'For those worried about the Trump/Musk fight, don’t be.'

'Start governing with discipline'

Excerpts romantasy Read an Excerpt From Never the Roses by Jennifer K. Lambert The Dread Sorceress Oneira has retired, exhausted from fighting the endless wars of kings and queens… By Jennifer K. Lambert | Published on June 11, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Never the Roses, an epic and deeply emotional romantic fantasy debut by Jennifer K. Lambert, out from Bramble on July 8th. The Dread Sorceress Oneira has retired. She’s exhausted from fighting the endless wars of kings and queens, and has long accepted that her death is near. Alone at last but for a few uninvited companions—a near-mythical wolf, a goddess’s avatar, and a feline that embodies magic itself—Oneira realizes that she’s bored. On a whim, or perhaps at the behest of fate, she makes an unlikely trip to the most extensive library in existence: the home of her most powerful rival, the sorcerer Stearanos.By recklessly stealing a book from him, Oneira inadvertently initiates a forbidden correspondence. Taunting notes and clever retorts reveal a connection neither has found—nor could ever find—in any other.But Oneira soon learns that Stearanos, bound to a vile king, is tasked with waging war on the queen she once served. A relationship with him is far too dangerous to pursue despite their mutual desire—and yet, Oneira can’t seem to stay away.A bond with Stearanos could alight the long-extinct flame of life within her… or it could destroy her entirely. If anyone had asked Oneira what manner of creature she anticipated would be the first to break the solitude of her self-imposed and vigorously enforced isolation, she would not have picked a near-mythical wolf designed by an ancient mage to wage brutal war. Though, given the life she’d led, it really just figured. The scáthcú sat on his haunches, eyeing her with riveted attention. Dirty ice matted his coat, turning him brown instead of his native white. Filth coated his belly, encased his great paws, and hung off the feathery underside of his long tail, which now curved around in front of him, the tip lifted in question. The unnatural magic that created his ilk shimmered about him, radiating a shade of purple not found in nature, an implicit warning to anyone with the wit to see it. He must have come down from the forever-frozen peaks looming above. The ancient tales spoke of the packs of scáthcú who’d gone feral following the demise of their creator, roaming the cave-riddled wilderness of those altitudes too extreme for ordinary lungs to draw breath. Oneira had heard rumors from time to time of some ambitious young mage, burdened by oppressive debt and made brave by the desperation to rid themselves of it, attempting to ascend to the thin air and desolation of those peaks. They thought to obtain a scáthcú and make their fortune. They died. Or disappeared. Or returned crushed in body and spirit, realizing their own insignificant skills could never allow them to survive the extremes a created being so thoroughly permeated with magic could. If those mages had bothered to read the books Oneira had, those hubris-laden and impetuous fools would have known that even if they could manage to ascend to such heights, they would return unrewarded. Scáthcú chose their own sorcerers. The fabricated dread wolves had been embedded with a craving for magic. The more powerful the sorcerer, the more attractive to them. If they befriended a mage, their loyalty was unbreakable, and they formed a symbiotic relationship with their sorcerer of choice. As an enemy, however, the scáthcú fed their hunger another way, devouring the sorcerer they found wanting. Oneira knew herself to be wanting in many ways—but were they the ones that mattered to a scáthcú? She waited with distant curiosity to discover the outcome of the test. Perhaps death had finally sought her out, impatient with her dithering. Truly, it would be a relief to have the decision taken out of her hands. The scáthcú’s massive jaws opened, revealing ivory fangs. A black, forked tongue flicked out to taste the air between them. Jaws widening beyond what would be physically possible for a natural wolf, he revealed his pink maw and his native magic coiled out like that black tongue, visible only to her sorcerous senses. Braced, she held her magic in a still, folded cloak, allowing him to taste it… and he settled into a canine grin, giving her a yip of greeting. Oneira sighed. There would be no getting rid of him now. Buy the Book Never the Roses Jennifer K. Lambert Buy Book Never the Roses Jennifer K. Lambert Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget “There’s no meat in my house,” she told him, her voice an odd, rusty sound after such long disuse. “You feed yourself.” She turned and walked away. Whatever would she do with such a creature? Undaunted by her lack of welcome, the scáthcú followed at her side, establishing a pattern that would endure. “Don’t make me sorry,” she added, and laid a hand in the ruff of coarser hair around his neck and shoulders. Such was his height that her hand rested there easily, her elbow at a relaxed and comfortable bend. As if they’d been sized for each other. “Perhaps you can address the rabbits savaging my garden,” she suggested. He emitted a growl of pure delight. It didn’t count, Oneira decided, if her scáthcú committed bunny murder. After all, the rabbits were far from innocent, determinedly avoiding her non-lethal deterrents with arcane cleverness. She’d spent an undue amount of time—not to mention magic, though she had plenty to spare these days—on devising wards that wouldn’t injure the fuzzy pests, but her humane solutions left loopholes for them to get in and savage her greens. Many of her former cohort in the world of the ruthless employment of magic would construe a lesson from that, along the lines of kill or be killed. She willfully refused that premise. Or, rather, she’d done enough of the former that she’d resigned herself to the latter. Eventually, anyway. In the meanwhile, it could be frustrating that the immensely powerful magic she possessed all lay in the realm of the Dream. And that she excelled in destruction above all else. Well, now she apparently had a pet scáthcú to kill for her. How scandalized her former handlers would be to know she planned to use such a lethal weapon for gardening. * * * Oneira decided to call the scáthcú “Bunny,” in honor of his labors on behalf of her greens. She’d gotten him to bathe himself