The Trump administration is taking on yet another blue state for issuing commercial driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has threatened to withhold $75 million in federal funding from Pennsylvania if the state refuses to stop handing out trucking licenses to illegal immigrant drivers, The Daily Wire has learned. It comes after an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/illegal-immigrant-on-terror-watchlist-received-pennsylvania-trucking-license?author=Jennie+Taer&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=7&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Illegal+Immigrant+On+Terror+Watchlist+Received+Pennsylvania+Trucking+License">Uzbek illegal immigrant</a> who had an international warrant for terrorist activity was pulled over in Kansas and discovered to have a Pennsylvania commercial driver’s license.
Duffy highlighted his concerns in a letter sent to Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro on Wednesday, claiming that Pennsylvania issued “non-domiciled CDLs [commercial driver’s licenses] with an expiration date that extended well beyond the driver’s authorized stay in the United States and failed “to require any proof of lawful presence before issuing a CDL [commercial driver’s license].”
“Under President Trump, this Department is taking every measure to ensure dangerous foreign drivers aren’t illegally operating 40-ton vehicles on American roads,” Duffy said in a statement shared with The Daily Wire on Thursday.
He continued: “Joe Biden allowed tens of millions of illegals to pour into our country through open borders, including a suspected terrorist who Pennsylvania then allowed to get behind the wheel of a semitruck. I will continue to fight to get these dangerous drivers off our roads to protect American families and support our national security.”
Shapiro&#8217;s office, however, defends that they&#8217;ve complied with federal audit requirements, which they said found no cases of concern.
&#8220;Following the release of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association&#8217;s (FMCSA) Interim Final Rule on September 29, 2025, PennDOT immediately paused issuing all non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs). PennDOT [Pennsylvania Department of Transportation] fully cooperated with FMCSA&#8217;s regularly-scheduled audit – and out of 150 cases the federal government audited, FMSCA did not identify a single commercial driver&#8217;s license issued to someone who was not eligible,&#8221; Shapiro&#8217;s office told The Daily Wire.
They also claimed that they have several layers of checks to ensure commercial driver&#8217;s licenses don&#8217;t end up in the hands of illegal immigrants.
&#8220;All non-citizens who apply for driver’s licenses, including CDLs [commercial driver&#8217;s licenses], must provide PennDOT with proof of identity and must have their legal presence in this country verified through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database – a database maintained by the United States Department of Homeland Security. PennDOT follows the established federal process for confirming that the applicant was lawfully present using the SAVE database in every case,&#8221; the governor&#8217;s office said.
&#8220;PennDOT&#8217;s top priority is safety on our roadways and ensuring only those legally eligible are able to secure a license. The Department is reviewing FMCSA&#8217;s letter and will respond within the required timeline,&#8221; they added.
In response to a series of fatal crashes, the Trump administration has taken steps to stop the issuance of commercial licenses to illegal immigrants, while also auditing states that have already handed them out.
Right now, DailyWire+ annual memberships are fifty percent off during our Black Friday sale. Join now at <a href="http://dailywire.com/blackfriday">dailywire.com/blackfriday</a>.
Much of the blame has been placed on California, which issued 17,000 non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses to foreign drivers, the agency said earlier this month. Non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses allow truckers certified in one state to work for companies in other states.
The Department of Transportation has already withheld $40 million from California after a federal investigation found that state authorities weren’t enforcing the English-language requirement for truck drivers.
Florida is also suing California after illegal immigrant <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/illegal-given-commercial-drivers-license-by-californias-newsom-charged-in-fatal-semi-truck-crash" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Harjinder Singh</a>, who was issued a commercial driver’s license in the Golden State, allegedly killed three people while making an illegal U-turn in August in the Sunshine State.

Untitled (1200 x 675 px) (1)

Trump Admin Threatens To Withhold $75M From Blue State That Gave Commercial Driver’s Licenses To Illegals

Trump Admin Threatens To Withhold $75M From Pennslyvania For Handing Commercial Driver's License To 

