By now, the case of Riddhi Patel, the left wing activist who threatened to murder members of the Bakersfield City Council, has become more than just another local criminal proceeding.

What once looked like a high-profile public safety and political extremism case evolved into a de facto legal determination that radical left political behavior is a matter of mental health rather than ideological disagreement.

In a decision that will reverberate far beyond Kern County, a California Superior Court judge has granted Patel a mental health diversion – meaning that instead of facing imprisonment or traditional prosecution for her conduct, she will enter a court-supervised mental health treatment program and could ultimately see all 21 felony charges dismissed if she completes the program successfully. Yes, they determined her behavior was just “nuts”.

WATCH:

This is the first time a radical leftist activist who escalated political rhetoric into explicit threats against elected officials has been formally routed out of the criminal justice system and into mental health diversion on the basis that her political extremism reflects a diagnosable and treatable psychological condition.

The saga began at a Bakersfield City Council meeting on April 10, 2024, when Patel attended public comment and delivered a passionate critique of council members for failing to adopt a Gaza cease-fire resolution.

When she finished her comments, Patel told council members, “We’ll see you at your house, we’ll murder you”.

That chilling threat to murder the council resulted in her immediate arrest on numerous counts of “intent to terrorize” and “criminal threats” under California law.

Prosecutors originally levied 16 felony counts that later grew to 21 as the case proceeded.

Bail was initially set at $2 million, and then lowered to $500,000, after which Patel was released pending further hearings.

Public safety advocates argued her remarks crossed numerous legal lines and should be met with accountability.

What has drawn the most attention isn’t just Patel’s behavior, but the court’s eventual decision to treat it as a mental health issue rather than a pure criminal matter. In late 2025 and early 2026, her defense team sought to qualify her for California’s mental health diversion program, which is typically reserved for individuals whose criminal acts are driven by underlying psychological disorders.

The law allows courts to divert eligible defendants away from traditional prosecution if:

• A clinically significant mental disorder can be diagnosed by qualified professionals, and
• The disorder significantly contributed to the alleged criminal behavior, and
• The disorder is likely to respond to treatment.

Unlike traditional criminal punishment, which focuses on deterrence and retribution, mental health diversion emphasizes treatment and rehabilitation, a concept usually applied in cases where delusions, psychosis, or other severe mental disorders are clearly involved.

After two rounds of psychological evaluations, one last November and another this January, Kern County Superior Court Judge John Brownlee ruled that Patel is suitable and eligible for mental health diversion.

This ruling effectively means that Patel’s threat to kill was not dangerous political speech with criminal intent, but a symptom of an underlying mental instability.

The court’s endorsement of the diversion program for Patel is an implicit acknowledgment that extreme radical leftist behavior is a form of treatable mental illness.

Even more consequential, this ruling might have implications far beyond Bakersfield and Kern County.

It means radical leftists like AOC, Eric Swalwell, Bernie Sanders and many others can be assumed to be mentally ill.

Patel will next appear in court on March 6, 2026, for a status hearing and progress report on her mental health diversion program.

If she completes all required treatment and supervision terms, the charges against her could be dismissed entirely, effectively giving her a legal reset from felony prosecution.

One thing is clear: California courts have taken a significant step toward reframing radical political conduct as a matter of mental health, not legitimate political ideology.

Joel Gilbert is a Los Angeles-based film producer and president of Highway 61 Entertainment. He is theproducer of the new film Roseanne Barr Is America. He is also the producer of: Dreams from My Real Father, The Trayvon Hoax, Trump: The Art of the Insult, and many other films on American politics and music icons. Gilbert is on Twitter: @JoelSGilbert.

The post California Court Decides that Radical Leftist Extremism Is a Form of Mental Illness as Riddhi Patel is Granted Mental Health Diversion appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

In a shocking new exposé highlighting the grotesque waste and cruelty involved in federal science funding, watchdog White Coat Waste (WCW) has uncovered documents revealing how the University of Chicago is using millions in taxpayer dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to deliberately inflict the “most severe” strokes on dozens of dogs, only to kill them shortly after.

