Ex-Prince Andrew arrested after police open Epstein-related misconduct case



Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew and the younger brother of King Charles III, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

The Thames Valley Police said they arrested a man in his 60s from Norfolk around 8 a.m.

Misconduct in public office is a common-law offense in England and Wales and can carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The BBC confirmed that Mountbatten-Windsor had been arrested, sharing footage of police vehicles arriving at the estate.

Assistant Chief Constable Oliver Wright added in a statement:

"Following a thorough assessment, we have now opened an investigation into this allegation of misconduct in public office. We understand the significant public interest in this case, and we will provide updates at the appropriate time."

RELATED: Do the Epstein files confirm this Pizzagate theory? NY Mag contributor makes stunning admission.

Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

Thames Valley Police confirmed last week that it was assessing allegations tied to documents within the U.S. Department of Justice’s Epstein files.

Wright said last week: “We can confirm today that Thames Valley Police is leading the ongoing assessment of allegations relating to misconduct in public office. This specifically relates to documents within the United States Department of Justice’s Epstein Files.”

Mountbatten-Windsor served as the United Kingdom’s special representative for international trade and investment from 2001 to 2011.

RELATED: Gov. Pritzker's cousin steps down at Hyatt over Epstein relationship

Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images

King Charles III acknowledged the arrest, “I have learned with the deepest concern the news about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and suspicion of misconduct in public office.”

Charles said that he expressed “deepest concern” and that “the law must take its course,” adding that the royal family would offer “full and wholehearted support and co-operation” to police.

Misconduct in public office is a common-law offense in England and Wales and can carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

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Free speech in Britain is worse than you think



If you want to see where contemporary speech regulation leads, look to Britain.

My country, the birthplace of the common law tradition and parliamentary liberty, now arrests thousands of its citizens each year for “offensive” speech. Much of what Americans still debate as hypothetical has already hardened into policy here.

While commentators work to enforce elite consensus, perceptions of two-tier policing have fueled public anger.

This did not happen overnight, nor did it require a dramatic constitutional rupture. It emerged gradually, through well-intentioned laws, bureaucratic definitions, and institutional habits that now govern what may be said, by whom and about whom. For Americans who assume such restrictions could never survive contact with the First Amendment, Britain offers a sobering corrective.

Catalog of grievance

The roots of this crisis can be traced to the Equality Act 2010, which laid the groundwork for today’s restrictions on speech. The act provides a legal definition of “protected characteristics,” making it unlawful to discriminate against individuals on the basis of attributes such as sex or race.

The act outlines core areas — race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and gender reassignment — which form the foundation of modern hate-crime legislation. Crimes deemed to be motivated by prejudice or hostility toward individuals with these characteristics can result in longer prison sentences. Yet because prejudice and discrimination are inherently subjective and difficult to quantify, hate-crime legislation erodes the principle of equality before the law.

In total, there are nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Although not all meet the legal threshold for hate crime, these categories are embedded across workplace training, education, and public services.

Institutionalizing them frames certain groups as uniquely vulnerable to harm, encouraging institutions to treat speech as a risk to be managed rather than a liberty to be protected, and confers a durable victim identity. Through the lens of identity politics, victimhood becomes a proxy for moral authority. Unsurprisingly this logic expands rather than contracts. Campaigns to add further protected traits — such as menopause, misogyny, or afro hair — reflect a constantly growing catalog of grievance.

12,000 arrests a year

This mindset has enabled some of the most restrictive internet-speech enforcement in the Western world. Each year, roughly 12,000 Britons are arrested for online communications deemed “offensive.” In widely reported cases, individuals have received custodial sentences for social-media posts seen by only a handful of people, or have been arrested for deliberately provocative but nonviolent acts. In another case, a man received a lengthy prison sentence for possessing music classified by authorities as “right-wing.” The cumulative effect has been chilling: Free expression now exists largely at the discretion of the state.

Even when not explicitly codified, the logic of victimhood drives these censorious impulses. Nowhere is this clearer than in the evolving concept of Islamophobia — a concept that Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, has pledged to “reform.”

With opinion polls faltering, Starmer finds himself electorally dependent on a sizable Muslim voting bloc. He must reassure the public that Britain remains a liberal democracy — one in which citizens are free to criticize, offend, and mock religion. The state’s response has been semantic rather than substantive. Islamophobia is now being reframed as “anti-Muslim hatred,” defined in draft guidance as:

Engaging in or encouraging criminal acts, including violence, vandalism, harassment, or intimidation — whether physical, verbal, written, or electronic — directed at Muslims or those perceived to be Muslim because of their religion, ethnicity, or appearance.

Although this definition is non-statutory and not legally binding, it is likely to encourage further self-censorship around legitimate discussion of Islam. A similar effect followed the adoption of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims’ definition of Islamophobia. The Labour Party and numerous public bodies — including more than 50 local councils, some governing Muslim-majority areas such as Bradford, Birmingham, Rochdale, and Leicester — have adopted it.

RELATED: Pakistani cousin marriage has no place in UK

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Hiding behind 'Islamophobia'

These same regions have long faced serious criminal scandals, including the sexual abuse of young girls by grooming gangs disproportionately composed of men of Pakistani origin. Official inquiries have documented how institutional reluctance to address these crimes — often citing fear of being perceived as “Islamophobic” — contributed to prolonged failures of safeguarding.

As someone who has written extensively about the cultural practice of cousin marriage, I must ask: Does pointing out the well-documented link between consanguinity and elevated risk of congenital disorders now qualify as “hostility”?

Rather than encouraging honest debate, further definitional expansion risks reinforcing institutional silence. In recent years, National Health Service materials have presented first-cousin marriage in notably neutral or positive terms, while academic journals have warned that criticism of female genital mutilation can shade into racism — sometimes proposing euphemistic language in place of the word “mutilation” itself.

