Rittenhouse Attacker Injured by Hit and Run, Outs His New Alias in Interview

Jacob Bruns
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Rittenhouse Attacker Injured by Hit and Run, Outs His New Alias in Interview

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A career criminal and attacker of Kyle Rittenhouse was recently injured in a hit and run in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, appearing on local news stations and outing himself, despite his attempts to change his name, the Kenosha County Eye reported.

Criminal Paul Prediger, formerly known as Gaige Grosskreutz, was struck by a car earlier this week. He had changed his name to Prediger after his true name and extensive criminal history were revealed in the Rittenhouse case.

During the 2020 riot in Kenosha, Grosskreutz, an Antifa “medic” had pulled his gun on the then-17-year-old Rittenhouse and got shot as a result.

“I thought the defendant was an active shooter,” Grosskreutz claimed, adding that he did it because he thought he was “going to die.”

Grosskreutz told the judge soon thereafter that he needed to have his name secretly altered so that he could protect himself from alleged “far right” people who were threatening his life.

But after being hit by a car while crossing the street, Grosskreutz decided to make an appearance on WISN 12 ABC news to talk about being run over.

“I went on top of the hood and then was dragged under and stuck underneath the vehicle for a good 20 feet,” he said, noting that he spent several days afterwards in the hospital with a lacerated liver and numerous broken bones.

Over the next several weeks, police located and confronted the driver of the car, who turned himself over immediately.

The offender in the alleged hit and run, Marvin Thomas, was charged Tuesday with two felonies related to the crash. He is holding on a $1,500 cash bail.

He will face two separate felony charges, one for a hit and run and causing great bodily harm, and another for operating a motor vehicle without license and causing great bodily harm.

Thomas could face up to 15 years in prison for his crimes.

Grosskreutz, under his fake identity, also has made a public appeal for public charity, saying the ordeal “has left me temporarily unable to work, and I am facing a challenging road to recovery.”

Those who contribute a minimum of $5 to his GoFundMe page are given access to a special section where they may offer “Words of Support.”

As of Friday afternoon, he had received $1,070 of his $2,500 goal with 25 people donating.

Leftists Fired Up over Missouri Republican’s Use of Flamethrower on Campaign Trail

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Leftists Fired Up over Missouri Republican’s Use of Flamethrower on Campaign Trail

(Headline USA) A longshot candidate for Missouri governor and his supporters describe his use of a flamethrower at a recent “Freedom Fest” event outside St. Louis as no big deal.

They said it was a fun moment for fellow Republicans who attended, and that no one talked about burning books as he torched a pile of cardboard boxes.

But after the video gained attention on social media, state Sen. Bill Eigel said he would burn books he found objectionable, and that he’d do it on the lawn outside the governor’s mansion.

He later said it was all a metaphor for how he would attack the “woke liberal agenda.”

“From a dramatic sense, if the only thing in between the children in the state of Missouri and vulgar pornographic material like that getting in their hands is me burning, bulldozing or launching [books] into outer space, I’m going to do that,” Eigel said in an interview with the Associated Press. “However, I would I make the point that I don’t believe it’s going to come to that.”

Despite having embraced violent and unhinged rhetoric about burning things down during the 2020 election—and, indeed, having regularly engaged in “mostly peaceful” arson as part of the George Floyd-inspired race riots that year—leftist critics claimed Eigel’s use of the flamethrower was a sign that rhetoric and imagery previously considered extreme were now being treated as normal in American politics.

“The slippery slope is that everything is a joke—everything can be kind of waved away,” said Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of public communications at American University in Washington. “Everything can be seen as just rhetoric until it can’t anymore and people start using it as an excuse to actually hurt people.”

When it comes to so-called progressive extremism, of course, Braddock himself is quick to dismiss it a s fringe threat and to write off the growing anti-Semitic movement within the leftist ranks, despite evidence showing it has become more normalized with politicians like Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. openly attacking Jews on the floor of the U.S. House.

