Spencer Pratt ripped into his far-Left opponents during the Los Angeles mayoral debate on Wednesday, hammering their policies on everything from homelessness to firefighting.  Pratt faced off against Mayor Karen Bass and socialist Councilwoman Nithya Raman on a stage where they clashed on how to best lead the city of 3.8 million. The former reality TV star said during the debate that he would crack down on crime, improve the city’s fire response readiness, and move away from the city’s ineffective efforts to combat homelessness.  “The good news is when I enforce the law and clear the streets of the drug addicts that have taken over 40 blocks of downtown L.A., abandoned buildings that have drug addicts just lighting them on fire every other day, I will have potentially 20,000 units available to build,” Pratt said.  Spencer Pratt DESTROYS Los Angeles’s Communist mayoral candidates Karen Bass and Nithya Raman: “The good news is, when I enforce the law and clear the street of the drug addicts that have taken over 40 blocks of downtown LA, abandoned buildings that have drug addicts just… pic.twitter.com/FsXKD22lMC — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 7, 2026 Pratt, whose home was burned down in the Pacific Palisades fire, accused Bass of denying money requested for fire engines just weeks before the blaze. He also accused her of using water reserves for fire fighting for drinking water. Bass claimed that Pratt was spreading “inaccurate” details of her response to the L.A. fires and said the reservoirs in question “have been for drinking water” for decades. The mayor also accused Pratt of spreading false information on the wind speeds during the fire outbreak, which L.A. authorities said were too high for firefighting aircraft to respond to the fires. “She’s an incredible liar,” Pratt responded, urging the audience to research what weather stations reported on the wind speeds in the early days of the blaze. The debate moderators cut him off and told him he could not engage in “name-calling.” NEW: Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt fires back after the debate moderator accused him of “name-calling.” Pratt: “[Karen Bass] an incredible liar…” Moderator: “I have to interrupt you for a minute. I have to interrupt you. No name-calling.” Pratt: “She just… pic.twitter.com/Z3L5gFPfmi — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 7, 2026 During a different exchange, Pratt criticized Raman over her approach to homelessness and said she would get stabbed if she tried to implement her drug treatment plan for the homeless.  “Councilwoman Raman acts like she doesn’t have any authority with this homelessness. She was the third most powerful person in city council,” he said. “She runs the homeless housing thing. She acts like this is just Mayor Bass.” “The reality is, no matter how many beds you give these people, they are on super-meth. They are on fentanyl. The DEA statistics says 93% of this is a drug addiction problem,” he added. “Councilwoman Raman’s plan for treatment first — I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her, and we can find some of these people she’s going to offer treatment for. 
She’s going to get stabbed in the neck. These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or super-meth. These ideas cost us over $400 million.” Pratt also accused Raman of favoring squatters over tenants, saying she would sue landlords who try to get squatters out of their properties.  Moderators also asked the candidates if they would support letting noncitizens vote in elections.  Pratt said no, while both Bass and Raman said it “depends.”  “They could have green cards, they could be here perfectly legal, and there’s a lot of states and cities that do that on very, very local elections,” Bass said.  Raman accused Pratt of having a “MAGA” vision for Los Angeles and said he was working with Bass to attack her campaign.  Best part of the debate tonight! https://t.co/HLkwprBcEr pic.twitter.com/1qiTGsPA21 — Barefoot Broadcast (@BarefootBC) May 7, 2026 “Mayor Bass and I are definitely not working together. I blame this person for burning down my house and my parents’ house and my town, and all my neighbors down,” Pratt responded. “You think it’s easier to run against the incumbent mayor with all the unions or a random city council member who’s been a failure for six years? I would much rather run against Councilwoman Raman.”  The Los Angeles mayoral race is slated for June 2, 2026. If no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the top two candidates will move on to a runoff in November.

