Highly anticipated

'Some of them, frankly, do seem to be sabotage efforts'

"The answer is always ‘yes’ in this class."

How's that for class?

'The new industrial revolution'

Going from a small town to the big city, a police detective went far beyond the call of duty to retrieve a woman’s stolen wedding ring. In LeRoy, New York, an elderly nursing home resident suffering from dementia—unable to care or speak for herself—had a wedding ring stolen from her hand. The theft was noticed […] The post Detective Spends Months Searching for Stolen Dementia Patient’s Ring–Finds it in a Pawnshop Miles Away appeared first on Good News Network.

An Alaskan candidate for U.S. Senate who ran under the same name and party affiliation as incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan has been declared ineligible to appear on the primary ballot by the state’s elections director. On Monday, Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher stated in a letter to candidate Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. that his election filing was not to “declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.” Sullivan filed for candidacy only two days before the June 1 deadline—and as Beecher pointed out, he filed as “Dan Sullivan” and did not include his middle initial or suffix to differentiate himself from the incumbent senator.  Sharing the name with the senator is merely a “matter of fate,” this Sullivan claims. “I am a qualified candidate who followed the rules and filed to run for office under my legal name,” he said last week. At one point, Sullivan listed “S,” rather than “J,” as his middle initial, exactly mimicking the senator’s name. Even the two candidates’ logos are hard to distinguish. Both include the last name “Sullivan” and the Alaska north star in white and yellow lettering on a blue background, with slightly different fonts.  Left: Sen. Dan Sullivan’s campaign logo, courtesy of Dan Sullivan for Alaska. Right: Daniel J. Sullivan’s campaign logo, courtesy of Sullivan for Senate. Beecher further cited that Sullivan did not usually go by “Dan,” and observed he had only recently registered as a Republican. Beecher’s statement came in response to a letter from the National Republican Senate Committee noting that Sullivan’s campaign manager is a consultant and longtime supporter of the opposing Democrat candidate, Mary Peltola, and that Sullivan himself has donated several hundred dollars to Democrat candidates nationwide. “The only plausible explanation for someone with this record running for office as a ‘registered Republican’ is to mislead unwitting Alaska voters who intend to cast a ballot for incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan,” the NRSC stated. “Sham Candidate Sullivan” is merely a Democrat ploy to confuse Republicans and split their votes between two candidates in order to bolster Peltola’s chances of victory, according to the NRSC. It’s no secret that Alaska is a crucial state for Democrats. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has listed Alaska as one of its top five target states this cycle since February 2025, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer listed Alaska as one of “the four states we have to pick up to win back the Senate.” Sullivan has 30 days to appeal the decision before his candidacy is officially terminated. Alaska’s primary elections are set for Aug. 18, and the top four candidates will advance to the general election.

A top federal prosecutor says California has “basically” decriminalized voter fraud by stripping away election safeguards used by other states. Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, told the Daily Signal that federal prosecutors are fighting for access to the state’s voter rolls in federal court and investigating election fraud allegations as Americans head into the midterm elections. “California has basically what I will call decriminalized voter fraud, or a lot of things that people consider voter fraud,” Essayli said. “The states have a lot of leeway as to how they want to run elections, and so California has just taken off all the safeguards that most states have to reassure the public that only eligible U.S. citizens are registered to vote and casting ballots in an election.” Essayli’s office has launched multiple ongoing investigations into alleged voter fraud in the state. While Essayli said his office cannot discuss pending investigations, he mentioned federal charges against a woman accused of paying homeless people on Skid Row to register to vote with false information. He called that case “a little slice” of the voter fraud that federal prosecutors are examining. California continues to insist its elections are secure while refusing to show the receipts, Essayli noted. He stressed that the only way to be certain of security would be to audit California’s voter rolls, which is why the Justice Department is requesting access to the voter rolls. California is resisting, arguing in part that turning over records would violate state privacy laws, he said. Essayli stated that the law requires states to show voter rolls to the attorney general, and said the argument made by California is “ludicrous” because federal law supersedes state law. The state automatically sends mail ballots to all active registered voters, and allows ballots to arrive up to a week after Election Day, allowing vote counts to change for days on end. Most California voters are not required to show identification at the polls. He stated that California’s automatic registration system is “basically registering everyone who interacts with the DMV as a voter,” and that officials “were caught about five or six years ago registering noncitizens who got driver’s licenses to vote, and they had to go and take them off the voter rolls. And those are just the ones they caught and admitted to.” He also criticized California’s accepted forms of identification for first-time voters who register without a driver’s license or Social Security number, citing examples like gym memberships, prescription drug labels, and health insurance cards that do not prove citizenship. When presented with a scenario of a voter using a gym membership purchased without any identification or citizenship documentation, Essayli said that is “how it could happen,” and said DOJ is looking into specific instances. Essayli stressed that U.S. citizenship is already mandatory to vote in federal elections, but Congress did not put enough teeth into the enforcement mechanism. He stressed the need for a stronger framework requiring voter ID and actual proof of citizenship at the time of voting, saying it would be “the safest, most secure way to ensure compliance with the law.” Regarding California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s claim on Monday that he and his wife were under federal investigation, Essayli told the Daily Signal in a written statement that he could not comment on pending investigations, and DOJ was unable to provide comment.

