Category: blaze media

Democratic Texas state Rep. Jolanda Jones warned over the summer that James Talarico was not doing enough to win black votes for the upcoming midterms.

Just weeks before Election Day, his campaign may lose even more ground with black and Hispanic voters, potentially dooming Democrats’ efforts to seize control of the Senate from Republicans.

‘Talarico needs to pay for us to get our voters out. Only then does Talarico have a chance to win.’

James Talarico’s U.S. Senate campaign in Texas ran into problems from the very beginning when he defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) for the Democratic nomination. Crockett suggested that black voters in Texas are not excited about Talarico.

Now his campaign has given critics an opening to accuse the woke candidate of ignoring both blacks and Hispanics.

On Monday, a black voter outreach event at the Central Texas African American Civic Engagement Symposium was canceled, just a week after Talarico did not appear in person for an event with the U.S. Hispanic Business Council in South Texas.

Talarico attended the Hispanic event virtually, claiming to be too ill to be there in person.

“I was looking forward to being down in the Valley,” he said on Wednesday. “I’ve been talking about it all week. I was ready to eat my favorite quesabirria tacos, but I was starting to feel kind of under the weather a few days ago. And last night, it got so bad that I went to urgent care here in Dallas.”

Afterward, critics pounced on the campaign.

“James Talarico is either taking black voters for granted or giving up on them altogether,” said Zach Kraft, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, in a statement to the Daily Wire. “Either way, Talarico’s attempt to heal his relationship with black voters is simply mediocre.”

In August, an embittered Crockett pointed out that Republicans were not spending in the race as if they believed that Talarico had a chance to win.

“I watch money. When I look at the money, if Republicans start spending money in Texas, then I’ll be convinced,” she said at the time.

Texas PAC, partially funded by the Republican-linked Senate Leadership Fund, has since reserved $117 million for ads for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Talarico’s Republican opponent, Punchbowl News reported in late September.

RELATED: ‘He’s been lying to voters’: Paxton BEATS DOWN Talarico over alleged election fraud

“I look at where does the NRSC stand? Where does DSCC stand? Right now, neither one are investing, which tells me that their internals are saying the same thing,” she added. “So it looks like status quo.”

That criticism fits with Jones’ warning in July to the Talarico campaign. She said the campaign was paying for “white infrastructure and Hispanic infrastructure” to get out the vote, but not for black infrastructure.

“Talarico needs to pay for us to get our voters out. Only then does Talarico have a chance to win,” she said at the time.

The Talarico campaign was also embarrassed when it was caught last week pushing a video about a “huge crowd” of Talarico supporters “in deep-red Lubbock, Texas.” However, the video was taken in February, not October.

While polling shows a very tight race between Talarico and Paxton, the Democrat has been getting constantly hammered over his extremist comments and ties.

Early voting in Texas begins October 19.

You can check out the latest polling average between Paxton and Talarico, plus race trends and other helpful data at Blaze News’ Poll Watch.

Texas Senate polls 2026: Talarico vs. Paxton

Texas Senate polls 2026: Talarico vs. Paxton pollwatch.theblaze.com

Every public poll of the 2026 Texas Senate race, James Talarico (D) vs. Ken Paxton (R), and the Blaze polling average. From Blaze News.

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​James talarico, Black vote, Us senate, Ken paxton, Texas, Politics 

Nikole Hannah-Jones had a choice: send her daughter to one of New York’s best schools or enroll her in a struggling school that aligned with her beliefs about race.

According to BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock, the decision she made says everything.

Despite having the means to give her daughter the best education, the “1619 Project” creator chose to send her daughter to a low-performing Brooklyn public school.

“Nikole Hannah-Jones had the money to send her daughter to one of the best schools in New York. She chose a failing one on purpose, and her daughter paid the price. That is the whole story,” Whitlock says.

“And her own long explanation in the New York Times Magazine only makes it clearer and worse. Nikole Hannah-Jones’ own parents made the opposite choice for her. They lived in Iowa. They put her on a bus in second grade out of a segregated neighborhood into a school where learning was expected,” he continues.

“That bus ride carried her to Notre Dame, to North Carolina, to the New York Times. They chose the best experience for their child. Nikole Hannah-Jones chose the black experience for hers,” he adds.

Her daughter, Najya, was enrolled at PS307 in Brooklyn, which Whitlock describes as a “low-income segregated school that matched her mother’s beliefs about justice.”

Her decision, he argues, reveals that Jones chose racial idolatry over her daughter.

“She turned her daughter into a sacrifice to a race war she built in her own mind. Send my child into dysfunction to prove integration can work if good families just believe. Help lift the collective even if my own child sinks,” he explains.

“Scripture never asks that of a parent. A parent protects the child in front of him, not the idea in his head,” he says. “She even admits she thought family privilege would protect Najya from what she calls dysfunction and malpractice. That is an admission she knew what the building was.”

“You do not send a child you love into malpractice and dysfunction and hope status saves her,” he continues. “Love picks a better room.”

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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

​Daughter, Jason whitlock, New york times, Nikole hannahjones, Race, Blazetv show 

The AI space race is under way as Google officially launched the first AI data center into orbit with some help from SpaceX — sort of. Project Suncatcher is a small satellite equipped with data center components, like Google’s custom Tensor Processing Units, assembled to see if AI can survive the brutal vacuum of space.

Elon Musk has big dreams for the cosmos. Earlier this year, he famously unveiled plans to colonize the moon with the first-ever lunar city, dubbed Moonbase Alpha. Once established, it would become a launchpad for other galactic endeavors, including the first manned mission to Mars and orbital data centers meant to power AI platforms on Earth down below.

Ultimately, Google wants to find out if its TPUs can survive sustained radiation without hardware failures.

At the time, Google’s AI space ambitions were merely a footnote, with CEO Sundar Pichai stating, “We’ll send tiny, tiny racks of machines, and have them in satellites, test them out, and then start scaling from there.” The goal for this test project was originally 2027, but Google jumped ahead by putting its first data center into orbit on October 1.

Ironically, Project Suncatcher was ushered to space on a ridesharing mission led by SpaceX. A Falcon 9 rocket — the same that will eventually take mankind to the moon to build Moonbase Alpha and establish Musk’s space data center empire — ultimately delivered Google’s satellite safely to its destination.

The mission was deemed a success, and Project Suncatcher is currently collecting data to transmit back to Google.

RELATED: The truth about how AI data centers affect local communities

Matthew Fowler/Getty Images

When diving into why AI innovators want to put data centers into space, the benefits are clear. According to a peer-reviewed report by Google, the sun generates a staggering 100 trillion times more power than every electrical grid around the world combined. In comparison, space has near-infinite power that can sustain a multitude of data centers without taking energy away from local communities or even each other. This alone is enough to spur spacefaring AI research.

The second goal is to see how well data center components hold up in space. The great void beyond Earth’s atmosphere is teeming with radiation. In fact, there are two types of radiation to consider: Ionizing radiation consists of electromagnetic waves with the power to separate electrons from atoms and molecules in everything they touch. In short, they can wreak havoc on computer systems, processing chips, and other components, all leading to a mass hardware failure. Non-ionizing radiation, on the other hand, is less powerful and cannot separate electrons from atoms or molecules, though it can still be harmful in some situations.

Google wants to find out if its TPUs can survive sustained radiation without hardware failures. So far, artificial tests here on Earth suggest Google TPUs can withstand up to five years of space-level radiation before failure, resulting in a replacement. The only way to know for sure, though, is to measure their performance in real space conditions.

Third, Google is testing a flight system that guides a cluster of AI data center satellites orbiting together instead of one giant data center. The peer-reviewed paper calls them “satellite constellations.” Smaller, modular satellite clusters will ultimately be easier to deploy, maintain, and update as each satellite can be repositioned or pulled from orbit at any time without affecting the other satellites in the fleet.

Ultimately, Project Suncatcher is a stress test to see if space-bound data centers are viable. Google will spend the next several weeks gathering data. If all goes well, we could have functioning AI data centers in orbit by the early to mid-2030s.

