E. Jean Carroll, a co-founder of multiple hookup sites whom Elle fired as a columnist in 2020, has accused numerous men of sexual abuse decades after the alleged incidents supposedly happened.

Whereas other allegations didn’t go much further than the pages of her imaginative tell-alls, Carroll’s allegations against President Donald Trump ended up centering a pair of civil lawsuits — one in which she alleged that Trump sexually abused her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan back in the 1990s and the other in which she alleged defamation over Trump’s denial that the incident happened.

‘Her counsel sat by and allowed her to do so, knowing full well that her testimony was false,’ Trump’s attorneys claimed.

Carroll’s legal offensive ultimately left the president on the hook for a $83.3 million jury award — but now, she may have to go on defense.

The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into Carroll, sources familiar with the matter told multiple publications, including CNN and the New York Times. Investigators are reportedly looking into whether the fired columnist committed perjury in testimony linked to her lawsuits against Trump.

The probe reportedly focuses on Carroll’s assertion in a 2022 deposition statement that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, which was later shown to be demonstrably false.

RELATED: Trump’s anti-weaponization fund puts GOP cowards on trial

Anti-Trump activist Reid Hoffman. Jason Alden/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

When asked on Oct. 14, 2022, whether anyone else was paying her legal fees, Carroll definitively answered, “No.”

A jury found Trump civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation in May 2023.

However, several weeks earlier, Carroll’s attorneys admitted in an April 10, 2023, letter that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a big-time Biden donor and anti-Trump activist, had been funding Carroll’s lawsuit, prompting Trump’s legal team to raise hell.

Attorneys for the president said in an April 13, 2023, letter to U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan — the Clinton-appointed judge overseeing the case — that the belated disclosure “raises significant concerns as to plaintiff’s bias and motive in commencing the instant lawsuit.”

Trump’s attorneys also rejected the suggestion that Carroll suddenly remembered all that money didn’t come ex nihilo:

Of course, the proposition that plaintiff has suddenly “recollected” the source of her funding for this high-profile litigation — which has spanned four years, spawned two separate actions, and been before numerous state, federal, and appellate courts — is not only preposterous, it is demonstrably false. Indeed, it simply defies logic to believe that plaintiff’s attorneys — four of whom were present at her deposition — were unaware that their own firm had “secured additional funding from a nonprofit organization” to bankroll their client’s various lawsuits and ensure their bills were being paid.

Trump’s attorneys noted in summary that Carroll “apparently perjured herself during her deposition; her counsel sat by and allowed her to do so, knowing full well that her testimony was false; and then they conspired to conceal the truth for nearly six months, only to disclose it on the eve of trial.”

At the time, Kaplan denied the request by Trump’s attorneys to delay the case so they could properly investigate the funding issue.

Carroll’s lawyers, meanwhile, suggested that the outside funding — from the largest donor to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin — was irrelevant, even though it buttressed Trump’s 2019 claim that the lawsuit was a setup intended to “carry out a political agenda.”

Carroll’s lawyers also claimed that she had nothing to do with securing the outside funding or outsider funding source.

The inquiry into Carroll was reportedly launched by the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Andrew Boutros. Having previously represented Trump, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has allegedly recused himself from the investigation.

Carroll did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News, and the DOJ declined to comment.

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​Criminal investigation, Defamation, Democratic party, E jean carroll, Us district court, Sex, Rape, Donald trump, Perjury, Reid hoffman, Justice department, Politics 

“George Floyd Square” in Minneapolis was packed this Memorial Day as residents came to remember the sixth anniversary of Floyd’s death — which BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock finds “extremely unhealthy.”

“He’s set off a toxin in global society and particularly in American society. His death, a tragedy, has been exploited to spark more racial division and, you know, George Floyd-19 disease,” Whitlock tells his panel on “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”

Shemeka Michelle agrees, asking, “What exactly are we celebrating?”

“This man should not be any type of hero to the black community. He didn’t even lay down his life willingly. … To actually acknowledge this, in my opinion, on Memorial Day when we had people who actually went into battle to fight for our freedom, who lost their lives, and we’re acting as if he compares in some type of way,” Michelle explains.

