“Heya pal, got a cigarette?” Frank Sinatra was walking outside the Moulin Rouge in Los Angeles, heading west. Outside the club, the guests at the evening’s charity event had started heading out, getting some fresh, damp spring air to cure their mild drunkenness — not as drunk as Spencer Tracy or Clark Gable, but enough that a few stumbles were caught beneath the circular words, perched on the building’s broad side facing Sunset Boulevard: “Thru These Portals Pass The Most Beautiful Girls In The World,” and the rendering of a woman’s profile illuminated in neon — a relic that the club’s manager, Frank Sennes, wouldn’t dare remove, lest the cache of the club go down in the dumps with it. No, this was Hollywood and no one made a move without having some well-connected friends or a bulletproof reputation. Frank Sinatra had both. Lighting his cigarette, Sinatra stared up at the neon goddess and kept walking. Somewhere in the night, the HOLLYWOOD sign was staring down from Mount Lee, above Beachwood Canyon, right over 6230 Sunset Boulevard. Its blinking marquee lights had been taken down years before, but its looming presence remained, overlooking its Pacific desert empire, daring young men and women to follow their ambitions. Fortunes and reputations and dreams were made and lost here ­— Peg Entwistle’s ghost would oversee all of it from the top of the Hollywood “H.” Sinatra, by this May 13 night in 1960, had been through it all. And now he was back on top. To an outsider, there was no better place to be than in the Sinatra orbit. Post-WWII America was still in the midst of a national boom and tiptoeing up to a decade-long transition that would wave a wistful goodbye to one Golden Age and then oversee its burial without realizing how rich we had it. Sinatra had taken over the original Rat Pack from his pal Humphrey Bogart, who hosted the group in a revolving-door style in the Holmby Hills home he shared with his wife Lauren Bacall. And they made a show of it in this showbiz town. David Niven, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, Swifty Lazar, Sinatra, Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Lana Turner. They stayed at The Garden of Allah and dined at Romanoff’s. They drank Rusty Nails and champagne and played practical jokes, had affairs, danced, romanced, gossiped, and broke up. They started rumors and ended them. And when Bogart died in 1957, a part of that world went with him. It was a new, old era. Sinatra had gathered his permanent crew, rebranded the Rat Pack in his swinging image, and set off for Las Vegas. He, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford had a standing show at The Sands Hotel and Casino. “Ocean’s 11” was being filmed; casinos up and down the strip were headlining the stars of the day that would be buried by the counterculture of tomorrow. But the Old Guard’s code still worked. There was carousing and drinking, gambling, smoking, showgirls, money, drugs, sex, parties, and the ease of life that was confident in the present. Untouchable. It was a brotherhood of Rats but clad in black tuxedos, endearing itself to a nation at the cusp of revolution. And the genius of it all — what made it work — was the adherence to a line of respect that came down to what it meant to be a man. By 1960, Rock and Roll had weaved its way into the mainstream. Romonoff’s skipped over Wilshire Boulevard, moving from North Rodeo Drive to South Rodeo. It preserved the original building’s mood, but the cultural shift proved too much to bear, and the restaurant closed its doors two years later. The Brown Derby on Wilshire was also shuttered, followed years later by the Brown Derby on Sunset — the one that created the Cobb salad and the sticky-sweet Shirley Temple — relics of an age that seemed like it would live forever until one day it didn’t. The culture never offers an explanation; only an autograph at the bottom of an IOU. It was, at its core, a town of men, just like any town. And here was Sinatra, smoking a heater, a little drunk, and in a full Indian squaw outfit. The Moulin Rouge party had a Western theme, and the crooner showed up in drag with a feather-topped headdress. It was a deliberate move to tempt the entertainment gods into a fight, and that night, the god was John Wayne. Wayne showed up as himself because he was always John Wayne, and performed his act on stage and received his applause and laughs and cheers. But not from Sinatra. The leader of the pack had beef to settle with Duke. In that town, nothing is as good as the story behind the story, and this was one for the papers. The two Big Men of the Golden Age were at odds over politics, scripts, the Blacklist, Albert