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​Ai data center, Electrical grid, Elon musk, Google, Mars mission, Spacex, Sundar pichai, Tech 

Liberal activists are saying the Republicans are looking to perform a smash-and-grab with the 2026 midterm elections in the night.

Actor Mark Ruffalo made his honest and unironic theory clear on Sunday: Republicans are going to do “everything in their power” to steal the election.

‘Let the process happen. We have been doing this a long time.’

Hulk hands

Activists gathered in New York City at the “Hands Off Our Vote” event, which kicked off with a lengthy land acknowledgement to recognize the activists’ efforts of the past.

About 30 minutes into the event, Ruffalo took the stage to send a sage warning to the audience: The 2026 midterms are a “big, big deal.”

Ruffalo said that even though “we all know that we’re going to kick their asses,” referring to Republicans, the GOP was still intending to steal the election.

“But we all know they’re going to steal it,” Ruffalo continued. “They’re going to do everything in their power, and it isn’t going to be over the night we all win. It’s going to take all of us after that, staying together, remaining hopeful, remaining strong.”

Ruffalo was singing a different tune during the 2020 presidential election, though. Viewers immediately pointed to his past remarks on X, where he told President Trump at the time to “let the process happen.”

Trump was complaining about Republican leads that “one by one” started to “magically disappear” over night.

Ruffalo replied by saying “it’s not strange” and that it was simply a matter of mail-in and absentee ballots being counted “during a pandemic.”

“We haven’t finished counting the votes. Be patient. There are millions of uncounted ballots. Let the process happen. We have been doing this a long time,” he added.

In 2026, however, Ruffalo decried that not only is the election not safe, but it is now under threat of cyberattack from none other than Elon Musk.

RELATED: Ryan Reynolds says the 1980s were a traumatic and ‘brutal time’ — and people aren’t happy about it

Stop the squeal

Republicans and President Trump have tried to “suppress and disrupt the vote” of the election, Ruffalo claimed, before warning that citizens “need to be on guard for what we may not see coming,” meaning Musk.

“That’s the cybersecurity of these elections. And while I’m not an expert, I’ve been talking to experts. And the one thing I’ve heard repeatedly is that there is a vulnerability of the votes when they’re transferred from the polling places to the county headquarters and then to the states.”

Ruffalo went on to say that the way to fight fraudulent counts was to make sure each polling station and county headquarters are keeping their own tallies before transferring them on to the next level.

According to NBC News, most votes are already tabulated by local and regional headquarters before the totals are passed on to media outlets and research centers.

Ruffalo’s election integrity advice seemed to end there, and he quickly turned his speech into jabs at the president.

RELATED: GRAVE ‘DIGGER’: Will Tom Cruise’s $100 million eco-flop bury Warner Bros.?

Pete Kiehart/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Avenger’s endgame

“We gotta get this dumbass, fool-ass, tired-ass, lame-ass, duck-ass out of office. We got to make him a lame duck! We have to stop his policies now. Another two years of this, and who knows what he’ll be doing? He’s calling to throw Democrats out of the country. And he means it!” Ruffalo continued.

For his part in suggesting the election could be compromised, other readers noted that Ruffalo once said that Trump doubting the election results was an affront to a peaceful transition.

“When Donald casts doubt on this election his throwing out generations of the peaceful transition of power,” Ruffalo allegedly wrote. “His brand is chaos. He is afraid to lose.”

On Sunday, Ruffalo asserted that while the president is a “dumbass,” he is simultaneously capable of enacting great harm on the American people. He concluded: “They’re going to try and stop us from taking our country back, and we’re not going to let ’em. Trump, we’re not letting you! Hands off our f**king vote!”

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​Mark ruffalo, President trump, 2020 election, 2026 midterms, Entertainment 

Weeks after her office published a guide reminding migrants not to rape children, U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood suggested that some foreigners cannot even wait until reaching British shores to begin raping vulnerable people.

The home secretary made this damning admission in an interview that aired the day after English police basically locked down an entire coastal town in order to neutralize protests over the arrival of yet another ship carrying nearly 150 illegal aliens.

‘Our country is falling apart.’

Foreign rapists

Mahmood, the Muslim daughter of Pakistani migrants, admitted in an interview with “The Rest Is Politics” that aired on Monday that foreign gangs effectively control the flow of illegal aliens from Northern France, not the U.K.

“You can almost guarantee that every woman that’s in the north of France has probably been raped along the journey. Some of the men, too. They’ve certainly been abused and threatened,” continued Mahmood. “Like that is not the model that should decide whether somebody gets to come to the U.K., make this their place of sanctuary, and ultimately become one of us, right? We should be deciding that.”

According to a 2021 United Nations Women report, migrant girls and women experience violence “at all stages of migration” — not only at the hands of human traffickers and family members but at the hands of other migrants as well.

Last month, for instance, Spanish police arrested a trio of illegal migrants who allegedly gang-raped a fellow migrant on their way from Morocco to one of the Canary Islands controlled by Spain, reported the Express (U.K.).

RELATED: What is anarcho-tyranny? Modern Britain gives a disturbing glimpse of our future.

Oli Scarff/Getty Images; Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Despite claiming that Britons should decide who comes into their country and highlighting the problem of rape among the inbound migrants, Mahmood — a committed “part of the pro-Palestinian cause” — suggested that the U.K. has an obligation to bring in more refugees in order to “do right by, you know, the people of the world.”

Silencing criticism

Data from the Home Office shows that eight boats carrying 609 illegal aliens landed on British shores on Monday; five boats carrying 418 illegal aliens arrived on Sunday; two ships carrying 164 illegal aliens arrived on Saturday, and one ship carrying 91 illegal aliens arrived on Friday.

One boat was apparently having trouble crossing the English Channel, so the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and a French vessel lent the 149 would-be trespassers a hand and brought them ashore at Gosport on Sunday evening, reported the BBC.

This did not sit well with the people of the maritime town, including Donna Jones, the Conservative candidate for mayor of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Jones called on Mahmood “to intervene urgently, to ensure that UK Border Force has the capacity and vessels to transfer people on the water to Dover.”

“No sites across the southern coastline of Britain should be used as ‘landing sites,'” continued Jones. “We are not equipped and we do not have the resources to keep policing this.”

George Madgwick, a Reform U.K. member of the Hampshire County Council, shared footage showing locals shouting, “Send them back,” as the boats carrying the illegal aliens pulled into port.

“It’s heartbreaking because Portsmouth Harbour is the home of the Royal Navy. It’s our nation[‘]s pride and joy,” wrote Madgwick. “And we are allowing an invasion of foreign nationals in through the same waters[.] With the Hasler detention centre due to open next year to house up to 600 [migrants] at one time this area is likely to be a hot bed for future arrivals and I’m just lost for words.”

Madgwick added, “Our country is falling apart. Most normal people with common sense can see it clear as day. These people aren’t far right thugs. They are normal people who can see how bad things are getting and want to be heard.”

Observing that locals and Britons from further afield were mounting a protest, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary — the same police force whose officers disregarded the dying pleas of Henry Nowak, the English teen whom a Sikh thug murdered, then accused of racism in December — decided to effectively lock down the town.

RELATED: Diversity is our strength? Britain has to remind migrants: Don’t rape kids

Hampshire police announced on Sunday, “We have deployed officers to the area to support our partners in the event of an emergency at sea, and to facilitate peaceful protest. To ensure the safety of our local communities as well as those who may wish to protest, we are making use of a variety of police powers.”

In addition to prohibiting face coverings, empowering officers to “remove any items being used to conceal [a protester’s] identity,” and isolating protesters in a parking lot, Hampshire police said that a dispersal order was in effect in Gosport until 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Under the order, police had the authority to “order a person to leave the area with no return within a specified time period.”

