Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) handed her party a problem it spent Sunday morning refusing to answer when she laughed off a slate of far-left policy positions as the excesses of &#8220;Woke 1.&#8221;
Two of the biggest Sunday shows put Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s remark to Democratic guests as a loyalty test, and both guests gave a near-identical non-answer. NBC&#8217;s Kristen Welker and CNN&#8217;s Jake Tapper each raised it on &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EukfmKkYwS4">Meet the Press</a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCBVnEyVdwQ">State of the Union</a>,&#8221; respectively.
Welker put the question to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) directly, quoting Ocasio-Cortez and asking whether he agreed.
&#8220;She said &#8216;Woke 1 was crazy,&#8217; effectively suggesting some progressive views just went too far in the 2020s,&#8221; Welker said. &#8220;Do you agree with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that Woke 1 was crazy?&#8221;
&#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t know what these labels mean,&#8221; Khanna replied, immediately pivoting to a recitation of his own record: &#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you what I&#8217;ve always stood for. I have never been for defunding police.&#8221; He went on to volunteer that he has &#8220;called for abolishing ICE.&#8221;
Welker followed up by asking about Francesca Hong — the Madison democratic socialist who narrowly lost Wisconsin&#8217;s Democratic gubernatorial primary on Tuesday — and the resurfaced post in which she called for getting rid of Thanksgiving. &#8220;Did that kind of rhetoric hurt the progressive cause?&#8221; she asked.
Khanna refused to give an inch. &#8220;I really feel bad for what happened to Francesca. And I know it&#8217;s fashionable to distance yourself. I am not,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I was proud to endorse her and she&#8217;s far more than the caricature that was presented.&#8221;
Notably, Ocasio-Cortez herself never endorsed Hong. Asked in the same ABC News <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFwAnMLBSOw">interview</a> that produced the &#8220;Woke 1&#8221; line whether she would, she said her focus was &#8220;winning back the Congress&#8221; — putting her in line with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the national Democratic Socialists of America, all of whom stayed out. Khanna did not.
On &#8220;State of the Union,&#8221; Tapper raised an almost identical line of questioning with Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), referencing Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s comments and pressing Moore for his view.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Democrat Governor of Maryland Wes Moore plays dumb when asked if Democrats went too far by calling to defund the police:
“I said I don’t know what woke 1 is, but frankly I don&#8217;t know what woke 2 or woke 3 is either.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/PFVN265qYw">pic.twitter.com/PFVN265qYw</a>
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://x.com/RNCResearch/status/2088985603874463944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 16, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems to have acknowledged the overreach of the 2020 era of progressivism last week. She said, quote, &#8216;Woke 1 was crazy,'&#8221; Tapper said. &#8220;You were asked about that. You said you didn&#8217;t know what Woke 1 was. So I&#8217;ve been trying to figure out how to ask this question. There&#8217;s no official definition. I think Woke 1 generally refers to what are now viewed as excesses of the progressive movement — defund the police, a far-left view of the world that views the world in terms of only oppressor and oppressee, language policing, holiday policing, cancel culture positions that turned off a lot of middle-of-the-road voters. What is your take on that era, even if that wasn&#8217;t part of how you ran or thought or governed — and what does the Democratic Party need to do if they hope to win outside of blue states and congressional districts?&#8221;
Moore took a position almost identical to Khanna&#8217;s, replying, &#8220;Well, it&#8217;s funny, it&#8217;s true — I said I don&#8217;t know what Woke 1 is, but frankly, I don&#8217;t know what Woke 2 or Woke 3 is either.&#8221; Moore then pivoted to gas prices, recounting a conversation with a woman at a Delmarva Shorebirds game who told him she can&#8217;t afford to drive to her doctor&#8217;s appointments. Tapper did not follow up.
Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aoc-has-an-excuse-for-the-lefts-most-radical-woke-1-era">further popularized the phrase</a> during an August 9 appearance on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;This Week,&#8221; where she too was attempting to put some distance between herself and the less popular policies of the far left. Anchor Jonathan Karl had asked her about Hong&#8217;s record. The line wasn&#8217;t hers: she borrowed it from New York City Councilman Chi Ossé, a fellow socialist who deployed it in May while explaining away his own 2021 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/nyregion/nyc-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-freezing-eggs.html">declaration</a> that &#8220;a cis white man should not be the next speaker of the Council.&#8221;
“I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,&#8217;” Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFwAnMLBSOw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Karl</a> during an interview. “What’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”
She went on to blame the pandemic for the era&#8217;s excesses while insisting the debates it produced were worthwhile.
&#8220;I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that were had in that time were quite fruitful,&#8221; she said.

Maryland Gov. Moore And Utah Gov. Cox Speak At National Press Club On Bipartisanship

Democrats Suddenly Can’t Define ‘Woke’ After AOC Says It Was ‘Crazy’