Maltz, and the art of being a man — an uncompromising commitment to reputation, honor, and a Code. And so, in the small hours of a Saturday morning with half of Tinsel Town in Cowboys-and-Indians, Sinatra called out, “Hey Duke, why’d you run your mouth?” The five-foot-seven Sinatra, who registered 150 pounds soaking wet, shoved the 220-pound Wayne, a towering figure at six-foot-four even without his hat. Wayne didn’t move; he didn’t have to. He had the advantage of size and posture and a lifetime spent being the final word in the room. Sinatra had the advantage of nerve. This was not merely a fight between two famous men. It was a collision between two competing ideas of manhood, both shaped by the old Hollywood machine but ultimately a reflection of the American Man: overcoming challenges, flaws, and sins (because… who among us?), and stepping into responsibility and danger and sacrifice for honor, reputation, the friends beside you and the family behind you.  The romance of the Rat Pack era, when stripped of the smoke, dazzling lights, crinoline-lined dresses, whitewalls, and the cultural sins of the age, rested on aspiration. A man wanted to be better than he was. He wanted to sing better, dress better, tip better, dance better, and love better. Masculinity was not victimhood. It was not a podcast grievance. It was not a rented sports car photographed at a low angle. It was movement — toward a woman, toward a friend, toward the door, toward the next town, toward the next chance to prove that style was not a costume but a discipline. And if you stepped out of the Moulin Rouge on a starry night below the Hollywood Hills with a heater and an attitude and moccasined feet right into your custom, two-toned 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham and headed toward Route 91, the crystal desert air giving way to the razzle-dazzle of Sin City, a man just might find that discipline refined in ways that only shone under the electrified oasis. That is the thing about the lure of this show town, embedded in the ethos of Las Vegas in its heyday: glamour that is too easy to misunderstand from a distance. It was not simply the tuxedos, the cigarettes, the neon, the women, the jokes, the drinks, the swagger, the snap of a cufflink, or the band hitting the downbeat while a man in a dinner jacket leaned into a microphone as if the whole country had been waiting for him to explain the meaning of cool. It was performance, but performance with obligations. You had to be funny. You had to be generous. You had to be able to take a joke, buy a round, show up for your friend, and know that the woman across the table was not an accessory to your mythology but the reason the mythology had any stakes at all. The Beautiful Babies who understood that what it meant to be a lady was just as important as what it meant to be a man. This is why the film “Swingers,” released in 1996 and set inside the hungry, half-broke, retro-cool Los Angeles of aspiring actors and late-night bars, understood the Rat Pack better than most nostalgia ever could. Set against the backdrop of the revival-swing era, an underground, niche scene that was at its best when it was still below the surface — a spontaneous zeitgeist that originated in small, intimate venues in Southern California — was a reaction to the heavy-handed hair bands and carbon-copy grunge rockers popular at the time. The players never took themselves too seriously, and it reflected the upbeat, carefree fun of the original American Swing of the 1930s and ’40s, but with a punk/ska twist. It only became cringe when GAP mainlined it into its khaki commercial, and Super Bowl XXXIII featured one of the more commercially successful bands, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Doug Liman’s film, written by Jon Favreau, was not about men who had made it. It was about men rehearsing for the possibility that they might. Mike was heartbroken, broke, embarrassed by his own need. His friend Trent was loud enough to cover the terror beneath confidence. Rob, Sue, Charles — all of them were orbiting the same dream factory Sinatra had conquered and the same city that keeps a ledger of everyone who thinks wanting something badly enough makes it inevitable. But “Swingers” is not cruel to Mike. That is its grace. His friends tease him, push him, dress him up in their borrowed bravado, drag him to Vegas and back, and tell him he is money long before he believes it. Their friendship is noisy, immature, and occasionally ridiculous, but it is also tender. The movie knows that male friendship, at its best, is a rescue mission disguised as a bit. And the women in “Swingers” matter precisely because