This kind of top-down enforcement rarely sits well with voters. Public frustration grows when large numbers of young male asylum seekers are housed in already strained cities, while criticism of immigration policy is constrained by speech codes. No amount of central planning can engineer a harmonious multicultural society. Rebranding Islamophobia as “anti-Muslim hostility” will not resolve these tensions. It instead grants the state wider discretion to interpret — and restrict — speech.

Expansion of civil claims

The revised guidance goes further, characterizing anti-Muslim hostility as “the prejudicial stereotyping and racialization of Muslims as a collective group with set characteristics.” Like all attempts to police expression, the language is subjective and elastic. What happens if one agrees with MI5 that Islamist terrorism represents the most significant national-security threat? Or if one cites court data showing disproportionate Muslim representation in grooming-gang convictions?

The guidance also gestures toward institutional liability, warning against the “creation or use of practices and biases within institutions.” This invites an expansion of HR enforcement and civil claims based on indirect discrimination. Recent employment-tribunal cases — some involving substantial settlements for “injury to feelings” — illustrate how these standards already operate in practice.

Britain already restricts expression where Islam is concerned. Although blasphemy laws were formally repealed in England and Wales in 2008, they continue to function de facto. In one recent case, a man who burned a Quran was charged with “offending the religious institution of Islam” — an offense unknown to statute. (He later won on appeal.) When prosecution proceeds on improvised grounds, it is not difficult to imagine future cases brought under the banner of “anti-Muslim hostility.”

This is the endpoint of multiculturalism: ad hoc speech regulations shaped by cultural sensitivities and sustained by mass immigration. While commentators work to enforce elite consensus, perceptions of two-tier policing have fueled public anger.

There should be no such thing as a hate crime — only crime. Conditions are likely to worsen before they improve. Open borders and cultural relativism have become default assumptions across much of the West, yet they sit uneasily with the rule of law and freedom of expression.

If you want to see where contemporary speech regulation leads, look to Britain. Americans would be wise to do so while these questions are still debated in theory — rather than enforced in practice.

Woke UK video game backfires: 'Extremist' Amelia becomes viral symbol of British pride



Hull City Council in Yorkshire, England — an area overwhelmed by third-world asylum seekers in recent years — wasted no time setting a high bar for self-owns this year.

The local authority teamed up with the East Riding of Yorkshire Council and the woke media literacy outfit Shout Out UK to create an online choose-your-own adventure video game targeting young Britons titled "Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism."

'The government is betraying white British people.'

To the chagrin of the re-education tool's makers, one of its supposed villains, a purple-haired patriotic character named Amelia, has been appropriated and used to great effect in counter-messaging campaigns by the right and other critics of the woke British establishment.

The game

Hull City Council announced last year that the game would be "made available to schools, education settings, and community and youth organizations throughout the city" and used to teach youths "about the dangers of extremism and radicalization."

One of the stated objectives of the propaganda tool was to "demonstrate the local threat picture of Extreme Right Wing activities specifically."

The game offers six scenarios in which users decide the path the protagonist, Charlie, will take.

In the third scenario, Charlie — who is referred to as "they" — watches a video that claims both that "Muslim men are stealing the places of British war veterans in emergency accommodation" and that "the government is betraying white British people."

RELATED: 'Enemy of Europe': Liberal globalists attack Trump over recognizing 'civilizational erasure' in Europe

Screenshots from Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism.

If the player decides that "this seems unfair" and has Charlie engage with the post, Charlie ends up inadvertently sharing the content with online bad actors, sending the player's radicalization risk score through the roof.

Charlie avoids arrest long enough to attend class with Amelia in the third scenario, where she suggests that "immigrants are coming to the U.K. and taking our jobs."

Amelia features prominently in the fourth scenario, where she is introduced as a close friend of Charlie who has "made a video encouraging young people in Birdlington to join a political group that seeks to defend English rights."

After Amelia — who is depicted holding the Union Jack and a sign that says, "No entry" — asks Charlie to join a group called Action for Britain and shares a video on-theme, the player is given the option of having Charlie: ignore the video, like the video but not join the group, or share the video and join the group.

If the player chooses the third option, their radicalization risk score increases just as it will increase if they agree in the final scenario to go in Amelia's place to protest "the erosion of British values."

Screenshot from Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism.

Regardless of inputs, the game inevitably suggests that exposure to supposedly extremist views such as love for nation, concern over wage suppression by immigrants, and cultural erasure warrant Charlie's referral to an anti-terrorism expert and re-education on "how to engage positively with ideology and the difference between right and wrong in expressing political beliefs."

The Telegraph, citing official documents, revealed last year that the British government listed "cultural nationalism," defined as the belief that Western culture is "under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups," as a terrorist ideology.

The game concludes with the suggestion that only after receiving counseling on "harmful ideology" from a hijab-wearing counselor is Charlie able to "rebuild their confidence, find their identity, and continue their college course successfully."

New pathway for Amelia

Amelia has recently featured in numerous viral online videos and memes where she warns of the Islamification of Britain, champions national pride, promotes normalcy, and criticizes leftist policies.

In a popular Amelia meme shared by Elon Musk, the character underscores that the English people aren't "immigrants" and "didn't 'arrive' in England. They became England — over more than a millennium."

In another popular meme, Amelia is shown bonding with Charlie over their common love of country, getting married, then starting a family.

Amelia has also been depicted as the Lady of the Lake of Arthurian legend, handing an armored knight the sword Aerondight; in photo-realistic images mocking political figures; and in a multitude of other images making a wide range of political commentary.

British journalist Mary Harrington writing for UnHerd noted that "Amelia stands as a potent illustration of how desperately an officialdom accustomed to comparatively comprehensive public message control is struggling to adapt to the recursive online environment."

