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I recently had a minor health issue, and while talking to my doctor, he mentioned that “stress and anxiety” might be contributing to my problem.

Probably a lot of patients at doctors’ offices hear this. Unless you have a broken leg or tennis elbow, doctors can probably link your health problems to “stress and anxiety.”

Did I ever think: ‘The steering wheel of my car has too many buttons. I should probably just kill myself’?

These days, this is probably a reasonable assumption. You’re constipated. You have headaches. Your stomach hurts. Stress and anxiety probably play a part.

When my doctor first suggested I contact the mental health department, I politely declined.

But when my health issue persisted, he mentioned it again, and this time, I agreed to check it out. Who knows? Maybe he’s right.

Head case highway

At my health care provider, it sometimes takes several weeks before you can see someone. But if you have mental health concerns, they get you right on the phone with a mental health specialist.

It seems like health care providers currently put an emphasis on getting everyone signed up for some kind of mental health regimen.

You let a dentist inspect and clean your teeth twice a year. Why not let a mental health expert have a regular look at your brain? And maybe suggest some tweaks and adjustments?

To be or not to be

I spent an hour on the phone with different people as I did my mental health intake. During these phone calls, I was asked repeatedly if I wanted to kill myself.

Had I ever imagined killing myself? Had I ever made plans to kill myself? Did I think about killing myself with a knife? Or a gun? Or by hanging?

Did I ever think: “The steering wheel of my car has too many buttons. I should probably just kill myself”?

I assumed this was done for legal reasons. But it was alarming how thorough the questioning was. And how many times I had to go through it.

RELATED: Strange but true tales from a communist childhood

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Brain candy

And then came the moment of truth: I was asked which kind of mental health care I sought. There were two choices: 1) therapy, or 2) drugs.

They didn’t say it quite so bluntly. It was more like “counseling” or “psychiatry.” And of course, my primary care doctor would be consulted as well.

But ultimately, this was my personal choice. Did I want to talk? Or did I want to take drugs?

I opted for talking since I don’t know anything about the drugs and was told as a child to “just say no” to them.

No, I played it safe and chose “therapy.” An appointment was made for me right away — with a therapist who had a Vietnamese name, which I think is female. (But I’m not sure.)

Positive feelings

By now, I felt good about this plan. I felt a sense of relief just admitting to the intake people that I might have a problem with stress and anxiety.

Of course, I had a problem with it. I’m an intelligent person living in a once great country that seems determined to ruin itself.

Forget about me committing suicide. My whole country was committing suicide! Why wouldn’t I be a little stressed and anxious?

The great therapy problem

Then, I thought about my new female Vietnamese therapist who I’d be visiting next week. What would I talk to her about?

That’s when I remembered the great therapy problem, which is that 90% of therapists are woke. The whole field is woke. Sitting around, discussing how you feel about things — instead of acknowledging how things actually are — is essentially the basis of all wokeness.

The publication’s own Josh Slocum has talked about this. What if you’re a Republican and your therapist is a democratic socialist? To that therapist, everything you think or say might be hate speech. If you were outside the office, this person would want you arrested.

OK, I thought. I’ll just be careful what I say. And make sure to avoid certain subjects. We’ll probably be talking about “therapy topics” anyway. Like my family. My upbringing. What parts of my life cause my anxiety.

This way to the rubber room

BUT ALL OF THOSE THINGS ARE POLITICAL!!! At least nowadays they are. My family? Split by politics. My upbringing? I grew up conservative, and now I’m stuck in a blue city. The cause of my stress and anxiety? The insanity of present-day society!

I’m trying to visualize my first session with the Vietnamese therapist. She’ll probably be very young. Everyone at my health care facility looks to me like they’re in high school.

What on earth am I going to say to this woman? I have no idea. This might be a bad idea. Maybe I should have just gone for the drugs. Drugs don’t care who you voted for.

​Drugs, Lifestyle, Men’s health, Mental health, Stress and anxiety, Therapy, Blake’s progress 

Recent experiments in quantum physics suggest time travel exists — but it’s not what we see in the movies with flashing machines and meet-ups with past or future people.

