A Democratic lawmaker running for a Senate seat has formally filed articles of impeachment against Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and is receiving criticism from even her own party. Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens filed the articles of impeachment on Wednesday, accusing Kennedy of an “assault” on the public health system that constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors and a violation of his oath of office, according to The New York Times. The articles have little chance to pass the House, since the GOP has a majority. And, notably, leaders in the Democratic Party are not biting either, reportedly criticizing Stevens behind the scenes for acting politically, in a desperate attempt to drum up attention for her Senate run. The Times reported on Wednesday: And though Ms. Stevens said she had discussed her impeachment push with Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, Democratic leaders are not backing it. Some of her colleagues viewed it as the politically motivated move of a candidate who has struggled to gain traction in a heated primary, in which she is facing off against two dynamic candidates who are further to the left than she is. HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon also framed the move as a “partisan political stunt.” “Secretary Kennedy remains focused on the work of improving Americans’ health and lowering costs, not on partisan political stunts,” Nixon said in a statement. Stevens contends she’s “not one for political theater,” however. “I’m for standing up for the health and safety of the people I represent. It’s pretty clear that these are life-and-death issues for folks,” she said. The Democrat further claimed RFK “is carrying out a scientific coup d’etat of America’s public health and his conduct warrants impeachment.” Kennedy, Stevens said, “represents the single largest self-created threat to public health, public trust and the future of scientific progress in the United States. If we don’t act, Americans will suffer. The secretary must go.” Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships Under the leadership of Secretary Kennedy, HHS has moved incredibly quickly to make changes at the department, including cuts to what Kennedy deemed wasteful bureaucracy, changes to vaccine recommendations, working with businesses to eliminate synthetic food dyes and other additives, and, most recently, reportedly amping up standards for vaccine approval. The secretary has also teamed up with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to make food stamp choices healthier and with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to effectively “MAHA” our airports. Related: Trans-Identifying Biden Official Outraged Trump HHS Changed His Nameplate

In Southern California, local officials are now handing out air purifiers to residents choking on the stench of raw sewage — yes, including human waste — flowing across the border from Mexico. Roughly 25 million gallons of untreated sewage from America’s southern neighbor reportedly spill into the Pacific Ocean each day, and in parts of San Diego County, the cross-border torrent has turned what should be crisp seaside air into the unmistakable funk of a porta-potty. By Wednesday morning, the mess had grown loud enough to reach the White House, as President Donald Trump weighed in on Truth Social. “Mexico must take care of its water and sewage problem, IMMEDIATELY. It is a true Threat to the People of Texas, California, and the United States of America!” Trump warned, attaching a local news segment as evidence of the unfolding mess. In California, the mouth of the Tijuana River, which flows through Mexico, empties into the Pacific just north of the border near Imperial Beach. Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships The San Diego County Air Pollution Control District spent the week handing out hundreds of air purifiers and replacement filters to residents in the South Bay, a cluster of communities pressed against the Mexico border. CBS 8 News reported that people living there “continue to grapple with foul odors and polluted air stemming from cross-border sewage flow.” Last week, the situation worsened after a break in a Mexican sewer line reportedly sent 120,000 gallons of sewage into the South Bay. The ongoing pollution has already dragged down home values, closed some beaches, and affected Navy SEAL training. Leon Benham, who has lived in the area for more than 60 years, told KGTV that raw sewage has contaminated his backyard. He is the founder of Citizens for Coast Conservancy, which has reportedly spent years advocating for solutions. “When the offshore flow comes in, we can smell the stink, you know, we can smell it,” he said. Residents largely viewed the air purifiers as a temporary band-aid, not a fix. Baron Parlow, the founder of Stop the Poop, told CBS 8 that local officials simply handing out filters wasn’t anywhere close to enough. “Where [are] all the tough sanctions on the source Mexico?” he asked. “Where’s all the pressure to get Mexico to stop the poo?” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin reacted to President Trump’s demand on social media. “The Trump Admin has been taking important action to PERMANENTLY END the flow of disgusting raw sewage from Mexico into the United States,” he posted on X on Wednesday. “We are working very closely with our Mexican counterparts to ensure San Diego area beaches can reopen, foul odors cease, and the Tijuana River Valley gets cleaned up as quickly as humanly possible. This will also be great for our Navy SEALs who train in the area.”    

