Singer Post Malone gave a single mom an unexpected gift during her shift as a bartender on Christmas Eve. Renee Brown, 36, told her story to the outlet Music Mayhem. The restaurant worker said she was sad to be scheduled to work during the holiday because it meant she couldn’t spend it with her 9-year-old daughter, Iliana. But her night took a turn when the “Sunflower” singer, whose real name is Austin Post, made a stop at The Railyard in Houston, Texas, during her shift. “The day started off super slow, and I was just taking it as it was, trying to be in a good mood for others while dealing with not being able to spend Christmas Eve with my daughter,” Brown told the outlet. “We usually bake cookies and watch Christmas movies, and this was the first time I wasn’t able to do that.” The small neighborhood kept getting busier, and then Post showed up with “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” singer, Shaboozey.  “I initially didn’t realize he was there until one of my coworkers from my second job came inside and told me that Austin [Post Malone] was outside on the patio,” she said. “I thought he was kidding with me at first, then I kept seeing people go outside [and] I kept making drinks for like 30 minutes before curiosity got the best of me, and lo and behold, he was there.” “I told all my regulars not to be weird and bug him as it’s a neighborhood dive bar, and I’m sure he picked a place like that to feel a sense of normalcy,” Brown continued, mentioning how the vibes shifted when the famous recording artists arrived. “It lifted the spirits of the entire bar. It was amazing to see everyone so happy and seeing how kind he was to all the people that spend their days with me on the regular.” Brown said the biggest surprise at all came at the end of the night. “Everyone that he was with was also so kind and inviting, we had a great night jamming to songs on the jukebox. Then came time for last call and to close. When Austin asked for his check, he didn’t have one because many regulars and his friends bought his beverages,” Brown said. She explained how Post was insistent that he be charged for something, which led to him leaving a tip.   “So he asked me to ring him up for a penny or anything, so I did. I continued my close and collected all my checks and started to enter my tips. Then I got to his. It was a tip for $20,000,” she told the outlet. “I immediately broke down crying. It was a very emotional night already being away from home, being swamped behind the bar, trying to process that they were even there and then the tip on top,” she said. Brown added, “I finally got a chance to stop cleaning and talk to him some more and thank him. I know I was crying and thanking him, but he has no idea exactly how much this meant to me.” “I work two jobs and homeschool my daughter. I’m constantly exhausted. We’ve been without a car for two years. And recently moved after losing everything and starting over from scratch in August of 2024,” she said.  “This put me in a position to at least be able to get a way back and forth to work and pay up on rent and save a bit. I’m trying to save up to start a business, so I don’t have to continue working two jobs and be able to spend more time with my daughter. Things have been extremely difficult, and this was truly a blessing that I can’t fully put into words. The visit alone was absolutely amazing and something I could talk about and remember for the rest of my life.” Brown concluded, “If this message reaches him, I know I told him that night how grateful I am, but I’d like to reiterate that he helped me in ways I can’t even begin to explain. My best friend [Matthew] and I have been huge fans of him for years, and it was amazing we got to meet him and experience that moment.” The bartender also posted about her experience on Instagram right after it happened and included photos of herself with Post.    View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Renee Brown (@dazedncnfuzed) “Going into work Christmas Eve, I was so sad I had to leave my baby girl to go to work. Oblivious that God would send me a Christmas miracle,” she wrote in the post caption. “This is hands down the most humble, personable celebrity I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. He changed my life on Christmas f***king Eve, and will forever be grateful. Thank you so much, Austin.”

President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the Hamas terrorist organization must release the hostages that it kidnapped during its unprecedented October 7 terrorist attack against Israel before Inauguration Day or else “all hell will break out” in the region. Trump made the threat against the Iranian-backed terrorist group during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago when asked about it. “If those hostages aren’t back… if they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” Trump said. “And it will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone.” Trump’s use of the word “anyone” is likely a reference to Iran, which has propped up Hamas and is already facing Trump’s wrath for its increased terrorist activities, including attempts to assassinate Trump. “All hell will break out,” Trump said. “I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is. And they should have given them back a long time ago, they should have never taken them. There should have never been the attack of October 7th, people forget that.” WATCH: BREAKING: Trump says that if the hostages are not released by the time he is sworn in that “all hell will break loose in the Middle East” because of what he is going to do to the Iranian axis of terror. pic.twitter.com/tALYuvAp2I — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 7, 2025

