As thousands of Nashville residents in Davidson County remain in the cold and dark without power as single-digit temperatures fast approach this weekend, many, including country star John Rich, are now wondering what went wrong. Friday will be day six without power for 71,000 Nashville Electric Service (NES) customers after Winter Storm Fern. The singer, who cofounded the duo Big & Rich, said what’s happening in Nashville is “very California.” “This is incompetence on a level kind of like what you saw in California when they didn’t have enough water to put out the fires,” Rich said on Fox News Friday morning. California had fire hydrants running dry during the devastating wildfires in 2025, the Los Angeles Times reported. For many, that failure fell squarely on California leadership. NES CEO Teresa Broyles-Aplin said last August she was focused on saving Nashville’s tree “canopy” instead of trimming trees that were too close to power lines. Yet another example of leadership failure as Davidson County continues to have the highest power outages in the state. RELATED: Nashville Electric CEO Touted Tree-Hugging Over Aggressive Trimming Months Before Massive Ice Storm Rich made it clear during his interview that he is thankful to the lineman working to help restore power. His anger is directed at Nashville’s Democratic mayor, Freddie O’Connell. “We have a mayor here in Nashville, a hard-core leftist guy, and they’ve decided that they aren’t going to do any interviews or press conferences through the weekend as the temperatures go down to four and five degrees,” Rich said. “I’ve just reminded a lot of my Democrat friends … I said, well, ‘You get what you vote for here in Nashville. Maybe next time you put some people in office who actually think ahead.'” NES said Friday morning that more than 1,000 linemen are working to restore power for more than 70,000 households still in the cold and dark. To put it in perspective, Duke Energy deployed 18,000 crew members to respond to power outages in North Carolina, bringing in linemen from as far as Canada. An anonymous member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union told Fox 17 in Nashville that, at a minimum, NES should have 2,000 crew members working to restore power. NES was pressed on Thursday about the number of linemen working while other cities with fewer outages have larger crews. “This storm is different,” NES Executive Vice President Brent Baker said. “This ice storm is significant. This is the most people NES has ever onboarded onto the system. This storm was bigger than what was even expected … Nashville was slammed. Poles were broken like toothpicks. Trees exploded, landing on top of our infrastructure, on top of the wires.” The Daily Wire has reached out to NES for an estimate of when power will be restored.

In a historic milestone for archaeology and faith, the newly opened Pilgrimage Road at the City of David is welcoming visitors for the first time in nearly 2,000 years. This monumental 600-meter thoroughfare, once the spiritual and commercial heart of Second Temple Jerusalem, has been painstakingly uncovered stone by stone. As of January 2026, the final sections of this “Stepped Street” will open to the public, allowing modern travelers to walk the exact path their ancestors used during the great festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. A truly historic moment – the newly opened Pilgrimage Road at the City of David is welcoming visitors for the first time in nearly 2,000 years. This stone-paved path once carried pilgrims from the Pool of Siloam up to the Temple Mount for Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot, alive… pic.twitter.com/U8q2DuGfRU — Embassy of Israel to the USA (@IsraelinUSA) January 29, 2026 The road is a marvel of ancient engineering, stretching from the Pool of Siloam in the south to the foot of the Temple Mount in the north. Eight meters wide and paved with massive limestone slabs, it features a unique stepped design — two shallow steps followed by a long landing — specifically crafted to facilitate a slow, meditative ascent for the millions of pilgrims who once thronged its path. While long attributed to Herod the Great, recent coin evidence found beneath the paving stones suggests the road was actually completed around 30–31 CE under Pontius Pilate. This places its activity squarely within the era of Jesus’ ministry, making it the literal surface upon which he and his disciples likely walked after ritual purification at the Pool of Siloam. The New Testament records Jesus performing a famous miracle with a blind man at the pool of Siloam, which sits at the very bottom of this road: John 9:7 states, “And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam. He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.” Managed by the Ir David (City of David) Foundation, the excavation of the road is a modern engineering triumph. Because the ancient street is buried beneath the modern neighborhood of Silwan, it has been excavated horizontally using high-tech steel supports. This subterranean “tunnel” method allows visitors to experience the bustling commercial hub of the past — where remains of shops, market stalls, and even an elevated preaching podium have been found — while the modern city continues to thrive above. The opening of this route fulfills a long-held vision to connect the Pool of Siloam directly to the Western Wall. For visitors, it offers more than a history lesson; it provides a tangible connection to the “DNA of Jerusalem.” From the drainage channels where Jewish rebels once hid to the massive stones polished by millions of ancient footsteps, the Pilgrimage Road is the “opening act” of a new era of discovery. It stands as a bridge across two millennia, inviting the world to walk the ceremonial way that once served as the primary gateway to the House of God.

