America has a basic moral rule that used to be understood without explanation: when someone dies, especially violently, you put down the rhetorical knives. You don’t dance on graves, and you don’t treat a coffin like a political prop. This rule is not about pretending we agree with the dead. It is not about suspending our convictions. It’s about preserving the last thin strand of decency that keeps politics from becoming blood sport. In 2025, America learned again what happens when that strand snaps. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University on September 10, the country did not just witness a murder, we witnessed a national test. Would we respond like a serious people, or like a civilization that has forgotten the difference between a political opponent and an enemy? We all saw what followed. Social media was filled with people eager to prove they had no soul left to guard. Some didn’t simply mourn differently. They mocked. They rationalized. They insinuated that Kirk somehow “deserved it.” One of the most grotesque examples came from longtime left-wing commentator Keith Olbermann, who wrote that someone should “burn in hell… alongside Charlie Kirk,” a post that quickly spread before being deleted. That moment felt clarifying — and damning. For years, conservatives have argued that parts of the modern Left have normalized a kind of moral vandalism: that if you label someone “dangerous,” you can justify anything done to them. That if you call someone “literally Hitler,” the next step is always implied. The reaction to Kirk’s murder made that argument impossible to ignore. But something else happened, too. In the immediate aftermath, many conservatives made a conscious choice to be better. They mourned a young father and husband. They prayed for his family. They condemned the violence without qualification. They insisted that assassination can never be a political tool. Even voices on the Left noticed the contrast. Bill Maher, hardly a conservative, criticized the ghoulish reactions from his own side and condemned those who mocked or justified the killing. He warned about what happens when tribalism makes basic humanity optional. That acknowledgment mattered, not because it redeemed anyone, but because it underscored something essential: this was no longer a Left-Right debate. It was a human one. Then, this week, the country faced the test again. Director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found murdered in a horrifying family tragedy, with their son arrested in connection with the killings. Reiner spent years as one of Donald Trump’s most relentless critics. Conservatives have no shortage of reasons to oppose his politics, his activism, or his rhetoric. But this was not a policy dispute. It was a tragedy. And once again, conservatives initially rose to the moment. Prominent right-of-center voices expressed sympathy and restraint. Ben Shapiro wrote that, regardless of political differences, “The murder of Rob Reiner and his wife is horrific, and their family deserves prayers and privacy.” Speaker Mike Johnson called it “a heartbreaking loss” and urged Americans to “lower the temperature and remember our shared humanity.” Even figures known for sharp rhetoric paused, recognizing that death demands humility, not point-scoring. In that moment, conservatives were proving something — to the country and to ourselves. We were showing that our condemnation of the Left’s reaction to Charlie Kirk was not merely tribal outrage. We were passing our own test. And then Donald Trump logged on. Trump took to Truth Social to frame Rob Reiner’s murder through the lens of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” writing that Reiner “spent his life consumed by hatred” and implying that his death was somehow a reflection of that obsession. It was not restraint. It was not leadership. It was mockery dressed up as commentary — and it detonated the moral high ground conservatives had just earned. This is why the Reiner tragedy is not just another cycle of outrage. It’s a verdict. Conservatives can argue, correctly, that the Left’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s assassination exposed something deeply broken. But if we insist we are better, we have to prove it when it costs us something — when the deceased is someone we disagree with, someone who attacked our side, someone who spent years calling our leaders names. This is the leadership test. And Trump failed it. Some will dismiss this as overblown. It was just a post, they’ll say. Just Trump being Trump. Just rhetoric. But that defense collapses under scrutiny. Rhetoric is not incidental to leadership; it is central to it. Leaders do not merely reflect the temperature, they set it. When the most powerful voice on the Right treats murder as an opportunity for mockery, he licenses the very sickness conservatives claim to oppose. The Right cannot be a movement that condemns grave-dancing only when the dead wear our jersey. We cannot demand dignity for our slain and deny it to others. That is not strength, it is tribal weakness. It is not principle, it is reflex. After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, conservatives promised the country we would not become what we despise. In the immediate aftermath of the Reiner murders, many conservatives honored that promise. Our most influential leader did not. There is still time to recover what has been lost, but it will require making some adult decisions: That we will treat death with dignity, not like content. That we will make room for grief even when we disagree. That we will reserve our sharpest words for arguments, not funerals. And that we will demand more from our leaders because if they cannot pass the decency test when blood is on the ground, they become unfit to lecture the country about moral decline. * * * Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

