Sylvester Stallone is one of America's most recognizable actors. He also stands as a rare representation of sanity in Hollywood, refusing to dance to the industry's carefully choreographed ideological drumbeat.His new memoir, "The Steps," documents his rather fascinating rise to fame.Casting agents repeatedly shoved him out of their offices, telling him his voice sounded like a broken garbage disposal and his face looked like a stroke survivor's.The story starts on July 6, 1946, in a maternity ward in Hell’s Kitchen. The delivery went sideways when a careless doctor dragged him into the world with a pair of forceps, severing a facial nerve and paralyzing the lower left side of his lip, chin, and tongue.Hangdog sneerThe easily avoidable accident left him with a permanent hangdog sneer and slurred speech, a combination that made childhood an endless gauntlet of brutal teasing. His home life proved equally chaotic, torn between a short-tempered barber father and an oddball mother who dabbled in astrology and DIY medicine.His parents eventually “shipped” him off to a boarding home, and he bounced between over a dozen different institutions before finishing high school. Teachers saw him as a lost cause, while his peers treated his cartoon-character name as an open invitation to brawls. He routinely answered the mockery with his fists, accumulating bad grades, behavioral warnings, and a growing reputation as a feral misfit.By the early 1970s, Stallone was stranded in Manhattan with a few dollars in his pocket, sleeping on wooden benches at the Port Authority Bus Terminal when he couldn’t afford rent. To keep from starving, he took on whatever absurd odd jobs came his way. He cleaned out lion cages at the Central Park Zoo, a gig where he lived in constant fear of urine sprays and sharp claws. He worked at a fish market slicing heads off cod, cut hair in a basement using box cutters with hands that “resembled ten bananas connected by foam rubber,” and worked as an usher at the Baronet and Coronet Theatre. He even sold his beloved bull mastiff, Butkus, outside a 7-11, a moment he describes in "The Steps" as his absolute bottom.RELATED: Mel Gibson has been fighting this fight longer than you think Ellen DeGeneres/Twitter/Sunset Boulevard/Getty ImagesRejection as rocket fuelHis early acting credits were equally unglamorous. Desperate for heat during a brutal winter in a tiny room on 46th Street, he agreed to star in an adult movie called "The Party at Kitty and Stud's" for $200. "The whole thing was an embarrassing debacle," he writes in the book, maintaining a dry, self-deprecating tone about his total lack of hope and dignity. Casting agents repeatedly shoved him out of their offices, telling him his voice sounded like a broken garbage disposal and his face looked like a stroke survivor's.Stallone used the rejection as rocket fuel, sitting down with a notebook to study screenplays and figure out how stories actually worked.The turning point came in March 1975, when he watched Muhammad Ali fight Chuck Wepner. Wepner was an obscure boxer who lost the fight, yet managed to knock Ali down and survive 15 punishing rounds. Stallone locked himself in a room for three days and hammered out the screenplay for "Rocky." When producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff offered him $350,000 for the script, Stallone refused to sell unless he played the lead role. He had $106 in his bank account, and his wife was pregnant. Still, to his credit, he held firm against every attempt to replace him with an established star like Robert Redford or Ryan O'Neal.Stubborn to a fault, he got his way and managed to get the film made for under a million dollars. "Rocky" went on to win Best Picture at the 1977 Academy Awards, instantly turning him into a massive movie star.Stallone eventually bought his dog back for $1,500.Eye of the tigerThe middle section of "The Steps" tracks his explosive run through the 1980s, but here the narrative loses some of its original momentum. Stallone is most entertaining when he is broke, angry, humiliated, and scheming his way toward the next opportunity. Once the rags become extreme riches, some of that desperate comic energy disappears. There are stretches where a story about an almost pathologically determined outsider turns into the considerably less relatable story of a very famous movie star.But Stallone taps into his inner Rocky in the final act, reviving the book by confronting his age (80) and mortality with absolute honesty. A churchgoing Catholic, he suggests that although life can be difficult, “you just get stronger the more you fight back and finally realize that God’s greatest gift is your heart and the will to keep going.” It’s a little cliché, but the New Yorker is nothing if not genuine.He looks back on his career choices with surprising sincerity, admitting when his ego got the best of him during his late 1990s box-office flops. He presents himself not as a genius auteur, but as a relentless, working-class craftsman who understood his own limitations better than his critics did. "The Steps" succeeds because it avoids fawning self-congratulation, standing as an inspiring account of a man who escaped a nightmare to achieve the American dream.