Meanwhile, it was Eigel, an Air Force veteran, devout Catholic and father of two who Democrats saw as the true terrorist threat, becoming immediately triggered by the viral post after his political affiliation became apparent.

The 30-second video that put Eigel at the center of a social media storm came from a Sept. 15 event for Republicans at a winery near tiny Defiance, Missouri, about 30 miles west of St. Louis. He and another state senator shot long streams of flame onto a pile of cardboard in front of an appreciative crowd.

The video posted on Twitter, caught the attention of Jonathan Riley, a left-wing activist in Durham, North Carolina, who dishonestly posted Sunday that it showed “Missouri Republicans at a literal book burning,” though he’d later walk that statement back to a “metaphorical” book burning.

“It fit a narrative that they wanted to put out there,” Freedom Fest organizer Debbie McFarland said about claims that Eigel burned books. “It just didn’t happen to be the truth.”

Some of Republicans’ skepticism over the online outrage stems from Eigel’s status as a dark horse candidate to replace term-limited GOP Gov. Mike Parson.

The best known candidates for the August 2024 GOP primary are Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe.

The Ashcroft campaign declined to respond to the video, the uproar it caused or Eigel’s follow-up statement.

Kehoe’s campaign had no official comment, but Gregg Keller, a GOP consultant working on Kehoe’s campaign, said Eigel’s promise to burn objectionable books is “typical electioneering hyperbole.”

He added, “I would challenge you to find me any non-psychotic Republican who has actually burned” a book deemed objectionable by conservatives.

Eigel posted on Twitter that his flamethrower stunt was meant to show what he would do to the “swamp” in the state capital of Jefferson City, but “let’s be clear, you bring those woke pornographic books to Missouri schools to try to brainwash our kids, and I’ll burn those too—on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion.”

Republicans across the U.S. are backing conservative efforts to remove sexually explicit and pornographic books from school libraries and the children’s section of public libraries amid a growing anti-groomer movement that has seen strong grassroots political success..

The issue resonates with Republicans in Missouri. An AP VoteCast survey of Missouri voters in the 2022 midterm elections showed that more than 75% of those voting for GOP candidates thought the K-8 schools in their community were teaching too much about gender identity or sexual orientation.

Large guns have been a popular prop for some Republicans. In Missouri in 2016, GOP candidate and ex-Navy Seal Eric Greitens ran an ad featuring him firing 100 rounds from a machine gun on his way to winning the governor’s race.

Flamethowers also have popped up previously. In 2020, a GOP congressional candidate in Alabama showed her support for then-President Donald Trump by torching a mockup of the first articles of impeachment against him. She finished third in the primary. And in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem’s staff gave her a flamethrower last year as a Christmas gift.

Experts who study political extremism said images involving fire or bonfires have long been associated with extremist groups. Eigel’s critics quickly posted online images involving the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi book burnings before World War II.

Braddock, the American University professor, said that after portraying a flamethrower as a weapon against “the woke agenda,” Eigel’s supporters don’t need “that big a leap of logic” to see it as a tool for settling actual political grievances. Talking about book burning enough can plant the idea in people’s minds so that ”people think it’s actually a righteous thing to do.”

Eigel said he’s not worried the video will inspire violence in “reasonable, everyday Missourians,” which he said is the majority of people. But he said he’s concerned about the number of threats he, his family and his staff have received as a result.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Police Face Backlash for Threatening to Charge 11-Yr-Old w/ Creating Child Porn

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Police Face Backlash for Threatening to Charge 11-Yr-Old w/ Creating Child Porn

(Headline USA) When an Ohio father learned that his 11-year-old daughter had been manipulated into sending explicit photos to an adult, he turned to the police for help.

But instead of treating the girl as a crime victim, an officer seemingly threatened to charge her under a law most people view as designed to protect child victims.

The shocking interaction was recorded last week on body camera audio and by the father’s doorbell camera in Columbus, Ohio.