Donald Trump

Illegal Immigration

Pennsylvania

Sean Duffy

Truckers

If you didn&#8217;t see Tucker Carlson&#8217;s recent segment on Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old man who nearly assassinated Donald Trump live on national television during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last year, there are a few important revelations you should know about.
The first revelation — which isn&#8217;t remotely controversial — is that the FBI has clearly been hiding relevant information about Thomas Crooks from the general public. And by itself, that&#8217;s a national scandal that justifies completely gutting the FBI, from the highest levels on down. Even if you firmly believe that Thomas Crooks was a lone gunman, and even if you believe that the Secret Service was merely incompetent (as opposed to complicit) — the fact remains, our government has been withholding important details about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump&#8217;s life, without any justification whatsoever.
We should not have to rely on Tucker Carlson, or any podcaster, to tell us that Thomas Crooks left a lengthy trail of comments on YouTube, in which he openly called for political violence for several years.
These calls were so overt, and so disturbing, that one user wrote in response to Crooks:
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1003085 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-1024x158.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="158" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-1024x158.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-300x46.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-768x119.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1.jpg 1520w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
<blockquote>You&#8217;re on YouTube threatening to shoot government officials. I sure hope the FBI is monitoring social media for violent nutcases.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s almost too on-the-nose to be real. But that comment is still available on YouTube, to this day. Thomas Crooks&#8217; account has been suspended, and all of his comments have been hidden. They&#8217;re only accessible using the Internet archive website. But the replies are still there. And yet, more than a year after the assassination attempt in Butler, we have to rely on Tucker Carlson to tell us about any of this. That is completely, overwhelmingly, unequivocally unacceptable. It shouldn’t fall to anyone in the media to tell us what Thomas Crooks was saying online — and how people were reacting to his comments.
We also shouldn&#8217;t have to rely on podcasters to tell us that Thomas Crooks decided, sometime during the COVID lockdowns, to completely reverse his political views, and to begin openly attacking Donald Trump and his administration on social media. And we certainly shouldn&#8217;t have to rely on podcasters to tell us that Crooks was in contact with a mysterious person — who remains unidentified, beyond the online alias &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221; — who openly encouraged Crooks to commit acts of violence.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1003091 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-1024x204.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="204" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-1024x204.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-300x60.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-768x153.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-1536x305.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
At one point, Willy Tepes wrote to Crooks, 
<blockquote>&#8230;authority obviously comes from the barrel of a gun. We have more guns than they do. There is no way we can avoid a war at this point, so you better just get used to the idea.</blockquote>
In common parlance, this is known as &#8220;fed posting.&#8221; Willy Tepes is almost being too obvious about it. He understands that Thomas Crooks is a radical who&#8217;s prone to violence. He sees that Crooks is posting about acts of violence against political officials — and that Crooks wrote, at one point, that even the White House could be overwhelmed if enough Americans took up arms. Willy Tepes is aware of all this. And instead of expressing concern, he encourages Crooks to go to war.
Is it possible that this is just some random internet troll? Of course it is. It&#8217;s also possible that &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221; was working with a government agency or a terror cell — either in this country or some other country — to groom potential assassins. In fact, given how weird &#8220;Willy&#8217;s&#8221; comments were — and to be clear, he replied to Crooks multiple times — it seems very likely that he was trying to groom Thomas Crooks. So what has the FBI done to investigate Willy Tepes? What have they done to figure out his identity? Why is Tucker’s show the first time — literally, the first time — that anyone in this country has heard the name &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221;?
That is inexcusable, for about a million different reasons. It&#8217;s not the FBI&#8217;s job to determine what information is worth sharing to the public, or what information they deem is &#8220;important.&#8221; When it comes to the near-assassination of the leading presidential candidate, no detail is irrelevant. If Thomas Crooks went bowling every week, we should know that. If Thomas Crooks loved the film &#8220;Good Will Hunting,&#8221; we should know that. And certainly, if he was in regular communication with an anonymous person who sounded a lot like a fed, we should know that, too. At the very least we should know something about this guy. But if the feds had their way, we would know nothing at all. And that’s what we knew — nothing — until this week.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1694-tucker-carlson-reveals-shocking-details-about-thomas-crooks?"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-976065 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
And on top of that, beyond the transparency issues, it would obviously help the government&#8217;s investigation to raise awareness about these posts. Maybe someone, somewhere, knows who &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221; is. And as long as Willy Tepes isn&#8217;t the alias for a CIA agent or something like that, then you&#8217;d think your government would want someone to come forward and identify him immediately. But that&#8217;s not possible if they bury his identity, and all information about him.
And then there&#8217;s the fact that Crooks&#8217;s PayPal account, for one reason or another, uses the name of an ex-FBI agent who worked in Pennsylvania, and who investigated the Las Vegas mass shooting — the one where no motive has ever been established. What exactly is going on there? We have no idea, because again, this is the first time anyone&#8217;s hearing about any of this. Our government — under both the Biden administration and the Trump administration — made the conscious decision to hide all of this information from us. The only reason we&#8217;re hearing about it now is that a random source got in contact with Tucker Carlson&#8217;s team, and tipped him off to Crooks&#8217; online history. And because this information remains uncontested by the FBI, several days after Tucker Carlson&#8217;s broadcast, we can assume it&#8217;s all true.
So let&#8217;s pause for a minute here, and zoom out. Let&#8217;s really think about what&#8217;s happened here. This is the official narrative. Last summer, Thomas Crooks — supposedly an untrained 20-year-old with an angry, inconsistent social media history — managed to outwit the Secret Service and gain access to a roof 500 feet away from Donald Trump. 
And he wasn&#8217;t particularly subtle about it. As you can see here, he was clearly visible, running along the rooftop as Trump spoke.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
CRAZY. This video is from James Copenhaver &#8211; one of the bystanders who was shot twice and critically wounded during the assassination attempt against Trump. It CLEARLY shows Crooks&#8217; head scurrying on the rooftop moments before the shooting.
Takeaway: Secret Service BLEW IT and… <a href="https://t.co/1rP6083ZFH">pic.twitter.com/1rP6083ZFH</a>
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) <a href="https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1818701467190165566?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @justin_hart/X.com
But the Secret Service didn&#8217;t notice him — even though random attendees in the crowd were suspicious, and notified law enforcement. Somehow the Secret Service didn&#8217;t have anyone on the roof — because it was too &#8220;sloped&#8221; — and somehow the Secret Service counter-snipers couldn&#8217;t see any of this. They only shot Thomas Crooks after he unloaded several shots at Donald Trump, including a shot that hit Trump in the head. And coincidentally enough, the rally in Butler was the first time that the Secret Service had deployed counter-snipers to a Trump rally during the 2024 campaign season. Yes, the Secret Service snipers made their debut at the Butler rally — just in time to neutralize Thomas Crooks after he got his shots off. 
So in a very tidy fashion, Thomas Crooks was quickly erased from the picture. No one could question him. No one could put him on trial. And then a funny thing happened. No one really investigated Thomas Crooks. No one told us anything about his social media posts, or his political views — beyond the claim that he was a Trump supporter, which was false. It took more than a year for us to learn that, in fact, Thomas Crooks was openly promising to commit violence on social media — and that someone was encouraging him to do so.
But the story gets even stranger from there. 
Less than 48 hours after Tucker&#8217;s reporting, out of nowhere, the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/11/17/us-news/thomas-crooks-used-they-them-pronouns-had-obsession-with-violence-and-muscle-mommies-sources/">published</a> this exclusive information.
<blockquote>Thomas Crooks used they/them pronouns and posted threats of political violence and violent art on his secret social media accounts before he attempted to assassinate President Trump, according to sources who shared the suspected messages with The Post. &#8230; .Crooks had two possible accounts on DeviantArt, a site that hosts fan art and has become notorious for its community of furries — people who identify as anthropomorphized animal characters and/or are sexually attracted to them. One of the DeviantArt accounts linked to Crooks shared just one post, a repost of a towering, muscular female bodybuilder and a slight man in his underwear.</blockquote>
Separately, the Post&#8217;s Miranda Devine reported that Crooks, &#8220;had an obsession with scantily clad cartoon characters sporting muscle-bound male bodies and female heads.&#8221;
This seems to be a clear case of yet another psychologically disturbed mass shooter — someone who had been indoctrinated into the LGBT cult — turning to violence. Which is not a particularly surprising development. As I&#8217;ve said repeatedly, the LGBT cult is the single greatest domestic terror threat this country faces. In just the past few years, trans-identifying terrorists have shot up multiple Christian churches and schools. &#8220;Non-binary&#8221; mass shooters have targeted high schools and bars. A Leftist living with a &#8220;furry&#8221; assassinated Charlie Kirk in front of thousands of people.
Put simply, trans extremism is an epidemic. And the pattern of trans and “non-binary” violence is not at all surprising, even though the media tries to cover it up. Any man who identifies as a woman or a “they/them” is mentally unstable by definition. It seems nearly certain that all of these people were on psychiatric meds and in some cases hormones. And there&#8217;s another common theme here as well, which is that all of these violent LGBT shooters all probably developed their “gender identity” from consuming hundreds of hours of porn. The gender stuff is the product of extreme nihilism and extreme perversion. A steady long term diet of pornography turns anyone into a nihilist pervert. It’s not a far leap to get from that to murderer.
That&#8217;s why it’s not exactly shocking to hear that Thomas Crooks was also a member of the &#8220;they/them&#8221; cult, who regularly consumed various degenerate forms of media. At this point, you almost expect the investigation to uncover something like this. Thomas Crooks is yet another violent LGBT-linked killer, to add to a very disturbing, and fast growing, list.
There were some concerns expressed by some commentators that perhaps this revelation was an intentional diversion. A targeted leak, intended to distract us from the investigation that Tucker Carlson just published. That does seem like something the FBI might try to do, but that’s not what happened in this case. Miranda Devine has made it clear that her source is the same as Tucker’s — the information didn&#8217;t come from the FBI. Devine also provided more information on the Willy Tepes character, who was first identified by Tucker Carlson. 
Here&#8217;s what Devine <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/11/17/opinion/fbi-secret-service-butchered-the-thomas-crooks-case-and-invited-conspiracies-we-deserve-the-truth/">wrote</a>.
<blockquote>One of the people Crooks interacted with online was &#8216;Willy Tepes,&#8217; a member of Norwegian neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance Movement, which has since been designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. In one comment on Oct. 5, 2025, more than a year after Butler, Tepes commented to another user that he had been contacted by both Russian and American intelligence. &#8216;People who ask you to contact them when they just as easily could contact you, are Feds. This is how they avoid entrapment. Both American and Russian intelligence does this. I have chatted to both.&#8217; Tepes said.</blockquote>
There are only two possibilities here. The first possibility is that we&#8217;re seeing a monumental, unforgivable failure by the FBI — a degree of incompetence that&#8217;s simply staggering. Maybe they missed all of these chats. Or maybe they didn&#8217;t think they were relevant, and just never got around to releasing them. So they&#8217;re left to respond with pathetic &#8220;rapid response&#8221; press releases when Tucker Carlson and Miranda Devine publish investigative reports a year later. That&#8217;s the best-case scenario. That is the absolute, best-case scenario we&#8217;re dealing with.
The worst-case scenario is almost too dark to say out loud. But I&#8217;ll try my best. The worst-case scenario is that the FBI has been hiding all of this information about Thomas Crooks for the same reason that the Secret Service — supposedly the most elite protective force in the entire world — failed to secure that slightly-sloped roof 400 feet away from Donald Trump, with a direct line-of-sight to his head. The worst-case scenario is that the leadership of our intelligence agencies want Donald Trump dead. And if that&#8217;s the case, then there&#8217;s no reason to think they&#8217;re going to stop trying to kill him.
It&#8217;s not my job, or your job, to decide between these scenarios. It&#8217;s the job of our government, out of an abundance of transparency, to absolve itself completely of any responsibility in the attempt to murder Donald Trump. They should be telling us everything they know, even if they don&#8217;t think the information is relevant. But our government has not done so. And for that reason, it&#8217;s not insane or paranoid to assume the worst, or at least to consider it a very real possibility. For one reason or another, we aren’t being told the whole story, or even an incomplete story. And it’s way past time for us to ask one question: why?

