South Carolina executed a man by firing squad on Friday after appeals were denied by the state and U.S. Supreme Courts earlier this week.

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was convicted in the 2004 killings of an off-duty police officer in Calhoun County, South Carolina, and a convenience store clerk in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was sentenced to death for the murder of the officer and life in prison for the clerk’s murder. 

Mahdi had the choice of dying by lethal injection, the electric chair or firing squad – and he chose the latter. The Associated Press reported that he did not give a final statement nor look at the nine people witnessing his execution before a hood was put over his head and shots were fired by three prison employees who volunteered for the act. He was declared dead less than four minutes later.

Prison officials announced that he requested ribeye steak cooked medium, mushroom risotto, broccoli, collard greens, cheesecake and sweet tea for his last meal.

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Mahdi was sentenced to death in 2006 after he admitted to killing off-duty Orangeburg Department of Public Safety Capt. James Myers, 56, on his property on July 18, 2004. 

Myers had been shot at least eight times and his body was burned when his wife found him in their shed, which was near a gas station where Mahdi attempted to purchase gas with a stolen credit card. He left a vehicle he had carjacked in Columbia at the gas station and was later arrested in Florida while driving Myers’ unmarked police truck.

Mahdi also admitted to murdering convenience clerk Christopher Boggs three days before he killed Myers. Boggs was shot in the head twice while checking Mahdi’s ID, according to The AP.

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Orangeburg Department of Public Safety Capt. James Myers, 56, was violently murdered by Mikal Mahdi on July 18, 2004, at a shed on his property. (SC Law Enforcement Officers Hall of Fame)

Mahdi’s lawyers entered a final appeal to the South Carolina and the U.S. Supreme Courts, but it was rejected earlier this week. 

They argued that Mahdi was not fairly represented by his original lawyers as they did not call on relatives, teachers or other people who knew him during the case, adding that they also ignored how the several months Mahdi spent in solitary confinement as a teen impacted him.

Prosecutors, on the other hand, said Mahdi’s nature was “violence” and said he solved problems with brutality, mentioning how he stabbed a prison guard and hit another worker with a concrete block during his years on death row. 

He was also caught with tools that could have been used to escape, including sharpened metal that could have acted as a knife, prison records stated.

Mikal Mahdi was the second death row inmate in South Carolina to be executed by firing squad in the past five weeks. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)

The execution on Friday marked the second time a South Carolina inmate has been put to death by firing squad in the past five weeks and the fifth execution overall in the state over the past eight months.

Following Mahdi’s death, the Palmetto State now has 26 inmates on death row – only one of those people has been sentenced to death in the past decade.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A conservative political action committee wants to flip school board seats across the country, part of a recent trend of school board elections becoming more overtly political battles.

In Wisconsin, 20 school board candidates endorsed by the 1776 Project Political Action Committee (PAC) won their races this year and “flipped two seats,” the organization claimed. Wisconsin’s school board elections are nonpartisan, meaning they don’t display party labels on school board candidates.

The Watertown Unified School District and Burlington Area School District were flipped with conservative candidates.

The PAC was launched in 2020 by Ryan Girdusky during the coronavirus pandemic to combat progressive-led efforts in the education system. Its mission is to reform school boards across the country by supporting conservative school board candidates. 

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What is the 1776 Project PAC?

1776 Project PAC Executive Director Steven Forte told Fox News Digital that Girdusky was alarmed by the books being used in the classroom that he and other parents deemed too inappropriate for children.

“He got this idea of, well, if this is happening here, this is probably happening elsewhere throughout the country, we should start going and getting school board candidates elected that would be able to fight these things,” Forte said.

Forte explained further that the 1776 Project PAC, which was founded in 2021, noticed the learning loss incurred from COVID-induced school lockdowns, declining grades, and eroded standards in the classroom. 

“The 1776 Project PAC is really focused on making sure that academic merit, academic achievement, and academic standards are upheld in schools, as well as making sure that there is no indoctrination in schools as well,” Forte said.

