Suspect in deadly Palisades Fire was obsessed with Luigi Mangione, critical of rich: Prosecutors



The 2025 Palisades Fire raged for at least 24 days, torching 23,448 acres in Los Angeles County, killing 12 people, and destroying over 6,800 structures.

While state authorities list Jan. 7, 2025, as being the official start of the Palisades Fire, the 30-year-old son of a French citizen is accused of kindling the inferno days earlier.

'It would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money.'

Jonathan Rinderknecht was arrested in October and charged with property destruction by means of fire, arson affecting property used in interstate commerce, and willful of malicious burning of timber on federal lands. He is alleged to have set the Lachman Fire on New Year's Day — a fire that was suppressed but apparently continued to burn underground until revived topside days later by heavy winds.

Federal prosecutors have provided new details about the alleged arsonist.

According to a trial memorandum reviewed by Bloomberg, Rinderknecht "exhibited extreme anger, indignation, and frustration about being unable to find companionship on New Year’s Eve."

This aligns with what investigators previously said about the suspect.

A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives agent claimed in a sworn affidavit that:

  • witnesses observed Rinderknecht acting "agitated and angry" on the evening of Dec. 31, 2024;
  • Rinderknecht allegedly watched the music video for a despair-themed song featuring fire-setting imagery repeatedly in the days leading up to the Lachman Fire; and
  • the suspect asked ChatGPT, "Are you at fault if a fire is life [sic] because of your cigarettes."

Prosecutors said in the new filing that after unsuccessfully trying to make plans with two other people, Rinderknecht — then working as an Uber driver — dropped off passengers in the Palisades area then, "alone again," scaled the hillside where investigators apparently found evidence that the suspect had set a fire with a barbecue lighter.

RELATED: Democrats promised to quickly rebuild after Los Angeles fires destroyed homes and lives — they aren't delivering

Qian Weizhong/VCG/Getty Images

Prosecutors further alleged that Rinderknecht had become "increasingly angry with his life and society at large," adding that he had become "fixated on Luigi Mangione" — the 27-year-old Maryland native accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson on Dec. 4, 2024.

According to the trial memorandum, a forensic review of Rinderknecht's computer revealed he had searched for news regarding Mangione using search terms like "free Luigi Mangione," "lets [sic] take down all the billionaires," and "reddit lets kill all the billionaires."

Mangione is apparently admired by more than one alleged arsonist.

Chamel Abdulkarim, a 29-year-old accused of sparking the massive fire that destroyed a 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse in Ontario, California, last month, compared himself to Mangione, according to Bill Essayli, the first assistant United States attorney for the Central District of California.

When questioned by investigators about why someone might set the Palisades area ablaze, Rinderknecht said that "it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as 'we're basically being enslaved by them' and compared such an act of 'desperation' to the murder for which Mangione was charged," prosecutors claimed in the filing.

Steven Haney, Rinderknecht’s lawyer, said in a statement to Bloomberg, "I maintain my client’s innocence."

"No misguided theory from the government will change the lack of evidence showing my client started or was responsible for either of the fires for which he is charged. We look forward to proving it at trial," added Haney.

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The real desecration isn’t in the White House — it’s in America’s newsrooms



Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

RELATED: Antifa is what you get when cowards run civilization

Photo by Julia Beverly/Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

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Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson consider whether American decline is by design and a prelude to authoritarian rule



Tucker Carlson revealed in a spirited conversation Tuesday with nationally syndicated radio host and co-founder of Blaze Media Glenn Beck that his tour of foreign nations has little to do with those destinations and everything to do with the United States — a nation he would like see restored to greatness or at the very least boosted back to the domestic and international prowess it apparently enjoyed circa 1993.

During his first interview in the U.S. since his return from Russia, the titular head of the Tucker Carlson Network broached various topics with Beck, nearly all linked back to the health and integrity of the United States.

Before the duo delved too deeply into matters directly affecting the U.S., Beck pressed Carlson on recent critiques over his Russian reportage, for which critics have pulled the Cold War term "useful idiot" out of retirement; forced parallels to the Soviet propaganda peddled by the New York Times' Pulitzer-winning Walter Duranty; made accusations of economic illiteracy; and, in the case of Bill Kristol, demanded Carlson's exile.