Secret Service Says Trump Is ‘Safe’ After ‘Incident’ At Rally

Tucker Carlson Reveals Shocking Details About Thomas Crooks

assassination attempt

Butler

LGBTQ

Mass Shooting

Matt Walsh

Opinion

Shooting

Social Media

Thomas Matthew Crooks

Tucker Carlson

Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) said on Saturday evening that he&#8217;s made a &#8220;full recovery&#8221; after taking a nasty fall at his home in Braddock, Pennsylvania, this past week.
&#8220;[Twenty] stitches later and a full recovery, I’m back home with [Gisele Fetterman] and the kids,&#8221; the Democrat posted to X, captioning a photo of himself. &#8220;I’m overwhelmed + profoundly grateful for all the well-wishes. Truly.&#8221; 
&#8220;Grateful for the [University of Pittsburgh Medical Center] for the incredible medical care that put me back together,&#8221; he added. &#8220;THANK YOU SO MUCH. See you back in DC.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
20 stitches later and a full recovery, I’m back home with <a href="https://twitter.com/giselefetterman?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@giselefetterman</a> and the kids.
I’m overwhelmed + profoundly grateful for all the well-wishes.
Truly.
Grateful for <a href="https://twitter.com/UPMC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UPMC</a> for the incredible medical care that put me back together.
THANK YOU SO MUCH.
See you back in DC. <a href="https://t.co/j81LXZGLBx">pic.twitter.com/j81LXZGLBx</a>
— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenFettermanPA/status/1989784336170684880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
Fetterman’s team announced Thursday that the senator suffered a “ventricular fibrillation flare-up&#8221; and subsequently fell as he was light-headed, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/conservatives-rally-around-fetterman-after-fall-lefties-cant-get-the-knives-out-fast-enough?author=Virginia+Kruta&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Conservatives+Rally+Around+Fetterman+After+Fall%2C+Lefties+Can’t+Get+The+Knives+Out+Fast+Enough">The Daily Wire</a> reported. He sustained minor injuries to his face, as Fetterman&#8217;s attached photo on Saturday showcased.
At the time, Fetterman quipped, “If you thought my face looked bad before, wait until you see it now!”
Conservatives rallied around Fetterman when they heard of his fall, but the tone from leftists on X-alternative Bluesky was far different. As highlighted by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/conservatives-rally-around-fetterman-after-fall-lefties-cant-get-the-knives-out-fast-enough?author=Virginia+Kruta&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Conservatives+Rally+Around+Fetterman+After+Fall%2C+Lefties+Can%E2%80%99t+Get+The+Knives+Out+Fast+Enough">The Daily Wire</a>, leftists mocked Fetterman for falling and complained that he lived.
Just before his fall, Fetterman said on CNN airwaves that the most vicious attacks aimed at him have not come from conservatives, but rather those on the Left. The Democrat has strayed from his party on numerous occasions, like supporting the reopening of the government and giving nuanced takes on the Israel and Gaza conflict.
“I asked my digital team, I said, ‘We’re on all the platforms, you know, what’s kind of the harshest? What’s kind of the most personal?” Fetterman recalled. “And the answer was immediate. They said, ‘Oh, Bluesky. It’s Bluesky.'&#8221;
“And the difference is the Right would say really rough things and names, some names I won’t repeat on TV,” he continued. “But on the Left, it was like, they want me to die, or that, ‘We’re cheering for your next stroke’ or, that’s terrible that depression — ‘Why couldn’t the depression won?’ And, ‘I hope your kids find you.’&#8221;
“I remember one that they claimed, ‘Oh, the doctor let us down,’ and ‘Why did they have to save his life?&#8217;” Fetterman added. “I mean, just really — I just can’t imagine people are wishing, ‘I wish he dies,’ or ‘I want him to die,’ you know, literally cheering for a stroke. And I don’t know &#8230; the kind of a place where that comes from.”
“That’s much different from calling me a name,” he explained. “And that’s really been consistent in that community online.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨NEW: John Fetterman *STUNS* CNN&#8217;s Dana Bash by telling her how Left crueler than Right🚨
FETTERMAN: &#8220;The Right would say really rough things and names &#8230; but on the Left, it was like they want me to die or that &#8216;We&#8217;re cheering for your next stroke&#8217; &#8230; they even have a gif… <a href="https://t.co/iMRyVTssgs">pic.twitter.com/iMRyVTssgs</a>
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/1988670736924336374?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 12, 2025</a></blockquote>
Virginia Kruta contributed to this report 
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/conservatives-rally-around-fetterman-after-fall-lefties-cant-get-the-knives-out-fast-enough?author=Virginia+Kruta&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Conservatives+Rally+Around+Fetterman+After+Fall%2C+Lefties+Can’t+Get+The+Knives+Out+Fast+Enough">Conservatives Rally Around Fetterman After Fall, Lefties Can’t Get The Knives Out Fast Enough</a>

John Fetterman

John Fetterman Shares Photo, Medical Update After Fall Lands Him In Hospital

Congress

Health

Politics

U.S. Senate

Senator John Fetterman suffered a fall Thursday morning and is currently under observation in the hospital.
The Pennsylvania Democrat fell near his home in Braddock and he was transported to a Pittsburgh hospital, his spokesman <a href="https://x.com/SenFettermanPA/status/1989026864862507493?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote on X</a>.
“Upon evaluation, it was established he had a ventricular fibrillation flare-up that led to Senator Fetterman feeling light-headed, falling to the ground and hitting his face with minor injuries,” the post said.
Ventricular fibrillation is a type of irregular heart rhythm, according to the <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/ventricular-fibrillation/symptoms-causes/syc-20364523" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mayo Clinic</a>.
The spokesperson confirmed he is “doing well” and decided to stay so doctors can “fine-tune his medication regimen.”
Fetterman has a history of heart-related health issues. He was reportedly diagnosed with atrial fibrillation in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pennsylvania-democrat-john-fetterman-to-end-absence-from-campaign-trail-two-months-after-stroke" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2017</a> and suffered a near-fatal <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/04/john-fetterman-ignored-heart-condition-stroke" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stroke</a> in 2022.
In a lighthearted statement following the incident, Fetterman said in the statement: &#8220;If you thought my face looked bad before, wait until you see it now!&#8221;
“Senator Fetterman is grateful for the EMTs, doctors, and nurses who are providing his care,” the spokesperson said.
Fetterman traveled back to Pennsylvania this week after the Senate passed the resolution to reopen the government. Fetterman was one of the few Democrats who sided with Republicans, voting with them 15 times to reopen the government.
The Daily Wire’s D.C. Bureau Chief Tim Rice interviewed Fetterman on November 3. The senator discussed his opposition to the government shutdown, the Democrat Party&#8217;s extremism problem, and why he no longer gets invited to appear on MSNBC. You can read the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-daily-wire-sits-down-with-john-fetterman-who-doesnt-hear-from-democrats-anymore" target="_blank" rel="noopener">full story here</a>.

