'You kill disabled people': Lesbian bar faces revolt over mask-optional event in 2026



Most businesses in 2026 have long moved on from the mask mandates of the COVID era — but one Massachusetts bar has built its business around those mandates.

And now it’s paying the price.

Last Ditch, a lesbian bar in Greenfield for “immunocompromised” lesbians, announced that it would begin allowing mask-optional Saturday nights in an effort to host larger events, DJs, and themed club nights while maintaining other masked gatherings throughout the month.

Owner Jackie Matellian posted news of the change under a banner declaring “UPDATES!”

“It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional to try out typical club nights with themes/hosts/DJs/full capacity,” she wrote on the Last Ditch instagram.


“Accessibiliy is a pillar of our mission,” she continued. “AND our mission is also to make the space work for everyone and everything radical, sometimes that’s being wild!”

“We strive for solidarity, transparency of risks, and connecting us all in this revolution. We still give priority to public and private Masked bookings, and continue a recurring monthly Masked Social prioritizing safety. It is only after an outpour of feedback from our regulars, volunteers, and team that we make this addition,” she added.

“They had a mandatory face mask rule in the year 2026. Remember, this place didn’t even open until 2025," BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere says on “Stu and Dave Do America.”

"Right, so there’d be no reason to have this,” agrees co-host Dave Landau.

“All these restrictions have been lifted even by the craziest governments by now,” Stu adds.

“What is their logic for this?” Dave asks.

“I think it’s insanity,” Stu answers, before reading some of the comments on the Instagram post.

“Just say you’re being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with,” one comment reads.

“People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience,” another one says.

Stu is shocked, saying, “Imagine living like this.”

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Oregon burns, Portlanders shrug: It's just 'wildfire season' — get used to it



Here in Portland, we’ve had a bad week of wildfire smoke. It’s been at DON’T GO OUTSIDE levels. You literally feel the ache in your chest. Your eyes begin to burn.

This recent event brought to mind the Great Portland Smoke-Out of 2020, which followed the most devastating and deadly wildfires in Oregon history.

I went to relax in a lounge chair by the hotel pool. But as I lay there, I noticed the sky slowly change from blue, to a dull yellow, and then to a reddish gray.

Thanks to that ordeal, people know what to do during smoke events. They stay inside. They wear masks. They seal their doors and windows.

One thing I noticed during this year’s wildfire emergency: There’s been little talk about what anyone could have done to prevent it.

After 2020, Oregon spent nearly $200 million on wildfire prevention and preparedness. The state promised more prescribed burns, more fuel reduction, and more resilient forests. Six years later, there’s plenty of bureaucracy devoted to wildfire, but it’s hard to tell what any of it has accomplished.

Liberals hardly even talk about "climate change" anymore. Whatever you thought of that explanation, at least it implied there was a problem to fix.

Now, we just call it “wildfire season." As if it's an inevitable part of the cycle of life. It comes every year. Like the snow melts in the mountains. Or the leaves change in the fall.

We’ve normalized the burning of our state.

Worst year ever

In 2020, we were already dealing with riots; and then COVID lockdowns; and then terrible fires; and then dense walls of smoke descended on Portland.

The first day of smoke was bad. The second day was nightmarish.

I woke up that day at 6 a.m. I could already feel the burning in my lungs. I’d had serious respiratory problems in the past, so I made the immediate decision to evade the coming smoke by whatever means necessary. I jumped out of bed and quickly packed a bag.

I clicked on the radio and consulted various smoke maps on my laptop. Northeastern Oregon still looked clear, so I got in my car and started driving east toward Pendleton, 200 miles away.

Surely that was far enough. I could stay there for a couple days, until the smoke cleared.

As I passed through downtown Portland, the smoke was as thick as fog. As I continued east, through the Columbia Gorge, the smoke was so dense you couldn’t see the Columbia River, 50 yards to your left.

The air smelled toxic. The smoke blocked out the sun. You couldn’t tell what time it was by the ambient light. You had to look at your watch.

They didn’t see it coming

In Pendleton, I could finally see blue sky. But according to the weather radar on my phone, the smoke was right behind me. I remember that the teenage employees at the Pendleton Burger King didn’t know anything about it. I had to explain to them that in an hour they’d be engulfed.

