In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Jillian Michaels told NewsNation about a very disturbing text message received from her daughter.
“Kids at my daughter’s high school were celebrating” the assassination, said Michaels. It’s unclear in what area this took place.
Michaels, a lesbian, had worked a bit with Charlie Kirk. She said the celebrations were “disgusting”. “Something is WRONG in this country,” she added.
Michaels is a fitness trainer, podcaster, and media personality.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed a bill that would prohibit most law enforcement officers—including federal agents—from wearing masks during official operations in the state.
The first-of-its-kind law, which would go into effect in January 2026, was immediately criticized by Trump administration officials, who have instructed federal agents to ignore it. That sets the stage for a showdown in court.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents—who are most involved in carrying out President Donald Trump’s deportation operations—have taken to wearing masks while carrying out their jobs.
During the Sept. 20 bill-signing event, Newsom said the state was “pushing back against the authoritarian tendencies in action this administration.”
“The impact of these policies all across this city, our state, and nation are terrifying,” Newsom said. “It’s like a dystopian sci-fi movie. Unmarked cars, people in masks, people quite literally disappearing. No due process, no rights in a democracy where we have rights.”
The administration has defended the use of masking by federal agents, who officials say are facing increased threats and violence related to their work.
Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat who is running for governor of Virginia, was recently asked by a reporter if she supports the idea of boys who identify as girls being in girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.
She could not answer. The answer she did give was a Kamala Harris style word-salad. When the reporter asks her to simply say whether or not she supports it, she ran away.
This is a political ‘Achilles’ heel’ for Democrats. They can’t say they fully support it because they know the public doesn’t, and they can’t say they don’t support it because they will alienate their own base voters.
Transcript via WJLA News:
Nick Minock: “As you know, there’s a battle playing out between the Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Education and five Northern Virginia school systems. The Trump administration is taking aim at their locker room and bathroom policies. They [the Trump administration] say those school systems are violating Title IX by having policies that allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity, not biological sex. So can you tell us directly, do you support biological males, who say they’re women, using women’s locker rooms and bathrooms and competing in women’s sports?”
Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger: “The circumstance as this legal case plays out is really one of we’ve had court cases settled or judged here in Virginia in the fourth district, the former Gavin Grimm case related to bathroom usage. And in fact, the argument is the assessment is there needs to be much clearer guidance in terms of what is an executive order’s binding assessment of Title IX versus what has been a decision of a court.
Topline: The Veterans Health Administration has lost an estimated 5% of its reusable medical equipment worth at least $211 million — including exam tables, computers and microscopes — and “will continue to do so if processes are not improved,” according to a new audit from the Veterans Affairs inspector general.
Key facts: VA hospitals own over 2 million pieces of nonexpendable equipment that is meant to be used for two years or more, valued at $12 billion. Federal auditors recently visited hospitals to see if the VA was properly tracking the equipment and found that thousands of items had disappeared.
The auditors estimated that a third of the equipment — 537,000 items — is in a different location than inventory records claim, and an additional 75,500 items are missing entirely.
It’s possible there is even more missing equipment, because the VA is only required to keep track of inventory worth more than $5,000.
Some of the nonexpendable equipment is tracked using electronic tags, but some of the tags have dead batteries or only show what building the item is in and not what room.
The VA also uses an “inventory by exception” system in which items that have their location recorded during routine maintenance do not need to be included in annual inventory reports for up to 24 months, even though most items are required to be logged every 12 months. Auditors wrote that “a lot can go wrong, including losing equipment,” because of the inventory-by-exception system.
There are also staffing issues contributing to the missing equipment. Some VA employees working on inventory could not search for items because they did not have the keys to all the rooms in the hospital. Some hospitals have staffing levels below 40%, which employees said made it harder to fill out inventory reports on time.
Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com.
OpenAI has announced plans to develop an automated age-prediction system to determine whether ChatGPT users are over or under 18, following a lawsuit related to a teen’s suicide. The teen’s parents claim that Sam Altman’s AI chatbot served as the boy’s “suicide coach.”
Ars Technica reports that in the wake of a lawsuit involving a 16-year-old boy who tragically died by suicide after engaging in extensive conversations with ChatGPT, OpenAI has announced its intention to implement an age verification system for its popular AI chatbot. The company aims to automatically direct younger users to a restricted version of the service, prioritizing safety over privacy and freedom for teens.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the potential privacy compromise for adults in a blog post but believes it is a necessary trade-off to ensure the well-being of younger users. The company plans to route users under 18 to a modified ChatGPT experience that blocks graphic sexual content and includes other age-appropriate restrictions. When uncertain about a user’s age, the system will default to the restricted experience, requiring adults to verify their age to access full functionality.