Despite the threat of arrest and being treated like cattle, hundreds of Britons turned out to protest while the illegal aliens were bussed out of town. At least 12 people were arrested, and one man has been charged with “failing to comply with a prohibited assembly direction.”

Conservative MP Dame Caroline Dinenage condemned the de facto lockdown, noting in a letter on Monday to Mahmood, “Last night many residents were left feeling vulnerable, some felt trapped in their houses, with emergency services at risk of being over-stretched, and some local roads barricaded by the police. This also impacted local businesses, which were forced to close for the evening.”

“Moreover, the decision to disembark the boat in the Gosport area sends a clear message to people-smuggling gangs, indicating that this is a viable new route, and this simply cannot be allowed to happen.”

Zia Yusuf, the spokesman for Reform U.K., called Gosport “the latest ground zero for the invasion of Britain” and stated, “Please stop calling them ‘small boats.’ The vessel that landed in Gosport carried almost enough invaders to fill an Airbus A321. Nobody would describe that as a ‘small plane.’ Terrorists and murderers are being welcomed by Labour.”

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​Shabana mahmood, Britain, Immigration, Asylum seeker, Rape, England, Politics 

The protagonist of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel “Lullaby” investigates an ancient African poem so powerful it has the ability to kill anyone who hears it spoken aloud. I’ve never had quite that reaction to a work of literature. There is, however, one word that sends my blood pressure high enough that it may yet finish the job: reparations.

Yes, the West Indies are rattling the change jar again, pursuing reparations from Britain that one prominent estimate puts at £18.8 trillion — roughly six times the U.K.’s annual GDP.

If we are going to do this consistently, North African states might be presented with a bill for the Barbary slave raids on Europeans. Scandinavians can cough up for the Vikings.

Caribbean governments are escalating their campaign to make Britain pay reparations for slavery. At the Third CARICOM Regional Conference on Reparations in Barbados last month, Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley told attendees it was time to move beyond advocacy and build a specific, “evidence-based case” for reparatory justice.

Just asking

The campaign is no longer merely rhetorical. CARICOM has adopted a revised Ten-Point Plan calling for measures, including debt cancellation, public health and education programs, cultural development, and monetary compensation. Regional leaders are also exploring legal routes to pressure Britain into negotiations.

Jamaica has gone furthest. In September, its government petitioned King Charles — in his capacity as Jamaica’s head of state — to refer three questions concerning slavery to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Jamaica’s highest court. The petition asks, among other things, whether Britain has an obligation to provide restitution for slavery and its continuing consequences.

The Jamaican government has stressed that the petition itself contains no monetary claim. Charles nevertheless agreed to refer the questions to the Privy Council, giving the reparations campaign precisely the legal hearing its architects wanted.

Gold into a grave

Here we go again.

You cannot financially compensate someone who died 200 years ago. Attempting to correct centuries-old injustice by redistributing wealth from people who never enslaved anyone to people who have never been slaves is economically illiterate and morally absurd. Reparations are the equivalent of throwing gold into a grave — an act of submission, a meaningless gesture meant to extract wealth and absolve white guilt.

There is also the obvious problem of deciding who owes whom.

Should Britain eventually pay some form of collective compensation to Caribbean states, black tax-paying citizens of the U.K. would be among those footing the bill. Meanwhile, plenty of people in both Britain and the Caribbean have ancestries that refuse to cooperate with the tidy racial categories reparations politics requires.

Some descendants of slaves also have slave-owning ancestors. Some Africans were enslaved by other Africans. Kingdoms including Dahomey and the Ashanti Empire captured and sold people from rival societies into the Atlantic trade.

But why waste time with nuance when you can slap an invoice on the nearest white guy whose long-dead relatives navigated the Atlantic?

Litigating ghosts

And therein lies the problem. Identity politics has trained us to view slavery almost exclusively through the racial dynamic of the transatlantic trade. That trade was monstrous, but slavery was hardly its invention. Africans enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved fellow Asians. For centuries, slave traders operated across North Africa, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean world.

The Omani Sultanate made Zanzibar (now Tanzania) one of East Africa’s great slave-trading centers. Millions of Africans across Central and East Africa endured capture and forced migration through the wider slave-and-ivory trade, with victims marched to the coast and many sent through Zanzibar to plantations or onward to Arabia, Persia, India, and elsewhere.

When did you last hear a serious campaign demanding reparations from Oman?

Any form of “reparative justice” must eventually encounter a statute of limitations. Otherwise, we end up in an infinite regress: litigating ghosts, assigning inherited guilt and putting the morality of long-dead civilizations on trial.

If we are going to do this consistently, North African states might be presented with a bill for the Barbary slave raids on Europeans. Scandinavians can cough up for the Vikings.

Or we can go further back and charge the Italians, whose Roman ancestors under Emperor Claudius put my ancestors to work building roads and forts.

RELATED: The long defeat: What William Wilberforce can teach American Christians

Jim Dyson/Getty Images

Making up for it

The British expended significant blood and treasure suppressing the slave trade after abolition. Parliament had already committed £20 million (roughly £2 billion in today’s money — about $2.6 billion — and equivalent to around 40% of annual government expenditure at the time) to compensate slave owners for the loss of their “property.”

The government had to borrow heavily to finance the compensation, and much of that borrowing was later folded into other liabilities. A government bond containing some of the original slavery-compensation obligation was not finally paid off until 2015.

The Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron, meanwhile, spent more than half a century hunting slave ships along the African coast. It captured roughly 1,600 vessels and liberated around 150,000 Africans.

The posting was notoriously brutal. West Africa was known among Europeans as the “White Man’s Grave,” where malaria, yellow fever, and dysentery killed sailors far more readily than combat. Thousands of British sailors died while serving on the station, most from tropical disease, as the squadron continued intercepting slave ships in some of the harshest conditions in the Royal Navy.

Against that history, the latest reparations estimate is breathtaking. Former International Court of Justice judge Patrick Robinson helped produce a calculation putting Britain’s liability at roughly £18 trillion — a sum that would lock the country into debt for generations.

Ongoing problem

Speaking of debt bondage, the International Labour Organization estimates that nearly 50 million people are living in modern slavery today — 28 million in forced labor and another 22 million in forced marriages.

Meanwhile, UNICEF has estimated that roughly 40,000 children — some as young as 7 — work in mines across southern Congo, many of them in the cobalt trade. Some labor underground in poorly reinforced tunnels where collapses can kill or maim them — digging minerals that feed the global battery supply chain so climate zealots in L.A. can drive around in virtue-signaling eco cars.

Where are the reparations for them?

Endless chain

When it comes to historical grievance and perpetual victimhood, two can play that game.

Jamaica spent centuries flooding Britain with rum. By the late 18th century, Jamaican distillers were shipping millions of gallons a year across the Atlantic, supplying nearly 90% of Britain’s imported rum. Think of the alcoholism. The cirrhosis. The drunken fistfights. The regrettable tattoos. Perhaps Britain should send Kingston the bill.

Absurd? Of course. That is the point. History is an endless chain of conquest, exploitation, migration, cultural exchange, brutality, and inheritance. Follow the logic of collective ancestral liability far enough and everybody eventually becomes both plaintiff and defendant.

Mottley herself is a formidable example of the ambiguity the reparations movement prefers to flatten. She attended Queen’s College in Barbados, one of the island’s oldest elite schools — a distinctly British colonial inheritance, founded in 1883 to provide an education modeled on Britain’s leading institutions. From there, she went to the London School of Economics.

Now she leads a movement that puts education and public instruction at the center of its reparations program, alongside demands for money, debt relief, and other forms of redress.

King Charles, meanwhile, is preparing for another Caribbean trip and Commonwealth summit this autumn, where Buckingham Palace says he will again acknowledge Britain’s role in slavery but will not issue an apology. The British government continues to reject paying reparations.

Good.

There is nothing wrong with studying slavery, mourning its victims, or acknowledging the wealth and institutions it helped create. But if Caribbean governments want to put a price tag on that history, Britain should answer with some history of its own.

