Excerpts Fairy Tale Retellings Read an Excerpt From Cinder House by Freya Marske Murdered at sixteen, Ella’s ghost is furiously trapped in her father’s house, invisible to everyone except her stepmother and stepsisters. By Freya Marske | Published on September 18, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Cinder House by Freya Marske, a queer Gothic fantasy retelling of Cinderella, out from Tordotcom Publishing on October 7. Ella is a haunting.Murdered at sixteen, her ghost is furiously trapped in her father’s house, invisible to everyone except her stepmother and stepsisters.Even when she discovers how to untether herself from her prison, there are limits. She cannot be seen or heard by the living people who surround her. Her family must never learn she is able to leave. And at the stroke of every midnight, she finds herself back on the staircase where she died.Until she forges a wary friendship with a fairy charm-seller, and makes a bargain for three nights of almost-living freedom. Freedom that means she can finally be seen. Danced with. Touched.You think you know Ella’s story: the ball, the magical shoes, the handsome prince.You’re halfway right, and all-the-way wrong. Ella’s father died of the poison in their tea. Ella drank less and so might have lived, and not turned ghost at all, if the house hadn’t shrieked for its master’s murder in the moment she stood, dizzied and weak, at the top of the stairs. Ella flinched, stumbled, and fell. There were fifteen stairs; she struck her head on the seventh. The sound of crunching bone was not loud. But the house gave another window-shaking shriek, as the girl who should have inherited it died not two minutes after her father—the blood of his line reduced to a bright smear on the hard wooden edge of that seventh step. Ella’s stepmother had the stairs carpeted in time for the wake following the double funeral. The carpet was a pretty shade of blue, with brass stair rods, and covered the stain entirely. People trod Ella’s blood unknowingly underfoot, while in the parlour Ella’s stepmother—a pragmatic woman named Patrice—dabbed at her eyes with a pre-dampened handkerchief and nudged her younger daughter whenever the girl looked like she might forget herself enough to smirk. The house had wanted to apologise for its part in her death, Ella figured. It wanted to give her more existence, if not more life. By the time of the funeral, the ghost that had been Ella had only just got the hang of consciousness; appearance would be beyond her for some weeks yet. She was too much the houseto be Ella as well. Some unpeeling was yet to happen. Her awareness drifted from floorboard to windowpane to candlesticks to the wide pottery platter with its red border and its painted pattern of pears and rosemary, which Ella’s greataunt had given to Ella’s parents on their wedding day. At the wake, this platter held fan-shaped cakes made with vanilla and hazelnuts. Ella could feel the delicate scrape of fingers against the glossy surface as the guests took the cakes to eat. It sent a thrill of unfamiliarity through her, all the way up to where the chimneys gasped into the sky. * * * Finally she found the look of a person again. It was summer by then. The sun soaked deliriously into the dark red tiles of her roof and Ella’s stepsisters, like most of the cityfolk, pinned up their hair and went swimming in the river on days when the royal sorcerers declared it free of drowning-sprites. The ghost of Ella looked more or less like Ella had when she died. She was still a sixteen-year-old girl with a strong chin and one foot a size larger than the other. She wore the lavender day-dress with the lace collar that she’d worn on her last day of life; she’d only ever been halfway fond of this dress, but her father had liked it. Buy the Book Cinder House Freya Marske Buy Book Cinder House Freya Marske Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Where the living Ella had been blue-eyed with hair like a wheatfield touched by sunset, her ghost had eyes the impassive grey of stone bricks, and her hair was the red of roof tiles, streaked with the grey-white of lichen and pigeon droppings. Ella determined this by looking in the backs of spoons. She did not show up reflected in glass, nor in mirrors. She had read something about ghosts and mirrors, long ago, but couldn’t remember it now. She only knew she’d become visible to her family when Patrice walked into the upstairs parlour, screamed at the sight of her, and dropped a cup of tea. Ella winced. The smash of the cup hurt like a hand clenched hard in hair, and the trickle of hot liquid on the floor was an unpleasant itch. Still she said, “Hello, Stepmother.” * * * Patrice adjusted to the idea of a