Chinese purchasers have been buying up American farmland at an alarming rate. In 1980, Chinese buyers owned 2,000 acres of American farmland, according to the Department of Agriculture. Now, they own 300,000 acres. “The consolidation of our farmland, the foreign adversarial ownership of farmland, especially from China and other places has really been creeping up on our country,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins recently told Fox News. The House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI), along with a bipartisan group of lawmakers, plans to introduce the Protecting U.S. Farmland and Sensitive Sites from Foreign Adversaries Act on Thursday. The bill seeks to close the “dangerous loopholes” that have allowed foreign adversaries, like China, to make such purchases near critical infrastructure and military bases. “Food security is national security, and we cannot allow foreign adversaries like China to buy up American farmland near our most sensitive military and critical infrastructure sites,” Moolenaar said. The proposal mandates that any purchases involving farmland, ports, telecommunications infrastructure, and locations in proximity to military installations and intelligence facilities undergo a mandatory review. It also gives the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is headed by the Department of the Treasury, the ability to provide oversight of such land purchases if they involve enemy nations such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. CFIUS declared in 2022 that a Chinese food manufacturer’s purchase of farmland in Grand Forks, North Dakota, which was situated near Grand Forks Air Force Base and Cavalier Space Force Station, wasn’t a “covered transaction” in its jurisdiction. If passed, the latest bill would ensure CFIUS would have oversight in such cases. Adam Savit, director for China policy at the America First Policy Institute, said threats to the food supply have become a “national security” issue, adding that “the federal government needs the jurisdiction and the tools to stop these transactions before they happen, not to negotiate mitigation agreements after the fact. States have led on this issue for years, and federal law should reinforce their efforts.” “Legislation is needed to close these loopholes and protect critical American infrastructure and American communities, and the provisions of this bill do just that,” Savit, a former senior adviser for national security at the Department of Agriculture, added. The bill will be cosponsored by Reps. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), Julia Brownley (D-CA), Neal Dunn (R-FL), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Dusty Johnson (R-SD), Zach Nunn (R-IA), Nathaniel Moran (R-TX), Dan Newhouse (R-WA), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Pat Harrigan (R-NC), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), and Mike Thompson (D-CA).

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** I saw her big announcement on Instagram. Stay in touch on Facebook. They posted about it. Did you hear the news? Any person under 30 has heard these conversation hooks enough times to know how much of modern life happens online. Personal news, events, and drama all center on the posts and comments circulating. Today, 65% of Generation Z is on Instagram, and 58% is on TikTok. I’m not one of them. I know just how much I miss out by not liking, sharing, or following. There are friends whom I only hear about in whispers through the grapevine now, life updates that I learn about after the fact, and social functions that I miss out on. But despite this, I’m stalwart in my anti-social media stance. I’m at an advantage, having never been allowed on social media during the young teenage years when the scrolling habit starts, but seeing just how much life happens online, and what I miss out on, has only compelled me further to stay offline. The mental health consequences of social media have been recounted thousands of times, but what truly disturbed me about some of my generation’s social media habits was how disconnected they were from each other, despite being more “connected” than ever. Real connection has been swapped for the updates in Instagram posts from people who haven’t spoken in years. Rather than being friends who share their deepest secrets, acquaintances who catch up occasionally over coffee, or complete strangers, everyone is trapped in a parasocial hell. Neither friends nor enemies nor strangers, many of my peers exist to each other only as the curation of whichever posts happen to pass through one another’s feeds. If they are lucky enough, they bump into each other in real life to catch up on everything else. The fear of missing an update ever looms, too. Staying away from the feed for too long could mean missing something apparently important, and the very existence of the awaiting algorithm is temptation to log in and check what everyone else is doing. I know I miss out by not being on social media, but without the curated feed in the first place, the temptation (and fear) is gone. By missing out, I know that I’m also cutting off many old connections from seeing into my life, and tepid friendships unfortunately turn cold as life brings each of us into new seasons. But this also leaves us free to move on with our lives — and happily catch up if we meet again. In contrast, even a “private” social media account makes every personal update available to any old interlopers still