In reality, what scientists found is that at the most micro levels, the laws of physics don’t really care if time goes forward or backward. Some processes look the same either way.

Glenn Beck explains it like this: “Time is not a straight railroad track marching only forward. It’s like a long ribbon — flexible. And under the right conditions, at the tiniest invisible scales, the ribbon can twist and loop back so the end connects with the beginning.”

How this plays out practically is complex. While humans cannot send their physical bodies back in time, they may be able to send “information” backward.

Glenn gives the following hypothetical: A concerned father gets a gut feeling that something bad is about to happen to his daughter. He listens to it, warns, and she makes a different, safer decision.

What research is suggesting is that that gut feeling might actually be a quiet “nudge” or whisper of information sent back from the dad’s future self — who has already seen (or lived through) the near-disaster with his daughter. The future dad desperately wants to protect her, so he slips a hidden message backward in time. It arrives as intuition or a “something feels off” feeling. She acts on it, stays safe, and the loop stays consistent.

But even though this research is new, it reveals something Christians already know, Glenn says: God, being altogether outside of time, speaks to us through promptings and nudges.

“A godwink — that’s what they’re saying can be sent back through time,” he says.

“Something feels off before a bad decision is made or an unexplained urge to call a loved one right when they need it, … sudden clarity that steers us away from trouble” — these common scenarios that quantum scientists are calling “tiny echoes of information traveling backward” are really just proof that God and His connection to (and affection for) His people are real.

“Science dismisses all of this stuff. Or they’ll say, ‘Well, that is your subconscious mind rapidly processing clues,”’ Glenn says.

But what if both are simultaneously true?

“This new thinking about time loops opens a pretty wondrous door,” Glenn says. “What if the promptings, what if these godwinks are all, get this, part of the God-designed cosmos itself and our entangled connection to it?”

“Science doesn’t describe it this way, but science also doesn’t understand if God exists, then he’s the greatest scientist of all time,” he continues. “To me, it’s only logical the entire universe has a grand design … and if there is a grand design, then there has to be a designer.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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​Blaze media, Blazetv, Glenn beck, Godwink, Laws of physics, Quantum physics, Quantum physics experiments, The glenn beck program, Time travel 

Democrats have an extremism problem, and it’s not clear how they can solve it.

After yet another gunman allegedly tried to assassinate President Donald Trump at last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, liberals nobly renewed their commitment to moderation. “We need LESS violence in America, not MORE violence in America,” wrote CNN’s Van Jones.

Quite right. But the American left has not exactly put itself in a good position to calm down its radicals.

You can court bloodthirsty Marxists, or you can build a wide-ranging coalition of the sensible, but it’s hard to do both at once.

Consider: In April, the New York Times hosted superstar streamer Hasan Piker for a podcast with writer Jia Tolentino. Piker has fantasized on camera about murdering landlords and once told his viewers, “If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill [Florida Republican Sen.] Rick Scott.”

He joked with Tolentino about “micro-looting” — that is, shoplifting — and equivocated about whether UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson deserved to die at the hands of his alleged murderer, Luigi Mangione.

Thompson “was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder,” said Piker, citing Friedrich Engels to suggest that the killing was retribution for “systematized forms of violence” in the health care system.

Piker is just one online celebrity, but the problem is that he represents a significant portion of the base that Democrats must now cater to. One survey found that 41% of young voters, and 22% of Democrats, considered Mangione’s actions “acceptable.”

This will make it hard for mainstream politicians to tack toward the center without alienating their most youthful, energetic supporters — especially since many Democrats have been enthusiastically courting those supporters since 2020.

That June, following the death of George Floyd, then-California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris solicited donations to cover bail for rioters and looters in Minnesota. Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), and other congressional Democrats donned Ghanaian Kente-cloth stoles and knelt in a display of solidarity with protesters as they proposed unworkable and dangerous police reform.

For a good long while, it was not only encouraged but almost compulsory on the left to side with criminals in the name of social justice. None of this was a secret; all of it was put proudly on record.

Not only that, but to dissent from the maximalist position in these matters, even slightly, was portrayed as a ghastly betrayal that could only be motivated by rank prejudice. “All this anti-woke stuff is just anti-black. Period. Full stop,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) just last year.

