Category: blaze media

An AI model has reportedly exposed vulnerabilities in secure government systems as concerns over cybersecurity rage through top companies and government leadership alike.

The Associated Press reported that Mythos, an advanced Anthropic AI model, identified weaknesses in “sensitive and secure U.S. government computer systems during a testing exercise,” citing a U.S. official.

‘This tool broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks but in hours.’

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, reportedly told the AP that the testing was conducted as a part of Project Glasswing, though the identification of the vulnerabilities does not mean that they were exploited.

Project Glasswing, which was announced on April 7, was described at the time as “an urgent attempt to put [the capabilities of frontier model Mythos Preview] to work for defensive purposes.”

RELATED: $965 billion AI giant warns we need to hit the brakes — but will China?

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The project announcement noted that Anthropic would be partnering with several industry giants to identify the vulnerabilities on their platforms, with Anthropic even pledging “up to $100M in usage credits for Mythos Preview across these efforts, as well as $4M in direct donations to open-source security organizations.”

The companies listed include Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palo Alto Networks.

These defensive measures, including the testing performed by Mythos, was alluded to by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) during a June 11 Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing.

Mentioning Mythos and Anthropic by name, Warner said, “This tool broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks but in hours.” Warner attributed this information to the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, General Joshua Rudd.

The government limited access to Anthropic’s latest models for foreign nationals just days after President Trump signed an executive order establishing a national security framework for AI, cybersecurity, and the regulation and classification of “frontier models.” That directive resulted in the company disabling the model temporarily.

Blaze News reached out to the office of the National Cyber Director and Anthropic but did not immediately receive a response.

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​National security agency, Us government, Donald trump, Mark warner, Politics, Tech, Artificial intelligence 

Minor league baseball team the York Revolution forfeited their Pride Night game on June 18 after fewer than nine players on the 28-man roster were willing to wear Pride uniforms — which featured jerseys with rainbow sleeves.

General manager Ben Shipley said that he was “disappointed” the team “was at this point.”

“I recognize the players’ plight and their unwillingness to cross their line. I also think tolerance is not acceptance. I was just asking for tolerance from the team, and they were unwilling to navigate that with me,” Shipley explained.

“No,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments. “You were asking for them to participate. That is not tolerance. That’s promoting something that they have religious convictions against.”

“They’re not paid to wear rainbow colors,” he adds.

“That was a political statement they were asked to endorse, and they refused to,” executive producer Keith Malinak says.

“And this is how you change the culture. And this is what we’ve been begging young girls, young women to do when faced with dudes that want to compete against them,” he continues.

“And if they have to cancel the event, they have to cancel it. That’s how you change this mindset,” he adds.

“But that’s how committed the officials on the team were to this,” Gray says, “that they’d rather not even play baseball.”

“They still donated 10 grand to some gay charity, too,” Malinak adds.

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​Pat gray, Keith malinak, Jeff fisher, Pride night, York revolution, Baseball, Pride, Lgbtq, Pat gray unleashed 

The conviction and sentencing of a group of Antifa-linked terrorists is making Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan implode on social media.

The leader of the violent 2025 attack on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in Texas was sentenced to 100 years in prison while seven others were given sentences between 30 and 70 years. Several others have pleaded guilty and await sentencing.

‘Americans hate the fascist Trump regime, so the only way they can try to cling to power is brute force.’

Tlaib objected to the sentencing based on her opposition to President Donald Trump declaring Antifa a terrorist group back in September. Trump made the declaration in NSPM-7, a national security presidential memorandum that established a federal strategy to charge violent groups and networks with terrorism.

“These sentences are a travesty and totally unjustified, but that’s the point,” wrote the congresswoman on a social media post Tuesday.

“Americans hate the fascist Trump regime, so the only way they can try to cling to power is brute force. NSPM-7 is a grave threat to all of us and more bulls**t ‘terrorism’ charges like these are coming.”

The attackers used fireworks to distract ICE officers before firing gunshots that injured one officer. They also vandalized the facility before fleeing from the scene.

An attorney for the leader of the group objected to the government labeling the attackers as “terrorists” and claimed they did not intend to fire gunshots.

“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” the attorney said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”

Tlaib, who is a member of “the Squad” of progressive congresswomen, denied during a congressional hearing in 2021 that there’s any formal evidence that Antifa is an organization.

RELATED: Tlaib flips out when asked to condemn ‘Death to America’ chants by anti-Israel protesters

Critics like the American Civil Liberties Union claim that the NSPM-7 lays the groundwork for the administration to punish and prosecute enemies and political opponents based on speech protected under the First Amendment.

“No matter what the president says or tries to do through NSPM-7, the First Amendment constrains what federal agencies can do when it comes to punishing groups and people for exercising their rights to free speech, peaceful protest, and supporting causes by making donations,” said the ACLU in a statement about the edict. “It also safeguards against viewpoint-based government discrimination, coercion, and retaliation.”

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​Immigration and customs enforcement, The squad, Terrorist group, Antifa, Politics, Rashida tlaib, Ice 

In a congressional district that encompasses upper Manhattan and a portion of the Bronx, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist, has emerged victorious in the contentious Democratic primary against five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat.

With 88% of the votes counted, the New York Times has called the race in Avila Chevalier’s favor. She currently leads Espaillat 49.4% to 45.9%.

‘Zohran endorsed her, so I voted for her.’

“I am so thrilled to have the support of my community, and I am so proud that they have put their trust in me to send me to Congress on their behalf,” Avila Chevalier told Norwood News.

But let’s break down the results further.

The 13th Congressional District of New York contains a population of roughly 750,000 people in an area of 11 square miles, which equates to about 68,000 people per square mile. In the recent election, the Manhattan portion of the district accounted for a significantly larger share of the vote than the Bronx portion.

The median age in the district is 39 years old, with 50% of the residents identifying as Hispanic, 24% as black, and 17% as white.

The district is also one of the poorest congressional districts in the country, with a quarter of its residents living below the poverty line and a median household income of just above $52,400.

According to the Times, Espaillat outperformed Avila Chevalier by a sizeable margin of 28 points in the Bronx, while in Manhattan, Avila Chevalier led by a margin of eight points.

Espaillat was able to secure the black (+2.2) and Hispanic (+15.3) vote, as well as the vote of lower-income areas (+10.2). Avila Chevalier, on the other hand, dominated among younger voters (+24.5) and majority college-educated areas (+19.2), reflecting a broader trend of democratic socialists such as NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani performing well among these groups.

Avila Chevalier also led by 5.1 points in higher-income areas, the Times reported.

RELATED: ‘Weak and pathetic’: Mamdani-backed radicals sweep Democratic establishment in New York’s electoral bloodbath

“I’m an immigrant myself, and she has strong positions on immigration. It’s the first time I felt like I had a real choice with the Democratic primary. Zohran endorsed her, so I voted for her,” Juan Alvarez told the New York Post after casting his vote.

The politics of NY-13 have been consistently Democratic for decades, with voters backing Democrat candidates on the national, state, and local levels.

In last year’s New York City mayoral race, Mamdani performed strongly across the district. Both Espaillat and Avila Chevalier endorsed Mamdani for mayor, yet Mamdani later threw his support behind Avila Chevalier in the primary contest.

In her victory speech, Avila Chevalier declared to her crowd of supporters that “the politics of the past ends today.”

“The era of taking a check and cashing a check and calling it representation is over.”

“To every little black and brown girl, mujer dominicana, my Muslim sisters, and every working-class person here — our time has come.”

Avila Chevalier will face off against Republican nominee Manual Williams in the November general election, where she is expected to win comfortably.

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​Adriano espaillat, Darializa avila chevalier, Democratic primary, Democratic socialist, New york city, Politics 

The Department of Justice on Tuesday unveiled the results of the 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, which resulted in criminal and civil charges against hundreds of defendants and billions in allegedly stolen taxpayer funds.

The enforcement effort involved 56 federal districts, 45 U.S. states and territories, and 455 defendants, including 90 doctors and other medical professionals, tied to more than $6.5 billion in alleged fraud.

‘The government seized over $30 million in bank accounts, a $594,000 Ferrari 296 GTS, seven other high-end vehicles, an $865,000 custom Bulgari necklace, and $1 million worth of other luxury jewelry.’

The DOJ accused the defendants of participating in numerous schemes, including opioid abuse, submitting false claims to Medicare and Medicaid, and causing patient harm, including death. The department also claimed that 10.7 million pills of controlled substances were illegally distributed.

The alleged stolen taxpayer funds were used to purchase high-end vehicles, jewelry, and real estate, among other luxury items. The federal government has seized $182 million in cash and other assets.

“This announcement marks the greatest combined federal and state effort in combating health care fraud in history,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated. “This team is working tirelessly to take down fraudsters who steal from taxpayer funded programs and prey on vulnerable Americans.”

The DOJ highlighted that charges were filed against 11 individuals allegedly tied to billions of dollars in fraudulent claims for amniotic wound allografts, a wound treatment made from donated placental tissue typically used to repair hard-to-heal injuries.

RELATED: Trump DOJ charges illegal aliens in Boston with nearly $1.5 million in welfare fraud

Image source: Department of Justice

In the District of Arizona, the vice president of sales for a company was charged in an alleged kickback scheme after providers allegedly billed Medicare over $4 billion from Dec. 2021 to June 2024 for his company’s allografts.

“The company did not manufacture allografts and instead acquired allografts from tissue banks and relabeled them for sale at a 2,000% mark-up, charging up to $1,450 per square centimeter,” the DOJ stated.

The defendant and others allegedly targeted hospice patients to apply allografts to superficial wounds and treat areas that exceeded the size of the wound.

The defendant was accused of receiving $24 million from the company and spending the funds on “multi-million-dollar houses, million-dollar life insurance policies, luxury vehicles, including a $135,000 Maserati, and luxury watches.”

RELATED: JD Vance is ending the Medicaid gravy train

Bulgari necklace and beach resort in the Philippines. Image source: Department of Justice

In the Southern District of Texas, the DOJ also charged a nurse practitioner who allegedly billed Medicare $906 million for medically unnecessary allografts.

“As alleged, the defendant used the fraud proceeds to purchase high-end vehicles, real estate, and luxury jewelry, and to fund the construction of a $4.6 million … beach resort in the Philippines,” the DOJ stated. “The government seized over $30 million in bank accounts, a $594,000 Ferrari 296 GTS, seven other high-end vehicles, an $865,000 custom Bulgari necklace, and $1 million worth of other luxury jewelry.”

The DOJ reported that Medicare claims for allografts skyrocketed from $1.2 billion in 2022 to $14.4 billion in 2025.

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​News, Department of justice, Doj, Medicare, Medicaid, Todd blanche, Politics, Fraud 

The stunning victories of far-left extremists against centrist establishment candidates in the New York City Democratic primary elections are leading many to embrace fringe socialism.

Among those voices is Hunter Biden, the former president’s disgraced son who sired a child with a reported Washington, D.C., stripper.

‘The establishment wing of the party is no longer a sword. It’s a question mark.’

Biden said in a post on social media that Democrats need to abandon seeking the vote of Americans with more moderate views.

“I’m not running for office. But if I were, these are some of the lessons I’d take away from what happened in NY yesterday,” he wrote in a post on the X social media platform.

“The middle is not a strategy. It’s an empty room. Voters reached past the establishment to grab someone who actually believes something,” he said after a few other bullet points.

He said Democrats who made anti-Israel and pro-rent control statements won because they were “authentic.” He also derided endorsements from establishment partisans.

“Endorsements from the current Democratic leadership now read like warnings,” he added. “The establishment wing of the party is no longer a sword. It’s a question mark.”

He also praised far-left democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City. Mamdani backed the extremist candidates who swept their primary elections.

“The lesson under the lessons: the country is tired of being managed. People want to be led,” Biden concluded.

In a response to a commenter, he affirmed that the Democratic Party needs to listen to black women more.

Many on the left are making the same observations about the victory of extremists in New York City while others point out that these policies are not likely to be popular in the rest of the country, even among Democrats.

RELATED: Hunter Biden linked to identity theft of his dead brother by investigator in paternity suit

Biden’s addiction problems became a flashpoint in the 2020 election after Republican operatives were able to obtain a laptop with damaging private content of Biden left at a computer shop.

Trump supporters tried to use the content to damage the Biden presidential campaign, but various social media giants responded by restricting the circulation of the story over suggestions from the administration that foreign actors were circulating fake propaganda.

Hunter Biden has since gone to rehab and began commenting on politics after his father had to drop his re-election campaign over health concerns.

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​Hunter biden, Zohran mamdani, Politics, Democratic socialism 

Transgender actress Ellen Page, who now goes by “Elliot” Page, offered her definition of “healthy masculinity” during a recent interview on “It’s Open with Ilana Glazer” — and unsurprisingly, it’s not very masculine at all.

“We are seeing so much, and I mean our entire lives, we’ve seen so much unhealthy masculinity, so much sickness in this world, specifically through the lens of men,” Glazer began.

“In your gender journey, which to me as someone who knows you, but also as someone consuming you as a public figure, to me you appear healthy and continually finding more health and security,” she continued, asking, “What does it mean to you to hear me say ‘healthy masculinity?’”

“Healthy masculinity to me is, or even just something I’ve felt as transitioning … for anyone to just you know love themselves, be able to care for themselves, ideally get rest when they can, like just the practical basic: drink water, eat a banana,” Page responded.

“I think it’s just like healthy masculinity could just mean a really good cry,” she added.

“I feel like I know a lot of masculine men, and they aren’t like, ‘It’s just sometimes hugging yourself and having a good cry and drinking some water,’” Gonzales says.

“That actually sounds like the most feminized version that you could possibly get,” she adds.

“I haven’t had a banana since I was like 6,” Adam Johnson replies, adding, “I reject the whole premise of men eating bananas.”

“You’re right, probably not masculine,” Gonzales says. “I’m sorry to all of the men out there who do enjoy bananas, but the act of it, to Adam’s point, probably not very masculine.”

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​Sara gonzales, Ellen page, Adam johnson, The lectern guy, Elliot page, Ilana glazer, Masculinity, Transgender, Sara gonzales unfiltered 

A Southern California father has learned his fate after pleading guilty to having sex with his daughter who months later took her own life.

The Ventura County District Attorney’s Office said Stephen Vincent Chavez’s 18-year-old biological daughter, Makayla, was staying with him at his residence in Moorpark last July. Moorpark is about an hour northwest of Los Angeles.

‘Investigators and prosecutors performed additional interviews, obtained and reviewed the results of new forensic testing and medical evaluations, and carefully analyzed electronic evidence.’

“After a day of drinking at a family gathering, Chavez purchased additional alcohol for himself and his daughter to consume at home,” the DA’s Office added. “Chavez then engaged in sexual intercourse with her. Makayla tragically took her own life in December 2025.”

Chavez, 41, pleaded guilty in May to felony incest and misdemeanor providing alcohol to a minor, officials said, adding that Chavez also “admitted he took advantage of a position of trust and that the victim was particularly vulnerable.”

“Several members of Makayla’s family addressed the court during sentencing and provided emotional victim impact statements describing the lasting trauma caused by the defendant’s actions and the devastating loss of Makayla,” the DA’s Office said.

In addition, Deputy District Attorney Tessa McCarty said, “The people requested the maximum three-year state prison sentence because the defendant exploited his position as a father, violated his daughter’s trust, supplied her with alcohol, and engaged in criminal conduct that forever altered the course of her life.”

McCarty added to KTLA-TV that Makayla had “placed her trust and well-being in [Chavez’s] care” by moving from North Carolina to California to start a new life with him.

The following video report aired prior to Chavez pleading guilty.

RELATED: Previously deported Brazilian woman arrested and charged with child rape, assault, and incest

But District Attorney Erik Nasarenko announced Tuesday that Chavez was sentenced to one year in Ventura County Jail and three years of felony probation for incest and providing alcohol to his 18-year-old biological daughter, officials said.

Prosecutors objected to the court’s sentence, the DA’s Office said.

Prior to Chavez entering guilty pleas, Nasarenko “directed the office’s most experienced prosecutors to conduct a comprehensive review of whether additional charges, including rape, could legally be filed. Investigators and prosecutors performed additional interviews, obtained and reviewed the results of new forensic testing and medical evaluations, and carefully analyzed electronic evidence,” officials said.

The DA’s Office added that 10 of its prosecutors reviewed the evidence and findings and that “experienced prosecutors and legal experts from another county” also were consulted.

However, following the “extensive review, all concluded that incest was the only felony charge supported by the law, facts, and admissible evidence,” officials said.

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​Incest, California, Suicide, Father and daughter, Alcohol, Arrest, Sentence, S​tephen vincent chavez, Ventura county district attorney, Crime 

President Donald Trump says vandals are to blame after the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool saw its new coat of paint peel and algae take over just days after a $16 million renovation project was completed.

“The United States Park Police have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Pool. Who would do such a thing? These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair. President DJT,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere isn’t sure he buys the reason for the pool’s state.

“I think Donald Trump’s done some really good things, and there’s parts of his presidency I’m absolutely really happy with. Secondarily, let me ask you … do you believe that it was vandals that caused the algae and the paint to rip up?” he asks on “Stu and Dave Do America.”

“That’s the problem, though. It could have been, because they would,” co-host Dave Landau says.

“It is believable that they would attempt this. I don’t know that I believe they’re smart enough to figure out how to do it this well,” Stu agrees.

Outspoken liberal Stephen King also chimed in on the drama, writing in a post on X: “Nobody is vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, and Trump knows it. This is a visible example of his corruption–a no-bid contract to some crony followed by sky-high cost overruns, and shoddy construction to boot. Classic Trump: I didn’t f**k up, it was my enemies.”

“He’s a weirdo,” Stu says.

However, there’s another group of activists who have descended upon the algae issue in the pool — and they’re mad at the president for getting rid of it.

“There are people upset at those trying to kill the algae to make the pool look American Flag Blue again. We’re talking about — yes, they exist — pro-algae eco-activists,” Stu explains.

“They oppose the cleanup of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool,” he adds.

A video from TMZ confirms the existence of these activists, showing several protesters yelling, “Let’s go algae, let’s go,” while standing next to the pool.

Stu is disturbed, commenting, “We really should just disconnect the life support on this nation.”

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​Stu burguiere, Dave landau, Donald trump, Lincoln memorial reflecting pool, The blaze, Stu and dave do america 

Tim Ferriss did something that almost no author with a brand to protect would ever do. He posted his real sales numbers, and they weren’t pretty. He called his own catalog the “cadaver on the table.”

It’s worth looking at the body.

Ferriss has five books, all of them number-one best-sellers, the kind of backlist that is supposed to pay out like an annuity. “The 4-Hour Workweek” was still one of the most highlighted titles on all of Amazon a full decade after it came out. Then the floor gave way. His sales were down 46% in 2025 and are on pace for another 57% drop this year. If the run rate holds, his catalog will sell roughly 80% fewer print copies in 2026 than it did in 2022.

What changed in 2022? ChatGPT launched that November. The slide tracks the chatbot almost line for line, and it isn’t just that. In the first quarter of this year, total print sales fell 3.1%, and self-help took the worst beating of any category, with units down 26.3% from a year earlier. Only two of adult nonfiction’s 16 subcategories grew at all. One of them was religion. Hold that thought for later.

A free country runs on citizens who can read a contract before they sign it.

Ferriss’ read is clean and probably correct: A how-to book was always a lookup table. “The 4-Hour Body” is a menu. How do I lose the fat, fix my sleep, and add 10 pounds of muscle? In 2019, the best interface to those answers was 600 pages. In 2026, it’s a free chatbot that already ate the book and will hand you a personalized version in 15 seconds, adjusted for your weight, your bad knee, and your hatred of cottage cheese.

He’s right about the books. I think he buried the lede, though. And the lede is us.

The book was the on-ramp

Here’s the thing nobody in this conversation wants to say out loud. Most people who bought how-to books weren’t readers. Not really. With no offense intended to Ferriss, who has been remarkably successful, his bibliography could easily be dismissed as “airport books,” something you thumb through on a long layover.

The guy who would never crack a novel would still buy the diet book. The money book. The manual for fixing his own transmission. He read because he wanted the thing on the other side of the reading, and the reading was the toll you paid to get it. That toll is what kept a whole class of marginal readers in the habit at all. Self-help was the gateway drug to literacy for grown men and women who had set reading down the day they walked out of high school.

Ferriss is documenting the exact moment we stop charging the toll, and we’re doing it at the worst possible time in about a century.

Now read the literacy numbers

In December 2024, the National Center for Education Statistics dropped the latest international assessment of adult skills, and the results were ugly. Average U.S. adult literacy fell 12 points between 2017 and 2023. The bottom rung swelled from 19% of the population to 28%. That’s the group that struggles to compare two pieces of information, paraphrase a short passage, or make a basic inference.

That’s more than one in four working-age Americans and is the first statistically real drop since they started keeping score in 2008.

Sit with the timing on that. The test was given in 2022 and 2023, before the chatbots had fully soaked into daily life. We were already forgetting how to read on our own.

RELATED: Livid judge cancels trial and busts lawyers for faking briefs with AI — on both sides

Background: Melina Mara/Washington Post/Getty Images; foreground: Grok/xAI

The habit data says the same thing from a different angle. By 2021, Gallup had Americans reading fewer books than at any point since it started asking in 1990. Reading as a favorite way to spend an evening got cut in half in four years, from 12% down to 6%. And a CBS/YouGov poll out last week found a third of Americans now read fewer books than they did a decade ago, with more than a third admitting their own attention spans have gotten worse. They can feel it going. That’s almost the saddest part.

The kids are the leading edge of this, not the exception. Reporting in the Atlantic last year had professors at places like Columbia trimming their syllabi because incoming students couldn’t get through a whole book any more. And these were bright kids, the ones who tested in. The professors said it’s a problem of stamina and commitment. “Students can still read books, they argue — they’re just choosing not to,” said Rose Horowitch of the Atlantic.

But the adults are the real story here, because they already have the skill and are choosing not to exercise it.

This villain is different

Every generation gets handed a reading villain. Radio was going to rot our brains. Then television. Then the smartphone. And many of the concerns about those technologies were valid. Despite that, we remained a nation of readers until the smartphone era. “Teenagers are constantly tempted by their devices, which inhibits their preparation for the rigors of college coursework,” Horowitch said.

But even in the worst case, all of those things merely competed with reading for your attention. The chatbot is the first one that poses an existential threat to publishing, its very reason to exist. It doesn’t just pull you off the page. It offers to stand between you and every page you’ll ever encounter, from now on, and hand you the gist so you never have to do the work yourself.

The work was the whole point of reading: comprehension, judgment, and the slow, unglamorous business of building a mind that can tell when it’s being handled. The early research on what they call cognitive off-loading indicates that the more people hand their thinking to the machine, the less they draw on their own. One MIT team even wired up people’s brains and found weaker neural connectivity and poorer recall when subjects leaned on a chatbot to write instead of doing it themselves. That study was about writing, and it’s preliminary, so I won’t oversell it. But you don’t get the bicep by watching somebody else lift the weight.

A people that can’t read is a people that gets managed

A free country runs on citizens who can read a contract before they sign it. Read the ballot initiative. Read the lease, the diagnosis, the verse, the founding document, and catch it when somebody’s tidy little summary is shading the truth.

Ferriss tosses off a Pew number almost in passing: 83% of Americans haven’t paid for news in any form in the past year, and when they slam into a paywall, exactly 1% reach for a credit card. Now, the other 99% shrug, give up, or ask the AI for the gist. A whole population is increasingly taking the machine’s word for what the document said, without looking at the document itself.

That’s not just a reading crisis, but a sovereignty crisis. A man who can’t read for himself, and won’t, has no choice but to trust whoever’s doing the reading for him. There’s an old word for that arrangement: subject.

This is what inspired my wife and me to launch Chapter House. We make hardcover children’s books, the kind meant to be read aloud and handed down to the next generation. We didn’t build it out of nostalgia, and we sure didn’t build it because print is the fastest way to get information into a mind.

We built it because speed was never what reading was for. Reading forms the person doing it. A child raised on hard, beautiful books grows into the one adult in the room the machine can’t fool, precisely because he has already done the work the machine keeps offering to skip.

Ferriss circles this the whole way through his post without ever landing on it. He says what survives the AI flood is voice, taste, the sequenced journey, the experience of sitting with one mind at real length. He’s describing a thing. The thing has a name, and it’s a lot older than his bibliography. It’s education. The genuine article.

The off-ramp is open and the machine will drive

He ends by lashing himself to the mast of long-form writing and half-joking that maybe he’s just delusional.

He’s not delusional. He’s optimistic about the wrong number. The thousand true fans are going to be fine. They were always going to be fine. It’s the quiet quarter-billion I’d lose sleep over, the ones for whom the machine just removed the last practical reason they had to ever read anything again. They don’t get the tidy ending. And they vote, and raise children, and sign their names to things they didn’t read.

The off-ramp is open. It’s well lit, it’s free, and the machine is happy to take the wheel.

Whether we hand it over or not was never up to the machine.

The one lever still entirely in our hands is whether the next generation can do the thing the machine keeps volunteering to do for them. So read to your kids tonight. It’s a smaller act of defiance than it sounds like. It might also be a bigger one.

​Tech, Lifestyle 

If a driver is so dangerous that the government needs to electronically control his car, why is he still allowed to drive?

That’s the question New York lawmakers don’t seem interested in answering.

Today the threshold is 16 violations. Tomorrow it could be 10.

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) recently signed legislation requiring certain repeat speeding offenders to install GPS-based speed-limiting technology in their vehicles. Under the new law, drivers who rack up 16 or more speed-camera violations within a year can be ordered to install an Intelligent Speed Limiter that prevents their vehicle from exceeding posted speed limits. Drivers who refuse can ultimately lose their vehicle registration.

Reckless legislation

At first glance, the proposal sounds reasonable. Most Americans agree that chronic reckless drivers should face serious consequences. But the real question is not whether dangerous drivers deserve punishment. The real question is why someone with 16 speeding violations still has driving privileges in the first place.

New York already has speeding laws. It already has fines, insurance penalties, license points, court appearances, and suspension mechanisms. If a driver has accumulated enough violations to be considered such a serious threat that the state now wants to electronically control their vehicle, then why weren’t existing laws sufficient to remove that driver from the road?

That question goes directly to the heart of the issue. Rather than addressing the apparent failure of existing enforcement systems, lawmakers have chosen to create an entirely new layer of technology, surveillance, and government oversight. Instead of asking why repeat offenders remain licensed, they’re asking the public to accept the idea that government should have a greater role in controlling privately owned vehicles.

That’s a significant shift, and it deserves far more scrutiny than it has received.

Pre-crime preview

The legislation relies on Intelligent Speed Assistance technology, commonly referred to as ISA. The system uses GPS data and digital mapping to determine the posted speed limit on a roadway and can prevent a vehicle from exceeding that speed. Unlike traditional enforcement, where a driver is punished after breaking the law, this technology is designed to intervene before the driver can make the decision.

The automotive industry is already moving toward an unprecedented level of connectivity. Modern vehicles collect enormous amounts of information. They receive over-the-air software updates, communicate with manufacturers, monitor driving behavior, and increasingly operate as rolling computers. Consumers have already watched vehicle ownership evolve into something that looks increasingly like a subscription service, with features activated remotely and software determining how products function.

Now government is entering the equation with technology designed to control how a vehicle operates.

That should concern anyone who values personal privacy and consumer rights.

Starting small

Supporters insist the law applies only to a small group of repeat offenders. That’s true today. The problem is that government programs rarely remain confined to their original scope. Nearly every major regulatory program begins with a narrowly defined target. Politicians identify a group that few people are willing to defend, implement a new policy, and assure the public that the measure will be limited. Once the infrastructure exists, however, expanding it becomes significantly easier than creating it.

Today the threshold is 16 violations. Tomorrow it could be 10. Later it could be expanded to fleet vehicles, commercial operators, or other categories of drivers. Once the principle is accepted, the debate shifts from whether government should have this authority to how broadly it should be applied.

Imperfect technology

The practical questions surrounding this law are equally troubling. GPS technology is useful, but it is not infallible. Speed-limit databases are not always current. Construction zones change. Temporary restrictions appear. Road conditions evolve faster than mapping systems can update.

What happens when the speed-limit database is wrong? What happens when a roadway has recently changed and the system hasn’t been updated? What happens when a driver needs rapid acceleration to avoid an accident?

These are not hypothetical concerns. They are the types of real-world situations automotive engineers consider every day. Yet lawmakers frequently discuss speed-limiting technology as though vehicles operate in a controlled environment where every situation can be anticipated by software. The reality is far more complicated.

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

Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images

Punishing cars, not drivers

Then there is the issue of fairness.

One of the most overlooked aspects of this legislation is its reliance on camera enforcement. Traditional traffic stops identify the driver. Automated camera systems identify the vehicle. Those are not the same thing. Families share cars. Businesses operate fleets. Vehicles are borrowed, rented, and loaned every day. Yet policymakers continue to build enforcement systems around the vehicle itself rather than the individual behind the wheel.

That distinction matters because accountability should be directed at the person responsible for the behavior, not simply the machine involved.

There is also a financial component that deserves attention. Installation costs for these systems can run into the thousands of dollars, with additional fees for monitoring, maintenance, administration, and compliance. Government officials often frame these costs as penalties for offenders, but every new regulatory program creates opportunities for vendors, contractors, software providers, installers, and administrators.

Whenever government mandates a new technology, there is almost always an industry waiting to benefit from it.

New York is hardly alone in pursuing this approach. Washington State has adopted its own Intelligent Speed Assistance requirements for certain offenders. Virginia and Washington, D.C., have moved in a similar direction, while Illinois lawmakers have advanced proposals involving mandatory speed-limiting technology. What once appeared to be an isolated experiment is rapidly becoming a national trend.

As more states adopt similar programs, lawmakers should answer a basic question: Why create a technological workaround instead of enforcing the penalties already available under existing law?

Accountability … or control?

The answer may be uncomfortable. Suspending licenses removes the driver from the system. Technological monitoring keeps the driver in the system while creating new layers of oversight and control. One approach focuses on accountability. The other focuses on management.

Those are fundamentally different philosophies.

New York’s “super speeder” law is being sold as a narrowly targeted safety measure. Maybe that’s how it begins. The larger concern is where it ends. Once government gains the authority to electronically regulate how privately owned vehicles operate, future expansions become much easier to justify.

The most important question isn’t whether a driver with 16 violations deserves punishment. It’s whether Americans are comfortable creating the technological infrastructure that allows government to control how a privately owned vehicle operates.

Today, lawmakers call it a solution for super speeders. Tomorrow, it could become something much broader.

​Lifestyle, Auto industry, Reckless drivers, Intelligent speed assistance, Kathy hochul, State law, Technology, Speed limiters, Automotive 

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he would delay the signing ceremony for a major bill until lawmakers pass the SAVE America Act.

Just over an hour before he was scheduled to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would not sign the legislation on Wednesday. The bill aims to increase the nation’s housing supply and boost affordability by expanding available financing and providing grants for community developments.

‘It has been stuck in the Senate, and here’s why: because no Democrat in the House or Senate will vote for the SAVE America Act.’

The housing act passed the Senate by an 85-5 vote on Monday and the House in a 358-32 vote on Tuesday. The bill had complete Democratic support from those who voted, and the only dissenting votes were from Republicans.

“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT,” Trump wrote.

The SAVE America Act aims to end noncitizen voting by requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in a federal election. The form of identification must comply with the REAL ID Act of 2005, such as a U.S. passport, military ID, birth certificate, or other government-issued photo ID.

RELATED: Trump takes action to secure elections against voter fraud — Democrats already plan to shut it down

Brendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) stated Wednesday that the top priority is passing the SAVE America Act, which he plans to push through a third budget reconciliation bill.

“It has been stuck in the Senate, and here’s why: because no Democrat in the House or Senate will vote for the SAVE America Act,” Johnson stated during a press briefing.

RELATED: America desperately needs better election security

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Johnson stated that “the only path” to get the act passed is to “put it on a reconciliation bill.”

“We believe that if you create a grant program that ties it to reconciling the budget, and you allow blue states, if they come to their senses and they want to avail themselves of election integrity proposals and ideas and policies, they can draw down from a federal fund and use those funds. We’re willing to invest heavily in that, and House Republicans will put together a reconciliation bill, reconciliation 3.0, that will have that,” Johnson said. “I talked the president through that in detail this morning, as I have in the past, and he said, ‘Can we do it?’ I said, ‘We can, if the Republicans will stand together.’ We’re on the line right now to defend it.”

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​Save america act, Donald trump, House, Senate, Housing, Mike johnson, Voter id, Politics 

A Mormon couple seeking to protect their children from radical gender ideology were allegedly notified by Sunnyvale School District in Santa Clara County that LGBTQ instruction was “not optional and is not subject to parent opt-out provisions.”

The district allegedly gave this notice after — and apparently with full knowledge of — the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which the high court held that a Maryland school district’s policy of withholding from parents notice of LGBT propaganda sessions and forbidding opt-outs constituted “an unconstitutional burden” on the parents’ religious exercise.

‘The school boards will continue to defy the SCOTUS ruling, gaslight, lie, and deflect.’

The district also allegedly denied the Mormon parents an opt-out after the California Department of Education acknowledged in its August 2025 guidance that the “fundamental holding” in Mahmoud was that schools must provide parents with the opportunity to opt their children out of policies or exposure to material that schools have “reason to know will ‘substantially interfere'” with parents’ religious rights.

Unwilling to surrender their children’s hearts and minds to the apparent LGBT propagandists at SSD’s Cumberland Elementary School, Justin and Rose Taylor — represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit law firm focused on protecting religious freedoms that won the Mahmoud case before SCOTUS — filed a lawsuit on Monday against the district in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The Taylors — the proud parents of four children, including a rising third-grade son and a rising first-grade daughter at Cumberland Elementary School — said in a statement, “Our children are the most cherished part of our lives.”

“We know and love them best and should be the ones deciding when and how they learn about sensitive topics regarding sexuality and gender,” continued the parents. “Fortunately, the Supreme Court has recognized that right for religious parents nationwide.”

RELATED: Critics blast Chicago mayor for pushing ‘transfemicide’ ‘gibberish’ amid deadly shootings

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images

“California school districts have been putting LGBTQ propaganda in front of students for close to 20 years,” Alvin Lui, president of the parental rights advocacy group Courage Is a Habit, told Blaze News. “They’re just now much more emboldened. I’m ecstatic to see these parents make an example out of the Sunnyvale School District.”

The lawsuit claims that “Sunnyvale’s denial violates parents’ constitutional rights to direct the education and upbringing of their children in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs,” and asks the court to:

enter a declaration that the SSD’s alleged refusal to afford the parents a right to “opt out from LGBTQ+ instruction, including the forced reading of the District’s recommended LGBTQ+ storybooks, violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment”;enter a declaration that forcing the Taylors to “educate their children, read,and/or speak consistently with the perspectives contained in the LGBTQ+ instruction, and compelling Plaintiffs’ children to accept one viewpoint to the exclusion of all others violates their rights under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment”;enter a declaration that “forcing students, over their parents’ objection, to read or listen to the LGBTQ+ instruction violates the Taylors’ rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”;grant preliminary and permanent injunctions prohibiting the school from forcing the kids to participate in the LGBT propaganda sessions; andaward the parents damages for loss of their rights under federal law.

The SSD did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

The lawsuit details some of the LGBT agitprop allegedly pushed by the SSD, noting that its curriculum “integrates LGBTQ+ history, representation, and examples throughout instructional units to show ‘diverse backgrounds, identities, experiences, and abilities, including those who are lesbian, gay, genderqueer, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual (LGBTQIA).'”

This propaganda is apparently foisted upon students at all grade levels.

The “LGBTQ+ Teaching Guide” issued by the Santa Clara County Office of Education, which oversees Sunnyvale, discusses how to incorporate LGBT propaganda into virtually every subject.

Math teachers, for instance, are told in the guide to “use problems that relate to marriage equality, gender-neutral bathrooms, and LGBTQ+ rights to demonstrate mathematical concepts such as statistics, probability, and geometry.”

Science and health teachers are told to champion “gender-inclusive biology” — in which, for example, “ovaries” are substituted in for “women” so as not to suggest a link between womanhood and female reproductive organs.

This guidance — which has been embraced by Sunnyvale — even quoted LGBTQ activist Barbara Gittings: “The struggle is really won in the hearts and minds of the community, where it really counts.”

The Taylors’ lawsuit highlights a number of the agitprop materials allegedly used by the SSD in its LGBT instruction including a book that changes the lyrics of “The Wheels on the Bus” to lyrics celebrating drag titled “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish” and “Pride Puppy,” a book that tasks 3- and 4-year-old students with searching for items they might find at a non-straight parade — including transvestite activists, underwear, leather, “intersex flag,” and feathers.

The LGBT instruction under way in Sunnyvale is of the same type addressed in Mahmoud, claimed the lawsuit.

The Taylors’ lawsuit alleges that while SSD initially appeared willing to permit opt-outs, “Sunnyvale abruptly flipped its position” and “affirmatively disclaimed its constitutional responsibility to afford families what the First Amendment requires.”

Sunnyvale stated in a letter to the Taylors that it was “not granting opt-outs from LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum or storybooks that are part of our adopted educational program.”

The district added in its letter that “the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor … addressed a specific set of facts in another state” and neither created a “general or automatic right for parents to opt their children out of required curriculum” nor overrode “California’s statutory requirements governing instructional content.”

Becket said that “Sunnyvale’s defiance was no accident. After Mahmoud came down, Sunnyvale told its teachers to ‘resist pressures’ that might get in the way of its curriculum.”

However, Michael O’brien, counsel at Becket and lead attorney for the Taylors, underscored that “the Constitution doesn’t come with a California carve-out.”

One of the defendants, SSD director of student support services Paul Slayton, said in a statement obtained by the Press Democrat, “The district was surprised to learn that the Taylor family had filed a lawsuit, particularly given the positive and productive discussions that took place following the family’s initial concerns.”

“We will continue to approach this matter with professionalism and care,” added Slayton.

“When the Mahmoud decision came out from the SCOTUS, like everyone in our space, we were very happy,” Alvin Lui told Blaze News. “However, the first thing we did was warn parents that schools, and especially school counselors, will not honor that decision.”

“The school boards will continue to defy the SCOTUS ruling, gaslight, lie, and deflect. They’ll try to wear parents down so they can continue to put obscene LGBTQ materials in front of children as young as possible.”

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​Faith, Christian, Mormon, Becket, California, Transgender, Propaganda, Leftism, School, Education, Politics 

As an important deadline approaches for Georgia to fix problems with its election system, a special legislative session has come to a close. Yet the solution the legislature came to has left a potential flaw on the table for the upcoming midterms.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp called a special session last week to resolve a looming issue with the state’s election system, which currently uses QR codes to tabulate election results.

The QR code system was first implemented statewide in the 2020 election.

According to the Georgia Recorder, a state law passed in 2024 banned the use of QR codes. The ban was set to take effect on July 1, resulting in an impending crisis for the 2026 midterms absent a solution this month.

The QR code system was first implemented statewide in the 2020 election, according to WSPA.

RELATED: ‘Hammer Down!’ Trump-backed favorite wins Georgia Republican Senate runoff

Georgia Governor Brian KempDerek White/Getty Images for the Coca Cola Company

With just a week before the deadline, the special legislative session concluded with the successful passage of Senate Bill 3EX, which, among other things, postpones the looming deadline to find a replacement system until after the 2026 midterms.

The new bill, if Gov. Kemp signs it, will establish a new Elections Equipment Specifications and Standards Committee charged with forming and implementing a system to replace the current system. However, the QR code system will remain in place.

Blaze News reached out to Kemp’s office for comment.

This bill, which Republican state Rep. Victor Anderson told the Associated Press was “the culmination of a lot of work,” is nonetheless “not the ultimate solution.”

“This bill solves an immediate conflict we have and lays out a path to achieve the most election integrity, the most accuracy, the most transparency that we can have going forward when we implement the next uniform voting system in Georgia,” he said.

Republicans and Democrats fought over the extent to which hand-counting ballots could be used in the future. Democrats often oppose hand-counts, citing the extended waiting periods and extra costs.

“The question before us is not whether we support election integrity. Of course we do,” Democratic state Rep. Debra Bazemore told the AP. “The question is whether the bill actually improves election integrity or whether it creates a new opportunity to cast doubt on legitimate election results. I believe it does the latter.”

CBS News reported that the Georgia Senate passed the state House-amended bill after a failed attempt at passing additional amendments in the upper chamber.

The House passed the bill 94-79. The Senate eventually passed the bill 36-16.

The committee would be required to present its findings by January 31, 2027. The new deadline for ending the current system would be January 1, 2028.

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​Georgia, Midterms, Republicans, Politics, Elections, Brian kemp 

For generations, landing a summer job has been a traditional American rite of passage. Whether working at a local ice cream shop, a neighborhood grocery store, or an amusement park, teenagers have their very first taste of being a part of the workforce. However, a new report shows that teens are facing the toughest hiring market since the government began tracking the data in 1948.

The traditional summer job that generations of American teenagers have relied on is facing its grimmest outlook in nearly eight decades.

‘That is exactly the kind of work teens depend on.’

Challenger, Gray, and Christmas — a Chicago-based workforce consulting company — released a recent forecast revealing the troubling summer employment outlook that teens are grappling with.

Citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the report noted that last summer’s teen hiring total plummeted to its lowest level since the government began tracking the data in 1948. In 2025, teen summer hiring hit rock bottom at 801,000 positions — the worst figure in the 77-year history of tracking by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, this summer’s job forecast for teenagers is even more dire. In an alarming projection, Challenger, Gray, and Christmas warns that employers will offer teens 790,000 jobs in May, June, and July 2026.

The previous documented low point occurred in 1949 during post-war demobilization, when teen hiring dropped to 932,000. In 2010, the total number of teenage jobs fell to 960,000, when the economic recovery from the Great Recession dragged on.

Fortune reported that federal data shows that approximately one-third of 16- to 19-year-olds in the United States were employed last summer, noting that it is “down from a peak of about 60% in the late 1970s.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that applications for New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program this year have already shattered 2025’s record of 200,000 candidates competing for just 100,000 slots.

Meanwhile, advertisements for summer camp counselor positions on the Indeed jobs board have crashed by nearly 30% year-over-year, according to the WSJ.

“Last summer was the weakest summer for teen hiring we have ever recorded,” said Andy Challenger, labor and workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray, and Christmas.

RELATED: The secret to Chick-fil-A’s success has nothing to do with chicken

Challenger stressed, “What is striking is that it happened without a recession.”

The report by Challenger, Gray, and Christmas cited “rising inflation, climbing oil prices, and a broadly cautious hiring environment” as factors contributing to the historically weak teen summer job forecast. The report also said artificial intelligence, automation, and older workers staying in the workforce later have hurt job prospects for teens.

“Inflation and rising fuel costs are squeezing the same households and small businesses that hire teens, such as amusement parks, restaurants, retailers, and summer camps,” Challenger continued. “When margins tighten, summer hirers will wait for demand to dictate hiring.”

Challenger said, “We predicted a quiet summer last year, and it played out even quieter than expected. The dynamics that drove that slowdown — cost pressures, automation, employers waiting to see how consumer demand holds up — are all still in place, and in some cases they’ve intensified.”

Non-seasonally adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that there were 5,193,000 employed workers ages 16 to 19 in April. The report said the total is a noticeable drop from the figure from April 2025, which saw 5,487,000 teen workers on payrolls.

Challenger pointed out, “When fewer teens are working in April, the late-spring catch-up usually doesn’t close the gap. June will be the most important month to watch, but the trajectory is already pointing down.”

Challenger, Gray, and Christmas reported, “Entertainment and leisure, which led the seasonal categories most relevant to teen hiring last year with 28,000 announced plans, has announced only 8,261 hiring plans through April of this year, a 70% drop.”

Challenger added, “The collapse in entertainment and leisure hiring announcements is one of the clearest signals we have for the summer.”

Challenger said jobs in places like theme parks, resorts, hotels, and events will “run leaner this year.”

“That is exactly the kind of work teens depend on,” Challenger stated.

The report said teenagers could find employment opportunities in agriculture, hospitality, and food service. The report claimed that in areas with crackdowns on illegal immigration could help American teens secure jobs.

“Tighter labor supply in certain regions, particularly those most affected by ongoing immigration enforcement actions, continues to push some employers to lean more heavily on local teen workers,” the report proclaimed.

Challenger declared, “In the places where labor remains tight, teens can be a real solution.”

According to NewsNation, teenagers could find a “few bright spots” in summer employment, including lifeguards and working in retail.

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​Business, Economics, Employment, Inflation, Jobs, News, Politics 

This month, Hello Fresh ran a Pride-themed ad campaign that seems far removed from the assurances many Americans heard during the same-sex marriage debate. Remember? “My marriage won’t affect your marriage.” “What consenting adults do in private is none of anyone’s business.”

Many voters who supported same-sex marriage believed these assurances, understanding it as a request for legal recognition, not the beginning of a broader cultural project that would eventually permeate corporate branding, workplace policies, schools, and popular culture.

Ordinary moms and grandmas just wanted their gay relatives to be happy. They were assured that redefining marriage would be harmless.

But here we are, almost exactly 11 years since the Obergefell decision, and the most popular meal-kit delivery service in the country has brought gay sex out of the bedroom and right to the kitchen table.

‘Bottoms up’

Now, I don’t want to write about this any more than you want to read about it. But the unfortunate truth is that we can’t afford to ignore it, no matter how distasteful we find it. Because if you and I won’t talk about these things on our terms, be assured, the sexual revolutionaries will talk about them on theirs.