I got back in my car and drove farther east to Boise, another 200 miles. When I got there, the skies were clear. I had outrun the smoke. And hopefully outdistanced it as well.

I checked into a hotel. I thought, OK, I’ll just hang out here for a couple days.

I went to relax in a lounge chair by the hotel pool. But as I lay there, I noticed the sky slowly change from blue, to a dull yellow, and then to a reddish gray.

How could the smoke have caught up with me? I had driven here at 80 mph!

The next day I drove to Pocatello and the day after that to Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake was a ghost town because of COVID. There, I checked into an eccentric-looking two-star hotel. It was the only place open.

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UCG/Bloomberg

Salt Lake City

The smoke eventually arrived in Salt Lake City too, but only faintly. It wasn’t the suffocating soup it was in Oregon.

I kept thinking, One more day, and I’ll head back. But then I’d check the air quality in Portland, and it was still “extremely hazardous.”

On Facebook, my Portland friends were hunkered down, taping up their windows, sealing their homes. They were stuck inside with their kids, their pets; nobody was going outside. They put on brave fronts on Facebook, but I could tell they were losing their minds.

In SLC, I was just bored. I walked around a lot. My hotel was full of weirdos. Some of them lived there. They appeared unaware that the world was on fire.

In my room, I had the Weather Channel on continuously. By now, I was an expert at tracking smoke. My laptop bookmarks were everything from obscure NOAA wind maps to meticulous air quality websites based in Switzerland.

Throughout all of this, I kept thinking: This can’t last more than another couple days. But in fact, it lasted eight more days.

Finally, when the sky was visible in Portland, I began the long drive home.

Homecoming

It took days to air my apartment out. At first, I felt survivor’s guilt. My traumatized friends and neighbors looked like they’d been through a war.

Of course, this recent smoke event wasn’t nearly as bad as the Great Portland Smoke-Out of 2020. This one only lasted four days. Most people didn’t bother to tape their doors and windows shut. But they could have. They know how. They’ve done it before.

Like I said, Portlanders are accepting this. Like they accepted mask mandates. Like they accepted transgender children.

They even named our new WNBA team the Portland Fire. It’s almost like they’re asking for it.

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Deja vu: Christians are falling for the same trap that fooled them in 2020



As Minnesota erupts in protests with cries of racism and tyranny over the recent ICE shootings, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says she’s “having deja vu to 2020.”

“Like, are we really doing this again?” Stuckey asks.

“So many women in my DMs have yet again fallen for the very same psychological and political traps that were laid for us in 2020 and, in some ways, were laid for us all the way back in the Garden of Eden,” she explains.

In 2020, Stuckey recalls people suddenly becoming “very feverish about things like masks.”

“We were getting a lot of propaganda. It was almost like Trump’s enemies realized that they can harness this as a tool to try to help him lose the election. And then George Floyd happens, the riots happen, the protests,” she says.


“And, of course, you remember that right away, the reaction by most people, especially in the evangelical world, was to condemn racism, to condemn police brutality, to condemn white supremacy, to almost apologize to their black friends, to post the black square, maybe put their Christian spin on it,” she continues.

Of course, those same people ignored the deaths of young people like Tony Timpa and Justine Damond, who were also unarmed, in non-threatening positions, and killed by police officers.

“But they didn’t have the right skin color. And so they didn’t point to the systemic white supremacy, the institutional racism that has plagued our country since its very beginning,” Stuckey says.

“That’s just not true. That’s not politically true. I mean, black Americans have a large segment of the vote. They almost always vote Democrat. Barack Obama won his election two years in a row. It’s not true that these voices are politically unheard, but that was used by Christians to justify violence and to check themselves and to check their privilege and to commit to being an anti-racist,” she continues.

“And I had read too much Thomas Sowell and too much Walter Williams at that point in my life to buy into that. But I’m telling you, for real, it was really hard. It would have been so much easier at the time to shut up about that and to just not say anything, to just post the black square,” she says.

