A televangelist named Katie Souza, whose show “Healing Your Soul” airs on the Faith Broadcasting Network, recently made a claim that turned a lot of heads.

Earlier this month on her YouTube channel, Souza said that the reason she and her husband are childless is because when she was a young girl, aliens (which she views as demonic/fallen angel beings) implanted an “interdimensional device” in her that harvested her eggs over her lifetime. She says the beings used those eggs to create a “hybrid child” named Starburst.

BlazeTV host Rick Burgess agrees with Souza’s assessment that what secular society calls aliens are actually demonic beings — but that’s where their alignment ends.

On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” Rick examines Souza’s shocking claim — and her equally stunning prediction about the return of the Nephilim.

In the same episode, Souza also claimed that thousands of other women have had their eggs harvested by demonic beings, but that many of them remain unaware of it.

Her newly released book, “Star Gods: Unmasking the Alien Agenda, Fallen Angels, and End-Time Deception,” expands on this hypothesis. In it she claims that modern “alien”/UAP encounters are not extraterrestrials from other planets, but fallen angels (the “star gods”/watchers from Genesis 6 and related texts) engaged in an ongoing “seed war.”

According to the book’s central claim, these beings have been harvesting human eggs, sperm, and DNA to create hybrid offspring as part of a long-running agenda to corrupt the human bloodline, seize legal dominion over the earth, and prepare a major end-time deception.

“She's talking Nephilim here, OK?” says Rick. “This is Genesis 6. Modern-day Nephilim is what she's talking about.”

But is a new era of Nephilim really a possibility?

Rick is not willing to answer definitively. While he acknowledges that he does not know what happened to Souza when she was a child, her claim that demons are harvesting reproductive material to create a new era of Nephilim is biblically “shaky.”

“I don't see anything like this that is prophesied in the end-times,” he says.

“Do I think it would probably sell a lot of books and get a lot of attention? Yes. Am I leery of televangelists? Yes. Does that mean that I'm right? No, it doesn't.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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America is in a schizophrenic mash-up that reverses childhood innocence and adult licentiousness. We treat children as if they were louche, hedonistic adults while we treat grown-ups like they’re still learning primary colors on wooden blocks.

A visit to a restaurant in a tourist town in Vermont crystallized it for me. Stay with me while I set this up, then we’ll take a visit to an eatery I call There Will Be Pictures in Bright, Primary Colors!

I asked a kid of about 14 for a knife. He looked at me blankly. So I went native: 'A sticky-downy sharpie?'

This may be a new thought for some people, this reversal of childhood and adulthood. But it’s easy to see once you have your eyes pointed to it.

'Drag kids'

America is a country where it’s legal and socially praised to chemically and sexually mutilate abused children. We call these abused children “transgender kids.”

There’s a reason President Trump had to announce that public schools risk losing federal funding if they participate in this depraved farce. It has indeed become normalized to cry happy tears while we watch parents (nearly always mothers) destroy their children's bodies and minds with hormones, surgeries, and the lie that they can become the opposite sex.

This brutality started with so-called “drag kids”: minor boys dressed up like female prostitutes and paraded in gay bars and before cameras shaking their “moneymakers.” Remember “Desmond Is Amazing,” the “drag kid” featured gyrating and affecting a transvestite hooker attitude? Adults started filming his abuse and putting it on social media in 2015. Within a few years, parents were going beyond dresses and all the way to chemical castration, cross-sex hormones, and actual surgical castration.

Hufflepuff hell

Let’s look at the other side, the childification of adulthood. I started noticing it in the 2010s when fully grown adults were putting bumper stickers on their cars telling everyone what Harry Potter “house” they belonged to. Since when did 30-year-olds cling to a series of children’s books about witches and wizards to “identify” themselves to their grown peers?

We used to look forward to adulthood. But something changed with the Millennial generation: Teenagers were begging to remain children for the first time in history. (Boomers and Gen Xers: This is our fault. We “raised” them.) Sixteen-year-olds once longed for the independence of a driver's license. Today? Why learn to drive when Uber will cart you around like an entitled toddler (car seat not included)?

These two inversions — the adultification of childhood and the childification of adulthood — collide in a supernova at a restaurant I recently visited, a taco place in one of those Vermont tourist towns tucked between two peaks of the Green Mountains. Let’s call it Ms. Rachel’s Taqueria and Play-Skool.

'Saccharine babble'

Why “Ms. Rachel’s”? Because the tone of the place is like that awful YouTube woman who sings saccharine babble to babies on YouTube and gets 20 million mothers watching it.

“Ms. Rachel’s” has a lot going for it. The food was great, and the staff were all friendly, which is a rarity in New England these days.

But it’s got a lot going against it too, and that starts with the staff’s stage names. Our waiter was a handsome Irish guy of about 19 years. He announced what I assume is his “Mexican name” to the table behind us.

“Hi there, I’m going to be taking care of you today,” he said to the party next to us. “My name is Hooley-Anne.”

Hooley-Anne’s name was obviously “Julian,” but I suppose that wouldn’t have been “authentic” enough. Hooley-Anne did a great job, but it was impossible to keep a straight face talking to him after this. OK, I confess: I had a giggle attack that had my hands over my face while I cried silently with shaking shoulders.

When the food got there, it arrived on an aluminum baking sheet without utensils.

I asked a kid of about 14 for a knife. He looked at me blankly. So I went native: “A sticky-downy sharpie?”

He brought me a butter knife.

RELATED: Want yesterday’s quality today? Stop 'upgrading' your appliances

Found Image Holdings Inc./smartstock/Getty Images

Tummy trouble

The problems continued with the menus.

“Greens and other fun colors.” “Bevs.”

It got worse when you flipped it over. Apparently adult diners need to be guided through concepts like “appetizers” and “tacos” and “burritos.”

Get it? “Horizontal eats”? In case you didn’t understand special-needs-ese, that means “tacos.” But what about the vertical “eats”?

Tee-hee-giggle-coo! Isn’t it just adorable?

No, it’s insulting. If you’re at least 45 years old, cast your mind back 20 years. I don’t think you remember being regularly spoken to (or written to) in the tone of voice we associate with a "Romper Room" hostess.

Now it’s everywhere. You see it in the ugly faux-cubist “art style” that dominates pamphlets and announcements called “Corporate Memphis.” It’s all over chain restaurant menus that call sandwiches “sammies” (giggle-coo!) or “hand-helds.”

How long until it’s just “eatables”?

Potty humor

The other side of this coin showed up when I went to the bathroom at "Ms. Rachel’s." Remember, these are the same bathrooms that adults and children use.

There are multiple problems.

1. The restaurant is showing off its woke credentials by conspicuously bragging that it doesn't care what “gender” you are — you can even be a Sasquatch or an alien (giggle-coo)!

2. “Cute” vulgarity — a cartoon depiction of feces shaped like soft-serve ice cream in a kiddy drawing style — tells children there’s no such thing as respectable public behavior. Potty humor is just normal now, even in a place where you eat.

Yes, I am saying that I think this kind of display harms children. This is the cultural, visual, and conceptual background that is forming children’s character. The adults have abandoned propriety, and they’re shoving it in children’s faces. This may be less extreme than the broad daylight displays of sexual depravity that people call “Pride parades” for “families,” but it’s only a matter of degree.

But what do I know? I’m just a stupid old Boomer, even though I’m only 52 (everyone goes from hip-mod-with-it-youth to “stupid Boomer” without stopping at Gen X these days). Why can’t I just let people enjoy things?

Hope I haven’t yucked your yum.

President Donald Trump was fired up over a Fox News report about the lack of negotiations with Iran, and he called on Bret Baier to "straighten out his flunkies" over the segment Thursday.

Jonathan Hunt had reported that the president was not negotiating with Iran and noted some of the efforts Iran had taken to strike back against the U.S. economic warfare.

'Fox News did a particularly inaccurate report on the Failing Islamic Republic of Iran.'

The president criticized the journalist later on social media and demanded that Baier, Fox's chief political correspondent, reel Hunt in.

"Jonathan Hunt of Fox News did a particularly inaccurate report on the Failing Islamic Republic of Iran," Trump wrote on social media. "I don’t want to meet, they do. In fact, they are begging to make a deal. Bret Baier should straighten out his flunkies, for a change!"