So here is the ad Hello Fresh posted on Instagram: “We know eating isn’t always a top priority this month. We respect that. But for those of you who are … prepping … we have an extensive lineup of high-fiber recipes available. Happy Pride.”

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the term “prepping.” In Megan Basham’s delicate translation: “For those not initiated into the sexual practices of gay men, let me help decipher what ‘prepping’ means. HelloFresh is saying that their product is useful for clearing out the rectum of feces in preparation for sodomy. Yes, that’s what it means.”

The company later added a discount code: BOTTOMS UP.

This tasteless Hello Fresh “Pride Month” campaign delivers your food with a side dish of unappetizing sexual innuendo, whether you ordered it or not.

Hardly harmless

What ever happened to that “gay marriage” deal about the privacy of the bedroom? Many people accepted that bargain in good faith. Ordinary moms and grandmas just wanted their gay relatives to be happy. They were assured that redefining marriage would be harmless.

I was a campaign spokeswoman for Proposition 8 in California, the ballot initiative that defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. I was involved in the marriage debates from Prop 8 in 2008 all the way to 2015 and the Obergefell decision. I distinctly remember that many leaders of the pro-marriage effort made a conscious decision not to talk about gay sex.

“The gay marriage campaign is not about ‘gay.’ It’s about ‘marriage.’” This strategy suited a lot of us, including me. We didn’t want to talk about gay stuff at all, much less gay sex.

We wanted to talk about the meaning and purposes of marriage, how marriage attaches mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. We wanted to talk about how redefining marriage would inevitably redefine parenthood.

We feared that mentioning gay sex would gross people out. We didn’t want to offend the good, decent people who don’t want to talk about any sex in public, much less gay sex. We figured the first side to bring it up would lose.

RELATED: Trans is the natural progression from ‘gay marriage’

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Sanitizing sodomy

But there was a downside to this strategy. It allowed the gay lobby to sanitize the sexual activities of two men. The public was never asked to think about what gay men actually do together. Grandma could picture her grandson cuddling on the sofa with his boyfriend, listening to showtunes.

I recall giving a talk at Stanford. In response to a question about “marriage equality,” I asked the student, “Is there any sexual act that would equally consummate the marriage of a male couple and a female couple and a man-woman couple?”

The student thought for a minute. This was a new thought for her. She probably couldn’t imagine anyone getting married who hadn’t already performed the act that normally consummates a marriage, long before they walked down the aisle.

She finally said, “Well, marriage doesn’t necessarily have to be a sexual relationship.” This is a tacit admission that there is no “equal” way of consummating these “marriages.”

Intrinsically sterile

Maybe avoiding “gay” was a good tactic at the time. But the marketing geniuses at Hello Fresh broke the tacit deal: What happens in the bedroom doesn’t stay in the bedroom. It was wishful thinking to believe that it would.

Decent people prefer to keep a discreet lid on discussions of sex. Unfortunately, the sexual revolutionaries — be they gay, straight, nonbinary, or whatever — can’t shut up about it.

The marital act between a man and a woman can bring forth new human life. The combination of oxytocin and vasopressin during sex creates bonds between the man and the woman.

Neither babies nor bonding are part of the gay sex equation. Gay sex is intrinsically sterile. Gay sex is gross.

There: I said it.

But don’t forget who brought it up first.

​Culture, Gay marriage, Lifestyle, Marriage debates, Obergefell decision, Parenthood, Proposition 8, Obergefell v. hodges, Family, Lgbt, Countering ‘pride’ 

A virulent anti-Trump critic did very poorly in the Democratic primary election for an open seat representing Manhattan, and the president didn’t hold back his mockery.

George Conway, ex-husband of former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, was a Republican political strategist before President Donald Trump won election in 2016. He has since become a fierce opponent of the president and even helped found the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump political organization.

‘This is a truly unattractive person, both inside and out. Have a nice life, George!’

None of that helped Conway in the primary race for New York’s 12th Congressional District, which had a crowded field of candidates that included a Kennedy scion.

“Wow, Mr. Kellyanne Conway, a Trump Deranged Loser at the highest level, is getting absolutely CRUSHED in the Primaries tonight,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social, referring to Conway’s defunct marriage.

“He’ll end up at about 5% of the vote in a rather weak field of young and aggressive Communists,” Trump added. “No wonder his ‘husband’ dumped him like a dog! This is a truly unattractive person, both inside and out. Have a nice life, George!”

The Conway campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Kellyanne Conway was a Republican strategist who was Trump’s campaign manager in 2016 and became a passionate supporter of his policies.

Kellyanne Conway left the Trump campaign just a few months ahead of the 2020 election. The Conways announced their divorce in March 2023 after two decades of marriage.

The primary election was called for New York state Assembly Member Micah Lasher, who garnered 39% of the vote with 87% of the ballots counted. Conway had gotten support from only 6% of the vote at that point.

Jack Kennedy Schlossberg, 33, also performed poorly despite carrying the Kennedy name — he received only about 11% of the vote.

RELATED: George Conway publicly chides Kellyanne Conway while she defends Trump

Lasher is a longtime Democrat who promised to “revamp and recharge the Democratic Party in Washington” after his victory.

He added that his goal was to show his party has “bold new ideas to improve the lives of struggling Americans and then deliver on them.”

Lasher will likely have an easy road to Congress, as two-thirds of the voters in the district are registered as Democrats.

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​Democratic primary, George conway, Kellyanne conway, New york, Politics 

While the Trump administration has seen some major pro-life wins, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is worried that the administration hasn’t made much headway on issues like the abortion pill.

“A lot of pro-lifers, myself included, are concerned about mifepristone continuing to circulate. Most abortions now are done via abortion pill. The FDA under Trump hasn’t reversed the Biden policy about mail-order abortions and mifepristone circulating,” Stuckey tells Vice President JD Vance.

“So can you tell us the latest on that front and if that’s going to change?” she asks.

“So the FDA has put this under review, and we’re well under review. I think the Wall Street Journal reported that it had just started. … And of course, I’m not going to prejudge the investigation, and I’m not going to tell anybody exactly what it will find because I don’t know what it will find,” Vance answers.

“We’re trying to be led by the science, and that’s also how you make sure this stuff is defensible once it will inevitably be challenged in court. I think, number two, that you know there are so many wins, not just in designating embryos as worthy of protection, but all of the foreign funding of abortion that grew up in the wake of the Biden administration — that was completely stopped,” he continues.

“We expanded the Mexico City policy, which cut down on the amount of foreign funding going to abortion services overseas,” he says, asking, “Why are American tax dollars funding abortions in other countries?”

“Also, the One Big Beautiful Bill mostly was a tax-cut legislation for working families. We’re obviously very proud of it, but it also meant that abortion providers would not get tax money in the United States of America either,” he continues.

“So,” he adds, “I think that there are a lot of wins to hang our hat on.”

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.

​Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, Jd vance, Donald trump, Pro-life, Abortion, Pill, Joe biden, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

The Democratic Party is undergoing a hostile takeover by democratic socialists — as evidenced in New York’s primaries on Tuesday where Democrat establishment-types suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of radicals cut from the same cloth as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

With over 90% of the votes in on Wednesday morning, incumbent Rep. Daniel Goldman trailed former NYC Comptroller Brad Lander 65.8% to 34% — a whopping 31.8 percentage points.

‘We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.’

Lander was endorsed by Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and the Working Families Party, and ran largely to the left of Goldman, heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.

Goldman — who was endorsed by AIPAC, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — did his apparent best to join his opponent, who is also Jewish, in criticizing Israel and virtue-signaling to radical would-be voters, but his best was nowhere near good enough.

After getting steamrolled at the ballot box, Goldman told supporters, “The voters of New York’s 10th Congressional District have spoken, and while this is certainly not the outcome I hoped for and worked so hard for, I respect their decision.”

RELATED: CNN data analyst stunned by Democratic Party’s takeover by Mamdani’s fellow travelers

Brad Lander and Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

President Donald Trump weighed in on Truth Social, writing, “Weak and pathetic Congressman Dan Goldman just lost, BIG! I guess people didn’t like him illegally targeting President TRUMP. In any event, this jerk is finally GONE!”

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the five-term Democrat who leads the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, also lost to a Mamdani-backed radical, democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier.

Chevalier is a black identitarian who co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a radical coalition that posted “death to America” on social media earlier this year; stated, “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization”; and asked for “community and instruction from militants in the Global South, who have been on the frontlines in the fight against tyranny and domination which undergird the imperialist world order.”

‘NEVER be a communist Country!’

In addition to her involvement with the international intifada, Chevalier helped advance the Columbia rape hoax and made headlines for advocating against all deportations, claiming, “Israel doesn’t exist,” and demanding a “world without prisons or police.” She was backed by Mamdani, the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, and Justice Democrats PAC.

With 88% of the votes in, Chevalier leads Espaillat — who enjoyed endorsements from Hochul, Jeffries, and New York Attorney General Letitia James — 49.4% to 45.9%.

Espaillat endorsed Mamdani for mayor last year.

Claire Valdez, a Mamdani-backed democratic socialist member of the New York State Assembly, won her primary race for Democratic incumbent Rep. Nydia Velazquez’s seat, beating the Democratic establishment’s apparent preference and Velazquez’s desired successor, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

Valdez campaigned on abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “demilitar[izing] the border,” making it easier for illegal aliens to gain lawful permanent residence, defunding Israel, and super-charging the “Green New Deal.” Like the other radicals, she also enjoyed support from Sanders, Justice Democrats PAC, and the DSA.

Following the Mamdani-backed candidates’ clean sweep, Trump wrote, “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a communist Country!”

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​Aipac, Dan goldman, Elizabeth warren, Hakeem jeffries, Zohran mamdani, Brad lander, Adriano espaillat, Democrats, Democratic socialist, New york, Primary, Election, Leftism, Israel, Claire valdez, Politics, Donald trump 

The Joe Biden years proved a hard truth: Lawfare works, and the right is far more vulnerable to it than the left.

Stacked judiciaries, activist allies, and unprincipled prosecutors all play their parts. But one factor matters above all others: money.

The left built a legal machine because it understood power. The right must build one because it understands what happens when power goes undefended.

Lawsuits are expensive. So are investigations, subpoenas, demand letters, bar complaints, defamation claims, and congressional inquiries. The left figured out that it could move political disputes into legal disputes and shift the fight to terrain overwhelmingly favorable to itself.

The cost is the punishment

The left has nearly conquered major law firm culture. Despite President Trump’s early executive orders aimed at changing that landscape, little has materially shifted. The left still enjoys a vast network of pro bono and donor-funded legal organizations ready to defend allies and pursue enemies.

Look no further than the nearly billion-dollar Southern Poverty Law Center, which has served as an investigative engine for government action against political opponents. That is one organ in a much larger ecosystem, and it dwarfs anything available on the right.

Similar efforts are already preparing for the possibility that Democrats win a House or Senate majority and then the presidency in 2028. If that happens, the right will return to the Biden years, with one key difference: The left views its earlier campaign as unfinished business. Its base believes Merrick Garland did not go far enough. Next time, they will.

The mere receipt of a congressional subpoena, demand letter, defamation claim, bar complaint, or federal investigative request can create legal bills that climb into the tens of thousands of dollars. Competent defense costs money, and the people most likely to become targets often cannot afford it.

The old model failed

During the Biden years, several noble efforts raised money for legal defense. But the old model had limits. A few senior-level individuals benefited from donor generosity. The money rarely reached the broader class of people caught in the machinery of political targeting.

The reason was simple: Lawyers are expensive.

I saw this firsthand. A friend of mine, a senior White House official in his early 30s who had not even been at the Capitol on January 6, received a subpoena from the January 6 committee and a not-so-friendly outreach from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was on his own.

Big lawyers charging big fees were representing bigger players. He received quotes he could never dream of affording just to deal with the investigation. For lack of a better term, he was pretty screwed.

RELATED: The left wants to put MAGA on the couch — then on trial

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I represented him pro bono and handled the January 6 committee and a daylong deposition. Weeks of prep and review went into the matter. Even discounted representation from a firm with relevant expertise would easily have cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The story has a happy ending. My friend now works at the FBI.

But that is one person and one story. My organization, the Oversight Project, does what it can to represent allies across the country caught in the crosshairs of weaponized targeting. Far more must be done before the next wave arrives.

Build the bench

The right needs to rethink legal defense. We can no longer hope to collect vast sums and spend them on a handful of high-priced outside lawyers. A serious movement needs a dedicated defense team.

The fundamental problem is cost. The model cannot depend on hourly fees that crest above $1,000.

The left has built a corps of highly paid attorneys who handle matters ranging from major lawsuits to symbolic complaints over reflecting pools or the naming of the Kennedy Center. Its financiers will pay lawyers to sue constantly and defend constantly.

The right has the opposite problem. It must accept that reality and build the equivalent of a nonprofit public defense network.

That may seem unfair to right-leaning lawyers who deserve the million-dollar paydays available in the left-wing ecosystem. But a serious political movement must be able to sustain itself by defending itself.

The conservative ecosystem needs major structural reform. Policy shops, communications firms, advocacy groups, and convening organizations all have value. But the movement has too much of that compared with the infrastructure needed to gain and maintain power.

A legal defense unit is one of those structural necessities.

A ‘public defender’ for lawfare

What would a public-defender equivalent for political allies on the right look like?

The current model concentrates money in legal defense funds that serve a few high-profile defendants and a few expensive, well-credentialed lawyers. The better model would create permanent, full-time attorneys working on salary inside a nonprofit structure to defend more people at lower cost.

Some cases will still require outside counsel or a hybrid approach. But the goal should be to build, credential, and develop a specialized legal bench equipped to handle lawfare.

RELATED: Republicans took ICE hostage — then bragged about saving it

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That bench should also reap the political rewards the so-called conservative legal movement has long monopolized: prominent appointments, elected office, and leadership positions. The days of prestigious Big Law careers converting automatically into prestigious political patronage should end unless they include acts of sacrifice and service to the broader cause.

Defense efforts should prioritize those most in need: ICE officers, mid-level political appointees, local officials, young staffers, activists, and others without meaningful financial resources.

The effort must also maintain integrity. Resources should go only to cases that can honestly be characterized as political weaponization. A legal-defense network cannot become a mechanism for defraying the costs of white-collar crime, contract solicitation, self-dealing, or financial misconduct.

This is not about shielding wrongdoing. It is about ensuring that actual ethical violations, not political speech or service to conservative causes, trigger professional consequences.

Change the incentives

When one side can impose costs without meaningful pushback, it will keep doing so. When the other side develops the institutional ability to absorb those costs and impose consequences in return, the incentive structure changes.

A public-defender-style legal network would create in-house capacity for rapid-response representation when subpoenas, bar complaints, investigations, or lawsuits strike. It would develop specialized expertise in constitutional, administrative, ethics, and First Amendment defenses tailored to political attacks. It would coordinate a nationwide roster of aligned counsel rather than leaving every target to negotiate alone with expensive firms.

Most important, it would operate on a charitable model that directs resources to the most vulnerable clients — the people who would otherwise be destroyed before the real fight even begins.

The left built a legal machine because it understood power. The right must build one because it understands what happens when power goes undefended.

​Big law, Democrats, Donors, Fbi, January 6, Justice department, Lawfare, Legal defense, Opinion & analysis, Pro bono, Public defender, Weaponization of government