$25 million less than their competitors

'Mr. Brimhall then places his right arm on the victim’s arms and his left hand around the victim’s neck, choking her'

Harper, who's earned 78 outfield assists in his 13 year career, earned an assist off the field

Dystopia Alert!

"News" outlets are engaged in feverish speculation about just how dystopian Donald Trump's second term might be. Their fervent imaginations overrule the reality of Trump's first term, which never devolved into dictatorship.  On Sunday, Politico's Joanna Weiss conducted a Q&A with liberal Samantha Rose Hill, a scholar of totalitarianism and the author Hannah Arendt. The headline was "‘A Truer Reality Beyond Reality’: Hannah Arendt’s Warning About How Totalitarianism Takes Root." Although Stalinism and Nazism are touched upon (barely), the main focus was Orange Man Bad. Weiss somehow manages to go two paragraphs of the interview before latching on to Trump:  Samantha Rose Hill is a professor at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a leading interpreter of Arendt’s thinking, particularly as it relates to loneliness. She notes that The Origins of Totalitarianism became a bestseller in 2016 because it helped explain an aspect of Donald Trump’s election: how economic and social conditions create feelings of loneliness and rootlessness and lead people to seek out belonging and meaning in political movements. Today, Hill says, Arendt might have connected loneliness not just to the rise of Trump, but also the actions of groups like Moms for Liberty on the right and the fervor of identity politics on the left. Arendt died almost 50 years ago, but Hill can somehow conjure up her spirit to tell us how she would have thought about Trump? How very, very convenient. Oh, and would it be too much to expect the interviewer to ask the interpreter of Arendt's thinking what Arendt might have thought about the state employing partisan lawfare to suppress and interfere with their opponents in an election year? And here we have "evidence" for the authoritarian cult of Trump based on weather reports:  Ideology teaches people that there is a truer reality beyond reality. Think of QAnon, Pizzagate and the many Americans who believe Donald Trump won the last presidential election. Another example that comes to mind is Trump’s inauguration. It was very clearly raining. You could see the rain. People were holding umbrellas. And yet, Trump said, “It isn’t raining.” Many people affirmed his statement, because the point of the statement wasn’t to reflect upon the experience as it was, but to assert his ideology of dominance. Hey Politico! How's this for an alternate reality? The CIA narrative fed to you that you enthusiastically recited in 2020, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." But wait! The rain! The rain! Finally they speculate about Trump being merely being in the authoritarian stage before he finally achieves true totalitarianism. Weiss asks: When people object to Trump or a politician like him, it seems what they’re often concerned about is authoritarianism, as opposed to totalitarianism. What’s the relationship between the two? Does totalitarianism lead to authoritarianism? Or is it the other way around? To which self-styled Arendt thought interpreter Hill answers: In Arendt’s account, it would be the other way around. She distinguishes between authoritarianism, fascism, tyranny and totalitarianism. Totalitarianism, she argued, depended upon the radical atomization of the whole, the absolute elimination of all spontaneity. One lived in absolute fear all the time, even those in the party, and the aim of totalitarianism was total world domination. Within an authoritarian system, you still have limited political freedom. There isn’t a totalizing state of fear, but there is domination: domination that aims at political control within a state, without the means of persuasion. So if we were to think of Trump trying to overturn the election results of 2020, that I think we can read as a kind of authoritarian grab. Sniff! You mean Donald Trump still has not quite reached totalitarian level yet? So how would Hannah Arendt as conjured up by her 2024 thought interpreter regard the massive governmental lawfare being used against Trump? Politico thinks you can never suggest Democrats might engage in authoritarian behavior as they claim they're just "safeguarding democracy."