following from bygone eras. Or, as one of my friends from adolescence unfortunately found out, a hacked account can quickly be set from private to public to advertise a crypto scam — along with every old post. And in the era of AI, deep fakes, data mining, and digital stalking, having a low online profile is even more appealing. Plus, there are moments that most of us would rather not have immortalized online. Who wants their teenage phases forever left for a future employer or first date to find? Even as an adult, I find that there are seasons to life that ebb and flow. Retaining a sense of privacy and discretion is a lost art. Rather than blasting our lives to the world, we once had a narrow sphere of public life: weddings, births, obituaries, and anything else that made the local paper. Instead of scrolling social media, here’s how I stay connected. I do still check the local paper (rather, its online website) for any happenings, and I write up the annual Christmas card for my parents and immediate family each year and include my own small set of updates. There are, however, less ancient swaps for social media updates. For instance, whenever I have an important life change, I personally email or text friends and family who should know — and who won’t hear it firsthand from me sooner. In turn, I ask them how they’re doing and ask about their lives. I’m also upfront with anyone new I meet who mentions social media: “I’m not on social media,” I simply say, “but do you have an email or phone number?” Besides these one-on-one avenues, I’m also signed up for a few email newsletters for associations I’m interested in, rather than following their social media feeds. And finally, I’m judicious about joining every group chat for mutual friends or interest groups, muting most notifications and manually checking each one to catch up a few times each week. My small confession is that I don’t get away with no social media accounts. I use LinkedIn to stay professionally connected, I keep an eye on news trends via an empty X account, and I have a friend-less Facebook account if I ever need it for a golden marketplace find. But it’s a far cry from the hours of posting, liking, and scrolling that my generation averages. Instead, I spend that time enjoying the company of real people I know, intentionally seeking out opportunities and activities I enjoy, and cultivating personal connection. Yes, there are opportunities I miss. There are friends who fall away because we’re not liking each other’s pictures. There are major life updates that I hear second-hand. But I’m not pining over a curated highlight reel of someone else’s life. I’m not trapped in the parasocial zone with old acquaintances. And I know that every person in my life is truly in my life — not just there online. I’m not the only one in my generation logging off: my own reasons are the same ones I’ve heard echoed from the intentionally offline among 20-somethings. So, to any trepidatious fellow Gen Zers, we invite you to log off and join us. The real world awaits. *** Jordan Jantz is the assistant editor at IW Features as well as a freelance writer, editor, and website designer.

The general assumption among most in Washington, D.C. is that Republicans are headed into a tidal wave of Democratic wins in November. While the Senate remains a close call, most assume the House majority will be lost by a wide margin. But not all assumptions in politics go the way that the consultant class expects. The Daily Wire reached out to the man who had the experience of knowing what it takes to win the majority for Republicans — Kevin McCarthy, the 55th Speaker of the House. Here are his frank, honest thoughts on the 2026 election — what Republicans need to do better, how they need to talk in a challenging political climate, and what they can do to stave off a blue wave. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and content. Daily Wire: Should Republicans have done this redistricting push a lot earlier? Should they have done this years ago? Kevin McCarthy: I think we should have done it years ago when the Democrats started it. Remember what the Democrats did when Eric Holder left. This is all he focused on. They did it in Illinois, and we kind of just sat back. I remember when I first went to the State House in California, my very first bill on the very first day was to change redistricting. So you actually had competitive lines. You couldn’t do the things that the Democrats were doing. And now I think it’s really bad when you let politicians pick the voters. I like competition. I like the idea of winning fairly at the end of the day. The day I became Republican leader, Nancy Pelosi became Speaker. Four years later, we had a five-seat majority. I ended up winning five more seats in California, and I didn’t have to redraw lines. I got better candidates and came up with better ideas. This is taking over entire states and saying only one party – the California voters decided that they wanted a commission, and then Gavin Newsom, for his own political favor, went against where 61% of them voted in the Constitution. Daily Wire: Well, there was that whole period where everybody was doing this independent commission thing, and there was this whole, “Oh, we’re going to take it out of the hands of politicians and we’re going to have these lines drawn according to some kind of fake nonpartisan sort of perspective.” But now it just seems to be complete open warfare. The Virginia experience is just the worst