In the summer of 1969, a woman leaned out of a tenement window in Boston’s Italian North End and called, “Anthony! Anthony!” A 12-year-old boy who had immigrated from Italy three years earlier raced through the busy streets and burst into his apartment, where his loving family was setting dinner on the table. “Most days, Anthony takes his time going home,” the narrator says. But not today, because “Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day.”

The boy was Anthony Martignetti, a real North End kid, and the woman calling him was a neighbor, Mary Fiumara. Neither was a professional actor. Martignetti was discovered when three men asking for directions to Commercial Street turned out to be scouting the neighborhood for a Prince ad. Part of the commercial’s charm was that authenticity.

For reasons no one could have predicted, this TV commercial for a Boston pasta company became a symbol of Italian American pride and part of the fabric of American culture. It ran for 13 years. No matter where your family came from, if you grew up in the Northeast Corridor in the 1970s, you probably remember little Anthony.

The one-minute commercial captured the shared childhood experience of city children playing outside until they heard their names called down the block. Irish, Polish, Jewish, Black, and Hispanic working-class families in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsburgh could recognize their own neighborhoods in that footage.

And while we Italian Americans believe we invented the family dinner and, on some level, the mamma, most people grow up with nostalgic memories of large family meals centered around traditional food. Although Anthony was Italian, a similar scene played out in the surrounding ethnic neighborhoods, with kielbasa, matzo ball soup, or Irish pot roast and potatoes on the dinner table.

For Italian American kids, it was comforting to see our neighborhoods and our families on TV. In our house, Sunday was pasta night, but Wednesday was Prince Spaghetti Theater night, when we would all watch the movie sponsored by Prince Spaghetti. Of course, the commercial ran multiple times during the evening.

It was also one of the few positive portrayals of Italian Americans on television. Unlike many other groups that file lawsuits or get triggered by stereotypes, Italian Americans generally have a love-hate relationship with Hollywood’s images of mafia, pistols, pasta, “fuhgeddaboudit,” and “gabagool.” With exceptions such as the movie Moonstruck, mob-themed portrayals dominate.

Another stereotype, less common today but familiar for decades, was the Italian American young man portrayed as a ladies’ man: impossibly good-looking but dumb. This image recurred from John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever to Vinnie Barbarino on Welcome Back, Kotter, Joey Tribbiani on Friends, and pretty much any character ever played by Tony Danza. Even Fonzie, the most iconic Italian American figure of the 1970s, was a girl magnet who, despite being the epitome of cool, didn’t finish high school.

Little Anthony gave the rest of the country a rare look into what our lives were really like, and we were grateful. Part of the reason Prince Spaghetti knew how to portray an ethnic family was that the company itself was an immigrant success story.

In 1912, three men from the same village in Sicily opened a small spaghetti shop at 92 Prince Street in the North End. Gaetano LaMarca ran the administration, Giuseppe Seminara handled sales, and Michele Cantella made the pasta. The business outgrew its storefront and moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1939, where its plant became the biggest pasta mill in the country. A sign at the city line welcomed visitors to “Spaghettiville.” The Pellegrino family owned Prince until 1987, when it was sold to Borden.

The Prince story repeated itself across America because the New World offered immigrants the freedom to build and the rule of law to protect what they built. Ettore Boiardi arrived in 1914 from Piacenza, worked his way up in New York kitchens, and in 1928 launched the company that put Chef Boyardee on shelves nationwide. Amedeo Obici left Oderzo at age 11, sold roasted peanuts in Pennsylvania, and in 1906 founded Planters with fellow Italian immigrant Mario Peruzzi.

Domenico Ghirardelli, born in Rapallo, came to California during the Gold Rush and opened his San Francisco chocolate business in 1852. It remains in operation today. The Jacuzzi brothers, from Casarsa in northern Italy, worked in California orange groves while speaking only basic English before opening a Berkeley machine shop in 1915. Their surname became synonymous with whirlpool baths.

The children of immigrants carried the story forward. Amadeo Peter Giannini, born in San Jose to Italian immigrant parents, opened the Bank of Italy in San Francisco in 1904 to lend to immigrants whom larger banks refused to serve. Renamed Bank of America in 1930, it was the largest bank in the world by 1945.

