One person is dead and six others were injured after masked men stormed into a New Jersey Chick-fil-A on Saturday night and opened fire, WNYW-TV reported.Police said the shooting began around 9 p.m. at the restaurant on Route 22 in Union Township, the station said.Democrat New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a statement posted to X that 'our hearts go out to the victim’s loved ones, and we are hoping for the full recovery of those who were injured.'Responding officers found seven victims at the scene, WNYW reported, citing the Union County Prosecutor’s Office.The six surviving victims all suffered non-life-threatening injuries and are expected to recover, the station added.Investigators told WNYW the masked men went behind the restaurant's counter before opening fire.Dashcam video recorded what appeared to be a masked individual running from the restaurant with a gun.RELATED: 4 dead, at least 20 injured after shooting at South Carolina coastal bar: 'Screaming and panic and fear' Authorities believe the shooting was targeted and not a random act of violence, the station said, adding that officials have not released the identity of the person who was killed, and it remains unclear whether the victims were employees or customers.The suspects remain at large, and a manhunt is underway, WNYW said.One worker’s father described the scene as a “war zone," the New York Post reported.Democrat New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a statement posted to X that "our hearts go out to the victim’s loved ones, and we are hoping for the full recovery of those who were injured," WNYW noted.The Union County Prosecutor’s Office is asking the public to submit tips by phone at 908-654-TIPS (8477) or online at www.uctip.org — noting that tips resulting in an indictment and conviction can be eligible for a reward of up to $10,000 via Union County Crime Stoppers, the Post reported.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Democrats have turned on California Rep. Eric Swalwell after former staffers accused him of sexual assault and other sexual misconduct, prompting the gubernatorial hopeful to scrap his campaign altogether. Swalwell suspended his campaign for California governor just two days after several bombshell reports cited ex-staffers accusing the congressman of sexual assault and inappropriate behavior. Although Swalwell has denied all the allegations, pressure in the form of leaked videos, investigations, and rescinded endorsements pushed the lawmaker to drop out Sunday. 'We should take her story seriously.'"I am suspending my campaign for Governor," Swalwell said in a statement on X. "To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.""I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s."RELATED: Eric Swalwell's campaign for governor is collapsing after devastating allegations from former staffer ETIENNE LAURENT/AFP/Getty ImagesSwalwell's trouble did not stop there, with dozens of his colleagues condemning the congressman in the immediate aftermath of the reports about the allegations. "I have read the San Francisco Chronicle’s account and I am deeply distressed by its allegations," Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement on X. "This woman was brave to come forward, and we should take her story seriously. I am withdrawing my endorsement immediately, and believe that he should withdraw from the race.""Following the incredibly disturbing sexual assault accusations against Congressman Eric Swalwell, we call for a swift investigation into these incidents and for the Congressman to immediately end his campaign to be California's next Governor," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a post on X. "This is unacceptable of anyone — certainly not an elected official — and must be taken seriously." Not only did Democrats call for a full-fledged investigation, but several lawmakers and former staffers called for Swalwell's removal from office. RELATED: 'I made a mistake': Tony Gonzales admits to affair with staffer who set herself on fire Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesLawmakers are now leading a bipartisan effort to expel Swalwell and Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, who similarly suspended his re-election campaign after admitting to an affair with a former aide who tragically took her own life by setting herself on fire. "I've seen enough," Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California said in a post on X. "With his nuanced statement aimed at defending likely criminal charges, Swalwell all but admits a per se abuse of power under House ethics rules: sex with a subordinate.""He must now drop out of the Governor's race and resign from Congress. Rep. Tony Gonzales, who admitted to the same violation, should also resign. If they don't, I will support voting to expel both of them."The overcrowded Democratic primary for California governor is now down to five candidates. Notably, Republican candidates Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco are leading the general election polls, but Swalwell's support is likely to shift to the remaining Democrats. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