A new bill from Republican Senator Tom Cotton would protect National Guard troops from “deranged individuals” who attack or spit on them while they are on duty. Cotton’s bill would create a 15-foot buffer zone around any National Guard member performing official duties, his office told The Daily Wire. The intent would be to shield troops from people trying to intimidate, harass, touch, or spit on them. “The brave Arkansans who serve in our National Guard should be protected from deranged individuals. My bill ensures that anyone who attempts to intimidate or harass a Guardsmen will face the full force of the law,” Cotton told The Daily Wire. Cotton’s legislation comes as President Donald Trump has deployed National Guard troops to cities across the country from Memphis to Los Angeles to assist in federal operations. The bill, known as the ‘‘National Guard Protective Zone Act,” would create a federal misdemeanor for those who enter the protective zone to intimidate, harass, or impede a troop. It would also create a felony for anyone who spits on or throws an object at a National Guard member while on duty. That would be punishable by up to five years in prison. “Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit activity protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that is conducted outside a posted protective zone,” the legislation reads. Since being deployed to Washington, D.C., National Guard troops have faced protests and violence. Just before Thanksgiving, two National Guard troops were shot, with one dying while another was critically injured. The man suspected of shooting the troops was an Afghan refugee who entered the country under former President Joe Biden. Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships  In another high-profile incident, a man threw a subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Patrol officer during part of the Trump administration’s law enforcement surge to the nation’s capital. On Wednesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Trump administration could keep the National Guard deployed to the district while litigation plays out. “Another important court victory for President Trump’s agenda: today, the D.C. Circuit unanimously issued a stay in favor of our National Guard deployment to Washington, DC,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said. “Our federal surge in DC has saved countless lives, removed hundreds of illegal guns off the streets, and led to a dramatic drop in crime in our nation’s capital city.”

A man awaiting trial for his alleged role in the nation’s largest COVID scam is to this day billing the government millions for dubious services. The man indicted in the Feeding Our Future scandal, in which Somali nationals billed the government to provide millions of non-existent meals for the needy, is currently operating multiple assisted living homes in which adults live and receive on-demand services at taxpayer expense. That’s according to Minnesota lawmaker Kristin Robbins, a Republican who chairs the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee, which was set up in response to more than a billion dollars of fraud in roughly the last six years. The person is Gandi Yusuf Mohamed, who later changed his name to Gandi Abdi Kediye. “In February 2024, this person was indicted and charged for $1.1 million in money laundering in Feeding Our Future,” Robbins said at a hearing. “This person was paid an additional $49 million for other state programs between 2019 and 2024. This person will have their trial in 2026.” The suspected fraudster donated the maximum permitted campaign contribution of $2,500 to Minnesota’s Democrat attorney general Keith Ellison, according to a 2024 Minnesota Reformer article. That article quoted a Republican lawmaker explicitly calling on state authorities to review his contracts, yet he continued to operate. The federal Department of Justice said that Mohamed’s brother was also part of the Feeding Our Future scheme. Robbins said her tiny committee, with only one researcher using public documents, had found evidence of a sprawling fraud scheme that the Walz administration and Ellison had apparently done nothing to stop. The inaction raises questions about how many safety-net programs are being exploited in the state and whether Minnesota’s Democrat governor Tim Walz has taken even basic steps to stop fraud. One real estate broker handled the purchase of a large number of single-family homes, including on behalf of Mohamed, the Feeding Our Future defendant, that were then converted into assisted living facilities that billed Medicaid. One assisted living company used three houses owned by the defendant and operated by his wife through a different company. The wife recently purchased a fourth home, again using the realtor, to which the state granted a provisional license in September, her committee found. “Incredibly, the Feeding Our Future defendant changed his name just months before he was indicted, and used that new name to purchase the two [assisted-living facility] homes [as a business referred to as] ALF 17, that the state has paid $132,000 this year. One was purchased using the same LLC that he’s indicted for money laundering” over, she said. “If we haven’t cross-checked people who are indicted to see what other services they’ve received, we have failed.” Another realtor purchased multiple homes, and one recipient testified months ago that he was not getting medical services despite the owner billing $1.6 million to the government. The government shut down payments to him in one program, Integrated Community Supports, but he is still operating in the assisted living program. Another person, who used one of the same realtors, runs a mining operation in Africa and a restaurant in Minneapolis that was shut down for illegal gambling. He used the same address as a building that purported to house 100 different health care companies. One property he owns has only four bedrooms, yet “got $826,000 last year and is on pace to double that,” Robbins said. Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships Another assisted living facility he purchased using cash and claimed it as his primary residence to avoid taxes, despite also claiming another home for that, she said: “That should be a basic internal control that is being flagged.” One individual also purposed to operate an adult daycare center that billed $632,000 this year — at the same address as the African mine operator, suggesting the same home was being double-billed, she said. Minnesota has historically provided generous government programs to help the elderly, sick, and needy. But after an explosion of immigrants from low-trust societies like Somalia, such programs have grown at a pace that defies common sense and threatens the ability to operate such programs. Minnesota’s Department of Human Services Inspector General James Clark told the committee, “Medicaid is a trust-based system; we don’t have the technology or staff to look over everyone’s shoulder.” The number of people providing “adult day care” has increased 43% in the last decade, even though the number of people requiring such care has only increased 7%, and there is typically a shortage of qualified health care workers, state officials acknowledged. “Just yesterday, we announced that effective February 1, we will enact a two-year pause on adult day care licenses,” said Shireen Gandhi, the Minnesota Department of Human Services’ temporary commissioner. Asked why the state would have approved so many providers for which there is no demand, Gandhi said she was pressured by “a whole host of legislators and providers.” Clark said there was supposed to be a “needs assessment” required before new adult day care centers could be licensed, “but unfortunately, that was removed from the statute” by legislators. He said as long as the spigots of Medicaid dollars are flowing, recovering fraudulent payouts is difficult If a provider pays kickbacks to a fake patient, both are in on the scam, and neither will talk. Even as Walz acknowledged that fourteen programs that pushed the boundaries of what Medicaid is supposed to pay for using waivers from the federal government are at “high risk” of fraud, John Collins, Medicaid director at the Department of Human Services, said he did not even know the dollar figure of the growth in spending. “But it’s a very reasonable thing to ask,” he said. Growth in payments for assisted living are 10 to 15 percent higher than growth in other programs, Robbins said. Democrat members suggested that could be because baby boomers are beginning to become elderly. Yet a county-by-county breakdown showed that almost all the growth came around Minneapolis, where Somalis are concentrated. Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Brooke Cunningham said “we are not currently aware of any credible allegations of fraud within the assisted living space.” Robbins told The Daily Wire in a post-hearing interview that Cunningham’s claim was “shocking.” “That would imply that they don’t have whistleblowers to their own agency, which is false,” Robbins said. “And they just opened their own whistleblower tip line.” Democrats on the committee faulted Robbins for not sharing her whistleblower leads with Attorney General Ellison in addition to the U.S. Attorney. But Robbins said many of the whistleblowers only approached her as a last resort after being ignored by the Minnesota executive branch. Gandhi, the Department of Human Services commissioner, said, “Fraud is not a partisan issue. People of all races, ages and incomes commit fraud.” But Robbins told The Daily Wire that Democrats opposed the creation of an anti-fraud committee in the legislature, and that Walz’s Human Services head opposed the creation of a government-wide inspector general. She said one reason Democrats have opposed rooting out fraud is because most of it is done by Somalis. “One reason the fraud mushroomed is when they raised concerns, they were told to be quiet becuse they didnt want to be considered islamophobic,” she said. Somalis have outright used that as a get-out-of-jail-free card, with some Feeding our Future culprits suing the Department of Education on the grounds that it was racist, she said. If Democrats won’t stop fraud, then big-government programs cease to become an option, she said: “We need to refocus on the original intent of Medicaid, which is health care for the elderly and disabled. If we refocus, we’d see more support and higher reimbursements for our hospitals.” The high-risk programs involve expanding Medicaid beyond its intended scope using waivers granted by the federal government. One such program has been terminated after going through a 90-day federal process, Rollins said. Medicaid bills are split by the state and federal government, and the feds could demand that the state repay fraudulent funds, which could cripple the state, she said. Nate Olsen, a disability advocate, became emotional at the hearing, faulting Walz for looking the other way at fraud to an extent that there could be no money left for taking care of Olsen’s disabled brother. “Our governor is not doing anything to help us except to sit here and decide he wants to blame the president of the United States, who has nothing to do with this,” Olsen said. “There is a time to hold our governor accountable, and I’m not seeing it. This fraud is outrageous and I’m very scared for my little brother.”