in the deep, freshwater pond she’d added to the walled garden. It was easy enough to coax him into it as Bunny gleefully took to water. She then spent several nights by the fire—she lit a fire every evening, regardless of the weather, for its quiet comfort— meticulously combing the snarls from his matted coat. His fur turned out to be as soft as a rabbit’s and as pristine white as their winter coats. She ended up with a pile of extracted fur that she regarded with considerable bemusement, recalling excursions to various outlying fiefdoms where the women—it was almost always the women—would gather to spin piles of fluff like it into threads or yarns or some such. Oneira had always regarded their chattering circles, busy hands, and clacking instruments with a similar sense of befuddlement. Their lives had so little resemblance to her own that they seemed like a foreign tribe, a people who existed in spaces that weren’t battlefields or council chambers crowded with greedy or frightened men. It didn’t matter which emotion motivated the men, as they behaved in the exact same ways. The women, though, they’d appeared content enough from a distance, as unmoved by the scheming of their men as the sheep in the meadows. It had seemed an enviable sort of peaceful ignorance and a kind of magic Oneira lacked, one made of nimble fingers and keen attention. As if by focusing on the simple tasks, they elevated the importance of small creations, putting the epic sweep of wars and kingdoms into the far distance, a tumult of landscape irrelevant to them. So, remembering their ability to retire violence to the background of their lives, and confronted with a pile of white fur, Oneira attempted spinning. She located a book in her library with instructions on the techniques, and which included several illustrations of the necessary tools. Selecting the spindle as something that looked as easy to use as a child’s toy, she entered the Dream to find one. Oneira was powerful and skilled enough to travel physically through the Dream that connected all living beings and emerge in a location where she could purchase—or steal, depending on the provenance of the item—anything she needed. But to create something as simple as a spindle, she needed only to reach mentally into the dream, which was much easier, though by no means easy. Stilling herself, allowing her folded cloak of magic to unfurl just a small amount, she walked her thoughts along the familiar pathway into the Dream. A place as fantastic and unreal as the dreams that made up its fabric, the Dream was wildly confusing to magic-workers not experienced in that ever-changing, undulating landscape. Even naturally talented oneiromancers could become lost in bubbles of dreams that popped or spontaneously sealed themselves off. For Oneira, who’d traveled this mutable land intuitively since she was a small child, then with more skill as she learned from the best, skipping through dreaming minds to find a spindle took only moments. She located one that looked like a simple version, similar to the book’s illustration, from the dream of a woman surrounded by endless piles of wool and spindles that ever eluded her grasp. Extracting it from the Dream, Oneira pulled herself back to the waking world, the spindle in her hand. As always happened with items from the Dream, it wasn’t exactly right. Though it looked like wood, the substance of the thing was flimsy, too soft for real-world work. There came in the true craft and skill of this sort of oneiromancy. Using her magic with finely honed precision, Oneira recast the substance into something much more like the wood it was supposed to be. It would never be exactly like the real-world version, but it would more than suffice for her purposes. Especially with no one but herself to see and hold it. Other people tended to be unsettled by the vaguely foreign aspects of items built from the Dream, something of no concern in her exile. Another bonus. Amused at herself that her self-imposed rules allowed her to obtain a spindle from the Dream, but not cheat any more than that, Oneira bent herself to the new task. Within an hour, she wished she’d simply thrown the whole pile of fur on the fire. This was why she’d become a sorceress and not a weaver or spinner or maker of things. Well, this and that she’d never had a choice. As a child of power, the recipient of magic that flew to her like birds to seed in winter, Oneira had begun to study sorcery so young that she had barely understood that people led any other kind of life. It had never once occurred to her to stop and chat with those women she’d observed, to ask to be shown how the tools they used worked to transform one thing into another. Faced with a mountain of fluff, sore fingers that bumbled every movement, and a scáthcú who watched her as if he suspected she’d lost her mind, Oneira regretted that she hadn’t ever taken the time to linger by those chattering groups, to observe, or possibly even ask. The book could only give her words; she lacked the translation that would make her hands do the thing. Still, giving up had never been in her nature. She possessed an innate stubbornness that had frustrated her teachers and handlers alike, but her obdurate nature had also seen her through knottier problems than fur that flew up her nose and made her sneeze or fingers that reddened and ached in every tiny bone. Out of pride, and honestly a lack of much else to do, she persevered, working the strands of soft fur into, if not actual thread or yarn, then at least a lumpy tube with aspirations. Hours later, the windows open to the warm summer evening and the languid chorus of crickets singing in counterpoint to the bass beats of the surf below, Oneira dubiously confronted the coil of dirty white ropelike stuff. Nothing remained of the prodigious pile of fur but for a few wisps tumbling idly over the stone floor, dancing with the night breezes. Beside her, Bunny gave her creation much the same look that she did. In retrospect, she should have spent time removing the various inclusions, all the thorns, bits of rubble, and other unidentifiable detritus Bunny had collected in his fur like an avaricious minor lord wearing his wealth on his costume. At that point, she very nearly did pitch the ugly product of her work into the fire. Probably she should have—it served no useful purpose—but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do so. She’d made it, however useless and unlovely, and that meant something. Probably not much, but