NBC News affiliate NBC10 in Boston published an exclusive on Friday outlining their investigation into the one juror, laying out a number of their findings and suggesting that it was possible that he should not have been allowed to serve on the jury.

Citing court documents and interviews with members of the juror’s family, NBC10 reported that he had been accused of domestic violence and that there was an active restraining order against him — and that his current landlord was in the process of evicting him for nonpayment of rent.

According to the report, the juror was accused by a nephew of grabbing his then-wife by the throat in 2021; the couple divorced after the incident. The criminal charges against him were later dropped. The restraining order was reportedly taken out by that same nephew, who said that the juror had punched him and threatened him for calling the police about the first incident.

“Those details raise questions about the jury selection process,” the outlet reported.

“I don’t see how they would’ve allowed him to be a member of this jury,” NBC10 Boston’s chief legal analyst Michael Coyne said, noting that jurors in Massachusetts have to answer questions about whether they’ve previously been arrested, charged with a crime, or served with a court order. “I don’t see how, if those questions had been answered correctly, one side or the other would’ve taken the chance with allowing him to be seated.”

It is unclear whether juror questionnaires are retained after the trial, so it may not be possible to determine whether or not those questions were answered truthfully.

But according to Massachusetts law, the charges that were later dropped would not have kept him off the jury. Only having a felony conviction within the last seven years — or pending felony charges — would have barred the juror from service.

A number of critics also pointed out the fact that Massachusetts state law prohibits the intimidation and harassment of witnesses, jurors, and others involved in legal proceedings in the state.

According to Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 268, Section 13B, the section of the statute that covers the crime of intimidating or retaliating against witnesses, jurors, and other court officials:

(b) Whoever willfully, either directly or indirectly: (i) threatens, attempts or causes physical, emotional or economic injury or property damage to . . . or (iii) misleads, intimidates or harasses another person who is a . . . (C) . . . juror . . . with the intent to or with reckless disregard for the fact that it may . . . punish, harm or otherwise retaliate against any such person described in this section for such person or such person’s family member’s participation in any of the proceedings described in this section, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 10 years or by imprisonment in the house of correction for not more than 2 ½ years or by a fine of not less than $1,000 or more than $5,000 or by both such fine and imprisonment.

The statute covers both intimidation during the legal proceedings in question and harassment or retaliation after the fact.

NBC10 Boston does not appear to have launched investigations into any of the remaining jurors.

Several other members of the jury — along with defense attorney Kevin Reddington — have spoken out since the trial, and all have accused the lone holdout juror of failing to properly consider the facts of the case.

The Dallas Express reported on Saturday that Texas PAC — a Republican-aligned super PAC — was boosting ad buys in support of Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX) to the tune of about $51.3 million. Among the ads scheduled to run against Talarico is one that Trump used against former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election that highlights Democratic support for trans-identifying individuals, often at the expense of biological women.

“Radical liberal James Talarico is for ‘they/them,’ not you,” the repurposed ad blares, highlighting Talarico’s  record of support for trans-identifying people.

“What do we really know about James Talarico?” the ad asks, quoting Talarico as saying, “Defending trans Texans is something we have to do every day.”

“Talarico supported using taxpayer dollars for sex change surgeries on young children and even said denying your child’s gender identity is abusive. ‘Defending trans Texans is something we have to do every day,'” the ad continued. “Radical liberal James Talarico, for they, them, not you. Texas PAC is responsible for the content of this advertising.”

Talarico recently tried to walk back some of his previous comments, saying during a Fox News interview that he’d been wrong when he claimed that there were six genders.

“What I meant is there are two sexes and there’s a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities. Obviously I didn’t say it correctly. There are not six sexes, there are two,” he said.

During the same interview, he tried to downplay Democratic efforts to allow trans-identifying males to play on female sports teams.

“I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it risks safety or fairness,” he said, but made no effort to clarify what criteria he might use to measure “safety or fairness.”

He also claimed that Paxton – who highlighted Talarico’s statements about God being “non-binary” — was using his past “cringey comments” in order to make sure that no one was looking too closely at him. He went on to claim that he’d meant that statement in particular to be “provocative” because he was making about point about God not fitting into any particular box.

In one post, according to a report from Breitbart News, Headen was pictured smiling in front of the ovens at Dachau — the Nazi concentration camp in Germany where tens of thousands of Jews were murdered — and the caption read, “Visiting Dauchau [sic] Concentration Camp in Germany… This is where Trump supporters belong.”

In another recently-surfaced post, Headen appeared to call for violence against Republicans: “I think our only hope is an attack on US soil … preferably Alabama, Louisiana … where the stupid people are.”

Headen, in interviews, said that she opposed President Donald Trump and admitted that she’d posted on social media to that effect — but claimed that she could not remember any specific posts.

“I can’t remember what I’ve posted. I’ve been very vocal against MAGA,” she said, adding that she’d paid a firm $30,000 to go through her social media accounts and flag anything that might be cause for concern.

Headen, who is running to unseat Republican John Blust, then compared herself to Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., and Abraham Lincoln, suggesting that she was a martyr for the Democratic cause.

“I’ve sacrificed myself just like Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross, and Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln and all the people that put themselves out there to sacrifice for our country,” she said. “If a few angry moments on social media are the end, then so be it. MAGA will keep winning if we continue with not standing up for what’s right.”

But Headen’s posts have proved too much for members of her own party to bear, and Sam Lozier, the communications director for the House Democratic Caucus, publicly condemned her comments.

“Shelly Headen’s posts are unacceptable and do not reflect the values we expect of our candidates. The North Carolina House Democratic Caucus condemns these comments without qualification and will not support Shelly Headen’s candidacy,” he wrote in a statement.

The Guilford County Democratic Party has also pulled support, stating that they “unequivocally reject and condemn” her comments because they “violate everything our party represents.”

Others have raised concerns about Headen, citing two 2024 incidents detailed in Guilford County Police reports in which she was named as the suspect and her husband a potential victim of assault. Headen released a competing statement suggesting that she was the victim.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told NBC News deputies were dispatched around 10:30 p.m. Friday after Harris’ private security team flagged a “suspicious person” on the grounds of the $8.15 million estate. Officials said the unidentified woman had been dropped off nearby by an Uber before approaching the residence and making contact with security personnel, who told her she could not remain on the property. She initially left, but returned a short time later, prompting the call to law enforcement.

When deputies arrived, they made contact with the woman, who was still outside the residence, and advised her to leave. She did so voluntarily, and no arrest or citation was made. The sheriff’s department said it took a trespassing report and would set up patrols in the area as a precaution. It remains unclear why the woman came to the property or why she returned after being turned away.

Neither Harris nor her husband, Doug Emhoff, was home when the incident occurred. Harris spokesman Eduardo Negrón told TMZ the couple was grateful for the swift response from security and law enforcement, and characterized the woman as having illegally entered the property before being intercepted short of the house itself.

Harris purchased the four-bedroom, six-bathroom Malibu property in January, and it sits on roughly three-quarters of an acre with ocean views, a pool and spa, according to the New York Post. She no longer has Secret Service protection; President Donald Trump revoked her detail last year, cutting short an extension President Joe Biden had authorized before leaving office. Former vice presidents are ordinarily entitled to six months of Secret Service coverage after leaving office.

The Malibu incident follows a similar episode in January 2025, when two men were briefly detained near Harris’ former Brentwood home during a curfew tied to the Los Angeles wildfires after an initial report of a possible burglary. Investigators found no evidence of a burglary in that case, and the men were held only for a curfew violation.

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.

VisitWausau.com

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.”

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) September 13, 2026

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.

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. https://t.co/WUcbFU8FY0

— David Crowley (@DavidCCrowley) September 13, 2026

But remembrance is not the same as understanding. We have remembered 9/11 as a terrorist atrocity, but we have failed to confront the ideological challenge it represented — one we remain reluctant to name, understand, and resist.

The men who carried out the attacks were not an invading army. They were the violent edge of a movement that sees liberal democracy not as an order to join on equal terms, but as one to be displaced. Their instrument was terror, but their purpose was much larger.

That distinction matters. Jihadist violence is its loudest expression: spectacular, coercive and impossible to ignore. But political Islam also works through da’wa, or religious “invitation”: the quieter effort to persuade, organize, and advance an Islamist program within open societies.

This is not a claim about Muslims as a people, nor does it deny the diversity of belief and practice among Muslims. It concerns the political theology of Islamism: the effort to make a particular interpretation of Islamic law sovereign over civil authority, equal citizenship and democratic self-government. Its most violent adherents use terror; others seek influence through law, education, social pressure, and institutional accommodation. The methods differ, but the common political claim is that religious doctrine should outrank equal citizenship and democratic self-government.

A liberal democracy can accommodate religious faith. But it cannot survive if any faith, secular creed or political movement claims exemption from the principles that protect everyone else: equal rights under law, freedom of conscience, free speech, reciprocal tolerance, and the right to dissent.

For a quarter-century, Western leaders and institutions have often treated any discussion of Islamist doctrine as an accusation against Muslims. The result is paralyzing confusion. Criticize a political theology that rejects equality between believer and unbeliever, man and woman, or dissenter and authority, and the critic is readily charged with bigotry. Yet refusing to distinguish a people from an ideology is a moral and intellectual failure. It leaves Muslims, reformers, women, religious minorities, secularists, and ex-Muslims without allies.

Among the doctrine’s bravest opponents are Muslims who have risked their lives to challenge its claims of religious and political supremacy. Their existence should end the claim that opposition to Islamist political doctrine is inherently anti-Muslim. They understand, from experience, what many Western elites prefer not to see: Ideas can be dangerous when they demand immunity from criticism and enforce themselves through intimidation.

Muslims deserve the full protection of religious liberty in the West. But religious liberty is not a license for political supremacy, unequal citizenship, or a violence-backed veto over dissent. No religious movement may claim a veto over speech, scholarship, art, apostasy, conversion or political debate. Salman Rushdie’s attack and the murder of Charlie Hebdo’s staff show why a violence-backed claim of religious offense becomes a veto only when a free society accepts it as one.

That principle has weakened where it most needs defenders. A critic can be branded beyond the pale. A university can hesitate before inviting a speaker. A publisher can choose silence. A threat of violence can become an informal censorship regime. None looks like surrender in isolation. Together, they teach free societies to pre-censor themselves.

The underlying problem is not merely fear. It is also a loss of confidence in the civilization that produced the freedoms at stake. Roger Scruton called this oikophobia: a reflexive contempt for one’s own inheritance. A culture that sees itself chiefly as history’s oppressor may hear warnings about illiberal ideas only as prejudice. It can mistake moral clarity for intolerance and unilateral concession for sophistication. In universities, newsrooms and advocacy organizations, an instinct to scrutinize Western failures too often becomes an inability to scrutinize the claims of those who would dismantle Western liberties.

A supremacist ideology that cannot tolerate criticism or scrutiny is not strong; it is insecure enough to enforce its claims through intimidation and, at times, murder. That is the danger worth naming on this anniversary: not simply another September 11, but a free society that loses the confidence to defend the liberties on which its freedom depends.

The alternative to both collective suspicion and silence is principled clarity: distinguishing Muslims from an illiberal political doctrine, while affirming the rights that doctrine seeks to subordinate. Muslims are often among Islamism’s first victims, and some of its bravest opponents are those within the faith who have risked their lives to challenge it. Equal citizenship, freedom of conscience, free speech, and the right to dissent must remain the standard for all.

Defending that standard requires courage — the courage to name an ideology of submission without maligning a people, to protect the liberties that make honest disagreement possible, and to stand with all who refuse coercion. A free society survives not by looking away from hard truths, but by learning their lessons — so that “never forget” becomes “never again.”

***

Richard Landes is a historian, founder of Infidel Awareness Month (InfidelAwareness.com), and author of “Can ‘The Whole World’ Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad.”

Huffing, I made it back with seconds to spare. The doors were still locked. 

“One second!” A muffled voice called from within. A wavy-haired brunette rushed around a counter and unlocked the door. 

“Can I help you?” She asked with a German accent. 

“Hi, I’m here for the tour!” I said. 

“Fantastic! Our two o’clock. I’m Elsa,” she said, eyes unblinking as she let me in. 

Behind her was a bookshop where every shelf was devoted to the same author, Hubbard, except for a stack of annual anthologies. The Writers of the Future winners. Each year, thousands submitted shorts and competed for a cash prize along with a coveted spot in print. Judges for the contest included Orson Scott Card and, while living, Frank Herbert. 

“It’s a great opportunity for new writers!” Elsa said, “Last year’s winners are meeting here this week! They do a workshop with the judges!” 

“So… Orson Scott Card is in the building?” I asked, and Elsa shrugged with a telling smile. “Is he a member?” 

“Oh no, but we work with all talents regardless of status. And that’s a good introduction to the tour! Scientology, despite misconception, is not theological. It’s an applied study of the sciences!”

I held back asking about Xenu (by their cosmology, Space Satan), as the bulk of the museum was hidden behind a wall and Hubbard’s golden bust. Many YouTubers and journalists have attempted interviews, short-lived for their inability to hold back probing questions like, “Why is Earth a galactic gulag?” or, “What happened to Shelly Miscavige?” Instead, my approach would be to experience the tour as the church intended. I had full faith in my discernment, and some faith I would not be abducted.

Elsa swiped an ID card, and a set of large double doors opened. Behind them, the maze-like interior opened inward. Framed photos of a young Boy Scout surrounded a built-in projector screen. Elsa gestured to a theater seat, and I sat. 

“We always start the tour with our introductory presentation,” Elsa said, then pulled a switch that dimmed the lights. The projector turned on, and a video played along with inspirational music. Rolling text appeared over a gold background: “As any understanding of a religion includes an understanding of its founder, we present a brief chronology of Scientology founder Ron Hubbard.”

It went on to explain that the intent was also to dispel common misconceptions and ended with: “For here was a man who forever maintained that to know life one must live life…”

Cornfields and maps shifted in sepia. A narrator explained Hubbard was born in 1911 in Nebraska. At 12, he entered the Boy Scouts and was chosen to meet then-president Calvin Coolidge. A year later, he became “the youngest Eagle Scout in history.”At 16, Hubbard went overseas, traveling to “a land steeped in mystery,” or Asia. He also saw “wonders beyond any known scientific explanation.” I  held a laugh as these were not detailed and the narrator just moved on. 

Hubbard allegedly returned to the United States, enrolling in George Washington University, where he studied nuclear physics. Then came WWII. Hubbard was recommended, not drafted, to become a lieutenant in the Navy. He would command two vessels, succeed in battle, and suffer combat wounds. At the VA hospital in Oak Knoll, California, Hubbard cured himself. A few years later, he solidified his techniques and drafted the precursor to Scientology: the 1950 book “Dianetics.”

It was a bestseller, and Hubbard led a series of fan gatherings where participants relived their past lives. The Church of Scientology was born (not stated, but established 1954) and spread internationally. 

The narrator becomes grave: Hubbard died in 1986. Then he finishes with, “What kind of man could have founded the only major religion of the twentieth century? … A man such as L. Ron Hubbard.” A photo fades in, Hubbard smiling with one hand on his cheek. The music reaches climax, and the projector shutters off. 

Before resuming the tour, allow me to fact-check. L. Ron Hubbard was likely not the youngest Eagle Scout (there are not comprehensive records of Scout ages from the time period), though he did meet Calvin Coolidge at a meet-and-greet. He did travel to Asia but journaled that it was “trashy.”

He attended George Washington University but flunked entry-level atomics before dropping out. He was a Navy lieutenant in charge of two ships but was removed from both commands. He was not wounded in combat but was a patient at Oak Knoll after the war. “Dianetics” was a bestseller, and Scientology does carry some traits of a major religion. But it is not the only one established in the 20th century. Contenders include: the Nation of Islam, Falun Gong, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Rastafari, and, according to its members, the Church of Satan.

We then journeyed around a corner to a newspaper stand featuring titles like Cosmic, Astounding, Unbelievable, and Beyond. There were life-size sculptures depicting Hubbard’s stories. An orange alien with a threatening hunch stood over a device. Across from him was a caveman reaching for it. Next to this was another scene, a ’50s-era cockpit with two semi-humans sitting at the controls. 

Elsa explained the vignettes were from Hubbard’s most popular books. The alien and the caveman were from “Battlefield Earth” (1982), and the others were villain-protagonists from “Mission Earth” (1985-87). In front of the displays, each book sat beneath enclosed glass. 

“Beautiful, right?” Elsa said. “I’m reading the series right now, book seven.”

“Any good?” 

“It’s…” she looked up, searching, “…you have to read them, and then you have to re-read them.” 

“And then, read them again?” 

“Exactly!” We shared a knowing smile. Then she gestured to follow.

Elsa slid backward into a small theater. A pressed curtain wrapped around an extended stage. I sat in the front row as Elsa vanished behind me. The lights dimmed. The curtain pulled apart. Reveal: a giant sculpted volcano. A symbol? Or a hint to deeper truth? Speakers blared and the volcano “erupted” with red and orange lights like I’d angered it. 

A projector screen rose from the floor. Light struck, and suddenly I was watching what felt like an early commercial for antidepressants. 

The same narrator asked, “Are you unhappy?” followed by a woman, “Does your life lack meaning?” Similar questions rattled off as shadow-people blurred past. Finally, the narrator said, “In this video, you will learn the secrets of Dianetics, and how to apply them to the betterment of your life.” Then the projector clicked off, the screen descended, and the curtains reclosed around the stage. 

“What?” I asked out loud. Where were the secrets? Why would the last line be an obvious lie? The volcano — was that it? I waited for Elsa to return. 

“Now I’m going to take you to one of our most exciting exhibits!” Elsa said, beelining for a stairwell. 

I ran after, and we climbed to the second floor balcony. A massive display of what I’d call Geiger-toasters. Some like deco-radios. A few antiques sported the name Hubbard Electrometer. 

“These are the e-meters, aren’t they?” I asked. 

“What have you heard about these?” Elsa asked, a tone sharper. 

This was the first I’d slipped — showing I knew more than I’d let on. The e-meter was a somewhat pointless device that measured resistance to electrical flow. By holding two metal handles, a person would complete the circuit. 

A church member called an auditor would calibrate the device during sessions. They ask questions like a therapist or interrogator with the intent of releasing spirit demons called Engrams from your mind (and we still haven’t gotten to Space Satan). As Lex Fridman summarized while in conversation with ex-auditor Aaron Smith-Levin, “It’s a real device you can calibrate to probably get an outcome that you want.” 

“I’ve heard about these just from college here in LA,” I said, and Elsa eased.

“Why don’t you take the handles?” 

I followed her instruction and she pointed to the wriggling arrow.

“With this technology, I can tell what you’re thinking — more or less.” 

“You’re an auditor?” I asked, and she nodded, gleaming. Arrow far right. 

“It’s a rewarding experience, especially when you’re a high-enough level, because then two auditors can read each other at the same time —” Elsa inhaled sharply; she’d said more than intended. I didn’t push the topic, but this was the first I’d heard of dual auditing (add it to the wiki). 

Elsa must have read my mind (more or less) because she clicked the e-meter off. Then turned to the next exhibit. 

“I think you’ll like this. You seem very industrious.” 

Next was the least creative display in the entire museum: a glass case containing seven large books breaking down how L. Ron Hubbard thought corporations should be run. Behind the case, a metal plaque showcased hundreds of company names that used his “Efficient Management System.” Names you would recognize. 

“What is this?” 

“L. Ron Hubbard not only wrote epics and explored science; he tackled the problem of management. Each volume represents a key department in any business. All seven must work in tandem.” 

“Where are you in the hierarchy?” 

“I’m in division one, dealing with public relations.” 

“You like it?” 

“I did not enjoy division three.” 

“Oh?” I said, and she did not expand. 

In all fairness, I have no clue if this is legitimate. Redditors have described the system as “diabolically ruthless,” which the ardent capitalist might desire. One can learn the Efficient Management System via purchase of the volume set, or by attending the School for Administration here in Los Angeles. Management experts can also be hired to impose the system upon your underlings. 

This shrine to capitalism was the last second-floor exhibit, so I followed Elsa back down the stairs. We arced left and found ourselves in a cartoonishly extensive hallway, each wall filled with bookshelves. At the end, two monolithic wooden boards covered in framed awards hung on the wall.

“This is my favorite part,” Elsa said, and trumpets blared. 

The panels pulled apart, revealing yet another pair of monolithic boards: certificates, diplomas, plaques. Three more pairs opened before revealing the same photograph of L. Ron Hubbard from earlier. He was middle-aged, smiling with his hand on his cheek, eyes full of joy. 

“Can I get a picture with him?” I asked.

“Oh — it’s going to close in a second, so we have to be quick!” 

I posed, and Elsa clicked the button on my phone’s camera app. Moments later, the music cut, the monoliths reset, and the tour ended. 

On return to the lobby, I expected pressure to buy a book. YouTubers have captured such behavior. But Elsa didn’t push. I was almost offended. When I asked, she beamed, recommending the “church favorite,” “Final Blackout” (1940). It chronicled the rise of a charismatic lieutenant in war-ravaged England. Elsa invited me back whenever I liked. 

“It’s been a pleasure,” I said as the door closed. It had been four hours, and I had numerous texts from friends asking if I was alive. I smiled, then didn’t respond. 

Amusing, elaborate — a fine experience for a weekday afternoon. Given the length and free admission, tourists might consider buying a book. It’s a cheap souvenir for LA, a testament to survival, and most aren’t about Space Satan. We never did get to him, though the volcano was a highlight. For the curious, I say, chance the rabbit hole! Enjoy the museum built around one man’s ego and some of his science fiction. As for Elsa, I never did gauge her — if she truly believed in Hubbard’s revelations. 

I looked back through the plate glass, at his bust. I’d run a mile to get past him, seen through his grandeur, and left with his story. He was still too happy. A crack in his facade, maybe — but cast in gold. 

***

Erby Char is the pseudonym of a writer and audio producer whose work ranges across culture, technology, travel, and the strange fringes of modern life. He also writes fiction and designs games. You can follow him on X @ErbyCharWrites.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

***

House of Strauss has followed the Fall of Nike since its inception, and it’s a rich topic because there are so many components. The more politically-oriented tend to see this crash as cultural in nature (“wokeness,” according to some), whereas the more business-minded focus on Nike’s disastrous “direct-to-consumer” rejection of retailers.

The failed DTC bid is the more tangible wound for Nike and thus more directly explanatory. I think it can be too tempting for some financial pundits though, especially among the controversy-avoidant, to wholly lean on this functional mistake. It’s a huge reason for Nike’s fall, obviously, but there’s clearly something wrong with that company’s corporate culture beyond nuts and bolts strategic choices. This week’s release of Nike’s widely panned Specter Edition NBA uniforms is yet another indicator of the company’s cultural rot. The people running this place just refuse to accept that sports fans like what they like. They keep trying to appoint a new customer rather than bend to the customer’s preference.

Just look at these terrible uniforms, in a now long line of terrible uniforms foisted on NBA teams. I lack the aesthetic vocabulary to completely convey the appearance of these dark designs, but they remind me of this Fantasy Football league I played in years ago, on a now antiquated website, where our teams were given blandly unaffiliated uniforms. The best way I can describe the jerseys is that it’s like if a movie from three decades ago imagined what players would wear in some fictional future league. The team logos are so deemphasized that they almost convey the appearance of a filmmaker sidestepping copyright infringement concerns. Had Space Jam dressed Michael Jordan in this, it would have tracked, but also looked worse than what was actually chosen.

Nike’s Specter Edition uniforms for the 2026-27 season “reimagine team identity for the league’s oldest franchises through their history, culture and the energy of today’s game.” I don’t believe fans were necessarily clamoring for their team’s identity to get “reimagined.” Nike explains the origin of creation with:

The collection was created to revolutionize the look of the NBA for the next generation, strengthening the connection between what athletes wear on court and how fans express their team devotion.

“Revolutionize”? Why? This is the exact sort of situation for which the cliché phrase, “you don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” exists. The value proposition of uniforms is that they are uniform. Fans have an emotional, Pavlovian attachment to a team’s classic jerseys. The notion that “next generation” demands a change falls into my Rule of Corporate Slop:

A trend is bad when even its defenders can’t defend it on merit, but instead only speculate that hypothetical kids must like it.

You can see what Nike’s going for in their photos of the apparel launch: Young, diverse models of varying hairstyles, glumly sporting this supposed garb of the future. There’s nothing wrong with the kids in the pictures, other than how they’re posed and what they’re wearing. This is not what actual sports fans at a sports corporation would produce. It’s giving supercilious Gen Z Zoolander. This isn’t clothing for happy jocks. This is attire for sullen fashionista catwalks.

