The Texas church where Democrat James Talarico has delivered his radical sermons is pushing radical gender ideology on children, featuring books filled with sexually explicit content and transgender ideology.
Talarico, the Democrat nominee for the crucial Senate election in November, attends St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin. There, children have access to a library stocked with “banned books” that promote ideas rejected by most Christians, including books that contain descriptions of anal rape, incest, and oral sex, according to a Daily Wire review of its offerings.
Books found in the St. Andrew’s catalog include the book “Gender Queer,” which includes illustrations of oral sex and masturbation, and the book “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” which discusses anal rape and incest.
“This Book Is Gay,” <a href="https://www.amazon.com/This-Book-Gay-Juno-Dawson/dp/1492617830" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has</a> a chapter on the “ins and outs of gay sex,” while the book “Becoming Nicole” tells the story of a gender-confused teen boy who identifies as girl with the support of his family. In “The Courage to Be Queer,” the author <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/eEmUCgAAQBAJ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claims</a> that “God is queer.”
Other books in the church catalog include “This Book is Gay,” “Trans Kids, Our Kids: Stories and Resources from the Frontlines of the Movement for Transgender Youth,” “Called OUT: The Voices and Gifts of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Presbyterians,&#8221; “The Courage to Be Queer,” and “Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family.”
Talarico, looking to flip a Senate seat in a state President Donald Trump won by 14 points in 2024, has faced criticism over comments he made on transgender ideology. It will likely be a central theme in the campaign against him — in his first speech as the official Republican nominee on Tuesday night, Republican Ken Paxton referred to Talarico as both &#8220;Six-Gender Jimmy&#8221; and &#8220;James Tala-FREAKO.&#8221;
Republican congressman Brandon Gill on the same stage went after Talarico over the Daily Wire report earlier this year on the time he said the thing he loved most in the world was &#8220;trans children.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-james-talarico-says-he-loves-trans-children-in-unearthed-clip">WATCH: James Talarico Says He Loves ‘Trans Children’ In Unearthed Clip</a>
St. Andrew’s, the church where Talarico <a href="https://x.com/greg_price11/status/2029210425879892253?s=20">delivered</a> his sermon that asserted that &#8220;our trans community needs abortion care too,&#8221; <a href="https://www.staopen.org/banned-books" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says</a> it offers banned books so that children can find “affirmation in the books they read.&#8221; It boasts that the books “shift our perspective, develop empathy, and see more clearly the call to justice among all people.&#8221;
“We are a safe haven for controversial narratives right in the heart of Texas, the state that takes the top prize in challenged books. Take a moment to browse our collection of banned books and see what you notice &#8230; common themes … particular experiences and identities being censored,” the church says of its banned books collection.
Talarico has voted in the state legislature against keeping men out of women&#8217;s sports and claimed it was “abusive” and “destructive” if parents did not accept their child&#8217;s alleged gender identity.
He has also stated his belief that &#8220;god is nonbinary,&#8221; and that Jesus was a &#8220;radical feminist.&#8221;
St. Andrew’s is <a href="https://www.staopen.org/about-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener">part</a> of the Presbyterian Church (USA), generally known as a liberal denomination with unorthodox views on gender and sexuality. Talarico&#8217;s church refers to itself as a “Reproductive Freedom Congregation,” <a href="https://justtx.org/rfc/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">meaning</a> it believes “abortion is a blessing.&#8221; The Democrat candidate himself has argued that the Bible doesn&#8217;t oppose abortion.
The church <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/it-turns-out-james-talaricos-church-is-as-weird-as-he-is" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recently</a> held a training linked to the anti-Trump “No Kings” protest movement.

Featured Session: State Of Being: How To Care in 2024 with Ilana Glazer, Danny Brown, State & Local Politicians, and the ACLU – Conference – SXSW 2024 Conference and Festivals

‘God Is Queer’: See The Sexually Explicit Books James Talarico’s Church Gives Kids

James Talarico

Ken Paxton

Senate

Special Reporting

Texas

Transgender

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
There are a lot of reasons to be excited about Ralph Lauren’s America 250 collaboration with the United States Postal Service.
First and foremost are the “American Icon” <a href="https://www.ralphlauren.com/rlmag/ralph-lauren-commemorative-stamp.html">stamps</a> around which the collection is built: From Jackie Robinson’s glove to the top of the Empire State Building, these 13 images “celebrate the essence of our country.”
Then, of course, there are the clothes: patriotic hats, polos, and a semiquincentennial edition of the brand’s famous American flag sweater. But most exciting is how Ralph Lauren, both the brand and its namesake, describes the collection in explicitly patriotic language.
“I love America,” Lauren said at the launch of the series, which the brand describes as a celebration of “America’s shared values — freedom, independence, equality, opportunity, and the pursuit of happiness.”
In Commentary this month, Robert Pondiscio <a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/robert-pondiscio/america-250-lost-opportunity/">laments</a> that America’s 250th anniversary does not feel as celebratory as the bicentennial, largely because we have forgotten our “shared ideals.”
The Ralph Lauren collection suggests that those shared ideals may still have some gas left in them. If nothing else, it means that America’s 250th anniversary, if not as triumphant as its 200th, may be more stylish. Gone are the bell-bottoms and kipper ties we associate with bicentennial kitsch; Americans will greet their country’s quarter-millennial milestone in roll-necks and Oxfords.
America is in the midst of a preppy revival. When Ralph Lauren hosted its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/17/style/ralph-lauren-mens-milan.html">first men’s fashion show</a> in 20 years this past January, it was only the latest confirmation of this trend. In recent years, we’ve seen J.Crew claw its way back from the <a href="https://freebeacon.com/culture/rollneck-sweaters-and-the-delicate-brine-of-a-clambake/">brink of bankruptcy</a> and irrelevance as menswear head Brendon Babenzien pushed the brand back to its <a href="https://puck.news/j-crew-is-cool-again-but-is-it-selling/">classic roots</a>. 
J. Press, the original purveyor of Ivy style, is <a href="https://yaledailynews.com/articles/j-press-founded-at-yale-plans-brick-and-mortar-expansion">expanding</a> its brick-and-mortar presence under <a href="https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/a66051557/jack-carlson-new-york-personal-space/">Jack Carlson</a>, the founder of renegade prep shop Rowing Blazers, who took the helm of the 124-year-old retailer earlier this year. And while European luxury brands <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/europes-luxury-giants-are-slipping-as-american-brands-quietly-take-over">grapple</a> with plummeting sales, <a href="https://www.economist.com/business/2026/04/13/from-ralph-lauren-to-the-row-american-luxury-is-booming">Ralph Lauren&#8217;s revenue</a> is up 10% year-over-year.
What makes this trend especially notable is that it’s being driven by Gen Z, a group not known for earnestly embracing tradition. Menswear industry insider R.F. Kenmore points to the popularity of FX’s “Love Story” and the renewed interest in John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette as a clear instance of this phenomenon. On TikTok, Zoomers valorize the “quiet luxury” and “old money” aesthetics embodied by the Kennedy clan, a prep rebranding for the social media age.
Kenmore sees the entire trend as “a bit of a reset,” a response to the “era of streetwear … and COVID sweatsuits” from which we’ve just emerged.
“I personally watched, while working at a large American brand, as consumers rotated directly out of booming knits categories such as tees, sweats, etc., and into button-up shirting and woven pants like khakis, driven by both a return to work and a desire to leave those days behind,” Kenmore told The Daily Wire. “The natural swing was into more structured and iconic-feeling uniforms or outfits.”
O.W. Root, a menswear writer and cultural critic, also sees a commercial fashion logic to the preppy revival. Style swings back and forth. Young people who came up wearing hoodies on Zoom meetings want to wear ties; after stuffing themselves into slim-fit suits for most of the 21st century, men have decided to embrace looser, more traditional fits.
But Root sees something deeper going on here, particularly when it comes to young men.
“What many men really ache for, even if they don&#8217;t know they ache for it, is style that more or less can be recognizable 10 years from now and 10 years prior,” Root says. “Style that follows them through their life, that roots them in their life.”
“Our clothes are our culture, they say something about our values, they say something about who we are, they say something about what we care about and what we believe,” he adds. “The beautiful thing about preppy style is you can wear it when you&#8217;re 17 and you can wear it when you&#8217;re 70, and you will wear it slightly differently, but you will still have a recognizably preppy through line through your life.”
Unlike trends, which come and go, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-fashion-company-millennials-loved-just-got-bought-by-americas-rival?author=Brooke+Brandtjen&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+Fashion+Company+Millennials+Loved+Just+Got+Bought+By+America%E2%80%99s+Rival">fast-fashion garments</a>, which deteriorate rapidly, classic preppy items are durable, both physically and aesthetically. As Kenmore notes, this has to do with economic realities as much as with a desire for authenticity.
“People are getting tired of rotating disposable crap through their closets and are finally saying &#8216;enough,’” he says. “This is driving them to buy things that they can have as long as their favorite vintage pieces have lasted.”
But will the prep revival last? Leaf through an issue of GQ and you’re bound to find the hallmarks of early-2000s style — front-zip hoodies and running shoes with boot cut jeans — dotting the pages. If the economy dips, we’re likely going to see a return to mid-aughts business casual — because when money is tight, you need one pair of slacks that can go from the office to the bar.
There are also some concerning signs at the recently ascendant preppy stalwarts. Babenzien, who, as Root put it, “basically spearheaded J.Crew becoming good again,” departed earlier this year. And while he made the brand cool again, that may not have <a href="https://puck.news/j-crew-is-cool-again-but-is-it-selling/">boosted sales</a> enough to keep it out of the red long-term.
Then there’s Brooks Brothers, the pillar of American prep, which recently came under fire for an ill-advised attempt to launch a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/is-brooks-brothers-brain-dead-96f7f271?mod=e2tw">streetwear line</a>.
“Brooks Brothers is terrible,” Root tells me. “They&#8217;ve just — and I hate to say use this language, because it&#8217;s so lame, but they&#8217;ve just lost their way. They&#8217;re not servicing any traditional Brooks Brothers customers at all.”
But these setbacks pale in comparison to the strength of the prep revival.
“Brooks will come back,” Root says. “Brooks Brothers is not going to die forever.” Similarly, Kenmore doesn’t think Babenzien’s departure will materially change J.Crew’s direction. Moreover, as he noted, the Ivy style revival has occurred in large part outside major brands. Today’s preppies care less about flashing their Polo horses and buying the newest collections than about acquiring good, timeless pieces and cultivating a sense of style. 
Americans, it seems, want things that last. Things that matter. Things that connect them to what came before. Prep, like all styles, has ebbed and flowed over the years. But this latest resurgence isn’t just about the clothes. It’s about the attitude. It’s about tradition. It’s about America. And like America, it’s not going anywhere.