When pressed for comment, Hull City Council referred Blaze News to the U.K. Home Office, which did not respond. Shout Out UK for comment similarly did not respond.

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Princeton’s president lectures America on free speech — and omits his own failure



At a moment when elite universities are under intense scrutiny for how they handle speech, protest, and ideological conformity, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber has entered the debate with a defense of the status quo. His new book, “Terms of Respect,” argues that the crisis of free speech on campus has been overstated and that colleges are, in fact, getting it mostly right. The argument is polished, earnest, and in crucial places, deeply evasive.

I have no particular affection for Eisgruber. Still doubt deserves a hearing. In that spirit of restrained generosity, I read “Terms of Respect” with real interest. Would he distinguish himself from the failed presidencies of Claudine Gay, Liz Magill, and Minouche Shafik? Would he say something candid, new, or clarifying about free speech on campus?

Justice Louis Brandeis famously argued that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Eisgruber seems to disagree.

The book is, as expected, careful, lawyerly, and saturated with constitutional doctrine. Eisgruber is a serious scholar and writes like one. His prose is sober, the tone measured, the citations abundant. He spends considerable time walking the reader through legal history before arriving at his central claim: that colleges are not failing at free speech nearly as badly as critics allege. The real problem, he argues, is a broader “civic crisis” afflicting American society.

Free speech, Eisgruber insists, must be understood alongside equality, civility, and respect. Truly constructive speech, he claims, must be both “uncensored and regulated.” Colleges, in his telling, deserve higher marks than they receive.

So far, so plausible.

Then comes chapter four, page 65.

There Eisgruber repeats the long-debunked “very fine people on both sides” libel regarding President Donald Trump’s remarks after the 2017 Charlottesville rally. He cites a New York Times article by Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman and reproduces the claim without qualification.

This is not a trivial slip. The full transcript of Trump’s remarks has been publicly available for years. Eisgruber is a constitutional lawyer and university president. He could have made his point without repeating a known falsehood. But apparently the fruit was just too juicy to leave unharvested, so he ventures into the dark land of “lying for justice.”

Why?

The most charitable explanation is tribal comfort. Eisgruber knows that no one within his ideological circle will challenge him for repeating the lie. The same insularity that led Ivy presidents to offer evasive, lawyerly, and absurd testimony before Congress is at work here. Inside the tribe, bureaucratic language suffices. Outside it, in the sunlight, the hubris falls easily to the nemesis of scrutiny.

And Eisgruber is only getting warmed up.

Does he tell the whole truth?

The most consequential failure of “Terms of Respect” is not what Eisgruber says but what he refuses to confront.

Absent from the book is any serious reckoning with the July 4, 2020, Princeton faculty letter — a document signed by roughly 350 professors accusing the university of “rampant” racism and demanding sweeping institutional changes. Among those demands was the creation of a faculty-run “racism tribunal.”

As the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf observed at the time, such a tribunal is inherently incompatible with academic freedom — the very subject of Eisgruber’s book. Friedersdorf contacted signatories and asked them to cite a single instance of “rampant racism” at Princeton over the preceding 15 years. Not one could.

Nevertheless on September 2, 2020, Eisgruber responded by largely capitulating. He validated the accusations, adopted the rhetoric, and opened the gates to the DEI regime now entrenched at Princeton. This was not principled leadership. It was submission under moral intimidation — a textbook example of what psychologists describe as “virtuous victimhood,” a confidence game designed to extract resources by moral threat.

Yet Eisgruber treats this episode as if it never occurred.

That silence is not accidental. It is bureaucratic self-protection.

As literary agent Susan Rabiner has noted, the distinction between lying and withholding the truth is merely technical. Any attempt to cause others to believe something one knows to be untrue is a lie. Eisgruber’s omission of the defining crisis of his presidency is a classic case of lying by omission.

Criticism for thee, not for me

Returning to “Terms of Respect,” we find that Eisgruber does not much care for criticism — especially when it comes from outside the academy. External critics, in his telling, are almost invariably “right-wing.”

He traces this lineage back to William F. Buckley’s “God and Man at Yale” (1951), dismissing it as a “diatribe” that inspired generations of conservative “muckrakers.” He names Campus Reform and the College Fix as exemplars of an “odious strand of pseudojournalism” that ridicules faculty, disproportionately targets women and minorities, and undermines free discourse.

The irony is difficult to miss. Eisgruber decries ridicule while deploying precisely the tactics Saul Alinsky championed in “Rules for Radicals”: personalize, polarize, and delegitimize. He offers exactly one example of this supposed intimidation — nearly a decade old.

Meanwhile he waves away the pervasive ideological capture of higher education as a “myth.”

It is no myth. The evidence is supplied daily by the institutions themselves. Eisgruber either does not know what is happening on his own campus, does not care, or counts himself an ally of the coterie of extremist dullards populating the Princeton bureaucracy now enforcing these programs.

Posturing above the fray

Throughout the book, Eisgruber adopts a posture of measured balance — “on the one hand, on the other.” But the pose does not hold. He speaks the language of civility while excusing coercion. He invokes academic freedom while ignoring its most serious internal threats. He treats accurate reporting on campus excesses as “ugly media frenzies” rather than sunlight.

Justice Louis Brandeis famously argued that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Eisgruber seems to disagree.

In the epilogue, his agenda becomes clearer. Vague invocations of the “shocking rise of white nationalism,” “heartless treatment of undocumented children,” and “anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry” appear, unmoored from specifics and immune to scrutiny. Criticism of his policies is transmuted into moral threat.

RELATED: From accommodation to absurdity on campus

Photo by Kalpak Pathak/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Does this sanctimony disqualify Eisgruber from expressing it? Of course not. But neither does his status shield his arguments from judgment — especially when they rely on half-truths and conspicuous omissions.

