West
GOP lawmaker rips 'lost in the wilderness' DOGE protesters amid chaos at her town hall: 'Highly orchestrated'
EXCLUSIVE: Wyoming GOP Rep. Harriet Hageman spoke to Fox News Digital about the raucous Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) protesters who showed up at her recent town hall and about the acts of “domestic terrorism” occurring at Tesla dealerships, which she says Democrats are doing everything they can to ignore.
“My takeaway from that was that it was highly orchestrated,” Hageman said about two of her town halls last week in Wyoming that were disrupted by liberal protesters whose actions went viral on social media.
“This was not grassroots. I do believe that quite a few of the people may have been from outside of the state of Wyoming, or at least outside of that community. I have now held 75 town halls in the last three years, and there’s only two of them that have been disrupted.”
Hageman told Fox News Digital that Democrats are involved in a “national movement” to try and “shout Republicans down” while not bringing any new ideas to the table at the same time.
MEDIA, DEMS CELEBRATE TESLA WOES AS ANGER OVER ELON MUSK’S ROLE IN TRUMP ADMIN CONTINUES
GOP Rep. Harriet Hageman spoke to Fox News Digital about the nationwide DOGE protests. (Storyful/Getty)
“The Democrats are so lost in the wilderness right now because their policies have failed, will continue to fail, and the American public woke up as to how bad they are,” Hageman said.
“They’re bad for kids. They’re bad for adults. They’re bad for healthcare. They’re bad in terms of education, business, national security. You can go on and on and on by almost every single metric. I’m not aware of one Democrat policy that I can even remotely agree with just because they’ve gone so off the rails. And so, because they’ve lost the narrative, because they’ve lost the support of the American people, they’re lashing out at people like me.”
Some of the protesters were chanting about Jan. 6 in the state where Hageman soundly defeated incumbent GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, the face of the movement to impeach Trump over Jan. 6, which Hageman said was a sign that the protests were not organic.
“I beat Liz Cheney by almost 40%,” Hageman said. “My election last November was by an enormous landslide that was similar, if not bigger. Yes, there are Democrats in Wyoming, but that’s not what we’re seeing. The national leadership, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, they made it clear that because they cannot engage in the debate of ideas, they’re going to shut us down from speaking, and that was clearly the intent of what they were trying to do in Albany County.”
PAM BONDI THREATENS PROSECUTION AMID DOGE’S FINDINGS ABOUT FRAUD: ‘WE’RE COMING AFTER YOU’
Five Tesla vehicles were set on fire and shot at in what police are investigating as a “targeted attack” at a local repair center in Las Vegas on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (Hal Sparks via Storyful)
Hageman explained that Democrats “do that because they cannot engage with a legitimate discussion or analysis of the issue they know they’re going to lose” while explaining that she will continue to hold town halls and stand up to the protesters.
“They just simply are trying to prevent us from being able to speak,” Hageman said. “Didn’t allow that to happen. I fought through it and I made my points. I did my town hall, I informed people of what was going on in D.C. and I handled it, and we went on to the next one the next time.“
Some Democrats in recent weeks have accused Republicans of not showing up to town halls to answer questions from constituents about DOGE and the Trump agenda. Hageman told Fox News Digital she believes the opposite is true.
“I think it’s kind of funny that people are saying that because there’s evidence on the internet that that’s not true,” Hageman explained. “We’re seeing the town halls. And again, I think what is happening at these are the activists are coming in and attempting to disrupt them. They want their viral moment. They want the one moment when they get somebody to say something silly, or they take something out of context.”
Hageman told Fox News Digital that Democrats have created a “dangerous situation” and that she has carried elevated security at recent events, which has kept the protests in line, but she has concerns about “taking resources away from the rest of the community.”
ELON MUSK SAYS DOGE CUTS NECESSARY, BUT FACE HEADWINDS ACCORDING TO FOX POLL
Elon Musk speaks during an event in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump at the White House on Feb. 11. (AP Images)
Fox News Digital spoke to Hageman about the violence at Tesla dealerships across the country in response to Elon Musk’s DOGE actions, which have resulted in cars being burned and Attorney General Pam Bondi describing the attacks as “domestic terrorism.”