Carlson recently interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin, then joined Muscovites in traversing the Soviet-constructed Moscow Metro system, wherein he marveled at the Russian capital's apparently clean and orderly underground.

Carlson also visited a grocery store in hopes of ascertaining firsthand whether sanctions on the Slavic nation have had an impact on citizens' shopping experience.

"Coming to a Russian grocery store, the 'heart of evil,' and seeing what things cost and how they live — it will radicalize you against our leaders," Carlson said in the video. "That's how I feel, anyway: radicalized. We're not making any of this up, by the way. At all."

Beck told Carlson Tuesday that it would not be hard to replicate such cleanliness and order if one would allow for the kind of totalitarian overreach and bloodletting seen in nations like North Korea; that behind such glimmers of utopia lurk monstrous systems alien to America.

"There's a lot of people on the right and the left that are both saying, 'Screw the Constitution. We need a radicalized leader,'" said Beck. "When you look at Orban, I think Orban is great for his country. That's not our system. ... Moscow might be great. Love to visit. That's not our system," said Beck. "The only path forward for America is through the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution."

Carlson agreed, making expressly clear over the course of the interview that contrary to recent complaints leveled against him, he is neither a flack for Putin nor a fan of strongman authoritarianism. Rather, he suggested that the point of his foreign travels was to shake Americans out their resignation to the very domestic trends steering America off the path Beck mentioned and toward authoritarianism.

— (@)

"The people that run our country are destroying it, and they're doing it on purpose," said Carlson. "With what they've done at the border: completely changing the population, letting millions and millions of people who have no connection to the United States, can't possibly help our economy, can't possibly unify our very fractured civic culture ... whose loyalty and knowledge of the United States is completely in question. In fact, their identities are in question."

Carlson indicated that this engineered demographic upheaval is taking place amidst an imported opioid epidemic, costly multilateral initiatives abroad that overstretch the U.S., manufactured race hatred, and lawlessness.

He suggested to Beck that the destruction under way and the disenchantment that follows are altogether a means to break down resistance to a potential statist overcorrection and authoritarian regime.

"We have the laws. They're not being enforced on purpose. ... And of course the reason is because people will lose faith in liberal democracy, and they will welcome a strongman, and that's exactly what this about," said Carlson.

While quick to attribute this program to the left, Carlson also credited the "quisling right on Capitol Hill."

"The communists did it. It's the color revolution. And it's Cloward-Piven," said Beck. "It's happening right in front of our eyes."

According to Carlson, the result and aim of this alleged project is that "people are just going to give up. They're not going to vote, [thinking], 'They're going to steal the elections, just as they stole the last one,' which they did — sorry."

"And they're going to steal the next one, and people are just going to be like, 'You know what? I don't even care. I just totally give up. This is crazy. Just get the bums off my street. Some guy just exposed himself to my daughter, or my nephew just died of a fentanyl OD. Make it stop,'" continued Carlson.

"I don't want that. I want to live in the country we lived in in 1993 or 1985. Not ancient history. Post-Civil Rights Act. We can do that. Let's do it right now," added Carlson.

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Terrifying videos capture moment Japan was hit by lethal 7.6 magnitude earthquake



Japan rang in the new year with tsunami alarms after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake rocked the country's west coast Monday afternoon. Even though the colossal waves never came, the destruction on the Noto Peninsula in the central prefecture of Ishikawa was nevertheless extensive.

Scores of lives have been confirmed lost. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to smoldering rubble. Thousands on the Noto Peninsula proceed into 2024 homeless.

Despite the enduring aftershocks affecting the region, efforts are now underway to locate additional survivors in the ruins.

The Japanese office overseeing disaster prevention indicated Monday that a 7.6-magnitude earthquake centered in Noto shook the western coast. The Japan Meteorological Agency assigned the quake a seismic intensity rating of seven — the highest possible.

The U.S. Geological Survey indicated that the primary quake was the most powerful the west coast had seen since 1970.

As 2024 begins, our \xf0\x9f\x92\x94s go out to those affected by Japan\xe2\x80\x99s M7.5 quake. Despite Japan\xe2\x80\x99s active plate boundaries, large quakes on the west coast of Honshu are rarer than the east coast. Since 1970, no M7+ quakes are on record within 155 mi/250 km of today\xe2\x80\x99s quake.
— (@)

The quake was preceded by a report of a similarly strong tremor in the area and has been followed since by dozens of lesser quakes in the area of magnitudes of up to 5.7 on the Richter scale. The JMA suggested that sporadic aftershocks nearly as strong as the initial quake could strike for up to a week.

Officials advised residents to evacuate "to even higher ground wherever possible" and to expect high and repeated tsunami waves. While waves as high as four feet were reported following the quake, the region was spared the kind of behemothic waves Japan suffered following the March 2011 8.9-magnitude quake in the country's northeast.

While the JMA has downgraded its tsunami alerts to advisories, the agency continues to stress the importance of exercising caution near or around the coast.

Footage captured by a motorist in one of the affected areas shows a river slosh side to side as the earth around it quakes.

— (@)

Another video shows a subway station tremble as commuters brace for the worst.

— (@)
Effect of the earthquake that hit Central Japan today: roads cracking and pavements rising.\n\n[\xf0\x9f\x93\xb9 mmmin726]
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Drone footage documenting the aftermath in Wajima City, Japan, obtained by Reuters, shows smoldering ruins, flattened neighborhoods, beached boats, and toppled multi-story buildings.

Aerial images reveal the extent of the destruction caused by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck central Japan on Monday https://t.co/keiE0EocsV
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While the Asian nation's infrastructure is largely built to withstand the earthquakes common around the seismically-active Pacific Ring of Fire, tens of thousands of homes were nevertheless destroyed by the quake, which also shut down water, cell phone service, and power in various areas.

Authorities in the devastated city of Wajima, seen in the drone footage, received reports of at least 30 collapsed buildings and noted firefighters had battled blazes well into the night.

As of Tuesday, officials confirmed at least 48 people were dead and 16 were seriously injured in Ishikawa, reported the Associated Press.

The Japanese government indicated Monday evening that it had ordered over 97,000 people in nine prefectures on the west coast to evacuate, reported Reuters.

According to the New York Times, Japan's Nuclear Regulatory Agency indicated that while a fire had broken out in a transformer at the Shika power plant in Shikawa, there were no signs of abnormalities at its radioactivity monitoring stations.

The Shika plant had shut down its two reactors prior to the quake for regular inspections.

Various governments around the world expressed their sympathies and support for the Japanese people.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel wrote, "We are saddened to see the damage caused by the earthquake that occurred this afternoon near Ishikawa, Japan. Our thoughts are with those who have been impacted across the region."

Emanuel further indicated that the U.S. government and American military in Japan have offered their full support and are ready to provide aid to the affected communities.

President Joe Biden said in a statement, "As close Allies, the United States and Japan share a deep bond of friendship that unites our people. Our thoughts are with the Japanese people during this difficult time."

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Virginia home explodes as police approach trigger-happy resident with search warrant



Police attempted to execute a search warrant Monday at a duplex in a Washington, D.C., suburb wherein a man was said to be barricaded and firing off a flare gun into the surrounding neighborhood. However, before officers could make entry, an explosion blew the structure sky-high.

According the Arlington County Police Department, officers were dispatched to the 800 block of N. Burlington Street in Bluemont around 4:45 p.m. on Monday in response to a report of possible shots fired.

On the scene, officers learned that the suspect had allegedly fired a flare gun into the surrounding neighborhood an estimated 30-40 times. Fortunately, no one was injured and no property was damaged as a result of the discharge of the flare gun.

Police soon obtained a search warrant for the suspect's home. Before approaching, officers attempted to communicate with the suspect by phone and over loudspeakers. However, police indicated the suspect failed to respond and "remained barricaded inside the residence."

After failing to get through to the suspect, police prepared to execute the search warrant and make entry. However, when they initially attempted to do so, the suspect allegedly opened fire, this time with what was suspected to be a gun.

Alex Wilson, a neighbor who filmed the incident from his rooftop, told WTTG-TV the barricaded resident shot at police with what appeared to be a high-caliber weapon.

"Three hours later, at least, we saw the SWAT truck arrive, and when the SWAT trucks arrive, you know, you're like, 'Oh, things are getting escalated at that point,'" said Wilson.

Police reportedly continued to urge the suspect inside to come outside, but their implorations proved fruitless.

"The guy inside wasn't responding, and they drove a SWAT truck through the front door and then shots were being fired," said Watson.

