A financial giant accused of debanking a gun store is facing increasing pressure over allegations it targeted conservative customers.  Consumers’ Research, a conservative organization, launched a “woke alert” campaign targeting Capital One on Thursday. Last week, The Daily Wire reported on a lawsuit filed by a Maryland gun store suing Capital One after claiming it blocked it from using its payment platform after identifying it as participating in a “prohibited industry.” The lawsuit from the Rockville-based United Gun Shop says it received messages in 2025 and 2026 from Capital One and Melio Payments suggesting that they could not work with the firearms industry. The messages came after the gun store attempted to use Capital One’s payment platform, administered by Melio Payments, for multiple business-related transactions and bill payments. “Capital One has been caught debanking law-abiding citizens again. It apparently isn’t enough for Capital One to fund and promote racist DEI, climate activism, and extreme transgender policies; the company is also debanking its own customers simply for holding views outside leftist ideology,” Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild told The Daily Wire.  The “woke alert” from Consumers’ Research pointed to a lawsuit filed by the Trump organization accusing Capital One of cancelling more than 300 of the company’s accounts in 2021 after President Donald Trump’s first term ended.   This lawsuit was noted in a recent financial filing from Capital One, noting it was dealing with “a civil lawsuit filed by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust and several affiliated corporate entities against Capital One.” Additionally, the filing noted that it was “responding to demands and requests from various federal agencies” regarding “fair access to banking,” prompted by an executive order from Trump directing “government agencies to review financial institutions’ policies and practices for providing, maintaining, or discontinuing financial products or services to certain clients or potential clients.” Capital One is one of the nine major financial entities being probed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The “woke alert” flagged other gun industry owners who complained they had services cut off by Capital One, including the owner of a silencer company, who testified that he was unable to use their banking services to sell federally regulated suppressors.  A previous version of the company’s corporate terms of service contained a provision saying that “ammunition, firearms, or firearm parts or related accessories” were prohibited payments for corporate accounts. That provision has since been removed from the current terms of service.  Capital One has a history of pushing corporate activism, including announcing a $200 million investment back in October 2020 into “growth in underserved communities,” focusing on “black and Latinx” communities.  “From law-abiding gun sellers to President Donald Trump’s own family, conservative Americans are being disgracefully treated like criminals because of Capital One’s discriminatory policies,” Hild said. “Every consumer needs to know that ‘woke’ is what’s in Capital One’s wallet.”

The resignation of FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary creates an opportunity for the agency to return to its mission of protecting the public by ensuring drugs are safe. Whether Kyle Diamantas is running the agency long-term or the administration expediently appoints someone new, now is the time to address the most significant public health crisis of our time: the widespread distribution of mail-order abortion drugs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration recklessly stripped away basic requirements for the abortion drug mifepristone, such as in-person doctor’s visits. The intention was to expand abortion nationwide if Roe v. Wade was overturned. This mail-order policy has pushed abortion drugs into pro-life states, violating their laws, ending lives, and endangering women and girls. And it’s still in place. This Biden policy is the reason abortions have risen, not fallen, in the post-Dobbs era, with more than one million unborn children dying annually. Even in states with strong pro-life protections, tens of thousands of abortions persist each year, driven in large part by this unchecked spread of mail-order abortion drugs. We know 90,000 abortions are occurring annually just in the states that protect life all throughout pregnancy. Mifepristone is manufactured and distributed to kill unborn children, but it is also highly dangerous for women. In September, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. confirmed that the Biden administration “twisted” data on abortion drug safety and there would be a necessary review. Studies indicate that even when these drugs are given in person with oversight, as many as 11% of women who take these drugs experience serious adverse effects, including hemorrhaging, infection, and