Former MTV reality star Spencer Pratt informed comedian Bill Maher that, if elected mayor of Los Angeles, he would enforce laws against smoking marijuana around children and in public spaces. Pratt joined Maher for the latest episode of his “Club Random” podcast, where the two discussed Pratt’s dramatic surge leading into Tuesday’s jungle primary — and Pratt said he was absolutely ready to enforce laws already on the books regarding cannabis smoking and drug use when children are present. WATCH:   Pratt explained that he’d never really talked about politics when he was on MTV, saying that at the time he’d been trying to be famous, and did not see an advantage in angering one half of the audience or the other. Maher asked then whether he cared about “all the issues” now that he was running to be mayor of Los Angeles, and Pratt said no. “I care about safety, the lights being on, potholes. I don’t want you smoking in front of kids at the park. You know, I’ll be enforcing if you’re smoking that in front of a kid at a swing. I’ll be getting you as mayor,” he jabbed at Maher, who is well known for his love of marijuana. “No more drugs around kids at parks, in schools, in front of daycares,” Pratt said. “We need to have a society of consequences again … I never thought growing up I could smoke a blunt in front of a kid at the park. Now that happens. Moms do not want their kids that are like 5 years old …” Maher continued to press Pratt on specific issues — namely the regulatory red tape surrounding solar panels, despite the fact that California has been pushing more people toward green energy sources — and Pratt insisted that crime and drug use needed to be handled first: “We’re about three years from worrying about solar panels. We need to get all the naked drug addicts off of the sidewalks, and then I can worry about solar panels.” Spencer Pratt drags Bill Maher out of his liberal bubble and brought him back down to earth. Maher was annoyed that Pratt didn’t know the specifics about taxes on solar powered energy, but Pratt humbled him with the REAL problems Angelenos care about. MAHER: “This is a state… pic.twitter.com/OvfHVkVzCh — Overton (@overton_news) June 1, 2026 Pratt and Maher appeared to be on the same wavelength for much of the conversation, but the former MTV star shocked the comedian with one assertion: the number of homeless people in Los Angeles who, he says, are not even from California. “Ready for the best part?” he asked. “60% of the people in Los Angeles that are ‘experiencing homelessness’ are NOT from California! They’ve been brought here by NGOs that profit off of this homeless industrial complex.” “Wait, wait, they’ve been brought here?” Maher asked. “They’ve been brought here,” Pratt replied. “Body brokers bring these people here from all across the country. If you’re an addict you can come to LA and get these rehabs and because you can use Medicaid, Social Security.”

For years, Pride Month gave companies an opportunity to launch elaborate marketing campaigns celebrating LGBTQ+ communities. But two years into President Donald Trump’s second term, much of corporate America’s enthusiasm appears to be undergoing a Pride pivot.  During the Biden administration, Target’s annual Pride collection was a centerpiece of its June marketing strategy, dominating store displays and the company’s homepage while generating extensive influencer promotion online. In 2026, however, Target’s homepage focuses on Father’s Day gifts and Fourth of July merchandise, with Pride products playing a far less visible role. Walmart has taken a similar approach. The retail giant withdrew its sponsorship from Stonewall Columbus Pride in 2025 and scaled back its Pride-related inventory in 2026.  Amazon also appears to be taking a quieter approach. While the company previously used its social media platforms to celebrate Pride Month, it has yet to make a comparable public declaration in 2026. Few companies have experienced a more dramatic shift than Anheuser-Busch. Three years after partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, the company is promoting “Patriotic Packs” that support military and first responder families through donations to Folds of Honor.  The pullback extends beyond marketing campaigns.  Mastercard, Nissan, Deloitte, PepsiCo, and other Fortune 500 companies have withdrawn sponsorships for Pride events around the country, leaving organizers sounding the alarm. NYC Pride told Gothamist it was more than $500,000 short of its fundraising goal despite already lowering that target by $1.1 million compared to 2024. “Can you imagine the very first, the best, the biggest Pride in the world — the queen of all Prides — doesn’t have enough funding?” NYC Pride’s Director Im Lynde said.  Other companies, however, have maintained their Pride Month commitments. Apple, Google, the NFL, the MLB, and even Sesame Street continue to celebrate Pride Month despite the changing political environment. Their social media accounts remain largely indistinguishable from the Biden era, with Pride-themed posts and messaging still front and center. Happy #PrideMonth from Sesame Street! Join us in celebrating and uplifting the LGBTQIA+ members of our community. ❤️