This barbaric practice, which involves blocking the animals’ brain arteries and subjecting them to immense suffering, comes as the NSF is already under fire for a litany of wasteful and inhumane animal experiments.

According to WCW’s investigation, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the lab at the University of Chicago has conducted these experiments on at least 64 dogs, inducing what researchers themselves describe as the “most severe stroke” possible.

The process is cold and methodical, spanning three days:

• Day 1: The dogs undergo imaging scans and blood draws to establish baselines.
• Day 2: Experimenters block the animals’ middle cerebral arteries using coils, triggering massive strokes. The dogs are then assessed using a “stroke scale” to measure the damage.
• Day 3: The suffering ends – not with treatment or mercy, but with euthanasia. Lab documents admit that if the dogs were allowed to survive, they would endure “significant suffering” due to the lack of round-the-clock care equivalent to what human stroke patients receive.

These experiments are purportedly testing a stroke treatment that has already been proven safe and effective in human clinical trials, raising serious questions about why innocent dogs are being tortured and killed for redundant research.

WCW notes that this continues despite NIH’s pledges to phase out dog testing, led by figures such as Fauci-fan girl Nicole Kleinstreuer, who heads the agency’s efforts to promote non-animal alternatives.

While the NIH has wasted $4.9 million on these dog experiments, including a new $596,000 grant awarded in June with three more years of funding secured, the NSF’s involvement is even more egregious.

Portions of two massive NSF grants, totaling a staggering $40.5 million, are supporting the University of Chicago lab. The current active grant alone is worth $24.7 million and runs through August.

Those are your hard-earned tax dollars, part of the NSF’s bloated $9 billion annual budget, going straight to needlessly torturing man’s best friend.

This isn’t an isolated incident.

WCW has repeatedly blown the whistle on the NSF’s pattern of funding absurd and cruel animal tests, including poisoning puppies with experimental drugs, force-feeding cats to make them obese before injecting weight-loss cocktails, creating “transgender” lab mice by mutilating rat genitals or dosing them with cross-sex hormones, and injecting drugs into puppies’ eyes.

One particularly outrageous project, highlighted in Sen. Rand Paul’s 2025 Festivus Report, involved a $14.6 million NSF grant for primates playing Plinko after drilling into their skulls during invasive brain surgeries.

WCW, an organization dedicated to ending the taxpayer-funded animal testing industry, has long fought to defund the NSF, and they are not alone in the fight.

Just last month, The Gateway Pundit reported on WCW’s partnerships with Republican heavyweights to pressure the Trump administration into cutting off NSF funding for these atrocities.

Rep. Nancy Mace has been a key ally, introducing an amendment to the 2026 appropriations bill that would ban NSF funds from being used for any research causing pain or distress to domestic cats or dogs. The congresswoman previously collaborated with WCW to eliminate similar funding for painful pet experiments in the military’s 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Trump signed into law.

One group is actually fighting back: White Coat Waste Project.

They’ve exposed $20 BILLION in taxpayer funding for cruel, useless experiments—including bizarre transgender tests on animals and bat virus gain-of-function work in China.

Yes, really. pic.twitter.com/8cyf3Kr9fM

— Vigilant Fox (@VigilantFox) February 13, 2026

In a December Fox Business interview, Sen. Rand Paul went as far as to say the NSF should be entirely shut down because of its reckless spending habits.

Sen. Joni Ernst has repeatedly teamed up with WCW to expose NSF’s wasteful spending, including an infamous study that involved putting shrimp on a treadmill.

If you want to put shrimp on a treadmill or turn mice transgender, do it on your own dime, not the taxpayers’.

This is exactly why we need @DOGE! pic.twitter.com/XUcSGf4aud

— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) March 7, 2025

On Thursday, it was reported that President Donald Trump plans to nominate Jim O’Neill, a vocal critic of similar animal abuses, to head the NSF. There may finally be hope for ending this taxpayer-funded nightmare.

