Category: blaze media

The governor of New York was reduced to begging the wealthy to move back to the high-tax state in order to help fund its social programs.

Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul made the comments during a Politico forum in Albany on March 11 after the state legislature called for higher taxes.

‘They’re not going there because they have a nicer governor. … They’re going there because of the tax rate.’

“I need people who are high net worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state,” said Hochul.

“There are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up. OK! Cut me the checks. If you want to be supportive, then maybe the first step should be go down to Palm Beach and see who you can bring back home, because our tax base has been eroded,” she added.

“So I philosophically don’t have a problem. It is, like, I have to look at the fact that we are in competition with other states who have less of a tax burden on their corporations and their individuals,” Hochul concluded.

Hochul is seeking to win re-election after she was elevated to the governor’s office because of the fall of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).

New York joins other states looking to tax the wealthy in order to fund their socialist schemes, including California, which is facing its own population exodus, and Washington state. Both states have experienced billionaires fleeing to other states with lower tax burdens.

“Wall Street businesses looking at Texas?” Hochul asked rhetorically. “They’re not going there because they have a nicer governor! I know that for sure! But they’re going there because of the tax rate. We have to be smart about this.”

RELATED: LA Times gets obliterated online for scolding people wanting to leave high-tax California

Hochul’s critics pointed out that she told conservative and Republican New Yorkers to leave the state in 2022 and go down to Florida, “where you belong.”

Ironically, just months later, she lamented that too many people were leaving the high-tax state to seek better opportunities elsewhere.

“We must and will make our state safe,” she said at her inaugural speech.

“And we must reverse the trend of people leaving our state in search of lower costs and opportunities elsewhere.”

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​Ny gov kathy hochul, Hochul begs millionaires to stay, High tax proposal new york, Hochul vs republicans, Politics 

Thermostats have become so intelligent that they can build entire lifestyle portfolios on a homeowner simply by using the embedded technology that regulates and tracks heat and electricity.

Many smart thermostats are openly asking users for this information. But studies have also revealed that other knowledge, which no homeowner would want a stranger to know, can now easily be harvested and quantified.

A thermostat’s built-in motion sensors determine if a homeowner is home or away.

For example, an Ecobee smart thermostat, available on Amazon for $140, has been used to monitor sleep patterns over the course of a year. A 2022 study used six Ecobee sensors to track sleep time, wake-up time, sleep duration, as well as time spent at home. It also determined how those behaviors were influenced by weekends and seasonal weather.

This all came from the thermostat’s data, which can connect to Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant.

Google Nest thermostats can come equipped with a series of cameras, sensors, and more, as well as public-facing features like Home/Away Assist and Auto-Away. These features track whether the user is home or not and can do so in multiple ways.

The first option is to sync with the homeowner’s phone location. It asks for user location and address, and it even helps pinpoint the home on a map.

Auto-Away does not even need add-on sensors throughout the house to tell if the user is home. According to How to Geek, it uses the thermostat’s built-in motion sensors to make this determination.

The justification for the intimate invasion of privacy is to lower and limit heating or cooling usage when the user is not at home or to enable security features.

Ecobee also has passive motion sensors that can tell when a person is home or not.

RELATED: Creepy new laws will mean your car monitors you 24/7 — eyes, skin, even breath

Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Ecobee also utilizes a feature so it knows which rooms in a home are occupied. “Follow me” mode is an attempt to maximize energy efficiency by tracking the resident with sensors as he moves through rooms, and it adjusts the temperature accordingly.

At the same time, it tracks the amount of time spent in each room.

A 2018 study showed a 95% accuracy rating in terms of gauging home occupancy using a technology called WalkSense. The technology identified room occupancy, house vacancy, and even occupant activities.

The latter is helped by what is referred to as “load monitoring,” which is a fancy term for tracking what type of appliances a person uses by how much electricity he uses, another feature of smart home devices.

RELATED: Storm season is here. Yes, you need a better weather app.

Load monitoring works by applying a “signature” to an appliance by extracting data from its power signal. The signature is applied to the typical amount of energy usage from the appliance, which henceforth identifies the amount of power used by a dishwasher, washing machine, etc.

A February 2021 study proposed such a system that identified appliances with 98% to 99% accuracy.

Another study from 2017 even showed it was using load monitoring through a smart meter called Rainforest at the time.

Load monitoring is typically used with energy meter trackers like Sense Energy — installed on the electrical panel — but can be paired with home monitoring systems like Google Nest or Alexa, which either pair with or operate the smart thermostat.

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​Return, Automation, Thermostat, Smart home, Smart thermostat, Smart energy, Homeowner, Tech 

Actress Katherine Heigl was in attendance at Mar-a-Lago last weekend where she posed for photos with Lara Trump and Jeanine Pirro. And while the left is not happy with seeing the actress there, it was at an event that raised $5.5 million for Big Dog Ranch Rescue.

“Liberals outraged, I told you about everything, including dogs. Dogs,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments, shocked. “They don’t like dogs. That’s how you know they’re not the party for you. They are the party of hating dogs, because there was a big fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago to rescue dogs.”

“Now everyone hates Katherine Heigl for going there and trying to raise money to save dogs,” she adds.

One X user wrote, “F**k her and anyone attending maga-lago for any reason,” while another wrote, “Supporting Nazis. So many orgs that aren’t run by white supremacists. This is a choice.”

However, Heigl wasn’t taking the attacks lying down.

“Animals don’t vote. The only room they don’t like is the euthanasia room at a shelter,” Heigl told Page Six in a statement. “They are completely at the mercy of us, and they have no voice of their own.”

“This event was about animal advocacy, something that has always been deeply personal to me,” she continued. “Anyone who knows me knows that protecting animals is one of my greatest passions.”

“The point is, animals, of course, do not knowingly vote,” Gonzales comments, adding, “They’re not involved in our politics. And the charity event raised $5.5 million for rescue dogs.”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Mar a lago, Katherine heigl, Leftist outrage, Leftism, Liberals, Trump derangement syndrome, Big dog ranch rescue 

Carl von Clausewitz framed war as a “continuation of politics by other means.” Weaponry, in this view, is an extension of state judgment, a tool pulled from the kit when the talking stops. Looking at the landscape of directed-energy weapons and autonomous subsea networks, one suspects the tools have begun to write their own script. The question is no longer just what we do with the tools, but what kind of world becomes thinkable and governable once they exist.

The new frontier is the management of latency, visibility, and energy at the very edges of the habitable world. It is a reorganization of politics around the capacity to see and the speed at which one can destroy.

The border is becoming a software-defined stack of sensing and response.

The visual theatricality of directed-energy weapons appeals to our desire for a clean defense. We hear of the Iron Beam, a 100kW-class laser system integrated into multitier defense arrays. The descriptions are intoxicating: an unlimited magazine, almost zero cost per interception, and the promise of reduced collateral damage. These defense systems promise to restore cost symmetry in the face of cheap, numerous drones that can saturate expensive missile defenses.

The technical reality is more mundane and perhaps more telling. These weapons of light remain stubbornly bound to the earth. A laser is a system of ordering: power generation, cooling, and software integration. It is also a prisoner of the weather. For all their speed-of-light elegance, lasers are degraded by the most common of things: rain, fog, and storms. Even when the technical feasibility is proven, the operational reality is constrained by the atmosphere itself.

If the sky is becoming a theater of light, the ocean is becoming a laboratory for a different kind of visibility. Historically, the undersea domain was the last holdout against panoptic ambitions: It was difficult to see, difficult to communicate through, and difficult to police. The Cold War depended on this opacity, on stealth and the difficulty of detection by sonar.

Now, the sea is being made a platform. Subsea drones, from small autonomous vehicles to the U.S. Navy’s Orca extra-large uncrewed undersea vehicle, are designed to make the underwater domain legible. The goal is a distributed fleet architecture, storing eggs in many baskets to ensure that no single loss is catastrophic.

RELATED: Yes, there’s an AI hive mind, and it’s making us dumber

Yuuji/Getty Images

Yet the physics of water remains punishing. While we take high-speed wireless for granted on land, the underwater acoustic channel offers only a few kilobits per second over a 10 km link. This scarcity of bandwidth forces a shift toward decision-making at the edge. A drone under the ice cannot call home for instructions but instead must interpret its own sensors and manage its own contingencies through a complex stack of perception, state estimation, and mission policy.