signal-2026-05-18-151656_002

The Preppy Comeback

Fashion

Upstream

In Kibbutz Be’eri, the air inside a child’s bedroom was still. Behind a small bed, a doll lay where it had fallen. The wall above it was scarred with bullet holes and blood stains.
The scene needed no explanation. An Israeli girl had hidden behind her bed as Hamas terrorists rampaged through her home, clutching her doll in the dark and hoping to survive. However, she was found and murdered for nothing more than existing.
<div id="attachment_1097271" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1097271" class="size-full wp-image-1097271" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Miyares1.jpg" alt="" width="384" height="512" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Miyares1.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Miyares1-225x300.jpg 225w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" />Credit: Jason Miyares</div>
As the father of three teenage daughters, this room left an indelible impact on me during a post-October 7th visit to Israel, and I worry about what it means that the world has largely moved on already.
The October 7th massacre revealed how quickly some will rationalize evil when the victims are Jewish. The same hatred that fuels barbaric terror against Jewish civilians in Israel does not stay contained. It spreads, adapts, and rebrands itself globally with new slogans and justifications.
<div id="attachment_1097273" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1097273" class="size-full wp-image-1097273" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Miyares2.jpg" alt="" width="512" height="384" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Miyares2.jpg 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Miyares2-300x225.jpg 300w" sizes=" (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Credit: Jason Miyares</div>
Here in the United States, antisemitism has reemerged across the political spectrum in recent years. On the far left, it is generally dressed up in ideological language, presenting hostility toward Jews as moral or political virtue, and often merges into the legitimization of Islamist aims.
On the far right, it has evolved too, from old nationalist branding into a foreign-amplified “groyper” rhetoric targeted at young men who feel alienated, rootless, and eager for a cause.
To comprehend why antisemitism keeps returning, one must realize what it offers — a shortcut around reason. Once hate hardens into a kind of faith, words lose their meaning, and arguments no longer need to make sense.
In the aftermath of October 7th, antisemitism moved from the margins to the mainstream. In Virginia, Jewish students were prevented from walking on sidewalks at the University of Virginia. Outside agitators tried to occupy the Virginia Commonwealth University campus. At George Mason, antisemitic threats led to law enforcement intervention.
After returning home from my trip to Israel, the first image I saw on TV at the airport was of American students waving Hamas flags and chanting pro-terror slogans.
Virginia had a duty to act, and we did so quickly. Our efforts were rooted in an understanding that the fight against contemporary antisemitism requires a multi-faceted strategy, spanning policy, law enforcement, and education, with a focus on concrete steps to prevent violence before it occurs.
We prioritized training for law enforcement. Hundreds of Virginia State Police officers have participated in antisemitism awareness seminars, facilitated by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), where they learned to identify and counter extremist threats, resulting in real-world outcomes that have made Virginia’s communities safer.
We focused on maintaining order on college campuses. To do so, we met with the general counsels of every public higher education institution in Virginia to help them navigate First Amendment questions while ensuring schools had increased security and resources. Working with law enforcement agencies and university leaders, we proactively prepared for the unrest seen in other states before it arrived in the Commonwealth.
We ensured families and students understood their rights, providing clear guidance on how to report and file formal complaints when antisemitic discrimination occurs. For elementary, middle, and high schools, the Task Force developed a new curriculum module about Jewish religion, culture, and history to counter distorted narratives about the Jewish people that frequently circulate among students.
In 2025, we became involved in a case where three young Jewish siblings were expelled from their school after their parents complained about antisemitic harassment one child suffered at school. The eventual settlement saw the school agree to implement a new nondiscrimination policy, including adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism.
Important action was taken against support for foreign terrorist organizations when we initiated a criminal investigation into potential violations of state charitable fundraising laws by Hamas-linked Americans for Muslims in Palestine (AMP).
I was also proud to participate in Virginia’s first-ever state-level summit against antisemitism, organized by CAM in June 2024.
Reflecting on my term as attorney general, I remember that child’s room in Be’eri and the abandoned doll. It strengthens my resolve to refuse the world’s excuses and insist on better.
As Virginians and as Americans, we should be clear-eyed about what antisemitism is, honest about how it proliferates, and unafraid to counter it wherever it appears. That is what this moment in history calls for.
***
Jason S. Miyares served as Attorney General of Virginia (2022-2026) and is now a member of the U.S. Advisory Board of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM).