In Monday evening’s edition of The ReidOut, MSNBC’s Joy Reid took a stab at apparent conservative “distress,” explaining their recent actions as irrational efforts to advance an impending Trump “dictatorship.” Her chief targets included former White House Personnel Director John McEntee, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, NFL kicker Harrison Butker, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, among others. Reid attacked McEntee’s involvement in Project 2025, labeling it as “the plan for the Trump dictatorship.” She went on to list a series of miseries that plague conservatives, whom she collectivized as “the Alitos and McEntees of the world.” These included: “out-of-control liberated women who won't marry conservative men, have babies, and give up no-fault divorce, people who keep insisting that Black Lives Matter, immigrants of course, and accurate history that doesn’t always make the white guys look good.”      McEntee wasn’t the only alleged culprit. Reid criticized Youngkin’s veto of two bills protecting access to contraception in Virginia. She failed to note, however, that Youngkin vetoed the bills because they specifically excluded parental rights in making medical decisions for their children.  In the same sentence, suggesting Youngkin’s hand in the matter, she announced the decisions of two Virginia school boards to keep the names of Confederate generals on schools. In reality, only the Shenandoah County School Board made this change and Youngkin, in a press conference four days after the decision, told a reporter he was unaware of the situation.  Reid also added her own spin on Butker’s commencement speech, hilariously oversimplifying his statements as telling “a graduating class, including scores of women, that their degrees are a lie and they should just embrace their true vocation of making their husbands a sandwich.”  In Butker’s actual words, he first congratulated the female graduates on their accomplishment, adding that “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.” She further commented on Abbott’s recent pardon of Daniel Perry, a man convicted of shooting and killing a Black Lives Matter activist. Reid didn’t bother to explain that the pardon was granted on the basis of Texas’ “Stand Your Ground” law, which protects the right of self-defense using deadly force.  The MSNBC host falsely asserted that Perry, an Uber driver, simply “[drove] his car into a group of pedestrian marchers,” though he actually stopped his car when he reached the intersection blocked by protestors and allowed some of them to cross. It was then that Garrett Foster, one of the activists, allegedly raised his weapon, an AK-47, prompting Perry to fire his own revolver. Reid summed up the entire situation by stating it occurred “Because in Texas, the only thing actually illegal is trying to vote while black and on parole.” Foster was white. Reid closed out the segment by tying the stories together as an “answer to the Alito question,” mockingly pondering “Who do MAGA believe is in distress, such that they need a King Trump to put things right again?” The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: MSNBC’s The ReidOut 5/20/2024 07:52:58 PM ET JOY REID: John McEntee is a big part of Project 2025, the plan for the Trump dictatorship, and he would be in charge of personnel again in a new Trump administration. McEntee is the kind of guy who is in distress, in the MAGA mind. And the cause of the distress for the Alitos and McEntees of the world, are out-of-control liberated women who won't marry conservative men, have babies, and give up no-fault divorce, people who keep insisting that Black Lives Matter, immigrants of course, and accurate history that doesn’t always make the white guys look good. And John McEntee and his friends at Project 2025 aren’t the only ones with a plan to fix it. Just in the last week, Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed two bills that would protect access to contraception in Virginia and two Virginia school boards put the names of Confederate generals back onto schools, meaning black students in the schools will be forced to venerate men who enslaved their ancestors while not being allowed to learn true facts about slavery or read books by a number of black authors. NFL kicker and "fashion pics with Bible quotes" aficionado, Harrison Butker, told a graduating class, including scores of women, that their degrees are a lie and they should just embrace their true vocation of making their husbands a sandwich. And Texas governor Greg Abbott granted a full pardon to a man who was convicted by a jury of shooting a Black Lives Matter activist dead, after threatening and racist rants on his social media that he wanted to do just that, and then driving his car into a group of pedestrian marchers. Because in Texas, the only thing actually illegal is trying to vote while black and on parole. Did I mention that if you’re pregnant, it’s illegal to get a divorce in Missouri? Scores of U.S. states allow child marriage and Project 2025 includes the national abortion ban. I know these stories don't seem obviously related, but they are. They are the answer to the Alito question. Who do MAGA believe is in distress, such that they need a “King Trump” to put things right again?