And while both of the recent ICE shootings have been of white people, they were white people defending the honor of minorities and white people playing into the propaganda that minorities need saving, just like in 2020.

“They’re buying into lies, and they’re very tied to it,” Stuckey says.

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Health commissars are pushing masking again in Newsom's California



California's mask commissars are once again clamoring for Americans to cover their faces.

During the pandemic, Democrat leaders and health officials in the Golden State proved eager to condition Americans' ability to leave the house and to perform basic errands on wearing a mask.

"Bring your mask with you whenever you leave your home," said former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. "That will help us get more freedoms."

On June 18, 2020 — just over a month after L.A. reopened its beaches — the California Department of Public Health announced that Californians were required to wear face coverings in public spaces; when obtaining services from the health care sector; when waiting for or riding on public transportation; when engaged in work with other members of the public; and "while outdoors in public spaces when maintaining a physical distance of six feet from persons who are not members of the same household."

"Simply put, we are seeing too many people with faces uncovered," said Gavin Newsom — the Democrat governor who months later issued a statewide order expanding the mask requirement to most indoor and outdoor settings.

Newsom issued his order despite evidence that masks, like the COVID-19 vaccines, weren't as effective as some proponents liked to pretend.

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Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

For instance, the Centers for Disease Control's peer-reviewed journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, published a study in May 2020 that found "no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks."

The researchers stated, "There is limited evidence for [disposal medical masks'] effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza."

'I recommend that everybody in West Sacramento wear a mask when they are around others in indoor public spaces.'

Although Newsom's mask mandate was partially dropped in March 2022, mask requirements nevertheless remained in effect for certain settings. Even a comprehensive Cochrane analysis of scientific studies concerning the efficacy of masks in reducing the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses, led by Oxford epidemiologist Tom Jefferson and published in January 2023, concluded:

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness/COVID‐19-like illness compared to not wearing masks. ... Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza/SARS‐CoV‐2 compared to not wearing masks.

Aimee Sisson, the health officer in Yolo County, said in a statement on Friday, "California is experiencing a summer COVID wave."

The CDC's COVID-19 Hospitalization Surveillance Network indicated that in the week ending Aug. 23, the national hospitalization rate was 1.4 per 100,000 for those ages 0-4; 0.2 for those ages 5-17; 0.4 for those ages 18-49; 0.9 for those ages 50-64; and 5.1 for those 65 and older.

While the overall level of hospitalizations for the endemic virus is reportedly "low," the Los Angeles Times indicated the number is increasing across the Golden State.

According to an estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 infections are growing or likely growing in 31 states, including California.

RELATED: The numbers hold terrible news for the Democrats’ future

Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

"Based on current wastewater levels of the virus that causes COVID-19, I recommend that everybody in West Sacramento wear a mask when they are around others in indoor public spaces," said Sisson. "I also recommend that people in the rest of Yolo County wear masks when they are around others indoors if they are 65 or older, have a weakened immune system, have an underlying medical condition that puts them at a greater risk of severe COVID-19, or spend time around people who fall into these categories."

The San Francisco Department of Public Health has similarly recommended "wearing a well-fitted mask when you are in crowded, indoor spaces, including when traveling."

The California Department of Public Health noted in a social media post on Saturday, "Protect yourself and your loved ones by considering masking in indoor public places like airports and planes. Wear a high-quality mask like an N95, KN95 or KF94 to stay protected."

The CDPH told Blaze News in a statement, "CDPH continues to recommend masks in certain situations and is not considering changing these recommendations at this time."

"Local health departments may make recommendations on masking based on virus activity in their region," the agency added in its statement. "Overall wastewater concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 are currently increasing, and it is not yet clear when wastewater activity will peak this summer."

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'Eddington': Portrait of COVID-era craziness wrings laughs from peak wokeness



Did anyone want to revisit America circa May 2020? BLM. COVID-19. Mask mandates. Peak cancel culture. Social distancing.

No, thank you.

A throwaway scene finds a white teen describing his privilege to his gobsmacked parents. Their reaction is guaranteed to draw howls.

Somehow director Ari Aster makes it an invitation worth considering.