“When you look at what Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are saying, when you say what Jasmine Crockett is saying, when you look at the attacks against Teslas and Tesla dealerships and attempting to dox people, they are intentionally trying to get somebody hurt or have a very scary moment take place at these events, and that’s entirely inappropriate under our form of government,” Hageman said.
Fox News Digital asked Hageman about the overall unwillingness by Democrats to condemn the Tesla dealership violence as “domestic terrorism” despite not being shy about using the domestic terrorism label in the past.
“The domestic terrorism comes from the left, not the right, and they know that. It is a form of projection and I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anybody or any group of people who are better at projection than Democrats,” Hageman said. “They engage in this kind of rhetoric and violent behavior, and then turn around and try to paint parents at school board meetings or conservative Catholics as domestic terrorists and really it’s a point of deflection.”
“It’s to try to say, hey, don’t look at us. We’re not the bad guys. We may be torching Teslas. We may spray painting swastikas on vehicles, but don’t look at us. We’re not the ones doing it, it’s the guy who’s trying to protect his daughter from having some dude go into the locker room. That’s a domestic terrorist. And again, it’s become silly. It’s become very obvious what it is that they’re trying to do this situation with the Teslas.“
Hageman told Fox News Digital that “a badger is the most dangerous when you’ve got them cornered” and that Democrats today are in that position because they are “losing their base,” which has always been “big government.”
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is seen speaking to an audience at a town hall event in Hampton, Iowa, on Friday. Outside the event, he was captured on video being heckled by a hostile crowd. (x.com/@ChuckGrassley)
“Their base has been agencies,” Hageman said. “Their base has been the National Education Association and the public unions. And what you’re seeing with President Trump and DOGE and conservatives in Congress is we’re saying it’s a new day. There’s a new sheriff in town, and we’re going to do things better.”
“We’re going to do things different. We’re taking our country back. And I think that they’re getting pretty hysterical. They’re getting pretty scared of how they’re going to keep the gravy train going in light of the fact that they’re not going to be able to be laundering money through these federal agencies. And I think that we’re seeing them lash out at these town halls and in, in the way that they’re treating business owners.”
Recent polling suggests that a strong majority of Americans support DOGE’s mission of cutting waste, fraud and abuse, although many have expressed concerns about the way the cuts are being made. Hageman told Fox News Digital that the plan would not be perfect, but that the vast majority of Wyoming voters are behind DOGE.
“There’s going to be mistakes but don’t try to convince me that we haven’t been having problems with federal agencies for the decades that they have been in existence,” Hageman said. “So it is interesting to me that they want to act like any kind of a blip or a glitch is somehow the first time in the history of our country something hasn’t worked exactly right. The people in Wyoming strongly support the efforts of this administration to root out waste, fraud and abuse.”
Read the full article from Here
Ahmed Ali Mazen can’t remember the last time he missed the call to prayer.
Five times a day, he heads out the back of his restaurant, Old Jerusalem at 25th and Mission streets, and climbs the stairs to his rooftop, which overlooks the Mission and Bernal Heights.
He always concludes the routine with a Marlboro Gold and a scorching-hot cup of tea with fresh mint.
It’s a lifetime away from the farm where Mazen, now age 58, was raised, one of 11 children, in a small village named Saffa in Ramallah, Palestine. His family grew cucumbers, tomatoes, watermelon and, on the village’s mountaintop, olives.
The Mazen family raised cows, sheep and goats. Mazen had his own pet donkey, which he said he loved dearly.
“Donkeys were for those who couldn’t afford horses,” he said. “Those who couldn’t afford donkeys walked.”
Mazen’s donkey was his most prized possession. He would use it to plow the family’s land and carry produce back from the top of the mountain.
He looks back on his childhood fondly, remembering the village’s ceremonial olive harvest and the fiercely competitive soccer matches.