If that’s the case, then it’s hard to see how 2028 presidential hopefuls like Newsom can moderate in any meaningful way without falling into the jaws of their own logic: Either you’re woke, or you’re a cretin. That is not the sort of stance one can gracefully adjust or walk back without considerable awkwardness.

RELATED: Trump’s enemies keep reaching for the gun

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And so, as William Voegeli observed in the Claremont Review of Books, “Even when moderates do emerge from the Democrats’ process of selecting nominees, a correlation of forces within the party combines with shrewd politicians’ flexibility of conviction to accelerate the leftward shift.”

The Hasan-ization of the party, in other words, may be hard to resist. Try as they might to avoid it, Democrats might be forced to swallow the Piker Pill.

For instance, last November, Ezra Klein of the New York Times was lamenting that “the Democratic Party has made room on its left and closed down on its right,” suggesting a more balanced approach would be effective against the polarizing force of Trumpism.

But by April of this year, Klein was making qualified excuses for Piker in a column initially headlined “Hasan Piker is not the enemy.” The Tolentino podcast followed shortly thereafter.

You can court bloodthirsty Marxists, or you can build a wide-ranging coalition of the sensible, but it’s hard to do both at once.

Democrats might like to recast themselves as the cool-headed alternatives to Trump’s reckless villainy. But all the momentum and media clout are with Piker — and with young celebrity politicians who feel comfortable making high-profile public appearances alongside him, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D).

Regrettably, this could be what peak Democrat performance looks like from now on: callow, clickable, and aggressively extreme on social and economic issues.

That’s not obviously a winning brand. But it could be the only viable one going. If so, then Democrats don’t actually get to choose whether to court the far left or recast themselves as sensible centrists. They already chose back in 2020, and they chose peak woke.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the American Mind.

​Brian thompson, Democrats, Ezra klein, Luigi mangione, Rick scott, Shoplifting, Trumpism, Unitedhealthcare ceo, White house correspondents dinner, Zohran mamdani, Young voters, Hasan piker, Radical left, Opinion & analysis 

For years, Americans have been told the future of driving is settled. Electric vehicles would take over, gas engines would fade away, and anyone questioning the timeline was “anti-progress.” That narrative just took a direct hit, and it came from General Motors.

GM isn’t tweaking its EV strategy. It’s hitting pause, hard.

Charging times still don’t compete with a five-minute fill-up at a gas station.

The company has indefinitely delayed the next-generation refresh of its electric trucks and SUVs. No new deadline. No confident road map. Just a quiet admission that the plan isn’t working the way Washington, or the automakers themselves, promised.

Translation: The market isn’t cooperating.

Truck stop

After pouring billions into electrification, GM is now sitting on $7.6 billion in EV-related losses from 2025 alone, including a massive write-down tied to scrapped production plans and battery commitments. At the same time, EV sales dropped 43% in the fourth quarter after government incentives dried up. Turns out, when the subsidies disappear, so does a big chunk of the demand.

And while EV inventory piles up, GM is doing something far less glamorous but far more telling: It’s going all in on gas-powered trucks. Silverado. Sierra. The vehicles politicians love to demonize are the same ones keeping the lights on.

Because that’s what Americans are actually buying.

This is the part policymakers don’t want to admit. You can regulate, subsidize, and mandate all you want, but you cannot force consumers to embrace a product that doesn’t meet their needs.

Electric trucks still come with trade-offs that matter in the real world, not in a press release. They’re expensive. Range drops when you tow. Charging infrastructure is inconsistent at best, nonexistent at worst, especially outside major metro areas. And charging times still don’t compete with a five-minute fill-up at a gas station.

And now the bill for ignoring that reality is coming due.

RELATED: Stellantis just blew $26 billion on bad EV bet

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Hero to Zero

GM’s flagship EV facility, Factory Zero, has already seen shutdowns and workforce cuts. Production volumes for high-profile electric models remain underwhelming. And instead of ramping up, GM is scaling back, delaying programs that were once central to its “all-electric future.”

Let’s call this what it is, a strategic retreat.