Dems Scramble To Break Free Of AOC's 'Woke 1' Label

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Jake Tapper

Kristen Welker

Media

Politics

Ro Khanna

Wes Moore

Woke Culture

I’d imagine the hardest part of being a Democratic Socialist of America in 2026 is that they adore the sound of their own voices. Voices captured by cameras that trap every syllable in amber like prehistoric bugs, forever available for public dissection.
They can’t outrun their rhetoric. It always circles back, grinning.
For Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she’s perpetually being strangled by her own airtight logic. In 2019, she warned that climate change would end the world in twelve years if we didn’t act. Yet this week she cheerfully announced she was freezing her eggs, apparently convinced she has all the time in the world, as she puts biology on pause to run for president. She insists socialists have abandoned obscure rhetoric…while remaining a proud DSA member in the same company as candidates who treat the American flag like toilet paper, excuse the 9/11 attacks, and brag about dismantling the Western empire. In 2021, she huffed that “woke” was just a nasty little euphemism for civil rights, and how dare anyone sneer at it, you racist. This week she coyly admitted that Woke 1 was “crazy,” a silly phase of goofy things she didn’t really mean.
If Woke 1.0 was merely crazy, Woke 2.0 might just spark World War Eleven. (Ask Ilhan Omar how many of those we&#8217;ve had.)
AOC can switch accents, ideologies, and positions with the restless flair of a chameleon on Adderall, but we cannot let her memory-hole what she said and did during Woke One. It was genuinely insane and destructive. Pretending otherwise isn’t evolution; it’s gaslighting with better lighting.
In 2020, she insisted that New York Police Department’s billion-dollar cuts didn’t go nearly far enough. A defunded-police society, she explained, looked like a white affluent suburb. Any criticism of the movement? Pure racial resentment. That same movement delivered the costliest and deadliest riots in modern American history: roughly two billion dollars in insured damage, a 30% spike in U.S. homicides, police resignations that skyrocketed and never fully recovered, and tens of millions of dollars of bail funds sponsored by leftist organizations and cheered on by AOC and her playmates that freed murderers, sexual offenders, and other violent criminals.
And it wasn’t only Defund. She worked overtime to inject DEI into every institution within rhetorical reach. She repeatedly described white supremacy as a “virus” — often subconscious, often dormant — in the nation and in ordinary individuals. She argued COVID relief should be written, “with a lens of reparations.” She became a key amplifier of the post-George Floyd worldview that filtered everything through systemic oppression and dismissed color-blind equal treatment as naïve or worse. The result was a surge of corporate DEI roles, mandatory diversity statements, staffing quotas, and federal equity mandates. Meanwhile, perceptions of race relations hit multi-decade lows, and workplace fairness concerns climbed as more people grew skeptical that preferential DEI processes still tracked pure merit.
In 2021, the woman spat all over capitalism by wearing a dress dripping with the bloody slogan “Tax the Rich,” to a Met Gala where tickets cost more than some Americans make in a year. Egg-freezing isn&#8217;t cheap either. Tax the rich, just the other rich, apparently.
Her rhetoric poured gasoline on those ideological fires. Watching her now try to laugh it off as youthful exuberance is not charming. It’s nauseating.
Especially since nothing has actually changed for the candidates around her. They’re talking crazier than ever, and more of them keep crawling out of the woodwork every week.
In the very same interview where AOC smiled, waved, and tried to reframe 2020 as a rebellious teenage phase rather than a national disgrace, she openly confirmed that she remains a member of the New York City DSA chapter. That same chapter wants police, prisons, the Senate, the presidency, borders, and the Department of Defense abolished outright. It has produced candidates who flirt with Sharia law in America, campaign alongside people who claim America “deserved” 9/11, and argue that Thanksgiving should be canceled because it’s racist.
Obviously.
Woke 1.0 may be over, but only because the Left has graduated to Woke Two: the sequel where despising America is the new patriotism, where Planned Parenthood rebrands abortion as gender-affirming care, where it’s chic to post videos of yourself injecting your ovaries with hormones on Instagram to stop the clock, where the WNBA doesn&#8217;t know what the &#8220;W&#8221; stands for, where capitalism is the bane of your existence, and where leading Democratic candidates are open terror sympathizers eager to dismantle the country from the inside.
AOC is trying to gaslight us into seeing her as a moderate communist who only hates America a little (some consultant must have whispered that she needs to chill if she wants a national stage). Her comrades, however, are not moderating. They are radicalizing at speed. They’re devouring the remains of the moderate Democratic Party for breakfast, hosting LGBTQ parties at mosques for lunch, and canceling dinner altogether because the nuclear family is apparently a white-supremacist construct.
They are losing their ever-loving minds. And it’s still hurting America, just as the rhetoric did in 2020.
It almost makes me nostalgic for Woke One. Hopefully, by the time AOC is ready to thaw those eggs at the ripe age of seventy-five, Woke Wars I through XI will all be ancient history. Maybe then we’ll finally return to common sense, nostalgic suburbia, and an Overton window that isn’t stretched to the breaking point by people who proudly cried woke wolf.

image_6c932314

Don’t Let AOC Memory-Hole ‘Woke 1.0’

DW Opinion

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joked that her and other socialist politicians&#8217; calls to ‘defund the police’ were just a “crazy, Woke 1” era.
&#8220;I have a local city councilman that has this saying, &#8216;Woke 1 was crazy,'&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFwAnMLBSOw">said</a> in an interview with ABC. “What’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.&#8221;
ABC News host Jon Karl had asked the congresswoman about the latest socialist backtrack, involving Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong and her comments that called for prisons to be abolished and for Thanksgiving to be canceled.
The radical statements from the Left’s self-proclaimed “Woke 1” era ranged from calls to &#8220;defund the police&#8221; to declarations like &#8220;no one is illegal on stolen land,&#8221; &#8220;homeownership is a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nyc-landlords-blast-mamdani-official-who-calls-property-ownership-weapon-of-white-supremacy">weapon</a> of white supremacy,&#8221; and “all <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Vox/videos/i-still-believe-that-all-deportations-are-wrongnew-york-congressional-candidate-/4441164026124427/">deportations</a> are wrong.”
Ocasio-Cortez explained that those statements led to &#8220;fruitful&#8221; conversations. “I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that were had in that time were quite fruitful,&#8221; she said.
She tried to put some distance on that line of thinking, however, claiming that rhetoric is not the rhetoric used today. “I think that when we talk about crime today, it’s fundamentally different than the way that we talked about crime in bringing crime down, right? And I think that we all share the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”
So far, past radical comments have not stopped self-described democratic socialists — many of whom do still embrace the rhetoric Ocasio-Cortez appears ready to abandon — from winning primaries and advancing to the general election. In New York City, democratic socialists Darializa Chevalier and Claire Valdez swept their primaries and defeated incumbent establishment Democrats, Melat Kiros won in Colorado, and Abdul El-Sayed won in Michigan.
Their success may not stop at the primaries. Prediction market Kalshi currently forecasts a Chevalier win in the general election at <a href="https://kalshi.com/tag/new-york-elections">98%</a>, a Valdez victory at 76%, a Kiros win at 97%, and an El-Sayed win at 55%. Increasingly, more and more Americans hold a positive view of socialism — with nearly <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/694835/image-capitalism-slips.aspx">40%</a> reporting they have a positive view of socialism.
Democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani proved in his 2025 election that radical statements can be successfully walked back before a general election. Mamdani had previously <a href="https://apnews.com/article/59f6a66cd40d4c2b750fdfd06a4f5da1?utm_source=chatgpt.com">advocated</a> for seizing the means of production, refused to condemn globalizing the intifada, and had described the New York City Police Department as a &#8220;racist, anti-queer, and a major threat to public safety.&#8221;
The thirty-four-year-old mayor <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/zohran-mamdani-fox-news-interview/6405385/">chalked</a> up his comments to his own emotional reaction to &#8220;the year George Floyd was killed,&#8221; saying that at the time &#8220;it felt like safety and justice had never been further apart.&#8221;
Mamdani&#8217;s win proved socialism could win a major election in the United States. And while socialism’s popularity is on the rise, capitalism’s popularity has declined, dropping 6% since 2021 to just over half — <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/694835/image-capitalism-slips.aspx">54%</a> — of Americans viewing capitalism in a favorable light.