something. Even if she didn’t know what that was. For someone who’d never created anything without a purpose, that she’d made this useless, artless thing felt like a step toward an unknown destination. So, she coiled it carefully, though the uneven lumps and occasional extrusions meant it would never look neat—neatness counts, her teacher Zoltan had endlessly exhorted—and she set it on the mantel, which had been otherwise bare. She couldn’t have said why she had one to begin with, except that mantels went with fireplaces in the visions of most dreamers, and so it had emerged from the Dream that way. She hadn’t cared enough either way to pare it off. She paused, studying the soiled, brownish, and lopsided column precisely centered on the pristine white shelf, surrounded by equally pristine white walls, then went to bed. Bunny followed along, so he could lay himself in his accustomed spot across the threshold, where he’d remain until she awoke. As was her habit, she rested a hand between his shoulders as they walked, the newly combed fur soft as down. That was an accomplishment: not the making of the object she turned her back on, but the creation of the absence of filth. As the sorceress and wolf walked away, the coiled rope remained on the mantel, a dubious occupant of the lone place of honor in an otherwise empty house. * * * The next creature to find Oneira arrived like a literal bolt from the blue. She was out in the garden picking the last of the tomatoes, the as-yet unripe green ones, as the cold wind blasting off the ocean shouted of a hard frost to come that night. She’d learned to listen for those sounds, too: the land, water, and sky speaking of their immediate plans, of the weather traveling from far beyond her fastness, bringing with it the imagined scents of exotic lands she’d once visited, occupied, or overthrown. The lash of the wind against her bare neck—for she’d braided her long, crimson hair and coiled it around the back of her head, so it wouldn’t snarl—felt like a well-deserved punishment from those faraway places. You abandoned me. You laid waste to me. You made me bow to your might and left me broken. You made me into a nightmare landscape of nothing, nothing, nothing… Pressing her lips together, she didn’t reply, even in her mind. She didn’t have anything to say back to them. The voices on the wind told her nothing she didn’t already know, nothing she didn’t already regret to the depths of her pitiless soul, nothing she hadn’t already considered how to redress, except that nothing could. Nothing, nothing, nothing. So she accepted their castigation as her due, plucking each hard, round, brightly green fruit with care—neatness counts—as if each tomato saved from the frost might compensate for some small portion of the land she’d destroyed. The sound hit her barely before her aerial wards blazed the warning through her mind, then shredded in the wake of the creature that plummeted from above, shrieking a bloodcurdling cry as it fell. Oneira leapt to her feet, dirt-encrusted hands stretched to the sky in a gesture that had nothing to do with defense, and everything to do with strike-first violence. Without thinking about it, she’d opened a portal to the Dream, iridescence tracing the outline of a doorway, the Dream seething beyond, the night terrors summoned by her instinctive fear throbbing with the need to be released. Struggling against her darker instincts, she caged the restless, potent magic, restraining the terrors, prepared to call something else from the Dream instead. Something less lethally nightmarish. She would not kill rather than die. At least, not until she knew what hurled itself toward her. Acutely cognizant of that irony—that all her noble aspirations fell apart depending on context, and her emotions of the moment, marking her indelibly as a monster, forever and always— she sent a seeking eye upward. Aiming her far-vision at the rent in her wards, she was rather astonished to discover the culprit: a tiny kestrel, brilliantly colored in ruby rust and sapphire gray, diving straight for her. She turned her raised hands in time for the creature to land on her forearm, small, black-tipped talons easily piercing her sleeve to dig into her skin, drawing blood. Oneira winced, but held steady, regarding the bird—no taller than her hand was long—with considerable bemusement. This small raptor had been able to slice through her wards as if they were nothing. Was that the fault of her less-than-sterling ward-making or its own ability? Would it be able to similarly shatter the wards of a powerful wardmaking sorcerer like Stearanos Stormbreaker? It would be interesting to try, though she’d never meet her nemesis in battle now that she’d retired. Not that they’d ever been likely to collide, always positioned against the other as a threat between the warring nations that held their leashes, a promise of mutually assured destruction. Apparently uninterested in her musings, the kestrel stared her down, glistening obsidian eyes knowing, hooked beak sharp for killing prey. Another meat eater. She considered asking why it had sought her out, knowing there would be no more answer than to whether she could have defeated Stearanos in battle— she was certain she could have—or to the endlessly cycling, far more pertinent question of how to atone for her past. She could, however, answer the question of the tiny raptor’s identity. Stilling herself, she queried the Dream, seeking similar images. The vivid coloring, the metallic gold sparkle of the ring around its eyes, its ability to penetrate her wards. The answer bubbled up from countless numinous dreams. This was Adsila, hunting companion to She Who Eats Bears, goddess of old. Oneira had not asked for Adsila, nor did she want the attention of She Who Eats Bears. Attracting the notice of a deity always led to trouble, and Oneira’s entire plan at the moment hinged on being so thoroughly forgotten that she’d be left alone. “You should go,” she whispered to Adsila, who cocked her head, an obdurate glint in her bright eyes, a mirror to Oneira’s own stubborn nature. The wind tugged at the knot of Oneira’s hair, pulling it free of the coil and sending it whipping about them, stinging her face bloodless from the cold. Bunny nipped a green tomato from the basket and ate it, grinning at her. Excerpted from Never the Roses, copyright © 2025 by Jennifer K. Lambert. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Never the Roses</i> by Jennifer K. Lambert appeared first on Reactor.

