9/11 beat: Libs’ Deep Denial on Islamist Evil

As the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks was observed, many major media organizations shifted their focus from the Islamist terror assault itself to the discrimination Muslims allegedly faced afterward, writes Spiked’s Tom Slater. For decades, he argues, liberal commentators have sought to recast the meaning of 9/11, often treating the mass murder committed by Islamists as less consequential than the alleged sins of American foreign policy. That line of thinking echoes the post-attack claim that the United States somehow “had it coming,” he says. Slater warns that the instinct to center Muslims in every discussion of 9/11 becomes dangerous when it downplays Islamist violence and fails to recognize what he describes as an ongoing threat to Western society.

Dissident: Punish Putin, not Russians

Developments in Ottawa and Strasbourg offer another illustration of the West’s inconsistent approach to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Kara-Murza writes in The Washington Post. Canada has recently removed sanctions from certain Kremlin-connected figures, while the European Court of Human Rights dismissed hundreds of cases brought by Russians alleging abuses by their own government. Broad restrictions on Russian travelers, he adds, can also hurt people who oppose Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship and the war. Rather than isolating all Russians, Kara-Murza argues, Western governments should intensify sanctions against the Kremlin while preserving contact with Russian civil society, where opposition to both the regime and the conflict is becoming increasingly apparent.

From the left: OpenAI Hired Chuck’s Daughter

OpenAI has strengthened its Washington influence operation by bringing aboard three prominent lobbyists with connections across the political spectrum, The American Prospect’s Dylan Gyauch-Lewis reports. Two arrived from major tech firms Amazon and Meta, while Jessica Schumer is departing her role leading Amazon’s public-policy efforts in New York. Beyond her Democratic political experience, she is the daughter of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — a relationship that, the article notes, carries the kind of access and insider familiarity associated with powerful political families. The recruitment drive offers a window into the influence industry’s dependence on well-connected dynasties. In sports parlance, OpenAI did not merely add depth to its roster; it landed a first-string player.

READ MORE: Fox News Pundit Says McConnell Should Step Down If He Won’t Return

Health beat: Dems’ Latest ObamaCare Oops

“Since when was Jesus an antitrust attorney?” asks The Wall Street Journal editorial board, taking aim at Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. Talarico recently said his Christian faith would guide him to dismantle large health-care monopolies. But the board argues that Democratic-backed government policies — particularly ObamaCare — helped spur consolidation among American hospitals and pharmacies in the first place. The answer, it contends, is not simply breaking up large firms, but rolling back regulations that limit market competition. The Journal further argues that the left ultimately favors a single-payer health-care model, in which Washington officials would decide which treatments patients receive. If Talarico were candid about that objective, the board concludes, he would say so.

Republican: Pass Our Bipartisan Crypto Bill

The Clarity Act represents an increasingly rare bipartisan deal on crypto regulation, Sen. Cynthia Lummis writes in The Hill. The legislation, crafted alongside Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand after a year of negotiations, is designed to provide the digital asset sector with clearer rules while adding consumer safeguards, she says. Lummis notes that President Trump accepted ethics provisions applying to him as well as other Democratic priorities. For lawmakers concerned about Trump’s cryptocurrency investments, she argues, approving the measure would offer a more effective response than blocking it. The crypto industry will not disappear if Congress fails to act, she warns; it could relocate to financial hubs such as London, Singapore or Abu Dhabi, taking American jobs, tax revenue and regulatory oversight with it.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

Four people were hospitalized Monday after a construction drilling rig collapsed in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood, crushing three vehicles and a construction container, trapping two workers and sparking a vehicle fire, authorities said.

Miami Fire Rescue was called to the area near Southeast 12th Street and Brickell Bay Drive at about 8 a.m., after the rig toppled.

“Miami Fire Rescue responded after a drilling rig fell onto three vehicles near SE 12 Street and Brickell Bay Drive,” the department said in a post on X.

“The Technical Rescue Team units worked to safely free two trapped victims in a crushed container. Fortunately, the 4 patients transported were in stable condition.”

Firefighters rescued two construction workers, ages 27 and 29, from the crushed construction container, Miami Fire Chief Robert Hevia said at a news conference.

At the same time, crews put out a fire that broke out when the rig crushed a BMW, Hevia said.

“To be able to see the crane falling, pull the car in reverse and pop out of the back while the car’s on fire, really incredible,” Hevia said, describing the BMW driver’s escape from the burning vehicle.

The rig also crushed two unoccupied parked vehicles, he said.

The two workers, the 47-year-old rig operator and the BMW driver were all taken to local hospitals with minor injuries, he said. Hevia also said all 18 construction workers at the site were accounted for.