Sen. John Fetterman

John Fetterman Hospitalized After Cardiac Incident And Fall

Senate

A Democratic candidate for Congress once boasted about her record of supporting “no new taxes” as mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, even as city taxes have steadily climbed during her tenure.
Ready to move on from city politics, Mayor Paige Cognetti is running to unseat Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA), who represents Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District. Cognetti&#8217;s record on taxation is drawing criticism from her opponents, who note that property taxes have jumped multiple times during her time in office, despite complaints from residents. 
Cognetti was first elected as mayor of Scranton during a special election in November 2019 and took office on January 6, 2020. By January 28, the city <a href="https://scrantonpa.gov/docs/council_agendas/2020/2020-01-28%20Minutes.pdf">adopted</a> a 2.47% property tax increase. According to the Times-Tribune, that increase, which was first proposed by the previous mayor, was also <a href="https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/2020/01/23/scranton-annual-trash-fee-to-remain-at-300-in-2020/">authorized</a> by the Cognetti administration.
A year-and-a-half later when running for her first full term in office in May 2021, Cognetti released a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSHWzx9_rgg">campaign ad</a> which claims she “fought new taxes” and guided the city to a “budget surplus with no new taxes.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-990403" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-23-at-12.16.53-PM.png" alt="" width="1746" height="961" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-23-at-12.16.53-PM.png 1746w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-23-at-12.16.53-PM-300x165.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-23-at-12.16.53-PM-1024x564.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-23-at-12.16.53-PM-768x423.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-23-at-12.16.53-PM-1536x845.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1746px) 100vw, 1746px" />
After winning re-election, property taxes increased under Cognetti in both 2023 and 2024. Both those hikes were about 2%, but could have been higher if Cognetti had her way. Her administration wanted taxes to increase by 3.5% in 2024, the Times-Tribune <a href="https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/2024/02/10/more-than-a-quarter-of-lackawanna-county-municipalities-hiked-taxes-in-2024/">reported</a>.
Cognetti recently <a href="https://www.audacy.com/podcast/the-morning-news-with-nancy-and-jason-f6d87/episodes/speaking-with-scranton-mayor-paige-cognetti-after-her-victory-in-yesterdays-primary-election-58cad?fbclid=IwY2xjawNQuN9leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFiNVZDckJhZHhHYlE0bGF4AR70dGDQugnDK2Lgk-0TSIyqfypbLtvKzl60HOuBSrj_LdIpYl7xmBrAiy6mmA_aem_k3AZXVPpEUXZFvwxIXMvCA">discussed</a> these hikes on local radio, saying that they were increases that residents could handle. 
“Over five years, we&#8217;ve increased taxes twice, about 2% each time. Those are responsible increases and there&#8217;s things that people can manage,” she said on the “Morning News with Nancy and Jason.”  “We don’t play politics with people&#8217;s finances. We don’t pretend for years that we don’t need to raise our taxes and then let somebody else do it years later.”  
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At the time the 2024 hike was being considered, some residents of Scranton voiced concerns about not being able to handle the increase.
&#8220;Look at it for senior citizens. I&#8217;m like 72 years old. Where am I going to get the money from on a fixed income? This is not good,&#8221; Gerry Dombroski <a href="https://www.wnep.com/article/news/local/lackawanna-county/proposed-tax-hike-in-scrantons-2024-budget/523-74c54dcf-4db0-4b24-8d24-cc47884f4d9d">told</a> a local ABC affiliate.
Prior to taking office, Cognetti <a href="https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/2019/11/09/cognetti-faces-major-hurdles-as-scranton-mayor/">said</a> that she would fight to lower the city’s income tax, which is 2.4%. She called that rate &#8220;unbelievable,&#8221; comparing it to New York City where &#8220;at least you get a subway.&#8221; That tax has not budged during her over five and a half years in office. 
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Reilly Richardson said that Cognetti’s record on taxation shows that she is a “political opportunist.” 
“Political opportunist Paige Cognetti raised taxes on hardworking Scranton families then lied about it,” he told The Daily Wire. “Cognetti is too dishonest and too expensive to be mayor, much less a Member of Congress.”
The critical northeastern Pennsylvania race could come down to the wire. Bresnahan only won his last election by about 6,000 votes out of 385,000 cast.

Sen. Bob Casey Holds His Election Night Event In Scranton

Taxes Have Jumped Under Dem Congressional Candidate Despite ‘No New Taxes’ Boast

2026 Midterms

Elections

Taxes

A Christian woman was punished after refusing to escort a prominent transgender-identifying male “political figure” to a female locker room at a spa operated by the iconic Hershey Entertainment and Resorts, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday. 
The suit says that Jeriah Sellers, a devout Christian, was told to leave her faith at the door after she informed her supervisor that she was uncomfortable bringing a male into the female locker room at the Melt Spa by Hershey in Pennsylvania. As a result of her request not to be forced to bring males into female spaces, Sellers says that she was suspended without pay for a shift and slapped on the wrist by the company’s HR department. 
“Hershey wants you to leave your personal, religious, and political beliefs at the door,” Sellers was told by a company HR representative, the lawsuit alleges. The suit accuses the spa of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits religious discrimination and requires employers to accommodate workers’ religious practices.  
Sellers is being represented by lawyers Andrea Shaw and Jeremy Samek, a lawyer with the Independence Law Center, a Pennsylvania-based public interest law firm. The suit was filed in the federal court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. 
“This is really, I think, a  case where the corporate mentality on the transgender issue is that employees can&#8217;t be accommodated and that they&#8217;re justified in punishing religious beliefs on this issue,” Shaw told The Daily Wire. “And that&#8217;s what needs to change. The corporate can have their policy, but they need to accommodate their employees with their religious beliefs.” 
Hershey Entertainment and Resorts was founded in 1927 by chocolate baron Milton S. Hershey, more than 30 years after he founded the famed Hershey Chocolate company. While the two are separate business entities, they both partner with the Milton Hershey School. 
The controversy began on May 28, 2025, when Sellers says her supervisor told her that a transgender-identifying male who was a “well-known political figure” was coming to the spa and would be using the female locker room. After she was told of the upcoming visit, Sellers told her supervisor that she would be unable to bring the male to the locker room because of her Christian religious beliefs. It is unclear who the figure visiting the spa was. 
Her supervisor responded by saying that it was not a problem and offered to bring the guest to the locker room, according to the suit. A few days after this conversation, Sellers and her supervisor discussed a potential religious accommodation. 
“[Sellers] explained that as a Christian, she wanted to figure out how best to respond to this situation in a positive way for everyone, but that she was not comfortable escorting a biological male into the Women’s Locker Room because it went against her religious beliefs, which also included her concern for other female guests who may be uncomfortable having a biological male present in the designated female locker room facility,” a copy of the suit obtained by The Daily Wire said. 
The supervisor indicated that the accommodation was reasonable but that it would need approval from the HR department, the suit says. During a meeting on June 4, 2025, with the HR department, Sellers says that she was told that she would be disciplined by having her shift for the day suspended without pay and receiving a write-up by HR.
That was when she was allegedly told to leave her “personal, religious, and political beliefs at the door.” She was also given a copy of the company’s transgender policies, which require employees to guide customers to their facilities based on if they mark male, female, or “non-binary,” according to the suit. 
An exhibit included in the suit viewed by The Daily Wire reveals a document called “Spa Transgender Policies” dated September 2021 that says that “guests are welcome to use the locker room that corresponds with their gender identity. Bathroom and shower stalls are also located within the locker rooms for privacy.” 
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-988705" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-20-at-1.44.05-PM.png" alt="" width="1482" height="561" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-20-at-1.44.05-PM.png 1482w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-20-at-1.44.05-PM-300x114.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-20-at-1.44.05-PM-1024x388.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-20-at-1.44.05-PM-768x291.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1482px) 100vw, 1482px" /></div>
Sellers said that she had never seen the document outlining the spa’s transgender policies before. 
“Despite Jeriah’s request for a reasonable accommodation based on her deeply held religious beliefs, and in spite of both her supervisor’s and manager’s recognition that she easily could be accommodated, Defendant disciplined Jeriah, placed her under threat of future discipline and instructed her to leave her religious beliefs at the door.”
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On July 21, 2025, Sellers filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Two days later, the EEOC issued a right-to-sue letter indicating that it would not be able to resolve the complaint quickly. 
As a Christian, Sellers believes that God created only two sexes, male and female, and believes it would be deceitful to purposely bring a male into a female space. 
Additionally, her “Christian faith dictates her belief in modesty and privacy,” the suit said. “Therefore, it is a violation of Plaintiff’s religious beliefs to be present where males might change or to encourage, aid, or facilitate the entry of a biological male into a designated space where females undress without their consent, thereby subjecting those women to a sexually harassing environment where their privacy will be compromised.”
The suit requests that a court rule that Hershey Entertainment and Resorts violated Sellers’ civil rights and ensure that she has an accommodation for the future. 
Sellers first began working at Melt Spa in August 2023 and was required to give female guests a tour of the female locker room while only having to escort male guests to the door of the male locker room.

