Man Steals Tools From Work Truck, Gets Caught Riding Same Trailer On Camera The Next Day

On a Friday in Hillsborough County, someone broke into a parked work truck and made off with multiple bags of tools worth several hundred dollars, all caught on surveillance video, trailer and all. On Saturday, deputies spotted a man riding a bicycle down the road pulling that exact same trailer, in what can only be described as an unusually confident encore performance.

That man was identified as 56-year-old Joe Talmadge Butts, who was arrested and found to be carrying methamphetamine at the time. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office did not need much of an investigation, on account of the culprit having returned to the literal scene of the crime pulling the literal evidence.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere about not riding your stolen trailer past the same business the day after you stole it, but Butts appears to have skipped that chapter.

We did not make this up. CBS12 has the receipts.

Texas ‘Psychic’ Who Promised to Remove Curses Couldn’t Foresee Her Own Indictment

Bridgette Doreen Evans, who also went by Jolene Travis, told her clients she could remove curses. Specifically, she convinced grieving and heartbroken people that their bad luck was caused by their own money, and that the only fix was to liquidate their assets and hand the proceeds over to her — in gold coins, or cash — so she could “cleanse” the funds and send them back. Reader, she did not send them back.

Evans and her partner, Vinnie John Uwanawich, are accused of running the scheme out of Frisco, Texas, targeting people going through divorce, romantic heartbreak, or the death of a loved one. Prosecutors say they took at least $2.5 million from at least three victims between 2021 and 2024, including one person who lost $2 million alone.

The pair now face conspiracy, wire fraud, and mail fraud charges. A federal prosecutor summed up the operation about as plainly as it deserves: “Ms. Evans preyed upon their needs, convincing victims that she could ‘remove a curse’ and help them find love. In truth her scheme was simply to help herself to their wealth.” One assumes the curse she failed to see coming was her own indictment.

All of this actually happened. The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed it.

Asked If God Appointed Him President, Trump Says ‘I Hope It’s True’

Asked directly whether he believed God had placed him in office “for such a time as this,” Donald Trump did not exactly reach for humility. “I hope it’s true,” he said. “All I’m going to do is, I’m going to do my best.” Then, apparently worried about jinxing it, he added: “I almost don’t even want to think about it.”

The claim wasn’t Trump’s own invention — he cited backing from evangelical allies including Mike Pompeo and Sarah Sanders, along with a moment he described as deeply moving: Franklin Graham revealing that his late father Billy Graham had voted for him. Trump framed his base as a “silent majority” of overlooked, hardworking Americans, which is a more modest self-description than “instrument of the divine,” but he’ll take both.

It is, admittedly, a tricky position to be in: too much confidence and you sound unhinged, too little and you’re turning down a compliment from several evangelical leaders and possibly the Almighty. Trump threaded the needle by simply agreeing it would be nice if it were true.

Don’t take our word for it: Fox News has the full story. It’s exactly as described.

Broward Man Allegedly Ran 41 Fake Luxury Car Insurance Claims, Somehow Still Got Caught

Adam Otrok wanted to drive luxury cars he never bought with money he never had, so he allegedly did what any resourceful Broward County man would do: he filed 41 fake insurance applications for vehicles he didn’t own, using counterfeit identification, then canceled the payments and demanded refunds before anyone noticed the checks had bounced.

According to Florida’s Department of Financial Services, Otrok attempted to defraud insurers out of $206,000 and actually walked away with $44,704 of it before investigators caught up with him on August 6. He now faces charges of organized fraud, insurance fraud, grand theft, and fraudulent use of personal identification, with a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia offered a promise that doubles as a warning label for the entire state: “If you want to commit financial crimes, my investigators will be close behind you.” Forty-one fraudulent applications later, they were.

We did not make this up. FOX 35 Orlando has the receipts.

Appeals Court Rules the Quiet Part DHS Already Said Out Loud Counts as Evidence

Back in January 2025, the Department of Homeland Security put out a statement bragging that, under its new policy, “criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches.” It read like a tough-guy soundbite at the time. This month, a federal appeals court used that exact sentence as evidence against the government.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction blocking DHS agents from conducting immigration enforcement at or near more than 1,400 houses of worship across 33 states and Washington, D.C. Senior Judge Barbara Milano Keenan wrote that the policy had already caused a documented decline in worship attendance, placing “a substantial burden” on congregations’ ability to practice their religion — and that DHS’s own public statement showed the agency meant to target those buildings all along.

The ruling applies specifically to the Quaker, Sikh, and Baptist congregations who sued, and it requires DHS to fall back on the more restrictive 2021 policy that generally kept immigration agents out of churches, schools, and hospitals absent a warrant or an emergency. DHS, for its part, called the ruling “a false narrative to try and demonize our brave ICE law enforcement” — which is one way to respond to a court quoting your own press release back to you.

All of this actually happened. CT Mirror confirmed it.

California Pastor Says God Told Him To Run For Governor; California Says Where’s Your Tax Returns

Ché Ahn, a self-described “apostle” who leads a global network of more than 25,000 ministries, says he prayed until 4:30 in the morning asking God for a sign about whether to run for governor of California. The sign, as Ahn describes it, arrived in the form of a text message informing him he’d be getting an email invitation to the White House. He took that as confirmation of his divine mandate. God, it turns out, communicates through Outlook.