He and his friends would wait outside the nearby girls’ school in the afternoons, each picking who they said they would one day marry.
“Of course, we never had the guts to go up to them and introduce ourselves. It was just fun to love from afar. That’s what kids do.”
Mazen was 19 during the first intifada in 1987, a political uprising against Israel in which more than 1,100 Palestinians, many of them children, were killed.
“Nothing was ever the same,” he says.
He was still in his teens when he left to start a new life in the United States. In San Francisco, he worked all sorts of odd jobs: Bagging groceries at Mike’s on Mission Street, tow-truck driver, and endless kitchen gigs.
Next came an arranged marriage. “She had seen a photo of me beforehand, I didn’t, but I didn’t really care,” he recalled. “I just wanted to get married.”
His bride was another Palestinian from Ramallah, possibly one of the girls he’d admired from afar during his school days.
He said falling in love and wanting to raise a family motivated him to be self-sufficient by starting his own business. Mazen felt there was a gap to be filled, that existing Middle Eastern restaurants weren’t serving “true” Palestinian food.
One day, Mazen noticed a new “for sale” sign in a window on his commute home. The asking price was far above his price range, but with loans from a bank, family and friends, he cobbled together enough money to buy it.
Old Jerusalem Restaurant opened in 2005. At first, business was so slow that he had to borrow another $40,000 loan from a friend, but eventually it picked up.
Now, 21 years later, Old Jerusalem offers authentic Palestinian dishes like pistachio-crusted lamb chops and Nablusi kunefe, a dessert made of crispy, shredded phyllo, layered with melted cheese and soaked in sweet, fragrant syrup.
“We serve the food I ate growing up, no compromises,” Mazen said.
On its face, Mazen’s story is one of the many successful stories of Palestinian immigrants. He has a wife and three kids, all of whom went to college, and a longstanding business.
He has friends in the Palestinian community here, like Sami Rami, who owns the nearby Middle Eastern market. These days he goes to countless weddings for his friends’ grown children. And he has come to love this sanctuary city.
“This place has everything you need to love it,” he said. “There is so much diversity here: Arab, Chinese, Black, you name it. If you want to get to work in this country, there’s also the money for it.”
Yet Mazen longs for the life he left behind. The annual olive harvest has become nearly impossible due to the current conflict, he says, but he still visits home about once a year to check in on his mother.
“Do you want me to tell you what is good for the story, or do you want me to be honest?” he asked. “I’m so grateful for what God has given me, but if I could go back 20 years from now, I would have never left.”
“The biggest mistake anyone can make is to leave their country,” he said.
“Money doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t fix that feeling of comfort hearing the mosque’s call to prayer, or seeing your children gather with your nephews, and grow up alongside their cousins. No matter how much money you make, you’ll never be able to get what you once had at home.”
If you were a single Slavic pagan in ancient times, the path to finding true love was fairly straightforward and considerably more exciting than going on a blind date. All you had to do was weave a garland of wildflowers, grab your intended by the hand, hurl yourselves over the roaring flames of a bonfire, and plunge nude into the nearest body of water.
In other words, ancient midsummer festivals of romance were fairly high stakes.
While you likely won’t find anyone risking third-degree burns or stripping nude in Boulder this weekend, chef Bo Porytko is reviving similar energy for a sprawling 10-course fine-dining experience where feast-goers can party like it’s 900 A.D.
The Midsummer Farm Dinner takes place on Sunday at Esoterra Culinary Garden, 8985 Valmont Road, Boulder. The event will bring together a collective of 10 chefs from some of Denver’s buzziest restaurants — including Molotov, Somebody People, Hearth, Odell’s Bagel, Petit Chelou, Margot, Bear Leek, La Diabla and Rougarou — for a collaborative, long-table meal built around Esoterra’s summer produce. The outdoor feast will begin with arrivals at 5 p.m., followed by dinner at 6 p.m. Tickets start at $260.
Porytko, the chef behind Denver’s Molotov restaurant, said the dinner series was inspired by his heritage.