Following a number of recent violent attacks in America that appear to have been driven by antisemitism, members of Congress are seeking solutions to the threat of anti-Jewish acts of terrorism.   “The Jewish community has long been a vibrant and integral part of the nation’s fabric, yet today, too many Jewish Americans are now living with an ever-present fear for their families, their institutions, and their future, simply because of who they are and what they believe,” Rep. August Pfluger, chairman of the House Homeland Security Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee, said at a hearing Wednesday.   Pfluger, R-Texas, criticized American universities that have “become breeding grounds for antisemitism,” saying failure to take action against such behavior “is not neutrality; it is complicity.”   “Silence and apathy in the face of antisemitism is not neutrality, it is permission to continue to act that way,” Pfluger continued. “It enables the hate to spread and the violence to escalate. We will no longer tolerate cowardice or indifference when Jewish lives are under threat.”  The @HomelandGOP Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence is holding a hearing on combatting antisemitism today. "Silence and apathy in the face of antisemitism is not neutrality," @RepPfluger says. "It is permission to continue to act that way. It enables the hate… pic.twitter.com/jdbMCv6gB3— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) June 11, 2025 The hearing, “The Rise of Anti-Israel Extremist Groups and Their Threat to U.S. National Security,” comes just weeks after Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, a couple who were soon-to-be-engaged and who worked at the Israeli Embassy, were fatally shot outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. The man charged in their killing, Elias Rodriguez, shouted “Free Palestine!” when authorities arrested him immediately after the shooting.   Less than two weeks later, on June 1, a man in Colorado used a makeshift flamethrower and incendiary devices as he also shouted, “Free Palestine,” and attacked a group of people in Boulder who were marching in solidarity with the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.  At the hearing, Democrat and Republican lawmakers alike condemned the rise in antisemitic violence in America, but expressed varied views on measure to address the issue.   In the case of the attack in Boulder, Colorado, suspect Mohamed Soliman, who is facing 28 counts of attempted murder following the attack, was in the U.S. illegally on an expired visa.   “We have to understand … that there are people who were let into this country over the last four years that have a tie to radical groups like al-Qaida, like ISIS, and that still affiliate with these groups and are prone to radicalization,” Pfluger said.   James Carafano, an expert in national security and foreign policy at The Heritage Foundation, said one of the most important actions the government can take to prevent acts of terrorism in the U.S. is to coordinate local, state, and federal investigations into possible threats. Coordination of investigations can extend beyond “immigration enforcement,” Carafano said, to additional areas of government, to even include threats that fall under the purview of the Treasury or Commerce departments.   He also stressed the need to cut “one of the most vital sinews in the connection between material support and violent action, and that is terrorist travel.”  Taking action to “thwart malicious travel and presence and entry in the United States are extremely efficacious in helping diminish the capacity to provide material support and reducing the likelihood of terrorist actions,” Carafano said, adding examples to include “border and immigration enforcement, deportations, [and] denial and revocation of visas.”  While conservative witnesses and lawmakers raised concerns over the threat of terrorism stemming from illegal immigration and antisemitic ideology on college campuses, Democrats pressed the need for funding to address the issue of antisemitism.   Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., the subcommittee’s ranking member, discussed his Jewish heritage in his opening remarks and said he and members of his family have experienced antisemitism  “I want to make sure that our government is doing everything that it can to stamp this out and to keep people safe,” Magaziner said, before criticizing President Donald Trump’s actions downsizing the federal government that have led to the reduction of some federal government offices of civil rights.   “I am concerned that President Trump has fired staff across the federal government who were tasked with investigating cases of violent antisemitism and other forms of hate, including over 100 employees at the [Department of Homeland Security] Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties tasked with investigating and stamping out violent antisemitism and other domestic violent extremism,” the Rhode Island Democrat said.   Magaziner said “antisemitism on college campuses is a real problem that must be dealt with,” adding, “the way you deal with that is by strong oversight from the Department of Education, including The Office for Civil Rights, which has been gutted.”   Pfluger closed the more than two-hour hearing acknowledging that combating antisemitism is a bipartisan issue and does require funding, but also requires policy and a willingness to “stand up to an antisemitic mindset that, unfortunately, has permeated our society.”   