The last thing the NFL needs is another national anthem controversy.One online video, however, has the Chicago Bears in the spotlight for a player's actions during "The Star-Spangled Banner," and one online video may be all it takes.'Don't pray to Allah during OUR national anthem!'Before the Bears' game against the New York Jets on Sunday, wide receiver Kalif Raymond was spotted alone on the edge of the end zone grass at Soldier Field in Chicago during the national anthem, seemingly praying on his hands and knees.Raymond rose to his feet for what appeared to be the final 20 seconds of the anthem performance, standing still.Raymond was spotted performing similar actions before Week 3's game against the Philadelphia Eagles, also at Soldier Field in ChicagoSome fans immediately took Raymond's actions as a sign he is a Muslim."Don't pray to Allah during OUR national anthem!" wrote radio host Grant Stinchfield on an X post.However, other fans quickly pointed to Raymond attending both a private Christian high school in Georgia and the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, a private Jesuit college.In fact, last Thursday the Bears posted a YouTube video with Raymond wearing a microphone on the field, where he is seen saying, "I'm going to thank Lord Jesus first."Further evidence of his Christian faith comes from 2022, when Raymond said he was "just thankful that the Lord blessed me" after winning a game ball for his performance.Still, some fans found the display disrespectful to the anthem.RELATED: Former NFL player and Christian minister says Muslim players are being unfairly punished "Is this respectful during the National Anthem?" a post asked. A reply stated, "Anyone disrespecting the national anthem like this (or kneeling) should be fined and suspended."The NFL's most infamous controversy came when quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem in 2016. The former San Francisco 49ers player's performance was a vague protest about injustice and police brutality:"I am not going to stand to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," Kaepernick said at the time.Many other players protested similarly in subsequent weeks, including retired player Ray Lewis, who joined the Baltimore Ravens' protest but decided to get down on both knees instead.Other famous prayers in the NFL include former quarterback Tim Tebow, who made his name into a verb by "Tebowing," which meant to take a knee in the end zone to pray after scoring a touchdown.RELATED: NBA team hires and fires announcer on same day over teenage tweets: 'Asian people p*** me off!' Amy Lemus/NurPhoto/Getty Images The NFL rulebook does not specifically mention conduct during the national anthem.At the height of the kneeling controversy though, outlets referred to a league Game Operations Manual that encouraged players to stand for the anthem but didn't required them to. The NFL vice president of corporate communications confirmed this to FactCheck.org in 2017.The previously listed operations manual no longer appears online, and the current operations manual mentions the national anthem only with regard to its maximum length.The Bears organization did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Laws are often passed under the guise of protecting the vulnerable, but sometimes they hurt the very people they’re intended to protect. And immigration policy expert Lora Ries is no stranger to this, telling BlazeTV host Nick Freitas that this has been going on for decades when it comes to child trafficking and immigration policy. “In 2000, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act became law and it created a T visa for victims of trafficking even though we already had something called an S visa, which was nicknamed, you know, the snitch visa,” she explains.The “snitch visa” allowed immigrants to "temporarily come into the U.S., help this prosecution testify in a criminal case, … and then depart.” “Instead of using that, which they should have done, they created a T visa, which became both a temporary visa but also a permanent visa,” Ries says. “It just has become yet another pathway for permanent immigration,” she continues, “And so this victim can then bring in their family members, their parents, who often put them into the trafficking situation to begin with. And on and on.”Freitas points out that this creates an incentive for “people to send unaccompanied minors into the United States.” “That may sound very, very generous, but in reality, you’re creating a situation where human traffickers are going to exploit this,” he adds.Despite the policy being “about prosecution,” Ries explains that when the bill was first introduced in 2000 and passed, “The estimated number of trafficking victims was 600,000 to 800,000."The State Department reports that this number has now skyrocketed to 27 million. “So this is not working,” Ries says, “and it gets reauthorized every few years. And just more money going out the door.”Ries also explains that “when the Department of Homeland Security was created, the House Judiciary Democrats in particular insisted that the functions for giving shelter to unaccompanied minors and sponsors was not going to go in DHS.”