of it. McCarthy: Well, think about this. That Governor [Abigail] Spanberger, she said when she’s in Congress, “you shouldn’t redraw,” right? Yes. She gets elected and runs as a moderate and she’s become further left than Mamdani to raise taxes, to redraw the lines, to prepick. I mean, it’s so absurd that it really shows you that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And remember what Carville has recently said. He said, “First of all, the Democrats shouldn’t tell the voters, but when they win, they should pack the Supreme Court, make Puerto Rico a state, do the redistricting, because they know the public doesn’t agree with what they’re doing.” Daily Wire: The cycle and the history is obviously against Republicans, especially in the House, which everybody has basically written off. What are the three things that you think Republicans and the House in particular should be doing differently? McCarthy: First of all, you study history. So the party in off-year elections usually doesn’t do as well. If you look at New Jersey and Virginia, how those gubernatorial races go, it kind of gives you some indication. If Democrats win both, they usually flip. If Republicans win one, we flip. But there are some things internally that upset me that Republicans should be doing differently. First, the use of discharge petitions. Now, a discharge petition is 218 people sign a discharge petition, your bill automatically comes to the floor. If you’re in the majority, that’s simply saying, “I’m going to turn the floor over to the Democrats.” They should stop allowing that to happen. They have passed more discharge petitions in three weeks than happened in 30 years. They let a discharge petition authored by a squad member just pass. Too many retirements; we’ve now set a new record. So that’s another indication. You’re not just running for higher office; you don’t like the job. They’re fighting with the Republicans in the Senate too much. So what they’re doing in this is they’re setting every indication to the public that they can’t win or they can’t govern. They should stick together. They should put an agenda together and they should stop recessing. Now, the Senate stayed in when the Democrats shut down the government, but the members of the Republicans in the House left. Think about this. The voters gave you 24 months to be in the majority, and you just took two months of that and didn’t use it. If I was in the minority and I stopped the majority from being able to govern, that’s a victory. You could be in there passing bills that are 80 / 20 every day of the week. You gave up your majority for two months when you only have 24 months of it. This is the part that upsets me. And then I watched, like the week before, they fought on things that were never going to fly in the Senate, and they took up so much time with that. I want to see things that shift in the voters’ minds that they want to have you be in the majority. So you know what? Focus on the economy, focus on crime, and you can divide the Democrats on this and really show the public who they want to be governing. Daily Wire: The complaints that you said are all complaints that I’ve heard from members, particularly leaving town. Why does that happen? Who in the architecture of power thinks that’s a good idea? McCarthy: I don’t know, because I would not have allowed that to happen. Because if you’re given this power for a short time, the public’s going to judge you on how you use it. If you’re in a sporting event, if you’re in a basketball game in the last seconds, are you going to quit? Are you going to set up and take that shot? You want to show the public that, even if the Democrats are doing derelict things, that if you’re in charge, you don’t walk away. You put them in their place, and then you go show simple bills out there, and the Democrats vote “no,” you vote “yes,” and show the public the difference. I give the Senate credit. They stayed in session. Daily Wire: The other one I hear a lot from members is frustration with the Senate, that they feel the Senate has expectations and priorities that aren’t aligned with theirs. I literally had a member last week saying, “The Senate’s going to screw us over on this particular thing again.” And my question is, why don’t Republicans in the House and Senate understand that voters in this midterm are going to vote based on you as a unit? McCarthy: It’s always the old argument. The Senate is the enemy. The other party is my adversary; they get mad at us. You’re 100% correct. The public is not going to sit back and say, “Oh, it was the Senate. Oh, it was the House.” They could say, “Republicans, you were in charge. What job did you do?” Recently, I watched as the Democrats shut down the government, and when the Senate passed the bill over to the House, the House Republicans voted no, and then a month later voted for the exact same thing by voice vote. But what they did there was take the shutdown. It’s a difficult job and a hard job to lead, but if you only take advice from the Freedom Caucus, you’re only going to end up in one or two places: in a cul-de-sac or in the minority. You’ve got to understand the rules of the House are different than the rules of the Senate, but that’s why you’ve got to work together, achieve as many conservative aims as you can, pass that, and come back for what you didn’t get the next day. But fighting with each other lets the Democrats sit back and say, “They’re the problem,” instead of highlighting and putting the