As I’ve mentioned, anecdotally, the most commonly-worn uniform I see at my kid’s school is the classic, standard Steph Curry. Because why wouldn’t it be? The common blue and gold Warriors jersey is a minimalist beauty. They’re also the uniforms one envisions when thinking about “Steph Curry.” What’s with this concept that the kids instead cry out for this darkened shimmery nonsense, connected to nothing?

I’m also skeptical that this overkill is all done to appease children, who just love novelty so much. Many parents in the Bay Area have had the experience of buying their child a Steph Curry jersey. Very few Bay Area parents have had the experience of a kid being disappointed that the uniform just so happens to be classic blue-and-yellow Warriors colors. To have a problem with this would be like being mad that daddy bought you a dapple-gray pony instead of a chestnut pony. But more to the point, blue and yellow are the colors Steph Curry is most associated with. Anecdotally, when you see kids wearing a Steph jersey, it’s almost always one of these two options.

You might assume that the NBA teams are in league with Nike in this project, and that all parties are eager to sell newfangled products. This is incorrect. The team people I talk to are sick of Nike’s constant tinkering and demands that their teams sport increasingly bizarre designs. To be blunt, the sources I have are tired of Nike’s idiocy being transposed onto brands they’re trying to protect. They’re also weary of the confusing protocols involved in all this:

In theory, Nike engages in a back-and-forth with NBA teams where design ideas are exchanged. In practice, from what teams tell me, the result is a lot of confusing Nike rules and dictation regarding which jerseys and when. NBA franchises must manage being managed by Nike. The league office doesn’t appear to care about the aggravations and brand issues so long as the sponsorship checks clear.

As recently as April, I wrote about a UBS report that theorized Nike had been hurt by a decline in NBA star power. While that’s a plausible interpretation of the recent past, following a boffo NBA Finals, Adam Silver’s league looks to be in far better health than its major partner. It’s now dysfunctional Nike that’s arguably the millstone (literally?) around the NBA’s neck. The NBA can brag about currently commanding a TV rights price that embarrasses the NFL. Nike can boast about once having been listed in the S&P 100.

More to the point of this article, Nike’s DTC failure has arguably little to do with its struggles on this crazy NBA uniform front. This is a cultural disconnect that, if we’re being taboo, could be downstream from gender-informed shakeups at the company. Quoting me:

In 2018, a New York Times article detailed the middle-up “revolt” within Nike, driven by women who had enough of an “environment that had turned toxic.” According to the report, the Nike company culture wasn’t so far from that of the locker room, which will run you into some problems when your locker room employs 75,000 people, with both sexes included. Even if Nike had thrived over the decades, its ways didn’t seem sustainable in the modern world. Finally, a concerted push from middle class female employees led to multiple high-profile male ousters, including the aforementioned Trevor Edwards.

Trevor Edwards was CEO heir-apparent but got undone by his #MeToo transgressions. I’m not defending whatever Edwards did. I’m instead observing that Nike, shocked by the scandal, made a guilt-ridden effort to change course with new management hires. The attempt to excise the bad appears to have been a botched surgery. Nike ceased to be a male-oriented sports company. They shifted into becoming a fashion company. Sports fans like sports. They don’t necessarily like “fashion” for its own sake.

***

Ethan Strauss is the creator of the Substack House of Strauss. He is a former NBA PR gopher, basketblogger, and NBA beat writer.

“60 Minutes” is billing the segment, titled “The Pardon Economy,” as a “hidden camera investigation into a lucrative business: brokering pardons for felons. Lobbyists offer a chance at clemency — at a cost, and with no guarantees.”

Tune in Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT for a 60 Minutes hidden camera investigation into a lucrative business: brokering pardons for felons. Lobbyists offer a chance at clemency — at a cost, and with no guarantees. pic.twitter.com/kOKRaqbONF

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) September 12, 2026

The teaser trailer for the episode features longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl interviewing rapper Boosie Badazz, who claims controversial far-right lobbyists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman promised to secure him a pardon from President Donald Trump for $600,000. The rapper, who was facing prison time for possession of drugs and firearms, appears to have entered a typo-laden contract in which Burkman and Wohl agreed to “craft … a compelling and comprehensive narrative for the pardon petition.”

According to a version of the contract reviewed by the New York Times, Boosie could request half the money back if a pardon was not secured. Burkman and Wohl claim the rapper never signed the contract.

It is unclear what else “60 Minutes” has captured on hidden cameras, or what else the segment — reported in part by CBS investigative reporters Gabe Kaminsky and Daniel Klaidman — contains. Martin did not comment on allegations of a pay-for-play scheme, but confirmed to The Daily Wire that he participated in a lengthy interview with Stahl, ostensibly to be included in Sunday’s segment.

“When I heard that 60 Minutes was doing a piece on pardons, I was confident,” Martin said. “I thought, ‘I’m the guy who knows how this worked … I know what President Trump thinks and how it was.’ So I was confident I could help.”

Martin, whom Trump tapped early in his second term to serve as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, later joined the Trump administration in May 2025 to spearhead the president’s approach to pardons, of which he has issued more than 1,500 thus far this term. To Martin, this demonstrates both the unconventional nature of Trump’s governing style and his unique understanding of the presidential pardon power.

“Most presidents wait until the end of their term” to issue pardons, Martin says, granting clemency “in the dark of night in December or January as they’re leaving office.”

Not President Trump, who Martin says has always intended to use the pardon power in addition to legislation like the First Step Act — a bipartisan bill that helped reduce prison sentences, which Trump signed in 2018 — to show mercy, not mete out justice.

“I think he really looks at it like this kind of second chance, because a pardon is not about justice,” Martin says. “It’s not justice, it’s mercy.”

Martin expounded on this theme in an April piece for Chronicles, in which he grounded Trump’s approach to pardons in a Christian conception of forgiveness.

“In 2025, a year I called the Year of Trump Mercy, President Trump performed thousands of acts of mercy through pardons. He did this for people whom he had met and thousands that he never personally knew. He pardoned cops, freed lifelong and rehabilitated prisoners, and forgave debts.”

Trump also pardoned en masse the so-called “alternate electors” who objected to the results of the 2020 presidential election. Critics viewed this pardon as the president rewarding those who aided his attempt to remain in the White House, including many who participated in the January 6 Capitol riots. But Martin casts the pardon in a different light, noting that most of those pardoned “weren’t big shots,” but rather “forgotten men and women of America” who had been “put through the wringer” by state and federal prosecutors.

A handful of other Trump pardons have garnered significant public attention, including Changpeng Zhao and Juan Orlando Hernández. Zhao, the founder of the cryptocurrency company Binance, served four months in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to financial crimes. Trump pardoned him in 2025, as Binance was in business with World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm run by Trump’s children.

Hernández, the former president of Honduras, was convicted of accepting bribes from drug traffickers and sentenced to 45 years in prison in 2024 after being extradited to the U.S. His 2025 pardon from Trump drew particular attention as it occurred while the Pentagon was carrying out strikes against alleged narco-terrorists in Latin America.

The pardon segment will round out the premiere of “60 Minutes’” 59th season, which comes at a transitional moment for the news magazine and its network. Last year, CBS News President Wendy McMahon resigned amid an ongoing legal battle between the network’s parent company, Paramount, and Trump, who was outraged that “60 Minutes” selectively edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign. Paramount last year paid Trump $16 million to settle the case.

In June, longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley was fired by the show’s executive producer, Nick Bilton, after Pelley “hijacked” a staff meeting to criticize CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. Bilton’s hiring was one of several shakeups instituted by Weiss, who rose to prominence as the founder of The Free Press and took the helm at CBS News in October 2025.

While Martin does not “think Bari Weiss is MAGA,” he is nevertheless optimistic about what she’ll accomplish at CBS.

“We need more Bari Weisses, not fewer,” Martin told The Daily Wire. “And we, meaning people who care about conservatism and care about the Trump administration, should be out there taking those risks and being a part of it. Because if we don’t do that, then they will fail. If I don’t go on ‘60 Minutes’ and try to help what I see is getting better, then it will be guaranteed to fail … that’s why I was happy to do it.”

It’s a sentiment Martin shares with his old boss.

“One of the things [President Trump] always says to me is, ‘You like being in the media, go out and be in the media. Be bold and go out there.’”

“That’s what we should be doing,” Martin agrees. “We should be bold and go out there.”

Fairfax County, Virginia’s public school system drew national outrage when Fox News revealed its 9/11 lesson plan, whose first section was “Responding to Racism, Hate, and Bias against Muslims and Middle Eastern People.” It instructed teachers to “leverage a critical lens with students,” meaning use critical race theory.

“The commemoration of 9/11 focuses on those whose lives were lost and those who sacrificed to help others – not those who attacked the United States,” it says.

But the problem is not limited to deep-blue areas. In a message to families on Friday, Fairfax schools superintendent Michelle Reid said she was “reviewing our materials as we value feedback from our FCPS community,” and blamed others for the curriculum, saying administrators drew from “authoritative subject-matter resources, including materials from the 9:57 Project, which is an association with the mission to connect Veterans with students to perpetuate service, teamwork, and the legacy of Flight 93.”

The 9:57 Project says it “provides six lessons on 9/11 and its effects.” Its 94-page curriculum completely omits who attacked America on 9/11, instead focusing on human interest details and the hardships of the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan afterwards.

The word “Islam” does not appear. Some on the left claim describing the terrorists’ ideology as Islamist risks reflecting poorly on all Muslims. Yet that can’t explain not naming the individuals who committed the attacks. The curriculum does not include the name Osama bin Laden, and does not say al-Qaeda was behind the attacks. It mentions the terrorist group only once in saying that a United States service member was missed by his family because he was “fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan against al-Qaeda.”

It has worked with numerous school districts, such as the Pineville and Corbin districts in Kentucky.

That makes it effectively the 9/11 version of the 1619 Project, a revisionist history by far-left New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones that was implanted into schools via a nonprofit’s realization that teachers don’t want to bother creating their own lesson plans, and if someone packages and promotes a free one, they will use it.

The concealment of who committed 9/11 has been so pervasive among educators that when PragerU asked college students the question, many of them did not know, and became visibly uncomfortable that their high schools had allowed them to be so ignorant. “I don’t want to sound retarded,” one said, before guessing, “Israel?”

The 9:57 Project was founded by Peter Findler, an administrator at the Wakefield School in The Plains, Virginia, and John Hamilton, an Army veteran. It is advised by women from leftist private schools. It did not respond to a request for an interview.

Former Attorney General Jason Miyares said on social media that the Fairfax curriculum would “be like trying to teach Pearl Harbor and leaving out the fact that we were attacked by the Japanese Empire. It’s that absurd.”

Fairfax County’s treatment of 9/11 was especially shocking because it is home to many military members and is a few miles from the Pentagon. Yet only one of 12 school board members objected to the curriculum.

“As someone who witnessed the aftermath of the attack on the Pentagon and as a military dad, I am outraged that Fairfax County Public Schools directed educators and schools to teach our children that 9/11 was about ‘Racism, Hate, and Bias against Muslims and Middle Eastern People,'” Mateo Dunne, whose constituents include residents of Fort Belvoir, told The Daily Wire. “This is a gross mischaracterization of our history that resembles the worst propaganda propagated by our foreign adversaries.”

Fairfax instructed teachers not to “center the extremists or the acts of the extremists,” and to instead “create safe spaces for Muslim and Middle Eastern students.” The reason some Fairfax students might be offended by hearing the names of terrorists who committed 9/11 is because their families are, in fact, tied to terrorist groups.

Some of the 9/11 hijackers attended the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Fairfax County, whose imam was Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda operative who later traveled to Yemem, where former president Barack Obama had him killed. Al-Awlaki was hired by mosque director Esam Omeish, whose daughter, Abrar Omeish, later joined the school board, using her position largely to push radical Islam.

Just before the 20th anniversary of September 11, Abrar opposed a motion to honor the victims of 9/11, instead offering a September 11 resolution that spent one paragraph on dead Americans and ten paragraphs treating Muslims as the victims. At a school graduation that year, Omeish declined to put her hand over her heart for the pledge of allegiance, and gave a speech telling graduates to remember their “jihad” as they entered a world of “white supremacy.”

Fairfax County receives extra federal dollars for educating the children of military members, but many say they are treated as second-class citizens, below people who aren’t citizens at all. In 2022, an FCPS curriculum called for “Identifying Your Privilege,” saying that “Military Kids” had privilege alongside “Cisgenders” and “Native English Speakers.”

Its lessons on slavery do not omit the race of people who owned slaves, or say that their descendants hundreds of years later have nothing to do with it.

“I don’t want to cause any problem. I will tell you, I’d love to see it unified,” Trump said alongside Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin. “It’s going to happen eventually.” Trump further called reunification “a fantastic thing” and said it would be “a great feather in everybody’s cap,” while acknowledging that the United Kingdom would have a say in any change. “How can it be bad?” Trump said.

The remarks represented a notable departure from the longstanding U.S. approach to the issue, in which successive administrations have supported the peace process without taking sides on whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland.

Trump appeared to recognize almost immediately that he had ventured into politically sensitive territory. Later Saturday, speaking at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, Trump returned to his comments and acknowledged that there was “no good answer” to the question. “I gave a nice answer, I think,” Trump said. “We’ll worry about it tomorrow.” He added that Irish unification would still be “a very cool thing.”

Northern Ireland’s constitutional status has been one of the most sensitive political questions in the British Isles for generations. During “The Troubles,” 3,600 people were killed during the three decades of violence which pitted Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland against unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom.

The 1998 Belfast Agreement, commonly known as the Good Friday Agreement, established the framework that largely ended that conflict. The agreement enshrined the principle of consent: Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom unless a majority of its people vote to change its constitutional status. Thus, Trump’s comments produced an immediate political reaction.

Gavin Robinson, leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, rejected the president’s intervention. “President Trump knows better than most that elections matter,” Robinson wrote on X. “Northern Ireland’s constitutional future will be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington.”

“Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom because that is the settled democratic will of its people,” Robinson added.

The British government likewise indicated that its position had not changed. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said there is currently insufficient public support to hold a referendum on Northern Ireland’s constitutional status and that such a vote is therefore not on the table. Trump acknowledged that London would inevitably be involved. “The U.K. will have something to say about it, obviously,” he said.

Irish nationalists, meanwhile, seized on the president’s remarks. Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said Trump’s comments demonstrated that the conversation about Irish unity had shifted and called on the Irish government to begin preparing for the possibility of reunification.

Claire Hanna, leader of Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labour Party, told her party’s annual conference that Trump had effectively announced his support for a united Ireland, prompting cheers from the crowd.

Trump backing Irish unity wasn’t on our conference Bingo card – I suppose even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Has anyone checked on the DUP? pic.twitter.com/Txmcaum0Dn

— Claire Hanna (@ClaireHanna) September 12, 2026

Trump’s comments were not entirely unprecedented. Earlier this year, he suggested that Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland should have a “merger,” though the remark was subsequently treated by Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly as a joke.

His most recent Ireland remarks came during a two-day visit that was officially focused in large part on economic ties and his visit to his golf resort in County Clare.

Trump met with Martin in Dublin and also held a ceremonial meeting with Irish President Catherine Connolly, who has previously criticized Trump’s foreign policy. The president’s intervention on Irish reunification was only one of several moments during the visit that touched on Britain’s role in the region.

The United States played a significant diplomatic role in the negotiations that produced the Good Friday Agreement, which remains the foundation of Northern Ireland’s constitutional settlement and power-sharing institutions. Trump did not announce a change in American policy Saturday, and the White House has not indicated that his remarks represent a formal shift in U.S. policy.

Cruz, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, spoke with Rece Davis for roughly eight minutes — longer than the six minutes given to Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian — arguing that college athletics have descended into disorder since federal courts struck down NCAA compensation limits.

“What we have right now is chaos. There are no rules,” Cruz said, pointing to disputes over bringing professional players into college competition and litigation involving athletes gambling on their own games.

ESPN had Ted Cruz on ‘College GameDay’ in a conversation with Rece Davis for nearly 10 minutes.

Cruz was heavily booed by the crowd — and heard “Ted, you suck!” chants — in Austin. pic.twitter.com/npQesiYMsG

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 12, 2026

The bipartisan bill, coauthored with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), would establish a national framework for athlete name, imagine and likeness compensation, cap revenue-sharing payments to players with an annual inflation adjustment, and restrict boosters and third parties from funneling pay-for-play money through NIL deals. It cleared the Senate Commerce Committee in June with bipartisan support and has since won backing from the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten, more than 260 universities, and President Donald Trump, who said he hopes to sign it before the college football season ends. The measure needs 60 votes to clear the Senate before heading to the House.

The bill missed a floor vote before the Senate August recess despite Trump urging lawmakers to stay in session, and the Congressional Black Caucus has said Senate Democrats should withhold support until concerns from black athletes, coaches and HBCUs are addressed. Cruz told Davis on Saturday he remains confident the bill will secure the votes needed to pass this week, marking the second consecutive week “GameDay” has featured a segment on the legislation, following an appearance by Nick Saban and Pat McAfee.

Cruz also renewed criticism of the transfer portal, calling it “terrible for the game” and blaming Congress-triggered antitrust rulings for the current landscape.

The officials told the Wall Street Journal that Iran obtained the imagery from Chinese entities before and after the July 17 attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. U.S. officials have linked the imagery to the deadly strike, though they have not identified the Chinese companies involved or accused the Chinese government of directly ordering or authorizing the assistance.

The attack killed Army 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, and Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad. Feehan died from injuries sustained during the July 17 attack, while Gonzales and Rampersad were killed in the attack itself, according to the U.S. Army. Four other American service members were wounded.

The strike was one of three Iranian missile attacks against the base within a 24-hour period. Iranian missiles struck a housing area where American troops were sleeping, while other missiles targeted aircraft and other U.S. assets at the installation, according to U.S. officials cited by the Journal.

American officials had spent months warning Beijing that Chinese companies were providing Iran with satellite imagery that could be used to target U.S. forces. The Trump administration sanctioned MizarVision, Earth Eye, and Chang Guang — all Chinese companies — in May. The sanctions were leveled due to allegations that they were providing, collecting, or publishing satellite imagery that could be used by Iran against American personnel and military assets.

The State Department had previously accused Chang Guang of providing satellite imagery that directly supported attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants, according to the Journal. Now, U.S. officials say they have connected Chinese-sourced imagery to an attack that actually killed American service members.

Senior U.S. officials reportedly raised the July attack and the imagery with their Chinese counterparts. Beijing pushed back and demanded evidence, while Chinese officials have repeatedly denied that Chinese companies are providing Iran with imagery for military targeting.

A Chinese Embassy spokesman did not directly address the specific allegations. Instead, spokesman Liu Chang accused unnamed critics of “maliciously linking and smearing other countries” and said Chinese cooperation with Iran complies with international law, according to the Journal.

The White House has also downplayed the broader significance of foreign assistance to Iran, with an administration official saying that no outside assistance had enhanced Tehran’s ability to attack American targets. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was similarly cautious after meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi days after the July attack. When asked whether China was providing Iran with targeting information, Rubio said that “nothing that China has done has in any way changed the trajectory of the conflict.”

But U.S. officials say Iran’s ability to target American forces appeared to improve over the course of the conflict. Earlier in the conflict, American attacks damaged Iranian radar, satellites, and other systems, degrading Tehran’s ability to monitor the battlefield. Iranian missiles consequently struck locations of lesser military significance or missed important American assets.

High-resolution satellite imagery can give Iran a much more current picture of a military installation, potentially revealing changes in the location of personnel, aircraft, vehicles, and other assets. Former CIA analyst Jim Lamson told the Journal that fresh imagery could help Iran “select the most impactful targets in a timely manner” and evaluate whether previous strikes had been successful.

The satellite imagery, however, would have been only one part of Iran’s intelligence picture. Tehran also operates its own satellites and uses human intelligence, while U.S. officials have said Russia provides Iran with intelligence and imagery as well.

U.S. officials are also concerned that Chinese assistance could help Iran track American naval forces in the region. Iranian ballistic missiles have recently been fired at U.S. warships, including an aircraft carrier and other vessels. The attacks failed to hit the ships, but U.S. officials have described some of the incidents as close calls and said Iran’s ability to target moving American vessels appears to be improving.

The disclosure comes less than two weeks before Trump’s planned September 24 meeting with Xi. Trump has made maintaining relations with Xi a priority, while senior administration officials have sought to avoid public confrontations with Beijing that could complicate the summit. The newly reported intelligence puts a potentially lethal dimension on one of Washington’s longstanding complaints about China’s relationship with Tehran.

Speaking at a rally at Michigan State University, El-Sayed was responding to a student’s question about protections for transgender medical procedures. He told the crowd that physicians like himself — who he said attended a “whole ass” medical school alongside classmates who did the same — are the qualified voices patients should rely on for treatment decisions, according to Fox News Digital.

The remarks came as the Trump administration has pushed several major hospital systems — including Texas Children’s Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Connecticut Children’s Hospital and, this week, Mount Sinai — to end pediatric gender-transition procedures under agreements with the Justice Department.

El-Sayed also drew a comparison to the Right to Try Act, a law backed by conservatives that lets terminally ill patients access experimental drugs without FDA approval, suggesting Republicans already accept the principle that treatment decisions shouldn’t be dictated by the government.

His comments arrive months after Politico reported that El-Sayed, despite building much of his campaign around his identity as a “physician,” has never held a medical license in Michigan or New York, the two states where he trained and worked. His clinical experience amounts to a four-week sub-internship, an experience he once described in a 2022 podcast as “cosplaying” a doctor. Michigan’s Democratic primary rival Mallory McMorrow’s campaign seized on the disclosure, accusing him of misleading voters about credentials essential to his candidacy. El-Sayed’s campaign has said he has earned the right to be called “doctor” through his degrees and public health work, even without a practicing license.

The research base for youth sex change treatments remains limited, and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service has curtailed hormone treatments for teenagers after concluding the evidence supporting them was weak.

Andrew James Wimsatt, 62, of Austin, was killed September 7 in what authorities believe was a random attack in Round Rock, Texas. Wimsatt had been sitting on a park bench shortly after visiting his mother at a nearby nursing home when a stranger allegedly approached him from behind and stabbed him repeatedly in the neck.

Williamson County deputies arrested 26-year-old Benedict Chinedu Ogbodiegwu and charged him with murder and theft. Surveillance footage captured the attack, according to court documents obtained by Fox 7 Austin.

But as news of Wimsatt’s death spread, his connection to Fox News personalities revealed a very different picture of the man who was killed. Wimsatt was a longtime fan of Greg Gutfeld’s former show “Red Eye” and later “Gutfeld!” He would clip segments from the shows, attend live events, and regularly send clips to members of the cast. Over the years, that fan relationship developed into genuine friendships.  Gutfeld said he initially assumed Wimsatt had ulterior motives when he began helping promote the show and its personalities. “At first, I was suspicious, because I always assume people do things because they want things,” Gutfeld said. “I was wrong with Andrew. He did stuff for people — lots of people — because he enjoyed being of service, and promoting stuff that he genuinely enjoys and believes in.”

“The crime, to me, is so heinous and shocking that I’m still trying to comprehend it,” Gutfeld told Fox News Digital. “I may never.”

Kat Timpf described Wimsatt as “a fan who became a friend.” The two reportedly stayed in contact weekly for years, and Timpf said Wimsatt consistently encouraged her during difficult moments in her career. She and her husband had lunch with Wimsatt in Fort Worth in June, when he drove from Austin to see her return to the stage following the sudden death of her father.

“He was so kind and generous it almost seems impossible,” Timpf told Fox News Digital. “He always supported me … whether that was sending me clips I wanted to post or offering truly helpful words of encouragement during the times throughout my career that the internet was piling on me.”

Timpf also shared a photo of Wimsatt receiving merchandise she sent him, writing that he was “so excited and grateful” despite, in her words, having done “way, way more for us and everyone he’s ever met.”

Tyrus, another personality on “Gutfeld!,” remembered Wimsatt as a longtime supporter who attended his stand-up shows. “He took care of his mother… always positive… he was kind man, 62 years old, fragile-looking, but had a monster laugh,” Tyrus said. “I was honored to know him I was honored he cared so much and honored that my jokes and thoughts brought him joy.”

Wimsatt’s life extended well beyond his connections to television personalities. He held a Ph.D. in civil engineering and worked for the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, remaining with the organization part-time after retiring. He was also credited as an executive producer on Penn Jillette’s horror-comedy “Director’s Cut.” His social media reflected interests ranging from wildlife and cityscapes to vintage storefronts and art.

