The Federal Communications Commission’s latest broadband report makes two things clear: America has made real progress, but the rural job is far from finished.

The number of Americans lacking access to fixed terrestrial broadband with download speeds of 100 Mbps and upload speeds of 20 Mbps fell roughly 23% in one year, while rural gaps shrank more than 44% over two years. Prices for the mid-tier plans most households buy have also fallen in real terms.

The path is simple: Make the biggest users and beneficiaries of Universal Service Fund-supported networks help pay, without raising prices for consumers.

Yet the FCC still says deployment is not “reasonable and timely” for all Americans, especially in rural areas and tribal lands. For many families, broadband is now one of the rare essential services that is both faster and more affordable than it was a few years ago.

That’s why the Universal Service Fund remains indispensable. It connects an estimated 130 million Americans each year, supporting low-income and rural households, schools, libraries, students, and health care providers. At roughly $8.5 billion annually, USF underwrites a crucial piece of America’s digital infrastructure. It also supports the infrastructure beneath an internet economy measured in the trillions of dollars.

The problem is how we pay for it. Consumers bear a monthly surcharge on legacy voice services, while the largest internet platforms, which depend on broadband to generate enormous revenues, contribute nothing.

Congress knows the system needs reform. In 2023, Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) launched a bipartisan Universal Service Fund Working Group. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) now shares leadership with Luján, joined by Reps. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) and Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), and the working group has heard from hundreds of stakeholders. Its assignment is straightforward: preserve a program that works while replacing a financing mechanism that does not.

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, and TikTok all depend on broadband networks to reach Americans. Each USF-connected household generates an estimated $3,000 annually in revenue for these companies, which collectively consume roughly two-thirds of U.S. broadband capacity. Data-center expansion will only increase that traffic. As more data centers come online to support AI, cloud computing, streaming, and other digital services, the demands placed on those networks will only grow.

Broadband providers, meanwhile, must keep investing in the networks that carry it. Without USF support, many networks would not be built, and broadband could become unaffordable for millions.

Don’t put the bill on consumers

Congress should not solve the problem by adding another fee to household broadband. Affordability remains politically and economically sensitive, and even modest price increases can push consumers out of the market. Broadband has remained relatively stable in price even as Americans have absorbed years of inflation elsewhere in the household budget.

RELATED: The FCC finally cuts local TV loose

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Economists Hal Singer and Ted Tatos found that a 5% increase in broadband prices could cause roughly 10 million households to cancel service. Their review found a different dynamic for large digital advertising platforms, where end users generally do not pay subscription fees and companies are better positioned to absorb assessments.

Former FCC Chairman Brendan Carr suggested assessing digital advertising revenue from the largest platforms. Congress could also consider certain transmission services — cloud interconnection, backhaul, content delivery networks, satellite transport, and wide-area networking — that depend heavily on the broadband ecosystem.

The precise mechanism matters less than the principle: Broaden the contribution base so consumers carry less of the burden. Bipartisan legislation already points in that direction. The Lowering Broadband Costs for Consumers Act would extend contributions to large internet service providers, with thresholds aimed at companies of significant scale.

The rural job is not done

Some argue that low-earth-orbit satellite services have largely solved rural broadband and made subsidies unnecessary. They have not. Satellite is valuable where terrestrial networks are uneconomical, but it remains capacity-constrained and is not a full substitute for high-capacity terrestrial broadband in every household or community.

A rural family with several people working from home, taking virtual classes, or using telehealth can need sustained high-speed service and reliability that satellite cannot always guarantee as cell density grows. Prices have also risen, weakening the case for satellite as a cheap universal backstop. Satellite belongs in the mix, but it cannot carry the entire rural-connectivity burden by itself.

Big Tech should pitch in

Big Tech benefits from some $200 billion annually in USF-supported broadband investment, yet the companies oppose contributing to the fund by calling such payments a “tax.” That evades the basic question: Why should the largest users and beneficiaries of broadband infrastructure be the only major participants paying nothing toward its cost?

Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta spend billions building their own data centers, cloud networks, and related infrastructure because infrastructure has economic value. They would never give unlimited use of those facilities away for free. Yet they expect private broadband networks to reach their customers without contributing to the universal service system that expands access to those networks.

RELATED: This app censors your phone in a stunning new way — and people are using it on purpose

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The contradiction is especially striking because 13 bipartisan governors recently joined major technology companies at the White House, where the firms pledged to cover the cost of infrastructure upgrades needed for their data centers while protecting consumers from higher electricity bills. The Ratepayer Protection Act would codify those pledges. Congress should apply the same logic to broadband.

How Congress can act

Universal service already enjoys bipartisan support. In Consumers’ Research v. Federal Communications Commission, 29 lawmakers and working-group members filed an amicus brief defending USF before the Supreme Court. They warned that dismantling the fund would harm millions of Americans, particularly low-income and rural households. Congress established universal service in 1996 and has repeatedly recognized the need to adapt it as communications technology changes.