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the U.S. in the coming weeks will be renaming the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America.” Trump made the announcement during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago while speaking about trade deficits that the U.S. has with its southern neighbor. “We have a massive deficit with Mexico and we help Mexico a lot,” Trump said. “They’re essentially run by the cartels. And we can’t let that happen. Mexico is really in trouble. A lot of trouble. A very dangerous place.” Trump said that at a future date, which he said would be “pretty soon,” that his administration will be “changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.” “The Gulf of America. What a beautiful name!” Trump said. “And it’s appropriate. It’s appropriate.” Trump said that the U.S. has the right to do it because “we do most of the work there, and it is ours.” WATCH: Trump says that the drug cartels run Mexico and that the country is in deep trouble He also announces that he is changing the name of the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America” pic.twitter.com/bSpmJp5SZY — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 7, 2025 Mexico is in a frantic state of preparation for the incoming Trump administration as officials worry Trump could take military action against the country’s notorious drug cartels. Mexico’s new far-Left president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who blames her country’s problems on the U.S., has tried to calm nerves in her country over the possibility of U.S. military intervention, claiming: “There won’t be an invasion. It’s not going to happen.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Mexican officials are rushing to gauge just how serious the threat from Trump is, especially considering that two of Trump’s picks for his upcoming administration — Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) for national security adviser and Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense — are proponents of the idea. Trump indicated on the campaign trail that he would use military action against the drug cartels, who fuel the deaths of north of a hundred thousand Americans per year. He’s also indicated he would use the U.S. Navy to stop fentanyl precursors from arriving in Mexico from China and he would designate the drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO). He’s also threatened steep tariffs if Mexico does not stop the flow of illegal aliens and drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. The Journal reports that in response to Trump’s threats, Sheinbaum is starting to take action against the Sinaloa cartel, arguably the world’s most powerful drug trafficking organization. Mexican law enforcement has made record seizures of fentanyl from the cartel and she sent her security minister to Sinaloa “to oversee the efforts to take back control of a state where organized crime dominates.” The country is also setting up an elite unit of security officers, who will be vetted and trained by the U.S. for operations against the cartels in Mexico, the report said.

Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have just abandoned the Net Zero Banking Alliance. While it seems to be yet another dire omen for so-called environment, social and corporate governance (ESG) investing, it would be premature for people on the Right to imagine that the Left’s lock on the finance industry is ending. ESG investing is notionally the idea that investors should consider the eponymous non-financial factors of ESG in making finance and investment decisions. The biggest part of “ESG” investing is the “E” (environment) and the biggest part of the “E” is climate and the dubious goal of “net zero emissions,” which I have previously written about here and here. The phenomenon of ESG investing started out in the 1960s as “socially responsible investing” (SRI) investing, was rebranded as “corporate social responsibility” investing in the late 1990s and then rebranded again as ESG investing in the 2010s. SRI/CSR/ESG investing was invented by the Left as a means of using stock ownership for political purposes. The practice started with labor unions in the 1960s. After the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, a cadre of Left-wing activists got together to figure out how to use investment as a means of advancing the rest of the Left’s agenda. In “Biz-War and the Out of Power Elite,” author Jarol B. Manheim writes, “22 young and wealthy individuals who shared a common concern about the conservative turn the country had taken … hit upon the idea to pool their [financial] resources and direct them at what they saw as socially and politically desirable programs…” aimed at corporations. Though it took time, this program succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Meanwhile, the Right was largely asleep. While Nobel laureate Milton Friedman prominently pushed back against SRI investing in his 1970 New York Times magazine article entitled, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” there was no organized follow-up until 2005. At that point, a friend of mine and I launched a publicly traded mutual fund called the Free Enterprise Action Fund to push back against the success the Left was having in foisting its CSR agenda on publicly-traded companies. While our fund had success, we didn’t have the resources to survive the catastrophic market conditions of the housing bubble collapse. The deep-pocketed Left, though, easily survived the tough market conditions and emerged on the other side with near total control of the finance industry with its rebranded and steroidal ESG investing strategy. Virtually all large banks and Wall Street firms joined one or more of the Net Zero Bank Alliance, Net Zero Asset Managers, Net Zero Insurance Alliance, Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), Climate Act 100+ and other similar groups. But this success bred arrogance on the Left and awoke conservatives to a degree that the Free Enterprise Action Fund could only have dreamed about in the 2000s. By 2020, the ESG empire and its anti-fossil fuel, anti-conservative, DEI and other “woke” policies and practices had sufficiently alarmed red state politicians into pushback. State investigations, hearings and laws reining in ubiquitous ESG actors and activities popped up. Congress got involved. Then, ESG investing began to reveal itself as a poor investment strategy. JOIN THE MOVEMENT IN ’25 WITH 25% OFF DAILYWIRE+ ANNUAL MEMBERSHIPS WITH CODE DW25 Perhaps most importantly, though, it had become increasingly clear that the ESG actors were illegally colluding as a cartel, possibly running afoul of anti-trust laws. While the ESG actors could possibly organize themselves into pushback against red states, the post-2024-election prospect of facing a federal government entirely controlled by Republicans would be too daunting. So, amid the holiday distractions, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase all dropped out of the Net Zero Banking Alliance. But those concerned about ESG would be wise not to declare victory and move on. The Left has acquired immense influence and power over the financial industry and has no intention of surrendering it. ESG may be dead as brand, but not as a strategy. The Left has been invested in SRI/CSR/ESG for a long time and for the long-term. While they will likely head underground for a few years, they will certainly be plotting a comeback that may start as soon as the 2026 elections. * * * Steve Milloy is a senior legal fellow with the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