Protest Against Anti Semitism and NSJP Conference At UCLA

Fighting On The Frontlines Of Antisemitism

antisemitism

DW Opinion

October 7

Sometimes we are the news here at the Daily Wire.
Over the past few weeks, the Daily Wire has been the subject of a veritable cornucopia of hit pieces. There was one from the Washington Post, one from Puck, and finally an especially ridiculous one from the stellar journalists at New York Magazine, who plagiarized their hit piece from the Washington Post.
So much high-level journalism.
New York Magazine claims “there was a time when Ben Shapiro could reasonably call himself the king of all conservative media.”
I don&#8217;t remember that time, but it sounds cool.
“That’s all over now. The Daily Wire is instituting significant layoffs,” they continued.
According to New York Magazine, the future of conservatism isn&#8217;t traditional conservatism; free markets, equal rights before the law, checks and balances, and traditional virtue. That&#8217;s done.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-ep-2427?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
The future, according to New York Magazine, is Nick Fuentes, confirmed Nazistan and woman-hater, and a man who will never be able to get a human woman pregnant through natural means.
Or Tucker Carlson, confirmed anti-capitalist and Muslim apologist and victim of demon-scratching. Or maybe Candace Owens, the confirmed slanderer of widows and connoisseur of French testicles. Or maybe Megyn Kelly, clickwhore and Grandma Groyper.
New York Magazine writes, “The collapse of the Daily Wire can be seen as a dire warning for traditional Republicans. &#8230; There are two realities to Shapiro conservatism in 2026: It retains a significant foothold among Republican elites, and it is fast being rejected by the future grassroots of the party.”
The polling data shows that is wrong. The positions we take here on the show reflect the broad majority of Republicans. That&#8217;s just the reality.
But I figured that we should address all of this head-on. It&#8217;s true; the Daily Wire has laid off roughly 13% of our workforce since the beginning of the year.
It really sucked. It was truly sad because all those people are great, and any time you lay people off, it really sucks. It&#8217;s tough. It&#8217;s bad for them; it&#8217;s bad for us. And I&#8217;m personally working to find other places of employment for as many of these people as I possibly can, because everybody we let go deserves a job somewhere else; they&#8217;re great folks.
But for our critics, this was all cause for massive celebration, the joyful popping of the corks. (Or maybe, in the case of Nick Fuentes, a victory celebration with catboys and lubricant.)
We&#8217;re honored by the attention. Here&#8217;s the thing: People only tend to write stories like this about major American institutions, such as “Amazon dumps people” or “The Washington Post dumps people.” That&#8217;s a big story.
Thank God we are a major American institution. According to Podtrac, our podcast reaches 41 million people per month. We&#8217;re ranked sixth globally. We have a total of 11 shows. Paramount, for example, is ranked fourth globally, according to that same chart. They have 145 shows.
So on a per-capita basis, we&#8217;re killing it. We are responsible for the two most successful conservative documentaries in history, “Am I Racist?” and “What Is a Woman?” Just this week, Vice President JD Vance was quoting our reporting in his fraud investigations, and our White House correspondent, Mary Margaret Olohan, was in the press room asking questions.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/">Join us in the fight for traditional conservatism &#8211; become a DailyWire+ member today.</a>
There&#8217;s no national media coverage if a Candace Owens producer and her manager quit, or if Megyn Kelly&#8217;s YouTube account starts shedding tens of thousands of subscribers a month, or if Tucker Carlson&#8217;s traffic is disproportionately drawn from Pakistan.
Those are all things that have actually happened, but nobody really cared very much because while those people have significant audience numbers, they don&#8217;t have any real institutional influence. They are not institutions.
That&#8217;s not true of the Daily Wire. We&#8217;re big enough that people care when we trip up. And of course, like any business, we have our ups and we have our downs.
As Mark Twain put it, the reports of our death are greatly exaggerated.
But there&#8217;s something else going on here. Something very clear is going on here.
The media Left, and the Woke Right — Candace and Fuentes and Tucker and Megyn — all of them together form the New Left. They are attempting to destroy traditional conservatism.
That&#8217;s the reason for these attacks. The Daily Wire is the largest traditional conservative media company in the digital space by leaps and bounds. We are multiple times the size of any of these others.
We have many conversations on our platform among our hosts about topics ranging from AI to the Middle East to Catholicism and Judaism. There&#8217;s a lot of rich disagreement here at the Daily Wire, but in the end, what we stand for is pretty simple: truth, virtue, and freedom.
And that is what the New Left would love to destroy. It&#8217;s why the attacks have been coming fast and furious for weeks now. They want to destroy traditional conservatism. It is their goal in life.
There are a couple of different reasons they do this.
The media Left is always happy to run this grift because they love a Right that is crazy. They don&#8217;t want a political Right characterized by normie beliefs. They want a Right that&#8217;s nuts, because the easiest way to make AOC president in the 2028 election is to have that nutty lady run against a conservative movement that is focused on Brigitte Macron&#8217;s testicles, or demon attacks in the wilds of Maine, or why the Jews are responsible for your incurable gingivitis and horrific body odor and inability to get a date.
As for the Woke Right, Fuentes and Tucker and Candace and Kelly, they’re ecstatic about all of this for both business and political reasons. First, they compete with us, and second, they want to tear down traditional conservatism. Their whole goal is to cannibalize the traditional conservative audience.
There are, by all available metrics, a hell of a lot more traditional conservatives and rational people in this country than people who are nuts. But the goal of the New Left is to gut the conservative movement and then turn it into a skin-suit for their own perverse politics.
That is why many of them are now coming out as Democrats. That’s why Russia Today, the official outlet for the Kremlin, is retweeting Nick Fuentes acting triumphant.
I don&#8217;t know; if living in your basement and streaming for eight hours a day while jacking off to catboys is a form of winning, then whatever floats your boat.
It&#8217;s also why the Washington Post is happy to quote Candace Owens, the ranting bag lady of the internet, to explain that The Daily Wire&#8217;s numbers are down.
The alliance between the Left and the Woke Right is genuine, and it&#8217;s active.
Candace says that the Daily Wire&#8217;s numbers are down because people don&#8217;t want to be lectured. This is the teenage point of view from Candace and Megyn and Tucker. They&#8217;re all saying the same thing. They don&#8217;t want to be lectured.
Megyn tweeted in March 2026, “You are the coward, Ben. And your moral preening, priggish lectures and holier-than-thou judgments are the reason you are losing fans.”
All of these people are on the same script. And because they are people who traffic in crap for sweet, sweet lucre, they would love to be spared the lecture. They don&#8217;t want to be lectured as they grift.
Thus, they&#8217;re going to do the same thing that a 13-year-old boy would do if caught doing naughty things on his iPad: “Don&#8217;t you lecture me!”
It turns out sometimes in life, people need lectures in decency and reason and in truth.
You know, like people who smear the wives of murdered men or cover for people who smear the wives of murdered men.
Maybe the people who revive Nazi propaganda, the people who have a weird interest in the non-existent testicles of the spouses of French politicians, or the people who make cause with actual Nazistan deserve lectures. 
Maybe the people who are repeating talking points from Hasan Piker and mimicking the propaganda of Vladimir Putin, or people who just randomly start cursing a ton and are hanging out with groyper-adjacent people and embracing Islam, deserve lectures.
There&#8217;s always a big YouTube audience for their crap. But let&#8217;s be real: There&#8217;s a massive online audience for pornography as well. People addicted to either deserve a bit of a lecture.
But getting back to the central issue: The point of the attacks on the Daily Wire is not just to attack the Daily Wire. It&#8217;s to destroy traditional conservatism.
That&#8217;s the whole thing. The entire thing. All of it. Every bit of it.
The reason they&#8217;re coming after the Daily Wire is that they want to come after you. They want to come after traditional conservatives who believe traditional conservative things.
It is no coincidence that at the same time the Washington Post and New York Magazine and all the rest of these legacy Left publications are attacking the Daily Wire, they&#8217;re also writing Strange New Respect features on Nick Fuentes and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson.
The Left wants those people to win — and they&#8217;re not hiding it very well. New York Magazine&#8217;s piece says,”Like the Rockefeller Republican of yore, the Shapiro Republican could go extinct entirely.”
That&#8217;s what they want. They want traditional normie Republicans to go away. It&#8217;s what they want, and it&#8217;s what they hope for.
Perhaps it will turn out that all these people who hate conservatism and what I consider to be traditional American principles are correct; maybe it&#8217;ll turn out that the future of the Right — perverted by the algorithmic insanity of the internet — is slopulism, the Tucker-style grievance conspiracism, complete with the night-scratching demons, or Candace Owens’s usual brand of kookery, or Nick Fuentes’ transgressive Nazi cosplay or Theo Von&#8217;s man-child podcast illiteracy.
Maybe that&#8217;s where the Right goes. Maybe that&#8217;s what comes next. Maybe that&#8217;s all facilitated by the click-whoring of the Megyn Kellys of the world and justified by an appeal to audience numbers, because none of these people ever appeal to morality; they just point to their clicks.
Maybe “Idiocracy” wasn&#8217;t a satire. Maybe it was a prophetic documentary.
But here&#8217;s the thing: From where I sit, that does not change one single thing for me.
Not a single thing.
I&#8217;ve been doing this since I was 17. I started writing a syndicated political column when I was 17. I didn&#8217;t do that because I wanted to get rich that way; that’s not how you get rich.
I got into politics because I cared about the truth, about saying things that I believed to be eternal and true, because I care about the ideas of conservatism.
It&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve done that for all these years.
I care about free markets, and I care about private property, and I care about equal rights before the law and checks and balances and the Constitution.
I care about all of those things.
I care about the America the Founders promised us, and the America our parents and grandparents fought for, worked for, and died for.
And I&#8217;m not going to lie for cash. I&#8217;m not going to do it.
I&#8217;m not going to tell you about the wonders of Moscow supermarkets or the glories of Sharia Law in Qatar. I&#8217;m not going to pander for clicks by pretending that Erika Kirk might have been complicit in Charlie Kirk&#8217;s murder, or that perverse and malicious questions about TPUSA’s “cover-up” are somehow a bizarre form of investigative journalism.
I&#8217;m not going to wink and nod at the transgressiveness of the Nazi incels, or chuckle along with people who pretend that “a conspiratorial elite” is the reason your life isn&#8217;t everything that you want it to be in the freest and most prosperous country in world history. I&#8217;m going to be grateful for America. I&#8217;m going to point out what&#8217;s great about America and what our principles are.
I&#8217;m not going to do any of that other stuff because I got into this business to do precisely the opposite. I haven&#8217;t changed my principles. I&#8217;ve been doing this for 25 years. I have not changed my principles.
There&#8217;s a question I get a lot these days from friends and family. People will come up and say, &#8220;What happened to all these people?&#8221;
They understand New York Magazine and Washington Post and what they are. But what happened to Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly, and all the rest?
I don&#8217;t know the answer because I&#8217;m not a psychiatrist.
But here&#8217;s what I do know. Nobody has ever asked that question about me. No one. Because my worldview has not changed, it has not changed. 
My principles haven&#8217;t changed because I think they&#8217;re true and good, and they won&#8217;t change.
So in the end, take it or leave it. If people decide they don&#8217;t want to hear it, it&#8217;s a free country; that&#8217;s their choice.
But I am willing to bet my future and the future of America that more Americans agree with me than agree with the people who want to destroy the Daily Wire. I&#8217;m betting there are far more rational people in this country than conspiracy-mongering nutjobs. I&#8217;m betting that there are far more people in America who believe in truth and virtue and freedom than people who revel in grievance and demoralization and stupidity.
Maybe I&#8217;m wrong. Maybe we lose.
But that doesn&#8217;t change a thing. It doesn&#8217;t matter.
Because the only thing that matters is the only thing that has ever mattered to me: speaking the truth, whether people like it or not.
That’s because facts still don&#8217;t care about your feelings.
&nbsp;
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BSS-Merica-16×9

The Daily Wire Responds To The Haters Rooting For Its Death

Ben Shapiro

New Left

New Right

Opinion

There is an old quote from Ernest Hemingway: “Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.”
This is true of our conflict in Iran. We must win. Nothing less than victory is an option for America. We need to embrace the Apollo 13 mindset: “Failure is not an option.” Talks continue for when and how this conflict will end. I pray for peace and a denuclearized Iran.
However, Iran’s radical Islamic leadership has chanted “Death to America” for nearly half a century. To them, that’s not a slogan; it’s a promise. When your enemy tells you who they are, believe them.
Iran has spent decades building up its military and propping up terror networks for the sole purpose of killing innocent Americans.
In October 1983, Iran-sponsored suicide bombers killed 241 U.S. servicemen in Beirut. On October 7, Iran-backed Hamas terrorists brutally executed over 1,000 innocent people in Israel, including American citizens. This year, Iran executed 30,000 of their own people for peacefully protesting the government. The murder of the innocent will be the legacy of this Iranian regime.
President Donald Trump has done what his predecessors could not. He said, “Enough.” He said Iran cannot possess a nuclear weapon to kill innocents en masse.
While the Washington, D.C. beltway class wants to traffic in speculation about how this conflict ends and what it will cost, I want everyone to remember the core objective: Preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Different “experts” are trying to read the tea leaves about what terms are acceptable to wind down the conflict and how the Strait of Hormuz affects global trade. We need to keep a clear focus on the first principle of this conflict: Iranian nuclear ambition. We cannot dismiss their bloodlust. That’s the arena.
This objective should exist outside of American political theatrics and electoral math. The price of gas is high. Fertilizer costs are spiking; these concerns cannot be dismissed.
I grew up in a poor family. I understand how this squeezes a family’s budget and how unfair it feels when prices rise. Fortunately, I know that President Trump is laser-focused on lowering prices while keeping Americans safe.
We all must remember that this is the greatest nuclear threat America has faced since the Soviet Union fell. Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon for deterrence. The regime actively wants to detonate a nuclear weapon in our homeland and kill millions of Americans. Our nation has never experienced such a violent tragedy, and we cannot passively watch Iran achieve that ambition. That’s why I support this operation.
If your neighbor spent the last decade saying he wants to burn your house down, you might dismiss him as crazy. But if he starts making Molotov cocktails in his garage, you’d worry he wants to use them. It doesn’t take more than common sense to predict his target.
That is our situation with Iran. We need to act now and win. Once we achieve our objective, we can withdraw to keep our servicemen safe and give our citizens peace of mind. That is how we’ve defined victory, and we cannot accept anything less.
This November, I want Americans to cast their ballots in the midterms knowing that our government and military are doing everything in our power to protect the country so they can enter the voting booth freely.
That’s a privilege Iran denies its people. It’s why, regardless of how anyone feels about how this conflict started, America must win.
These are the stakes. It is life and death. Iran wants to kill Americans. They want to kill me, and they want to kill you.
That’s not the world I want to leave for my children and grandchildren. I doubt Americans disagree.
Because of Operation Epic Fury, Iran’s economy is in free fall. The government is shattered. And the last remnant of the regime’s most radical believers, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), is on the ropes.
However, Iran’s nuclear ambitions have not abated, and they still want to kill us. But if we can decapitate the terror-supporting regime of Iran and let the people choose their future, we may never have to worry about the Strait of Hormuz closing ever again.
This is a once-in-a-generation chance to finally neutralize the nuclear threat Iran poses to every American.
I continue to support President Trump and the efforts of the U.S. military because they are in an active combat zone. At a time like this, we need to focus on helping warriors accomplish the mission, not bicker about process in Washington and speculate on cable news.
Americans need to come together again. We don’t want another 9/11, and we can’t have an Iranian dirty bomb on our soil.
Our military is on the brink of victory. We can’t wait for Iran to rebuild. We can’t wait for Iran’s next attack.
The radical Islamist regime is hearing its death knell. It’s time to deliver the final blow.
***
Rick Scott is currently serving as a U.S. Senator from Florida.