The initial attempts to breach the front were ineffective, so the tactical team reoriented the vehicle and attempted to burst through the window.

"As the SWAT team were driving forward to the window, that's when the whole place went up," added Wilson.

At 8:25 p.m., the house exploded, injuring three officers. None of the officers required treatment at a hospital.

Footage of the incident shows fire belch from the side of the two-story brick duplex, a cloud of debris punch out the front of the structure, then the roof and much of the interior thrown hundreds of feet into the air. Car alarms ring out while flaming debris rains down into a plume of smoke.

— (@)

Carla Rodriguez of South Arlington indicated she could hear the blast over two miles away, reported the Associated Press.

"I actually thought a plane exploded," said Rodriguez.

Blake Thompson, another nearby resident, told WTTG, "I thought it was a sonic boom at first, but I looked out of my window and I saw burning stuff in the sky, in a sense. It looked like ash, but of course, it was much farther away so it was probably debris."

The house next door was reportedly all but demolished in the explosion. Power was also knocked out to multiple homes in the neighborhood.

The Arlington County Fire Department responded to the scene to put out the inferno and were able to tame it around 10:30 p.m.

— (@)

Capt. Nate Hiner, a spokesman for the ACFD, noted that it is not yet clear what caused the explosion. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other federal agents have joined the investigation.

While the suspect has not yet been identified by police, WTTG and local news website ARLnow.com both indicated that public records suggest a man named James W. Yoo is linked to the residence. Yoo's LinkedIn page, which was deleted overnight, indicates he was previously a landlord who also worked in telecommunications and security.

It's not clear whether Woo was in the house at the time of the explosion or involved in the incident.

Yoo's YouTube channel details various legal complaints he has apparently filed in recent years. Documents shared in a number of the videos indicated his address was 844 N. Burlington Street.

In a Nov. 3 video, Woo shared images of his correspondence with various attorneys and federal officials regarding his complaint alleging Rochester General Hospital illegally held him for five days against his will. The letter indicates those who allegedly detained him did so citing a state law enabling a temporary hold of a mentally compromised individual who is at risk of doing harm to himself or others.

Apparently convinced LinkedIn was suppressing his content — including Woo's suggestion that his supposed poor treatment by the police and government was "how White people operate" — Woo shared videos of various now-deleted posts, including criticism of former President Donald Trump, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The "About" section on his YouTube page states, "I gave THEM / Y'ALL every opportunity to 'do the right thing' and all I see is America's hypocrisy, corruption, fraud, conspiracy, CHICKENSHAT. ... #NoneOfTheAbovePARTY #MontyBrewsterish 'U.S. is the world's biggest TERRORIST' (N.Chomsky, ~2015)."

"This guy has been cooped up for years," Wilson said. "He's closed off his windows, no one has really seen him for years."

Ashley Savage, spokeswoman for the ACPD, told the New York Times, "We have not been able to access the home at this point, so I don't have the status of the suspect."

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) wrote on X, "This is very, very scary, and my profound thanks go out to first responders working to secure the area and keep everyone safe."

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Biden’s tone-deafness reverberates as Hawaiians search for survivors



As stories featuring heroes who risked their own lives to save friends, family, and strangers from the fate of the flames in Maui continue to flood the media, President Biden continues to reflect an inability to grasp — or at least be sympathetic to — what has happened.

Biden claimed, while wearing a lei, that he and Jill have a “little sense” of “what it's like to lose a home,” as their home was once struck by lightning. He also loudly complained that the ground was hot while visiting the ashes of a once-beautiful city.

Mark Levin, who despises the president’s reaction to the wildfires, sheds light on the stories of devastation and hope that Biden has confirmed he is incapable of understanding.

One story features a young man, Benny Reinicke, who carried Sincerity Mirkovich, a total stranger, for miles in order to get Mirkovich and her daughter, Lani Williams, to safety.

The mother-daughter duo had jumped in their car to escape as wildfires began to ravage the town they have lived in for most of their lives. As they sat in standstill traffic, the two found that embers were already falling down on them.

"Then we see another fire on the side of us, a whole house. We're in the car and a whole tree is on fire, and I was like, 'Oh my God, we're going to die,’” Williams told "Good Morning America."

The two decided the best course of action was to seek shelter in the water. However, their escape route proved too difficult, as Mirkovich uses a walker for assistance.