For Italian Americans, Columbus Day is a celebration of pride and heritage, an occasion to honor these accomplishments and commemorate our history. New York’s Columbus Day Parade is the world’s largest celebration of Italian American culture and heritage. It is a day to mark that climb from tenement to boardroom and remember what it cost.

The Italian American connection to Columbus Day was born in violence. On March 14, 1891, a mob stormed the Orleans Parish Prison and murdered 11 Italian prisoners held in connection with the killing of New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy. It was the largest mass lynching in U.S. history.

In April 1892, the United States paid Italy about $25,000 for the victims’ families. Three months later, on July 21, 1892, President Benjamin Harrison issued Proclamation 335, declaring October 21, 1892, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage, a general holiday and calling Columbus “the pioneer of progress and enlightenment.”

Congress made the observance annual through a joint resolution of April 30, 1934, and in 1971 it moved to the second Monday in October. This year, President Trump signed the Columbus Day proclamation on October 7, setting the holiday for October 12.

The proclamation states that Columbus Day “holds special significance for our incredible Italian-American citizens,” and notes that a replica of Baltimore’s Columbus statue, which rioters tore down and threw into Baltimore Harbor on July 4, 2020, now stands on the White House grounds.

Little Anthony most likely didn’t realize it, but he was carrying all of this history, heritage, and culture on his shoulders as he raced home in 1969 to eat Prince Spaghetti.

The post On Columbus Day: Remembering Little Anthony Who Rushed Home for Prince Spaghetti Day appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

President Trump on Saturday told reporters that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “does not want to make a deal” with Russia, blasting him again for allowing the war to continue and calling for an election to be held. 

“He could have settled this thing many times,” Trump said, again calling for a new leader in Ukraine. Ukraine has not held an election since Zelensky was first elected in 2019.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Trump went off on Zelensky yesterday after announcing a deal with Russia to sell diesel to the US. While speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump blasted the Ukrainian President’s refusal to make peace and blamed him for the continuation of the war with Russia.

He further slammed him for attacking Russian oil refineries, blaming him for high US diesel prices. “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president,” Trump said.

WATCH: Trump GOES OFF on Zelensky After Ukrainian Attack on Russian Diesel Hub – “He Better Damn Well Stop… Time for Ukraine to Get a New President!”

Trump was asked on Saturday night if Zelensky is delaying peace so that he can stay in power without holding an election.

"I think he should have an election, and he could have settled this thing many times," the President said.

"This is a war that should have never happened. Ukraine, Russia should have never happened. If I were president, it never would have happened. But President Zelensky could have solved this war, or he could have could have made a deal many times."

WATCH:

When asked another question about a potential upcoming meeting between US envoys and Putin, Trump again blamed Zelensky for the war, stating, "I think that Russia would like to make a deal."

"But as I said, this is something that could have been solved many times, but for whatever reason, Zelensky does not want to make a deal," he continued.

"I think it would have been smart. If he would have made a deal two years ago, he would have been a lot better off... He could have made a much better deal two years ago."

Of his recent phone call with Putin, Trump said, "President Putin would like to see a settlement strongly."

"And look, he's freeing up a lot of oil for the world, okay? That’s a good thing," he added. "And by the way, at a very low price."

WATCH:

The post (VIDEO) Trump Blasts Zelensky Again, Says Russia Wants to Make a Deal but “Zelensky Does Not” – Calls for Elections in Ukraine appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov has delivered a blistering rebuke of the Norwegian Nobel Committee after it awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to controversial South African jurist Navi Pillay, whose record of attacking Israel has sparked fierce condemnation from Israeli leaders and supporters of the Jewish state.

Kasparov, the 13th World Chess Champion and longtime opponent of authoritarian regimes, took to X with a devastating one-line response to the committee’s decision.

“Maybe next year they’ll give the Chemistry prize to a Hamas bomb maker.”

Maybe next year they’ll give the Chemistry prize to a Hamas bomb maker.

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) October 9, 2026

The tweet quickly went viral, drawing tens of thousands of likes as it cut through the usual polite fiction surrounding the award. In a follow-up, he dryly noted that he was aware the Peace Prize is handled by a separate Norwegian committee from the Swedish ones that award the other prizes, but the broader point landed.

The chess legend was reacting to the committee’s decision to honor Pillay “for her efforts to promote peace and international law.” Pillay chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which issued a report accusing Israel of “genocide” in Gaza.