WASHINGTON— U.S. embassies around the world will not be flying Pride flags this June, thanks to a State Department directive implemented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio shortly after he took office. Rubio’s order prohibited State Department personnel from “conducting or participating in any public diplomacy outreach or representational activity” celebrating, commemorating, or recognizing theme day holidays or observances that are not official U.S. holidays or the subject of a U.S. Presidential proclamation, according to an internal State Department memo. A separate State Department “One Flag Policy” also states that only the flag of the United States, a Prisoner of War/Missing in Action flag, or the Hostages and Wrongful Detainees flag may be flown or displayed at U.S. facilities worldwide. That memo, first reported by The Washington Free Beacon, specifically notes: “Examples: Posts should not fly or display the Pride or Progress flag at the U.S. Embassy.” “Per the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024, only the United States of America flag is authorized to be flown or otherwise publicly displayed at U.S. facilities, both domestic and abroad, and featured in U.S. government content,” the guidance states. “No symbol or affiliation marking other than those authorized by U.S. statute, the President, or the Secretary may be displayed, projected, or exhibited at any U.S. facility, both domestic and abroad.” A Black Lives Matter banner, a United States national flag and a rainbow flag are hung on the facade of the US embassy building in Seoul. (Photo by Simon Shin/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) “The flag of the United States of America unites all Americans under the universal principles of justice, liberty, and democracy,” the Trump State Department guidance adds. “These values, which are the bedrock of our great country, are shared by all American citizens, past and present.” A similar directive was issued during President Donald Trump’s first administration, when Mike Pompeo led the State Department (though some embassies defied the order and still flew the flags). Under President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken encouraged embassies to follow Biden’s lead in supporting “the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons and communities.” The Biden State Department gave embassies “blanket written authorization…to display the Pride flag on the external-facing flagpole, for the duration of the 2021 Pride season.” Blinken had promised to do this during his confirmation hearings, during which he also promised to name a special LGBTQ envoy. His State Department also provided asylum categories for people who identify as LGBTQ and said they were fleeing persecution. The U.S. Embassy in Uruguay, for example, raised a Pride Flag in 2023. The embassy’s Ambassador Heide Fulton said at the time that “raising the Pride flag is a celebration of the hard-won accomplishments of LGBTQI+ activists and their allies, and a reaffirmation of our commitment to the work that still needs to be done to promote the protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of LGBTQI+ persons across the globe and within our own communities and workplaces.” The State Department’s former Pride Month webpage is no longer active, and the department does not appear to be running any Pride Month promotions. The State Department’s stance toward the theme, which celebrates adults and children who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex, is matched by the White House. Last year, the White House did not celebrate Pride Month at all, and the Department of Education instead declared June “Title IX Month,” highlighting the Trump administration’s actions taken to protect female sports and spaces. Asked by The Daily Wire on Monday if the White House will be observing Pride Month this June, a White House official responded: “We celebrate all Americans every day.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is overhauling how the federal government addresses homelessness, tying billions of dollars in Housing and Urban Development funding to treatment, recovery, and measurable outcomes rather than approaches officials say have enabled addiction and failed to solve the problem. The Housing and Urban Development Department announced a new $4.04 billion Notice of Funding Opportunity on Monday through its Continuum of Care (CoC) homelessness assistance program. “The status quo on homelessness is not working,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said on a call with reporters. “In a country as prosperous as ours, it is unacceptable that hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans are sleeping on the streets, struggling with drug addiction, suffering from mental illness, and trapped in cycles that federal policy has too often failed to address.”  The funding notice represents what Turner called a “fundamental shift” in how HUD evaluates homeless programs and allocates federal dollars. “Instead of enablement, we will focus on treatment and recovery,” he said. “We will fund projects based on merit and outcomes, not warehousing the homeless and government dependent. We will define success by how many Americans achieve self-sufficiency, not by dollars spent or units filled.”  HUD officials stressed that under President Joe Biden’s administration, billions of dollars were spent on the homelessness problem, yet homelessness simultaneously spiked. One reason for this, the officials told reporters, is that HUD was funding programs that were enabling the use of illicit drugs and distribution of paraphernalia.  “We should be making this easy to get treatment and hard to get high, but our policies in the prior Biden and Obama administrations have basically made it easy to get high and hard to get treatment,” a HUD official explained to The Daily Wire. HUD’s 2025 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report informed Congress that 745,652 people in the United States were homeless, including 266,320 people living on the street on a single night in January 2025. The figure is a 3% decrease since 2024, which the Trump administration has attributed to decreases in homelessness in sanctuary cities. Between 2013 and 2025, homelessness increased 27%, unsheltered homelessness by 36%, chronic homelessness climbed 81%, and taxpayer-funded beds increased by 151%. Continuum of Care spending had also increased 111%, according to HUD. Officials stressed that those trends demonstrate the need for a new approach. Under the revised framework, HUD says it will prioritize programs that produce measurable improvements in treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency rather than simply increasing the number of beds or housing units. Officials also accused some federally funded homelessness providers of tolerating or facilitating drug use. “Under the Biden administration, HUD turned a blind eye to and ignored the reality of illicit drug use and trafficking inside of DOC funded, HUD funded housing for the homeless, and the result is devastating,” one HUD official explained to The Daily Wire.  “We’ve seen countless lives lost to overdose inside of HUD funded housing for the homeless because of this, and even worse, we’ve also seen COC funded providers distributing needles, crack pipes, foil, drug paraphernalia to use deadly drugs inside of housing.” Officials also pointed to the federal “Crack House Law,” slang for the Controlled Substances Act, which makes it illegal to knowingly open or run a place that is being used for drug manufacturing or distribution. “We basically had programs totally ignoring the federal law, as well as local and state laws,” explained a second HUD official, “and what you’re seeing is a lot of mayors are really leading the effort now to fight back in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Austin, Houston, Portland.” “Somebody experiencing homelessness should not get a get out of jail card for distribution use, on the street,” the official added. 

Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters is a free woman after being released from a Colorado correctional facility on Monday, ending a dark chapter of weaponized, partisan governance in the Centennial State. Her release comes after Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis succumbed to relentless pressure from the White House, ultimately commuting her absurdly punitive sentence. Peters, 70, had served less than a quarter of her original nine-year sentence before Polis formally intervened. While left-wing commentators and activist state officials are busy wringing their hands over her release, the truth that the mainstream media wants to ignore is that Peters’ original punishment was never about blind justice. It was a politically motivated hit job designed to make an example out of a grandmother who dared to ask questions about the 2020 election. Even the Colorado Court of Appeals — hardly a bastion of conservative thought — was forced to admit earlier this year that the trial court went way over the line. In April, a three-judge appellate panel completely threw out Peters’ original nine-year sentence. Why? Because the trial judge, Matthew Barrett, let his partisan TDS show, using his bench to launch a blistering, vindictive tirade against Peters. Barrett openly mocked her as a “charlatan” and a “snake-oil saleswoman,” making it glaringly obvious that he wasn’t punishing her actions, but rather her First Amendment-protected speech and skepticism regarding Dominion Voting Systems.   The appellate court rightly noted that the trial court’s nasty rhetoric went far beyond relevant considerations, effectively exposing that the lengthy prison term was a direct punishment for her refusal to bow to the establishment’s narrative. Governor Polis, facing a masterclass in political pressure from the Trump administration — which included relocating U.S. Space Command out of Colorado and slashing federal grants — finally saw the writing on the wall. When Polis issued the commutation, he openly admitted that the nine-year sentence handed down to a first-time, non-violent offender was an “obvious outlier” and “unusually harsh.” He even pointed out the blatant double standard in his state, comparing Peters’ draconian treatment to the slap-on-the-wrist probation given to former Democratic State Senator Sonya Jaquez Lewis for similar charges of attempting to influence a public servant. Predictably, the partisan Democrats who weaponized the state’s legal system against Peters are throwing a tantrum. Far-left Secretary of State Jena Griswold — the same activist who tried to kick Donald Trump off the Colorado ballot — released a statement claiming Peters’ release would “embolden the election denier movement.” But the facts speak for themselves. Tina Peters was a 70-year-old public servant with no prior record, thrown into a maximum-security prison for trying to preserve election data. The establishment wanted her broken. Instead, the system’s overreach was exposed, proving once and for all that her nine-year sentence was nothing more than a vindictive, tyrannical abuse of power.