AOC Has An Excuse For The Left’s Most Radical ‘Woke 1’ Era

Abolish the police

Defund The Police

Anson Frericks spent 11 years climbing to the top of Anheuser-Busch, eventually becoming the legacy beer brand&#8217;s president of sales and distribution.
And then, he watched in horror as the company he loved traded its relationship with customers for an elitist stakeholder capitalism scorecard. Most Americans can date Bud Light&#8217;s collapse to February 11, 2023 — the day that transgender-identifying social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video of himself drinking Bud Light in a bathtub, a paid promotion that permanently altered the brand&#8217;s reputation.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OW9CG4XLky4?si=OGwHI7tRwqXRiF39" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
But as Anson recounts in his bestselling book, &#8220;Last Call for Bud Light,&#8221; the Mulvaney campaign was just one of many poor decisions that led to Anheuser-Busch losing $30 billion in market value. The company&#8217;s executives, he wrote, &#8220;had lost touch with Anheuser-Busch’s brand. With its mission. With its consumers.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/i-worked-at-anheuser-busch-when-bud-light-imploded-heres-what-i-learned?author=Anson+Frericks&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=I+Worked+At+Anheuser-Busch+When+Bud+Light+Imploded.+Here%E2%80%99s+What+I+Learned.">READ AN EXCERPT FROM ANSON FRERICKS&#8217;S BESTSELLER &#8216;LAST CALL FOR BUD LIGHT&#8217;</a>
Frericks had seen the writing on the wall before the Mulvaney fiasco. He left Anheuser-Busch in 2022 and partnered with Vivek Ramaswamy to found <a href="https://strive.com/story">Strive Asset Management</a>, whose &#8220;bold vision&#8221; was &#8220;to depoliticize corporate America and restore the voices of everyday citizens in the American economy by leading companies to focus on excellence.&#8221;
Frericks breaks down all that and more in the premiere episode of The Daily Wire&#8217;s newest show, &#8220;Titans On Tomorrow.&#8221; The series brings Shapiro face to face with the founders, CEOs, and investors building the next decade of business and finance during a transformative time for the global economy.
In this exciting premiere episode, Shapiro and Frericks break down Anheuser-Busch&#8217;s fall from the top of the beer world to the punchline of a national joke. They also discuss why companies like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard have outsized power over corporate America, and how Strive is fighting back; whether corporate neutrality is enough, or if conservatives need to push harder; why he left the culture wars behind to build an AI company tackling serious mental illness; and what&#8217;s next as AI, biotech, and capital markets reshape the American economy.
Watch Episode One of &#8220;Titans On Tomorrow&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-titans-on-tomorrow-ep-1?contentProgram=The%20Ben%20Shapiro%20Show&amp;contentType=ShowEpisode&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;location=Home%20Tab&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Home%20Featured%20Carousel">exclusively at The Daily Wire.</a>

Untitled design – 2026-08-02T091151.196

He Foresaw Bud Light Losing $30 Billion. Then He Built The Fix To End Woke Capital.