MixCollage-21-Oct-2025-10-01-AM-1103

Hershey Resorts Punished Employee For Not Bringing Trans Male Into Female Locker Room, Suit Says

Christianity

Civil Rights

Religious Liberty

Transgenders

Airports in Pennsylvania and Canada were hacked on Tuesday with pro-Hamas messages that attacked President Donald Trump, forcing passengers on at least one plane to deboard over security concerns. 
Hackers took control of the public address system and screens at Harrisburg International Airport and three Canadian airports to broadcast profane messages targeting Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The hacks are under investigation by law enforcement in both the United States and Canada.
“F**k Netanyahu and Trump. Turkish hacker, cyber-Islam is here&#8230; Free, free Palestine,” a message <a href="https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/10/harrisburg-international-airports-pa-system-hacked-by-political-message.html">blasted</a> over the PA system at Harrisburg International Airport said.
Similar messages were played in Canada at the Victoria International Airport, the Kelowna International Airport in British Columbia, and the Windsor International Airport in Ontario.
In Harrisburg, the TSA ordered passengers off a boarded plane for an additional security check.
&#8220;As the safety and security of our customers and employees comes before all else, Delta followed the direction of TSA to return to the gate and complete a security check of the aircraft. We appreciate our customers&#8217; patience and cooperation,&#8221; Delta <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/travel/hacker-hijacks-airport-speakers-blasts-anti-trump-other-political-messages">told</a> Fox News. 
In a statement, the Harrisburg International Airport said that an &#8220;unauthorized user” gained access to its PA system to play a recorded message. “The message was political in nature and did not contain any threats against the airport, our tenants, airlines, or passengers. The PA system was temporarily shut down, and the message was removed,” the airport said. 
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said that the Federal Aviation Administration was working with the airport to figure out what happened. 
“This is absolutely unacceptable and understandably scared travelers,” Duffy <a href="https://x.com/SecDuffy/status/1978644738161996218">said</a>. “The [FAA] and I are coordinating with [Harrisburg International] to help get to the bottom of this hack.”
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Kelowna International Airport <a href="https://ylw.kelowna.ca/passengers/passenger-updates">said</a> it was able to remove the unauthorized messages within minutes and that the hack was limited to a cloud-based third-party software. Transport Canada, the country&#8217;s government transportation body, and Canadian police determined that the messages did not pose “a direct threat towards the travelling public,” the airport said. 
One passenger <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/15/us/airport-cyber-breach-pennsylvania-canada-hnk">told</a> CNN that airport staff used megaphones to relay information after the PA system was shut down at Kelowna International Airport. 
“The airport staff was about as in the dark as we were,” the passenger said. “They even had to resort to using megaphones to give people boarding information because the intercom was down.”

Travelers on line on LaGuardia Airport in New York

Pro-Terrorism Hackers Hijack Airport PA Systems With ‘Free Palestine’ Stunt

Pro-Terrorism Hackers Hijack Airport Public Address System With 'Free Palestine' Stunt

Air and Space

airport

Canada

Hackers

Hamas

World

A man who expressed anti-Israel views and called Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro a “monster” pleaded guilty to all charges on Tuesday morning after firebombing the Governor’s Residence in April.
Cody Balmer, 38, pleaded guilty to charges of attempted homicide and terrorism, along with dozens of arson-related charges, The Philadelphia Inquirer <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/crime/cody-balmer-arson-guilty-plea-josh-shapiro-mansion-fire-20251014.html">reported</a>. Balmer was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison.
Balmer scaled the property fence and broke into the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence at around 2:00 a.m. on April 13, shortly after Shapiro — who is Jewish — finished celebrating Passover with his family. The arsonist lit multiple homemade incendiary devices and threw them on the floor inside the home as Shapiro and his family slept, security footage shows. Balmer then fled the property.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Video inside Gov. Shapiro&#8217;s residence shows the moments Cody Balmer threw Molotov Cocktails inside the residence earlier this year
More details on <a href="https://t.co/7vlW67ZTdM">https://t.co/7vlW67ZTdM</a> <a href="https://t.co/ZKWrn5LQqm">https://t.co/ZKWrn5LQqm</a> <a href="https://t.co/scIl39YPYH">pic.twitter.com/scIl39YPYH</a>
— abc27 News (@abc27News) <a href="https://twitter.com/abc27News/status/1978097948140388429?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 14, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
After the blaze erupted, the governor and his family were awakened by state troopers and escaped unharmed. The fire damaged much of the home, costing more than $7 million to repair, the Inquirer reported.
Hours after he set the fire, Balmer called police and admitted to the attack, saying that he would not “take part in [Shapiro’s] plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,” The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/arsonist-arrested-for-attack-on-josh-shapiro-hated-israel-911-call-reveals">reported</a>. Balmer told authorities that he strongly disagreed with Shapiro’s stance on the war between Israel and Hamas and admitted that he would have beaten Shapiro with a hammer if he had encountered the governor during his rampage, according to police documents.
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Balmer had past run-ins with law enforcement, and his mother said that he is “mentally ill and he went off his medication.” In 2023, police responded to a call from Balmer’s home, and he reportedly told police that he attempted suicide with a “bottle full of pills” and got into a fight with his wife and 13-year-old son. His wife alleged that Balmer hit the teenager and punched her in the face and bit her. He was charged with three counts of simple assault at the time.
Last year, as Shapiro was on the shortlist of potential running mates for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the governor faced intense criticism from many on the Left for his stance on the war in Gaza. Harris ultimately skipped over Shapiro and selected Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz. Shapiro maintained that he was not passed over due to any form of antisemitism within the party.
Balmer’s social media activity shows that he expressed a range of leftist beliefs, while also criticizing former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, The New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/04/14/us-news/cody-balmer-suspected-josh-shapiro-arsonist-pictured/">reported</a>. Leftist media personalities like Don Lemon and Joe Scarborough <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/no-the-attack-on-democrat-josh-shapiros-house-is-not-an-example-of-maga-violence">attempted</a> to spin Balmer’s attack as an example of Right-wing violence.