“In Ukrainian culture, we have something called Ivana Kupala, which dates back to ancient times,” Porytko said. “Basically, it’s their midsummer festivities that also act as a mating holiday.”
Don’t worry, coupling up is not required for this event.
“Midsummer is just kind of a fun time,” Porytko said. “It was a good way to harness these weird, culty vibes that kind of suit the farm setting.”
The ancient East Slavic festival of Kupala was celebrated on the evening of June 23-24.
For guests wondering how that ancient atmosphere translates to a modern dinner on a 100-acre Boulder property, the evening starts on a hospitable note. Guests arrive for James Beard-recognized cocktails mixed by the team from Denver’s Yacht Club. From there, diners have time to explore the farm.
“The way the actual event begins is people come to the farm and get about an hour with welcome cocktails,” Porytko said. “Then you’re supposed to wander, check out the space, take in the farm, and there’s a little bit of education too.”
Attendees are asked to arrive dressed entirely in white. An LED flower wreath will be placed at each setting around a massive table built for 100 people. A maypole will be erected nearby, and a live DJ will guide the evening’s soundtrack. The music will begin to vibe with standard dinner fare before veering into unexpected territory.
“The DJ will play normal music, but then take, for example, a Kelly Clarkson song and turn down the beats per minute so she sounds like she’s speaking in Viking tones,” Porytko said, adding that the DJ will also mix in random Gregorian chants to fit the scene.
As the wine flows, the initial formality of the long table quickly disappears. Porytko said guests naturally start getting up, making friends and moving around the property after a few courses.
“After 10 courses and eight glasses of wine, people just kind of take it in whatever direction they want,” Porytko said.
To translate those festive vibes into an actual 10-course meal, the participating chefs rely on a highly democratic planning process. Justin Freeman, the executive chef of Somebody People in Denver, will help coordinate the logistics, beginning with a digital inventory of whatever Esoterra is currently pulling from the soil.
“There’s a Google Doc that we all use,” Freeman said. “We just ask the owner of Esoterra — Mark DeRespinis — what he’s growing, and then everyone signs up for what ingredients they want to cook with. We really just try to showcase what Mark has.”
Chefs look over the active list, claim the specific vegetables they want to work with and design a dish around them. Freeman then steps in to help arrange the final layout of the courses. He said the event has become an ongoing annual collaboration to give a little praise to the people who are doing all the hard work — the farmers.
The resulting menu leans heavily into hyper-seasonal creativity, starting with Porytko’s own intricate contribution.
“The idea is to highlight items from the farm,” Porytko said. “For me, I’m highlighting their beets, their Badger Flame beets.”
Porytko is preparing a guinea hen roulade cured in the juice of the Badger Flame beets and stuffed with a chocolate mint mousseline. The dish will be served with a beet mole, a gummied Badger Flame beet and traditional roasted beets.
The rest of the collective will showcase the farm’s harvest through a variety of distinct culinary styles. Freeman is serving grilled fennel with a creamy pistachio sauce, pickled celtuce and seasoned breadcrumbs. Andrew Van Stee of Hearth is contributing Moroccan pistachio carrot rolls, while Miles Odell of Odell’s Bagel is pairing dry-aged ocean trout with a coconut pea puree. Justin Fulton of Margot is preparing charred cucumbers with agretti, coconut broth and yuzu kosho, and Rema Maaliki and Harrison Porter of Bear Leek are bringing braised leeks with leek soubise, albufera and crispy leeks. The lineup also features plates from James Beard chef finalist José Avila of La Diabla, JohnDavid Wright of Rougarou and pastry work by Ali Spahr of Hearth .
The actual preparation happens entirely outdoors. The chefs arrive early in the morning to set up tables, tents and their own Japanese konro grills packed with binchotan charcoal.
“It all happens out in the field, in the middle of Mark’s gardens,” Freeman said. “We set up that morning. We’ll set up the tables, the tents, everything. Then we do all the cooking in front of everyone.”