The Hill noted that the president posted the critique as Hunt's segment on "Special Report" aired.

Baier defended Hunt in comments just before the show ended.

"First of all, Jonathan is not a flunky. He is a great reporter," he responded.

"Second of all, Mr. President, we didn’t say you wanted to meet. In fact, we played a soundbite; you didn’t want to meet, and there are negotiations," Baier added. "We said that Treasury Secretary Bessent is hoping to meet with G20 countries to increase the pressure on Iran, and Gulf State allies, including Qatar, are inside Tehran trying to get Iran to agree to concessions."

He added, "That’s what we said."

A report from Iran appeared to confirm that the regime was drawing up another set of demands in order to seek a peace deal with the administration.

RELATED: The Iran war is causing another shortage — and it will directly affect every American

The U.S. has sought to pressure Iran through economic policies to push the regime into agreeing to a peace deal that would keep it from obtaining nuclear weapons and also relinquish its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

Axios reported that the administration has gained the upper hand on Iran by quietly slipping oil tankers through the strait and continuing to suppress the regime's ability to benefit financially from the oil trade.

The president, meanwhile, has projected strength over the battle to control the strait. Earlier in August he told a rally of supporters that he would make the Strait of Hormuz the 51st state of the U.S.

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Gay British right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at an airport in Louisiana.

Yiannopoulos, who most recently had worked as the chief of staff for Kanye West, was detained for overstaying a visa, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

'He chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws. ... He will remain in ICE custody pending removal.'

The detention was reported by TMZ, which cited inmate records.

Yiannopoulos had been issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in July after he failed to appear at an immigration hearing, according to the DHS.

He was detained at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner on Thursday, according to te DHS.

"He chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws," the agency stated. "He will remain in ICE custody pending removal."

Yiannopoulos legally entered through New York City, New York, on May 19, 2019.

The right-wing provocateur gained fame for supporting President Donald Trump and for supporting the theory that homosexuality was not hardwired from birth, but a response to early childhood trauma that can include sexual molestation.

He was canceled by many after numerous comments resurfaced in which he appeared to support men having sex with underage boys.

RELATED: California Democrat calls for ICE to be abolished after Homan announces 'record' arrests

Yiannopoulos parted ways with West in 2024 before posting that the rap mogul had been recreationally using nitrous oxide that was supplied to him by his dentist. The dentist has denied the allegation.

He was also banned from Facebook after being listed alongside right-wing conspiracy theorists and white nationalists that the platform described as "dangerous."

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Iran's most powerful piece of leverage against the U.S. is slipping through its hands, according to the latest Axios assessment.

The Iranian regime's stranglehold over the pivotal Strait of Hormuz has allowed it to resist demands from the Trump administration for a peace deal with terms favorable to the U.S.

'They don't want us to go back at them. That's the whole ball game. The rest doesn't matter.'

U.S. officials now tell Axios that they have gained the upper hand in the struggle to control the strait, which may lead to an end to the military operation.

"That sucker is open. The Iranian response is very mild," said Trump in a phone call Thursday to Axios. "They don't want us to go back at them. That's the whole ball game. The rest doesn't matter."

The effort to reopen the strait despite the Iranian threat began after a memorandum of understanding collapsed in the peace negotiations in July.

The U.S. military then reportedly began to quietly help transport about 10 million barrels a day through the strait by a southern channel near Oman. While the amount is about half of what it was before the strait was closed, it's a significant increase and a boon to the U.S. cause.

The U.S. has also been able to cripple Iran's ability to strike at tankers after a two-week bombing campaign, according to Axios. A U.S. military mine-sweeping operation and aid from the United Arab Emirates have also improved Trump's advantage.

CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper announced that they had reached a major milestone in the effort to wrestle control of the strait from Iran.

"Internationally recognized sea routes in the strait are free of Iranian sea mines. Bottom line: Today international shipping lanes are open and momentum is building," he said in a video Thursday.

While some experts remain skeptical of the official tally of oil that can pass already, Axios noted many other signs that the U.S. is gaining ground against Iran.

The president has repeatedly proclaimed that the ultimate goal of the operation is to keep the Iranian regime from obtaining nuclear weapons.

"I don't want to meet, they do. In fact, they are begging to make a deal," Trump claimed on social media Thursday.

Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaee denied the claims and said that they had agreed to allow the southern channel near Oman. He added that the regime was compiling a list of demands to negotiate a peace deal.

RELATED: When Marco Rubio warned Iran that closing of Strait of Hormuz would be 'suicidal'

Brent crude oil was trading at about $72 a barrel before the military operation began and surged to over $111 at its worst in April. It opened at just below $90 on Thursday.

About a fifth of the world's oil trade flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S.-Israeli joint military strikes against Iran began 6 months ago on Feb. 28.

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Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah was rehired after her termination over social media posts about Charlie Kirk's assassination after taking the publication to court — and BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock is disappointed to hear it.

“This is a woman that had tweeted out some really negative things about the death of Charlie Kirk, and the Washington Post said, ‘Hey, we don’t need any of that.’ She was a columnist there covering race and culture,” Whitlock explains.

“She sued to get her job back, and this week, she won that lawsuit and has been reinstated,” he adds.

An article from the New York Times reported that “the Washington Post said in its termination letter that Ms. Attiah’s posts about Mr. Kirk had harmed ‘the integrity’ of the organization and violated standards requiring employees to use social media with civility and respect.”

“Ms. Attiah’s remarks about Mr. Kirk’s assassination, which she posted to the social network Bluesky on Sept. 10, the day he was shot, responded to the outpouring of grief after the shooting,” The Times continued.

"Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is … not the same as violence," she wrote in a post.

“She wrote this on a post on the day he was shot,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock says in disbelief.

“I can’t blame the Washington Post for not wanting to be associated with Ms. Attiah. I’m not surprised that she sued, and I’m not surprised that some liberal judge, or some liberal court, reinstated her,” he continues.

And in a recent podcast episode, conservative commentator April Chapman made her case for why things like this happen.

“Y’all not gonna like this, but it is risky and full of hidden liabilities to hire a black woman. They tend to be difficult. Okay? They tend to be less compliant. They are more likely to file a lawsuit and cry racism or sexism or some other ‘ism’ as a way to extort money from a company,” Chapman said on her podcast "Unshakable."

“She will get the company embroiled in some lawsuit that never ends. And so you don’t have to take my word for it, but because of the lack of the accountability and the ethnic narcissism of most liberal black females, like you don’t really have this problem in conservative spaces with black women,” she continued.

“But since 92% of all black women are progressive and liberal and Marxist in their worldview, what I’m saying holds to be true,” she added.

“That’s amazing,” Whitlock says, adding, “particularly coming from a black woman.”

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WNBA team owner Michael Alter may want to rethink his choice of words the next time he gives an interview.

Following an incident at Wintrust Arena in Chicago last Sunday, the sports world wanted to hear what the owner had to say about a pro-women protest by former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom during a Chicago Sky vs. Indiana Fever game.

'He needs to check himself.'

Following a courtside exchange with Chicago Sky point guard Natasha Cloud — which included him standing up and raising his arms — Freedom was promptly ejected from the arena.

This was followed by Alter, the principal owner of the Sky, banning Freedom from the arena later in the week. The owner said Freedom had "the potential to be a threat," accusing him of stepping "towards the court" and "towards the players."

On Wednesday, Fox News' OutKick asked Alter to explain why Freedom did not get a warning before he was kicked out of the arena.

"You're kind of making me repeat over and over. So I think at some point we need to move on. But he wasn't given a warning because certain threats don't get warnings," Alter is heard saying in an audio clip. "He was given a lot of leeway. As I said, he was sitting there, and he was trash-talking [Cloud] and, and all that."

The owner continued, comparing Freedom's actions to shooting a person in a metaphor he might soon regret using.

"[Freedom] was certainly given leeway, but at a certain point, you know, when somebody, I mean, to use an extreme example, when you, when you shoot a gun at someone, you don't get a warning. 'Don't do that again.' Your action doesn't deserve a warning. "

The owner reiterated that if a person takes an action "that becomes a threat," they "don't get a warning."