That’s when Benny Reinicke came in.

The man saw the women struggling and told Mirkovich to lean on his back so he could carry her over the seawall and into the water.

Reinicke got them to safety and then stayed with them for over eight hours until the fires subsided.

The trio had not seen each other since the rescue, but they were brought together for a heartwarming reunion on "Good Morning America."

Levin is convinced that it was the Biden-led government that let people like Mirkovich and Williams down — and the government still refuses to acknowledge that obvious fact.

“You can’t prevent every fire and you can’t prevent these high winds in the middle of the Pacific, but to keep blaming climate change for something that obviously had nothing to do with climate change,” Levin comments.

“Then I have this fraud of a president, dementia, no dementia, who has to be told he needs to get there and he has to break off from his second vacation [in] Lake Tahoe, where he constantly is mooching off billionaires and foreign governments and so forth and so on,” he adds.


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Biden gets booed in Maui — then makes matters worse by comparing devastating blazes that killed hundreds to nearly losing his Corvette in a fire



As historic wildfires raged across the Hawaiian island of Maui over the past two weeks, claiming hundreds of lives and scorching thousands of acres, President Joe Biden managed to take two vacations, padding his record of over 365 vacation days since taking office.

Facing significant pressure to do so — especially after an early refusal to comment on the disaster — he cut short his second vacation at a billionaire's mansion in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and made his way to Maui on Monday.

His reception by some survivors of the wildfires was anything but warm.

The environmentally conscious president and his nearly 30-car motorcade went on a five-hour tour of Hawaii, passing disgruntled residents who jeered him, yelling, "Thanks for nothing!" and "Go home, Joe!"

Newsweek reported that other residents who confronted Biden along the way held signs that read "F*** Biden" and "Trump Won." Others held signs near Kapalua Airport, where the president touched down, that read, "It's too late."

The New York Post noted that there were additional signs amid the ash and ruin in Lahaina that said, "Action speaks louder than words" and "FJB," as well as "No comment," in reference to Biden's Aug. 13 refusal to address the tragedy while vacationing in Delaware.

After joking about the ground being hot and a cadaver dog's boots, Biden then delivered a speech in Lahaina in front of the devastated town's ancient banyan tree, which survived the worst of the fires.

While he remembered the name of the island this time around, the 80-year-old president mispronounced the names of multiple Hawaiian officials and called the disaster an "unimaginable travedy."

Biden later addressed another crowd at the Lahaina Civic Center, where he drew a parallel between the deadly inferno, which has reportedly claimed more than 480 lives, and the near-loss of his beloved '67 Corvette as the result of a kitchen fire.

"I don't want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, of what it's like to lose a home," said Biden. "Years ago — now 15 years ago — while I was in Washington doing 'Meet The Press.' It was a sunny Sunday, and lightning struck at home, on a little lake that's outside our home — not a lake, a pond."

"To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my '67 Corvette, and my cat," added Biden.

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A restaurant owner in Kihei, Maui, told the Daily Signal that Biden's comparison was "the most despicable thing this president has ever said," adding, "How do you compare almost losing your f****** Corvette to the children burned in their f****** homes, man?"

Kristen Goodwin, a former teacher on the island, similarly expressed contempt for Biden, noting, "I’m not voting for him again — that's for sure. I'll vote for Trump. I will never vote for him again."

Goodwin characterized Biden's visit as nothing more than a "photo op."

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Maui's wildfire death toll officially 114, but locals running out of body bags reckon it's closer to 500, with thousands still missing



The County of Maui and the Maui Police Department confirmed Sunday that at least 114 people were dead as a result of the Hawaii wildfires that torched thousands of acres and reduced much of the historic town of Lahaina to ash.

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier indicated early last week that rescuers accompanied by scores of cadaver dogs were working their way through the aftermath, over 85% of which had been covered by Sunday, according to Hawaii Gov. Josh Green.

Locals, whose morgues have reportedly run out of body bags, indicated that the actual number of deaths is the neighborhood of 500.

Allisen Medina told the Daily Mail, "I know there are at least 480 dead here in Maui, and I don't understand why they're [the authorities] not saying that. Maybe it's to do with DNA or something."

Authorities are encouraging people to provide DNA samples to help identify victims, reported Axios.

