Nashid Akil, a former Philadelphia police captain, and eight current or former officers have been charged with conspiracy, theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, and receiving stolen property. They are accused of misusing about $392,000 in city anti-violence grant funds tied to Guns Down, Gloves Up—an after-school youth boxing program Akil started. Prosecutors say the program paid Akil and the other officers while they were also on duty with the police department, in some cases during their scheduled working hours, even though city employees are barred from collecting grant money.
A Turkish prosecutor has demanded more than 2,000 years in prison for Istanbul’s jailed mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, accusing him of leading a vast corruption network that allegedly defrauded the state of billions of liras, according to an indictment unveiled on Tuesday.
Istanbul Chief Prosecutor Akin Gurlek said the nearly 4,000-page document names 402 suspects, including Imamoglu, and charges them with forming a criminal organization, bribery, fraud, money laundering, and bid-rigging.
He said the alleged network caused 160 billion Turkish liras (around $3.8 billion) in losses to the state over 10 years.
The indictment, which includes findings by the Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) and what Gurlek described as “digital and video evidence,” portrays Imamoglu as the founder and head of the organization. It also accuses several business figures of being coerced into paying bribes through a secret municipal fund.
Turkish media reported that Imamoglu faces 142 separate charges and could serve up to 2,352 years in prison if convicted.
The mayor, detained since March, has rejected all accusations and denounced them as politically driven. His arrest sparked the largest demonstrations in Turkiye in over a decade.
Imamoglu previously received a separate prison term in July for allegedly insulting and threatening the city’s chief prosecutor – a verdict he is appealing.
Additional charges against him include espionage, document forgery, and defamation of public officials. He is also accused of transferring residents’ personal data to obtain foreign campaign funding, which Imamoglu has dismissed as “nonsense.”
The government has denied accusations by Imamoglu and his Republican People’s Party (CHP) that the proceedings are politically motivated, insisting that Turkiye’s courts are independent.
The Istanbul municipality and Imamoglu’s lawyers have not commented on the latest indictment, with the trial date to be set once the court accepts the case.
The sweeping indictment against Imamoglu aligns with what Turkish academic and writer Fatih Yasli describes as a broader campaign by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to dismantle the country’s democratic framework.
Yasli argues that Ankara has turned the judiciary into a mechanism of “de-electoralization,” or criminalizing opposition forces while extending selective overtures to the Kurdish movement.
Within this context, the case against the Istanbul mayor, the most prominent figure in the Republican People’s Party (CHP), is seen as part of a wider effort to fracture the opposition, reclaim CHP-led municipalities, and entrench Erdogan’s power through judicial and administrative control rather than through elections.
Viennese teachers are reporting growing challenges with students from immigrant backgrounds who are increasingly unwilling to learn German or adapt to local values, according to teachers’ union representative Thomas Krebs of the Christian Trade Unionists Group (FCG).
Speaking to Heute, Krebs said many of those arriving from conflict or crisis regions now bring radical beliefs that pose problems in Austrian classrooms.
“In the past, people fled from extremism. Now, many people come to us radicalized by extremism and spread these ideas here as well,” said Krebs.
He cited incidents of female teachers being disrespected or assaulted by male students and parents, saying such behavior reflects imported attitudes that reject gender equality.
“This disrespect ranges from refusing to shake hands to insults and physical assaults,” he added.
Krebs said the problem also affects staff relations, with reports of some male teachers refusing to shake hands with female colleagues for similar reasons. He warned that children from Western or secular families are sometimes treated as inferior by classmates, while those from conservative backgrounds who wish to integrate face pressure to conform.
“Students from Western cultural backgrounds are not seen as equals,” Krebs said, adding that liberal democratic values are often dismissed in favor of religious rules.
According to the union, teachers frequently encounter resistance to Austria’s educational standards.
“Our educational principles are often rejected. For example, religious content is prioritized over the content of the curriculum prescribed by Austrian law,” Krebs stated.