Reliability here is engineering for trust. In the extreme cold of under-ice operations, in which temperatures can sustain -35°C, there is no fail-safe of surfacing. The ice layer removes the luxury of escape.

The Arctic was once the site of exceptionalism, a region governed by cooperation, science, and the explicit exclusion of military security from the mandate of the Arctic Council. That story is ending. As the sea ice declines, this environment is being revealed as a corridor for commerce and surveillance.

The IPCC suggests the Arctic may be practically free of sea ice in September at least once before 2050. The U.S. Department of Defense is more aggressive, suggesting an ice-free summer could arrive by 2030. This melting makes minerals, fisheries, and choke points like the Bering Strait newly available for military and commercial ordering.

The map is being redrawn by infrastructure as much as by diplomacy. Finland and Sweden have joined NATO, shifting the alliance geography of the North. The U.S. Air Force maintains a North Warning System of 49 radars, a logistical feat that requires sustaining sensors and fuel in an austere environment. In this theater, sovereignty requires infrastructure: keeping the sensors on, the parts moving, and the communications flowing.

The cost of latency here is strategic. Because geostationary satellites do not sufficiently support high-latitude operations, there is a frantic move toward low-Earth-orbit constellations to provide the connectivity required for modern command and control.

We are witnessing a shift in the nature of the border. It is becoming a software-defined stack of sensing and response. NATO now treats the ocean floor, the hidden architecture of cables and pipelines, as a critical space that must be monitored by AI and sea drones. It is the defense of the material substrate of digital life. Technologically mediated violence produces a new kind of border politics, in which the decisive terrain is invisible, found in electromagnetic spectra, sonar inference, and satellite coverage gaps.

In this world, we are always operating under imperfect information. We return to Clausewitzian friction, though today we call it packet loss, acoustic noise, or navigation drift. We find ourselves at the edge of the habitable world, watching the ice melt and the sensors blink, waiting for the speed of light to solve a problem that remains stubbornly human.

​Tech 

Several super PACs linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee reportedly poured over $20 million into multiple House primary races in Illinois in hopes of advancing favored candidates or at the very least kneecapping candidates critical of Israel.

Some of the groups’ investments paid off.

‘There’s no gray lines as it relates to their beliefs.’

For instance, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller — a beneficiary of nearly $4.5 million in ad spending from the AIPAC-linked group Affordable Chicago Now — defeated former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in the Democrat primary for the state’s 2nd Congressional District.

In the Democrat primary for the 8th Congressional District, former Rep. Melissa Bean, another beneficiary of spending by an AIPAC-aligned group, also came out on top, beating Junaid Ahmed, a leftist whom AIPAC faulted for centering “his campaign on attacking Israel.”

However, Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, a candidate who ran in the 7th District Democrat primary to replace retiring incumbent Rep. Danny Davis, turned out to be a bad investment.

With 90% of the votes in, the Associated Press called the race for state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat with a history of tax fraud who secured 23.9% of the total vote. Conyears-Ervin, one of only handful of candidates who said in a WBEZ-FM survey that she did not oppose sending U.S. military aid to Israel, trailed behind with 20.5% of the vote.

RELATED: Jesse Jackson Jr.’s political comeback fails miserably after he served prison time

John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

The United Democracy Project, an AIPAC super PAC established in 2022, poured nearly $5 million into positive ads for Conyears-Ervin, reported Politico.

Austin Weekly News reported that the AIPAC group’s intervention in the race was criticized by many of the other 13 candidates, including Ford, who was backed by the retiring incumbent.

“I’ve also had meetings with the very people that’s spending this money,” said Ford. “They want you to say ‘yes’ to everything that they have requests for. There’s no gray lines as it relates to their beliefs. It’s a yes or no. … ‘Don’t have a conversation, that this is what we want. We want you to vote with us in Washington 100% of the time, and we want to control our member,’ and that’s what this is about. And I refused that type of relationship.”

Ford suggested further last month that “this money dwarfs, or tries to dwarf, the voice of the voters in the 7th Congressional District, and it would tell you immediately who this candidate will be beholden to. Follow the money.”

Kina Collins, one of the leftist candidates defeated on Tuesday, said last month that it was “not going to help [Conyears-Ervin’s] case that AIPAC is backing her.”

While AIPAC’s support may have negatively affected Conyears-Ervin’s chances, she also had plenty of baggage. For instance, she reportedly agreed in September to pay a $30,000 fine to resolve charges brought by the Chicago Board of Ethics.

Conyears-Ervin, an ally of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D), was accused of misusing city resources and retaliating against whistleblowers — allegations she denies, reported WTTW.

Conyears-Ervin’s race was among the Illinois primaries regarded as a test for AIPAC. The lobbying group characterized the night as a win overall, however, stating, “Illinois voters rejected half a dozen anti-Israel candidates across several heavily Democratic open-seat races. These results further demonstrate that campaigns defined largely by opposition to AIPAC, our members, and the values we represent continue to fall short on election night.”

The group added, “Although Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin did not advance, AIPAC congratulates State Representative La Shawn K. Ford on his win. The pro-Israel community is proud to have helped defeat Kina Collins, who has voiced anti-Israel views over multiple election cycles.”

Ford — who was indicted on 17 counts of bank fraud but ultimately pleaded guilty in 2014 to only a single misdemeanor charge of tax fraud — will face off in the general election with Republican nominee Chad Koppie, a farmer and retired Delta Airlines pilot whose “main goal is trying to ban abortion.”

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​Illinois, Conyear-ervin, Aipac, Foreign influence, Elections, Chicago, La shawn ford, Democrat, Primaries, Congress, Israel, Brandon johnson, Politics 

I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting the other night, a meeting I have gone to sporadically over the years. It’s in a big church and tends to average around 200 people every Saturday night.

I was immediately surprised at the sparse attendance. This is something I have been seeing a lot lately. I was just at a meeting the week before that was half its normal size.

The idea of a person having a ‘drinking problem’ feels almost quaint now that most major American cities are full of drug-addicted zombies wandering the streets.

It’s not unusual for attendance at AA meetings to ebb and flow. One meeting will get hot for a while. Then it will die down and another meeting will become popular.

Also, COVID has had a lingering affect on AA meetings. People got comfortable doing Zoom meetings, and now they don’t want to leave their homes.

*******

I got a coffee and took a seat. The first of the night’s three speakers went to the podium.

He was from Texas. It was very entertaining to hear his accent and his crazy drinking stories. The next woman bottomed out in Los Angeles while working in the film business. The third person was a local guy and told his story of basically being in the grip of alcohol from age 13 onward.

That sober life

I’ve been sober for a long time. So I know how AA stories go. They’re all different, but at their heart, they are all the same. Also, there’s a certain AA language people use to describe their experiences. There’s a rhythm to the stories.

It’s all very familiar and routine for me. It’s a nice feeling to settle in and listen to your fellow drunks describe their experiences.

But sitting there this time, a dark thought came over me. I wondered if AA was getting old in some way. If I’m in my 60s, and this meeting felt like the perfect way to spend a Saturday night, what would it feel like to a younger person? Probably very old-fashioned.

AA’s glory days

AA began in the 1930s. It caught on immediately. Over the decades, it literally saved millions of lives and vastly improved millions of others.

In theological circles, many consider Alcoholics Anonymous to be the most profound and important spiritual movement of the 20th century.

But what now? Can it continue indefinitely?

I considered who founded AA in the first place: white Christian men, most of them professionals. Of course, AA evolved and adapted as it grew, quickly including women, younger people, and other ethnicities and social classes.

But it still bears the marks of its beginnings. And institutions with those kinds of roots tend to get targeted and harassed by leftist activists — even the most benevolent ones.

RELATED: When ‘live, laugh, love’ means ‘pour me another’

Matt Cardy/Tatyana Larina/Getty Images

First they came for …

So far, no one has accused AA of being sexist or racist or “white supremacist.” But it seems possible the left could find something wrong with it.

Not to mention that AA is a lot like church. There are prayers and talk of God, and many meetings actually take place in church basements.

And we all know how socialist/communist countries dealt with churches in the past. They shut them down.

I doubt that will happen, but the left could certainly try to discredit AA. Or file lawsuits against it, as with the Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts were just minding their own business, until they were obliterated by lawsuits brought by the radical left.

To drink or not to drink

Another consideration: Is alcoholism still a major problem in our society? I mean, it obviously can be. But is it as bad as fentanyl? Or meth?