His final moments, meanwhile, were captured by surveillance cameras at the park. According to the arrest affidavit, Wimsatt sat down on the bench at approximately 10:55 a.m. A man investigators identified as Ogbodiegwu then allegedly approached him from behind and began stabbing him. Wimsatt attempted to fight off the attacker, but was unable to do so. The suspect allegedly wiped the knife and fled toward the park’s pool area.

Investigators later tracked the suspect to a nearby home. A search allegedly uncovered the clothing seen in the surveillance footage and a 5.5-inch knife with a wooden handle. The affidavit says the sweatpants contained red stains and the knife tested presumptively positive for blood. When questioned, Ogbodiegwu allegedly acknowledged that a photograph from the crime scene showed him but claimed he had not been at the park. He then allegedly told investigators he had a twin brother but could not provide the supposed twin’s name.

Authorities have said Wimsatt and Ogbodiegwu did not know each other and that preliminary evidence indicated the attack was random. Ogbodiegwu, who has prior arrests in Williamson County dating back to 2017, remains jailed on $1 million bond. His next court appearance is scheduled for October 8.

The man entered from the left-field stands in the top of the seventh inning and ran toward center field while the Mets had the bases loaded, two outs, and a 3-2 count on shortstop Francisco Lindor. Stadium security and NYPD officers chased him down and brought him to the ground on the outfield grass before dragging him beyond the center-field wall. As he was removed, fans seated near the Mets bullpen hurled beer cans and other drinks in his direction while the crowd erupted into chants of “USA! USA!” according to the New York Post.

A man waving a Palestinian flag storms the field at Yankee Stadium during the Yankees-Mets game on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Video shows security chasing him down and tackling him as fans reportedly throw beer cans while he is escorted away.

The disruption happened around… pic.twitter.com/p1JAjGAQCR

— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 12, 2026

The man wore a jersey reading “No Kings,” a slogan associated with anti-Trump protests. He was later identified by NYPD as 38-year-old Kelly Marcucci, who was arrested and charged with two misdemeanors — interference with a professional sporting event and criminal trespassing.

The Yankees declined to comment on the incident, according to The Athletic.

The disruption came hours after an extensive pregame ceremony honoring the victims of the 2001 attacks, featuring members of the 2001 Yankees team, including Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, and Mariano Rivera. The ceremonial first pitch was thrown by Brielle Saracini, whose father, Victor Saracini, piloted United Airlines Flight 175, which was flown into the World Trade Center’s South Tower.

Play resumed shortly after the man was removed. The Yankees went on to win the game 6-4, aided by a three-run homer from Cody Bellinger.

Mamdani posted the same photograph of Harlem rap group The Diplomats, also known as Dipset, alongside a “Happy 4th” message in 2021, 2023, and 2024, according to a review of his social media history first reported by Just The News.

The posts have resurfaced as Mamdani faces renewed scrutiny over his record and rhetoric surrounding September 11, amid the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

The photograph comes from Dipset’s “Dipset Anthem” music video and prominently features members Cam’ron and Juelz Santana, with Santana wearing an American flag-themed outfit.

Zohran used to do 9/11 dog whistles by posting a pic of the rap group The Diplomats each July 4.

Their most famous lyric praises 9/11: “I worship the prophet, the great Mohammed Omar Atta, for his courage behind the wheel of the plane. Reminds me when I was dealin’ cocaine.” https://t.co/Vqausy7wNM pic.twitter.com/dJwhViteJv

— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) September 12, 2026

The group’s history, however, includes lyrics and comments about September 11 that generated controversy shortly after the attacks.

In a 2002 interview with New Musical Express, Santana defended a lyric from a then-forthcoming Diplomats song that referred to Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker of American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower.

The original lyric said, “I worship the prophet / The great Mohammed Omar Atta / For his courage behind the wheel of the plane.”

Santana told NME that he was not endorsing terrorism but said he admired Atta’s “courage” and “love for what he believed in.” He also questioned why the September 11 attacks had occurred, blaming American foreign policy for contributing to the circumstances surrounding the attacks.

The lyric was subsequently changed before the album’s release to refer to Muhammad Ali instead of Atta.

Other Dipset lyrics from the group’s 2003 album “Diplomatic Immunity” also invoked the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and September 11. The group referred to itself as the “Dipset Taliban” and “Harlem’s Al-Qaeda,” while another song included a reference to the falling World Trade Center towers.

Santana also later released lyrics comparing himself to Atta. The material has continued to draw attention years after its original release, including during a 2022 interview in which Santana again discussed his admiration for what he described as Atta’s willingness to sacrifice himself for his beliefs.

Mamdani himself had a failed rapper phase. In 2017, he released a song titled “Salaam” in which he referred to the “Holy Land Five,” the five leaders of the Holy Land Foundation who were convicted in federal court of providing material support to Hamas. He described the song at the time as being about what it was like to be a Muslim in America and in New York City.

The Dipset controversy also comes as Mamdani’s handling of September 11 has become a recurring issue in his public life.

The mayor has faced criticism over his political associations and statements concerning Israel, Hamas, and the phrase “globalizing the intifada.” He has said the phrase was intended as a call for Palestinians to achieve their rights and has rejected interpretations that he intended to endorse violence.

Mamdani has also repeatedly emphasized the experience of Muslim New Yorkers after September 11. On the 25th anniversary of the attacks, The New York Times prominently featured coverage examining Islamophobia and Mamdani’s position as New York’s first Muslim mayor.

In 2021, Mamdani posted “Happy 4th” alongside the Dipset photograph. He used the same image and message again in 2023 and 2024. In 2025, after he had become the Democratic nominee for mayor, he changed course, posting “Happy 4th” alongside photographs from a Democratic Club barbecue in Queens rather than the Dipset image.

Odd, that after becoming a major-party nominee for mayor, and then mayor of New York City, Mamdani stopped using the image.

Now they watch British piglets sass their parents and nosy German Shepherds police their neighbors. Before “Peppa Pig” and “Paw Patrol,” there was the “Looney Tunes” franchise, which launched in 1930 and became part of countless American childhoods. The comedic shorts have inspired only a few feature films, most notably the 1996 Michael Jordan sports comedy “Space Jam.” Yet Bugs Bunny and co. aren’t lacking in good material.

By 1990, Ian Frazier had already provided an inspired spin-off for The New Yorker, one that Warner Bros. would snatch up some time later. In “Coyote V. Acme,” the humor writer imagined a lawsuit from Wile E. Coyote against the Acme Corporation, whose faulty products nearly single-handedly thwart his pursuit of the elusive Road Runner. The comedic courtroom drama based on this premise, however, almost never saw the light of day. 

Three years ago, Warner Bros. announced that rather than releasing “Coyote vs. Acme,” it would be shelving it, taking the loss, and reaping a massive tax write-off. But, fitting for a film that rails against corporate greed and disdain for the little guy, “Coyote vs. Acme” inspired a cult following and at least one protester who diligently picketed the Warner Bros. lot with a Coyote-inspired sign reading, “Release me!!”

This summer, Warner Bros. finally acquiesced, allowing an indie company to distribute the endearing, PG-rated comedy to the masses. For a film about a cartoon dog seeking retribution after always getting the short end of the dynamite stick, “Coyote vs. Acme” has more than its share of inspiring moments.

After another Road Runner caper goes awry and an infomercial pops up on his TV screen, Coyote seeks out the legal services of Kevin Avery, a lawyer whose practice mainly consists of fear-of-failure-motivated efforts: getting big companies such as Acme to settle for small-dollar amounts.

When Coyote slips a mound of compromised merch in the evidence box — rocket skates, a magnetic glove, a freeze gun that backfires — Avery unwittingly launches not a demand for a $300 settlement but a massive lawsuit that garners him national attention as the guy taking on a giant monopoly. After some circumstantial coaxing, he rises to the challenge. 

Will Forte delivers a charming performance as Kevin, alongside Lana Condor as his niece, an Oxford-trained lawyer who chose to work with him instead of a big law firm because she wanted to help regular people. John Cena plays Acme’s lawyer, expertly depicting the despicable and laughable narcissism of corporate executives who think they’re too big to fail (a court case). The Coyote, as in the original cartoons, cannot talk. But that doesn’t mean he can’t pull a few punchy one-liners with his classic white paper signs. 

Kevin can learn a thing or two about persistence from Coyote, who, for reasons unclear to the rest of us, never stops pursuing the Road Runner, even if it means falling so far that the ground creates a Coyote-shaped cut-out for him — over and over again. “I envy you, really,” Kevin says. “It must be nice to have such a clear goal.”

Coyote never does give up, though he does pause when he finally has a chance to capture the bird at a congressional hearing. In a film full of slapstick comedy — broken glass panes and foot-long lumps growing out of cartoon heads — “Coyote vs. Acme” ends on a profound note. Some spoilers follow.

After calling Acme’s unethical cartoon animal experiments the price of progress, Acme CEO Foghorn Leghorn demands to know whether anyone really cares about the fate of these cartoons, specifically the lone Coyote. “Is there anyone in the whole wide world who cares what happens to the Coyote at all?” he demands. 

Then, amid a flurry of papers and with his signature “beep beep,” the Road Runner arrives. Coyote, who has secretly planned this court case as a way to get to the Road Runner at last, is even more speechless than usual.

“Mr. Runner,” Kevin asks, “have you been a witness to Mr. Coyote’s pain and suffering?” To this, the Road Runner answers in the affirmative, “Beep beep.” When Kevin asks if the Road Runner would consider Coyote a friend, he once again answers yes, as the predator’s eyes well up with tears.

Coyote needs the Road Runner like Tweety Bird needs Sylvester or Batman needs Joker. And just like the downtrodden need good lawyers to fight against corporate injustice, original and heartwarming movies need champions to ensure that instead of languishing away, they reach families across the country with good storytelling, humor, and a truth about human relationships that all viewers can appreciate.

***

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

The 2026 Socialism Conference, held in Chicago last weekend, showed what modern socialists are really fighting for in America today. 

“Democrats must be destroyed”

“The Democrats cannot be reasoned with. They must be destroyed,” proclaimed UC Santa Barbara professor Butch Ware, who later discussed weapons training and fighting in the streets. 

When Ware says Democrats must be “destroyed,” he’s talking about the political institution of the Democratic Party. Yet he’s not advocating for higher taxes or another government program. He’s talking about political revolution.

Democratic Socialists love to distinguish themselves from communists: Stop calling us communists. Socialism isn’t communism, they say. 

Though technically true, they are in fact related. Lenin himself explained socialism was the first stage of transition into a communist society. Socialism is the ostensibly democratic step towards full communal ownership (communism), which promises an end to all forms of exploitation. But society always has winners and losers, and a worldview built on permanent exploitation requires a political program of permanent revolution. 

Once you start with that Marxist framework — constantly looking for the exploiter and the exploited, the oppressor and the oppressed — you start seeing that relationship everywhere.

Apparently, even in a weight-loss drug.

“Body fascism”

Self-identified “anarcho-communist” activist Da’Shaun Harrison spoke about fighting “Health Fascism,” claiming that the political deployment of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs is “fascistic.”

He argued that society treats thinness as desirable, fatness as a fixable condition, and that medicine and capitalism help reinforce that standard. But this concept of fascism is so watered down that it loses all meaning. 

Fascism is an authoritarian political system where the nation is placed above the individual and government power is used to suppress individual rights. When a pharmaceutical company invents a treatment, offers it to people, and people decide whether they want it — that’s the capitalist wonder of having options.

Nazi Germany demonstrated what actual health fascism looks like. The Nazi government forcibly sterilized people it considered genetically “undesirable.” Under fascist control, no one had a choice.

The anti-capitalist tries so hard to find exploitation that he can’t recognize something incredibly simple. The pharmaceutical company isn’t your friend. Profit doesn’t magically make everything good. But profit also doesn’t magically make everything oppression.

Abolish the police

Georgetown professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò discussed responding to skepticism that defunding the police comes with serious risks. 

He argued the immediate concerns of anarchy do not make the long-term goal of police abolition wrong. He instead suggested that abolitionists need a better answer for what happens “next week.” 

Abolishing the police doesn’t abolish murder, domestic violence, robbery, assault, theft, or gangs. If you eliminate the institution responding to those problems, you don’t eliminate the problems themselves. 

Any serious proposal must answer: Who has the authority and ability to stop someone from hurting somebody else?

There is effectively no short-term strategy, or long-term one for that matter. Taiwo seemingly looks for a better PR strategy to sell police abolition in light of the obvious ramifications. But no convenient framing can make those problems go away. 

The much easier answer comes outside the Marxist framework: reform, rather than tear down, the institution of policing. 

Protect peaceful people from others who are violating their rights instead of using police to control peaceful people. Then hold those officers accountable when they abuse the power they’ve been given.

You don’t have to choose between “police can do whatever they want” and “abolish the police.”

Socialism 2026 takeaways

Underneath each of these viral moments is a similar way of looking at society: power, conflict, exploitation, oppressor versus oppressed — the Marxist framework in various forms. Capitalists become the exploiters and voluntary exchange becomes a system of exploitation.

A pharmaceutical company giving consumers a new medical option becomes part of “body fascism.” Police misconduct becomes an argument for abolishing policing itself. And revolutionary politics remains on the table for some speakers because the existing political and economic system isn’t simply something they want to reform, but something they want destroyed and replaced.

Ideas have consequences when they move from conference rooms and internet debates into institutions and policy. And these aren’t simply debates about how to make life more affordable. They’re debates about core principles of freedom and ultimately who should have power over whom. 

***

Holly Jean Soto is a liberty and economics communicator dedicated to making complex economic, social, and political ideas accessible to everyday audiences. She graduated from George Mason University with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and is a Young Voices Contributor. 

Newly remastered in 4K, the film does more than let audiences revisit Mel Gibson’s spiritual vision. The re-release offers a sneak peek at the follow-up, “The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One,” coming May 6, 2027. (The second installment will debut May 25, 2028.)

Jim Caviezel played Jesus in the original film, and while the title sparked some debate, including questions about the film’s hard R-rated violence, its cultural impact proved profound.

Filmmaker Randall Wallace (“Braveheart,” “We Were Soldiers”) has teamed with Gibson to co-write the two-part saga expanding on the Biblical telling.

Wallace wasn’t surprised by “The Passion’s” initial reception. The film became the highest-grossing R-rated film of the time, earning $370 million stateside and a whopping $610 million globally.

“The story of Jesus’ crucifixion had never before been told in that medium with such intensity and authenticity,” Wallace tells The Daily Wire of a film using Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin, not English. “The world was hungry for it.”

The film’s success paved the way for filmmakers to share faith-based narratives in an industry slow to acknowledge Christ-friendly crowds. Think “Jesus Revolution,” “The Case for Christ,” “I Can Only Imagine,” “War Room,” and “Sound of Freedom.”

Wallace learned firsthand the impact Gibson’s film had on fellow creators.

“I’ve gotten to know a number of young Christian filmmakers and have seen the work of several others, and to a person they have been inspired by the commitment and the quality Mel displayed in his work — just as I have been,” Wallace says.

The veteran filmmaker (“Secretariat,” “We Were Soldiers,” “Heaven Is for Real”) understands the pressure on him, Gibson, and Gibson’s brother and co-writer, Donal Gibson, for an encore.

“Only someone crazy would attempt it,” Wallace tells The Daily Wire with a knowing chuckle. He recalled a powerful conversation with a rabbi about faith, one that he connected to his Hollywood handiwork.

“Just let go and fall into the arms of God,” he recalls the rabbi saying. That “beautiful” explanation helped him keep the task at hand in perspective.

“You get overwhelmed by your own sense of importance,” Wallace adds.

That context didn’t make the creative process any easier, or shorter. It took nearly a decade to write the final script and Wallace is grateful to have had enough time to get it just right.

“We started really rooted in the Biblical story and began to look at it in all of the doors of inspiration,” he says of the process. “How do you tell a story about something that was literally mind blowing? You have to allow your own mind to be blown by the story. Mel is a master at that.”

Wallace understands on a personal level why patience matters in the creative process.

“I encountered the story of William Wallace 10 years before I had the courage to start writing it,” he says about the 1995 epic “Braveheart.” The film, which Wallace co-wrote, was his first of several creative collaborations with Gibson. “The story has to grow in me.”

Wallace says collaborating with Gibson on the “Resurrection” films had him writing an initial draft before sharing it with the Oscar winner for his input.

“He took my jumping off point and expanded it into ways I admire so much I can’t even tell you,” Wallace says.

Wallace and Gibson took great care in crafting the screenplay, but the films’ visual aesthetic proved vital, too. Wallace says Gibson drew on the work of classical artists (he won’t name names) to create both a visual template and a sense of the unexpected.

“Surprise the central currency of screenwriter … it’s when we become most alive and alert [as an audience],” he says.

That matters, since the next two installments in the “Passion” series capture the uncertainty of the key figures at the time.

“These people who grew so close to Jesus of Nazareth believed everything was over and they had deserted Jesus … then he was dead and they felt awful, and three days later they’re willing to risk death itself to say, ‘we’ve seen him and he’s alive,’” he says. “It’s the most surprising story we can imagine.”

Wallace says the second part of the two-part “Resurrection” saga is now in post-production. He calls the upcoming chapters “one big work,” but the individual films can still stand alone.

Films like “The Passion of the Christ” and, later, the TV series “The Chosen,” impacted audiences in profound ways, far more than simple box office receipts reflect. Some may have found their spiritual selves re-ignited by Gibson’s vision. Others may have found Christ for the first time.

“I hesitate to set my own expectations too high,” Wallace says of the “Resurrection” films. “You offer a hand to God, and whether He uses it is up to God. That’s the best we can do.”

***

Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. He’s also the host of The Hollywood in Toto Podcast. Follow him at @HollywoodInToto. 

To be sure, the crisis is real, and it speaks volumes about the current state of culture in Western civilization. If estimates are to be believed, roughly 300 institutions of higher learning have become defunct since the 2008 financial collapse. Further, as the Huron Consulting Group claims, another 370 schools may close over the next decade, with many of the surviving institutions being hit hard financially and struggling. The hardest hit have been private liberal arts colleges. In 1960, they numbered nearly 570 in the U.S. Today, there are only around 200. While not all 200 will close, of course, the next decade will see dramatic changes in these institutions, even for those that survive the coming years.

What went wrong

There are, naturally, several causes of this decline. First, beginning in the 1960s, large state schools and systems intentionally created immense numbers of smaller regional campuses with the intention of driving private schools out of business.  

Second, many schools have become too dependent upon tuition and federal funding (especially federal funding of student loans), and prices have been driven up artificially because of public interference in the marketplace. Many colleges have shot themselves in the foot, pricing themselves out of the market.  

Third, something that few like to talk about in polite society: We face a demographic crisis not only because of falling birth rates, but, especially, because of legalized abortion since 1973. While no one knows for sure, abortions probably account for the loss of about 66 million Americans, with nearly one out of four women under the age of 50 having had at least one abortion. Putting aside the question of abortion’s morality, these numbers are staggering and telling, and we’re simply not replacing population like we once did through procreation.  

Fourth, all institutions of higher learning should be mission-driven, and almost none are; thus each one becomes essentially replaceable by every other college. Small private schools have especially become part of a vanilla tapioca over the last 50 years, bowing only to the heretical gods of race, class, and gender. 

Fifth, liberal arts schools, especially, have forgotten the meaning of the liberal arts, substituting a serious education in the classics for ridiculous novelty classes and courses driven only by hateful ideologies.  

Not surprisingly, those claiming to be the most anti-racist are, indeed, the most racist and hostile to majorities of student bodies. All of this results from the very crafty and insidious New Left playing the long game in the late 1960s, and entering in mass numbers the field of education and the institutions of culture. Unlike their parents, the Old Left, who embraced an economic form of Marxism, their children — red diaper babies — stood firm on a cultural form of Marxism. What was essentially Maoist in 1968 became political correctness in the early 1990s, and wokeness and DEI over the last 20 years.  

Most colleges hold a freshman orientation that serves as nothing more than a reworked consciousness-raising session and a left-wing struggle session. The radical Left seeks nothing less than the eradication of individuality. Though more gentle in their implementation, these college introductory sessions closely resemble China during the Cultural Revolution or Cambodia under Pol Pot. Further, some schools also have sexual exploration tents, introducing many students to the most depraved things possible.

In other words, many colleges subvert everything noble about Western civilization and human dignity and deserve a quick death.  

So, how can we recover one of the most important institutions of our civilization and prevent an even further decline into a moral and ethical dark age (even as our technology advances beyond our wildest imaginations)? To be sure, several institutions will fail, and given their own leanings toward totalitarian and inhumane ideologies — in thought and in practice — they deserve to die. But those that might return to first principles should have a fighting chance. How to give them one?

The better vision

First, we need to have more babies. Lots and lots of babies. As the economist Julian Simon so brilliantly noted, they are our ultimate resource. Not only are we missing 66 million Americans, but we’re also missing their creativity, their uniqueness, their talents, their personalities, and their artistry. We need stable families, too.

Second, colleges absolutely must return to first principles, especially in exploring and promoting their individual missions. It is impossible to attract students and donors without a comprehensive, telling, and fetching mission. Whether that mission is intellectual or religious or artistic, or some combination of all three, it is the only way an institution can weather the storms of society. A mission statement not only gives coherence to the college or university, but it also allows for distinctive and deep fundraising, and, equally important, it ties all students of a particular institution together across the generations. Otherwise, one institution easily blends into another institution, all a form of conformist homogeneity, conducive neither to excellence nor virtue.

Third, we must return to the proper understanding of education. For centuries over the course of Western civilization, education meant one thing: a proper understanding of the seven liberal arts, an understanding of the classical languages, with either philosophy or theology holding it all together. In other words, all education was liberal education, and everything else was a form of training. It was liberal in the sense of being “liberated from the immediate cares of the world.”  It focused on man, God, and man’s relationship to God. Its most important question was, “What is man?”

There’s nothing wrong with training, of course. Indeed, it’s extremely important in a complex society — such as with law and engineering — but it’s not the same thing as education. While it would be absurd and unrealistic for us to expect that major research universities will suddenly embrace the primacy of the liberal arts, we have every right to expect our major institutions to treat education and liberal education seriously. Before we do anything, we must first learn what it means to be human. After all, if we’re searching for profit in the business school or seeking the newest research on genetic modifications, we need an ethical and moral basis by which to decide such things, exaggerate our excellences, and temper our failings. We learn such things from Socrates, Cicero, St. Augustine, and Sir Thomas More.  

Fourth, colleges and universities must absolutely wean themselves from federal and state monies. With such strings come too many obligations that, again, drive us toward a reckless conformity. Our institutions, while rooted in the true, the good, and the beautiful, must be allowed to explore the limits of human creativity, tempered only by our ethics and morality. Governments can and do provide nothing healthy for a society of learning. While it is obvious that Harvard, with a $57 billion endowment, has absolutely no business taking public monies, it is equally important for smaller institutions to find alternative ways to pay for their campuses than by taking public monies. Such monies are healthy neither for the institution nor for the public.

A model institution

In all four of these things, my own institution, Hillsdale College, has led the way. Our acceptance rate is around 20%, and we can compete — in terms of standardized testing and scores — with the Ivy League.

First, we love life. Everywhere around town, around campus, and in my local Catholic parish, there are kids and kids and more kids. We seem to be having — and have had ever since I arrived in 1999 — a major baby boom. Yeah, it’s loud, and it’s messy, but it’s also brilliant and beautiful. That love of life extends to the way we treat our students and to the ways in which we treat our colleagues. We truly love one another.

Second, our mission statement defines every single thing we do at the college. Since our founding in 1844 by abolitionists, we have been absolutely and utterly colorblind. As such, we were the first college to integrate those of European and those of African descent. We were also the second college to allow women to study, though we were the first college to allow them to earn a liberal arts degree. During the American Civil War, we sent more men to the Union army than any other Northern college, and our men sacrificed themselves in vast numbers in the 24th Michigan infantry Regiment on the first day of Gettysburg, and in the 4th Michigan on the second day of Gettysburg.

In other words, we defied American culture and certainly governmental and political norms long before anyone else. Our mission statement notes that we are custodians of the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian inheritance and that we see America as an experiment of liberty under law. While I would exaggerate to claim that I remind myself of these things before every single class I teach, I wouldn’t be exaggerating by much. I have no problem reminding students, my colleagues, visitors, and donors of our mission. I am immensely proud to teach at such an institution. Frankly, every professor in America should feel such pride in their respective institutions. That can only happen with a distinctive mission statement.