U.S. Military Launches Operation Epic Fury Attacking Iran

Rick Scott: Victory In Iran, Nothing Less

Iran war

Nuclear Weapons

This is part four of &#8220;Medicaid Millions,” a Daily Wire series exposing billions of dollars in dubious “personal services” payments where people are paid to spend time with their own relatives.
***
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio’s Medicaid has paid more than $5 million to a company that says it sends helpers to the homes of the elderly – even though the company’s president had a daycare shut down because of signs it was billing for nonexistent children, and her husband has a felony conviction for billing the government for nonexistent elder services.
The tale raises questions about what, if any, effort the government makes to ensure it isn’t being tricked by Medicaid providers who bill the government vast sums.
Omega Healthcare Services is based in a black, windowless building in Columbus, a city that boasts one of the largest African immigrant populations in the country and also gets the bulk of the state’s Medicaid dollars. When The Daily Wire visited its office during business hours, the door was locked and no one was there.
Yet Omega was <a href="https://npidb.org/organizations/agencies/home-health_251e00000x/1033712484.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">certified</a> to begin receiving Medicaid dollars for &#8220;home health&#8221; in November 2020. According to Ohio spending records, the state paid the firm <a href="https://checkbook.ohio.gov/State/Resources/PayeeSearch.aspx?search=OMEGA%20HEALTHCARE%20SERVICES,%20LLC" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$5.7 million</a> beginning in June 2020 and as recently as this month.
<div id="attachment_1094215" style="width: 840px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1094215" class="wp-image-1094215 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-12-at-9.21.49-PM.png" alt="" width="830" height="538" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-12-at-9.21.49-PM.png 830w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-12-at-9.21.49-PM-300x194.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-12-at-9.21.49-PM-768x498.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px" />The Daily Wire</div>
Who runs this lucrative home health business? Business records <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/202014001324" target="_blank" rel="noopener">show</a> it’s registered to Esther Acheampong, who a decade ago had a daycare in Wisconsin called Kids Campus CDC <a href="https://dcf.wisconsin.gov/wishares/terminated-providers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shut down</a> because it was &#8220;unable to provide investigators with requested attendance records.&#8221;
Sharing the same office is an accounting firm called Scabeda registered to Esther and her husband, Robert Acheampong.
In 2005, Robert Acheampong pleaded guilty to <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ohsd.104599/gov.uscourts.ohsd.104599.2.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">felony theft of public money</a> in federal court, after stealing $19,000 from the IRS and a priest in a scheme that mirrors what fraudulent home health companies are known to do.
He falsely claimed to represent a “community development” nonprofit in order to seek a federal grant for &#8220;tax counseling for the elderly.&#8221; He falsely claimed that 25 volunteers filed taxes for 1,000 elderly people, and billed the government for $16,000 in expenses.
He <a href="https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/acc.ohio.gov/Website%20Materials/About%20Us/Compliance/Disciplinary_Spreadsheet.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lost</a> his accounting license and received four months house arrest and three years of probation. His probation was extended to 2010 after he incurred <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ohsd.104599/gov.uscourts.ohsd.104599.3.0_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">another felony</a> conviction, for failing to support his own children.
The feds put a $15,000 lien against him, but he simply never paid it – even as his wife, an immigrant from Ghana, found an extraordinarily successful business venture in billing the government for visits to the elderly.
In December 2024, the government <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ohsd.104599/gov.uscourts.ohsd.104599.6.0_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gave up</a> on trying to collect what it was owed, saying the &#8220;collection period for the criminal monetary penalties… has expired.&#8221; Shortly prior, records show the Acheampongs <a href="https://delaware-auditor-ohio.manatron.com/Property.aspx?mpropertynumber=318-130-02-007-000&amp;mtab=property&amp;p=31813002007000" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bought</a> an upscale home in the tony suburb of Lewis Center.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1093851" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega-sign-871x576.jpeg" alt="" width="871" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega-sign-871x576.jpeg 871w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega-sign-300x198.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega-sign-768x508.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega-sign-1536x1016.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega-sign-2048x1354.jpeg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 871px) 100vw, 871px" /></div>
In April 2025, Ohio <a href="https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/v1751395777/acc.ohio.gov/Board%20Meeting%20Materials/Signed%20Meeting%20Minutes/2025%20Meetings/Apr_25_2025_ABO_Meeting_Minutes_-_signed.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reinstated</a> his accounting license. Scabeda’s sign advertises advice on “advanced taxation” and boasts of securing “$25 MILLION IN LOANS.” Scabeda itself received $25,000 in forgivable <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_8377448904_073" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COVID loans</a>.
Robert Acheampong’s multiple felonies were just one of a slew of red flags that the Ohio Department of Medicaid could have caught when it approved Omega Healthcare Services to operate in the “home health” field, a program known to be highly vulnerable to fraud.
Omega’s LLC paperwork filed in May 2020 didn’t list Robert’s name; it <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/202014001324" target="_blank" rel="noopener">listed</a> Esther and a white American teenager who lived more than two hours away.
Public records show the teen is the son of Paul G. A. Kasapis, who had just gotten out of federal prison for <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndoh/pr/canton-man-sentenced-more-year-prison-money-laundering-and-tax-violations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tax fraud</a> and money laundering convictions tied to an illegal casino he was running out of a bowling alley. The Omega paperwork was filed three days after the teen turned 18. Scabeda’s LLC paperwork was <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/202012100706" target="_blank" rel="noopener">updated</a> in the teen’s name on the same day.
The Ohio Department of Medicaid didn’t seem to find it odd that a teenager from Canton was teaming up with a woman from Ghana on a Medicaid business. The Daily Wire did. When we reached out, we got part of the story from his mother.
Debbie Kasapis said Robert Acheampong was the accountant, apparently working despite his revoked license, who filed the fraudulent tax returns concealing millions of dollars for her now ex-husband.
After Paul was released from prison, she found that they were still working together.
&#8220;Something came to the bowling alley for a trucking company, and it had Paul&#8217;s address and a Columbus phone number,&#8221; she explained. &#8220;I dialed the phone number&#8230; it came up Robert Acheampong.&#8221;
She was shocked. Worse, they were using her son&#8217;s name: “I can guarantee you, if my kid&#8217;s name is on it, my kid doesn&#8217;t know&#8230; I don&#8217;t think my son is quite aware of how much his dad is using his name,” Debbie said, adding that she was surprised he was able to get government money.
“It just seems like nobody’s minding the store,” she said of government oversight.
Paul Kasapis owes more than $500,000 in restitution to the IRS, but Debbie suspects he’s hiding money. Some of those assets might be in Robert’s name.
On April 4, 2025, the Kasapises’ divorce was finalized. The next day, a company called Genesis Training Center LLC was created. The <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/202509304792" target="_blank" rel="noopener">articles of incorporation</a> were signed only by Robert and Esther Acheampong. But the paperwork was sent to Paul Kasapis’s bowling alley.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1093857" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega_payments_by_year-1024x514.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="514" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega_payments_by_year-1024x514.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega_payments_by_year-300x151.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega_payments_by_year-768x386.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega_payments_by_year-1536x771.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/omega_payments_by_year.jpg 1641w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
In March 2020, a company called <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/202008701028" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bullet Logistics</a> was created in the name of the then-17-year old son. After the divorce was finalized, it was <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/202534601320" target="_blank" rel="noopener">amended</a> to list the elder Kasapis. Scabeda Group’s online account was used to make that change.
In September 2021, Robert and Esther <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/202026502922" target="_blank" rel="noopener">created</a> Omega 1 Logistics Inc. Two years later, Kasapis, the convicted money launderer, created <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/202325602098" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Omega 1 Log LLC</a>, a name that most people would assume was the same company simply abbreviated, but which was actually a different legal entity.
Asked about the near identical name of Acheampong’s trucking company, the elder Kasapis said, “Why is that weird?” He told The Daily Wire he hired Acheampong to create the bowling alley LLC, but his son was &#8220;not at all&#8221; involved in any businesses, and he didn&#8217;t know why his name appeared.
Esther Acheampong declined to comment. Robert Acheampong did not answer repeated phone calls.
The Acheampongs are tied to several businesses, including a mortgage bank called the <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/201923403164" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Omega Mortgage Banc Corporation</a>, which listed their own then-17-year-old son as a partner.
Their business filings regularly involve individuals billing the government large amounts of money. In October 2020, Robert was named as the sole incorporator of <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/202029602104" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alert Security Agency</a>, but the company was created using a Secretary of State account linked to an address belonging to Dr. Yaw Ayesu-Offei, who founded numerous Medicaid companies, including one that billed $4.7 million.
Scabeda itself was originally <a href="https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/201907902270" target="_blank" rel="noopener">created</a> using the online account of Al Hassan Mansaray, the founder of the High Tech Learning Center, Inc. The learning center’s listed address is an apartment, and its website consisted of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190906053220/http://www.hlcoh.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stock photos</a>, but it got <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_1083949007_073" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$30,000</a> in COVID money.
<h3>Cat and mouse</h3>
Ohio spent $1 billion on home health in 2024, paid overwhelmingly with federal money. How many of the 3,700 home health LLCs incorporated in Ohio have similar stories to the Acheampongs?
To illustrate how common it has become for people in some communities to bill the government for such work, the Acheampong home health care business is not even the only multi-million dollar business within its office building. The windowless black box – a different one than the buildings mentioned in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-ohios-home-health-empire-7-buildings-288-medicaid-companies-250-million?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=Inside+Ohio%E2%80%99s+Home+Health+Empire%3A+7+Buildings%2C+288+Medicaid+Companies%2C+%24250+Million">previous installment</a> of this series – is full of companies that bill the government.
Down the hall is All Nation Home Health Care, which collected $7.5 million since 2018. Across the corridor is Confidential Health Services LLC, which fittingly had its windows blacked out. Ohio state records report paying it <a href="https://checkbook.ohio.gov/State/Resources/PayeeSearch.aspx?search=CONFIDENTIAL%20HEALTH%20SERVICES%20LLC" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$1.8 million</a>, and it got $280,000 in <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/search?hash=244f6f780843f8cdd9724ecd6a03b566" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COVID money</a>.
More than 15% of all “home health” spending in Ohio takes place in four square miles around northeast Columbus, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-investigation-ignites-imminent-crackdown-on-medicaid-fraud" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to the state auditor. The city houses one of the largest African immigrant communities in the country, many based in the same neighborhood where home health has become so prevalent.
As part of this investigative series on Medicaid spending, The Daily Wire reviewed scores of companies in Columbus and found them often connected to people with red flags in their background that raise questions about waste, fraud, and abuse in the massive government program.
Ohio’s Republican governor Mike DeWine has said that “Ohio has extensive oversight mechanisms in place” to root out fraud and abuse.
Parker Thayer, an investigator for the Capital Research Center, contributed reporting.
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Medicaid Millions Part 4