ghost remarkably quickly. They’d known the house was on its way to being properly magical: a valuable, respectable thing to have in the family. Her husband hadn’t changed his will when they married. It still left the house to his daughter, Ella. Ella didn’t have a will. And with two silent corpses it was easy for the living to dictate the timeline. Ella fell down the stairs, yes, such a terrible accident, and died first. And her father’s heart stopped from grief when it happened. Everything went to Patrice, by common law. On the day Ella became visible, Patrice, once she’d regained some colour in her cheeks, looked at the shattered cup and the tea seeping into the edge of the rug. “Oh, clean that up,” she said. It might have been automatic. Even before Ella died, everyone assumed that Ella would keep things tidy. Ella cared far more about tidiness than anyone else in the house. She’d always liked things to be clean and neat; always had the urge to move the cushions on the couch so they were evenly spaced. Ella did not want to obey her stepmother. But at the same time—yes, she did. The first real emotion of Ella’s afterlife was urgency. It took hold of her and moved her before she could think. The teacup was solid when she touched it; or else Ella became exactly as solid as the teacup needed her to be, for exactly as long as was needed to scoop up the pieces and set them on a table. She could feel the rug beneath her knees. It was not like feeling-a-rug had been when she was living. She was the rug. She was the wet tassels at its edge and the soiled woollen pattern, and that urgency would be a knot within her until they were set right. “Very good, Ella,” said her stepmother. “Perhaps you’ll be worth keeping around after all.” Ella felt her second emotion. How does a house, lacking flesh, feel fury? With the fire in its hearth and in the wide black stove. Ella felt anger with her kitchen fires and felt anger with the fifteen stairs, especially the seventh, and she felt anger with the yellow wallpaper that had been half stripped from the walls of her old bedroom and dangled there for weeks while Patrice was in an argument with the decorators. Ella’s stepmother was in no hurry to turn the emptied chamber into a new study. The house had rooms enough. Ella’s bedroom festered like the socket of a pulled tooth. She had been pulled. Violently. How dare Patrice? How dare she stand there in this place she only owned through murder, and look upon Ella’s ghost and feel no shame—and see nothing but a servant? The anger surged and whipped through Ella. An awakening. She snarled and launched herself at Patrice with her hands outstretched, meaning to fasten them around her stepmother’s neck. The two of them, woman and girl-ghost, passed through one another. To Ella it felt like a bucket of steaming suds thrown across a floor. Anger mixed with growing fear now, Ella raced on her ghost legs downstairs, and before she could stop herself had passed entirely through the maid-of-all-work, Jane—who didn’t look up, didn’t shiver at all. She kept on humming as she ran a damp rag down the side of the grandfather clock, ticklish in all the creases of the wood as she sought out the stubborn traces of dust. Ella sneezed. Jane didn’t blink or mutter a blessing. Patrice came down the stairs, watching Ella with wary interest. It had never occurred to Ella before then to try to leave the house, any more than it occurred to a skeleton to pick itself up and leave its flesh behind. Now that fear—a strange salty ephemeral fear, the only thing that existed untethered from any piece of the house, a fear that was Ella’s alone—drove her to the front door. She took hold of the brass knob and wrenched the door open, dashed down the steps to the gate which opened onto the footpath and the busy street— And stuck. She tried again, with more force. No use. The boundaries of her haunting closed around Ella like a skin sewn from simple knowledge: this fence, the walls shared with the smaller town houses on either side, the kitchen door where the deliveries came. The damp stone floor of the cellar. And the tip of the iron cockerel’s crest up where the weathervane swung in the summer wind at the highest point of the roof. Ella stood staring out at the world beyond the house, at skirts and feathers and leaves and flags dancing in a breeze she could feel only with wrought black iron. She screamed for help, she screamed the name of Miss Filigree the milliner who walked within two feet of her, and nobody heard. She took hold of the gate and shook it violently, but her efforts out here on the boundary were weaker than they’d been on the teacup and the door. The gate merely wobbled and the hinges creaked. It drew some glances from passers-by. “Goodness, what a wind we’re having,” said Patrice, from the top of the steps. “It blew our front door wide open. Yes—good day to you.” And then, quiet with triumph—“Stop behaving like a child and come back inside at once, Ella.” Ella obeyed. Excerpted from Cinder House, copyright © 2025 by Freya Marske. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Cinder House</i> by Freya Marske appeared first on Reactor.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee introduced legislation Thursday to restore protections against government-funded propaganda targeted at Americans. The legislation, dubbed the Charlie Kirk Act after the recently assassinated Turning Point USA founder, would restore protections from the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act to block the federal government from “propagandizing its own citizens shaping media narratives,” according to a press release. The bill’s introduction comes after Kirk died on Sept. 10 after being shot—allegedly by an accused assassin reportedly indoctrinated by left-wing ideology—during a speaking event at Utah Valley University. “From the end of World War II until the Obama administration, it was illegal for the U.S. government to use the State Department’s foreign broadcasting apparatus to target American citizens with propaganda,” Lee said in a statement. “In 2013, these protections were taken away. My legislation restores this safeguard under the name of an American martyr for freedom of speech and freedom of thought: Charlie Kirk. As Charlie’s vital work so ably demonstrated, Americans can figure out the truth for themselves without [the] government telling them what to believe.” Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall is cosponsoring the bill. “The tragedy we witnessed last week was a sobering reminder of the perils of a population subjected to dangerous propaganda,” Marshall said in a statement. “The federal government should never be able to directly target U.S. citizens with propaganda, and this bill takes meaningful steps to remove any semblance of government influence over American media.” The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, often referred to as the “Smith-Mundt Act,” specifies the terms in which the U.S. government can engage in public diplomacy, according to the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Some liberals have reportedly been taking to social media to celebrate Kirk’s assassination. Additionally, Disney’s ABC announced on Wednesday night that it is taking Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show off the air indefinitely over his remarks about Kirk’s assassination. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Mike Lee Takes on Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda With Charlie Kirk Act appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Carrie Edwards of Midlothian won $150,000 from the Virginia Lottery in the Sept. 8 drawing. “As soon as that divine windfall happened and came down upon my shoulders, I knew exactly what I needed to do with it, and I knew that I needed to give it all away,” Edwards said, according to Richmond TV station WRIC. “Because I’ve been so blessed and I want this to be an example of how other people, when they’re blessed, can bless other people.” >>> Sign up for our Virginia email newsletter This week, Edwards took that money and gave it all to three charities.   The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, an affliction that took her husband and an organization that is focused on researching a cure for dementia, received part of the winnings. Shalom Farms, a nonprofit farm and food pantry she volunteers for that grows and distributes hundreds of thousands of servings of produce every year to those in need, also received part. The third organization she gave her winnings to was the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, which provides financial, educational, and emergency assistance for active-duty service members, veterans, and their families. Gillian Gonzales from the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society sat down with The Daily Signal to tell us more about what her organization does and why it was so important for Edwards to make such a selfless gift. Listen here: The post ‘I Knew That I Needed to Give It All Away’: Virginia Woman Donates $150K Lottery Winnings to Charity appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The American Civil Liberties Union is teaming with influencer and former Ohio State University student Guy Christiansen to sue the school for expelling him for a video post that appeared to celebrate the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers. The