If you’re like many single moms, the holidays can be the most difficult time of the year.

When Democrats want to slam their political opponents, they resort to a kind of linguistic reductionism. Everyone to their right is a neocon, or alt right, or MAGA, or a Christian nationalist, or whatever the popular term of art is at the moment. Republicans have the opposite problem. For years, they’ve used “liberal,” “leftist,” and progressive” interchangeably. Today things are even further obfuscated by more specific but still somewhat vague concepts like “DEI,” and of course, the ever-evocative but incredibly diffuse “woke.” This isn’t a good rhetorical strategy. Liberal hasn’t meant what it really means in a century, and it’s such a useless term that even the liberals don’t want to claim it. Leftist is probably the most accurate, but it’s still so dripping with the blood of 1968 that Democrats will sooner call themselves socialists before they proclaim themselves leftists. That leaves progressive, which has more or less been the go-to epithet for partisan Democrats since Barack Obama. But what is progressivism, and why is it bad? Progress in and of itself seems like a good thing: we like that our cars are safer and our phones are faster, and that we no longer have lead in our paint or children in our factories. Those on the Right, of course, know that “progress” as a political concept is something altogether more sinister, a Hegelian tidal wave that if left unchecked will wipe out the nuclear family and Judeo-Christian values in one fell swoop. What relevance does any of this have, though, for contemporary politics? If ever there were a man who could answer this question, it’s Ronald J. Pestritto. A graduate dean and professor of politics at Hillsdale College, Pestritto has been writing, researching, and teaching about progressivism throughout his career, which began at Claremont McKenna College in 1990 and continued through his graduate work at Claremont Graduate University, where he earned his Ph.D in 1996. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Pestritto lecture on the progressives, by which he means the early 20th-century American political movement defined by presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and thinkers like John Dewey and Herbert Croly. Unlike some of his colleagues at both Hillsdale and Claremont, who — due respect — love to sound off on contemporary political debates, Pestritto is a thinker and teacher through and through. This is reflected not just in his engaging classroom demeanor and professorial aesthetic, but in his body of work. His first book, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, is a sustained engagement with the controversial progressive president. He has edited a fine collection of Wilson’s political writings as well as American Progressivism: A Reader, both indispensable volumes for anyone interested in progressivism or turn-of-the-century American political history. It is precisely these academic bona fides that make it all the more exciting when Pestritto starts talking about contemporary politics — which he did in a wide-ranging interview with The Daily Wire. The occasion of our conversation was the publication of Pestritto’s latest offering, “Government by the Unelected: How It Happened, and How It Might Be Tamed.” The ninth installment in the Claremont Institute’s “Provocations” series, Pestritto describes it alternately as a long essay or a small book. It is, according to the précis, “a comprehensive, historically-grounded account of how America moved from the founders’ vision of republican self-government to a regime governed by a permanent, unaccountable class of administrators.” But the book’s goal is less lofty than that makes it sound. Pestritto says he wrote it with the 2026 midterm elections firmly in view, and in the hopes of providing Americans with a deeper understanding of precisely what is at stake when they go to the polls. “The point is to help people understand the current controversies, because the way that they’re explained in the press is often not useful,” he says. “These are things that have been boiling for 80, 90 years, and we’re now finally at a point where there’s going be a fight over it. So, that background is necessary to hopefully help explain what’s been going on legally to bring us to this point.” By this, Pestritto means the administrative state and its discontents. Better known as the bureaucracy or the “deep state,” this unelected leviathan is both the outgrowth and steward of American progressivism. Now a popular conservative bugaboo, the administrative state, as Pestritto admits, “something that most folks did not pay much attention to until probably Obama.” If Mr. “Pen and Phone” raised hackles about the deep state, it was his onetime vice president who really laid bare what was at stake. From mandating coronavirus vaccines to banning gas-powered stoves, Joe Biden’s administration made clear to Americans what happened when elected officials ceded all authority to government bureaucrats. A quick refresher for anyone who fell asleep in Deep State 101: federal agencies like the EPA, CDC, FCC — pretty much anything with a three-letter acronym — aren’t in the Constitution. They were largely created by congressional action, and the idea was that Congress would fund them, the president would control them (as part of the Executive Branch), and the courts would intervene when necessary. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the system of checks and balances most of us had drilled into our heads in school. But things changed in 1984, when the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The result of the case was, in short, that administrative agencies were allowed to interpret and enforce federal guidance about themselves however they saw fit. In other words: screw the branches, we can do whatever we want. The result of that case, which came to be called “Chevron Deference,” led to a bloated and powerful administrative apparatus with no fear of legislative or executive oversight. It also fueled the neutering of Congress, and, until the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, made it seem like the rule of unelected bureaucrats over the United States was simply a forgone conclusion. That, to Pestritto, is unacceptable. “Government by bureaucracy contradict our principles of law and constitutionalism,” he says, in addition to violating “the basic democratic idea, that the people are supposed to govern themselves.” “We have guards against majority tyranny, but basically you have people making rules, you have people governing who aren’t accountable to voters, and that’s not kosher in a republic.” This is not merely a partisan gripe. It’s not that the federal bureaucracy is often staffed with liberals because liberals tend to gravitate toward government work. No, the liberal bias is built into the machinery — a machinery that seeks to shred the foundations of the country. The original progressive idea, he notes, was that “the circumstances are different today than they were at the Founding. Progress means new circumstances, and requires a new kind of government.” In other words, “our constitution’s outdated.” This, more than anything, Pestritto sees as the progressives’ lasting legacy. “I would say the main way in which, uh, you see the Progressive legacy today is in the deference to the administrative state,” he says. “I am not naive enough to think that contemporary Democrats who call themselves progressives are true believers in the way that the original progressives were.” While the original progressives at least had some kind of political program — workplace safety protections, things like that — “the contemporary Left is all about power.” But that doesn’t mean that the bureaucracy the progressives built isn’t a useful tool for the Left. “The bureaucracy, given the nature of what it does, is inherently Left ideologically,” Pestritto tells The Daily Wire. “It’s not conducive to conservative priorities.” Here, Pestritto sounds increasingly like the odd man out among conservatives. It’s popular on the Right these days to say that the problem with the federal bureaucracy is simply that the wrong people are running it. Put patriots in charge, the argument goes, and things will turn around. Pestritto isn’t buying it. “You’re never gonna get an entity like the Federal Trade Commission but conservative, or the EPA but conservative,” he says. “That’s where I get off the bus.” But this hardly means Pestritto is the kind of conservative intellectual who waxes poetic about Congress reasserting itself as a coequal branch of government — quite the contrary. “Congress has basically ceased to become a legislative body,” he says. “It’s not a legislative institution anymore. It’s a kind of public media company.” Asked how he would rate congressional efforts to rein in the administrative state, he pulls no punches. “I’d give the congressional Republicans an F,” he says, noting that lawmakers are “failing to take advantage of a historic opportunity.” That opportunity, of course, is the re-election of Trump, who has made “draining the swamp” one of his top priorities. On this front, the president is succeeding, Pestritto says. “Trump’s really trying to go after the kind of inherent ideological bias in the federal government that’s sort of seated there in the bureaucracy, and that’s why they’re fighting like hell right now,” he says. While Congress gets an F, “The current Trump administration I would give almost an A+,” Pestritto says, “because they are peddle to the floor trying to take advantage of every opening to rein in the bureaucracy, with the agency firings, with DOGE, and with a lot of the executive orders pertaining to rescinding regulations pertaining to bringing the independent agencies under the control of the president.” Pestritto is quick to distinguish between his kind of robust executive authority and an effort to make the bureaucracy conservative. “I’m much more an advocate of making the agencies directly accountable to the president by a total removal of power that he has, and then by paring back their authority and returning governing to actual elected officials, not so much in the federal government but probably in the state governments.” Trump isn’t the only reason Pestritto is optimistic about the future of representative government. The Supreme Court, he says, has over the past decade begun “to try to turn the tables on the bureaucracy.” The Court took a major step in this direction earlier this month during oral arguments for Trump v. Slaughter, which deals with the president’s ability to remove independent agency heads. The Court’s conservative majority appeared to side with President Trump, who contends he had the ability to remove Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission. In January, the Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Cook, a similar case that hinges on Trump’s attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. “This stuff is kind of filtering up to the grownups in the judicial system,” Pestritto says. Though Pestritto is optimistic about all of these developments, he is clear that we never should have gotten to this point. The best way to dismantle the administrative state, he says, “would be for Congress to reverse all of the discretionary authority it has delegated to bureaucratic executive agencies.” But of course, “they’re not going to do that — that ship has sailed.” “Congress is never going to be what it should be,” he says. That’s a pity, because in the not-so-distant past, congressional appropriators from both parties (he names Democrat John Dingell as one example) were so bullish about protecting their own power that they would fight the bureaucracy if only for territory. “Nowadays, ideology has transcended all of that,” he says. “So the Democrats in Congress essentially know that the bureaucrats are their proxy.” “And so, they are perfectly happy to let the bureaucrats disparage and ignore and resist congressional efforts for oversight,” he adds. “Because they understand that the bureaucracy will do the hard legislative work of legislating for the Left.”