The post House Panel’s Republicans, Democrats Concur on Scourge of Antisemitism, but Not on What to Do About It appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Biden-era State Department promoted censorship in Brazil, according to documents highlighted by former State Department official and free speech advocate Mike Benz. The State Department’s “Integrated Country Strategy” for Brazil warned about “disinformation during elections” and promised to “support Brazil’s democratic institutions by providing training, capacity building, and engagement.” Benz wrote via X on Sunday. Benz said that this 2022-era document served as “Yet another smoking gun” revealing the “deliberate” and “top-down” construction of Brazil’s censorship apparatus by the Biden-era State Department. The strategy explicitly singled out "disinformation on social media" as something it would ‘capacity-build’ to stop.” [Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America] 

The ABC News co-hosts of Disney’s The View were channeling their friend Jane Fonda on Wednesday as they took to viciously bashing America’s services members as Nazis. According to the gaggle of liberal extremists, the ICE agents as well as the soldiers with the National Guard and the Marines in Los Angeles, California echoed “1938” Germany and the Nazis who were “just following orders.” Even the purported “conservative” on the panel took shots at them. As spewed by staunchly racist co-host Sunny Hostin, the soldiers and Marines in L.A. were there to be part of President Trump’s dictatorial “power grab” and “suppress peoples’ rights.” She demanded that Americans “wake up” to her “truth”: I think Trump is not doing this just for optics. I think that this is a test case so that he can dismantle some of our institutions. I think it's a power grab. I think he is trying to use the might have the military to suppress peoples’ rights. I think that is very clear. When you use the military against your own citizens, that is a sign of fascism. That is just the truth. We've seen it in history over and over and over again. People have to wake up to that! Minutes prior, Hostin blamed the violence in L.A. on ICE for carrying out their duty to deport illegal immigrants. “Let's all be very clear, what's happening in L.A. is a direct result of what ICE is doing in California. It is a direct result of that. This was created by ICE. Everything that we're seeing,” she bitterly sneered. Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin pleaded with them to “not take the bait” and “start demonizing those individuals as opposed to a president.” “No one is demonizing them. We're saying this is the result of ICE,” Hostin hypocritically pushed back.     Despite also claiming she wasn’t demonizing the National Guard or Marines, ABC moderator Whoopi Goldberg (with help from co-host Joy Behar) invoked the Nazis and how they were “just following orders”: FARAH GRIFFIN: Correct, but I think it's very important to remember it's a commander-in-chief that’s made these decisions. They're following the orders. GOLDBERG: Yeah. Think back, y'all. Where have you heard that before? BEHAR: 1938! GOLDBERG: “I’m just following orders.” By my commander-in-chief. “We don't want to be what they were!” Goldberg shouted at Farah Griffin. Later adding: "We do have to be careful, because when we say things like, 'just following orders,' it leads to that." While Farah Griffin was trying to get them to not demonize American service members, she herself denounced their very presence. Despite repeatedly bragging about how she served in the Pentagon’s press shop, she bloviated about how Americans supposedly hated seeing the National Guard and Marines. “It's seen as societal disruption, it's seen as incredibly volatile, and it reminds us of our worst moments in history: after 9/11, after January 6, after the Rodney King Riots, BLM. Times when things were so volatile and society felt like it was really on the brink, that's when you had to deploy U.S. troops,” she decried them. Americans see the National Guard as heroes. They’re the ones who come to their rescue when natural disasters strike; they’re the angels who swoop down from heaven in helicopters to pluck them off their rooftops during flooding and amid the flames of wildfires, and do the literal heavy lifting during relief and recovery efforts. Americans love the troops. The View despises them. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s The View June 11, 2025 11:05:53 a.m. Eastern (…) ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: On that note, I was trying to kind of get into the head of Donald Trump on what he's doing around this and I think most of this is driven by politic. What I think he's doing is he is baiting liberals and liberal governors like Gavin Newsom into taking the bait and adopting rhetoric that he thinks will be divisive and damaging ahead of the midterms. So, what he wants to happen is he wants Newsom and Democrats to start chanting things like “defund ICE” and “defund the police.” Cause we know that that hurt Kamala Harris, we know it hurt Tim Walz. They had to run away from those previous positions. And he’s trying to create that sort of stand off right now. But here’s the problem, most Americans oppose rioting. That's just across the board. They may generally be like, if there's violence, if police officers are getting hurt, they don't like this. JOY BEHAR: But they’re very much for protests. Americans. FARAH GRIFFIN: They’re for peaceful assembly as enshrined in the First Amendment. But what I think Trump is missing here is seeing