A top aide in the Minneapolis prosecutor’s office, previously exposed by The Daily Wire for his alleged participation in an anti-ICE protest that stormed a church in St. Paul, has been arrested. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Friday that federal authorities arrested Jamael Lundy, along with three others, including ex-CNN anchor Don Lemon, “in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.” The Daily Wire previously spotted Lundy in footage taken of the protest. Lundy works as an intergovernmental affairs coordinator for Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, is married to St. Paul City Council member Anika Bowie, and is currently campaigning for a seat in the state legislature as a Democrat, according to his campaign website. Lundy’s role in Moriarty’s office involves communicating with the federal government. He has done so in an existing investigation into Moriarty, boasting that she takes into account a suspect’s “racial identity” when making charging decisions. Arrested: Jamael Lundy – works for the Hennepin County Attorney’s office and a candidate for Senate. pic.twitter.com/Iu23Rc1qx6 —

Lindsey Vonn’s epic Olympic comeback is in jeopardy after the legendary skier was airlifted after crashing during a World Cup race in Switzerland on Friday. Vonn said she injured her left knee while competing at the Crans Montana World Cup. Vonn was making a turn when she lost control and crashed. She was able to limp off the course to a medical tent for evaluation before having to be airlifted in a harness. “I am discussing the situation with my doctors and team and will continue to undergo further exams,” Vonn said Friday. “This is a very difficult outcome one week before the Olympics … but if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s a comeback.” The 41-year-old was poised to compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics, which begin next Friday in Italy. Vonn made a comeback last season after spending nearly six years away from the sport. The Olympic gold medalist is scheduled to compete February 8 in the women’s downhill for her first Olympic event. She is also set to compete in the super-G and the new team combined event. “My Olympic dream is not over,” Vonn added. “Thank you to all the medical staff who helped me today … it’s not over until it’s over.” Vonn’s coach told Reuters that the skier was in some pain after the incident. “She has some pain so it’s better to have some checks, the physio did some checks they seemed ok but there were things he was not 100% sure so it was good to have it checked (at the hospital),” Aksel Lund Svindal said. The rest of the World Cup race was called off because of the worsening conditions in Switzerland and several crashes on top of Vonn’s accident. “The main reason is the safety of the athletes,” Women’s World Cup Director Pete Gerdol said after calling off the competition. “The visibility was getting worse and worse, they couldn’t see the race line properly and it caused mistakes. We saw six athletes starting and all six had some mistakes. This was a sign that it was a high-risk situation. We know that our sport is a risky sport, but the feeling was too much risk. That’s why the Jury decided to stop the race.” Before Friday’s injury, Vonn was having a successful 2025-2026 campaign on the slopes. In December, she won her first skiing World Cup since her comeback. Her last title before that was in 2018, but she didn’t have to wait long at all to find the top spot again. Earlier in January, Vonn won another World Cup in Austria, bringing her total World Cup victories to 84. The accolades mounting during her comeback tour are why Vonn was a strong favorite heading into this year’s games. If she is able to recover for the Olympics, it will have to be speedy. The practice runs for the downhill start Wednesday.

The chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, a federal agency affiliated with USAID, will plead guilty to steering grants and contracts in exchange for bribes. The previously-obscure African Development Foundation became a darling of the Left when its CFO, Mathieu Zahui, locked its doors to prevent Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from entering. Democrat politicians framed it as an act of moral courage, and left-wing media called the group “the little agency that could.” But on Friday, the Department of Justice said Zahui admitted that he was doing exactly what conservatives have suspected is common in foreign aid: Laundering money through poor nations and then back to D.C. insiders, who used it to enrich themselves. According to court papers filed Friday, the African Development Foundation sent $800,000 to a Kenya-based company run by Zahui’s friend. The friend paid Zahui a kickback of $12,000, and the company kept $134,886 for doing no work. The rest of the money was simply a “pass-through” where the Kenyan company paid bills that the agency owed to other people. That made it appear that more money was going to African aid as opposed to bureaucratic overhead, and added a layer that concealed where the agency’s money was actually going. “For example, when USADF needed to pay a past-due debt to a staffing vendor, Zahui directed the vendor to invoice Company-1 instead of USADF. Company-1 then invoiced USADF for the vendor’s past-due amount, but added a mark-up of over $20,000 to the amount owed. Zahui approved Company-1’s invoice even though he knew that Company-1 had provided no services related to the vendor’s work,” federal prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said. Zahui has agreed to plead guilty to accepting gratuities and making a false statement to a federal law enforcement officer, after he lied to the USAID Office of Inspector General about having received the kickbacks. He could face up to seven years in prison. “The USADF Director of Financial Management’s fraudulent acts betrayed the trust of the American people,” the USAID Office of Inspector General’s acting Assistant Inspector General for Investigations Sean M. Bottary said in a statement. “When they show up, we didn’t let them in” The Daily Wire broke the story of Zahui’s crimes in May after uncovering a search warrant for Zahui’s phone, granted by a D.C. judge in November 2024, during the Biden administration. The series, titled, This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why. included details that are redacted in charging papers, which refer to the company only as “Co-Conspirator 1.” Zahui steered contracts and grants to a firm called Ganiam, which was run by a friend named Maina Gakure. Gakure and Zahui previously worked together for the Department of Veterans Affairs in California, where Gakure was in charge of contracts. Gakure later created his own company designed to exploit the government’s “8(a)” law, which allows minority-owned companies to get no-bid contracts. He also established an Africa-based version of the company, to which Zahui steered money. (One of the contracts was ostensibly for “travel” during COVID, when travel was shut down.) Each time Zahui awarded Gakure’s company a contract, Gakure would send Zahui kickbacks to his personal bank account, the disgraced CFO admitted in federal court. The flow of money to Africa made it seem — to Congress, the public, and auditors — that the agency was fulfilling its mission. But Ganiam was actually used as a slush fund, with Gakure serving as an intermediary to pay bills elsewhere — including in D.C. The Daily Wire interviewed Zahui at his home for nearly two hours in May, where the African immigrant spoke with indignation that his federal job might be ending. “When they show up, we didn’t let them in,” he said of DOGE auditors. Eventually, the Trump administration changed the locks on the building, but Zahui gained access. “They forget, or they didn’t know there was a back door that they didn’t lock,” he said. Zahui said that the agency had money scattered in bank accounts across Africa, and that he would frequently travel to tend to it. Some money that appeared on balance sheets as being sent to Africa was later redirected back to D.C., he acknowledged, saying, “a grant can pay for people, even if it’s not in Africa.” “Ganiam was not a grant, it was a contract,” he said, before later acknowledging that Ganiam also received a grant. When asked how he knew Gakure, he said, “He was in D.C., it was bid, it was in the U.S. Then he returned home as a [sic] Africa diaspora, returning home, that’s it.” “He has moved a long time ago. Very, very long time ago, okay, even before COVID,” he added. (Gakure’s Virginia-based minority contracting company received a COVID bailout from the federal government.) Zahui was hired as the CFO of a federal agency even though he declared personal bankruptcy, a fact he first denied, then admitted in the interview. Gakure did not return a request for comment in May. Sen. James Risch (R-ID), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had for years documented serious irregularities at the African Development Foundation and pleaded for officials to reform the agency, saying that if they did not clean house, it risked the public losing faith in foreign aid more broadly. They failed to heed his warning, and his prediction came to pass, with the Trump administration abolishing USAID, the larger foreign aid agency, outright. “This