“He didn’t raise his hand to say, ‘Hey, let me die for a cause. Let me die for America. Let me die for the freedom of people.’ This just happened because he was high on drugs,” she continues, pointing out that even Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Bernice King, was publicly honoring Floyd.

“What? Your father was Martin Luther King Jr. … How is George Floyd even coming out of your mouth?” she asks.

And those celebrating George Floyd could use a little history lesson.

“We’re so far removed from the truth and our own history that we have no reverence for Memorial Day. And it was started by black people that were thanking Union soldiers for fighting in the Civil War and sacrificing their lives,” Whitlock explains.

“And somehow celebrating George Floyd takes precedence over celebrating Memorial Day. It’s just sad and tragic to me,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Jason whitlock, George floyd, Memorial day, Shemeka michelle, The blaze, Martin luther king jr, Bernice king, Fearless, Jason whitlock harmony 

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe says Los Angeles writers are living in an unfunny liberal bubble of mental illness, and that includes those who write for Chelsea Handler.

Hinchcliffe’s reaction to Netflix’s roast of Kevin Hart aired on Monday during his show “Kill Tony,” which was filmed the day after he went head-to-head with Handler in front of the world.

‘They just read what the writers wrote for them without any originality whatsoever.’

Heil Handler

During the roast, Handler called Hinchcliffe and fellow star Shane Gillis white supremacists and Nazis who would rather spend their time burning crosses, while Hinchcliffe poked fun at how the 51-year-old comedienne constantly brags about being childless and single.

Hinchcliffe wasted no time getting right into the good stuff on Monday, saying that the roast was the first time he had been “called a Nazi multiple times in just a few hours.”

The Ohio native recalled that while everyone human he has interacted with told him his performance was “unbelievable,” fake news media was busy trying to convince the general public otherwise.

“There’s news articles — because the news isn’t real. Nothing is real — that say that I got lit up by Chelsea Handler, which is very, very funny because that’s not what happened at all.”

The “Kill Tony” host described Handler as a “c**t” who “just kept coming at me” despite making false claims like he had taken money from Saudi Arabia.

“The teleprompter only went down during my set,” Hinchcliffe recalled. “And it gave me a lot of opportunity to remind Chelsea Handler what she looks like and where her life is, because she had it coming.”

RELATED: Chelsea Handler learned a valuable lesson — if you’re going to attack Tony Hinchcliffe, don’t go first

Bubble-brained

Hinchcliffe blamed Handler’s lack of creativity on her writers, describing L.A. writing circles as “a lot of mentally ill liberals” who call him a Nazi but somehow can’t tell that his show is performed with a bunch of “blacks and Jews and Mexicans” around him. Hinchcliffe was referring to his trio of Mexican brass musicians, his Mexican drummer, and his black keyboard player and black guitarist (who is also blind).

“I guess I’m a f**king Nazi somehow,” Hinchcliffe added. “I guess the guy that pulls names out of a bucket, giving everybody an opportunity, is a Nazi. Isn’t that something?”

Hinchcliffe described those putting racist labels on him as people who have “never written anything in their lives,” summing them up as being cue-card and teleprompter readers.

“They just read what the writers wrote for them without any originality whatsoever,” he explained. While some of the others are good writers, the 41-year-old admitted, “the rest of them are just living in a bubble of mental illness, and it’s very exciting.”

RELATED: ‘ROAST’ BEEF: Chelsea Handler scolds fellow comics for ‘racist,’ ‘sexist’ jokes

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Roast redux

While Hinchcliffe disagreed with the idea that comedians like Handler should go first in the broadcast, he said it gave him the opportunity to watch what she was doing and prepare for the onslaught he was about to deliver.

Hinchcliffe paraphrased that even though he “got called a Nazi, gay, [and] a racist over and over again,” he is “none of those three things,” but those he made fun of are in fact “fat, ugly, black, [or] Jewish.”

The “Kill Tony” crowd went wild after those comments, as Hinchcliffe concluded, “Anyway, it was fun.”

