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"I've Never Heard Anything Like It": Was America's Top Secret Stealth Bomber Just Spotted Over Kansas?
A video of a mysterious aircraft thundering over a U.S. military installation has set off a wave of speculation online, and the leading theories all point to aircraft the Pentagon would rather nobody photographed.
The aircraft was captured flying over McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas. It is believed to be the B-21 Raider, a nuclear-capable stealth bomber carrying a unit price tag of roughly $700 million.
That identification is unconfirmed. OutKick's David Hookstead, who first published the footage, wrote that a reflection off what appears to be a cockpit window around the seven-second mark is the strongest evidence for the B-21 - but allowed it could also be the RQ-170 Sentinel or the RQ-180, a classified surveillance drone whose existence the government has never acknowledged. Other observers have argued the shape is a better match for the older B-2 Spirit.
McConnell is a tanker base, home to the KC-46 Pegasus, and sits well outside the B-21's Edwards Air Force Base test corridor - which is part of why the sighting drew attention, and part of why some doubt the identification.
Mysterious aircraft was spotted flying over McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas, fueling speculation that it may have been a rare glimpse of America's costly, top-secret B-21 Raider stealth bomber - reports
(📹 justind8036) pic.twitter.com/ZGTBDOAddI
Witnesses on the ground said they felt the aircraft before they ever saw it.
"I never saw it, but I could hear it. It was shaking the ground! I've never heard anything like it," one X user wrote.
Northrop Grumman landed the contract to build the bomber in 2015 and the U.S. Air Force expects the Raider to enter operational service in the coming years. The first aircraft is slated to arrive at Ellsworth Air Force Base in 2027.
The Pentagon has signaled it wants at least 100 of the bombers, flying alongside a fleet of 76 modernized B-52 Stratofortresses. However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made clear the Pentagon may need far more firepower than that.
"We have to invest in more capabilities to include the B-21, which is ahead of schedule," Hegseth told the Senate Armed Services Committee in April. "We believe we will require a lot more - over 100 - in the future."
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Dallas Airport Shelves Muslim Washing Facilities After Texas Governor Threatens Airport Funding
Authored by Jeremy Lott via The Epoch Times,
The Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport was mulling the installation of special washing rooms to facilitate prayers by its Muslim passengers. A DFW spokesman told The Epoch Times Saturday that the airport has shelved those plans after objections by the governor of Texas.
The airport was “in the process of evaluating an internal proposal to add a set of ablution washing stations on the pre-security side of Terminal D” for international passengers, the spokesperson wrote in a statement.
Terminal D is one of five terminals at DFW. The terminal has more than 30 gates, out of what the airport lists as over 160 total gates. It also has a connected hotel, the Grand Hyatt.
With every proposed project in the whole airport, DFW management considers several factors, including “operational benefits, customer service impacts, operational risks and costs,” before granting approval, the spokesperson said.
The prayer washing project had not yet reached the official evaluation point when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott registered his opposition to such facilities.
“Government-owned airports cannot favor one religion over all others,” Abbott wrote on his X account Friday, and thus the airport’s “plans to install Islamic wudu washing facilities” were “illegal.”
The governor announced that he had taken action so his state would “not allow illegal religious discrimination at taxpayer-funded facilities.” He directed a review of all state grants to both DFW and an airport in Houston “for possible revocation” and also referred the issue to the Department of Transportation for its own investigation.
Abbott also included links to letters that he had sent to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and DFW’s CEO Christopher McLaughlin. He copied U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche on the Duffy letter, and the mayors of Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston on his letter to the DFW.
DFW then “accelerated its review due to elevated public interest this week,” the spokesperson said. It “determined not to proceed” as the project seemed unlikely to “deliver the originally anticipated operational benefits.”
Reached for comment, the governor’s press office pointed The Epoch Times to a follow-up post by Abbott in which he acknowledged the change of plans by DFW and said, “It was clearly illegal.”
Houston FacilityWhile the issue appears to be closed at DFW, the George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston has had a wudu washing facility in place for close to two years now.
In late October 2024, the Houston branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-Houston) held an official recognition ceremony to celebrate the Houston airport as “one of the first airports in the U.S. to offer such amenities,” and for “setting a new standard for inclusivity and traveler comfort.”
CAIR-Houston said at the time that wudu is “an Islamic ritual of purification.”
The wudu room in Houston includes “benches, coat racks, and space for luggage” and is “fully ADA-accessible,” it said.