Not because EV technology is useless. Not because innovation has stalled. But because the timeline was never grounded in how people actually live, drive, and spend their money.

For years, the auto industry was pushed into a corner to build EVs at scale or face regulatory consequences. So they did. They spent. They bet big.

But consumers didn’t get the memo.

Now, the same companies that were racing to meet political deadlines are pivoting back to profitability, back to demand, and back to common sense.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth for the architects of this agenda: Affordability matters more than ideology.

Money talks

When EVs cost more, when infrastructure lags behind, and when performance doesn’t match expectations, consumers don’t “adapt.” They wait. They keep their current vehicles longer. Or they buy what works, which right now is still overwhelmingly internal combustion.

GM’s move isn’t an isolated event. It’s part of a broader industry correction that’s been building for months. Automakers are quietly scaling back, delaying investments, and reassessing timelines that were never realistic to begin with.

The electric future isn’t canceled. But it’s no longer on a government-imposed fast track. It’s being dragged back to reality, where consumers, not regulators, decide what succeeds.

And right now, the verdict is clear. If EVs want to succeed, they better start putting buyers in the driver’s seat.

​Auto industry, Electric vehicles, General motors, Suvs, Gas engines, Gm, Lifestyle, Align cars 

What began as a Supreme Court ruling on workplace discrimination quickly became a sweeping federal campaign to enforce gender ideology across American life — and Camille Varone, senior counsel at the DOJ, has proof.

According to the DOJ’s 2026 report by the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, the Biden administration expanded the 2020 Bostock decision far beyond its original scope and used it to rewrite Title IX guidance, pressure public schools, and challenge religious exemptions.

Varone tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey that the Biden administration “created all sorts of new memorandums, guidance materials, and threatened across the board doctors, schools, school lunch programs, and girls’ sports with compliance, with their views of gender ideology, at risk of losing federal funding.”

“It sounds like you’re saying the Biden administration really weaponized against Christian institutions, individuals, and schools,” Stuckey comments.

The Biden administration also used the Department of Agriculture to tell public schools that if they did not abide by the rewrite of Title IX and allow boys into girls’ bathrooms, they would not receive SNAP funds, and it considered requests for religious exemptions as “harmful conduct to be regulated.”

“So, they really wanted to use this rewrite of Title IX, this transgender issue specifically, to push back on Christians and Christian institutions exercising our beliefs about biology and gender,” she continues. “Is that right?”

“That’s exactly right,” Varone responds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

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Mother’s Day is more than flowers, lunch at a nice restaurant, Hallmark cards, and sentimental social media posts. It is a reminder of the profound and formative responsibility mothers carry in shaping the next generation.

In a culture increasingly built on outsourcing, mothers are constantly told someone else can do the job better. Let the schools educate them. Let youth pastors disciple them. Let sports teams shape their character. Let others teach them practical skills. Let screens entertain them while we parents catch up on life.

Our ‘do more’ culture demands peak performance in every area of life, but it is leaving both children and mothers exhausted.

But motherhood was never meant to be outsourced. As a mother of two, these are a few lessons I’ve been learning.

Motherhood is discipleship

Mothers remain one of the single greatest influences on a child’s spiritual formation.

Barna research found that among practicing Christian teens, 79% say their mother encourages them to go to church, 66% say their mother teaches them about the Bible, and 72% say their mother teaches them traditions.

Social media and its culture of comparison can make us think discipleship requires planning elaborate Bible lessons, printing worksheets, and creating Instagram-worthy devotional moments. But with just a little intention, some of the most meaningful spiritual lessons can happen naturally through ordinary life.

You light a candle at dinner and explain, “Jesus is the light of the world.” You pull weeds together and talk about how bitterness and sin grow quickly when we neglect to root them out. Or, as my toddler and I did last week, you read “The Little Red Hen,” then knead bread dough or grind flour together while talking about diligence, generosity, and helping one another.

The advantage of this informal approach is that faith becomes woven into everyday rhythms instead of compartmentalized into a separate lesson plan. These are the moments when faith becomes tangible and competence is built.