2020 vision

The director behind “Hereditary,” “Midsommar,” and “Beau Is Afraid” jumps into that awful, no-good chapter in U.S. history with “Eddington.” Those expecting another progressive screed from La La Land will be happily disappointed.

Nor is Aster gunning for a MAGA cocktail party invite. His tale pulls nary a punch, belittling both hard-right conspiracists and BLM types.

What’s maddening is the lack of discipline in the film’s third act. If you thought 2020’s Summer of Love protests proved chaotic, perhaps “Eddington’s” finale feels appropriate.

Otherwise, a potentially great film loses its way.

Mask off

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Sheriff Joe Cross, an earnest lawman flustered by his state’s new mask mandates. It’s May 2020, and the country has already fallen for pandemic hysteria.

He tries to bring sanity to his New Mexico hamlet with few results. The locals have already adopted a mask-at-all-cost approach, including Eddington’s Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal).

Mostly.

That drives Joe to impulsively declare his candidacy for mayor, much to the chagrin of his troubled wife, Louise (Emma Stone). She spends her days ducking his carnal advances and devouring conspiracy theories along with her hard-charging Ma (Deirdre O’Connell).

Progressive Mad Libs

Meanwhile, the death of George Floyd sparks sympathetic protests across Eddington, straining the town’s wafer-thin resources. It’s neighbor against neighbor, and some of the young protesters barely know what they’re shouting about.

White privilege. Colonization. Racist cops. It’s a Mad Libs dash through progressive slogans, and it’s even sillier than what we remembered. The protests are a blindingly white affair, with BLM sympathizers torn between acknowledging their privilege and barking land acknowledgements.

One teen wants to get lucky, so he Googles “Angela Davis” just to break the ice with a pretty protester.

We can laugh about it now, but it wasn’t funny at the time. And sadly, remnants of that thinking refuse to slink away.

Aster isn’t sugarcoating far-left absurdism, although his hard-right conspiracies feel too cartoonish. The writer/director’s sense of editorial balance is shocking and smart. It’s a culture war movie that doesn’t look or sound like one.

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Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

Too soon?

The director leans into TikTok videos, YouTube confessionals, and cancel culture attacks — 2020 distractions that kept our attention during lockdowns.

The only thing missing? Netflix’s “Tiger King” series.

Sheriff Joe wants to have it both ways. He’s disgusted by residents trying to capture him in an unflattering light on their smartphones. He still turns to his phone to record campaign videos.

His political instincts, or lack thereof, are the film’s funniest running gags.

Aster’s setup is bracing and uncomfortable. Is it too soon to dissect this societal breakdown? The answer quickly becomes “no,” especially given how much we’ve learned about COVID-19, vaccines, and BLM-style activism since then.

Hackneyed slogans

“Eddington” isn’t a traditional comedy, but its satirical swipes leave a mark. A throwaway scene finds a white teen describing his privilege to his gobsmacked parents. Their reaction is guaranteed to draw howls.

Man, it feels good to laugh at that.

Eddington teens want to do something, anything, other than stay locked in their homes. So they join BLM and recite hackneyed slogans without actually understanding what they mean.

They look miserable.

The overstuffed story includes Austin Butler as an oily conspiracy theorist (is there any other kind?), a plot thread that adds a few chuckles to the story. Butler is a charismatic presence, but he’s not fully unleashed.

Laugh riot

Aster never knows how to leave well enough alone — his 2019 misfire “Midsommar” felt longer than the Summer Olympics. That means “Eddington” overstays its welcome by at least 20 minutes (the film is just shy of two-and-a-half hours long).

The film takes a violent turn mid-movie but lacks the urgency of the best screen thrillers. Instead, we watch a key character scramble for his life while we wonder what, exactly, is happening on screen.

Little of it makes sense, and the film’s coal black humor takes a knee.

Phoenix gets the meatiest role as a troubled sheriff. Poor Joe is earnest but overwhelmed, trying to process our 24/7 digital age without much luck. Pascal’s mayor should have our sympathy, from his pro-masking stances to having “he/him” on his Zoom profile.

Overdue relief

That’s how Hollywood movies work in 2025 ... right?

Instead, the actor makes sure to show his character’s smarmy side, and Aster refuses to deify a Hispanic leader.