Freedom responded to the statement in a subsequent podcast with OutKick and seemed flabbergasted at the comparison.

"The Chicago Sky owner, Michael Alter, literally compared my actions with shooting a gun. Unbelievable," the Turkey native stated.

"He needs to check himself. This is unacceptable," Freedom later said.

RELATED: WNBA team bans Enes Kanter Freedom from arena with yet another insane claim: 'That changed everything'

Freedom went on explain that after playing in the NBA for 11 years, he's quite familiar with the rules surrounding fan interactions with players.

"If a fan steps over the baseline or the sideline, you will be thrown out of the game," Freedom explained. "Fans are not allowed to touch players, right? Anything other than that, you're allowed to do, which, I wasn't even trash-talking to her. Let me just make that very clear."

Freedom maintained that he simply told Cloud he was at the game to help protect women, wearing a shirt that read "WOMAN noun. adult human female."

He did not heckle or cuss at Cloud, although she used bad language toward him, the 6'10" center claimed.

The conversation culminated with Freedom saying he has plans to take legal action against Alter and the Sky, but not necessarily the WNBA. At the very least, he added that he would demand a refund as a paying customer who did nothing wrong.

RELATED: Al Michaels divides NFL fans with Trump jab during 'Thursday Night Football': 'Read the news'

Michael Reaves/Getty Images

Alter, overall, has continually boasted about the arena security who immediately reprimanded Freedom during the game and escorted him out.

"The security were there to stop him. ... The Indiana Fever guy was right there. He was right in front of him. The guy from the arena, Monterey, was right there. It took a second for Chicago's guys to go to get there, but they got there pretty damn fast," Alter said, per Fox News. "I can't tell you what his intent was beyond his actions. I don't know what was in his head, OK? Neither do you. And if he tells you what's his intent based on the other things he's told you, you have to know he is completely unreliable."

As for whether the ban is permanent, Alter said Freedom would not be permitted into the arena until "he can prove" he is able to control himself.

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The Lindsay Clancy case has generated no shortage of online speculation, but a new theory gaining traction on TikTok may be among the strangest yet.

Rather than examining evidence presented in court, some social media users are using astrology and birth-chart readings to argue that Clancy's husband, Patrick, was actually responsible for the deaths of the couple's children.

“Women on TikTok are using astrology to argue that Patrick actually committed the killings. And they’re using divination. They’re using what they claim to be some connection with the divine and with the universe to try to prove their case,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey explains.

“So they’re using Lindsay and Patrick’s birth dates to create birth charts,” she says, noting that these women have “too much time.”

“An idle mind is the devil’s workshop. That’s what’s going on here,” she adds, before playing clips of women arguing their case on TikTok.

“Patrick Clancy did it, and you will never convince me otherwise. His sun sign is at 24 degrees of Gemini. That is a violence degree. That’s a malevolence degree and a danger of accidents degree,” one TikTok user said.

“So to all the Patrick Clancy haters, I can validate for you that he was a jackass because he was cheating on Lindsay, and I confirmed it. This is his chart,” another one said.

One TikTok user even used Lindsay’s birth chart to claim that she “likely had a very deep need to protect, nurture, and provide safety to children, her own children, and vulnerable populations.”

“Astrology is not a scientific method. It’s not thoughtful. It has its roots in ancient pagan traditions. It’s a religious belief system that Christians should have absolutely no part in whatsoever,” Stuckey says.

“But this just goes to show social media, astrology, the New Age, conspiracy, true crime, toxic empathy, all of these things are coming together in this very, what I think is dangerous and disturbing combination of the American female psyche,” she continues.

Stuckey also notes that God warns against use of divination, necromancy, mediums, magic, fortune, fortune tellers, and tarot cards.

“That’s not where we’re supposed to be seeking wisdom,” she says, “because all of that makes us vulnerable, I think, to demonic influence."

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President Donald Trump immediately took action after a plea from Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck to deregulate farmers and ranchers to fight back against a processor monopoly.

The president posted on Truth Social Friday that he is unleashing farmers and ranchers to allow them to more easily butcher their livestock and help lower beef prices.

'I am authorizing legal documents to be drawn in order to allow Farmers and Ranchers to be given the right to PROCESS THEIR OWN FOOD.'

Beck interviewed the president on his show Wednesday and explained how four large meat-processing companies have a chokehold on the industry that has been driving up beef prices. Beck has particular knowledge about the regulations that hold back ranchers because he runs a working cattle ranch in Southeast Idaho.

"I run a ranch, so I know what it's like, and I'm telling you, it's the processing plants," Beck told the president. "There's four of them, and I think two of them are not even American. It's bad. And I believe they're colluding with each other.

"I'm surprised that the ranchers and the farmers haven't done it, because they're smart as hell. I'm surprised, because that's been going on a long time, Glenn," Trump responded.

"Help us. We can't butcher with all of the federal regulations," Beck said.

On Friday, the president said his administration would move quickly to pass the deregulation of beef processing.

"Ranchers and Farmers have always been a number one priority for me. They work very hard, are smart, efficient, and immaculately CLEAN, but for years I have heard that they have had a tremendous problem with the Big Processors, who many say are a nasty Monopoly," the president wrote.

"There are, essentially, 4 of them, a very non competitive number, and they make life miserable for our wonderful Farmers and Ranchers, and I can’t let that happen, can I?" he added. "So, in order to break this powerful monopoly, with much of its ownership based outside of the U.S., I am authorizing legal documents to be drawn in order to allow Farmers and Ranchers to be given the right to PROCESS THEIR OWN FOOD. This should move quickly."

Beef prices have been rising steadily due to a decrease in U.S. cattle production. Over the last three years, the average U.S. beef price has risen by about 37.8%.

Agriculture Dept. Sec. Brooke Rollins also posted about the deregulation proposal.

"We are on it Mr. President!" she wrote. "Our great AMERICAN ranchers produce the highest-quality, most incredible beef in the world AND it is a matter of national security that we be able to feed and fuel ourselves."

RELATED: Karoline Leavitt berates CNN's Kaitlan Collins over inflation and the economy

.@POTUS tells me he will look into SLASHING harmful regulations in the beef industry that lead to high prices. I know firsthand how rigged the system is against independent American farmers. Four massive corporations control almost the entire meat processing industry. If… pic.twitter.com/xxNBrhWUI4
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) August 26, 2026

She said officials would seek to:

• waive red tape in processing,
• expand ranchers' ability to sell across state lines,
• rescind outdated guidance,
• add technology for faster safety data,
• grow real support for small processors (funding and deregulation),
• fight consolidation so small processors can compete, and
• expand truth in labeling.

"The world is hungry for American beef!" she added.

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A 19-year-old Texas woman is accused of stabbing a pregnant woman in the face, and it isn't the first time the suspect has been accused of such a crime.

Carrieale Williams last week allegedly invited the victim to her home on Dona Lane in Houston after meeting her at church.

'That is extremely violent.'

Williams allegedly tried to hide the knife from the victim, who has not been identified, but the victim noticed it. When Williams pulled out the knife, the victim grabbed for it, and Willams responded by stabbing her in the face, arms, and hands.

When deputies arrived on the scene, the victim was transported to a hospital for treatment of non-life threatening injuries.

Court documents allege the victim is dating Williams' ex-boyfriend.

A judge also indicated that Williams herself was believed to be pregnant at the time of the alleged attack.

One neighbor told KTRK-TV that the neighborhood is usually quiet.

"That is extremely violent. I didn't know any of that was happening," Damiun Becnel told the station. "My neighbors are usually chill, so hearing that, hearing that story came from my neighbors is kind of crazy."

The pregnant victim is expected to be OK, according to police.

RELATED: Pregnant mother found brutally raped and murdered in Mexico after fleeing the US with 7 kids

Williams is charged with aggravated assault, and charging documents accuse her of intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causing bodily injury to the victim by stabbing her with a deadly weapon.

What's more, during Williams' court appearance, a judge noted that she was accused of attacking a different pregnant woman prior to the current allegations. Williams last year allegedly pushed her pregnant sister down and punched her in the stomach amid a dispute about a phone charger.

Williams' sister, who was six-months pregnant at the time, requested dismissal of charges after Williams completed a 10-hour anger management course. KTRK said the case was dismissed.