Children need margin

Modern parenting culture often leaves children overscheduled, overstimulated, and emotionally exhausted. Childhood itself is disappearing beneath endless activities, sports schedules, programs, lessons, and pressure to achieve earlier and earlier milestones. These poor kids are hardly allowed to be kids anymore.

Parents now worry whether their preschooler can pass entrance assessments while many children barely have time left to roam outdoors, build forts, help cook dinner, or sit quietly long enough to become curious. We need fewer sensory bins in the living room and more mud puddles in the backyard.

More than anything, children need margin — the kind of unhurried space modern family life often eliminates — and our presence. They need more kitchen table talk and less time away from home.

They need to be bored because boredom is the birthplace of creativity, resilience, and imagination. In fact, a growing body of research shows that unstructured play is tied to healthier development, stronger executive functioning, and greater long-term independence. My parents’ generation understood this, but my generation often fills every gap in our children’s schedules, leaving little room for kids to simply be kids.

Our “do more” culture demands peak performance in every area of life, but it is leaving both children and mothers exhausted.

Mothers need margin

Another Barna survey found that 32% of mothers say they feel tired most of the time, while 38% say they constantly find themselves worrying about something. Many mothers feel isolated, unsupported, and crushed by unrealistic cultural pressure to “do it all.”

Many women strive to be fully present mothers, maintain spotless homes, manage packed calendars, curate magical childhood memories, and somehow do it all effortlessly. The result is that many families are running at a pace no one was designed to sustain — and more dangerously, it’s spiritually bankrupting us.

As Christian mothers, our family life should look drastically different from the world’s. Our priorities should reflect eternal values instead of mirroring the frantic priorities of the world.

Maybe for your family that means dropping a sport or cutting out an activity to make room for those family dinners and deep conversations — creating space for what matters.

My mother-in-law wisely sat down with my husband as a young boy and showed him on a calendar how many weekends the next “level” of baseball would consume. She told him, “We can do this if you’d like, but if you are saying yes to this, you are saying no to fishing, dirt biking, or camping on those weekends.”

She gave him the choice, and he chose the latter.

That kind of intentionality matters because what fills our children’s time will shape who they become.

RELATED: How to choose godly friends

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Life skills matter

A Yugo survey found that 74% of parents believe teens are not fully prepared for adult life. Only 37% of teens know how to cook a basic meal, and just 32% understand basic food safety.

I saw this firsthand during my senior year of college when several freshman girls came over for dinner and Bible study. I asked one to chop an onion and another to brown hamburger meat. Neither had ever chopped a vegetable or touched raw meat before. Not because they were lazy, but because no one had ever taught them.

I came from a very different upbringing. Before the age of 10, I was already baking bread, grinding flour, doing laundry, and helping manage our house — whether I liked it or not.

These practical skills matter because they shape what kind of roommate, spouse, parent, and adult our children will become. We should be setting our kids up for success, not failure.

Some mothers feel intimidated because they themselves were never taught these skills. But the beautiful reality is this: We live in the age of YouTube, tutorials, online learning, and accessible information. If you do not know how to garden, sew, cook from scratch, can vegetables, or bake bread, you can learn.

Ask other women, watch videos, do little by little, and more importantly, don’t be afraid of failing, and failing a lot (like I do!).

I constantly ask people to show me how to do things because I desperately need a community of women walking alongside me in this motherhood journey.

Greatest responsibility, deepest joy

Motherhood has forced me to slow down, eat a lot of humble pie, and imperfectly navigate all kinds of new terrain.

And that is fine. This vocation is ultimately not about curating an image of perfection. It is about faithfully stewarding the souls, habits, character, and formation of the children God has given us.

As mothers, we have the greatest responsibility and the deepest joy to raise our children up to love the Lord and become competent, mature adults who serve God and others well. What we build in our homes today will shape the world tomorrow.

And that responsibility is far too important to outsource.

​Lifestyle, Faith, Family, Motherhood, Christian living, Mother’s day 

A video has gone viral on TikTok for revealing a literacy crisis in America — showing high school students failing to read a very simple sentence: “She wore a silhouette of clothes that were extraordinary but somewhat gauche.”

And BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey believes that one of the reasons for this crisis is not only the method for teaching literacy in schools, but that the amount of parents reading to their children daily has dropped. And according to a study conducted by HarperCollins Publishers, the drop is significant.

“I saw this statistic that says only 41% of children aged 0 to 4 are read to daily as of 2025. That is a nine-point drop only since 2019. Only 55%, a little over half of children aged 0 to 5, are read to at least five days a week,” she continues.

“There are a lot of parents who are overstimulated. They’re tired. They’re distracted. It’s really not about these kids having their own lack of discipline. It starts with a lack of discipline and bad priorities for parents honestly,” she adds.

Stuckey believes that the difficulty parents face finding the time or energy to read to their kids is manifesting in “difficulty for them for the rest of their lives.”

And the reason this is creating so much difficulty for children is because “the comprehension of words is necessary for understanding the world.”

“It is very difficult to be a diligent student, an informed voter, a productive citizen, a helpful neighbor if you do not understand words,” Stuckey says.

But it’s not just the ability to participate in modern society that’s being threatened by the literacy crisis.

“Unlike Buddhism, Christianity does not place a premium on silence or the emptying of the mind. Christianity is a word-based faith. You go all the way back to the beginning. God spoke the universe into existence,” Stuckey explains.

“He dictated all of creation, including the creation of man and woman who were made in his image. He spoke to Noah. He spoke to and through Moses,” she continues.

This is why, Stuckey explains, Christians have historically been “the best communicators in the world.”

“Christians dominated academia in this country before giving it over to the liberals and the secularists over time. And now, I think we have the opportunity to take the lead again. We have to. I mean, look at where we are,” she says.

“We have schools that are not teaching kids to read. We have people going to college and becoming lawyers and doctors with barely a high school-reading level. We’re scared of objective standards here in the U.S., standards of excellence because of whom they might exclude,” she continues, adding, “And all of us are going to suffer for that.”

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.

​Allie beth stuckey, Allie beth stuckey podcast, America, Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Harpercollins publishers, Host, Literacy crisis, Reading, Relatable, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Schools, Students, Teaching, The blaze, Tiktok, Video, Viral 

Few remember what economic plan Jimmy Carter tried to sell in 1980. They remember the misery index, inflation and unemployment climbing together, and the hostages in Iran. What they don’t remember are the policy details, because one question cut through all of it.

Ronald Reagan asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

That was it. Everything Carter wanted to argue for a second term had to pass through that question. Once it didn’t, the rest of the argument no longer mattered.

People escape accountability because we lack the will — or the courage — to let the question stand in the spotlight.

People remember questions like that, not because they were clever, but because they left nowhere to hide.

“What did the president know, and when did he know it?” —Howard Baker

“Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” —Senator Marsha Blackburn

“What’s your favorite type of abortion?” —Rep. Brandon Gill

And then there is the question God put to Job, not for information, but for perspective: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”

Some questions demand accountability from men, while one reminds man who he is. We used to understand this. Now we try to avoid it.

I have spent four decades in exam rooms, where polite conversation is useless when something goes wrong. You don’t ask questions to sound informed; you ask because something is at stake.

What happened? What changed? What are we doing now?

You don’t let the answer drift into language that sounds right but explains nothing. You bring it back, again and again, until something real emerges. No amount of expertise, credentials, or authority allows someone to evade accountability with a filibuster. You don’t have to know how to perform surgery to do that. You just have to care enough not to be brushed aside.

That discipline is rare in our public life.

A congresswoman recently echoed a talking point her party and much of the media have been pushing. She pressed Pete Hegseth about the 25th Amendment and Donald Trump. It sounded serious, but it wasn’t.

The world watched Joe Biden struggle in plain view. Where was this concern then?

The same thing shows up with Elizabeth Warren. She raised concerns about airline prices while opposing the JetBlue-Spirit Airlines merger that might have reshaped that market.

She is welcome to make the argument, but the question remains: “You opposed the merger, so how is this outcome not on you?”

That question doesn’t ask for a speech; it requires an answer.

The same pattern shows up on a much larger stage. For decades, leaders in both parties have said the same thing about Iran: It cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon, and it remains a leading state sponsor of terrorism.