U.S. troops on U.S. soil is not a sign of safety and strength. That is not how the American spirit interprets it. BEHAR: You think? FARAH GRIFFIN: It's seen as societal disruption, it's seen as incredibly volatile, and it reminds us of our worst moments in history: after 9/11, after January 6, after the Rodney King Riots – BEHAR: Kent State. FARAH GRIFFIN: BLM. Times when things were so volatile and society felt like it was really on the brink, that's when you had to deploy U.S. troops. BEHAR: But he's creating it! FARAH GRIFFIN: But that’s what I’m saying. [Crosstalk] FARAH GRIFFIN: He’s misreading how it's going to be interpreted. SUNNY HOSTIN: That's what I was going to say. You know. Let's all be very clear, what's happening in L.A. is a direct result of what ICE is doing in California. It is a direct result of that. This was created by ICE Everything that we're seeing -- FARAH GRIFFIN: By the direction of the U.S. president though. They’re following orders by the way. HOSTIN: By the direction of the United States and Stephen Miller. WHOOPI GOLDBERG: But keep in mind, Gavin Newsom did not ask for them. He did not ask for them to come. HOSTIN: That is usually the protocol. GOLDBERG: That’s the protocol. HOSITN: That's the protocol. GOLDBERG: Okay. (…) 11:08:18 a.m. Eastern HOSTIN: I think Trump is not doing this just for optics. I think that this is a test case so that he can dismantle some of our institutions. I think it's a power grab. I think he is trying to use the might have the military to suppress peoples’ rights. I think that is very clear. When you use the military against your own citizens, that is a sign of fascism. That is just the truth. We've seen it in history over and over and over again. People have to wake up to that! FARAH GRIFFIN: But I want us to be very careful and not take the bait. The National Guard -- HOSTIN: I don’t think its bait. FARAH GRIFFIN: I haven't made my point yet. The ICE agents, those are nonpartisan actors for the most part who signed up for jobs, have served under multiple administrations, they did not necessarily sign up to be doing this, and they’re following an order of the commander-in-chief. And we could say they could all, I guess, resign in mass tomorrow – HOSTIN: But what is the bait? What is the bait? FARAH GRIFFIN: To start demonizing those individuals as opposed to a president. [Crosstalk] GOLDBERG: No, nobody is demonizing – HOSTIN: No one is demonizing them. We're saying this is the result of ICE. FARAH GRIFFIN: Correct, but I think it's very important to remember it's a commander-in-chief that’s made these decisions. They're following the orders. GOLDBERG: Yeah. Think back, y'all. Where have you heard that before? BEHAR: 1938! GOLDBERG: “I’m just following orders.” By my commander-in-chief. FARAH GRIFFIN: But again, can I just say. I want to finish. GOLDBERG: No, no, because this is my point, we don't want to be what they were! (…) 11:10:13 a.m. Eastern GOLDBERG: We do have to be careful, because when we say things like, “just following orders,” it leads to that. (…)

NPR CEO Katherine Maher recently traveled to London for the city’s SXSW festival because, apparently, she thinks London is the place to be when she needs to convince American lawmakers not to rescind her federal funding. While in London, Maher sat down for an interview with CNN International’s Max Foster that aired on his Monday installment of What We Know, where she insisted that NPR wasn’t on the left because nobody really knows what “left” means. She also claimed NPR is needed in order for people to have safe drinking water after hurricanes. Foster had more of a declaration than a question when he opined, “America's got lots of networks that aren't so common here in Europe, which are opinion-based networks, and that's a different culture. But you have to serve everyone. So you're trying to stay in the middle. And that's become harder.”     Maher agreed, “I think it's harder insofar as people don't agree on what the middle is now. It's not harder in the sense of our commitment to ensuring we're hearing from different voices. I also tend to think there's this perspective that, you know, people can be reduced to sort of political platforms, but in reality, when you drill down on people's preferences, they're far more complex than that.” After trying to use manufacturing jobs versus environmental protection as an example, Maher added, “And so, when we do really good reporting, what we're actually offering is the ability for us to hold that context, that nuance and that complexity in ways that allow people to connect with how it affects people's lives, as opposed to reducing it to sort of left versus right.” Okay, but what about issues that are pretty clearly left versus right, like eco-terrorism or abortion? Foster wasn’t interested in that. Instead, he proclaimed, “It's been undermined by parts of the right.” Later, Foster lobbed another softball, “When you're dealing with the Trump administration, you've got this particular challenge at the moment. They're effectively trying to take away your funding, which I know doesn't necessarily affect the national network, but does affect the local networks massively, doesn't it?”     