Critics, including Israeli officials and Jewish advocacy groups, have long documented her lack of impartiality: she signed a 2020 manifesto calling on governments to “Sanction Apartheid Israel,” then accepted the chairmanship of the inquiry without disclosing the conflict; she defended a fellow commissioner who invoked “the Jewish lobby”; and she has a record of one-sided criticism that ignored Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 Israelis, the rapes, the hostages, and the group’s use of human shields.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Jewish leaders and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted with fury. Netanyahu stated that the Nobel Committee “has lost its moral compass” by awarding its highest honor to “a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.”

UN Watch condemned the decision, with Executive Director Hillel Neuer highlighting Pillay’s “troubling record on antisemitism and gross breach of ethics.”

After the announcement, Pillay herself cracked a snide joke suggesting she might share the prize with President Trump, the man who has actually ended multiple wars, secured the release of hostages, and advanced real diplomacy.

President Trump himself delivered a blistering response later that day at a packed rally for Republican candidates in Syracuse, New York.

“The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel peace prize, but didn’t. And this is an indelible stain on the country of Norway, and those people that made such a disgraceful and embarrassing decision,” Trump said.

“The Nobel peace prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilization,” he continued. “We will not forget, Norway, that you didn’t give this prize.”

Trump repeated his record of settling eight conflicts, including efforts involving Israel and Iran, where he has stated he stopped Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and prevented wider escalation in the Middle East, along with securing the return of hostages from Hamas. He noted he had never heard of Pillay and dismissed the decision as further evidence of the committee’s bias.

The post BRUTAL! Former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov TORCHES Nobel Committee After Controversial Peace Prize Award: “Maybe Next Year They’ll Give the Chemistry Prize to a Hamas Bomb Maker” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Democrats and the media have spent the last week going into convulsions over Trump’s recent comments about Iran ‘taking out’ the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego. They completely twisted his meaning and everyone knows it, even Bill Maher.

On his show on Friday night, Maher called out the Democrats for doing this and even took a completely justified dig at Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in the process.

It was a pretty funny line, too.

The liberal Daily Beast is very upset that Maher is defending Trump:

Bill Maher, 70, Defends Trump Comments About Bombing L.A.

Bill Maher has defended President Donald Trump’s incendiary suggestion that Iran could “take out Los Angeles.”

Trump defended higher gas prices this week as a “small price to pay” for keeping Americans safe, then said, “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” Outrage ensued, while Trump insisted he was invoking the cities as examples of what a nuclear-armed Iran could attack, saying higher fuel costs were preferable to destruction.

Maher corroborated Trump’s defense on his Friday show, saying, “Let’s be fair.” He said the “small price” the president meant was high gas prices.

“He wasn’t saying that we were encouraging Iran,” Maher said, defending the president. “But still, you don’t want to say that to people in this city. We live here.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was among the California Democrats who called Trump’s slopiness out. She called the remarks horrifying and “egregious,” saying the president should not treat major American cities as expendable.

Maher, 70, ribbed Bass over her response, saying, “She immediately got on the phone with her travel agent.” That appears to refer to her trip to Ghana during the devastating January 2025 Los Angeles fires.

Here’s the video:

HBO’s Bill Maher called out those who framed Trump’s rally comments as him wanting LA and San Diego to be bombed: “He was saying gas prices are too high, it’s a small price. He wasn’t saying that, that we were encouraging Iran…”

Maher even got a Karen Bass joke in: “Karen… pic.twitter.com/7XG6mjG2Qv

— Nick (@nspin310) October 10, 2026

Did you think we would ever see a time when Bill Maher is more fair and balanced than 99% of the media?

The post Bill Maher Slams Democrats for Twisting Trump’s Words on Iran and Takes a Dig at Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in the Process (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A Biden-appointed federal judge has once again stepped in to shield dirty voter rolls from federal scrutiny, striking down the Justice Department’s nationwide effort to collect registration records and identify suspected non-U.S. citizens on the rolls.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, ruled that the Department of Justice overstepped its bounds by demanding unredacted voter registration lists and cross-referencing them using federal databases.

According to the 78-page ruling, the DOJ began requesting complete, unredacted statewide voter registration lists (including names, dates of birth, addresses, and driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers) from 49 states and the District of Columbia starting in May 2025. At least 18 states fully cooperated.

