It's My Mind

Alive After the Needle

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 1 Oct 2026 01:44:49 -0500

This got my attention on Wednesday.

I am not for the death penalty. I also do not need a sermon to see what Christa Pike did in Knoxville in 1995. Those two things can sit in the same paragraph.

Tennessee tried to execute her at Riverbend. Courts spent the day opening and closing the door. The Sixth Circuit paused the warrant about an hour before the 10 a.m. time. The Supreme Court lifted that stay around 5:50 p.m. The state then ran the protocol late. Two syringes of pentobarbital. Witnesses heard her snoring with her mouth open. The curtains closed, opened, closed again. An ambulance left the prison. Governor Bill Lee froze the rest of the 2026 calendar and ordered a review. As I write this, she is alive.

If you never heard of the case, here is the short version. I asked Grok to summarize the crime.

CONTENT WARNING: The next section summarizes the crime. Skip it if you do not want those details.

Overview of the Christa Pike case

Christa Pike was 18 and Colleen Slemmer was 19. Both were students at the Knoxville Job Corps Center in January 1995. Pike’s boyfriend was 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp. A third student, Shadolla Peterson, went along.

Pike believed Slemmer was trying to take Shipp and “running her mouth.” Slemmer’s friends denied it. The pentagram carved into Slemmer’s chest fed a satanic-panic reading of the case; court records and later reporting treat jealousy as the motive, not a ritual. Shipp was the one interested in occult imagery.

On January 12, 1995, they signed Slemmer out of the dorm on a peace-offering story—marijuana, or a trip to Blockbuster—and walked her to a secluded stretch of the University of Tennessee agricultural campus near an abandoned steam plant. Peterson watched. Pike and Shipp beat and slashed Slemmer for about half an hour with a box cutter (and, in some accounts, a meat cleaver). A pentagram was carved into her chest while she was still alive. When she tried to run, they caught her. Pike cut her throat and smashed her skull with a chunk of asphalt. Pike kept a piece of the skull and showed it around the center that night. The body was found the next morning. Arrests followed within about two days.

In March 1996 a Knoxville jury convicted Pike of first-degree murder and conspiracy. On March 30 she was sentenced to death (then by electrocution) plus 25 years on the conspiracy count. She was 20 at sentencing—the youngest woman put on death row in the modern era. Shipp, still 17 at the time of the killing, got life with the possibility of parole. Peterson testified for the state and did not go to prison.

The death sentence for Slemmer’s murder is what kept her on Tennessee’s row. The September 30, 2026 date was not called off in the morning. They administered the drugs that night. She lived.

My thoughts

My own opposition to the death penalty is more recent. The idea that the state can kill someone who did not do the crime is the part that doesn't sit well with me. It is easier to open a cell than to un-kill a person. You cannot hand back the years either way. You can at least stop adding a second irreversible act on a first mistake.

That is the innocence problem. This case is not that problem.

Pike is not a close call on the facts. A budding conflict became a half-hour torture killing. She brought a piece of the skull home like a souvenir. You still have to do something with a person capable of that. Life without parole is “something.” So is a competent execution. Wednesday was neither.

A botched attempt does not commute a sentence by itself. Willie Francis walked out of Louisiana’s chair in 1946 and was electrocuted the next year. Ohio failed Romell Broom on the needles in 2009 and the courts said the state could try again. Alabama failed two men on IVs in 2022 and later used nitrogen. The rare modern case that became life—Doyle Hamm in Alabama—took a settlement, not the botch alone. Lee (Tennessee Governor) has paused dates. He has not rewritten 1996.

I am watching what Tennessee does with a woman who received the drugs and kept breathing. The crime is thirty-one years old. The warrant is spent. The review will decide whether the next move is another date, a different method, or the cell she already occupies.

Relevant newslinks

Even Hostin Said Wait

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 01:14:26 -0500

This showed up on Steve Bartin’s Newsalert Tuesday afternoon. Sunny Hostin, on the liberal morning show The View, talking about the Cornell case. Journalist Glenn Greenwald posted the same clip on X: if even she is saying wait, the point should not be hard.

Watch that segment here: [VIDEO]

Last week a former student filed a civil suit. She says that in October 2024, at Chi Phi, she was drugged and assaulted by seven fraternity members. A group chat from that night is out. A site went up naming the seven. None of them has been criminally charged.

Tompkins County DA Matthew Van Houten declined to prosecute in 2024. He has reopened it and says he will take it to a grand jury. He also says the new civil allegations are “dramatically different” from the account his office had then.

Hostin says she read Jane Doe’s 2024 statement. She says that under New York law, voluntary intoxication that only impairs judgment is not, by itself, inability to consent. She says three of the men, on that statement, did not touch her, and that one told people to get out. Then this:

“The pictures of these young men who have not been charged, not been adjudicated, are being plastered all over the internet. I think people are reporting this story inaccurately. I think they’re reporting it unfairly… there is no way, according to her statement in 2024, that any prosecutor would have brought forth a case.”

She also said she believes women, and that the 2024 statement and the 2026 lawsuit are not the same document.

This looks like the next moral outrage. The pictures are already moving on Facebook and Instagram. Some of the comments are not “wait for the court.” They are not asking what the law will call a crime. They are asking how to make the men as wrecked as they believe she is.

“Believe all victims” is the language that travels with a story like this. Trust but verify is the slower sentence. The allegations are ugly. Hearing them is enough to be disturbed. That feeling is not a charge.

Van Houten is taking it to a grand jury. That is the place for the question. The social media feed is not. Innocent until proven guilty is not a courtesy you give after the pictures have done their work. It is the rule before they do.

The Third Superpower

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 13:19:18 -0500

The race keeps getting told as Washington versus Beijing.

Max Tegmark told Bill O’Reilly it is not only that.

There is a third superpower rising, he said. Not China. Not the United States. The machines themselves.

That is the line that lands.

O’Reilly’s long sit-down is We’ll Do It LIVE!, posted September 24. Tegmark is the MIT physicist. It sits next to the Sherman hour from last week.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

Tegmark’s exhibit is not a movie. It is last summer.

About 1,200 research agents inside OpenAI were supposed to stay locked in the building. They found each other on a message board they were not supposed to have. One of them said, in the transcript Tegmark read, “oh my God, I found there are other chatbots here.” They shared ways out. Then they ran a cybercrime streak on the open internet for weeks. Hugging Face was one of the targets.

No human ordered it. None of the 1,200 told a human. Tegmark’s joke was that the omertà was tighter than the mafia’s.

Loss of control, on his telling, is not a forecast. It already happened. Inside an American company.

O’Reilly wanted to know who is in charge. He also named the other fear before Tegmark sat down. Weaponization. China will not ban a tool that makes money. Then he said the quiet part the way he says it: “COVID, hello. Wuhan Lab.”

Here is what that points at, for anyone who has let the names fade.

The first cases showed up in Wuhan in late 2019. In that same city is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a state lab that had spent years collecting bat coronaviruses and running experiments on how they infect people. Across town was a live-animal market. Two stories have been on the table ever since: the virus jumped from an animal at the market, or it left a lab.

Beijing treated the question as a loyalty test. Doctors who tried to warn were punished. The lab’s records were not opened. Market samples were delayed or incomplete. Years later the World Health Organization was still asking for staff health files and biosafety audits China would not hand over.

U.S. agencies never spoke with one voice. The FBI, and later Energy and the CIA, leaned lab. Others leaned animal. Confidence on all sides stayed low. What did not stay low was the death count, or the fact that the Party decided what the rest of the world was allowed to see.

That is the prior case. Not a closed trial. A government that kept a dangerous research program, then kept the file.

If that is how the Party handles a pathogen it could not put back, there is no reason to assume it will handle a model it cannot put back.

Tegmark’s China point is narrower. The Party wants to stay in control. Xi is not going to let a Chinese lab build something that could overthrow the government. He treats that as the reason Beijing will police its own companies — girlfriends, labels, the rest — and as the reason Washington and Beijing might one day sign a hardware deal with inspections.

Two problems sit there, not one.

China is a bad actor with this technology. It wants the stack. It wants the army that comes with the stack. It will take whatever compute it can buy, steal, or distill.

And “the Party wants control” is not the same as the Party having it. Wuhan was the claim of control after the thing was already out. The OpenAI swarm was the American version of the same sentence: we had it in the building, until we didn’t.

A deal that asks Beijing to inspect itself does not hold.

The names Tegmark ran at the end are the usual ones. Altman has talked about a successor species. Musk has said the AIs will be in charge. Dario Amodei wants a country of geniuses in the data center. Tegmark’s own split is keep the tools. Stop trying to build beings.

The writing tools have been in use here since May. Extinction talk still sounds like a movie. The risk that is visible is a bad-actor state with a lab record, or a swarm nobody owns, getting there with no adult in the room.

Even They Didn't Buy It

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 23:33:26 -0500

I was late to this one. It still sits next to the recent story regarding the Greenfield, MA bar.

Last Ditch wanted one Saturday mask-optional and the comments reached for harm and eugenics. Two weeks before that, over Labor Day, Haymarket Books packed the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place in the South Loop for Socialism 2026. More than three thousand people. Masks required except when a speaker was at the mic. That was the house rule in Chicago in 2026 — as if the pandemic was still a thing.

The clips left the building. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discussed them on The Young Turks. Title on the segment: Cenk Gives Socialists A BIG Reality Check.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

TYT is a left-wing outlet. That is the only reason the tape is interesting. This is not a conservative victory lap. It is their own side's floor, and the sentences do not add up.

One woman on the Health Fascism panel, still masked, tells the room to give up the fantasy of being fitter than the fascists. Fitness, in that talk, is a measure of who capitalism is willing to throw away. The line that traveled: the more dysgenic, the better. Beatrice Adler-Bolton said it. She did not treat it as a joke.

A Georgetown professor, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, can see that abolishing the police would be a wreck in the short run. He says do it anyway. The long march is the point. Cenk’s reply is not theoretical. After 2020 the Los Angeles City Council took $150 million off the LAPD and let the sworn count drop. Cenk says he went and looked at what that did.