The bureaucrat unmasked

In the end, “Terms of Respect” reveals less about free speech than about its author. Eisgruber is not a radical. He is something more familiar: the consummate bureaucrat — fluent in moral rhetoric, insulated from consequence, and committed above all to preserving the system that empowers him.

He resembles the warden of Shawshank Prison, assuring Andy Dufresne that appeals are pointless while maintaining the fiction of order as the institution decays around him.

Instead of “Terms of Respect,” higher education needs more Brandeisian sunlight — and yes, more of the “ugly media frenzies” that unsettle administrators who prefer darkness to accountability.

If that discomfort troubles the wardens of Shawshank University, so be it.

Apple rolls out digital ID, says users get 'privacy and security'



Digital identification is the latest frontier in privacy and data protection, according to its newest purveyor.

Apple rolled out support for digital ID in its Apple Wallet this week, boasting that users can provide a plethora of personal data in order to add their digital identifiers to their phones.

'Biometric authentication using Face ID and Touch ID helps make sure that only you can view and use your Digital ID.'

In order to be eligible for the privilege of digital ID, Apple requires users to have the following:

  • an iPhone 11 or newer or an Apple Watch Series 6 or newer.
  • the latest software version.
  • an Apple account with two-factor authentication turned on.
  • a valid U.S. passport.
  • a device with the region set to the United States.

If meeting the prerequisites, users must scan their passports into their phones, in addition to providing another live photo.

The photo and information must then be authenticated with Face ID or Touch ID.

Digital ID users can present their e-documents at TSA checkpoints for boarding domestic flights and at select businesses, Apple wrote in a blog post.

RELATED: UK government makes digital ID mandatory to get a job: 'Safer, fairer and more secure'

TSA lists digital ID as being supported in at least 16 different states for domestic air travel, as well as Puerto Rico. Apple ID particularly is eligible in most participating states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, and Ohio.

States like Arkansas, Louisiana, New York, and Virginia only support a state-sponsored digital ID.

"Digital ID in Apple Wallet takes advantage of the privacy and security features already built into iPhone and Apple Watch to help protect against tampering and theft," Apple claimed.

"Your Digital ID data is encrypted. Apple can't see when and where you use your Digital ID, and biometric authentication using Face ID and Touch ID helps make sure that only you can view and use your Digital ID," the company added.

The justification for digital ID on the grounds of increased privacy and security mirrors reasoning used by the U.K. government during its recent introduction of mandatory digital ID for its citizens.

RELATED: Can anyone save America from European-style digital ID?

Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images

"This government will make a new, free-of-charge digital ID mandatory for the right to work by the end of this parliament. Let me spell that out: You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID," U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in September.

The leader stated that the digital ID would help crack down on illegal employment and immigration, before adding a moral justification to his argument.

"Because decent, pragmatic, fair-minded people, they want us to tackle the issues that they see around them. And, of course, the truth is we won't solve our problems if we don't also take on the root causes."

As Blaze News previously reported, the digital ID movement seemingly started in the U.K. around 2004. At that time, the BBC published a report criticizing the government and the IDs as a "badly thought out" means of fighting organized crime and terrorism.

Since then, the idea has long been perpetuated by the World Economic Forum, the yearly gathering of government officials and international businessmen who discuss global policy and reform.

The WEF published "A Blueprint for Digital Identity" in 2016, citing the Aadhaar program, a government ID from India. The initiative was meant to "increase social and financial inclusion" for Indians. The Unique Identification Authority of India holds a database of user information "such as name, date of birth, and biometrics data that may include a photograph, fingerprint, iris scan, or other information."

Over 1 billion Indians have enrolled in the program for the 12-digit identity number.

In 2023, the WEF promoted a report on reimagining digital ID.

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Tommy Robinson has the last laugh after politically motivated terrorism arrest: 'Free speech won!'



Tommy Robinson has long drawn the ire and attention of British establishmentarians by raising hell about the fallout of mass immigration, the failure of multiculturalism in England, the threats posed by radical Islam, and the cover-up of the Pakistani rape-gang scandal.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, various other politicians, and even some woke clergymen have condemned him; multiple social media platforms have banned him; and he was even told to stay clear of an entire city.

'Thank you for raising the flag of England whilst so many cowards cowered.'

The desperation to shut Robinson up or, at the very least, make him go away manifested last year in the form of an unjustified police stop, which resulted in his indictment on a terrorism charge under the British equivalent of the Patriot Act.

To the likely chagrin of Robinson's detractors in parliament and to the delight of his supporters on the scene, Judge Sam Goozee of the Westminster Magistrates' Court cleared the 42-year-old activist on Tuesday, agreeing with the defense that the stop was unlawful and that police discriminated against Robinson because of what he stands for and his political beliefs.

"That judge's verdict is a slam down against the police," Robinson told reporters outside the courthouse. "Read what he says. Read about the evidence. It was corrupt. It was unlawful."

"I'm frustrated still. I should be happy. I'm not happy because I shouldn't be put through this time and time again," Robinson added.

RELATED: The UK wants to enforce its censorship laws in the US. The First Amendment begs to differ.

photo by Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images

On July 28, 2024 — a day after organizing a political rally — Robinson was detained by Kent police under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act while attempting to travel to Spain, where he now lives. During his detention, Robinson was told to give police the PIN necessary to access his phone.

Robinson allegedly told police, "Not a chance, bruv. ... You look like a c**t, so you ain't having it," adding that his phone contained sensitive "journalist material" regarding "vulnerable girls."

Alisdair Williamson, Robinson's lawyer, emphasized during the trial that Robinson "was stopped unlawfully, detained unlawfully for 40 minutes, and asked questions that were something to do with his political beliefs."

Judge Goozee evidently agreed, finding on Tuesday that the stop did not appear motivated by any genuine suspicion of terrorism but rather by Robinson's beliefs, which altogether qualify under the law as a protected characteristic. The judge also took issue with the police officers' apparent selective amnesia regarding the incident and credibility.