The Supreme Court upheld the program’s constitutionality. Congress defended USF in court; now it should make the funding system fair and sustainable in statute.

The path is straightforward: Broaden the contribution base to include the largest users and beneficiaries of the networks USF supports, while protecting consumers from rising costs. The companies that profit most from ubiquitous broadband should help ensure that ubiquitous broadband continues to exist.

​Federal communications commission, Opinion & analysis, Supreme court, Big tech, Broadband, Infrastructure, Internet, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Congress, Data centers, Universal service fund, Microsoft, Netflix, Regulation 

The claim that the synthetic mRNA-based COVID-19 genetic therapies were “safe and effective” was repeated ad nauseam not only by former President Joe Biden during the pandemic but by health officials in his administration — including former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, and former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky.

It may then come as a surprise that not all high-ranking federal health officials were keen on this particular characterization.

‘Science doesn’t tell you what your actions should be.’

When reached for comment about a new tranche of recently released emails of Anthony Fauci, former Biden administration acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock told Blaze News that she protested the “safe and effective” description.

But first let’s rewind. On Sunday, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) published a May 27, 2021, email sent by Dr. Woodcock to Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins regarding the perceived need to set aside scientific research funds to later investigate COVID-19 vaccine side effects.

“I have been contacted by a number of people who have experienced adverse events post COVID-19 vaccination (from all three of the current vaccines),” wrote Woodcock. “Many are healthcare professionals, some of whom I know. The symptoms do not fit together into a distinctive syndrome and most are not easily quantifiable or evaluated with standard laboratory testing.”

Woodcock, who became acting FDA commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were being pushed on the nation, was sympathetic to the concerns of some apparent vaccine casualties that “no one takes them seriously, no one knows how to treat them” and that there had been “no effort to study this.”

RELATED: First domino to fall? Fauci’s ‘consigliere’ pleads GUILTY to role in COVID cover-up

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“I think it would be worthwhile to do a study and evaluate a cohort of these individuals,” said Woodcock. “But of course $ need to be made available, and you would need an investigator who is interested in ‘medical mysteries.’ I doubt the industry would support, for obvious reasons.”

Woodcock provided Blaze News with insights into her proposal.

“I was thinking, ‘Could we find some kind of treatment to offer these folks?’ But first, you have to understand what’s going on, right? You can’t just sort of go out and treat people,” Woodcock told Blaze News. “So that was my objective in this. … I don’t think it’s probably different than any other immune challenge, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I felt the vaccine was dangerous or should not be used or anything. By no means. It was simply that if people were having this reaction, we could find a way to study it.”

When pressed — in light of her concerns at the time — about the “safe and effective” description, Woodcock responded, “Well, look. I always told our press office, ‘Don’t call it safe and effective, because no medical intervention is 100% safe.’ Even water. You could kill yourself by drinking too much water, literally.”

The FDA noted in recent years that it was “confident in the safety and effectiveness” of the COVID-19 vaccines. While apparently hesitant herself to use that phrasing, Woodcock stated in 2021 that “the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product.”

Woodcock offered Blaze News what she regards as a better pitch for the vaccine: “What it is is the benefits far outweigh the risks, and that’s the standard for all drugs that are approved, all medicines that are approved, because none of them are free of side effects, which is the kind of ordinary, you know, meaning of the term ‘safe.'”

While the former acting commissioner noted that many health experts suggested during the pandemic that the “benefits way outweigh the potential harms” of the vaccines, people nevertheless “do use the term ‘safe and effective’ a lot, which is a statutory term.”

Woodcock emphasized that any intervention “that you do has to be pretty safe, right? But that doesn’t mean it’s totally without adverse events.”

Adverse events were in some cases deadly.

The FDA admitted in an internal letter last year that FDA Office of Biostatistics and Pharmacovigilance career staff had “found that at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination.”

Dr. Vinay Prasad, the former chief medical officer at the FDA and director at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in the letter that the OBPV performed an analysis of 96 deaths between 2021 and 2024 and concluded “that no fewer than 10 are related. If anything, this represents conservative coding, where vaccines are exculpated rather than indicated in cases of ambiguity. The real number is higher.”

On the matter of takeaways from the handling of the pandemic, Woodcock told Blaze News that while the “development of the vaccines was a scientific triumph,” “science doesn’t tell you what to do. Scientists often forget that.”

“Science just tells you the facts,” she continued. “What do to do — especially about society, right — is a value judgement that should take into account the facts, but science doesn’t tell you what your actions should be.”

HHS and the FDA did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ requests for comment.