Third, half of our courses are core courses at Hillsdale. In this, we are not alone. Christendom, Wyoming Catholic, and the University of Dallas are similar, as are programs at the University of Notre Dame, Faulkner University, and the University of Louisville (McConnell Center). St. John’s College and Thomas Aquinas College have even stricter core requirements. At Hillsdale, on day one of Western Heritage, required of all incoming freshmen, I have the grand privilege of teaching them Socrates and the Socratic ethic of never doing evil, even in the name of good. It is always challenging. At Hillsdale, we teach them not only Socrates, but also Cicero, St. John the Beloved, St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Petrarch, Martin Luther, and Sir Thomas More. We teach Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolkien, and Dostoevsky as well as Strauss, Jaffa, Voegelin, Hayek, Kirk, and Solzhenitsyn.   

Fourth, we take absolutely no federal funding, either through direct aid or indirect student loans. Yet, we keep our tuition very low, and last academic year, fewer than 10 students (not 10% but 10 total students) paid full tuition at the college. Few students pay much at all, as our donors cover their expenses. Almost all the credit for this goes to President Larry Arnn for his extraordinary vision, though it has been the tradition of the college going back to the earliest years to refuse government funding. We are fiercely independent, and we are financially very solid because of our independence. And it should be remembered, we were colorblind decades and decades before the government became so. It have nothing to teach us, nor should the government be in the position to teach anything to any institution of higher learning.

As we contemplate the future of higher education, we could do no better than to turn to the excellent advice of the late Russell Kirk, the founder of post-war conservatism and a wonderfully humane man, as well as a Hillsdale College professor.

“To what truths, then, ought the Academy to be dedicated? To the proposition that the end of education is the elevation of reason of the human person, for the human person’s own sake. To the proposition that the higher imagination is better than the sensate triumph. To the proposition that the fear of God, and not the mastery over man and nature, is the object of learning. To the proposition that equality is worth more than quantity. To the proposition that justice takes precedence over power. To the proposition that order is more lovable than egoism. To the proposition that to believe all things, if the choice must be made, is nobler than to doubt all things. To the proposition that honor outweighs success. To the proposition that tolerance is wiser than ideology. To the proposition, Socratic and Christian, that the unexamined life is not worth living. If the Academy holds by these propositions, not all the force of Caesar can break down its walls; but if the Academy is bent upon sneering at everything in heaven and earth, or upon reforming itself after the model of the market-place, not all the eloquence of the prophets can save it.”

***

Bradley J. Birzer is the Russell Amos Kirk chair in American studies and a professor of history at Hillsdale College. He is the author of 13 books, including his most recent book, “The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty.”

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

This weekend, Matt Murphy — ABC News legal analyst and former senior deputy district attorney — takes The Daily Wire behind the scenes on the road to justice. With decades of experience prosecuting cold cases, “no-body” murders, and serial killers (think the Golden State Killer and the Dating Game Killer) in homicide and sexual assault units, he now offers victims a fighting chance through his private practice. When he’s not penning the follow-up to his bestseller “The Book of Murder: A Prosecutor’s Journey Through Love and Death,” he’s chasing waves and making his peace all around the world. Here’s why uncovering society’s darkest evils only gives him more hope in humanity.

* * *

Matt Murphy greets me from his pied-à-terre on New York City’s Upper East Side with an iced coffee in hand. A long way from his home base in Manhattan Beach just south of Los Angeles, he’s kind of getting used to having his doorman call him “Mr. Murphy.”

“For a kid from California, it’s such a different world for me, the whole New York City deal,” he says, leaning into the sophisticated tradition of lobby attendants. “They’re like the only people that call me Mr. Murphy. Them or angry judges.” 

Fans of “20/20,” CrimeCon, and other true crime documentaries and podcasts will recognize Matt for his expert contributions after dedicating his life to the job. He just finished his latest book, set to come out next year. 

“This one’s a little deeper and a little darker,” he says. “It’s about serial killers. I prosecuted fourteen when I was in the homicide unit.” He just so happened to live in a state with the most victims in the country. “I hope people like it.” Like it? True crime’s winning streak shows no signs of stopping. With 52 homicide cases and zero losses under his belt, all Matt has to do is ride the wave. 

“You know, Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper probably kicked this whole interest off for everybody, and then Truman Capote. Now it keeps getting bigger. It’s getting a little haywire.” Segue to the trial of the summer: Lindsay Clancy. Matt didn’t work the case, but he has thoughts.

“That’s a trial where I can see objectively,” he says. “I got no dog in the fight. I don’t have kids. I’ve never suffered from postpartum. I don’t think the prosecution did a very good job. They made one mistake after another. It was frustrating to watch.” 

“The defense lawyer did a really good job tactically until closing arguments. He lost that juror. It’s like, dude, you picked that guy and you lost him in your closing. I guarantee you he’s hung juries that were 11 to one for the prosecution where he had nothing but praise for the holdout. And here’s this guy that holds out Lindsay Clancy. And it’s like the defense lawyer painted a target on his back.”

Noting how the prosecution lost the jury by muddling the case with useless arguments, Matt describes how he would have leaned into Clancy’s mental illness. “This lady’s batsh*t crazy, obviously,” he explains. “But can still control her conduct to the requirements of the law. That’s what the entire argument should have been from the prosecution.”

“They said it wasn’t a serious suicide attempt. Why would you argue that? Why not embrace the suicide attempt and say she absolutely wanted to kill herself and she wanted to take her kids with her? That’s called a murder-suicide and that’s somebody that knows exactly what she’s doing. Her motivations may be diluted, but that’s how you convict on a case like that.”

“There are plenty of people to point our fingers at, but at the end of the day, the person who let those kids down the most was Lindsay Clancy herself.” For this take, Matt received an onslaught of internet backlash. He says he’s “still a rookie” on the social media stuff and the “masochistic exercise called reading the comments.”

But pro-level legal strategy takes the lead over your typical influencer mom throwing a tantrum about how hard it is to parent. Instead of being overly emotional, it feels precise, unbiased, and true. Maybe that’s why for us outsiders, crime solving feels oddly soothing to the spirit. Unencumbered by society’s gray areas, it’s like a sacred puzzle coming together, each piece revealing the story of the voiceless.

“Your faith in humanity gets challenged when you see the murder,” Matt admits. “And then it’s restored immediately. You see everybody come together and see these detectives work their hearts out.”

“It really impresses upon you the importance of what you’re doing. And the enormity of trying to — it sounds corny, but it’s a real thing — trying to bring justice to the family of a person who’s been murdered. It becomes your calling.”

Paddling out

Matt got called to his very first murder case just as he finished surfing one morning. “I would bring a suit to the beach. And I would change in the parking lot and hope nobody noticed,” he remembers. “I’ve got sunscreen on. I’ve got a beat up old car with a surfboard in it. And I pull up to this crime scene with the yellow tape, and the guy with the clipboard looks at me and he’s like, ‘Who are you?’” 

The victim was sprawled out inside a beautiful townhome in Newport Beach. Matt recalls seeing two guns and a knife placed oddly in the victim’s hand. Bullets had been shot from a gun flush against the man’s chest after he was already down, embedding themselves into the rosewood floor under his back. This guy was “dead as a doornail,” but when detectives moved his body, his lungs compressed and he let out a groan. 

“This is something I’ve never even seen on TV. I hear the dead guy go, ‘Uhhh,’ and I’m like, holy sh*t, we’re sure this guy’s dead?” They had enough evidence to go for first-degree murder, but after the killer ex-girlfriend made bail, she bludgeoned another former lover to death, then rented a pistol at a gun range and eliminated herself from the equation. 

But none of that ruined Matt’s love of quality surf. These days, a typical morning involves catching three waves, hitting the gym, and sitting down at his desk by 10 a.m. “This is going to sound totally Californian, so bear with me,” he warns me. “A resident pod of Pacific bottlenose dolphins lives right there. They’re in the water every morning and they do what’s called spy-hopping, where they stick their eye out and look at you. It is tough to have a bad day after a dolphin has literally looked you up and down.”

He’s weeks out from a chartered surf trip he’s taking with a tight group of friends. “We’ve been doing this for 25 years,” he says. If they once aimed to be champion surfers, it’s a different story now. “We’re all in our fifties and the conversations have gone from girls we’re dating to what anti-inflammatory works best for you.”

They’ll spend 13 days off the coast of Indonesia surfing, scuba diving, and fishing. “We’re off the grid, which is wonderful. We go to these places where they keep putting in cell towers and then the locals canoe out and steal all the copper wiring.” This year, there’s talk of Starlink on the boat. “I hope it’s just a bad rumor. As soon as I have no ability to read my text messages or my emails, my stress level drops exponentially. I sleep like a baby on those trips.”

The “other” Manhattan

The Big Apple’s a little less surfable, but Matt discovers all available nature in Central Park. “I read this author who said that he would walk his way into thoughts,” Matt says. He leveraged the movement technique for himself to write two books. “It totally works. I go on a walk … just think about stuff. I would then pick a bench in Central Park, sit down, write, and then start walking again.”

A second writing tip that made use of the City That Never Sleeps? A bit of solitude. “Another thing that same guy said was for your first book, get an apartment in a city where you don’t know anybody and don’t tell anybody you’re doing it. That was my motivation to get the place in New York.”

To fuel the creative juices, Matt grabs coffee from Sant Ambroeus. Claiming he’s “not tough enough for black coffee,” he says his usual order is “basically a conduit for sugar and oat milk into my body.”

He stays fit and lean on his usual Manhattan Beach routine, but when in New York City, he says, “Every important meeting happens over a meal. The worst restaurant in New York is better than the best restaurant in L.A. Basically I sit around tables and eat too much.” 

East Coast Italian cuisine might be on point, but the West Coast food scene isn’t all bad. “The one food type that LA really does have on New York is Mexican food, and I’m a sucker for it. If they know how to make guacamole, you’ve got authentic Mexican food.”

A moment of zen

I’m curious about what one does to blow off steam after a long day of taking bad guys to task. “I had a crew of buddies in the DA’s office who are all now judges, but we would play tons and tons of golf.”

Along with those luscious greens, surfing isn’t the only thing keeping Matt’s mindset above water. “A recent passion that I’ve really gotten into is scuba diving,” he says. “In the Caribbean, they have a huge problem with lionfish.” The invasive species went rogue when pet lionfish entered the local ecosystem in the ’80s. “In Cuba, biologists are trying to train the local sharks, groupers, and eels to see and recognize lionfish as a food source. They go down with scuba divers and they let you hunt the lionfish and feed the sharks off a spear. It is the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.”

Matt’s more of a catch-and-release kind of guy, but just one lionfish can eat a hundred reef fish in a day. “Every lionfish you kill, you’re helping the reef,” he says. I can’t help but notice the oceanic justice. 

 

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In the Sea of Cortez off Baja California, Matt dives with bull sharks, one of the most dangerous species in the world next to great whites and tiger sharks. If you want to live in the moment, make eye contact with one of these fellas.

“When you’re looking at a 10-foot bull shark swimming up to you — they’ve never touched a diver — and they look you in the eye, you are pretty focused on what’s happening right then and there,” he says. “If you want a way to forget whatever other noise you have going on in your life, dive with bull sharks because you are completely absorbed in that moment.”

If he can’t swing the saltwater thing, he’ll settle for owning a few sharks in court. He recently defended an innocent LA County police officer involved in an on-duty shooting of a known gangster. “If my client had gone to prison, he wouldn’t have survived between BLM and the gangs. There were so many threats on his life, there were threats on his children’s lives. They even threatened to kill his dog.” The case was ultimately dismissed. 

“When I left the DA’s office, I didn’t know if I was ever going to find cases that I could get passionate about again. We fought it and we won. It is incredibly rewarding,” he says. I could listen to Matt’s stories forever, but I’ll catch up with him on his next episode of “20/20.”

“I think true crime sort of offers us a little anchor of stability for people that are just kind of over all the vitriol,” he says. “I hope so anyway. It makes me optimistic.”

***

Ben Domenech: When I was growing up, one of my best memories was console gaming with my siblings. We were homeschooled, and once we finished our studies for the day, we had permission to go downstairs and game for a certain amount of time. What was your experience along those lines when you were growing up?

Palmer Luckey: I don’t think I got seriously into gaming until I was a bit older. I mostly played console games with my friends growing up, but then I got really into PC gaming when I was 10, 11, or 12 — and really got into computers.

BD: What games were taking up most of your time in both periods?

PL: Oh, man. On the console side, the late 1990s were a Pokémon world in a way that nobody will ever understand unless they were there. It’s hard to communicate to people because, of course, it’s still the largest media franchise on an ongoing basis. But there was Pokémon mania in the 1990s.

I also got really into Super Smash Bros. and GoldenEye 007. On the PC side, I played Descent and Quake III Arena. Later, I got into Team Fortress and Team Fortress 2, and I spent an enormous amount of time playing TF2. I was a PC gamer, though I also spent a lot of time playing Halo and Halo 2.

BD: Who did you play as in Team Fortress?

PL: I was almost always the Heavy Weapons Guy. I jumped around — I played Soldier, Scout, and Spy — but mostly I was Heavy.

I had a group of guys I played with all the time from the ModRetro forum. I started the ModRetro forums as a place for people to combine the best of modern electronics with vintage electronics, especially by turning old game consoles into portables. That was the crew I regularly played TF2 with.

I think the reason I mainly played Heavy was that everybody had their role. We figured out how to work together very effectively. We always knew how to push the cart and stay on the point. It’s a lot more fun to play games like that cooperatively with friends than with random people you’ll never see again.

BD: What do you think we lost when gaming started to move away from that model and toward something you do with strangers?

PL: It happened when the games industry moved, in so many ways, from innovation to extraction. They ruined a lot of the natural dynamics that made these games special.

I like that you can do online multiplayer trivially easily in most games now. But I also remember that, if you wanted to play Halo 2 with your friends, what you really wanted to do was get together, hold a LAN party, and plug all your Xboxes into one another. The same thing was true with PCs. A lot of modern games — probably most modern multiplayer games — don’t support that even as an option.

So, when you ask what was lost, that’s a very clear example. It’s not just that they are encouraging us to play in a much more isolated way. It’s not just that they’re discouraging split-screen play or LAN parties. It’s that they’ve completely removed support for those methods of play because they want everything gated through data-collecting, revenue-generating subscription services.

BD: I think that’s such a different cultural phenomenon from what gaming used to be. I remember going to a friend’s office, where a bunch of guys who were a little older than me were playing Doom II on their office computers and yelling at one another in person. It’s a completely different experience from having some random stranger yell at you online.

What is really lost when the attitude is all about data — when every gamer is treated as a commodity instead of someone participating in a distinctly social experience?

PL: What’s happened is a very negative, self-reinforcing loop. Developers spend more and more on games, creating huge set pieces and assembling absolutely massive teams. When I was growing up, many of my favorite games were made by teams of a dozen or maybe two dozen people. There are still lots of great games being made by teams that size today.

But the big industry has reached the point of having such large budgets that it can’t start the game-development process by asking, “What’s something new we can do on the gameplay side that people will really love?” It has to start with: “How will this make money? What is the model?” Instead of saying, “This is a new type of fighting game,” it says, “This is a free-to-play live-service game.” They have to start with the business model to pay the bills that come with modern game development.

I’m sorry — I was ranting a bit.

BD: No, I completely hear you. The comparison I’ve made is that it’s the difference between gathering at a friend’s house to play poker together and playing poker with strangers online. The two experiences have almost no resemblance to each other.

PL: I know this is going to sound weird, but the dynamic you’re talking about is exactly one of the things I was hopeful about when I was running Oculus VR. My hope was that you could use technology to recreate a lot of that sitting-around-with-friends, face-to-face feeling — that you could feel embodied and present in a virtual environment in a way that was akin to what you could do with those multiplayer games.

Some games have successfully pulled that off. They really make you feel as if you’re all there, doing something together in person. Unfortunately, as the industry moved beyond indie gamers and visionaries who understood that having people co-present — even virtually — felt very different, it instead moved back to the lowest common denominator: people who drink Starbucks and not Mountain Dew.

They don’t get it. They don’t understand. They weren’t around for split-screen gaming. They weren’t around for LAN parties. A lot of them don’t even care about games, per se. They’re in the industry because they want to pursue some social-justice agenda, or because they couldn’t cut it in a real job. The games industry is a place where people willing to work for too little money can come in pretty easily, especially if they have friends on the inside hooking them up. Unfortunately, even the VR industry has turned into basically the exact same kind of slop as the rest of the industry — just in VR.

BD: I have a five-year-old and a three-year-old — two daughters — and this is something that happened just this week. I brought home ModRetro Tetris, opened it up and told them, “This is Tetris, and you girls need to share.”

They fired it up. It took them a little while to figure it out, but then they started going back and forth and paying attention to their scores. When I left, I thought, “This is amazing.” In the space of three days, they were already getting a little good at it.

It was such an echo of my own experience, and one that feels totally alien to so many other gaming experiences today. Talk a little bit about children’s exposure to games — and particularly the tangibility of what you’re trying to do with this project.

PL: I was deeply involved with the development of ModRetro Tetris. If you look at the credits, it’s only about nine people — which is a good example of what I was just talking about. I think it’s my favorite version of Tetris ever. We were able to combine many of the best elements of old-school Tetris with some of the modern rules and competitive improvements that people have decided they like.

I got distracted by the Tetris side of it. What was the second part of the question?

BD: It was interesting to see my children — whose experience with games until now has essentially been limited to dancing games, or things where you’re posing in front of a little camera — have something tangible in their hands for the first time. They immediately caught on and then asked, “Are there more games? Can we play those?” I even let them watch a YouTube review of some of the original games so they could pick which ones I would order for them, which I did.

It was interesting to see kids interacting with games in that way. Do you think part of this project is about showing kids a different avenue toward gameplay that they might never have experienced?

PL: One hundred percent. Modern games are basically dopamine-addiction apparatuses. Even if the people building the games didn’t set out to create that, they have to build them that way by necessity. Many of the things that keep you coming back and hooked don’t use the same mechanisms that games used to.

Games didn’t used to have all these artificial mechanisms to keep you engaged. You were engaged because you were explicitly striving for excellence, trying to get a high score or entering that flow state. I think Tetris and many games like it have more in common with physical games such as mancala or Go — which people have been playing for hundreds or even thousands of years — than they do with modern smartphone-style video games. It’s a totally different mechanism of attraction and retention, and I wish the games industry could get back to that on a broader basis.

It attracts a certain type of person, and I would argue that it may even help form someone into a certain type of person. Look at the sort of person who is prototypically playing smartphone games like Candy Crush, and then look at Tetris. Jeff Bezos has said on the record that Tetris reprograms your brain; he was huge into Tetris. Even Hillary Clinton was famously addicted to Tetris. She has said so in interviews, and there are pictures of her aboard Air Force One playing Tetris on her personal Game Boy.

Even when you get to people who can experience anything, there is something about some of these games that still makes them unique, standalone experiences. Those people aren’t the ones going in to play Fortnite and FarmVille.

BD: There is obviously a significant concern — mostly among conservative parents, but not entirely — about children’s screen usage and screen time, particularly in the context of education. I know you’re familiar with that. What makes this type of “screen time” different, from your perspective, in terms of the way your brain responds to it?

PL: I think it is very different because it was designed in a different age, for different reasons and with a different business model. People were trying to sell you a game and make you want to buy it. They weren’t trying to keep you coming back 365 days in a row, obsessively checking every box and tapping into a lot of the psychological mania that many people have latent inside them.

As I mentioned before, I really do think many older video games are more like non-video games, partly because that’s what inspired them. The people who built early video games didn’t grow up with other video games to inspire them. They grew up inspired by things in the physical world: actual physical puzzles, crossword puzzles or literal geometric puzzles.

Tetris is basically a real-world puzzle game of the kind that has existed for thousands of years, turned into something you can do in bite-sized chunks on a digital device. It has nothing in common with the social, local, mobile-subscription-service games that kids are getting hooked on today. That’s what makes it different. Those games were created from things that have compelled people for thousands of years, rather than from the trends of the past 10 or 15 years.

I’m much more comfortable letting my kid play Tetris for hours than most of the games coming out today.

BD: One hundred percent. I also think it’s a lot like how building with LEGOs rewires your brain.

PL: That’s a great example. I had so many LEGOs, and I played with them until I wore the edges off.

BD: My kids are still playing with the plastic tubs of LEGOs that I collected as a kid. They dump them out and play with them.

PL: It’s funny you mention that, because I was about to say that even modern LEGO has lost its way in some respects. The company is building collectible knickknacks for adults and leaning so heavily on specialized pieces that the sets are much less configurable than they used to be. They used to have connection points along basically every surface and every facet. Now you have huge, curving plastic pieces and internal skeleton pieces that make it very hard to build anything cohesive.

You can build greebled mecha, with a bunch of crazy stuff sticking off the sides, but it’s harder to build structures.

BD: I had the same experience. I bought my older daughter a couple of different LEGO sets that she wanted when we went to the store. As she was working on them, I thought, “This is really different.” So I got the old tubs out, and they play with those much more than they do the new stuff.

The other thing they do — and I love that they do this — is respond to things they’ve seen by making something of their own. They were watching the end of an F1 race on TV, for instance. Afterward, one of my daughters tried to draw the F1 car, while the other started building one. That’s a completely different, tangible experience, and I think we’ve lost something like that in some of these projects.

Let’s shift to the M64 project. For people who don’t know, explain why it is so significant — why it’s important and what was lacking in the marketplace.

PL: It really gets back to how ModRetro started. I started ModRetro in 2009 as an internet forum for people who were like me. We were reverse-engineering many of these consoles and turning them into handhelds.

The M64 project actually began in the 2010s. Many of us grew up with the N64. Originally, it was a project to build a portable Nintendo 64 by reverse-engineering the original, creating our own cloned schematic and then using original Nintendo 64 chips to build a new, super-portable Nintendo 64. We were going to build 64 of them.

Over time, as FPGA technology advanced, we realized it would be possible to build something that didn’t rely on old chips. We could reverse-engineer the Nintendo 64 and then build a new Nintendo 64 that would allow our kids — and everyone else — to play the games they already own.

Have you seen the deep-dive video I did on the M64?

The Nintendo 64 wasn’t designed to keep working for 30 or 40 years. They didn’t gold-plate many of the connectors, so they oxidize and stop working. They also used capacitors that can blow or go bad over time.

Most importantly, the original Nintendo 64 hardware doesn’t even work with most modern televisions. Very few modern TVs support composite video, and the ones that do typically support it in very poor, naïve ways. We wanted to make something you could use with the modern TV you already have in your house.

People say, “Palmer, wouldn’t it be more authentic if people just got an old CRT, repaired their Nintendo 64 and did it that way?” Absolutely. There’s a place for that, but it’s an enthusiast thing.

BD: Yes. For the first three years my wife was with me, she kept asking, “Why do you still have that chunky old TV? You have to get rid of that.”

PL: Exactly. For a lot of people, it isn’t an option. They don’t know how to repair their old console. They aren’t going to be able to convince their wife to let them keep their old CRT running in the house. Whatever the reason, you would never reach a new audience that way.

We wanted to bring back the Nintendo 64 and that whole era of gaming — just as we did with Chromatic — to a totally new audience. The way to do that was to make something easy to buy, low-cost and totally authentic to the original experience. You just plug it into your TV and play.

BD: As I said, some of my favorite memories are of playing those games — playing GoldenEye with my brother and sister in the basement and yelling at one another. It was such an embodied experience.

PL: That’s exactly what we’re trying to protect. On Chromatic and M64, we’ve been rereleasing many of these old games. Some of them are hard to find and expensive in working condition. Some are insanely expensive.

We just rereleased ZAS, which was a Game Boy game that was going for around $4,000 because so few copies were available for sale. Even games that everyone played — old Pokémon games, for example — now regularly go for more than $100 just for loose cartridges. It’s kind of crazy. We’re trying to make that accessible.

The original idea for the M64 project dates to around 2012, with a group of ModRetro members. It got serious around 2016. That was when we started X-raying boards, sanding them down and building schematics. We built the first reverse-engineered version back then. It was very early and needed a lot of work, but the project was first working in the 2010s.

BD: I know you’re a busy guy, and I don’t want to take too much of your time. Just two more questions.

The cliché cited by many social conservatives — many of whom are friends of mine — is about young men in their basements with their video games. You know the whole spiel. It seems to me that what you’re saying is: Instead of just complaining about this, why don’t we make gaming better — better for the soul, better for friendship and better for camaraderie?