The Texas governor is pressing the case that the Houston facility is also illegal. The Epoch Times contacted IAH for comment but received only an automated reply.
In majority Muslim nations, public facilities such as airports often have rooms or at least stations to assist in this cleaning, as observant Muslims pray at five distinct times during most days.
These are less common in nations without Muslim majorities, but some Western airports have them. London’s Heathrow Airport has wudu capabilities in its multi-faith prayer rooms. O’Hare International Airport, which services the Chicago metro, has interfaith chapels with wudu functions.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) did not return The Epoch Times’ request for clarification on whether or not it considered a Muslim washing room to be illegal at an American international airport by the time of publication.
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The Democrats' Hasan Piker Problem Is Getting Worse
The Democratic Party has so much going for it in the 2026 midterm election season, yet it looks like one man in particular might blow it for them. Hasan Piker, the 35-year-old left-wing influencer, is becoming a genuine electoral liability that could extend well beyond the races he's personally gotten involved in, and according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Democrats are trying to do something about it.
In Michigan, Piker has been campaigning alongside Democrat U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed despite warnings from party operatives who would rather he didn't. The two have continued campaigning together even as Democratic officials worry the association could bleed into contests in Texas, Georgia, Wisconsin and Maine, states where Piker hasn't lifted a finger for any candidate. That's the nature of viral notoriety. A candidate doesn't need Piker in the room to become an issue because of him.
Piker built his following on livestreams that pull in an audience of millions, a platform he has used to deliver commentary that ranges from standard progressive fare to remarks widely considered to be antisemitic, particularly his treatment of Israel and its supporters. Piker rejects the antisemitism charge, saying his quarrel is with Israel and its defenders rather than with Jews.
In addition to his criticism of Israel, one of his most controversial remarks was that America "deserved 9/11," a line he later claimed he should have phrased more carefully.
Even as his rhetoric becomes a liability for the party he's trying to help, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have aligned themselves with him, while others are drawing a line in the sand. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and strategist James Carville both threatened to walk away from the party over Piker's rising influence within it, though Carville later softened the threat.
Two primaries in two weeks offered the first real test. Even though El-Sayed won his Michigan Senate primary on Aug. 4, his margin of victory was smaller than polls predicted. A week later in Wisconsin, DSA-aligned Francesca Hong lost the gubernatorial primary despite polls showing her with a commanding lead. Notably, neither Ocasio-Cortez nor Sanders endorsed Hong, even as both went to bat for El-Sayed.
Piker rejects the idea that he's dragging down Democratic candidates. "I don't think that progressives have a harder time beating Republicans," he told the Wall Street Journal. "I think that logic is flawed. It's just somewhat untested."
Despite his claim, the record on progressive and socialist candidates winning outside deep blue turf is thin to nonexistent. Progressive mayors run Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and New York City under Karen Bass, Brandon Johnson, Katie Wilson and Zohran Mamdani, and Democrats hold every governorship on the West Coast plus Massachusetts and Illinois. Every one of those wins happened on turf Democrats were always going to carry. The candidates who actually flipped competitive ground, Barack Obama and Joe Biden among them, ran as moderates first and only governed further left once in power. Piker's theory requires competitive states to behave like safe ones. They haven't yet, and nothing in this cycle suggests they're about to start.
Republicans have been playing both sides of this. In Wisconsin, GOP-aligned super PACs spent millions on ads calling Hong "too liberal" - an attempt to hand her the nomination and an easier general election to their own candidate. Their opposition researchers have been just as busy with Piker. They've resurfaced a hostile exchange Piker had with a woman who identified herself as a refugee from a Marxist regime, along with his reaction to Hong's primary loss, and both clips are now doing steady rotation in attack ads across multiple states. The combative instincts that built Piker's audience are proving just as useful to the people trying to end Democratic careers as they were to the people who wanted him amplifying their own.
Carville's walk-back and Fetterman's hedge suggest party leadership understands the risk even if it can't agree on what to do about it. AOC and Sanders embracing Piker points to a faction that either doesn't see that risk or has decided it's worth the trade. Both camps are operating inside the same party, running in the same midterms, sharing the same brand and trying to pull it in opposite directions.
The Democrat Party isn't shaking Hasan Piker loose anytime soon, and the longer leadership avoids confronting that, the more permanent the association becomes. Every week they stay silent, Republicans bank another data point for their general election messaging. Democrats keep telling themselves this is a manageable problem, but it clearly isn't.
Tyler Durden Sun, 08/16/2026 - 21:35