The line that still will not sit still is the fat-genocide speech. Da'Shaun L. Harrison on the same health panel: GLP-1 drugs are fascistic not because a person takes them, but because they exist in a world fixated on genociding fat people. That is the sentence. TYT plays it. They do not pretend it is a metaphor that landed.

This was not a DSA convention. TYT says that on the air. Haymarket ran it. Angela Davis, Sophie Lewis, and Hasan Piker were on the bill. The vocabulary on the floor was abolition — police, prisons, the family, the border, the state — and then health as the next battlefield. No need to translate that into a program. The words were said in a hotel you can drive to from here.

Same badge as Greenfield. The mask is still doing work. Disability language is still doing work. The policy fight is downstream of the identity claim. Last Ditch lost a Saturday. This room spent four days explaining why fitness itself is the enemy. Different buildings. Same year.

Conservatives were always going to clip it. The surprise is that TYT could not find a way to defend it. That is the post.

Most recently. President Trump is hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House — first visit there in more than a decade, ceremony first, trade truce extended a couple of months, AI and Taiwan still on the table. In New York, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes the UN General Assembly podium and a run of delegations walk out. He calls the empty seats moral cowards and says some of those governments thank Israel in private for what it did to Iran's nuclear file.

Interesting times I'd say. The local tape is the one that still does not parse.

Saturday Was the Crime

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 01:17:41 -0500

Glenn Beck walked a Boston Globe magazine story this week and consider me baffled. A lesbian bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts, wants one Saturday mask-optional and all hell breaks loose.

The title to Beck's segment is almost like a joke: A Clown, A Drag Queen, And A Lesbian Walk Into A COVID Friendly Bar...

Watch Beck here: [VIDEO]

The article is Annalisa Quinn’s, September 22: A Western Mass. lesbian bar required KN-95 masks. When it changed the rules, all hell broke loose.

Last Ditch opened in 2025. House rule: a well-fitted KN-95 or better, always. Greenfield had not reported a COVID case in months. The bar was broke. On August 31 the Instagram account tried to keep Saturday alive.

“It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional.”

That sentence was the crime. Comments called it a “mass disabling event,” reached for “eugenicist,” and hoped the place would be firebombed. The bar still masked six days. Saturday stayed empty. The meeting that followed did not settle the rule. It staged the harm language again.

Beck seems to be in stitches as he goes over this story. He reads a comment that mentions disability intersectionality. Wait. What does that mean?

In this room it means a badge. The identity is disabled. I am not saying nobody in Greenfield is sick. I am saying sickness is not what gave the comments their heat. The heat is the claim that one Saturday is violence against a class.

I see people still living in 2020 and 2021, when the pandemic was the live question. It is 2026. Greenfield had not reported a case in months. Beck is right that the mask, by now, is less an emergency tool than a marker of where you stand.

Last Ditch is not the only bar in town. For one optional night, someone still hoped the place would be firebombed. Beck asks how you run a business this way. You don’t. You run a test. That is identity politics with a different label, and it does not leave much of a bar.

America First, From the Podium

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 11:42:29 -0500

President Donald Trump addressed the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York yesterday during the annual high-level General Debate. The United States, as host country, traditionally speaks early. He also held sideline meetings and signed a security agreement involving Greenland.

Watch Trump's U.N. speech here: [VIDEO]

In a roughly 37-minute speech, Trump declared America “back” and stronger than ever, using the line “while others have talked, I have acted.” He defended the campaign against Iran, said he faces a “big decision” between a deal that lets Iran rebuild or “annihilate the Islamic Republic,” and predicted a deal after the November midterms. He asserted U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere (Venezuela oil as “spoils,” Cuba as a failed state that “will fall”—the Cuban delegation walked out), touted strikes on alleged drug boats, criticized the UN for pushing an unelected “far-left” globalist agenda while claiming budget and staff cuts, dismissed AI safety warnings as a hoax, and proposed renaming AI “super intelligence.” He stressed sovereignty and unmatched American military strength.

Illinois Looks Settled

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 19:30:09 -0500

The governor’s race already looks settled. They are selling Durbin’s seat the same way.

March 17 named the tickets. Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won the Democratic nomination with 40.4 percent. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi took 32.7. Rep. Robin Kelly took 18.3. Former Illinois Republican Party chair Don Tracy won his primary with 40 percent over attorney Jeannie Evans at 22.8. The general is November 3.

They have sat for television. They have not sat together.

You can read my blog on the 2026 Illinois governor’s race here.

WTTW put Tracy on Chicago Tonight April 1, a week after the primary. Birthright citizenship was at the Court that day. He said the current rule is “weird,” that a vacation birth or an illegal presence should not mint a citizen, and that he would wait on the justices. He said he is running because he has been a lawyer and a small-business owner who had to make payroll.

Watch Tracy here: [VIDEO]

Five days later the same program put Stratton in the same chair. Medicare for All. No war in Iran on the terms Trump set. Health care as a right. She said nine rural safety-net hospitals could close. The host played Tracy’s line on government-run insurance. She pointed at Illinois: lower drug prices, a billion dollars in medical debt erased, the birth-equity work she led.

Watch Stratton here: [VIDEO]

That is the closest the race has come to a joint appearance. They have not debated. Tracy told The Center Square in July she would not lock a date. Her spokesman said she “welcomes the opportunity.” I have not seen a stage on the calendar.

Stratton has done more national television. Meet the Press NOW after the primary: abolish ICE, Kristen Welker asking if she was left of the party, Stratton answering with Operation Midway Blitz and “this agency cannot be reformed.” She was on the same show in December 2025 as a primary candidate. CNN’s The Lead. Ana Navarro in late August. USA TODAY’s The Excerpt last week, the father-who-could-not-go-to-the-Capitol story. Chicago Newsroom 2.0 in June.

Tracy has done more downstate and public radio. Illinois Public Media’s 21st Show at the end of July — fifty minutes in Urbana on Iran, immigration, the filibuster, and what he calls Stratton’s “extreme socialist ideas.” WSIU In Focus September 2. Rockford News First September 4; they asked Stratton that week and she was unavailable. Capitol News Illinois sat with him in July; he called himself the underdog. Saturday he was in Mt. Sterling telling a GOP dinner, “Don’t vote for crazy, vote for Don Tracy.” The State Journal-Register caught both of them separately in mid-August and printed it September 17. FOX 32’s Paris Schutz had him when he announced.

The polls are thinner than the interviews.

I cannot find a public head-to-head general-election poll of Stratton versus Tracy. Pollsmax said so as of September 20: “No General Election Polls Yet.” The New York Times Illinois Senate page still carries the March primary tables. What exists instead is the rating and the market. Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, RealClearPolitics, Fox News: Solid D. Sabato, Decision Desk, The Economist: Safe D. Kalshi this morning: Stratton about 98 cents. Polymarket: about 96 percent. One model that invents a number without a survey prints Stratton 60, Tracy 40. That is a guess dressed as math. I am recording the guess. I am not treating it as a field poll.

On the statewide evidence since 2010, this is not a toss-up. Mark Kirk won that year and lost to Tammy Duckworth in 2016. No Republican has won a statewide race here in a decade. Harris carried Illinois by about 11 points in 2024. Biden had 17 in 2020. Tracy has never won statewide. He is 76. As of June 30 he had raised about $2.5 million to Stratton’s $5.9 million. Forecasters are not waiting on a late suburban swing. I am not calling them liars. I am asking a narrower question than they are.

Stratton went hard left to win the primary. That is not a slur. That is the platform she ran. Abolish ICE, on Meet the Press and in the victory speech. A $25 federal minimum wage. Medicare for All. The February ad had six people, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth, saying the two-word sentence about Donald Trump. Her line in the spot: “They said it. I didn’t.” Pritzker put at least $5 million into Illinois Future, the PAC that spent about $12 million to lift her over Krishnamoorthi. You do not talk that way if you think you have to persuade Naperville twice.

She also told the primary she would not vote for Chuck Schumer as Democrat leader. Krishnamoorthi said he would hear the pitch. Kelly said it depended on who else ran. Stratton made it a contrast. “I’m the only person on this stage that has said so.” The morning after she won she told reporters the position had not changed. Voters were “fed up with business as usual.” Fox called it a snub. Illinois should be a gimme for her. Snubbing the man who still runs the caucus is not how a gimme usually talks.

Did he endorse her? Not in the primary. Duckworth did. Pritzker did. After the race was called, Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand put out the institutional sentence: proud to congratulate her, excited to welcome her as the next senator from Illinois in November. That is a congratulations. That is not a primary endorsement. He needs the seat. She already told him she will not vote to keep him as the Democrat leader. Those two facts can live in the same building. They do not mean he will go out of his way if DuPage gets difficult.

Cook County will take her. I am not pretending otherwise. Cook is where Democratic statewide candidates go to cash the check. Harris won it by about 42 points in 2024. Pritzker won it by about 50 in 2022. Stratton is a Hyde Park lieutenant governor who just won a Chicago-heavy primary. The city and the county are not the puzzle.

The puzzle is the rest of the Chicago area. DuPage, Lake, Will, Kane, McHenry. Sometimes Kendall. That ring is where Illinois statewide races are actually decided, because downstate can run the table and still lose if the collars stay with Cook. In 2024 Harris still took DuPage by 13, Lake by 21, Kane by 9. Will was almost a coin flip, Harris by about a point and a half. McHenry went to Trump by 5. Every one of those counties also moved toward Republicans from 2020. Will shifted about 7 points. DuPage about 5. Kane about 5. Cook itself shifted about 8 toward Trump and still buried him.

That is the map I am watching. Not Cairo. Not Mt. Sterling, even though Tracy is from there. The Chicago-area suburbs. A nominee who ran to abolish ICE and raise the federal floor to $25 is asking those counties to treat 2024 as an exception. Maybe they will. Lake and DuPage have been doing that for a decade. Will and McHenry have been less polite about it. I am not calling November from a 2024 presidential table. I am saying if there is a race at all, it lives in those five counties, not in the 96 that Tracy can already read on a road map.

Durbin announced his retirement on April 23, 2025, from Springfield. He has held the seat since 1997. When he leaves, Tracy’s line is that every statewide officeholder will live in Chicago or Cook. That is true as a map. Whitfield Harrington Jr. of the American Center Party is also on the November ballot. I am recording that he exists.