staffers, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, were shot to death in Washington, D.C. on May 21 by a man chanting pro-Palestinian slogans. Their murders sparked debate about antisemitism and political violence in America. Suspect Elias Rodriguez is also facing federal charges in the case. The ACLU announced the suit via a Wednesday night press release. “Senior Trump administration officials threatened to investigate Mr. Christensen, and his critics urged the University to take disciplinary action,” the press release stated. “By expelling Mr. Christensen, Ohio State University—the third largest public university in the United States—has dangerously capitulated to the Trump Administration’s broad program of extreme, and selective, repression of First Amendment activity on college campuses.” Christiansen initially condemned the murders in a video posted the morning after the couple was fatally shot. Later that same day, however, Christiansen released another video. “I take it back. I do not condemn the elimination of those two Zionist officials who worked at the Israeli Embassy last night,” Christiansen said. “And you cannot expect to do such a thing in this world without the people standing up to fight to stop you in any way they can. To resist against you. And that is exactly what happened. Do not let yourself be fooled by the media, by the Zionists in this country who are telling you that this was an antisemitic terrorist attack. It was not,” he added. “And I want to remind you that while this attack took the lives of two human beings, Israel has murdered thousands of Palestinian civilians in cold blood without any shame, with pride, rejoicing in the streets of Israel over this, and they get no attention in this country. While this attack is being used to weaponize violence against the movement. But we will meet it with our own greater resistance andescalation,” Christiansen also said. Christiansen shared the nearly 9-minute video to his TikTok and Substack addressing “How Elias Rodriguez Was A Normal Reaction To Genocide.” The press release from the ACLU and lawsuit claim that Christensen did not engage in violence nor direct others to do so, and that he also did not reference Ohio State in any way. “The videos and speech do not incite or threaten unlawful violence, and the action taken by the University to single out a particular viewpoint for censorship and punishment is unconstitutional,” the press release stated. Pro-Israel outlets did not seem to be of the same mind as the ACLU. JFeed published a piece on May 22, “Words Can Kill: TikTok’s Guy Christensen and the Murder of Two Jews in D.C.,” and The Algemeiner publishing a blog post on May 29, “Guy Christensen: The Gen-Z TikTok Star Inciting His 3.4 Million Followers to Murder ‘Zionists.'” Stop Antisemitism also flagged Christiansen’s remarks over X, tagging members of the Department of Justice, including Leo Terrell, the chair of the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. Terrell responded with a quoted repost that they will “review all leads.” The DOJ declined to comment on the lawsuit against Ohio State. Will review all leads! https://t.co/BRGw69KTRQ— Leo Terrell (@LeoTerrellDOJ) May 23, 2025 Rodriguez’s alleged actions were also justified by the Palestinian activist group Tariq El-Tahrir in a letter not long after the murders occurred, with the Democratic Socialists of America Liberation Caucus signing on. Christiansen, in another video from May 22, also went after Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y. “Now Ritchie, screenshots are forever and what you’ve said and done will haunt your family for eternity asyou will eventually, if you’re still alive, end up in a Nuremburg trial for all the elected officials in America who facilitated and protected this genocide,” Christiansen said in part. “He has an open arrest warrant against him from the [International Criminal Court]. But we don’t talk about that. Ritchie’s going to keep on meeting and [committing sex acts upon] the Zionist officials who are wanted for war crimes. So, shame on Ritchie. He is a Zionist scumbag. And I hope that the money he sleeps on at night stains his pajamas blood red,” Christiansen continued. Christiansen also referred to the congressman, who is black, as “our boy in the South Bronx.” The ACLU is asking the court to “1) declare that Mr. Christensen’s speech was protected by the First Amendment and that his disenrollment was a violation of his right to free speech; 2) declare that Ohio State’s choice to deny him any hearing was a violation of his due process rights; and 3) order the University to expunge any student records that indicate that he violated the Code of Student Conduct, committed any disciplinary infraction, or presented any risk to university safety.” The Columbus Dispatch, in covering the lawsuit, noted that “Ohio State University declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said the university is committed to protecting the freedom of speech and expression.” The Daily Signal also reached out to Ohio State for comment about the lawsuit. The post OSU Student, ACLU Sue After Expulsion for Comments on Murdered Israeli Staff appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Peak Illinois Crime Prevention

