran off, screaming for help as the suspect chased her, police said. She injured her leg while trying to escape.
During the encounter, the suspect kept one arm concealed behind his back, according to police.
No weapon appears in the surveillance video, but police say the suspect is wanted on charges including possession of an instrument of crime, terroristic threats, harassment, assault, reckless endangerment, and intimidation.
A woman named Jameka saw what was happening and tried to warn the jogger from across the intersection. She later confronted the suspect herself and kicked him in the chest.
“He just seemed so disoriented about what his goals actually were,” she said. “I had bags. He wasn’t reaching for those. It didn’t seem like he had a clear goal to like actually get in La Colombe to do anything, so I was like OK, well, let’s see if you can fight, and he couldn’t.”
The suspect eventually fled into SEPTA Suburban Station.
Police describe him as a black male between 16 and 20 years old with a medium complexion, standing about 5 feet 8 inches tall with a thin build. He was carrying a black-and-blue plaid backpack.
Investigators believe he approached multiple people that morning, although police said only the jogger has formally reported an incident as of their latest update.
“It’s really unsettling just trying to get to work and have a kid like this actively terrorizing women,” said Kate Egan, who works at a nearby coffee shop. “I really hope he is caught.”
Police have produced footage and still images of the suspect, including video showing him briefly lowering the mask.
Anyone with information is asked to call Philadelphia Police at 215-686-TIPS or submit a tip through the department&#8217;s website. Law enforcement has warned members of the public not to approach the suspect.

Black Man In Chucky-Style Mask Chased, Threatened Woman With Death

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philadelphia

philadelphia police department

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Leona Salinas