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Some statements are politically incorrect, some are defamatory, and others are outright illegal. For Tim Dillon, it's all alleged.

For the better part of a decade, the stand-up comic has delivered what can be considered some of the most offensive tirades ever broadcasted. The problem is, a lot of people agree with him.

'I don't want to live in a right-wing Christian theocracy.'

Nothing to lose

Perhaps it was in 2020 when Dillon took a turn for the worse, suggesting during one of his trademark rants that Bill and Hillary Clinton should be respected "even if they are murderers."

Dillon's verbose way of comically beating around the bush always, eventually, gets to the point, but he's not willing to show his cards right away. First, audiences need to hear about how tough a negotiator Hillary is, or how American mothers revered Bill through his political journey and his time as governor of Arkansas.

After about eight minutes, viewers are ready to hear how far the mighty have fallen. In this case, it was Hillary's transition from committing murders and "arranging the suicides of many of your Secret Service people" into hosting a new podcast. Dillon's show is like watching the news being broadcasted by someone who is on death row and has nothing to lose.

Through this method, Dillon laughed his way through the next year, amassing a reported 23,000+ Patreon subscribers who garnered him $1.5 million in revenue. In 2021, his show was labeled the seventh-richest podcast on the air.

By 2023, Dillon's production had lost any and all guardrails, as seen by clips titled "My Son's P*ssy Rant," for example. Looking to address transgender controversies, the 41-year-old provided adequate prefacing: "I don't want to live in a right-wing Christian theocracy," Dillon began, priming the conservative portion of his audience.

After reminding his viewers that such topics are always handled with tact, Dillon expressed that he isn't a fan of children being rushed into operating rooms or told to use puberty blockers.

While asserting that he is not trying to take a side in the culture war, Dillon asked a simple question: "Are we going to be better at making a vagina out of someone's bowel? I hope we are," he said.

"Literally not kidding, no joke," he added, saying he dreamed of a future where such surgeries become as easy as going to the dentist.

RELATED: Joe Rogan & Shane Gillis say we're never going back — and young men should listen

Burying the lede

This wasn't the first time Dillon tactfully addressed the excesses of the MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ community. In a video from 2019 titled, "The problem with 10 year old strippers," the comedian informed listeners that as a gay man himself, "if you're a woman and go 'I'm a dude,' it's still not working."

Much of Dillon's show is figuring how to say what is not supposed to be said and then saying it anyway.

"You can say it 'cause you're gay," Joe Rogan told Dillon in 2020, citing that his wife doesn't believe Dillon is actually a homosexual. But even if Dillon does have a "get-out-of-jail free pass" for gay topics, as Rogan claims, he still has to find a way to say more broadly incendiary politic remarks, too.

Dillon admitted to Rogan that he may "look too racist" to say certain things, but he says them anyway.

Case in point: episode No. 355. Dillon tells viewers about his trip to Denver, doing comedy shows and having a great time. After promoting his tour dates and talking about his observations in the Mile-High City, the New Yorker made another one of his famous comedy-to-politics transitions.

After about four minutes of a monologue culminating in the eating of a green chili burrito, Dillon stated, "In that time that I was away from you all, I imagine you've heard about, and this is not a big deal, it's the summer and the Obamas killed a sex slave."

RELATED: The video of Tony Hinchcliffe & Snoop Dogg they forgot to delete — it changes everything

Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images

Loose lips

Whether Dillon is accusing the Obama family of murder, the Trump administration of being in a mafia-like government, or Vice President JD Vance acting clueless about Jeffrey Epstein, the backdrop of the entire podcast has, and always will be, Dillon's freedom of speech.

Dillon has vehemently, and perhaps even seriously, defended his right to free speech in the face of people who actually wanted to silence him. He discussed this when he was fired from the Riyadh Comedy Festival over jokes in which he said Saudi Arabia has slaves.

In his defense, Dillon said he was actually complimenting the Islamic regime by saying, "Slaves are probably hard workers and, for the most part, agreeable."

Things turned more serious when Dillon addressed comments his publicity team had allegedly told him about how there are certain topics he doesn't need to touch because they might hurt his career, but Dillon soundly rejected the idea: "On my own show, in my own country, where I have the freedom to speak and say the things I want, I'm going to be funny and I'm going to be who I am. And if you're not buying that, you don't have the right to tell me on my own show."

So whether Dillon is calling out "Good Morning America" for promoting an 11-year -old "drag kid" or being told he's a "self-hating gay guy" or not even really gay at all, he knows exactly where his get-out-of-jail free card lies: with his audience.

"The business doesn't have any teeth any more. They can't tell me what to do or say. What? They're not even offering anything."

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Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed made his stance clear on the genital mutilation of minors in a recent interview on Fox News with Jesse Watters — and BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is disturbed.

“Sex changes for minors, do you support that?” Watters asked El-Sayed.

“I just think the government shouldn’t tell you what kind of health care you should have. And if you’re a minor, it’s your parents. Now, if you disagree with that ... if you disagree that health care decisions need to be made by a doctor and their parents and a patient, then I think we just agree to disagree,” El-Sayed answered.

“So you think it’s OK for a parent to slash his kid's ding-a-ling off? You think that’s OK?” Watters asked.

“Do you really want to have this conversation? Are you circumcised?” El-Sayed asked.

“Circumcision’s different than castration,” Watters said, shocked.

“It’s a problem that you think that you get to decide what happens between a parent, a doctor, and a patient. And I’m just saying that yes, circumcision is surgery on a kid's ding-a-ling,” El-Sayed added.

“Circumcision is not chopping off a child’s genitals. That is wild stuff,” Gonzales comments, noting that while he refused to answer Watters, some old audio of his does.

“Right now, 31 bills have been introduced across the country to restrict health care access among trans people seeking gender-affirming care. It’s ironic that a party that decries medical tyranny in the form of flimsy cloth masks thinks that it can get between a person and their doctor,” El-Sayed said in unearthed audio.

“To add insult to injury, an additional 66 bills have been introduced to restrict trans youth from school sports. Seriously, let the kids play. Trans rights are human rights. And this Pride Month, remember that those rights are not a foregone conclusion in this country and that we must keep up the fight for equal dignity, equal protection, and equal rights under the law,” he added.

“By the way,” Gonzales comments, “it seems like other Sharia doctors are pretty obsessed with mutilating genitals too. In Abdul's own state of Michigan, a Detroit-area clinic allowed a doctor to perform a female genital mutilation on two 7-year-old girls from Minnesota.”

“Female genital mutilation is that they, like, cut off a part of a girl’s genitals,” she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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Authorities in Hamilton, Ontario, a city on the western tip of what is now being called Lake America, are desperate to prevent Canadian nationalists and international remigration activists from holding a conference.

Despite the ongoing public-private campaign to shut them up and drive them out of town, the Dominion Society of Canada is holding its ground and remains committed to holding its sold-out DomCon 2026 on Saturday.

'They could not stop us.'

The weeks-long "anti-hate" campaign to prevent the conference from happening largely relies on claims from a report issued by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, a leftist organization chaired by Sue Gardner. Gardner is a liberal who previously served as executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation and as head of Canadian state media's English-language website.

CAHN — which plays the Southern Poverty Law Center's game of painting critics of mass migration, gender ideology, and LGBT extremism with the same brush as bona fide neo-Nazis — characterizes the DSC as a "white nationalist organization that uses propaganda and political campaigning to promote mass deportations on the basis of race, ethnicity, and religion."

The DSC alternatively refers to itself as a "nonpartisan advocacy group dedicated to promoting Canadian identity, heritage, and nationalism."

The organization is critical of multiculturalism and contends that "a Canadian is not anyone who simply arrives, fills out a form, and collects benefits." Instead, the group states that "Canadians are descendants of the brave pioneers who built this country" and that "Canada was uniquely forged through cooperation with our First Nations peoples."

RELATED: Diversity is our strength? Britain has to remind migrants: Don't rape kids

DAVID BOILY/AFP/Getty Image

The group has drawn the ire of leftists for raising concerns about "replacement migration" and advocating for a total moratorium on immigration as well as mass deportations.