The footage drew criticism from the public and from experts who said law enforcement officials have long misused laws meant to protect children by threatening to charge them with being part of the same crime.

Experts said the incident also showed that training for officers on how to respond to child exploitation cases is spotty and not standardized between police departments.

“It was a complete fail on a legal level and on a human level,” said Scott Berkowitz, founder and president of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network—the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. “I don’t know who immediately goes to blaming a child in a situation like that. It’s inconceivable.”

In the redacted body camera recording obtained by The Associated Press, the father asks if there’s anything the police can do. A female officer is heard replying that his 11-year-old could be charged with creating “child porn.”

The parent protests that she is a child, a victim who was manipulated by an adult.

“It doesn’t matter,” the officer said. “She’s still creating it.”

The angry father ends the conversation and slams the door behind him. The video he posted to TikTok had been watched more than 750,000 times as of Thursday.

Police have not released the father’s name. The AP, which does not identify victims of alleged sexual abuse, reached out to him on social media and by phone this week but did not receive a response.

Columbus Police Chief Elaine Bryant responded quickly in a statement that the officers’ conduct was being investigated and that it did not meet the division’s standards for how victims should be treated.

Columbus police spokesperson Andrés Antequera said the agency has a nuanced policy that considers each case individually, but that “the focus is to protect the minor through education, counseling and social services, not criminal charges.”

He said the department sometimes provides information on those resources to parents, as well as referrals for services.

But Antequera said Ohio statutes are clear that minors who create, possess or distribute images of child sexual abuse, even of themselves, are violating the law. He said prosecutors ultimately decide when to file charges, but he did not answer when asked whether Columbus police had arrested minors under similar circumstances in the past.

The AP filed a written request with the Franklin County prosecuting attorney’s office seeking information on whether minors have been charged under the statute, but had not received a response as of Thursday afternoon.

Rebecca Epstein, the executive director of the Center on Gender Justice and Opportunity at Georgetown Law, said charges against victims are common. Epstein co-authored a report in April looking at how survivors of sexual assault and abuse are often criminalized.

“Girls who experience sexual abuse are often the ones who are punished for the sexual abuse that they experience. Rather than being treated as survivors who need support, they are funneled into the criminal justice system,” she said. “Our culture assigns complicity to girls who are too young to legally even consent to sex.”

Epstein said minors who are trafficked or coerced into sexual acts or into creating or soliciting sexual materials can often be charged with crimes.

In the early 2000s, as cellphone cameras became common and “sexting” entered the national vernacular, juvenile justice advocates began fighting against prosecutors who wanted to charge minors for consensually sharing explicit images with other minors.

Riya Saha Shah, the senior managing director of the Juvenile Law Center, said the center was part of that advocacy and has continued to raise concerns about sexual exploitation laws being used against child victims.

“These laws were really intended to prevent sexual abuse of children, to protect against the exploitation of children,” Shah said. “So weaponizing these laws against children to bring charges against them really misunderstands the law, and even worse, is flouting the law’s purpose.”

It’s hard to know how many children are charged, partly because prosecutors can use the charges to elicit guilty pleas to lesser offenses, she said.

Shah, who said she also has an 11-year-old daughter, called the police response to a parent seeking help disappointing but not surprising.

“There was no investigation into who the individual was who has these images in their possession,” Shah said. “It went right to punishing her, which unfortunately is all too common in a system that really isn’t designed to help first, but rather to punish first.”

Berkowitz said the interaction reflected the importance of training and the scarcity of standardized training for interviewing and interacting with child victims of sexual crimes.

The AP requested information on any training the responding officers had received, and asked why the father’s call was not directed to specialized departments within the Columbus Division of Police, but police had not responded as of Thursday afternoon.

Berkowitz said a possible lack of training resources doesn’t excuse the officers’ behavior.