The FCG union is calling for new measures to address what it describes as a widening integration gap. It wants not only mandatory German-language instruction but also compulsory integration programs held outside of school, with attendance monitored by authorities.
“Effective teaching is only possible if there is also a willingness to integrate,” Krebs said. “The values of our democratic society must be conveyed in such a way that fundamental rights and culture are understood as an enrichment and not opposed.”
Recent data and testimony have reinforced concerns about language barriers and integration in Vienna’s schools. Of the roughly 16,700 first-graders enrolled in the city, more than 44 percent — about 7,400 children — do not have sufficient German skills to follow lessons. In the 2018/2019 school year, the proportion was 30 percent. Officials note that around 60 percent of these students were actually born in Austria, suggesting that many are growing up in what commentator Andreas Mölzer described as “closed parallel societies that simply refuse integration.”
“This means they grow up in families and closed parallel societies that simply refuse integration. Integration into our social system and our cultural fabric depends primarily on language acquisition,” Mölzer wrote in the Austrian daily Krone, warning that many such children risk “entering life without a qualification and with limited career prospects.”
Freedom Party (FPÖ) education spokesman Hermann Brückl called the situation “a full-blown educational emergency,” claiming that “German is becoming a foreign language in our own classrooms.” He pointed to data showing that 41.2 percent of students in Vienna’s compulsory schools now identify as Muslim, surpassing Christian students, who make up 34.5 percent. The figures were confirmed by the Austrian Integration Fund (ÖIF).
Brückl’s party argued that political leaders have failed to address “parallel societies” in schools. “Instead of demanding achievement and integration, parallel societies are being cultivated directly in our schools,” Brückl said, adding that the number of pupils in German-language support courses has grown by a third since 2019, and those in special education classes have doubled.
Last October, former principal and author Christian Klar warned of what he called a “rapid Islamization” of Austrian schools. In an interview last year, he said schools in Vienna’s northern districts now have up to 90 percent of students from migrant backgrounds, leading to “increasing pressure on non-Muslim students” and rising anti-Semitic incidents. Klar argues that Austrian schools must “take a massive stand” against fundamentalist attitudes and ensure that classrooms remain neutral spaces free of religious coercion.
Teachers’ unions report that Vienna’s schools are struggling to cope. Krebs previously said staff resignations are increasing, citing “violence, extremism, and misogyny” as the main reasons. Evelyn Kometter, chair of Austria’s national parents’ association, described classrooms where “only three out of 22 students can speak German,” forcing teachers to repeat instructions multiple times. “By then, two-thirds of the lesson is already over,” she said.
Krebs warned that expanding capacity alone will not solve the problem. “They can think of nothing better to do than to plow up the last green spaces and sports facilities for schools with excavators and construction equipment and to pave them over with containers and huge extensions without any real plan,” he said.
“America will never be a socialist country!” says President Donald Trump.
I hope not.
Trump rightly declared socialism “the wrecker of nations and destroyer of societies.”
But I fear he’s confused about what socialism is.
“Trump says he’s against socialism, but he is having the government get involved in owning companies and directing companies,” complains economist Daniel Mitchell in my new video.
When Trump took 10 percent of Intel, his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said, “It’s not socialism. This is capitalism!”
But when government takes partial ownership of companies, that is socialism.
I said to Mitchell, “It’s just 10 percent.”
“It doesn’t have to be 100 percent,” he replies. “If you’re Intel, there’s no way you’re going to antagonize the Trump administration or some future AOC administration by doing something that the government doesn’t like.”
Even Trump worries about that, saying, “I’m a little concerned whoever that president might be.”
“I don’t trust Donald Trump to control the share correctly,” says Mitchell, “but I definitely don’t trust some of the folks on the left. All of a sudden, you’ve created this precedent of government being a senior partner sitting in the boardroom.…It’s going to be a disaster for the U.S. economy.”
Lately, both parties have been eager to subsidize politically connected businesses.
Some Republicans say such deals are needed to keep America safe.