Daniel Tyrie, the founder and chairman of the DSC, told Blaze News, "Demographic change is the most pressing issue facing Canada and the Western world and yet our politicians and media refuse to address it. We built the Dominion Society and are hosting DOMCON26 to raise awareness and discuss the most important policy solution of our lifetimes: remigration."

At the beginning of the month, the taxpayer-funded Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Center issued a guide for local businesses aimed at shutting down events held by so-called extremist groups.

The center, which noted that the DSC was planning to hold its conference in the area, called on "residents, businesses, institutions, and elected leaders to stand together in rejecting hate."

B'nai Brith Canada was among the groups that joined the censorship campaign, calling on federal officials to block "foreign extremists from entering the country to attend" the conference. The conference originally had Martin Sellner, the Austrian founder of the Remigration Institute, and Charlie Downes, a spokesman for Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain, scheduled to speak.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the freedoms of conscience, religion, thought, expression, various media of communication, peaceful assembly, and association, but police and political officials have proven more than willing to help shut down the DSC and its event.

"There is no place for hate and white supremacy in Hamilton," Pakistani-born Aslam Rana, the member of parliament for Hamilton Center, said in an official release. "This conference, and the organization hosting it, represent a racist and extremist ideology masquerading as a nationalist movement. I unequivocally condemn this event and the hateful ideology behind it."

Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath, the socialist who unsuccessfully ran for premier of Ontario four times, said in a statement to Blaze News, "I stand firmly and reject hateful, hurtful rhetoric and racist and discriminatory activities of all kinds. The City of Hamilton will not allow this conference to be held in any of our facilities and will continue to encourage privately owned and operated venues to do the same."

Horwath, who sent concern-mongering letters about the event to local businesses, added that she has shared her concerns about the event with the Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Center and Hamilton Police Service.

The Hamilton Police Service, which did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment, stated online, "The messaging associated with DomCon is divisive and exclusionary and can negatively impact the sense of safety and belonging within our community. We have heard those concerns from members of the community and take them seriously."

The police made no secret that it has encouraged "venues to consider the impact this event and its messaging may have on the broader community when making decisions about hosting it."

After noting that a previous DSC booking had been canceled on Thursday, police implored residents to call their snitch line with any information regarding a potential alternate venue booking.

When Jason Willett of Wiretap Media called the snitch line and pressed Hamilton police about whether they were infringing upon Charter freedoms, an officer responded, "We're not infringing, we're not telling venues that they're not to book. We're just making venues aware of who they are booking with."

RELATED: 'No American flags': Calls for remigration intensify after latest Muslim demonstration in Dearborn, Michigan

Remigration protest in Toronto, Canada. Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty Images.

Canadian-based lawyer Eva Chipiuk noted, "If citizens are lawfully gathering, talking to one another, expressing political views, and engaging with their fellow citizens, that is not something for the police to be 'policing.' And when police solicit tips from the public about citizens engaged in otherwise lawful political expression and peaceful gathering, we should be asking some very serious questions."

"A free society requires citizens who are free to speak, gather, disagree, and participate without being treated like suspects for doing so."

Josh Dehaas, interim litigation director with the Canadian Constitution Foundation, noted, "Charter rights belong to all Canadians, not just those whose speech or ideas the police or mayor agree with."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's office did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

Andrew Lawton, a Conservative member of the House of Commons, spoke out, however, stating, "I have significant issues with the Dominion Society but I am unaware of any criminal allegations against them or any credible suspicion their conference would be illegal. It is not for police to target venues who may wish to rent space out to a group who is breaking no laws."

"The establishment is doing everything they can to stop this event, because they know if people learn about our ideas they will catch on like wildfire," DSC Chairman Daniel Tyrie told Blaze News. "Local politicians and government-funded NGOs have smeared us. The mainstream media has published hit piece after hit piece. ... We have committed no crimes but now the police are going door to door pressing venues to cancel on us or refuse our booking in what can only be described as mafia-style intimidation tactics."

"But they failed!" continued Tyrie. "Despite their best efforts, they could not stop us. DOMCON26 will proceed as planned. It will be a pivotal moment in Canada's future."

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My mom wouldn’t let me watch Monty Python when I was growing up in the ’80s. The British comedy troupe was a little too crass for her taste.

So it wasn't until later in life that I watched their 1983 feature "The Meaning of Life," a collection of outrageous sketches lampooning everything from birth to death. One of the 1983 film’s most grotesque bits was “Live Organ Transplants.”

For decades, we have chipped away at the principle that every human being possesses inherent dignity regardless of age, health, consciousness, independence, or usefulness.

Two men in lab coats arrive at the home of an unsuspecting organ donor and ask for his liver. The man points out the obvious: He is still alive. In fact, he is using his liver.

No matter. He signed an organ donor card.

When he protests that the card applies only in the event of death, the response is pure Monty Python: Nobody who has had his liver removed by them has ever survived!

That joke isn't funny anymore

The scene works because it’s absurd. No civilized society would harvest vital organs from a living person. More than four decades later, the sketch is considerably less funny.

Anthony Thomas “T.J.” Hoover II suffered a drug overdose and was taken to a Kentucky hospital in 2021. His family agreed to organ donation after believing he would not recover.

Then Hoover began showing signs of life.

According to subsequent reporting and federal investigations, Hoover cried, moved his body, and shook his head as preparations for organ procurement continued. Doctors ultimately refused to proceed, and Hoover survived.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began the process of decertifying Network for Hope, the organ procurement organization whose predecessor was involved in Hoover’s case.

Federal investigators reviewed 351 cases in which donations had been authorized but later canceled. They identified concerning features in 103. In 73 cases, patients exhibited neurological signs that should have made them ineligible for donation. Network for Hope disputes the findings and is appealing.

Dead certain

Kentucky lawmakers responded with House Bill 510, signed into law in April. It requires a “pause” in organ procurement when questions arise about a patient’s neurological status or other indications of life.

Think about that.

We’ve reached the point where state law must explicitly ensure that organ procurement stops when there is evidence the donor may not actually be dead.

Monty Python couldn’t have written it better.

Let’s be clear: I support organ donation. Donating organs after death can be a profoundly generous act that saves lives. Precisely because it is so noble, the public must have absolute confidence that a donor’s life is protected until death has actually occurred.

The deeper issue is how our culture views vulnerable human life.

Inherent dignity

For decades, we have chipped away at the principle that every human being possesses inherent dignity regardless of age, health, consciousness, independence, or usefulness.

Abortion tells us that the right to life can depend upon whether an unborn child is wanted.

Doctor-assisted suicide extends that mentality to the sick and disabled, where suffering can become not merely something to alleviate but a reason to help someone die.

Consider 26-year-old Australian Annaliese Holland, who suffers from autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy, a devastating illness that has left her in constant pain and dependent on intravenous nutrition. Holland has been approved for voluntary assisted dying and has chosen a date to end her life, though she has kept that date private.

Much of the coverage has treated Holland’s decision with solemn approval, framing her planned death as an understandable — even empowering — exercise of personal choice.

But Holland deserves compassion, not termination. That is precisely the point: When someone is suffering terribly, our response should be to surround that person with care — not offer death as the solution.

RELATED: 'Threats will not stop us': Lila Rose's pro-life group tells radicals to pound sand after legal threat over calling abortion 'killing'

L/R: Fotopress/Getty Images; Ian Waldie/Getty Images

What Teresa knew

Mother Teresa offered a radically different answer.

She spent her life among those the world found easiest to overlook: the abandoned, diseased, disabled, and dying.

In her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, she described taking in a man found dying in the street, his body partly eaten by maggots. After being washed and cared for, he told her that he had lived like an animal in the street but was going to die “like an angel,” loved and cared for.

That was Mother Teresa’s answer to suffering.

She didn’t calculate whether someone’s life was still worth living. She was convinced that the person before her possessed infinite worth simply because he was human.

The saintly nun understood an essential distinction modern medicine must never lose: There is a vast moral difference between allowing a person to die naturally and deliberately causing that person’s death.

Once human dignity becomes conditional — dependent upon health, independence, consciousness, or perceived quality of life — the boundaries protecting all of us begin to erode.

A culture that accepts ending a human life because that life is judged no longer worth living should not be surprised when other calculations about the value and usefulness of human beings creep into medicine.