“What we do is, sometimes, we’ll donate directly to the candidates and other times we do it in tandem campaigns, meaning we do mailers, we do digital advertisements, text messages—We run the gamut on what we do for our candidates and what works best for them,” Forte said.

The 1776 Project PAC says it has backed 352 school board races and won more than 200 school board seats across the country. 

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More parents are getting involved in school board races in their communities. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)

While school board members are elected directly by voters, most school board races are technically nonpartisan. Some school districts appoint school board members or have a combination of both.

Parental uprising in education

The victories in Wisconsin underscore the phenomenon of parents across the country paying closer attention to school boards by challenging progressive curricula and lashing out at sexually explicit and LGBTQ-related books being used in the classroom.

There has been an uptick in conservative groups backing school board candidates since 2022. The American Principles Project (APP), based in Virginia, first got involved in school board races in Florida in 2022. The group poured money and aired attack ads against Democrats, criticizing critical race theory and gender ideology.

The APP and 1776 Project PAC are among several conservative groups seeking to shape education in the U.S.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, school board meetings have at times become contentious clashes between parents and school board officials, sparking a debate about how much control parents have over their children’s education. 

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President Donald Trump issued an executive order “ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling.” (Donald Trump 2024 campaign)

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At the federal level, President Donald Trump is weighing into culture war issues. The commander-in-chief issued an executive order this year staying any school districts receiving federal funding must comply with anti-discrimination mandates, as well as a slew of other mandates to combat diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in schools.

“In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight,” the White House announced.

19-year-old social media influencer Savanna Stone is defying societal norms and embracing her life as a stay-at-home wife, drawing in millions of views across Instagram and TikTok. 

Stone shares videos from her Florida home where she discusses the need for women to embrace femininity and healthy marriages, and tells young women that it is OK to want to be a wife and a mother. 

In one of her viral videos, Stone said, in part:

“Have you tried putting on a sundress and cooking his favorite meal? Have you tried actually listening when he speaks? Have you tried being happy and joyful when he comes home instead of nagging him? Have you tried keeping the house clean so that it’s a sanctuary for him to come home to and not more chaos?”

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“I had this moment before I got married and, through a lot of conversations with my husband now to where I realized, you know what, I just want to be a traditional woman. I want to stay at home, be a stay-at-home wife. I want to stay home with my kids one day. I want to rebuild a nuclear family because the left and modern feminism has truly tried to destroy that,” Stone said during an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital. 

Stone met her husband at 17 years old, when he was 20, and they got married a year later when she was 18. Stone shared that she hasn’t always wanted to live a traditional life.

“I was very feminist in high school, actually,” Stone said. “I was quite liberal. Growing up throughout high school, I believed the lies that modern feminism taught, and I actually wanted to go to law school and get a law degree.” 

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Stone said she believes that modern feminism “lies” to women about the life they should pursue. 

“I just quickly realized the lies that modern feminism pushes on young women, that we have to graduate high school, and then we have this huge career, and we have to go to college and get a degree and grind and kind of get our life together and experiment in the dating pool, if you will, until we find our husband. And then you still want to work because, you know, you have to be independent, and you can’t rely on a man.”

Stone said feminism pushes that marriage is a “transactional” relationship, and encourages women to pursue healthy marriages based on a foundation of serving one another. 

“It’s constantly wanting to uplift and encourage the other person and serve them, and specifically for women, our power comes from serving and nurturing,” she said.

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Stone rejects the “strict boxes” that she believes modern society has placed women into. She shared how she believes women can aspire to be anything that they want. In her case, Stone is a content creator and works from home but still describes herself as a stay-at-home wife.

“It’s really hard because, let’s say you want a career, but you also want to be an amazing wife and an amazing mother. You can have that, but the world will tell you, no, you need to focus on your career,” she said. “Or if you want to be a wife. No, you can’t have a career, too. And so I would say, don’t let the world put you in boxes. You get to define what your life looks like. You get to define what your career looks like and what your whole life looks like.”

However, Stone believes nothing provides more fulfillment than family.

“There is nothing more fulfilling, and there is nothing more important in your life than being a wife and a mother,” she said.