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​Janet woodcock, Food and drug administration, Covid-19, Vaccination, Vaccine, Adverse events, Biden administration, Pandemic, Safe and effective, Politics 

On a recent episode of “The Drive,” my co-host, Karl Brauer, mentioned taking his 2018 Dodge Demon to the dealership and having his car’s key-programming system permanently locked down. The trade-off was significant: If Karl lost his keys, the dealer couldn’t simply program him another one. The car’s Radio Frequency Hub would have to be replaced before new keys could be programmed.

Why would anyone deliberately make his own car that inconvenient?

Fortunately, one of the easiest precautions against relay theft specifically is remarkably low-tech.

Because Karl was worried somebody else might make a key first.

Fob job

Challengers and Chargers, particularly high-performance models such as the Hellcat and Demon, had become notorious theft targets after criminals discovered they could exploit the same electronic system dealers used to program replacement keys. After getting into the vehicle, thieves could access the RF Hub and program their own fob. The car would then recognize the thief’s new key as legitimate.

Karl’s solution turned out to anticipate Dodge’s own. The company later introduced Key Programming Lockdown, which permanently disabled new key programming through the RF Hub. Dodge acknowledged the inconvenience: If an owner lost all existing keys, the RF Hub itself would have to be replaced.

While Dodge addressed this particular vulnerability, that was only one way thieves were learning to defeat modern vehicle security. Other attacks don’t require programming a new key at all.

Relay race

Take the proximity key. You keep the fob in your pocket, walk up to the vehicle, open the door, and press a button to start. It works because the key and vehicle communicate wirelessly — and thieves have learned how to exploit that communication too.

One increasingly common method is known as a relay attack. Using electronic equipment, thieves can capture or extend the signal from a legitimate key fob inside a house to a vehicle parked outside. The car thinks the key is nearby, allowing the thief to unlock it, start it, and drive away.

This isn’t the old image of somebody smashing a window and hot-wiring an ignition. As vehicles have become more technologically sophisticated, so have the people stealing them.

Bluetooth blues

And new vulnerabilities continue to emerge. In July 2026, University of California San Diego researchers disclosed a Bluetooth flaw affecting dealer-installed KARR/SWDS anti-theft systems in at least 2.2 million vehicles. Researchers found that a nearby attacker could potentially exploit the system to unlock doors and interfere with the immobilizer.

These aren’t all the same attack. The Dodge thieves programmed a new key. Relay thieves fool the car into believing the owner’s existing key is nearby. The KARR vulnerability involved Bluetooth. But they all demonstrate the security challenge created as vehicles become increasingly dependent on wireless electronics.

Your car may recognize you automatically. Your phone can become a digital key. Doors unlock as you approach. Apps can start vehicles remotely. Each feature offers convenience, but each wireless connection also creates something manufacturers have to secure.

RELATED: Gone in 60 seconds: How high-tech thieves can steal your car

Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images

Low-tech fix

Fortunately, one of the easiest precautions against relay theft specifically is remarkably low-tech: Put your keys in a Faraday pouch when you’re home, particularly if your vehicle sits outside. A properly functioning Faraday enclosure blocks the signal thieves are trying to relay.

Also think about where you leave your keys. Tossing them on a table beside the front door or garage can make the signal easier to reach.

I know how miserable vehicle theft can be because it happened to me.

Years ago, my modified 1985 Mustang GT was stolen. Police eventually found it stripped and burned. Then came the insurance fight, and the theft even affected my insurance afterward.

People sometimes joke that if an insured car gets stolen, it’s the insurance company’s problem. It isn’t. You’re the one filing police reports, dealing with adjusters, finding replacement transportation, and potentially watching your insurance costs rise. If the vehicle is dismantled for parts, shipped overseas, or otherwise disappears into the criminal supply chain, there’s a good chance you’ll never see it again.

Automakers have spent years making it unnecessary to take a key out of your pocket. Thieves have spent those same years learning how to attack the technology that replaced it.

Sometimes the smartest way to protect a $50,000 vehicle is a $20 pouch that stops your expensive technology from talking to anybody.

​Key programming lockdown, Relay theft, Vehicle theft, Faraday pouch, Dodge, Auto industry, Auto theft, Crime, Lifestyle, Tech, Automotive 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a cooking series titled “The Real Food Show” last month with the aim of helping Americans prepare healthy and affordable meals.

Despite the show’s upbeat, informative, and apolitical nature, the liberal media reflexively found something to whine about.

‘Very hard to swallow.’

After CNN’s Erin Burnett devoted a segment of her show on Wednesday to attacking the initiative, Kennedy responded by diagnosing the host with “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and giving her something to chew on.

The show

Kennedy announced the launch of the “The Real Food Show” on July 30, stating, “The Real Food Show reminds Americans that healthy eating starts at home — and that cooking with real food can be simple, affordable, and within reach for every family.”

“By bringing people back to the kitchen table, we can strengthen our families, improve our health, build healthy habits that last for generations to come, and Make America Healthy Again,” added the HHS secretary.