He Was Convicted For Defrauding The Government. Now Medicaid Pays His Wife Millions.

Medicaid Millionaires

Ohio

Your understanding of American history likely depends on what textbooks you were handed in school. Unfortunately for today&#8217;s students, textbooks are now driven by politics — and none of them tell the whole story.
Take a gander at the major textbook publishers to see how bad it&#8217;s gotten. Pearson Education <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/09/textbook-bias-is-a-real-problem/">recently launched</a> an initiative called Pride 365, the aim of which is to teach gay pride every day of the year. Houghton Mifflin went all-in on Black Lives Matter, and McGraw Hill has an &#8220;Equity Advisory Board.&#8221;
Unsurprisingly, textbook manufacturers that have embraced leftism to this extent are not portraying American history in a positive light. One popular AP U.S. History textbook <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/anti-trump-american-history-textbook-blatantly-biased-critics-say">instructs</a> students that President Donald Trump&#8217;s election was racist. Another <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/09/textbook-bias-is-a-real-problem/">claims</a> that the American dream is a &#8220;myth&#8221; and says the United States is one of the most unequal countries in the world.
Pick up a high school history textbook at random, and you&#8217;ll find some version of the same narrative: the country was founded by slave owners and built on stolen Indian land. Democrat savior Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved America from Republican boogeyman Herbert Hoover&#8217;s Great Depression with his New Deal.
With textbooks like these, it&#8217;s no wonder American children are quick to be ashamed of their country and accept leftist ideas and Democratic policies as inherently good and right. As long as these views dominate the American mainstream, Americans will think it&#8217;s wrong to love their country and its history.
Enter Matt Walsh.
Beginning this year, the Daily Wire host has been working to tell the American story in his groundbreaking <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/real-history-with-matt-walsh">series</a>, &#8220;Real History With Matt Walsh.&#8221; Walsh doesn&#8217;t shy away from complicated chapters in American history — the series has thus far tackled <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/rhs-260118?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel">slavery</a>, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/rhs-260322-civil-war-sub?elementPosition=2&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel">Civil War</a>, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/rhs-260222?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel">American Indians</a> — but lets the facts speak for themselves. The goal is not to make viewers ashamed of the United States, but to better understand what really happened.
His latest installment, out now exclusively on DailyWire+, tackles the history of the Civil Rights movement. It’s been presented as one of the most successful movements in American history, reversing decades of racism against black Americans and laying the groundwork for racial equality.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/real-history-ep-4-civil-rights-pt1?contentProgram=Real%20History%20with%20Matt%20Walsh&amp;contentType=ShowEpisode&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;location=Home%20Tab&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Home%20Featured%20Carousel">WATCH: THE REAL HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS</a>
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TTIXdyk4RL0?si=LXA54jAflmqBAHva" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
But is any of that true? Or did the Civil Rights movement actually set the country on the wrong track? Was America the racial hellscape we were taught it was before the country passed the Civil Rights Act, or was it actually better than it is today? 
Take Martin Luther King Jr. He&#8217;s now one of the most famous figures in American history, with a federal holiday dedicated to honoring the assassinated activist. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. Is MLK really who we think he is? Was the movement he led actually about non-violence?
&#8220;He had a dream — just not the dream you thought it was,&#8221; Walsh says in a trailer for the episode. &#8220;Were his true aims a color-blind society, or something far more radical? Who bankrolled him? What unfolded behind the scenes in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963? Was civil disobedience actually peaceful?&#8221;
Walsh notes that he was unable to play a clip from King&#8217;s famous &#8220;I Have A Dream&#8221; speech because King&#8217;s estate has a habit of suing news outlets that play clips from the speech.
&#8220;What they&#8217;re doing makes it very difficult to judge Martin Luther King Jr. not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character,&#8221; Walsh says.
&#8220;King&#8217;s movement fundamentally transformed our country and our system of government,&#8221; he adds. &#8220;These questions demand answers, and as Americans we are entitled to a full accounting of King&#8217;s movement.&#8221;
Walsh sets out to answer those questions. Watch Part I of &#8220;A New Constitution&#8221; now, exclusively on DailyWire+.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/real-history/?utm_campaign=realhistory&amp;utm_medium=editorial&amp;utm_source=article">Not a DailyWire+ member? Join today to access the entire Real History series and more.</a>

Screenshot

Ditch The Old History Textbooks, Watch Real History With Matt Walsh

Civil Rights

Martin Luther King Jr.