Democrats in a weaker position, or having them vote against popular bills. Daily Wire: The conversation around affordability has been one that Republicans seem really frustrated by. In part, I understand their frustration because the Democrats basically aren’t actually offering any kind of agenda when it comes to affordability. They’re just giving a nod to the term. But when it comes to the Republican answer to that, they just haven’t seemed to hold on to anything in particular. What do you think is the best response to affordability concerns that isn’t just sort of what the White House has been saying, which isn’t arguing till they’re blue in the face, things are not as unaffordable as the media is making them out to be? McCarthy: You’ve got to literally show it. And what I always love is members going out directly in their district, showing it, going to the store, and showing the successes. The tough part is that, when they passed the One Big Beautiful Bill, it didn’t go into effect until later, and now you’re seeing some of the outcomes. Okay, your fuel prices are higher. Admit that, but they’re going to come down as the war ends, but show the other things of the growth that you’ve been able to do. And don’t let the Democrats just say something. This is where you put items on the floor. I love the Trump Accounts where you’re literally looking toward the future for your kids. Daily Wire: By the way, haven’t they done a crap job of talking about those? It’s weird. It’s actually awesome. I mean, the flexibility you get with it is great. McCarthy: They’re going to transform not just your family, but the country. I would be holding booths to sign kids up in your district. I would be doing it on the weekends when you’re going to the grocery store, “Parents, let me help you sign this up. Let me explain what it is.” I’d be holding brochures. I’d go to the Little League games, right? Not all of you on the team will get an athletic scholarship. It’s going to transform people’s lives. And I would go into the heart of every part of the district. I would go into the part that I did the worst in the polls, and I would be on the sidewalk handing out the card. I care about your kids. You may not have voted for me. That’s okay. I care about your kids having a better future. And you know what? People would like what they hear. Daily Wire: You still have to explain compound interest to them. McCarthy: Well, remember, Albert Einstein said there’s only one miracle in this world, the compound of interest. Daily Wire: So when it comes to the energy side of things, Republicans have obviously had success in the past, becoming the party of “we are going to drill baby drill.” We’re going to make American energy the centerpiece of everything. I don’t hear a lot from Republicans about the energy question right now because we are in the midst of this Iran conflict. What do Republicans do to get back on a good footing on energy? McCarthy: That’s 100% true. The price has gone up because of what happened; you have to take it head-on. You can’t avoid it. Talk about it. Talk about where it was before Iran, and we’re watching what’s happening hopefully today. The president’s getting an agreement there. The price dropped 10% just on the barrel today — show people how it’s going to get better, but also the strength of where America is in the energy sector of what we’ve been able to accomplish already. Because I will tell you in California, even when the price of a barrel of oil was low, it was really expensive because the Democrats were just adding taxes to it. And I think proposing an ability when the price is up, having a holiday on the tax, offering ideas and solutions to make it better for people. Daily Wire: The Iran War question, you said that they have to talk about it and they have to lean into it. I’ve seen members who clearly don’t want to talk about it. What would your message be to the conference right now about the fact that you cannot divorce yourself from this? This is actually a central question to the election, and you’ve got to embrace it with both arms, and understand I’ve got to talk about this because otherwise my opponent is going to completely wreck me on this stuff. McCarthy: The one thing I’ve learned from everyone is that people respect you if you’re honest, authentic, and straightforward. They could disagree with you, but they understand your handling of the situation: that this is temporary, that this is for the better of the future of where America is going to be. And what you’re able to show is, talk about Venezuela too, talk about very quick successes. And that has a lot to do with energy. That transforms and resets geopolitics because China relied so much on it. And because of our policies, we are stronger in this from that point. Daily Wire: The Democrats have an extremism problem. They like to depict Republicans as having an extremism problem. Most of the extremism problem among Republicans or perhaps even adjacent people is podcasters as opposed to candidates. When it comes to the Democrats though, they’ve got this situation in Maine, this El Sayed guy, they’ve got Mamdani obviously, and they’ve got a lot of crazy people who are running in various places across the country who might end up just accidentally winning. What do Republicans do now to make that extremism and radicalism an issue before those people actually end up in office and suddenly people wake up to the fact, “Oh wait, did we just elect a guy who’s really crazy on a bunch