Josh Shapiro

Anti-Israel Man Pleads Guilty After Terrorizing Pennsylvania Governor’s Home

anti-Israel

Arson

Crime

Fire

Israel

A suspect is on the run after a car slammed into the gates of the Pittsburgh FBI office early Wednesday morning in what officials described as an “act of terror.” 
The FBI is searching for a man named Donald Henson, who authorities say crashed his vehicle into the main entrance fence at around 2:40 a.m. FBI Pittsburgh Assistant Special Agent in charge Christopher Giordano said that Henson is “dangerous” and has a history of mental health issues. 
&#8220;We look at this as an act of terror against the FBI,&#8221; Giordano <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/suspect-sought-after-carrams-fence-fbi-office-pittsburgh-125652585">said</a>. &#8220;This was a targeted attack on this building. Thankfully no one was hurt.”
Giordano said that Henson exited the car after the collision and draped an American flag over the gates before leaving on foot. He said that officials believed he was a former member of the U.S. military. 
“We don’t have any indication that he is armed. We do believe that there is a mental health problem and a history of mental health issues with the subject so we would consider him dangerous,” he said. “We just have no reason to believe right now, from here, that he had a weapon.” 
Giordano added that Henson had previously made an incoherent complaint to the FBI, which didn’t result in any federal action. 
&#8220;In scouring our indexes, we did find that he visited the field office a couple of weeks ago to make a complaint that didn&#8217;t make a whole lot of sense,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We ran down everything that he came down with. It didn&#8217;t have a federal nexus. We contacted him to let him know there wasn&#8217;t a federal offense that we were able to charge.&#8221;
Witnesses <a href="https://www.wtae.com/article/im-blown-away-right-now-witnesses-describe-crash-into-fbi-building-gate-in-pittsburgh/66136309">said</a> that the man exited the crashed vehicle, shouted, and fled.
“He got out and went around the passenger side and pulled something out of the passenger side. I thought it was a gun but it happened to be a flag and he just set it on that fence and started yelling out some words and just took off,” Nakeisha Brown told a local ABC News affiliate. 
Authorities say anyone who spots Henson should call the FBI or their local police department. The suspect is from Penn Hills, a township located approximately 12 miles from Pittsburgh.

MixCollage-17-Sep-2025-07-04-AM-8717

‘Act of Terror’: Suspect Flees After Ramming Car Into FBI’s Pittsburgh Office

'Act of Terror': Suspect Flees After Ramming Car Into FBI's Pittsburgh Office

domestic terrorism

Pittsburgh

Terrorism

U.S.

Police responded to an active shooter situation at Villanova University on Thursday afternoon, as new students were moving into their dorms at the private Catholic research university west of Philadelphia. Villanova President Rev. Peter M. Donohue said that the reported shooting was a &#8220;cruel hoax,&#8221; adding that no one was injured, NBC 10 Philadelphia <a href="https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/villanova-students-warned-of-active-shooter-on-campus/4257685/">reported</a>.
At around 4:30 p.m. ET, while many students and parents were attending mass, an alert went out from Villanova instructing everyone to shelter in place and stay away from the Law School&#8217;s Scarpa Hall. A video posted on X showed a representative for Villanova telling a group of people who had taken shelter that the active shooter situation was &#8220;supposedly in the library at the law school.&#8221;
The campus was placed on lockdown over the incident just hours after Villanova Law <a href="https://x.com/Villanova_Law/status/1958620709808206026?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1958620709808206026%7Ctwgr%5Ec8b9ece089c78ab88cf83b134bb6b0ff50ce0254%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcphiladelphia.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fvillanova-students-warned-of-active-shooter-on-campus%2F4257685%2F">posted</a> that it hosted a &#8220;successful&#8221; orientation for students that was followed by a picnic. The school year is set to begin next week.
&#8220;Today, as we are celebrating Orientation Mass to welcome our newest Villanovans and their families to our community, panic and terror ensued with the news of a possible shooter at the Law School,&#8221; Donohue said. &#8220;Mercifully, no one was injured, and we now know that it was a cruel hoax—there was no active shooter, no injuries and no evidence of firearms present on campus. While that is a blessing and relief, I know today’s events have shaken our entire community.&#8221;
&nbsp;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨BREAKING: An active shooter alert has been reported at Villanova University
<a href="https://t.co/tzqwX9s1BK">pic.twitter.com/tzqwX9s1BK</a>
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1958637655790325927?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2025</a>
&nbsp;</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
shooting at villanova university, we are hiding and locked down in a utility closet…. an HR rep just came to clarify the situation <a href="https://t.co/Ukw42WEHg3">pic.twitter.com/Ukw42WEHg3</a>
— Liam Zieg (@liamzieg) <a href="https://twitter.com/liamzieg/status/1958633579807904016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2025</a></blockquote>
&nbsp;
The active shooting hoax at Villanova came hours after police <a href="https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2025/08/21/university-of-tennessee-chattanooga-lockdown-reports-of-shooter/85762026007/">lifted</a> an active shooter lockdown at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga after finding no evidence of a threat.
This is a developing story; refresh the page for updates.

US-VATICAN-RELIGION-POPE-UNIVERSITY

Active Shooter Scare On Villanova Campus Was ‘Cruel Hoax’