Goozee said in his ruling, "I cannot put out of my mind that it was actually what you stood for and your beliefs that acted as the principle reason for the stop," the Guardian reported.

"I cannot convict you," the judge added.

In addition to questioning what happens now to the counterterrorism officers who unlawfully targeted him, Robinson thanked Elon Musk after the trial, stating, "I'm forever grateful. If you didn't step in to fund my legal fight for this, then I'd probably be in jail. So today, free speech won!"

Elon Musk responded, "Thank you for raising the flag of England whilst so many cowards cowered."

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Mark Levin reveals the leader he says could save Britain



Leftist policies have gutted Europe, with the U.K. and France serving as prime examples — once proud bastions of Western civilization, now barely recognizable as native cultures are systematically eroded under the guise of unchecked mass migration. Free speech is a relic of the past, crushed by tyrannical censors. Sky-high taxes strangle the working man, and suffocating bureaucratic overreach is the hallmark of these failing socialist regimes.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer sits at the helm of Britain’s descent into its dystopian nightmare.

“This is the guy that allowed these gang rapes by Pakistani immigrants of English girls that went on for years,” Mark Levin says, adding that under Starmer, “Crime is through the roof and mostly committed by recent immigrants” who are valued above natives.

England is a picture of what the United States was hurtling toward under Democratic rule. If Donald Trump hadn’t pulled our nation back from the cliff, Levin predicts we would’ve seen “the end” of America.

England needs its own Donald Trump now — a party that can effectively fight tyranny. Levin believes the Tories — the Conservative and Unionist Party — are the answer to Britain’s woes.

The party’s leader, Kemi Badenoch, is a woman Levin deeply respects and admires — a “superstar,” he calls her.

“She is brilliant. She is courageous. She is trying to defend Western culture and principles in Britain — the home of Western culture and principles,” he says.

He then plays a clip from Badenoch’s fiery parliamentary takedown of Keir Starmer’s weak-kneed Israel policy during a Middle East debate on October 14, during which she lambasted Labour’s appeasement of Hamas and vowed unyielding Tory solidarity with Israel’s fight against Islamist terror.

“The response from some in the West — the equivocation, the indulgence in whataboutery, and the drawing of false equivalence — shows how far moral clarity has eroded. And we have got a job to do here at home, Mr. Speaker, to fix this,” she fired.

She went on to praise President Trump for masterminding the Gaza ceasefire and condemned Starmer and his spineless Labour cronies for “rewarding terrorism” by recognizing Palestine sans hostage releases, for making “the wrong decisions time and again” that gutted Britain’s Middle East clout, and for their mealy-mouthed weakness that only emboldens Hamas butchers.

“She is fantastic,” Levin says.

“I hope she becomes prime minister,” he adds.

To hear more of his analysis, watch the clip above.

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The castration of Christendom



In Ireland, the priest was once as vital to a village as the pub or the post office. He baptized the babies, buried the dead, and kept the farmers from killing each other.

If the neighbors were at war over a hedge, he’d settle it before Mass and still have time for a fry-up. The priest wasn’t just a man of God but also a referee of rural life — part Joe Rogan in a cassock, part St. Patrick with a whistle. The church bell was the town clock. The confessional was the psychiatrist’s couch. And the parish hall was the beating heart of the community.

You can now 'attend' Mass online, complete with comment sections and buffering hymns. It’s efficient, yes — but as spiritually satisfying as watching someone else eat your dinner.

That Ireland is disappearing. This year, the entire country produced just 13 new priests — barely enough to fill a choir, let alone a nation. The waves of eager new recruits who poured forth from the seminaries are no more, leaving weary veterans to cover half a dozen parishes, driving from one church to the next like overworked delivery drivers of the divine.

What happened? "This is an immense question, requiring a book-length answer," Irish journalist John Waters tells Align, after which he kindly attempts a summary anyway:

The explanations include: Ireland’s history of kindergarten Catholicism; the damage done by simplistic moralization; the liberal revolution; the infiltration of the Catholic clergy; the escalating implausibility of transcendent ideas (a contrived not a naturalistic phenomenon); the moral inversion unleashed by the LGBT revolution; the confusion created by the church leadership for the past 12 years and counting; et cetera.

Irish goodbye

The outlook is bleak. The number of priests in the capital is expected to fall by 70% over the next two decades. Since 2020, only two priests have been ordained in Dublin’s archdiocese.

Across Ireland, the average priest is now over 70, long past retirement age. Some say the Church’s only hope is to let priests marry. It would make more sense than flying in bewildered clerics from Africa, men who can quote Scripture but not survive small talk in a Kerry kitchen.

It’s not that people stopped believing in God (though Ireland’s Catholic population has fallen to just 69%, down from nearly 78% less than 10 years ago). They just stopped believing the Church was worth the effort.

The pews that once held families now hold the few who remember when everyone came. Ireland changed faster than the Church could follow. Confession replaced by podcasts, pop psychology, and Pornhub. It’s a lethal mix of heresy and habit — busy souls, distracted minds, and a generation convinced that salvation can be streamed, scheduled, or outsourced.

Flickering faith

At the same time, people like my mother still light candles. They still bless themselves on long drives. They still mutter prayers when the doctor calls with bad news. Faith is still there; it has just learned to keep its head down. Weddings and funerals still draw a crowd, if only because even the most lapsed Irishman can’t stomach the thought of being buried by a stranger in a suit. The flame is still there, but it’s more a pilot light than a blaze.

The fading of show-up-every-Sunday faith has mirrored the fading of everything that once made Ireland feel Irish. The language is vanishing, the music sanitized, the dances replaced by drill rap and dead-eyed TikTok routines.

Even the local watering hole — the unofficial annex of every parish — struggles to stay open. What’s vanishing isn’t just religion; it’s ritual, the sense that life meant something beyond the week’s wages.