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​Align, Comedy, Tony hinchcliffe, Chelsea handler, Kill tony, Netflix, Entertainment 

Traditionally, one advantage of living in rural America was the ability to escape insufferable leftists. The trade-offs were obvious: fewer jobs, fewer restaurants, less entertainment, and fewer institutions built for upward mobility. But distance from liberal cultural centers meant the average community could preserve a sane, conservative, patriotic outlook — the kind of place where normal people could still breathe without asking permission from their urban cultural commissars.

That escape has narrowed. As media and universities became more radical, their disciples moved into rural America through government-mandated institutions like schools and libraries. Progressivism became harder to avoid no matter how far someone moved from the city. Thus the hicklib was born.

The fail-lib was promised luxury and elite influence. Now she serves people she despises while searching for any opportunity to make their lives worse.

The hicklib is usually a social outcast, a failson who needs a moral explanation for why he hates the community he never fit into. His resentment searches for a theory that will dignify his rage, and the progressive missionaries installed in local institutions are happy to provide one.

Teachers tell the hicklib his country is evil. His family and neighbors are racist, sexist, backward religious fanatics destroying the lives of minorities who do not even live in town. The white Christian culture that dominates rural America is primitive and responsible for the evils of the world. The hicklib’s failure to fit in becomes proof of moral superiority.

So the hicklib shows up at town council meetings in a Black Lives Matter shirt to denounce minority oppression in a community with no actual black people. That absence, naturally, becomes further proof of the town’s intolerance. He loudly organizes Pride events attended by two other hicklibs. The clique stages protests, distributes flyers, and imitates urban activist rituals.

By practicing the sacraments of their faith, they hope to summon the spirit of the age to judge their reactionary little town.

The hicklib has become one of rural America’s petty plagues. But as the value of college degrees collapses, a new breed is emerging: the fail-lib.

The fail-lib worked hard in high school and gave progressive teachers every approved answer. She wrote her college entrance essay on the oppression of transwomen of color in coal mining. On campus, she became an activist. She secured a degree in some woke humanities discipline and earned straight A’s by repeating everything her communist professors told her.

The path to success was laid out before the fail-lib was born. She followed it perfectly. All that remained was the cushy corporate HR job and her rightful place making ordinary people miserable.

Then the plan failed.

RELATED: Your enemies aren’t mentally ill. They apparently just want to kill you.

Blaze Media Illustration

The college degree that cost $100,000 was supposed to guarantee success. The debt would be worth it because the credential would deliver a salary large enough for an apartment, a car, and monthly student loan payments. But the degree was not merely about financial security. It was also a symbol of status. College graduates were supposed to rule over the simple plebs who never left home.

The degree would confer wealth, power, and privilege. Instead, it turned out that too many people held degrees and too few jobs required them. Corporations began cutting HR departments that wasted resources and reduced productivity. Poor oppressed immigrant workers somehow found work while the fail-lib remained unemployed, though a good progressive would never complain. She could never explain how, but she knew the white Christian patriarchy was responsible for this injustice.

Earlier generations of college students had an insult for the ordinary residents of college towns: townies. The townie was contemptible because he was not merely passing through before collecting a credential and moving on to rule the world. He belonged to the place the student planned to use and abandon.

The arrogance required to insult the permanent residents of a community while you are a temporary visitor is staggering, but the slur was common. It revealed the sneering condescension of the would-be liberal elite. Now the tables have turned.

The college degree was once a ticket to the top. Now it is an expensive lottery ticket with worsening odds. More graduates emerge from extended stays in higher education with mountains of debt and few prospects.

The fail-lib spends a year unemployed, desperately seeking even the entry-level positions her fancy degree was supposed to let her bypass. After burning through savings and taking on more debt, she accepts a management job at the local Starbucks or retail outlet. If she gets lucky, she might run the local Apple Store.

The hicklib may be insufferable, but the fail-lib is worse. She was destined to leave the college town behind and move to a big liberal city like New York. She was supposed to be the person ordering lattes and $30 burrito bowls for important work lunches, not the person making them. Once, she mocked the parochial townies trapped in their backward existence. Now she is stuck among them with no escape.