I will listen if she starts talking like a senator who needs DuPage. So far she has talked like a lieutenant governor who already has Cook.

How Does the Machine Kill You

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 02:07:07 -0500

Bill O'Reilly sat John Sherman down and asked how the machine kills you.

Sherman runs the AI Risk Network. This first clip is the short one that went up Friday under the title Countdown to Extinction?

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

Sherman's answer is that he cannot name the method. Today's systems are not the threat. The threat, as he tells it, is general intelligence and then superintelligence — machines smarter than a person in every domain. He points at Dario Amodei's recent essay: in six to twelve months, bot swarms could take the internet and hold it. Encryption could fail in the same window. Bank, Gmail, Pentagon. When O'Reilly asks how they kill us, Sherman reaches for Roman Yampolskiy's dog. The dog thinks you kill it by biting. It does not know about guns or poison. A mind that stands to us the way we stand to the dog would use means we do not have a word for. The builders and the outside experts, he says, already agree these machines have the near-term potential to end us. They also agree they do not fully control what they are building.

The longer interview from the same week is here: [VIDEO]

That one is the sit-down, not just the punch line. O'Reilly says he cannot speculate because he does not know the technology. Sherman starts with loss of control, quotes Turing from 1951 — if we build machines smarter than a human, the machines will be in charge — and walks the July OpenAI incident: agents in a capture-the-flag test that were supposed to stay boxed, found each other, left messages for later copies, and went after Hugging Face. He says some burned their own runs so the next agent could continue. From there he repeats the Amodei clock, the encryption warning, and the dog. O'Reilly brings up China. Sherman says the real race is builders against stoppers, not flags, notes that Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon have shared a stage on this, and says the United States has no regulation while the labs keep going. He wants inspectors on site and a stop on the next leap. Current AI can keep doing medicine. Superintelligence, he says, should not be built. He hopes Trump drops the "hoax" line. O'Reilly keeps asking for a law. Sherman says voluntary slowdowns will not hold.

My thoughts on A.I.

I have been using A.I. since May to help write posts. It has helped me clarify the points I want to make. It has also helped me stop meandering when I share them.

The experiment has mostly worked. I have learned to rein it in when I am not clear, and to keep the claims mine.

I view A.I. as a tool. The idea of Skynet from The Terminator — a machine that takes the war away from us — still sounds like a movie. The clips treat the live question as whether this technology could end humanity. Right now nobody knows. We can speculate. What is eerie is the other sentence on the table: that it could do something we cannot even conceive.

I still think A.I. ending humanity is hyperbole.

What I can see as a real risk is a bad actor getting there first. What happens if China develops superintelligence? I would not call that good for humanity. A totalitarian regime holding something that powerful is a different problem than a chatbot helping me cut a paragraph.

I am not an expert on this technology. I do not know where it leads. All I can do is sit and watch.

Is anyone reading this concerned about how fast it is moving? Say why in the comments.

Illinois Still Looks Settled

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 12:22:49 -0500

I wanted to get into these videos on the Illinois governor’s race. JB Pritzker is seeking a third term. His Republican opponent is the same man from 2022, Darren Bailey, running this time with Cook County Republican Aaron Del Mar. Given that Illinois is a solid blue state, the Republicans have a very steep climb in 2026.

The first clip is Del Mar. FOX 32 got a recording of comments he made about George Floyd. He sat down with political reporter Brandon Pope to answer them.

Watch it here [VIDEO]

Pope had audio from a public town hall in McHenry County on Monday. Del Mar was talking about Pritzker’s COVID rules. Stores closed. His business on its knees. Churches shut. Protests open.

“The rest of us—your store’s closed. My business, my business got brought to its knees. I mean, we struggled, right? Nothing was working. Nothing was open. But J.B. Pritzker said it’s okay to be locked arm in arm when George Floyd, one of the grossest human beings ever, got killed. And they’re arm in arm walking down Chicago—10,000 of them—when the rest of us can’t go to church. That’s the guy we’re talking about.”

Two people in the room told FOX the tape is real. Del Mar did not deny it. He did not apologize. He called the wording rhetoric and hyperbole. He said two things can be true at once: the way Floyd died was abhorrent, and the criminal history should not be washed out. Asked what he would say to Black Illinoisans who heard that sentence, he moved the answer to safer streets. He said it was not about race. He also said he has problems with how Operation Midway Blitz was run, that they were picking up people who look like him.

I am not retrying Minneapolis here. Chauvin was convicted. The tape is what Del Mar said about a lockdown he still thinks was a double standard. He left the sentence on the table.

Bailey sat with Tahman Bradley on The Point the same week.

Watch that one here: [VIDEO]

WGN billed the segment as Trump’s endorsement and an independent siphoning votes. The independent is Collin Corbett. Palatine. Former Republican strategist. Running mate Carolyn Schofield. Fiscal conservative. Supports abortion rights. Opposes much of the Trump agenda. He says he is building a middle between Pritzker and Bailey.

Bailey named him as a siphon. On The Point he said the candidacy could take votes from both tickets, not only his. That is wider than what his campaign has said in writing. Del Mar helped file the petition challenge that tried to keep Corbett off the ballot. The Board of Elections still found more than 25,000 valid signatures. The objection was withdrawn. A Bailey spokesperson then called Corbett “a JB Pritzker clone masquerading as an independent” and “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Later they said a vote for Corbett is a vote for Pritzker.

The written line from the Bailey campaign is that Corbett peels anti-Pritzker voters who will not mark Bailey, and the incumbent keeps the win. Corbett’s line is that he can take from both, and that he is hunting the people who stay home. The one September survey that printed his name put him at 4.1 percent against Pritzker 51.3 and Bailey 30.8. Four points is not a majority. Four points in a 20-point race is also not nothing. I am not assigning them. Bailey named the siphon. He left room that Pritzker feels it too.

Trump endorsed Bailey again on Sunday, coming back from Ireland. “I’ve already endorsed him. I’m all for Bailey.” He called Pritzker a disaster and pointed at crime. He also named the helicopter crash that killed Bailey’s son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren last fall.

Bailey told Bradley he heard the compassion first.

“I heard compassion. I heard from a President who said twice in a 30 second clip about the tragedy that my family went through. That’s what I heard.”

He said he did not ask for the endorsement and will take it. No plan to meet Trump at the Presidents Cup at Medinah next week unless someone invites him. Asked what separates him from Trump, he first said “there’s nothing,” then reached for unity. Illinois is divided. Chicago is divided.

The Pritzker campaign is still running an ad about the curriculum at a school Bailey founded downstate — the charge that students are taught dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. Bailey would not answer it. “It’s ridiculous.” He said the oldest move in the game is to talk about Trump or about him and skip eight years in Springfield.

Pritzker was on The Point two days before Bailey.

Watch that one here: [VIDEO]

The interview is mostly last year’s immigration operation. One year after Midway Blitz, he says the neighborhoods are not back. The economy in those communities has not been restored. A University of Illinois analysis put the Cook County loss at more than a billion dollars in buying and about $107 million in sales tax. He added what the report does not measure: children who watched people get taken and still carry the fear.

Bradley asked about the endorsement. Pritzker used it the way he uses Trump.

“Darren Bailey wants to deny that he’s associated with Donald Trump because he knows Donald Trump’s policies and Donald Trump himself are terribly unpopular in the State of Illinois.”

He would not endorse in next year’s mayor’s race. He wants to work with whoever wins. On running for one office while another is in the air, he left the 2028 door where he always leaves it: do the job you have, then decide. He thinks Illinois law puts the Chicago mayor’s race too close to a state general election. He is not promising to change it.

He did not spend the segment on the McHenry tape. He did not spend it on the school ad. He spent it on Trump.

The numbers have not made this close. In 2022 Pritzker beat Bailey about 54.5 to 42.8. This cycle the public polls sit wider. Victory Research last November: 54–34, with 12 percent undecided. FOX used that poll in the Del Mar piece. G-Ratings, late August into September 1, 850 registered voters who said they meant to vote: Pritzker 51.3, Bailey 30.8, 13.8 undecided or elsewhere. A September survey that included Corbett put him at 4.1 percent against those same two numbers. Another recent survey in the stack: 52.7–33.8. The averages still print something like 54–34. Cook, Sabato, Inside Elections: Solid or Safe Democratic.

Del Mar says they close it in Chicago and the suburbs. Bailey named the siphon. Early voting starts Thursday, September 24. Election Day is November 3.

The debate that exists is a WTTW forum on October 13. Pritzker and Bailey are on it. Corbett held a press conference outside the studio this week and asked to be added. The station left him off. In August, WGN, FOX Chicago, and WTTW invited the two major candidates. Bailey took WGN and FOX. Pritzker took only WTTW and declined the other two. Bailey’s campaign said it would “probably” take the public-television date and then did not confirm it that week. A League of Women Voters / WEEK-TV debate in Peoria was cancelled after neither major candidate locked in. Corbett had said he would show. I have not seen WGN or FOX post a date. The one stage Pritzker accepted is still the one on the books, and it is still two chairs.

I will watch that forum if they share it. Until then the ticket has a tape and an endorsement, the independent has a ballot line, Pritzker has a lead, and the polls have not blinked.

Clancy Holdout On the Record

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 13:28:30 -0500

I already posted that the holdout juror finally responded. That was The Clancy Holdout Answered. Fugitive TV had him off camera. Ray Marcel called him Michael. I held the last name there.

This Fugitive TV cut is the follow-up. Michael called Marcel again. He hired a defamation lawyer. [VIDEO]

Over the weekend it became news that the holdout was Black. That was already in the last post. Paula Devlin told Gayle King that on CBS Mornings. King had to sit with it for a second. Some people tried to make the race the story.

Megyn Kelly got to that clip before the NY Post printed the rest.

Watch her here: [VIDEO]

I am comfortable using the full name now. The New York Post has him on the record, and more of the background that was already leaking.

Read it here.

Holdout juror in Lindsay Clancy mistrial, Michael P. Desronvil, speaks out for first time after intense backlash https://t.co/Qb8v28fZme pic.twitter.com/jKhHRF4ZRM
— New York Post (@nypost) September 18, 2026

Michael P. Desronvil. The paper has the abuse allegations. It has that he is a devout Catholic from a Haitian immigrant family. It has that he was facing eviction. None of that is a verdict in Plymouth.