“Eddington” is neither a lecture nor a cautionary tale. Aster serves up no solutions, only the potential for more misery. We already lived through the worst of what’s seen on screen, and laughing at it now offers a delicious, overdue sense of relief following those over-reactions.

We wouldn’t do that again. Would we?

It’s why the final, chaotic moments prove so dispiriting. “Eddington” eventually loses its way, and a bitter coda puts an exclamation point on that fact.

It’s high past time Hollywood grappled with the worst year in recent memory. Aster’s willingness to call out all sides makes "Eddington" a bracing, almost necessary watch.

Why I’m rooting for the lunatic over the creep in NYC



Although I would do so reluctantly — while holding a barf bag in one hand — if forced to vote in the next New York City mayoral election, I’d cast my ballot for Zohran Mamdani.

Yes, that Zohran Mamdani.

It isn’t just the Democratic Party destroying these cities — it’s the people who keep voting for them. Let them live with the consequences.

A dire warning about this unappetizing candidate, a “Muslim lefty from the other side of Queens,” just appeared in the New York Post, which reports that Mamdani consorts with pro-Hamas rioters, adores Black Lives Matter, and recently said Bill de Blasio was “the best mayor of his lifetime.”

In a sane political environment, such a figure would be consigned to the loony bin. But in the present urban climate, voters find themselves grasping for the least ghastly option — if they bother voting at all.

And Mamdani, God help me, appears marginally less disgusting than Andrew Cuomo, who is now the front-runner.

Cuomo, who presided over the slow death of New York as governor, seems poised to take the helm of a city already in decay. In any race to the bottom, he’d win in a landslide. This is a man who groped and manhandled female staffers while parading his feminist credentials; who packed nursing homes with COVID patients, causing the deaths of thousands; who then lied about it repeatedly and shamelessly. He worked tirelessly to eliminate cash bail, unleashing a wave of criminality across the state.

And yet, somehow, Mamdani is supposed to be worse?

That former Mayor Mike Bloomberg — now a prolific funder of leftist candidates — is backing Cuomo only sharpens the stench of this whole affair. The staleness of the New York political class, its complete moral exhaustion, has never been more evident.

Still, I’ll give you another reason I prefer Mamdani: Sometimes collapse is a better catalyst than stagnation.

Cuomo would likely run the city into the ground — but slowly. He’d reward the usual Democratic parasites with patronage, keep street crime just under the boiling point, and exercise marginally more restraint when it comes to unwanted touching. He’d reassure the woke plutocrats and Wall Street donors that he won’t rock the boat too much. He knows the game and plays it well.

But the rot would fester.

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Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

New York would remain unsafe. Schools and other public institutions would stay in the grip of culturally radicalized unions. The courts would remain ideological tools of the left. Nothing would improve. The decline would just ooze along — business as usual.

Mamdani, by contrast, might deliver a spectacular crash.

If he’s as doctrinaire and deranged as his critics suggest, his administration could bring about real catastrophe with impressive speed. That kind of shock might finally push productive citizens to flee en masse and accelerate the corporate exodus already under way. Sometimes it takes a maniac to wake the slumbering.

This wouldn’t be the first time a disastrous mayor paved the way for genuine reform. In 1994, New Yorkers elected Rudy Giuliani after enduring the catastrophic tenure of David Dinkins. Giuliani cracked down on crime, brought investment back, and helped restore a semblance of order. But it took years of misrule to make that turnaround politically possible.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: That kind of change isn’t possible any more. Cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia are too far gone. Their voting blocs are locked into leftist fantasy. The idea of another Giuliani, a Richard Daley Sr., or even a Frank Rizzo showing up today seems laughable.

Maybe so. But if that’s true, then the voters are getting exactly what they asked for. It isn’t just the Democratic Party destroying these cities — it’s the people who keep voting for them.

Let them live with the consequences.

Given the state of our urban politics, the choice now is between ideological lunatics and cynical reprobates. Mamdani may fast-forward the train wreck. Cuomo might slow it down. But either way, the crash is coming.

At least with Mamdani, we might finally reach bottom — and from there, maybe, begin again.

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