they are not merely trophies in the boys’ recovery narrative. Nikki’s answering machine becomes a tribunal — a trainwreck of a scene that rivals any horror flick. Mike humiliates himself not because a woman is cruel but because he’s upended by his own panic. Lorraine (Favreau ahead of the curve, utilizing an old-fashioned name before it became trendy, again), when she arrives, is not conquered. She is met. She is another person in Los Angeles trying to begin again. The happy ending is not that Mike gets the girl as a reward for suffering. It is that he becomes capable of speaking to her without dragging the wreckage of his old life into the conversation. He becomes, in the old sense, a gentleman — not because he wins, but because he finally stops making his pain someone else’s problem. And here’s the thing that made Swing revival the understated hero: Swing music wasn’t meant to be heard over speakers. It was meant to be live. It was meant for dancing — partner dancing. With a live swing band playing and a postage stamp dance floor, a guy who wasn’t afraid to dance had no shortage of girls to dance with. It was an immediate icebreaker. No stupid pickup lines; all you had to ask was, “May I have a dance?” Hell, maybe she’d buy you a drink if you made her look good. It was a real-life part of the L.A. scene. Favreau frequented the Los Feliz Derby, a version of one of the original Brown Derby restaurants, located in the Los Feliz neighborhood in the greater Hollywood area of Los Angeles, abutting Hollywood and encompassing part of the Santa Monica Mountains. The Hollywood location was the haunt of Bogart and the boys, and the spirit was the same: There was no animosity between men and women; no “trad,” no longhouse. There is no patriarchy, matriarchy, manosphere, feminazis, cat ladies, or chads. There were beautiful babies and cool cats, and no one took it or themselves too seriously. A few members of the cast of “Swingers” recalled that mood in a 2014 interview in Grantland: Vince Vaughn: When Jon moved to L.A., I started to take him out to a lot of these swing music places. A lot of the old punk rock bands started to play swing. It was an alternative to the alternative scene — great live music, people dressing up, and the dancing was fun in a fun, intimate way. You would go and dance with a girl and hang out. It was really conversational. It was like being back in Chicago, where people would actually talk. Glen “The Kid” Marhevka (trumpet player, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy): When we first started playing, we would show up at a club in suits and fedoras and people would just trip. They stared at us like we were aliens. But you’d go out and you’d dance. You’d dance with people. There was physical contact. It was kind of romantic. And just plain cool. Morris: It was Hollywood personified. I mean, it was as hip as any club I have ever been into ever. There is a line running from Sinatra’s Vegas to Favreau’s Los Feliz, from the Sands to The Derby, from the tuxedo to the bowling shirt, from “Luck Be a Lady” to “You’re so money and you don’t even know it.” It is not a straight line of virtue. It is a line of posture, music, friendship, romance, and the belief that life is worth dressing up for even when your checking account says otherwise. The swing revival of the 1990s understood that glamour was democratic if you had the nerve to enter the room. You didn’t need to own the casino. You needed a jacket, a friend, a song, and enough self-respect not to confuse rejection with oppression. In the Golden Age of aspiration, risk, men with ambition, men in love and the beautiful babies they pursued — from the mahogany booths of The Brown Derby, the glitz and red lips of the Sands and the showgirls at the Flamingo; hard-boiled toughness of Bogart and the easy swagger of Wayne — post WWII America placed a lot of expectations on men and men were up to the challenge. The grifter, by contrast, never risks the room. He broadcasts from a throne he built out of insecurity and charges admission to men who have not yet learned that no woman, no friend, no city, no world owes them applause, and when life breaks your heart, call your buddy. Put on the jacket. Go hear the band. Try again. “Cock your hat — angles are attitudes,” Sinatra said. This is the inheritance worth keeping from the Rat Pack’s long shadow: not the vices, not the swagger for swagger’s sake, not the belief that masculinity is proven by intimidation, but rather the American wager that a man can lose, get dressed, meet his friends, hold onto the woman in front of him, and still walk into the night as if the band is playing his song. That’s money, baby.

