ABC knew exactly what it was getting when it cast Taylor Frankie Paul in its upcoming season of The Bachelorette. As someone who went through ABC’s vetting process twice — on The Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise — I can say this with certainty: Nothing about a contestant’s past is ever a surprise to producers. The viewing public may not realize that contestants don’t just “get cast.” When I interviewed for the show, I underwent hours of psychological evaluations with licensed professionals, completed extensive written assessments covering everything from emotional stability to behavioral patterns, and participated in long, detailed interviews about my family, relationships, and personal history. We are thoroughly vetted, profiled, and stress-tested. There are background checks. Producers look into everything, including legal, financial, and personal matters. If something exists, they will find it. That includes run-ins with the law, arrests, DUIs, falling behind on child support, and even inappropriate photos. So, why did ABC abruptly cancel the show after resurfaced footage showed would-be bachelorette Paul involved in a domestic violence incident? The footage wasn’t new or hidden; it had already circulated and was public, and had even been discussed across platforms tied to Disney’s broader media ecosystem, including Hulu. Producers decide how to use a show’s video. They can build a storyline around it, downplay it, leak it, or bury it entirely, but they are never unaware of it. So the idea that ABC didn’t know about a widely discussed incident, one already publicly tied to Paul, doesn’t add up. The truth is, the Bachelor franchise is still alive, but it’s no longer the cultural force it once was. This cancellation is a symptom of a show making riskier decisions to stay relevant. I hadn’t watched the show in nearly a decade, and I was looking forward to watching this season; that’s how much attention this casting was already generating. At its peak, The Bachelor was the world’s biggest reality show. It created cultural moments, dominated conversations across the country, and has, at times, produced real relationships that turned into marriages and families. That era is gone. Ratings have declined, and relevance is no longer guaranteed. When that happens, casting changes. It stops being about love and becomes about spectacle. Paul brought exactly that, with a built-in audience, an existing social media fanbase, and instant attention. But she also came with a highly visible, controversial past marked by serious and widely discussed incidents. ABC made a calculated decision to bet on the attention, manage the risk, and hope the controversy held long enough to carry the season. That gamble collapsed. And when a franchise declines, entertainment value starts to outweigh better judgment. This time, the line between compelling television and unacceptable risk became impossible to ignore. The fallout isn’t just corporate. Contestants rearranged their lives, left their jobs, and upended everything for this opportunity, including Paul. She didn’t misrepresent herself; ABC chose her, fully aware of her history. And like everyone else, she stepped away from her children and her life for a show that ultimately pulled the rug out from under her. And at the center of it all is something far more serious than television: domestic violence in the presence of a child, which should not be minimized. What the footage revealed is the tension between entertainment and the seriousness of the issue. The incident is serious, and ABC knowingly cast someone with a very public history. The show has always been entertainment first. Yes, real relationships have come out of it. I know many people, from my season alone, whose marriages and families exist because of this franchise. But even at its best, it was still television. *** Jillian Anderson King is a former Washington Redskins Cheerleader Ambassador and ABC’s The Bachelor and The Bachelor in Paradise contestant. She’s a Mombassador for Moms for America, an ambassador for Turning Point and Turning Point Faith, and a proud Christian Conservative mother and wife. Jillian is also the founder of The King’s Firm, a strategic communications firm.