PL: You’ve got it exactly right. And the best part is that I don’t have to be a genius to do this. The blueprint is already there. It’s in the games that the reasonably well-adjusted conservative adults of today grew up with.

The games we played didn’t ruin us, and they didn’t turn us into iPad kids. Even without getting into the science or the brain waves, anyone who has seen an iPad kid and then seen kids sitting around a Nintendo 64 playing GoldenEye knows there is a radical, massive difference between the two things — even if both happen to involve a screen.

BD: For someone who is convinced by your argument — or at least open to it — what entry point would you suggest? I talk to my friends about screens and iPad kids all the time.

If you have children who are 10 or younger and you want to expose them to an experience that has largely disappeared — the kind you had as a kid, which did not screw you up — where should they start? Which of these products or games should they adopt?

PL: On the Chromatic side, I’d say two kids with two Chromatics and two copies of Tetris, playing head-to-head with an actual link cable — not over the internet. That’s pretty much the pinnacle of what you can do on a road trip or sitting on a couch.

Then, if you’re going back into older games, the N64 is interesting. It was one of Nintendo’s worst-selling consoles, but so many of its most important experiences involved local cooperative or competitive play. That’s not the case today. Almost every popular N64 game was an in-person multiplayer game that was about socializing people.

Let’s run through the list: Mario Kart 64; Mario Party 1, 2 and 3; GoldenEye 007; Star Fox 64 multiplayer; Perfect Dark; and, of course, Super Smash Bros. How did I almost forget that?

You can pick any one of those games, take your iPad kids and put them in front of it. If you’re worried about screens, watch an iPad kid sit in front of an N64 with his three best buddies and play Smash Bros. It is a totally different experience, a totally different kind of brain activation. Those two activities look nothing alike.

I know a lot of people simply think the way they grew up was better. But in this case, games have gotten so bad for kids’ brains that the old and new experiences are basically incomparable.

To use an analogy — maybe this is a good thing to end the call on — have you ever used marijuana?

BD: I have not.

PL: Neither have I. I’m totally straight-edge. So we’re two squares having this conversation.

Something that quite a few people are familiar with — and an analogy that many of my more delinquent friends have understood when we’ve discussed this issue — is the difference between marijuana then and now.

There are people today who grew up smoking the kind of pot that existed in the 1960s: hippie pot that was relatively low-potency. There was a lot of ritual and a communal aspect to it. Much of it was a ritualistic protest against the man: “Look at us. We’re criminals. We’re ne’er-do-wells. We’re not part of their system. We’re using marijuana — the devil’s lettuce.”

That’s totally incomparable to marijuana or THC use today. The hits people take from their vapes today are hundreds of times stronger and contain hundreds of times more THC than what people used back then. Marijuana has been hyper-optimized. Even natural marijuana is dozens of times more potent than what people were smoking 20, 30, 40, or 50 years ago.

I think games are the same way, and some people haven’t figured that out. You, I, and our friends talk about these issues and say, “Man, I don’t want to raise an iPad kid.” We know there is something different about the games we grew up with.

The real discussion should be about parents who don’t understand that the games their kids play are not the games they grew up with. New games don’t affect children the same way. They do not give children the same benefits — or even the same lack of benefits.

Right now, many parents who played games as kids are letting their children become iPad kids. They’re like the hippies who smoked dirt weed in the 1960s and 1970s and think there’s no difference between that and their teenager smoking something 100 times more potent today.

People like you and me need to sound the alarm. That doesn’t mean we need to play only old-school games. But we need to recognize that something new, stronger, and more addictive has been one-shotting all our kids — and we have to protect them from it.

***

***

Today, the country marks the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The pictures of that day bring back the fear Americans felt in the days and weeks that followed. But out of that fear came a wave of national unity and pride that we haven’t come close to experiencing since.

Looking back at the polling after 9/11 is a reminder that the past is another country. Our immediate instinct was to come together. In one poll, 72% said the country was going in the right direction; just 11% said it was off on the wrong track.

The post-9/11 period was the last sustained stretch of when a majority of Americans were optimistic about the country. There were smaller rallies at the start of the Iraq War and after Saddam Hussein’s capture. But by 2004, “wrong track” had taken the lead, and we haven’t looked back since.

The same went for presidential job approval. Americans rallied behind George W. Bush, including overwhelming majorities of Democrats. Democratic job approval reached well into the 80s in September 2001. The conventional wisdom is that Iraq broke our post-9/11 unity. But the rally lasted longer than people remember. Bush’s overall approval was still above its pre-9/11 level when the Iraq War began 18 months later. The invasion itself triggered another rally. Partisan divisions had already begun to return, but the prolonged insurgency deepened them. By Bush’s second term, we were settling into the extreme polarization that has carried through to today.

Notice where Bush’s job approval was among Democrats before 9/11, during normal times: nearly 30% — roughly where it returned before the Iraq War, then briefly spiked to close to 50%.

Those out-party approval numbers would be unheard of for a president of any party today.

The 2000 election gave us the modern partisan alignment that 2016 ratified. But 9/11 interrupted it. The unity that followed was a great anomaly, born of something nobody would have wished for. We haven’t seen unity on that scale in a national emergency since.

More jarring still are the figures for Congress, trust in government, the political parties, and the press. Start with Congress. In the days before the attacks, its approval stood at 42%. A month later, it had doubled to 84%.

In January 2001, just 31% of Americans trusted the federal government to do what was right. In October 2001, 60% did.

Even before the attacks, both parties were viewed more positively than negatively. Both improved afterward, with Republicans holding a 56-22 favorability rating and Democrats 48-23 in December 2001.

Even the media benefited. The share saying news organizations generally got their facts straight rose from 35% in early September to 46% in November. The share saying that news organizations stood up for America rose from 43% to 69%. The share viewing them as protecting democracy rose from 46% to 60%.

Thankfully, America hasn’t faced an attack like 9/11 in the quarter century since. Amid today’s doomerism, it’s worth remembering that the worst fears about what comes next don’t always come to pass. America bounced back.

But we have faced major national emergencies since — Covid-19 being the most prominent — and the public reaction was nowhere close to what we saw after 9/11. Donald Trump’s overall approval went up a few points in March 2020 and a Gallup poll recorded 60% approval of Trump’s handling of coronavirus, including 27% of Democrats. But by the summer of 2020, 77% of Americans thought the country was more divided than before the outbreak.

These numbers can’t be separated from Trump’s own conduct. Other world leaders enjoyed longer rallies, but those, too, faded as the pandemic dragged on and inflation took hold. The contrast with Bush is striking: 9/11 arguably guaranteed his re-election, even as Iraq grew more difficult.

Nor has the recent upsurge in political violence produced anything resembling that broader sense of unity. The assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the killing of Charlie Kirk a year ago didn’t produce any lasting change in public opinion.

Perhaps some of this comes down to the sheer scale of 9/11, the first mass-casualty attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. But it also happened in a country that was already more trusting and optimistic than the one we live in today. If the same thing happened today, I suspect the grief would be just as great, but the sense of shared purpose and unity nowhere close.

***

Patrick Ruffini is a pollster at Echelon Insights, author of PARTY OF THE PEOPLE, and creator of The Intersection newsletter.

Texas PAC, a new group connected to Senate Leadership Fund, purchased roughly $32 million in broadcast television advertising on Friday across the Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin markets, according to Politico. Senate Republicans are reportedly preparing to spend more than $50 million on the race.

The new spending marks Senate Leadership Fund’s first financial involvement in Texas since the Republican primary. The super PAC, affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), previously stayed out of the Texas contest despite reserving hundreds of millions of dollars for other competitive Senate races.

The investment follows a $10 million ad buy from MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, earlier this month. That money was split evenly between positive ads for Paxton and negative ads against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, according to a Federal Election Commission filing.

Elon Musk’s America PAC has also spent more than $2.6 million on phone calls, text messages, printed advertisements, and other efforts supporting Paxton and opposing Talarico, according to The Texas Tribune.  

Republican groups have now spent or reserved $60.8 million in advertising since Paxton won the May runoff, compared with $43.7 million from Democrats, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact. Nearly all the Democratic spending has come from Talarico’s campaign.

The spending surge comes after polling shows an unusually competitive contest in a state that last elected a Democratic senator in 1988. An AARP survey released Thursday found Talarico leading Paxton 48% to 44% among likely voters, with 8% undecided. 

Thune supported Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) over Paxton during the Republican primary and had previously described Paxton as “scandal-plagued.” After Paxton defeated Cornyn in the runoff following Trump’s endorsement, however, Republican leaders began publicly urging Trump’s political operation to invest in the race. Thune told Fox News that Republicans needed to help Paxton because Texas has an unusually expensive media environment, with 20 television markets across the state.

The Republican leadership’s new investment comes as Trump has repeatedly emphasized the importance of keeping Texas in Republican hands. 

At the Dallas convention, Trump said Republicans “have to elect Ken Paxton,” adding that he would return to Texas “twice or three times” if necessary to campaign for him. Trump also used his convention appearances to attack Talarico while defending Paxton, though he continued his pattern of joking about Paxton’s appearance and mannerisms.

“He may not dress right. He may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best looking guy I’ve ever seen,” Trump said, before calling Paxton “the greatest attorney general in America” and saying he deserved to be the next senator.

Senate Majority PAC, the Democratic Senate super PAC, has not yet reserved advertising time in Texas. A spokesperson for the group described the Republican spending as evidence that Paxton’s campaign requires significant outside assistance.

The newly released 9/11 Commission summary of the President’s Daily Briefs, or PDBs, shows that years before the attacks, intelligence reaching the president warned that Osama bin Laden wanted to strike inside the United States. It reported that his network had infrastructure in North America, warned about hijackings, described operatives testing airport security and, in September 1998, raised the possibility that a group connected to the East Africa embassy bombings might fly an explosive-packed airplane into an American city.

That was three years before American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower. The United States did not fail to notice al-Qaeda. It failed to understand what kind of enemy it faced.

Washington knew bin Laden was a threat. The CIA tracked his organization, the United States launched cruise missiles against his camps, the FBI investigated his supporters, and presidents were repeatedly briefed on the risks. But the files released this week show that al-Qaeda was still being viewed largely through the framework of terrorism we already knew: bombings, hostage taking, attacks against American facilities overseas, and hijackings in which terrorists seized an aircraft to make demands.

Reading these documents through an intelligence and targeting lens, the problem was not simply a lack of information. Important pieces were already there. The harder failure was recognizing that those pieces were describing an enemy that was innovating operationally, taking familiar terrorist methods and repurposing them in ways our assumptions did not account for.

The Warning Was There

Intelligence is rarely clean. A report does not become fact because it appears in a classified document. Analysts have to judge sources, weigh reliability, challenge assumptions, and separate credible reporting from rumor. The lesson in these files is not that we should have believed every warning. It is that the reporting changed before our understanding of the enemy did.

A July 1998 PDB summarized reports that bin Laden was planning attacks inside the United States, including possible attacks in Washington. The sources were considered highly questionable, but the possibility of a homeland attack had reached the president.

After the East Africa embassy bombings the following month, the reporting continued. An August 28 PDB said bin Laden’s network remained intact and that he was considering attacks in the United States. On September 1 came UBL’s Infrastructure in North America. Three days later, another PDB reported that bin Laden had associates inside the country.

None of those reports, by itself, predicted September 11. But by the fall of 1998, the reporting was repeatedly raising a different problem than the one Washington had spent years confronting overseas. Bin Laden was not only threatening Americans abroad. Intelligence increasingly pointed toward the homeland. That should have changed how later reporting was viewed.

The Aircraft Was Already In The Reporting

A September 10, 1998 PDB, UBL’s Location and Intentions, reported that bin Laden’s preferred option was to strike the United States on its own soil in Washington. It also contained one of the most significant pieces of intelligence in the files: a walk-in source claimed the group responsible for the embassy bombings in Africa might fly an explosive-packed airplane into an American city.

The assessment cautioned that there was no conclusive information about bin Laden’s future plans. That caveat was appropriate. The reporting did not prove such an operation existed, but it gave analysts a scenario serious enough to test.

The 9/11 Commission later found that the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center did not analyze how a hijacked or explosives-laden aircraft might be used as a weapon. It did not develop indicators for that type of attack, and the intelligence community did not establish collection requirements to look for them. The Commission noted that such analysis could have identified one of the terrorists’ critical operational requirements: finding suicide operatives capable of flying large jet aircraft.

That is where this becomes more than a missed warning. Intelligence does not always tell you exactly what the enemy will do. Sometimes it gives you enough to start working backward from the operation. If al-Qaeda wanted to use an aircraft as a weapon, it would need people who could fly. Those people would need training. They would need access to the United States and its aviation system. The plotters would need to understand airport security and might test it beforehand. Once you identify those requirements, they become things you can look for.

Three months later, more pieces appeared. A December 4, 1998 PDB, Bin Laden Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks, described preparations for attacks inside the U.S. A senior bin Laden operative was expected to meet with counterparts in the U.S. to discuss options, while reporting described plans that could include hijacking an American airliner. Two members of an operational team had apparently evaded security checks during a trial run at an unidentified New York airport. Members of bin Laden’s network had also received hijacking training.

That was significant reporting: hijacking training, U.S. counterparts and an airport security trial run. Yet the expected purpose of the hijacking remained familiar. The aircraft would be seized to secure the release of imprisoned extremists, including the Blind Sheikh.

That assumption mattered. Al-Qaeda did not have to invent hijacking. It only had to change what hijacking was for. The possibility that the airplane itself could be the weapon had already entered presidential intelligence, but it did not become the framework against which later reporting was tested.

The Assumption That Failed

By 2001, the reporting around bin Laden had grown substantially. The August 6 PDB, Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US, is now one of the best-known intelligence documents associated with 9/11. Read alongside the files released this week, it looks less like an isolated warning and more like the culmination of a threat stream that had been building for years.

The brief said bin Laden’s followers had been told to “bring the fighting to America.” It reported that al-Qaeda members had lived in or traveled to the U.S. for years and that the organization apparently maintained a support structure that could aid attacks. It also cited FBI information showing suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other attacks, while noting that the FBI was conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considered bin Laden-related.

It was the 36th PDB item that year relating to bin Laden or al-Qaeda, but the first devoted specifically to the possibility of an attack inside the U.S. Five weeks remained before 9/11. The brief also noted that earlier reporting about a possible hijacking had not been corroborated. That caution was warranted, but by then new information was pointing again to possible hijacking preparations. At that point, the older reporting should have been reconsidered in light of the new threat picture.

If the 1998 reporting was wrong about why al-Qaeda wanted an airplane, that did not necessarily mean it was wrong about al-Qaeda’s interest in aircraft. Those are different intelligence questions. New information can change the significance of reporting that once looked weak or incomplete.

Another August 2001 PDB noted that bin Laden’s operational practices had become “expert and flexible.” That phrase deserves more attention. An enemy that is expert and flexible learns. Al-Qaeda had already demonstrated that it could spend years preparing an operation, adjust after setbacks, and give operatives flexibility in how attacks were carried out.

Bojinka is a good example. The 1995 plot to bomb U.S. airliners over the Pacific unraveled, but the idea did not disappear with it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had already been thinking about using aircraft as weapons while working on the plot, and he later carried that concept into the operation that became 9/11.

That is why you cannot hunt that kind of network by asking only what it did last time. You have to ask what it learned from failure, what it kept, what it discarded, and what it might do differently the next time. That was the larger analytic problem. The United States recognized al-Qaeda as a dangerous terrorist organization, but it had not fully adjusted to an adversary that was studying American systems, identifying vulnerabilities and adapting familiar tactics to exploit them.

What September 12 Made Clear

A PDB prepared hours after the attacks described mounting evidence that extremists in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf knew bin Laden-directed attacks were imminent. Extremists reportedly knew a probable operation existed. Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar had also reportedly clashed over bin Laden’s determination to carry out attacks, and bin Laden told Omar that he had operations underway that would cause great damage to the United States.

After the attack, those pieces fit together in a way they had not before. That is why describing 9/11 simply as a failure to warn does not go far enough. America was warned. The deeper failure was understanding the adversary well enough to recognize what those warnings could mean before the operation was complete.

That is what makes these files worth studying beyond another round of anniversary headlines. The United States knew bin Laden wanted to strike America. It knew al-Qaeda could plan operations over years. It had reporting on operatives inside the country, hijacking training, airport security testing, and even the possibility of an airplane being flown into an American city. No single report predicted September 11, but together they described an enemy adapting faster than our assumptions.

That is the lesson worth carrying forward. Intelligence collection gives you pieces of the picture, but collection alone is not enough. Analysis has to determine what those pieces mean, and targeting has to ask what the adversary must do next for an operation to succeed. Before September 11, the U.S. had important pieces of that picture. It did not connect them in time. That was the gap the hijackers flew through.

The West has imported millions of immigrants from Muslim countries, a huge swath of whom do not support Western values. The West has continued to excuse and appease Islamic radicalism across the globe, with some rare exceptions. Many Americans, nearly the entire Left along with the horseshoe Right, now agree with the anti-American worldview promoted by Osama bin Laden that the United States and the West are chiefly responsible for suffering around the world, and that Islamic terrorism is simply blowback for Western sin.

Let’s start with a history lesson, a lesson in memory. There are a lot of people listening to my show and walking around the United States who weren’t alive for 9/11.

You have to be about 30 or older to remember 9/11. For a lot of folks, this is the first time they’re even experiencing what history was.

That’s just a reality. As time moves on, things become more distant.

But for an entire generation of people, for several generations of people, this was the worst moment in American history. What ought we remember on the 25th anniversary of 9/11?

Of course, we should remember the pain Americans suffered and still suffer.

When we remember, it is not enough to be vague about that day, but that seems to be the purposeful tendency: to be vague.

Who did it and what did they think? If you listen to our politicians, they have no idea. It is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. It’s just a bad thing that happened, and we have no idea why or how it happened, or what the people who did it thought, or what people who still agree with them today think.

Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York — a man who once rapped in solidarity with the Holy Land Five, the people who went to jail for material support of terrorism via the Holy Land Foundation — has nothing but sympathy for a wide variety of Islamic radicals.

He issued this statement:

We remember 9/11 as the darkest day in our city’s history, but we also remember what so many New Yorkers did in that darkness. We remember the thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers who lined up for hours to donate blood. We remember the people who opened their homes to those who could not get home. We remember the workers who carried their colleagues down hundreds of stairs, then turned around and went back up to find someone else who needed help. 

25 years later, we have a sacred obligation to those who were stolen from us to care for one another as they cared for strangers, to live lives worthy of the sacrifices they made, and to build a city worthy of their courage. A city where we run toward one another. That is how we remember.

Everything that Mamdani is saying here would be equally applicable if the towers had simply collapsed on their own.

If you were just watching this, if you didn’t know anything about it, if you were a young person who didn’t live through 9/11, if you were an alien who landed on planet Earth today, you would have no idea who did what and to whom.

There is a purposeful attempt to obscure what happened on 9/11, who did it, and why they did it.

The top of The New York Times web page had the following three headlines. Headline number one: “25 years after 9/11, a nation gathers to remember and to mourn the lives lost.”

Headline number two: “Trump personifies a nation moving on.”

Headline number three: “Islamophobia shaped a generation of Muslim New Yorkers.” There was also this headline from The New York Times: “Facing Islamophobia. Mamdani keeps focus on 9/11 victims.”

Never mind that many of the 9/11 victims don’t want him around. They certainly don’t want him attending their events.

This is worse than useless. It is counterproductive. It is a total betrayal of the American people and the victims of 9/11 and their families and all the people who fought to defend America in the aftermath. We have to remember and relive the evil that happened on 9/11, because if we don’t, what we forget is the nature of our enemies, who are still out there and still doing things and still think the same things.

On 9/11, 2,977 Americans were murdered while two American airplanes were hijacked and flown directly into the World Trade Center. Flight 11 was the first flight that hit; it hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. There were 87 passengers on board, including the crew. Everyone was killed instantly. Every stairwell route above floor 91 was severed. No one could escape if you were above that floor.

There are many, many, many tapes of people who were located in the towers who were calling their families to tell them they loved them because they knew they would never come home to them. 

Firefighters immediately started rushing the buildings, trying to get people out. Hundreds of firefighters were killed on 9/11.

The second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. The 60 passengers who were on board, including the crew, were instantly killed.

People on the street tried to dodge the debris as it began raining down from the towers.

The footage is astonishing. Much of this footage wasn’t made publicly available for years because there was essentially a conspiracy of silence to keep these images from becoming ingrained in an entire generation of Americans beyond the basics. Why?

Because Americans might respond terribly.

People began leaning out of the towers, trying to breathe, trying to survive, if they were above the stories that had been hit. They had nowhere to go. At least 37 people, probably well over 50, ended up jumping to their deaths from the North Towers because people were trapped in the heat.

It is important to recognize what America’s enemies are willing to do. This is what they celebrated. People were dancing in the streets in certain places on planet Earth.

There was a third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, that hit the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. The 59 passengers and crew were killed instantly. One hundred and twenty-five military and civilian personnel died inside the building as well. It was like a missile hitting the Pentagon.

There was the horrifying sight of the South Tower collapsing at 9:59 a.m., with somewhere between 600 and 1,000 people dying inside the South Tower, including 343 New York City Fire Department firefighters and 71 law enforcement officers.

Meanwhile, one of the great stories of heroism in American history was taking place aboard United Airlines Flight 93. That flight to the fourth plane had been hijacked. It was likely headed for the Capitol building, and the passengers breached the cockpit and counterattacked the hijackers, forcing the plane to crash. All 40 of the passengers and crew died.

In an iconic moment in American history, passenger Todd Beamer told the others, “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.” That became a battle cry for Americans.

The North Tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m. One thousand six hundred people died inside the North Tower. Everyone above the impact zone died.

Most of midtown Manhattan was a war zone. Lower Manhattan was a war zone.

The 9/11 Commission released its full report in July 2004. Of course, conspiracy theorists will claim the report was rigged from the start and other nonsense. But the reality is that the commission produced an incredibly thorough report. 

The report summarized institutional breakdowns before 9/11 and the failures of intelligence to communicate with one another. The commission reviewed some 2.5 million pages of documents and interviewed 1,200 individuals.

The chief failure was the failure of imagination. People just did not think that Islamic terrorists could carry off anything of this size and scale. Terrorism was not regarded as a paramount national security concern before 9/11. Counterterrorism was treated as a law enforcement issue rather than as a foreign policy and intelligence issue. Our intelligence agencies failed. The FBI was more reactive than proactive. The CIA had been weakened.

A Chinese firewall separated the CIA and the FBI, so they could not share information. The FAA had a no-fly watch list with a total of 12 people; none of the hijackers were on it.

Al-Qaeda, which carried out the attacks, obviously had a strategy in the lead-up to 9/11. Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda in 1998, declared it a religious duty for Muslims to kill Americans anywhere in the world, both military and civilian, and Al-Qaeda built a network of state sanctuaries during the 1990s in Sudan and in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

We know why Osama bin Laden did this. It is not a mystery. The answer is that Osama bin Laden was a terrorist devotee of Islam. This does not mean that all Muslims are terrorists or that all Muslims agreed with Osama bin Laden.

Osama bin Laden wrote a letter to America in 2002, and you can break it down into two parts: the excuse-making and the real reason. The excuse-making is about how Muslims everywhere are victims of America.

That’s nonsense. It’s not true. It is factually untrue. It is a victim mentality, unsupported by the evidence.

The real reason Osama bin Laden did this is that he was a Muslim fundamentalist who believed that everyone in the world ought to convert to Islam.

He knew the West lacked the courage to stand up and say we have a civilization worth preserving and defending. He believed we would tire and become stupid. That was his premise.

Our enemies thought we were weak. They thought that we would blind ourselves to reality.

As it turns out over the subsequent 25 years, they were not wrong. Just days after 9/11, the president of the United States appeared at the Islamic Center of Washington to explain that Islam was a religion of peace.

By saying this and many things like it, President Bush essentially defanged the entire Western movement against our actual enemies. That doesn’t mean every Muslim is an enemy of the United States, but if you want to make the argument that our enemies hate American freedom, you need to explain why they hated American freedom and what motivated them.

President Bush believed the false idea that all human beings around the world believe the same kinds of things, and that we are all, at root, exactly the same in our orientation toward the world.

This is untrue. Not every human being on Earth is oriented toward freedom the way Westerners believe in it.