is a tremendous win for law and order,” Risch told The Daily Wire of Zahui’s guilty plea. “What started in 2023 as a simple inquiry from my committee into questionable dealings at USADF will now become justice served,” he told The Daily Wire. “Corruption like we have seen at the USADF will not stand.” Risch has introduced a bill to abolish the agency. Lawfare After Trump’s election, the agency’s CEO, Travis Adkins, quit, leaving Zahui in charge as part of a three-person executive committee. President Donald Trump fired the board and named Pete Marocco, who oversaw the demolition of USAID, as chairman of the African Development Foundation. But Zahui notified the White House that the federal agency would not be recognizing the Trump administration’s authority. Remarkably, even after the Biden-era criminal investigation into Zahui was revealed by The Daily Wire, left-wing lawyers used the D.C. courts to ensure that Zahui remained in charge. In June, a judge tossed out a lawsuit filed by an ousted board member, finding that Trump had the right to fire the board. Lawyers from the same left-wing firm, Democracy Forward, then filed suit with a different plaintiff: a for-profit company in Zambia that said the U.S. government is its only customer. The lawyers argued that abolishing ADF would be unfair to the company. In July, a judge ruled in their favor, imposing an injunction that blocked Marocco from controlling the agency. Zahui was brought back to work as part of the three-person executive committee. Because of a Supreme Court ruling limiting the breadth of injunctions, the ruling was later modified to only require that the specific Zambian firm, Rural Development Innovations Ltd., be paid, with Marocco free to otherwise axe the agency. This month, the Democracy Forward lawyers have been pleading with the judge that the ADF staff must be restored to work, so that the Zambian firm can call them for advice. On Monday, the Trump administration filed court papers in that lawsuit saying that the Democracy Forward lawyers are seeking to “restore all 353 grants and forty-three contracts that Marocco cancelled as acting chair and rehire all sixteen employees that Marocco terminated.” In December, a law firm run by a founder of Democracy Forward sued The Daily Wire and one of its alleged sources. The plaintiff is Adkins, who quit as the agency’s CEO after Donald Trump’s election. The lawsuit was leaked to The Daily Beast, which ran with the headline, “Federal Official Shows How DOGE and MAGA Shattered His Life In New Lawsuit.” Though Adkins voluntarily quit before the Daily Wire stories, Adkins is seeking money, citing damages that he has not found a job willing to pay him $500,000 a year as he expected. An email, provided by Adkins’ attorneys, shows that after Zahui directed Gakure to wire $17,000 to Adkins’ personal assistant, Adkins replied, “Thanks for this Mathieu – let us know what needs to be done next to fully resolve this matter.” The alleged Daily Wire source being sued by Adkins is a black former ADF staffer who filed a sworn affidavit saying Adkins told her he “wanted all of his direct reports to be Black.” Atkins denies the allegations. The agency’s onetime general counsel, Mateo Dunne, was placed on leave by Adkins after Dunne pointed out rampant misconduct. “As General Counsel, I led an internal investigation that revealed substantial fraud, waste, and abuse. When I reported my findings, the agency retaliated and sought to destroy my career and reputation. Today I am fully vindicated. This is an indictment of an agency culture that facilitated corruption, punished integrity, and silenced dissent,” Dunne said. A federal official familiar with ongoing investigations into USADF said USAID IG’s investigation said that “this case is the tip of the iceberg,” citing “corruption at the highest level in an agency entrusted to support impoverished communities in Africa.” Marocco, who was put in charge of the ADF, told The Daily Wire that the agency “is a scam that delivers no value to the American taxpayer, and its budget should be zero.” “We are investigating many alarming behaviors that demonstrate the agency’s defiance of the President, disregard for the taxpayers, arrogance and entitlement by bureaucrats and foreigners with no semblance of accountability, ridiculous waste, systemic abuse and crime,” Marocco said. “USADF should be abolished, and there must be a post-mortem on this degenerate enterprise that operated under the guise of government ‘philanthropy,’” he said. Though USAID has been abolished, its inspector general, which specializes in rooting out fraud in foreign grants, has 350 open investigations. Congress voted to give it purview over foreign aid disbursed by the State Department and other agencies. UPDATE: Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said “When USADF blocked DOGE from accessing their building last year, Democrats applauded. Now we know it is because USADF was hiding bribes, kickbacks, and fraud. I have filed the Terminate Unaccountable Spending, Abuse, Deception, and Fraud (USADF) Act to defund these crooks.” House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast (R-FL) said “For years Democrats labeled programs as aid and development, but it was really just fraud, grift, and as pure waste of American tax dollars. The Director of Financial Management for USADF, Mathieu Zahui’s guilty plea is just the tip of the iceberg.” READ MORE: This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why.