A Democrat flipped a solidly red Florida state House seat Tuesday in a special election held in President Donald Trump’s home district. Democrat candidate Emily Gregory defeated Republican Jon Maples in a district that includes Mar-a-Lago, winning 51.19% of the vote to Maples’ 48.81%. County data showed Gregory had a significant lead through mail-in voting, while Maples held a slight edge in early in-person turnout.  The special election was triggered after former Rep. Mike Caruso, a Republican, left office to become Palm Beach County Clerk. Caruso had won his last election by 19 points, while Trump carried the district by about 10 points.  Trump, who cast his ballot by mail, endorsed Maples on Monday night.  “There is a very important Special Election tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24th, for Florida State House District 87 in beautiful Palm Beach County — JON MAPLES HAS MY COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Jon is a very successful Businessman and Civic Leader, who is known and loved, and also endorsed by so many of my Palm Beach County friends.” Immediately after Gregory’s victory became evident, the Democratic National Committee quickly moved to fundraise off the party’s win, calling the result a “humiliating defeat” for President Trump.  “Americans are furious with Trump and his cronies for jacking up costs, ripping away their health care, and working in the interests of their billionaire donors instead of the people they’re supposed to serve,” one fundraising email said. “The message here is loud and clear: If Democrats can win in Trump’s own backyard, we can win anywhere.” Gregory, who positioned herself as a moderate Democrat, was endorsed by several local leftist activist groups. On her campaign website, she called for increased government spending on “affordable housing,” healthcare, and education.  Republicans downplayed the loss, pointing to the typical low turnout and unpredictable nature of special elections.   “A low-turnout state House special election is a snapshot of local quirks, candidate dynamics, and turnout math — not some grand verdict,” said Republican National Committee senior adviser Danielle Alvarez. Despite the upset, Republicans still have a dominant majority in the Florida House, holding 84 seats to the Democrats’ 34. In other Florida races on Tuesday, Republican Hilary Holley defeated Democrat Edwin Perez to retain a state House seat, while Democrat Brian Nathan narrowly edged out Josie Tomkow in a state Senate contest. 

My cell phone rang the other day, and it was my 18-year-old calling while she was out running errands. My first thought, as it almost always is, was that she was in a car crash or was stranded on the side of the road after running out of gas. It turned out she was calling in response to a text I had just sent her saying, “Your baby sister used the potty for the first time!” What ensued was our eldest asking to put the 2-year-old on the phone so she could congratulate her. I heard our toddler shriek, then jump up and down with immense pride as she recounted her achievement, followed by my eldest’s congratulatory squeals. If you had told me 10 years ago that, at 45, I would have both an adult child and a baby barely out of diapers, I would have laughed at you. I had fully imbibed the convincing cultural lie that the female body stops working after 35, that it is no longer meant for childbirth, maternity, or postpartum struggles. I also believed the lie that having a child in “old age” will derail your retirement dreams and you will most certainly leave that sweet baby robbed of normal childhood relationships with her siblings. Those narratives are pernicious; they are loud, and women all over our country have adopted them. I’m here to offer something different. But first, allow me to admit that not all of the struggles outlined by media, medical professionals, and anti-natal influencers are without a grain of truth. My husband and I are fully aware that we will be by far the oldest parents at our baby’s high school graduation (63 and 60, respectively). We also won’t be sending off our three older girls and traveling the world as empty-nesters in the next five years, and, yes, my body was far more tired when I was pregnant at 42 than it was when we had our first in 2008. All these things are true. What is also true is that our three eldest were old enough to remember, in clear detail, their sister’s birth, and it absolutely changed their lives in the best possible way. They helped me during pregnancy, learned carefully about the great responsibility of carrying a child, fell in love with another human in a way I didn’t think possible from the moment they set eyes on her, and have each played a unique and beautiful role in raising her. They adore her; she is “their” baby. Not just their sister, but something wholly special in a way that isn’t replicated when your children are all born two years apart. Sure, she’s a toddler and can be messy, naughty, and at times challenging. She is also the child who helped each of my girls to become more human, more adult, more sacrificial, and more alive. She has changed the way we live, the way we look at the world, and the way we consider our plans. She glued us all together in a way I didn’t think was possible and that I am unable to explain. And, as for me, I don’t think I’ve ever loved something more than I love our family right this moment. These past few years have been the fastest and most joyful that I’ve ever had. Nothing has filled me with more happiness than watching all three sisters push and shove their way into Meg’s room when she wakes from a nap, literally cheering when they see her. This still happens every day — almost three years later. Credit: Rachel Reeves It has been so game-changing to have this fourth baby as an “older” mother. I’m not at all worried about the things that concerned me when I was a new mother to our firstborn. I don’t care if someone thinks I shouldn’t let her have a pacifier or that I shouldn’t feed her Kirkland brand formula. I’m not particularly worried about milestones or if she’ll be an early reader. Yes, having children when you are young is ideal — it’s how God made our bodies after all — but something truly exceptional happens when you’re a “geriatric mom”:  an acute understanding that those worries that come with youth only serve to eat up the precious moments you have while your babies are still young. I know how fast it all flies by. Hindsight, in this case, is helpful. Our lives changed the moment we found out we were pregnant with Margaret. We gladly suffered through the side-eyes and predictable, “Are you going to be ok?” comments. We knew it was coming. Our culture has told women they are barren once they near their mid-30s, so we didn’t expect anything less. For some, those double pink lines post-40 may have been a devastating revelation, but I hope that perhaps you can begin to think of it differently, to see the multiplicity of benefits of having a child when you are wiser, more self-assured, and more grounded. If that’s where you find yourself, I want to give you hope. Likewise, if you are still yearning for a child and have been told you are past your prime, perhaps you are, but that doesn’t mean the story is absolutely over.  We can start telling women that the Lord might have something more beautiful than we can craft for ourselves. Sometimes the most wonderful gifts come when we stop repeating a script about motherhood that isn’t truthful in the first place. *** Rachel Reeves is a wife and homeschool mother of four daughters. She works in political commentary at Here Are The Headlines, both on Instagram and Substack.