A Utah state employee accused Republican Governor Spencer Cox of engaging in “reprehensible censorship” for ordering a review that included flagging content related to radical gender and racial ideology in state documents, according to emails viewed by The Daily Wire.  An employee with the Utah Department of Health attacked Cox, accusing him of “dehumanizing” minorities and saying more should be done to “push back” against the review, emails obtained by Do No Harm show. The employee made the comment amid a sensitive content review that directed officials at Utah’s Department of Health to go through content and watch for words like “anti-racism,” “environmental justice,” “gender identity,” “LGBTQ(IA+),” “Racism,” “transgender,” “white privilege,” “white fragility,” abortion, and more.  The call to “push back” was apparently made during a staff meeting and passed along by public information officer Charla Haley, whose job is to communicate with the public about what’s happening at the health department, to other employees in the Utah Department of Health in an email on January 10, 2024. “Why isn’t more being done to push back against the Sensitive Content Assignment issued by the governor’s office?” the quote shared by Haley read. “This effort to remove references to health equity, race, gender identity, ethnicity, and sexual orientation is reprehensible censorship that invisibilizes communities who have already experienced disproportionate negative health outcomes from systemic oppression. It is dehumanizing and will further marginalize diverse people in Utah, including employees and Partners.”  Utah Department of Health and Human Services Director Mike Grass said in an email to The Daily Wire that Haley passed the message along to other employees “who had some questions.” It was not clear what the questions were. “With respect to the comment sent by Charla Haley, this was simply a direct quote written by an employee made during a staff meeting. She passed it along to three staff members who had some questions,” the Utah Department of Health told The Daily Wire.  Kurt Miceli, the medical Director of Do No Harm, said the comment showed that there were political ideologues embedded in Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services.   “What Do No Harm has uncovered makes it clear that there are political ideologues in Utah’s DHHS who are interested in pushing an agenda, not science,” he said. “These activists within Utah’s DHHS should stop pushing their political agenda and spend more time helping the people of their state.” A few hours after passing along the quote attacking the governor, Haley sent an email to another health department employee telling them to pull “concerning” handouts “for the time being.”  “So, you might want to go through some of your handouts that might be concerning and pull them for the time being. Your disease reports should be fine for now and we can review them and rebrand them after the 15th,” she wrote.  Grass told The Daily Wire that the reference to rebranding had to do with a merger, and the department was not trying to hide DEI-focused materials. “DHHS is compliant with the governor’s directive. DHHS materials were not rebranded to hide references to DEI activities; however, materials were revised to comply with the governor’s directive and the department’s internal policies,” he said. “Additionally, the department’s efforts to rebrand and the references to rebranding were necessary due to the merger between the Utah Department of Health and the Utah Department of Human Services in July 2022. After the merger, the department’s website continued to contain documents with old logos. The rebranding comments simply referred to making sure they all had the new logo.” Grass said those conducting the review were “instructed to watch for certain words” and “the context in which those words were used during the review process.” “The use of those words alone did not necessarily result in revisions to particular materials,” he said.  In another email sent to a health department employee in February 2024, Haley shared a rant from someone named “Mikey” who she said was “definitely in touch with his emotions.” In the rant, “Mikey” said that parents should allow their kids to identify as transgender.  “The LGBTQIA+ community does not want your children. They want to give a safe space for your child when you decide they are no longer your child because they came out as gay or trans. YOU, as a parent, are a failure if you feel that is the only acceptable response to your child telling you what has been plaguing their minds the most,” the person wrote.  In another email from April 16, 2024, obtained by Do No Harm, a then-health department employee, Andrea Hood, discussed editing an LGBT-focused resource to get it through the content review process.  “I was wondering if we want to edit this resource for parents and submit it through the DHHS ‘sensitive topics’ review process,” she wrote. “What are your thoughts? I created it to go with Inclusive Spaces training but I think it could be useful on its own. I’m open to making adjustments to it if there are pieces that might be particularly scrutinized we can brainstorm how to do that.” The resource pushed parents to get involved in politics and embrace their kids’ gender expression. The resource said that using “chosen name & pronouns,” supporting “gender expression,” encouraging “inclusive practices,” and being “active in the legislative process,” would “increase the likelihood of your LGBTQ+ child having a healthy and happy future.” The resource also said to “speak up when you hear stereotypes about LGBTQ+ people,” and “talk with your religious leaders to help your congregation become more supportive of LGBTQ+ people.” The inclusive practices the resource said to support included “including pronouns on enrollment forms,” “name and pronoun change procedures,” “LGBTQ+ professional development for staff,” “sports participation for transgender and gender non-binary youth,” “inclusive curricula,” and “affirming clubs (Gender & Sexuality Alliances).” The resource told parents to use their children’s chosen pronouns, not their biological ones, and to “correct” themselves when they “make a mistake.”  “Listen to your child to understand what being transgender or gender nonbinary means to them, and what it feels like,” the resource said, adding, “Try to use their chosen name and pronouns, and correct yourself in the moment when you make a mistake.” The resource also claimed that studies “found that youth who have parental and school support to transition socially have significantly better mental health outcomes than youth without that support.” Cox’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the emails.  Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships Utah’s Department of Health has been criticized for producing a “terribly flawed” report on the science behind transgender procedures for kids. The report, which was sent from the department to the Utah legislature, significantly misrepresents the scientific record and glosses over the danger of transgender procedures, Do No Harm said in a memo last week.  The report also came alongside recommendations from the Utah Department of Health, which Miceli said silently supported undoing protections for kids from transgender procedures.  The recommendations are all contingent on the moratorium being lifted, Miceli said. These included things like setting up a board to oversee the moratorium, creating specific standards of care, and limiting those who prescribe transgender procedures to “demonstrated experts.” Utah’s Department of Health also maintains a “self-paced” training page on the topics of “advancing health equity,” “an anti-racist imperative for public health data,” and “How to be Anti-Racist in the Everyday Practice of Public Health.” “Each day, we have opportunities to fight racism and bias in our work in public health. From our hiring practices to microaggressions that occur in internal meetings to the data we collect to the policies we influence, enact, and enforce — racism and bias impact all facets of public health. Studies show that this ultimately causes a negative impact on health outcomes and hinders our efforts to reduce racial inequities in health,” the course description says.  In January 2023, Cox signed legislation placing a moratorium on doctors giving kids cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers and banning transgender surgeries. That came after he previously vetoed a bill keeping males out of female sports.