of things?” McCarthy: Yeah, and you look at Virginia, you could have a Spanberger who runs as a moderate and then governs as one of the most extreme leftists. So I think you show that as an example. What I’m really worried about in this campaign are Republicans who have won in districts that Trump carried from six to 12 points because they really didn’t have to do much and somebody else was electing them. If they sit back and think, “Oh, someone’s running against me, but no one knows who that is,” they’re going to have a wake-up call this election because it’s just like a tide. Sometimes the waves are with you, and sometimes the waves are against you. This is where you have to lean in. You have to have the ability to communicate with your district. You have to have an agenda where you show your record and what you’ll do if the public trusts you with another two years. So don’t lean back and wait for election time. You should be walking door to door now, listening, and then finding solutions. Daily Wire: I’m going to ask you about Senate races because you pay attention to those, too. How do you feel about Maine? How do you feel about Michigan? And how do you feel about Texas? McCarthy: I’m concerned about Texas because that shouldn’t be competitive. Otherwise, Republicans are going to spend a lot of money on a safe seat, which will make us weaker everywhere else. We want to be on the offense, right? We want the Democrats to be spending a lot of money in Georgia. We want them to be spending a great deal of money in any Democrat seat that we want to be on offense. But if we’re spending money in places that should be safe, we have less to go around. Now, thankfully due to President Trump, we have a money advantage here for the House and the Senate. Maine, look at the Democrats. This is the problem that Schumer’s going to have. Schumer picks the sitting governor. She has to back out because the progressives have taken over. So if the Democrats are going to get behind an individual that has a Nazi symbol tattooed on their chest and they think that’s okay, I don’t understand. I don’t want to see Republicans fighting among themselves. Do they want the majority? Susan Collins is with us the majority of the time, and she comes from a state that is going to have some independence, rightfully so at times. But if we’re spending a lot of money in Alaska, in Texas, in Iowa, we have an open seat there. Let’s not forget, Obama won Iowa both times. It could be very competitive. When I came in as leader, we only had one congressional seat there, Republican. We now have all four. That hasn’t happened since the 1950s. It’s going to be competitive. I’d like to see us more on offense in North Carolina. In Ohio, we have an appointed senator, and they took their old candidate and spent lots of money. It’s going to make it competitive there. We want to be able to win Michigan. I think we got a good candidate in Michigan. They’re internally fighting. I see Stevens, the appointed Schumer person, get booed at the Democratic Convention, only because they’ve gone so far left. So let’s not let that sit just with the Democrats. Bring that out to the public because those Democrats sitting in the convention are probably not the same as the mass Democrats throughout that state. They’re going to realize, “This party has left me.” Daily Wire: The Fox News and Daily Wire audience sees the radicalism of all of these various people. But the dominant legacy media, which is still dominant to a certain extent, can whitewash all the way until November. And we just saw this play out with Mamdani, for example. Condé Nast and New York Magazine were running pieces, “We’re not sure about this Mamdani guy,” the skepticism, that kind of thing. As soon as it became clear he would be the nominee, they started doing profiles of him. “Oh, he’s going to the U.S. Open today. Look at him smiling with all these people and doing Instagram shots and stuff like that. Isn’t he fun? Bon Appétit did a thing about Mamdani talking about his favorite hand food in New York. The point is they still have a lot of power. How can we get this Republican party currently to understand that they’ve got a much higher hill to climb than I feel like a lot of the people who are the satisfied voters who came out for Trump, who are tuning into Fox and places like that and that feel like, “Oh yeah, these guys are all radicals, the voters will reject them” and feel that without an honest understanding of what average voters are seeing. McCarthy: That’s some of my greatest fears. That’s people waiting till the end when the campaign comes. You’ve got to start explaining that now. And you ought to use the majority to put the bills on the floor that show who voted against it and how it’s just common sense and how far they’ve gone. I mean, listen to Barney Frank. Look, he’s close to the end of his life and he’s one who believes the Democrats have gone too far Left. And remember what a progressive he was in his own Democratic Party. Now, regardless of what you think of Barney, he was very smart. I remember I served on Financial Services with him. I could disagree with him, but that man was smart. But then you have Obama out there praising Mamdani… Daily Wire: So here’s a question about that. Do you think he’s scared of his base? McCarthy: Yes. Daily Wire: He doesn’t have to do that. So it seems to me that he does that because, on some level, he is scared of what he sees happening within his own former coalition. McCarthy: Exactly. He wants to hang out with the mayor to try to get a positive reaction from him. That’s very sad. I think he just doesn’t want people looking at what his library looks like. Daily Wire: When you survey the Republican scene here, you’ve got the dollar advantage, you still have the majority, you still have these thin margins. What should their priorities be for the next couple of months to start doing what you’re talking about on setting up the messaging that they’re going to have to run on in the fall if they’re going to have any hope of preventing — the kind of tidal wave that will take years to crawl out of as opposed to a backlash that you could recover from fairly quickly? McCarthy: Now, even if the Democrats have a great advantage, like in the election, I don’t think they’ll win that big of a seat margin because they’re still disliked. They have no agenda and redistricting has made fewer competitive races. So it won’t be like 2010, where we beat 63 Democrats. But the first thing you have to do is meet with yourselves and say, no more internal fighting. No longer do we turn the floor over to the Democrats. No longer do we question whether our rules come up and we’re only going to put bills on the floor that are 80 / 20 and is positive for our agenda moving forward and we’re going to stop taking breaks. We’re going to make a pledge to the American public that you trusted us with this, and we’re going to deliver for you. And if you keep trusting us, we’ll even deliver more. Daily Wire: Last question: Does Spencer Pratt have any hope in Los Angeles? McCarthy: I would tell you this: the demographics, I thought no, but he has tapped into something, and not as a Republican. His messaging … okay, I was calling a friend who was a big Democrat, and the person at his house was Spencer Pratt, and he had three or four other Democrats over, and they had just been to an event for Spencer Pratt. They are so frustrated with homelessness that they can’t rebuild their houses, so they’re willing to try something new. And Spencer Pratt, he was just going to go and do what he can, but he’s tapping into something that’s pretty exciting.

Feds swarmed MacArthur Park near downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, executing a massive drug bust and taking an alleged narco queen into custody. Bill Essayli, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, announced Operation Free MacArthur Park in a post shared via X, explaining that agents were targeting what amounted to an “open-air drug marketplace.” Operation Free MacArthur Park Federal agents have taken control of MacArthur Park to execute federal arrest and search warrants targeting the notorious open-air drug market there. We are going after street dealers and suppliers of massive amounts of fentanyl and… pic.twitter.com/sozcSCGo5u — F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) May 6, 2026 “We are going after street dealers and suppliers of massive amounts of fentanyl and methamphetamine. Over the last 24 hours, federal and local law enforcement have started arresting 25 defendants charged in a federal criminal complaint with possessing and distributing dangerous narcotics, including fentanyl and methamphetamine,” Essayli added. “The park’s #1 drug trafficker, a Calabasas resident, is in federal custody and faces possible life imprisonment. The other defendants arrested today also face decades in federal prison.” The New York Post gave additional details on the bust, reporting that Drug Enforcement Agency officers had also conducted a raid on the home shared by Mallaly Moreno-Lopez, a known “narco queen,” and her boyfriend Jackson Tarfur. After surrounding the suspected stash house, they called the occupants to come outside. When no one did so, officers crashed through the door  — and DEA officers reported finding occupants attempting to flush narcotics down the toilet at the time of the raid. Both Moreno-Lopezand Darfur were taken into custody. Video taken at the scene showed just how massive the operation was. BREAKING: Major drug bust taking place right now across from LA’s MacArthur Park. pic.twitter.com/tsCNh9UxmK — Matthew Seedorff (@MattSeedorff) May 6, 2026 Dr. Mehmet Oz, serving in President Donald Trump’s administration as the 17th administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, commented on the amount of fentanyl that was seized: “MacArthur Park has become a cemetery. The thought that 190,000 doses of Fentanyl was seized should scare you. Fentanyl is used in the operating room, before you know it you can’t breathe but fortunately we’re there with a tube.” Dr. OZ: MaCarthur Park has become a cemetery. The thought that 190,000 doses of Fentanyl was seized should scare you. Fentanyl is used in the operating room, before you know it you can’t breathe but fortunately we’re there with a tube …. @DrOz pic.twitter.com/OMIb9CjSae — Matt Finn (@MattFinnFNC) May 6, 2026 Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche praised the joint operation, including both DEA officers and members of the Los Angeles Police Department, saying that they’d succeeded in wresting control of MacArthur Park from the drug dealers. “To the drug dealers poisoning the streets of Los Angeles: your safe haven is gone,” he said. Agents from @DEAHQ and officers from the @LAPDHQ have taken back MacArthur Park. To the drug dealers poisoning the streets of Los Angeles: your safe haven is gone. pic.twitter.com/dNaVDitSTM — Acting AG Todd Blanche (@DAGToddBlanche) May 6, 2026