On April 3, BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo released an investigative report in City Journal documenting fraud in the state of California under current Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom. According to his team’s research, California lost at least $180 billion to fraud and improper payments in programs like Medi-Cal (California's Medicaid), unemployment insurance, and general welfare since Newsom took office in 2019.Rufo believes targeting domestic fraud is a fool-proof “political winner” for the Trump administration — certainly more than the Iran war, which he says is “at best a 50/50 issue.” “Portraying Minnesota and New York and California and other bastions of blue governance as havens of outright fraud, ripping off taxpayers, seems like the kind of domestic policy agenda — along with immigration, along with a couple of other issues — that can be a winner, both substantively ... but also politically,” he tells “Rufo and Lomez” co-host Jonathan Keeperman.Keeperman wholeheartedly agrees: “[Domestic fraud] is such a good thing for us to be focusing our attention on, not just because it's a huge problem that we need to eradicate from our public life and is creating all sorts of downstream pathologies that are making everyday life just more difficult for ordinary Americans, but because it also demonstrates ... the problems of democratic governance.”The best part is that large-scale fraud isn’t even that difficult to uncover.“A guy like Nick Shirley just takes a camera, finds some public documentation, and just goes and knocks on some doors, and you can uncover that easily hundreds of millions, if not billions, in fraud,” he says, “and so yes, this is the best message for the GOP and for Republicans going forward.”The mass exodus of people from California, Keeperman argues, is evidence that domestic issues are what people care about most.“California has, despite being one of the nicest places to live in the country, has net out domestic migration and has had net out domestic migration for the last decade, if not longer,” he says.“People are voting with their feet on this, and so yes — this is all just to say [domestic fraud] is an obvious winner.”Rufo confirms Newsom’s direct role in California’s out-migration.“There's two stats that we came across in this reporting that I think are really important,” he says.“Under Gavin Newsom, the state's population has declined by 0.2%, which is the first time that California's population has declined ever since it became a state ... but at the same time that the population declined, Medicaid spending ... for low-income people doubled.”“And so you have the population going down and then the health care expenses under Medicaid doubling,” he explains, pointing out the vicious cycle of fraud money flowing to unions, which funds politicians, who expand the system even more.The result, Rufo says, is a two-tiered society. The combination of astronomical taxes and high cost of living creates a population where residents are either “rich enough where it doesn't really matter” or “poor enough where it doesn't really matter because you have every part of your life subsidized.”“I think that's why people are saying, ‘I'm out,”’ he says.To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.Want more from Rufo & Lomez?To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

America is a nation of cars. Those hunks of metal on four rubber tires are our lifelines. They are how we go to work, go home, go out to eat, go on vacation, and go just about everywhere and anywhere. When we are just a few days old, we come home from the hospital in one, and on our way out, we head to the grave in a hearse.I bought it for $450 from a friend who was moving to New York City. It was cream with a plush, brown interior.From birth to death; we live in cars.We love our cars when they work for us, and we hate them when they don’t. We curse them when they break down, when they don’t start, and when they demand $2,750 for a new computer chip just to get running again. We even mourn them when they break down once and for all — no matter how much grief they've caused us. We become attached to our cars because of course we do. For Americans, they are an inextricable part of life.1978 Oldsmobile StarfireAnd of our history. Cars transport us through space, but also through time — to certain chapters in our lives. A car is a physical reminder of who we were behind that particular wheel. I remember my first car like we all remember our first car. It’s the first time you are free like an adult even though you are not an adult. You are still very much a stupid kid, but you don’t feel like one in the driver's seat. Mine was a 1978 Oldsmobile Starfire. It was light blue, and it was my grandpa’s before it was mine. He “sold” it to me for $1. I loved that car. I felt like I was in an old movie when I was driving down the road. I loved looking at it parked. I loved thinking about the fact it was mine. It was so cool, so retro, so rear-wheel drive, so bad in the rain. One morning on the way to school, I drove it off the road and into a ditch, and that was the end of the Starfire. 