Former director of the defunct Disinformation Governance Board (DGB), Nina Jankowicz, said President Joe Biden’s disinformation policing government does not even have a consistent definition of disinformation. Rep. Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee released the transcript of Jankowicz's sworn testimony to the committee which it gathered in April 2023. In her testimony, Jankowicz pointed out discrepancies in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) definition of disinformation. DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency “has one definition, and one of the things that occurred to me while I was at DHS is that different entities were dealing with different definitions,” she said. But according to Jordan, CISA’s definition is merely “anything that they deem false.”  The leftist disinformation activist said that creating protocols for identifying misinformation, disinformation and misinformation “wasn’t really at the top of the list” of things to do. “And so, to get to identification, you first have to kind of have an agreement about what you're talking about,” said Jankowicz. “You can't say that something is a bear if you don't know what a bear looks like. So that's where we were.” During the interview, Jordan had Jankowicz read the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency’s definition of disinformation as noted in a CISA memorandum: “[F]alse information that is intentionally or inadvertently injected into the information environment.” Jankowicz, however, described this definition as “overbroad” and indicated that it “would be fair to say” that DHS was not even using definitions agreed upon within the Orwellian disinformation research community. She went on to provide her own definitions of mis-, dis- and mal- information. Jankowicz claimed that while mis-, and dis- information both refer to false information, disinformation is intentionally “spread with malign intent” while misinformation is not. Jankowicz defined malinformation as true information that is allegedly “injected into an information environment with ulterior motives.” During the interview, Jankowicz downplayed the role of the DGB claiming that it “had no operational authority or ability to act as an all-purpose arbiter of truth.” She claimed it merely had the power of suggestion.  However, The Twitter Files and The Facebook Files have demonstrated just how forceful the federal government’s so-called suggestions can be. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) similarly uncovered internal documents via a whistleblower that showed that the DGB was developing programs and forming relationships with social media companies. Jankowicz however maintains that meetings scheduled with Facebook and Twitter never took place. But Jankowicz, has a history of supporting censorship and organizations that prop themselves up as arbiters of truth. She was criticized heavily in 2022 for her support of Twitter’s fact-checking program “Bird Watch” and “demoting content.”  She now runs the gaslighting operation The American Sunlight Project, which specifically works to dispel allegations that “the Federal Government is overseeing a vast censorship regime in coordination with social media platforms, academic institutions, and civil society organizations.” Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s  contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

An 11-year-old Florida boy is now in custody, having been accused of a truly heinous crime: fatally shooting the woman who has taken care of him for almost his entire life.Just before 8 a.m. on Friday, police responded to a call about a shooting at a residence in Ocoee, Florida, about 10 miles northwest of Orlando. Neighbors had heard screaming, and when police arrived at the home on Idaho Court, they found 55-year-old Sandra Pape King shot and clinging to life.'He had a little tantrum here and there. I figure that was normal for a kid his age.'A report from WESH indicated neighbors had found her in the front yard of the home, and TV footage showed her purse, which was still laying on the ground. However, a statement from the Ocoee Police Department claimed she had "had been shot inside the home."In any case, first responders raced King to Advent Health Apopka, where she later died from her injuries. It is unclear how many times she had been shot.Officers almost immediately honed in on a suspect: the 11-year-old boy who lived with King. The boy appeared in court on Saturday.Members of the boy's family also attended the hearing, and at least one of them seemed sympathetic to the boy's circumstances. A woman, who described herself as King's daughter and the boy's cousin, asked the court to allow her and other relatives to visit the boy at the juvenile detention facility where he is currently being housed."He doesn’t understand what’s going on. I don’t even think he knows he killed her," she told the court. She also explained that King had been the boy's "guardian since he was 6 weeks old."The court granted her request. The boy will remain in custody until his next hearing, though the date of that hearing is unknown.Meanwhile, those who know King from the neighborhood are still reeling with shock over her violent death. One local resident admitted the boy is "a little thin" and may have gotten "caught up with his aunt," but still couldn't believe the boy is believed to have killed her.Another neighbor, Jackson Genao, is likewise bewildered. "He seemed like any other child, you know. You see, he had a little tantrum here and there. I figure that was normal for a kid his age, you know. I have two daughters his age, so I didn’t think nothing of it," he said.Neighbor Gerald Ingram called the entire situation "heartbreaking."The boy's attorney declined to comment. Ocoee police claim the investigation into the case remains "active and ongoing."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The Kansas City Star published an essay demanding that the Kansas City Chiefs drop kicker Harrison Butker and hire a woman as his replacement.Butker, a three-time Super Bowl champion, is one of the best kickers in the NFL. But he's now facing down the barrel of cancel culture for giving a pro-Catholic speech that affirmed traditional values. 'They could trade him for a solid kicker, or they could make a statement by signing a woman to kick.'As punishment for expressing his personal views, journalist Peter Hamm said Butker deserves "poetic justice" for his "Neanderthal outburst": losing his job to a woman."This is not a joke. It's not unrealistic. And it would be good for business," Hamm wrote in the Star.Hamm, who has connections to Democrats and liberal advocacy groups, claimed that successful female soccer players and a few examples of women attempting placekicking at the collegiate level are sufficient evidence to prove "the fact that girls can kick." He even suggested that Maya Turner, a placekicker at the University of Manitoba, could be as good as Butker one day.With such "evidence" in hand, Hamm called on the Chiefs to "make a strategic call about Butker’s future with the team" and said Butker needs to "shut his mouth."Then, in a bout of extreme irony, Hamm revealed his own views on the ability of female placekickers."Harrison Butker is not Patrick Mahomes. He’s a special teams player. That gives him less leverage with the team," Hamm wrote. "They could trade him for a solid kicker, or they could make a statement by signing a woman to kick."By juxtaposing the idea of trading Butker "for a solid kicker" versus hiring a woman as Butker's replacement, Hamm is suggesting that no female "solid kicker" currently exists. This is true, and it is backed by the evidence: Some girls become successful placekickers at the high school level, and a few try their shot at the collegiate level. But none have ever been successful, except for Turner — and her career is still young. Importantly, no woman has ever made an NFL roster, let alone contributed to an NFL team's success in the same way that Butker has.Butker's success and talent likely mean his job as the Chiefs' kicker is safe.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