CA's Oily Governor Slips on His Own Greased Banana Peel

Thursday morning on WMAL’s “O’Connor and Company,” MRC NewsBusters took center stage in a lively chat about Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite suspension from ABC. The conversation, featuring MRC President David Bozell, kicked off with a quip about two of the more grueling jobs at MRC, handled by Alex Christy, who covers the late-night “comedy” shows, and Nick Fondacaro, who monitors the cackling crew at The View. Co-host Bethany Mandel joked, “Does this come with hazard pay?” Bozell chuckled, “They watch it, so we don’t have to. You have to be a different kind of crazy to do this sort of thing. But I love them and they’re great.” The focus was on Kimmel’s suspension after his Monday monologue, where he snidely remarked, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” MRC’s Alex Christy posted the clip on X, amassing 15.2 million views and a sharp rebuke from Elon Musk: “Jimmy Kimmel is disgusting.” That was the final straw of thousands of straws, when ABC yanked Jimmy Kimmel Live! from its lineup late Wednesday, replacing it for the time being with the much more entertaining Celebrity Family Feud, with future programming TBD, after pushback from affiliates like Nexstar and Sinclair. Jimmy Kimmel claims "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it" and "This is not how an adult… pic.twitter.com/KMhnskaYWD — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) September 16, 2025 Host Larry O’Connor lauded MRC: “I think it’s fair to say that Media Research Center can sit up straight today and recognize the good work that your team does there in pulling clips.” He then asked Bozell if the suspension was about political speech or something deeper, “and what do we know about the FCC’s involvement, if any involvement?” He noted FCC Chairman Brendan Carr “didn’t threaten anything,” speculating affiliates consulted Carr for options like pulling Kimmel’s show. Bozell highlighted the public’s frustration: “Grassroots Americans had had enough. They were willing to cut the cord. Sinclair and Nexstar are trying to preserve the cord, as it were. That’s their business model, cable. Kimmel was in the cord, and his comment about MAGA protecting the killer was beyond the pale.” MRC’s research has long exposed Kimmel’s sway. A 2024 study by Alex Christy crowned him the most mean-spirited late-night host of them all, with 92% of his jokes targeting conservatives. Another MRC study found 99% of late-night guests were liberal in the first half of 2025. O’Connor set up the broader issue: “MRC has been tracking the influence and importance of these late-night shows and how political and news-oriented they have become. It is disingenuous at best to say that this is just a comedian telling jokes, isn’t it?” Bozell agreed, “Absolutely, it’s disingenuous at best. Every time anyone gets on television, they have the opportunity to go viral. And so their ratings may not be what they once were, but they can go viral at any moment and be watched by millions.” He cited a YouGov poll post-Kirk’s assassination, where most Americans initially believed the killer was MAGA, possibly fueled by Kimmel’s claim. O’Connor closed, saying, “David Bozell, thanks for jumping in on this story, a big media story, and once again, the Media Research Center has their fingerprints on the research and exposing exactly what’s going on here, and always effective.” Hear the full interview below. David Bozell is the president of the Media Research Center and ForAmerica, a grassroots organization that mobilizes conservatives to advance policies prioritizing American sovereignty and values. Larry O'Connor is the host of "O'Connor and Company," airing weekday mornings from 5:00 to 9:00 AM on News Talk WMAL in Washington, D.C. He also hosts the daily "LARRY" podcast for Townhall Media. A seasoned media figure, O'Connor appears regularly on Fox News and Newsmax. Bethany Mandel is the author of Stolen Youth: How Radicals are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation, a writer for the New York post and Washington Examiner, and a frequent fill-in co-host for WMAL's O'Connor and Company.