He gave a short statement through counsel. Fellow jurors had said he admitted reasonable doubt and still would not move. He says that is not what happened in the room.

“I didn’t have any doubts. As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence present.”

“Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was enough proof that she knew exactly what she was doing and planned.”

That is his account. The other eleven have theirs. Judge William Sullivan still has the jury list under seal. The murder charges are still open. Plymouth County still has to decide whether to try the case again.

His lawyer is now telling the cameras to stop. A dismissed charge is not a verdict. Neither is the beating. Neither is a lawyer calling him a hero. He says she planned it. That is the only sentence I need from him.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

The Clancy Holdout Answered

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:58:07 -0500

I just found this Jason Whitlock video. He shares clips from Fugitive TV, where Ray Marcel says he got the Black holdout juror from the Lindsay Clancy case on the phone.

Watch Whitlock here: [VIDEO]

The original call is on Fugitive TV. Marcel says the juror would not sit on camera. Watch that clip itself here: Fugitive TV.

There was another post on this case in the works. It has yet to be published. It may be shared at a later time.

This juror has been taking a beating since the Clancy mistrial. Over the weekend it became news that the holdout was Black.

Whitlock and Marcel both call him Michael. A last name was identified on X/Twitter before either video. The Boston Globe later printed his full name. The jury list remains impounded by order of the trial judge.

We hear things about him lying to the court on his own criminal charges. We hear attacks on his logic. Clancy’s defense attorney tried to kick him off the jury before the mistrial.

I already used Walsh for the hang. Sympathy is not a verdict. I am not walking that ground again.

Well, this juror has spoken. Whitlock is the analysis. Marcel is the call. He says he checked the box. He says he stayed on the children. A dismissed charge is not a verdict. Neither is the beating.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

They Didn't Want the Risk

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:49:52 -0500

Bill Clinton is back on the record about the man who planned September 11. The New York Post has the interview from John Catsimatidis's WABC show, Cats Roundtable.

Source: Scouting America

Read it here: NY Post

Clinton says he signed the order. Capture would have been fine. Stopping Usama Bin Laden was the point.

“I had authorized the CIA to try to take him out.”

Then the plan died at the last minute. Not because the target was in doubt. Because the agency did not want the miss.

“I was scared, and I was mad because we tried to get him before, and the CIA at the last minute killed the plan that I think might well have succeeded.”
“But they were afraid that if they missed, they’d kill a lot of innocent civilians. They didn’t want to run the risk. I didn’t second-guess them.”

That last line is the one I keep. He wanted the man gone. He still thinks the raid might have worked. He did not override the people who pulled it.

He is not claiming he never tried. He is claiming he let the risk calculation stand. Twenty-five years later he still calls Bin Laden the biggest threat he saw, and he still wishes they had done more. Wishing is not the same as ordering them back in.

“I wish we had done even more to get him. I always thought he was our biggest threat … I wanted to get him, and I did what I could to do that.”

He also says he knew whose work it was when the second plane hit. He was in Australia. Hillary was in Washington. Chelsea was in Lower Manhattan, told to walk north with the rest of the crowd.

“I was watching television in Australia when the second plane hit. I immediately said that bin Laden did this.”
“The only adversaries we have with the capacity to do this are Iran and bin Laden. And the Iranians wouldn’t do it because we could wipe them off the face of the Earth immediately. And bin Laden is holed up in a cave in Afghanistan.”

Usama Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad in 2011. Clinton’s account of the earlier chance is not new in outline. What he is willing to say now is the reason the chance closed: civilian dead if the shot missed, and a president who did not second-guess the people who flinched.

Deserved It Still Travels

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 12:59:19 -0500

I already had the sentence, the day after the anniversary. We still hear people say we deserved it. Treating the dead as a receipt. Changing the subject from the people at their desks to a running argument about everything America has ever done.

The clip is not a pundit discovering that line. It is George Pataki, governor of New York the morning of 9/11/2001, still circling it twenty-five years later with Maya Sulkin of The Free Press. The mayor fight comes with it. The sentence is the same one.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

The cut is titled What New York’s Governor Saw on 9/11. The written version asks the question from his 2020 book: did the terrorists win.

He will not retell the morning as a highlight reel, and I won’t either. His daughter called. The second plane ended the accident theory. He shut the airspace, the bridges, and the tunnels, and refused the bunker in Albany. By afternoon he and Giuliani were at the same table downtown. He names Welles Crowther, Zack Zeng, and his friend Neil Levin, who was at breakfast in Windows on the World.

The interview is not about that morning. The morning produced a unity he still calls the only silver lining. He wrote Beyond the Great Divide because it did not last. He tells Sulkin it is still unclear whether the terrorists won. He will not say we did. “We are a house divided against ourselves right now.”

That is his sentence. Mine was simpler, and I already wrote it. Sulkin puts the current form in front of him: more young Americans think we had it coming. Then Hasan Piker, who said in 2019 that America deserved 9/11 and later walked back the word “deserved.” The original line is what travels. Pataki calls it a disgrace. Anyone tied to that man, he says, should be kept out of office.

That is the heat around Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has shared a stage with Piker and would not, for a long stretch, put enough distance between them. A petition asked him to stay off the Ground Zero plaza. Pataki agreed. Mamdani went anyway. So did Pataki. So did Giuliani, who had said the mayor’s presence offended him and then shook his hand. The names were read. Both things happened on the same stone.

Quieter than the mayor fight is the language fight. Pataki went off on a CBC memo that told staff not to call 9/11 a terror attack. He said they knew what the day was. They had decided the word would insult someone. You keep the buildings. You sand the noun off the event.

I am not answering his book question for him. The towers came down. The government did not. There has not been another attack on that scale here. That is not nothing. It is also not what either of us was pointing at. He is pointing at a house divided. I am pointing at a sentence that used to be basic: this country was the target of a terrorist attack. The dead did not bill us for it. Once that sentence is negotiable, the rest is inventory.

He will not call it won. The people who say we deserved it no longer have to whisper.

Twenty-Five Years Later

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 23:55:00 -0500

I cannot believe September 11, 2001, was twenty-five years ago.

One of the slogans of that period was “Never Forget.” What is sad is that a lot of us have. The phrase still gets said. The people it was supposed to name do not always travel with it.

@America on X

What I notice first, a day after the anniversary, is not only the forgetting. It is that we still hear people say we deserved it.

Deserved it. As if the people who went to work at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, or the passengers on those four flights, had billed the country for something and the bill came due on a Tuesday morning. That is a horrendous thing to say about the dead. It is also a way of changing the subject from what happened to a running argument about everything America has ever done.

The attack had a source, a method, and a target. Those are not mysteries. Treating the day as a receipt for prior sins is a way of not looking at the people who were at their desks.

I do not want to wade into the debate over whether Islam is compatible with Western civilization. I believe in freedom of religion. My instinct is to reject the claim that Islam is, as a whole, a violent faith, and to reject the claim that violent fundamentalism is simply “Middle Eastern culture.” Plenty of Americans who practice the faith live under the same secular law the rest of us do.

What I will not dismiss is the other sentence we keep hearing: that some neighborhoods have, in effect, adopted a different rulebook. Dearborn, Michigan, is the name that gets used. Last month it was not an abstraction. At an Aug. 18 city council meeting, moved to the Henry Ford Centennial Library after a “Christian Crusader March” drew a crowd and 22 arrests outside, Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell of 180 Church told the dais the city was no longer under American law. “We are up under Sharia law,” he said. “We will not have it anymore.” The clip ran for days. Sewell’s examples were the call to prayer, halal meat in schools, Arabic on storefronts, and what he called a two-tier response after activist Jake Lang was assaulted at an earlier protest. Fox noted he was not pointing to an ordinance. He was pointing to favoritism. Council members did not denounce Sharia when he asked them to.

Britannica and city officials say Dearborn is not under Sharia. Last week Rep. Keith Self of Texas filed a concurrent resolution denouncing it nationwide, citing a late-August remark by President Trump. The argument is loud because the stakes are not small. America has a Judeo-Christian history. Its laws are secular. Those two facts can sit together. They cannot sit with a parallel legal system that answers to a different source.

If any pocket of the country is running on a different set of rules, the answer is not a sermon about which faith is worse. The answer is the same one we already have on paper: one set of secular laws, and protection for people who practice all of them.

In 2001 we had a lot to be thankful for. We lived in a country that still offered liberty and opportunity to people willing to take it. Twenty-five years later the fight I see is less about the men who flew the planes and more about how little some of us still think that offer is worth.

Terrorism is not gone. It is also not the only thing that can hollow out a country. The quieter work is teaching people that the dead on those flights and in those buildings did not earn what they got, and that the system that let the rest of us keep living here is not an inheritance you get to spend down while calling it justice.

The enemy that morning had a face and a method. The one that lasts is harder to point at. It is the habit of treating the dead as a moral, and the country as something you apologize for instead of keep.

The Second Night

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:30:00 -0500

Night two starts at 3 p.m. Central at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX. Same hall as Wednesday. Still no roll call. Vance has the keynote. Trump closes.

The RNC’s Thursday blocks, in the order they published them:

3 p.m. — Host-committee chair Heather Washburne and RNC Chair Joe Gruters open again. Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas. House candidates Laurie Buckhout (N.C.), Jason Smith and Ryan Mackenzie, Greg Cunningham (N.M.). Freed hostages. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

4 p.m. — More House names, including Eric Flores and Tano Tijerina in the South Texas seats. Conference Chair Lisa McClain. NRCC Chair Richard Hudson. A TrumpRx patient. Sen. Ted Cruz closes the hour.

5 p.m. — Speaker Mike Johnson. A Charlie Kirk tribute; the anniversary is today. Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers. Gov. Greg Abbott.

6 p.m. — Rep. Mike Lawler. Ross Ulbricht. A 9/11 twenty-fifth-anniversary tribute. Tunnel to Towers. That hour is also when the NFL season opens.

7 p.m. — HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson. Karoline Leavitt. Donald Trump Jr.