The department then shared the data with DHS for runs through the expanded Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system and urged states to remove voters flagged as potentially ineligible.

The Justice Department maintained that its actions were authorized by federal laws governing voter registration and election administration.

Sooknanan rejected that argument.

Sooknanan concluded that the Justice Department’s policy violated the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act, exceeded the agency’s statutory authority, and was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.

She wrote that the policy “flies in the face of duly enacted laws designed to protect Americans” and accused the DOJ of attempting to “decide who gets to vote.” She claimed the administration failed to adequately weigh the risk that flawed federal databases could wrongly flag eligible citizens.

This is not the first time Judge Sooknanan has ruled against the Trump administration’s voter citizenship verification efforts.

As The Gateway Pundit reported in June, Sooknanan previously blocked the administration’s expanded Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.

That June 22 ruling concerned modifications allowing federal agencies to combine citizenship and Social Security information to help states verify voter eligibility.

Sooknanan found that the expanded system violated federal privacy protections and other statutory requirements.

The administration challenged that ruling, setting off a separate legal battle over the government’s ability to maintain and operate the expanded citizenship database.

On September 4, Gateway Pundit reported that two Obama-appointed judges on the D.C. Circuit rejected an emergency request to restore the expanded SAVE system while the administration’s appeal proceeded.

Trump-appointed Judge Gregory Katsas dissented.

Then, on September 25, the Supreme Court temporarily permitted the government to resume certain expanded SAVE operations while litigation continued, as described in subsequent Gateway Pundit reporting.

Friday’s decision represents a separate challenge to the Justice Department’s nationwide voter-roll collection policy, rather than a reversal of the Supreme Court’s temporary order concerning SAVE.

Trump DOJ Previously Reported Thousands of Suspected Noncitizen Registrations

The Gateway Pundit reported in March that Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon had described a federal review of voter registration records provided by 16 cooperating states.

According to Dhillon’s reported findings, the investigation identified tens of thousands of suspected noncitizen registrations, along with duplicate records and registrations associated with deceased individuals.

The post Biden-Appointed Activist Judge Sparkle Sooknanan Blocks Trump DOJ’s Nationwide Voter Roll Cleanup Effort — Even in States That Voluntarily Cooperated appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Sophie Cunningham, the second most popular athlete in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) responded to the latest derelict attacks by racist Sydney Colson.

Recently, Colson told Cunningham to “shut the f*ck up” after Cunningham said biological men should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports, a view that is popular with nearly 80% of Americans.

But the crazies in the “Womens” National Basketball Association, including Colson, disagree. They want to compete with dudes.

WNBA player tells Sophie Cunningham to “shut the f**k up” and says she doesn’t respect White players.

Remember, this is what Sophie said: “I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or… in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” https://t.co/SzBY5rCa77

— Dan Zaksheske (@RealDanZak) October 8, 2026

Sophie Cunningham responded to Syd Colson this week following the ignorant, racist attacks, “I literally don’t even care…if you’re going to live by the praise, you’re gonna die by the hate. They’re just thirsty to have attention or be relevant…I’m gonna continue to do me…whatever. SUCK IT!”

Here is the full exchange:

Sophie Cunningham: I literally don’t even care what anyone says about me anymore. Because I’ve said this so many times, if you’re going to live by the praise, you’re going to die by the hate. And the majority of these people have never picked up a ball in their entire lives. And they’re just like thirsty to, you know, have attention or be relevant in some type of way.

And like, no matter what anyone says to me, I’m going to continue to do me. I know what I bring to the table. It’s not always in the stat sheet.

And so for you to like not say I’m effective or any of that, whatever, suck it.

Anyway, let’s talk about some basketball because that’s why we’re here. And this is why we even started this pod. Let’s get into this first round. Yeah.

Sophie responds to the article from @TheAthletic demanding Fever to drop her

“If you’re going to live by the praise, you’ll die by the hate…..I’m going to continue to do me…..suck it”

This is the appropriate response. We should all be more like this. https://t.co/kfQuNw89dQ

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) October 10, 2026

The post Sophie Cunningham to Critics of Her Trans-Kids Statements: “I’m Going to Continue to Do Me… Suck It!” (Video) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.