'Bulls**t': Ben Shapiro vows to continue Charlie Kirk's legacy



Charlie Kirk's horrific assassination on Wednesday has led many people to wonder about the future of the conservative movement. While Kirk will be sorely missed in the discourse, many political figures are stepping up to the podium with some choice words for their enemies.

On Thursday, the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro released a statement attempting both to dispel rumors and to encourage those who are mourning the loss of the late conservative giant.

'We're going to pick up that bloodstained microphone where Charlie left it.'

In the statement, Shapiro cut through earlier rumors that he would be canceling speaking events in the future. "Now, it's still up to us. I saw a lot of rumors online today — I was made aware of this by my team — that I canceled some sort of college tour. That's bulls**t. I saw those rumors. They are false. I will be coming to college campuses, many of them this year. So will we all, I am sure, because we're Americans, and we're not going to be deterred."

The co-founder of the Daily Wire made clear that intimidation would not stifle free discussion of ideas. "Charlie's voice is not silent. We're going to pick up that bloodstained microphone where Charlie left it," Shapiro said.

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Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

"And to those who would intimidate, who would seek to stop us, who would seek to end free discussion, who believe that they have ownership over public spaces and can violently threaten and kill people who speak freely: We are not going to stop, and I have two words: F**k you."

Turning Point USA and the Daily Wire have had a strong partnership in shaping the contemporary conservative movement.

While the future may seem uncertain, Shapiro made one point very clear: "We will not stop telling the truth. We will never stop telling the truth. We will never stop debating and discussing. We will never stop standing up for what America is and for what she should be, and we will never let Charlie Kirk's voice die."

"Goodbye to my friend Charlie Kirk. May your memory be a blessing for your family and for your country and for all of us."

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Daily Wire's Michael Knowles faces de-banking over alleged 'legally binding order'



A major payment processing platform revealed that it halted payouts to a Daily Wire political commentator due to "a legally binding order."

On Monday, Michael Knowles accused payment platform Stripe of possibly "de-banking" him. He speculated that the suspension was a reaction to his political opinions.

'Looking forward to resolving this issue with Tennessee.'

"Hi, @Stripe. Are we still doing this de-banking thing? Was it something I said?" Knowles wrote. "If we say that men can't be women, if we donate to pro-life charities, if we oppose two men buying eggs, renting wombs, and commoditizing babies."

"Does that come at the cost of de-banking?" he questioned.

In a multi-post thread, the Daily Wire host explained that payments from his monetized X account "abruptly stopped" six months ago. Assuming it was "an innocent mistake," he reached out to Stripe's user support to rectify the issue.

Stripe's support team confirmed that it had "temporarily disabled" his payouts, stating that it sent a message to X in October with more details about the pause, according to screenshots uploaded by Knowles.

The payment platform reportedly instructed him to contact X directly to obtain more information.

"I would recommend contacting your platform for more information, as we can't provide any further information on this account hold," a screenshot of a support email reads.

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Photo Illustration by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Knowles said that he then asked X for assistance on the matter, but its team referred him back to Stripe.

"We have confirmed this issue is not on our end — and you will need to login [sic] to Stripe and contact them to sort this out," an X team member reportedly wrote.

Knowles concluded that Stripe's decision to suspend his account was likely a retaliatory act due to his political views, emphasizing that he had not violated any of the platform's stated "prohibited businesses" rules.

"Since I haven't been distributing fake IDs, selling drugs, or jamming telecommunications equipment, it seems Stripe concluded that my political opinions had somehow violated their policy against encouraging 'unlawful violence' against certain demographics," Knowles stated. "Of course, I've never encouraged 'unlawful violence' against anyone. But in the absence of any real explanation from Stripe, I can only conclude that they've now decided that certain conservative opinions amount to 'illegal' activity."

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Michael Knowles. Photo by Jason Davis/Getty Images for The Daily Wire

Stripe responded to Knowles, requesting that he contact them directly to resolve the issue.

A few hours later, Stripe reached out again, offering additional information about the circumstances surrounding the pause. Yet its second post raised more questions than it answered.

"By way of follow-up, we can confirm that the restrictions placed on your account were not taken unilaterally by Stripe, but were the result of a legally binding order that was issued to us. Our support team previously reached out to X regarding this matter. In order to maintain your privacy, we are following up with you in a separate email with additional information," Stripe wrote.

While it remains unclear what the order pertains to, Knowles provided an update on the issue on Tuesday afternoon.

"I'm pleased to say Stripe has reached out to resolve this strange issue, which appears to have begun with a government administrative error rather than intentional de-banking," Knowles wrote. "As we investigate, I'm even more pleased to say that we're also exploring legislative solutions to the lack of transparency that often makes these issues unresolvable for countless Americans. Will discuss more on the show and keep everyone posted as this develops."

Stripe responded, stating, "Thanks for working with us. Looking forward to resolving this issue with Tennessee. At Stripe, our role is to process payments — we do not take action on accounts based on political speech."

When reached for comment, Stripe referred Blaze News to its response to Knowles on X.

X did not respond to a request for comment.

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Why our obsession with true crime isn’t as dark as you think



Social media has a way of humorously exposing humanity’s peculiarities. Using memes, reels, and trending audio, we love to make fun of ourselves.

One trend that’s been going strong for a while now exposes our strange obsession with true crime documentaries, books, and podcasts. There’s no telling how many thousands of Instagram reels and TikToks out there poke fun at normal people pounding popcorn while bingeing a series on Ted Bundy, for example.

Initially, it’s kind of funny. But a deeper consideration reveals a dark question: Why are we so drawn to serial killer stories? What is it about brutality, bloodthirst, and murder that attracts us?