Unfortunately for Ahn, California’s Secretary of State does not accept prophetic text messages in place of the five years of tax returns state law requires from gubernatorial candidates. Ahn’s campaign missed the March 6 filing deadline, and a Superior Court judge tossed his ballot bid, rejecting the argument that the tax-disclosure law was somehow unconstitutional.

Undeterred by the state’s very earthly paperwork requirements, Ahn is reportedly still fundraising and making campaign appearances without telling anyone he’s no longer eligible to be on the ballot. God apparently didn’t mention that part either.

Don’t take our word for it: Friendly Atheist has the full story. It’s exactly as described.

Local Man Chooses Superman Costume for Boat Burglary, Forgets the Part About Not Getting Caught

Somewhere in Hillsborough County, a man decided that if he was going to steal power tools out of a stranger’s boat cabin, he might as well do it dressed as the Man of Steel. James Tidwell allegedly helped himself to several items off a docked boat, and by all accounts felt so good about it that he never bothered changing out of the full Superman costume before deputies caught up with him.

Body camera footage shows Tidwell, cape and all, admitting to the theft as calmly as if he’d just saved a bus full of orphans instead of pocketing somebody’s cordless drill. He was charged with felony burglary of an unoccupied conveyance and first-degree petit theft, then released on a $5,500 bond — presumably back to whatever phone booth he uses to change into street clothes.

There is something almost poetic about a man choosing the costume of truth, justice, and the American way to commit a property crime. Superman never had to explain himself to a judge. James Tidwell will.

We did not make this up. TMZ has the receipts, cape included.

Defense Secretary Compares Rescued Pilot to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Because Why Not

When a U.S. Air Force officer was shot down over Iran and rescued during Easter weekend, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had a choice: describe it as a well-executed 155-aircraft joint operation, or describe it as a religious event with a body count of zero and a callback to the New Testament. He chose the latter.

Hegseth laid out the timeline like a sermon: “Shot down on a Friday — Good Friday — hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday.” The rescued officer’s first transmitted message upon activating his rescue beacon, according to Hegseth, was “God is good,” which is a very reasonable thing to say and a somewhat less reasonable thing for your Defense Secretary to then build an entire briefing-room metaphor around.

To be clear, actual human pilots, planners, and aircrews executed a massive coordinated rescue effort and pulled it off without a single American casualty. That is a genuinely impressive operation. It did not require a resurrection metaphor to be impressive. It required 155 aircraft and a lot of extremely competent people who are not, as far as we know, deities.

Foreign policy analysts have since noted this fits a broader pattern of Christian nationalist rhetoric coming out of the Pentagon lately. We have noted that “a pilot reborn” is a phrase that belongs in a movie trailer, not a Department of War press briefing.

Don’t take our word for it: CNN has the full story. It’s exactly as described.

Postal Worker Accused of Turning Her Mail Route Into a Stray Animal Recruitment Pipeline

A 77-year-old U.S. Postal Service worker in Martin County has been charged with animal cruelty after deputies discovered she had allegedly been collecting feral cats along her mail route and bringing them home. The final tally: 92 animals, 80 cats and 12 dogs, living inside a house with no air conditioning and up to a foot of animal waste on the floor.

Martin County Fire Rescue had to send in a hazmat team just to ventilate the property before anyone could safely go inside, which tells you roughly what mail delivery had turned into on this particular route. The sheriff called it one of the worst hoarding cases his office has ever handled, a sentence that carries real weight in Florida.

The animals are now recovering at the Humane Society of the Treasure Coast, many underweight or dealing with skin and dental issues. Several were microchipped, and at least five have already been reunited with their actual owners, meaning some of these cats had homes the entire time and simply got picked up along the way, like a very committed rewards program nobody signed up for.

Somewhere in Martin County there is a mail carrier position posting that badly, badly needs the phrase “no side projects” added to the job description.

We did not make this up. News4JAX has the receipts.

Scientists Officially Debunk the Baby Rattlesnake Myth That Fooled Everyone, Including Doctors, for 60 Years

Here is a fact you have probably repeated with total confidence at a campfire: baby rattlesnakes are more dangerous than adults because they can’t control their venom and “dump it all” in one bite. Here is the correction: that is completely false, and researchers at Loma Linda University just proved it with actual venom milkings.

Adult rattlesnakes produced an average of 120 milligrams of venom per milking. Juveniles produced less than 15 milligrams. The babies are not secretly more lethal. They are, in fact, working with a fraction of the ammunition. The myth apparently didn’t even exist before the late 1960s, at which point it got into newspapers and never left, eventually infecting the brains of 53% of surveyed Southern California students and, more alarmingly, 73% of emergency responders and health professionals.

So a rumor with no scientific basis outcompeted actual toxinology for over half a century, largely because it made a better story than the truth. The truth, notably, still involves a venomous snake biting you, which remains bad regardless of the snake’s age.

Consider this your one dose of real information for the week. Use it to correct someone smugly, then immediately go check every category on this website for the exact opposite of what we just did.

All of this actually happened. ScienceDaily confirmed it.