It usually takes years of drinking to seriously damage your body. Our new super-addictive street drugs can kill you in a week.

The idea of a person having a “drinking problem” feels almost quaint now that most major American cities are full of drug-addicted zombies wandering the streets.

In recent years, alcohol seems to have faded as the recreational intoxicant of choice. Think of how popular alcohol was in the 1940s and 1950s. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin’s ever-intoxicated “Rat Pack” became the symbol of suave masculinity. The idea of a man not drinking was unthinkable. That’s what men did. They drank.

But not any more. Oh, men still drink. They drink Evian water out of their $30 water bottles.

Teenagers under the influence

And what about teenagers? Do they still drink? I’m sure they do. But not like the generations before them.

When I was in high school, everything we did was combined with alcohol from freshman year onward. That was what we did at social gatherings. That was how we talked to girls.

When you picture contemporary teenagers’ social lives and leisure activities, you see them online. On their phones. Gaming. Posting. Texting.

I don’t remember “reading” as being something I was good at when I was drunk. Or typing on a tiny keyboard.Maybe that’s why Adderall is so popular now. It sharpens your mental skills instead of blurring them.

Into the future

I am not suggesting I want Alcoholics Anonymous to age out or become irrelevant. I love AA. It saved my life. It gave me a life. The friends I made there will be in my heart until the day I die.

But the world is experiencing rapid change. And it seems inevitable that this will affect AA. I hope it can adapt and survive and continue into the future.

Because I, for one, still need a place to go when I’m feeling unsettled and overwhelmed. Where I can drink some bad coffee, lean back in my seat, and enjoy the company of my fellow alcoholics.

​Lifestyle, Aa, Alcoholics anonymous, Sobriety, Blake’s progress 

President Donald Trump’s administration has offered several concessions to persuade lawmakers to restart funding for the Department of Homeland Security, but Democrats continue to refuse to compensate Transportation Security Administration personnel.

The White House and Democratic lawmakers have remained in a negotiation stalemate since the DHS shut down on February 14.

‘If this continues, it’s not hyperbole to suggest that we may have to quite literally shut down airports – particularly smaller ones if callout rates go up.’

Border czar Tom Homan and the White House director of legislative affairs, James Braid, wrote a letter dated March 17 to Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Katie Britt of Alabama, detailing the administration’s offered concessions.

The letter, which was shared by the Daily Wire, explained that the “majority” of Democrats’ demands “would make it impossible to fully protect American citizens from dangerous criminal aliens and expose law enforcement and their families to increasing threats of violence.”

“In other words, they would prioritize illegal aliens above American families,” it reads.

The letter detailed how Homan ended the surge operation in Minnesota, canceled Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s roving patrols, updated protocols for dealing with unlawful agitators, deployed body-worn cameras, and enhanced cooperation with local law enforcement.

RELATED: Spring break blues: DHS highlights outrageous airport conditions amid Democrat shutdown

Tom Homan. Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Homan and Braid stated that the White House has offered to codify several improved guidelines, including expanding the use of body-worn cameras, limiting immigration enforcement activities in certain sensitive locations, increasing the oversight of detention centers, and requiring officers to visibly display their identification.

Despite the administration’s efforts to negotiate, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly failed to make a good-faith effort to compromise, according to Homan and Braid.

“The Administration has worked in good faith to again reach bipartisan agreement on full funding for the entire Department of Homeland Security and institute common-sense operational improvements to federal immigration enforcement operations that enhance the safety of American communities,” the letter reads.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused the White House of not taking the negotiations seriously.

“The issue is, they’re not getting serious,” Schumer stated. “The key issues of warrants when you bust into someone’s house, the key issue of identity of police and no masks, they haven’t budged on those.”

RELATED: ‘Is it even REMOTELY reasonable?’ Scott Jennings demolishes liberal CNN panel on DHS funding feud

Photographer: Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Meanwhile, TSA agents missed their first full paycheck last week. An estimated 366 TSA agents quit last month, NBC News found.

A TSA spokesperson told Fox News that the national callout rate jumped to 10.19% on March 15, compared to 2% before the shutdown.

“If this continues, it’s not hyperbole to suggest that we may have to quite literally shut down airports — particularly smaller ones if callout rates go up,” acting Deputy TSA Administrator Adam Stahl told the news outlet.

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​News, Immigration, Illegal immigration crisis, Illegal immigration, Tom homan, Trump, Trump administration, Trump admin, Donald trump, James braid, Transportation security administration, Tsa, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Dhs shutdown, Adam stahl, Politics 

I’ve been sick the past couple days. In the last 48 hours, I’ve probably spent more time in bed during the day than I have in the past three years combined. It’s been miserable. But more than that, it’s been terrible feeling so useless.

I tried to work as much as I could, but with a fever, my brain turns to mush. Even doing my best, my productivity wasn’t much to write home about. I couldn’t really sleep, so I spent most of the days in a groggy state — lying in bed, looking at my phone.

Maybe friction is essential to life. We imagine wanting a life with no demands, no stress, no deadlines — but maybe we go soft without them.

Really, I was doomscrolling and “bed-rotting,” as our Zoomer friends call it.

I only did it for a couple days, but it was brutal on my mind and spirit. I can only imagine what it does to capable young adults who live like this. No wonder so many Zoomers feel listless, nihilistic — just sort of blah.

Pajama punditry

Feeling useless is bad enough on its own. It’s worse when you’re a spectator, scrolling through short-form videos of other people doing more interesting things. It’s like being kicked when you’re down. Psychological masochism.

There’s something especially bleak about the “bed” in bed-rotting. I’m someone who gets up and gets dressed, who puts on shoes in the morning and takes them off at night. Spending the middle of the day in bed feels wrong in a deeper way. It makes me feel lazy. For some reason, scrolling on the couch at 1 p.m. doesn’t feel as bad as doing it in bed at 1 p.m. Same behavior — but the setting seals the degradation.

“I can’t even rouse myself from bed. I can’t even pretend to engage with the world. I’m just waiting for it to get dark again so I can sleep.”

That’s the feeling. It’s deeply depressing.

Reflecting on a few days of this has clarified something — not just about younger generations, but something more universal: The problem isn’t just distraction. It’s uselessness.

RELATED: Most men buy their clothes too small

Bettman/Getty Images

Needless to say

We need to be needed. That’s the core of it. From love to work to everything in between, being needed gives shape to our lives. When we aren’t needed, we feel it. Even when we say we want a break, want to get away, want to escape the demands — after a while, the absence of need starts to itch. We want it back.

This is why people without children get dogs. They need to be needed. Simple.

It’s also why the looming threat of AI-induced uselessness is so unsettling. If you follow discussions about AI and the future of work, the forecasts can look bleak. Whether or not the worst predictions come true, it’s worth asking what happens if they do.

Give me friction

If large swaths of the workforce are replaced or managed by AI, millions of people could find themselves both unemployed and unneeded. The optimistic view says we’ll have universal basic income — and everyone will be free, comfortable, and happier than ever.

You can only believe that if you misunderstand human nature. We need to work. We need to be rewarded for what we do. We don’t actually want everything handed to us. Five-year-olds might — but not 45-year-olds. And even if we think we do, that feeling dulls quickly. The need to be needed comes back.

Maybe friction is essential to life. We imagine wanting a life with no demands, no stress, no deadlines — but maybe we go soft without them. Maybe we lose something vital when nothing is required of us.

Being needed might be one of the most precious conditions we have, especially in a world moving toward automation and away from human necessity. Preserving that — ensuring people are needed — may be one of the most important challenges of the next decade.

Because it doesn’t matter if we have everything we want — if we’re well-fed and comfortable. If we aren’t needed, we aren’t fulfilled.

​Men’s style, Lifestyle, Family life, The root of the matter, Bed-rotting, Usefulness, Sick 

Former Democrat Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (Ill.) faced a brutal primary loss after attempting to revive his political career in the aftermath of a corruption scandal.

Jackson represented Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 until 2012, when he resigned, citing health issues amid a federal investigation into his campaign’s finances. Jackson, son of the late civil rights activist Jesse Jackson Sr., pled guilty in 2013 and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for misusing approximately $750,000 worth of campaign funds for personal expenses.

‘A terrible night for anti-Israel candidates.’

Jackson ultimately served 17 months more than a decade ago. His name recognition and political experience were not enough to secure the Democratic nomination for Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District on Tuesday. He earned just 29% of the primary vote, while Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller won with 40.4% of the vote.