'It is urgent that we get Kash Patel at the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation'

Come and take 'em!

What some see as a shot across the bow aimed at President-elect Donald Trump, Pope Francis announced Monday that left-wing Cardinal Robert McElroy of the Diocese of San Diego would be the next archbishop of Washington. McElroy, 70, will succeed retiring archbishop, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, 77, who shepherded the more than 600,000 Catholics who live in the nation’s capital region. Gregory has not been afraid to oppose abortion in the public square, but angered some Catholics with his restriction on the traditional Latin Mass. In a press conference on Monday, Gregory thanked all “the priests, deacons, and religious men and women who have offered themselves so tirelessly and selflessly in service to the faithful in our parishes, schools, and Catholic institutions.” The Archdiocese of Washington is known for its influence not only in the halls of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court, but also on young people through Catholic schools and universities within its jurisdiction. The pope’s pick for Gregory’s successor is well-known for his advocacy on issues as wide-ranging as admitting women to the diaconate to allowing even those in grave sin to receive Communion, and it has garnered him no shortage of critics among his fellow priests. But observers of the Catholic Church were quick to note that the position McElroy holds that will most put him at variance with the soon-to-be new occupant of the White House is illegal immigration. McElroy did not shy away from the topic at the press conference announcing his appointment. “The Catholic Church teaches that a nation has the right to control its borders, and our nation’s desire to do that is a legitimate effort. At the same time, we are called always to have a sense of the dignity of every human person. And thus, plans that have been talked about at some levels of having a wider, indiscriminate, massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine,” the cardinal argued. McElroy’s comments come after Catholic charities in the United States have been criticized for facilitating the unlawful migration crisis in the United States through their support of illegal aliens who are transported across the border by Mexican drug and trafficking cartels. In Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton has sought the records of several Catholic groups in order to make sure their conduct has not crossed over into human trafficking. For example, Annunciation House in El Paso has been accused by Paxton of having “assisted persons in Mexico in crossing over to the United States in the past.” Because religious organizations such as Annunciation House are tax-exempt, it can be difficult to ascertain who supports them and what exactly their activities consist of. Annunciation House has not disclosed its financial accounting to the IRS since 2003. McElroy also drew pushback from lay Catholics this past September when he released a statement prohibiting Catholic homeschool and charter school groups from having “designated special access to the parish facilities of the Diocese of San Diego.” The policy was articulated even as the diocese allowed unused school buildings to be rented out to a “non-Catholic educational program or school,” subject to the cardinal’s approval. The move was seen as particularly tone-deaf, given that it was rolled out just days before the academic semester was set to begin for some homeschool groups. The Pillar, a Catholic media organization, reported that at least one group had to quickly find a different location to meet for its class of 40 students. The post New Catholic Archbishop of Washington Opposes ‘Massive Deportation’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Hmm: FBI Redacts Origins of RussiaGate in Final Report