O’Neill recently served as HHS Deputy Secretary and acting CDC Director.

Back in 2021, O’Neill publicly condemned WCW’s revelations about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIH-backed beagle experiments, where puppies had their vocal cords removed to silence their cries during toxic drug tests. O’Neill called it “horrible if true,” which it was.

“some of the dogs had their vocal cords removed so scientists could work without incessant barking.”

Horrible if true. https://t.co/ZuWz6tIjSG

— Jim O’Neill (@regardthefrost) October 23, 2021

The Gateway Pundit reached out to O’Neill for comment on the University of Chicago experiments and whether he would be open to stopping these tests and similar ones if confirmed. We did not receive a response as of early Friday morning, but we will update this article if one is provided.

The post EXPOSED: Taxpayer-Funded Horror at University of Chicago – NSF Pours Millions into Inducing Severe Strokes in Dogs Before Killing Them appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Kansas Republicans delivered a decisive victory for women’s privacy and biological truth on February 18, 2026, when the House joined the Senate in overriding Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of House Substitute for Senate Bill 244.

The Republican-led Senate overrode Kelly’s veto with a 31-9 vote, and the House followed with an 87-37 tally, easily surpassing the two-thirds margin needed to send the bill straight into law.

The move came just days after Gov. Kelly vetoed the bill on February 13, 2026, calling the legislation “poorly drafted” and warning it would have “numerous and significant consequences.”

Republicans, however, had the votes and they used them.

Under the new statute:

• Restroom use in state government buildings, schools, and universities is restricted to the sex assigned at birth. Transgender Kansans who identify differently but who have not had surgery or whose IDs do not match their gender identity will be barred from using opposite-sex facilities.
• Government agencies will designate multi-occupancy restrooms as either male or female — eliminating “gender-neutral” bathrooms in state buildings.
• Driver’s licenses and birth certificates must reflect biological sex at birth, not self-declared gender identity — reversing any existing changes for residents.
• Penalties for violations include warnings for a first infraction, $1,000 fines for second violations and misdemeanor charges for repeated infractions.

House Speaker Dan Hawkins (R-Wichita) defended the override, emphasizing that clarity and reality should triumph over ideology, and that women’s privacy and safety in restrooms and locker rooms matters above all.

Sen. Kellie Warren (R-Leawood) hammered the point during debate, questioning why a man should ever be legally permitted into a women’s restroom.

Opposition was swift and forceful.

Civil liberties organizations, including the ACLU of Kansas, called the law intrusive and discriminatory, accusing lawmakers of gender policing and forcing Kansans into the wrong bathrooms.

“This bill is about forcing people into the wrong bathrooms and opening up all Kansans to scrutiny and gender policing by strangers,” said Logan DeMond, ACLU of Kansas Policy Director.

“Bathroom bans are grounded in prejudice and misinformation, and they don’t actually make anyone safer. Transgender people are already vulnerable to violence, especially in restrooms, and this bill layers prospective physical violence on top of the existing privacy violation of forced changes to identification documents. Transgender Kansas should have protection and dignity in our state instead of persecution. But rather than addressing the real problems everyday Kansans face and trying to make people’s lives better, politicians continue to focus their lawmaking powers on a minority, bending the very rules in the statehouse to do so.”

“This bill is exactly the kind of politicized, governmental overreach that the Kansas Constitution seeks to protect us against,” said Micah Kubic, ACLU of Kansas Executive Director.

“When Attorney General Kobach failed to see his extremist interpretation of a vague law accepted by the Courts last year, he ran to the legislature to try and to have another go at undermining constitutionally protected rights. We are disappointed to see a policy adopted that is based on misinformation against our trans and intersex family and friends, intruding into the most private corners of our lives.

Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson issued the following statement: 

“Instead of meeting the needs of their constituents, Kansas lawmakers have prioritized cruelty. As one of their first acts, they forced through this “bathroom bounty” bill  under the cover of night and then overrode the governor just days later, denying LGBTQ+ Kansans and their allies an opportunity to even speak in defense of their dignity.