Human dignity is inherent. Life is valuable precisely because it is human. Our Creator has granted that dignity, and we have no authority to withdraw it.

Monty Python once imagined the unthinkable for laughs.

When reality begins catching up with satire, it is time to ask whether we still believe every human life is worth protecting.

Thanks for the life lesson, Mom.

A 12-year-old girl – who was among eight family members gunned down in a Montana massacre by a relative – has been hailed as a "hero" for trying to save her loved ones.

A man shot and killed eight family members, including four children, as they gathered for dinner Sunday at a home near Billings, Montana. The mass shooting occurred weeks after his parents reportedly asked him to move out of their house.

'There were many red flags, and many people spoke out. No one listened.'

Police said the suspect killed his grandmother, his parents, his younger sister, and four children.

NBC News reported that the gunman shot and killed the homeowners: 73-year-old Dana Smith and 72-year-old Barbara Smith.

Also killed in the mass shooting were their daughter, 39-year-old Megan Ireland-Ghekiere, as well as her two children and two stepchildren, 15-year-old Landon Ghekiere, 12-year-old Charlotte Ghekiere, 13-year-old Owen Ireland, and 7-year-old Chloe Ireland, according to authorities.

Evelyn Smith – who was Dana's 92-year-old mother and described as the "family matriarch" by interim Yellowstone County Sheriff Kent O’Donnell — did not live at the house but was in attendance for the Sunday dinner and was among the victims killed.

Brad Ireland — the ex-husband of Megan Ireland-Ghekiere — told the Associated Press that the suspected shooter was 44-year-old Alan Smith.

Police confirmed that Smith was the older brother of Megan Ireland-Ghekiere.

Ireland said that Smith had lived in his parents' home for years.

Ireland described Alan Smith as a "hermit," and added, "No one knew what he did in there 24/7."

Ireland noted that Smith's parents asked him to move out a couple of weeks ago, but he returned to the home on Sunday and went on a shooting spree.

Police said Smith arrived at the home at approximately 5:49 p.m., just 11 minutes before neighbors reported hearing what they believed were fireworks.

At 6:02 p.m., police dispatchers received a call from a "female" inside the house, and deputies from the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office arrived at the crime scene around 6:10 p.m., NBC News reported.

When law enforcement arrived at the home, they "confronted the suspect in the front yard, where he retreated into the house," O'Donnell stated.

The Associated Press reported that officers arrived "just before the house was completely engulfed in flames."

O'Donnell said more "gunshots were heard within the household" before the suspected shooter went to the rear of the property.

At about 6:13 p.m., a deputy "heard a final shot, which was broken away from the rest of the shots," O'Donnell noted.

At around 6:22 p.m., officers "made entrance into the backyard," where they discovered a male with a gunshot wound and began lifesaving measures on him, O'Donnell added.

"At this time, it wasn’t known that he was actually the suspect of all this," O'Donnell continued. "He was just a person down, and law enforcement did what they're trained to do. They got him out of the hot zone and provided what first aid they could."

Police said the suspect was transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. Investigators confirmed that the suspect had suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Billings Fire Department Chief Matt Hoppel said firefighters battled the blaze until around 1 a.m. on Monday.

Authorities noted that it took so long to extinguish the fire because the house is located outside Billings city limits on county land, where fire hydrants are not mandatory.

O'Donnell said, "They had to haul in truckloads of water, set up a temporary tank and pump out of that tank. So the fire suppression portion of this was very, very difficult.”

Jeff Stovall, a spokesperson for the Billings Police Department, told the Associated Press that investigators also faced challenges due to the structural instability of the home, which had burned down to its foundation.

RELATED: 'Evil feels unleashed': Gut-wrenching reactions to horrific Michigan church shooting

Adam Ghekiere, the widower of Megan Ireland-Ghekiere, was not at the home during the attack but learned about the active shooting over a dispatch radio.

The Associated Press reported that Ghekiere called each family member before he "raced across town to the Smith home."

The Smith house was on fire when Ghekiere arrived, according to the AP.

The Associated Press reported that two hours after arriving at the crime scene, Ghekiere learned his wife, two children, and two stepchildren had been killed.

Ghekiere said of his brother-in-law, "Monster isn't even enough to describe what he did."

Ghekiere stated that police later confirmed his daughter, Charlotte, made the 911 call from inside the residence.

Jennifer Mercer, a neighbor and family friend, told NBC News, "Charlotte was the hero that dialed 911. She tried to save her family."

Mercer added, "She lived by her favorite quote, 'I love you more.'"

According to CBS News, Brad Ireland said of Alan Smith, "There were many red flags, and many people spoke out. No one listened."

O'Donnell said the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office "had not been called to this residence before, and we had not had any prior contact with the suspect."

A search of criminal records in Montana and Washington by the Associated Press found that Alan Smith had never been arrested or charged with a crime.

A GoFundMe campaign launched on behalf of Landon Ghekiere and Charlotte Ghekiere raised nearly $95,000 as of Friday morning.

The crowdfunding listing reads:

Landon was just 15 years old and preparing to begin his sophomore year at Senior High School. He was a loving, caring young man who was always willing to lend a hand to his family and neighbors. He was looking forward to getting his driver’s license this week and was a patient, protective, and loving big brother.

Charlotte was 12 and preparing to begin seventh grade. Funny, precocious, and adorable—with just the right amount of stubborn—Charlotte had an angelic smile and loved posing for pictures. She especially loved exploring the world around her, turning over rocks to look for bugs. Oh, how she loved her bugs!

A separate GoFundMe campaign to help support Adam Ghekiere has raised nearly $130,000.

Ghekiere said, "We are so grateful for the prayers, the love, the support that we're getting from the nation."

Authorities are still piecing together an official motive for the tragic mass shooting.

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A study of puberty blockers has finally seen the light of day, despite the best efforts of the activist physician behind it.

The former medical director of what was long the nation's biggest child sex-rejection clinic suppressed the results of a taxpayer-funded study following 95 children who were given puberty blockers, expressing fear that the results might be used against her craft and ideology.

'Every taxpayer should be furious that this research was encouraged and funded.'

The study, which was obtained by the Oversight Project and published on Thursday by the Daily Signal, is every bit as injurious to the gender ideologue's preferred narrative as she apparently suspected.

Suppression

Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health, has made no secret of her radicalism.

This former medical director of the gender clinic at Children's Hospital Los Angeles — a clinic that conducted medical procedures on minors and provided confused children with puberty blockers that could affect their future fertility — has, for instance, publicly argued against mandatory psychological assessments prior to sex-rejection mutilations; compared teen girls cutting off their healthy breasts to taking the SATs; and allegedly provided sex-rejection hormones to kids as young as 12 and referred little girls as young as 13 for double mastectomies.

A year prior to her clinic's closure in July 2025 — the result of a crackdown by President Donald Trump and his administration — Olson-Kennedy revealed that she and her team had suppressed the results of the years-long study funded by the National Institutes of Health regarding "long-term outcomes of medical treatment for transgender youth."

When asked why she was refusing to publish the data for which taxpayers paid at least $9.6 million, Olson-Kennedy "said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court," reported the New York Times.

RELATED: 'Our results shocked us': HHS report confirms your darkest suspicions about trans ideology

Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images

"I do not want our work to be weaponized," said Olson-Kennedy. "It has to be exactly on point, clear, and concise. And that takes time."

The reason her findings were politically sensitive is because the study apparently showed that the so-called "gender-affirming care" promoted at the L.A. clinic and elsewhere was not all it was cracked up to be.

Amy Tishelman, a psychologist at Boston College who was one of the study's original researchers, noted at the time, "I understand the fear about it being weaponized, but it’s really important to get the science out there."

Tishelman acknowledged that the study had found that kids given puberty blockers — drugs that have long been used to chemically castrate sex offenders — did not see psychological improvements but suggested that "no change isn't necessarily a negative finding."

Despite the interest expressed by Tishelman and others in releasing the study, it remained under wraps.

Exposure

According to the newly released report of Olson-Kennedy's study, titled "The Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth," two years of puberty blockers didn't make much of a difference for the mental health of the test subjects, one-quarter of whom went in reportedly having thoughts about suicide and 8% of whom previously attempted to kill themselves.