Philadelphia

Police

The Democratic Party is in a &#8220;deep political hole&#8221; with voter registration, according to an analysis <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/us/politics/democratic-party-voter-registration-crisis.html">published</a> by The New York Times on Wednesday.
Between 2020 and 2024, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in all 30 states that track party affiliation when Americans register to vote, and the Times acknowledged the losses were &#8220;often by a lot.&#8221; In those 30 states, plus the District of Columbia, Democrats shed 2.1 million voters between 2020 and 2024. Republicans, meanwhile, gained 2.4 million voters.
&#8220;That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from,&#8221; the Times wrote.
The major shift toward the GOP included vital swing states, such as Arizona and Pennsylvania, but Democrats also lost ground in the deep blue states of California, New York, and Massachusetts. In states where Republican voter registration was already blowing past that of the Democrats — such as Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Oklahoma — GOP gains continued to grow.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
New York Times: &#8220;The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls.
Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a… <a href="https://t.co/gx94qL9EVP">pic.twitter.com/gx94qL9EVP</a>
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) <a href="https://twitter.com/TomBevanRCP/status/1958153504842801375?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 20, 2025</a></blockquote>
&nbsp;
While Democrats still outnumber Republicans by party registration nationwide, more newly registered voters across the country chose the Republican Party over the Democratic Party for the first time since 2018. The Times also noted that the Democrats&#8217; voter registration numbers are helped by massive blue states like California and New York allowing people to register by party, while the largest Republican state, Texas, and many of the deep-red southern states do not.
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Decision Desk HQ&#8217;s director of data science, Michael Pruser, told the Times that there &#8220;seems to be no end&#8221; to the voter registration crisis for Democrats.
&#8220;There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year,&#8221; he said.
In recent years, Democrats &#8220;fell asleep at the switch,&#8221; according to longtime Democratic strategist Maria Cardona. Even Tom Bonier, one of the party&#8217;s top voter registration experts, admitted to the Times that he &#8220;was wrong&#8221; after downplaying the Democrats&#8217; registration issues last year.
“Clearly, in retrospect, we can say the Democratic Party had dug itself in too deep a hole in the preceding four years for the Harris campaign to dig itself out in the last few months,” Bonier said.
Republicans, meanwhile, adjusted their strategy following President Donald Trump&#8217;s 2020 election defeat and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/republicans-ballot-harvesting-fraud-claims-rcna151952">hit the gas</a> on voter registration and ballot harvesting strategies in 2024.
“We don’t like drop boxes, to be clear,” a Republican National Committee official said in May of 2024. “We’re still going to use drop boxes if we have to, if they’re available. Same thing with harvesting: Where it’s a practice that Democrats are partaking in, we’re going to partake in it, too.”
Republicans also benefited from the efforts of activist Scott Presler, who dedicated himself from 2021 to 2024 to registering Republicans in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania. In the summer of 2024, voter registration in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — a competitive suburb of Philadelphia — shifted to a GOP advantage for the first time since 2007, according to the Times. Trump went on to win Bucks County in the 2024 election, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to do so in the 21st century.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats held an advantage of more than 517,000 registered voters in 2020, but that lead has now <a href="https://x.com/ScottPresler/status/1954912806911844834">fallen to fewer</a> than 54,000. Much of that shift comes from Democrats switching their party affiliation to Republicans. From 2020 to 2025, around 314,000 registered Democrats flipped to registered Republicans, while just over 160,000 registered Republicans became registered Democrats.
Democrats are also losing support among young voters, who are shifting to the GOP. Last year, Republicans registered nearly twice as many voters under 35 as Democrats did in key states such as Nevada, the Times reported.

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Leftists Panic: Even NYT Says Democrats Face ‘Voter Registration Crisis’