“This should be pretty basic stuff that when an adult abuses a child, you do everything you can to stop it, not to blame the child,” he said.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

New York Republicans Sue Hochul over Mail-In Voting

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New York Republicans Sue Hochul over Mail-In Voting

(Christian Wade, The Center Square) New York Republicans are suing Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul for signing a bill on Wednesday authorizing mail-in voting in federal, state and local elections.

Hochul signed a package of so-called voting access bills on Wednesday that will authorize registered voters to vote early using a mail-in ballot and same-day registration, among other changes.

Critics contend that the changes will be conducive to massive voting irregularities at best and systemic fraud in the worst-case scenario. Evidence has shown that both are issues, particularly in blue states that maintain relaxed voting procedures, and lead to diminished confidence in the election outcomes.

Shortly after Hochul signed the bill, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, filed a lawsuit in state Superior Court with the New York state Republican Party, Conservative Party, and other members of the New York’s Republican House delegation, seeking to block the new law.

“Kathy Hochul and extreme New York Democrats are trying to destroy what is left of election integrity in New York,” Stefanik said in a statement. “Under Kathy Hochul’s failed leadership, elections are less secure and less transparent and now they will be unconstitutional.”

Besides Stefanik, Republican Reps. Nicole Malliotakis, Peter King and Claudia Tenney signed on to the legal challenge, along with the National Republican Congressional Committee.

In the lawsuit, lawyers for the Republicans and other plaintiffs argue that the mail-in voting law violates the portion of the state constitution that governs absentee voting and amounts to an end run around New York voter’s rejection of a 2021 ballot question that would have amended the constitution to allow for “no-excuse” absentee voting.

Under current law, New York voters can cast absentee mail ballots if they are out of the state or country on Election Day, are sick, taking care of someone who is sick, or incarcerated.

“The Mail-Voting Law was enacted by the Legislature in open and knowing defiance of [state election laws], ignoring and subverting the will of the people whom the Legislature is supposed to represent,” they wrote in a 23-page complaint. “Accordingly, the Mail-Voting Law should be declared unconstitutional and the defendants should be enjoined both preliminarily and permanently from implementing or enforcing that act in any respect.”

Hochul told reporters at a bill signing that the new law is “unrelated” to the ballot question and vowed that the courts would uphold it despite the legal challenge.

“I want to be very clear, the new law that we signed today is unrelated to absentee voting,” Hochul told reporters. “This is simply allowing vote-by-mail during the early voting period.”

The measure’s primary sponsor, state Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, D-Queens, ripped the lawsuit in a statement and labeled the lawmakers who filed it “Trump loyalists and insurrection apologists.”

“Their disdain for our democracy is well-established but we will not cede this critical ground to them as we continue to make it easier for people to vote and participate in choosing their government,” he said in a statement.

But Republicans argued that the law defies New York voters by pushing forward with an “unconstitutional attack” on the state’s mail-in voting safeguards.

“The people of New York resoundingly rejected this attempt to weaken the integrity of our election process, and I am confident it will once again be rejected by the courts,” state Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt said in a statement.

Leftist Media Outlet Uses Alex Jones Conspiracy to Attack Justice Clarence Thomas

Ken Silva
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Leftist Media Outlet Uses Alex Jones Conspiracy to Attack Justice Clarence Thomas

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Bohemian Grove is a secluded retreat in Northern California where America’s elite power brokers meet to secretly plot the future of the nation—and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is apparently a regular attendee, according to a new report attacking him.

No, the report isn’t from Infowars founder and conspiracist Alex Jones, who popularized the Bohemian Grove more than 20 years ago, when he attended an event there undercover and filmed the infamous “Cremation of Care” mock sacrifice ceremony.

Instead, the report comes from the George Soros-funded ProPublica, which used the justice’s trips to the Grove to generate interest in its latest hit piece.

“Thomas has been a regular at the Grove for 25 years as Harlan Crow’s guest, according to internal documents and interviews with dozens of members, other guests and workers at the retreat,” ProPublica reported Friday.

