Michele Tafoya, a longtime NFL sideline reporter turned political activist, is running for Senate in Minnesota, telling The Daily Wire her home state is at a “crisis moment.” “I’ve raised my family here and I love this place, and we are at a crisis moment in Minnesota, a crisis of leadership,” Tafoya said in an interview ahead of Wednesday’s launch. “These career politicians that have brought us to this place show no inclination of getting us out of it.” Tafoya spent nearly four decades working in sports, most notably as the sideline reporter for Monday Night Football on ABC and Sunday Night Football on NBC. After she stepped away from NBC in 2022, Tafoya became a regular voice in the political sphere, launching a podcast where she discusses the issues of the day. Now, Tafoya is stepping further into the political fray with a bid to replace retiring Democrat Senator Tina Smith. Minnesota, which has not had a Republican senator in 20 years, has become a political flashpoint following allegations of widespread fraud that occurred under Democrat Governor Tim Walz, and the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Hours before Tafoya officially launched her campaign, Vice President JD Vance announced that he would travel to Minneapolis to hold a roundtable on the ongoing fallout from Good’s death. The tense political climate and prospect of a formidable Democrat opponent — Rep. Angie Craig and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan have both entered the race — pose a challenge for any Republican candidate. Tafoya says she’s ready. “I have a willingness and a spine to do the hard work and really fight for all Minnesotans, and that’s what I will do in the Senate,” she said. “I bring new ideas to the mix and ask the tough questions, particularly about this fraud. We have to hold people accountable for this. This can’t just slip by anymore. This is right versus wrong, and we’re either going to choose the common sense that built this country or we’re going to choose corruption and craziness.” Tafoya has been critical of Walz amid the fraud scandal, and has also slammed Minnesota Democrats for adopting soft-on-crime policies. “We have failed leadership that has led us to the chaos that we’re seeing. It has led us to the fraud and the circumstances in which we find ourselves,” Tafoya said. “We have a crisis of law enforcement. The local law enforcement here are not allowed to work with federal law enforcement, and that has resulted in some absolutely disastrous results.” Tafoya told The Daily Wire she’s trading the gridiron for the GOP because she wants to see the Minnesota middle class thrive again. “People are really struggling to make ends meet and we’ve had some good signs, like gasoline is at a five-year low and GDP is high, but healthcare is a mess and getting a college education costs a fortune,” Tafoya said. “We’ve got rent and mortgage that is too high, and these things need to be corrected.” “We’ve got fourth- and fifth-generation Minnesotans who love it here, who believe in this state,” she adds. “They don’t want to leave.” Tafoya is proud of her political outsider status, but enters the race with a major ally in her corner: the National Republican Senatorial Committee for her campaign, led by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, has already endorsed her. That endorsement could help her emerge victorious from an already-crowded Republican field that includes former NBA player Royce White, former state Republican Party chair David Hann, and others. Despite the challenges, Tafoya says she’s ready to fight — and win. “I’m going to have to reach every single Republican in Minnesota,” Tafoya says. “I’m going to have to reach Democrats as well and find people who are willing to cross the aisle.” “We have a lot of independents here in Minnesota. Right now it’s about reaching out for those votes and working really hard for those votes.”

Elon Musk is funding a lawsuit from the Texas doctor who is accusing Texas Children’s Hospital and multiple physicians of crafting “malicious” lies about him to destroy his career as they attempted to cover up their efforts to transition children. Dr. Eithan Haim blew the whistle on Texas Children’s Hospital in May 2023, unveiling proof that the hospital had lied about ending its transgender medical program and was still performing attempted transition procedures on children as young as 11. His disclosures showed the hospital was breaking the law, as Texas had just passed a bipartisan law to ban the procedures. One month later he received a visit from federal agents — and he quickly realized he was on former president Joe Biden’s target list. His lawsuit, filed this month in Texas, says that individuals at the hospital worked with Biden’s Department of Justice “by devising a scheme to destroy his career and put him behind bars.” Haim, who first came forward about the legal crusade against him to The Daily Wire in January 2024, suffered the consequences of severe federal scrutiny for more than a year, until President Donald Trump took office in January 2025. Trump’s Justice Department dropped the case. His lawsuit says they were “dismissed with prejudice because they were founded on lies, not facts or law.” “The judge just signed it! It’s fucking over!” I was just on the phone with @EithanHaim as his wife told him that the judge officially dismissed DOJ’s case against him. Pure jubilation. Amazing guy who Biden put through hell. — Brent Scher (@BrentScher) January 24, 2025 Now he’s looking for payback against the hospital that put him in the mess. He says it’s fitting that Musk is backing the lawsuit, because of how important Musk’s platform X was to his initial fight. “The only way I was able to fight back against an unjust prosecution was to tell the truth. And the only way for people to see the truth was because of X,” Haim told The Daily Wire. “For this reason, they have proven themselves to be an incalculable force for good at a time when it’s most important.” The Lawsuit Haim is suing Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Larry Hollier Jr., a