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Democrats

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New York

New York Times

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You can tell a lot about the strength of a particular argument or world view by how long it lasts before reality ends up discrediting it. There are some debates that don&#8217;t need to be settled by consulting with dozens of experts or asking ten different AI models and then comparing notes. Instead, certain events take place, and they resolve the disagreement right away. A catastrophic nuclear meltdown ended any discussion about how effective Chernobyl&#8217;s emergency shutdown mechanism was. An iceberg convinced everyone that, despite all of the marketing hype, the Titanic could in fact sink. There are limits to the ability of liars and charlatans to deceive the population, in other words. Even the most convincing fraudsters face the risk of exposure if their deception is simply too absurd to be compatible with reality. The more absurd the deception is, the faster it falls apart.
By that standard, there are few lies that are more flagrant — and obviously so — than the fiction that gay men should be allowed to adopt children, or to acquire them by paying for a woman to serve as a &#8220;surrogate.&#8221; As we saw recently, a journalist named Glenn Greenwald personally <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/glenn-greenwald-called-me-morally-deranged-then-this-happened">attacked</a> me for holding the position that children should be raised by a mother and a father. He maintained, in a very public and vitriolic fashion, that I was a terrible person for suggesting that gay adoption isn&#8217;t an ideal outcome. He presented himself as infinitely more virtuous than I am because of his decision to acquire young children. And then, within a matter of weeks, Greenwald himself demonstrated through his own conduct — on camera — why my position was correct.
That was back in June. And now, just a month later, it&#8217;s happened again. Reality has caused yet another major problem for the Left&#8217;s narrative about homosexuals who adopt children. Only this time, reality reared its head even faster — as in, within 24 hours. And the implications here are somehow even more disturbing and grotesque than they were with Glenn Greenwald&#8217;s debauchery. This is a story that makes it very clear that laws need to change, and they need to change immediately. And then people need to go to prison.
It all began on Sunday, when an Irish political activist named Derek Blighe discovered some videos that had been posted on a gay couple&#8217;s social media feeds. The videos show the two gay men, both of whom are overweight, marking monthly anniversaries with a child they&#8217;ve obtained. In every video, they blow out a candle on the cupcake. And the videos keep going, as the men seem to somehow get fatter each time. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Gay Couple" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sYxqkeV2XRQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
In response to these videos, on Sunday, Derek Blighe posted simply, &#8220;Unless a miracle happens, this child has almost no chance at a normal life.&#8221;
And he was right, of course.
At a visceral level, this footage is repulsive. Everyone understands that, whether they&#8217;ll admit it or not. When a child is deprived of his mother and father, it isn&#8217;t something to celebrate. It&#8217;s a tragedy that&#8217;s inflicted on someone who cannot possibly deserve it, and who may never recover from it. And that&#8217;s especially true when, in lieu of a mother and a father, a child is obtained by two men who belong to a demographic whose behavior, in a very disproportionate number of cases, is completely incompatible with raising children, to put things as mildly as possible. It&#8217;s also a demographic that&#8217;s disproportionately interested in adopting male children. And again, everyone understands what&#8217;s going on there, though nobody will say it.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1631-the-matt-walsh-show?elementPosition=0&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=The+Matt+Walsh+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
And yet, when Blighe made this simple and straightforward observation, hundreds of thousands of Left-wing activists pretended to be shocked and horrified by what he had written. They also claimed that, in fact, it&#8217;s *better* for the child to be raised by two gay men, than by his own mother and father.
Here&#8217;s <a href="https://x.com/LouiseScot51918/status/1949441171085799511">one representative post</a>, which has more than 6 million views and 220,000 &#8220;likes&#8221; on X:
<blockquote>Makes me happy. That baby is going to be raised not to hate people and will be loved.</blockquote>
Here&#8217;s another post, from someone named &#8220;Bev Jackson&#8221; of a group called &#8220;Alliance LGB.&#8221; This came in response to Derek&#8217;s post expressing disgust at the footage: 
<blockquote>That is homophobic. If the child has two loving male parents, there is no evidence whatsoever that he or she will not prosper.</blockquote>
But Bev Jackson&#8217;s response didn&#8217;t last very long. Just a few hours later, Bev <a href="https://x.com/BevJacksonAuth/status/1949907957203751331">deleted</a> it. And a lot of people like Bev deleted their reactions, too. That&#8217;s because, in record-breaking time, the narrative took an extremely dark turn. The journalists at Reduxx decided to take a closer look at the two gay men in the video with that toddler. <a href="https://reduxx.info/gay-man-who-crowdfunded-surrogacy-journey-with-husband-revealed-as-child-sex-offender/">Here&#8217;s</a> what they found:
<blockquote>A widely circulated video showcasing a gay couple’s &#8216;surrogacy journey&#8217; has revealed that a baby boy is currently in the custody of a registered child sex offender. &#8230; Brandon Keith Mitchell is a Tier 1 sex offender in the state of Pennsylvania, and was arrested in 2016 after attempting to solicit a 16-year-old boy for sexual abuse. The victim in the case was a student at Downingtown West High School, where Mitchell had worked as a chemistry teacher. He was 30 years old at the time.</blockquote>
Here&#8217;s an image of Brandon Mitchell when he was teaching:
<div id="attachment_953911" style="width: 442px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-953911" class="wp-image-953911 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-432x576.jpg" alt="Chester County District Attorney’s office." width="432" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-432x576.jpg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-225x300.jpg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-scaled.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px" />Chester County District Attorney’s office.</div>
According to local news reports, Mitchell was, &#8220;charged with texting obscene images and texts to a student, [and] asking for nude images of the underage student.&#8221;
Mitchell taught at this school from 2010 to 2015. And during this period, he reportedly sent more than 12,000 text messages to this student. He ended up pleading guilty to &#8220;felony child pornography possession and one count of Corruption of Minors&#8221; — because police found sexually explicit videos of the child on his personal computer — and was sentenced to nearly two years of incarceration. But he didn&#8217;t serve anywhere near that sentence. Just two months after his conviction, Reduxx reports, he was granted parole. For a crime that should&#8217;ve resulted in life imprisonment, at a minimum, he barely spent any time in jail.
The Reduxx article <a href="https://reduxx.info/gay-man-who-crowdfunded-surrogacy-journey-with-husband-revealed-as-child-sex-offender/">continues</a>:
<blockquote>Part of his conditions included that he have no unsupervised contact with minors and that he surrender his teaching license. He quickly moved on to obtain a job as a chemist at Eurofins BioPharma Product Testing in Lancaster, where he has worked for the past 9 years. &#8230; In 2021, Mitchell married Logan Riley, a second-grade teacher from Maryland, and moved to Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania. In 2023, the two launched a GoFundMe to raise money for a surrogate.</blockquote>
Of course, the GoFundMe didn&#8217;t mention the whole &#8220;convicted sex offender” thing.
In any event, the fundraiser has since been taken down. But it reportedly had a goal of $50,000, and raised just over $2,000, so it wasn&#8217;t exactly a success. Nevertheless, Riley — the husband of the convicted sex offender — reported that, in November of 2023, they had found a surrogate.
<blockquote>Our surrogate went through extensive medical and social worker evaluations in order to be approved for surrogacy. Once approved, the lengthy legal and financial process began. We are so excited that our amazing surrogate will carry one of our embryos for us, helping to expand our family.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s hard to miss the irony here. According to these two gay men, there was an &#8220;extensive&#8221; screening process for their &#8220;surrogate&#8221; — meaning, the woman whose body they were going to rent, so that she would bear a child for them, so that they could pretend to be parents. Social workers, doctors and lawyers were all involved. And yet, evidently, there was no screening process whatsoever for these two gay men. No one in the federal government, or the state of Pennsylvania, saw any problem with creating a new human life, for the sole purposes of handing the child off to a convicted sexual predator. And not just any convicted sexual predator. We&#8217;re talking about a convicted <a href="https://x.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1949915000589443072">sexual predator</a> who specifically preyed on a child.
At first, you might think — well, there must have been some massive, very unfortunate mistake here. Surely, you&#8217;d assume, there must be a thorough vetting process for the parents of children who are born through surrogacy. And somehow, in this particular case, someone must have fallen asleep on the job. Maybe they ran a criminal records check under the wrong name or something like that.
But that&#8217;s not remotely what happened. As it turns out, there is no legal bar in the state of Pennsylvania — or many other states — for convicted sexual predators to obtain children through surrogacy. It&#8217;s completely legal. There are no roadblocks whatsoever.
Again, this is from <a href="https://reduxx.info/gay-man-who-crowdfunded-surrogacy-journey-with-husband-revealed-as-child-sex-offender/">Reduxx</a>:
<blockquote>Reduxx reached out to the division Pennsylvania State Police responsible for maintaining Mitchell’s registration, and was informed that the state does not automatically forbid individuals convicted of sex crimes from having children, gaining custody, or exercising parental rights. While Pennsylvania’s adoption law does prohibit sex offenders from adopting or fostering children, gestational surrogacy circumvents any such laws through pre-birth parentage orders.</blockquote>
You heard that correctly. Individuals who are convicted of sex crimes, including sex crimes involving children — crimes so severe that the guilty party had to agree to have &#8220;no unsupervised contact with minors&#8221; for a certain period of time — are allowed to obtain children in Pennsylvania. The only restriction is that, instead of adopting a child, they have to pay for a woman to give birth to a child. This is a policy that&#8217;s so incomprehensible, and so evil, that it&#8217;s hard to even talk about. And it&#8217;s also a policy that, evidently, a lot of officials in Pennsylvania aren&#8217;t even aware of.
One of Reduxx&#8217;s writers <a href="https://x.com/Slatzism/status/1949926492651024812">posted this</a> on social media, as she was working on this story:
<blockquote>While I was talking to the state police sex offender division, the agent actually stopped for a moment when I mentioned it was a surrogate baby and said, &#8216;But surely … there’s a vetting process for this kind of thing?&#8217;</blockquote>
Well, actually, no. There&#8217;s no vetting process for &#8220;this kind of thing,&#8221; as it turns out.
If someone is a pedophile in the state of Pennsylvania, and they’ve been convicted for &#8220;corrupting minors&#8221; and possessing child pornography, they are still completely free to obtain a child through surrogacy. And not just any child — a newborn with no known relatives, no next of kin to check in on him. And then, once they have this defenseless child in their home, he is entirely at their mercy and helpless, and no one can see what they’re doing, and there is no one who actually knows the child or cares for him. Even his mother isn&#8217;t allowed to speak to him. It&#8217;s almost as if the state went out of its way to create a loophole for pedophiles. There are no words for how dark this is.
And by the way, this is one of the many fundamental, fatal problems with relying on &#8220;statistics&#8221; and &#8220;experts&#8221; who tell you that gay adoption is completely fine and appropriate. Every single mainstream expert will tell you that gay men are just as capable as straight couples to raise children, if not more so. They&#8217;ll tell you to suspend all of your intuitions and common sense, and they&#8217;ll call you a bigot if you disagree. But the truth is, none of these experts actually knows what goes on inside these households where men are raising children that aren&#8217;t theirs.
None of the statistics can capture the reality of what&#8217;s happening, because only the parents who are caught abusing their children will actually be reflected in those statistics.
That&#8217;s why we have intuition and basic morality. And it&#8217;s why we should always pay close attention whenever activists on the other side, in a demonic kind of rage, attempt to claim the moral high ground — only for it to crumble immediately in a matter of days (or hours, in this case). There are some lies that are simply too evil and unsustainable to survive contact with reality. The fiction that gay men are appropriate foster parents for other people&#8217;s children is one of them. In recent months, we&#8217;ve repeatedly seen <a href="https://people.com/ga-couple-adopted-young-boys-filmed-sexual-abuse-house-of-horrors-8766348">glimpses</a> into the horrors that many of these children are enduring behind closed doors. The recent case of William and Zachary Zulock in Georgia is an example of two men who were sexually abusing their two adopted children. They probably would never have been caught, if they hadn&#8217;t bragged about their behavior to others.
Especially in light of stories like this, it shouldn&#8217;t be remotely controversial to say that the safety of children is infinitely more important than any gay man&#8217;s desire to become a parent. Nature has already decided that gay couples will be childless by definition. The law should follow suit. Starting with the state of Pennsylvania — which should immediately change its law and remove this particular child from this household — this very straightforward principle needs to become law. Any society that doesn&#8217;t protect its own children does not deserve to exist. Under the guise of helping children, a system has been created that allows for children to be abused in the most horrific ways imaginable. That system must be dismantled. The abusers should go to prison for the rest of their lives. And no child, no matter the circumstances, should ever be forcibly prevented from having a mother and a father ever again in this country.

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