As Ayaan Hirsi Ali noted in Tablet: 

Islam is not an “Abrahamic faith” that functions anything like Protestant Christianity or rabbinic Judaism. There is no equivalent in Islamic doctrine for such foundational Western concepts as the separation of church and state, secular law, or the idea of individual freedoms and rights, including the freedom to worship freely. Rather, Islam is animated by the beliefs that the Muslim world suffered a historical dispossession with the abolition of the caliphate and that this loss must eventually be reversed, including the retaking of all lands that have ever been ruled by Muslims. In the temporal sphere, Islam as much resembles totalizing and irredentist political ideologies as it does a religion.

In the frame in which both ordinary Muslims and their self-appointed political spokesmen see the world, America and the wider West are not just geopolitical rivals. They are civilizational obstacles: powers that uphold a secular, liberal, and postcaliphal order that Islamists seek to overcome. 

Americans have been lied to. We’ve been taught the opposite of this for a generation.

When you refuse to acknowledge the reality of Islam’s role in geopolitics, people are left to speculate about the motives behind acts like 9/11, and then they glom on to precisely the worldview that Osama bin Laden was counting on: The idea that if only the U.S. and the West weren’t so mean and cruel and interventionist, there’d be no problems and 9/11 never would have happened.

The belief system held by a huge percentage of Muslims across planet Earth — and a heavy percentage in the West as well — is not conciliatory with basic ideas of the West such as separation of church and state and freedom of religion.

That does not mean that there aren’t Muslims who don’t support terrorism; it does not mean that there aren’t some moderate or reform Muslims out there. There are some, and I truly hope they win.

But if we refuse to acknowledge who did 9/11, why they did it, and what the overall problem is, we will import it.

And it will be our fault.

The vote took less than two minutes and came about two months after DeSantis announced that Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass had recommended designating the three groups.

The new rule implements a Florida law that took effect earlier this year that gives Glass, the state’s chief of domestic security, authority to recommend terrorist designations. The governor and Cabinet must then approve the designation.

Under the process approved Friday, a designation would take effect 30 days after being published in the Florida Administrative Register. An organization would have seven days after receiving notice to object in writing and submit documentation.

“As Florida chief of domestic security, I know there are imminent dangers to public health, safety, and welfare due to increasing risks from foreign and domestic terrorist groups,” Glass told local media Friday.

“This provides an appropriate framework where they can take action appropriately so that they can defend the people of Florida against possible actors and terrorist groups,” DeSantis said before moving to approve the rule.

The underlying law bars state agencies, local governments, and public schools from using state funds to support designated organizations. It also creates criminal penalties for knowingly providing material support or resources to a designated domestic terrorist organization.

Public schools and universities are prohibited from using state or federal funds for programs that promote designated terrorist organizations. The law also contains restrictions affecting students who promote such groups, including the possible loss of financial assistance and reporting requirements for students attending on visas.

The measure passed the Florida Senate 25-11 and received final approval from the state House in an 80-25 vote before DeSantis signed it in April. The law took effect July 1.

The designation effort is already facing two federal lawsuits. CAIR and CAIR Florida sued after DeSantis issued a December 2025 executive order labeling CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood foreign terrorist organizations for purposes of state action.

In March, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of that order against CAIR, finding that it likely violated the First Amendment. The DeSantis administration appealed the ruling two days later.

CAIR, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other attorneys, filed a separate lawsuit in July challenging the new state law. The organization argues that the designation system is unconstitutional and that Florida has no legitimate basis for labeling it a terrorist organization.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations in November 2025. The Texas designations subjected the organizations and their affiliates to heightened penalties under state law and prohibited them from acquiring real property in the state. Abbott subsequently directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to investigate the two organizations for potential violations of state and federal law.

The Trump administration has also taken action against individual Muslim Brotherhood branches. The Treasury Department and State Department designated the Egyptian and Jordanian branches as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, citing their alleged material support for Hamas. The State Department separately designated the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood in January, while the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood was designated in March.

Neither CAIR nor the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole has received a federal terrorist designation.

***

“Racket” readers may have noticed it’s quiet in here. There are three reasons, two temporary. I’ve been working on a book for two years and am in a home stretch. The second involves a breaking-type story that is a document-heavy slog, but coming.

The third is more complicated. Call it an existential pileup. When I entered journalism I filed as unimportant the fact that many of my heroes left warnings to avoid the profession. The most famous are known, like Hunter Thompson calling his profession a place where “thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs,” or Oscar Wilde saying, “journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.” Balzac said journalism was a “bottomless pit of iniquity and treachery and lies,” while Flaubert, whose “Dictionary of Received Ideas” was one of a handful of books I lugged around the world throughout my twenties, wrote in a letter to George Sand that the press is a “school of demoralization” that “dispenses with thinking.” H.L. Mencken, whom I idolized, said the newspaper was a “public organ for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.”

I laughed all this off once, and ignored a professor (one who’d been good to me and deserved my attention) who implored me to listen. Journalism is an easy target. Many of its harshest critics were cheerful practitioners, and even the most savage satires, like Evelyn Waugh’s “Scoop,” were lovingly rendered. The best American writers revered the job, Mencken being the most obvious example. He talked of living the “life of kings,” even as he denounced newspapers as factories for mass-producing the opinions of Babbitts, jobholders, and other assorted Boobi Americani. When Thompson teed off on journalism, it was usually in the same breath as an admission there was no other life that allowed a person, in a snap, to go from being broke to abusing drugs in the Nevada desert on a stranger’s tab.

Now, I wonder.

A writer’s most unforgivable sin is being boring, which makes saying anything in this time period tough. Whether you’re reporting or commenting, the game is up once audiences are able to classify according to current political taxonomy. You can publish 50 words or 5,000, but what you’re producing for most audiences is a compass heading, showing where you reside on a map in relation to Donald Trump. Maybe you wanted to say something else, but the compass reading is the only thing most people care about, so that’s how the thing will be compressed, summarized, and circulated.

It’s fine if you find talking about Donald Trump interesting, or if it’s important to you that neighbors and family receive an unambiguous signal about where you’d like to place yourself on the TrumpScape. You can put out a strong “against” signal in legacy media — that’s allowed — while almost any other strong statement is interpreted in the other direction.

For instance, we’ll soon come up on the 10-year anniversary of Peter Beinart’s 2017 “The Anti-anti Trump Right” column in The Atlantic, which defined most anything that isn’t explicit opposition to Trump as “evading the reality” and “opposing the people who oppose Trump.” Under that logic, just about anything could be dismissed as throat-clearing on the way to a refusal to Say The Required Things about Trump. This half-clever formulation arrived in sync with a large chunk of American academia electing to purge the social sciences of “objective” pursuit of knowledge, or what one Literature professor derided as the act of “intentionally [dissociating] their work from the political and ideological exigencies of the time.”

If the challenge is to allow people to have identities independent of this scheme, then the task becomes creating work that resists taxonomy. If neither Norm Eisen nor Stephen Miller can classify a thing, and people still enjoy reading it, you’re on to something. The original thinking behind discussions about old books with Walter Kirn was to remind myself (and, hopefully, others) that we once read all sorts of things that were smart, funny, and provocative that had little to do with politics. Some things are timeless, which is why we loved them. In his recent essay, “Advocacy in Literary Studies,” Northwestern Professor Gary Saul Morson wrote:

As William Hazlitt pointed out in his essay “Why the Arts Are Not Progressive?” literature, unlike the hard sciences, does not progress. Aristotle’s Poetics is still relevant in a way that his physics is not. Any first-year physics student knows more physics than Aristotle, but no dramatist has surpassed Shakespeare. Novelists of the present have not created works as significant as War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

The good professor’s essay was part of a “State of Scholarship” report formulated and promoted by the chancellors of Vanderbilt University and Washington University of St. Louis. Naturally, that report has already been denounced as a “diabolical” attack on academics who are “critical of configurations of power in the Trump years.” Call it anti-anti-Trump academia; even the simple observation that “Anna Karenina” will probably always be a great book offends someone’s current politics.

This is not to say that journalism is dead or that there isn’t a point to doing interviews and leaving a record of what this weird and unhappy time was about. However, I’m beginning to appreciate those old warnings.

You know you’re operating in a dysfunctional landscape when the most influential stories of a period are set in the distant past (“Julius Caesar,” “The Crucible”) or in a fantastical other-world (“Gulliver’s Travels,” “Minority Report”). Take “The Master and Margarita.” Mikhail Bulgakov knew by the mid-1930s he’d never see his characters in print, not in Stalin’s world. He wrote partly for a hypothetical future, and partly for his sanity. In a severe totalitarian landscape, he created a story about mortality, art, love, bravery, and other timeless questions, laughing all the way. People reading that book 50 years from now won’t have a clue he wrote it in the middle of the purges, which seems like the ultimate triumph over those purges.

Of course, that’s different. I bring it up only to ask for patience as I try to find new ways to do more prosaic traditional reporting or research on this site without being dull. I have ideas, including a project where I’m looking for academic escapees who might be interested in helping dig for a thing or two. Until then, please hang in, and don’t be shy about offering suggestions. If you want me to visit an event, I’m now more able to do that. I just don’t want to play the binary game. The whole country can’t be the same desert. Can’t we find new worlds to explore?

***

Matt Taibbi is a journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and creator of Racket News on Substack.

“If you were an alien who landed on Earth this morning, and you were reading the top headlines on the NYT’s webpage, you would immediately assume that 9/11 was an attack on Muslims,” Shapiro wrote on X.

The Times responded directly, calling Shapiro’s post “a disingenuous attempt to seek attention and stoke outrage by misrepresenting The New York Times’s journalism.”

This misleading statement is nothing more than a disingenuous attempt to seek attention and stoke outrage by misrepresenting The New York Times’s journalism covering the anniversary and commemoration of the Sept. 11 attacks. In the 25 years since that day, we have led the way on… pic.twitter.com/varsZ83uv7

— NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) September 11, 2026

“In the 25 years since that day, we have led the way on reporting on the event, its human toll, and resulting societal shifts,” the Times X account added.

Shapiro was unimpressed.

“Are you f***ing kidding me right now?” he responded. “This was the top of your homepage about three hours ago.”

Are you f***ing kidding me right now? This was the top of your homepage about three hours ago. https://t.co/Lold1CAiHK pic.twitter.com/zVzS6DZ7Vw

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 11, 2026

The story drawing Shapiro’s criticism was headlined “Facing Islamophobia, Mamdani Keeps Focus on 9/11 Victims,” and it focused heavily on New York City Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, and the alleged backlash he has faced because of his religion.

The Times described Mamdani as having to navigate “a delicate dynamic” because he is both New York’s mayor and a Muslim, and quoted Muslim community leaders discussing what they characterized as continuing anti-Muslim hostility. The article was published at the top of the Times’ website Friday morning alongside the paper’s broader 25th-anniversary coverage.

The article documented Mamdani’s appearances at 9/11 memorial events and his efforts to honor victims and survivors. But it also devoted substantial attention to Islamophobia, quoting Husein Yatabarry, executive director of the Muslim Community Network, claiming there is “a right-wing angst to bring back that level of Islamophobia against prominent Muslims in political life.”

The piece cited Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who lost his nephew in the September 11 attacks and has called Mamdani “un-American.” It also highlighted a social media post from Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) that juxtaposed an image of Mamdani at an iftar dinner with an image of the burning World Trade Center.

“The enemy is inside the gates,” Tuberville wrote.

Conservative pundit Stephen L. Miller also posted a screenshot of the Times’ homepage without adding any commentary. The newspaper responded with the same statement it had sent Shapiro.

The New York Times on 9/11. pic.twitter.com/kTeQMPmqtS

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 11, 2026

“Highlighting what the New York Times chooses to publish on 9/11 is divisive and disingenuous, but the pieces themselves are not divisive and disingenuous according to the New York Times,” Miller responded.

“I didn’t editorialize, or put up an opinion,” he later added. “I simply posted what the New York Times chose to publish on 9/11. And the NY Times Comms is struggling with it.”

Another Times article, “After 9/11, Islamophobia Shaped a Generation of Muslim New Yorkers,” focused on the alleged backlash experienced by Muslim Americans after the attacks and the subsequent growth of Muslim political and civic organizations in New York.

The Times defended its coverage as a “deep and diverse set of journalism” about the anniversary.

It was the same for my generation on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Dark days such as these may not cause the dark history that follows them, but it’s difficult not to feel they mark the place in time where a certain shadow fell.

JFK’s murder marked the end of that period of patriotism, confidence, and unity brought about by the Allied victory in World War II. The Islamist destruction of the World Trade Center marked the end of the “Holiday from History” that followed the West’s victory in the Cold War.

Many of today’s young people feel beset and battered by such catastrophic days. Endless wars in the Middle East. The 2008 financial crisis. The COVID lockdowns. Race riots. Inflation. The madness of woke — or the rise of conservative populism, or both, depending on your point of view.

But, of course, my generation also saw such things. The Cuban missile crisis. The 60s riots. Assassination after assassination. The stagflation of the Jimmy Carter economy, and the gas shortage. Speaking personally, I lived in the crime-ridden New York City of the 70s and 80s, when smoking was bad for your health because you were likely to get shot going to the store for a pack of cigarettes.

Yet I also saw that things could turn around. I saw Ronald Reagan restore the economy and help engineer the end of the Soviet Union. I saw Rudy Giuliani transform a cesspool of a city into the greatest, safest metropolis on Earth, thus leading the way to an era of lower crime across the nation. These men were reviled every day by the powers-that-be and the news media. Yet on they went, and did what they did and accomplished what they accomplished. As we recently saw in the Lindsay Clancy trial, it really is true: One man with courage makes a majority.

Still, there is no doubt we are living in an age of uncertainty. As the Baby Boom generation passes into the greater life and its long-dominant vision begins to fade, destructive radicals are vying to fill the gap. The collapse of a non-credible news media followed by the rise of a non-credible social media has caused an information crisis — a long Good Friday in which it seems the truth is forever being crucified. We know from history that such uncertainties often resolve themselves through war. It doesn’t take a catastrophist to trace a potential path from the present moment to some worldwide conflagration.

All this, I think, should be taken seriously, but calmly, too, in a spirit of hope.

It has always fascinated me — and puzzled me somewhat — that hope is considered one of the three primary Christian virtues. Faith, hope, and agape love — that spirit of benign, non-judgmental goodwill sometimes called charity. I feel I understand two of these virtues. Faith is “the evidence of things unseen.” It gives us assurance that we can know and live in some human version of God’s truth. Agape love is the spiritual practice that helps us develop the third eye with which we see that truth, even amid the harsh practicalities of life.

But what about hope? I suppose this could mean the sort of generalized hope that “all things work together for good to them that love God,” the hope that suffering and death lead to eternal life and so on. But this always sounds to me better than it actually is. I know a lot of people who believe in that kind of hope, and yet they live as pessimists, morosely and sometimes angrily counting every setback as a sign of the incipient End of Days.

I myself am frequently derided for what some deem my blindly optimistic attitude. But I think they mistake me. I see the possibility of disaster just as clearly as they do. It’s the certainty of disaster that is rarely apparent to me. I am a tragedian by nature. I take a dim view of humanity. I know that every mortal enterprise will ultimately end in failure and death. I simply don’t believe that it will necessarily end today — “Sufficient unto this day is the evil thereof.”

This sort of hope is the hope of doctors and soldiers. Of Gandalf’s consolation: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” This is the sort of hope that knows that in the certain march toward death, today is a day of life and there are works to do and tears to shed and loves to love. This, I think, is the hope described by the poet Emily Dickinson when she wrote:

Hope is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all …

“The tune without the words,” means, as I read it, not with grim reason ceaselessly charting out the possible paths to destruction, but with a general attitude of joy in living. Whatever the outcome, after all, this is the day that the Lord has made. We should rejoice in it and be glad.

When The Daily Wire began, it was Ben Shapiro and I recording podcasts in the pool house in Jeremy Boreing’s backyard. The first day, I was so jet-lagged from a trip to England that I forgot to put my shoes on and arrived wearing bedroom slippers. I stumbled through a short opening podcast that ended with that Bible quote: “This is the day that the Lord has made.” It was like nothing else I’d ever done. So when I was finished, I asked Jeremy how it went. He said, “Great, but you say ‘uh’ too much.” I said, “Well, what can I do about that?” He said, “You can not say it.”

I was startled to discover that this was true. It was a small piece of wisdom, but it grew greater over time. Because I also soon discovered you could treat fear and depression and despair in much the same way. Without denial, without repression, without dishonesty, you could simply not do them and let the thing with feathers sing.

“A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day.” So says Aragorn in the movie version of “The Lord of the Rings.” And he adds: “This day we fight.”

So yes, the crises facing the West this day are real, and so are the possibilities that they will lead to disaster. But every day is the Lord’s day, and we are only responsible for the days He has given us.

So this day, we rejoice — each one of us — and we fight.

Because one man with courage makes a majority.

In their very first episode of the season, moderator Whoopi Goldberg proclaimed that if Americans didn’t vote to “change” who was in power in the midterms, then everyone in the country would “literally” die as a result:

This is what we can tell you: If you want to see change, you got to make the change. It doesn’t matter your color. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican, if you want change, you got to get out there and make it happen. And you got to find every way that you can to vote.

(…)

Find out where you can vote and help your elders get to the places to vote. Help everybody you can to get out this vote because our lives literally depend on this.

As an extra incentive to vote for Democrats, Sunny Hostin suggested that losing control of Congress would give President Trump’s Cabinet the opening to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office:

But think about if the Republicans — I think when the Republicans lose the House, and they lose the Senate, they’re going to want to have some control over this person, this person that is in the office, and J.D. Vance would then be that replacement. And I wonder if the Cabinet then looks at each other and says, “Okay, we’ve got to take control of this, 25th Amendment.”

Trying to scare Americans into voting against Republicans wasn’t enough. They also had to make sure they weren’t afraid to vote for the slate of Democratic Socialist extremists put up by their party. To that end, that was Hostin and Goldberg’s effort later in the week.

Following Senator John Fetterman’s (D-PA) message at the Republican midterm convention to stand against the far-Left of his party, Hostin was offended that he would “try to use the word ‘socialism’ as a boogieman. He’s playing right into Republican hands.” “Communists. They call liberals communists,” Joy Behar clutched her pearls.

When token “Republican” Alyssa Farah Griffin pointed out that their party had just nominated a slew of socialists, Hostin claimed they weren’t real socialists, and Goldberg insisted they were only concerned about “Social Security”:

FARAH GRIFFIN: You guys did just nominate socialists in a number of states for the House.

HOSTIN: Democratic socialism is very different than —

[Crosstalk]

HOSTIN: It’s very different than communism.

GOLDBERG: Social Security! Social Security!

“The View” has been very open about admitting that the show is meant to be a vector to help the Democratic Party. They’re trying to do what they can ahead of Election Day, defying the FCC and ignoring that it violates ABC’s broadcast license. ABC is fully supporting it.

***

Nicholas C. Fondacaro is the associate editor for the Media Research Center and NewsBusters.

That portentous warning is contained in a newly declassified intelligence report released Friday by the CIA as part of the agency’s largest-ever public release of analysis related to the 9/11 attacks.

The CIA released 71 President’s Daily Briefs, files covering the period from February 1998 through September 12, 2001, giving the public an unprecedented look at what intelligence officials were telling presidents about bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the years leading up to the attacks.

The documents include a September 10, 1998, report titled “Bin Laden’s Location and Intentions,” which warned that al-Qaeda “may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a U.S. city.” The intelligence did not know the precise details of the eventual September 11 plot, including the targets, timing, or use of multiple hijacked commercial aircraft, but the newly public documents show that American intelligence agencies had repeatedly warned successive administrations that bin Laden was seeking to strike the United States.

The 1998 warning was one of a series of reports that now appear particularly significant in hindsight. A July 1998 report told President Clinton that reports from several sources indicating bin Laden intended to attack the United States were “plausible,” while a 1999 assessment examined whether the large number of potential al-Qaeda targets being reported could have represented an intentional deception campaign.

By October 2000, another intelligence report stated that bin Laden was “committed to striking U.S. targets,” while noting that the CIA could not pinpoint the targets or timing.

And just over a month before the attacks, July 24, 2001, one such report told President George W. Bush that an “expected imminent bin Laden-sponsored terrorist operation” had been postponed, while warning that preparations for other attacks could still be underway.

The documents also include the now-famous August 6, 2001, presidential briefing titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” which had previously been released and warned that bin Laden had been preparing operations against the United States for years. The newly released material provides additional context for that warning and shows that it was part of a much longer series of intelligence assessments about al-Qaeda.

The CIA said the documents demonstrate the difficulty intelligence officials faced in distinguishing meaningful warnings from incomplete, contradictory, and sometimes unreliable information.

Before 9/11, counterterrorism was not yet the dominant intelligence priority it would become after the attacks. CIA analysts had information indicating that bin Laden wanted to attack the United States, but they often lacked specific details about the location and timing of an attack.

The agency also faced concerns about “warning fatigue,” with officials worried about repeatedly alerting policymakers to potential attacks without enough concrete information to explain how the threats could be stopped.

The 9/11 Commission ultimately concluded that American intelligence agencies had provided numerous warnings about al-Qaeda but failed to understand the scale and immediacy of the threat. The commission described the failure in part as one of “imagination,” alongside problems involving intelligence collection, information sharing, and the government’s response to the warnings. The newly declassified documents do not fundamentally alter that conclusion.

The CIA said the release contains more than 100 pages of analysis that are now publicly available for the first time. “Today, [CIA] Director John Ratcliffe declassified 71 President’s Daily Brief products in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks,” the agency said. The agency described the release as its “single largest release of declassified CIA PDB products related to 9/11.”

“Twenty-five years ago, the 9/11 attacks struck a blow to our Nation, but they did not break us,” Ratcliffe wrote in the release. “Generations of CIA officers have since dedicated their careers to securing justice for our fallen Americans and ensuring al-Qaida would never again harm our country.” Ratcliffe also said the release was intended to honor both the Americans killed in the attacks and CIA officers who later died during the war against terrorism.

The President’s Daily Brief is among the most sensitive intelligence products produced for the White House. It provides the president and a limited number of senior officials with intelligence analysis concerning threats and other national-security matters.

El-Sayed, running to become the first Muslim U.S. Senator, released a somber video on Friday saying that the country should not forget the victims of the attack or the first responders who lost their lives. That focus contrasted with messages he gave in which he compared the loss of life on 9/11 to COVID and lamented the “rise in white supremacist violence.” 

“A cruel act of terror took the lives of more than 3,000 kids, women, men, including brave first responders who ran into the rubble to save lives that day,” El-Sayed said in the new video. “Thousands more were injured. Many continue to suffer the consequences even today.”

The video comes after El-Sayed attempts to distance himself from some of his previous radical positions. He has deleted dozens of posts, including comments on 9/11, pushes to defund the police, and arguments against the Second Amendment.  

“Today, on 9/11, we honor the lives that were taken from us in a terrible act of terrorism. Nothing can justify the murder of innocent civilians, nothing. And on this day, we mourn the victims, their families, and the destruction those terrorists caused,” El-Sayed added in the video. 

The victim-focused message released Friday contrasted with posts from the last several years that El-Sayed has since deleted, in which he compared 9/11 to the COVID pandemic and criticized America’s response to 9/11. Many of the posts were archived by conservative news outlet Townhall. 

“Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country,” he wrote on September 11, 2021. 

In another post on September 11, 2020, he compared the government’s response to 9/11 to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“19 yrs ago, 2977 lives were taken from us on 9/11. We mourn them. To avenge their deaths, our country launched harmful wars that took lives,” he wrote. “Since the #pandemic, we’ve lost the equivalent of *64* 9/11s. That’s one EVERY 3.5 DAYS. Why is there no war on #COVID to SAVE lives?”

In another post that same day, he said he “feared” for his family’s safety for the first time on 9/11 and claimed that “white supremacist violence” was “blooming” under President Donald Trump after germinating under President George W. Bush. 

After more than 3,000 Americans reportedly died of COVID, El-Sayed posted for the first time that more lives had been lost than on 9/11. 

“I hope that means we’ll spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against climate change & poverty… like we launched a global #WaronTerror after 9/11,” he wrote on X. “We could save lives, rather than take them.”

El-Sayed’s moderate message comes as he faces attacks over his history of radical rhetoric and ties to activists like Hasan Piker, who once said America “deserved 9/11.” Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers has made El-Sayed’s ties to Piker a major focus of his campaign. 

Our heroes have left, except for one. He is the avatar of what is missing: a man who refuses to bend the knee to a coven of emotionally self-indulgent victim-mongers, breaking the race-trained guilt mind simply by being Black. Marvel couldn’t write a better character to shatter progressive priors if it tried. It is unsurprising that the white, senior-citizen jurors practically choked over their acknowledgment of Juror #5’s skin color. After all, they were cast straight from central casting for the last decade’s worth of Kendi-style performative anti-racism scolding. How dare he not comply with their narrative? Even Gayle King had to reckon with this inconvenient truth.