Activists and so-called experts previously claimed that puberty blockers amount to a "lifesaving option" and that "withholding puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria will very likely have serious adverse effects on the health and well-being of young people." The Mayo Clinic still suggests on its website that puberty blockers might "improve mental well-being."

Rather than "improve" the kids' mental health, the study merely said of puberty blockers:

Over 2 years of medical intervention that started with blockers, mental health remained relatively stable and was on par with the population at large. These youth showed no worsening of their mental or emotional health and suicidality decreased from baseline to 24 months. Mean scores on mental health measures remain stable in a clinically non-significant range over two years.

In a previous progress report, Olson-Kennedy hypothesized to the National Institutes of Health that kids taking puberty blockers for two years would show “decreased symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms, self-injury, and suicidality, and increased body esteem and quality of life over time," reported the Times.

Neal Cornett, the Oversight Project's director of state litigation, said in a statement to Blaze News, "The final report confirms what anyone sensible would know — treating troubled youth with puberty blockers and hormone treatments does nothing to improve their mental health. What it does do is support a medical-industrial complex that must provide lifelong medical care to those who suffered from its harmful medical interventions. Every taxpayer should be furious that this research was encouraged and funded for the decade the country lost its collective mind."

Cornett added, "Dr. Olson-Kennedy was no doubt concerned that the final report would call into question the rationale behind her research. That isn’t weaponization. It’s justifiable scrutiny of a practice the majority of Americans rightly oppose."

While Olson-Kennedy's study is undoubtedly a gut-punch for gender activists, major studies released in the U.S. and the U.K. have already made clear that puberty blockers are not worth the risk.

The Cass Review, an independent investigation into sex-rejection drugs and procedures that was commissioned by NHS England and published in 2024, concluded that:

• the quality of previous studies suggesting that puberty blockers are beneficial in reducing mental distress and improving the well-being of gender-dysphoric youth is "poor";
• the alternatively high-quality "University of York systematic review found no evidence that puberty blockers improve body image or dysphoria";
• puberty blockers "may reduce psychological functioning";
• most kids' gender dysphoria appears to be "resolved by puberty"; and
• "brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by the use of puberty blockers."

The Department of Health and Human Services' exhaustive peer-reviewed 2025 report on pediatric treatments for "gender dysphoria" also highlighted numerous physical risks associated with puberty blockers including reduced bone mineral density, compromised skeletal development, infertility, and sexual dysfunction.

Olson-Kennedy could not immediately be reached for comment.

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Some people in the public eye simply can't help themselves.

Such is the case with veteran NFL play-by-play commentator Al Michaels, who took a moment to mock the president on Thursday night.

'We think it is still called Lake Erie.'

Michaels was commentating for the Cleveland Browns vs. New England Patriots game on "Thursday Night Football," a preseason broadcast for Amazon Prime, when he made a brief comment that ruffled some feathers.

Less than four minutes into the game, the broadcast was showing off the Cleveland skyline before a kickoff when Michaels commented on President Trump's recent name change of Lake Ontario to Lake America.

"That is Lake Erie. We think it is still called Lake Erie," Michaels remarked.

"We're not quite sure at this point. But we'll be by Lake 'Something Like Ontario' or whatever it's going to be called by the time we get to Buffalo. Anyway, you know what I'm talking about," Michaels chuckled.

"Some of us do," replied co-commentator Kirk Herbstreit.

"Right! Read the news," Michaels concluded.

RELATED: WNBA team bans Enes Kanter Freedom from arena with yet another insane claim: 'That changed everything'

Fans seemed split on whether the remarks were necessary, with some getting in on the trolling nature of the name change.

"It’s Lake America, losers. Get it right," one viewer wrote on X.

Another compared the 81-year-old broadcaster to President Joe Biden: "Al Michaels is only one step ahead of Joe Biden in the brain department."

Others supported the veteran NFL voice, writing comments like, "Al Michaels comeback season. Top of his game!" and "Love it! Al Michaels calls it as he sees it."

Some comments were more in the middle, with one X user quoting a post of the video to claim, "God I love broadcasting. You can say whatever you want!"

While Michaels is known for cracking jokes, he does not have a history of going rogue with political opinions.

RELATED: MAGA-haters mock Giants quarterback for getting laid out by massive hit

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

His most notable foray into such topics was during the kneeling fiasco of 2017 where Michaels, along with broadcasters Cris Collinsworth and Mike Tirico, began NBC's "Football Night in America" broadcast with a discussion about Trump's remarks on the subject, which included saying kneeling players should be fired.

"Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He's fired. He's fired,'" Trump said at the time.

Michaels said that through his remarks, Trump had "galvanized" the league.

"People were beginning to listen to each other. It was calming down a little bit, and then a match got thrown into the gas tank," Michaels claimed. "It’s inadvertently created a new level of unity."

The Browns won on Thursday, 37-13.

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Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley is not sympathetic to the surveillance state.

With evidence that would frighten any American, Hawley made an announcement on Wednesday that will affect thousands of U.S. neighborhoods.

'The American people want to know who has access to their personal data and how.'

As license plate reading cameras spy from seemingly every corner of the United States, with some even hiding in traffic cones and barrels, Senator Hawley stated on Wednesday that Americans' privacy rights do not stop when they get in their cars.

"Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church," Hawley wrote on X.

With that, Hawley said he is opening an investigation into Flock, the manufacturer behind over an alleged 120,000 cameras across 49 states, a number consistent with license plate camera tracker DeFlock.

"Americans deserve answers," Hawley added.

In letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley, Hawley demanded answers surrounding Flock's safeguards for Americans' data.

Noting that the company conducts "more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month," Hawley said that "the overwhelming majority of the Americans captured in those records did nothing wrong."

Then, Hawley listed some recent horrifying examples of abuse using Flock systems.

RELATED: This state's citizens now oppose Flock cameras — despite agreeing they help police

Just days before Hawley sent the letter, a Missouri man was found to have engaged in "egregious misuse" of Flock's "data system" by using it for personal reasons.

Two weeks prior, prosecutors charged a police officer in Milwaukee for allegedly searching the Flock system for his girlfriend's license plate 124 times, along with her former boyfriend's plate 55 times. He reportedly entered "investigation" as his justification each time.

Other examples cited by Hawley included a Florida woman spending 13 days in jail over eight possible felony counts after she was arrested through a Flock network search.

The charges were eventually dismissed when it was concluded that she was the wrong person.

Moreover, a California police department found that Flock misread license plates in 71% of its issued alerts, leading to the LAPD dropping its contract with the company.

RELATED: What the Flock? Knoxville mayor explains the dark truth about Flock cameras: ‘Not your grandma's license plate readers’

Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Senator Hawley also said there was "uncertainty" around whether or not Flock can sell or use customer data.

"Flock's $8.3 billion valuation comes with enormous pressure to find new commercial applications. Americans demand a full accounting for how their driver data is stored or sold."

Hawley also said, "These camera networks harness artificial intelligence to pool what they capture into a national database that customers can search."

"The American people want to know who has access to their personal data and how. This investigation will seek those answers," the letter concluded.

As Blaze Media previously reported, there are also growing concerns about how the license plate readers can be enhanced to to capture any "unique signals" emitted from devices in cars.

The SignalTrace upgrade captures unique identifiers from cell phones, smart watches, Bluetooth devices, earbuds, and Wi-Fi signals and ultimately gives the ability to create a dossier on the driver and all his smart devices.

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Flock Safety spent years selling license plate cameras faster than local officials could ask questions. Now cities are shutting them off. On Wednesday, Tempe, Arizona, shut off all 33 of its Flock license plate readers and announced that it would end its contract. The city won't hire another company to replace them.

That wasn't always the plan. On March 26, the Tempe City Council approved a trial of Axon's Outpost plate readers. The free, 60-day pilot included three fixed cameras and was described at the time as a test of an alternative to Flock. Wednesday's announcement went further. Councilman Bobby Nichols said Tempe needed to "stop looking for other ALPR providers."

'These cameras need to be deactivated immediately.'

So Tempe isn't merely changing the logo on the pole. At least for now, it's walking away from fixed plate readers altogether.