Forcing people into the wrong bathrooms, stripping them of accurate IDs, and allowing government-sanctioned harassment doesn’t make anyone safer — it targets transgender Kansans for no reason and will undoubtedly impact many others who are targeted with animus whether or not they are transgender. Meanwhile leaders ignore real challenges facing families. This was sadly politics over people, but we will keep fighting for dignity and freedom for all LGBTQ+ people.”

The following statement is from Governor Kelly regarding the overriding of her veto of House Substitute for Senate Bill 244:

“As I said in my veto statement, this is a poorly drafted bill with significant, far-reaching consequences.

“Not only will this bill keep brothers from visiting sisters’ dorms and husbands from wives’ shared hospital rooms, it will cost Kansas taxpayers millions of dollars to comply with this very vague legislation.

“It is nothing short of ridiculous that the Legislature is forcing the entire state, every city and town, every school district, every public university to spend taxpayer money on a manufactured problem. Kansans elected them to focus on education, job creation, housing, and grocery costs.”

WATCH:

BREAKING: The Kansas Legislature just OVERRODE the Democrat Governor’s veto and enacted a law that
– Bans MEN from WOMEN’S restrooms
– Defines male and female at birth
– Requires accurate listing of male or female on licenses and birth certificates

Both the Senate and House… pic.twitter.com/ZvN5D4pKD7

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 18, 2026

The post Kansas GOP OVERRIDES Dem Gov. Laura Kelly’s Veto — Enacts Law that BANS MEN from WOMEN’S Restrooms, Defines Sex at Birth, Mandates Accurate Male/Female IDs appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Another unsuccessful round of peace talks.

The two-day trilateral talks between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine, held in Geneva Tuesday and yesterday, have broken down in an abrupt fashion.

Swiss press says that ‘the maximalist visions of the Russian chief negotiator and the divisions within the Ukrainian camp contributed to the breakdown of the negotiations’.

But there is also reporting about a distancing between US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Kiev’s delegation.

“[News outlets] note that the Russian delegation was seated to the right of Witkoff and Kushner, while the Ukrainians were on the left, and even ‘through’ a Swiss diplomat. The publication also points to the pressure that US President Donald Trump is exerting on Volodymyr Zelensky.

Head of the Russian delegation Vladimir #Medinsky on the outcomes of the tripartite talks in Geneva:

The talks continued for two days – yesterday & about two hours today.

They were difficult, but businesslike.

The next meeting will take place in the near future. pic.twitter.com/Ex0uWxta1Z

— MFA Russia (@mfa_russia) February 18, 2026

Le Temps reported:

“The second day of negotiations in Geneva between Russia and Ukraine was abruptly cut short on Wednesday morning. Barely two hours after the start of the talks, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, announced via the Russian media that the negotiations were coming to an end.

Between Moscow’s maximalist positions, a rift within the Ukrainian camp and Washington’s haste, the conditions for US-sponsored talks to end the four-year-old war in Ukraine were far from being met.”

The military-level talks in Abu Dhabi reportedly ran more smoothly, but now sensitive political issues such as the protections for the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church were back on the table.

“A rift within the Ukrainian delegation would also have complicated the situation. According to The Economist, one camp, led by former Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, believes that a quick deal — even if imperfect — would be preferable before the window of opportunity closes. Another, still influenced by former chief of staff Andriy Yermak, is said to be much less conciliatory. Volodymyr Zelensky is reportedly seeking to maintain the balance between these two lines, while being under external and internal pressure to organize elections, reports the British weekly.”

Read more:

Ukrainian Negotiators Divided, With Head of Presidential Office Budanov Leading Faction Who Wants a Quick Peace Agreement ‘While There’s Still Time’: REPORT

The post Second Day of Trilateral Talks Between US, Russia and Ukraine Breaks Down in Geneva, Amid Russian Demands, Divisions in Ukraine Camp and Growing Distance Between Kiev and Washington appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.