The FBI announced Friday it would be opening a DNA matching site to speed up the process.

"I do know they ran out of body bags by the first or second night and had to ship some in from the mainland," added Medina.

Medina criticized the Biden administration's relief effort, saying, "100 percent not enough is being done, so people are doing it themselves. The government, relief organizations — they're not doing anything."

"We're only 100 miles from Oahu, which has several military bases. Why is the response so lacking? Why are they doing so little? Why is nothing else being done?" asked Medina, who has been traveling to and from Lahaina over the past two weeks, helping burned-out residents.

The 24-year-old also took aim at the apparent failure of some officials, particularly Herman Andaya, the administrator of the Maui Emergency Management Agency who resigned Thursday despite refusing to admit fault.

While she did not mention Andaya by name, Medina blasted his decision not to sound warning sirens.

A part-time morgue worker similarly suggested that around 480 people had already been confirmed dead, telling Southwest flight attendant Sarah Trost that authorities had only searched 13% of Lahaina as of last week, where he personally "found so many children, children and moms holding each other. Infants, toddlers, the unimaginable. Husbands and wives, whole entire [families] in a room just huddling together, burning to death."

The morgue worker further claimed, "It's all bones. ... They have no more room on the island in the morgue, so they're shipping in containers to hold those body bags."

Gov. Green told CBS News Sunday there were still an estimated 1,050 people unaccounted for, noting both that search and recovery efforts in the ruins of larger buildings could "take weeks" and that "the remains of those who died, in some cases, may be impossible to recover" on account of the high temperatures at which the fires burned.

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NBC News reported that an accurate count could take months or even years according to researchers and forensic anthropologists.

"The death toll number is always provisional, in a way," said Lynn Goldman, an epidemiologist and the dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. "I assume people won't stop trying to find remains and the work will take a very, very long time."

Goldman added, "It's going to be challenging to account for all the direct deaths, whether it was people who were burned or people who jumped into the ocean and drowned or people who died of smoke inhalation."

Although the official number is less than one-quarter of that counted by the morgue worker, Medina, and others, Pelletier underscored that it is already "unprecedented."

"No one has ever seen this that is alive today. Not this size, not this number, not this volume — and we're not done," said the Maui police chief.

While officials continue to tabulate how many souls perished in the blazes, some survivors are trying to establish precisely who or what set Maui up to burn.

Numerous lawsuits allege that Hawaiian Electric, which serves 95% of the state's 1.4 million residents, helped set the stage for the wildfires.

TheBlaze previously detailed a report claiming Hawaiian Electric had prioritized its shift to 100% renewable energy — as mandated by Democratic lawmakers — over the clearing of flammable vegetation and the maintenance of its power lines.

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Desperate Parents traverse war-torn Ukraine to recover their abducted children



Tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have been put on trains and moved into the interior of Russia, where they’re being adopted out to Russian parents under the guise of “humanitarian aid” — and Mark Levin is disturbed.

“They’re literally enslaving these kids in Ukraine and taking them into Russia,” Levin explains.

According to a report by the Yale Humanitarian Lab, there are at least 43 Russian facilities holding Ukrainian children, and 78% of those “camps” are engaged in systematic re-education efforts.

The parents of these children have been fighting to get them back.

The children were taken from territories seized by Russian authorities after the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Many families were told it was to protect the children from the fighting and that they would be gone for two weeks.

One woman told PBS that while she initially gave permission for her granddaughter to go for two weeks, she was never returned.

The woman was eventually able to get her granddaughter back, but it took extraordinary effort, and her granddaughter has not been the same since.

The granddaughter told PBS that the rescue by her grandmother came just in time as the camp she was in told the children they were planning to move them out of the camp and that they may be forcibly adopted and become Russian citizens.

“They’re not adopting them, they’re enslaving them. That’s what’s taking place, and it’s only one side that’s doing this. It’s not the other side. Ukraine was invaded. It’s trying to defend itself,” Levin says.

“People are now attacking Zelenskyy,” Levin continues, “[saying] that he’s ungrateful and he’s this and he’s that. He’s a man who’s trying to save his people in his country, and they’ve seen absolute horror. Put yourself in his shoes.”


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Glenn: The DESTRUCTION of eternal truth is hurting YOUR kids
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Glenn: The DESTRUCTION of eternal truth is hurting YOUR kids