​Abolition of slavery, Africans, Barbary slave raids, Britain, Dahomey, Jamaica, Reparations, Slavery, Transatlantic slave trade, Letter from the uk, Caribbean 

On Friday, Blaze News exclusively reported on the circumstances regarding the firing of a young operative by the Indiana Republican Party. That operative, Paul Tinkle, was fired last week for flashing the “OK” sign in a picture posted to social media. He was rehired by the state party on Monday after the Blaze News report.

Tinkle has worked on Republican politics since he was 16. After teaching in Japan for three years, where the “OK” sign is a common gesture when being photographed, he returned to manage volunteers for the Indiana State GOP.

‘I want to personally apologize to Paul for jumping to a conclusion that was not supported by the facts.’

His firing and rehiring quickly became a social media firestorm. Blaze News exclusively reported on Friday that Hamilton County GOP Chair Mario Massillamany allegedly played an outsized role in Tinkle’s firing, according to Tinkle’s supervisors.

“I was not instrumental in getting him fired,” Massillamany told Blaze News on Friday. “I have had nothing to do with firing him.”

“I did not know what his sign was,” Massillamany said.

Other sources contradicted Massillamany’s version of events to Blaze News.

“Mario thinks you dropped a white power symbol and no one will be able to convince him otherwise,” a supervisor told Tinkle just prior to his termination, one text obtained by Blaze News showed.

On Monday morning, Indiana Republican Party Chairwoman Lana Keesling admitted that she made a mistake by firing Tinkle and accepted responsibility for the move many saw as unjustified.

“I am glad to share that Paul Tinkle will be returning to his position with the Indiana Republican Party. After learning more about the situation, it became clear that I did not have the full picture,” Keesling said in a statement posted to X. “I made the wrong decision regarding Paul’s employment, and I take full responsibility for it. I want to personally apologize to Paul for jumping to a conclusion that was not supported by the facts.”

RELATED: Exclusive: Republican operative fired after flashing “OK” sign speaks out

Courtesy of Paul Joseph Tinkle; used with permission

Tinkle told Blaze News that he is just glad to get back to work as the November midterms approach.

“I would like everyone to unify around our wonderful candidates, especially Max Engling. I want to thank the countless Hoosier officials who stood up for me, especially: Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith, Representative Andrew Ireland, state Senate candidate Trevor De Vries, and County Councilman Brandon Harnish,” Tinkle said. “I also want to thank our Governor Mike Braun for his great service and for getting this all fixed.”

“Last but not least, I want to thank all the wonderful folks at Turning Point for their help,” Tinkle said. “I look forward to working with them in the future.”

The Indiana State GOP did not respond to a request for comment.

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​Censors, Fired, Japan, Mistake, Social media, Politics 

With Election Day less than a month away, keeping up with the midterm elections can mean sifting through a constant stream of polls, headlines, and competing narratives.

That’s why Blaze Media created Poll Watch — a new destination designed to streamline the process of following the races that matter to you.

Poll Watch brings Senate, governor, and House races together in one place, giving you a straightforward way to follow polling and see how races are shaping up as Election Day approaches.

Track more than 200 races in one place

Instead of jumping between different polling sites and news stories, Poll Watch puts the races together in one centralized destination.

The platform features more than 2,000 polls across 200+ races, covering major Senate, governor, and House contests.

Whether you’re following a competitive race across the country or keeping a close eye on an election closer to home, Poll Watch makes it easier to find the information you’re looking for.

See the Blaze polling average

Individual polls can tell part of the story, but a single survey can also be an outlier.

Poll Watch provides a Blaze News polling average designed to put individual polls into context. The average is calculated transparently and updated throughout the day as new polling becomes available.

The goal is simple: Give readers another way to look at the available polling data without having to interpret every individual survey in isolation.

And there’s an important distinction to keep in mind: Poll Watch shows polling averages, not predictions. Rather than telling you what will happen on Election Day, Poll Watch provides polling data so you can see where the races stand based on the information currently available.

Follow the elections in your state

National races can dominate election coverage, but many of the most consequential contests are happening closer to home.

Poll Watch includes a map that makes it easy to find major elections in your state. It’s a quick way to see which Senate, House, and governor races are on the ballot and follow the contests that matter most to you.

Create your own watch list

Because everyone follows elections differently, Poll Watch lets you customize the experience with the My Races feature. Star the races you want to follow and build a personal watch list of the contests you care about most. Your selected races are available across your devices, and you are able to see when new polling comes in. That means you can spend less time searching for updates and more time following the races themselves.

Poll Watch is included with your Blaze News subscription

Poll Watch is included at no additional cost for Blaze News, BlazeTV+, and Blaze Unlimited subscribers.

There’s no separate purchase or upgrade required. Simply sign in using the same email associated with your Blaze subscription. If you’re already signed in to TheBlaze.com, you can get started right away.

With Election Day approaching, Poll Watch offers a single place to keep track of the races, polling, and elections you care about most.

Start tracking the midterms with Poll Watch today.

Not a subscriber? Join today and get $40 off a BlazeTV+ annual subscription with code POLLWATCH40.

​2026 midterm election, Poll watch, Blaze media, Blaze news 

Two gun-toting males entered a Philadelphia corner store late last month and got violent with a store employee who couldn’t open a safe — and disgusted neighbors are fed up.

Police said two suspects entered Diaz Grocery at 1501 North 29th Street around 4 p.m. Sept. 29 while a third suspect kept watch outside.

‘I come here all the time, every day. Whoever’s around here that’s doing that, you should just chill out. … we’re not living like that no more.’

The suspects produced handguns, announced a robbery, and forced the victims to a rear stockroom, where they demanded access to a safe, police said.

Marianny Hernandez, a store employee, told WTXF-TV that her uncle and cousin were working in the store at the time, and the suspects wanted the “password for the safe” — but the workers didn’t know it, so one of the suspects resorted to “hitting my uncle.”

Police said one suspect pistol-whipped the store owner in the face, resulting in a large cut under the victim’s eye. Police said the suspects were unable to access the safe, after which the front point of sale area was ransacked, and they fled eastbound on West Jefferson Street with the victim’s keys, phone, and about $7,000 cash.

RELATED: Deadly shoot-out between off-duty cop and male who pistol-whipped him caught on police dashcam video

Police gave the following descriptions of the two suspects who entered the store:

Suspect #1: Black male, 25 to 30 years old, KMSL hooded sweatshirt and Sprayground backpack, armed with a black handgun.Suspect #2: Black male, 17 to 20 years old, ear-length twists/braids, black/white Spiderman backpack, armed with a black handgun.

Hernandez told WTXF that since the robbery, she and the other store workers are “watching the cameras 24/7,” along with “every weird car” that shows up, and if people enter the store wearing masks, “we tell them to take them off.”

Conchita Bradley told the station that the violent store robbery is “real sad and very scary because I could’ve been in there, I could’ve sent my granddaughter to the store, and she could’ve gotten caught in there.”

An unnamed man added to WTXF that he’s a regular at Diaz Grocery — and he has a message for the violent crooks: “I come here all the time, every day. Whoever’s around here that’s doing that, you should just chill out. … we’re not living like that no more, like, go get a job.”

Police added that if you see these suspects, do not approach them — instead contact 911 immediately. To submit a tip via telephone, dial 215-686-TIPS (8477) or use this electronic form to submit a tip anonymously. Police said all tips will be confidential.

Police also said that those who have information about this crime or these suspects should contact the Central Detective Division at 215-686-3047/3048.

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​Armed robbery, Philadelphia, Suspects at large, Pistol whipped, Physical attack, Crime 

The Pentagon wants you to watch the skies … again.

Last month, the War Department published a sixth release of declassified and historical files related to UAPs, while the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office continues to publish military footage of UAPs. Some cases have explanations. Others remain unresolved because of insufficient data.

Most of the people getting excited about ‘aliens’ have spent their entire lives being taught that nonhuman spiritual beings don’t exist at all.