Anheuser-Busch

Ben Shapiro

BlackRock

Bud Light

Daily Wire

Dylan Mulvaney

Podcast

Titans On Tomorrow

Transgender

Vivek Ramaswamy

It’s no secret that conservatives are the David to Hollywood’s Goliath on the pop culture front.
Much of that isn’t their fault. The Heartland is mostly shut out of Hollywood, Inc. Conservative stories rarely get a close-up on screens of any size. The list of openly conservative stars remains microscopically small.
Yet conservatives may have hurt their own cause by going to war with “The Odyssey,” mostly sight unseen.
Director Christopher Nolan’s take on Homer’s epic poem drew endless online attacks from both Right-leaning YouTube creators and conservatives. It’s woke! It’s D.E.I. gone wild! The source material’s translator is a <a href="https://www.slashfilm.com/2219268/how-emily-wilson-feels-christopher-nolan-the-odyssey-adaptation/">woke feminist</a>!
A woke feminist, for what it’s worth, who had some unkind things to say about Nolan’s finished product.
Now, with the film generating rapturous responses from <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_odyssey_2026">film critics</a> and <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/odyssey-audience-cinemascore-even-beyond-031733557.html">audiences alike</a>, that knee-jerk response is looking worse. The film earned a whopping <a href="https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/the-odyssey-box-office-christopher-nolan-opening-weekend-shatters-expectations-1236815861/">$264 million globally</a> in its opening weekend, and the subsequent numbers show little sign that it’s a one-weekend wonder.
Nolan isn’t your average Hollywood storyteller. He never weighs in on politics directly, lets his art speak for him, and once made a blockbuster that side-eyed the Occupy Wall Street movement – “The Dark Knight Rises” (2012).
He spent an entire Oscar campaign for 2023’s “Oppenheimer” without shouting “Free Palestine” or attacking a certain U.S. president. He’s also not a social media diva. He reportedly doesn’t own a smartphone and has his assistants <a href="https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/jaelaniturnerwilliams/christopher-nolan-no-smartphone-email">print out emails for him</a>. (Maybe we can all agreed that’s a bit much.)
That should have earned him some respect on the Right, the sense that this wasn’t your average Hollywood progressive weaponizing a classic against Red State USA.
No.
Social media allowed some Right-leaning souls to predict the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldGE53GwLlc">film’s financial doom</a> and slam the film sight unseen. Even Elon Musk entered the chat, pummeling the film for weeks prior to its release.
On one key front, the Right had a point.
Nolan cast trans actor Elliot Page in “The Odyssey,” but he and his team refused to explain what role Page played. That sparked rumors that the part was Achilles, known to all as a fearsome warrior.
Page is five-foot-one and slender.
No matter. That Fake News story ricocheted around the web, desperate for a fact check that took too long to arrive. It’s notable that Nolan didn’t immediately debunk the misinformation, nor did his marketing team.
The latter likely possess smartphones.
Casting Page deserved some raised eyebrows. The actor is intensely political, before and after the transition. Page’s on-screen appearance is a distraction, no matter where you stand on so-called “representation” and trans rights. Period. Good filmmakers should understand that, but like even the very best storytellers in Hollywood, Nolan isn’t perfect.
Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o co-stars as Helen of Troy, a character described as fair-skinned in the text and played by white actors in previous takes on the source material. It’s a race swap! Yes, yes, it is, but it’s a very minor point in a much larger story.
Some savaged the star for not being beautiful enough for the role, a characterization that is both subjective and silly. Plus, Nyong’o has little screen time.
Nolan spoke repeatedly of his attempt to “modernize” the epic tale for modern audiences. Nyong’o’s casting may have been part of that effort. Some other minor “Greek” roles also clashed with the time period. Was Nolan pulling a minor “Hamilton” move, where casting choices took a creative turn to say something about the culture at large?
Right-leaning podcaster Bridget Phetasy leveled the cruelest dig at the film’s conservative critics. She called their <a href="https://www.phetasy.com/p/walk-ins-welcome-400?utm_source=podcast-email&amp;publication_id=348276&amp;post_id=208139218&amp;utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&amp;utm_content=watch_now_gif&amp;r=2rv17&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email">attacks “liberal” in nature</a>:
<blockquote>
You had a criticism of making everything political for a decade, and now you haven’t seen the movie and you’re making it political and telling people not to go enjoy a good movie.
</blockquote>
That’s not to say some conservative arguments weren’t solid or leaned on little more than tired talking points to fit their agenda. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh skewered “The Odyssey” while bringing up salient arguments about the casting, the impact of Page’s character and more.
He actually saw the film and gave his two cents thereafter. Agree? Disagree? He stated his case well.
Andrew Klavan mostly praised the film but found the screenplay wanting, to put it mildly.
The Critical Drinker, who isn’t overtly conservative but leans to the cultural Right, served up a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_W0z6hZlrI">nuanced take</a> that mixed criticism with praise.
Conservatives should take great care in “jumping the gun” on pop culture matters. In a way, that’s what the Left often does. Consider the L.A. Times’ <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/la-times-daily-wire-run-hide-fight-racist/">recent assault on “Run Hide Fight: Infidels,”</a> a movie that doesn’t hit Daily Wire+ until the Fall.
The newspaper read a generic synopsis of the film, set on a college campus where Islamic radicals take charge, and declared the film deeply problematic. The film could inspire violence, the paper argued, while implying it should be censored.
The worst part of this ugly culture war battle? The anger and absolutism behind the critiques. “The Odyssey” is just a movie, albeit a massive one with cultural heft. We can love or loathe it, find it inspiring or wanting.
Walsh is right, to a degree. So is The Critical Drinker and the Left-leaning mainstream critics who adored “The Odyssey.”
Conservatives should still engage in the culture wars, create art on their own terms (when feasible) and not cede Hollywood to the modern Left. The latter would be disastrous.
They also should hold their fire until they see the art in question and bring vital context to their culture war crusades. The Right is working at a distinct disadvantage here. They shouldn’t make matters worse.
***
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <a href="http://www.hollywoodintoto.com/">HollywoodInToto.com</a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News&#8217; Big Hollywood. He&#8217;s also the host of <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hollywood-in-toto-podcast-w-christian-toto/id1186449155">The Hollywood in Toto Podcast</a>. Follow him at <a href="https://twitter.com/HollywoodInToto?lang=en">@HollywoodInToto</a>.

“The Odyssey” New York Premiere

Conservatives Lose A Culture War Battle Over ‘The Odyssey’

Andrew Klavan

Christopher Nolan

Culture wars

Elliot Page

Entertainment

Hollywood

Lupita Nyong’o

Matt Walsh

The Odyssey

Punch-Odyssey-2

Is ‘The Odyssey’ A Sign America Is Post-Woke?

