Climate activist organizations aimed at transforming the plastic industry may be illegally raising costs for consumers in the name of sustainability, a group of Republican attorneys general warned Wednesday. Led by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, the officials said that the environmental groups GreenBlue, the Consumer Goods Forum, and U.S. Plastics Pact may each be violating consumer protection and antitrust laws. They demanded that the groups provide more information about their efforts to transform the plastic industry, according to a series of Wednesday letters obtained by The Daily Wire.  “Radical environmental activists do not have the right, nor the avenue, to suppress business operations in our market,” Uthmeier told The Daily Wire. “We will not allow these activist organizations to push misguided policies that can’t win at the ballot box and inflate prices for Florida consumers.” Uthmeier said that Republican officials had “reason to believe” that the groups were “hindering states’ economic prosperity by coordinating business behavior.” The other attorneys general who signed onto the letters include Brenna Bird (Iowa), Austin Knudsen (Montana), Mike Hilgers (Nebraska), and Ken Paxton (Texas). They said that the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, one of GreenBlue’s projects, raised red flags about encouraging anti-competitive practices. The goal of the project is “to bring sustainable packaging stakeholders together to catalyze actionable improvements to packaging systems and lend an authoritative voice on issues related to packaging sustainability.” The project was first launched in 2004 and includes businesses, educational institutions, organizations, and government agencies.  “We have grave concerns that this mission is harmful to our States’ economies, results in higher costs to our States’ consumers, unreasonably restrains trade, and reduces output and quality of goods and services,” the officials wrote in a letter to GreenBlue.  This project’s agenda “appeared designed” to “artificially implement” strategies “that affect the output and quality of goods and services in a uniform manner, in a way that normal, unrestrained market forces would not otherwise bring about,” the letter said.  The Consumer Goods Forum received a similar letter. Its mission is to bring “together consumer goods manufacturers and retailers in pursuit of business practices for efficiency and positive change across our industry benefiting shoppers, consumers and the world without impeding competition.” It does this by encouraging collaboration between companies, national and local governments, multinational organizations, and the recycling industry. “These goals appear to be designed to ensure as many stakeholders as possible, across entire markets, artificially implement a ‘new approach’ that affects the output and quality of goods and services in a uniform manner, in a way that normal, unrestrained market forces would not otherwise bring about,” the officials wrote.  Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to DailyWire.com/Subscribe to join now. A third letter to the U.S. Plastic Pact took aim at the group’s mission to “facilitate the transition to a circular economy for plastic packaging in the U.S. by bringing together resources and expertise across the entire plastics value chain.” Goals of the pact include making 100% of plastic packaging reusable or compostable by 2025, in addition to making products from an average of 30% recycled materials.  “In other words, it appears that the Pact uses these targets to ensure as many stakeholders as possible, across entire markets, artificially change the output and quality of their goods and services in a uniform manner, in a way that normal, unrestrained market forces would not otherwise bring about,” the Republican officials wrote. Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, praised the efforts of the Republican attorneys general. “Consumers should not be forced to accept costly climate mandates from activist-driven organizations. These groups appear to be colluding to impose ESG metrics and a radical climate agenda across entire industries, raising costs and reducing choices for everyday Americans,” he told The Daily Wire. “By driving coordinated, politically-motivated rules into the market, these organizations are likely violating antitrust law and threaten the free market.”

A Jewish man was assaulted near a Kosher restaurant in New York City on Monday, video obtained by The Daily Wire shows. Rami Glikstein, 58, was walking by Mr. Broadway Kosher restaurant in midtown Manhattan when an African American man tore off his yarmulke, throwing it to the ground and stomping and spitting on it before punching him in the face and pushing him to the ground. WATCH: A Jewish man was attacked in broad daylight in midtown Manhattan. His yarmulke was ripped off and thrown in the street before he was punched in the face. The NYPD told the Daily Wire it’s been reported and is being investigated by the hate crimes task force. pic.twitter.com/1B8pgLpC2S — Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 29, 2025 Glikstein was treated and later released from Mount Sinai hospital for his injuries. Police are expected to arrest the attacker in the next few hours, The Daily Wire has learned. This attack comes days before the city’s mayoral election. The frontrunner in that race, socialist Zohran Mamdani, has a complicated relationship with the New York Police Department and New York’s Jewish population. Mamdani has supported defunding the police and has come under fire for his criticism of Israel and Hamas sympathies. Critics say that electing Mamdani could cause a spike in crime and antisemitic incidents. The Mamdani campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Rami Glikstein’s attack.  The video shows the man stopping Glikstein, who appears to walk off. The man follows him, tearing off his yarmulke, throwing it to the ground and stomping and spitting on it before assaulting him.  The man walks onto the crowded Manhattan street before turning back around. As Glickstein picks up his yarmulke, the man comes back to punch him in the face and knock him to the ground onto the road. Another man from the street emerges into the frame and comes to the victim’s assistance, standing between the attacker and Glikstein. More bystanders enter the frame to support Glickstein as the attacker appears to get into another altercation with bystanders. At the first NYC Mayor debate, moderators pressed Mamdani on his refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada.” Mamdani also released a rap praising men convicted of funneling money to Hamas. Mamdani addressed the moderators’ concerns, explaining he has had many conversations with Jewish New Yorkers and now understands their reservations as well as past experiences with hate.  However, one Jewish New Yorker remains unconvinced.  Do we want to live in a NYC where our politicians with their actions and inactions inspire violent hate crimes? https://t.co/eKlJCkYbTT — Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) October 29, 2025 Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square, retweeted a video of Rami Glikstein’s attack on X, with the comment, “Do we want to live in a NYC where our politicians with their actions and inactions inspire hate crimes?”  This is a developing story, please refresh this page for updates.