According to the HHS, each episode features a recipe that uses real, whole-food ingredients; is kid-friendly and easy to prepare; works in a basic home kitchen; and “costs less than $5 per serving whenever possible.”

The premier episode featured chef Andrew Gruel, the executive chef of Calico Fish House in Huntington Beach, California, who demonstrated how to prepare salmon cakes and a fresh salad.

Liberal gas

Weeks after MS NOW did something similar, Burnett’s CNN show ran a snark-saturated report on Wednesday casting doubt on the affordability of the recipes featured in “The Real Food Show.”

After accusing Kennedy of incorporating “dubious claims about the food industry, science, and public wellness” into his cooking show, CNN correspondent Tom Foreman claimed that “the math doesn’t add up in this cooking class.”

Foreman purportedly went to a store and bought all of the ingredients mentioned on the first episode of the HHS cooking show.

“When we started buying ingredients used in the show, even going for the lowest prices at a big competitive chain, the cost heated up fast,” said Foreman.

The CNN correspondent, who evidently missed the HHS’ note that canned salmon would also work for the recipe, claimed that he couldn’t find frozen wild-caught sockeye salmon for under $24.

Burnett’s crony also complained that Kennedy had priced just the ingredients used in the recipe.

“That’s the trick here, because they’re only pricing that one egg out of the carton,” said Foreman. “And that gets worse with other things. For example, this red onion, they say they only spent eight cents on this because that’s how much they used. Getting the whole onion cost us more than a dollar.”

“They’re only pricing parts of it. And grocery stores don’t sell things that way,” added Foreman.

Since CNN priced out every single ingredient for the four-serving meal as it appears whole in stores, not as it appears fractionally in the recipe, it ended up with a price tag of $70.54 instead of the roughly $20 indicated by the HHS show.

Burnett thanked Foreman for his misleading report, which he said was “very hard to swallow.”

Kennedy dishes out a response

Kennedy responded on Thursday to the anti-MAHA segment, writing, “Trump Derangement Syndrome has so debilitated @ErinBurnett that she has abandoned both common sense and basic arithmetic.”

“CNN wants us to incorporate the full package price of every ingredient, regardless of what is used in the recipe,” continued the HHS secretary. “If you put a squirt of ketchup on your burger, would you be surprised if the restaurant charged you for the whole bottle?”

“The Real Food Show uses standard recipe costing: we count what the recipe actually uses. The rest stays in your kitchen for the next meal — and the meals after that,” added Kennedy.

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​Maha, Health, Cnn, Erin burnett, Health and human services, Politics, Robert f kennedy 

As a deportation officer, I managed cases from beginning to end. I took the file when it opened and stayed with it through custody determinations, immigration court, appeals, travel-document requests, and, when it came to that, the flight home.

We worked those cases on the merits and nothing else. Not race. Not nationality. Not religion. Not politics. What did the file say, and what did the law allow?

A rule that exists only on paper is not much of a safeguard.

Anyone who worked differently answered for it, because immigration enforcement is watched constantly: by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, detention inspections, congressional oversight, federal litigation, and a press corps often eager to publish before a case is even closed.

I never objected to that scrutiny. Enforcement power is serious power, and it should be examined hard. I have said so under oath.

What I do not understand is why the examination so often seems to stop at the government’s side of the table.

On the other side sits a disciplinary regime that is hardly weak on paper. Federal regulation subjects immigration practitioners to discipline for grossly excessive fees, solicitation through runners for financial gain, frivolous filings, false statements, and other misconduct. A lawyer’s signature on a filing certifies that he has read it, made a reasonable inquiry, and has a basis in fact and law for putting it before the court.

In other words, the rules already recognize the problem.

And the misconduct is not hypothetical.

In Illinois, immigration attorney Robert DeKelaita was convicted by a federal jury of conspiracy to commit asylum fraud, making false statements in asylum applications, and procuring perjury during asylum interviews. Federal prosecutors said applications filed through his firm contained fabricated accounts of rape, murder, torture, kidnapping, and bombing. Some clients obtained asylum, lawful permanent residence, and eventually citizenship on the strength of those lies.

In New York, a Queens immigration attorney received five years in federal prison after submitting more than 100 asylum applications containing false persecution narratives, criminal histories, and travel histories. Prosecutors said she invented stories, forged clients’ signatures, and falsely notarized affidavits.

RELATED: The conservative base will remember this betrayal

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images

In Georgia, an attorney went to federal prison after filing false documents in employment-based immigration matters, surrendering her law license, and forfeiting $100,000 in fees.

Those are the spectacular cases. The quieter misconduct may be more common and, for individual families, just as destructive.

Illinois disciplinary records describe an attorney who allowed nonlawyer office managers to practice law out of his firm, failed to diligently represent immigration clients, withdrew from others without adequately protecting them, and failed to return tens of thousands of dollars in unearned fees.