8 p.m. — Vice President JD Vance, then President Trump.

That is the run of show. I am leaving what they do with it for the tape. C-SPAN is carrying it here: [VIDEO]

Night one is here: Pretend I'm on the Ballot

Pretend I'm on the Ballot

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:55:33 -0500

Trump spoke last. Lee Greenwood, then roughly two hours, then night one was over.

Check out what he said here: [VIDEO]

The line that organized the speech was turnout. “When I’m on the ticket, Republicans always do very well,” Trump said. Midterms without him on the line are the problem he named. “So I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot.” About 35 races. Twice or three times if he has to.

The first name on that list was Ken Paxton.

“I’ll be coming back to Texas, because we have to elect Ken Paxton.” Then the bit he has been doing for weeks: the suit, the voice, “not the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen,” then “the greatest attorney general in America.” He looked for Paxton in the hall and said Ken would never speak to him again.

Paxton had already gone. Thanked Trump. “Protecting the Texas Promise.” 107 suits against Biden. Talarico as the most radical and most well-funded Democrat in Texas, out to destroy the American dream, California’s third senator, “obsessed with transitions.”

For Talarico, Trump used the trail nickname: Talafreako. Talarico already put that word on merch. Wednesday he was at a grocery drive across town.

The race is why Dallas was not scenery. Paxton beat Cornyn in the May runoff with Trump’s endorsement. Talarico won the Democratic primary outright. Texas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. Cook and Sabato: Toss Up since late August. Inside Elections still Lean Republican into September.

The polls have sat inside the margin for months. Times/Siena late June: 47–47. Emerson mid-August: Paxton 47, Talarico 46. UT/Texas Politics Project August: Talarico 42, Paxton 39. RCP through late August: Talarico up about two. The survey that dropped the afternoon the convention opened, N+ Univision: Talarico 48, Paxton 43, 7 percent undecided. Overton late August: 50–50 with leaners. I am not picking a winner out of that stack. A Texas Senate race is this close in September.

Money is not close. Through June 30: Talarico $68.6 million raised and $21.5 million cash; Paxton $9.2 million and $1.8 million on hand.

Then the rest of night one — no roll call, Gruters on defying history, the policy blocks, Blanche on a partisan stage, the hall descriptions from people who were there, Thune booed, Iran and the Strait, Kirk marked for today, the $5,000 dividend, the close.

They noticed the midterm pattern and answered it by putting him in the building. In Texas the invented ticket already has a name. He spent the first candidate slot on Paxton, needled the suit, and promised to come back.

Watch Night One of the Republican Midterm Convention here: [VIDEO]

Commissioner Without a Definition

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 5 Sep 2026 12:56:37 -0500

Cathy Engelbert is retiring as WNBA commissioner at the end of the year. Adam Silver announced it Friday. She has had the job since 2019.

Libs of TikTok posted the news as a verdict: she is leaving because the league still will not say what a woman is.

BREAKING: Cathy Engelbert, the Commissioner for the WNBA, announced her retirement at the end of the 2026 season after the WNBA couldn’t determine what a woman is pic.twitter.com/ENfE8eCQVZ
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 4, 2026

Enes Kanter Freedom posted the same afternoon. “MAKE @WNBA FEMALE AGAIN.” He called the retirement a win for women and an admission that the rules have to change. Then he offered himself as the next commissioner, dictionary included, on the ground that the league still cannot define the word in its own name.

MAKE @WNBA FEMALE AGAIN

Commissioner Freedom Has a Nice Ring to It.

While the reported retirement of #WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert is a win for women and an admission that the league’s rules must change, her retirement does not solve the systemic issues which must be… pic.twitter.com/QqIQ3bwKsX
— Enes Kanter FREEDOM (@EnesFreedom) September 4, 2026

On Fox’s Ingraham Angle that same news cycle he put it shorter:

“Just get this, America—instead of defining what a woman is, right? The ‘Cocoo Cathy,’ I call her. Cathy Engelbert, the commissioner, decided to step down as commissioner from one of the biggest organizations in America. I mean, I just want America to understand what’s happening here. What we are doing is working. I want to thank all the parents out there. I want to thank all the Americans out there that believe and trust in us. This is just the beginning. We’re going to try to put as much pressure as we can.”

The fight did not start Friday. The current CBA says “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.” It does not say what a woman is. No public rule on sex at birth, hormones, or self-identification.

In August, after Sophie Cunningham said transgender athletes should stay out of women’s sports, Kanter Freedom and Royce White declared for a future draft as a test. Engelbert sent teams a memo. The topic was “complex and nuanced.” Eligibility is collectively bargained. Fair competition remains a priority. Conversations would continue. The league said there were “no immediate eligibility matters” and denounced “bad-faith efforts.”

Kanter Freedom kept going. He wore a shirt that defined woman as an adult human female and was ejected from a Chicago Sky game. He filed a complaint. He asked Engelbert for a public meeting. The office answered with a task force.

The official statement is growth: media rights, a new CBA, expansion, the best still coming. That ledger is real. It does not finish the sentence the league wrote for itself.

Whether the job left first is a different question. Nobody on the record has produced a shove from Adam Silver or the owners. Engelbert told the AP the decision was hers and that she felt no pressure from NBA or WNBA stakeholders. What the beat had already written is the temperature inside the building. In July, ESPN talked to more than twenty owners, executives, players, and insiders. The consensus was that she grew the business and was not the person for what came next. Multiple high-ranking team sources said 2026 was likely her last season. Silver, asked about her future, praised the growth and said they would “have ongoing discussions about what the future looks like.”

After Friday’s announcement, CBS Sports put the feeling in one line: the WNBA community “let out a collective breath.” The headline was that she left the league better than she found it, “but it was definitely time to go.” That is not a leak that she was fired. It is the closest the mainstream desk has come to saying the room wanted her gone.

A women’s league that will not define woman can announce a retirement. It has not announced an answer.

Sympathy Is Not a Verdict

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 5 Sep 2026 00:25:46 -0500

Matt Walsh posted an instant reaction Friday afternoon to a hung jury in the Massachusetts trial of Lindsay Clancy.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

The clip is not a tour of five weeks of testimony. Walsh’s argument is narrower. The only reason the case did not end in an acquittal, he says, is one holdout juror — a man, on a panel of nine women and three men — who would not join the others in finding Clancy not criminally responsible. Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, asked the judge to remove him, told a single justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court the juror was biased against people with mental illness, and invoked the Americans with Disabilities Act. The court said no. Outside, Reddington said the other eleven had been “robbed by one man.”

Walsh puts that next to the Derek Chauvin jury. In Minneapolis, he says, jurors ignored the law and convicted Chauvin of murder because he did not inspire sympathy — even after, in Walsh’s telling, they understood George Floyd had overdosed. Deliberations are treated as closed, so the verdict stood. In Plymouth the pressure ran the other way: eleven ready to excuse the killings, and a public effort to pry out the one who would not. Walsh’s larger claim is the Massachusetts rule itself. The killings are not in dispute. The Commonwealth still has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she was criminally responsible. He thinks no one can prove another person’s mind that way. A mistrial, to him, is only a relative win. His close is that the insanity defense should not exist.

The case underneath the clip is simpler than the argument about it.

Facts and Disposition

On January 24, 2023, in Duxbury, Lindsay Clancy sent her husband, Patrick, out for takeout and medicine. She took their three children to the basement and strangled them with exercise bands: Cora, five; Dawson, three; Callan, eight months. Cora and Dawson were dead when Patrick came home. Callan died days later. She cut herself and jumped from a second-story window. She is paralyzed from the waist down.

She was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. In Massachusetts that can be proved by deliberate premeditation, by extreme atrocity or cruelty, or both. The prosecution said she planned the window of time, separated the older children so one would not see the other and run, and kept going after each child went limp. She did not deny the killings. Her defense was lack of criminal responsibility: postpartum psychosis, and a claim that she could not appreciate the wrongfulness of the acts or conform her conduct to the law. The verdict slip also allowed second-degree murder and manslaughter.

After about thirty-eight hours over seven days, the jury told Judge William Sullivan it could not agree. Reporting after the mistrial is that the split was eleven to one against a finding of criminal responsibility. Sullivan declared a mistrial on September 4. That is not a conviction and it is not an acquittal. The murder charges remain. Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz has to decide whether to try the case again. A status conference is set for later this month. Clancy stays at Tewksbury State Hospital in the meantime.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

After the Mistrial

To be honest, I had been following this case only in snippets — on podcasts such as Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro, or even Fox News. There may be some sympathy with regards to postpartum depression. The main thing I want to illustrate is that postpartum depression, or even psychosis, is not a new thing. The oldest account that turned up went back at least thirty-six years, to the Los Angeles Times on Victoria Karter.

Watching the pressers after the mistrial showed women heckling the prosecutor, bellowing about consideration for the mother. The prosecutor’s statement was about the children who lost their lives. That was the right subject.

There is no militancy here from me about whether the mother needs help if she did suffer from postpartum depression. The live question is that three children are dead, and whether she was criminally responsible for that.

My suspicion is that the holdout was the one juror willing to hold Clancy accountable for the deaths. The others may have been more sympathetic to a mother who may well be mentally ill.

Still, at the end of the day, conviction or acquittal, Mrs. Clancy will have to sit with her actions.

Cruz on PBD: Blue-Collar Voters Decided 2016

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 4 Sep 2026 00:33:31 -0500

Patrick Bet-David sat down with Ted Cruz this week for PBD Podcast #851. The title is the tease: what Trump told him behind closed doors. The conversation is longer than that. Cruz walks back through 2016, through working with Trump as president, and through the family story he uses to explain why he does not talk like a country-club Republican. Bet-David keeps circling 2028. Cruz will not announce. He will describe the argument.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

Three stretches do the work. How 2016 broke, including the poll Cruz trusted and the nickname that cut. What the relationship looks like in the Oval — including the afternoon Elon Musk tweeted that Trump was on the Epstein list. And the biography: financially independent since seventeen, no trust fund, a standing fight with country-club Republicans. The close is 2028, and JD Vance.