Jackson’s scandal-ridden track record was not the only force working against him. As in other primaries across the country, a very powerful lobbying group put its thumb on the scale, likely costing Jackson the race.

RELATED: Jasmine Crockett claims voters were ‘disenfranchised’ following crushing defeat in key Texas primary

Photo by Saul LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has successfully ousted anti-Israel Democrats like former Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.) and Cori Bush (Mo.), and Tuesday night was no exception. AIPAC touted a pro-Israel winning streak, saying the organization helped “defeat six would-be Squad members” in the Illinois primaries.

“Six up… Six down!” AIPAC said in a post on X. “A great night for the pro-Israel community and a terrible night for anti-Israel candidates.”

“Tonight’s results tell a critical story: centering campaigns on attacking Israel and demonizing pro-Israel Americans is a losing strategy.”

RELATED: ‘Judgement Day is coming’: Ken Paxton advances with establishment incumbent in key Texas primary

Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Jackson was not an overly anti-Israel candidate, but AIPAC deemed Miller more supportive of its cause compared to the former congressman. Miller was reportedly able to rake in support from an AIPAC-aligned group that spent over $4 million on promoting her campaign.

Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District is heavily Democrat, and Miller is expected to secure the House seat in November.

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​Jesse jackson, Jesse jackson jr., Chicago, Illinois, Illinois primary, Democrat primary, Donna miller, Aipac, Politics 

Israel Flores-Ortiz, an illegal alien from El Salvador who stole into the U.S. in 2024 and was subsequently released by the Biden administration, is accused of molesting at least nine girls at Fairfax High School in Virginia where he was enrolled in the 11th grade, even though he is at least 18 years old.

Adding insult to injury, the school allegedly downplayed the scandal.

‘They have attempted to sweep it under the rug.’

The alleged offenses took place as recently as Feb. 25. Flores-Ortiz was arrested on March 7 and has been charged with nine counts of assault and battery.

“There’s a group of about 12 individuals that have reported this assault,” a mother of one of the victims told WJLA-TV. “It was all perpetrated by a single individual who is a stranger to the girls. He just sneakily walked up behind them and put his hand in between their legs. It was not just a butt smack or a butt grab. It was a groping of a private area. It had been occurring for several months.”

Two of the victims’ mothers said that the school was doing a terrible job handling the situation.

“Abysmal, abysmal,” said one of the mothers. “I think from the very beginning, Fairfax County has attempted to diminish what happened to these girls.”

Fairfax High School principal Georgina Aye reportedly waited over two weeks after the incidents were reported to notify parents in an email, “We are writing to share the news of the recent arrest of a student who was charged with inappropriately touching other students at school. These incidents involved the student touching students’ buttocks while they were transitioning in the hallways.”

RELATED: ICE arrests child-diddlers and ecstasy traffickers while Dems try to ‘score brownie points,’ DHS says

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D). Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

Parents lashed out over Aye’s claim that the alleged molestation was simply a matter of a “student touching students’ buttocks.”

“Yeah, no, I would not be here for butt slapping,” one mother told WJLA. “I would, I mean, I would be upset about that, but this wouldn’t be my second day this week here at the courthouse for that. It was a clear violation. He put his hand in between my daughter’s legs, and the butt was actually the last thing that he touched.”

Another mother said, “The girls have experienced harassment and bullying from peers at school, including people that they once thought were their friends, and the letter that they sent out, referencing it only as buttocks touching, just adds fuel to rumors that they were just attention seeking.”

“They have attempted to sweep it under the rug,” said one mother.

The City of Fairfax School Board, which oversees Fairfax High School in partnership with the FCPS, said in a statement on Monday that it “takes the recent situation at Fairfax High School very seriously.”

“We support the students who have been directly affected and encourage members of the Fairfax High School community to support one another during this difficult time. Inappropriate conduct has no place in our schools, and we understand the concern and distress this incident has caused for students and families,” said the school board. “We also want to express our support for Principal Dr. Georgina Aye, a student-centered leader who has devoted her career to serving and supporting students. We have confidence in her leadership.”

In addition to receiving what one victim’s mother described as “a completely sanitized letter” from the school’s purportedly “student-centered leader,” parents were allegedly informed by Fairfax County Public Schools that upon his release, Flores-Ortiz would return to school.

FCPS told WJLA in a statement, “While Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is unable to comment on specifics due to federal and state privacy laws, we prioritize student and staff safety and we fully investigate any time someone shares that an incident has occurred at school, or that they do not feel safe at school.”

FCPS did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

ICE issued a detainer for Ortiz, the agency told WJLA, “to ensure this violent criminal is removed from our country so he can never claim another victim again.”

Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid’s (D) office told Blaze News in a statement:

Israel Flores Ortiz remains in the custody of the Sheriff’s Office in the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center (ADC). While it is still too early in the process to know the outcome of his case, ICE has been notified of Ortiz’s location at the ADC, and they are able to execute their detainer by responding to the ADC and taking Ortiz into custody if and when he is ordered released.

The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office does not obstruct or prevent ICE from acting on their civil detainers.

Flores-Ortiz reportedly requested to be released on bail. Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano’s (D) office told Blaze News that there was a bond hearing, but “after listening to arguments, the judge decided to hold him. He is being held.”

Judge Dipti Pidikiti-Smith reportedly denied Ortiz’s request on Friday after reviewing surveillance video of one of the incidents.

“This 19-year-old criminal illegal alien should NOT have been attending a Virginia high school and allowed to prey on innocent teenage girls. He now faces nine counts of assault and battery. This is yet another example of the Biden administration’s failed open border policies,” DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement.

“We are calling on Fairfax County sanctuary politicians to NOT release this predator from jail back into our communities to assault more teenage women,” continued Bis. “Unfortunately, Governor Abigail Spanberger ended cooperation with ICE and is siding with criminal illegal aliens over American citizens.”

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​Pedophile, Molester, Molestation, Illegal alien, Immigrant, Illegal, Noncitizen, El salvador, Israel flores ortiz, Fairfax county, Fairfax county public schools, Fairfax, Virginia, Democrat, Kincaid, Ice, Immigration and customs enforcement, Dhs, Politics 

Selling one’s soul to the devil for fame, money, or power is an age-old trope. Elites have long dismissed it as nothing more than a conspiracy theory perpetuated by “satanic panic” Bible beaters, but is there any truth to this legendary exchange?

In her March 10 podcast episode, actress Candace Cameron Bure, best known for her role as D.J. Tanner in the iconic sitcom “Full House,” suggested that it’s more than just a theory. The outspoken Christian revealed that she’s personally stared Hollywood’s dark underbelly in the face.

On a recent episode of “Strange Encounters,” BlazeTV host Rick Burgess reacted to Bure’s anecdote and exposed the truth about Hollywood’s depravity.

On the “Candace Cameron Bure Podcast,” Bure told her co-host Madison Prewett Troutt about a time when she and her husband, former NHL hockey player Valeri Bure, accidentally attended an S&M themed party.

“I went to a party once with Val because we were married, and it ended up being this underground party that was an S&M like sex thing that was so dark and demonic,” she recounted, adding that her “eyeballs were popping out of [her] head.”

The scene was so shocking that the couple immediately left. “We made a hard U-turn and walked right out of there,” she recalled.

“It was just so slimy and weird. … We just had no idea what we were walking into. And it was so disgusting and gross.”

The “Full House” star has long been open about rejecting Hollywood’s moral compromises. On the “Stay True Podcast” last year, she explained: “I was just honestly never the kid that wanted to do the risky thing, that wanted to use my body or my sexuality to get ahead or my morality meant more to me, and my character has always meant more to me than the success of things.”

Rick reads between the lines of Bure’s comments.

“What she’s saying is there were moments she got scripts and there were things in the script she didn’t want to do,” he says, implying that Bure’s dedication to her Christian values might have cost her opportunities because she refused to participate in the “underground demonic world of Hollywood.”

He rejects the notion that Hollywood infuses depravity into film and music “because that’s what the people want.”

“That’s not true because we know that really family-oriented movies and shows have far bigger numbers than any of this garbage. No, it’s an agenda. It’s coming from a dark place,” he warns.

To hear more of Rick’s commentary, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

To enjoy more bold talk and big laughs, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Strange encounters, Strange encounters with rick burgess, Rick burgess, Candace cameron bure, Hollywood, Hollywood corruption, Blazetv, Blaze media 

A male was caught on video punching a Philadelphia-area crossing guard in the face and knocking her out in front of elementary students Monday afternoon.

The incident took place outside Walnut Street Elementary School in Darby Borough shortly after 3:30 p.m., WPVI-TV reported.

‘Her children go to this school, so can you imagine? They shouldn’t have to witness anything like that.’

Authorities told the station the guard was helping students cross the street when a male exited his car, chased her down the sidewalk, and punched her in the face.

“It’s disgusting,” Darby Borough Police Chief Joe Gabe told WPVI. “She stated an unknown male exited a Nissan Altima and came at her in an aggressive manner, chased her down the street, about a quarter of the way down the block, grabbed her, and struck her in the face with his left fist.”

RELATED: 3 females dragged Philly crossing guard off bus when she tried to escape brutal beating, detective says; suspects arrested

Surveillance video captured the attack; it shows the male chasing the guard down a sidewalk until she stops next to a school bus. The male gets in her face, brutally punches her, she falls backward to the ground, and he runs off.

She told police she was knocked unconscious as the male ran back to his car and drove away, the station said.

The chief told WPVI it’s believed the suspect may have been angry about waiting in traffic: “He may have been upset with having to wait for her to cross children off of the school bus there.”

Gabe added to the station that the suspect was yelling profanities as he drove through the intersection prior to the attack: “When he was approaching her, he was yelling more obscenities at her before he grabbed her and struck her in the face.”

The crossing guard suffered swelling to her face, WPVI said, adding that police said she regained consciousness, walked home, and then called authorities.

The station said the crossing guard didn’t report to work Tuesday, and a male crossing guard took her place.

“We just spoke to her, she’s feeling OK, but she’s very shaken up over what happened yesterday and is worried to go back to her position as a crossing guard,” Gabe added to WPVI.

Dionne Galloway, a school district employee, added to the station that “I see her every day. She’s a part of this family, this school district. She crosses these children every day. She’s always on time. She’s always helpful. I just hope she recovers and is safe. Her children go to this school, so can you imagine? They shouldn’t have to witness anything like that.”

Police told WPVI they’re asking for the public’s help in identifying the suspect, who was seen driving a gold Nissan Altima. However, police added to the station that the car didn’t have a license plate and had a paper tag in the window.

“It’s terrible that a person would come up, just out of nowhere, just maybe frustrated with traffic or having to wait, and goes over and assaults this woman,” the chief told WPVI. “A male goes over and assaults this woman in front of children and has no problem doing it.”

Gabe also has a message for the suspect, the station noted: “We are tracking you down, and we’re hoping that we will be able to find you and have you prosecuted. So the best thing to do is to turn yourself in.”

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​Physical attack, Crossing guard, Male punches female, Elementary school, Darby, Pennsylvania, Knocked out, Suspect at large, Caught on video, Assault, Crime 

Republicans didn’t win the Senate so their leaders could manage expectations. They won it to deliver results. Will Republican leaders actually deliver? We are about to find out with the SAVE America Act.

The legislation requires proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. That is not a fringe idea. It’s the law of the land in nearly every nation in the world — and is one of the most widely supported election reforms in the United States.

Republicans campaigned on restoring integrity to elections. Passing the SAVE America Act should be treated as a blood oath, not a messaging exercise.

A February Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 85% of voters say only U.S. citizens should vote in American elections. The same survey found that 71% support the SAVE America Act itself, 81% support voter ID, and 75% support proof-of-citizenship requirements. Perhaps most striking: Roughly 70% of Democrat voters support voter ID.

That’s a consensus. When an issue has that level of support, failure usually isn’t about policy. It’s about will.

Yet Senate Republicans still appear poised to treat the SAVE America Act like a messaging exercise: Debate it for a bit, eventually set up the opportunity for Democrats to kill it rather than having to vote on the bill, shrug, and move on.

That may satisfy the Senate’s procedural instincts, but it won’t satisfy voters. It certainly isn’t how Donald Trump gets a deal done. In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump laid out a strategy he has followed again and again with demonstrable success: seeking leverage, wearing down your opponent, fighting back hard and never folding, exerting time to your advantage, and applying psychological pressure.

Past Senate leaders have understood this method and have used it themselves. In December 2009, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wanted the Affordable Care Act passed before Christmas. Several Democrat senators were balking.

RELATED: ‘Allows ICE to kick tens of billions’ off voter rolls? Schumer’s SAVE Act claims keep getting worse.

Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Reid’s solution was blunt: No one goes home until the votes are there. The Senate stayed in session nearly a month and passed Obamacare on Christmas Eve. Senators whose votes hadn’t been there suddenly discovered ways to support it. Amazing what happens when missing Christmas becomes the alternative.

Senate leaders routinely use endurance and inconvenience as leverage — especially in budget fights. They keep the floor open overnight, run endless amendment votes, and threaten to blow through recess until the holdouts crack.

That kind of determination to change the dynamic when “the votes aren’t there” should not be reserved just for spending bills. The SAVE America Act is exactly the kind of legislation where pressure works and why Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) wants to restore the standing filibuster for this bill to maximize pressure.

The recess threat isn’t just about challenging Democrats’ ideological commitment to unverified voting processes. It’s about the human cost of being physically trapped in Washington while your family, your staff, your donors, your fundraisers, and your district events — as well as your junkets and vacations — are elsewhere. That applies to every senator regardless of how committed they are to blocking the bill.

And over 80% public support for common-sense voter ID creates an entirely different kind of psychological pressure: the daily political exposure of defending an unpopular position.

This would be the application of Trump’s doctrine, which isn’t just about wearing down a monolithic opponent — it’s about identifying and applying pressure to the weakest link.

Remember, Democrats are politically exposed. Democrats must defend two Senate seats this year — including Georgia, where Jon Ossoff faces re-election in a state Trump carried, and Michigan, where Gary Peters’ retirement has created a competitive open seat.

Other Democrat incumbents — from Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire to Mark Warner in Virginia — represent states where elections are often decided at the margins. Picture what a real floor fight would look like if Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) were serious about getting the SAVE America Act passed.

RELATED: The SAVE Act is the hill voters will die on

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

The SAVE America Act stays on the Senate floor. No artificial deadline. No prearranged surrender through cloture vote. Republican leadership simply says: We are staying here until this bill passes — even if that means canceling spring recess.

Senators like Jon Ossoff — or any Democrat in a competitive state — would be faced with a brutal choice: Keep blocking a bill their own voters support overwhelmingly, while missing weeks of campaigning, or break ranks.

That’s exactly the kind of leverage Trump talks about. Find the pressure points. Apply force where the incentives are weakest. Keep the fight going until the opposition starts looking for the exit. Republicans don’t need to break the entire Democratic caucus. They need seven votes — really six if you think John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is smart and sensible.

Now add one more piece of leverage: Restore the standing filibuster so that obstruction actually carries a cost. The Senate survived that rule for most of its history, and its absence has helped turn the Senate from the world’s greatest deliberative body into the place where legislation dies in darkness.

If Democrats want to block the SAVE America Act, let them talk all night if necessary. Let them explain repeatedly why they oppose proof of citizenship to vote. Go on record with their condescending view that married females are too dim-witted to get new IDs (thank you, Mazie Hirono) and their racist smears that minorities will struggle to get ID (thank you, Chuck Schumer).

The modern “silent filibuster” protects obstruction from accountability. A talking filibuster does the opposite — it puts obstruction on display.

Republicans campaigned on restoring integrity to elections. Passing the SAVE America Act should be treated as a blood oath, not a messaging exercise. Trump would understand that instinctively. The question is whether Senate leadership does, because right now the country isn’t looking for performative politics. It’s looking for resolve and results.

A “hybrid talking filibuster” is a good step, but ultimately what counts is delivering results, and Donald Trump, the dealmaster, shows how to get it done.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Save america act, Election security, Voter fraud, John thune, Senate republicans, Save act, Gop, Trump, Democrats, Opinion & analysis, Filibuster, Voting rights, Voter id, Voter registration 

I was in the delivery room for my eighth child when I found out Paul Ehrlich died.

Ehrlich’s 1968 book “The Population Bomb” did not come from concern for the environment. It grew out of a basic contempt for his fellow man. He viewed people not as the foundation of society but as a destructive force consuming resources. His warnings about overpopulation and climate issues were not about protecting nature. They were about controlling and reducing the number of people.

Ehrlich prided himself on the hundreds of millions of babies who were never born because of his ideas. That is his legacy.

This line of thinking was not original. Ehrlich drew directly from Thomas Malthus, the 18th-century writer who argued that population increases faster than food production, leading inevitably to catastrophe. Malthus provided the intellectual justification for elites of his era to look down on the poor and the growing families among them.

Ehrlich updated the same argument with modern statistics, computer models, and environmental language. He took it farther. Ehrlich functioned as a modern version of the Albigensians, the medieval sect condemned by the Catholic Church for teaching that physical matter and the body were inherently corrupt. Those believers discouraged marriage and childbirth, seeing procreation as trapping more souls in an evil material world. The ultimate good preached by the Albigensians was for followers to starve themselves to death to show their commitment to not consuming resources.

Ehrlich repackaged these ideas in pseudoscientific terms: Stop having children, or you will destroy the planet. The message stayed the same — human life and babies are the problem.

His specific forecasts failed, one after another. He predicted that hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation in the 1970s and ’80s. That did not happen.

He wrote that India faced unavoidable mass famine and societal breakdown. Instead, new agricultural techniques dramatically increased food production there and across Asia.

In a famous 1980 wager with economist Julian Simon, Ehrlich claimed prices of key raw materials would surge due to scarcity over the next 10 years. The prices fell, and he lost the bet.

Ehrlich had an easy time settling his $10,000 bet with Simon. He mailed the check shortly after receiving both the MacArthur “Genius” Grant and the “ecologist’s version of the Nobel” for his ingeniously wrong ecology — twin prizes that netted him $485,000 (about $1.15 million today).

Despite this best-selling record of error, Ehrlich’s outlook and recommended policies gained influence among those who consider themselves the educated, evidence-based class. University departments, international organizations, and media outlets adopted his assumptions.

RELATED: NYT is getting crushed online for downplaying infamous ‘population bomb’ false alarm

Gene Arias/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

When he wasn’t barnstorming lecture halls demanding that parents be taxed at higher rates than selfish adults, he was making multiple appearances on “The Tonight Show,” where he warned that “there’s a finite pie. The more mice you have nibbling at it, the smaller every mouse’s share.” Johnny Carson nodded along, no doubt contemplating the alimony he had paid out over the course of four marriages.

Our elites were not simply mistaken about the facts. They embraced Ehrlich’s ideas because they already held contempt for the people they aimed to direct. Large families in middle America, working parents, and growing populations in developing nations represent something they want to limit — too many independent voices, too many demands on resources, too much resistance to top-down planning.

This shared attitude explains why policies inspired by Ehrlich persisted, from China’s one-child policy to aggressive carbon pricing that burdens ordinary households and education that frames having children as environmentally irresponsible.

The goal was never just saving the planet. It was managing populations that elites view as excessive and unruly.

It may no longer be in vogue in communist China, which is now scrambling to recover from the disaster of crushing birth rates through forced abortion and sterilization, but progressives throughout the Democratic Party and Europe are still wildly enthusiastic about suppressing new life in the name of “freedom.”

Maybe the closest Ehrlich ever came to being correct is when he predicted that Britain would no longer exist as a viable nation by the year 2000. That will not happen for another year or two under Keir Starmer’s leadership. The U.K., it turns out, won’t be undone by climate catastrophe or mass starvation, but by its embrace of Paul Ehrlich’s worldview. In 2023, England and Wales aborted nearly 300,000 babies. Live births dipped below 600,000.

Ehrlich is gone, but the impulse he represented continues in policy circles and institutions that treat the human population itself as the central threat. Families across the country continue to reject that message. They are choosing to raise children and invest in the future without apology.

Ehrlich prided himself on the hundreds of millions of babies who were never born because of his ideas. That is his legacy. It had to be, because, as he boasted throughout his lifetime, he got a vasectomy in 1963 after the birth of his first child.

Paul Ehrlich lived 93 years. His family tree spanning four generations is less crowded than the recovery room I’m in right now.

​Paul ehrlich, Population bomb, Thomas malthus, Natural resources, Population bomb book, Birthrates, Opinion & analysis, Obituary, Environmentalism, Population decline 

Officials in a Georgia city have locked Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of accessing the local water supply for the agency’s planned mega-detention facility.

ICE’s plans to open a detention center in Social Circle, Georgia, first became public in December, when the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration aims to overhaul the immigration detention system by renovating seven large-scale warehouses to hold 5,000 to 10,000 people each.

‘The lock is there until ICE indicates how water and sewer will be served without exceeding our limited infrastructure capacity.’

The warehouses will reportedly be located in major logistics hubs: Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri. ICE would also establish other smaller warehouses capable of holding 1,500 people each.

According to the Post, ICE plans to establish a feeder system in which individuals would be booked into smaller processing sites and then funneled into one of the seven larger detention facilities for holding while they await deportation. This new system reportedly aims to speed up deportations.

The Post’s article revealed that one of those mega-centers would be located in Social Circle, a plan which city officials have called “infeasible,” citing limitations on local water and sewer infrastructure.

“The mayor and city council of the City of Social Circle unequivocally does not support an ICE detention facility in the city or the surrounding areas,” the city said in a December statement.

Later reports revealed that the DHS is planning eight large detention centers, not seven.

RELATED: Exclusive: DHS dispels legacy media’s claims about family detention center

Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Social Circle Mayor David Keener released a joint statement in January insisting that the detention facility is “not right for Social Circle, and the City of Social Circle does not support it.”

“We are urging the administration to abandon this plan, which risks overwhelming the city’s resources and more than tripling its population,” the joint statement reads.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) joined local leaders in opposing the planned facility.

“Folks in Social Circle voted for this president overwhelmingly,” Warnock stated March 3. “But here’s what they didn’t vote for — they didn’t vote for a 10,000-person detention center that will triple the size of their town, to place a massive detention center next to an elementary school. They didn’t vote for potential ‘boil water’ advisories or sewer overflows because this administration has overstrained their city’s resources. They didn’t vote for their voices to be unheard and trampled by their own federal government.”

In early February, Social Circle confirmed that ICE had purchased a facility within the city and that local officials had met with the Department of Homeland Security to discuss the plan.

The city claimed the DHS plans to “fully implement” its new detention center model, which involves transitioning from private operations to government-owned facilities, by the end of the fiscal year.

“DHS plans to implement a ‘Hub and Spoke Model,’ in which four smaller processing facilities will feed into the larger detention facilities,” the city said. “The proposed facility in Social Circle is identified as one of eight ‘mega centers’ that will be located across the nation. Overall, ICE intends to reduce its number of facilities from approximately 300 to 34 nationwide. The facility in Social Circle is expected to house anywhere from 7,500 to 10,000 detainees and will be constructed using a modular design so that capacity can be scaled up or down as needed.”

The city stated that the facility will employ roughly 2,000 to 2,500 staff members and include holding areas, gyms, recreational spaces, court facilities, intake areas, cafeterias, laundry facilities, health services, and a gun range.

Social Circle estimated that ICE will begin intake at the detention center between mid-May and June.

RELATED: ACLU’s Alligator Alcatraz lawsuit CRUSHED: Trump judge smacks down liberal bid to close facility meant for illegal aliens

Photographer: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images

DHS reportedly committed that the facility will have “no adverse effect on the community and surrounding properties”; however, city officials are not convinced, claiming that concerns about its water and sewage capacity have not been addressed to their satisfaction.

“Documents provided by DHS indicate this detention facility alone would have a sewage demand of 1,001,683 gallons per day. The city’s current wastewater system processes 660,000 gallons a day and is already operating at capacity. It cannot accommodate an increase in usage of this magnitude,” the city stated.

While Social Circle plans to build a sewer treatment plant that would initially increase its capacity by 1.5 million gallons per day, construction has not yet begun, and it is projected to take one year to 18 months to complete.

As a result, city officials have opted to cut off water and sewer services to ICE’s facility by locking the water meter serving the warehouse.

“The lock is there until ICE indicates how water and sewer will be served without exceeding our limited infrastructure capacity,” Social Circle said Monday.

Blaze News requested comment from the city regarding whether it or any other local or state government entity was required to review or approve the sale of the warehouse to ICE.

“The federal government acted unilaterally to acquire the property. Nobody from the city was consulted prior to purchase,” City Manager Eric Taylor replied.

Walton County told Blaze News that it “had no correspondence or communication with the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security, or any private contractors regarding the detention center’s establishment.”

“The facility in question is located within the city limits of Social Circle. Consequently, all planning, zoning, and land use matters fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the City of Social Circle,” the county stated. “There was no requirement for Walton County to review, approve, or sign off on the purchase of the warehouse. As this is a private property transaction within city limits, the county was not a party to the sale or any associated federal agreements.”

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s office stated, “As this is a federal project the state has no involvement in, I would have to refer you to the Department of Homeland Security for more information.”

DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

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​News, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Social circle georgia, Georgia, Ice facility, Ice detention center, Immigration crisis, Illegal immigration crisis, Immigration, Illegal immigration, Politics 

Storm season is here, and depending on where you live, you may have already seen some early strong thunderstorms, mild flooding, and even intense tornadoes. The best way to know what’s coming next is to track your local forecast with your smartphone. These are a few of our favorite free weather apps you need for iPhone and Android.

A few of our favorite weather apps

There are tons of weather apps on the App Store and Google Play, but they’re not all created equal: They offer varying types of information, their user interfaces are wildly different, and most importantly, they pull weather data from different sources, potentially leaving forecasts open to holes and inaccuracies. If you only use one weather app or tune into the same weather report on TV, you might have an incomplete picture of your local weather.

Having access to the best weather apps is only half the battle when a severe outbreak rolls through.

As the de facto “weather guy” in my own family, I use a combination of all of these to understand weather conditions as they unfold. The options below are all available for free with ads. If you want to remove the ads or unlock even more features, most of these offer recurring subscriptions. For the sake of accessibility, though, we’re only dealing with the free versions today.

The Weather Channel app

The Weather Channel app is one of the earliest apps on the App Store, launching just several months after Apple opened its digital storefront to developers back in 2008. Although the Weather Channel has gone through several major redesigns, it remains one of the most accurate and reliable weather apps available. It’s especially good at predicting daily and weekly forecasts. The live radar is easy to read as storms move through. The severe outlook map layer is a handy way to see if your region is at risk of severe weather. Lastly, real-time precipitation notifications with lightning alerts let you know exactly when rain is about to start, whether it’s just a light shower or something much more severe.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw / The Weather Channel

AccuWeather app

AccuWeather is another weather solution that’s been around for ages. Getting its start all the way back in 1962, its service is trusted by local TV and radio stations from coast to coast. As for the app, the hourly precipitation estimator, Minutecast, is a great way to know if any rain is expected within the next hour, making it easier to shore up outdoor plans. The radar filters are especially useful, with multiple views to display live radar, temperature, and cloud cover. My personal favorite feature, though, is the government-issued event map, which shows distinct colored zones for watches and warnings, just like on TV.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw / AccuWeather

Weather Underground app

Although not as much of a household name as the first two, Weather Underground has spent the last 30 years building its reputation as a hyper-local weather forecasting service. The app wraps all the usual weather metrics into a beautiful modern design. The reason I keep it in my collection, though, is for the map data, more specifically storm tracks. Unlike some other apps that lock storm tracks behind a paywall, Weather Underground offers it for free. Once enabled, storm tracks lets you see granular radar-indicated information about every storm, including the path of each storm cell, its intensity markers, and overall threat level (tornado impact, hail risk, damaging wind, and more). These tracks can make the difference between knowing if a tornado is aimed for your home or expected to miss.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw / Weather Underground

Native weather apps

If all else fails, your phone comes with a built-in weather-tracking option that will get the job done.

Users of iPhones get instant access to Apple Weather. While Apple used to rely heavily on the Weather Channel for its data, its acquisition of hyper-local weather phenom Dark Sky back in 2020 gave Apple the first-party edge it needed to make its weather app essential. It includes granular hourly rain alerts, severe weather notifications, and Apple News integration that displays weather-related stories from local stations and mainstream outlets.

RELATED: New hack poses biggest iPhone threat in 19 years: What you can do

Xaume Olleros/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The big place where Apple Weather falls short, in my opinion, is the lackluster radar that only highlights minimal precipitation, and that’s about it. I’ve also encountered some inaccuracies with incorrect rain alerts, but your experience may vary. Overall, Apple Weather offers a good baseline for tracking conditions in your area.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw / Apple Weather

Samsung Galaxy phones come with Samsung Weather. The app offers a clean look at hourly forecasts, air quality, and other typical weather metrics. At its core, though, the app is just a wrapper for the Weather Channel, which powers Samsung Weather’s entire data portfolio. In fact, if you click on any of the data points in the app for more information, you’ll be redirected to a web app for the Weather Channel, which is, unfortunately, not nearly as good as the main Weather Channel app. If you own a Samsung phone, you may as well just download the former for a better experience.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw / Samsung Weather

Google Pixel users get exclusive access to Pixel Weather. Powered by Gemini Nano, Pixel Weather is an AI-first weather app that offers generated weather reports that summarize expected weather conditions, weather insights that let you know what kind of weather event is coming your way, plus daily forecasts, air quality, and a radar that is slightly more useful than the one in Apple Weather. While the look and feel of Pixel Weather is modern on the surface, its overall accuracy — at least regarding the snow estimates of the recent Midwest and East Coast blizzards — has been called into question.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw / Pixel Weather

Stay safe with emergency alerts

Having access to the best weather apps is only half the battle when a severe outbreak rolls through. You also need a lifeline to let you know when bad weather is on the way. Luckily, all major smartphones support government-issued alerts to tell you when to take cover. Check your settings now to make sure you’re all set up when the next major storm strikes:

iPhone: Open the Settings app and tap “Notifications.” At the very bottom of the page, check “Emergency Alerts” and “Public Safety Alerts.”Samsung Galaxy: Open the Settings app. Tap on “Notifications,” followed by “Advanced settings,” and then “Wireless emergency alerts.” From here, make sure “Extreme threats” and “Severe threats” are toggled on.Google Pixel: Open the Settings app. Select “Notifications” and then “Wireless emergency alerts.” On this page, toggle the switches for “Allow Alerts,” “Extreme threats,” and “Severe threats.”

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw / Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel

Severe weather can develop fast as we shift into spring, but you don’t have to live life in the dark. All it takes is a few apps and alerts to get all the information needed to keep you and your loved ones safe.

​Weather, Apps, Storms 

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is sounding off on what she sees as a deeply unsettling turn in high fashion, criticizing Paris Fashion Week for embracing what she describes as “demonic” and grotesque aesthetics over beauty.

“The theme is clearly to be demonic. And I don’t know what kind of statement they’re trying to make, if it’s some kind of critique of society or if they are just the demonic people themselves, but pretty scary. Obviously, not about beauty,” Stuckey says.

And those who attend the shows and praise the designers aren’t much better.

“I think that they’re all thinking about being seen, and how the world is interpreting them, and what kind of statement they’re making, and what kind of opportunity or attention this is going to get them,” Stuckey says, mocking, “‘Do people think I’m edgy finally? Oh, I bet I’m going to be the strangest, most bizarre, most, you know, edgiest person there.’”

“I think they’re all thinking about themselves. I don’t think that they are there to enjoy the art or to enjoy the spectacle. I think they are there to be the art and to be the spectacle,” she adds.

Designer Kei Ninomiya’s collection was described as “gloom” made “tangible” by Vogue Runway. The collection featured gothic horror elements of bondage and morbid animal sculptures.

“Because all of us are like, ‘How can I get my hands on some gloom?’” Stuckey comments.

“The soundtrack for the collection was labeled ‘the aural equivalent of a nervous breakdown,’” she says. “Again, I have always wanted my nervous breakdowns to become an aura that I could just kind of swim through.”

The brand Enfants Riches Déprimés, whose French name translates to ‘Depressed Rich Kids,’ also made an appearance.

“His show featured a model chained to a statue of a man’s head. … The brand’s inspiration comes from fellow child elites the designer met in rehab as a young man,” Stuckey explains.

The designer, Henri Alexander Levy, is quoted as once saying, “If you were going to kill yourself, wouldn’t you want to do it with a $7,000 cashmere noose?”

“I think people underestimate how many people in Hollywood, the fashion world, movie industry, are truly just disturbed people who are working out their trauma and demonic possession through entertainment and fashion,” Stuckey says.

Another brand, Matières Fécales — which is French for “Fecal Matter” — claims that its collection is a critique of “wealth, power, corruption, and inequality.”

“Somehow, I just don’t feel like that’s what it’s accomplishing,” Stuckey says.