“It was a very complex scene with a fire that was occurring, our crews were putting out the fire and our technical rescue team working simultaneously to cut through the Conex box, the construction box, and they were able to successfully extricate the two victims,” Hevia said.

Earlier Monday, the Miami Police Department urged motorists to avoid the area.

“Due to a crane collapse, Brickell Bay Drive is currently closed between SE 12th Street and SE 13th Street. Motorists are encouraged to avoid the area, seek alternate routes, and expect delays. Please use caution and follow the direction of officers on scene,” Miami Police wrote on X.

Officials have not said what caused the collapse. Hevia said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is investigating the incident.

According to NBC 6 South Florida, the collapse occurred at the site of billionaire Ken Griffin’s planned Citadel headquarters.

Miami Fire Rescue and Citadel could not immediately be reached by News Media for comment.

Tucked into a worn-down strip mall between a pet groomer and a Colombian barbershop sits what is left of John-Paul Miller’s once-expansive church empire.

The embattled pastor previously led a megachurch from a vast auditorium, where hundreds of devoted congregants gathered beneath a high-end lighting and sound system comparable to those found at major music venues.

Over Labor Day weekend, however, Miller addressed only several dozen loyal followers inside a small former nail salon near a highway bypass outside Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

A vocal group of demonstrators gathered roughly 90 feet from the service, with the protests reportedly intensifying following Netflix’s release of the documentary Death of the Pastor’s Wife.

Miller, 47, has faced sustained scrutiny since the April 27, 2024 death of his wife, Mica, who was 30 and had filed for divorce just days earlier.

As accusations emerged that he had abused Mica during their marriage and contributed to her death by suicide, attendance at his Solid Rock Church sharply declined.

Those who remained loyal moved with him to Mercy Church, a newly established congregation surrounded by businesses with names including Golf Knickers, Bare Wax and Beyond, and Hollywood’s Bar Grill.

Inside the compact space, Miller delivered his sermon with the same forceful style of his former megachurch days, wearing a green polo embroidered with the Mercy Church name.

Preaching alongside him is his new wife Suzie Skinner, 51, whom he is accused of having an affair with behind Mica’s back. Skinner’s ex-husband drowned in a swimming pool in 2021 amid her alleged affair with the pastor.

Miller was indicted by a grand jury in December last year on federal cyberstalking charges over a shocking alleged campaign of harassment against Mica in the lead up to her death. He faces trial later this year.

Mica was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Lumbee River State Park in North Carolina, after calling 911 to tell her family where to find her.

Miller is back in the headlines after the release of the damning documentary that delved into the many accusations surrounding their marriage.

For months, a growing group of ‘Justice for Mica’ campaigners have protested outside Mercy Church every Sunday, holding up pictures of Mica’s face and placards with slogans like ‘church walls won’t hide your crimes.’

Their presence has Miller rattled enough to impose paranoid security measures, including a newly installed six-foot wooden fence that blocks views of the church’s entrance and thick blinds covering the windows.

Miller was driven to and from the church and his home just 1.1 miles away by an armed private security guard last Sunday, and a uniformed Horry County Police Department officer stood watch outside the door.

The pastor sheepishly poked his head out the door minutes before the 10.30am service began to say a death threat had been made at the back entrance by someone on a golf cart.

The policeman ducked inside to investigate but returned to his post several minutes later.

No sooner was worship over about 12pm, Miller and Suzie were whisked out the back door into a gravel alley. 

By now the crowd of a few dozen protesters had moved to the intersection with the US-17 Bypass and screamed at his black Honda Ridgeline as it drove past.

When confronted by the Daily Mail outside his home soon afterwards, a furious Miller jumped back in his car and drove away while filming on his phone.

Mercy Church is Miller’s attempt at a rebrand after the fallout from Mica’s death doomed its previous incarnation, Solid Rock Church.

Boasting hundreds of members in its heyday, almost all of them abandoned Miller until the church was finally shut down and everything inside given away in November 2024 after an FBI raid on his home.

Miller soon began his new church with the few dozen who stuck by him, first meeting in a gym and an abandoned shop before the old church was sold for $2.1 million in February last year.

The humble new venue, measuring just 1,120sq ft and so narrow it could only fit rows of seven chairs, was acquired for $155,000 in cash.

Mercy Church was initially registered with a ‘Mollie Fleming’ as its sole agent, an almost identical name to Miller’s paternal grandmother Molly Fleming, who died in November aged 96.

‘Nana was closest to her grandson, John-Paul Miller, and spent her final years on Earth in deep prayer for her family,’ Molly’s obituary read.