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. *** There is something beautiful that exists only on the baseball field and in the stands, and it isn’t the manufactured roar of a billion-dollar stadium or the over-produced bass of a “fan experience” sound system. It’s the sharp, lonely crack of a wooden bat echoing off a wooden grandstand, the low murmur of men in lawn chairs, and a scorecard being filled out by hand. On Opening Day this year, Americans have a deep cultural hunger for the authentic, the local, the rugged. You see it in the revival of traditional crafts and in the renaissance of farming and homesteading. And yet, our national pastime is being stripped of its poetry by the cold, clinical hand of modern finance. In recent years, the business of baseball has succumbed to a particularly modern form of madness: the cult of efficiency. Major League Baseball has shuttered and unaffiliated dozens of minor league affiliates, cutting the cord on communities that had hosted teams for generations. In the vacuum, firms such as Diamond Baseball Holdings, backed by Silicon Valley capital, have moved in — not to steward the game, but to consolidate it. These firms don’t buy teams because they love the infield fly rule (like I do). They buy them to extract value. To maximize that value, they lean on public money, hundreds of millions of dollars from local governments, pressuring towns such as Columbus, Georgia, and Spartanburg, South Carolina, into financing stadiums under the threat of relocation. So the question becomes unavoidable: Why are we subsidizing the corporatization of our own culture? This is more than economics; it’s a kind of erasure. The local team becomes a line item, the ballpark becomes an asset, and the community — its memories, its rituals, and its people — is treated as expendable and tradable. And yet, anyone who has ever sat in those bleachers knows exactly what’s at stake. Sociologists call them “third spaces,” places that are neither home nor work where community is built. For generations of American men, the baseball field has been the ultimate third space. It is a slow game. In our hyper-caffeinated, doomscrolling age, it creates room for something rare: quiet, unstructured fellowship. You sit shoulder-to-shoulder with your father, your brother, your friends, watching the same patch of green, speaking in the language of the game. We need these spaces, not “safe spaces,” somewhere outdoors where the grass is real (not turf, please) and the stakes are human. This fellowship is the connective tissue of our social order. We knew this inherently for all of history; we don’t need a study to prove it. It is where boys learn patience and the truth that failure is not fatal. In baseball, if you fail seven out of 10 times, you’re a star. There is no better metaphor for the kind of stick-to-it gumption real life demands. I remember my father’s hands adjusting my grip on a bat before my first Little League season. To a boy, that moment is more than instruction. When a father tells his son to keep his eye on the ball, he isn’t just talking about a fastball. Then the boy grows up, and one day he’s no longer being taught the game; he’s watching it with his father. That’s the magic of baseball. It doesn’t just pass time; it binds generations together in a way unique to American culture. It is the “green field of the mind” that A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote about, a place where the “chill rains” of change are stayed, if only for nine innings. Giamatti famously noted that the game is designed to break your heart, beginning in the spring and leaving you to face the fall alone. But we shouldn’t let that heart be broken by a Silicon Valley algorithm or a private equity dividend. If we’re going to keep it, we have to make a conscious choice. It starts by rejecting the convenience of the screen. We’ve become a nation of fans who consume what’s broadcast to us from hundreds of miles away, rooting for logos while the diamonds in our own towns grow over with weeds. This season, go find the game. Find the independent league club playing in a municipal park or the American Legion team where the players still rake the infield themselves. Sit in the stands where the outfield fence is lined with ads for the local plumber and the family-owned hardware store. Bring your son, and explain why the pitcher throws over to first. Tell him about the first game you remember. Let him feel the long middle innings, the productive boredom that teaches you how to sit still and pay attention and not just scroll away. If our sons grow up thinking that sports are just something you watch on a screen or play on a console, then we’ve failed them. We owe them dirt. We owe them the smell of pine tar and the rhythm of the game. We owe them something that can’t be downloaded. And we should be honest about this, too: Our dollars are our votes. The people reshaping this game want frictionless consumption. They want us staring at betting apps and buying mass-produced jerseys, detached from any real place or community. We don’t have to accept that; we can choose something local and real. Some things are too beautiful to be sold. And some traditions are too important to be optimized away. Baseball, at its best, cannot be rushed and cannot be faked. It demands your presence. It asks you to sit, to watch, to listen, to be part of something unfolding in real time, on a real piece of ground. It is our best invention to “stay change,” to keep the memory of sunshine alive even when the days grow short. This Opening Day, the big leagues will put on their spectacle. Enjoy it. I know I will. But at some point this summer, I’ll find my way back to a local field. I’ll sit in the stands, I hope with my dad and my brothers. Maybe I’ll go with my friends, and we’ll all listen for that sound — the crack of the bat echoing into the evening. I hope to see you there too.

