Netanyahu Says Israel Will Sue New York Times, Nick Kristof for 'Blood Libel' Rape Article: Times Takes More Heat for Relying on Widely Discredited Source

The pressure on the New York Times intensified Thursday after Israel announced it will sue the newspaper over opinion writer Nicholas Kristof's article alleging garish "sexual violence" by Israeli troops against Palestinian detainees. While a Times spokesman defended Kristof a second time, the Times newsroom, which is separate from the opinion section, has been silent as the integrity of Kristof's reporting comes under heavy fire.

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‘This Doctor and His Staff Are Horrible!’ Democratic House Hopeful Under Fire for Terror Ties Denounced as ‘Creep’ Who Left Patients Scarred, Disfigured, According to Complaints

The deepest cuts are his reviews. A New Jersey plastic surgeon now running for Congress—under fire for his long friendship with the notorious, terror-plotting "Blind Sheikh"—has left a string of patients with lifelong burns, scars, and other disfigurements, according to multiple allegations against his medical practice.

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Disabled Woman Sues Multnomah County After Race-Based Program Denies Her Rent Relief

A disabled woman is suing the homeless services department in Multnomah County, Oregon, after she was denied rent relief due to her low score on the county's race-based prioritization rubric, which awards more points for requesting "culturally specific services"—including "BIPOC"-focused housing—than for having a disability.

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REVIEW: ‘Uncanny’ Michael Jackson biopic moonwalks past controversy



The Michael Jackson biopic is finally here, and it’s already smashing records after a $217.4 million worldwide opening — which is the biggest of all time for a biopic.

“You think you’re watching Michael Jackson. You forget that’s not Michael,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“It’s uncanny,” he adds.

And while there have famously been allegations of child abuse at the hands of Jackson, the biopic didn’t cover them.



“His estate was sued again ... some more sexual abuse allegations. But the lawsuit is from that Cascio family who, they settled, but they claimed that the settlement was breached and broken,” Jeff Fisher explains, pointing out that the family initially claimed Jackson did nothing wrong but later changed their tune.

“It was really bizarre,” he says.

“I’ve always gone back and forth on that, but they don’t deal with it in the movie. I mean, they might in the future. I don’t know, because at the end of it, it says, ‘His story continues,’” Gray comments.

“So I don’t know if [the biopic] gives away too much, but it takes you up to 1988,” he adds, pointing out that this was before the allegations of child abuse.

“His story will continue,” executive producer Keith Malinak adds.

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ACLU fights archangel Michael statue honoring cops — but court might not normalize 'heckler's veto'



A Massachusetts city in the Greater Boston area commissioned a pair of 10-foot-tall bronze statues heavy with cultural and historical significance to honor police and firefighters outside its new public safety headquarters.

Since the statues also carry religious significance — one depicts the winged archangel Michael stepping on the head of a demon, and the other depicts Florian, a third-century firefighting Roman Christian — the American Civil Liberties Union and a handful of secularizing activist groups joined local thin-skinned critics in suing to block the installation last May.

According to the ACLU, having the two statues as the sole adornments on the building's facade "would undermine religious pluralism in Quincy and violate the Massachusetts Constitution’s long-standing requirement that the government remain neutral in matters of religion."

'Let Quincy pay tribute to its firefighters and police.'

The ensuing legal battle has reached the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which heard oral arguments on Wednesday in the case Fitzmaurice v. City of Quincy.

The defendants' thesis, as outlined in their opening brief to the court, is that symbolism on government property should not become "illegal simply because some citizens perceive it to have religious meaning."

Some of the court's justices, Democrat-appointee Gabrielle Wolohojian in particular, did not appear to be entirely buying what the attorney for the city from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty was selling at the outset despite considering his arguments in a city already replete with public art evoking persons, symbols, and themes of religious significance, including multiple statues of Moses.

RELATED: Young men flocking to Christianity in record numbers

Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Image

The court proved particularly fixated on whether Florian and Michael's special recognition as saints by the Catholic Church was actually an issue in this case and raised as possibly relevant in a lower court's insinuation that the statues' primary champion, Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, was untrustworthy and had worked clandestinely to get the statues funded and installed.

The court was not, however, overly receptive to the ACLU's arguments in favor of denying Quincy first responders their statues, which have been defended in recent months by a plethora of organizations, including the nation’s largest firefighter and police unions, various faith groups, and esteemed constitutional scholars.

One justice questioned whether:

  • such legal concern-mongering constitutes a "heckler's veto" that is here at risk of being normalized;
  • the plaintiffs were effectively asking the state's high court to "provide less protection than the Supreme Court on free exercise," or "allow more hostility to religion than the Supreme Court would tolerate"; and
  • the statues endorsed a particular religion — an especially dubious claim given Florian's secular, historical significance and the archangel Michael's significance in multiple distinct faiths as well as in popular culture and literature.