“If a company is important to America’s security,” says Mitchell, “make it easy for them to operate in the U.S. Fix the regulatory process.…That’s a much better approach than government handouts.”
Trump’s not the first president to make deals with companies. Former President Barack Obama squandered billions on companies like Solyndra. Then, Republicans rightfully objected.
But now Trump’s doing the deals.
To support chipmaker Intel, he used our money to buy 433 million shares of Intel stock. This is after former President Joe Biden offered Intel an $8 billion grant.
The handouts didn’t stop Intel’s decline. This year, the company said it will let 20,000 workers go.
Government handouts interfere with the creative destruction that helps economies really grow.
“Let the weak companies go away,” says Mitchell. “Then resources, labor and capital can go to the young new companies that actually create wealth. Allow creative destruction to operate. Politicians, they look at the seen but ignore the unseen. The seen is, ‘A company in my district is closing and factory jobs will be lost.’ They’re not paying attention to the new companies, the new entrepreneurship that makes us much richer in the long run.”
The “unseen” is also the company that might have started, might have become even more valuable, if government hadn’t thrown our money at the older, politically connected, declining businesses.
“Japan was one of the richest, most prosperous countries in the world,” Mitchell points out. The media said, “We needed to copy Japan. ‘They had this great industrial policy.’ It turns out they suffered several lost decades, largely as a consequence of trying to prop up zombie companies.”
Japan’s economy fell behind as freer economies surpassed them.
“No country has ever prospered with that kind of system,” says Mitchell.
Businesses collecting government grants stagnate partly because executives start chasing political favors instead of innovating.
After Trump gave Pfizer a tariff exemption, the CEO groveled: “Mr. President, I want to thank you for your leadership…for your friendship.”
After Intel got your money, its executives did lots of photo ops with politicians like Joe Biden.
“The market,” says Mitchell, “is better than government at delivering things we need [because] there’s a bottom-line incentive to use resources intelligently and efficiently. With politicians, it’s about, ‘Does a factory have jobs in a key state?’ ‘Are the executives donors to my campaign?’ This is a recipe for rampant cronyism.”
It is.
Bizarrely, today, Democrats say they will defend free markets from Trump.
“America will never be a socialist country!” says President Donald Trump.
I hope not.
Trump rightly declared socialism “the wrecker of nations and destroyer of societies.”
But I fear he’s confused about what socialism is.
“Trump says he’s against socialism, but he is having the government get involved in owning companies and directing companies,” complains economist Daniel Mitchell in my new video.
When Trump took 10 percent of Intel, his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said, “It’s not socialism. This is capitalism!”
But when government takes partial ownership of companies, that is socialism.
I said to Mitchell, “It’s just 10 percent.”
“It doesn’t have to be 100 percent,” he replies. “If you’re Intel, there’s no way you’re going to antagonize the Trump administration or some future AOC administration by doing something that the government doesn’t like.”
Even Trump worries about that, saying, “I’m a little concerned whoever that president might be.”
“I don’t trust Donald Trump to control the share correctly,” says Mitchell, “but I definitely don’t trust some of the folks on the left. All of a sudden, you’ve created this precedent of government being a senior partner sitting in the boardroom.…It’s going to be a disaster for the U.S. economy.”
Lately, both parties have been eager to subsidize politically connected businesses.
Some Republicans say such deals are needed to keep America safe.
“If a company is important to America’s security,” says Mitchell, “make it easy for them to operate in the U.S. Fix the regulatory process.…That’s a much better approach than government handouts.”
Trump’s not the first president to make deals with companies. Former President Barack Obama squandered billions on companies like Solyndra. Then, Republicans rightfully objected.
But now Trump’s doing the deals.
To support chipmaker Intel, he used our money to buy 433 million shares of Intel stock. This is after former President Joe Biden offered Intel an $8 billion grant.
The handouts didn’t stop Intel’s decline. This year, the company said it will let 20,000 workers go.
Government handouts interfere with the creative destruction that helps economies really grow.