The 1980s were a tamer time for movies. Films rated “R” for extreme content, “Die Hard” or “Flashdance,” for example, now seem benign when placed alongside the gorefests or sexually gratuitous scenes that are standard fare on today’s large and small screens. However, the Dustin Hoffman movie “Tootsie,” given a modest “PG” rating on its release in 1982, now feels shockingly boundary-pushing and transgressive when viewed through today’s culturally charged lens.  The plot centers on brilliant but struggling New York actor Michael Dorsey, who is too much of a perfectionist to be offered work anymore. As his long-suffering agent, played by the film’s director, Sydney Pollack, warns him: “No one will hire you.” Providing moral support to a friend and fellow actor, Sandy, at her audition for the role of an administrator in a daytime TV hospital soap opera, Dorsey realizes he can simultaneously circumvent his difficult reputation and experience, as he puts it: “one of the great acting challenges an actor could have,” by pretending to be a woman and auditioning for the role. Michael duly becomes “Dorothy Michaels,” wins the part of hospital administrator, Emily Kimberly, and proves an instant hit with the viewers, production crew, and cast members alike. So convincing is he as a woman, the showrunner congratulates him as “the first female character who is her own person.”  Despite his newfound wealth and professional success, Michael soon comes to realize how stressful being a woman can be. As Dorothy Michaels, he gains a terrifying insight into how women are routinely patronized by their male co-workers or simply ignored. The very title of the movie, “Tootsie,” comes from the demeaning term the show’s director uses to address women when he cannot be bothered to remember their names. Casual and sometimes threatening objectifications of women are brought home to Dorsey on numerous occasions. In one particularly fraught evening, the father of an actress he has fallen in love with proposes marriage to him, and upon returning home he is pursued to the point of assault by a male co-star who has stalked him back to his apartment. “This is a nightmare,” he mutters to himself as he tries to get rid of his amorous suitor without blowing his cover.  Dorsey becomes desperate to leave the soap opera — partly because he cannot handle the exhausting attention “Dorothy” is receiving, and partly because he is falling in love with his beautiful co-star, Julie, who plays a nurse on the show. But his agent tells him he cannot break his contract and confess what he has done. Admitting that all along he was a man pretending to be a woman would be treated by the studio executives as “major fraud.” This declaration alone feels genuinely scandalous to a modern sensibility trained to internalize the mantra “trans women are women” as an unquestionable orthodoxy. The way Dorsey figures out a solution to his predicament — ad-libbing live on camera after a pre-recorded scene has accidentally been wiped — is one of the funniest moments in the whole movie. And it is as a screwball comedy rather than social commentary that “Tootsie” works best. Not only does the film contain humorous insights into what New York was like in the early 1980s — as, for instance, one character saying it would be cheaper to get mugged than to get a taxi — but the real hero of the film is Dustin Hoffman. The brilliant but impossible Michael Dorsey we see at the beginning of the movie is clearly based on Hoffman himself. By playing off his real-life reputation as a notorious control freak, Hoffman displays remarkable generosity and humility as an actor, disarming the audience from the outset.  Drawing on what psychologists might laud as the healthy ability to acknowledge one’s own absurdities, Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey absolutely “straight.” There is no knowing wink to the camera that this is really Dustin Hoffman under the wig, and none of the camp a less confident actor might have reached for in his depiction of Dorothy. That earnestness, paired with his evident willingness to mock his own reputation, establishes a safe, playful tone that allows the movie’s satire to grow organically without feeling mean-spirited. It is from this foundation that the film’s comedy of gender errors can flourish.  