Diners can stand right by the workspace and watch the dishes come together. For the chefs, the open-air format offers a rare chance to step away from their respective restaurant kitchens and collaborate directly with their fellows.
“For us, as chefs, we just don’t get to see each other very often, so it’s really fun and special when we do,” Porytko said. “We definitely have our own little hangout in the kitchen area with all the chefs, you know — all the weirdos in the corner.”
Freeman echoed the sentiment, noting the benefit of the format for the guests as well.
“With this one, you’re getting 10 different chefs with 10 different views all coming together under one roof,” Freeman said.
Cooking in an open field does, however, mean operating at the whim of Colorado’s summer elements. Freeman recalled a previous year when a sudden onset of mountain weather forced the culinary crew to quickly shift from grilling to structural defense.
“The first year we had a little bit of rain at the start of it,” Freeman said. “Then the wind was crazy, where we all had to come and grab the tent so it didn’t blow away.”
Hopefully, on Sunday, the weather will remain tame, but guests should prepare for whatever Mother Nature has to throw at them, just in case.
The event takes place on Sunday, with arrival at 5 p.m. and dinner at 6 p.m. The location is Esoterra Culinary Garden, 8985 Valmont Road, Boulder. Tickets start at $260 and are available through Tock.
SEATTLE — Seattle is preparing for one of its busiest weekends of the year as Pride celebrations and the FIFA World Cup converge across the city.
Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend parades, festivals, concerts, and sporting events Friday through Sunday, with city officials encouraging people to plan ahead for street closures and use public transportation.
Pride weekend begins Friday with the FIFA World Cup Group G match between Egypt and Iran at Seattle Stadium.
ALSO SEE | Seattle Pride festivities to kick off with ‘Seattle Pride in the Park’ at Volunteer Park
Local organizers have designated the game as the tournament’s Pride Match Day, with community celebrations planned throughout the day. The designation has drawn objections from the Egyptian Football Association and the Iranian Football Federation, but local organizers say Pride events will move forward as planned.
Saturday’s events include Trans Pride Seattle at Volunteer Park, one of the nation’s largest transgender Pride celebrations, along with PrideFest Capitol Hill, which will transform Broadway and Cal Anderson Park into a daylong street festival featuring live music, food vendors, artists, and community organizations.
The ticketed Queer/Pride Festival will also continue throughout the weekend on Capitol Hill.
RELATED | FIFA to allow rainbow flags at Egypt-Iran World Cup ‘Pride Match’ in Seattle
The weekend culminates on Sunday with the Seattle Pride Parade, which begins at 11 a.m. along Fourth Avenue in downtown Seattle before ending near Seattle Center. Following the parade, PrideFest Seattle Center will feature live entertainment, food vendors, beer gardens, and community exhibitors through the afternoon and evening.
Seattle Pride traces its roots to 1974 and has grown into one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations, drawing hundreds of thousands of people each year.
Officials are urging attendees to expect heavy crowds and traffic throughout downtown and Capitol Hill, particularly on Sunday.
Organizers recommend using the Link light rail, buses, or other forms of public transportation whenever possible.
-
Los Angeles, Ca1 hour agoAbout 20 detained after armed suspect call sparks LAPD response in Koreatown
-
Detroit, MI2 hours agoWith Jack Flaherty returning, AJ Hinch ponders Tigers’ starting rotation
-
San Francisco, CA2 hours ago
Serving up a slice of Palestine at Old Jerusalem in the Mission District
-
Dallas, TX2 hours agoAll-day restaurant and patio coming to Dallas’ Knox and more top stories
-
Miami, FL2 hours agoBugtopia takes center stage at Zoo Miami
-
Boston, MA2 hours agoWhat JJ Peterka Will Add to the Bruins’ Roster, ‘He’s Got an Elite Shot’ | Boston Bruins
-
Denver, CO2 hours agoThis Boulder farm dinner serves up midsummer Slavic vibes with James Beard-worthy fare
-
Videos2 hours agoDestruction in Venezuela after deadly earthquakes | BBC News