board-certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Kristy Rialon, an associate professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and pediatric surgeon at Texas Children’s, and Afsheen Davis, the general counsel for Texas Children’s. The lawsuit challenges “the malicious prosecution against Dr. Haim for blowing the whistle on Texas Children’s Hospital’s efforts to conceal the existence of their Transgender Health Program.” Hollier was the key witness who “knowingly lied” to federal authorities at HHS, FBI, and DOJ to “fabricate a story that would serve as the predicate for the criminal investigation and eventual prosecution” against Haim, the lawsuit states. Rialon posted a number of “anonymous defamatory reviews” on Haim’s public WebMD profile while he was still an anonymous whistleblower and his identity had not been made public. Her reviews, according to the lawsuit, “accused him of mutilating and raping his patients.” In one post, she pretended to be a female patient who had been raped by Haim. Her posts, according to the lawsuit, were intended to encourage the government’s prosecution as well as punish Haim for “exposing Texas Children’s Hospital’s deception and her complicity in the misconduct.” Rialon admitted to the FBI that she posted these claims against Haim under fake names, the lawsuit notes. The final defendant, Texas Children’s general counsel and senior vice president Afsheen Davis, was lead counsel when the hospital met with federal agents to “encourage the investigation” into Haim. ‘Blacklisted’ The lawsuit extensively cites the reporting and social media posts of journalist Chris Rufo, who broke Haim’s story when he was anonymous whistleblower, and who continued to cover Haim’s plight throughout the DOJ’s prosecution. Rufo also published the story of a whistleblower who was inspired by Haim to step forward, Vanessa Sivadge, who also received visits from federal authorities. Haim’s lawsuit alleges that the individuals and institutions named as defendants “concocted” a story that his disclosures had violated HIPAA, an allegation he says they knew to be false. They found ready partners at the Biden administration HHS, FBI, and DOJ, his lawsuit notes, “particularly Assistant United States Attorney Tina Ansari.” Ansari’s family has “substantial financial and political ties” to Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, a fact that Haim’s lawyers pointed out to the DOJ in November 2024, causing her to withdraw from the case. Haim and his suit argue that the other individuals named in the lawsuit saw Ansari as a “willing accomplice” given these family ties, and her quick moves to target Haim before fully even understanding the allegations against him. “Dr. Haim’s budding reputation and career as a surgeon were severely damaged as a direct result of Defendants’ unconscionable and vindictive conduct,” the lawsuit says. “Having moved to Rockwall County in September 2023, Dr. Haim was embarking on a promising career.” “However, because of the pretextual investigation and sham prosecution against him, Dr. Haim has been blacklisted from major hospitals and surgical practices, unable to obtain valuable credentialing or privileges despite being otherwise qualified,” the suit continues. “Haim was forced to constantly fend off and refute false claims that he violated HIPAA and engaged in a host of other unethical behaviors, including the malicious accusations Defendant Dr. Rialon made about him on WebMD and other Google physician reviews.” This was particularly egregious when it came to media reporting on Haim’s case: the New York Times, Boston Globe, New York Post, and other outlets repeated the false allegations in the indictment as they covered the charges against him, the lawsuit notes. That reporting included the suggestion that he intended to harm children. Haim’s lawsuit argues that the long term effects of this reporting can be seen in a January 2025 Washington Post article in which the publication asks readers whether or not the agreed with the DOJ’s decision to drop charges against Haim, “the Texas doctor accused of sharing transgender care data.” “It received over 750 comments,” the lawsuit says. “The comments were overwhelmingly negative and vilified Dr. Haim by echoing Defendants’ knowingly false allegations, that he had violated HIPAA by accessing and sharing confidential medical records related to transgender care.” “The malicious prosecution of Dr. Haim made the false allegations the focus of national news. Additionally, believing the false narrative perpetuated by Defendants, many Washington Post readers expressed misguided outrage at the decision to drop the case, believing that it set a dangerous precedent for patient privacy. Commenters called for Dr. Haim to lose his medical license and face legal consequences. The suit argues that Haim’s surgical and academic career has been “irreparably limited,” that he’s incurred heavy attorneys’ fees and costs, that he has suffered severe emotional distress, and his standing in the community has been harmed so egregiously that he “fears for his life,” due to the number of death threats he received based on the false allegations against him. Haim has had to take “additional security measures to protect himself and his family,” and “he has suffered and continues to suffer from persistent fear of physical violence due to the large number of threats he has received at home and at work.” Haim says he is “eternally grateful” for the support of not just Musk and X, but also the lawyers who supported him since the charges were first brought against him. “I am eternally grateful for Elon Musk, X Corp, and the legal teams at Schaer Jaffe and Burke Law Group for supporting me in this effort,” Haim told The Daily Wire. Haim says he owes his deepest gratitude to his attorney Marcella Burke, “the person who has stood by me from the very beginning.” “She took the greatest risk in representing me and endlessly sacrificed for the next two years,” Haim said. “It’s not enough to say she is my lawyer, but rather a guardian angel. She is the reason my wife has her husband and my daughter, her father.”