Tempe Mayor Corey Woods (D) acknowledged that the cameras helped police but said the potential for abuse was too great. "For Tempe, that means taking these cameras down," Woods said.

That same day, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) launched a Senate investigation into Flock, demanding records from CEO Garrett Langley about data access, camera placement, retention, and sharing. Hawley gave the company until September 8 to respond.

"Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church," Hawley wrote.

Hawley wasn't alone. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the same day that he would soon introduce legislation to "stop Flock and AI mass surveillance." Sanders warned that the network was pushing the country toward a surveillance state run for the profit of "AI oligarchs."

Flock sold local police departments roadside cameras and connected them to a nationwide system capable of reconstructing where ordinary Americans drive. Most of the people entered into that system aren't suspects. They're going to work, church, school, the gun store, the doctor, or wherever else free people go without asking the government for permission.

Knox County may be next

In Tennessee, the Knox County Sheriff's Office has operated Flock cameras since 2020 and now has 143 of them, according to reporting by the Knoxville News Sentinel. The department planned to install another 270 with state grant money.

County officials then started asking basic questions. Is there a valid contract? Who approved it? Where are the cameras? Who can search the data?

Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs (R) says the original agreement expired in 2024 and that there's no valid service contract governing the current cameras. Records reviewed by county officials also showed the sheriff's office repeatedly purchasing Flock equipment in batches priced just below the threshold that would have triggered mayoral review.

RELATED: When did we agree to be watched?

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

"These cameras need to be deactivated immediately," Commissioner Kim Frazier said during an August 24 meeting. "You don't have an active agreement."

Jacobs has told Flock that the county will not renew the deal even if the company maintains that it is valid. Existing cameras remain active for now, but installation of new ones has stopped. The County Commission is scheduled to vote August 31 on an ordinance regulating the cameras. A proposed amendment would order Flock's equipment removed within 30 days, though its sponsor says final passage would require a second reading in September.

Knox County hasn't pulled the plug. Yet. But the county installed 143 cameras before commissioners could get straight answers about whether the contract was valid, where the cameras had been placed, or who inside the sheriff's office controlled them. That should bother even people who like the cameras.

The cancellations are piling up

By mid-August, the Associated Press reported that more than 50 agencies or jurisdictions had canceled, suspended, rejected, or deactivated a Flock system since the beginning of the year, according to a tracker maintained by the anti-Flock group DeFlock.

The day before Tempe's announcement, the Asheville City Council voted 5-2 to terminate its Flock contract, remove the hardware, and stop employees from accessing or sharing the data.

In Missouri, the St. Charles County Police Department discontinued Flock and began terminating its contract after an audit found that a civilian employee had searched the system for a personal, non-law-enforcement purpose. The employee resigned after receiving notice of termination.

Arizona has become a particularly bad market for the company:

• Chandler ended its Flock partnership after an audit found an unexplained anomaly in how an employee used the system.
• Cave Creek terminated its contract and removed its cameras after officials concluded that local privacy rules could not control a system designed for data sharing between agencies.
• Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple said the county won't renew its contract when it expires in September because he has "serious Fourth Amendment concerns" about the technology.

The Josephine County Sheriff's Office in Oregon canceled its contract and deactivated 10 cameras after residents objected on Fourth Amendment grounds. The sheriff's office said the technology had helped solve crimes but conceded that much of the county was not willing to accept it.

In Massachusetts, Salem declined to renew its contract, citing insufficient protections for locally generated data. Salem plans to replace Flock with a system that keeps the data under local control, which is an improvement but hardly the end of automated plate tracking.

Stoughton, Wisconsin, shut the whole thing down. Its council unanimously terminated a two-year contract only months after the cameras were installed. The resolution called for shutting down and removing the cameras, deleting collected data, and barring the city from buying a replacement without a new public oversight process.

RELATED: Student accused of destroying Flock cameras — his community comes out to defend him

L-R: Monongalia County Sheriff's Office press release; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Redmond, Washington, canceled its contract in a unanimous July vote and ended the city's plate-reader program after deactivating the cameras months earlier. The LAPD stopped using Flock when its agreement expired, pending stronger terms for data ownership, privacy, security, and sharing. Officials left open the possibility of a new contract. Denver and Colorado's Douglas County are replacing Flock with Axon.

Flock's loss may be Axon's gain

Axon has noticed the opportunity. CEO Rick Smith told investors that the company was seeing "a significant number of agencies" switch from other plate-reader systems to Axon. While Knox County is debating getting rid of its 143 Flock cameras, in January, the Knoxville City Council approved a $9.4 million expansion of the police department's Axon contract. The package included plate readers along with additional body cameras, in-car cameras, and drones. The Knoxville Police Department now says it operates 19 fixed Axon plate readers and 30 mobile readers built into police dashcams. It keeps plate data for 30 days. Searches must be tied to an incident report number and are logged for auditing.

Those controls are better than a free-for-all. They don't make the cameras stop recording innocent drivers.

Axon's fixed Outpost cameras combine plate reading, vehicle identification, and live video. In July, the company also began rolling out cross-agency ALPR sharing. Axon's version isn't identical to Flock's national network. Sharing is off by default, initiated by the agency that owns the data, and subject to offense categories and audit logs. But an agency can still let another department search its plate records.

Flock built the network first and the guardrails later

Flock now says it operates more than 120,000 cameras across roughly 6,000 communities. Together, they produce about 20 billion vehicle scans every month.

A Washington Post investigation found at least 50 officers who had been charged with or accused of misusing automated plate-reader systems, often to track current or former romantic partners.

One former Georgia police chief allegedly searched for his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter roughly 600 times. In Wisconsin, an officer allegedly searched plates connected to his ex-girlfriend and her partner 179 times, including checking whether she had visited an abortion clinic.

Flock's CEO has said human misuse is inevitable and that the company's job is to provide tools that catch it. In August, the company announced new safeguards that will make several previously optional controls mandatory by January 1. Law-enforcement customers will have to tie searches to case numbers, use software intended to flag abnormal search behavior, and review emergency overrides. Flock also shortened its standard retention period from 30 days to seven, though customers may configure it differently under their own laws and policies. The Associated Press has a useful summary of the changes.

Any check on abuse is better than none. But Flock added these rules only after its network was recording billions of vehicle movements every month. Local officials were sold a crime-fighting tool. What they got was access to a national location-search system. Its limits depended on company policy and department rules, plus the honesty of every employee handed a login.

There isn't a clean partisan story here. Hawley and Sanders agree on very little, but both are now calling for federal action against Flock. Asheville, Tempe, and county sheriffs in Arizona and Oregon have reached similar conclusions for different reasons. A government camera network that records everyone by default and sorts out abuse afterward has the presumption backward.

Most of these towns never had a real debate until the cameras were already watching them. They should have.

Comedian Druski has NFL players fuming after a viral sketch portrayed a concussion-riddled football star spiraling.

In the skit, he plays an NFL player named Ray Price who gets a horrific concussion on the field, becomes violent, and even evades the cop in a O.J. Simpson-inspired chase — but this time it's in a gold Ferrari.

“First off, people try to say Druski is not funny, and I find that ridiculous,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock comments. “Druski is hilarious.”

“I also find it uncomfortable that I find this so funny and I’m laughing at really inappropriate jokes, but the thing is hilarious,” he adds.

“He kind of nailed it,” Steve Kim agrees. “I think a lot of these comedic skits, if you’re really good at it, it’s a commentary on reality. Like parody is a lot to do with reality and you overblow it just to make an overall point.”

However, ex-NFL player T.J. Ward was among those who did not find it funny.

“In that skit ... it was a couple funny moments, but overall, I’m going to put my sensitivity cap on like everyone else seems to do when it’s affecting them,” Ward said in response to the skit.

“These are life and death situations. And at the end of the day, it’s a life-taking disease. And I think CTE universally is the only disease that’s allowed to be made fun of, which is crazy. You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with cancer. You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with dementia. You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with AIDS,” he continued.

“You wouldn’t make fun of anyone with these diseases that are taking lives,” he added.

“I’m going to put my insensitivity cap on and just call that cap,” Whitlock comments.

“It’s a programming that he has accepted and that many people have accepted that everybody’s looking to be a victim,” he adds.

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