“Let the weak companies go away,” says Mitchell. “Then resources, labor and capital can go to the young new companies that actually create wealth. Allow creative destruction to operate. Politicians, they look at the seen but ignore the unseen. The seen is, ‘A company in my district is closing and factory jobs will be lost.’ They’re not paying attention to the new companies, the new entrepreneurship that makes us much richer in the long run.”
The “unseen” is also the company that might have started, might have become even more valuable, if government hadn’t thrown our money at the older, politically connected, declining businesses.
“Japan was one of the richest, most prosperous countries in the world,” Mitchell points out. The media said, “We needed to copy Japan. ‘They had this great industrial policy.’ It turns out they suffered several lost decades, largely as a consequence of trying to prop up zombie companies.”
Japan’s economy fell behind as freer economies surpassed them.
“No country has ever prospered with that kind of system,” says Mitchell.
Businesses collecting government grants stagnate partly because executives start chasing political favors instead of innovating.
After Trump gave Pfizer a tariff exemption, the CEO groveled: “Mr. President, I want to thank you for your leadership…for your friendship.”
After Intel got your money, its executives did lots of photo ops with politicians like Joe Biden.
“The market,” says Mitchell, “is better than government at delivering things we need [because] there’s a bottom-line incentive to use resources intelligently and efficiently. With politicians, it’s about, ‘Does a factory have jobs in a key state?’ ‘Are the executives donors to my campaign?’ This is a recipe for rampant cronyism.”
It is.
Bizarrely, today, Democrats say they will defend free markets from Trump.
The Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI) grows psilocybin mushrooms in Arizona with permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Late last month, the organization announced that it will use those mushrooms in a state-funded study testing their effectiveness in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
That project, which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has greenlit, exemplifies a renaissance of research investigating the psychotherapeutic potential of a drug that has been federally prohibited since 1968. But this route to pharmacological redemption, which focuses on turning psilocybin into an officially approved medicine, does not address the injustice of criminalizing people who use psychedelics for reasons the government refuses to recognize as legitimate.
The SRI study, which will include 24 veterans, firefighters, and police officers diagnosed with PTSD, is the first to use whole mushrooms rather than synthetic psilocybin. SRI President Sue Sisley says she aims to explore the possibility that other components of psilocybin mushrooms contribute to their effects.
In 2018, the FDA recognized psilocybin as a “breakthrough therapy” for “treatment-resistant depression,” a designation that was supposed to facilitate regulatory approval. Subsequent studies have reinforced the case for psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy as a treatment for depression and cancer-related anxiety, and it also looks promising as a PTSD treatment.
The process for obtaining FDA approval is expensive and time-consuming, and it has not yet resulted in any new options for people with psychological problems that might be relieved by psilocybin sessions. Five years ago, Oregon voters took a different approach, approving a ballot initiative that authorized state-licensed “psilocybin service centers” where adults 21 or older can use the drug under the supervision of a “facilitator” after completing a “preparation session.”
Notably, that initiative did not require any particular medical or psychiatric diagnosis. Colorado voters went further two years later, passing an initiative that not only authorized “healing centers” but decriminalized the noncommercial production, possession, and transfer of psilocybin and four other naturally occurring psychedelics.
While the campaigns for both of those initiatives emphasized psychotherapeutic applications, the resulting legislation left room for other uses. The same is true of various local measures, beginning with a Denver ballot initiative in 2019, that discouraged the arrest and prosecution of psychedelic users.
Those measures often described psilocybin and other natural psychedelics as “entheogens,” which refers to substances that generate “the god within.” That term suggests the inadequacy of viewing these drugs strictly as psychiatric medications.
In a 2023 RAND Corporation survey of people who had used psilocybin in the last year, 49 percent described their goal as “improved mental health,” a category that includes but extends beyond individuals who would qualify for a psychiatric diagnosis. Other common responses included “personal development” (45 percent), “curiosity” (43 percent), “spiritual growth” (41 percent), and “cognitive development” (41 percent).