NEW: Lindsay Clancy juror Paula Devlin reveals on ‘CBS Mornings’ that the lone, male holdout juror who voted to find Clancy guilty of murdering her children was the *only* person of color — a black man.

The 11 not-guilty jurors — who hectored him for a week to cave — were all white.

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 11, 2026

Yet, hundreds of women at the courthouse and thousands more in the digital sewer of social media supported a murderer — unabashedly, proudly, and loudly. When the trial concluded in a mistrial due to a lone holdout, Juror #5, a collective gasp rippled across this deranged sisterhood. It is an indictment of our culture that only one person possessed the courage of his convictions to stand up to a jury room ready to grant Lindsay Clancy more compassion and sympathy than the three children she ruthlessly killed.

After the trial, one juror recalled evidence proving that Clancy “loved her children” and was, by all accounts, a “good mother.” Her kids were unavailable for comment.

Another juror suggested the prosecutors did more harm than good by “just not thinking about Lindsay.” Apparently, Juror #5 missed the memo that the perpetrator should be the primary focus of compassion.

Now this man, who should be lauded as a hero, has joined the ranks of the “problematic.” This is the crux of our modern crisis: society’s hero-villain dynamic is completely inverted. We arrived here because ordinary people decided it was best to prioritize a weaponized form of “compassion” where no one should ever feel unwelcome, where standards and judgments are dismissed as cruel, and where villains are merely misunderstood victims of an underlying systemic failure. This heroic juror is treated as the trial’s villain simply for daring to see Lindsay Clancy not as a victim, but as the murderer she confessed to being.

When a mother brutally and cruelly murders her own three young children, it is the act of a monster. I have three kids who are nearly the exact ages Cora, Dawson, and Callan were when their mother strangled them to death. This is the architecture of nightmares: that the last thing these precious children experienced was the person who gave them life, snuffing it out. In an America where right and wrong were objective and shared principles, justice for these three babies would have been swift and definitive. Instead, it devolved into a circus — a symptom of the clown-show society we have built on the ruins of our own complacency and indifference.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, it isn’t a foreign power or nuclear war that threatens to end us, but the systematic destruction of our heroes and the slow death of common sense to indulge a false concept of “inclusivity.” This brand of inclusivity is merely cover for codependent and cowardly people to hide behind so they never have to appear mean. Those who crave power and control have weaponized this weakness against an America that traded strength and confidence for peace without defense, and love without boundaries.

As Walker Percy wrote, “You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.” America has lost the plot. We no longer distinguish the heroes from the villains. Three thousand innocent Americans die in the terrorist attacks of September 11, and our primary anxiety must be caution over “Islamophobia.” A nation’s cities are burned after a street criminal dies, and we apologize to the arsonists. Daniel Penny defends passengers against a violent threat, and he is the one put on trial. A woman murders her children, and we shield her behind a clinical label while demanding public sympathy. We end the lives of thousands of innocent babies in the womb and call it choice. We allow men and boys to invade women’s spaces and call it inclusion. We graduate millions of poor and minority kids from public schools without teaching them how to read or write and call it equity.

What America needs is to stop the nonsense. We must quit the empathy addiction. We must defend the heroes and condemn the villains. We need an America where Juror #5 is the norm, not the anomaly. Percy was right; we live in a deranged age. If we refuse to correct course, we walk a straight line toward the world Michel Houellebecq envisioned in Submission: “No doubt the Romans had felt that theirs was an eternal civilization, right up to the moment their empire fell apart. Were they suicides, too?”

* * * * *

Sometimes a tennis match is just a tennis match, even when it features two Americans squaring off for a spot in the final of the U.S. Open. Sadly, the scouting report on ESPN never changes.

Give it the smallest of openings and the Worldwide Leader In Sports will pull back its racket for a bold strike and miss the mark by a mile.

Ahead of the men’s semifinal Friday featuring the rocket-serving Ben Shelton and the resilient Frances Tiafoe, an ESPN account on X, ESPN Insights, posted to its 1.7 million followers that the winner will become the first Black American man to reach a US Open final since Arthur Ashe in 1972 and the first Black American man to reach any major final since MaliVai Washington at Wimbledon in 1996.

The winner of Tiafoe vs. Shelton will make history ✍️

🎾 First Black American man to reach a US Open Final since Arthur Ashe (1972)

🎾First Black American man to reach any major final since MaliVai Washington (1996 Wimbledon) pic.twitter.com/IRE4boYOlQ

— ESPN Insights (@ESPNInsights) September 9, 2026

It was a classic ESPN take, equally jingoistic and identity-obsessed. Its programming, by which I mean the beliefs or values it is spreading, crumbles when subjected to critical analysis. Why not celebrate the strides the sport has made since Ashe’s trailblazing days by posting that Shelton, at No. 9, and Tiafoe, at No. 12, are among four players of color in the top 12 of the ATP rankings? The others, for anyone who’s interested, are Canada’s Felix Auger–Aliassime (4) and France’s Arthur Fils (11).

That’s progress. So is the fact that a match of import featuring two Black players isn’t blue-moon rare anymore. Last month’s final in Cincinnati, a Masters 1000 event, featured Tiafoe and Fils, the eventual winner.

To perpetuate the idea that Black players are marginalized unicorns in American tennis is to spit on the successes of Venus and Serena Williams, Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys and Coco Gauff, all of whom have graced at least one U.S. Open women’s singles final – and combined for 11 titles – since 1999.

And how about the all-court queen, Taylor Townsend, who can complete a career Grand Slam in doubles if she and partner Katerina Siniaková prevail in Friday’s final against Robin Montgomery and Ashlyn Krueger? Now, that would be historic. Only 18 women have pulled off that feat in the Open era.

But you do you, ESPN. Since tenuous takes on history are its specialty, I offer its tennis crew a few other scintillating facts to spray all over its men’s semifinals telecast. If Shelton wins, he will become the first men’s player who was born on a Wednesday to grace the U.S. Open final since Marin Cilic in 2014. It’s true. I looked it up.

Shelton and Tiafoe are also the second headband-wearing Americans to play each other in the final four of a U.S. Open, after Tiafoe and Taylor Fritz in a 2024 semifinal.

In Friday’s other semifinal, Karen Khachanov can become the first Karen to reach a men’s or women’s U.S. Open final with a victory over Alexander Zverev, who advanced to all four major singles semifinals this year,  only the ninth man in the Open era to complete such a calendar sweep.  Zverev can become the first known Type 1 diabetic to win the men’s U.S. Open title. He lost to Dominic Thiem in the 2020 final.

Zverev’s diabetes is no laughing matter, and the fact that he is open about it has no doubt gone a long way towards normalizing what can be an isolating condition. But don’t let the other silly stretches at history distract from the power, grit, grace, athleticism and sportsmanship that will be on display. The semifinals can stand on their own merits. No need to come up with contrived reasons to make them compelling.

Defense ministers and personnel from 67 countries attended the gathering in South Korea, when a staffer passed a note from China’s military attaché to Philippine Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro.

MAHIYA NAMAN KAYO | Secretary of National Defense Gilberto C. Teodoro, Jr. responded to a note from the Chinese side during the Seoul Defense Dialogue (SDD) 2026 in Seoul, Republic of Korea.#DNDPHL #DiKaPasisiil #SDD2026 pic.twitter.com/fsCRVphkgf

— Department of National Defense – Philippines (@dndphl) September 8, 2026

The note sparked fury in the secretary, who, after receiving it and reading it aloud, lashed out at the military attaché and China more broadly.

The handwritten letter contested a ruling that went against Chinese claims to part of the South China Sea and upheld Philippine claims to those waters. The note said that China took issue with a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration tribunal under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Annex VII maritime ruling that adjudicated the sea dispute between China and the Philippines. The letter declared that “the so-called award is illegal, null, and void … and has no binding force.”

When the secretary read the portion of the note that said “China neither recognizes nor accepts the award,” Teodoro commented, “Of course, because you lost.”

After reading China’s letter rejecting the UNCLOS ruling, which the United States supports, Secretary Teodoro said, “The thing speaks for itself,” noting that the letter disrespected South Korea, which was hosting the meeting.

Teodoro looked at the audience and asked them, “How do you expect to deal with [China] civilly?” He further challenged the audience and China, saying, “Perhaps basic decency and behavior is [sic] what China needs to do” and adding that China was a bully.

After directly addressing the letter, the Philippine defense secretary said he would keep the letter as a “memento of how desperate China is, and how ineffective its position is in the face of a free audience,” adding that the attaché “had done [his] country a great service.”

He concluded by saying that he hoped the attaché “does not suffer in a gulag for it.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long maintained aggressive maritime claims in the South China Sea along its so-called “nine-dash line,” which comprises more than 80% of the sea.

These claims overlap with several American allies’ maritime claims and international trading waters, making the disputes highly significant to U.S. national interests.

A recent Center for Strategic and International Studies report found in 2025 that 29% of global seaborne oil trade passed through a single strait that connects to the South China Sea known as the Strait of Malacca. This means the Strait of Malacca is more critical to global oil markets than the Strait of Hormuz. Nearly half of 2024 global maritime trade transited through the Strait of Malacca and the Taiwan Strait, another trade route challenged by China’s nine-dash line.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in technologies critical to the U.S. economy and military move across the South China Sea every year. The United States, the Philippines, and other American allies have cooperated to maintain freedom of navigation in these critical waters and have mutual defense agreements.

In the past, the CCP has taken aggressive action enforcing its claims, including during the Johnson South Reef Skirmish in March 1988, where the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy shot and killed 64 Vietnamese soldiers who were attempting to plant a flag on the reef.

More recently, China’s Coast Guard has sprayed Filipino fishermen in Philippine waters with massive water cannons, threatening the vessels’ safety and injuring the fishermen.

Given the stakes of the conference and the claims advanced by the CCP military attaché, the room burst into raucous applause at the Philippine defense secretary’s comments.

The Seoul Defense Dialogue prioritizes “global security cooperation and peace on the Korean Peninsula” and has been growing in attendance and profile.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below.

— Jacob Coxon (@hilbertspaess) September 9, 2026

Within 24 hours, Coxon’s Tweet had more than 100 million views, amplified by politicians, mostly prominent Democrats, who sounded the claxon. “It’s becoming more clear the threat AI poses to humanity, so I’m calling for immediate action from the industry and Washington,” wrote Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who never saw an alarm bell he couldn’t raise. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy invoked “AI companies in a blind race to build a death machine first.” Bernie Sanders once again is asking you to “ban superintelligence” (a serious threat to his very normal intelligence) and “pause AI development.”

Coxon went on a media blitz, telling the Wall Street Journal it’s “crunch time” for humanity. Wired Magazine magnified his claims, quoting Coxon as saying that crunch time was actually “the next two years.” Another Anthropic researcher, Evan Hubinger, publicly said he puts the probability of AI killing all humans within the next decade above 10%, which seems a little high.

Axios literally ran a story headlined “Anthropic insiders warn AI could kill all humans,” calling the warnings “chilling.” Ars Technica used “Self-improving AI could ‘kill us all,’” while TechCrunch wrote that uncontrolled AI development could “end up killing us all.”

As the Vince McMahon meme goes, triggering intensified. Business Insider published “Researchers fear there’s a chance AI could kill us all. Here’s how experts say that might play out,” walking readers through cyberattacks, infrastructure collapse, biological weapons, and autonomous systems taking power. The New York Post went with “Experts warn AI could kill us all — this is how an apocalyptic doomsday scenario could play out,” extending the possibilities to electrical grids, water systems, bioweapons, nuclear catastrophe, and the cheerful conclusion that even hiding in a bunker might not save you.

The Guardian similarly framed the question as whether AI might “kill us all,” assembling Coxon, Hubinger, Stuart Russell, Geoffrey Hinton, Toby Ord, and other existential-risk voices alongside harrumphing demands for international regulation and restrictions on superintelligence. CBS Boston found an academic to tell viewers that Coxon’s warning needed to be taken seriously. Even People ran the ridiculous tabloid headline: “Employee at Top AI Company Quits with Public Warning the Tech Could ‘Kill Us All,’ and Then Former Co-Worker Agrees.”

Coxon is a real person who had a real career in AI. And his concerns seem at least somewhat genuine. But the full-court press doesn’t. The media first reported a resignation containing a speculative extinction forecast as an alarming testimony from inside the AI labs, then rapidly converted it into a media event about how and when artificial intelligence might actually wipe out the human race. Stop right there, as Meat Loaf once sang in more analog days, before we go any farther.

The money trail behind the AI-doom movement runs through a remarkably small circle of AI-safety philanthropy. Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, an early Anthropic investor, is also a major funder of the advocacy ecosystem surrounding AI existential risk: his Survival and Flourishing Fund directed more than $2 million to the AI Futures Project in 2025, along with $516,000 to Encode AI and $1.635 million to the AI Policy Institute. Dustin Moskovitz, another investor in Anthropic’s original funding round, and his wife Cari Tuna are the principal funders of Coefficient Giving, formerly Open Philanthropy, another major financial engine of the AI-safety movement.

None of this proves anyone orchestrated Coxon’s resignation. But it does complicate the image of an entirely spontaneous uprising of terrified independent experts. The AI-doom movement has some extremely wealthy patrons and professional advocates working from inside well-funded institutions. And its message has already found eager allies in Washington, particularly among Democrats but among Republicans as well, in an election season where public opinion about AI is growing increasingly hostile.

Coxon “spontaneously” revealed his judgment about where current progress might lead and reported what colleagues supposedly believe privately. Yet much of the coverage treats the credentials of the people intensely expressing the fear almost as evidence for the underlying proposition, when in fact they’re just credentials.

Of course there are issues involved with the rapid march of AI into most human activity. But can we turn down the moral panic dial, please, and maybe think about who these Cassandras actually are and why we might be hearing from them now? “The apocalypse is imminent” isn’t an acceptable or a rational answer.

As of today, humanity hasn’t fallen. Though I did just see a sunglasses-clad man driving down my street on a motorcycle while brandishing a shotgun. Maybe I shouldn’t have used ChatGPT to generate that meme last night after all.

***

Neal Pollack is the author of 12 semi-bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction and is a three-time Jeopardy! champion.

The 41-year-old star was asked to comment on her mom’s “far-Right” views while walking the red carpet at an event earlier this week. 

“I don’t agree,” Kelly told a reporter from Attitude Magazine, per Page Six. “I don’t agree with my mum, no. That’s one thing that I can say that I don’t agree with her on.”

“It’s hard because I love my mum. … It’s really hard when it comes to politics and things like that, but that’s not for me,” she added, saying Sharon is “entitled to her own opinions.”

Kelly was also asked during a red carpet interview if she had spoken to her mother about her views on “LGBT+ rights.” 

The reality star said she was “always of the understanding that [her] mom was, like, of the same opinion” and was “sad” to discover that Sharon had said “certain things … that may not align with the trans community in particular.”

“I don’t know if my mom knows enough trans people to make a fair judgment or anything to do with that sort of thing,” Kelly said. “Whereas for me, that is my world. And to be born in a body that doesn’t belong to you, I couldn’t imagine anything worse.”

Kelly chalked it all up to a “lack of education.” 

“When I sit down, and if I ever have a conversation with my mom about stuff like this, she gets it,” she insisted.

Kelly went on to express her views plainly: “I wouldn’t be me without [the LGBT community]. They’re the only community that has always accepted me no matter what. They taught me how to be myself, fearless, and to truly believe that I can be whatever I want to be.”

She also said that group is responsible for “every ounce of creativity and beauty in this world.”

“It was the drag queens that taught me how to do makeup. It was the trans community that taught me about bravery. It was ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ that taught me how to stand like a lady,” Kelly said.

Sharon previously angered the Left by voicing support for U.K.-based activist Tommy Robinson’s anti-immigration event, “Unite The Kingdom.” She responded to a post promoting the event by saying, “See you at the march.”

Sharon was then disavowed by the charity Centrepoint, which aids the homeless. 

As for the trans issue, she said in 2024 that there should be age limits for making life-altering decisions related to so-called “gender affirming care.” She was also blasted by leftists in 2022 for daring to say that identifying as trans or nonbinary is sometimes treated as a fad.

Sharon has also argued that it’s not fair for men who identify as women to compete against women in sports. 

Afghan national Nazira Haji Zada, 47, plotted the attack alongside her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, and son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, who were previously arrested and convicted. The Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC) issued Zada, who lived in Fort Worth, Texas, a deportation order on August 20, which was unsealed Friday following her removal from the United States.

The announcement of Zada’s deportation comes on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, when al-Qaeda terrorists killed 2,977 people on U.S. soil.

The case was the first ever to go before the secretive court, which Congress established in 1996.

“From the moment President Trump took office, he made clear that his Administration would put the safety and security of the American people first,” Secretary Markwayne Mullin of the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Friday. “The President’s direction to use the Alien Terrorist Removal Court to expel Nazira Haji Zada, an Afghan national who plotted with members of her family to carry out an ISIS-inspired attack on American soil, delivers on that promise.”

“Thanks to the President’s leadership and the coordinated efforts the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State, Nazira Haji Zada’s final order of removal is now FINAL. Those who plot acts of terrorism against the United States have no place in our country. We will find them, and we will use every lawful tool available to remove them,” he said.

An application to deport Zada was filed on July 15, the Justice Department said. The terrorist appeared in court before ATRC Chief Judge Joan N. Ericksen for the first time on July 30.

Federal prosecutors used classified information to prove that Zada was an “alien terrorist,” providing the terrorist and her legal team “approximately half a terabyte of documents” to prove their case, according to the Justice Department. She later admitted to being an alien terrorist and waived her right to appeal her deportation order, resulting in the termination of her immigration status.

Zada’s 17-year-old son, Abdullah, and her 28-year-old son-in-law, Tawhedi, were arrested on October 7, 2024, after they bought firearms and ammunition they planned to use to carry out the attack, federal authorities said. Zada’s son entered a guilty plea as an adult, receiving a 15-year prison sentence.

In entering into the plea, Abdullah, who is a green card holder, agreed to his eventual deportation to Afghanistan following his imprisonment.

Tawhedi pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring and attempting to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and receiving, attempting to receive, and conspiring to receive firearms and ammunition in furtherance of a federal crime of terrorism. He has not yet been sentenced.

Between June 2024 and October 2024, Tawhedi said he worked with at least one other individual to purchase two AK-47 rifles, 500 rounds of ammunition, and 10 magazines, with the intent to carry out the mass shooting on behalf of ISIS, according to court documents. Tawhedi communicated with an ISIS facilitator about his plans and asked the unnamed terrorist whether the 500 rounds of ammunition would be enough to carry out the attack.

In 2024, the family began selling their property, including furniture, computers, a cell phone, and two cars, to fund their attack, the Justice Department said. Zada also signed a contract to sell the family’s home.

The terrorist relatives also bought one-way airline tickets to Kabul, Afghanistan, before election day for Zada and other minor children.

Cameras at the 9/11 memorial in New York City cut from a young man crying in front of the names listed at the 9/11 memorial to a shot of AOC and Mamdani as they laughed together during the somber event.

Numerous 9/11 victims’ families had previously urged the giggling mayor to stay away from the memorial on the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. City, state, and U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance, gathered at Ground Zero for the annual memorial service.

AOC and Mamdani were blasted after the clip of them laughing spread on social media.

“How the hell do you laugh while the names of those murdered on 9/11 are being read aloud? Why would you do so?” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

“After thousands of families of victims of terror beg Mamdani not to show up, he stands there and laughs while families weep. This is NYC’s Mayor,” said Republican NYC Councilwoman Inna Vernikov.

Commentator Meghan McCain added, “Why the f*ck are these two laughing?!?”

Mamdani has made multiple callous remarks about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. On Thursday night, Mamdani released a statement on the attacks that failed to mention that radical Muslims killed thousands of Americans in a terrorist attack. Instead, he made the horrific events seem no different than a natural disaster.

“Today, I attended a memorial mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, led by Archbishop Ronald A. Hicks, in honor of those who died on 9/11,” Mamdani wrote on Thursday night. “25 years ago, we bore witness to unimaginable suffering. But New Yorkers met that moment with a spirit of love, sacrifice, and solidarity that guided us forward. As we remember those we lost, let us continue to take refuge in one another. Let us recommit to the work of building a better city — one that is worthy of the legacy they left.”

On Friday morning — after major backlash for his previous statement — Mamdani released another statement, in which he wrote, “25 years ago, terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people, including 2,753 New Yorkers.”

Earlier this week, Mamdani brushed aside concerns from former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Governor George Pataki and said he would attend the 9/11 memorial ceremony. The backlash over Mamdani’s attendance has been fueled in large part by Mamdani’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, who previously served as a defense lawyer for Ahmed al-Darbi, an al Qaeda operative held at Guantanamo Bay whose brother-in-law helped hijack the plane that struck the Pentagon, The Daily Wire previously reported.

The Muslim mayor has also sparked outrage with comments about “Islamophobia” that Muslims faced after the 9/11 attacks.

“I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab,” Mamdani said last October.

“Growing up in the shadow of 9/11, I have known what it means to live with an undercurrent of suspicion in this city,” he continued, adding, “To be Muslim in New York is to expect indignity, but indignity does not make us distinct. There are many New Yorkers who face it. It is the tolerance of that indignity that does.”

Ocasio-Cortez has her own history of controversy over 9/11. In 2019, the leftist defended her fellow Squad member, Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), when Omar said of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, “Some people did something.” AOC claimed the backlash to Omar’s comment was “incitement of violence against progressive women of color.”

Brittney, an audience member who doesn’t have any children, said she disagreed with the “majority” of the room and their assertions that postpartum psychosis was to blame for Clancy’s actions. 

“I do believe she’s a murderer,” Brittney said, prompting Winfrey to interject and ask incredulously, “After all you’ve heard today? You still…” 

Brittney said she also disagrees with her mom, Jocelyn, who was a guest on the podcast taping. After Jocelyn detailed her own struggle with postpartum depression and said she “understands” what Clancy was going through, Brittney was given the chance to state her opinion. 

“It’s just unfortunate that [my mom is] so quick to say… ‘You’ve never had a baby. You don’t understand what it’s like to go through all the hormonal shifts.’ But I just feel as though these were not instant deaths,” she went on.

“They weren’t gunshots to the head. She was here strangling her kids three times. You’re telling me like even after the first time she couldn’t snap out of it? You’re watching the life leave your kids’ eyes, you know? So, I know I hear everybody’s opinions and God bless mothers, but at the same, I just don’t understand how we can empathize.”

She added, “They weren’t strangers. They were her kids, and she was able to grab those exercise bands – that took a lot of effort. It breaks my heart that these young kids [went] through that.”

Brittney also mentioned how women have banded together to support Clancy for all the wrong reasons. “I feel like so many mothers empathize with her so much that they want to … make her a mascot and they’re turning something so negative into a movement.”

Winfrey dove into the Lindsay Clancy trial and postpartum psychosis in a new episode of “The Oprah Podcast,” which aired on Thursday. “The Lindsay Clancy Case, Understanding Postpartum Psychosis” included an interview with Meg Hamp, a nurse who worked alongside Lindsay for seven years and testified at her trial, along with medical experts, legal scholars, and women who are said to have personally experienced postpartum psychosis.

The majority of the episode was one-sided in favor of Clancy being unaccountable for her actions due to being overmedicated and suffering from postpartum psychosis. 

Clancy was accused of first-degree murder after admitting to strangling her three young children. The judge declared a mistrial on September 4 after the jury was deadlocked three times.

Guatemalan national Lester Noe Perez-Amador, 27, is accused of snatching the child from her home in Washington Borough, New Jersey, around the early morning hours of September 5.

The illegal immigrant knew the child, authorities said. Police located and rescued the young girl as she was running toward her home.

The illegal immigrant crossed the border illegally and sneaked past authorities when he entered the United States, DHS said. The Cameron County Police Department arrested Perez-Amador in March 2024 for DUI.

At the time, local police officers transferred the illegal immigrant to ICE, which released him onto the streets, according to DHS.

Since the kidnapping, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged a detainer with local authorities asking them to transfer the illegal immigrant to federal custody for deportation if he is released, according to DHS.

“We are urging Washington Township authorities to transfer Perez-Amador into ICE custody so we can do what Biden failed to do the first time — get this criminal illegal alien off of our streets and back to Guatemala where he belongs,” a Homeland Security spokesperson told The Daily Wire.

