A Republican mayor in Utah is catching heat for turning the state's traditional Pioneer Day into a celebration of African refugees, dubbing them the modern-day equivalents of the Mormon settlers who founded the Beehive State.
Provo Mayor Marsha Judkins posted an Instagram message this week praising African migrants who have resettled in Utah's fourth-largest city.
Judkins said that Utahns mark Pioneer Day to "recognize those who journeyed west in search of religious freedom and the opportunity to build a better future free from persecution."
Judkins's message then took a woke turn, writing: "We also recognize members of our refugee community who embody that same pioneer spirit, leaving behind familiar homes to begin new lives in a place they had never seen before."
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Provo City (@provocity)
"We encourage you to watch and learn from the experiences of refugees who now call Provo home and the enduring contributions they make every day, from strengthening local nonprofits to serving in the United States military," the mayor's message added. "Their stories inspire all of us to continue fostering a welcoming community where people of every background and experience can experience the promise of Provo."
Pioneer Day traditionally honors the Mormon pioneers led by Brigham Young who settled Utah in the 1800s. Judkins's post ignited a firestorm online as critics accused her of twisting the state's history to push a progressive immigration message.
Disgraceful conduct by Marsha Judkins and Provo City. Talk about erasing history. This is a total rejection and re-write of what Pioneer Day even is.
— NormieUtah (@NormieUtah) July 25, 2026Enraging.
— Ava McSweeney (@AvaMcSweeney) July 26, 2026 Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 18:00Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
Health officials located the diaries of Dr. Anthony Fauci across nearly a dozen different servers, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on July 27.
Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 22, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times"It took us about eight months to dig these out of 11 separate servers, where they had been sequestered and secreted," Kennedy said during an appearance on Fox News.
After obtaining the private entries of Fauci, who was the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1984 to 2022, officials with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) handed over the documents to Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). The senators have been investigating the origins of COVID-19 and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paul, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, subsequently released diary entries from December 2019 through December 2022, combined into one document.
"I think the starkest impression that you get from reading these diaries is this massive dichotomy between what he was saying privately and what he was simultaneously saying publicly," Kennedy, whose HHS oversees NIH, said on Fox.
Fauci's institute had provided funding to a Wuhan laboratory to run experiments on coronaviruses, at least one of which added a feature to a virus. A 2018 research proposal outlined work that would insert a feature called a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus, which may have been done at the Wuhan lab.
In a diary entry, Fauci recounted how, during a Feb. 1, 2020, call, 9 of the 11 scientists felt that deliberate insertion of the furin cleavage site into the COVID-19 virus was possible, noting past work done at the Wuhan lab.
Fauci, though, repeatedly promoted the theory in public that the virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, came from nature.
"There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve," Fauci told a White House briefing in April 2020. "And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human."
That paper, "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," said that "SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus" and that no lab-based scenario was plausible.
Fauci was involved with crafting the paper, emails released by Paul show, and the paper's authors doubted their conclusions both before and after the study's publication, according to messages made public by Paul and others.
The following month, in May 2020, Fauci told National Geographic that there was no scientific evidence that COVID-19 was made in any lab in China.
Fauci also said in his diary that he had convinced the mayor of New York City to close schools.
"I had a similar call with Ann O'Leary, the [chief of staff] of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California," Fauci wrote. "Ann said that based on my TV appearances today and yesterday, the Governor has decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants."
Fauci said in a 2022 interview that he had "nothing to do" with schools being closed.
Fauci declined to testify to Paul's committee on a voluntary basis, prompting the senator in June to subpoena Fauci. The doctor is scheduled to testify before the committee on Wednesday.
Fauci, who has not responded to requests for comment, is covered against many possible charges by a preemptive pardon provided by former President Joe Biden.
NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci listens to President Joe Biden speak during a visit to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., on Feb. 11, 2021. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 17:40NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration has been staffed with far-left activists who seek nothing less than the destruction of capitalism and America in its current form. They govern like socialist thugs and are only in the early stages of mounting a war against NYC's wealthy.
This is particularly worrisome for the Ken Griffins of the world because Mamdani's friend, an unofficial spokesperson for the Democratic Socialists of America who has taken questionable trips to communist Cuba and may be linked to a foreign subversion network, told his followers, "Let the streets run red with their capitalist blood."
Hasan Piker calls on his followers to kill capitalists:
“Yeah kill them! KiII those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood, dude.”
Democrats are campaigning with him. pic.twitter.com/YiZxGgRkgc
Mamdani's Department of Finance published a new list of names and property addresses for residences it classifies as potentially unoccupied, non-primary homes valued above $1 million.
"This is a target list. And it's clearly designed to intimidate homeowners under the very realistic threat of violence from Luigi-worshipping leftist thugs," Queens City Council Member Vickie Paladino wrote on X.
I’m sorry but the city did what?
This is a target list. And it’s clearly designed to intimidate homeowners under the very realistic threat of violence from Luigi-worshipping leftist thugs.
Understand that they want people to die. As Zohran’s buddy Hasan Piker said “let the… https://t.co/Rku52dHL7D
Property transaction records for NYC are public, but what the far-left controlling City Hall actually did was create a handy list of wealthy individuals and the addresses of their second homes, which "Luigi-worshipping leftist thugs" could use to target in intimidating tactics - common among the radical left.
Council Minority Leader David Carr called the release "reckless," warning that thousands of properties may have been incorrectly classified.
What readers need to understand is that the Mamdanis of the world and reform socialists are not actually focused on affordability, transgender issues, or Palestine. Those causes function as mobilization pathways toward a broader strategic objective: disrupting the gears of capitalism and creating the conditions for systemic collapse from within.
The DSA states this objective plainly:
What the internet is saying:
The "Curley effect" in action: Intentional policies designed to make the politically undesirable move out, after which it becomes easier to consolidate political power. #NYC
— OG Capitalist Shrugged (@CapitalShrugged) July 25, 2026You know who else published lists… the Nazis. They published lists of Jewish owned businesses and properties, so the Germans knew whom to throw out and illegally take over those homes and businesses
— AniYehudi - ברוך (@AYehudi1948) July 27, 2026Why would he publish people’s names and home addresses if not to target them like Ken griffin?
— Megan Martin MD, MPH (@Megmd514) July 25, 2026Publishing names and addresses creates a glaring security risk: How long before a radical Marxist group targets one of these homes with a firebomb?
The central point is that reformist socialists are not primarily focused on solving affordability, for which they have produced no credible plan.
Their main objective is to delegitimize and ultimately dismantle capitalism. Mamdani's list should alarm wealthy New Yorkers because it lowers the barrier for surveillance, harassment, and potential violence by radical activists tied to the radical left. This doesn't prove an attack is imminent, but it materially expands the threat environment.
via Karlyn Borysenko ...
Intimidation and political violence are common tactics among the radical left. The State Department warned about the resurgence of the far left in recent weeks, underscoring that America's political climate is entering a more volatile and dangerous phase reminiscent of the era when the Weather Underground ran amok.
Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 17:20