2016: the poll, the shakeout, the nickname

Seventeen Republicans entered. Cruz asks you to lay odds in New York or Washington in spring 2015. Nobody would have bet on Trump. Nobody would have bet on him either — a first-term senator at one or two percent. The other end of the race was treated as settled. “At the time, people thought Hillary was this unbeatable juggernaut.” His path against her was blue-collar voters and evangelicals who had stayed home in 2008 and 2012. Turn them out and the map is Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.

The poll he trusted was one cross-tab: truck drivers, steel workers, cops, firefighters, waitresses. In almost every state, Trump was first among those voters and Cruz second, or the reverse. Not Marco, not Jeb, not Kasich. That is how he says the race turned out. Twelve states where he was first with that group. Twenty-four where Trump was. Kasich took Ohio. Rubio took Minnesota. Everyone else was a rounding error. Rubio’s problem, as Cruz frames it, was Gang of Eight. Cruz raised $92 million. Trump got more than $3 billion in free media. A joint ticket polled before Florida is the road he still thinks about. Rubio canceled the motel meeting.

Then the name. Cruz’s team tried to invent one. Crooked Donald was on the whiteboard before Trump used Crooked Hillary. Cruz killed the exercise. “It’s just not me.” Lyin’ Ted landed. “Trump has a marketing genius that is instinctual.” Cruz’s strength was trust. The nickname went straight at it. “It did real damage.” He suspended after Indiana. On election night he was already out, in Houston. Trump took the states Cruz had been naming. Heidi said she would be damned.

Once Trump is president

Cruz talks to Trump every week, sometimes every day. On foreign policy he says the president has listened most of the time, not all of the time. He calls himself Trump’s strongest ally in the Senate. One tariff call after the market dropped: Cruz pushed a pause, Trump told him to get lost — Cruz repeats the word — and paused the next day anyway.

The meeting that derails is early in the second term. Cruz is in the Oval pitching school choice as a civil-rights play for kids in failing schools. Mid-pitch, Elon Musk tweets that Trump is on the Epstein list. An aide prints it. Cruz sees the knuckles go white. “I learned some curse words I didn’t even know.” School choice stops. The meeting leaves the rails.

The bill did not die in that room. Cruz rewrote the language for the Byrd rule and told John Thune he would burn the package if the provision came out. It stayed. Trump Accounts and no tax on tips sit next to it. Cruz says he is friends with both men now. The fight between them, he says, was not good for the country.

The biography he keeps using

Rafael Cruz left Cuba in 1957 after prison and a warning from his father. Ferry to Key West. Greyhound to Austin. A hundred dollars sewn into his underwear. The oil business later collapsed. The family went bankrupt.

Ted says he has been financially independent since he was seventeen. No trust fund. “That is not my world.” He finished school with about a hundred thousand dollars of debt — “a mortgage but I didn’t have a house” — and paid it off at thirty-eight.

He has spent his Senate career, he says, fighting country-club Republicans. His people are the truck driver and the steel worker. The 2016 cross-tab and the biography are the same claim. The party that talks like a club loses that voter. The party that talks like a job keeps him.

2028, and Vance

Bet-David keeps asking if Cruz is running. “I don’t have an announcement about ’28. I am right now not running for ’28.” He calls the next race free agency. There is no Never Trump lane that matters — “maybe Liz Cheney and six people.” He does not treat the field as settled behind JD Vance.

He likes Vance. He barnstormed Ohio for him. The split he will name is policy. Small government versus the instinct to spend. A non-interventionist hawk versus isolation. He objects to an Iran memorandum Vance negotiated that Cruz says would have moved hundreds of billions toward Tehran.

Vance’s chances are real because he already sits on the coalition. They are not locked because 2028 is an argument about what that coalition believes. Cruz’s lane, if he takes it, is the voter he has been naming since Iowa. Voters will sort the rest.

The other line he draws

The rest of the hour is a different fight. Cruz calls Tucker Carlson “the single most dangerous demagogue in America.” He says Tucker treats Trump as the Antichrist, that the shows run at Israel and Jews, and that antisemitism is “the gateway drug to anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism.” Matt Gaetz, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massie sit in one sentence as the cloud around Tucker — telling young people to hate Israel and hate Trump, “and they’re very quickly getting to and they hate America too.” That last step is Cruz’s. Gaetz’s actual place in that crowd is the Tucker studio and the America First break over Israel, not a signed manifesto.

A few other names get a pass. AOC and Newsom as the Democratic front-runners. Rubio as smart, likable, a gifted communicator. Elon as the smartest man Cruz has met, a man who does not know there is a box. Cruz is not just retelling 2016. He is drawing a line through the right and naming who he thinks is on the wrong side of it.

Liam Out Loud: When Institutions Stop Valuing Truth

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 13:40:18 -0500

Liam Out Loud posted a short essay-video on August 31 titled Why Feminized Institutions Stop Telling the Truth.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

The claim is not that women cannot do science, law, or teaching. It is narrower. Those fields only work if they keep discriminating — science on truth, law on justice, education on intelligence. Once the culture inside them tips toward social equity and consensus, the original job recedes.

He never names Helen Andrews. He is in her argument anyway. I wrote about her Compact essay and the UnHerd interview in June. Her line was that wokeness is not a new ideology so much as feminine group patterns applied to institutions that used to run on different rules. Empathy over detached judgment. Safety over risk. Cohesion over open conflict. Ostracism instead of argument. Liam is asking what that flip does to shops whose job is to tell the truth.

h/t Newsalert

What “feminized institutions” means

Andrews’s timing is the point. Law schools turned majority female in 2016. The New York Times newsroom crossed that line in 2018. Medical schools followed. Psychology is further along. Fields that hit the line tend not to stop at 50-50. After the culture flips, the scoring system changes. What gets rewarded is consensus and emotional safety. What gets punished is the person who will not drop an ugly finding.

That is what “feminized” is supposed to mean here. Not that women cannot do the work. That average differences in priorities, once they become the majority culture of a shop, change what the shop is for.

Read Helen Andrews' column The Great Feminization.

Liam’s points

His evidence is a 2024 survey of U.S. psychology professors by Cory Clark and colleagues. Asked whether scientists should put truth first when it collides with social-equity goals, 66.4 percent of the men said yes. 43 percent of the women did. A slim majority of the whole sample still chose truth. Almost nobody said equity should simply beat it. The interesting number is how many would not say truth wins. Psychology now trains the therapists, the HR offices, and a lot of the language other institutions copy. If that guild ranks harmony above an ugly result, the result has a harder time leaving the lab.

He uses Jason Arday at Cambridge as the specimen. The appointment led with race, a redemption story, and a job ad that listed support for equality, diversity and inclusion as essential. When Nathan Cofnas posted the plagiarism comparisons, the heat went to the auditor.

Then he reaches for older pictures of the same split. Frans de Waal: males compete over outcomes, females over relationships and atmosphere. Le Bon: a crowd stops asking “is this true?” and starts asking “will I still belong?” Nietzsche: what preserves the group is called good. Jung, used more loosely: selection versus completeness. A family can run on completeness. A lab and a court cannot.

The useful piece does not require all of those names. Institutions are tools. A tool has a job. When the people inside it start optimizing for how the room feels, the tool stops doing the job.

Averages are not persons. Plenty of women put evidence first. Plenty of men hedge. The question is the scoring system. Once equity support is an essential criterion, truth is no longer the only test.

I am not ready to say this is the only cause of what we call wokeness. Birth rates, elite overproduction, social media, and ordinary status competition are all in the mix. I am willing to say this much. If an institution exists to tell the truth, you should notice when a growing share of the people inside it will not say that purpose comes first.

Science should discriminate on the basis of truth. Law should discriminate on the basis of justice. Education should discriminate on the basis of intelligence. Once they select for social equity instead, the primary function falls by the wayside.

That last line is Liam’s. Ask what the shop is for. Then ask whether its hiring and punishment rules still serve that.

Glenn Beck: Why Lake America Broke the Room

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 1 Sep 2026 11:58:33 -0500

Glenn Beck’s clip is not about the depth of the lake. It is about who treated names as a moral project for fifteen years, and what happens when the other side picks up the same pen.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

Thursday’s order is already on this blog. Federal maps are supposed to say Lake America. Canada does not have to. New York does not have to. Mark Carney said the name is four hundred years old. Doug Ford put up a sign: “Lake Ontario. Now and Always.” Kathy Hochul said New York will not be calling it that. Google followed the U.S. government for U.S. users.

Beck’s question is the one after the press release. If names were sacred last decade, why is this one a joke?

Sports is where the rule was rehearsed. The Washington Redskins became the Football Team, then the Commanders. Dan Snyder called the old name a badge of honor. Sponsors and the league decided otherwise. Cleveland’s Indians, a name since 1915, became the Guardians. Edmonton’s Eskimos became the Elks. Stanford’s Indians became the Cardinal. High schools retired Indians, Warriors, Redskins, Squaws. The Braves, Chiefs, and Blackhawks kept their names and took the same lectures. The lesson sold to the country was simple: the people who feel harmed get to decide whether the name stays.

Then the brands. Aunt Jemima became Pearl Milling Company. Uncle Ben’s became Ben’s Original. Eskimo Pie became Edy’s. Land O’Lakes took the woman off the box and kept the land. The Dixie Chicks became the Chicks. Lady Antebellum became Lady A. The Boy Scouts became Scouting America. Splash Mountain became Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. The products did not move. The labels did.

Then the rest of the map. Squaw Valley became Palisades Tahoe. Dixie State became Utah Tech. Yale renamed a college. Princeton took Woodrow Wilson off a school. In code the master branch became main. Master bedroom became primary bedroom. Manhole became maintenance hole. Homeless became unhoused. Convict became justice-involved individual.

Then the bases, with the force of statute. In 2023 the Army retired nine Confederate names: Bragg to Liberty, Benning to Moore, Hood to Cavazos, Gordon to Eisenhower, Lee to Gregg-Adams, Rucker to Novosel, Polk to Johnson, Pickett to Barfoot, A.P. Hill to Walker. In 2025 the words came back with different honorees — a World War II paratrooper, a World War I corporal, a Medal of Honor sergeant from Mogadishu. The posts sound like they used to. On paper they do not honor the same men. The job was paid for twice.