Gavin Newsom would have you believe he is now the brave victim of a Trump-orchestrated reign of terror. In a self-pitying video released this week, the California governor melodramatically declared that he and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, had proudly joined “Donald Trump’s hit list.” Federal agents, he wailed, have been knocking on doors of family, friends, and former employees. Grand juries are being “abused.” Investigators are digging through years of documents—not because they found crimes, he insists, but because they are simply trying to manufacture them. According to Newsom, the entire effort is raw political revenge for his repeated criticisms of Trump and his rumored interest in running for president in 2028. This is Newsom’s calculated bid to become the Left’s Trump. He frames every legal pressure as a witch hunt, turns routine scrutiny into a badge of honor, and positions himself as the defiant champion who will lead the resistance.  He hopes the “hit list” rhetoric, paired with the suggestion that Trump fears him as a genuine threat, will rally the progressive base, attract big donors, energize activists, and finally make him the Democratic Party’s Trump-like figure—resilient, victimized, and destined for the White House. It won’t work. The parallels are hollow. Trump endured four criminal indictments, two impeachments, an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, a public mugshot, gag orders, and novel legal theories pushed in hostile courts. His supporters rightly called it lawfare—the weaponization of justice by a politicized system. Newsom faces nothing comparable. There have been no SWAT raids on his mansion, no agents rifling through wife’s underwear drawer, and no Alvin Bragg-style press conferences inventing felonies from misdemeanors with ever-shifting “other crimes.”  Newsom and his wife have not even been personally subpoenaed. Instead, federal investigators have interviewed associates and issued routine subpoenas to banks and financial institutions for records linked to nonprofits and businesses tied to the Newsoms.  These are standard tools that Newsom and his allies long cheered when used against conservatives. Yet, he casts these inquiries as a Trump-driven “reign of terror.” Newsom is frantically searching for any angle to paint a legitimate investigation as false persecution. The hypocrisy is incredible. For years, Newsom praised every aggressive legal move against Trump—creative charges, friendly venues, and process as punishment. “No one is above the law,” he declared repeatedly. Now that career prosecutors in the Eastern District of California, following leads that began under the Biden administration, are reviewing patterns in his own circle, it suddenly becomes a fascist plot driven by Trump’s personal dread. This is the classic double standard: justice for thee, but tyranny for me. The questions under review are real and long predate any Trump return. Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, pleaded guilty in May 2026 to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, false statements, and related counts after allegedly diverting roughly $225,000 from a dormant campaign fund tied to former Biden health secretary Xavier Becerra. Wiretaps and evidence gathering started years earlier. Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit, The Representation Project, raises even more serious concerns. IRS filings show she and her production company, Girls Club Entertainment LLC, have pulled in roughly $3.7 million combined over more than a decade—including her $150,000 annual salary plus licensing and production fees for her own films.  These payments consume an outsized share of the organization’s modest budget, while donations flowed from entities with business before the state. Longstanding Sacramento questions about self-dealing and pay-to-play optics triggered reviews well before any supposed vendetta. Then there is Newsom’s predictable counterattack. When federal agents appeared near one of his events last year in Los Angeles, he immediately filed Freedom of Information Act requests framing routine law enforcement presence as intimidation by Trump’s “personal police force.” On the very same day he released his victimhood video, his office demanded more records from the Justice Department.  He weaponizes transparency demands against others while shielding his state’s books on pandemic fraud, homelessness spending, and nonprofit dealings. All of it is designed to manufacture a narrative of victimhood rather than confront the actual questions being asked. California’s well-known history with fraud makes the entire martyr act impossible to take seriously. An estimated $20 billion in Employment Development Department pandemic unemployment fraud vanished to criminals and overseas scammers while legitimate claimants suffered. Billions poured into homelessness programs have produced proliferating tent cities, open drug use, street filth, and declining public order.  Businesses and middle-class residents continue fleeing the state in droves, shrinking the tax base and accelerating decline. This is the governance record of a career machine politician who lectures the nation on morality while insulating his inner circle from scrutiny. All of this exposes why Newsom’s comparison to Trump is hollow. Trump rose as an outsider who built a genuine grassroots movement against a hostile establishment. Newsom is the ultimate insider—a product of elite California whose leadership has delivered high taxes, failing schools, urban decay, and mass exodus. Claims that Trump “fears” his influence only highlight the vast gap between the two men. If the probes ultimately clear the Newsoms, full transparency will vindicate them. But the desperate spin, selective amnesia, and emperor’s-new-clothes denial only deepen the humiliation.  History will record the fraud—and dismiss the performance as the transparent ploy of a man who expected exemption from the standards he demanded for everyone else. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Florida wants every social media user in the state to prove how old they are. The method is up to the platforms and the options include government ID uploads, biometric face scans, payment credentials, and behavioral profiling. Now the state is suing TikTok for not doing it fast enough. Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a 66-page complaint Monday in St. Lucie County Circuit Court, accusing TikTok of letting children under 14 create accounts, skipping parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds, and lying to parents about what their kids actually see on the app. The lawsuit names TikTok Inc., its parent company ByteDance and several related entities. It’s the first enforcement action under House Bill 3, Florida’s Online Protections for Minors Act, which took effect January 1, 2025 after spending two years tangled in court challenges. We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.  HB 3 bans social media platforms with addictive design features from contracting with children 13 and younger and requires parental consent before 14- and 15-year-olds can open accounts. Violations carry fines of $50,000 each. But to block minors, platforms first have to figure out who is and isn’t a minor, which means age-checking every user, adults included. Florida is building an identity verification regime for the internet under the banner of protecting kids and the surveillance costs of that project land on millions of people who have done nothing wrong. What the Complaint Says TikTok Did The state’s filing is an indictment of TikTok’s entire business model. According to the complaint, the platform’s own executives have admitted internally that “[t]he product in itself has baked into it compulsive use” and that the algorithm can disrupt young users’ ability to sleep, eat, and interact with people in person. The complaint also cites a description of “[t]eenagers in the U.S. are a golden audience,” drawn from New York Times reporting in 2016. Florida alleges TikTok uses what its own documents call “coercive design tactics” to manipulate young users into spending more time on the app. The platform harvests personal data from children and teenagers to identify psychological vulnerabilities, then exploits those vulnerabilities to serve targeted advertising. Internal records cited in the complaint acknowledge that “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety” and that it “interferes with essential personal responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities, and connecting with loved ones.” TikTok knew and kept going. The complaint also targets how TikTok represents itself in Apple’s App Store. The platform currently carries a 13+ rating and tells parents that sexual content, profanity, drug references, and self-harm themes are “infrequent” and “mild.” Florida says that’s false and that investigators found this content “frequently and easily accessible” through accounts registered as belonging to 13-year-olds. The state argues TikTok deliberately lowballed its App Store rating to dodge parental controls. If the platform had been honest, according to the filing, it would have received a 17+ rating under the old system or 16+ to 18+ under Apple’s new one, triggering automatic blocks on phones with parental restrictions enabled. “TikTok’s success hinges on its ability to addict children and teenagers to the platform,” Uthmeier said. “TikTok knowingly deceives parents and allows children to be exposed to harmful and inappropriate content in direct violation of Florida law. We have zero tolerance for companies that prioritize profit over children’s safety. TikTok should expect to be held accountable.” Beyond HB 3, the lawsuit invokes the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and asks the court to declare TikTok a public nuisance. Florida is seeking civil penalties, punitive damages, disgorgement of profits, permanent injunctive relief, and attorney’s fees. TikTok’s Response TikTok said it has already been working with the attorney general’s office and has started notifying users under 14 in Florida that their accounts will be suspended. “TikTok is built with safety at its core, with more than 50 preset safety and privacy settings for teens and easy-to-use tools for parents,” a spokesperson said. “We’re continuing to update our platform in Florida in response to state law. We are evaluating the state’s complaint and are prepared to defend our strong record on minor safety.” The company claims 50-plus preset safety settings. What it doesn’t explain is how those settings square with internal documents showing executives knew the platform was harming children and chose to keep operating the same way. Fifty safety toggles mean nothing if the algorithm underneath them is designed to override user autonomy through compulsive engagement. Florida’s case against TikTok is built on a law that creates a problem of its own. HB 3 requires platforms to verify ages but doesn’t specify what counts as “reasonable” verification. That leaves companies to decide how much personal data to extract from every user in the state, and none of the available methods come with meaningful limits on how long the data gets stored or who gets access to it. The law protects children by demanding that adults prove they aren’t children, a trade that turns anonymous internet use into identity-verified internet use for millions of people who have every legal right to browse without showing ID. Meta already capitulated in April, agreeing to start purging accounts belonging to under-14s and implementing age checks ahead of an enforcement deadline. Uthmeier has been pressuring Snapchat, Roblox, and Discord to follow. Discord’s earlier experiment with government ID-based age checks resulted in a breach that exposed over 70,000 government-issued IDs. That’s a preview of what mandatory identity harvesting across every major platform could produce at scale. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Florida Sues TikTok Over Age Verification Failures as Digital ID Mandate Takes Effect appeared first on Reclaim The Net.