Debates over casting choices and historical portrayals have been making headlines in recent years, particularly as filmmakers and creators experiment with reimagining well-known figures. Some observers say a similar conversation is now playing out outside of Hollywood — this time at a Benjamin Franklin look-alike contest in Philadelphia. Here’s the clip: BREAKING A black woman in Philadelphia won the July 4th Ben Franklin look-a-like contest. pic.twitter.com/zy2T1Yoppa — David Santa Carla (@TheOnlyDSC) July 4, 2026 The moment quickly sparked reactions online: How is the left this fucking stupid? I am truly confused at this point at the level of retardation we see daily. — Matt (@Matthew197315) July 4, 2026 So it wasn’t a look a like contest after all. — Deion (@0xD24590) July 4, 2026 Welcome to Philadelphia Land of make & believe — Gary (@Garytiug) July 4, 2026 I watched this 9 times before I realized that wasn't actually Ben Franklin. — Lyle (@bacon_bagel_) July 4, 2026 KYW reported on the contest: With a kite in hand, Kiya Burgess, 25, from Philly, beat out all the other look-alikes with her handmade costume and wig. “I love cosplay. I love dressing up, and I already had this costume, so I just wanted to come and show everyone what I made because I like to sew, and this is one of my first costumes,” Burgess said. All the look-alikes paid $1 to enter the contest, and Burgess took home the pot of money.  The outcome has fueled a broader debate about how historical figures are portrayed — and whether similar trends seen in entertainment are beginning to show up in other spaces. Some critics argue that changing or reimagining well-known figures can feel forced, while others see it as a natural evolution of creative expression and participation. A past opinion piece in Newsweek captured part of that divide: Sunday’s episode of the HBO hit series “The Last of Us” was supposed to be a great one. All the others have been great thus far, earning the show plaudits from viewers and critics alike as the best video game adaptation of all time. I, too, had been enjoying the show—unsurprisingly; The Last of Us video game is my favorite video game. But I was deeply disappointed to see the latest episode feature a white character from the game, Maria, played by a Black actress. And this despite being Black myself. I simply object to using the race of an actor as a sign and standard for what constitutes progress. It’s an insult to my community—both to the long-fought struggle for representation and to the recent successes on that front. Think about it: Disney made not one but two “Black Panther” films. “Black Panther,” a comic book series about the (Black) leader of the most powerful and wealthy nation in the world, was brought to the big screen on two separate occasions—something that would have seemed like a pipe dream to Black people in the 60s. That was some serious progress. Yet after that massive milestone, Disney decided that what we needed was the token representation of palette switching, announcing a Black Ariel in their live action remake of “The Little Mermaid,” out in May of this year. We are told our little sisters are jumping for joy across the nation because of this, that Black moms are telling their children it’s so great that Disney gave us this amazing bounty of mana from on high. Videos across the internet show little Black kids celebrating that “a princess looks like me” as if that’s some kind of gift. The discussion highlights an ongoing cultural divide over how history, identity, and representation intersect — both on screen and beyond. Here’s additional commentary: What are your thoughts? TAP HERE TO ADD YOUR VOTE This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post WATCH: Winner Of Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Look-Alike Contest Raises Eyebrows appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

As President Donald Trump marked America’s 250th anniversary with White House-led celebrations, a separate online video featuring a roster of Hollywood figures emerged as a form of counterprogramming. The Hill reported: A star-studded cast released a reading of Timothy Snyder’s popular anti-propagandist book “On Tyranny” as counterprogramming to the White House-led celebrations for America’s 250th on Saturday.  The video, which was narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker, featured celebrities like Mark Ruffalo, Joan Baez, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Margaret Atwood, Leslie Odom Jr., Ted Danson and others. The stars read the book’s 20 points aloud, which provide advice for countering authoritarian systems of government. These points include ideas like “do not obey in advance,” “be wary of paramilitaries” and “practice corporeal politics.” The video circulated widely online and quickly drew criticism from viewers who described it as political messaging out of step with the holiday tone: Why do millionaire actors keep thinking they have the education, moral authority, reliability, or responsibility to educate regular people how to go about their lives? — Luka Duka (@lucas561) July 4, 2026 Greatest country in the world and we don’t care what you unthankful pieces of shit think ❤️ — David Moore (@PrimeTimeDino) July 4, 2026 The communism you all support is tyranny. Hollywood has really all dumbed you folks down. Americans laugh at you, and clearly don’t watch your repetitive, boring movies because we have better things to do with our time. — LLou4198 (@LLou4198) July 4, 2026 These people are bound and determined to shit on everyone's parade. — @Pamah11 (@pamelina1111) July 4, 2026 Meanwhile, Trump used social media ahead of the Independence Day speech to highlight the scale of the national celebration, even as a record-setting heat wave impacted much of the eastern United States. According to USA Today: A record-setting heat wave has plunged tens of millions of Americans in much of the eastern half of the country into heat advisories and warnings, as the country marks its 250th anniversary with massive parades, firework shows, concerts and barbecues.  