RELATED: Almonds feed a people. AI feeds a machine.

Blaze Media Illustration

The fail-lib is not merely trapped in the backwater town. She is poor and low-status. A management job at Target might provide a decent life in a small town where prices remain low, but the fail-lib has a mountain of student debt she can never repay on a retail wage.

Plumbers, cops, firefighters, and mechanics all seem to make more money and enjoy more status in the community. The fail-lib was promised luxury and elite influence. Now she serves people she despises while searching for any opportunity to make their lives worse.

Artificial intelligence will intensify the problem. The bureaucratic make-work jobs progressive college graduates once dominated are among the easiest to automate, consolidate, or eliminate. The bitter entitlement of a psychology major with $100,000 in debt helping you find the cereal aisle will become more common.

The fail-lib may make less money than you. She may be less respected than you. She may even be despised by the townies she once mocked. But in her heart, she knows she is superior.

Nothing could convince her otherwise.

And she will spit in your burrito just to remind you who was supposed to be in charge.

​Opinion & analysis, Woke culture, Colleges and universities, Leftism, Rural america, Christianity, Employment, Human resources, Artificial intelligence, Jobs, Hicklibs, Debt, Affordability 

A pilot allegedly threatened to call authorities this month over a Wi-Fi name that was determined to be a potential security threat.

The story came from a person who claimed to have been a passenger on a United Airlines flight that featured an awkward moment when the pilot addressed the travelers and issued a warning.

‘You could feel everyone looking around.’

The alleged passenger said the pilot came over the speaker “sounding extremely serious” and said the name of the Wi-Fi hot spot was being interpreted as a potential threat and security issue, Simply Flying reported.

According to the witness, the pilot warned whoever was hosting the network labeled “Free Palestine, F Zionists” had “30 seconds” to disable it or remove it from public view or he was going to have the FBI meet the aircraft when it landed.

“FBI will meet the plane,” the passenger recalled hearing.

“The entire cabin got dead silent,” the witness alleged in a post on Reddit. “You could feel everyone looking around, trying to figure out who it was.”

RELATED: Dear airlines, please stop pitching your credit cards at 33,000 feet

Karl Gehring/Denver Post/Getty Images

The social media user also claimed that while some of the passengers looked nervous, others were laughing because they thought it was an absurd situation.

The storyteller said it felt like an example of hyper-political-polarization, where regular people are bringing political messaging into almost any situation, causing institutions to react with full force rather than risk missing a warning sign.

The quick escalation is what the storyteller found most startling, noting that there was no request from a flight attendant, but rather a serious public announcement that turned an “edgy hot spot name” into a security issue.

However, it is not irregular for pilots or flight crews to raise the alarm over Wi-Fi names out of an abundance of caution.

RELATED: ‘Fewer choices = higher prices’: Elizabeth Warren laments Spirit shutdown she helped cause

Nasir Kachroo/NurPhoto/Getty Images

In February, Hungarian airline Wizz Air had fighter jets scrambled during a flight from London to Tel Aviv over a Wi-Fi network labeled “Terrorist” written in Arabic. According to PYOK, security forces were waiting to meet the plane at Ben Gurion Airport.

PYOK also reported on an incident from January when fighter jets from both France and Spain were scrambled over a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Barcelona. This incident related to a network named “I HAVE A BOMB. EVERYONE WILL DIE.”

United Airlines did not respond to a request for comment about the recent alleged incident.

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​News, United airlines, Fbi, Aviation, Terrorism, Politics 

This week at Google I/O 2026, the company announced what it called “the biggest upgrade to our Search box in over 25 years.” Translation: It’s officially done pretending Search is about helping you find websites.

The centerpiece is a new AI-powered Search box running Gemini 3.5 Flash. It expands as you type, accepts text, images, files, videos, even Chrome tabs as input, and spits back AI-generated answers where the blue links used to be. Google also unveiled “Search Agents,” AI systems that monitor blogs, news sites, and social platforms around the clock to proactively ping you when something matching your criteria happens. There are agentic booking features and custom AI-generated interfaces that build dashboards instead of sending you to actual websites.