Mass exodus

Technology promised connection but delivered solitude. You can now “attend” Mass online, complete with comment sections and buffering hymns. It’s efficient, yes — but as spiritually satisfying as watching someone else eat your dinner.

Once, the whole community walked to church together, children skipping ahead, neighbors chatting along the road. After Mass came tea, gossip, and maybe even a few sneaky pints. These days, the only communion most share is over brunch — order taken by a Filipino, processed by a Nigerian, cooked by a Ukrainian, and blessed by a middle manager named Ahmed.

In rural towns, churches stand like sentinels — beautiful, empty, and slightly ashamed of their own magnificence. Some have become cafés or concert halls, serving flat whites where once they served faithful whites. It’s called progress, though it feels more like repurposed reverence.

RELATED: Church of England investigating vicar for calling a transvestite deacon a 'bloke'

Photo by DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images

Let us spray

The same could be said across the pond. In Canterbury Cathedral — the cradle of English Christianity — artist Alex Vellis recently staged “HEAR US,” a graffiti-style art project inviting visitors to ask, with spray-can sincerity, “What would you ask God?”

The answers, splattered across medieval stone, came from “marginalized communities” — Punjabi, black and brown Britons, the neurodivergent, and the LGBTQIA+ faithful. A veritable clown car of the aggrieved, somehow granted front-row parking in the house of God. It was meant as inclusion; it landed as intrusion — like stringing jockstraps across the Vatican altar.

When critics like Elon Musk and U.S. Vice President JD Vance rightly accused the project of desecrating beauty in the name of diversity, Vellis fired back not with argument but with anatomy, accusing his detractors of “small d**k energy.”

Virile virtue

The phrase, unserious on the surface, hinted at something deeper: Both sides — the artist and the church that hosted him — seem afflicted by the same crisis of conviction. The Church, once roaring with moral certainty, now offers apologies to everyone and inspiration to no one. Its critics, meanwhile, confuse provocation for courage. Between them lies a vacuum where virtue used to be.

And this isn’t just an English problem. Across the Christian world, churches of every stripe — Catholic, Protestant, evangelical — have lost their fortitude. Too timid to offend, too eager to trend, they’ve traded conviction for comfort. "Small d**k energy" has gone liturgical.

Even in Ireland, where the Church once thundered with certainty, cowardice now calls the homily. The pulpit peddles activism instead of absolution, politics instead of prayer. No wonder so many stay home. And no wonder young men won’t answer the call. Who wants a life devoid of sex, love, and laughter?

If Catholicism is to last, it needs less talk and more testosterone. The next revival won’t come from a press release but from those who still believe life means something. If the Church in Ireland and beyond wants people back in its pews — and its pulpits — it best man up.

Notorious pedophile Ian Watkins killed in prison; cops round up suspects in apparent murder of disgraced Lostprophets singer



The former singer of the Welsh rock band Lostprophets, Ian Watkins, recently was attacked and killed in prison, according to authorities. Watkins was serving a sentence for multiple pedophilia-related offenses, including attempting to rape a baby.

Police in England said Watkins was murdered at His Majesty's Prison Wakefield in Great Britain on the morning of Oct. 11.

'Extensive inquiries remain ongoing in relation to the murder of Ian Watkins, and these arrests form part of that.'

Watkins, 48, was pronounced dead at HMP Wakefield despite being given medical treatment for injuries suffered during a "serious assault."

Last week, British authorities announced the arrest of two men — 25-year-old Rashid Gedel and 43-year-old Samuel Dodsworth. Both suspects were charged with murder in connection with Watkins' death.

The West Yorkshire Police Department said in a statement Tuesday that two other men — ages 23 and 39 — also were arrested in connection with Watkins' death and charged with suspicion of conspiracy to murder. Police did not name the two new suspects.

The senior investigating officer in the alleged murder said the investigation is ongoing.

Detective Chief Inspector James Entwistle of the Homicide and Major Enquiry Team with the West Yorkshire Police Department stated, "Extensive inquiries remain ongoing in relation to the murder of Ian Watkins, and these arrests form part of that."

"Ian Watkins' family are being updated as the investigation progresses," Entwistle said. "However, we do not anticipate any immediate developments at this stage."

A spokesperson for the His Majesty's Prison Service told the BBC that it was aware of an incident at the prison but was "unable to comment further while the police investigate."

The West Yorkshire Police Department and HMP Wakefield did not immediately respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

RELATED: Pair of convicted pedophiles — one who raped, murdered 3-year-old girl — die on same night in same prison

Photo by Marc Grimwade/WireImage

The Mirror noted that HMP Wakefield is known as "Monster Mansion," which "houses some of the U.K.'s most infamous and dangerous criminals, ranging from serial killers to terrorists and habitual rapists."

Watkins appeared in court in 2019 after a mobile phone reportedly was discovered in his prison cell. Watkins told magistrates that he was imprisoned among "murderers, mass murderers, rapists, pedophiles, serial killers — the worst of the worst," according to the Guardian.

Previously, Watkins was stabbed in prison while serving time for his child sex crimes.

As Blaze News reported in August 2023, Watkins was held hostage by three fellow HMP Wakefield prisoners for several hours and stabbed.

The Mirror previously reported, "The prison had to wait until a 'Tornado Crew' could be assembled — specialist officers trained in hostage situations. The three prisoners kept Watkins hostage for almost six hours — it is believed the attack took place on B wing, where 70 percent of the prisoners are serving life and 20 percent serving 10 years or more. So serious were his injuries, it is understood that he received emergency treatment from paramedics in an ambulance on the prison estate."

Watkins was arrested in December 2012 and hit with several child sex crime charges.

"During trial, it was revealed that the password to encrypted files on Watkins' computer was 'I F*K KIDZ,'" Rolling Stone previously reported.