None of this is to say the film asks us to excuse the men who patronize or endanger women. The director who can’t be bothered to learn a woman’s name is condescending, not confused. The co-star who follows Dorsey home and won’t leave is not a hapless victim of crossed signals; he is, by any reasonable measure, committing sexual assault. That Michael is genuinely rattled by it, entirely unprovoked as it is, tells you how little he understood before he had to live it, and it’s one of the film’s sharpest jokes at male expense. Yet the film’s brilliance lies in its recognition that men and women are bound to disappoint each other and that a healthy society must learn to accommodate that awkward reality. While Michael Dorsey witnesses the ugly side of male chauvinism, he also discovers the impossible, romanticized ideals women harbor about the opposite sex. In a brilliantly comedic reality check, Dorsey, back to being a man, uses his inside knowledge to feed Julie, the actress he has fallen in love with, the exact chat-up line that she had earlier confided in him — while thinking he was Dorothy — was her dream for how a man would approach her. Far from sweeping her off her feet, the line freaks her out, and she throws a drink in his face. It is a hilarious reminder that human beings rarely match the fantasies we project onto them. A mature culture doesn’t respond to this inevitable gap between expectation and reality with outrage. It accepts that romantic and social interactions are a messy business where we must learn to forgive each other’s inevitable shortcomings. This is a skill a healthy society still needs alongside its capacity to name real wrongdoing because most of daily life isn’t made up of “Tootsie”-grade sexism but of much smaller frictions: the clumsy joke, the misread cue, the tactlessly phrased opinion. For those types of interactions, a functioning, pluralistic society relies on an unwritten social contract: the presumption of good faith, sometimes called the benefit of the doubt. Civil society flourishes not because people stop making mistakes, but because a healthy culture defaults to reading most missteps as foolishness rather than malice. This presumption of charity is the bedrock of social trust. It acts as a buffer against paranoia and lets people speak, collaborate, and navigate their differences without constant fear of social excommunication. Naturally, bad characters exist; some people are genuinely manipulative or worse. But a society that structures its everyday norms around the worst of its members, rather than its ordinary ones who are all too capable of daily disappointments and calumnies, ends up asking everyone to live in a permanent defensive crouch. There is a reason everyone who meets Dorothy Michaels falls in love with “her.” Dorothy is patient, unflappable, endlessly wise about other women’s problems and without appetites or wounds of her own, the ideal of a woman precisely because she is a performance, not a person. Michael is talented but insufferably arrogant, capable of friendship and ruthless exploitation in the same afternoon. Julie is warm and funny but dragging the wreckage of a messy love life and a habit of choosing men who treat her badly. Neither of them is anyone’s fantasy. What “Tootsie” understands, and what a culture chasing moral perfection keeps forgetting, is that real intimacy is only available to people who can tolerate the whole, flawed picture of somebody else, essentially the version of them that lets you down and misjudges the moment. Dorothy can be loved by everyone precisely because she is unreal. Loving an actual person is a harder and far more interesting kind of work. The film’s real gift, then, is not naivety about human nature but proportion in how we respond to it. By letting us laugh at how men and women clumsily relate to each other, the film treats indignity as something survivable, even comic, rather than a mortal wound. It reminds us that a mature response to the disappointments of the opposite sex is neither to pretend them away nor to let them become the only thing that ever happened to you, but to meet them with the resilience to make sure they don’t get the last word. In a world obsessed with phantom standards of perfection, the messy, frustrating reality of genuine human relationships offers a more satisfying reward. *** 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.

Maybe it’s just that I’m planning a mid-August vacation this year, but it seems to me that a lot of people are waiting until the final month of summer to hit the beach, hop a flight, or just delete Slack and spend a week pretending to be an unbothered billionaire. If you’re among the many planning a late summer getaway — or if you’re just hoping to get those Goodreads numbers up before football season completely nukes your nights and weekends — here are nine books to keep you busy. Daikon by Samuel Hawley What if the Allies planned to drop a third nuclear bomb on Japan? What if the plane carrying that bomb crashed somewhere in Japan and the bomb didn’t detonate? That’s the premise of Hawley’s novel, one of the most exciting books of 2025. “Daikon” largely tells the story of Keizo Kan, a physicist whose wife and daughter have been lost to Imperial Japan’s increasingly futile war efforts. Blending military history, science, and suspense, “Daikon” is the kind of page-turner begging to be tossed on a sandy towel. Workhorse by Caroline Palmer I’m genuinely shocked this book isn’t at the top of everyone’s list. Imagine if “The Devil Wears Prada” had a baby with “Gossip Girl,” and that baby then grew up to work in journalism and go through alcohol-induced psychosis. “Workhorse” tells the story of Clo Harmon, a striving editorial assistant at a prominent New York fashion magazine, who falls into the orbit of her wealthy