It’s seamless. It’s free. And the traffic to the websites that actually created the information? That’s not Google’s problem anymore.

Google’s AI is a factory trawler scooping up everything in its path, indifferent to whether the fishery collapses behind it.

A slow suffocation

This didn’t happen overnight. Google has spent three years systematically strangling the open web that built its empire.

September 2023: The helpful content update

Google pushed an algorithm change targeting content “created for search engines instead of people.” Sounded reasonable. Then, independent publishers watched their traffic crater. Recipe bloggers, how-to sites, product reviewers. They never got that traffic back. The message was clear: Your content exists at Google’s pleasure, and Google decides what’s “helpful.”

March 2024: Core and spam update

Google promised to reduce “low-quality, unoriginal content” by 40%. It folded the Helpful Content system into its core engine and introduced spam policies against scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse, and expired domain abuse. The targets sounded like bottom-feeders. By April, Google announced it had exceeded its 45% reduction target. Translation: 45% fewer reasons to visit the websites that used to rank.

From there, the updates kept coming: August 2024 core update, November 2024 core update, December 2024 core update, March 2025 core update, June 2025 core update, August 2025 spam update, December 2025 core update, and March 2026 core update. Nine major confirmed updates in under two years, each tracked by Search Engine Journal. Each one was another announcement that Google had “improved quality,” with no real transparency, no appeals process worth the name, and zero accountability for the livelihoods it flattened.

What the numbers actually say

The data is not ambiguous. Multiple independent studies tracking billions of search queries tell the same story, compiled in aggregate by the SEO Spot from Chartbeat, Seer Interactive, Ahrefs, and similar data providers:

Organic click-through rates on queries with AI Overviews dropped 61% between June 2024 and September 2025;Position-one CTR fell 34.5% on queries triggering AI Overviews;Overall CTR across the top 10 positions dropped 36% as AI Overviews went from under 7% of queries to nearly 30%;Global Google search traffic to publishers dropped 33% year-over-year; in the U.S. it fell 38%;When an AI Overview appears, only 8% of users click any link below it. When there’s no AI summary, 15% do;58.5% of U.S. Google searches result in zero clicks at all.

Even when users click a link inside an AI Overview, 43% of those links don’t go to external websites. They just run another Google search. Google replaced the web with a layer of summaries that links back to itself.

The casualties

NPR reported extensively on the damage. The travel blog the Planet D lost 90% of its traffic and shut down entirely. CNN dropped roughly 30% year-over-year. Business Insider and HuffPost both saw traffic plunge around 40% year-over-year. Business Insider cut 21% of staff. NPR reported the Verge’s publisher calling it an “extinction-level event.”

RELATED: ‘Anti-clanker’: Why millions of people are cheering this android’s humiliation

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images

Digital Content Next, a trade organization for digital publishers, measured median referral traffic from Google Search down 10% in just eight weeks. Non-news brands lost 14%. News brands lost 7%. Declines outnumbered gains two to one. Meanwhile, Google’s own advertising revenue shifted from a roughly 50/50 split with the rest of the web to over 90% flowing to Google itself.

The question Google won’t answer

Here’s the part that should worry everyone, not just publishers.

Google’s AI is trained on the open web. It ingests billions of pages written by journalists, researchers, hobbyists, bloggers, doctors, chefs, and travelers. It paraphrases their work, synthesizes their expertise, and presents it as its own answer. Then, it sends fewer readers to the originals. Then, the originals, starved of traffic and revenue, stop publishing. Then, the AI has nothing fresh to train on.

This is the information ecosystem equivalent of overfishing. Google’s AI is a factory trawler scooping up everything in its path, indifferent to whether the fishery collapses behind it. The only thing that could force a course correction is monopoly accountability, and Google is fighting that on multiple fronts, from the Justice Department’s search antitrust case to EU antitrust complaints.

Google’s sitting on 95% of the mobile search market. Publishers who want out of AI training must opt out of Google Search entirely, which is corporate suicide. As the News/Media Alliance put it, “Google is using our content without compensation, offering no meaningful way to opt out, and then turning around and using that same content to compete with us.”