Hinder emerged in Oklahoma City in 2001 when Austin John Winkler stepped away from his work singing in a local cover band to form a new group after meeting drummer Cody Hanson and guitarist Joe “Blower” Garvey at a college party. The three quickly began writing original material, and their chemistry proved immediate. They began performing locally at venues like The Blue Note in Oklahoma City, building a regional following before recruiting a permanent bassist. After recruiting bassist Cole Parker in 2002 during the early recording sessions, the band completed their debut EP Far from Close in 2003 on the The post Complete List Of Hinder Band Members appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc dissect Australia’s reaction to the Hanukkah massacre and how the West flicks aside antisemitic violence.Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. Victor Davis Hanson: So, we have this mass murder in Australia, and then you ask yourself, is he an ISIS plant? Did he try to coordinate it online with other violence that day? But that all said, when you put the Australia thing and the Brown [University] thing and the [Rob] Reiner killing all in a 48-hour period, it kind of shocks Americans. Like, they’ve lost control. We’ve lost control of the American narrative. It’s kind of tragic. When people in Australia, to take an example, when they comment on Bondi Beach, which we’ll get to in a minute, they usually say two things: “We’re going to have gun control.” They have gun control there. It’s much stricter than California. But ask themselves, why did they allow somebody they knew had ISIS ties to have six guns? Yet, they’ll double down on that. And then the second thing they’ll always do is they’ll say, “Well, we’re going to look at extremist groups, like white nationalists and maybe, I don’t know, white supremacists.” Or, “We’re going to investigate Islamophobia.” That was the wrong thing to say. [Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese] should have said, “We have open borders, and we can’t vet people, so we’re going to take a time out until we get our house in order, so we don’t let people in who have a desire to kill us.” I’m so tired of these Western bureaucrats who say, “This is not who we are. We don’t tolerate this.” Well, what are you going to do about that? And then always gun control or, “Well, we’re going to have a special task force for antisemitism and Islamophobia.” But they never tell us the data, as I said earlier. They know the data. The data does not support the idea that Islamic citizens, residents are the objects of hate crime. If you look at the hate crime [statistics]—and it’s very hard to find because people in these blue cities don’t want to report it to the FBI—it’s mostly Jews who are 3% of the population. No, there are only six million, so maybe 2% of the population, they account for about 40 % of violent hate crimes. And they’re almost never the perpetrator. And Muslims are overrepresented, both as victims, but more importantly, as perpetrators.  Sami Winc: The other criticism in Australia was of the police department, which was only one block away. But you heard talk about how they hadn’t done enough to stop these guys. And we saw the one guy who was not police that tackled the father of the son-father duo in Australia. But the police chief came out and said, that’s not true. We shot one of the one of the perpetrators.  Killed him, I believe, and they also arrested the other one. Hanson: Yeah, he shot him after what? After he killed 15 people? Tell that to the 15 people. The police were on the scene pretty quickly. I mean, I’m not trying to be melodramatic, but I think the Western public is so tired of all these contortions, gymnastics, linguistic tomfoolery. They always praise everybody. It’s like T-ball. But why don’t they just say, “We’re going to make sure that this never happens again, and we’re going to want to warn everybody out there. If you point a gun at somebody in a crowd, and we hear a shot, you’re going to go down.” But they never talk like that. That’s only in the movies that show that the American people and Western publics want that, so Hollywood will supply it. But in the real world they don’t get it. I’m not talking about vigilantism.  It’s just like Parkland. Why didn’t the police just rush in there and say, “That’s my job. I signed up for this.” But you saw them cowering while these kids were butchered like animals.  And when I watch that picture of Bondi Beach and you juxtapose it to Oct. 7, and then you think of the Holocaust Museum butchery, and then you look at things that happened in Israel where a couple of people were killed, and then you look at what’s happening in Europe. I would say the West is slouching toward open season on Jews. I really do. I think they’re going to be hunted like animals.  It’s just sick and nobody speaks out against it. There are three things going on: Open borders and immigration from the Middle East, the corruption of the university that has these Middle East hate Israel programs, and a quarter million people from the Middle East who think it’s their country and can say, “From the river to the sea and Hamas,” right? And then DEI that protects them.  