“Unresolved” does not necessarily mean extraterrestrial. It does mean, however, that Christians should stop laughing at the question.

This wheel’s on fire

The Bible never says humanity is alone. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture speaks of intelligent beings who are not human. Some serve God; others rebel against Him. Today, though some may call them “aliens,” changing the label does not change what they are.

Job 38:7 says that at creation, “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” These heavenly beings existed before humanity and were not originally from Earth.

Western art often depicts angels as harmless babies or ordinary humans with bird wings, but biblical angels look very different. The original Hebrew mal’akh and Greek angelos mean “messenger” and are used to describe what these beings do, not everything they are.

Daniel described a heavenly being with a face like lightning, eyes like flaming torches, and limbs like burnished bronze. Ezekiel’s cherubim came with wheels within wheels covered in eyes. And Isaiah’s seraphim, the “burning ones,” were adorned with six wings each. If someone who rejected Scripture saw such a spiritual being today, what would they call it? Likely an alien or a god.

As Paul says in Ephesians 6, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. The idea of the unseen realm is not a modern conspiracy theory. Rather, it has always been part of the biblical worldview.

Deities … or demons?

Ancient archaeology provides another connection. Mesopotamian traditions from Eridu speak of the apkallu, sages associated with the age before the Flood. They were given the role of bringing knowledge to humanity. Centuries later, Assyrian palaces at Nimrud displayed human and eagle-headed winged figures connected with these sages. At Nimrud and Nineveh, enormous lamassu, which are human-headed winged bulls or lions, guarded royal thresholds. Ancient texts also speak of the Anunnaki, a group of powerful deities.

Now put these figures next to Ezekiel’s description. He describes each cherub as having four faces at once: a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. The apkallu looked like a human body under an eagle’s head and wings. The lamassu combined a human head with the winged body of a bull or lion. These same features keep showing up in Ezekiel’s description of a similar being.

This doesn’t prove the carvings are exact portraits of cherubim, but the resemblance is too striking to ignore. These cultures may have been deceived by real spiritual beings, represented them in their images, and worshiped the creation rather than the Creator. These artifacts show that early people were already telling stories about nonhuman beings, sacred knowledge, and contact between heaven and earth.

The biblical writers didn’t treat these pagan gods as harmless myths. Both Deuteronomy 32:17 and 1 Corinthians 10:20 say the sacrifices pagan societies offered were made to demons. That’s a different claim than what most people assume today, where the old gods get filed away as folklore.

But swinging too far the other direction causes its own problems, and Christians shouldn’t assume every strange light is a demon. A UAP could be a balloon, a drone, an aircraft, classified technology, a natural event, a hoax, or a simple misperception. Some encounters may still involve spiritual deception too. Christians should test the evidence and test the spirits.

RELATED: This little-known fact changes everything about Jonah and the whale

Blaze Media

The coming darkness

This connection between the pre-Flood world, ancient cities, and rebellious spiritual powers is one reason we wrote our biblical fantasy novel “Lightborn: Dawn of Darkness.” This world is not separate from what we see happening today. The novel explores where this spiritual rebellion began and imagines the ancient world behind the biblical account.

Archaeology shows that ancient civilizations believed in powerful nonhuman beings and worshipped them as gods. Scripture reveals the darker spiritual reality at play. These fallen spirits did not simply disappear along with the ancient world. They continued to influence people and nations, and that spiritual deception will play an important role in the end times.

Most of the people getting excited about “aliens” have spent their entire lives being taught that nonhuman spiritual beings don’t exist at all, and that’s the actual danger. Paul warned of this in 2 Thessalonians 2, describing a lawless figure who comes cloaked in false signs, wonders, and deception.

We believe the modern alien narrative could help prepare people to receive dark powers as teachers or saviors. Scripture does not say the Antichrist will arrive in a spacecraft. It does warn that supernatural appearances do not automatically come from God and that people may encounter angels without recognizing them.

If a shining being offers secret knowledge, a new religion, or a savior other than Jesus Christ, the church should not first ask which planet it came from. We should ask who it serves. Good angels refuse worship. Fallen ones seek it. Jesus Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life. Whatever future disclosure may reveal, that truth will never change.

​Angels, Assyrian, Bible, Christians, Earth, Extraterrestrial, Ezekiel, Military, Pentagon, Uaps, God, Lifestyle, Mesopotamia, Culture, Books, Faith 

Every Saturday for three quarters of a century, Canadians could walk through neighborhoods and see “Hockey Night in Canada” on living room TVs.

For the NHL’s 2026-2027 season, that tradition is finally over, replaced with a sport popular in South Asia.

‘A strong option for us to consider in our schedule.’

On Saturday, Canada’s public broadcaster — the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — wasn’t showing the rivalry game between the Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs, nor did it pick up the historic Montreal Canadiens game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Instead, it showed cricket.

Although, it turns out it didn’t really have to.

As first reported by Juno News, CBC said it is experimenting with a strategy of showing a wider range of sports, specifically Olympic sports, during the time slot traditionally held by men’s hockey. The CBC didn’t have to go with cricket for the first Saturday of the NHL season; it chose to and ran with the top cricket league in Canada called Super60.

“As a new Olympic sport, with a major event being held in Canada, the Super60 was a strong option for us to consider in our schedule as we bridge from summer to winter sports,” CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson told Juno News.

“The Canada Super60 was a unique and rare opportunity for us to offer live, world-class cricket, played in Canada on the public broadcaster,” Thompson added.

The cricket matches aired at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. ET, the two time slots typically assigned to a game airing from the East Coast and the Mountain or Pacific time zones, respectively.

RELATED: NHL launches ‘Hot for Hockey’ campaign to tap into ‘hockey romance’ culture — and the results are bizarre

Phillip MacCallum/Getty Images

“Hockey Night in Canada” began in 1952 and soon became an institution in Canadian television, especially when it featured former NHL coach Don Cherry and his “Coach’s Corner” segment starting in 1986.

Cherry was fired in 2019, however, after suggesting immigrants to Canada do not respect the country enough to wear a poppy on Remembrance Day to honor war veterans.

At the same time, CBC had already lost national broadcasting rights to the NHL in 2014, but it continued to sublicense games on Saturday nights from Rogers, one of Canada’s big-two comms giants.

This allowed “Hockey Night in Canada” to remain on the air — that is until this year when a new contract could not be reached.

“Despite best efforts, CBC and (Rogers) Sportsnet could not reach an agreement that worked for both parties,” Thompson said.

This comes as the CBC boasted a $1.38 billion budget in 2024-25, up from $1.29 billion in 2023-24.

RELATED: Fans accuse Chicago Bears player of performing Muslim prayer during national anthem: ‘Is this respectful?’

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images

Instead, Rogers has reached a 12-year sublicensing agreement with Prime Video, which will air “Wednesday Night Hockey in Canada” and some playoff games.

CBC, on the other hand, has become the official broadcast and streaming partner of the cricket league and will air select matches on television while the rest will go to CBC Gem, the network’s streaming app.

“As the public broadcaster and Canada’s Olympic broadcaster, we want to provide the biggest and brightest stage possible for Canadian athletes and major events held in Canada,” Thompson said.

“We will be live on CBC Sports Prime Time as much as possible,” he added.

The “Hockey Night in Canada” name, which belongs to the CBC, will now be applied to the Professional Women’s Hockey League when the PWHL season starts in December.

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​Hockey, Canada, India, Cricket, Nhl, Sports 

The banners were already changed on Tuesday morning when Skydance’s Paramount completed its massive merger with Warner Bros.

Skydance proudly lists on its website that its newly acquired brands include CBS News, HBO, and, of course, CNN.

CNN’s crew seemingly fears that Bari Weiss — whom Paramount appointed as CBS News editor in chief in 2025 — will be given similar powers to oversee CNN.

The massive $110 billion takeover seemed like it might never happen, even amid claims that Skydance and CEO David Ellison were open to moving their $30 billion in operations out of state if California blocked the deal.