That does not make national news. But to the client who handed over his savings, it can be devastating.

An enforcement officer has two reasons to care.

First, every fabricated claim consumes real resources: an adjudicator, a docket slot, government-attorney preparation time, and often years of delay. Fraud also poisons the well for the applicant behind it who is telling the truth. When adjudicators repeatedly encounter manufactured versions of the same persecution story, the genuine claimant has a harder road.

Second, I have watched families pay lawyers for cases that were dead on arrival, then get billed again at every continuance while the years ran out. Immigration law is complicated enough without desperate clients being sold false hope.

The point is not that immigration lawyers are uniquely corrupt. Most are not. Nor is it that government officers deserve less oversight. They do not.

The point is symmetry.

RELATED: DHS is naming names, and the media is melting down

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

If ICE officers are properly subjected to inspectors general, professional-responsibility offices, civil-rights review, congressional oversight, litigation, and press scrutiny, then the lawyers whose conduct can determine whether a family loses its savings, whether a false asylum claim enters the system, or whether a genuine claimant waits even longer should face meaningful accountability too.

There is a straightforward way to begin measuring whether that accountability exists.

How many practitioner complaints does the Executive Office for Immigration Review receive each year? How many are substantiated? How many end in discipline, suspension, or disbarment from practice before the immigration courts? How long does the process take?

Those are not classified questions. They are basic oversight questions.

If the numbers show a functioning disciplinary system, publish them and let the public see it. If they show a large gap between complaints and consequences, Congress should ask why.

A rule that exists only on paper is not much of a safeguard.

Immigration enforcement deserves scrutiny because government power can ruin lives when abused. Immigration representation deserves scrutiny for the same reason.

​Department of homeland security, Immigration and customs enforcement, Oversight project, Discipline, Opinion & analysis, Immigration lawyer, Law and order, Deportations, Asylum, Congress 

Federal officials seized a massive shipment being smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

CBP officers discovered 1,000 pounds of methamphetamine secreted in a 2012 tractor-trailer hauling laundry detergent, CBP said to Blaze News.

CBP estimated the street value of the methamphetamine to be $9,573,752.24.

The Roma Port of Entry connects Roma in Texas with Ciudad Miguel Alemán in Tamaulipas at the U.S.-Mexico border.

On Aug. 11, a CBP agent referred the tractor-trailer for enforcement inspection, and anomalies were found in the shipment through the scan of a nonintrusive imaging system.

CBP officers performed a physical inspection and found 485.78 kilograms of alleged meth concealed inside the detergent shipment.

The driver, the tractor-trailer, and the narcotics were turned over to the Roma Police Department, which opened a criminal investigation.

CBP estimated the street value of the methamphetamine to be $9,573,752.24.

“Our officers’ commitment to secure our borders continue[s] with ongoing enforcement actions,” said Port Director Andres Guerra. “Their dedication, vigilance, and professionalism demonstrate their determination to keep our communities and country safe.”

In a similar incident from Oct. 2025, a man named Jose Angel Barrera was asked to pull over when officials found anomalies in the spare tire of his white Toyota Tundra.

RELATED: Woman caught trying to smuggle live animals through US-Mexico border, CBP claims

Barrera replied, “No problem,” but instead hit the gas and fled into downtown Roma. He later turned himself in, was convicted for port running, and sentenced to 10 months in prison.

What might have been in his spare tire remained undetermined.

“Under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin,” the agency said, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers along the southwest border stop illegal activity and facilitate lawful entry for millions of legitimate travelers into the United States.”

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​Methamphetamine, Customs and border protection, Smuggling, Us-mexico border, Politics 

Here in the U.K., we recently learned that security cameras are racist. But the seething hatred lurking behind seemingly neutral video technology does not end there. It turns out that even the cameras capturing our sporting events harbor distinctly retrograde attitudes. They’re more sexist than Austin Powers, baby!

Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, Olympic Broadcasting Services chief Yiannis Exarchos warned camera operators against the “unconscious bias” that leads broadcasters to film female athletes differently from men. “Women athletes are not there because they are more attractive or sexy or whatever,” he said. “They are there because they are elite athletes.”

The cameras aren’t the problem here. The real issue is our refusal to face up to what actually keeps people glued to their screens.

If you think this feminized moral panic won’t reach American shores, think again.

‘Raising the Bar’

The European Broadcasting Union and European Athletics recently released “Raising the Bar” — a 23-page guide proposing to clamp down on camera angles they claim sexualize female athletes in international sports.

Through a series of cartoon stills that look more like swimming pool warnings for toddlers, the booklet instructs camera operators to avoid low-angle cameras positioned around the starting blocks, tight zooms, lingering shots, and unnecessary slow-motion replays.