In December 2013, Watkins pleaded guilty to 13 charges, including conspiring to rape a child, three counts of sexual assault of children, seven counts involving making or possessing indecent images of children, and one count of possessing an extreme pornographic image involving a sex act on an animal.

The judge during the sentencing hearing described Watkins' crimes as "plumbing new depths of depravity," according to the Guardian.

The disgraced singer was sentenced to 29 years in prison.

Watkins' former band, Lostprophets, was founded in 1997 and topped the U.K. charts in 2006 after the release of its third album, "Liberation Transmission." Lostprophets broke up in 2013 when Watkins was sentenced to prison.

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The UK wants to enforce its censorship laws in the US. The First Amendment begs to differ.



As some of you may know, I am counsel to the plaintiffs, together with my co-counsel Ron Coleman, in the case 4chan Community Support LLC and Lolcow LLC dba Kiwi Farms v. the UK Office of Communications aka Ofcom.

That case concerns the question of whether the U.K. can enforce its domestic censorship laws within the United States. I am quite unable to talk about the legal aspects of the case, and I also do not discuss English law. This article is about general principles regarding cross-border enforcement of censorship codes, in particular EU law, as I observe a change of mindset among European lawyers as they start to ask hard questions about the offshore enforceability of their censorship laws.

This article also sets out a new doctrine for transatlantic free speech defense, a doctrine that can be used to beat inbound censorship and will eventually become more widely recognized in the U.S. and European legal communities, which I can sum up in one line: “The law of the server is the law of the (web)site.”

Or, for the more classically minded among you: Lex loci machinae.

We Americans already know that emailed demands from European speech and data protection regulators are not legally binding in the United States.

This article is prompted by a knowledge update published by London law firm Taylor Wessing about the 4chan litigation. TW correctly identifies the general legal point that, if Americans can obtain confirmation from U.S. courts that European notices sent by email are not legally binding, it’s not just the Online Safety Act that will become difficult to enforce — it’s the Digital Services Act and the EU General Data Protection Regulation too.

This is in contrast to other takes in the London legal market, such as this piece written by the London office of Katten — titled “A (Byrne &) Storm Is Brewing,” in reference to my law firm — warning Americans to not “ignore the Online Safety Act’s international reach.”

Respectfully, the United States, not Ofcom or the European Commission, sets the rules on what orders Americans may safely ignore in the United States. Although the Europeans may not know this, we Americans already know that emailed demands from European speech and data protection regulators are not legally binding in the United States. They’re also almost certainly unenforceable here even if validly served.

Although a new precedent would be nice, as a practical matter, we don’t especially need one — these points are largely settled law in the United States, and indeed there’s a recent example from February of earlier this year that, because it involved a couple of conservative social media websites, went largely unnoticed. Foreign censorship mandates are just something the U.S. judicial system hardly ever sees, because European censorship colonialism was fairly uncommon until this year. More on that below.

But back to the firm’s article, Taylor Wessing writes:

Scope creep: If the challenge is successful, it has potential implications for a range of other extra-territorial effect UK and EU laws subject to the wording of the judgment and the wording of the legislation in question. It may impact both how to enforce (ie whether it can be done by email or whether the Treaty procedure has to be followed), and whether enforcement is even recognised under US law. The Trump administration is already pushing back on what it sees as foreign interference with US companies as a result of recent EU and (to a lesser extent) UK digital legislation, so this challenge, if successful, could impact more than just the OSA.

As a general rule, laws are contained by sovereign boundaries: Legal notices issued in or by one country are not legally binding on persons or entities in any other country. This is an ancient principle of international comity, practically as old as the Westphalian system itself.

This can present some coordination problems among countries that share significant links, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, or the United States and many of the member states of the European Union. For this reason, the United States has executed treaties with these countries, either reciprocal treaties such as Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties for criminal proceedings or the Hague Service Convention for civil proceedings, to deal with the issue of what happens when a legal process in one country needs to have legal consequences in another.

RELATED: Britain’s Big Brother ID law is the globalist dream for America

Photo by SOPA Images / Contributor via Getty Images

Taylor Wessing observes that Ofcom, under the OSA, has the power to serve via email. The firm points out that in many European countries, “emails are routinely used to exchange official correspondence.”

“Official correspondence” here means legal orders. America does not, as a rule, use email to communicate legally binding orders, because the U.S. Constitution imposes due-process requirements that require judicial supervision of any process that would deprive Americans of their constitutional rights or compel the disclosure of information or the seizure of property.

Ergo, as I said to the BBC about the 4chan case a month ago, having chosen my words extremely carefully, “Americans do not surrender our constitutional rights just because Ofcom sends us an email.”

I’m sure a lot of lawyers in London read that and thought I was firing off a snarky quote as bluster and/or in lieu of a coarser retort to the U.K., to which I would remind them that Americans are, despite our reputation, quite capable of subtlety. In fact, I was communicating to European politicians that, to get an American to do something, you cannot simply send them a message. You must send them process. That process must comport with American due-process requirements, and in the case of a foreign order, that means utilizing the relevant treaty.

This brings us to the subject of the European Union.

As the EU seeks to export its regulatory schemes to American shores, practitioners would do well to remember that, where U.S. law is concerned, the rule that we will wind up applying here after enough litigation works its way through the courts is simple: The law of server is the law of the site.

The ruling on a motion for a TRO by the plaintiffs in Trump Media and Technology Group v. De Moraes — which held, while denying the TRO, that the service of the Brazilian censorship orders outside of a treaty procedure is of no force and effect in the U.S. — is the first time a component of this principle has won in our courts. There will be more such wins as the Europeans try to enforce their rules here.