President Donald Trump said in a mid-afternoon social media post that the 100-degree heat “isn’t as bad as predicted” and the crowds are “INCREDIBLE!” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he put in a call to Trump to congratulate all Americans on Independence Day, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also sent his best wishes, as did the United Kingdom’s King Charles III. Not to be left out, California Gov. Gavin Newsom also weighed in with a post of his own: 250 years ago, this country was founded on a radical idea that government answers to the people. Today, that idea is under attack by a man who embodies the very tyranny our Founders rejected. Let's honor the promise of America by defending our democracy. pic.twitter.com/Gk5mTy5ce6 — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 4, 2026   What are your thoughts? TAP HERE TO ADD YOUR VOTE This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post Out-Of-Touch Celebrities Get Called Out By Critics For Releasing July 4 Video About ‘Tyranny’  appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

Paul Pelosi, husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is facing a possible hit-and-run charge in Napa County, California. The Napa County Sheriff’s Office said his brown convertible struck a legally parked car in Yountville on Friday, briefly stopped, and then drove away. A witness called 911, and deputies later found Pelosi roughly a quarter-mile from the scene with front-end damage to his vehicle. The crash happened Friday, July 3, and word of the charge spread quickly on the Fourth of July. Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul is CHARGED after alleged hit-and-run crash https://t.co/JGkLmA9N7L — Daily Mail (@DailyMail) July 4, 2026 The Associated Press reported that the 86-year-old was involved in the Friday crash that left the parked car with major damage, according to the sheriff’s office. The collision happened in Yountville, in the heart of California wine country. AP said the convertible hit the legally parked car on the side of the road, stopped briefly, and then left the scene before deputies caught up with him a short distance away. A witness saw the crash and called 911. Authorities told AP there were no injuries and no alcohol in Pelosi’s system. The report also noted that deputies said he could face misdemeanor charges, which is the legal lane this case is moving through. ABC News also reported that Pelosi allegedly crashed into an empty parked car and drove away. Investigators told ABC that no alcohol was detected on Pelosi, attributing the details to the Napa County Sheriff’s Office. Paul Pelosi faces a potential hit-and-run charge in Napa County after hitting a parked car in Yountville, though authorities confirm alcohol was not involved. https://t.co/T9lhghqzwx — KTVU (@KTVU) July 4, 2026 Fox News reported that a preliminary alcohol screening device showed 0.00 and that DUI was ruled out. That detail matters because the Pelosi name is already tied to a prior Napa driving case. Fox also reported that Pelosi was not arrested at the scene, which the sheriff’s office said is common for this type of misdemeanor offense. Instead, deputies handled it through the referral process. Deputies plan to refer the case to the Napa County District Attorney for review and possible prosecution. That means the charging decision rests with prosecutors, even as outlets describe Pelosi as facing a hit-and-run charge. Local Bay Area outlets picked up the story fast on Friday, and Napa County deputies confirmed the allegation directly. Breaking News: Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, is facing a hit and run charge for a crash in Yountville, Napa County Sheriff's Deputies announced. Paul Pelosi is accused of hitting a parked car, briefly stopping, then driving away. https://t.co/BjOSrINEoU pic.twitter.com/t1GZLBqPZi — ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) July 4, 2026 Pelosi’s name has surfaced in a Napa County driving case before. A Napa County release from August 2022 says Pelosi pleaded guilty to Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol Causing Injury after a May 28, 2022 collision. The matter was heard in Napa County Superior Court before Judge Joseph Solga. That release says he was placed on three years of summary probation, ordered to serve five days in jail, pay fines and restitution, complete a three-month DUI program, and use a certified ignition device for one year. It also said the DMV could suspend his license for one year. The 2022 case is separate from Friday’s incident, and authorities have ruled out alcohol in the current one. The overlap is Napa County, driving, and another public legal mess around the Pelosi family name. For now, no charge has been filed. The decision rests with the Napa County District Attorney, and the sheriff’s office has made its referral. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post Nancy Pelosi’s Husband, Paul Pelosi, CHARGED After Alleged Hit-and-Run appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has fired a Foreign Service officer after the State Department said the man concealed a romantic relationship with a Chinese national who has known ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The department announced the dismissal on Wednesday, October 8, 2025. President Trump and Rubio both reviewed the case before the officer was removed, according to the State Department. This is what zero tolerance actually looks like. BREAKING: Secretary of State Marco Rubio – with President Trump’s approval – FIRES Foreign Service Officer Caught Concealing a Secret Relationship with a CCP Affiliate. The State Department confirms this marks the first time in history such a dismissal has occurred – a direct… https://t.co/MP59CraYxm pic.twitter.com/d6MplW1Bai — James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 8, 2025 The Associated Press reported that the State Department fired the diplomat over a romantic relationship he admitted having with a Chinese woman alleged to have CCP ties, a rare personnel action inside the diplomatic corps. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the officer was dismissed after Trump and Rubio reviewed the matter and determined he had admitted concealing the relationship, according to AP. That put the decision at the top of the administration, rather than inside a quiet personnel file. Pigott said Rubio’s State Department would maintain zero tolerance for employees caught undermining national security, which is the frame that turns this from a workplace scandal into a foreign-service warning. AP reported the dismissal is believed to be the first of its kind. It came under a ban introduced late in the Biden administration that barred romantic or sexual relationships between American government personnel in China and Chinese citizens. That ban applied to U.S. government personnel in China, their family members, and cleared contractors. The State Department left the officer unnamed in its public statement. AP noted that the same case had already appeared in a surreptitiously filmed video. The trail leads back to that undercover footage. https://t.co/D9yod9KUzC — James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) August 6, 2025 O’Keefe Media Group published its undercover report on August 6, 2025, identifying the Foreign Service officer as Daniel Choi and the Chinese national as Joi Zao, then releasing video clips of the exchange. OMG reported that Choi discussed failing to file a required disclosure after starting the relationship and said he knew reporting restrictions applied to local dating at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. That matters because foreign contacts are not casual paperwork in diplomatic security. The group reported that Choi described Zao’s father as a senior CCP-connected official and acknowledged she could have been a spy, while still explaining why he withheld the relationship from superiors. Those are hidden-camera claims from the man himself rather than an espionage charge. The State Department still treated the conduct as a national-security problem. Fox News reported that Trump reviewed the case and approved the firing, citing the State Department statement, and connected the dismissal to the earlier hidden-camera footage. Fox reported that the man believed to be the fired diplomat told the undercover journalist he defied the government for love, said the woman could have been a spy, and described her father as tied to the Communist Party. Those details are why the story exploded beyond a routine HR matter. Fox also noted that Rubio had earlier said State and DHS planned to aggressively revoke student visas of Chinese nationals with CCP connections, putting the firing inside a broader administration push on Chinese influence risks. The State Department says it’s fired the foreign service officer following this video: https://t.co/Oexv69ZTCp pic.twitter.com/vazfFBoYVZ — Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) October 9, 2025 The firing fits a policy Trump set out early in his second term. The February 12, 2025 White House order titled One Voice for America’s Foreign Relations says officers and employees who implement U.S. foreign policy must do so under the President’s direction and authority, including inside the Foreign Service. The order states that failure to faithfully implement the President’s policy is grounds for discipline, including separation. It also directs the Secretary of State to reform recruiting, evaluation, retention, and related standards so the department implements the elected President’s agenda. An American diplomat stationed in Beijing quietly carrying on a relationship with a CCP-connected woman, then hiding it from his own government, is exactly the kind of exposure a serious foreign service is supposed to prevent. Rubio’s action shows the order had teeth. For years, that kind of risk got buried in paperwork and looked past. Rubio’s State Department drew a line and enforced it, with the President signing off. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post Marco Rubio Issues Immediate Firing Of U.S. Foreign Service Officer Allegedly In Affair With CCP Official appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