To understand why this matters to someone on a barstool in Ohio, it all comes down to international broadcasting rights. When American networks like NBC air the Olympics, they simply buy a master feed from bodies like OBS. Because OBS has adopted these sanitized framing rules, American viewers get whatever neutered footage passes the international purity test, whether they like it or not.

Is ‘sexy’ sexist?

No doubt the regulations were inspired, at least in part, by the shabby treatment of German sprinter Alica Schmidt, whose athletic achievements have consistently been overshadowed by the unwelcome label of “World’s Sexiest Athlete,” The indignities have piled up: runway modeling appearances, endorsement deals, and the onerous burden of maintaining a meticulously curated feed of casually glamorous photos for her 5.2 million Instagram followers.

Surely American fans would never place such crass emphasis on physical appearance over athletic accomplishment, you may think.

Think again.

In the states, even the sensibly aerodynamic uniform of an elite gymnast can prompt leers. Consider the case of LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne. Dunne was an accomplished college gymnast — an All-American whose LSU team won the 2024 national championship — but it was her extraordinary social media following that turned her into one of the biggest stars, and biggest earners, in college sports.

Once the NCAA began allowing athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness in 2021, Dunne discovered that millions of followers had considerable market value. She signed major endorsement deals, reportedly earned millions during her college years, and could command six figures for a single sponsored social media post.

Naturally, this success also prompted solemn concern that people were paying altogether too much attention to what Dunne looked like. Sports media fretted about the sexualization of female athletes while running photographs of the photogenic gymnast whose ability to attract millions of eyeballs was the very reason advertisers were writing her checks.

Dunne herself seemed rather less conflicted. “I love doing social media and I enjoy being in the spotlight,” she has said.

RELATED: Why liberals make life so ugly

flyparade/Getty Images

Chicks with clicks

There is something peculiar about this hand-wringing. Media outlets can simultaneously object to the attention paid to a beautiful female athlete and discover that photographs of that same beautiful female athlete are exceptionally useful for attracting readers.

I hate to break it to the puritans, but very few people watch women’s sports — especially men — purely for athletic ability. Take away the visual appeal, and viewership will collapse. You might as well put athletes in a burqa if the explicit goal is zero titillation.

Sponsors follow ratings. Ratings follow eyes. Eyes follow what millions of years of human evolution programmed us to notice. Talent is rare — but elite talent with sex appeal is a unicorn. Why not celebrate it?

Deny that fundamental reality, and watch the entire commercial edifice shrivel up and die. Like it or not, the audience for most major spectator sports still skews male, and denying visual reality doesn’t elevate women’s sports — it robs them of the paying audience that funds player contracts. Sports are an attention economy, not an affirmative action program.

‘Wrong’ attention

The cameras aren’t the problem here. The real issue is our refusal to face up to what actually keeps people glued to their screens. The same cultural sickness that turns every campus protest into a “Handmaid’s Tale” cosplay has infected women’s sports. When militant feminists campaigned to ban Formula 1 grid girls, they claimed to defend women’s liberty — but in reality, it eliminated well-paid jobs that many women valued, just to satisfy an ideological purity test.

Meanwhile, OnlyFans exploded, and Instagram fitness influencers monetized every angle. Radical feminism attacks traditional modesty, yet continues to frame women as eternal victims of “the male gaze.” The result is a bizarre cognitive dissonance: We celebrate sexualized women when it fits an empowerment narrative, but condemn men for reacting in predictable ways.

This isn’t about respect. It’s about control. If you control the image, you control the narrative. Beautiful, sculpted people who once drew eyes to screens are now treated as a problem to be solved. When the commentariat lobby for restricted camera guidelines, it feels less like athletic advocacy and more like institutional sour grapes. It makes you think: How many of the complainants cheering this on are the ones who, let’s face it, were never going to draw that particular gaze anyway?

Elsewhere, the internet’s seedier corners carry on as usual, because selective modesty is the latest grift. Ideologues demand sports coverage that pretends human attraction doesn’t exist, while the wider culture hyper-sexualizes everything else. Under this shibboleth, “equity” means no one is allowed to stand out — or receive the “wrong” kind of attention.

Traditional culture didn’t need such infantilizing guidance to appreciate physical strength and form without descending into vulgarity. Having removed those guardrails in the name of liberation, we now rely on micromanaged camera angles to police the very instincts their culture unleashed.

Broadcasters are killing off the one honest reason millions tune in to watch women’s sports — and when ratings inevitably collapse, broadcast revenues plummet, and the usual equal-pay complaints resurface, feminists will scratch their heads and wonder why women’s sports struggle for relevance.

Enjoy your socially engineered utopia in empty stadiums.

​Attention economy, Female athletes, Livvy dunne, Radical feminism, Sexist, Sports media, Alica schmidt, Lifestyle, Culture, Television, Women’s sports, Europe, Letter from the uk 

An Alabama woman put a liquid chemical into a microwave and heated it up before splashing it onto her longtime friend and causing significant chemical burns.

