1 month ago
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PULSE POINTS:
❓WHAT HAPPENED: New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against flavored vape manufacturers, claiming they target minors, prompting backlash from conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who says the move is a politically motivated attack on small businesses and adult consumers.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Letitia James, Attorney General of New York; Charlie Kirk, conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA; independent vape manufacturers; former smokers and small business owners.
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🧾KEY QUOTES: “This isn’t about protecting public health… It’s about scoring political points,” Kirk argued. He accused James of acting as a “political pawn” for Big Tobacco.
⚠️FALLOUT: Independent shops face potential extinction under burdensome regulations, while smokers may turn back to cigarettes or black-market alternatives. Critics warn of a de facto handout to Big Tobacco.
📌SIGNIFICANCE: Kirk frames James’s actions as a broader pattern of left-wing overreach—one that shields teenagers from conservative ideas but punishes adults seeking harm-reduction alternatives like vaping.
IN FULL:
Charlie Kirk is sounding the alarm over what he calls New York Attorney General Letitia James’s latest morally bankrupt crusade—this time, against the independent, American side of the vaping industry.
James, who rose to national prominence with headline-grabbing lawsuits against Donald Trump, has filed fresh litigation targeting flavored vape manufacturers. Her office claims these companies market to minors and violate state vaping laws. But Kirk sees something more sinister beneath the surface.
“This isn’t about protecting children,” he wrote in a recent op-ed. “It’s about scoring political points, consolidating power, and doing the bidding of Big Tobacco.”
Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a staunch advocate for small businesses and individual freedoms, admits he’s no fan of vaping. Still, he recognizes its role as a harm-reduction tool, especially for adults trying to quit smoking.
“Many of my hardest-working employees vape,” he revealed. “For them, it’s a way out of tobacco addiction.” He emphasized that flavored vapes—targeted by James’ lawsuit—are overwhelmingly used by adults seeking healthier alternatives, not teenagers.
According to Kirk, James’s crackdown will devastate independent vape shops and push consumers either back to traditional cigarettes or into the shadowy black market of unregulated products. “She’s forcing them back into the arms of Big Tobacco,” he wrote.
He compared the move to the suppression of off-patent COVID treatments like ivermectin or the resistance to nutrition-based solutions for obesity–attacks, he says, on methods that work simply because they don’t serve elite or corporate interests.
As for Letitia James, Kirk is blunt: “She must be stopped.” He urged her to focus on New York City’s crime surge rather than micromanaging what corner stores sell to adult customers.
A biologically male swimmer identifying as female swept gold in five individual events at the U.S. Masters Swimming Spring National Championships.
The details: Ana Caldas, who has also competed under the names Hannah and Hugo Caldas, competed in the 45–49 women’s division and won every event he entered.
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- He won by margins as wide as four seconds—which is considered a blowout in elite short-distance swimming.
The rules: The U.S. Masters Swimming competition allows biological men to compete against women as long as they can show proof that they’ve received hormone therapy to reduce their testosterone levels.
Reality check: We know that there is no level of testosterone suppression that can undo the physical biological advantages that a man naturally has in sports — bone density, lung capacity, muscle fiber density, skeletal structure—especially for a man his age.
What Americans think: A poll from earlier this year found that 79 percent of Americans oppose letting biological men compete against women—including 67 percent of Democrats.
The last word goes to comedian Rob Schneider, who wrote on X: “Michael Jordan at 60 years old could suit up today and be the best ‘WOMAN’ in the [WNBA] and maybe THEN the stupid people in the U.S. Masters Swimming National Championship would SEE THEIR OWN INSANITY!”
🚨Breaking🚨
4/25 – A male athlete has taken 1st in the women’s 50 yard breast stroke at the U.S. Masters Spring National Championships.
Earlier today, Ana C. Caldas (formerly Hugo Caldas) took first in the 45-49 masters category of the women’s breast stroke at the U.S. Masters… pic.twitter.com/fO3YwwzUhB
— HeCheated.org (@hecheateddotorg) April 26, 2025
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Image by Oriel Frankie Ashcroft.
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A biologically male swimmer identifying as female swept gold in five individual events at the U.S. Masters Swimming Spring National Championships. show more
PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles evaluated President Donald J. Trump’s first 100 days in office, highlighting various achievements and acknowledging areas needing improvement. Wiles specifically expressed frustration with Russian and Ukrainian resistance to peace talks, stating, “If peace is not achieved, it will be because it can’t be achieved. It just cannot.”
👥 Who’s Involved: Susie Wiles, President Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and members of Trump’s administration.
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📍 Where & When: The White House in Washington, D.C., during an interview with the New York Post on Tuesday, April 29.
💬 Key Quote: Wiles stated, “The president has devoted 100 days and his very top people to Russia and Ukraine, and if peace is not achieved, it will be because it can’t be achieved. It just cannot.”
⚠️ Impact: Wiles outlined ongoing initiatives and future goals for Trump’s administration, including potential trade deals, legislative objectives, and the prospects of the U.S. government’s ongoing mediation of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
IN FULL:
Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff, says President Donald J. Trump‘s first 100 days in office have been notably productive. Speaking to the New York Post on Tuesday, Wiles noted the America First leader has signed 142 executive orders since January 20 and mentioned the administration’s focus on trade agreements and curbing illegal immigration.
However, the first-ever female White House Chief of Staff did express consternation regarding the lack of progress in reaching a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, suggesting peace may not be achievable in the time frame President Trump wants. “The President has devoted 100 days and his very top people to Russia and Ukraine, and if peace is not achieved, it will be because it can’t be achieved. It just cannot,” Wiles said. She continued: “I don’t know whether that will be the case or not. I mean, it may well be that we can make some headway in the next couple of weeks, but nobody would have tried it but Donald Trump.”
“Nobody would have gotten these people to the table but Donald Trump. And if they want to continue to kill people, while it’s abhorrent, you know, he can’t stop that,” she added.
Despite the setbacks in ending the Russia-Ukraine war, Wiles still praised the administration’s productivity and credited President Trump’s decisive actions for the speed at which the White House agenda has been implemented. However, Wiles did acknowledge that the Trump White House has faced more resistance than anticipated in rolling back the expanded federal government left by former President Joe Biden.
“Where I would say there was not just sort of great, amazing success is perhaps our underestimation of the size and scope of the government that Joe Biden left us,” Wiles acknowledged, adding: “The economy, the war between Russia and Ukraine, the budget, the taxes writ large, which I consider to be different than the budget, the sort of institutional resistance to even recognizing that we’ve been ripped off by foreign nations that require us to do tariffs.”
The National Pulse reported on Tuesday that President Trump is “increasingly growing frustrated” with the Russian and Ukrainian governments’ resistance to peace talks. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told The National Pulse that Trump is increasingly concerned about “the amount of time” the administration is spending on Ukraine, implicitly at the cost of domestic priorities including federal government reforms, economic revival, and mass deportations.
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