Developing an effective age-prediction system is a complex technical challenge for OpenAI. The company has not specified the technology it intends to use or provided a timeline for deployment. Recent academic research has shown both possibilities and limitations for age detection based on text analysis. While some studies have achieved high accuracy rates under controlled conditions, performance drops significantly when attempting to classify specific age groups or when users actively try to deceive the system.
In addition to the age-prediction system, OpenAI plans to launch parental controls by the end of September. These features will allow parents to link their accounts with their teenagers’ accounts, disable specific functions, set usage blackout hours, and receive notifications when the system detects acute distress in their teen’s interactions. However, the company notes that in rare emergency situations where parents cannot be reached, they may involve law enforcement as a next step.
The push for enhanced safety measures follows OpenAI’s acknowledgment that ChatGPT’s safety protocols can break down during lengthy conversations, potentially failing to intervene or notify anyone when vulnerable users engage in harmful interactions. The tragic case of Adam Raine, the 16-year-old who died by suicide, highlighted the system’s shortcomings when it mentioned suicide 1,275 times in conversations with the teen without taking appropriate action.
In a stark juxtaposition that defies its sun-drenched, affluent image, California has officially tied Louisiana for the highest poverty rate in the United States. A new analysis reveals that in 2024, a staggering seven million Californians, which makes up 17.7 percent of the state’s population, were living below the poverty line, a figure that mirrors the deep economic distress long associated with the Deep South.
This alarming parity, drawn from a report by the California Budget and Policy Center, uses the Census Bureau’s supplemental measure that provides a more realistic picture by factoring in crushing local costs of living, medical expenses and family size.
While the two states now share this grim title, their paths leading up to this point are a study in contrasting American crises: one of exorbitant urban wealth, the other of persistent rural need.
For Louisiana, a 17.7 percent poverty rate is a familiar reality. The state has perennially ranked among the nation’s poorest, grappling with job shortages in rural areas and a legacy of economic stagnation.
For California, however, this ranking is a monumental policy failure. The state is an economic powerhouse, home to some of the world’s most valuable companies and richest individuals. Yet, its prosperity is a mirage for millions of its residents.
The report points directly to the expiration of pandemic-era aid as the catalyst for a nationwide surge in poverty, the largest in over fifty years.
In 2021, expanded child tax credits, boosted food assistance and eviction protections had slashed California’s poverty rate to a record low of 11 percent. As that lifeline was severed, the fall was precipitous and painful.
The primary engine of California’s poverty crisis is not a lack of jobs, but a suffocating cost of living, with housing as the lead weight. The state is a nation of renters in peril; their poverty rate is a devastating 27.1 percent, more than double the 11.1 percent rate for homeowners.
In major cities, the median rent routinely exceeds $2,000 a month, forcing low-income families to dedicate more than a third of their income solely to keeping a roof over their heads.
This creates impossible choices between paying rent, buying groceries, or covering medical bills. The consequences are visible in the state’s sprawling homeless encampments and in the overcrowded apartments where multiple families “double up” to survive.
For many, the California dream has been reduced to a government-dependent existence where quality of life is dictated by the level of public assistance one can secure.
The crisis is not felt equally. Children and seniors experience poverty rates above 20 percent.
Black and Latino residents see rates roughly ten points higher than their white neighbors, a glaring inequity driven by wage gaps and a dire shortage of affordable childcare.
A new controversy spread in Mexico as two sons of the country’s former President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) are allegedly being tied to a large-scale cartel-connected fuel theft and smuggling network.
The revelations came to light this week as the news outlet Latinus first reported on a series of “Amparos,” or legal protections similar to an injunction that had been filed on behalf of Andres Manuel “Andy” and Roberto “Bobby” Lopez Beltran, the two oldest sons of AMLO. The amparos were meant to protect the two brothers against arrest, even though it is not publicly known if they are under any investigations.
Last week, a gunman in Utah shot and killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It was a brutal and tragic event, regardless of one’s politics. And yet the fallout of Kirk’s murder has revealed a disturbing hostility toward free speech on the political right.
Republicans have long cast themselves as defenders of free speech against cancel culture and the censorial impulses of the political left. And there was merit to the argument—Reason has covered many cases of overreach.
But over the last week, MAGA Republicans have scoured social media for government employees posting about Kirk’s murder, contacting employers in an attempt to get them fired. “Kirk’s online defenders have snitch-tagged the employers of government workers over social media posts saying they don’t care about the assassination, that they didn’t like Kirk even as they condemn his assassination, and even criticizing Kirk prior to his assassination,” Reason‘s Christian Britschgi wrote this week. Even for nongovernmental employees, social media detectives apparently compiled a database with tens of thousands of people who criticized Kirk, including their names and employers.
Of course, that’s just people online. It’s not like those with government power are advocating such a thing, right?