When I mean slouching toward open season on Jews, then you have Tucker [Carlson] and Candace Owens, almost every major event now in the news. Maduro, we move on him—the Jews. Taking out the Iranian nuclear bomb—the Jews. Charlie Kirk’s death—Jews. 9-11—Jews. Why do they do that? And then they say, well, you can be anti-[Israel] and … [Vice President] JD Vance, I like him a lot, he tweeted, you can be against Israel and not be an antisemite. Yes, you can. But why do people who condemn Israel always go down the antisemitic road? And you know what I’m saying?  Winc: Yes, because haven’t we pointed this out in our podcast that if they are anti-Israel, then all the things they apply to Israel they should apply in other places like Turkey and Ukraine. Hanson: They never do. Israel shouldn’t take out these targets. Look at Ukraine. That’s pretty dangerous to sink a submarine of a nuclear-powered Russia. We always say no ceasefires. Netanyahu and Israelis—ceasefires.  Coalition government, Israel. No coalition government, [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky. Collateral damage, Israel. We don’t care about what you kill, kill the Russians all you want. And “occupation, occupation, occupation.” Yeah, that’s right. Azerbaijan just ethnically cleansed 150,000 Armenians I didn’t hear a peep.  Turkey went into Cyprus and slaughtered innocents in 1974, and they occupy illegally the northern part of the country. They took paradise and turned it into a backwater state. And then they forced the poor Greeks to go to the southern part of the island, the traditionally less affluent, and they turned it into paradise. Nobody talks about that. And so, the other thing is, when people say, “From the River to the Sea,” and I heard that ad nauseam at Stanford.  I was walking to my office: “River of the sea, Palestine shall be free.” And I told you once, I asked this young woman, “Which sea? Which river?” Everybody asked that. She had no idea. And I was just kind of joking. It was a Red Sea? Close. Was it the North Sea? Not close. Maybe the Mediterranean? What river? The Euphrates? The Tigris? The Nile? Or the Jordan? Which is it? And then I asked, this is what I remember the most. I was walking by and a very affluent student from the Middle East, and I say that because of my Victor gold antenna went up with the jewelry and stuff. Student, student. And she was out screaming. And I said to her, “What do you do with a two million? River to the sea means you want to get rid of Israel, erase it. Because if you take them, you’re going to take the Jews and kill them?” “Oh, no. They can go back.”  Remember Helen Thomas, the journalist that was the very left-wing journalist at all the press conferences, they gave her the top seat. She goes, well, those Jews, they should just get out of Israel and go back to Poland or wherever they came. Helen, Helen, 3,500 years in counting Jews have been in that place. The Arab world did not get there until the seventh century. And that was about 4,000 years after Jews were there. If that’s the game you want to play. What was fascinating is when you ask that, I always would ask, “What do you do with the 2 million Arabs? River to the sea, so you’re going to go in and you’re going to destroy Israel and kill 9 million Jews, but you let 2 million Arabs live who right now vote and are the only Arabs in the Middle East that have constitutional freedom and security and economic outside of the Gulf, prosperity. But Saudi Arabia, can you vote with a free and unfettered election? No.  Gaza? No. West Bank? No. Egypt? No. Tunisia? No. Morocco? No. Algeria? No. Syria? No. Iraq? Not really. Lebanon? If you want to risk your life. I mean free and unfettered. Can you say anything you want if you’re an Arab citizen in Israel? Pretty much. Can you say it anywhere else in the Arab homeland? Nope. Nope.  If Israel said tomorrow, “We will let Arabs live here in Israel,” they would have a flood of people. Winc: Of course they would. Hanson: Israel ethnically cleansed their own Jews from Gaza. They were settlements, we’re going to get out. So, there are no Jews in Gaza.  There’s no more expansion. They’re really working on not allowing the expansion. But my point is this: If you’re an Arab citizen in Israel and you own property, the Israelis say, OK. They may not want more. But if you say, “Hmm, I like this view in the West Bank, I’m going to buy property and I’m a Jew.” You can’t live there. You have to be in this particular settlement and armed.  All these things just go out the window when you talk to these students and professors, given the hate. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: ‘The West Is Slouching Toward Open Season on Jews. It’s Just Sick.’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Oxpeckers: pals or pests?

Are we boldly going with the force, or what? Shiny.

As a leftist Muslim immigrant from Somalia, radical Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is wonderfully blessed with a DEI press. She is perennially assumed to be a victim of racism, sexism, and xenophobia whenever she is criticized, and especially when she’s verbally targeted by President Trump. At the end of a typically syrupy interview with Esme Murphy from the local CBS station WCCO in Minneapolis on Sunday, Omar claimed her 19-year-old son Adnan Hirsi was pulled over by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement personnel. "Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by ICE agents, and once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go," Omar asserted.  She said her son "always carries" his passport with him, because she tells him ICE agents “are racially profiling, they are looking for young men who look Somali that they think are undocumented." The CBS anchor didn’t question any of this. The station later reported that ICE's Acting Director Todd Lyons said the agency has "absolutely zero record of its officers or agents pulling over Congresswoman Omar's son" and accused her of trying to "unfairly demonize our law enforcement officers." On Wednesday, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer oozed all over Omar on The Situation Room. Blitzer turned to her accusations against ICE. “I know that the Trump administration's immigration crackdown has become very personal for you, even though you're a member of Congress. You have said that federal immigration agents actually pulled over your son on Saturday and asked him to prove his citizenship. He is, of course, a U.S. citizen, as are you.” But at least Blitzer made one soft offering of a rebuttal: “The Department of Homeland Security says -- and I'm quoting them – ‘ICE has absolutely zero record of its officers or agents pulling over Congresswoman Omar's son’ and have accused you of seeking to -- quote – ‘demonize ICE as part of a P.R. stunt,’ their words. What do you say to that?” Omar presented “zero record” of her son’s supposed stop, just some word-salad demonization of ICE. “Well, if ICE is saying that they have documentation of every single person that they have pulled over in Minneapolis, we would love to see that record...they have not been able to provide a single information.” Blitzer just moved on. She didn’t have to give CNN “a single information” to back up her claims. The burden of proof is entirely on ICE. They’re guilty until they prove their innocence. Instead, Blitzer turned back to Trump’s taunts. “When President Trump attacked you again a few days later during a separate event in Pennsylvania, his statements were actually met with cheers from the crowd, and many of them were shouting, ‘Send her back,’ their words, ‘Send her back.’ What goes through your mind when you hear that kind -- and do you fear at all for your safety?” These interviewers just put the ball on the tee. “Please denounce Trump’s words as dangerous and creepy.” Omar proclaimed “Somali Americans are here to stay,” and Blitzer agreed: “As they should be. They're U.S. citizens. Almost all of them are now U.S. citizens, naturalized U.S. citizens.” Omar said “nearly 60 percent [were] born in the United States.” Blitzer added: “And they're very good U.S. citizens, to be sure.” Blitzer made no mention of more than $1 billion in welfare fraud in Minnesota, largely committed by Somali Americans, nor Trump's claims that Omar married her brother for a few years. That would violate their corporate intent to stay "woke."

California police say that three teenagers told them a story that unraveled after the discovery of allegedly contradicting video on social media.The incident unfolded after a mother in Twentynine Palms called police to report that her 15-year-old child had been attacked by their neighbor, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.One of the teens also tried to ignite curtains to start a fire before they left the residence.When deputies arrived, they found three teenagers claiming to be victims of assault.After determining that one of the teen's accounts had been fabricated, police said they discovered a video on social media that showed what actually happened.The video allegedly showed two girls and a boy brutally attacking a man who has an intellectual disability. Police said one of the girls slashed the victim's head and arms with a large kitchen knife while he pleaded for his life.One of the teens also tried to ignite curtains to start a fire before they left the residence.Deputies obtained search warrants for the residences of the victim and all of the suspects, and they were able to obtain evidence of the assault, including the kitchen knife.One of the teenage girls claimed that she suffered lacerations from being attacked by the man, but police determined that she was injured by punching through the actual victim's window.The three teens were booked into the San Bernardino County Juvenile Detention Center. Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images The suspects face numerous charges, including assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury, burglary, and criminal threats. The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office is considering additional charges as well.Police are asking for help from the public in their ongoing investigation into the case.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!