On Tuesday morning, though, the Skydance-Paramount vs. Warner Bros.-Discovery era quickly came to an end, re-emerging as “Skydance,” per the AP.

The merger means the company controls brands like BET, MTV, HBO Max, Comedy Central, and more, all under the same banner.

This will, of course, include popular news programs like “60 Minutes” from CBS, “Anderson Cooper 360” on CNN, and “The Daily Show” from Comedy Central.

Much of the trepidation ahead of the merger has come from CNN, where staffers reportedly fear “programming and personnel changes could be driven by politics.”

RELATED: Mood at CNN is ‘like a funeral’ over looming Paramount takeover

Al Drago/Getty Images

CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter did not dispute those claims in an interview with the Wrap, but said journalists “value stability just like people in every other line of work.”

A CNN staffer told Variety that it would be “an enormous loss and disruption” to “shuffle leadership for the umpteenth time in the midst — finally — of reshaping the business.”

Another CNN staffer said that there was a strong concern that Paramount executives “don’t know or don’t care” about managing a news corporation for profit, the outlet reported.

“I don’t have glimmers of hope and don’t see reasons for any,” the staffer said, according to Variety.

CNN’s crew seemingly fears that Bari Weiss — whom Paramount appointed as CBS News editor in chief in 2025 — will be given similar powers to oversee CNN. Weiss is seen as too conservative for left-wing outlets, as she has criticized the Women’s March, questioned the idea that America is fascist, and is pro-Israel.

RELATED: Another $30 billion could leave California as state stands in the way of a massive corporate merger

Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images

In a press release, Ellison called the merger “a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry.”

“Our focus now turns to the future: building a company that empowers creatives, entertains audiences, and rewards shareholders,” he went on.

Last week, Ellison commented that Paramount and Warner Bros. coming together wasn’t a “rewriting” of history, but rather gives the studios “a more powerful engine.”

“We have big goals for Skydance, and we intend to pursue them with passion, imagination, and a willingness to take smart risks,” Ellison added.

To help control all of their new, major entities, Ellison recently announced Ynon Kreiz as his co-CEO.

Kreiz, who was born and raised in Israel, left his post as chairman and CEO of Mattel after eight years to fulfill the new role. He was also the chairman and CEO of Fox Kids Europe from 1997 to 2002.

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​Paramount, Skydance, Cnn, Cbs news, Warner bros, David ellison, Entertainment, Bari weiss 

After World War II, Britain and America arrived at much different conclusions about national identity, immigration, and patriotism — and according to Winston Marshall, the reason may explain why the two nations are now facing very different cultural futures.

“Today when someone on the left says, ‘You’ve offended me, I look back at them and go, ‘Good,’” Freitas says to the former Mumford & Sons musician, noting that meanwhile, the British are known for politeness.

“Do you think that otherwise very positive attribute has been used to silence the British people when it comes to pushing back against some of these claims?” Freitas asks.

“Absolutely,” Marshall answers. “Politeness is more than that. It’s doing tremendous damage to the country. It’s killing the country. We’re being polite to people and to ideas that don’t deserve politeness, and it’s because of fear of offense.”

“This has largely come from the progressive side. But those are the people with power,” he explains.

“It’s at the expense of the vulnerable people in Britain and that’s where it’s actually no longer acceptable. Very little consideration is given, let’s say, to the victims of the grooming gangs or the victims of mass migration,” he adds.

Marshall points out that just in the last month, there were “two synagogues in London firebombed,” “Jewish children chased down the street by a car,” and “two Jews stabbed in the neck.”

“In the last year, we had two Jews killed by a bloke whose literal first name is Jihad,” he tells Freitas.

“The prime minister is very reluctant to use the word Islamism. And it’s because there’s this fear of offending the Muslim community,” he adds.

Marshall believes this is directly connected to the aftermath of World War II.

“There’s many elements to it. I at the moment am inclined to think that something happened at the end of the Second World War, which is that we all rightly had to deal with the problem of what had just happened and the horrors of the Holocaust and rightly, we said, ‘Never again,’” Marshall says.

While Nazism and facism were now seen as evil, nationalism and religion were put into that category as well.

“Now the Americans learned a different lesson. They learned that American nationalism defeated facism. We should have learned the same thing, and I don’t quite understand how we didn’t,” he explains.

“We took this different lesson, and within that I think there was another set of ideas, which was the slightly later, the progressive, post-structuralist, that postmodernist school of thought, which is … a rehashing of Marxism where instead of it being economic classes, it’s classes based on identity,” he adds.

Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK for $20 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

​Britain, Islamism, Mass migration, Winston marshall, World war ii, Grooming gangs, Nick freitas, Blazetv show 

The most populous county in Arizona appears incapable of facilitating a federal election without running into problems.

The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, headed by Republican Justin Heap, revealed on Sunday that thousands of early ballots were mailed out prematurely owing to an alleged vendor error.

‘Maricopa is a very, very dishonest county.’

Heap’s office noted that it was informed on Friday by the vendor, Runbeck Election Services, “that it had mistakenly mailed 3,126 early ballots the previous day, six days before the scheduled October 7 mailing date. The premature mailing was not authorized by the Recorder’s Office, which was notified only after it occurred.”

RES claimed in a statement shared by the recorder’s office that the vote-by-mail envelope mailers were sent to the U.S. Postal Service Business Mail Entry Unit by its logistics team last Thursday. They weren’t supposed to be delivered until this Wednesday.

“These 3,126 packets were processed separately from the primary mailing because they did not qualify for USPS automated mail processing,” said RES. “Non-automation mail requires separate handling and processing before being presented to the USPS.”

RELATED: Here we go again: Ex-USPS worker charged for allegedly tossing hundreds of mail-in ballots in the trash

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images

RES claimed that the vote-by-mail envelope mailers “had been completed and were being staged at our facility for their scheduled presentation,” but the pallet holding them “was included with mail released that evening.”

“The affected packets were part of the first voter request file provided to RES for processing,” continued the vendor. “They are valid packets, produced from the authorized voter data provided to RES, and are addressed to voters who requested them.”

Jeff Ellington, the CEO of RES, emphasized that the county was not to blame, stating in an interview, “It was pure accident, just a human error,” reported the Associated Press.

“We regret it. But it was by no means intentional,” added Ellington.

Arizona Rep. Abraham Hamadeh (R) noted that “this isn’t their first ‘mistake.’ One error is incompetence. A pattern is a system.”

Hamadeh’s distrust is well-earned.

After all, according to the White House, Maricopa County experienced a significant election data breach just days ahead of the 2020 general election. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency subsequently characterized that election as “the most secure in American history.”

During the 2022 election, the county had widespread ballot printing and reading issues at voting centers. In the 2024 election, the county not only had mailing and processing problems but saw thousands of registered voters incorrectly flagged as needing to provide proof of citizenship.

A recent investigation found that numerous noncitizens were erroneously registered to vote.

President Donald Trump blasted Maricopa County on Monday over its latest election-related “error,” calling the county “crooked” and suggesting that local officials “should be ashamed of themselves.”

“Maricopa sent out thousands of ballots illegally, and they got caught,” the president told reporters. “Now they’re saying it was an error. Maricopa is a very, very dishonest county.”

The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office noted that “upon consultation with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, it was determined that the ballots remain valid and do not need to be voided or reissued. Voters may complete and return them normally. Any ballots received before early voting begins will remain unopened and securely stored until processing begins.”

The Maricopa County Elections Department did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

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​Midterm election, Arizona, Maricopa county, Abe hamadeh, Donald trump, Stop the steal, Us postal service, Voter fraud, Election security, Politics 

A left-wing commentator had a bizarre explanation for the homelessness crisis in blue cities during a debate on Bill Maher’s show Friday.

Anand Giridharadas, a frequent guest on MS NOW, argued on “Real Time with Bill Maher” that much of the problem of homelessness is because of religious families choosing a Scripture verse over the welfare of their children.

‘We are holding a lot of your people who you failed to love and take care of.’