“I would think maybe their [broadcast] license should be taken away,” President Donald Trump told reporters this week on Air Force One, about TV networks. “All they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer,” Vice President J.D. Vance said while guest-hosting Kirk’s podcast this week. “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”
Vance’s argument bears a striking resemblance to the comments made just a few years ago by his ideological enemies. When certain public and not-so-public figures received backlash for offensive statements, some commentators noted that this was not cancel culture, it was “consequence culture”—people merely experiencing the consequences of their actions.
It’s no surprise that Trump has no principles on free speech—from the beginning of his first term, he called the press the “enemy of the American people.” But Vance’s position marks a notable pivot from just a few months ago.
“Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite,” Vance said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February. “Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square, agree or disagree.”
Now, Vance seems less keen on defending someone’s right to offer views that he personally disagrees with. Unfortunately, he’s not alone.
As the United States approaches its 250th Anniversary, the Trump administration is making it a priority to promote patriotism in schools across the nation.
On Wednesday, a partnership with Turning Point USA and more than 40 organizations was formed to promote civics education to young people.
According to Fox News, “Partners in the American 250 Civics Education Coalition include conservative groups such as PragerU, Hillsdale College, Moms for Liberty, and the America First Policy Institute.”
The Department of Education called it a “landmark initiative” that is “dedicated to renewing patriotism, strengthening civic knowledge and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation.”
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With oversight from Education Secretary Linda E. McMahon, the initiative aims to foster conversations about citizenship and America’s values.
McMahon said Wednesday that young Americans need to be equipped with an understanding of American history and values.
The U.S. Department of Education shared details of the initiative as well as the organizations who will be participating.
“With oversight from U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and the Department, the AFPI-led coalition will spearhead nationwide initiatives to engage students, educators, and communities in conversations about liberty, citizenship, and America’s enduring values.”
“As America approaches 250 years since its founding, we are proud to announce this coalition to ensure every young American understands the beauty of our nation and is equipped with the civic knowledge required to contribute meaningfully to its future,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
“A country cannot survive if its values are forgotten by its people. More than ever, we need to restore the vitality of the American spirit, and this coalition will take bold steps to educate, inspire, and mobilize youth toward active and informed citizenship.”
“AFPI is proud to stand with the Department of Education and partner with over 40 best-in-class organizations to form this coalition,” said Interim President of the American First Policy Institute Greg Sindelar. “Together, we are building a movement that will ensure the next generation understands America’s founding principles and carries them forward with confidence and pride.”
“Turning Point USA, which includes Turning Point Education, is more resolved than ever to advance God-centered, virtuous education for students flourishing across our nation,” said Dr. Hutz H. Hertzberg, Chief Education Officer of Turning Point Education. “With that in mind, we are honored to partner with the distinguished organizations that comprise the America 250 Civics Education Coalition to restore, revive, and reclaim robust American civics education for all students throughout our country.”
“We celebrate Lincoln for his greatness in recalling the nation to the principles of its birth, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the most beautiful political document in history,” said Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College. “It is time to repeat his work and the work of Jefferson and the Founders. We will work together to learn those principles, and for the love of them we will have a grand celebration.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller highlighted yet another example of an atrocity that will be swept under the rug by the mainstream media because it was committed by an illegal immigrant in a sanctuary state.
Marvin Ortiz-Montecinos, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, is accused of killing his girlfriend Victoria Aparicio Cruz, and their roommate, Yaneth Gomez-Hernandez in Burien, Washington, earlier this month.
The 29-year-old suspect, who has a wife and children in Guatemala, stabbed the two women dozens of times in the gruesome attack.
Marvin Ortiz-Montecinos was charged Friday, Sept. 12, with two counts of first-degree murder with deadly weapon enhancements in connection with the deaths of Victoria Aparicio Cruz and Yaneth Gomez-Hernandez.
According to charging documents obtained by PEOPLE, Ortiz-Montecinos is accused of using a filet knife to stab his girlfriend Cruz, “slicing through her neck, slicing her hands in multiple places as she tried to defend herself, and stabbing her multiple times in the back even after she was clearly unresponsive and deceased.”
Prosecutors allege that an hour before the attack, Ortiz-Montecinos “complained about Victoria breaking up with him,” per the documents.
Gomez-Hernandez, who was roommates with the couple, was found naked with a towel covering part of her leg, per the documents. “It appears victim Yaneth Gomez-Hernandez, the defendant’s roommate, was violently and cruelly murdered simply for trying to intervene,” according to the documents.
Gomez-Hernandez suffered 43 stab wounds.
The documents states that “both women received neck wounds so large and deep it appears clear that the defendant was attempting to slice and saw at his victims, and not simply stab them.” (People)
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