desk mate, Davis Lawrence. Palmer, a former Vogue editor and Manhattan socialite, paints a darkly funny picture of New York’s literati in this exceptional debut, equal parts shocking and delightful. The Last Kings Of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China by Jonathan Kaufman You didn’t think this list would be just fiction, did you? Come on now! Kaufman explores two centuries of history through the interlocking stories of the Kadoories and the Sassoons — two Iraqi Jewish families who sought new opportunities on the Chinese frontier and, in the process, helped create Shanghai and Hong Kong and, in many ways, laid the foundation for our globalized world. “The Last Kings Of Shanghai” takes readers through the tumult of the Opium War and the glamour of the Roaring Twenties, climaxing in the stunning tale of how the rival families joined forces to save 18,000 Jews from the Nazis. Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead Colson Whitehead earned critical acclaim for “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys,” two novels dealing with the African American experience in the Antebellum and Jim Crow South, respectively. Those are fine books, but a bit too serious for the lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer. So save them for the winter and instead reach for “Harlem Shuffle,” the first in Whitehead’s now-complete Harlem Trilogy. Ray Carney is a furniture salesman and family man whose part-time work fencing stolen goods has left him “bent, not crooked.” Things bend further when Ray’s scheming cousin Freddy enlists his help in robbing the nicest hotel uptown. Turn the AC down, and you’ll feel transported to the steaming Harlem of the 1960s. Hope I Get Old Before I Die by David Hepworth This is one of the coolest books I’ve ever read. Hepworth sets out to answer the question that many of us have pondered in passing: How did we wind up with this glut of aging rock stars, and are they even having any fun? Weaving history and pop-culture criticism together with ample British wit, Hepworth explains exactly how rock and roll and the music industry evolved and shaped each other, and how the end result — impossibly priced arena rock concerts headlined by septuagenarians — both explains and shapes the state of our society.  A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe Can you have a reading list without a Tom Wolfe book? Not in this house. You can’t go wrong with anything the white-suited wonder wrote, but this is his best novel. Don’t let the 742-page doorstop deter you: You’ll fly through this portrait of late-90s Atlanta, a satirical odyssey that weaves together politics, class, race, and college sports. Charlie Croker is the titular man in full, an aging football star and struggling businessman who’s found himself on the wrong end of a collector’s notice. His attempt to claw his way back to the black puts him at odds with the social-climbing Raymond Peepgrass, the downtrodden Stoic Conrad Hensley, and plenty of other colorful characters. Bonus: The Netflix adaptation is pretty good. In The Shadow Of The Sword by Tom Holland As with the aforementioned Tom, you’d be safe plucking any of Mr. Holland’s volumes off the shelf. A popular historian who doesn’t neglect actual history, Holland has written excellent books on the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. But this volume, on the rise of Islam, is, if not his best, then his most original. Using careful textual analysis, Holland casts doubt on the standard account of the rise of Islam, questioning the accuracy of Muhammad’s story while showing how early Muslims expanded their religion through war and conquest. It’s like the nonfiction “Satanic Verses.” It’s actually pretty crazy he doesn’t have a fatwa against him. Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner A recently divorced Manhattan doctor is navigating dating apps, parenthood, and professional neuroses when his wife disappears. Dazzlingly written, funny, and occasionally shocking, Brodesser-Akner’s debut is a probing portrait of modern life that doesn’t pull punches with its protagonists. You’ll laugh, you’ll wince, you’ll be glad you don’t live in New York. If you like it, skip the Hulu adaptation starring Jesse Eisenberg — fine, but not worth it — and pick up Brodesser-Akner’s truly deranged but breathtakingly brilliant second novel, “Long Island Compromise.” Football by Chuck Klosterman I can’t really describe this book because Klosterman’s writing defies description. If you’ve read him, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, you should rectify that as soon as possible. He is insanely smart and incredibly droll, and he thinks differently from anyone else in the world. This book, his latest, is a love letter to the American game, an encomium to TV broadcasts, college ball, all-star quarterbacks, and more. Pull this one out when the heat and humidity get really oppressive, and you find yourself yearning for a crisp weekend with football on TV. *** 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.