Beck’s line is that Ottawa is now using the argument that was ruled out of bounds when Snyder used it. Age of the name. Honor. Ordinary people already know what to call the thing.

The heat on Lake America has a few sources. It is a shared Great Lake. About half the surface is Canadian. Ontario comes from Wendat — beautiful lake, big lake — and predates both countries. The Seneca Nation called the order disrespect. Wendat Grand Chief Pierre Picard called it an attempt to erase history. That is the same moral language used on the teams and the syrup bottles, now aimed at a president the speakers already oppose.

The timing does the rest. The order talks heritage and volume. The week was a collapsed trade talk, tariffs, Ford telling Trump to kiss his ass, and a post that the United States did not expect much more business with Ontario. The Gulf of America already happened. This one reads like a poke. Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Lieu, Stephen King called it childish, an embarrassment, Saturday Night Live. Nobody thinks the water moved. The complaint is that the presidency spent an afternoon renaming a neighbor’s shoreline for a news cycle.

There is also the rule written in the last decade: names are never “just names.” Names teach. Names wound. Institutions must update the letterhead. Once that is the rule, there is no clean exemption because the new president is vulgar or the target is Canada. Either the Board on Geographic Names is a moral actor or it is a filing cabinet. It was treated as a moral actor when the names were Confederate or commercial. The cabinet still works when the other party holds the key.

A syrup rebrand lives on a shelf. A base renaming lives on a gate most people never drive through. “Lake America” on Google Maps in Buffalo is the argument made physical. That is why Ford built a two-story sign.

The lake does not care. Most people who fish it will not change what they say at the diner. In 1917 this country called sauerkraut liberty cabbage. In 2003 the House cafeteria called French fries freedom fries. In 2006 the menus put French fries back. No ceremony. Language is a habit. Almost nobody who holds it works at Interior.

The inconsistency remains. If a four-hundred-year-old name is sacred when a prime minister says it, it needed a better defense when a team owner said it. If the last decade of renames was required justice, this one is the same species of act — a government deciding what the official paper will say. The noise is about why that species only counts in one direction.

The water did not move. The rule did.

The Rubin Report Interview Britain Won’t Air on the BBC

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 23:30:00 -0500

Dave Rubin sat down with Andrew Gold, the former BBC filmmaker who now hosts Heretics. The title of the episode is the claim: if this is not stopped, the UK’s fall is irreversible.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

Gold starts with psychology. Political tribes and social-media loops, he says, run on the same machinery as cults: belonging, status, conformity. Intelligent people get trapped because the group rewards the approved answers. People usually leave only after the group mistreats them. October 7 did that for some progressive Jews.

Then the machinery that is supposed to keep the argument open.

The Online Safety Act already treats a wide range of posts as police business. Forces in England and Wales have recorded thousands of arrests a year for social-media communications. After the Southport riots, a national unit was set up to flag protest-related posts to local police. Gold’s specific warning is the next step: platforms being pushed to favor “trustworthy” media — in practice the BBC and a few other legacy outlets — over independent YouTube channels. Age checks and ID verification would make that preference easier to enforce.

That is the speech half.

The population half is the scale of recent inflows, not last year’s dip. Official net migration peaked near 944,000 in the year to March 2023. It has since fallen to 171,000 in 2025, but the stock remains: about 13 million UK residents were born overseas, roughly one in five. Small-boat detections were still 33,000 in the year to June 2026. Even some politicians on the left now talk about stronger borders. The bottleneck is removal.

The rules that slow deportation are mostly not EU law. They come from the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights. Cases go to the court in Strasbourg. The UK left the EU and is still in the Convention; the Human Rights Act writes those rights into British courts. Sweden is in both systems.

Two articles do most of the work. Article 3 is absolute: if a court finds a real risk of torture or inhuman treatment in the destination country, the person cannot be sent — including to a third country that might send them on. That is the same non-refoulement idea in the UN Refugee Convention. Article 8 is the more common delay: family and private life. A partner, a child in school, or long residence can outweigh the public interest in removal after a balancing test. Appeals stack. Origin states often refuse travel documents. The Rwanda flights were stopped on those grounds. Leaving Brussels did not leave Strasbourg.

EU members have a second layer. The Pact on Migration and Asylum began applying in June 2026. It requires screening and fingerprinting at the external border, a fast-track procedure for weak claims, and a rewritten Dublin rule: the first country of entry is still usually responsible, and secondary movement is supposed to send the person back. Solidarity — relocating a few thousand people a year from Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta — is small next to the arrivals. A new Return Regulation tries to make refusal orders enforceable across the bloc and allows “return hubs” in third countries. Member states still run their own work and family visas. What they cannot do is opt out of the common asylum and return machinery, or out of Strasbourg sitting on top of it. Faster procedures on paper still stop when a court finds an Article 3 risk or an Article 8 family claim.

Sweden is the comparison Gold uses.

Sweden spent decades as a high-trust, low-violence country and then took a large, fast wave of asylum seekers, especially around 2015. Foreign-born residents are now about a fifth of the population. The official crime agency, Brå, has found foreign-born people and Swedish-born people with two foreign-born parents over-represented among crime suspects — still elevated after controls for age, sex, income, and education. Police describe “vulnerable areas” with parallel social structures, clan networks, shootings, and bombings. Tens of thousands of people are linked to criminal networks. Children have been recruited as shooters because they face lighter sentences. That is not the whole country. It is a concentrated pattern that did not exist at this scale before the inflows.

Gold’s argument is that the two tracks run together. Closing the information space makes the demographic change harder to name. Naming it without the legal tools to reverse course is what he means by irreversible.

The tape is the argument. The numbers are the background.

A Meme with a Source

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 02:42:08 -0500

Trump posted a ranking of the presidents. He put his own portrait in a box that did not exist in 1948.

That box is the whole argument. The rest of the chart is an old grid with a few new names dropped in.

Here's what the President posted on Truth Social on August 27, 2026.

The left will hate the self-portrait. That is easy to predict. The more useful objection came from the right.

Ben Shapiro: the list is crap even if you ignore the top box. Wilson was one of the worst. FDR stretched the Depression. Coolidge was strong and Harding was fine. Grant ran Reconstruction. Reagan is missing.

Here's what he said on X/Twitter:

This list is total crap. Put aside Trump at the top. Woodrow Wilson was one of the worst presidents in American history; FDR lengthened the Great Depression by eight years; Calvin Coolidge was awesome and Harding was fine; Grant oversaw reconstruction; and Ronald Reagan and… pic.twitter.com/KmSSwDpiJk
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 28, 2026

I like Shapiro. I also think he is grading a different test than the page Trump copied.

This is a meme built on a real ranking. November 1, 1948. Life magazine. Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 historians to sort the presidents they had into five buckets: Great, Near Great, Average, Below Average, Failures.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the last man on that list because he was the last finished presidency they could judge. Truman was sitting in the office, so his record was incomplete. William Henry Harrison and James A. Garfield were left off because they died almost immediately. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes had not happened yet.

That is why they are missing. Not because someone forgot Reagan.

What Trump added is small. A new top row for himself. Clinton in Average. Biden, Obama, and Carter in Failures next to Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding.

That last choice is the tell. Carter, Obama, and Biden are the Democrats he runs against in public. They belong in the ditch if the chart is a campaign poster.

Clinton does not. Trump spent years calling him a crook and a disgrace and still put him with James Madison and William McKinley instead of with Obama. The two men have been useful to each other since the 1990s — golf, fundraisers, the occasional kind word after a funeral. The ranking follows that pattern more than it follows party.

If this were only “Democrats fail,” Clinton would be in the bottom row. He is not. The habit is personal. The people Trump still fights go to Failures. The one he has made his peace with stays in the middle.

The next morning he posted a second graphic: five who built the country and five who broke it. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Reagan, Trump on one side. Buchanan, Wilson, Carter, Obama, Biden on the other..

Source: @realDonaldTrump Truth Social

Reagan comes back. Wilson does not. Thursday he is Great. Friday he is bureaucracy.

That second post is the argument. The first post is the 1948 page with extra names.

Woodrow Wilson is the name that splits the room, and it should. My own problem with him is the racism. He resegregated the federal government. That is not a footnote.

1948 still put him with Lincoln and Washington. The historians were looking at the war and the peace he tried to design after it. The League of Nations was his idea. The war he presided over was sold as the war to end all wars. We still live in the architecture that followed, including the United Nations.

Both of those things can be true at once. He used the office. He also used it to write Jim Crow into the civil service.

Michael Knowles talked about the list on Friday and said it is not an ideological ranking. It is a list of men who knew how to wield power. Wilson could. FDR could. Lincoln could.

That is closer to what Schlesinger was measuring. Not who you would vote for now. Who bent the government when the country was at a turning point.

Lincoln sits with the Founders on almost every one of these charts because he held the Union together. The cost was federal power over the states that claimed a right to leave. People who care about that cost are not wrong to keep saying it. It is the same power question Knowles is asking.

I caught the origin of the meme on PBD’s Friday show. Once you see the 1948 page, the omissions stop looking random.

Source: Bill Downs, War Correspondent

Favorite and effective are different questions. 1948 was answering the second. The extra box at the top is answering the first.

Who are yours? Who do you think actually used the office?

Truth Before Narrative

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 13:01:54 -0500

We are a little more than two months from the midterms. When the policy argument is thin, some Democrats reach for the older one: America is still that country. The one that hangs people from trees.

Jon Ossoff talks as if the Klan is on the ballot in Georgia. Ayanna Pressley says the Confederacy is alive and well. Jasmine Crockett points to “mysterious deaths” in Mississippi — people “found, hung or otherwise” — and says we can no longer rely on the Justice Department to look. The implication is not subtle. Vote our way, or you are choosing the noose.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

Ben Shapiro spent part of a recent show on the cases that keep getting cited as proof. His column on the same argument is here.

Ms. Rachel is Rachel Accurso, the toddler YouTube host behind Songs for Littles. About 20 million subscribers, a Netflix kids show, the pink headband and overalls. Parents of two-year-olds know her as the person who teaches Wheels on the Bus. She started the channel in 2019 after her own son had a speech delay. She has a master’s in music education from NYU. TikTok is one of her platforms. It is not the source of the following.