Matt Walsh

This article is on Ohio&#8217;s response to “Medicaid Millions,” a Daily Wire series exposing billions of dollars in dubious “personal services” payments where people are paid to spend time with their own family.
***
Ohio says it has safeguards in place to cut down on fraud and abuse of Medicaid home health care, but one of the biggest tools to verify care is actually taking place has been rendered useless.
The Daily Wire’s investigation of the multi-billion dollar a year Medicaid industry in Ohio has raised concerns about abuse of a program in which people are paid to visit the homes of elderly poor people and provide “cooking,” “cleaning,” and other non-medical services that even include “companionship.”
In response to those concerns, the Ohio Department of Medicaid said it is “aware of concerns involving home health care activity” in Columbus, and “has been actively investigating these matters since prior to the publication of The Daily Wire series.” It touted an “extensive set of safeguards&#8221; in place to ensure aides are actually going to homes.
The key component is &#8220;mandatory electronic visit verification capturing date, time, and service location,&#8221; a feature that is required by federal law. But Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine’s administration inserted massive loopholes including making the verification optional.
The 21st Century Cures Act, passed by Congress in 2016, <a href="https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/home-community-based-services/home-community-based-services-guidance-additional-resources/electronic-visit-verification" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mandated</a> that states require electronic visit verification, or EVV, by January 2020 for the riskiest category of “personal services” – non-medical services like cooking and cleaning – and by January 2023 for in-home nursing. Yet for years, Ohio simply paid providers even if they didn’t submit any electronic evidence, according to a <a href="https://ohioauditor.gov/Auditsearch/Reports/2024/117_Electronic_Visit_Verification_Report_FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2024 audit</a> by Auditor of State Keith Faber.
Faber’s audit, examining payments in 2022, found that 44% of personal services claims had no electronic verification. The situation was similar for home nursing. “This resulted in approximately $1.1 billion in claims not supported by an EVV visit,&#8221; the audit found.
The audit said if the state has an electronic validation system, then using it should be a &#8220;condition of payment.&#8221; A spokeswoman for the Ohio Medicaid Department, Stephanie O’Grady, told The Daily Wire that this was done in March 2025.
But shortly before EVV was made mandatory, it was neutered as a fraud prevention tool. The most important feature – GPS coordinates captured by an electronic device – was made optional and defaulted to “off.”
“Effective July 1, 2024, GPS functionality within any EVV application or device may only be activated with the signed consent of the individual receiving services — valid for one year and revocable at any time,” O’Grady said. “The approach allows the person receiving care to make an informed decision related to privacy protections for individuals receiving home and community-based services.”
O&#8217;Grady disclosed to The Daily Wire that GPS is turned off for nearly half of home visits, with reliable coordinates present in only 53% of electronic records.
The patient was also supposed to sign their name to show that the patient and aide were actually together, but that, too, was removed in 2024, Faber’s audit flagged.
Earlier this year, Ohio’s attorney general Dave Yost, whose office is tasked with policing Medicaid fraud, testified that the rollback of safeguards made his job difficult.
“Until about a year ago [GPS] was required, now it&#8217;s optional,” he <a href="https://www.ohiochannel.org/programs/ohio-house-medicaid-committee-3-24-2026-joint-meeting-of-medicaid-committees" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told legislators in March</a>. “I do not know for the life of me why it went away, but I respectfully ask you to put in statute where no vendor, no bureaucrat can object to legitimate monitoring.”
“While we had the GPS, you could see where the person was, they had to drive to the house of the person they were providing services for, you could see how long they were there. That record makes it much harder to do the fake billing where they say they went to five houses but really sat at home,” he said.
Ohio state lawmaker Josh Williams, a Republican from Toledo, says there was no reason why the recipient of a government service would object, or be able to object, to the government verifying that the person being paid by the government to help him actually showed up.
“It seems like the DeWine administration continues to protect the bad actors. And I&#8217;m frustrated as a legislator, I&#8217;m frustrated as a taxpayer. I&#8217;m frustrated because I don&#8217;t think we should be providing protection for these individuals,&#8221; he told The Daily Wire. “We&#8217;re not checking any of your personal information. We&#8217;re making sure that the person that is assigned to your case is actually going to your residence.&#8221;
“You want to be a Medicaid provider in the state of Ohio for home health care aid, we should be able to track your location data during the times in which you&#8217;re asking for payment,” he added.
He said that a common fraud scheme involves a patient and caregiver colluding to have the government pay for nonexistent work — in which case the patient could now simply refuse GPS verification of the caregiver’s presence.
“You have family members going to provide services to an elderly individual, and on many occasions, they&#8217;re not even showing up, but they&#8217;re getting paid. That family member is not going to report their nephew or their cousin or their niece for not showing up. That&#8217;s part of a widespread, broad fraud that we&#8217;re seeing,” he said.
Williams has introduced a <a href="https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/136/hb795" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bill</a> to make GPS mandatory again. But even then, it appears that GPS data could easily be faked.
Faber’s audit said that Ohio spent $146 million contracting with Sandata, a company that produces EVV devices and software, resulting in Ohio providers being able to use Sandata’s software for free. Nonetheless, the state allows home care providers to use their <a href="https://medicaid.ohio.gov/resources-for-providers/special-programs-and-initiatives/electronic-visit-verification" target="_blank" rel="noopener">own software</a> instead, potentially including software that simply transmits fake coordinates rather than ones coming straight from a mobile device’s sensors.
The vulnerabilities don’t end there. Ohio also permits the electronic records to be manually adjusted. In 2022, “34 percent of all EVV entries were manually adjusted,” Faber’s audit found.
Additionally, ten percent of aides are exempt from EVV because they live with the patient, often a family member, O’Grady said.
Yost, who resigned as attorney general last week for a job in the private sector, said in his testimony that in addition to DeWine’s rules, Ohio laws also make it difficult to prove and punish Medicaid fraud.
The attorney general’s Medicaid fraud unit isn’t authorized to use subpoenas to gather information, he said. If someone is actually investigated, charged, and convicted, their punishment will be light because Medicaid fraud is “capped as being less serious than other theft, as a third degree felony,” he said.
<h3>Red state blues</h3>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1092743" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/ohio-hhc-chart-1024x480.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="480" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/ohio-hhc-chart-1024x480.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/ohio-hhc-chart-300x141.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/ohio-hhc-chart-768x360.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/ohio-hhc-chart-1536x720.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/ohio-hhc-chart-2048x959.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
The Medicaid scandal in Ohio has exploded under an all-Republican leadership. In fact, the historical dollar amounts in this series, relying on data through 2024, likely understate the ongoing cost, because DeWine drastically increased the pay rate for home health providers in 2024.
The increases took effect as “part of Governor Mike DeWine’s commitment to making sure every Ohioan receives quality care and that providers receive support to continue delivering the highest level of care for Ohio’s residents,” a press release <a href="https://ohiohcbs.pcgus.com/news/important-information-fee-for-service-reimbursement-rate-increases" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. “The rate increases are historic in nature, totaling approximately $3.4 billion per year,” including home health and other Medicaid spending.
DeWine has been accused of being soft on fraud, particularly after a spokesman once called fraud in the state&#8217;s Somali hotspots “the <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/01/14/ohio-gov-mike-dewine-responds-to-fraud-concerns/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cost of doing business</a>.”
Last week, Vivek Ramaswamy secured the Republican nomination to replace DeWine next year. Responding to The Daily Wire’s reporting, he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMXQjWxVQTw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that states have “turned a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMXQjWxVQTw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blind eye</a> to this level of rampant fraud” despite the fact that “in a modern era of AI, you have a toolkit that allows you to detect aberrant abnormalities.”
That’s partly because of an incentive issue with how Medicaid is set up, he said. Medicaid is run by the states, but is largely paid for by the federal government. That means it’s up to states to stop waste and fraud, but they don’t always have a strong financial motivation to do so, because it would decrease federal dollars to the state.
Ohio’s Medicaid program is set to be in the hole <a href="https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/ohio-medicaid-projected-to-lose-33b-over-next-decade/article_2f369df5-0a08-4819-a490-ac1b46612b95.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$33 billion</a> over the next few years due to federal changes aimed at stopping states from gaming the numbers to offload even more of the burden to the feds.
Vice President <a href="https://x.com/JDVance" target="_blank" rel="noopener">JD Vance</a>, also from Ohio, said in response to The Daily Wire’s series: “I’m directing the task force to look into it and take immediate action to prosecute any fraudsters involved and stop all further payments as appropriate.”
Ramaswamy noted that there is “uppercase F fraud, and also lowercase F fraud, which may be technically legal but doesn’t comport with anyone’s sense of who should get these dollars.” Those cases could necessitate changes in law or policy to stop the bleeding.
Aggressive Medicaid “waiver” programs such as those the feds have allowed Minnesota and Ohio to run are particularly vulnerable to abuse, and have exploded in usage. Medicaid takes up nearly half of Ohio’s general revenue fund, and spending has doubled in recent years.
Yet even as the red flags are hard to ignore — the percentage of people claiming to be autistic is exploding the dubious levels, for example — there has been aggressive, almost blatant pushback against using common and affordable technology to provide basic safeguards.
Nationally, a group called “<a href="https://www.stopevv.com/media-toolkit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stop EVV</a>” launched a “media toolkit” showing pictures of disabled people holding signs with messages like, “I’M THE EMPLOYER. IT IS MY RIGHT TO SCHEDULE, SUPERVISE &amp; SIGN MY EMPLOYEE’S TIMESHEET.” The site pictured a bald eagle and American flag and called stopping GPS tracking a “civil rights” issue.
Ohio’s Department of Medicaid says that “all allegations of fraud are investigated,” and further that many of the companies identified by The Daily Wire “are subject to ongoing investigation” by the state. It said it is unable to comment on those investigations.
But Faber, the auditor — who is running for attorney general — has been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-investigation-ignites-imminent-crackdown-on-medicaid-fraud" target="_blank" rel="noopener">warning</a> of abuse that mirrors The Daily Wire’s findings. He recently told the legislature that 38% of Ohio home health spending was in Franklin County, and that of that, 41% – or more than 15% of all home health care spending in the state — is spent in a four mile radius.
Faber’s audit found that in 2022, there were 2,479 home health companies in Ohio, which were paid $1.8 billion. That means 10% of all home health companies in the state are located in the seven buildings owned by one landlord in Columbus&#8217;s Somali neighborhood, which was highlighted in our <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-ohios-home-health-empire-7-buildings-288-medicaid-companies-250-million">second installment</a>.
The data analyzed by the Daily Wire, finding a quarter billion dollars to companies in seven buildings, covered from 2018 to 2024. It understates the total because data for smaller companies is not available for privacy reasons.
Parker Thayer, an investigator for the Capital Research Center, contributed reporting.
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J.D. Vance/Mike DeWine

Ohio Says Safeguards Exist To Stop Medicaid Fraud, But Admits Massive Loophole

J.D. Vance

Vivek Ramaswamy

Today, the Supreme Court of Virginia handed down one of the most consequential rulings in the Commonwealth&#8217;s modern history. In Scott v. McDougle, a 4-3 majority struck down the Democrats&#8217; brazen attempt to gerrymander Virginia&#8217;s congressional map from a fair 6-5 split into an outrageous 10-1 partisan stranglehold. The ruling is a triumph for the rule of law, for the Virginia Constitution, and for the nearly 1.5 million Virginians who voted against this scheme despite being massively outspent.
Let&#8217;s be clear about what happened here. In 2020, Virginia voters approved a bipartisan redistricting amendment to the state Constitution by a two-to-one margin. That amendment created the Virginia Redistricting Commission — a 16-member bipartisan body — and provided that if the commission deadlocked, the Supreme Court of Virginia would draw the maps. That is exactly what happened in 2021. The commission couldn&#8217;t agree, and the Court unanimously drew maps that independent analysts, including the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, graded as an &#8220;A&#8221; — among the fairest in the entire country.
Democrats didn&#8217;t like fair maps. Fair maps meant competitive elections, and competitive elections meant they might lose seats. So rather than compete on ideas, they hatched a plan to gut the very constitutional amendment that Virginians had overwhelmingly endorsed just a few years earlier.
Their scheme was as cynical as it was procedurally reckless. During a disputed Special Session, they rammed through a proposed constitutional amendment on a party-line vote — one that would temporarily suspend the bipartisan redistricting commission and let the General Assembly redraw congressional districts to their liking. They did this on October 31, 2025 — after more than 1.3 million Virginians had already cast their ballots in the ongoing general election for the House of Delegates (the same election in which Abigail Spanberger was elected governor).
That timing is the crux of the Court&#8217;s ruling. Article XII, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution requires that a proposed amendment be passed in two separate legislative sessions with an intervening election of the House of Delegates between them. The purpose is straightforward: give voters the chance to weigh in on delegates who will cast the second vote on the amendment. But when the General Assembly passed the proposal for the first time on October 31, forty percent of the electorate had already voted. Those 1.3 million Virginians never had the constitutionally guaranteed opportunity to consider the proposed amendment when choosing their delegates. As Justice Kelsey wrote for the majority, the Commonwealth&#8217;s position would have required early voters to have &#8220;anticipated a legislative vote on a constitutional amendment four days before the last day of voting.&#8221;
The Court rejected the Commonwealth&#8217;s tortured argument that &#8220;election&#8221; means only Election Day — a single 24-hour period, rather than the entire 45 days of voting that Virginia allows (also thanks to the Democrats). Drawing on centuries of legal scholarship, dictionary definitions from Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster forward, and consistent and similar federal appellate rulings, the majority held that a &#8220;general election&#8221; encompasses the combined actions of voters casting ballots and officials receiving them, from the first day of early voting through Election Day. The General Assembly&#8217;s first vote on the amendment came in the middle of that process, not before it.
Democrats then put their gerrymandered map to a referendum vote, accompanied by a ballot question asking voters whether they wanted to &#8220;restore fairness&#8221; — a masterclass in misleading framing. After outspending opponents by more than three to one, they eked out a bare majority: 1,604,276 yes votes to 1,499,393 no votes, a margin of just 3.38 percent. The Court correctly held that this narrow margin — secured through a constitutionally defective process — could not launder the underlying violation.
So where does this leave Virginia? The Court&#8217;s 2021 nonpartisan maps — the ones that earned an &#8220;A&#8221; from independent analysts — remain in full effect for the 2026 congressional elections. Virginia will continue to have a 6-5 congressional delegation split, with districts drawn fairly and without a partisan thumb on the scale. Republicans will compete on those maps, as they should, and defend their seats on the merits.
And what about the Democrats&#8217; next move? Theoretically, they could try again in Virginia. The constitutional amendment process requires passage in two sessions with an intervening House of Delegates election, so the earliest a new attempt could reach voters would be 2028. But consider their predicament. They threw everything they had at this effort — and it barely worked even before the Court tossed it out. They won the referendum by just over three points, with more than three million voters participating, while spending more than three dollars for every one dollar spent by the opposition. That is not the profile of a popular mandate. That is the profile of a scheme that required a massive resource advantage just to limp across the finish line.
Moreover, so much of the Democrats&#8217; political fuel in recent years has been anti-Trump energy. By 2028, Donald Trump will be in the final stretch of his presidency, constitutionally barred from running again. The single greatest motivator of Democratic turnout in Virginia will be exiting the political stage. Does anyone believe that a Virginia electorate — one that endorsed bipartisan redistricting by a two-to-one margin in 2020 — will embrace an openly partisan power grab without the boogeyman of Trump to drive them to the polls?
Today&#8217;s ruling is a reminder that constitutions matter, that process matters, and that no political party — no matter how large its legislative majority or campaign war chest — is above the law. Virginia Democrats tried to rig the game. The Supreme Court of Virginia stopped them. The fair maps stand, and the people of Virginia are better for it.
***
Ken Cuccinelli is the former Virginia attorney general and former acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Virginia Marked on Map