Videos of early services showed only about 20 people with greying and thinning hair in the audience as both Miller and Suzie preached from a cheap, flimsy lectern.

Churchgoers said the congregation initially struggled to grow but claimed it had swelled to 40 or 50 people of all ages this year – despite the charges against its pastor.

Miller has largely kept his head down since he was indicted.

He and Suzie were spotted at a Myrtle Beach Pelicans minor league baseball game on September 2, dressed casually and trying to blend in.

The couple also appeared on an artist’s social media pages after she ran a canvas paint party at Mercy Church in June.

Sixteen church members, almost all of whom were elderly women, grinned as they showed off their paintings of a tropical island scene.

Also in the shot was Miller’s father Reginald Wayne Miller, himself a disgraced former pastor who is accused in civil lawsuits of sexual abuse.

The artist, Angela Bartholow, said she didn’t know who the pastor was and only realized the church’s notoriety after the Netflix documentary came out.

‘The people I interacted with during this activity were very nice to me, and welcoming,’ she said.

‘I can not, and will not judge an entire group of people based on one person’s actions, and allegations against them… At the end of the day I am just an artist who runs this small business.

‘I hope that justice is served in whatever capacity is deemed necessary, and I hope the friends and family of Mica find peace.’

Miller’s best friend and former business partner, Mark Kaufman, has also attempted to distance himself amid fallout from the documentary.

Kaufman said in a statement last week that he had ‘severed ties’ with Miller and his church and bought out his shares in a local bar they owned.

The businessman also denied accusations in the documentary that he picked up a woman from an airport and drove her to Miller so he could cheat on Mica with her.

Disturbing new claims in Death of the Pastor’s Wife included that Mica feared her husband would murder her and stage her suicide.

‘He’s gonna put a bullet in my head and then tell everybody I killed myself,’ Mica’s friend and former Solid Rock member Bruna Pabon claimed she said.

Mica’s siblings claimed Miller forcibly admitted her to a mental hospital and questioned whether she was really mentally ill.

An affidavit Mica wrote days before her death as part of a restraining order application, revealed by her lawyer Regina Ward, also accused him of sexually exploiting her.

‘Paid three homeless people to engage in threesome,’ Mica wrote, and that he injected her with testosterone to ‘keep up with [his] sex drive.’

Mica also claimed Miller showed nude photos of her in ‘sexual postures’ to members of Solid Rock Church.

‘I am afraid he will harm me due to past gun violence,’ she wrote.

In the Netflix documentary, it is claimed that Mica told friends Miller harassed her by turning the bedroom lights on and off to stop her sleeping when she didn’t want to have sex with him – something he demanded up to four times a day.

Miller faces up to five years in prison for federal cyberstalking charges and two years for making false statements, plus a fine of up to $250,000.

The case has been postponed several times and is scheduled for trial in October.

Mica filed for divorce from Miller in October 2023, before they reconciled in February 2024, then again on April 15, 2024, just before her death.

There is no evidence Miller murdered his wife and he has repeatedly denied any involvement, along with claims of abuse or infidelity.

Miller is also fighting separate civil claims, accused in a lawsuit last July of raping a 15-year-old girl in 1998 while working at his father’s church in Myrtle Beach when he was 19.

Days later, a second woman, known as ‘Jane Doe #2’, sued him and his father for sexual abuse between 1999 and 2001 starting when she was 14.

Miller has denied both claims.

Within moments of starting Jesse Eisenberg’s “The Debut,” one thing is unmistakable: This movie is headed somewhere gloriously unhinged.

Julianne Moore plays Mona, an outwardly timid yet fiercely wound-up New Jersey housewife who auditions for a supporting part in a musical staged by her local community theater. Moore approaches the role with the wild-eyed intensity of someone freshly freed from a straitjacket.

Ordinary small-town theater business, right? Not quite. Mona loses the role to Bernadette Peters.

What sort of supposedly amateur theater group can attract Bernadette Peters? Peters plays Serena Cherry, a local theater star, though her voice suggests someone who has, in fact, collected two Tony Awards.

That wonderfully surreal appearance by Broadway royalty lays down the central principle of Eisenberg’s third feature as writer-director, premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival: Rules do not apply here, and neither does much of reality.

At times exhilarating, at others baffling, and consistently absurd, “The Debut” plays like a musical-theater fever dream born from “Waiting for Guffman” and “Black Swan.” It combines insider show-business jokes with a mounting psychological collapse. In other words, it is Weird with a capital W.