'Here we go again'

Rockin' all over the world.

A TikTok video created by a Somali-American man is going viral on social media right now. — (@) In it, the creator says: “Thank you for working so hard so I can be home all day — free. I can use my EBT. Go to work for me, white boy, white girl! Yeah! Go to work for me, you f**king white animals! F**king work for me. Yeah, you f**king work for me. And the U.S. government — they work for me. All of you work for me. Now go to work.”This is what we get when Christians assume they intuitively know the character of God instead of actually reading Scripture, Steve Deace says. Back when Deace was a new Christian and just beginning his career in politics, he struggled with “being kind to the alien and sojourner.” He would often speak to people who were pro-immigration — nuns, pastors, and Chamber of Commerce officials — who would peddle the argument that “these are just people that want to have a track at life.”“I could see myself falling into this to the point that one day, I let them put one of their illegal aliens on my show,” he says.This particular individual was attending the University of Iowa — a “very prestigious public university in the Midwest, if not America,” Deace says.The conversation was “fairly sympathetic” until Deace asked him this question: What do you say to the parents of students in Iowa whose children were denied a seat at Iowa State University because the university chose to give it to you — an illegal alien?His answer, Deace says, “was a lot like that Somali video.”In essence, he said this: “Well, you guys stole this land from the Injuns. It’s an illegitimate country. I don’t feel any guilt and remorse whatsoever. And you’ve been raping the Latin world and third world ever since. So, you owe me.”At that moment, the “scales [fell] off” Deace’s eyes. “I’m sitting there saying to myself during the break, ‘I just let these people work me over.’ Absolutely just worked me over. That’ll never happen again,” he recounts.Today, he doesn’t let others’ speculations about the character of God inform his viewpoints. He just looks at Scripture.“Let’s open up the word of God and see what it actually says. And I’m reading Nehemiah. There’s mass deportations. They’re building walls. God is punishing his people for not keeping boundary stones. I think the first judgment after Noah’s flood is the Tower of Babel. And God’s like, ‘Nope, you guys do not get to come together as one nebulous, globalist glob. We're not doing that here,”’ Deace says.But years and years of Christians ignorantly assuming that, according to God’s character, we should open borders and welcome anyone and everyone who wants to come here has landed us in the predicament we’re currently in — a predicament where a Somali immigrant can sit at home for free and make videos taunting white Americans, whom he considers his personal slaves.“Now it’s just in your face,” Deace says.The attitude of so many illegal aliens, he says, is this: “We will pee on you and tell you it’s raining. In fact, while we’re peeing on you and you know we’re peeing on you and you can smell the urine in the air, we’re going to keep just telling you it’s raining. We’re going to laugh at you because we have no fear of you whatsoever. None. We have no fear of your politicians.”To hear more of Deace’s response, watch the video above.Want more from Steve Deace?To enjoy more of Steve's take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

A California physical education teacher allegedly sexually assaulted two students before police found child sex abuse material on his phone, according to the Tehachapi Police Department.The parent of a student contacted police after the student said they were inappropriately touched by 43-year-old Timothy Seaman. The victim said the incident had taken place on campus.Police executed a search warrant at Seaman's home and seized several digital devices, including cell phones.During an investigation, police found a second alleged victim who had been inappropriately touched at the same campus.On Dec. 10, police executed a search warrant at Seaman's home and seized several digital devices, including cell phones. Police said the devices were analyzed by the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Secret Service in Bakersfield.Investigators were able to extract alleged evidence of possession and distribution of child pornography from the devices.On Tuesday, police located Seaman in Porterville and arrested him without incident. He was booked at the Lerdo Facility of the Kern County Jail on possession of child pornography and sexual battery of a minor.Tehachapi police are asking for the public's help in finding other possible victims.RELATED: Indiana man drove 1,100 miles to have sex with 15-year-old he had groomed for 5 years Seaman can be seen in a video from 2015 when he was a head coach of a high school football team that won an NFL contest and was featured in a documentary for the Super Bowl that year."I never imagined in a million years that I'd ever get to go to a Super Bowl for free," Seaman said at the time.Tehachapi is a city of about 13,000 residents located in the Mojave Desert about two hours north of Los Angeles.