Virginia’s Constitution Held — And Democrats’ Power Grab Failed

gerrymandering

Virginia Democrats

This is the third part of “Medicaid Millions,” a Daily Wire series exposing billions of dollars in dubious “personal services” payments where people are paid to spend time with their own family.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — After the federal government approved a waiver allowing Ohio to expand Medicaid by paying housekeepers to spend time at elderly people’s houses to help with tasks like <a href="https://aging.ohio.gov/care-and-living/get-help/home-and-community-care/passport-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“homemaking” and “chore services,”</a> taxpayers across the country footed a shocking $2.5 billion worth of bills between 2018 and 2024, according to a trove of Medicaid data released for the first time by the Trump administration.
The demand for free home care was so high in Ohio that taxpayers spent more on that “personal services” category, Medicaid’s term for non-medical in-home help, than any other outpatient service. The program allows for people who aren’t medical professionals to get paid by the government for work done inside private residences, where what was performed, and even whether anything was done, is essentially unverifiable.
The state’s largest outpatient Medicaid category therefore relies on trust. So who’s facilitating payments from the government?
The Daily Wire spent weeks analyzing the Medicaid data released by the Trump administration as part of its effort to weed out wasteful government spending. I went to Ohio, and found clusters of home healthcare providers that bill the government millions of dollars in desolate buildings filled with empty offices.
At 1415 East Dublin Granville Road, one of the Columbus buildings we visited in our investigation, we found True Home Healthcare LLC.
All that appeared on its door was a tattered piece of printer paper that read, “SORRY WE MISSED YOU, OUT FOR A QUICK BREAK.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-1090927 size-medium" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/true-home-sign-300x224.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="224" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/true-home-sign-300x224.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/true-home-sign-770x576.jpg 770w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/true-home-sign-768x575.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/true-home-sign-1536x1149.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/true-home-sign.jpg 1942w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></div>
In Medicaid records, the owner is listed Mamusu Kanu. According to a review of public records, Kanu has had a slew of criminal convictions, including for theft, assault, and DUI, as well as several civil judgments and tax liens. Kanu was charged with felony aggravated assault in Virginia, and convicted of theft in Columbus in 2004, 2005, and 2006.
The company True Home Healthcare LLC received $100,000 in December 2023 alone off just 15 patients, according to our analysis of federal spending data.
In a phone interview, Mamusu Kanu, who goes by “Sue,” denied that she had a criminal record, before declaring: “Even if I do, it doesn&#8217;t have anything to do with nobody. They [Medicaid] certify you before you do anything.&#8221;
Incorporation documents for True Home Healthcare don’t list Kanu, but rather a man named Alieu Conteh. The couple are married and have been partners in crime for decades. On December 12, 2004, both Kanu and Conteh were charged with theft in Columbus. They previously lived in Alexandria, Virginia, where they stiffed multiple landlords. Court records show the couple faced <a href="https://trellis.law/doc/58696516/judgment-entry-decree-foreclosure-court-finds-that-if-sums-found-due-are-not-fully-paid-within-three-3-days-equity-redemption-in-said-real-estate-shall-be-sold?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">foreclosure</a> in Columbus immediately before opening their Medicaid business.
Two months. Millions of documents. A full investigative team. That’s what this story required. Most outlets can’t afford work like this, which is why it doesn’t happen. We’ve chosen to make it happen. <a href="https://get.dailywire.com/fight/?utm_campaign=missional&amp;utm_medium=editorial&amp;utm_source=article&amp;utm_content=medicaid" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Support more of it by becoming a member of Daily Wire.</a>
In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, court records show Conteh has faced <a href="https://www.fcmcclerk.com/case/search/results" target="_blank" rel="noopener">25 charges</a>. He’s had additional convictions elsewhere, including for endangering children.
Conteh acknowledged his criminal history, but said it didn’t interfere with his ability to do business with Medicaid.
&#8220;Yes, I do have a lot of records,” Conteh told The Daily Wire. “I was just too dumb I didn&#8217;t even know what is law.”
“We came up to do business. I put in my application with the government, Medicaid, Medicare, they check. They see all my history &#8230; and they approved the business to operate,” Conteh said. “Do you want to tell me I don&#8217;t have rights to own a business?&#8221;
Conteh had a roster of aliases that he would give to the police, such as Osman Kanu and Gbssay Gbla, leading to multiple fraud convictions. “That way I cannot be arrested when I knew I was driving with a suspended license,&#8221; he told The Daily Wire.
Records confirm that Conteh’s criminal past was not a problem with licensing. In 2012, Ohio’s Board of Nursing permitted Conteh to become a nurse under a probationary agreement that acknowledged his repeated fraud and violent tendencies:
“In 2007, Mr. Conteh was convicted of one (1) amended misdemeanor count of Disorderly Conduct that stemmed from him grabbing and striking an adult female family member,” the government document states, also referencing “retail theft,” “falsification,” and “providing a false name/information to a police officer.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1090935" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/nursing-ss.jpg" alt="" width="676" height="812" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/nursing-ss.jpg 676w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/nursing-ss-250x300.jpg 250w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/nursing-ss-480x576.jpg 480w" sizes=" (max-width: 676px) 100vw, 676px" /></div>
The probationary license was contingent on his meeting certain terms, including being honest, disclosing his employers to the nursing board, and refraining from crimes. He did none of those things.
He was convicted of DUIs in September 2014 and November 2014. When he submitted an application to renew his nursing license in 2016, he falsely said he had not been convicted of any crimes, and that he was unemployed, even though he was in fact working as a nurse. His license was suspended in July 2017.
In September 2017, Conteh told the nursing board he “intended to seek alcohol dependency treatment and regretted his actions.” Just eight days later, he was arrested for DUI yet again. Conteh also “reported having a prior history of Cocaine use,” a January 2018 deal with the nursing board said.
The deal said his license would be suspended through at least January 2019, and required him to submit to drug and alcohol tests — which he then failed, claiming it was a “momentary relapse.” In January 2020, he was reinstated as a nurse, subject to permanent limits.
“Unless otherwise approved in advance by the Board or its designee, Mr. Conteh shall not practice nursing as a licensed practical nurse (1) for agencies providing home care in the patient’s residence&#8221; or “where the job duties or requirements involve financial activity.”
Nonetheless, Conteh and his wife created their own company, one that would involve unsupervised and unverifiable home visits, and rely on their honesty to accurately bill the government.
True Home Healthcare was certified as a Medicaid provider in April 2021; between May 2021 and October 2024, it billed taxpayers $936,000. It had 12 customers when it opened its doors, and 12 customers in October 2024, the last month for which data is available, according to the HHS data.
<div id="attachment_1090939" style="width: 1006px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1090939" class="size-full wp-image-1090939" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/true-home-chart.jpg" alt="" width="996" height="460" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/true-home-chart.jpg 996w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/true-home-chart-300x139.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/true-home-chart-768x355.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 996px) 100vw, 996px" />Monthly Medicaid payments to True Home Healthcare</div>
Conteh suggested he had not notified the nursing board that he was working in home health, and said he doesn’t think he has to.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t work for home healthcare,” Conteh said. “I own one.&#8221;
He said he neither dealt with finances or patients. &#8220;My role, I sit in the office,&#8221; he told The Daily Wire.
Asked how he finds the clients and whether he advertises, Conteh said that’s unnecessary.
&#8220;That is a very unnecessary question,” he said. “The patient just comes.”
&#8220;How do we as taxpayers know that they&#8217;re real? The database says you got $100,000 in a single month,” I asked.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t have an answer for you,&#8221; he said. He then issued vague threats, saying, &#8220;You still asking some questions that are very irrelevant and unnecessary. I already know who you are, your parents, and so forth.&#8221;
After I asked why Alieu Conteh said he mentioned my parents, he hung up, then called back and said he had not said that, but instead said the word &#8220;apparently.&#8221; Moments later, a woman who would not identify herself called from a different number and made clear that was a lie. &#8220;I&#8217;m gonna have to handle you a different way &#8230; let me tell you what will happen,&#8221; she said, before rattling off names of the reporter’s loved ones.
Kanu then called back and said, despite Medicaid records showing it using the billing code for “personal services” like homemaking, the company actually provided nursing service, installing intensive medical equipment like ventilators, and had closer to 40 Medicaid patients, significantly more than are shown in records.
The Daily Wire asked the Ohio Department of Medicaid about any possible discrepancy in the data. After nine days, the department pointed The Daily Wire to the federal government — which simply gathers the information from the states.
The couple that has repeatedly harmed people&#8217;s physical health and committed fraud is getting rich off of your money.
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Owners of Medicaid companies that share True Home Healthcare’s building
This is just what unfurled behind a single door in the seemingly endless labyrinth of home healthcare companies billing Medicaid millions in Columbus.
Conteh is not even the only person with his last name, one of the <a href="https://www.ancestry.com/last-name-meaning/conteh" target="_blank" rel="noopener">most common</a> in the Western African nation of Sierra Leone, taking advantage of the industry in Columbus.
Shortly before Alieu Conteh’s True Home Healthcare began billing Medicaid, a man named Alfred Conteh was busted for Medicaid fraud in Columbus and banned from the program.