The actress who played the villain in the mystery horror thriller “Weapons” said that the gay and drag communities have really connected with her character. Amy Madigan, who plays the child-snatching witch Aunt Gladys in the film, made the comments during a newly published interview with Variety. “People actually like Aunt Gladys,” the actress said of the character. “They kind of want to hang out with her. I’m very, very happy and grateful that the gay community and the drag community have really accepted Gladys. The people that I’ve talked to have said, ‘We’re the other. We’re the outsider, and we’re not supposed to fit in, and Gladys does in a weird way.’ And now they have really helped her spread her magic around.” The Golden Globes just nominated Madigan for best performance by a female actor in a supporting role in any motion picture. In the film, her character uses witchcraft to possess both children and adults, using their life force to keep herself young. “Weapons” director Zach Cregger discussed some of his motivations for the film, including the character of Aunt Gladys with her bright red hair and garish makeup.  “I had written another script many years ago that was kind of the Gladys story,” Cregger told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published in October. “It was told from a child’s perspective, and this crazy woman picks him up at school and takes him home and has subsumed his parents. It’s about him trying to figure out how to get out from under her oppression.”  He said the character was inspired by a non-fiction book by Wade Davis called “The Serpent and the Rainbow” and a song called “Dancing in the Head” by the British punk band The Mekons. There were many reactions on social media about Aunt Gladys being embraced by the LGBT crowd.  “Uhhh, she’s a hideous, murderous monster who tortured children,” one reply said. “Come to think of it, yes, it makes sense that the alphabet cult would embrace her.” “Extraordinary. Once again siding with an unsympathetic and irredeemable villain who preys on children,” another person said.  “The gay and drag community loves a witch who kidnapped and enslaved children, lol, I can’t believe she just straight up said it,” echoed a third.

There is a particular kind of tragedy that unfolds when good intentions are fed the wrong script. Hollywood has seen it before — the irresistible pull of a neatly packaged narrative, a morality play that casts a prisoner as a prophet and a conflict as a parable. But the global chorus of actors, writers, and musicians who recently called for the release of Marwan Barghouti walked into something far more complicated: a story crafted not to inform, but to activate. More than 200 cultural figures were presented with an emotionally charged narrative: Barghouti as the Palestinian Mandela — a heroic symbol of liberation, a political detainee whose freedom could heal a broken land. It was a narrative engineered with precision. It invoked apartheid, redemption, and the irresistible idea of the righteous prisoner held unjustly by a cruel state. But the story they signed their names to didn’t just omit context. It omitted the dead. Marwan Barghouti is not in prison for his ideology. He is serving five life sentences plus 40 years after being convicted in 2004 for his role in attacks that killed five civilians and attempted to kill others. These are not points of political contention; they are matters of public record. His victims had names. Father Georgios Tsibouktzakis, a Greek Orthodox monk, was shot dead in 2001 while driving near St. George’s Monastery — a man who devoted his life to prayer and his final years to quiet service. Yoela Chen, 45, was murdered at a gas station near Giv’at Ze’ev. Eli Dahan, 53, Yosef Habi, 52, and Police Officer Salim Barakat, 33, were gunned down in the March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv’s Seafood Market restaurant — civilians and a Druze Israeli officer, none of whom had any political role in anything at all. Their lives were not symbols. They were the texture of ordinary days: errands run, meals shared, shifts finished, families waiting at home. They remain absent at every holiday table, every birthday, every unspoken conversation that grief continues on their behalf. And yet — in the celebrity campaign to free Barghouti, these names vanish. Their faces are unimagined. Their humanity is eclipsed by the seductive narrative of the “freedom fighter.” This selective empathy is not an oversight. It is the fingerprint of the modern anti-zionist narrative machine, a hate movement that excels at converting geopolitical complexity into emotionally consumable scripts. It packages the conflict into a digestible drama: one side oppressed, the other villainous; one man heroic, the other side faceless. It knows whom it is speaking to — the artists, the idealists, the storytellers who respond instinctively to the visual of a lone prisoner against the world. This is why the comparison to Mandela was seeded into the campaign from the start. Simona Granati – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images But Mandela’s greatness was forged in restraint — his refusal to condone violence against civilians, his devotion to reconciliation, his commitment to building a multiracial democracy. Barghouti’s record is not that. His ascent through Tanzim, and his association in analyses with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, places him in the lineage of armed factions that targeted civilians during the Second Intifada. His conviction for the murders of Father Georgios, Yoela, Eli, Yosef, and Officer Barakat stands unchallenged in the legal record. To equate him with Mandela is not inspiration. It is historical malpractice. None of this diminishes Palestinian suffering under Hamas. The Palestinian people deserve dignity, freedom, safety, functioning