This is one of many subjects author and Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan touches on in his new book, “The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness.”

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” Klaven and Allie Beth Stuckey unpacked this grim query.

While you might think that the duo arrive at an equally grim conclusion, they don’t. Peeling back the layers of this obsession with true crime leads to a paradoxically optimistic verdict: We are captivated by the collision of darkness and the moral order.

In an age when reading, especially the classics, is a dying practice, true crime fills the gap that dark literature used to fill.

Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” or even the biblical account of Cain’s treachery against his brother Abel are all tales that hinge on murder and betrayal. These stories, Klaven says, explore darkness “within that moral order.” Our instinctive recoiling at the murder of an innocent, for example, shatters the atheistic idea of moral relativism, which can actually lead us to God — the source of truth.

Ultimately, “that's what people are looking for in crime,” he tells Allie. “Murder is the place where everybody says, ‘Yes, that is evil'" because there is something in us that understands “the sanctity of the human person.”

But is true crime a good substitute for dark literature?

Not exactly, says Klaven.

“I think that people would be better off if they were reading Dostoevsky more and maybe being titillated by true crimes a little less,” because “it’s when the mind and heart and soul of the artist engage with murder that we see it become something beautiful in this larger context, which is what I think God is doing with the world itself,” he says.

Allie then brings up another good point: Unlike thought-provoking literature that invites us to explore the human condition, true crime often leads to “fear and paranoia.”

“There is some sort of balance between looking at darkness, recognizing it for the objective evil that it is, [contrasting] it to God's goodness, and constantly dwelling on the darkness,” she says, citing Philippians 4:8, which encourages readers to focus their thoughts on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and praiseworthy.

While not denying the truth of the verse, Klavan says that Philippians 4:8 is not synonymous with the “You Can Fly!” song from Peter Pan, which features the lyric “Now, think of the happiest things / It's the same as having wings.”

“You have to remember that Peter Pan never grows up, and if your faith never becomes the faith of a grown-up person, it's not going to stand up very well when you come into contact with the things that really do happen in this world — not just the evil, but also the suffering, the cruelty,” he says. “We believe in a God who was crucified … that's a very, very tragic truth, and yet the very deepest thing that God does for us is contained within that crucifixion.”

“One of the first things it says in Philippians is meditate and dwell on what is true, and what is true is all the beauty we experience, all the good that we experience, all the God that we experience takes place in this very dark world,” he continues.

The best Christian art, he argues, pointing to Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Bach, dealt with the kind of “sorrow and darkness and pain and suffering that Christianity was meant to address.”

However, even non-Christians unknowingly do this. “Many writers who have no faith have produced beautiful works that speak of God because I think any time you tell the truth, you're going to speak of God,” says Klaven. “The arts convey [and] transform this evil and this darkness into a source of light, and I think that that is a beautiful thing.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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Drugged for being boys: The TRUTH behind the ADHD scam



Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that people are born with.

Well, at least that’s long been the narrative in the medical field.

But the fact that ADHD diagnoses and Adderall prescriptions have skyrocketed in recent decades, especially in young male populations, has many — even the left’s “experts” — questioning if ADHD is actually congenital. It seems they can’t help but ask: If ADHD is something you’re born with, why the enormous surge in diagnoses?

In a recent New York Times article titled "Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong?" writer Paul Tough challenged the idea that ADHD is solely a fixed, biologically driven condition and suggested that it might also be driven by various environmental factors, including increased academic pressure, pervasive screen time, sleep deprivation, and post-pandemic stress.

In response, the Daily Wire published an article titled "The ‘Experts’ Are Finally Admitting That ADHD Is A Scam,” in which the writer acknowledged that mainstream sources are finally beginning to question what many of us have known all along: ADHD is a misdiagnosis of normal behavior.

The writer alleges that the feminization of education, pharmaceutical greed, and the mislabeling of normal male behavior are what’s really driving ADHD diagnoses and prescriptions.

On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn dove into these new conversations revolving around ADHD.

“The truth is we've been told not that a feminized education system has increasingly punished normal male behavior it doesn't understand; it's not that schools have lost their capacity to educate male students; it's not that smartphone use and electronics in general have become distractions teachers have been unable to control. Instead, we're led to believe that boys have suddenly become afflicted with a severe psychological disorder,” Glenn reads from the Daily Wire piece.

He agrees that what’s being done to boys in education is a travesty.

“Everything is just push the girls, push the girls, push the girls — ‘you can be anything.’ ‘Shut up, sit down, have some Ritalin’ to the boys,” he condemns.

The boys who are being written off as distractible and out of control are really just being typical boys. The Daily Wire article mocked one experiment conducted at the University of Central Florida, in which children were placed in front of a computer and shown two videos: a math lecture involving basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and a pod-racing scene from “Star Wars.”

Surprise, surprise — the kids were more likely to fidget and spin around in their chairs during the math lecture than they were when watching the “Star Wars” scene.

Using these “groundbreaking” findings, the UCF published a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology titled “ADHD Kids Can Be Still — If They’re Not Straining Their Brains.”

The Daily Wire ridiculed this, arguing that the study merely “discovered the concept of boredom.”

Glenn agrees and humorously compares the UCF study to discovering that your children “like sugary cereal over bran flakes” and then trying to “get them on LSD” to correct the problem.

While it’s true that some children struggle to focus in school more than others, it doesn’t mean they have a psychological disorder, Glenn says. It means that “all kids are wired differently; boys and girls are wired differently.”

Our differences are not the problem. The problem is that "public schools are made for everybody to be the same."

To hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above.

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