“There is something just very dark about the glorification of the demonic that we see among a lot of people in Hollywood and in the music industry,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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Cesar Chavez has been lauded by Mexican-Americans as an iconic labor leader who fought for farmworkers’ rights in the 1960s, but his legacy may be marred by growing allegations of “profoundly shocking” behavior.

Several celebrations of Cesar Chavez Day, which is observed March 31, have been canceled across the country by the United Farm Workers, an organization Chavez co-founded.

‘These allegations have been profoundly shocking. We need some time to get this right, including to ensure robust, trauma-informed services are available to those who may need it.’

The union said in a letter Tuesday that the claims against Chavez were “incompatible” with the organization’s values.

“Some of the reports are family issues, and not our story to tell or our place to comment on,” the group said. “Far more troubling are allegations involving abuse of young women or minors. Allegations that very young women or girls may have been victimized are crushing. We have not received any direct reports, and we do not have any firsthand knowledge of these allegations.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that Cesar Chavez events were canceled in Tucson, Houston, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, and San Bernardino.

The union went on to say that canceling the events could “provide space for people who may have been victimized to find support and to share their stories if that is what they choose.”

The Times reported that it was unclear when the allegations might be made public.

“These allegations have been profoundly shocking. We need some time to get this right, including to ensure robust, trauma-informed services are available to those who may need it,” the UFW said.

RELATED: Jill Biden mocked for comparing Hispanics to tacos at ‘Latinx Incluxion’ conference: ‘Previously unimaginable level of cringe’

The Cesar Chavez Foundation also released a statement referring to the allegations, saying it had “become aware of disturbing allegations that Cesar Chavez engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior with women and minors during his time as President of the United Farm Workers of America.”

A spokesperson for labor leader Dolores Huerta said she was not commenting on the issue after she pulled out of a march in Corpus Christi.

A legal expert told the Times that the allegations may lead to legal trouble for the group.

Some on the left have argued against the glorification of Chavez over his opposition to illegal immigration because of its effect on union wages.

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​Cesar chavez allegations, United farm workers union, Profoundly shocking accusations chavez, Politics, Labor events canceled 

To say the conservative movement has come off the rails would comically understate the damage. Wild accusations bounce from show to show. Members of Congress pick petty fights on social media. President Trump even waded into internet drama while another war rages in the Persian Gulf.

Plenty of commentators blame podcasts for this new disorder, and the new ecosystem gives them no shortage of bad behavior to cite. But that diagnosis misses the deeper cause. Establishment conservatives treated their audiences the same way the legacy press did: as a resource to be managed, manipulated, and occasionally milked. A movement that spent decades being lied to will not be stitched back together by scolding the people who finally stopped listening.

Conservative audiences will not return to reality through scolding. They will return through honesty.

After Democrats lost in 2024 to a resurgent Donald Trump, they went hunting for culprits. They blamed a new breed of podcasters who cracked the information monopoly progressives had grown used to enjoying. Talk radio always bothered the left, but it remained a kind of cultural ghetto for older conservatives. Podcasts like Joe Rogan’s reached a younger, largely male audience that rarely participated in politics at all. Democrats screamed about “disinformation,” warned about the danger of free speech, then launched research projects designed to replicate what they claimed to hate.

The right cheered the upheaval. Establishment conservatives, however, never fully grasped what the shift meant for them. The left’s control of mainstream media gave it a weapon of enormous magnitude, but Fox News and talk radio served a parallel purpose on the right: discipline the acceptable narrative, keep Republican voters inside a manageable story, and punish those who stepped too far outside it.

Institutional conservatives also abused that power. They sold narratives that served donors, careers, and comfortable assumptions. They treated their base as a captive audience. This behavior helped fuel the Trumpian revolution in the first place. Trump did not rise only as a battering ram against progressive media. He rose as a middle finger to a conservative establishment that had earned the people’s contempt.

That plan worked, then kept working in ways many people did not anticipate. The democratization of information that destroyed the progressive narrative machine has now turned its solvent on the conservative one. Populism behaves like universal acid. It rarely dissolves only the targets you prefer.

Conservative gatekeepers now display the same panicked reflexes the left showed: warnings about “dangerous rhetoric,” demands for deplatforming, and pleas for “responsible” voices to regain control. These instincts never belonged to one ideology. They belong to institutions that sense their monopoly slipping away.

RELATED: America First can’t survive an Iran quagmire

Blaze Media Illustration

Podcast distribution changes the game. Commentators once required the reach of major networks and the production value that came with large teams. Now anyone with a microphone, a ring light, and an internet connection can reach millions.

It turns out that younger audiences value relatability and long-form conversation more than professional polish. Even established names found the freedom of the podcast more attractive than a coveted cable slot.

The low barrier of entry produces obvious downsides. Wild speculation spreads faster than corrections. Personal feuds drive engagement more reliably than careful analysis. The audience rewards charisma and intensity, not always judgment. The result looks ridiculous at times. This week, the president inserted himself into a juvenile online dispute while U.S. forces struck Iran, a perfect example of how unserious the culture can become when attention becomes the currency and everyone fights for a share of it.

But all the moralizing in the world will not restore the old order. Mainstream conservatives cannot lecture podcast audiences about “responsible broadcasting” after years of manipulating their own viewers. The level of mistrust runs too deep.

Censorship will fail too. Shaming and platform policing did not rebuild credibility for Democrats. It will not rebuild Republicans’ credibility.

RELATED: The SAVE Act is the hill voters will die on

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

This is the part conservative leadership does not want to hear. The path out requires admitting that the problem did not begin with podcasts. The problem began with institutions that treated truth as a tool. Restoring coherence demands that conservative leaders stop trying to reassert narrative control and start rebuilding trust. That means fewer games, fewer insinuations, fewer anonymous smears, and more willingness to say, “We were wrong,” and explain why.

Conservative audiences will not return to reality through scolding. They will return through honesty. That will require a different posture from conservative leaders: less control, more candor; fewer moral lectures, more receipts; fewer slogans, more clarity about what can be done and what cannot. The movement will stumble until it learns that discipline beats drama.

So expect things to get worse before they get better. Conservative media spent years breaking trust. The bill has come due. And now the only way out is through.

​Podcasts, Joe rogan, Right wing, Republican voters, Donald trump, Populism, Censorship, Opinion & analysis, Conservative movement, Elections, Media, Popular opinion, Disinformation, The left 

The search for a family missing since January ended gruesomely after their remains were found in a wooded area, according to Alabama police.

A 40-year-old mother, along with her daughter and son, had not been seen at their home since Jan. 30, and they were reported missing a day later. They were identified as Aurelia Choc Cac, her 17-year-old daughter Niurka Zuleta Choc, and her 2-year-old son Anthony Garcia Choc.

‘We wouldn’t be standing here today if this defendant, who has an extensive violent criminal history, was not released under Biden’s administration in 2021.’

The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office reported signs of struggle at the house and identified 31-year-old Juan Carlos Argueta Guerra, whose real name was later determined to be Hector Gamaliel Argueta-Guerra, as a person of interest in a post on Facebook that same day.

Argueta-Guerra was arrested and charged with kidnapping in February.

On March 13, the sheriff’s office reported finding remains it believed to belong to the family in Summerdale in Baldwin County.

“This is a horrific, gruesome murder,” said Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood at a media briefing.

Police said Argueta-Guerra was a member of the Sureños gang in El Salvador with a lengthy criminal history. In 2016, a detention order for terrorism-related conduct with special aggravating factors was issued against him. Other terror-related filings were made in 2018 as well as 2024.

Despite that long record, Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch said Argueta-Guerra had been deported once before and then released inside the U.S. under the Biden administration.

“We wouldn’t be standing here today if this defendant, who has an extensive violent criminal history, was not released under Biden’s administration in 2021,” Burch said.

Police said Argueta-Guerra had been charged with a slew of additional crimes, including:

Three counts of kidnapping in the first degree;One count of capital murder under 14 years;One count of obstructing justice using a false identity;Three counts of abuse of a corpse;Three counts of capital murder/burglary;Three counts of capital murder/kidnapping; andOne count of capital murder of two or more persons.

RELATED: ‘It had to be done’: Man confesses to brutal murders of 3 women in Utah after he hit an elk, police say

Argueta-Guerra pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to appear in court in April. The district attorney said they will seek the death penalty.

“Hector, you are a sick person to do what you did to this family, and we know if convicted, you will never see the outside world again,” the sheriff’s office said.

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