Homer

Shane Gillis

Spencer Klavan

Weekend Punch

It was 30 years ago this month that a couple of college students in Kennewick, Wash., stumbled upon a rare archaeological discovery — one that would help trigger a war between science and racial identity politics, or what we now call “DEI.” Three decades later, it’s clear that if we don’t act quickly, it’s a fight science will probably lose.
What the students found was a 9,000-year-old skeleton that was soon nicknamed Kennewick Man. It was certainly one of the most precious anthropological finds ever. At the time, it was the oldest human skeleton ever found in North America, and it had signs of an injury from an arrow or a spear. More intriguingly, it seemed to have less in common with the skeletons of Native Americans than with those of ancient Japanese peoples, thus potentially changing our understanding of how humans first arrived in the New World.
But that’s when the federal government stepped in. Under a law called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, skeletons found on federally owned land (as Kennewick Man was) must be turned over, or “repatriated,” to the Native American tribes they’re related to. NAGPRA was written in response to the actions of 19th- and early 20th-century archaeologists who sometimes engaged in practices that would be unacceptable today to acquire specimens, and it requires not only the “repatriation” of human remains, but also of “funerary objects” — that is, things buried alongside bodies.
Kennewick Man was far older than any existing tribe and not related to any of them. Nevertheless, tribal officials insisted that the bones be kept away from scientific study and turned over for reburial, which would destroy their usefulness for scientific research. In compliance with those demands, federal officials confiscated the skeleton and buried the Kennewick Man site under 600 tons of rock and fill to prevent any further discoveries.
Scientists sued, arguing that NAGPRA simply doesn’t apply to objects that old. After years of litigation, federal courts ruled in their favor. Indeed, the courts found that government officials had acted in bad faith and awarded the scientists $2 million in attorney fees. A year later, even though DNA research revealed that Kennewick Man was closest to South American indigenous peoples, an executive order by then-President Barack Obama forced the scientists to turn Kennewick Man over to a group of Northwest Coast Native American tribes who destroyed the bones forever.
That was bad enough, but in the years since, tribal activists and sympathetic politicians have taken increasingly aggressive positions in demanding the “repatriation” of specimens — many of which have no true connection to tribes, and others that aren’t even particularly old. Some museums have even “repatriated” artworks made in the 1980s and purchased from gift shops — as if these were sacred remnants of someone’s ancestors.
Today, in museums across the country, it has become common to see empty display cases, featuring signs like the one spotted recently at the San Diego Museum of Us: “As part of our decolonization process, these items have been moved to a sanctuary space.”
Equally absurd are cases in which scientists are forced to relinquish animal bones — literally the trash our ancestors threw away — on the theory that they’re somehow “funerary objects” that should be off-limits out of racial or religious sensitivities.
What’s more, some museums have adopted rules based on tribal practices to govern how scientists handle objects in their collections. These sometimes bar female scientists from handling specimens, since that’s sometimes prohibited by Native religious taboos. Museums are also required by federal regulation to have “advisory” committees that include practitioners of tribal religions. Christians, Jews, and Hindus aren’t given the same preferential treatment.
It’s hard to imagine a starker example of the collision between racial identity politics and the scientific rationality that our social and technological progress depends on. Out of deference to politically correct race politics and irrationally romanticized conceptions about “stolen land,” the institutions where science should reign supreme are being suborned into erasing the accumulated knowledge of centuries. In effect, an entire field of scientific inquiry has been placed at risk by an overzealous activist movement using the regulatory power of the state.
The study of human remains and artifacts isn’t just some antiquarian hobby. It provides critical insights about present-day issues like climate change and provides insights that can help police officers solve crimes. But entire areas of anthropological research may now be shutting down, thanks to the aggressive use and misuse of NAGPRA.
The science of anthropology can still be saved if we act now. Museum officials and state governments can push back. For one thing, many “repatriation” efforts aren’t actually required by NAGPRA. Museum leaders should refuse to be cowed by activist demands that fall outside the law. And states should adopt legislation prohibiting the return of specimens that are too old to be associated with a tribe or too young to be a “funerary object.” They should also forbid any museum from following rules that discriminate on the basis of sex or religion.
Science is too precious to be sacrificed to the political demands of DEI and the wishful thinking of angry activists who prioritize race over research, discovery, and progress.
***
Timothy Sandefur is the vice president for legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.
Elizabeth Weiss is a professor emeritus of anthropology at San José State University and author of the Goldwater Institute report, “<a href="https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-report/the-reburial-of-the-southwest/">The Reburial of the Southwest: Closing Off Native History and Archaeology</a>”