sepsis. Peer-reviewed research further shows that roughly three-quarters of emergency room visits following abortion drug use are classified as severe or critical. According to the FDA’s own label, abortion drugs send approximately one in 25 women to the ER. This policy shift has also created fertile ground for abuse. Without in-person screening, there is little to prevent coercion or forced abortions. Cases like that of Rosalie Markezich – whose boyfriend allegedly ordered abortion drugs online from California and pressured her to take them against her will – highlight a disturbing reality. When you peddle drugs online to anyone, vulnerable women and their children are left exposed to manipulation, violence, and irreversible harm. Thankfully, Republican attorneys general have challenged the Biden policy, with one case brought by Louisiana rising to the top. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently moved to halt the FDA’s mail-order abortion drug policy, signaling that challenges to this regulatory framework have substantial merit. The court called the Biden policy “federal interference” that nullifies Louisiana’s pro-life law and said the policy “lacked a basis in data and scientific literature.” The court said, “FDA’s own documents prove that emergency room care is statistically certain in hundreds of thousands of cases.” Looking ahead, the path forward is clear. It is time for the FDA to return to the standard of in-person doctor visits that was in place during the first Trump administration and to fully study mifepristone. While it is my hope that mifepristone will be completely taken off the market someday, going back to basic safety standards will allow pro-life laws to take effect and add a critical layer of protection for women. Face-to-face evaluations allow for screening of ectopic pregnancies, to assess gestational age, to identify risk factors, and to detect signs of coercion. Public opinion strongly supports this approach. Polling consistently shows that 71% of Americans – including majorities of Independents, Democrats, and even self-identified liberals – favor reinstating in-person medical oversight for abortion drugs. Now is the time for the FDA to do the right – and the politically smart – thing. Return to the Trump administration policy of in-person doctor visits to save lives. *** Marjorie Dannenfelser serves as president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. She has been called “the woman who brought down Roe.”

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. *** “Can I read the ingredients list?” That simple question is one I’ve awkwardly asked almost since I knew how to read. As a child, I grew up with an unfortunate host of food sensitivities that meant understanding labels had to become second nature as I navigated elementary school snacks and sleepovers. This was long before the days of shelf-scanning apps, label-busting influencers, and the MAHA powerhouse. Instead, all I had was a food-savvy mom, a memorized list of no-go ingredients, and my reading skills. If a seven-year-old can stare unflinchingly at the unpronounceable words on back-of-packaging labels, any adult can navigate the grocery store with confidence. A bit of knowledge and patience is all it takes to judge a label faster than any app or ChatGPT can ask. Here’s how. To start at the top of the label, it’s always worth glancing at the serving size information to see how much (or little) is one “serving.” A pint of ice cream may be two (or one) servings to some, but the label may disagree and demand four tiny portions. For those of us counting calories or cutting down on sodium, these serving sizes matter, but for those of us just concerned about ingredients, it’s just another handy data point. Similarly, unless you’re counting macros, it’s safe to ignore the table of grams and daily percentages of protein and vitamins. The requirements around which vitamins need to be reported are convoluted, and the percentages are based on a 2,000-calorie diet. Depending on your height, age, sex, and activity level, that may not be your actual caloric needs. Plus, many nutrient numbers are boosted by the addition of synthetic vitamins, particularly in boxed cereals or white bread. Past the white box of numbers is where most of the key information hides. A quick skim of the “contains” or “may contain” list below the ingredients can reveal any major allergens, and most foods will proudly advertise if they are gluten- or dairy-free. However, the full ingredients list is where the dirty secrets of food manufacturing are buried. Even seemingly simple products can have a surprisingly long list of preservatives, fillers, and mystery components. By now, most of us have heard that long ingredient lists are a red flag, and we know that if we can’t pronounce an ingredient, it’s probably worth avoiding. However, even the pronounceable ingredients can have some spooky secrets. “Artificial flavors” is a natural bogeyman, with a host of lab-made combinations