For almost two months I’ve been looking forward to making this announcement….and today it’s finally time. My new book, “The Confessor” is LIVE on Amazon! After nearly two months of writing this book, an average of 5-6 hours a day with no days off, the book is finally finished, edited and now live on Amazon for you to find and purchase if you are so inclined. Let me give you all the links you need right here, because you can choose from Hardcover, Paperback or Kindle, whatever works best for you. I am also offering signed first-editions of the book through my website at WLTLH.com, but only 10 of those available per month to keep it exclusive. Hardcover on Amazon available here:  https://amzn.to/4vhvun5 Paperback on Amazon available here:  https://amzn.to/4vcnX8U Kindle on Amazon available here:  https://amzn.to/44gCTYC Signed first-edition on my website available here:  https://books.wltlh.com/TheConfessor/ And what does everyone do before deciding to purchase a book? You read the back cover, of course. So here is the back cover from “The Confessor” so you can get a little taste of what’s in the book: Here’s the full text of the back cover in case that’s hard to read: The Confessor is never wrong. He has built his whole life around being sure of it. He chooses people who got away with it — never charged, never even suspected. The charity director who gutted his own foundation. The smiling influencer who built an empire on a lie. He sits them down alone with a pen and a yellow legal pad, and waits as long as it takes for the truth in their own hand. Then he balances the account. The confessions are real. But on paper, nothing connects the victims — separate lives, separate crimes, no thread that should tie one death to the next. Detective Logan Hollister has every reason to stay out of it. The money came a long time ago; the house is an hour down the coast, the kind of quiet other men spend their whole lives chasing. Logan can only tolerate it in small batches before he wants back in. He keeps the badge, works the cases that still mean something, and this is the one he can’t walk away from. On the surface, he and the man he’s hunting are opposites. One has everything a life can hold. The other spent years making himself into no one at all. But the bodies keep coming, and the difference between them keeps thinning — until Logan can’t always tell whether he’s hunting the man or recognizing him. Two small requests from me if you’re inclined to help me out… One, will you please help me get the word out about this new book?  As a new author, it’s hard to break onto the scene and get people to know you’re out there.  So if you’ve been with me for a long time and would be willing to help me out, please tell your friends and family about my new book.  It would sure mean a lot to me.  And for any of you so inclined, maybe purchase a few extra copies and give them out to friends and family, they make GREAT gifts! Two, once you read the book, I would LOVE to know what you thought about it, especially the ending!  I think the ending is so satisfying, but I’d love to know what you thought of it.  Please email me with your review and/or I would really love it if you would leave an honest review on Amazon, that helps me out a ton. Oh, and two fun things before I go…. First up, this will only make sense after you read the book, but there’s a website in the book that features prominently into the plot.  It’s called WLTLH.com and you might notice that sounds a lot like WLTReport.com.  That’s because many aspects of our main character, Logan Hollister, are parts of me that I’ve written into the book.  And Logan just so happens to run a news website just like I do, and it just so happens to be a big part of the plot twist in the book. So I thought it would be fun to not only have that site live in the book but also to come alive outside the book! Fiction meets reality and you can browse the real WLTLH website right here while/after you read the book:  https://localnews.wltlh.com The other thing I want to leave you with is the Dedication Page.  “The Confessor” is an homage to my favorite author of all time and dedicated to him: Dedication This book is dedicated to my favorite author of all time, John Sandford. And particularly to the Lucas Davenport universe. After reading countless Sandford thrillers beachside and poolside for nearly three decades, it has always been my dream to attempt to write something similar. Logan Hollister is his own man with a lot of myself baked in, but my hope is that he could pass for a distant cousin of Lucas. A warmer, West Coast cousin. And just as Del Capslock was born of the keyboard, I hope Curt Alton brings a smile. Together they could successfully reboot a computer. Much like Kobe Bryant modeled his game after the greatest of all time, that is my vision for this book. A young sixteen-year-old Kobe Bryant at Lower Merion High School, just outside Philadelphia, studying game tape and patterning his own game to honor and echo Michael Jordan. If I accomplish anything with this book and the Logan Hollister universe, I hope it has those same echoes. The pacing. The dialogue. The alternating point-of-view chapters that suck you in and flip you back and forth from killer to hero. The moments where Sandford will stop and tell you an utterly useless fact that does not advance the plot at all, just because he thinks the reader needs to know it. It’s all what makes Sandford uniquely Sandford and while there will never be another #23, here’s to hoping this could one day be The Black Mamba. Here are the links again for where you can find the book: Hardcover on Amazon available here:  https://amzn.to/4vhvun5 Paperback on Amazon available here:  https://amzn.to/4vcnX8U Kindle on Amazon available here:  https://amzn.to/44gCTYC Signed first-edition on my website available here:  https://books.wltlh.com/TheConfessor/ Thank you so much for your support, I think you are going to absolutely LOVE this book! Enjoy! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Amazon prices and availability can change, and the signed first edition is sold separately through WLTLH Books. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: My New Book Is Officially LIVE On Amazon! Here’s How You Can Find It! appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.