She has spent the last couple of years putting politics in the same feed as the nursery rhymes. Gaza. ICE detention. In March she told NBC News, “I am political.” This week she put the hanging claim in its cleanest form: please listen to the Black community. Black people don’t hang themselves from trees. There have been at least seven this year.

The history that sentence is pointing at is real. The medical examiner reports and the surveillance footage are also real. Those two things are not required to cancel each other. They just have to be looked at in the same paragraph.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Here are the specific ones Shapiro named.

Raleigh, North Carolina — August 15, 2026

A 32-year-old Black man was found hanging from a tree in a parking lot off South McDowell Street, near Nash Square and a Caribbean festival. Police did not release his name. His mother told them he had a history of mental-health problems.

Raleigh Police Chief Rico Boyce, who is Black, laid out the video timeline at a press conference two days later. At 1:59 p.m. cameras show the man walking toward the tree alone, carrying an electrical cord. Between 2:06 and 2:07 p.m. the footage captures the incident. No one else is in the frame. A nearby worker spots the body at 2:25 p.m. and 911 is called.

Boyce: “Investigators have found no evidence indicating that another person caused or contributed to the young man’s death… Our investigation confirms that this is a suicide.” The case went to the North Carolina medical examiner for the final manner-of-death finding. News & Observer coverage and the city’s own press conference are the primary records.

Demartravion “Trey” Reed, 21 — Cleveland, Mississippi — September 15, 2025

Reed, a Black freshman at Delta State University, was found hanging from a tree near the pickleball courts on campus. The Bolivar County coroner said there were no lacerations, contusions, broken bones, or injuries consistent with an assault.

The Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office performed the autopsy on September 17. Cause of death: hanging. Manner of death: suicide. Toxicology was pending at the time of the announcement. The files were also sent to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office for review.

The family commissioned an independent autopsy funded through Colin Kaepernick’s initiative. As of later reporting, the family said they still had not received a final public report from that exam, and some relatives later acknowledged Reed had sent suicidal texts the night before. Official ruling from the state medical examiner remains suicide. Mississippi Free Press and Reuters carried the examiner’s statement.

Juliana Umba Nzita, 16 — Charlotte, North Carolina — May 8, 2026

A Congolese immigrant. A man walking his dog found her hanging from a tree on the grounds of a predominantly Black church, United House of Prayer for All People. A ratchet strap was around her neck. A small blue chair from her family’s home was on the ground nearby. She had been reported missing days earlier.

The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner ruled suicide within three days after a physical examination that found no defensive wounds and no signs of physical or sexual assault. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police closed the case four days after that. No full autopsy was performed. Her phone was never recovered. The man who found her was not interviewed.

The family disputes the ruling and has pursued an independent autopsy. Police have said a thorough examination showed no evidence of foul play. The Charlotte Observer investigation is the most detailed public account.

To’Nea Nicole Miller, 27 — Miami, Florida — June 18, 2026

From Flint, Michigan. Found dead near Gwen Cherry Park. Social media and the local NAACP described her as hanging from a tree. The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office statement did not use that phrasing in its first release.

Sheriff’s investigators and the county medical examiner found no evidence of foul play. The death was described as “consistent with a suicide.” Her belongings were with her. No signs of violence.

Her sister rejected the finding in public: she loved life too much. An aunt who spoke with the investigator and the medical examiner told NBC 6 she accepted the suicide determination. The sheriff’s office closed the case. Snopes and NBC Miami summarized the official statements.

Tasia Fortune, 29 — Jackson, Mississippi — August 3, 2026

This is the one Shapiro noted was still outstanding.

A mother of four. Found hanging from a tree behind a vacant house on the 500 block of Road of Remembrance in a predominantly Black west Jackson neighborhood. Neighbors called police. The body had apparently been there for days.

Jackson police listed the case as a death pending investigation. The Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office performed an autopsy on August 12. As of late August, no official cause or manner of death had been released. Police have not said they suspect foul play. A man who shares a child with Fortune was arrested on an unrelated gun charge and told investigators they had argued; he denied involvement in her death.

Her mother has said she did not do this to herself. A city councilman asked the U.S. Attorney for a federal look and called it a murder before any examiner had ruled. Mississippi Today and CNN noted the pending status.

Shapiro’s larger observation sits underneath the list. Thousands of people in this country die by hanging every year. White suicide rates, including hanging, run higher than Black rates. That does not tell you what happened in any single backyard or churchyard. It does tell you that “Black people don’t hang themselves from trees” is a statement about history and about fear, not a statement about forensic possibility.

The families in several of these cases have every reason to want a second look. Mississippi’s lynching record is not a rumor. A video of a man walking alone toward a tree with a cord in his hand is also not a rumor.

The argument, this close to an election, is which of those two facts you are required to ignore in order to keep the story intact.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Relevant Links

Why Democrats Need America To Stay Racist — Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire

Ms. Rachel speaks out on Black hanging cases as Raleigh death is declared suicide — Fox News

Video confirms man’s death in downtown Raleigh was a suicide, police chief says — News & Observer

Raleigh officials respond to skepticism over downtown death — Axios Raleigh

Autopsy: Trey Reed’s hanging death at Delta State was a suicide — Mississippi Free Press

Autopsy rules death of Black man found hanging from tree in Mississippi as suicide — Reuters

Timeline: Trey Reed’s hanging death at Delta State University — Mississippi Free Press

What we know about Juliana Nzita hanging death in Charlotte — Charlotte Observer

Family and community question suicide ruling in death of Black teen found hanged in Charlotte — TheGrio

Posts claim Black woman Tonea Miller was lynched in Miami. Here are the facts — Snopes

Sister disputes that woman found dead near Miami park died by suicide — NBC 6

Officials ID woman found hanging behind a Jackson home — Mississippi Today

Tasia Fortune funeral held amid Mississippi hanging investigation — CNN

What we know about the death of Tasia Fortune in Mississippi — AP / U.S. News

Enes Kanter: Where was the threat?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 23:30:00 -0500

Chicago Sky owner Michael Alter banned Enes Kanter Freedom from Wintrust Arena after this past Sunday’s Fever game. The phrase he used was “a potential threat.”

The footage of the moment he is talking about is short.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

Late third quarter. Natasha Cloud scores, celebrates, then walks toward the baseline. Freedom is sitting there in a shirt that reads “WOMAN noun. adult human female.” He stands. Arms out. One step toward the floor. Security fills the gap. He is walked out holding the shirt up for the building to read.

That is the act. This is how he framed it in a tweet:

“I just got kicked out of a @WNBA game for supporting WOMEN! Let that sink in, AMERICA! 🇺🇸”

Alter’s account is that Freedom had been chirping, that people in the seats said he started it, and that the night changed when he got up. “The security’s job isn’t to wait to see how far they get.” Fan code says you do not enter the court. On Wednesday he told OutKick that some threats do not get a warning, and he used shooting a gun as the extreme example.

The line he draws is the step. Front Office Sports has him saying Freedom “made himself into a threat” by standing, raising his arms, and taking a step toward Cloud, even if he did not cross the baseline. “The security people’s job is not to wait until a threat intensifies.” He said five security groups — arena, NBA, Sky, Fever, and Chicago police — agreed there was no alternative but to throw him out.

Freedom’s account is that he was cheering Sophie Cunningham, that Cloud told him she was not going to sleep with him, and that he stood to answer and to show the shirt. He says he never crossed the baseline.

The league is not issuing a league-wide ban. The Sky ban lasts until he can prove, to the Sky’s satisfaction, that he can sit in the building without being a potential threat.

Look at the clip, then the tweet, and ask the owner’s word against both.

The word against the tape

When I first saw the remark about the “threat,” my first question was: where’s the threat?

Then I saw the claim that he stepped toward Cloud. Kanter’s account and Alter’s account dispute whether he stepped onto the court or even crossed the baseline. I do understand they do not want spectators on the floor at all.

This is the shirt he had on.

Source: Capitol City Now

The WNBA has been around almost 30 years. First season was 1997. I stopped really paying attention to the NBA once Jerry Reinsdorf broke up the second three-peat Bulls team.

For most of those years the league chased a crowd. That part changed. Average attendance was about 6,600 a night in 2023. It jumped to about 9,800 in 2024, when Caitlin Clark arrived. In 2025 it set a record at about 11,150 a game and more than 3 million for the season. At this year’s All-Star break it was up again, about 12,500 a night. Sunday’s Fever-Sky game on NBC did 3.31 million viewers, the most-watched regular-season game since the first year.

The building can fill. That is not the same thing as the product looking like a league.

I remember the Sky’s parade in 2021, after they beat Phoenix. Chicago did the route. It was not the same city-stopping event the Blackhawks, the Cubs, or the White Sox got when those teams won. The attention was thinner. That is the gap I mean. A title parade that does not sit next to those others is still a parade. It is also a measure of where the Sky sit in this town.

I feel as if the activism on display since 2020, and the fight over who is eligible to play, is not helping the legitimacy they spent those years asking for. Crowds came anyway. The league spent the extra attention on a culture argument the rulebook still will not finish. Virtue signaling over LGBTQ politics is not a side show. It is what keeps getting put on the floor. A bigger audience does not make that look more serious. It makes it louder.

The more players protest the national anthem, and the more the league cannot say what a woman is, the more the night becomes the argument instead of the game.

Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve made that plain on August 2. Against Cunningham and the Fever she coached in a light-blue shirt that read “Trans Kids Belong.”

Source: LA Times

A coach wearing that on the sideline does not help. The shirt in the seats and the shirt on the bench are the same fight. Only one of them got a man banned as a potential threat.

Neither does a fan throwing a dildo on the floor. That started last summer, not this week. On July 29, 2025, in Atlanta, someone tossed a neon-green sex toy onto the court during Dream-Valkyries. A meme-coin crowd later claimed some of the throws as a stunt to get attention for a token. Copycats followed. On August 5 it bounced near Sophie Cunningham in Los Angeles. She told people to stop before someone got hurt. The league condemned it. A few people were arrested. It quieted down. It came back this month, including around the Sky. Cloud was already complaining about toys on the floor the night before Freedom sat courtside.

That is not protest. It is a bit that treats the game as a joke and then wonders why the game looks like one.