Needless to say, these goals do not easily fit within any application that the FDA is likely to bless. Nor does the most frequently reported motivation: Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they used psilocybin for “fun,” e.g., “for a sense of joy, pleasure, or play, including at a party or other social gathering.”
Except for Colorado, no state is willing to tolerate these wide-ranging uses of psilocybin, notwithstanding scientific assessments that suggest the drug has far less potential for harm than alcohol. In Texas, where I live, possessing less than a gram of the wrong fungus is punishable by up to two years in jail, while one to four grams can get you up to 20 years.
Under federal law, simple possession of psilocybin is punishable by up to a year in jail and a minimum fine of $1,000. Possession with intent to distribute carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
These laws raise questions that go far beyond the real or purported benefits of psilocybin. While the most common uses of “magic mushrooms” might strike politicians or regulators as frivolous, that judgment is not enough to justify treating those personal choices as crimes.
The Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI) grows psilocybin mushrooms in Arizona with permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Late last month, the organization announced that it will use those mushrooms in a state-funded study testing their effectiveness in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
That project, which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has greenlit, exemplifies a renaissance of research investigating the psychotherapeutic potential of a drug that has been federally prohibited since 1968. But this route to pharmacological redemption, which focuses on turning psilocybin into an officially approved medicine, does not address the injustice of criminalizing people who use psychedelics for reasons the government refuses to recognize as legitimate.
The SRI study, which will include 24 veterans, firefighters, and police officers diagnosed with PTSD, is the first to use whole mushrooms rather than synthetic psilocybin. SRI President Sue Sisley says she aims to explore the possibility that other components of psilocybin mushrooms contribute to their effects.
In 2018, the FDA recognized psilocybin as a “breakthrough therapy” for “treatment-resistant depression,” a designation that was supposed to facilitate regulatory approval. Subsequent studies have reinforced the case for psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy as a treatment for depression and cancer-related anxiety, and it also looks promising as a PTSD treatment.
The process for obtaining FDA approval is expensive and time-consuming, and it has not yet resulted in any new options for people with psychological problems that might be relieved by psilocybin sessions. Five years ago, Oregon voters took a different approach, approving a ballot initiative that authorized state-licensed “psilocybin service centers” where adults 21 or older can use the drug under the supervision of a “facilitator” after completing a “preparation session.”
Notably, that initiative did not require any particular medical or psychiatric diagnosis. Colorado voters went further two years later, passing an initiative that not only authorized “healing centers” but decriminalized the noncommercial production, possession, and transfer of psilocybin and four other naturally occurring psychedelics.
While the campaigns for both of those initiatives emphasized psychotherapeutic applications, the resulting legislation left room for other uses. The same is true of various local measures, beginning with a Denver ballot initiative in 2019, that discouraged the arrest and prosecution of psychedelic users.
Those measures often described psilocybin and other natural psychedelics as “entheogens,” which refers to substances that generate “the god within.” That term suggests the inadequacy of viewing these drugs strictly as psychiatric medications.
In a 2023 RAND Corporation survey of people who had used psilocybin in the last year, 49 percent described their goal as “improved mental health,” a category that includes but extends beyond individuals who would qualify for a psychiatric diagnosis. Other common responses included “personal development” (45 percent), “curiosity” (43 percent), “spiritual growth” (41 percent), and “cognitive development” (41 percent).
Needless to say, these goals do not easily fit within any application that the FDA is likely to bless. Nor does the most frequently reported motivation: Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they used psilocybin for “fun,” e.g., “for a sense of joy, pleasure, or play, including at a party or other social gathering.”
Except for Colorado, no state is willing to tolerate these wide-ranging uses of psilocybin, notwithstanding scientific assessments that suggest the drug has far less potential for harm than alcohol. In Texas, where I live, possessing less than a gram of the wrong fungus is punishable by up to two years in jail, while one to four grams can get you up to 20 years.