Quicheay Williams was convicted of first-degree assault by a jury in Mobile, Alabama, on Wednesday over the Feb. 25 attack.

She underwent several skin grafts, lost her left eardrum, lost her hearing in that ear, and has limited eyesight from her left eye.

Jasmine Clausell had invited Williams to live with her at her home after finding her friend was homeless on Feb. 11. Two weeks later, Clausell asked Williams to move out, which angered her, according to prosecutors.

Mobile police said in the ensuing argument, Williams splashed the chemical liquid, which was described as similar to Draino drain cleaner, onto Clausell.

Then Williams pulled a gun on her as well.

Clausell’s grandfather testified in court that he saw the two tussling before hearing his granddaughter yelling that something had been tossed onto her.

The victim spent two months in the hospital receiving treatment for the severe burns that covered about a third of her body on the left side.

She underwent several skin grafts, lost her left eardrum, lost her hearing in that ear, and has limited eyesight from her left eye.

Clausell also underwent laser treatments to reduce the scarring.

The victim addressed the media after the conviction.

“Justice was served today, and me and my family are just grateful that the jurors, they just saw what it was and justice was served,” she said.

Williams is awaiting sentencing and could face up to 20 years in prison.

Clausell was described as a nursing student and a single mom of a 4-year-old boy in the GoFundMe account set up for her benefit.

RELATED: UK man arrested after 11-year-old dies from TikTok challenge in sleepover at friend’s home

District Attorney Keith Blackwood said prosecutors were very happy with the verdict.

“It brings some sense of justice that Jasmine Clausell suffered at the defendant’s hand,” he said. “This week was the time in court where that was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“I am very satisfied with the verdict; we appreciate all of you for all the prayers,” Clausell added.

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​Alabama, Chemical burns, Homeless, Crime 

Nothing scares the vaccine establishment more than a meaningful control group. Some vaccine trials do use inert placebos, but most compare a new product with an existing vaccine or another formulation. What we almost never get is long-term randomized evidence comparing children who receive the full schedule with children who receive none of it.

Thanks to ubiquitous mandates, cultural taboos, and pressure from pediatricians, truly unvaccinated children are also increasingly difficult to find in large numbers. That is why the Amish data are so revealing — and why they should be studied rather than waved away.

Why treat a naturally occurring unvaccinated cohort as an inconvenience rather than an opportunity?

Last year, the Supreme Court vacated a shocking Second Circuit decision siding with the state of New York against Amish parents who declined to vaccinate their children. In Miller v. McDonald, the parents argued that forcing the Amish to violate their religious beliefs in their own private schools violates the First Amendment. Yet after the Supreme Court sent the case back for reconsideration in light of its recent religious-liberty precedent, the Second Circuit last month again ruled for New York.

The legal fight continues and so does the coercion.

Putting aside the legal and moral issues at stake, the facts presented during discovery about the health of the unvaccinated Amish should be newsworthy across the world, especially as we debate both the new mRNA flu shot and the discovery that Anthony Fauci was aware of COVID vaccine injuries from the beginning.

Siri & Glimstad LLP, which represents the Amish families, provided the federal district court in New York with sworn expert medical evidence about the health status of 168 students in the three Amish schools targeted by the state for financial penalties.

The doctor’s declaration states: “I am advised that there are 26 families across the three Amish schools at issue, which have a total of 168 unvaccinated children (meaning they have received no vaccines) and that none of them have any health issue that arose after birth.”

The declaration then compares those 168 children with national background rates for allergies, autism, asthma, and ADHD. Using those rates, a random sample of 168 U.S. children would be expected to include several cases of each condition. According to the declaration, however, there were no documented cases of autism, ADHD, asthma, or food allergies among the 168 Amish children.

RELATED: Fauci is yesterday’s fight. Medical freedom is today’s.

Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg/Getty Images

No, that does not magically turn 168 Amish children into a randomized clinical trial. The Amish differ from the broader population in diet, lifestyle, environment, genetics, health care use, and countless other ways. But it does make them a rare, naturally occurring cohort of completely unvaccinated children — exactly the kind of population serious researchers should want to examine.

And the court filing does not rely only on the Amish. It also presents records from 99 unvaccinated children who had religious exemptions in four contiguous school districts in Ulster County, New York. Those records were drawn from state school health examination forms completed by physicians. Here is the comparison presented in the filing:

The numbers are striking. The filing reports zero cases of autism and diabetes in the Ulster County group, lower rates of ADHD and allergies, and a much lower asthma rate than the cited background figures.

Those differences do not prove vaccination caused the higher general population rates. They do raise an obvious question: Why not study the difference rigorously?