Per the Court’s ruling in Trump Media:

The Court finds that the pronouncements and directives purportedly issued by Defendant Moraes, (Dkts. 16-1, 16-2, 16-3, 16-4, and 16-5), were not served upon Plaintiffs in compliance with the Hague Convention, to which the United States and Brazil are both signatories, nor were they served pursuant to the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between the United States and Brazil. The documents were not otherwise properly served on Plaintiffs. Additionally, the Court is aware of no action taken by Defendant or the Brazilian government to domesticate the “orders” or pronouncements pursuant to established protocols.

For these reasons, under well-established law, Plaintiffs are not obligated to comply with the directives and pronouncements, and no one is authorized or obligated to assist in their enforcement against Plaintiffs or their interests here in the United States. Finally, it appears no action has been taken to enforce Defendant Moraes’s orders by the Brazilian government, the United States government, or any other relevant actor.

Lex loci machinae holds that an American company engaged in constitutionally protected conduct through the operation of a website must comply with the legal rules where it actually operates, not the legal rules of a much wider world in relation to which it has no connection, save that its American servers may merely be accessed from there remotely via the Internet.

European speech rules don’t govern American metal, American communications, and American conduct on American soil.

The United States has fought multiple wars to settle that issue. The case law is out there, too, if you want to look it up. When speech or the hosting of speech is lawful in the U.S. and the hosting and editorial acts occur here, no foreign regulator may compel acts on U.S. soil or export penalties into the U.S. by email. They must use the treaty and clear U.S. constitutional review.

An American site is only obliged to obey American law, and any purported foreign attempt to the contrary — to be properly served — must also comply with American law, namely the applicable treaty. For that demand to then be enforced, it must comply too with the rest of our laws, including the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.

Sending an email that demands unconstitutional censorship, data disclosure, or self-incrimination — for example — doesn’t comply with any of that. This has not stopped Europe from sending America a great many emails, or from planning to send a great many more. Nor has it stopped Americans, for the most part, from obeying those emails, even when they don’t have to.

The failure of lawyers on two continents to notice or do very much to stop Europe’s failure to adhere to our due-process requirements has occurred, in my view, for two principal reasons:

  • First, because international law firms have, historically, largely refused to represent U.S. companies who were targets of global censorship efforts and therefore have no experience in this area; and
  • Second, because the Big Tech companies those law firms represented have, historically, been willing to comply with European rules as they have domestic European establishments, meaning that it doesn’t make a lot of business sense for them to consider their U.S. constitutional defenses.

To give you some idea of how thin Big Law’s bench is in this area, until Ofcom tried to extract a fine from 4chan, as far as I am aware, the only time a U.S. company has refused a European censorship fine — ever — was when the most long-standing of the European online censorship laws, the German “Network Enforcement Act,” known also as the “NetzDG,” purported to enforce a fine on U.S. social media company Gab, which operates a strict moderation policy that explicitly follows the U.S. First Amendment. Accordingly, for nearly a decade, Gab has been targeted for destruction by politicians and activist groups alike.

That particular German case was, again to my knowledge, also the only time that a U.S. MLAT procedure has ever been knowingly and intentionally utilized by a foreign government to try to restrain constitutionally protected speech and conduct. (The German Federal Office of Justice also fined Telegram in 2022, but Telegram is a BVI company with operations in the UAE and no operations in the U.S., hence not entitled to American constitutional protection.) This happened under the first Trump administration and later the Biden administration. I had a word with a couple of Hill staffers about it earlier in the year, and the notices from Germany have since ceased, presumably because they are now being blocked by the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Justice.

When contacted by Der Spiegel to explain its refusal, Gab replied plainly that “Germany lost the chance to regulate American free speech in 1945.” Gab was also one of Ofcom’s American social media targets, all four of whom I represent against the agency, and all four of whom, lawfully exercising their constitutional rights, refused Ofcom’s orders. I note for the record that, despite eight years of attempts, the Germans have not been able to enforce the NetzDG on American soil.

Because they can’t.

It is therefore unsurprising that there are few direct precedents in this area. It’s also entirely expected that it never occurred to anyone working at big law firms — with one notable exception, chiefly, counsel for the plaintiffs in Trump Media from Boies Schiller and DLA Piper — that funneling an EU regulatory demand through a treaty, where it would presumably go no further or expose itself to U.S. judicial or executive branch scrutiny, was a viable option. This is why law firms, particularly European law firms, are only starting to write public-facing notes about this now and — judging from the hedging in those notes — still haven’t wrapped their heads around the applicable law.

I would expect that the U.K.’s blitzkrieg global rollout of the OSA was enough of a shock that larger U.S. companies are starting to review their global compliance posture and are beginning to figure this out for themselves.

Popular U.S.-based image-sharing site Imgur certainly appears to have gotten the memo. The company, in response to a threatened U.K. regulatory fine, pulled out of the U.K., invoked the Constitution, and told British regulators to go to hell — a move that is being referred to as the “4chan maneuver” online.

Taylor Wessing’s note correctly identifies that practically all European tech regulation, including the EU DSA and the EU GDPR, is potentially vulnerable if U.S. companies decide to force European speech and data protection regulators to behave like any other European state or non-state actor, and render service through the treaties — service which may not be waved through (in the case of MLAT) or, if it gets through one way or another, becomes vulnerable to constitutional attack the moment it is properly served, if not sooner.

It is difficult to see how the EU’s tech regulations will be effective at carrying out their objectives at all if U.S. lawyers begin to challenge them, through our actions and in our courts.

It would be nice for the U.S. Congress to enact a law like the SPEECH Act that created more robust defenses for American companies and American internet users. In the meantime, American lawyers have plenty of procedural machinery available to us to bring foreign censorship to a grinding halt at our shores.

Europe will be able to do very little in the face of mass refusal of its orders and daring them to utilize a treaty procedure, and U.S. litigation, to attempt to enforce them in U.S. courts.

I doubt the Europeans have the stomach for that.