The main focus of ProPublica’s piece was about Justice Thomas speaking at events hosted by billionaire Charles Koch, which the publication accused of being a conflict of interest since Thomas has presided over cases involving Koch’s companies.

But the references to Bohemian Grove is what seemed to draw most of the attention when the story published. Some observers criticized ProPublica for only reporting about the Grove when it involves a black man.

“Notice the race pattern: White progressives believed Bohemian Grove was some Alex Jones conspiracy until someone claimed Clarence Thomas went there,” said one Twitter user.

Jones, for his part, has used ProPublica’s articles to generate interest in his original Grove documentary from more than 20 years ago.

“Of course, the Bohemian Grove was first brought to the public’s attention following Infowars founder Alex Jones’ epic infiltration of the gathering in 2000 where he filmed the infamous Cremation of Care mock sacrifice ceremony,” Infowars said when ProPublica first reported on Thomas’s Grove trips in April.

“Jones released an entire documentary on the undercover footage he captured called, ‘Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove.’”

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Serial Fabulist, Ex-MAGA Huckster Lin Wood May Testify for Fani Willis Trial

Jacob Bruns
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Serial Fabulist, Ex-MAGA Huckster Lin Wood May Testify for Fani Willis Trial

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) In order to avoid trouble for himself, former pro-MAGA attorney and suspected con-man Lin Wood has reportedly thrown his former allies under the bus by cooperating with the Fulton County District Attorny Fani Willis’s lawfare attack on President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants—specifically his one-time legal colleague, Sidney Powell.

According to a Wednesday filing with the Fulton County Court, Wood and several others who have been charged have agreed to be witnesses for the prosecution, Rolling Stone reported.

“L. Lin Wood, Coreco Ja’Quan Perason, Vikki Townsend Consiglio, Gloria Kay Godwin, James Kenneth Carroll, and Carolyn Hall Fisher, are witnesses for the State in the present case. Sidney Katherine Powell and Cathleen Alston Latham are Defendants in the present case,” the filing reads.

When asked about the situation, Wood told Rolling Stone that he knew that he was going to be “subpoenaed as a witness” for the trial, but denied having knowledge of anything further.

He also wrote on Telegram later on that there is “no truth” in the statements that he has flipped on the former president, despite all signs pointing to that being the case.

“I have no idea why I am being asked to testify at the trial,” Wood continued. “I have had no discussions with the DA’s office since I testified before the special grand jury several months ago.”

Whatever the truth of the matter, Wood has a history of pretending to represent right-wing causes before abandoning them.

For instance, he at one time represented Kenosha, Wisconsin freedom-fighter Kyle Rittenhouse, who claimed later on that Wood had “taken advantage” of him.

Wood allegedly created a legal defense fund for Rittenhouse after he was banned by the woke GoFundMe platform but then pocketed all the proceeds while allowing the 17-year-old political prisoner to remain incarcerated in what Rittenhouse told Fox News host Tucker Carlson were brutal conditions.

After facing public backlash for his exploitation of Rittenhouse, Wood berated Carlson and threatened to sue the popular political pundit.

He even posted a private correspondence between Carlson and Hunter Biden concerning Carlson’s son Buckley.

“Oh, and when I sue Tucker Carlson and Fox and take Old Tucker Boy’s sworn testimony upon cross examination, I will be sure to ask him ALL about his ‘buddy buddy’ relationship of years with HUNTER BIDEN!!!” Wood wrote on Telegram at the time.

Although other sources have confirmed that Carlson did correspond with the Bidens, some of Wood’s prior social media claims have strained credibility.

At the same time that Powell was hoping to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court presenting evidence of vote fraud in the 2020 election, Wood appeared to be exerting pressure on the court by suggesting that Chief Justice John Roberts was part of a pedophile sex ring—a pernicious but yet unproven conspiracy that has ties to the Q’Anon movement.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

Texas AG Paxton Believes Election Was Stolen from Trump, Blames Biden for Impeachment

Ken Silva
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Texas AG Paxton Believes Election Was Stolen from Trump, Blames Biden for Impeachment

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told Tucker Carlson this week that he believes the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, and that the Biden administration instigated the recent impeachment proceedings against him.