Under federal law, simple possession of psilocybin is punishable by up to a year in jail and a minimum fine of $1,000. Possession with intent to distribute carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
These laws raise questions that go far beyond the real or purported benefits of psilocybin. While the most common uses of “magic mushrooms” might strike politicians or regulators as frivolous, that judgment is not enough to justify treating those personal choices as crimes.
When a 29-year-old man in Minnesota can post a TikTok video allegedly offering $45,000 for the assassination of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, we can’t dismiss it as another outburst from an online extremist. It’s a symptom of something far deeper—the moral corrosion of our civic life.
According to the FBI, Tyler Avalos uploaded a video on Oct. 16 captioned “WANTED: Pam Bondi. REWARD: $45,000. DEAD OR ALIVE (PREFERABLY DEAD),” complete with Bondi’s image in a rifle’s crosshairs. This wasn’t done in secret corners of the dark web. It was posted openly on TikTok—the global stage for attention seekers and provocateurs.
That brazenness should alarm every American. It tells us the guardrails that once kept outrage and violence in check have collapsed.
There was a time when people feared consequences—not irrationally but morally. That fear was a civic virtue, a recognition that actions carried weight. Now, we live in an age where shock replaces shame, and fame replaces fear. Social media has transformed the unhinged into the influential.
Platforms such as TikTok and X reward extremity, not reason. The algorithm doesn’t care if you’re serious or insane, only that you’re loud. For people who feel powerless or ignored, outrage becomes currency. Violence becomes a shortcut to significance.
When someone can post a public assassination bounty and expect followers before federal agents, deterrence is gone.
Avalos’s alleged threat isn’t just criminal—it’s emblematic of political nihilism: the belief that nothing is sacred, that speech is merely spectacle, and that power justifies anything. From threats against judges to violence at rallies, this nihilism has infected the bloodstream of U.S. politics.
And both sides are guilty.
The left excuses its extremists as “activists.”
The right excuses its own as “patriots.”
Each side’s moral blind spot validates the other’s madness. But when society measures justice by team loyalty, it ceases to be a society at all.
The republic only endures when restraint is voluntary—when people choose not to cross the line because they still feel its existence. Today, that line has been erased.
Deterrence requires two things: certainty and consequence. Both have eroded.
Americans watch as violent rioters go free while ordinary citizens who defend themselves face prosecution. They see selective justice—leniency for the powerful, vengeance for the politically inconvenient. When the law looks partisan, people stop fearing it. When the rules depend on who you are, not what you did, deterrence dies.
A nation cannot maintain order when justice is conditional. The law must be blind, not biased.
In a fame-driven society, notoriety has become the new immortality. The unhinged no longer fear prison; they crave recognition. Attention—even infamy—has become reward enough.
That’s why enforcement must be swift and visible. The FBI’s quick action in arresting Avalos was necessary and right. Justice delayed is weakness broadcast. But enforcement alone won’t fix the deeper rot. We must restore moral deterrence—the cultural understanding that some acts are beneath us as human beings and unacceptable as citizens.
What we are witnessing is the collapse of consequence. Every civilization that dies first loses its capacity for shame. Once people stop fearing moral failure, legal punishment soon follows. The boundaries of right and wrong blur into the fog of “my truth” and “your truth.”
That’s where America stands—a nation of endless outrage, with no sense of proportion or restraint. Politicians feed the frenzy because it keeps voters angry and engaged. But anger is combustible. When words lose guardrails, violence finds opportunity.
The answer isn’t just tougher laws. It’s tougher character. It’s moral courage—the kind that refuses to justify violence, no matter who it targets. Deterrence begins not in Washington but in the conscience of every citizen.
America doesn’t need a speech code; it needs a moral compass. We must once again teach that liberty is not license, that freedom requires responsibility, and that the rule of law must apply evenly or it applies to no one.
Until that happens, we’ll keep breeding more Tyler Avaloses—men who confuse infamy with importance, and chaos with courage.
And when fear—the healthy kind—finally dies, civilization follows.