Cheryl Hines is calling out the hosts of “The View” for using her entire time on the show to ask about her husband, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., rather than to discuss her life or ask about her book. The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress shared her thoughts during a Tuesday episode of Billy Bush’s “Hot Mics” podcast. “Were they what you expected? The women of ‘The View?’” Bush asked Hines, prompting her to say, “Mhmm” with tight smile. “You know, I was actually hoping that it was going to be more personal on ‘The View,’ but it was what it was. They just wanted to grill me about Bobby,” Hines continued. “I mean, I don’t think the ladies on ‘The View’ asked me one question about my book. But, you know, that’s OK.”   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Hot Mics with Billy Bush (@hotmicswithbillybush) Hines had initially joined the host of “The View” to promote her memoir, “Cheryl Hines Unscripted,” but host Sunny Hostin used the time to criticize comments RFK Jr. made and policies he promoted. “Respectfully, your husband is the least qualified Department of Health and Human Services head that we’ve had in history. I think that’s very, very dangerous,” Hostin opened with.  “Why is he less qualified than an economist? How is that possible?” Hines replied, referencing former President Barack Obama’s choice for the position, economist Sylvia Burwell. “I think he is less qualified,” Hostin insisted, as The Daily Wire previously reported. “He has spent his career studying toxins, studying people’s health, fighting for one guy who was using Roundup for his job,” Hines defended her husband. “He has also spread a lot of misinformation, a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion. And I think it’s just a very dangerous thing,” Hostin said before claiming, “I say it with the utmost respect.” “Some of it’s good and some of it is not. That’s the point,” Joy Behar interrupted. “Listen, we all have different views here. Yes. And when you say misinformation, disinformation, we could go back to COVID when —” Hines said. “He’s connecting circumcision to autism,” Hostin interrupted. “May I finish?” Hines asked. “Please,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg chimed in. “When people, Fauci, people were saying when you get the vaccine, you cannot transmit COVID, it will stop COVID. And that was disinformation, misinformation,” Hines reminded the panelists. At the end of the interview, Goldberg said it was important to have guests with different viewpoints and invited Hines to come back.  “We don’t often get people on this show who we can ask these questions to, and I appreciate that you came on,” Goldberg said. “Because you know what, if we can have the discussion back and forth, it then becomes people’s — then they can decide what they believe, and they don’t just hear one side.”

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) says he was not among the Republicans targeted and tracked by former President Joe Biden’s FBI — and he claimed during a recent podcast episode that it was largely thanks to his wireless service provider, AT&T. Cruz was responding to recent reporting on an operation code-named Arctic Frost that the Biden administration used to spy on a number of conservatives and even elected Republicans, including many of Cruz’s current colleagues in the U.S. Senate. Senator Chuck Grassley released a list of senators who had been targeted through Arctic Frost early in October, naming Republican Sens. Josh Hawley (MO), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Lindsey Graham (SC), and Tommy Tuberville (AL), among others — but Cruz’s name did not appear on the list. This document shows the Biden FBI spied on 8 of my Republican Senate colleagues during its Arctic Frost investigation into “election conspiracy” Arctic Frost later became Jack Smith’s elector case against Trump BIDEN FBI WEAPONIZATION = WORSE THAN WATERGATE pic.twitter.com/V2JyiVlX48 — Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) October 6, 2025 Cruz explained on the October 22 episode of “The Verdict” that he was one of nine whose phone records were subpoenaed by Biden’s Justice Department in an effort to investigate the January 6th riot on Capitol Hill — but that AT&T had refused to turn over his information. The DOJ reportedly received information on the other senators from Verizon. “All nine of them had their cellphone records handed over to the Biden Department of Justice,” Cruz said. “Now, I gotta admit just over a week ago, Sean Hannity was in town and I had dinner with Sean and with several of the senators on that list as well — and I was laughing with Sean, I was actually kind of offended. Like how did I get left out of this list?” The Texas senator laughed, adding, “What did I have to do? I was literally standing on the Senate floor on January 6 objecting and leading the fight, and I had brought together 11 senators to stand together and fight for an election commission to assess the evidence of voter fraud … I was joking with Sean, but I wasn’t entirely joking.” Cruz said the reason he had initially been left out was soon clear: “Well, it turns out the reason that I was not on the list, is apparently all eight of those senators, their cellphones are with Verizon — and evidence had come out that Verizon had handed over their cellphone information. Well, my cellphone is with AT&T, and I didn’t know it at the time, but I found out late last week that Jack Smith sent a subpoena to AT&T demanding my cellphone records, and AT&T told him to go jump in a lake.” AT&T, Cruz explained, refused to give up the information: “I’m proud of them. They did the right thing, I appreciate that.”