Paxton’s interview with Carlson followed his acquittal on corruption charges at his impeachment trial last week.

Paxton—who is the most litigious state attorney general against the Biden administration, filing 48 lawsuits so far—revealed that he believes Biden was behind the failed impeachment.

“So you think the effort to remove you came from the Biden administration?” Carlson asked him.

“I really do. I think that’s where it was instigated, and then there were other groups in Texas that participated,” he said. “And some of them were Republicans.”

Paxton also revealed that he believes in Trump’s 2020 election fraud allegations, at least as it pertains to the mail-in vote counting fiasco.

Paxton told Carlson that key swing states stopped counting ballots with Trump leading on election night because “they needed to figure out was how many real votes there were so they could figure out how many mail-in ballots to apply to the election.”

“I’ve never seen it before in my life. I knew it when they stopped and Trump is leading in all these states, I knew exactly what they were doing,” he said. “Because there’s no way of knowing where all these mail-in ballots came from. Anyone could have filled them out.”

Paxton’s statement prompted Carlson to ask him: “That’s not a dangerous conspiracy theory?”

“I watched it happen,” Paxton replied.

Additionally, Paxton  displayed an openness to challenging U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in 2026.  Cornyn has been one of Texas’ few top Republicans to publicly attack Paxton over his legal troubles.

Asked by Carlson why he doesn’t challenge Cornyn, who is up for reelection in 2026, Paxton said, “Hey look, everything is on the table for me.”

Paxton was acquitted on Sept. 16 by the Texas Senate on 16 articles of impeachment. Most of the charges surrounded his relationship with an Austin real estate developer named Nate Paul, who was indicted in June on charges of making false statements to banks in order to secure more than $170 million in loans. Paul has pleaded not guilty and did not appear at the impeachment trial.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

GOP Sens. Offer Bill to Protect Hospitals from LGBT Mafia’s Pfizer-Backed Pressure Campaign

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GOP Sens. Offer Bill to Protect Hospitals from LGBT Mafia’s Pfizer-Backed Pressure Campaign

(Victor Skinner, The Center Square) The Human Rights Campaign’s Healthcare Equality Index is pushing health care facilities to align with a “radical gender ideology,” and four congressmen are working to do something about it.

Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Cindy Hyde–Smith, R-Miss., and J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, recently introduced the Protecting Conscience in Healthcare Act.

It would prohibit federal or state government agencies and federally funded health facilities from requiring employees to promote a gender ideology tied to the movement involving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other cultural identities based around sexual preferences and bedroom fetishes.

“This common-sense legislation protects health care facilities and professionals from being forced to advocate for political and social agendas that violate their medical judgements and strongly held religious beliefs,” Tillis said in a statement. “This bill defends crucial medical and religious exemptions for hospitals, health clinics, and their employees so they can focus on patient care, not be required to advance radical political agendas.”

The legislation was spawned from a Healthcare Equality Index the Human Rights Campaign leverages to measure policies and approaches to “gender medicine” in hospital systems. While hospitals have no obligation to adopt the policies, news reports have highlighted more than 2,200 health systems that have coordinated with the powerful, far-left activist group to comply.

The index, funded by Pfizer and PhRMA, a trade association that lobbies on behalf of pharmaceutical companies, assigns scores to hospitals and other health care facilities based on a 100-point scale that says it measures the “equality and inclusion of their LGBTQ+ patents.”

The scale includes points for displaying symbols, soliciting and using patients’ preferred pronouns, trainings for “LGBTQ+ issues,” and whether nondiscrimination policies mention “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

Other criteria also tie into LGBT, including health disparities, promotion of services, hiring and whether health records capture gender identity.

To earn a perfect score, hospitals must also provide treatments for gender dysphoria that they provide for other medical conditions, such as puberty blockers used to treat precocious puberty.