Writing Tuesday for the Daily Mail, Shawn Cohen dropped a bombshell that the orthopedic surgeon husband of walking Notable Quotable and ABC’s The View co-host Sunny Hostin — Dr. Manny Hostin — “is among nearly 200 defendants named in one of the largest RICO cases ever filed in New York...accused or getting kickbacks by performing surgery and fraudulently billing a company that insures taxi companies and Uber and Lyft drivers.” The claim, filed back on December 17 “seeking more than $450 million in damages,” alleged Dr. Hostin “knowingly provided fraudulent medical and other healthcare services,” which his attorney vehemently denies and blasted as “meritless” crusade “by a near-bankrupt insurance carrier.” Citing the claim, Cohen added “[t]he insurance firm American Transit was...billed ‘in exchange for kickbacks and/or other compensation which were disguised as dividends or other cash distributions’” for the health professionals. He later continued: American Transit claims ‘rampant’ insurance fraud is endemic in New York State thanks to its ‘No-Fault Law’ under which insurers must pay up to $50,000 for medical expense for people injured in road accidents. ‘These substantial possible no-fault recoveries can incentivize providers with ill intent to over-diagnose, over-treat, and over-bill to recover the most money for themselves,’ American Transit said in a statement. The law was introduced in 1974 ‘in the wake of rapidly rising automobile insurance costs and when accident victims were experiencing long delays in compensation,’ American Transit says in the suit. But taxis and ride-share vehicles are now required to pay up to $200,000 – four times the coverage for private drivers. (....) The insurance company claims Hostin was given an ‘investment’ interest in Empire State Ambulatory Surgery Center in exchange for referring a ‘steady stream’ of patients. ‘Empire State ASC issued regular payments to or for the benefit of Hostin, which, in fact, were illegal kickbacks for referrals,’ the court papers claim. As examples the insurance company claims Hostin...saw two patients in January 2023 who were involved in ‘low-impact’ collisions that should have caused ‘no more than soft-tissue injuries’. Our Nick Fondacaro has made sure to repeatedly mention Hostin’s husband and that his profession, combined with her lucrative TV career, make for a lavish lifestyle. Despite that, she’s insisted she’s entitled to reparations as an African-American...even though her ancestors were slave owners. Last month, Hostin defended those celebrating the murder of the UnitedHealthCare CEO allegedly by far-left hearthrob Luigi Mangione and also her husband’s work because he “operates on someone even though they don't have insurance and then has to sue health insurance companies to get paid for the work that he's been trained his whole life to do.” In February 2023, she insisted she, as a multi-millionaire with an orthopedic surgeon, was “oppressed.” A month earlier, she blasted the notion of judging someone based on their character instead of their skin color. And, on Christmas Eve, Fondacaro had a year-in-review look at nine moments when Hostin fanned the flames of racial division. It turns out, according to this lawsuit, her husband was fanning the flames of class division.

A 17-year-old opened fire while he attempted a carjacking Sunday night in Raleigh, North Carolina, police told WNCN-TV.But a few crucial things didn't go the young suspect's way.'Well, would y'all look at it — a free notice to all wannabe carjackers! ... Don't try carjacking in North Carolina. We are an armed society and will defend ourselves.'First off, the kid apparently isn't a very good shot; the station said the victim — a man — wasn't hurt.Second, the victim had a gun of his own. Police told WNCN he fired back at the teen and wounded him.Police told the station the shooting was reported just after 8:50 p.m. along Arrow Road at the Red Roof Inn.Police told WNCN the victim's car was in the Red Roof Inn parking lot, and the 17-year-old male tried to carjack the man’s sedan and fired at least one shot during the incident.But police added to the station that the armed victim fired back, hitting the teen suspect.Police told WNCN the teen was taken to a hospital for treatment injuries that weren't believed to be life-threatening.You can view a video report here about the incident, which noted that charges were pending against the teen.How are people reacting?Commenters on the station's Facebook post about the botched carjacking seemed squarely behind the actions of the gun-toting victim:"Well, would y'all look at it — a free notice to all wannabe carjackers!" one commenter declared. "Do you wanna be on your way to WakeMed with gunshot wounds, too? Don't try carjacking in North Carolina. We are an armed society and will defend ourselves.""Glad [the] victim was able to defend himself," another user said."Glad to see someone fighting back with these punk[s]," another commenter wrote."Liberal-run towns are cesspools for crime," another user stated. "Good job liberals."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!