On the last day of his state visit to the United Kingdom, President Trump joined Prime Minister Keir Starmer for a meeting and to sign a new U.S.-U.K. agreement on tech and AI. Starmer called the deal “a blueprint to win this new era together.”The day began at Windsor Castle with a military band performance and an impressive flyover from the RAF’s Red Arrows. Trump then traveled to Chequers — the country residence of the U.K. prime minister — to meet with Starmer.Trump called the agreement 'the next logical step' in what he called 'the Anglo-American alliance.'After the closed-doors meeting, Trump and Starmer spoke briefly at a reception with U.S. leaders in tech and AI and then officially signed the Technology Prosperity Deal. In addressing the deal, Starmer emphasized the “incredible relationship” between the two countries, saying, “It comes down to leaders, of course, leaders who respect one another.” Both Trump and Starmer focused on the strength of their personal relationship and the strength of U.S.-U.K. relations. Trump characterized these ties as “priceless” and pointed to the new deal as “making those ties closer than ever before.” RELATED: Trump's new AI Action Plan reveals our digital manifest destiny Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesThe deal focuses on AI, quantum computing, and nuclear energy through joint funding, resource sharing, and cooperation between the governments and top tech companies of both nations. Highlights include the creation of a U.S.-U.K. task force on quantum computing, cutting back regulations, and investing in the U.K.’s nuclear energy sector. Starmer characterized the deal as “U.S. capital and entrepreneurial spirit combined with British ideas and ingenuity.” He praised the economic effects of the deal, saying, “It means life-changing investments across the U.K."Trump called the agreement “the next logical step” in what he called “the Anglo-American alliance.” He praised the strength of U.S.-U.K. relations and went on to say that “together we are building up the industrial capacity of both our countries.” He characterized the new deal as opening up “new government, academic, and private sector cooperation.” President Trump and the first lady departed for the U.S. in the late afternoon. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

In 2016, Donald Trump blasted President Obama for refusing to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.” Trump argued that any leader unwilling to name America’s enemy lacked the moral clarity to defend the nation and serve as president. He was right then — and he’s right now.Today, America faces another threat that must be called by its name: transgender ideology-inspired violence and extremism. The Oversight Project is calling on the FBI to formally designate TIVE as domestic terrorism. We urge every American to demand the same. Political correctness cannot be allowed to obscure a growing danger.Twenty-four years after 9/11, we should know better than to ignore clear warning signs.The need has never been clearer. Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a man steeped in TIVE ideology, as indicated by the shell casings, text messages, his homosexual relationship with a man claiming to be transgender, and other obvious indicators. Online communities of TIVE adherents continue celebrating the murder. Federal investigators are now probing groups that appear to have had foreknowledge of the attack.That assassination was not an isolated event. In August, Robert Westman fired through the windows of Annunciation Catholic Church, gunning down parishioners and killing two children. In May, Jared Ravizza stabbed six people, including children, in a Massachusetts movie theater. In 2023, Audrey Hale killed six at the Covenant School. And in 2022, Nicholas Roske, a man who identified as a transgender woman, attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.This list barely scratches the surface. The pattern is clear: TIVE adherents treat disagreement as violence. Anyone who refuses to affirm their delusions becomes an enemy whose mere existence justifies reprisal. From that warped premise, violent acts naturally follow.Why a federal designation mattersA domestic terrorism designation would give the FBI the tools to map networks, deploy undercover operations, and share intelligence with state and local agencies. The federal definition of domestic terrorism already covers the tactics TIVE adherents employ — assassination, mass shootings, intimidation, and coercion.Other categories already exist, from racially motivated extremism to animal rights terrorism. TIVE qualifies under the same standard, and its record of violence suggests it could soon eclipse those groups in lethality.Anticipating the pushbackThe left will accuse us of labeling all transgender people as terrorists. That is false. TIVE does not mean transgender identity itself — it means adopting an ideology that frames disagreement as violence and legitimizes retaliation. One need not be transgender to adopt TIVE, as the suspected assassin Tyler Robinson illustrates.The politically correct right will take another route. Fearing criticism, they will prefer vague labels that blunt the truth. Just this week, FBI Director Kash Patel unveiled a catch-all category designed to offend no one: “nihilistic violent extremism.” But TIVE does not fit. These attackers do not believe life is meaningless. They believe in a utopia purged of ideological opponents. That is not nihilism. That is fanaticism.RELATED: The right message: Justice. The wrong messenger: Pam Bondi. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesAs Trump said: If you cannot define your enemy, you are not fit to lead.Some may argue that Trump’s designation of Antifa as a terrorist group on Wednesday already addresses this threat. But Antifa represents a broader spectrum of anarchist and far-left ideologies. TIVE stands apart. It grows out of transgender ideology and channels rage into acts of targeted violence, often against Christians and conservatives.America can, and does, face multiple domestic terror movements at once.Time for political willTwenty-four years after 9/11, we should know better than to ignore clear warning signs. If jihadists with Arabic last names had carried out the recent wave of attacks, Washington would be in crisis mode. Instead, we get euphemisms and excuses.This problem can be solved. But only if leaders show the political will to act. Designating TIVE as domestic terrorism would allow law enforcement to disrupt networks before they strike again. It would send a clear message: America will not tolerate ideologies that sanctify violence.Until that happens, every church service, every school day, and every public gathering risks becoming the next target. Naming the enemy is the first step to defeating it.

Florida's new lieutenant governor, Jay Collins, is no stranger to being on the front lines. Prior to entering politics, Collins served as a Green Beret in the Army Special Forces in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.Now, his battles are in Florida and are political in nature, but it's a mission that he takes seriously in order to ensure the gains the state has made under Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) are not squandered. Collins was a state senator when DeSantis appointed him in August to replace former Lieutenant Gov. Jeanette Nuñez (R), who stepped down from the position in February to become president of Florida International University.'People just crave leadership that just cares about them.'Collins' preferred leadership style was put on display when he flew to California to oversee the transfer of the illegal alien truck driver who was taken into custody in Stockton after allegedly causing a fatal car crash in Florida by attempting to do an illegal U-turn. "Those are three lives cut short that ended early because [of] this guy who couldn't read road signs, doesn't speak English. ... What are we going to do? Let Gavin Newsom play games? We had zero faith that he was going to follow through and do the right thing. So why would we not have leadership on the ground?" Collins told Blaze News regarding his reason for going to California."We believe in government that will not only hold people accountable, we will go to great measures to make sure that accountability happens," he continued.Collins said the flight back to Florida with the suspect, Harjinder Singh, was "odd" and that he did not talk much other than to say he liked Chick-fil-A. — (@) Collins said he has not been too surprised with anything relating to the duties of lieutenant governor. "I'm a fan of measuring twice, maybe thrice before you cut," he said. However, he has noted how much people "want on-the-ground leadership.""Everywhere we go ... people just crave leadership that just cares about them," Collins continued. "It's been exciting to see that."Reacting to Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk being assassinated by a far-left suspect last week, Collins said that "there's so much at stake" for the direction of the country in the aftermath of such a tragic event.RELATED: Charlie Kirk's hometown gathers to honor beloved activist: 'His death is his life beginning with the Lord' Photo used by permission of Lourdes Camarillo "[Kirk's] approach to civil discourse and discussion and just confronting people with love, with curiosity, and curiosity, and conversation was amazing. To see somebody who believed in our American ideas ... to that degree being taken is heartbreaking," Collins explained, adding his concern with how the left has responded with violence to people like Kirk.With DeSantis being term-limited, Collins could jump into the governor's race and has not ruled it out. If he decides to run for the top position, he would have to go against Rep. Byron Donalds (R), who already has the endorsement of President Donald Trump.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!