In May 2020, Alfred was caught “submitting false documentation of home health services provided to Medicaid beneficiaries on dates when video surveillance confirmed he was not physically present at the homes of the beneficiaries in question,” the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/agencies/dab/decisions/alj-decisions/2023/alj-cr6343/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
He was charged in Franklin County Municipal Court in April 2022, and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in August 2022.
The punishment for Medicaid fraud is so lenient that it provides little deterrent. Alfred Conteh was only required to reimburse for charges that video conclusively proved he could not have provided ($607) while taking his word for the rest. His criminal case no longer appears in Ohio court records, which a court clerk said suggests it was expunged. The Ohio nursing board let him keep his license.
The only significant punishment is being placed on Medicaid’s Exclusions list for five years, preventing him from billing more.
Is Alfred Conteh related to Allieu Conteh, or is bilking Medicaid simply that common among immigrants from Sierra Leone? It’s hard for the government, or anyone else, to know for sure.
But with thousands of home health care companies, constantly being created and decommissioned, and whose LLC partners are not always public or seem to be placed in relatives’ names, that’s easy enough to get around.
Alfred Conteh has now moved to Alexandria, Virginia, the same city where Sue and Alieu lived, records show. He also shared a home with someone with the last name of Gbla — one of Alieu’s aliases. Allieu denied any relation.
Following earlier installments in this Daily Wire series,  <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jd-vance-eyes-fraud-probe-inspired-by-daily-wire-investigation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vice President JD Vance</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ramaswamy-says-he-will-aggressively-prosecute-kind-of-fraud-uncovered-by-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vivek Ramaswamy</a>, now Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, both vowed to investigate potential fraud in the state.
Ohio’s current Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has said he has no reason to believe there’s any unaddressed fraud in the state, and stated in response to this investigation that “Ohio has extensive oversight mechanisms in place.”
Parker Thayer, an investigator for the Capital Research Center, contributed reporting.
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This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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In my formative years, my perception of diamonds, engagements, and proposals was shaped largely by my favorite films from Hollywood’s Golden Age. From Audrey Hepburn in &#8220;Breakfast at Tiffany’s&#8221; gazing pensively into the Tiffany windows like a tourist craning up at the Sistine Chapel to Marilyn Monroe in &#8220;Gentlemen Prefer Blondes&#8221; enshrining the doctrine that “diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” these were the images that first taught me what romance was meant to look like. In such enduring portrayals, elegance came packaged in little blue boxes; they conveyed all the glitz and glamour a young romantic could imagine.
So when the time came to think seriously about proposing, the engagement ring in my mind had six prongs and a center stone, though I lacked the terminology to describe it as such at the time. And, as a willing victim of advertising, I did believe the best things came in blue.
Having since plunged into the world of engagement rings and diamonds, I have been reliably informed that I was mistaken. Jewelry is intensely personal, and an engagement ring is the most personal of all.
Women may still want the thrill of a proposal, but they generally also want some say — and final approval — over the ring’s design. They want to know it is coming, just not exactly when. Despite Hollywood’s portrayals, proposals are rarely shocking; more often, they are carefully forewarned surprises (sort of like the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound). If this strikes you as contradictory, I refer you to Oscar Wilde, who once remarked that women are meant to be loved, not understood.
In any case, fear not, gentlemen: I shall share what I have learned. Women, too, may glean something from it, as many of my own lessons came from consulting my girlfriend.
The engagement-ring market, as I discovered, is not a single industry so much as several overlapping ones. At the top sit luxury houses like Tiffany and Cartier, where one pays a handsome premium for heritage, branding (I soon learned the more apropos slogan is that the most marked-up things come in blue), and the carefully curated experience of buying there, right down to Cartier’s complimentary Champagne. Beneath them are the conventional retail jewelers found in malls, offering convenience and ready-made inventory but still carrying substantial markup. Then come wholesale independent jewelers, who source stones directly and can create custom rings, usually without grand showrooms but with greater flexibility and better value. Finally, there is the vintage, estate, and resale market, where buyers seek out older or previously owned rings for their character, individuality, or potential savings.
For the uninitiated, natural diamonds are typically judged according to the famous four Cs: cut, carat, clarity, and color. Carat refers to weight, though most people understandably think of it as size; roughly 0.9 to 1.5 carats is a common range. Cut, confusingly, does not refer to shape, but to how well the stone has been fashioned to catch and reflect light. Shape is its own category: round is the old standby, while cuts such as cushion, oval, pear, and emerald drift in and out of fashion with the tides of taste. Clarity and color, meanwhile, measure the degree of internal imperfections and tint, ranging from the visibly flawed to the nearly immaculate.
To put this in perspective with actual prices, a high-quality one-carat diamond ring from Tiffany — say, G color, VVS1 clarity, and an excellent cut — starts at around $20,000. If, instead, you skip the luxury tier and visit the sort of jewelry store your mother might browse in the mall while your father is off trying on shoes, a similarly specced ring will run closer to $8,000. Then there is the route I ultimately took: an independent jeweler recommended by a recently wed friend. There is no grand showroom, so it requires more preparation; you need to know what you want. But, as I learned, you can show such a jeweler the $20,000 Tiffany ring of your dreams and have it replicated for $5,000. Mine even told me that, if I were desperate enough, he could source the Tiffany box and papers, too. “I know a guy,” he said.
But knockoff Tiffany papers are not the only route to discount luxury in the jewelry world. You may have heard of lab-grown diamonds. With recent leaps in technology, lab-grown diamonds in the late 2010s were to the diamond industry what quartz watches were to Swiss horology in the 1980s: a major disruptor and a tech-driven solution to a laborious and difficult-to-source product. They have become so uniformly high in color and clarity that the old precision of diamond grading increasingly feels beside the point. As one jeweler explained to me, they are visually flawless diamonds, cost roughly $100 per carat to manufacture, and retail for somewhere between $500 and $1,500 per carat. They are cheap, plentiful, and readily available — ideal, if your ambition is to tone your fiancée’s arm by weighing it down with a baseball-sized behemoth that, if naturally mined, would fetch a price rivaling that of an exotic sports car. Even affluent clients, the jeweler told me, often opt for lab-grown when faced with the choice between spending $5,000 and $300,000 on what is, to the naked eye, effectively the same stone.
Given the striking disparity in cost and virtual lack thereof in appearance, why would anyone opt for a natural diamond over lab? Some bleeding-heart voices will still invoke the specter of blood diamonds. But with the Kimberley Process — the international certification scheme for rough diamonds — now covering roughly 99.8% of global rough-diamond production, it is exceedingly difficult to turn your proposal plans into a vehicle for financing African warlord insurgencies, even if you were so inclined. The decision instead comes down to preference, provenance, and resale value. They say diamonds are forever, but not all diamonds hold their value forever. Though no diamonds should be thought of as investments or reliable stores of value, natural diamonds will at least retain some fraction of what you paid; their lab-grown counterparts, however, retain virtually no resale value at all.
There is also something undeniably romantic about a natural diamond being more than a billion years old. In a world of fast and disposable fashion, it has an advantage over modern consumer goods in that it predates civilization and will certainly outlast it. If that connection to older, grander, and less synthetic worlds appeals to you, old mine-cut and old European-cut diamonds are also worth considering over the modern brilliant cut.
These were styles associated with the Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, and Art Deco eras, evolving from the squarish, hand-cut old mine style to the rounder old European before the modern brilliant arrived with the technical precision to maximize sparkle. The older cuts were fashioned to be admired under candlelight, before the widespread adoption of electric bulbs, giving them a softer, moodier glow. They feel closer in spirit to the sparkling socialites of the Gilded Age than to the moneyed influencers of social media. In the end, the European cut was the one we chose. It was a beautiful and singular stone and, as the jeweler explained, much harder to come by in such higher-grade colors and clarities: “I can get 10 of these brilliant-cut diamonds for you tomorrow. This European one? I can maybe find a handful a year.”
The jeweler also explained that, in certain friend groups and social circles, there is increasing pressure toward larger stones. “If all her friends are showing off massive three-carat diamonds, maybe she doesn’t want a quaint 1.2-carat natural.” Thankfully, this was not my predicament; none of my girlfriend’s friends are married yet.
Lab-grown diamonds, for all the snobbery they may still attract, have also democratized entry into a world once guarded by prohibitive prices. A young man no longer needs to bankrupt himself or delay proposing for a decade to participate in marriage. Engagement rings may be, in part, an offshoot of marketing and media, but they are now as fixed a feature of our culture as diamonds themselves, and, like refusing to read the directions or carrying all the groceries from the car in a single trip, seem to have become one of those things expected of us men.
The old Tiffany fantasy still has its charm, but romance, as it turns out, is not a faithful reenactment of a Billy Wilder script. Rather, it is learning what the woman you love actually wants and then finding a way (within budget) to give it to her. By the way, she said yes.
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Harry Khachatrian (<a href="https://x.com/harry1t6">@Harry1T6</a>) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at <a href="https://www.betweenbottles.com/">BetweenBottles.com</a>.

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Inside The Diamond Game, Where The Same Ring Can Cost $5K Or $20K Depending On One Choice

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