encompassed under such a vague term. But “natural flavors” and variations like “natural vanilla flavor” or “natural raspberry flavor” can be just as opaque when it comes to information on the actual contents or origin of the flavoring agent. And as the University of Wisconsin explains, “the science of flavoring is so advanced that many artificial flavors actually have the exact same chemical structure as the naturally occurring ones.” Food dyes like Red 40 or Yellow 5 have gotten ample press for their link to cancer, and many of them are banned or require warning labels in other countries. Derived from petroleum (like gasoline), they have also been linked to hyperactivity in children. Yet, even some natural dyes can have disturbing origins. Carmine is all-natural and has been used for hundreds of years to produce beautiful shades of crimson and pink in everything from fabrics to cosmetics. Today, you can find it in red-colored foods like strawberry yogurt. Its source? The dried bodies of cochineal insects. In short, skip the unidentifiable and unknown ingredients. We don’t have to know the name of every strange component to know what doesn’t sound edible. Beyond the names of food (and food-like substances) on the nutrition panel, the qualifiers that come with some ingredients are worth a second glance. For example, flour is rarely listed as a single-word ingredient. Instead, it’s typically paired with “enriched wheat” or “whole wheat.” Words like “whole,” “organic,” and “brown” signal a less processed component, while “white,” “enriched,” and any unfamiliar terms usually equal a food that Mother Nature wouldn’t recognize. Certainly, it’s an exercise in patience to pay attention to each word on the label, but food companies have ample incentive to keep their recipes a trade secret while conversely highlighting any high-quality inclusions. Each word can provide important information into what’s hidden or where the brand is stepping up their MAHA game. Even the parentheticals that give sub-ingredients of chocolate chips, spices, or “contains 2% or less of” can have a surprising number of strange substances. Finally, at the very end of the ingredients, manufacturers are required to reveal if their product contains genetically modified organisms or bioengineered foods. Soy and seed oils are often the source of GMOs, and shopping certified non-GMO or organic will cut out the lab-made foods. Once you’ve gone through the full list, take a closer look at the order of the ingredients. Each item is written in descending order of quantity, so if the first food is sugar, you’re in for a roller-coaster and crash after you indulge. As a bonus, this is also a handy way to know whether your purchase will be only a little spicy, very salty, or pack a punch of sour. It’s a slog to get through the text wall of hyper-processed mystery ingredients at first. But soon, key terms will start jumping out, and a skim will reveal just how honest the front-of-box advertising is. And in the end, checking labels is not about making perfect choices. It’s about choosing to be a more informed consumer. For food manufacturers to offer healthier options, we need to demand better options. That starts by voting with our wallets — and giving each label a leery look.  *** Jordan Jantz is the assistant editor at IW Features as well as a freelance writer, editor, and website designer.

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 a lot of my high school friends for the last time in March of 2020 — not because they died from COVID-19, but because they transitioned genders. The names of the people I cared about were no more; those were “dead names.” I watched them step away from lunch tables and afternoons at the park so they could inject themselves with cross-sex hormones. One of my best friends feigned sadness when she told me she would be missing from my graduation party, as well as most of our other favorite summertime traditions, because she was having “top surgery.” In the years since I graduated high school, I have seen over a dozen of my former classmates change their names and their genders. The people I grew up beside abandoned their identities. Sometimes I will pass them on the street, and I find myself squinting to remember their faces before they were modified by testosterone or their names before they abandoned the ones their parents gave them. It’s been a few years, so we’ve all grown and changed, but the wounds of transgenderism leave a deep scar. I first met my friends when I was 14. After growing up in a small, Christian elementary school, switching to the local suburban high school felt like entering a whole new world. We had a massive theater for the drama department, two enormous art classrooms, and a huge band room, each of which appealed to my artistic inclinations. My friends were in the same classes as me; we took drawing and photography, learned creative writing, and auditioned for the school play together. After school, we would walk to the park or get ice cream.  