“The safest way to arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our streets is by lodging arrest detainers. Because some sanctuary jurisdictions refuse to work with ICE law enforcement, criminal illegal aliens are released from jails into American communities to perpetuate more crimes. Seven of the top 10 safest cities in the United States cooperate with ICE,” the spokesperson added.

Within 24 hours of receiving a report of the crime, police nabbed Perez-Amador.

He is charged with aggravated sexual assault of a victim under 13, endangering sexual conduct with a child, kidnapping with bodily injury, and home invasion burglary.

“When a child in our community is at risk, law enforcement responds as one,” Warren County Prosecutor Jessica L. Cardone said in a statement.

“I witnessed first-hand as all involved agencies worked with focus on one common goal — to bring this child to safety. Protecting our children is a responsibility we take very seriously, and our commitment does not end with an arrest,” Cardone added.

The first-degree aggravated sexual assault charges carry a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison, according to Fox 5. A charge of first-degree kidnapping carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment with 25 years of parole ineligibility, and first-degree home invasion burglary carries up to 20 years.

At the 9/11 remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero Friday morning, Terry Strada, who went up to the podium to read her husband’s name, spent nearly two minutes in front of the crowd, ripping American leaders, whom she accused of protecting “the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families.”

Fifteen of the 19 radical Islamic terrorists who hijacked planes on September 11, 2001, were Saudis, and an ongoing lawsuit accuses the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of being complicit in the attacks.

“My husband, Tom Strada, you are missed more with each year that passes. But how can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder,” Strada said as many people in the audience responded with applause. “Yes, we finally made it into a court and have proved that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fomented a rancid culture of anti-American terrorism around the globe and then sent its agents to support radical Islamist hijackers so they could attack you and all of our loved ones.”

“But for 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” she added.

“They withheld evidence. They vetoed JASTA,” Strada continued, referring to former President Barack Obama’s veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which was overridden by Congress. JASTA specifically focused on Saudi Arabia and allowed families of 9/11 victims to seek legal recourse against the Middle Eastern country.

“They broke promises, both public and private,” Strada said. “It has been one betrayal after another. President Trump can still change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying. Tell them that if they want to be friends with the USA, they cannot continue to deny all of this, all of the pain, all of the destruction that we have been suffering through.”

Strada then turned her attention to Vice President JD Vance, who was among those in attendance at the Ground Zero ceremony.

“Vice President Vance, thank you for being here today. Please carry that message back. Stand with the families, stand with the survivors, stand with Americans. As my husband Tom would have said, that is always the right thing to do.”

Tom Strada was killed after American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. His wife Terry is now the national chair of 9/11 Families United, which for years has sought to hold Saudi Arabia liable for the 9/11 attacks.

A federal appeals panel is set to hear more arguments next month on the alleged Saudi government connection to the 9/11 terror attacks. Next month, the court will focus on Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who has ties to the 9/11 hijackers and was on the payroll of Saudi intelligence, according to a 2017 FBI memo, The New York Post reported.

The 9/11 Families United scored a major legal win last year when a federal judge rejected Saudi Arabia’s attempt to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims. The federal judge determined that there was enough evidence to claim that the kingdom employed two people to help the 9/11 hijackers, according to Axios.

The Saudi government has denied any involvement in the planning or coordination of the terror attacks that killed 2,977 people in New York City, Arlington, Virginia, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Trump has maintained a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, securing major economic and defense deals with the kingdom. Earlier this year, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Trump at the White House and was asked by a reporter about the accusations leveled against his country by the 9/11 families.

“We have to focus on reality, reality based in CIA documents and based on a lot of documents that Osama bin Laden used Saudi people in that event for one main purpose … to destroy the American-Saudi relation[ship],” bin Salman said.

Trump made the plea at a ceremony at the Pentagon on Friday near the location where one of the hijacked planes hit. Throughout his speech, the president highlighted the actions of firefighters and others who responded to the terror attacks. 

“No one can ever prepare for a day like 9/11 — but we can always choose to be the kind of nation the world saw in those days after,” Trump said. “We can raise our children to know that their country is good, that their fathers are brave, and that our flag is a symbol of justice and freedom.”

During his speech, Trump told the story of New York City Fire Department Captain Timothy Stackpole, who died after he ran into the South Tower after Islamic terrorists smashed a plane into it. Stackpole was off duty when he responded to the attack. Stackpole’s family attended the Pentagon ceremony. 

“We can be a nation whose heroes are not fanatics for an abstract cause,” Trump said. “But the kind who race into buildings and give their lives on a Tuesday morning for strangers they’ve never met.”

Trump added that “the light shines in the darkness,” and said future generations would honor the heroes of 9/11, “who no age will erase from the memory of time.” 

“On days like 9/11, we learn what a country is truly made of. We’re learning right now what we’re made of,” Trump said. “We have to be strong, we have to be smart. And Americans are made of a goodness, [a] spirit that can transcend any earthly force.”

Trump also highlighted the actions of the passengers on board United Airlines Flight 93, one of the hijacked planes. After hijackers took over the plane, the passengers fought back and forced the plane to crash-land into an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 

Commemorations for the 25th anniversary of the attack were held across the country on Friday, including at Ground Zero in Manhattan and Shanksville. Vice President JD Vance attended the ceremony at Ground Zero along with all four living former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.

***

Over Labor Day weekend, X caught fire with clips from the 2026 Socialism conference, hosted by the radical-Left Haymarket Books in Chicago. More than 3,000 socialists descended on Hyatt Regency McCormick Place in the South Loop to participate in the four-day event featuring radical activists and authors such as Angela Davis, Sophie Lewis, and Hasan Piker.

City Journal’s Stu Smith has highlighted some of the conference’s most controversial livestreamed moments: a Health Fascism panel that described GLP-1s as a “fat genocide” and being “dysgenic” as aspirational; abortion activists presenting Piker with a “Satan’s School of Gay Communism” hat; Weather Underground alumni Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in attendance; and professors from Columbia, CUNY, NYU, and the University of Illinois, Chicago promoting radical activism.

Click here for more Manhattan Institute content.

But while Stu closely monitored the livestreams, City Journal associate editor Aidan Grogan reported directly from the conference — especially on panels that weren’t publicly broadcast. Between the two of us, here’s what we saw and heard.

More than three years after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, the conference required attendees to wear masks at all times except for when speakers were actively presenting. Some of the sessions were overcrowded, hot, sweaty, and smelly. Conference staff didn’t allow “comrades” to sit on the ground in the aisles because it was considered a safety hazard for attendees with mobility issues. Rather than professional attire, the typical outfit consisted of denim jeans and radical T-shirts and buttons displaying slogans like “Black Lives Matter” or “Free Palestine.” Throughout conference spaces, both speakers and attendees spouted left-wing jargon and buzzwords repeatedly: “organizing,” “solidarity,” “praxis,” “resistance,” “liberation,” and, above all, “abolition,” not just of a market economy and private property but also police, prisons, border security, gender, the family, and the state itself.

Accordingly, speakers tended to glorify precapitalist, non-Western, indigenous cultures as possessing moral purity, in contrast to the capitalist system’s greed and exploitation at the hands of “the white man.” As environmental activist Tori Tsui said in the concluding session, “We are nature defending itself.”

Haymarket Books operated its own bookstore during the conference, featuring a whole section of “Marxist Classics.” Notable titles included “Towards a Gay Communism: Elements of a Homosexual Critique”; “In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action”; “The Case for Open Borders”; “Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity”; and “Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies.” (The cover of “Surviving the Future” calls for abolishing everything from “racial capitalism” and “settler colonialism” to “identity” and “society.”)

In a session titled “Femme-inism Against Cisness: Bread, Roses, and Hormones, Too,” British Marxist writer Sophie Lewis delivered a talk on concepts such as “whorish artifice” and “transfeminist abolitionism.” At last year’s conference, Lewis provided more detail about what abolition means to her, stating, “When you abolish the police, you do burn down police stations.” This year, she drew on themes from her book “Femmephilia: Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe” to argue against “cisness,” defined as “the naturalization of assigned sex.”

“In our species, there’s no preexistent or natural sex-gender system,” Lewis said. “The dyad known as ‘men and women’ is a product of culture, which is to say labor, all the way down.” She criticized “capitalist kinship” and the “private, nuclear household” for perpetuating a “cis-sexist motherhood regime” that denies the possibility that “all children might be the responsibility of all of us.”

The other speaker on the panel, A. J. Bohrer, asked Lewis, “what’s the number one thing we can do to make socialism sexier?” Lewis replied: “Spend more time naked together.” Bohrer followed up by inquiring about “the most important feature of a communist sex forest.”

In another sex-focused session, titled “Sex for Pleasure: Controlling your Reproduction Under a Pro-Natalist Regime,” doula Emily Likins-Ehlers argued that restrictions on birth control are likely coming in post-Dobbs America. “The fascists want you to have a lot of babies so that they can take them and turn them into warehouse workers and soldiers to be sacrificed at the golden calf of capitalism,” Likins-Ehlers said. The presentation offered advice on how herbs and other plants could be used as alternative contraceptive methods if (or when) a birth-control crackdown occurs.

The conference dedicated an entire session to family abolition “through a Black feminist lens.” Like a kindergarten classroom, attendees sat in a circle and used Crayola markers to participate in coloring activities. Speakers Alanah Armstead and Marin Hart (research fellows at the Kuluntu Reproductive Justice Center) attacked the traditional nuclear family as an “oppressive container” that “privatizes care, dependency, and resources.” They advocated for “collectivizing care” and a “return to pre-capitalist and indigenous ways of caring for each other and the earth.” Hart reiterated Sophie Lewis’s claim that “all anti-capitalists are family abolitionists. They just might not know it yet.” At one point, Armstead asked the audience what they imagined when picturing the image of the “most culturally celebrated family,” and the responses included (each voiced negatively) “white people,” “private property,” “heteronormative,” “childism and hierarchy,” and “children as belonging to their parents.”

Panelists at Socialism 2026 were as motivated to abolish law enforcement as they were the family. In a separate panel, Georgetown professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò insisted that abolishing the police, even if immediately disastrous, is worth the short-term pain on “the long march towards dialectical materialism.” He lamented his struggle to make police abolition sound convincing when he takes off his “commie hat” and puts on his “normie hat.”

On that same panel, a Brazilian leftist asked what to do about the fact that, in his home country, people “actually support the police attacking drug traffickers” and see organized crime as a threat to them. CUNY professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s answer was to wait for them to join the movement through a “growing abolition consciousness.”

Socialism’s virtual panels mirrored the action on the ground. Their absurdity was perhaps best captured by Angela Davis’s call, during one panel, to consider the “complexity and the vastness” of the struggle for liberation and to expand that struggle beyond humans to animals, the planet itself, and even the cosmos. She mused about the Earth being “one grain of sand on a huge beach.”

Other presenters mirrored her quasi-religious tones. For example, Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, who doesn’t see Hamas as a “fundamental threat,” discussed her view that activists can see “a face of the divine through organizing.”

Activists did engage the question of whether “Woke 1.0” had gone too far. One activist described woke as “really wonderful linguistic tech” that was unfortunately co-opted. Princeton’s Naomi Murakawa, meanwhile, asked Davis whether the movement needed to choose between “Woke 1.0,” characterized as the “crazy excess of indulgent aesthetics of radicalism,” and the “Marxist understanding of abolition.” Davis rejected the framing and argued that “woke” had been distorted by the capitalist class.

While many virtual panels were absurd, others were legitimately concerning. Some highlighted militant tactics, ranging from the DSA’s efforts to build toward a general strike to claims that militant labor organizing is occurring on the “DL [down low].” Other organizers spoke of labor activists taking a “guerrilla warfare approach,” using “radical incrementalism,” and the “Need to Disrupt Every Union Structure of the Whole City [NYC].” Some activists lionized tactics like the “soft blockade” of ICE vehicles to disrupt their operations or refusing to leave a tree in order to prevent the border wall from being built.

Hasan Piker even weighed in on the state of organizing. He argued that the movement’s most promising areas of activism are tenant organizing, opposition to data-center development, and fighting “mass surveillance” technology like Flock. While socialism’s academics often receive the most attention, the conference also appears to serve as a radical organizing incubator.

Despite its revolt against everything “bourgeois” and its professed “solidarity” with working-class and marginalized communities, Socialism 2026 was a grand spectacle of “luxury beliefs,” a term coined by Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Rob Henderson to describe ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while imposing costs on everyone else. Many elites espouse luxury beliefs like non-monogamy, a disdain for personal fitness, or abolishing the family and police, but don’t practice what they preach. For example, Lewis, the author of “Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation” and “Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family,” is a married Oxford graduate.

Abolitionist ideas may be trendy among the majority-white, urban professionals who attended Socialism 2026, but the abstract theories of human nature and society presented by the academic Left are not well-received in minority and working-class neighborhoods. The Marxists who took to Chicago last weekend still face the same dilemma that confronted past advocates of dialectical materialism and class struggle: proletarians remain uninterested in throwing off their “chains.”

***

This is republished with permission from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. The original can be found here.

Aidan Grogan is an associate editor at City Journal, a senior contributor with Young Voices, and a history Ph.D. candidate at Liberty University. Stu Smith is an investigative analyst at City Journal.

* * * * *

Football is synonymous with everyday American life.

This weekend, the NFL and its 32 franchises, in addition to dozens of college football programs across the country, plan to use the sports’ biggest stage to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

American flag displays, moments of silence, in-stadium recognitions of first responders, 9/11 tribute branding, and special musical performances are among the many ways the football community is honoring the lives lost in 2001.

Never Forget

During Week 1, the NFL said all games “will feature tributes designed to honor the lives lost, recognize survivors, first responders and military families, and connect fans to the lasting message of remembrance and service that emerged after September 11.”

We will Never Forget.

📺: NBC pic.twitter.com/EIFJTCXN20

— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) September 10, 2026

The phrase “Never Forget” will be stenciled into end zones, and game officials will also use a 9/11 branded coin for the opening coin toss — the coins will later be auctioned off to benefit the NFL’s 9/11 charity partners. Additionally, for all of Sunday’s 1 p.m. ET kickoffs, there will be live broadcast coverage of the national anthems.

For specific teams, the Colts have organized multiple commemorative efforts. During the pregame ceremonies, the organization will recognize members of the Indiana Task Force 1 (IN-TF1), which conducted search and rescue operations at Ground Zero.

Kicking off the season with a Seattle rock legend. @MikeMcCreadyPJ

📺: NBC pic.twitter.com/xxedRQoutY

— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) September 10, 2026

Country music artist Craig Morgan, who is also a U.S. Army veteran and longtime supporter of first responders, will perform the national anthem at Lucas Oil Stadium. Additionally, a portion of the team’s gameday 50/50 raffle will also be directed toward the Indiana 9/11 Memorial Fund.

“We hope fans leave the game with gratitude in their hearts for the sacrifice made by so many 25 years ago, as well as for the continuing service of those who protect and serve us every day,” said Steve Campbell, Colts Vice President of Communications & External Affairs, to Sport & State.

The Panthers’ organization said they are participating in Charlotte’s 9/11 Flags and Lights of Remembrance event, which includes honoring the 2,977 lives lost 25 years ago.

Other franchises like the Steelers and Titans are devoting time and resources to remembering 9/11, too. The Titans invited 200 local first responders to Sunday’s game with the Jets, while the organization will also host a meal packing session on Friday at Nissan Stadium as part of the country’s broader 9/11 Day of Service initiative to pack 20 million meals for families across the U.S.

For the Steelers, the first NASA NFL flyover will occur pregame, according to a team spokesperson. Family members of victims from the United Airlines Flight 93 crash in Shanksville, Penn. will be on site, too.

During halftime, the United States Air Force Heritage of America Brass Band will perform service songs from each branch of the military, in addition to God Bless the USA, followed by a third quarter recognition of Master Sergeant Tim Motte, Pennsylvania US Army and Air National Guard. He conducted multiple combat tours and previously served as a state trooper where he was a first responder on the scene for the Flight 93 crash.

Red, White, And Blue

Across college football, stadiums from coast to coast will turn into places of remembrance this weekend with different displays of patriotism.

Fans at Kyle Field, home of Texas A&M and the 12th man, will see the nation’s colors represented across the entire stadium this weekend.

The stage is set in red, white and blue. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/ZHjm8HCdIp

— Texas A&M Football (@AggieFootball) September 9, 2026

On Friday, Kansas hosts Missouri under the lights but not before four T-38 Talon jets conduct a pregame flyover at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. Like the Jayhawks, additional football programs such as Indiana, Georgia, SMU, and West Virginia will provide moments of silence during their respective national anthems as well as offer other in-stadium visual displays paying tribute to the 9/11 anniversary.

Louisville’s matchup against Villanova on Friday is the Cardinals’ Salute to Service game, which will honor military members from nearby Ft. Knox and recognize approximately a dozen football alumni who are in the military or first responders. During halftime, there will also be a re-enlistment ceremony held on the field at L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium for current military members.

Meanwhile, Rutgers will don 9/11 tribute helmets and jerseys Friday night against Boston College as the Big Ten program honors the 37 alumni killed in the terrorists attacks, while Georgia hosts its 3rd memorial stair climb at Stanford Stadium for ROTC students and local first responders — North Carolina is organizing a similar tribute on Friday.

As we take the field on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we honor all of those whose lives were lost on that tragic day, including our 37 @RutgersU alumni.

We remember. We honor. We will never forget. pic.twitter.com/XtzQ7fjdh6

— Rutgers Football 🪓 (@RFootball) September 7, 2026

Against Rutgers, Boston College, in its annual Red Bandanna game, will honor 9/11 hero and alumnus Welles Crowther, who is known as the “The Man in the Red Bandanna” for the type of handkerchief he wore years ago. Crowther guided nearly 20 survivors to safety down a stairwell in the South Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. The Eagles will distribute red bandannas to the first 10,000 fans in attendance.

.@POTUS tells the story of the “Man in the Red Bandana,” a 24-year-old rookie equities trader in the South Tower who heroically gave his own life to save 18 others on September 11, 2001. pic.twitter.com/EiYCfUlOsJ

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 8, 2026

Members of the Crowther family as well as relatives of Boston College alumni who died on 9/11 will also be honored. A drone show at Alumni Stadium is scheduled to dot the nighttime sky during halftime, too.

Nebraska, which hosts Bowling Green on Saturday night, plans to incorporate military personnel and first responders into the team’s pregame entrance, according to Keith Mann, Senior Associate A.D. of Communications. 

The senior administrator said the Cornhuskers will also illuminate the sky overhead with a postgame drone show of their own via a partnership with America 250 and an unnamed donor in Omaha, Neb. The organization put on a similar drone show this summer at the Men’s College World Series, Mann said.

As she fought through tears on the stage in Dallas, Jessica Gorman shared the advice of “a fellow angel mom” about unifying the country.

“A fellow angel mom, Patti Fox, recently said you need to love America, Americans more than you hate Trump,” Jessica said while joined by her husband Tom and Sheridan’s sister Madeline.

“Patti, God bless you and your daughter, Carissa. You are so right. We need to love our country and our children enough to come together regardless of which party or person is in charge. We do,” she said.

(Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)

Sheridan, an 18-year-old Loyola University freshman, was walking with friends to see the Northern Lights around 1 a.m. on March 19 when she was killed. Venezuelan illegal immigrant Jose Medina-Medina, 25, allegedly approached Gorman wearing a black mask before shooting her as she tried to run.

Medina-Medina crossed the border illegally in May 2023 and was released into the country by federal authorities, who were instructed to implement the Biden administration’s then-policy of “catch and release.” At the time, Border Patrol agents noted that Medina-Medina was “likely to abscond,” saying that he had “close family ties or roots in this country,” according to federal documents previously released by the House Judiciary Committee.

The Venezuelan national then made his way to Chicago, where he allegedly shoplifted from a local Macy’s that September, according to the Chicago Tribune. Medina-Medina did not appear for a hearing in the case, leading authorities to issue a warrant for his arrest.

During the Gorman family’s convention speech, Tom called out the “sanctuary policies” that “stole our daughter from us.”

“And that is why we’re speaking out,” he said. “We don’t want anyone else to have to hold the cold hand of their daughter and know that it was 100% preventable because the person who killed her should not have been in this country and should not have been released after committing a crime.”

“I’m begging you, whether you’re a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent, do not wait until this becomes your story. Every vote counts, especially now,” the grieving father added.

The information about the racial background of the jurors was revealed on Friday morning by a fellow juror, Paula Devlin. She previously came forward days after the mistrial was declared with two other older female jurors to voice support for Clancy and heap praise on Clancy’s defense lawyer Kevin Reddington.

Devlin told CBS host Gayle King that the ages of the jurors ranged from 22-70 years old, with “one person of color.” When she revealed that the holdout was a black man, King appeared visibly shaken.

“One person of color — was the person of color a woman or a man?” King pressed. “A man,” Devlin responded.

“Is the holdout juror a black man?” King tepidly asked. “Yes,” the juror answered.

“A black man is the holdout juror?” King said. “Whoa. I have to sit with that for just a second.”

Daily Wire host Matt Walsh pointed out how the revelation could cause issues for leftists who have supported Clancy and ripped the holdout juror.

“This is amazing. The Left has been trashing this guy all week only to find out that he was the only black person on the jury, getting hounded by bossy white women. Just perfect,” Walsh wrote.

Multiple Clancy jurors have come forward over the past week with inside information about the deliberations. Devlin and the two female jurors told News 10 Boston that the holdout juror was “arrogant” and complained that he would not listen to the female nurses on the panel who gave him information about a toxicology report presented in evidence. “They spoke to that specific thing, the question that he had [about the toxicology report] — he just completely disregarded the information that they gave,” Devlin said.

In another eye-catching moment, a younger female juror admitted that her decision to find the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity was rooted in her desire for Clancy to get mental health help, not necessarily the evidence presented in the case.

“Originally, I felt as though she was guilty and she was criminally responsible for it, and maybe I still believe that in a certain way,” the female juror told CBS Boston. “I think that this was a woman who, you know, she was not mentally healthy. She was someone that was in the throes of a significant mental health crisis, so I really just felt like she was so deep in it that she couldn’t see her way out. And so this was the only option.”

Clancy admitted to killing her three young children in her home, but relied on what’s known as an insanity defense to try to evade criminal responsibility. A mistrial was declared last week after the jury remained deadlocked following days of deliberations. It’s now up to the state to decide if they will retry Clancy for the crimes.

Revealed: Lindsay Clancy’s Lawyer Finally Blows Up TikTok Conspiracies Surrounding Case

Reps. Matt Van Epps (R-TN) and Gabe Evans (R-CO) both remember where they were when the September 11 attacks were carried out. The two lawmakers. fellow Army helicopter pilots. recounted that fateful day during a conversation recorded for the Republican Study Committee’s “Right to the Point” podcast, first previewed by The Daily Wire. 

“It’s been 25 years since the September 11th terrorist attack and we have to make sure we’re not slipping into complacency,” Evans said. “We have to understand that there are people who sit around all day and all night scheming, plotting and planning how to inflict harm on Americans and how to attack the American homeland.”

Both lawmakers served as Army helicopter pilots, seeing action in Iraq and Afghanistan after watching the attacks unfold. 

Van Epps and Evans via RSC.

Van Epps, elected to the House in a special election in December 2025, was in a computer science class at West Point when the attack occurred. 

“The instructor rolled in the TV after the first plane hit, and we watched the second plane hit, and we just knew from that moment we were going to war,” he said. “We knew that the next four years were going to shape how we were going to serve as army officers, and that we were preparing for the global war on terror.”

Van Epps went on to fly an Apache helicopter in Iraq during the 2007-2008 troop surge. 

Still in high school, Evans said he was 15 years old when the attack happened and watched the attack in the living room with his family.

“I remember it, same as you, sitting in the living room just glued to the TV, watching that second plane hit,” he told Van Epps.

While in college a few years later, Evans was recruited by the military, and he went on to serve in the Army and the Colorado Army National Guard as a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter pilot. During his time in the Army, he had a combat deployment to the Middle East. 

Today, Evans said America still faces numerous threats from enemies who want to target the United States. He said that the threat of radical Islam remains, but also warned about the danger of Mexican drug cartels.

“Every 15 days, the cartels and the drug dealers have killed more Americans than Al Qaeda have ever could [have] dreamed of,” he said during the podcast. “You’ve got religiously fueled terrorists, Islamic extremists, and radicals that also want to do bad things. But you got new and emerging cartels and other folks that hate Americans, want to kill Americans.”

The podcast will be released Friday afternoon.