Emmy Award-winning actress Catherine O’Hara has died at the age of 71. The iconic star was best known for her roles in movies such as “Beetlejuice” (1988), “Home Alone” (1990), “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” (1992), “Waiting for Guffman” (1996), and “Best in Show” (2000). O’Hara also starring in the cult classic TV comedy “Schitt’s Creek,” which earned her the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy. O’Hara’s manager confirmed the news of her death Friday, per ABC News, but no other details were immediately available. O’Hara had a long and varied Hollywood career spanning across TV and movies, mostly in the comedy genre. Her most recent project was the Apple TV+ series “The Studio” along with Seth Rogen. Her role in the series earned her an Emmy nomination in 2025. The Canadian actress was born in Toronto in 1954 as the sixth of seven children. Like so many other comedic actors, she got her start at the Second City Theater in Toronto alongside legends such as Dan Aykroyd, Joe Flaherty, Gilda Radner, and Eugene Levy. She became a staple character before moving on to films and scripted television. O’Hara met her husband, production designer Bo Welch, on the set of “Beetlejuice” in 1988. The pair wed in 1992 and had two sons: Matthew in 1994 and Luke in 1997. O’Hara stayed close with her “Home Alone” co-star Macaulay Culkin for decades and was there when he received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023. The actress said “Home Alone” got her recognized plenty, but the massive fandom of “Schitt’s Creek” was surprising. “I used to mostly get people named Kevin who’d come up to me and ask me to yell ‘Kevin!’ in their faces,” O’Hara told People in 2020. “Now it’s mostly about Moira and ‘Schitt’s Creek.’ I’ve never gotten this kind of attention in my life. It’s crazy.”

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Friday that three million additional files tied to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are being released as part of the “Epstein Files Transparency Act.” The total number of files released now stands at 3.5 million. Blanche said officials erred on the side of “over collection,” with the release including more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 photos. Blanche noted that many of the images and videos consist of “large quantities of commercial pornography and images that were seized from Epstein’s devices, which he did not take or that someone around him did not take.” “Some of the videos, though, and some of the images do appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or by others around him,” he said. Blanche noted that all pictures of women were redacted as potential victims, with the exception of Ghislaine Maxwell. He said no men were redacted from any photos or videos unless doing so was necessary to redact a woman. In a press release, the Justice Department warned that the production “may include fake or falsely submitted images, documents or videos,” noting that everything sent to the FBI by the public and deemed responsive to the Act was included. The department also said the release contains “untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump” that were submitted to the FBI shortly before the 2020 election. Blanche said that the White House had “no oversight” role in the extensive document review process. “I don’t have anything to share about what’s new and what’s not new,” the deputy attorney general said when asked about whether the documents would reveal any well-known figures. The DOJ said in its release that “notable individuals and politicians were not redacted in the release of any files.” The DOJ also sent a letter to Congress stating that “today’s production marks the Department’s compliance with its production obligations under the Act.” The department said the files largely came from the court cases against Epstein and Maxwell, “FBI investigations,” and the investigation into Epstein’s death. The department said files were excluded only if they were duplicates; protected by deliberative process or attorney-client privilege; contained violent imagery; or consisted of materials unrelated to the Epstein or Maxwell cases. “Prudently over-collecting, coupled with past intra-Department sharing of (and, therefore, duplication of) files across offices and jurisdictions, necessarily means that the number of non-duplicative, responsive pages is significantly smaller than the total number of pages initially collected,” the letter to Congress stated. President Donald Trump signed the act into law in November after it passed Congress with near-unanimous support, though House leaders were forced to use a discharge petition to bring the bill to the floor.