I was 15 when my friends suggested I join the GSA Club. The GSA, the national network of Gay and Straight Alliance clubs for school-aged children, only met a couple of times a month. When I informed my friends that I wasn’t gay, they told me that I was. One of my girlfriends took my phone, added me to the GSA group chat, and proudly told me, “You’re bisexual. I am, too. That’s why we get along so well.”  I never attended a GSA meeting, but for the next few years, I was told multiple times that I wasn’t straight. Older generations often think of peer pressure like an Archie cartoon, where a group of larger, scarier teenagers encircle a weaker kid and convince him that if he doesn’t smoke a cigarette, he’s a loser. Peer pressure surrounding gender ideology is different because the pressure comes from a deceptive misinterpretation of love. I was told I was bisexual because it gave me the freedom to date anyone I wanted. I was told I was asexual because it gave me the space to have relationships without physical connection. Eventually, one of my friends tried to tell me I was nonbinary as an explanation of why I liked skateboarding and rock ‘n roll.  I never bought into the lies of gender ideology, but over time, almost every single one of my friends did. Everyone, at the very least, identified as bisexual, and eventually nonbinary. Multiple people asked to be called by different names or different pronouns. At 16, I watched one of my best friends start taking testosterone, excitedly posting daily blogs about how exciting the journey was. These same kids were on SSRIs, went to weekly therapy sessions, and had self-harm addictions. I watched friends go in and out of mental health facilities, then claim that the only cure was to start taking cross-sex hormones or change their birth certificates. The reported rates of depression for transgender individuals is 63% compared to the normal 13%, and their rates of suicidal ideation are also comparably higher. My friends explored transgenderism because they hoped that changing their gender would fix their mental health problems, but it only made them worse. During the 2020 pandemic, when most people were struggling to get doctors’ appointments for cancer treatments or hospice care for nursing home patients, one of my best friends was able to get a double-incision mastectomy. All of our friends celebrated the surgery, and when my friend posted pictures of her chest afterward, I saw how transgenderism had ruined the once-healthy body of someone I loved. The pandemic radicalized a lot of young people, and, thankfully, I was one of them. In the months I spent isolated from my friend group, I ditched all of my liberal inclinations. I paid attention to the news, did my own research, and crossed the Rubicon when I started listening to Michael Knowles each morning. One afternoon, I posted a photo of myself in a MAGA hat. That marked the end of most of my friendships. The people I had spent years having lunch with, riding bikes with, and playing Mario Kart with were now flooding my inbox, calling me a Nazi and a pedophile sympathizer. Some people blocked me; others sent me paragraphs-long messages asking me why I hated them and wanted them dead. I was removed from group chats, uninvited from parties, and scrubbed from former friends’ social media feeds.  My experience is not unique. Nearly 40% of Gen Z claim they are on the LGBT spectrum. At the same time, a growing percentage of Gen Z is identifying as conservative, surpassing their millennial counterparts in some studies. There is a massive political divide within my generation. Those who identify as liberal are extremely far to the left, while those who identify as conservative are further to the right than previous generations. A portion of the divide is a product of gender, as Gen Z women are much more likely to be liberal. However, some of the divide is a product of age, with younger Zoomers being more likely to identify as conservative. Regardless of where the lines are drawn, the end result is the same: Young Americans are more polarized than they have ever been. Politics is tearing apart teenagers and children. Our culture is suffering under the weight of dangerous factions such as gender ideology. I miss my friends. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t think of an inside joke or remember a good day we spent together — listening to Smash Mouth in the film lab or when the power went out in history class. But my friends are gone. They changed their names, and they changed their bodies. They have injected themselves with hormones. They have chopped off their own body parts. Thankfully, the number of young people identifying as LGBT is declining, but the effects of the transgender hysteria will harm young Americans for years. *** Brooke Brandtjen is a writer and journalist from Wisconsin who focuses primarily on culture, politics, and religion. She is a senior contributor at New Guard Press, a publication she joined while attending Hillsdale College.