Maher gladly took the opportunity to claim, “Our local network, I think is, it's such an under-realized part of what it is that we do, and it's very different from other public media broadcasters, which is why it's sometimes confusing for people to understand. We at NPR are a producer of news. We've got a newsroom, news gathering, culture, information.” She then warned, “So, it's about 100 million in annual funding that goes directly to stations. So, it's both a lot of money. And also, you know, it's relatively small compared to the size of the federal budget. And so, the way that these public stations work, these local stations is they play a critical role in emergencies -- not only in terms of emergency broadcasting, warnings, tornado watches, things along those lines, but recently, there were -- in the last year, Hurricane Helene, which hit North Carolina terribly hard. The residents of Asheville and the surrounding area went without drinking water, showering water, cooking water for more than –” After Foster interrupted to add “and internet,” Maher rolled on, “And Internet and news and electricity and all these things. The radio was the only thing that worked. It was the only thing that worked. And it was where people found safe drinking water. It was where people found information about their loved ones to know whether they were okay. So, this is what we're talking about. It's not just a medium of last resort, but it's really important that it is there.” Asheville is a city of nearly 100,000 people, and NPR is not the only radio station in town. Claiming NPR is necessary to direct people to safe drinking water after hurricanes is just emotional blackmail. Here is a transcript for the June 10 show: CNN International What We Know with Max Foster 6/10/2025 3:37 PM ET MAX FOSTER: America's got lots of networks that aren't so common here in Europe, which are opinion-based networks, and that's a different culture. But you have to serve everyone. So you're trying to stay in the middle. KATHERINE MAHER: Yes, yes. FOSTER: And that's become harder. MAHER: It -- I think it's harder insofar as people don't agree on what the middle is now. It's not harder in the sense of our commitment to ensuring we're hearing from different voices. I also tend to think there's this perspective that, you know, people can be reduced to sort of political platforms, but in reality, when you drill down on people's preferences, they're far more complex than that. When you go into local communities and you talk to them about what they want in terms of economic revitalization, they will recognize real tensions, perhaps around manufacturing and ensuring that their environment is something healthy for their children. And so, when we do really good reporting, what we're actually offering is the ability for us to hold that context, that nuance and that complexity in ways that allow people to connect with how it affects people's lives, as opposed to reducing it to sort of left versus right. FOSTER: It's been undermined by parts of the right. Do you feel all the brands are suffering from a lack of trust? I mean, where does that come from? MAHER: I think it's indisputable that media right now has a trust problem. And it's not just NPR, it's not just major broadcast organizations. We're seeing a real rise in people's trust in media influencers, news influencers. I would always note that usually those influencers are relying on other media organizations, reporting organizations. They don't have newsgathering. I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing. I think what it teaches us is that people want a relationship not with an institution, but with an individual. We have a historic belief in media that the brand name of our organization is enough to convey trust, confidence and integrity. But people right now are really looking for relationships with the reporter. They want to understand why someone is saying what they're saying. That is as meaningful now as the brand of the organization itself. FOSTER: When you're dealing with the Trump administration, you've got this particular challenge at the moment. They're effectively trying to take away your funding, which I know doesn't necessarily affect the national network, but does affect the local networks massively, doesn't it? MAHER: Yeah. Our local network, I think is, it's such an under-realized part of what it is that we do, and it's very different from other public media broadcasters, which is why it's sometimes confusing for people to understand. We at NPR are a producer of news. We've got a newsroom, news gathering, culture, information. Our local stations are on the ground and they are doing local newsgathering. They're producing shows that are relevant to their local communities. The loss of federal funding will hit them first and foremost. So, it's about 100 million in annual funding that goes directly to stations. So, it's both a lot of money. And also, you know, it's relatively small compared to the size of the federal budget. And so, the way that these public stations work, these local stations is they play a critical role in emergencies -- not only in terms of emergency broadcasting, warnings, tornado watches, things along those lines, but recently, there were -- in the last year, Hurricane Helene, which hit North Carolina terribly hard. The residents of Asheville and the surrounding area went without drinking water, showering water, cooking water for more than – FOSTER: And Internet. MAHER: And Internet and news and electricity and all these things. FOSTER: They're still working. MAHER: The radio was the only thing that worked. FOSTER: Yeah. MAHER: It was the only thing that worked. And it was where people found safe drinking water. It was where people found information about their loved ones to know whether they were okay. So, this is what we're talking about. It's not just a medium of last resort, but it's really important that it is there.