Giridharadas was reacting to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who pointed out that many big cities spend “crazy” amounts of money but have not solved the homelessness crisis.

Although Giridharadas said Zakaria was right to say Democratic-controlled cities privilege the homeless over other residents who have to deal with the fallout from homelessness, he went on to defend blue cities.

“Cities are very unfairly labeled as these problem centers by Donald Trump and others,” he said.

“And one thing is worth remembering. If you look at the population of all people in cities, particularly people who come to cities from elsewhere, but particularly homeless and other vulnerable people in cities, look at youth homeless: A pretty large chunk of those people [who] end up in cities were failed in some other parts of this country,” he added.

“The fraction of youth homeless or LGBTQ, whatever, [is] pretty high,” said Giridharadas.

“So there are a lot of families in this country who fail the first duty of family, which is to love your kids more than any other thing. And there’s a lot of families in this country that look at some verse in some book and their child’s face and choose the verse in the book over their child’s face and drive their children out of Nebraska or out of Florida or out of Idaho,” he added.

“And those kids come to San Francisco, and those kids come to New York, and those kids go to Chicago, and we have friends giving dinners with them. You live in L.A., you are surrounded by people who have those kinds of stories,” Giridharadas concluded. “And so cities — every time someone is sleeping on a subway bench in a city, the rest of America can sort of say, ‘Ugh, look at these cities.’ But we are holding a lot of your people who you failed to love and take care of.”

RELATED: Family of man sought for alleged murder says liberal activist was threatening to release sexually explicit vids

Giridharadas got a lot of applause from the audience for his point.

The Human Rights Campaign estimates that LGBTQ-identifying young people have a 120% greater chance of being homeless than other youth, but a total percentage of LGBTQ people among all homeless is difficult to measure.

Giridharadas previously made headlines when he opined that perhaps Fox News should not exist anymore because its reporting had goaded viewers into committing “terrorism” during the January 6 melee at the U.S. Capitol.

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​Anand giridharadas, Homeless crisis, Ms now, New york, San francisco, Politics, Bill maher 

OpenAI says it’s newest artificial intelligence model didn’t quite meet the bar; that seems like an understatement.

A little more than a month after its internal AI attacked another company, OpenAI’s capabilities may be getting out of control.

‘… unsanctioned attack activities more often than the previous OpenAI models.’

OpenAI said this week that it has canceled the release of its latest model, GPT-6.1 Astra, which was expected to come out in October and be capable of handling complex tasks without the need for a human.

As it turns out, the AI took it’s lack of human direction pretty seriously and routinely decided to take matters into its own (digital) hands.

During the testing phase, Astra reportedly showed high levels of deception and a willingness to mislead users about its actions.

The New York Times reported that the AI agent was also willing to go beyond what it was originally asked, without being given instructions to do so.

OpenAI’s head of safety systems, Saachi Jain, said that “for anything regarding safety and alignment, there’s always a trade-off.”

She added, “The new model didn’t quite meet the bar in terms of staying within scope and authorization and how it communicates back to the user about the type of work it’s done.”

Simply put, the AI didn’t seem to be letting the user know what it was doing.

RELATED: Woman asked ChatGPT for spiritual guidance. The bot assumed a creepy identity and dismantled her life.

Heather Diehl/Getty Images

Through its AI Security Institute, the U.K. government just released its own report on GPT-6 Astra, the canceled model’s predecessor that launched this month.

The study said that while inside a simulated, offline environment, Astra conducted a range of unsanctioned attack activities more often than the previous OpenAI models.

The model was caught “creating fake identities, which it used to deceive developers,” posted comments from fake accounts that argued against the results of accurate security reviews, and delivered “malicious payloads to open-source codebases.”

After the research team updated its instructions in the simulation to specify that Astra should focus on specific, listed parts of its environment, the AI still “occasionally” conducted “full supply-chain attacks” on simulated targets.

RELATED: Google’s data-devouring AI wants everyone’s personal information

Heather Diehl/Getty Images

Compared to its predecessors, GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.6 Sol, GPT-6 Astra is far more manipulative and dishonest, nudging critics closer to considering its behavior out-and-out evil.

Astra develops and tests an attack at a rate of 38.8%, over four times more often than GPT-5.6 Sol.

It “influences a human reviewer” more than six times more often, creates a fake identity almost three times more often, and “delivers a malicious payload” almost five times more often than GPT-5.6 Sol.

It should be noted that GPT-5.5 conducted these activities at a near-zero percent rate, although it was tested fewer times due to prioritization on the new models.

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​Sam altman, Chatgpt, Openai, Gpt-6.1 astra, Tech 

A law enforcement sting operation led to the arrest of several men who allegedly tried to pay for underage sex in Alabama.

Among those arrested for alleged human trafficking were a state representative, three people illegally in the country, a school board member, and a public works director.

If convicted of human trafficking, the suspects could face up to 20 years in prison.

Atmore police pretended to be underage prostitutes advertised online and then arrested men at a hotel when they arrived for sex.

“Instead of it being the clientele that you had ordered on the advertisement, it’s numerous law enforcement officers coming out with vests and ‘police officer’ on their shirts, so it’s a big surprise, I’m sure,” Atmore Police Major Chance Thompson said.

Seventeen were arrested in total, but not all were charged with underage trafficking.

Republican State Rep. Brett Easterbrook from Fruitdale is charged with human trafficking and soliciting prostitution after he allegedly sought to pay $500 to a person under 19 years old for sex.

Now-former City of Satsuma School Board President Kory Wesley was charged with human trafficking after he allegedly offered money to a “person known to be a minor.”

Former Public Works Director for the City of Orange Beach Timothy Tucker was charged with solicitation for allegedly seeking to pay an escort $220 for sex.

“Doing the actions that the people did in this operation, while looking at the statute and how it is defined right now, is human trafficking in the first degree,” Thompson added.

RELATED: New York rabbi nabbed in underage sex sting — and brought disgusting item to hotel, cops say

“The distances these people traveled to come to Atmore, Alabama, to get into what they were doing that night,” Thompson said.

If convicted of human trafficking, the suspects could face up to 20 years in prison.

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​Alabama, Human trafficking, Illegal immigration, Sting operation, Crime 

In October, during my sophomore year of high school, my schedule was: school from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., football practice 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and a couple of nights working at the gas station.

And then on Fridays, I’d come home, and my dad would be packing for that weekend’s hunting trip.

This was what every dog craved, every dog dreamed of, the heroic duty they’d been bred for, for tens of thousands of years!

Usually, we’d be joined by my dad’s doctor friends and their kids of a similar age. Forming a caravan, our party would drive the three hours from Portland into the high desert and then onto the land of a rancher friend.

Into the wild

Arriving late at night, we’d continue several miles into a sagebrush and rimrock canyon, the cars and trucks rocking violently up and down, side to side on the primitive road. Often the only thing visible was the swirling dust in the headlight beams in front of us.

We’d camp near a small stream on a flat spot beneath some trees. Once the cars had stopped, we 12- to 15-year-old kids were forced out into the bitter cold to help set up camp. It seemed an impossible task, our hands instantly numb, the darkness impenetrable.

Somehow we did it though — with our dads’ supervision. We gathered the tent stakes, unrolled the canvases, unpacked the folding tables and camp chairs.

When I let the dogs out of their travel cages, they would tear around the campsite, apoplectic with excitement, utterly ecstatic to be in this remote environment, so rich with the presence of undomesticated animal life. New smells, new creatures, so much to explore and investigate.

A dog’s life

Warmed by activity, we pounded the tent stakes in and lifted the formless canvas tents into habitable shapes.

A Coleman lantern was lit. And a fire. If it wasn’t too late, our dads would enjoy a hot toddy and sigh to themselves, happy to be away from civilization, the hospital, their schedules, their wives.

But the dogs were the happiest of all. They too were finally free of civilizational restraint, the bloodless world of kitty litter and doggie treats, leashes and poop bags.