“They said, ‘Nope, it’s going over to the Department of Health and Human Services.’ And so that department receives a lot of money to go to these, you know, anti-trafficking NGOs. And during Biden’s four years, 550,000 unaccompanied children crossed the border,” she continues. “Four hundred thousand of them, Biden’s HHS lost track of. And so those functions need to be taken away from HHS. It is not HHS’ mission and they’re clearly bad at it, and it needs to go back to DHS,” she adds. “Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK for $20 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales has ruffled feathers with her ongoing investigation into H-1B fraud in Texas — and she has shown no signs of letting up.After shining an unflattering light on Great America Technologies Inc. and sending the Indian alleged fraudster behind it into a panic, Gonzales took a close look Global Star IT Serve LLC — a purported software company that state records show was formed in 2021, is registered to Rajender Bairineni, and was supposedly based in the same co-working building in Plano as Great America Technologies.'It's the same song and dance with these people.'According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' H-1B Employer Datahub, Global Star IT Serve has sponsored at least one H-1B visa. It recently received a damning review on MyVisaJobs.com, where an alleged former worker complained about "toxic management," recurring payroll delays, questionable payroll deductions, and concerns about the existence of an actual physical office."If there's one thing H-1B body shops love, it's ripping people off," said Gonzales, "whether it's the American workers they're stealing jobs from or the companies that they're selling cheap labor to and even all the way down to their own employees."On the basis of claims from a disgruntled former worker that the company denied in a statement to Blaze News, Gonzales suggested that Global Star fit into this category of exploitative outfits and further accused Bairineni's company — which is now inactive, according to state records — of "stealing wages from its workers."According to Gonzales, Global Star allegedly failed to pay its lone H-1B employee in a timely fashion and previously "took illegal deductions from his paycheck.""It's the same song and dance with these people," said Gonzales. "You set up shop in a co-working space to make it seem like you have an office so you can import a bunch of workers, a bunch of vulnerable people, and take advantage of them."RELATED: BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales' investigation has Indian H-1B sponsor panicking An unnamed H-1B worker who said he served the company as a software developer told Gonzales that Bairineni fired him in July. The worker claimed he was fired because Bairineni did not want to pay his salary for the previous two or three months.Records obtained by Gonzales appear to show that Bairineni's company also deducted thousands of dollars in "employer expenses" from the worker's salary — deductions the worker flagged as potentially illegal. The worker estimated that Bairineni allegedly tried to skip out on paying nearly $40,000 total.In addition to accusing the H-1B sponsor of attempting to intimidate him into signing off on the allegedly illegal after-tax deductions, the H-1B worker claimed to Gonzales that the address provided for Global Star on Google is "a fake address. ... It's not a ghost office. It's a fake address. Somebody's office is there. He's using that address."Gonzales characterized the former employee and other similarly situated H-1B workers as vulnerable "indentured servants" whom predatory businesses seek out while edging out citizen labor.The BlazeTV host tried paying Bairineni a visit at his home. Since no one answered the door, Gonzales decided to "resort to an old trick of ours."The team sent a production assistant dressed up as a delivery driver to the H-1B sponsor's door, asking for Bairineni to sign for a fake package.This time a woman who later identified herself as Bairineni's wife answered the door and summoned the H-1B sponsor. As Bairineni emerged from his home, Gonzales ran over to confront him, immediately asking, "Hey, Rajender, why aren't you paying your H-1B employees? ... Why are you deducting contributions, Rajender? ... Rajender, why are you labor trafficking?"Bairineni immediately retreated inside the home and slammed the door.Gonzales responded by shouting, "Why aren't you paying your H-1B visa employees, Rajender? Knock, knock, b***h! Why'd you run inside? We're just getting started."The BlazeTV host subsequently obtained audio of the 911 phone call placed by a woman in Bairineni's residence to the Plano Police Department regarding Gonzales' visit."I see here that you wanted to report someone knocked at your door?" said a Plano police officer.The woman described with some accuracy