Editor’s Note: This is the third installment in the five-part series “American Maoists: Warnings From The Cultural Revolution.” In Part II, Xi Van Fleet and Sasha Gong — both activists, scholars, and survivors of Mao’s communist uprising — broke down the endless cycle of victimization that fuels perpetual revolution, and has been embraced by the American Left. Today, the authors take up the question of women. The American Left, it turns out, is not the first revolutionary movement to encourage androgyny and shame women for being traditionally feminine. Indeed, as our authors, show, destroying womanhood is essential to the revolutionary project. ***  The story of women under radical Marxist ideology is the story of beauty turned to beast. Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing — known in the West as Madame Mao — was once celebrated as a symbol of feminine beauty. In 1930s Shanghai, the so-called “Hollywood of the East,” she gained fame as a rising movie star, embodying the glamour and grace traditionally associated with Chinese womanhood. But Shanghai was also a hub for progressives, Communist sympathizers, and fellow travelers — and Jiang Qing was soon drawn into their orbit. In 1937, at the age of 23, Jiang Qing — like tens of thousands of other progressive youths — traveled to Yan’an, the Communist stronghold in the loess hills of northwestern China, to join the revolution. There she quickly caught Mao Zedong’s attention, leading him to set aside his guerrilla fighter wife and marry the former movie star.  As Jiang Qing bound herself to Mao and the Communist revolution, she began to shed her feminine image: cutting her long hair short, trading dresses for shapeless military uniforms, and abandoning the aura of a glamorous actress. This transformation was not simply personal; it reflected a broader ideological demand. In Yan’an, and later in Beijing, the revolution required individuals to dissolve their identity into the collective. As Mao’s political power grew, Jiang’s own image moved ever further from the ideals of Chinese traditional femininity. By 1966, when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, Jiang’s metamorphosis was complete. Elevated to unprecedented authority as “Chairman Mao’s greatest standard-bearer,” she emerged as a hardened, gender-neutral revolutionary warrior, wearing a distinctly masculine haircut and clad only in a Mao suit or military uniform. Jiang Qing became the model for all Chinese women to emulate. Feminine qualities were denounced as toxic, bourgeois, and reactionary, and women were expected to abandon not only the ornaments of beauty but the very essence of femininity itself — as lovers, wives, and mothers. Mao himself praised this new ideal in verse: “China’s daughters hold uncommon resolve; they love not splendid ornaments, but the arms of revolution.” Nowhere was this more stark than in the Red Guard movement: thousands of teenage girls, who might once have sung, studied, or courted love, instead shouted slogans, wielded clubs, and became torturers and killers. The Red Guard was responsible for the first murder of the Cultural Revolution — the brutal beating to death of their principal at a Beijing girls’ high school — an act that unleashed the nationwide violence which would claim tens of millions of lives. It was in that era that both of us passed through girlhood, adolescence, and the bloom of youth, devoid of all femininity. We were told, and we believed, that women could hold up half the sky, and that whatever men could do, we could do even better. We strove to become Iron Girls — the Chinese version of the superwoman — taking on the hardest tasks while training ourselves to look, speak, and act like men. Family, children, and motherhood were pushed from our minds; all that mattered was proving ourselves as revolutionaries. Sadly, defeminization left deep scars on the women of our generation, eroding many of the traditional Chinese virtues of womanhood: tenderness, modesty, nurturing, grace, and devotion to family. Our generation, unlike our Western counterparts, grew up without dreams of a fairytale love story or a perfect wedding.  When some of us later came to the West, we shattered the stereotype of what an Asian woman was expected to be in the eyes of Westerners. As survivors of Mao’s defeminization, we are horrified to see history repeating itself here in America. Although the process began decades ago with the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1960s, its pace has accelerated dramatically in recent years. Radicalized young women — especially white female youth in search of identity — have taken defeminization to new extremes. The body itself becomes a canvas of protest against convention and traditional feminine beauty: blue hair, tattoos, piercings, and harsh attire announce open rebellion. One needs to look no further than the Antifa girls on the streets for living proof. As in Mao’s China, defeminization is more than an outward transformation; in today’s woke culture it is a proud declaration of being the opposite of what family, culture, or faith once revered as good, beautiful, or sacred. In this sense, it is a total reordering of values, inscribed visibly on the body.  What is even worse is that the defeminization of women is accompanied by the feminization of men — a topic for another time. Both trends aim to shake the very foundation of a functioning society. READ MORE: American Maoists, Part I: License To Kill: What Turns Normal People To Political Violence? American Maoists, Part II: The Wheel Of Misfortune: Victims, Victimhood, And Victimization Xi Van Fleet is a survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, activist, and author of “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning.” Sasha Gong is a writer, scholar, journalist, and filmmaker. A dissident in Mao’s China, she holds a PhD from Harvard University and was previously Director of the China Branch at Voice of America. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.