Well, it’s Oscar season again, that time of year when Hollywood honors those amazing films that bravely went on playing in theaters, even though no one was sitting there except Nicole Kidman, desperately trying to move her face. For myself, I couldn’t look forward to the award ceremony more. I really couldn’t. I’ve tried everything. But before you know it, that spectacular gala will be preempting something you actually wanted to watch, so some of you may be thinking… “Sure, if I watch the award ceremony, there’s no doubt I’ll be riveted to my TV, because obviously, if I weren’t, I’d just walk away and do something else. But what I’m really wondering is what’s the inside skinny on how you win this coveted award.” So just in case you’re one of the sad little people whose life is so empty that you would actually think something as pathetic as that, the Daily Wire will now take you behind the scenes for an exclusive look at what it takes to win the Oscar.  If you want to walk away with gold on Oscar night, you can’t just stand around waiting for someone to watch your movie because, let’s face it, that’s never going to happen. What you have to do is draw attention to yourself by giving interviews in which you express political opinions that are shockingly different from those of someone with even a minimal knowledge of world events. At the same time, of course, it’s important that your shockingly different opinion is exactly the same as everyone else’s opinion in Hollywood, otherwise you can kiss that statuette goodbye.  For instance, Ethan Hawke has been nominated for his performance as Lorenz Hart in “Blue Moon,” which, in all honesty, would have been the best piece of acting anyone saw this year if anyone had. So clinging to the laughable delusion that the best actor award might go to a white man, Hawke gave an interview in which he reacted to immigration enforcement for all the people in America who woke up that morning thinking, “Gee, I wonder what that guy who played Lorenz Hart is thinking about immigration enforcement.” Hawke told an interviewer, “Never before in America have I felt so afraid to speak my mind that I wouldn’t even dare to say what I’m saying right now. But in my role as a man with moral courage, I must come forward with the exact same opinion as everyone else in Hollywood and suffer the consequences, which I hope will be that sweet, sweet statuette. At a time when we in the movie industry are overcome with a sense of crisis totally out of keeping with reality, it’s incumbent on us to speak truth to power, as long as it’s not the sort of power that could keep me from getting the award I should have gotten for “Training Day,” but which instead went to Jim Broadbent, whom no one has heard of, in a movie no one saw about Iris Murdoch, whom no one has read. So please, please, this year, I was in an obscure movie about an artist no one remembers, and now I’m standing here degrading myself by slandering my country and pretending to be afraid for some reason, so please, just give me the award, all right? Please, I’m serious, please.” Even a front-runner has to campaign for the prize. For instance, “Sinners,” received a record 16 Oscar nominations, including most over-nominated picture, and best picture with a moderately entertaining first half before the second half dwindles into muddled anti-historical theorizing and shameful anti-white racism. Nonetheless, “Sinners” best actor nominee Michael B. Jordan still felt compelled to give a campaign interview, telling reporters, “So help me, if they give my Oscar to that fay cracker in the ping pong movie, I’m gonna slap Chris Rock in the face so hard, he’s gonna change his name to Will Smith so no one will remember who he is either.” So there you have it. Thanks to this exclusive inside Hollywood reporting from the Daily Wire, you’ll be able to turn on your TV on Oscar night and really enjoy whatever it is you’ll be watching instead. * * * This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “The Andrew Klavan Show.” Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, After That, The Dark, is NOW AVAILABLE. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan. The views expressed in this satirical piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Businesses across the country are shutting down, and multiple school districts have canceled classes for an anti-ICE protest scheduled for Friday. The strike calls for businesses to close, for parents to keep their kids home from school, to refrain from shopping, and to go out and protest federal immigration enforcement. The strike aims to remove federal law enforcement officers from cities nationwide. “Every day, ICE, Border Patrol and other enforcers of Trump’s racist agenda are going into our communities to kidnap our neighbors and sow fear,” the site for the protest reads. “It is time for us to all stand up together in a nationwide shutdown and say enough is enough!” Thousands of local businesses in blue states — including Minnesota, New York, California, and Maine — have posted to their social media accounts to signal their intent to close down to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Additionally, at least two school districts, both in the Denver area, canceled school for Friday over the strike. The districts were reportedly overwhelmed with teachers calling off work to participate in the anti-ICE demonstration. In Minnesota, the epicenter of the anti-ICE rioting and protesting, some 800 businesses are expected to shut their doors Friday. Major retailers have so far not joined in on the strike, though mid-level companies, such as online publisher Medium, have. The company said employees can take the day off to protest and would be publishing content related to the strike. Land to Sea, a coffee shop in Brooklyn, NY, said they were participating in the strike because they believe in “safe communities and a greater collective consciousness that protects our people.” One photo posted by the shop said ICE was “wag[ing] terror in our country and abroad, kidnapping and killing our family, friends, neighbors.” “We will be closing all day on Friday, January 30th in solidarity with the National Strike,” the business said on Instagram. “Land to Sea believes in safe communities and a greater collective consciousness that protects our people. We strive to be a place that feels like home, especially when the world feels scary and violent to be in. This Friday, January 30th, we invite you to participate in the National Strike to send a message that ICE must be abolished. We will continue to share resources to learn, organize, and protect one another on our stories.” Instagram: Land to Sea In Rochester, NY, local shops are shutting down too. Pizza Wizard, a local pizza joint, for example, posted about the strike online. “Been having some long, hard and ugly conversations,” the caption reads. “We are not ok with what is happening in Minnesota, locally and across the country. In participating with the national shutdown, Pizza Wizard will be closed this Friday.” “As to what this will accomplish? Not sure … maybe it’s a pebble that creates a ripple,” the post adds. “If ur big mad I’m sorry, leave a comment below. No judgement if ur keep ur business open. This sh*t aint easy.” Instagram: Pizza Wizard The strike is being backed up by a number of far-Left activist groups, including CodePink, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Defend Immigrant Families Campaign, and the Palestinian Youth Movement. Celebrities are jumping on the bandwagon, too. Actors Edward Norton, Pedro Pascal, Hannah Einbinder, and Jamie Lee Curtis, for example, have expressed public support. “Truth is a line of demarcation between a democratic government and authoritarian regime,” Pascal posted to Instagram. “Mr Pretti and Rene Good are dead. The American people deserve to know what happened.”

Virtue signaling companies stopped catering to their leftist followers a long time ago.  It’s easy – and tempting – to forget that a few short years ago, companies were posting black squares and memorializing George Floyd right and left. Now it’s a lot more likely for your local coffee shop to avoid political issues completely. However, there’s been an alarming resurgence of the blatant pandering that used to dominate the culture. It’s all thanks to the anti-ICE movement sweeping the nation complete with false narratives, fear mongering, and insufferable celebrity endorsements.  Right now it’s all over social media as local businesses and even public schools broadcast their allegiance to agitators who aim to obstruct federal officers enforcing the rule of law. One well-known author and professor Scott Galloway is pushing for even more drastic action, urging his followers to extend the walkouts and boycotts for a month.    View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) Leftists marked Friday, January 30 as a nationwide “ICE OUT protest day” where people were instructed to skip work, play hooky from school, and shut down their small businesses to make some kind of point. Here are some of their statements:    View this post on Instagram   A post shared by The Bookshop (@thebookshopnashville)   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by