Tom Bowes, president of Quincy's Firefighters Local 792, said in a statement, "For generations, Florian’s legacy has inspired the brave men and women who run toward danger when others need help. We hope the court allows Quincy to honor that tradition and the first responders who live it every day."

Joseph Davis, senior counsel at Becket and an attorney for the city, said, "In this country, public art doesn't become off-limits just because it may make some people think about religion. We’re confident the justices will apply that commonsense rule here and let Quincy pay tribute to its firefighters and police."

Eric Rassbach, another attorney at Becket, said in the wake of the hearing on Wednesday that the ACLU's argument largely "relied on the supposedly dead legal standard known as the Lemon test, which SCOTUS abrogated."

"For decades, the unusuable Lemon test produced confusion and split decisions in cases involving religious symbols," continued Rassbach. "That changed in 2019, when SCOTUS ruled 7-2 in [American Legion v. American Humanist Association] that the First Amendment does not require removing a WWI memorial cross and made clear that Lemon no longer applies."

While the Supreme Court rejected the relevance of the test articulated by SCOTUS in its 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman ruling as a way of guiding the court in identifying Establishment Clause violations, Norfolk Superior Court Judge William Sullivan previously leaned heavily on it in the Quincy case.

"It would be a bizarre move for Massachusetts to revive a test that failed so badly at the federal level, especially since Lemon has no grounding in the Commonwealth’s Constitution," wrote Rassbach. "That document takes a different approach: It recognizes the vital role of religion in public life while guaranteeing equal protection for all religious denominations. That’s a far cry from forcing cities to scrub anything that smacks of the religious from all public property."

The court is expected to deliver its decision sometime this fall.

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DOJ sues Denver over its ongoing war against the 2nd Amendment — and local Democrats aren't pleased



Denver has for decades impinged upon the Second Amendment rights of its residents.

Since 1989, the city has had a so-called "assault weapons" law on the books that now prohibits the carriage, storage, possession, manufacture, and sale of "any semiautomatic pistol or centerfire rifle, either of which have a fixed or detachable magazine with a capacity of more than fifteen rounds" and "any semiautomatic shotgun with a folding stock or a magazine capacity of more than six rounds."

'The Constitution is not a suggestion.'

According to Denver's Code of Ordinances, the city council that initially advanced the ban determined that the use of "assault weapons poses a threat to the health, safety and security of all citizens" in the city and that restrictions on law-abiding Americans' access to such firearms were both "reasonable and necessary."

The Trump Justice Department demanded in a letter last week that the city repeal the ban, underscoring that it is unconstitutional. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division said that failure to comply would likely trigger a lawsuit.

On Monday, the city's attorney, Miko Brown, wrote back to Dhillon, calling the request "baseless, irresponsible, and a clear overreach of the federal government's power."

RELATED: Why the Supreme Court nuked Colorado’s 'Must Stay Gay' law (and what to expect next)

Minh Connors/Washington Post/Getty Images

Democrat Denver Mayor Mike Johnston chimed in, characterizing the DOJ's effort to restore Denverites' rights as intimidation and claiming that the ban "has stood for 37 years because it works, it saves lives, and it reflects the values of our community."

Democrat Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez joined the chorus of fearmongerers, stating both that the Trump administration was trying to deprive students and families of critical "protections" and that "assault weapons take lives — that's what they're made for."

On Tuesday, the DOJ filed a lawsuit with the stated intention of vindicating "the rights of Denver citizens whose rights have been — and are continuing to be — violated."

"The Constitution is not a suggestion and the Second Amendment is not a second-class right," acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. "Denver's ban on commonly owned semi-automatic rifles directly violates the right to bear arms."

Citing the standard for applying the Second Amendment outlined in the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the government's complaint asserts that the "Ordinance is presumptively unconstitutional" and that the City of Denver "will not be able to rebut this presumption."

After noting that the Second Amendment protects firearms "typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes that are in 'common use' today" — a protection affirmed by the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller — the complaint explains that there are at least 28 million AR-style semiautomatic rifles presently in circulation and tens of millions of law-abiding AR-style-rifle owners in the country.

In addition to the numerousness and common use of such weapons, the DOJ's complaint shreds the notion that AR-15-type rifles are the go-to choice for criminals.

When making this point, the DOJ highlighted FBI data showing that whereas there were 364 homicides known to have been committed with rifles of any type in 2019, 6,368 homicides were committed with handguns, 1,476 were committed with knives or other cutting instruments, 600 were committed with hands and feet, and 397 were committed with blunt objects.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division stated, "Law-abiding Americans, regardless of what city or state they reside in, should not have to live under threat of criminal sanction just for exercising their Second Amendment right to possess arms which are owned by tens of millions of their fellow citizens."