The endgame

What Google announced at I/O 2026 isn’t innovation. It’s enclosure, the final stage of the monopoly playbook. You build the infrastructure everyone depends on. Then, you extract rent. Then, you replace the producers entirely and capture all value inside the platform.

The Search Agents Google launches this summer for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers will monitor publisher blogs and news sites in real time, pull the information, and deliver it to users without the user ever visiting the source. Google’s Search box won’t just summarize the web anymore. It will replace it.

Google executives say users prefer this. Sure. People prefer free music, free news, and free social media too, right up until the platforms that gave them those things finish strip-mining the industries that produced them.

The open web worked because it was a virtuous cycle. Search engines indexed content. Users clicked through. Publishers earned revenue. Publishers produced more content. Search engines had better results. Google’s AI strategy breaks that cycle. It takes the content, kills the revenue, and hopes nobody notices that an AI trained on a shrinking corpus of old information is just a very expensive echo.

Liz Reid, Google’s head of Search, called the new Search box “the biggest upgrade in 25 years.” For the publishers who built the web Google is now devouring, it’s the biggest downgrade since Search began.

​Tech, Google, Search, Ai 

An elderly woman, her 50-year-old daughter, and her 24-year-old granddaughter were all arrested Wednesday for the alleged “horrific abuse and torture” of a 7-year-old girl.

Paramedics were sent to a residence in Bayport on December 29, 2025, at about 10:30 a.m. after being alerted about a child who was unresponsive.

‘This was not an alleged single act of violence. It was months of alleged systematic cruelty and sadistic abuse, meticulously documented.’

Jor’Dynn Duncan was rushed to NYU Langone Hospital-Suffolk, where she was pronounced dead from a cardiac arrest.

Prosecutors said Barbara Renner, her daughter Emily Kelly, and Kelly’s daughter Elyssa Seymore each had a part in the “prolonged torture, abuse, and the brutal murder” of the “defenseless, innocent child.”

The Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office was able to document 90 injuries to the child’s body at her death, which led to a homicide investigation being opened.

Investigators said Duncan was the daughter of Kelly’s fiance, who is incarcerated, and that Kelly requested the child be placed into her care in Dec. 2024 by Child Protective Services. By April 2025, Kelly obtained full custody and guardianship of the girl.

Digital evidence from Kelly’s cell phone and cloud services allegedly revealed “prolonged abuse and torture” of the girl that included physical injuries, prolonged restraint, and lack of medical attention for the injuries since Jan. 2025.

One of the texts allegedly read, “You can’t hit her face. You gotta hit her body if you going to hit her. That’s another thing we gotta hide.”

The girl was also kept from attending school for a total of 40 days, allegedly in order to conceal the torture and her injuries.

Kelly was indicted on numerous charges that included murder in the second degree, Renner was indicted for second-degree manslaughter, and Seymore was indicted for unlawful imprisonment in the first degree.

“This was not an alleged single act of violence,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said. “It was months of alleged systematic cruelty and sadistic abuse, meticulously documented. The child was allegedly left to die while these defendants watched her deteriorate. No child should ever endure such horror, and we will seek justice for Jor’Dynn.”

Officials are now calling for accountability from the government organizations that were intended to detect these kinds of cases.

“How was this child placed in the hands of somebody who could be this unfit and this abusive?” County Legislator Rebecca Sanin asked. “How could the school not see her for 40 days over the course of a year and not ask questions?”

RELATED: AZ mom shoots woman she found with her husband — then sends him horrific photo of their child

Neighbors said they were shocked to find out about the horrific abuse allegedly perpetrated on the child.

“The cutest little thing that you want to see in your life,” Tim Lowe said. “I never saw any marks on her face.”

Relatives of the 7-year-old girl refused to comment to CBS News about the case.

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​Cardiac arrest, Child murder, Child torture, Child guardian murder, Crime 

The left has developed a strange blind spot when it comes to artificial substitution. In entertainment, its leading voices warn that AI threatens to replace real actors, writers, voices, and images. In women’s sports, many of those same voices insist that biological reality can be redefined without consequence.