At least three people are dead and two are injured after a gunman opened fire at an Idaho In-N-Out Burger, and authorities say the total number of fatalities is “expected to be higher.” A gunman opened fire in the parking lot of a Twin Falls shopping center around 2:30 p.m. local time Saturday, officials say. Social media video shows the assailant firing on vehicles and, in one instance, opening the doors of a parked car to discharge his weapon, CBS News reports. Twin Falls spokesman Joshua Palmer said that at least three were killed and two were wounded. Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks confirmed fatalities in a Saturday evening press conference, but did not specify a number. Hicks also confirmed that the gunman was killed. It is not clear if the gunman is among the three fatalities Palmer referenced. “The suspected shooter in this incident is deceased,” Hicks said. “He was nearby on the scene there, and we are working to try to ascertain his identity and the motivations behind that.” Palmer said that the total number of fatalities is “expected to be higher.” “We have literally hundreds of people that were in some way, shape or form in the area of this restaurant at the time,” Hicks said, calling the shooting “an exceptionally chaotic scene.” Police shut down nearby roads and bridges after the shooting, and urged residents to avoid the area. The FBI is reportedly on site to investigate the incident, CBS reports. “We are heartbroken,” In-N-Out Chief Operating Officer Denny Warnick said in a statement. “Our prayers go out to our customers, our associates, and all of their families. We are working with the Twin Falls Police Department to assist in the ongoing investigation.” This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Horace Sheffield III endorsed Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on his radio show last week and urged listeners to make “5 and 10 phone calls” to help him in the Aug. 4 primary against Rep. Haley Stevens. Sheffield is the pastor of New Destiny Christian Fellowship and host of “The Wake-Up Call” on FaithTalk 101.5 FM. Campaign finance records show El-Sayed’s campaign made 10 payments of $7,500 each to Ecumenical Ministers Alliance, totaling $75,000, between Oct. 21 and June 1. The payments were listed as “political consulting.” Sheffield incorporated the nonprofit in 2010. It is registered to his home address. Sheffield has publicly supported El-Sayed several times without publicly disclosing the payments. During a Dec. 6 appearance on his show, he endorsed the candidate and pledged to put his “full force of soldiers” behind him. In a June 20 video filmed at El-Sayed’s campaign headquarters, Sheffield said he expected El-Sayed to beat Stevens. The nonprofit itself endorsed El-Sayed last month. El-Sayed said he was “deeply honored” by the endorsement and features it on his campaign website. In 2018, Sheffield faced a similar situation. He was suspended from WFDF after endorsing Shri Thanedar for governor while Thanedar’s campaign was paying his nonprofit tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work. WFDF owner John Adell pointed to FCC equal-time rules. Sheffield later said, “I won’t be involved in any more campaigns.” Records from that year show three other Michigan candidates — Kevin Robbins, Tracy Green, and Terra Defoe — each paid the nonprofit $750 listed as “endorsement fees.” Sheffield is the father of Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield and serves as president of the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network. He has referred to Al Sharpton as a longtime friend. In 2024, the Free Beacon reported that Kamala Harris’s campaign paid $500,000 to Sharpton’s National Action Network shortly before she appeared on his MSNBC program. A spokeswoman for Salem Media, which owns FaithTalk 101.5 FM, said: “We completely reject the endorsement of Abdul El-Sayed made during this paid programming. Pastor Horace Sheffield is not a Salem Media employee and has no affiliation with Salem Media other than purchasing airtime for his independently produced program. Salem Media is supporting Mike Rogers for U.S. Senate, and the views expressed during this paid program do not reflect the views of our company.” In last week’s interview, Sheffield echoed El-Sayed’s arguments against corporate PAC money and in favor of Medicare for All. He described Stevens as “the person who is running” and claimed she “has never been seen” in Detroit. Polling shows Stevens ahead by 46 points among black voters in Michigan. Sheffield closed one segment by saying, “Lord, help this man win.” El-Sayed responded, “You can’t buy authenticity.”