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Democratic Fundraiser Threatens Free Beacon for Noticing Veterans Day Tribute to Grandfather Who Fought for Hitler

Kelly Neumann, a Michigan trial attorney and Democratic fundraiser, has threatened the Washington Free Beacon with "legal action" unless we retract our story about her Veterans Day Facebook post honoring her grandfather who served "on the German side" in World War II.

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Federal Judge Who Doubles as George Washington University Lecturer Recuses Herself From Antisemitism Case Against the School After Arguing There Was No Conflict of Interest

A federal judge who teaches a course at George Washington University's law school recused herself from an antisemitism case against the university—but only after she taught the course for three months and argued that her connection to the defendant did not create a conflict of interest. That judge, Biden appointee Loren AliKhan, said her employment didn't create any conflicts and was prepared to stay on the case until one party formally objected.

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California’s Political Commissars Surrender To Elon Musk’s Lawyers

'The Commission agrees that it may not consider irrelevant factors in performing its function and specifically agrees that it will not take into account the perceived political beliefs, political speech, or labor practices of SpaceX or its officers.'

Virginia Supreme Court seems skeptical about Democratic gerrymandering



Virginia voted last week in favor of a referendum to adopt a gerrymandered congressional map that would all but guarantee that 10 out of the state's 11 congressional seats go to Democrats in the upcoming midterm election.

There remains a good chance, however, that the new map may not ultimately be adopted.

Background

There are numerous legal battles across Virginia over whether the gerrymandering referendum that passed Tuesday is lawful. One of those battles — Scott v. McDougle — is now before the Virginia Supreme Court.

In October 2025, Republican state lawmakers and members of the Virginia Redistricting Commission filed a lawsuit, claiming that the special session reconvened late last year to consider a constitutional amendment on redistricting was invalid as it was called not by the governor, who holds the exclusive right to do so, but by the speaker of the state House.

The complaint noted further that while the Virginia House of Delegates "has no constitutional authority to propose a plan to redraw or reapportion districts" for the U.S. Congress, as this falls under the purview of the Virginia Redistricting Commission, the state House nevertheless usurped the authority.

To bypass the commission, lawmakers proposed a constitutional amendment to redraw the congressional map. Getting this amendment on the April 21 ballot required the approval of a corresponding resolution in two separate legislative sessions on either side of a state election. Challengers contend that this process was bungled and legally flawed.

RELATED: GOP bill would squeeze Democratic hives out of Virginia — and back into DC

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), a supporter of the gerrymandering scheme. Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Tazewell County Circuit Judge Jack Hurley Jr. ruled on Jan. 27 that the proposed constitutional amendment was unlawful, but the Virginia Supreme Court subsequently ruled that Virginians could still vote for it in the statewide April 21 referendum while the case proceeds.

The day after the referendum passed, Hurley blocked the state from certifying the results of the vote, ruling that the legislature's constitutional amendment and the special election on it were invalid.

Skeptical of Democratic plot

On Monday, the Virginia Supreme Court heard arguments in Scott v. McDougle.

One Virginia justice extracted concessions from the defense at the outset that the "yes" vote in the referendum "doesn't tell us anything" about the merits of the challengers' claims, and that the Virginia General Assembly didn't follow its own procedural rules with regard to the special session during which the new congressional map was passed.

Multiple justices expressed skepticism about the validity of that special session.

One justice said that contrary to the previous expectation in Virginia that the legislature wouldn't sit year-round, the Democratic "interpretation of the special session would allow them to sit in continuous session for the better part of two years."

The same justice appeared receptive to the argument by Thomas McCarthy, attorney arguing for the plaintiffs, that "it's sort of a nonsensical position to say that the special session exists through a regular session" — referencing the overlap of the 2024 special session and the 2025 general session.

The justices also did not appear entirely convinced by Democrats' argument that enough time had passed between when the amendment was first passed and the 2025 state election. The legislature voted on the amendment in October, weeks after early voting for the 2025 election had already begun.

"What is your position — your client's position — regarding a constitutional amendment that is adopted at 6 p.m. on Election Day with an hour left at the polls?" asked one justice. "Is that still the next general election?"

Virginia Solicitor General Tillman Breckenridge responded that the amendment must only be passed before Election Day, rather than on it.

McCarthy argued to the contrary, claiming that for the amendment to have been valid, it should have been passed before the entire voting period, not just before Election Day 2025. A Virginia Supreme Court justice subsequently noted that the amendment process responsible for the passage of the gerrymandering legislation was unprecedented.

Of note, the Circuit Court of the City of Richmond ruled on Sunday in a separate but related case that the Virginia General Assembly did not exceed its authority when passing the amendment on redistricting.

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