Most Americans, including Democrats and independents, want to change a federal government policy allowing abortion pills to be mailed with impunity throughout the United States, according to polling obtained by The Daily Wire.  Over two-thirds (67%) of Americans surveyed said they would support the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reinstating an in-person doctor visit requirement for accessing an abortion pill via the mail, polling from CRC Research showed. That included 72% of Republicans, 68% of independents, and 63% of Democrats. About 27% of Americans opposed reinstating the in-person requirement.  Pro-life leaders, who have blamed the increasing abortion rates across the country on mail-order abortions, touted the polling as a reason for the FDA to revoke the Biden-era policy allowing pills to be shipped without a doctor’s visit.  “It’s overwhelmingly clear that Americans support reinstating the in-person dispensing requirement to protect women taking mifepristone,” Christina Francis, the CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, told The Daily Wire. “As physicians caring for women and babies every day, we see the devastating impact that the FDA’s relaxed standards are having on women’s health and safety.”  CRC Research. The polling was conducted for the 85 Fund by CRC Research from March 12-18 and sampled 1600 likely voters randomly selected from opt-in panel participants. Those surveyed were 33% Republican, 34% independent, and 32% of Democrats, with 31% identifying as pro-life, 39% as pro-choice, and 27% as somewhere in between. Seventy percent of those surveyed also said they would support the FDA making an in-person medical evaluation required before and after taking an abortion pill, while 62% said they were more likely to support an in-person requirement after learning that some men were coercing women into having abortions. Nearly half of Americans (49%) said they would be less likely to support their representative if they supported abortion pills being shipped without a medical evaluation.  CRC Research. The Trump administration has promised to conduct a safety study of the abortion drug, but pro-life advocates have grown impatient. They say the allowance of mail-order abortion pills allows women and leftist activists to ship pills into states where medication abortion is technically illegal. The FDA has said that reimposing the in-person requirement would interfere with the ongoing safety study.  A Georgia woman was recently charged after investigators said she took eight abortion pills before her baby was delivered alive and survived for about an hour. “I know my infant is suffering, because I am the one who did the abortion. I want her to die,” the woman allegedly told nurses at the hospital. Tens of thousands of abortions have been carried out in states like Texas and Tennessee with pills shipped in by activists and abortion doctors. Pro-life groups say the FDA policy allowing pills to be shipped without the in-person requirement effectively nullifies state laws. “Voters could not be speaking any more clearly on abortion drugs flooding the mail, driving up abortion rates and undermining protections for women and children,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser told The Daily Wire. “They recognize this is an urgent public health and safety crisis that demands a return to common sense, like in-person doctor visits that were required under the first Trump administration.”  Previous polling has found similar results, including one from Cygnal that found large majorities of Republican primary voters said they would be less enthusiastic to vote in the midterm elections if GOP leaders shy away from pro-life policies “A broad consensus exists around the dangers of mail-order abortion drugs and the risks they pose to women’s health and safety,” said David Bereit, the executive director of the Life Leadership Conference. “A majority of Americans, across the political spectrum, express serious concern that eliminating in-person medical oversight increases the likelihood of complications, coercion, and undetected abuse.”