1993 Plymouth VoyagerMy next car was really my parents’ car, and it wasn’t a car; it was a van. They let me use it pretty much whenever I wanted to. It was a white 1993 Plymouth Voyager. The sliding door was full of sand and barely moved. The crank windows weren’t working so great. There was an MP3 player plugged into a tape adapter shoved into the tape deck on the dashboard. That van is my senior year of high school. I remember driving with my girlfriend to a crappy Chinese restaurant about 40 miles south just for something to do with a pretty girl I liked. We did that a lot. I got two tickets speeding back from her house late at night in that van.1984 Buick SkylarkAfter the Voyager, I drove a 1984 Buick Skylark. I bought it for $450 from a friend who was moving to New York City. It was cream with a plush, brown interior. I don’t even know how many miles it had on it, I just knew that it ran, and it ran good. I drove that thing all over. Up north, over to Detroit, down to Chicago, out to Wisconsin. It had a cigarette lighter and ashtrays. I remember smoking American Spirits in a yellow pack in that car. Driving with the windows down in the summer and slipping around the road in the winter. The Skylark was my college car. It was an "old" car then, but now it's ancient: 1984 was 42 years ago. I suppose that makes me ancient too. Four years after I bought the Skylark, I sold her to my brother for $300 and moved to Chicago. I didn’t have a car for almost a decade. I didn’t need one there, and I didn’t need one when I was overseas. 2007 Volvo XC90The next car I bought was with that old high school girlfriend, now my wife. Right after we got married, we left the city, and so we bought a 2007 Volvo XC90 with about 120,000 miles on it. It cost us $3,600, which we borrowed from my wife’s grandparents. We paid them back over the next year. We didn’t have the Volvo for too long; it broke down a couple years later. But it was a beast of a car and the first thing we owned together. Thinking about it now, the XC90 was kind of a symbolic introduction to married life. It wasn’t my car; it was our car.RELATED: My grandpa’s old desk Michael Brennan/Getty Images2009 Volvo S70After the XC90 was a 2009 Volvo S70. It was a fine car, and it was the car in which our son came home from the hospital. That car was us three. First-time parents, firstborn son. That first year with your first kid is special, and that car was where it happened. The S70 was a little weird. It wouldn’t start if it was colder than 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside. You would think a car from Sweden would be able to handle the cold, but it couldn't. I had to hook it up to a starter that plugged into the wall and juice the battery for 30 minutes if we needed to start it when it was cold. Our last trip in that car was our trip to the hospital when my wife was in labor and about to give birth to our daughter. In the middle of the night, I drove my wife and our son through a snowstorm to the hospital. We hit a massive piece of ice flying off a plow, the car eventually overheated, and the S70 died on the side of the road somewhere in Northern Michigan at about 4:30 a.m. My wife took an ambulance to the hospital, my son and I took a cop car behind her, and the Volvo took a tow truck to the scrapyard. 2017 Honda HR-VA few days later, we got a Honda HR-V from my wife’s then-92-year-old grandmother. She never drove it, and she didn’t need it, so she gave it to us, and it’s been our car ever since. I don’t know how much longer we will have the HR-V. Maybe 10 years, maybe one year. We’ve got three kids in there now, and it can’t take any more. One day, maybe we will be lucky enough to upgrade to an SUV with another row. We’ll see.I can already tell how we will remember the HR-V. I already know the chapter it will define for us. We will say it was our first real family car, our car when we added two kids and grew a lot in quite a few ways. Our lives have become much better in that car. We’ve experienced some bad stuff in it but much more good on the whole. We grew, that’s for sure. It’s a good car now, and someday we hope to remember it as a great car.It sounds funny to mark our time by our cars. But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s as good a way as any to divide up our time here. Cars: the things that take us wherever we go.

After Iran and the United States failed to reach a resolution during the negotiations last week, President Trump has resorted to stricter measures against Iran. Trump announced late Sunday night his latest plan.'The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.'"The United States to Blockade Ships Entering or Exiting Iranian Ports on April 13 at 10:00 A.M. ET," Trump said on Truth Social. "Thank you for your attention to this matter!"On social media, U.S. Central Command confirmed that the blockade of Iran's ports would be enforced, pursuant to President Trump's post: "The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.""CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports," CENTCOM added.RELATED: Pope responds after repeated attacks by Trump over war criticism: 'I have no fear' Shady Alassar/Anadolu/Getty ImagesLike Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!