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Above all, the film gives Moore — for whom Eisenberg wrote the part — a chance to cut loose. She has built a career on bold, destabilizing performances in films including “May December,” “Savage Grace,” “Boogie Nights” and, yes, “Kingsman: The Golden Circle.” Yet she has rarely been as all-in, or as magnificently deranged, as she is in “The Debut.” Her commitment to this frustrated suburban woman at a personal breaking point is so extreme it can inspire concern for the actor herself. It also produces some of Moore’s strongest work in years.

Luckily — or possibly disastrously — for Mona, Serena lands a job in New York City and leaves the production. Mona was, it turns out, the only other person who auditioned. She is subsequently cast as Miss Danielle, the apartment superintendent whose name sounds as though it belongs to a second-grade teacher.

Overseeing “Nosy Neighbors,” the musical at the center of the story, is its terrifying director, Jerry, a perfectionist jerk played by Paul Giamatti. Eisenberg wrote the songs himself, and they flirt knowingly with parody. If Moore’s great gift is playing lunatics, Giamatti’s may be playing assholes.

Mona’s castmates — Stef (Halle Bailey from “Little Mermaid”), Zachary (Colton Ryan) and Trish (Tony Award winner Bonnie Milligan) — revere haughty and pretentious Jerry like a pharaoh, but warn her that he is “going to drag you through the s–t and the mud.”

Indeed, Jerry’s tactic with mousy Mona is to crush her in order to squeeze out a better performance. With totalitarian cruelty, he obsesses over how she delivers a little line: “The rent’s due.”

And in the movie’s most memorable scene, a one-on-one after-hours rehearsal that spins out of control, he pushes her and pushes her until she snaps. To our utter delight. That’s when Jerry — and Mona — realize she’s got it.

Inspired, Mona devotes herself totally to Miss Danielle, like a New Jersey Daniel Day Lewis, shoving aside her husband and son who couldn’t care less what she does outside the home.

By now, Eisenberg’s film is out of its mind. Mona dyes her hair black and gives herself a Liza Minnelli pixie cut. Preferring her artsy new hobby to the monotony of motherhood, she discovers herself at the theater, just as Zac Efron did in “High School Musical,” except Mona coming out of her shell doesn’t move us or make us feel anything at all. This is an outlandish movie that’s more fun than it is deep.

Considering this is Eisenberg’s followup to the heartbreaking “A Real Pain,” that’s a slight bummer. Visually this is miles ahead of his last movie, though. Heightened “Debut” is a very, very slick production.

The whole reason to see it, though, is the spectacular Moore, who’s so batty as Mona you can’t look away, lest you miss the slightest freaky eyelid twitch.

Her fed-up homemaker character might be new to the highs and lows of the actor’s life, but Moore almost certainly has a second Oscar in her future. 

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

WHITMAN, Mass. — A juror who has spoken publicly after the Lindsay Clancy murder trial is rejecting claims that she was biased, while saying the case created an opportunity to draw attention to women’s mental health and postpartum illnesses.

“We didn’t know what was happening outside that room, but we knew we had an opportunity to start a conversation that could change something — that could maybe prevent this from ever happening again,” Paula Devlin, 65, told News Media. “I think that’s one reason we feel — or I feel — so strongly about it. I hope no other woman or husband ever has to go through this.”

Devlin made similar remarks over the weekend, prompting accusations that jurors entered the case with an agenda. She disputed those allegations Monday.

“We looked at the evidence, and there were holes in the prosecution’s case,” she said. “The biggest part of the entire case was mental health. How can you call that bias when only women can experience postpartum depression? Only women can experience postpartum psychosis. Only women can give birth. That isn’t bias. It’s simply a fact.”

Devlin said Clancy, a 36-year-old former delivery room nurse, repeatedly sought help but did not receive the care she needed.

In January 2023, Clancy strangled her three children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — with exercise bands before attempting to take her own life. She survived a fall from a second-story window but was left paralyzed.

“I truly, truly believe in my heart that if Lindsay had received the help she truly needed, those three children would still be here,” Devlin said. “Those five people would still be a family.”

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A key flaw in the prosecution’s case, she said, was that they had no witnesses who would say anything bad about Clancy.

“Nobody could find one bad thing to say about this person, and I would bet my house that those prosecutors looked everywhere to find somebody to be derogatory and say derogatory things about Lindsay,” she said. “And nobody could.”

That includes her ex-husband and the victims’ father, Patrick Clancy, Devlin added.

Still, she said, she’s haunted by the children’s faces.

“Those three little faces and just wondering if we missed something, if we didn’t ask the right questions of each other, if we could have done better — it’s hard not to feel like we failed,” she said. “I mean everybody says we didn’t fail, but it’s hard to not feel that when you’re given a task and you don’t accomplish it.”