Arrests are coming soon in the investigation into an anti-ICE mob that crashed a Sunday morning service at Cities Church in St. Paul, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Noem appeared on Newsmax on Tuesday evening and said that arrests would begin “in the next several hours.” The secretary also said that ex-CNN host turned YouTuber Don Lemon could face charges for his involvement in the church protest as well. “There will be arrests tied to that, and people will be brought to justice for how they violated the law in that situation,” said Noem. Noem suggested that Lemon’s claim to have only been a bystander and journalist during the incident at Cities Church is belied by the foreknowledge he had of the demonstration and relationships has with activists involved. “The fact that ahead of time, before this even happened, he said that he had conducted some surveillance before they went into this church, he identified individuals that were going in with him that were activists in the work that they had done in the past, the fact that this entire situation was then posted on the Black Lives Matter website, all of that is something that they’re going to be responsible for,” said Noem. Arrests coming. This weekend an anti-ICE mob targeted a church, emboldened by the reckless rhetoric from Minnesota’s sanctuary politicians and the media. The First Amendment protects speech and peaceful assembly – not rioting. This administration is committed to upholding… pic.twitter.com/rBlFFiFe7U — Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) January 20, 2026 The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, has led the Trump administration investigation into what took place at Cities Church. Dhillon has been forceful in her denunciations of the activists who stormed the church, as well as in her promises for accountability. Dhillon told The Daily Wire on Monday that the disruption at the church “clearly” represented a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or the FACE Act, that “criminalizes blocking, interfering with, disrupting a house of worship.” “The only question really is who they are and what other offenses there may be,” said Dhillon.

Joy Behar complained on Tuesday that it was time to “do something” about President Donald Trump — and she argued that just getting out in the streets to protest and even voting were not cutting it anymore. Behar claimed that it was time for Trump to go, saying that Americans were just going to have to “step up” and make that happen, although she was largely unclear as to how that would work, logistically speaking. WATCH: The View calls for Congress to invoke the 25th Amendment (but they can’t). pic.twitter.com/wOFHJgGWHp — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 20, 2026 “I think this is the end of it now for [President Trump]. It has to be. And Americans need to step up now. It’s not enough to go into the streets. It’s not enough to vote,” she said. “I believe that people need to start calling their congressmen and their Senators.” “I mean, he has eroded civil rights at this point, he’s erasing history … he’s wrecking the economy, it’ll be decades before we get back to where we’re supposed to be, and he’s alienating us from our friends in NATO,” Behar claimed, as the cohosts voiced their agreement. “And all because he’s not getting his award.” “You know, the shrinks call that a narcissistic injury,” Behar continued. “And that is what will get us into World War III because his ego is involved. And the only thing that Americans can do, including us, I mean, we have a forum here and we speak out.” Behar went on to claim that people loved “The View” for exactly that reason — and she called on the audience to call their representatives and say, “It’s time to do something about this guy, because he’s leading us into World War III.” Sunny Hostin followed Behar, claiming that Trump was only after Greenland because he wanted the rare earth minerals — and that people should take him seriously when he postured about taking the island nation by force. Behar interrupted then, claiming that she blamed Congress because she believed the president was not well and held them responsible for failing to do something about it. The 25th Amendment was mentioned, but as Alyssa Farah Griffin pointed out, that would have to come from the president’s own cabinet.

The newest “Star Trek” series is apparently so awful that it got the original Captain Kirk to see eye-to-eye with one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers. White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller responded to a brief clip of the new Paramount+ series “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” in an X post, arguing that the only way for producers to save the show would be to give full creative control to actor William Shatner. “Tragic. But it’s not too late for @paramountplus to save the franchise,” Miller said. “Step 1: Reconcile with @WilliamShatner and give him total creative control.” Shatner responded several days later, saying, “I am so on the same page with you @StephenM<! The fact that they have not [cured] Hyperopia by the 32rd Century is an abysmal oversight on the writers!” “Also @paramountplus needs to up the budget because I’m sure that a well oiled organization like Starfleet in the distant future could afford more than one pair of glasses for at least this hyperopic bridge crew,” Shatner continued, adding, “Do they pass the glasses around while piloting the ship? Shame on the line producers! That is what you meant, right?” “I am ready to assume command of the series! Call me!” he concluded. Shatner was written out of the franchise in the 1994 film “Star Trek: Generations” – a move he’s said was made because producers wanted to move on to solely using the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” cast led by British actor Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard. Shatner said that he was told before filming began for “Generations” that Captain Kirk was going to die in the film whether he participated or not – and so he opted for an onscreen death that allowed him a heroic exit. “So the producer said, ‘We’re going to kill Kirk because we think that The Next Generation will make more money at the box office,'” he explained. Three more movies followed with “The Next Generation” cast, and the series has since rebooted with three more films, starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk.