'We are not fazed'

'Rapid and opaque'

As anti-regime protests in Iran continue for a third week, U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee predicts a “complete realignment of the Middle East.”   “The potential is here for something of Biblical proportion,” Huckabee told The Daily Signal, adding he has used the very same language when speaking with President Donald Trump.   If the Iranian people succeed in toppling the regime, “that changes everything across the globe,” Huckabee said, adding it will lead to “one of the most unusual times in human history, because there will be a realignment.”   Before the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Israel and Iran had a cooperative relationship as the two nations shared geological interests. That economic, military, and intelligence cooperation ended, however, when the Ayatollah came to power.   Israel’s relationship with Turkey has also deteriorated in recent years after the two nations shared a “close partnership,” Huckabee said.  “I think anything is possible,” Huckabee said regarding the prospect of alliances between Israel and nations such as Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon.   “It takes leadership, it takes resolve, and President Trump has exhibited something that I’ve never seen,” Huckabee said. “He has a resilience that is unshakable, and he’s got a resolve to do what he says. So, I say, pop the popcorn, get in a good chair, sit back and hang in for the ride.”  Iranians have been protesting the regime for more than two weeks, in response to a failing economy and rampant inflation. The U.S. Department of State advised Americans Tuesday to flee Iran as the situation there grows increasingly unstable.   “U.S. citizens should leave Iran now,” the U.S. Consular Affairs account posted on X Tuesday.   Despite a growing death toll, Iranians are continuing to take to the streets to demand change. Due to regime-imposed internet blackouts, monitors have been unable to determine an exact number of casualties, but some experts predict the totals are in the thousands.  The regime “underestimated the resolve of their people,” Huckabee said. “And it may be the end of this regime, and I think we can all hope that it will be.”  Trump has threated a U.S. response to the regime’s killing of protesters.  “The White House said today all options are on the table,” Huckabee said. “President Trump is really good about not revealing all the cards in his hand.”  Trump was slated to meet with his senior national security team on Tuesday to discuss a possible U.S. response to the regime’s deadly crackdown, after he issued a statement on Tuesday telling the Iranian protesters that “help is on its way.”   The fall of the regime would mean a “safer world,” according to the ambassador. “It’s going to be a world in which the powers that have been so destructive, from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, will be, at least in the initial phases, neutered, because they’re not going to have that supply line of money and weaponry that has been their hallmark.”  Iran is documented to have provided financial backing for the terrorist group Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.   In Israel, Huckabee said Trump’s firm statement against the Iranian regime has been received well.  “I told the President not very long ago, was on the phone with him, and I said, ‘Mr. President, I don’t know if you realize this, but if you were on the ballot in Israel, you would get 95% of the vote, and the other 5% they’re all locked up in insane asylums.’ I said,   Trump has “done so many things that has shown a real understanding of the value of our partnership,” Huckabee said, referring to the U.S.-Israel alliance.   In June, the U.S. carried out strikes on Iran’s three key nuclear facilities, damaging the regime’s nuclear capabilities and significantly mitigating Iran’s threat to Israel and the world.   The U.S. also played a leading role in the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that was agreed to in October and based on Trump’s 20-point plan for peace. The first phase of the deal, which included the release of all hostages and a ceasefire, is well underway. The second phase is slated to include a formal end to the war that began following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.   Huckabee says he is confident the second phase of the peace deal between Israel and Hamas will be implemented in 2026 because “President Trump is leading it.”   A “technocratic government” will be established in Gaza, Huckabee said. “It’s going to be a slow process, because there is an immense level of work to do.”  It took Hamas 20 years to get it to the point where it is today, Huckabee said, “so, I don’t have any illusions that 20 days or even 20 months is going to restore it all, but it will happen.”   The post Ambassador Huckabee Predicts a ‘Complete Realignment of the Middle East’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President of The Daily Signal Rob Bluey called on Republicans in Congress to massively reduce the national deficit, telling host Steve Bannon during a Tuesday appearance on “War Room,” “Think about how much more progress we can make and the economic juice we can give this White House if we were able to also reduce government spending. “Just like you and I are expected to balance our budget on a monthly basis, we should expect the same of our congressional representatives,” Bluey stated.  “Republicans have for years, if not decades, promised that they were going to do this,” Bluey said of deep cuts to government spending. ROB BLUEY: Just as we are expected to balance our personal budgets, we should expect the same of our congressional representatives!The spending that we saw during the Biden administration directly contributed to the inflation crisis that the American people face.While… pic.twitter.com/e8Jvw78EeH— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) January 13, 2026 Bluey was on War Room to discuss an exclusive story published by The Daily Signal that suggested Republicans in Congress could be getting serious about bringing down government spending. Previously, The Daily Signal reported that the Republican Study Committee had come out with a comprehensive plan to balance the budget within the next 10 years. The 189 member committee’s report ran more than 100 pages, calling for ending wasteful spending and bringing costs down for the American family. “What the Republican Study Committee is attempting to do here is to go through department by department and eliminate what areas that they think are duplicative wasteful, try to find efficiencies throughout the government,” Bluey told Bannon. “The spending that we saw during the Biden years contributed to the inflation crisis that the American people faced,” Bluey later said. While the Trump administration has managed to bring Biden-era inflation down, Bannon later asserted that the inflationary pressures could reemerge thanks to reckless government spending during the Biden administration. BALANCING THE BUDGET IN 10 YEARS?@RobertBluey says the Republican Study Committee claims it can get to “no deficit” in a decade—by going “department by department” to cut “duplicative” and “wasteful” spending as debt sits at $38T.@bannons_warroom pic.twitter.com/2qKvvDIANP— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) January 13, 2026 “We have a big fight in front of us, Rob, but we’ll partner with you, because right now, the reason the legislators don’t take it seriously is that it’s still financeable,” Bannon said of the nation’s debts. “I think you look at the 10-year budget, it’s $2.5 trillion annually just for the interest payments—it’s over $2 trillion,” Bannon continued. “So when this hits, it’s going to hit like a punch from Sonny Liston right up in your face, and you’re not going to be able to recover from it,” Bannon added. “It is going to be a serious challenge that we will have to confront,” Bluey replied. “And who is it going to impact most? Probably those young people who are entering the workforce and are staring at years to try to pay down this huge debt.” The post Bluey and Bannon Say Conservatives Need to Pressure Congress Into Balancing the Budget appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Newsom: Don't Blame Me for the Wealth Tax Fiasco

Flashback: When Scott Adams Explained Trump, Persuasion, and 'Loserthink'

The man who was arrested for ramming protesters against the Islamic regime in Los Angeles was given a $0 bail and was released on his own recognizance. Iranian dissidents have organized one of the largest political demonstrations against the ruling regime and have been met with brutal state violence in response. Hundreds have been killed in the clashes, with some estimates reaching over 1,000 dead.'The demonstrators tore the signs off the truck and attacked the driver, who then drove toward a group of LAPD officers.'Supporters of the dissidents have protested in cities across the globe, but one group in Westwood was violently attacked by a man driving a U-Haul truck.Video showed protesters attacking the man as police dragged him away from the scene. He was later identified as 48-year-old Calor Madanescht. Only minor injuries were reported from the incident.The truck had signs on it indicating that Madanescht was opposed to the demonstration. One side read, "No Shah," which refers to the ruling leader before the Islamic regime overthrew the Western-backed Shah.However, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is trying to determine whether he intentionally rammed the protesters or was reacting to being boxed in by the protest.He was only charged with a misdemeanor count of reckless driving."Officers stopped the truck and directed the driver to turn around," reads a statement from the Los Angeles Police Dept. on Monday. "The demonstrators tore the signs off the truck and attacked the driver, who then drove toward a group of LAPD officers."Investigators said nothing significant was found inside the truck after it was impounded and searched.Madanescht was booked into the Los Angeles County Jail but was released on $0 bail. The Los Angeles City Attorney will review the case.RELATED: Trump has already reportedly approved attack on Iran but is giving the regime one last chance Iranian and Middle East studies professor Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani at USC told KABC-TV the man appeared to be opposed to both the Islamic regime as well as the previous Shah.He went on to say that the regime's actions to cloud reporting on the demonstrations had made it difficult to ascertain how many people had been killed."It's difficult to know the scale and the size because the communications have been cut off, and that's by design, right?" Movahedi-Lankarani said. "The government doesn't want the news to be easily spread about what is happening there."On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued a statement of support for the anti-regime protesters and said that help was on the way. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Paul HANNY/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesNew research found evidence of HPV16 in Ötzi’s genome, revealing groundbreaking insights into the virus’ evolutionary history. Both Ötzi the Iceman, the oldest well-preserved human ever found, as well as a prehistoric man who lived in Siberia 45,000 years ago were recently found to be carriers of a cancer-causing strain of human papillomavirus (HPV), according to new research posted to bioRxiv. Since his discovery along the Austrian-Italian border in 1991, Ötzi has been the subject of several scientific analyses that have revealed details of his life some 5,300 years ago. Researchers have, for instance, learned that he was likely killed after an arrow struck him in the shoulder, uncovered what his last meal was, and even revealed what ailments had plagued him, including broken bones, intestinal parasites, and lungs blackened by soot. Now, analysis of genetic data from Ötzi and another prehistoric individual has revealed that both were likely infected with HPV16, which would mark the “earliest molecular evidence” of the disease in human history, researchers say. The research has yet to be peer-reviewed, but if the findings are accurate, they could help to identify when and how humans first came into contact with the virus. Pushing Back The Historical Timeline Of HPV Wikimedia CommonsA reconstruction of an early Neanderthal man. “Our results suggest that HPV16 was already present in modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic, indicating a long-standing host-virus independent of Neanderthal transmission,” the researchers wrote in the new preprint paper. This is an especially notable finding, as it is commonly believed that Neanderthals, who overlapped with modern humans in Eurasia from 60,000 to 34,000 years ago, were responsible for transmitting the virus to Homo sapiens. The team’s sample size is admittedly small, and so the origins of HPV are still largely shrouded in mystery, but the research does at least challenge the Neanderthal-transmission theory to a considerable degree. “This is a very nice finding,” Ville Pimenoff, a computational geneticist at the University of Oulu who was not involved in the study, told Science. “Homo sapiens was basically infected by these viruses for all of its existence.” Scientists are starting to gain a better understanding of just how intertwined the evolutionary history of HPV is with that of humankind itself. Viruses in the Papillomaviridae family are prehistoric and have co-diverged with their vertebrate hosts over extensive timescales, exhibiting strict host specificity that mirrors the phylogeny of their hosts. In other words, the virus and its host evolved in lock step, side by side. South Tyrol Museum of ArchaeologyÖtzi is one of the best-preserved prehistoric mummies ever found. Phylogenetic studies suggest that the timescale of papillomavirus evolution spans millions of years, largely inferred from a model of virus-host co-divergence. This means, essentially, that as different species evolved, their associated papillomaviruses evolved with them. And while general papillomaviruses are very old, the specific high-risk types that affect humans today and can cause cancer, such as HPV16, have divergence times that align with significant events in human prehistory. Research into how these specific high-risk HPV lineages evolved can also provide insight into how ancient human populations interacted and spread viruses. Modern analyses indicate that the major variant lineages of HPV16 (A, B, C, and D) split apart around 500,000 years ago – predating the emergence of Homo sapiens and coinciding with the evolutionary divergence between Neanderthals and modern humans. “The results indicate that HPV16 has been associated with anatomically modern humans for a very long time, likely well before major population splits outside Africa,” study co-author Marcelo Briones told Live Science. “This supports the idea that oncogenic human papillomaviruses are not recent pathogens but long-term companions of their hosts, evolving alongside primates and humans over extended evolutionary timescales.” Potential Challenges To The Neanderthal-Transmission Theory Of HPV Both Ötzi and the prehistoric Siberian man also studied here, known as Ust’-Ishim, were chosen for this analysis because they represent two of the most well-preserved early human genomes ever found. Ötzi died roughly 5,300 years ago and was naturally mummified, but Ust’-Ishim, who was found in 2008, was much older. He lived around 45,000 years ago in what is now Siberia, and all that remains of him is a single leg bone. Still, that was enough material to sequence one of the oldest human genomes known to science. Through these genomes, Briones and colleagues were able to find multiple DNA fragments matching HPV16, indicating both men were afflicted with the virus. “We’re pretty confident there’s a signal there… We have the oldest evidence of HPV,” said study first author Juliana Yazigi. Wikimedia CommonsA map of potential sites of Neanderthal-human interbreeding. Given how far apart Ötzi and Ust’-Ishim lived, both geographically and in the historical timeline, both men showing signs of HPV16 provides further evidence that this disease has been with humanity for perhaps millions of years. It could also indicate, Briones says, that perhaps Homo sapiens transmitted the cancer-causing virus to Neanderthals, and not the other way around, contrary to popular belief. Other experts feel this claim may be “overstated,” however. Koenraad Van Doorslaer, interim co-chair of the immunobiology department at the University of Arizona, tells Live Science that because Ust’-Ishim also has Neanderthal DNA in his genome, “it does not prove that HPV16 does not come from Neanderthals.” Still, Van Doorslaer says he is “genuinely excited about the implications of this study because it supports some critical assumptions about the history of this family of important viruses.” “Is this gonna make better vaccines, better treatments, better cures? Probably not. But not all science should be about that,” he says. “It should just be about learning cool things.” After reading about this discovery, learn more about nine of history’s most fascinating mummies. Then, read about six of the most interesting diseases to ever ravage humanity. The post The Prehistoric ‘Ötzi The Iceman’ Mummy May Have Just Upended Experts’ Theories About The Origins Of HPV appeared first on All That's Interesting.

Yathin S Krishnappa/Wikimedia CommonsAn Indian bull elephant — not the rampaging elephant — as seen at Bandipur National Park. Over the past two weeks, several villages in the Indian state of Jharkhand have been terrorized by an elephant. The creature appears at night, tearing through vulnerable communities. So far, he’s trampled at least 22 people. Officials are now on the hunt for the elephant. They hope to safely capture him and return him to his herd — but he’s proving to be elusive. The Rampaging Elephant In Jharkhand, India According to reports from the Times of India, the elephant attacks began on Jan. 1, 2026, in the Indian state of Jharkhand, and have occurred in the villages and towns of Chaibasa, Kolhan, Saranda, Noamundi, Tonto, and Goilkera. The attacks mostly take place at night, when the young male elephant emerges from the forest and rampages through fields and residential areas. So far, most of his victims have included men who were sleeping outdoors or guarding their fields. But the elephant has also killed three members of a single family, including two young children, as well as a man who was returning from work. Google MapsThe elephant killed a father and his two young children near Goilkera, India. Officials have launched an urgent search for the animal, but so far it’s been difficult to track it down. After its nightly rampages, the elephant slips back into the forest, where it’s virtually impossible to locate. And even the elephant’s daytime attacks have not been consistent over the past two weeks, meaning that no one knows where the creature will appear next. “The elephant’s movement pattern suggests that it is haphazardly running around a [62-mile] circumference across three forest divisions,” an official told the Times of India. “Accordingly, teams are on its trail.” So, what has caused this elephant to go on a rampage? The Theories Behind The Elephant’s Attacks Elephants will attack humans for a number of reasons, including habitat loss, stress from human encounters, and even out of “revenge” for human actions. In 2022, an elephant in Thailand tore its handler in two after it was forced to work in extreme heat. That same year, an elephant in India trampled a woman to death for an unknown reason — then returned to attack her body as her family conducted her funeral. And in 2023, elephants in Malaysia trampled a car after the vehicle ran over one of the herd’s calves. What’s more, elephants and humans have increasingly clashed in India, where industrialization has driven elephants from their natural habitats and disrupted their migratory paths. This has led to an increase in violent human-elephant encounters, and Jharkhand alone has seen an estimated 1,300 deaths caused by elephant attacks in the last 23 years. Elephants also have fatal encounters with humans: Recently, eight elephants were killed when their herd tried to cross railway tracks in the state of Assam. Bernard DUPONT/Wikimedia CommonsAn elephant foraging along a road in India. But the most recent elephant attacks in India don’t seem to have been inspired by “revenge” or habitat loss. Rather, experts suspect that the rampaging elephant is in “musth,” or a mating phase during which its testosterone levels spike. This stage, which can last up to 15 to 20 days, can make male elephants more aggressive. “The elephant appears to have turned rogue and our focus now is to tranquilize it at the earliest,” Chaibasa divisional forest officer Aditya Narayan explained to the Times of India. “We are certain it is in musth, which explains its heightened aggression. We’re trying our best to control the situation.” Officials suspect that the rogue elephant may also have gotten separated from its herd and wandered into human territory. Their goal is to locate the animal and return him to the others. Hopefully, this — and the end of the elephant’s musth phase — will help bring an end to its rampage. After reading about the violent, rampaging elephant in India that’s killed almost two dozen people in two weeks, discover the story of the Gulabi Gang, India’s all-female vigilante group that wears bright pink saris, carries bamboo sticks, and protects abused women. Or, learn about Mumtaz Mahal, the woman whose death inspired the construction of the Taj Mahal, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The post A Rogue Elephant In India Has Killed More Than 20 People Since The Start Of The Year appeared first on All That's Interesting.

Don Lemon Asks If This Is What You Voted For, MAGA, You 'F**king Idiots'