The index does not explicitly mention medical conscience exemptions, but penalizes hospitals that allow “discriminatory treatment that is in conflict with their non-discrimination policy.”

The Protecting Conscience in Healthcare Act, Senate Bill 2797, would prohibit health care or government employers from requiring transgender trainings, workshops or events as a condition of employment.

It also prohibits those employers from requiring employees to identify pronouns or to use preferred pronouns that “conflict with the employee’s religious or moral beliefs, or the employee’s understanding of the relationship between sex and identity.”

Hyde–Smith said it was a violation of basic First Amendment religious freedom—a matter that the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld in a major ruling this past June, although the court has recently delivered big wins to the LGBT agenda too.

“Coercing health care workers to abandon their religious belief to accommodate a radical gender agenda is wrong,” Hyde–Smith said in a statement. “Hospitals and clinics, and those who work in them, should stay focused on care without being pressured to pay undue attention to fringe activists.”

SB2797 is among a flood of legislation on the state and national level this year focused on transgender issues and gender transitions, particularly for minors.

Other legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate this session would prohibit doctors from performing gender transition procedures on minors, and the use of federal funds for those procedures. The legislation faces an uphill climb in a Senate with a Democratic majority.

At least 22 states have adopted legislation through mid-August to outlaw gender transition treatments for minors, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

2023 Could See Most People on Food Stamps since Obama Era

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2023 Could See Most People on Food Stamps since Obama Era

(Shirleen Guerra, The Center Square) The 2023 fiscal year is on track to average the highest number of individuals on food stamps in the U.S. since 2016.

There were 42,329,101 on food assistance on average each month on through the first nine months of the fiscal year, as of June 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The fiscal year is completed at the end of September.

That’s the most people on food assistance since the fiscal year 2016 monthly average of 44,219,363.

The fiscal year 2023 overall cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, will be the first time in two years that emergency pandemic relief was not included the full year. Most states dropped the extra COVID-19 stipend by March 2023.

In 2016, the yearly cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was $66.5 billion, or $84.2 billion when adjusted for inflation.

Through the first three quarters of fiscal year 2023, the costs are $85.1 billion, which projects to $113.5 billion for the full year.  In fiscal year 2022, the SNAP program cost almost $114 billion.

Rupert Murdoch’s Surprise Exit Leaves Fate Uncertain for FOX News

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Rupert Murdoch’s Surprise Exit Leaves Fate Uncertain for FOX News

(Headline USA) Media Magnate Rupert Murdoch’s surprise announcement Thursday that he’s stepping down as leader of his two companies leaves his son Lachlan firmly in line of succession at Fox and the rest of the media empire.

The 92-year-old Australian billionaire’s creation of Fox News Channel has made him an enduring force in American politics. He inherited a newspaper in Adelaide, Australia, from his father in 1952 and eventually built a news and entertainment enterprise dominant in the United States and Britain.

Fox said Murdoch would become chairman emeritus of both the news network’s parent company, Fox Corp., and the News Corp. media holdings, effective in November. Lachlan will become News Corp. chairman and continue as chief executive officer of Fox Corp.

Lachlan Murdoch said that “we are grateful that he will serve as chairman emeritus and know he will continue to provide valued counsel.”

Fox News Channel has profoundly influenced television and national politics since its start in 1996, making Murdoch a hero to some and pariah to others. The 24-hour network converted the power and energy of political talk radio to television. Within six years, it outrated CNN and MSNBC, and still does.

But it’s been a rough year for Fox, which was forced to pay $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brough by Dominion Voting Systems rather than endure damning leaks as part of the ongoing lawfare trial. In what many believe to be a connected move, Fox also fired its most popular personality, Tucker Carlson.

Stock in Fox Corp., while positive this year, began to decline early in 2022, due in part to lawsuits and investor anxiety.