An Oregon city doubled down on its DEI policy after city officials received complaints about people using public restrooms and locker rooms based on gender identity, not sex.On Monday, Mayor Jan Kaplan and the rest of the Newport City Council addressed the issue during a public meeting. An agenda for the meeting claimed that parks and recreation officials had been "fielding questions" about transgender-related policies.'If I see you as a predator, ... then I will interpret whatever you do as predatory.'Resident Linda Dinerstein, who was wearing a Christian necklace, expressed concern that a male-appearing transgender person had been using the women's locker facility at the city rec center. Though this individual turned out to be a woman in the midst of a so-called gender transition, Dinerstein was still frustrated"We do not want our children to see persons of the opposite sex or persons transitioning to the opposite sex undressed or nude," she stated emphatically.Another woman, who claimed to be "a medical professional," said she was "mortified" that biological males were allowed to infiltrate women's spaces. "I am fearful of being exposed to male genitalia that I did not invite the exposure to," she said. "... I am afraid that I will be sexually attacked."Others in the area, however, fretted about how trans-identifying people might feel in the wake of such complaints. "It saddens me that a few people in the community have been able to stir up a frenzy," said Lincoln County Commissioner Claire Hall, whom Oregon Live once described as a "transgender woman activist.""I really feel it’s an attempt to target the bodies and identities of transgender women," Hall added.Mary Grace Frederick, a man who pretends to be a woman, likewise shook with emotion as he insisted that people in his community judge him unfairly. "People here tonight that are sitting in this room have called me a sexual deviant and a predator," he said.Other apparent LGBTQ+ activists were likewise slated to speak at the meeting, slamming their fellow citizens for voicing their concerns. They also pointed out that gender-neutral bathrooms are available, as are private changing spaces inside public locker rooms.Mayor Kaplan also participated in the discussion and suggested that complaints about men possibly disrobing in front of young girls was a sign that more tolerance is needed in his community. "There’s assumptions that people make. If I see you as a predator, and I see you through that lens, because you’re different than me, then I will interpret whatever you do as predatory," he claimed.On the agenda, the city reiterated its DEI policy, which states: "Racism and bigotry are never to be supported or tolerated, and instead are to be identified and condemned." It also indicated that transgender people could continue using whichever restroom they want."Public spaces are for everyone and the City works diligently to ensure they are inclusive, accessible, and safe. Our city is diverse, vibrant, and flourishing because of the many people who that live and work here. The City of Newport and Newport Parks and Recreation will not tolerate discrimination, harassment, or violence toward any patrons or staff," it said.Kaplan became mayor of Newport only recently after Dean Sawyer resigned as mayor last July after making comments on social media perceived to be "hateful." On a private Facebook page, Sawyer had criticized men who participated in women's sports and expressed support for the immigration policies of former President Donald Trump, as Blaze News previously reported. He later apologized profusely for those comments.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!