Dmitry Grinberg

1 AM. Arkansas. A dog won't stop barking. A father walks down the hallway. Opens his 14-year-old daughter's bedroom door. The bed is empty. The window is open. He already knows the name of the man who took her. He's known it for three months. Aaron Spencer is 37 years old. Army veteran, 82nd Airborne, deployed to Iraq. Farmer. Husband. Father of a little girl who used to sleep with the light on. The man who took her is named Michael Fosler. 67 years old. Three months earlier, when she was still 13, Arkansas had arrested Fosler and charged him with 43 separate crimes against her. Sexual assault of a minor. Internet stalking of a child. Sexual indecency with a child. Possession of child pornography. 43 counts. Against a 13-year-old girl. 43. The judge looked at all of it. And set the bond at $50,000. Fifty. Thousand. Dollars. Then she wrote "no contact order" on a piece of paper and called it justice. Fosler walked out the same day. And on the night of October 8, 2024, he came back for her. That's when Aaron Spencer grabbed his Glock 19. That's when Aaron Spencer climbed into his Ford truck. That's when Aaron Spencer stopped waiting for the system to save his daughter. He found Fosler's truck on Highway 31. His little girl was inside it. He chased him six miles. High beams flashing. Horn screaming. Begging him to pull over. Fosler did not pull over. So Aaron rammed the truck into a ditch. Drew his pistol. And fired sixteen rounds. Fifteen of them found the man who raped his daughter. Then he picked up the phone, called 911, and said the only words a father can say in that moment: "Michael Fosler is dead on the side of the road for trying to kidnap my daughter. I had no choice." The state charged him with second-degree murder. The prosecutor went on TV and said, quote: "We don't live in the Wild West." The judge slapped him in a jail cell. And every father in this country went silent for a long, long minute. Then something happened that nobody predicted. Aaron Spencer, awaiting trial for killing the man who raped his little girl, announced he was running for Sheriff of Lonoke County. A murder defendant. Running for the badge. The whole country laughed. The pundits called it a stunt. The papers called it impossible. March 3, 2026. The voters of Lonoke County walked into the polls. They did not laugh. They gave Aaron Spencer 53.5% of the vote. They threw out the incumbent sheriff who had locked him in a cell. They gave him a 27-point landslide. The father who killed his daughter's rapist is now the Republican nominee for sheriff in a county where Trump pulled 76%. His murder trial begins June 22, 2026. Five weeks from today. If he wins the trial, his name stays on the November ballot. If he wins November, he becomes the sheriff who answers 911 calls in Lonoke County, Arkansas. The father. With the badge. Of the same county that arrested him. This is what happens when a system lets a 43-count predator walk free for $50,000. This is what happens when a judge writes a paper order instead of doing her job. This is what happens when a father decides he is done waiting. There is something left in this country. Something the courts cannot kill. Something the judges cannot bond out. Something the prosecutors cannot silence. It is called a father. And in Lonoke County, Arkansas, 53.5% of the voters just looked Aaron Spencer in the eye and said: "Sir. You did the right thing. Now come run the whole damn sheriff's office." His trial starts in five weeks. God bless Aaron Spencer. And God bless every American standing behind him.

I get the rage—losing your daughter and her grandparents to a driver, and seeing them get 120 hours feels like the system spat on their memory. But throwing a chair at the judge doesn’t bring them back. It just gives the court another reason to ignore your grief and lock you up, considering the fact you are a person of colour. Justice failed here. But making yourself the next headline doesn't fix it.

Student funding in California is now a RECORD HIGH! Since Governor Newsom took office, it’s increased 66%— reaching $28,282 per student as the state makes historic investments in public education.

Speaker of the TN House Cameron Sexton just removed me and every Democrat — and therefore every Black elected official in the state legislature from any committee we served on. This move strips nearly 2 million Tennesseans from the representation they deserve in TN state leg.