The court-filed evidence also notes that the expansion of the childhood vaccine schedule has occurred during the same decades in which autoimmune, developmental, and neurological diagnoses have risen sharply. Correlation is not causation, and anyone pretending otherwise is doing bad science. But correlation can be a reason to investigate — especially when government is mandating the products in question.

RELATED: What happened to RFK Jr.’s red line on risky vaccines?

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

These retrospective comparisons do not prove that vaccines cause autism, asthma, allergies, ADHD, or any other condition. They cannot control for all the differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. But when government mandates a growing schedule of products for healthy children, shouldn’t the burden be on public health authorities to pursue the strongest possible long-term safety evidence?

Why treat a naturally occurring unvaccinated cohort as an inconvenience rather than an opportunity?

That problem remains with the latest mRNA flu vaccine, which is being compared against another flu vaccine rather than an unvaccinated cohort. If officials want to mandate these products, why not demand the strongest possible evidence about their long-term effects? And why did the New York Department of Health decline to engage the data the Amish families placed before the court rather than explain why the comparisons are misleading?

What is self-evident is that vaccine mandates make these questions harder to answer by shrinking the pool of children who remain completely unvaccinated. New York is willing to coerce Amish families in the name of public health? Then public health officials should be willing to confront the data those families have put before them and show their work.

Religious liberty demands no less. Neither does science.

​Rfk jr, Vaccines, Amish, Supreme court, Vaccination rates, Adhd, Religious liberty, Data, Science, Opinion & analysis 

California has perfected the art of regulating productive industries into oblivion while giving bad actors with the right political connections a free pass.

With more than 395,000 regulatory restrictions, the nation’s eighth-highest corporate tax rate, and an overzealous bureaucracy, Sacramento has driven hundreds of major employers — including Tesla, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise — to business-friendly states like Texas.

California was once the crown jewel of American opportunity, but Sacramento’s progressive priorities have turned it into a cautionary tale.

Yet, while Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) micromanages everything from Hollywood film permits to brush-clearing fees, Sacramento looks the other way as an unchecked plaintiffs’ bar undermines local communities and distorts the justice system.

The latest investigative reporting out of Los Angeles County shows how far this racket has gone. Predatory personal-injury law firms have turned an environmental remediation challenge at the Chiquita Canyon Landfill into an unregulated gold rush, illustrating why the Trump administration and federal authorities must step in before those in Sacramento make the situation worse.

For years, the foothill community of Val Verde has dealt with noxious odors caused by an inactive portion of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill. The landfill operator tried to act as a responsible partner: complying with environmental guidelines, coordinating with multi-agency response teams, and providing nearly $25 million directly to affected local residents through a community relief fund.

Rather than encouraging a constructive resolution, a chaotic web of overlapping state regulators — including South Coast Air Quality Management District, L.A. County Public Works, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board — paralyzed the site with conflicting mandates, ultimately forcing the critical facility to halt waste intake.

Rather than protecting residents, progressive governance turned Val Verde into what locals described as the “Val Verde Hunger Games.” Text messages uncovered in court filings revealed Downtown L.A. Group boasting “PackemRackemStackem” and demanding recruiters “Get em for me … all of them,” leading to thousands of dubious claims that the landfill’s attorneys have flagged as infected with misconduct.

This dynamic is emblematic of California’s broader livability and business environment crisis. Sacramento imposes the nation’s highest income tax and an annual $800 LLC fee on entrepreneurs, yet allows predatory litigation mills to exploit vulnerable, non-English-speaking residents for 40% to 45% contingency fees.

Overregulation does not stop trash from being generated; it merely shifts waste to distant facilities, spikes consumer hauling costs, and enriches opportunistic trial lawyers.

RELATED: ‘Expert witness’ humiliated in $61 million lawsuit after lawyers discover one insane detail

Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images

When state and local bureaucracy paralyzed debris removal following Southern California’s wildfires, the Trump administration took decisive action. Under Executive Order 14181, federal authorities expedited cleanup operations and completed in just 28 days what state bureaucrats estimated would take over a year.

The Trump administration and the Environmental Protection Agency under Administrator Lee Zeldin must apply that same standard of execution to Chiquita Canyon. The EPA must supersede Sacramento’s overlapping alphabet-soup agencies, streamline the process under unified federal oversight, and ensure actual technical remediation takes precedence over regulatory extortion and predatory lawsuits.

California was once the crown jewel of American opportunity, but Sacramento’s progressive priorities have turned it into a cautionary tale where critical infrastructure is strangled and legal grift thrives.

If Sacramento refuses to rein in its rogue plaintiffs’ bar and fix its broken regulatory state, the federal government must remind Californians to restore that which Newsom destroyed: common sense.

​Bureaucracy, California, Regulation, Environmental protection agency, Chiquita canyon landfill, Opinion & analysis, Lawsuits, Trial, Lee zeldin