Ohio says it is immediately implementing anti-fraud measures in the home health sector, days after claiming it already had such measures, and after a Daily Wire report showed how the administration of Gov. Mike DeWine actually turned off previously-existing fraud protections. The about-face comes after Vice President JD Vance, who also hails from Ohio, announced on Wednesday that the federal government would be suspending the enrollment of any new home-health companies in the Medicaid program for six months. DeWine announced in response that he was implementing “several new fraud prevention initiatives” that had been “long in development” to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicaid. The announcement comes amid a Daily Wire investigative series into home health care waste, fraud, and abuse. It comes just a week after the DeWine administration attempted to dismiss The Daily Wire’s series, telling other media outlets that “Ohio has extensive oversight mechanisms in place,” including a safeguard called “Electronic Visit Verification,” or EVV. Ohio spends $1 billion a year on “home health,” most often to people who aren’t medical professionals, to provide services like “chores,” “companionship,” and “conversation.” The people getting paid by Medicaid are frequently the patients’ own family members. The DeWine administration initially attempted to dismiss The Daily Wire’s series, telling other media outlets that “Ohio has extensive oversight mechanisms in place,” including a safeguard called “Electronic Visit Verification,” or EVV. It garnered sympathetic coverage in local outlets like the Columbus Dispatch, who played down the scandal after the Ohio Department of Medicaid told media May 5 that, “To confirm that billed services are actually rendered, ODM relies on an extensive set of safeguards, including… Mandatory electronic visit verification capturing date, time, and service location.” But it turns out that wasn’t entirely true. On Monday, The Daily Wire revealed Ohio wasn’t actually requiring meaningful EVV. For years, Ohio had been paying people even if there was no verification, according to public testimony by Auditor Keith Faber. Furthermore, the state neutered EVV by making GPS optional, citing privacy concerns for patients. Dave Yost, the former attorney general of Ohio, had complained to the legislature that making GPS optional had made detecting fraud impossible. “Until about a year ago [GPS] was required, now it’s optional,” Yost told legislators in March. “I do not know for the life of me why it went away, but I respectfully ask you to put in statute where no vendor, no bureaucrat can object to legitimate monitoring.” Ohio Department of Medicaid spokeswoman Stephanie O’Grady told The Daily Wire five days ago that the change was necessary because of patient “privacy.” “Effective July 1, 2024, GPS functionality within any EVV application or device may only be activated with the signed consent of the individual receiving services—valid for one year and revocable at any time. The approach allows the person receiving care to make an informed decision related to privacy protections for individuals receiving home and community-based services,” she said in an email. DeWine’s administration says it has been taking steps to reimplement the requirement since late last year. “In December, DeWine authorized Ohio Medicaid to begin the information technology investments needed to make GPS mandatory for EVV. Ohio Medicaid [is] now ready to make this rule change to implement the requirement,” it said. But Ohio’s implementation of EVV is still easily gamed: Even though it paid $146 million to work with a large provider of tracking software, it allows home health aides to use other software instead, and those systems simply transmit the coordinates as plain text, potentially making it possible to submit fake coordinates. As The Daily Wire’s series continues to document the people who own home health companies – such as a husband-and-wife team with repeated convictions for fraud, theft, and assault – the DeWine administration began to backtrack from its initial posture. O’Grady said Monday that “improvements were already underway, and The Daily Wire series provides a great reminder as to why we have been pursuing these stronger safeguards for future implementation.” DeWine said on social media Wednesday, “Today I announced several new fraud prevention initiatives to strengthen and build upon long-standing efforts to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in the Ohio Medicaid System. We are ready to begin these initiatives long in development that will enhance Ohio’s nation-leading work.” State lawmaker Mike Dovilla, a Republican who has been critical of the governor, replied: “The only thing that has been ‘long in development’ is persistently ignoring and denying these and similar instances of fraud, waste, and abuse.” As recently as May 4, the DeWine administration cut the latest check to Omega Healthcare Services, which has received nearly $6 million through Medicaid, and is run by a woman who previously had a daycare shut down for not being able to prove the kids were real. Her husband and office-mate was convicted of billing the government for nonexistent elder services, and the company listed the teenage son of a convicted money launderer on corporate documents. U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), who on Wednesday was named the chair of a new congressional subcommittee on fraud, said investigating Ohio is at the top of his list, and expressed shock at the lack of oversight of the multi-billion dollar program. “Our first action: a formal investigation into a massive Medicaid fraud scandal in Ohio — where hundreds of shell companies operating out of empty office buildings billed taxpayers over $250 million for services that could not be verified,” Gill said. “And we believe the full scope of this scandal reaches into the billions.” “A @realDailyWire reporter found this in two months. The agency responsible for stopping it had years,” he wrote.