The two issues may seem unrelated. They are not. Both turn on the danger of allowing what is artificial to replace what is real.

The left sees the problem when the artificial threatens its own institutions. It refuses to see the problem when women and girls pay the price.

Charlize Theron recently criticized Timothée Chalamet for disparaging ballet and opera after he said, “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though, like, no one cares about this anymore.’”

Theron not only defended ballet and opera but also warned performers to recognize the threat AI poses to their livelihoods.

“In 10 years, AI is going to be able to do Timothée’s job,” she said, “but it will not be able to replace a person on a stage dancing live.”

Theron is hardly the first performer to sound the alarm. Earlier this year, a 15-second, AI-generated fight scene featuring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise sent shock waves through Hollywood. The clip looked polished, and its creator claimed to have produced it with a two-sentence prompt. One top screenwriter responded bluntly: “I hate to say it. It’s likely over for us.”

Hollywood has reason to worry. AI-generated images, voices, scripts, scenes, and performances could overwhelm an industry already weakened by self-inflicted creative problems and growing competition from other forms of entertainment. Actors, writers, and many others could find themselves displaced by a few keystrokes.

On this point, the left sees the threat clearly. Hollywood, one of the left’s most reliable cultural strongholds, understands what happens when an artificial substitute can perform at or above the level of the real thing.

Yet many celebrities, athletes, journalists, and activists refuse to apply the same logic to women’s sports. They insist that biological males who identify as transgender should compete against women. Many more likely stay silent because objecting would alienate their peers.

The difference in perspective is stunning.

If the left fears AI-generated images, voices, and writing because artificial creations can displace real performers, why does it deny the consequences of allowing biological males to compete against biological females?

RELATED: Jack Osbourne takes message to Capitol Hill: Celebrities need to ‘keep their mouth shut’ about politics

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The threat to female athletes is clear. Biological males have a competitive advantage in female sports. Beyond the headline examples of individual male athletes dominating female competition, many women’s teams have competed against male teams — often much younger male teams — and lost decisively.

The advantage moves in only one direction. Biological females do not enter men’s sports and outperform males at scale. The controversy exists because biological males entering female competition changes the competitive field.

The more institutions accept that advantage, the more common it will become. That is why advocates fight so aggressively for acceptance. The goal is not merely access in a few isolated cases. The goal is normalization.

The stakes grow as athletes move up the competitive ladder. At first, the rewards involve satisfaction, recognition, and the opportunity to keep playing. But anyone who follows sports understands that money enters the picture early.

High school athletes compete for scholarships, especially at expensive private schools. College athletes compete for even more valuable scholarships. Those opportunities can shape a young person’s education, finances, and future. At the top of the ladder, professional athletes earn money for competing and often gain endorsement opportunities as well.

As the rewards grow, so does the incentive to win. Economics does not change because an athlete identifies as transgender. Without clear rules reserving female sports for biological females, more biological males will have an incentive to enter female competition.

The current debate exists because this is already happening.

The threat does not exist only at elite levels. Biological males displacing females anywhere on the ladder can affect who keeps playing, who develops, and who moves up. Girls who do not get a fair chance in grade school may never prepare for high school sports. Girls pushed aside in high school may never reach college competition. Women displaced in college may never receive professional opportunities.

Title IX was created to address exactly this problem: to ensure that women and girls have equal opportunities to compete in sports. That meant female sports, with females competing against other females.

The left once championed that principle. Now it champions the greatest threat to it.

The irony should be impossible to miss. The same cultural class that fears AI because it can imitate and displace real performers now insists women should accept biological males in their own sports. Hollywood understands substitution when the threatened class includes actors, writers, and directors. It becomes strangely confused when the threatened class includes girls and women.

Artificial creations threaten the real when they can perform at similar or superior levels. AI can. Biological males in female sports can too.

The left sees the problem when the artificial threatens its own institutions.

It refuses to see the problem when women and girls pay the price.

​Charlize theron, Timothee chalamet, Ai, Hollywood, Title ix, The left, Women’s sports, Ai images, Opinion & analysis