the events — the fake delivery driver, the fake package, the request for Bairineni, and Gonzales' appearance — then claimed the experience was "scary.""Okay, um," responded the officer, "so do you want me to just document that, or do you want, like, a report?""I do want to report it because she has no right to come to my house and then just knock on my door," said the woman."Strictly speaking, what they did wasn't actually illegal," said the officer, who added that "the act of recording is not a crime."Gonzales noted, "Typical scammers: They're the ones who are caught breaking the law, and then they cry like they're the victims. Again, this is case in point why we just need to shut the H-1B visa system down for good."Bairineni said in a statement to Blaze News:The Company categorically denies each and every allegation as stated, and the following statement is provided on the record for attribution.Office Lease and Business Location. The Company lawfully leased office space at 8105 Rasor Blvd, #125, Plano, TX 75024, and conducted legitimate business operations from that location. Any characterization of the address as a "fake address" is factually inaccurate and defamatory. The Company maintains documentation, including the executed lease agreement and related records, substantiating its lawful tenancy and business operations at that address.Work-from-Home Arrangement. [Employee's] position was a work-from-home ("telework") arrangement. He performed his duties from his personal residence located at [employee's address]. This remote work arrangement was known to and accepted by the Company, and is consistent with applicable H-1B telework and worksite reporting requirements. The Company's end client was located at [client's address], and [Employee's] remote work supported the services rendered in connection with that client engagement.H-1B Petition and Compliance with the LCA. The Company filed a bona fide H-1B petition on behalf of [employee] and employed him in the petitioned position. All wages were paid in accordance with the certified Labor Condition Application ("LCA") and applicable U.S. Department of Labor regulations, including all applicable worksite and telework provisions. There are no pending or outstanding payments owed to [employee]. The Company has at all times remained in material compliance with the terms and conditions of the LCA and its obligations as an H-1B employer.Alleged Deductions. The Company did not take illegal deductions from [employee's] paycheck. Any amounts referenced by [Employee] pertain to his own mischaracterization of contractual receivable provisions, not to any unlawful withholding of wages. The Company's payroll practices conformed to applicable law, and [Employee] has no outstanding balance or unpaid wages due to him.[Employee's] Separation and Misconduct. [Employee] voluntarily absented himself from his duties without notice, thereby breaching his professional and contractual obligations. His abrupt and unannounced departure caused material disruption at the Company's end client in Charlotte, North Carolina, resulting in the loss of that client relationship and, ultimately, the cessation of the Company's business operations. The Company had only one employee — [employee] — and at no point engaged in any improper, unlawful, or fraudulent conduct.Extortionate Demands. Following his departure, [Employee] began making escalating and unfounded monetary demands upon the Company, invoking paycheck-related clauses in an attempt to extract additional funds to which he is not entitled. The Company regards these demands as baseless and, to the extent they constitute an attempt to obtain money through improper threats, potentially actionable.Reservation of Rights. The Company expressly reserves all rights and remedies available at law and in equity, including, without limitation, claims for defamation, tortious interference with existing and prospective business relations, breach of contract, trade libel, and any statutory remedies available under applicable federal and state law. Nothing in this response shall be construed as a waiver of any such rights. This response is provided without prejudice to all such rights.No Admission. This response is not, and shall not be construed as, an admission of any liability, wrongdoing, or the truth of any allegation. The Company denies all allegations of unpaid wages, illegal deductions, fraud, and misrepresentation in their entirety.Should Blaze News elect to publish any allegation concerning the Company, we request that this response be included in full and that the Company be identified accurately. The Company is prepared to provide documentary evidence supporting the foregoing to the extent appropriate and consistent with its legal and confidentiality obligations.Blaze News has repeatedly asked Bairineni to provide the "documentary evidence" he claims to have, but he has so far provided none.Editor's note: Blaze News has redacted the name of Global Star's alleged victim, his personal address, and the address of his client.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!