FRANCE-SCIENCE-ANTHROPOLOGY-MUSEUM-PREHISTORY-RESEARCH

Identity Politics Is Burying Science

American History

Anthropology

Archeology

Kennewick Man

Native Americans

Natural history

Science

Armie Hammer is back. So are Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman, Jonathan Majors, Louis C.K., Brett Ratner, and other canceled stars.
Cancel Culture, which tore through Hollywood over the last decade, is losing its grip. No longer do comedians fear that an old stand-up routine might “resurface” and crush their careers.
Artists with troubling pasts can work again, allowing audiences to judge whether they’re worthy of forgiveness.
That’s great news, but a strain of Cancel Culture remains very much in place. It’s purely ideological in nature, and it’s supported by mainstream media outlets, Hollywood, Inc., and the culture at large.
Embrace MAGA, President Donald Trump, or simply the Right, and watch it snap into action.
For some stars, being apolitical is seen as an unofficial conservative pose and, sadly, worthy of condemnation. Sydney Sweeney has faced media scrutiny for not formally embracing a political party. That intensified after press outlets learned she had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/03/sydney-sweeney-jeans-ad-republican-voter-registration">registered</a> as a Republican in Florida but refused to share her ideological beliefs.
That media focus intensified after her far-Left critics complained her American Eagle jeans ad, where she playfully said she had good &#8220;jeans,&#8221; was seen as a white supremacist dog whistle. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheMaineWire/videos/good-morning-america-actually-ran-a-segment-comparing-sydney-sweeneys-ad-campaig/783248864052637/">Media outlets</a> ran with the absurd attacks.
Another tiny example happened recently with the opening of the Great American State Fair. Singer Leonard Cohen’s estate <a href="https://variety.com/2026/music/news/leonard-cohen-estate-objects-trump-hallelujah-freedom-250-1236789752/">decried the potential use of the late singer’s “Hallelujah.”</a>
This particular event highlighted the enduring Cancel Culture movement.
The Great American State Fair originally hired a gaggle of fading music stars, including Bret Michaels, Young MC, and Vanilla Ice, to entertain the crowd. The media played up the event’s loose connection to Team Trump – the administration tasked with creating the event to honor the nation’s 250th birthday.
The assembled artists <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bill-maher-rips-artists-for-pulling-out-of-america-250-concerts">quickly fled the gala</a>, either suggesting the concert would be too political in nature (without evidence) or that they’ve been threatened with violence for appearing (<a href="https://variety.com/2026/music/news/bret-michaels-exits-freedom-250-concerts-washington-trump-1236761992/">Michaels</a>).
Comedian Bill Maher called foul on the artists’ decision.
<blockquote>
Wouldn’t it have been better to play this gig? … It’s a month-long gig, lots of people, like — just celebrating America. Can’t we all just celebrate America itself and leave Trump out of it?
</blockquote>
That misses the point.
The musicians want to keep performing, and they know that being associated with any event tied to President Trump might hurt their careers. Said careers weren’t exactly thriving to begin with, putting even more pressure on them to conform.
Yet roughly the same time, we saw a group of high-profile musicians, including U2’s Bono and The Edge, and Bruce Springsteen, <a href="https://abcnews.com/Politics/wireStory/springsteen-bono-stevie-obamas-open-presidential-museum-133989191">perform at President Barack Obama’s presidential museum opening.</a>
They didn’t fear professional pushback (nor should they). This wasn’t a patriotic event to honor a national holiday. The opening celebrated the most prominent Democrat in the nation, and in doing so, the musicians didn’t face violent threats or attacks on their professional future.
That’s as it should be. Yet there’s an extreme double standard in play. Just ask British singer M.I.A.
She joined Kid Cudi’s Rebel Ragers tour earlier this year as an opening act, but she quickly lost the gig for saying the “wrong” thing on stage.
She shared <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/04/kid-cudi-fires-mia-tour-republican-rant">Right-leaning opinions</a>, and in a New York minute, she was gone. The singer later filed a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/m-sues-kid-cudi-dropped-tour-says-was-fired-publicity-poor-ticket-sale-rcna347845">multi-million dollar lawsuit against Kid Cudi.</a>
The media reported the lawsuit but didn’t share any outrage over the singer’s free speech rights or the potential of wrongful termination. Nor did reporters note the irony of Springsteen creating an entire tour to spread his far-Left views while M.I.A. lost her job for sharing a fraction (of a fraction) of that political commentary.
Perhaps the best example of the media trying to cancel a superstar for aligning with MAGA came courtesy of Nate Bargatze. He’s the most successful comedian of the moment, a squeaky-clean stand-up who sells out arenas and never discusses politics on or off stage.
Bargatze attended the recent White House/UFC extravaganza, an event meant to honor the nation’s upcoming birthday and showcase the popular sport. Bargatze was not only on hand for the fights but snapped pictures with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and his wife, actress Cheryl Hines.
That sparked several media outlets to <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/nate-bargatze-maga-photograph-media-attack/">shame Bargatze</a> for the snapshots, including The Daily Beast and Parade magazine. They played up a small sample of “outraged” social media users to buttress their flimsy argument.
<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2026/06/16/nate-bargatze-trump-white-house-ufc-fight/90569424007/">“USA TODAY has reached out to Bargatze&#8217;s rep for comment.”</a>
What comment?
<blockquote>
Yes, I attended the event. No, I don’t refuse photographs from people, regardless of their political leanings.
</blockquote>
It’s absurd and tantamount to press bullying. And it quickly got worse. A few days later, far-Left comedian W. Kamau Bell slammed Bargatze for palling around with “fascists,” sparking a fresh wave of media coverage, <a href="https://variety.com/2026/film/news/nate-bargatze-maga-w-kamau-bell-fascist-photos-1236788337/">including Variety</a>.
The not-so-subtle message? Cozying up to MAGA in any way is like supporting fascism. That’s actually fascist.
Bargatze had to issue a public statement saying he’s a big UFC fan and remains apolitical.
Had Bargatze attended a similar event with a Democrat in the White House, the moment would have gotten little, if any, coverage. Or, it might have expanded his already huge career.
Why would the media pile on Bargatze? He’s technically too big to cancel, but it’s all about sending a message. Align with the Right in any manner, be it a social media post or a simple selfie, and you’ll be “outed” and punished.
The comedian will survive this news cycle. Lesser stars might not, and thus they’ll stay quiet moving forward.
None of this should be surprising. Actors like James Woods, Kevin Sorbo, Scott Baio, and more have faced retribution for simply leaning to the Right.
Hines hasn’t had an acting gig since her husband joined the Trump administration. She isn’t even a part of Larry David’s new HBO Max series, “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.” That’s despite David working with stars he’s collaborated with over the decades on the show, including Jerry Seinfeld, Susie Essman, Vince Vaughn, and more.
And she’s not even conservative. Her crime? She’s married to a former Democrat who felt he could do some good for the country by joining the Trump administration.
It’s why Hollywood conservatives created Friends of Abe long ago. The secretive group once met to network, bond, and share horror stories about the professional pummeling they face for being on the Right.
The group still exists and remains an off-the-record affair.
The ironic part? Cancel Culture against conservatives has existed in Hollywood for some time. The term became popular when that punishment expanded to include anyone who ran afoul of the progressive narrative, AKA woke.
Now, as woke fades and Cancel Culture cases shrink, it’s back to where it originally thrived, punishing conservative stars who dare speak their minds or pose for selfies.
***
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <a href="http://www.hollywoodintoto.com/">HollywoodInToto.com</a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News&#8217; Big Hollywood. He&#8217;s also the host of <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hollywood-in-toto-podcast-w-christian-toto/id1186449155">The Hollywood in Toto Podcast</a>. Follow him at <a href="https://twitter.com/HollywoodInToto?lang=en">@HollywoodInToto</a>.

Hollywood Exteriors And Landmarks – 2022

Cancel Culture Isn’t Dead Yet

America 250

Cancel Culture

Enterainment

Great American State Fair

Nate Bargatze

When the Washington Commanders tweeted out an &#8220;<a href="https://x.com/Commanders/status/2061447683416412212">All Are Welcome</a>&#8221; graphic to mark the beginning of Pride Month, it seemed like just another professional sports team going through the woke motions. But the NFL franchise&#8217;s embrace of gay pride and similar issues could point to a much deeper problem within the organization, a Daily Wire investigation found.
Commanders owner Josh Harris is a client of BerlinRosen, a massive public relations firm that has openly embraced leftist views. When Harris purchased the Commanders from the Snyder family in the summer of 2023, BerlinRosen was openly bragging about how it helped facilitate what it called “the biggest deal in U.S. sports history.”
“BerlinRosen supported Harris with strategy and messaging support as he communicated directly with Commanders fans,” the firm <a href="https://berlinrosen.com/recognitions/prweek-how-berlinrosen-helped-score-the-biggest-deal-in-u-s-sports-history/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote at the time</a>. “This achievement with Josh Harris and the Washington Commanders exemplifies how Sports PR can drive transformative change and elevate impactful ventures like this.”
Outside the arena, BerlinRosen spends a lot of time pushing leftist causes. In 2021, the firm came out in support for the Movement for Black Lives, a Black Lives Matter offshoot with a long history of anti-Israel activism. The group has shared <a href="https://x.com/Mvmnt4BlkLives/status/1965819074979496388?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1965819074979496388%7Ctwgr%5E40a4c1244f9a36f8cc61b53aab11d8c3e1522390%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Floomered.com%2F2026%2F05%2F17%2Fthe-berlinrosen-grift-how-a-major-left-wing-anti-israel-consulting-firm-is-quietly-profiting-from-jewish-and-zionist-clients%2F">posts</a> on X accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza and called for a &#8220;free Palestine.&#8221;
BerlinRosen does not seem concerned that its liberal bona fides will be hurt by its longtime relationship with Harris, who has extensive ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
In January 2026, the Department of Justice exposed communication between Epstein and Harris, <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/josh-harris-jeffery-epstein-latest-emails-20260130.html?query=epstein#loaded" target="_blank" rel="noopener">who became acquainted</a> on Wall Street. Between 2013 and 2016, the pair exchanged emails and phone calls and scheduled a meeting at Epstein’s Manhattan home. Harris reportedly attended the meeting alongside Bill Gates, another known Epstein associate.
Despite the emails between their client and the man charged with multiple counts of child sex trafficking, BerlinRosen stayed true to Harris, denying that there was an “independent relationship” between the Commanders&#8217; owner and the deceased pedophile.
BerlinRosen took a different tack with President Donald Trump, whom the firm worked to remove from the Colorado ballot in February 2024. On an internal call exposed by <a href="https://www.projectveritas.com/news/leaked-call-pr-firm-berlin-rosen-celebrates-efforts-to-remove-trump-from-ballot">Project Veritas</a>, staff boasted that they “save[d] democracy&#8221; and “knocked it out of the park” for getting Trump kicked off the state’s ballot as part of their work with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a far-left activist group backed by George Soros.
While he is not their client, BerlinRosen has a direct relationship with Soros, who has contracted them to help elect progressive prosecutors over the years.
Nor are Soros-funded groups the only leftist organizations BerlinRosen has worked for. In 2014, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) paid BerlinRosen roughly <a href="https://freebeacon.com/issues/the-one-percenters-behind-fast-food-protests/">$3 million</a>, an organization that supports democrats and even organizes protests across the country. They followed this up seven years later, stating their continued work with SEIU on X.