The twin daughters of a top Los Angeles Democrat were arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon during the ICE riots in California, according to numerous reports. As of Tuesday, at least 378 people have been arrested in connection with the Los Angeles ICE protests and riots, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Included in those arrested on Sunday were 26-year-old twins Lucia Aguilar, who goes by Luz, and Antonia Aguilar. 'The allegations are deeply concerning, and I take them very seriously.'The Daily Mail and New York Post reported that the twin daughters are suspected of assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon. It was not certain what the two women reportedly used as a deadly weapon. According to jail records, both women were held on $50,000 bail before being released on Monday afternoon.Blaze News reached out to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for comment but did not receive an immediate response. Both women are scheduled to appear in court on June 30.The two arrested suspects are the twin daughters of Rick Cole — a Democrat Pasadena City Councilmember and the former mayor of Pasadena. The Los Angeles Times noted that Rick Cole is also "a high-level aide to L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia.""I’ve just seen pictures of my two daughters on a curb in downtown Los Angeles in handcuffs [with] the LAPD. So I’m going to be figuring out where they are so I can go bail them out," Cole said, according to a video recorded during an anti-ICE demonstration in Pasadena on Monday. Cole claimed that the anti-ICE protests are "personal to me" and that he would protect illegal immigrants in Pasadena. He urged rallygoers to "organize" and "mobilize thousands" to "protect our neighbors." RELATED: 7 shocking players behind the anti-ICE chaos Rick Cole - Photo by Carlos Chavez/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images According to the official website of the city of Los Angeles, Luz Aguilar serves as the deputy for economic innovation and community growth for Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado.The Los Angeles Times reported that Luz Aguilar was placed on unpaid leave after being arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon."The allegations are deeply concerning, and I take them very seriously," Jurado said in a statement. "While I respect the individual’s right to due process, I hold my team to the highest standards of conduct."Jurado's spokesperson, Lisa Marroquin, said the arrest is a "developing situation," and "appropriate action" will be taken following an investigation. Jurado was previously steeped in controversy when she made anti-police comments. In audio that was leaked in October 2024, Jurado is seemingly heard making a reference to the 1988 N.W.A. song, "F**k tha Police." "What's the rap verse? 'F**k the police,' that's how I see 'em." Jurado attempted to walk back the anti-police rhetoric. "In a meeting with students at Cal State L.A., I quoted a lyric from a song that's been part of a larger conversation on systemic injustice and police accountability for decades," Jurado said. "But it was just a lyric — and I'm proud to be accessible to young people and students, listening to their concerns and treating them like the future leaders they are."RELATED: Glenn Beck reveals the TRUTH behind LA’s 'Mad Max' riots and media cover-up Cole's boss, Kenneth Mejia, questioned whether the LAPD is assisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in any way. "LAPD’s presence raises serious questions about whether we are abiding by our City’s mandate as a Sanctuary City and is a cause for concern and confusion regarding LAPD’s role,” Mejia said in a statement on Saturday. Police Chief Jim McDonnell declared that the LAPD is not involved in "civil immigration enforcement" and "will not assist or participate in any sort of mass deportations nor will the LAPD try to determine an individual's immigration status."As Blaze News previously reported, President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard to quell the violence erupting in Los Angeles over federal immigration raids on illegal aliens.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California is getting mocked and ridiculed over her characterization of the violent rioting in Los Angeles against immigration enforcement raids. Pelosi was criticizing President Donald Trump's response to the violence when she opined that the violence was likely due to "anarchists" and then offered her bizarre rationalization of the rioting. '[You] always have to be careful, whether you see a burned car, a broken window, whatever it is.' "I say this as a former party chair," Pelosi said to reporters on Tuesday. "When there is a gathering, a large gathering of people, the anarchists see it as an opportunity, and they move in.” “So [you] always have to be careful, whether you see a burned car, a broken window, whatever it is. It may be the exuberance of the moment, but it may be the anarchists setting in," she added. "I heard one of the former police chiefs of Los Angeles speak about this on Sunday.”She went on to criticize the press for not bashing Trump enough for her liking. Video of Pelosi's comments was posted to social media, where they were widely circulated. Many online thought Pelosi's description of the rioting was irresponsible, and they nailed the former speaker of the House with criticism. "This was quite the psychotic rant. I wonder how many martinis went into this diatribe," said commentator Kyle Becker."According to Pelosi, burning cops cars and Waymos are the product of exuberance. Careful, Nancy, you’re starting to sound like an anarchist yourself," said another critic. "Yes whenever I feel exuberant I always go and break a few windows and burn a couple of cars. Totally normal," joked another X user. "Exuberance of the moment, what a crock of s**t this lady is regurgitating. Tell that to the small business owners who's shops were looted; others who lost their cars and property. F**k this lady and all of those f**king cronies up there!" read another angry response. RELATED: Fact-check: President Trump authorized 20,000 National Guard troops for duty on Jan. 6, 2021 Photo by Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images The beleaguered California GOP also weighed in on the Pelosi comment. “'The exuberance of the moment' ?!? Time to restore law and order," the group wrote. As the week wore on, protests that began in Los Angeles on Friday had spread to other parts of the country, some with violence and vandalism. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, said that the violence and vandalism of the ICE rioting had significantly eased on Tuesday evening, but she also accused Trump of needlessly escalating tensions. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Mickey Dolenz, Ronnie Wood, Mick Fleetwood and Randy Bachman were among the fellow greats celebrating the "musical and spiritual giant." The post Music World Offers Tributes to Brian Wilson appeared first on Best Classic Bands.