Besides Fox News, Rupert Murdoch started the Fox broadcast network, the first to successfully challenge the Big Three of ABC, CBS and NBC, with shows like “The Simpsons.” He owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. He slimmed his corporate holdings with the 2019 sale of many entertainment assets to the Walt Disney Co.

Murdoch has also controlled the New York Post, which, like Fox, has promoted his conservative world view.

Despite Murdoch’s advanced age, Thursday’s announcement took some by surprise.

“I do find it shocking because I figured that Rupert would be around until he couldn’t take a breath,” said writer Claire Atkinson, who’s working on a biography of Murdoch.

In a letter Thursday to staff, Murdoch thundered about elites who have “open contempt for those who are not members of their rarified class.”

Murdoch’s letter made it clear he doesn’t consider himself one of them, despite his status as a media executive and his family’s wealth, estimated by Forbes in 2020 at about $19 billion.

He also indicated his retirement won’t include much beach time.

“I can guarantee you that I will be involved every day in the contest of ideas,” he wrote. “Our companies are communities, and I will be an active member of our community. I will be watching our broadcasts with a critical eye, reading our newspapers and websites and books with much interest.”

Murdoch and his family, particularly children James, Lachlan, Elisabeth and Prudence, were said to be the model for the HBO drama “ Succession.”

“Rupert is certainly engineering a cleaner exit than Logan Roy’s departure from WaystarRoyco,” said former CNN president Jon Klein, who consulted on the series. “And he’s leaving behind a lot less of a mess.”

That may be the case — for now, said Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff, who next week is publishing a book, The End of Fox News.

“He is 92, and that has taken a toll on him, of course, but the company, too,” Wolff told the Associated Press. “He has remained up until today the singular decision-maker, and he can’t communicate what he wants and people don’t understand what he wants” like they did in the past.

Major changes are unlikely right away under Lachlan Murdoch, who’s largely been running things as CEO for a couple of years.

When Murdoch dies, control of the Fox empire will revert to his four adult children, each of whom has an equal say in the business, Wolff said. “That’s when the real new chapter begins,” he said.

Since Lachlan most closely shares his father’s politically conservative views, Wolff predicted that James Murdoch—known as the more liberal sibling—would eventually take control of Fox News, or that it would be sold.

“It will certainly not exist as the Fox News Channel that we have known and loved, or hated, for the past 25 years,” Wolff said.

Atkinson said that she has talked with people at the company, and they’re saying Murdoch is “fine and as engaged as ever.”

Thursday’s announcement, she said, “is really just Lachlan taking the mantle and saying, ‘now it’s time.’ It’s his company. His company only.”

One of Murdoch’s chief television competitors, Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, said that over many decades, no other individual has had as much impact on the media.

“His contributions to the news industry across several continents have been enormous, helping to ensure a balanced and truly free media,” Ruddy said.

While Murdoch never ran for political office, politicians in the United States and Britain anxiously sought his approval. He had a complicated relationship with Donald Trump. Wolff reported in 2018 that Murdoch had called Trump an “idiot,” adding an expletive for emphasis, but Fox News is built with an audience that largely admires Trump.

For decades, Murdoch was one of the most powerful media figures in Britain, a market he entered after buying the tabloid News of the World in 1969. He reinvigorated Britain’s stodgy newspaper scene with sex, scandal and celebrity and helped shake up television with satellite broadcaster Sky.

His clout has waned since the revelation more than a decade ago that employees of the News of the World had eavesdropped on phones and used other underhanded methods to get scoops on celebrities, politicians and royals. News Corp. owns the Times, Sunday Times and Sun newspapers, but News of the World closed and Murdoch sold his 40% stake in Sky when he failed to get complete control of the company.

Fox News went through a series of sexual harassment scandals in the 2010s, which led to top executive Roger Ailes and prime-time personality Bill O’Reilly being pushed out. Murdoch dismissed them as isolated instances that were “largely political because we’re conservative.”

Shares of News Corp. and Fox closed higher Thursday.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

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