Washington Commanders v Green Bay Packers

How An Epstein-Linked PR Firm Helped The Washington Commanders Go Woke

Jeffrey Epstein

Sports

Washington Commanders

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.
***
The massive Pride campaigns that Target and Bud Light splashed across their stores and cans a few years ago have quietly disappeared. Not because the culture moved on, but because those brands never truly believed in the slogans. They believed in revenue, and rainbow branding looked like an easy shortcut. When it backfired spectacularly, they walked away.
Woke corporate stances are merely pragmatic: marketing strategies dressed up as moral crusades. There’s nothing authentic or altruistic about them. At bottom, it’s always been about profits, and performative progressivism seemed like an efficient way to court younger consumers.
Though it started in the 2010s, woke capitalism took over in 2020 with the Black Lives Matter explosion and black squares all over Instagram. But since then, consumers have noticed it was all a bunch of bull.
Now people are just exhausted by brands that preach values they don’t practice. Faux-generous brands claim to take the harder right over the easier wrong, when in fact it is the opposite. The minute the numbers shift, they drop the social justice stance.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with chasing profits. Businesses exist to make money. The problem is when campaigns erode trust by promising principles they abandon at the first sign of trouble. It’s the misrepresentation, the lying, that is the problem.
A growing number of shoppers are demanding something simpler: brands that are honest.
As the founder of XX-XY Athletics, I started this brand with the idea that we would be the first pro-woman, pro-truth brand that champions female athletes, even when it’s hard. We would also promise to make our product ethically. We didn’t promise all made in the U.S. — because we didn’t know if we could pull it off given reduced capacities here at home. So we didn’t lie about it. But we continue working to make it a reality.
On the other hand, Nike makes money pretending to champion female athletes. In reality, when Allyson Felix, the most decorated female track athlete of all time, became pregnant, they proposed cutting her pay by 70%. When junior elite runner Mary Cain joined Nike’s Oregon Running Project, she was bullied for her weight and psychologically abused to the point of considering suicide.
Beyond the hypocrisy in the athletic category, fast fashion has changed everything in the clothing business. We buy twice as much and wear it for half as long as we did 20 years ago, and it all ends up in the landfill.
We used to shop twice a year: in spring and fall. Fast fashion brands created today’s modern demand cycle, which is basically always on. Buy more, buy it now, who cares if the quality sucks, you’ll just get more next week.
The average American buys close to 70 new items a year. More than 50% of those items remain unworn and go straight to the landfill. But that doesn’t stop major fast fashion brands from pretending they are “green.”
“Values-led” branding in fashion is especially performative. Fast fashion’s self-created economic reality makes real alignment an impossibility: chasing volume and low prices clashes with genuine sustainability or ethical labor.
But the fashion hypocrisy is everywhere. Take Everlane, once celebrated as a beacon of “radical transparency.” Founded in 2010, it built a loyal following by revealing production costs and factory details for basics such as t-shirts and jeans. It told us we deserved to know how and where our goods were made. And it promised to transform the industry through its “radically transparent” approach.
Guess what happened next? In May, after years of slumping sales and debt accrual, Everlane <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-fashion-company-millennials-loved-just-got-bought-by-americas-rival">sold</a> to ultra-fast-fashion giant Shein for about $100 million. The brand that sold a conscience is now under the roof of a company notorious for the opposite model. Shein has been cited as one of the biggest apparel polluters in the world, not to mention the well-founded allegations that the brand uses forced labor from the Uyghur Muslim minority in China.
H&amp;M offers another textbook case. Its “Conscious” collection and ambitious goals — 100% recycled or sustainable materials by 2030, climate positive by 2040 — sound impressive in marketing. Yet the core business remains a fast-fashion volume machine churning out massive overproduction, waste, and pollution. The brand has faced lawsuits and criticism for misleading claims on polyester-heavy items marketed as eco-friendly. It also brags about its recycling program, offering discounts to encourage consumption to those who bring in products to dump in its bins. Talk sustainability; walk disposability.
Then there’s Lions Not Sheep, which wrapped itself in pro-America, patriotic messaging only to get fined by the Federal Trade Commission for ripping out “Made in China” tags and replacing them with fraudulent “Made in USA” labels on imported apparel. The penalty was over $211,000. Patriotism as costume.
Marketing fake values goes both ways, it seems.
Wellness brands such as Prime market themselves as clean and health-focused while drawing scrutiny over ingredients and formulations that don’t fully match the hype.
Even Patagonia, long hailed as the gold standard for environmental activism because it has touted itself as such, relies heavily on petroleum-based synthetics. No brand is perfect, but when your image vastly outpaces your practice, it’s greenwashing.
Brands that claim values must live them, especially when it’s hard, or they will lose the trust of their fans. Consumers should demand to know more about what they wear every day: where it comes from, how it’s made, and whether the company actually stands for anything beyond the next quarterly report.
Shoppers are waking up. They’re tired of being sold conscience by companies that treat principles as optional marketing strategies. Real values aren’t flexible. They don’t vanish when the market shifts.
Brands that understand this — the ones that align strategy with substance — will be the ones that endure. The rest are just full of it.
***
Jennifer Sey is the CEO of XX-XY Athletics. She is an author, filmmaker, and retired national champion gymnast.