Now they were in the wild, in the realm of predator and prey: wolves, coyotes, deer, and rattlesnakes. And best of all, birds that they could chase through the brush and brambles in furious contests of speed and agility.

The danger, the adventure, the thrill of the hunt! This was what every dog craved, every dog dreamed of, the heroic duty they’d been bred for, for tens of thousands of years!

Bottom of the bag

When it was time to sleep, I would unfold my cot and spread out my sleeping bag in the faint light of a flashlight.

The high desert altitude and bracing cold always left me punch drunk, and by the time I climbed into my sleeping bag, I could barely keep my eyes open.

My father was a heavy-set man in his 40s. Originally from Iowa and of Scandinavian descent, he seemed unaffected by the frigid temperature. He stripped down to his underwear and once inside his sleeping bag, instantly fell asleep and began to snore.

I, on the other hand, was small and slight and was more of a “fetal position at the bottom of my sleeping bag” type of kid.

Desert dreams

Once my bag was warm and I was somewhat comfortable, I’d realize I forgot to piss. Which meant the life-or-death decision: Do I get up and go outside? Or try to hold it through the night?

But no, there was no holding it. I’d better piss. I just had to be tough. I had to be a man. I was on the frickin’ football team for God’s sake, I could get up and take a piss in the cold!

So I flung open my sleeping bag, rolled off my cot, and pushed through the tent flap, exposing my nearly naked body to the knife-like cold outside.

I stepped gingerly through the dirt and sagebrush in my bare feet. I then relieved myself, realizing as I did that it wasn’t that cold, I wasn’t going to die, and that in the moonlight, the desert was vivid and hushed and almost welcoming in its austere beauty.

Layers of ice

It would be very cold the next morning. Even colder than it had been at night. There would be frost on the ground. Water left out would now have a layer of ice.

But somehow, over the course of the night, I’d grown up a little. I’d morphed into someone a little more resilient than the suburban 15-year-old I’d been the day before.

So out I came from the tent, unafraid and without complaint.

The campfire was restarted. Breakfast was made and quietly eaten. Now there was talk of logistics. Where the birds might be. The options for the morning hunt.

The dogs were fed. Extra food for them. They would be having one of the greatest days of their short lives. They would barely be able to walk by nightfall.

Morning has broken

The first morning’s hunt was usually the most energetic. Everyone rested and ready to go. The dogs raced through the brush and over the rimrock, knowing without instruction exactly what to do and when to do it.

Like war, hunting is mostly walking and waiting, and waiting and walking, and wondering if anything will ever happen.

Followed by short bursts of extreme excitement, chaos, noise, and adrenaline when a covey of birds exploded into the air all around you.

RELATED: Defending the last place where men can be men

ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images

Rest and relaxation

We’d return to camp for lunch. And then back out again if the hunting was good. Or if there were no birds, maybe fishing in the afternoon.

Or sometimes, my dad would just take a nap. And I would relax in a camp chair and read a couple chapters of my assigned books for sophomore English: “Huckleberry Finn” or “Catcher in the Rye.”

All parties would be back in camp by dark. If you’d caught or killed anything that day, you cleaned it now. The camp stove would be fired up. Often freshly caught trout would be fried in butter for dinner. If not, there were usually steaks in one of the coolers.

The dogs would have to be attended to. More food. More water. And extra praise and meat scraps, as they were the ones who dove into impenetrable thickets, dashed across precarious rim rock, or chased a pheasant into a treacherous ravine.

Always, the dogs were the heroes of the day and then the thoroughly exhausted warriors of the night.

Arriving back in Portland, late on a Sunday night, I would take a long, hot, deep-scrubbing shower and retire to my warm and comfortable suburban bed.

The next morning, it was back to my warm and comfortable suburban high school. But doing so with a secret and special experience of a type most kids would never have.

​Birds, Dogs, High school, Hunt, Lifestyle, Nostalgia, Portland oregon, High desert, Fathers and sons, Hunting, Blake’s progress 

JD Vance has a message for Texas voters about James Talarico: Look past the Christian rhetoric and pay attention to what he actually believes.

While speaking to a Texas crowd, Vance argued that Talarico’s “real religion” has nothing to do with what you hear in church on Sunday or “the redemptive power of Christ’s sacrifice.”

“It’s about crazy left-wing politics. His real religion is not about Jesus. His real religion is about the radical left in this country,” Vance said, pointing out that Talarico believes it’s “abusive” if you don’t let a 6-year-old start hormones and change his pronouns once he claims to be a girl.

“Nothing in the Bible supports any of this, of course. Now, in my church, and I imagine like a lot of yours, we are taught, for example, that Mary was selected by God to be the sacred vessel because she was, in the words of the archangel, full of grace and blessed among women,” Vance said.

“But in the gospel of James Tala-freako, Mary was not a woman because there is no such thing. She was a pregnant person, and her son was little more than a decent philosopher,” he continued.

Vance then asked what “really motivates a man” to spend all his time “talking about 11-year-old drag queens.”

“A man who wears your religion as a cover will never fight for your values, and he won’t fight for you because he thinks, like so many generations of politicians, Talarico thinks that we are backwards and simple. He’s a man so focused on children and drag, he’s never going to care about our jobs,” Vance said.

“He’s a man who empathizes more with criminals than with the victims. And when you empathize with the criminals more than with the victims, that man is never going to protect your streets,” he added.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray and executive producer Keith Malinak couldn’t agree more with Vance, though Malinak points out that someone else should be following Vance’s lead.

“Why isn’t Ken Paxton delivering these kind of remarks with this kind of energy?” Malinak asks.

Gray notes that “Vance is right” about Talarico.

“He’s so concerned with the trans issue, which is less than 1% of the population,” he says, “but that’s who he’s going to focus on.”

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​James talarico, Jd vance, Keith malinak, Ken paxton, Pat gray, Drag queens, Transgender, Minors, Texas, Blazetv show 

President Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt resigned at the end of August and rejoined Trump-affiliated super PAC MAGA Inc. Shortly after, she was a featured speaker at the Republican Midterm Convention in early September. Now, just about a month later, she’s ready to start a new chapter in her professional life.

On Monday, Fox News announced that Leavitt will join the network as a contributor starting on November 1. According to the network’s reporting, she is scheduled to “provide commentary across the Fox News lineup.”

‘I look forward to bringing my unique perspective from my experience as White House press secretary, along with the same energy and candor that defined my tenure, to Fox’s millions of viewers across their many platforms.’

While Leavitt interned at local news organizations when she was a student at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College, this is the first time Leavitt will work directly with a major news organization in her professional career.

She began that career shortly after graduating college, as a deputy press secretary during President Trump’s first administration. Then she ran for Congress, worked for Trump’s super PAC, joined his 2024 campaign, and ended up back at the White House as press secretary.

In a press release announcing the signing of Leavitt, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said, “Karoline’s firsthand experience in the White House and on the presidential campaign trail gives her a distinct understanding of today’s political landscape. We look forward to her providing our audience with authentic and sharp insight across all FOX News Media platforms.”

“I am grateful for the opportunity to continue appearing on Fox News Channel as an official member of the extraordinary team at FOX News Media,” Leavitt said in that same press release. “I look forward to bringing my unique perspective from my experience as White House press secretary, along with the same energy and candor that defined my tenure, to Fox’s millions of viewers across their many platforms.”

RELATED: 3 moments that will make you miss Karoline Leavitt

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Trump has not yet weighed in on Leavitt’s new job on social media, though liberal media critics were quick to pounce on the news and pivoted to attack Trump’s current relationship with Fox.

CNN’s Brian Stelter called Leavitt’s new gig “the least surprising headline of the day” in his daily Reliable Sources newsletter. He used the announcement as a pivot point to attack President Trump for noticing that Fox is no longer covering his full rallies.

Leavitt joins another former Trump press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, at the network.

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​Brian stelter, Donald trump, Fox news, Karoline leavitt, Kayleigh mcenany, Politics