governance, and leaders who place their communities’ well-being over factional theatrics. They deserve institutions instead of militias, opportunity instead of stagnation, a future shaped by education, reform, and civil society rather than martyrdom posters, hate, and funerals. But elevating Barghouti as the vessel of that hope does not help Palestinians. It keeps them chained to the very political culture that has failed them for decades — a culture where leaders rise not through governing, but through “resistance” defined as violence; not through building, but through spectacle. There is nothing progressive about resurrecting an old militant as the future of a nation. What Palestinians need — what every people need — is leadership rooted in accountability, anti-corruption, institution-building, economic development, and the protection of civilians. They need a government that values life more than symbolism and the living more than the dead. And yet the world’s cultural elite were persuaded to throw their moral authority behind a man convicted of killing civilians, because the narrative they received was engineered to bypass scrutiny and appeal directly to empathy. Empathy is not the problem. The manipulation of empathy is. The selective framing that presents Barghouti as a moral beacon while erasing his victims is a hallmark of a hate movement masquerading as justice work. Modern anti-zionism often conflates political advocacy with emotional coercion — telling Western audiences that compassion requires elevating those who commit violence, while portraying any demand for accountability as oppression. But true solidarity does not require abandoning truth. And true justice does not require erasing the names of the dead. The celebrity signatories were right about one thing: the region needs renewal. Palestinians desperately need political transformation. But that transformation will not come from releasing a man whose legacy contains the deaths of innocents. It will come from amplifying those working — often quietly, often without fanfare — to build civil society, strengthen institutions, combat corruption, and create genuine pathways to prosperity, liberty, and safety. If the world’s storytellers want to stand on the right side of history, they must first stand on the right side of facts. And the facts demand this: the path to peace is not paved by celebrating those who shed blood. It is paved by elevating those who choose life. If the signatories truly seek justice, the path forward is simple: reconsider and retract your support for Barghouti’s release, and commit to vetting future campaigns that appeal to your empathy while obscuring violence. Direct your influence instead toward the real peace-builders — the Palestinian reformers, journalists, educators, and civic leaders fighting corruption and constructing a future rooted in dignity, agency, and safety. Honor all victims of political violence, Israeli and Palestinian alike, whose lives deserve remembrance rather than erasure. And finally, resist the seduction of myth-making — the heroic scripts that feel righteous but flatten truth. Your voices carry weight; let them be used in service of the living, the grieving, and those who are building a future rather than those who helped destroy it. * * * Elicia Brand is the founder and president of Army of Parents in Loudoun County, VA. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire. Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships

Host Joe Kernen and guest, former SEC Chair Jay Clayton, declared on Wednesday that President Joe Biden should have full and complete ownership of the affordability crisis that is currently facing many Americans. Kernen raised the issue early Wednesday morning on “Squawk Box,” arguing that the economy under President Donald Trump was still struggling under some of the baggage Biden’s economic policies had left behind. WATCH: Joe Kernen: “The affordability issue is from the 22% increase in prices under Biden—full stop.” Former SEC Chair Jay Clayton: “[Trump was] thrown, what I would say, the worst economy for the average American in my adult lifetime.” pic.twitter.com/5vljwi1KPm — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) December 10, 2025 “The affordability issue is from the 22% increase in prices and inflation under Biden, there’s just — full stop, right there. That’s the affordability issue — and you gotta be able to explain that,” Kernen said. “That’s right,” Clayton agreed. “And look, I think that with the economic team — President Trump and the economic team led by Scott Bessent — you have people who very much understand this. And it was a — they were thrown, what I would say, the worst economy for the average American in my adult lifetime, in terms of like you said, the incredible increase in prices at the household.” Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships The Trump administration has been talking a lot about the idea of affordability, particularly in the wake of New York City’s election of Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who ran on a platform focused on that. And while not all prices have come down as quickly as many would have liked, gas prices have been on a steady decline, and the rollback of Biden-era “green” energy standards could soon pay off for consumers in the market for new automobiles. “Lower energy, lower regulation… [eliminated] CAFE standards… That’s going to reduce the price of cars by, we estimate, between $1,000-$2,000 for the typical car,” Kevin Hassett explained. NEC Director Kevin Hassett on @POTUS‘ moves to lower costs: “Lower energy, lower regulation… [eliminated] CAFE standards… That’s going to reduce the price of cars by, we estimate, between $1,000-$2,000 for the typical car.” pic.twitter.com/xFspIRrWNg — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) December 9, 2025