MoveOn PAC Commissions Billboard Truck To Circle Target HQ In Minneapolis On Pride Weekend, Calling For The Company To “Reinstate Pride Merch”

The Truth Behind The Disappearing Rainbow Logos

LGBT

Target

Upstream

Halo Studios, the developer of the beloved classic shooter game, celebrated &#8220;Pride Month&#8221; with an update to Halo on June 1. 
“Wear your #Pride all month long with the Unity armor coating, visor and emblem, available in the Halo Infinite Exchange,” Halo Studios wrote on social media, showing how gamers can change their armor skin and player icon to be adorned with rainbow colors.
Halo blocked comments on the post, silencing the reactions of their fanbase. However, quote retweets are allowed on X, and gamers didn&#8217;t hold back in roasting the company.
Many users called out Halo for being too weak to keep replies open. 
Some argued that the game&#8217;s protagonist Master Chief would disapprove of gay &#8220;Pride&#8221; and complained about woke activists seemingly infiltrating the beloved franchise to turn it into a propaganda machine.
&#8220;Dear Halo, It&#8217;s time to just start firing people who push for this to happen yearly, and then fire the artists because these suck,&#8221; one person wrote.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Wear your <a href="https://x.com/hashtag/Pride?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Pride</a> all month long with the Unity armor coating, visor and emblem, available in the Halo Infinite Exchange. <a href="https://t.co/Qu0z79tUMD">pic.twitter.com/Qu0z79tUMD</a>
— Halo (@Halo) <a href="https://x.com/Halo/status/2061510595455697006?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" async="" charset="utf-8"></script>
Some users dubbed the game &#8220;Gaylo,&#8221; using AI to <a href="https://x.com/Captain_toke/status/2061562882048086096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2061562882048086096%7Ctwgr%5E0f97ea7298e16ffe5bbb4278e425f7c790ad83b7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnotthebee.com%2Farticle%2Fhalo-locked-the-replies-to-its-gay-pride-post-but-it-forgot-about-the-quote-tweets">reimagine</a> the game with safe diversity, equity, and inclusion objectives, such as safe spaces and pronoun affirmation. Other social media users posted a GIF of the scene from &#8220;The Godfather,&#8221; where Vito Corleone laments, “Look how they massacred my boy.” 
Former Blizzard Entertainment executive Mark Kern, known by his hundreds of thousands of social media followers as &#8220;Grummz,&#8221; has been a vocal advocate against DEI in video games. 
In a recent <a href="https://x.com/Grummz/status/2061885611473342959">post</a> on X, Kern pointed out that many major gaming companies have decided to avoid celebrating Pride Month, calling 2026 a “massive June month win for gamers.&#8221; 
&#8220;A year ago [these gaming companies] would have been all skittles,&#8221; he wrote. 
Kern reminded gamers that even though Halo might still be woke, many other gaming companies are not anymore.

Experience: HALO by Xbox 360

Gamers React After Popular Shooter Game’s ‘Pride’ Update

Gaming

LGBTQ

Pride

Twitter

Video Games

A patriotic middle school assembly celebrating America’s upcoming 250th birthday sparked protests and backlash from left-wing parents in Southern California this week after critics objected to the event’s alleged ties to organizations like Turning Point USA and The Heritage Foundation.
The event, dubbed “History Rocks 250,” was held at Canyon Hills Junior High School and focused on American history, the country’s founding principles, and civic pride ahead of the United States’ 250th birthday celebration next year.
But before the assembly even began, protesters gathered outside the school holding signs reading “No politics in school,” while some parents reportedly kept their children home entirely over fears the presentation would push a conservative political agenda.
Much of the controversy centered on reports that organizations affiliated with Turning Point USA and Heritage Foundation had helped coordinate the broader “History Rocks! Trail to Independence Tour,” which is tied to America’s semiquincentennial celebration.
“I’m concerned about the views of Turning Point USA and the Heritage Foundation, which produced Project 2025,” grandparent Debra Esquivel said while protesting the event.
Parents <a href="https://abc7.com/post/controversy-surrounds-history-rocks-250-assembly-canyon-hills-junior-high-chino/19066944/">interviewed by local media</a> expressed fears that conservative ideology was being inserted into the classroom under the banner of civic education, despite school officials repeatedly stating the assembly would simply focus on American history and the nation’s founding.
“The things they teach and the ideas that they like to bring into communities and into students are concerning to me,” parent Kristi Hirst said. School officials and district leaders pushed back forcefully on the criticism, insisting the event contained nothing political or controversial.
“They will be learning about the founding documents and also about the American Revolution,” said Sonja Shaw. “This is nothing new. It’s in our curriculum.” The assembly itself appeared largely straightforward and patriotic in nature.
Students and faculty opened the event with the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem before participating in history-themed trivia games and presentations about the American Revolution and the country’s founding ideals.
One student emcee asked classmates questions about colonial America, while another delivered remarks praising the United States as a place where generations of immigrants came seeking freedom and opportunity. “What makes America special is that for generations families all over the world have come here, searching for freedom, opportunity and the chance to build a better life,” one student said during closing remarks.
Featured speaker Katharine Gorka, a senior adviser for civic education at the Department of Education similarly emphasized America’s openness and national identity. “We are the most welcoming country on earth, and I love that about this country,” Gorka told students.
After the assembly concluded, multiple students reportedly said the event felt like a normal school rally focused on American history rather than partisan politics. “I think they politicized something that’s not political,” Gorka later said.
The backlash puts a fine point on how reflexively hostile some have become towards conservative organizations and overt expressions of American patriotism, even when the actual content presented to students remained centered on basic civics and national history.
The reaction highlights the increasingly polarized atmosphere surrounding patriotism, civic education, and American history in schools — particularly in deep blue states like California, where even celebrations tied to the country’s founding can quickly become ideological flashpoints.

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