That has been the consistent position, even as the policies have differed. Two Clintons, two Bushes, Obama, Schumer, Pelosi, Biden, and scores of others all said the same thing: Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.

Now, when Donald Trump takes steps he argues are aimed at achieving that outcome, many of the same voices object.

RELATED: The media can’t hide behind ‘we’ forever

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We have also lost the discipline to define the words we use. People throw around “fascist” as if saying it settles the argument, when all it does is raise another question: “What do you mean?”

Not the label, but the definition. If the word means something, it should withstand that question. If it can’t, then it is being used as a weapon or a prop, not a description. Ultimately, the question becomes the teaching moment.

God set that standard in the third chapter of Genesis: “Where are you?” “Who told you that you were naked?”

He didn’t ask because they needed information, but because they needed to see. That’s what a real question does. It brings clarity. It forces things into the open that people would rather leave covered.

Clarity doesn’t come from longer answers. It comes from better questions. And when the question is right, it leaves no room to hide behind time or language.

People escape accountability because we lack the will — or the courage — to let the question stand in the spotlight. The clock runs out. The filibuster works. And the question either goes unanswered or never gets asked at all.

And everyone retreats to their corner, waiting for the next performance.

​Accountability, Definition, Donald trump, Fascist, Jimmy carter, President, Real questions, Genesis, Adam and eve, Opinion & analysis 

The dawn of the AI era has sparked a wide range of reactions, from exhilaration over the technology’s capabilities to deep distress.

Such responses to a new communicative tool are nothing new, and indeed, AI presents new and unique challenges that will require deep thought and sensitivity.

But a heavy-handed congressional response that erodes long-standing American freedoms isn’t the answer. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s passage last week of SB 3062, the GUARD Act, shows the substantial risk that Congress’ “do something” energy poses to free speech.

Restrictions violate the First Amendment by regulating the protected editorial decisions of developers and by infringing on individuals’ rights to create and receive lawful expression.

The bill regulates AI chatbots — especially so-called “AI companion” systems — through access limits, design mandates, and disclosure requirements, backed by civil and criminal penalties of up to $100,000 per violation.

If enacted, it puts the federal officials squarely in the position of deciding how this technology is built and used, limiting engagement with information and compelling speech along the way.

Growing calls for a federal solution to the fragmented landscape of state regulations reflect a clear political appetite for legislative action. And a single national standard has obvious appeal for an industry seeking consistency across jurisdictions. But consistency isn’t the same as constitutionality.

If federal proposals like the GUARD Act replicate the speech restrictions found in state laws, they just hardwire those problems into federal law.

Take the bill’s age verification requirements. The GUARD Act forces Americans to create accounts and prove their ages. Existing accounts are frozen until verified, and companies are required to recheck users’ ages periodically.

Age-verification mandates like this one force individuals to disclose their identity to seek answers and thus give up anonymity, a right the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized as central to free expression.

Faced with mandatory identity disclosure, many think twice before asking sensitive questions. Would someone trapped in an abusive relationship be more or less willing to seek advice from a chatbot if she had to surrender her privacy? Or how about the employee who is consistently harassed at work but is worried about asking for advice?

There’s a reason that the Federalist Papers were written under a pseudonym. Even public debate sometimes requires distance from the speaker’s identity. That protection is still needed today, allowing people to seek information, test ideas, and ask sensitive questions without fear of legally required exposure.

Then there are rules about content. The bill makes it unlawful to design, deploy, or make available chatbots that, in the government’s view, “encourage” or “promote” certain categories of constitutionally protected speech.

RELATED: Age verification laws do not make us safer

Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Who do we want to be in charge of determining that? Those restrictions violate the First Amendment by regulating the protected editorial decisions of developers and by infringing on individuals’ rights to create and receive lawful expression.

Proposals like the GUARD Act dictate how chatbots respond and intrude on editorial judgment by putting Congress’ thumb on the scale of what is acceptable speech. This means control over who can speak, what can be said, and how ideas are expressed.

Those choices shape the substance of speech and risk reducing a chorus of voices to a single, government-shaped note.

Finally, disclaimer mandates can cross constitutional lines by compelling speech. The GUARD Act requires chatbots to deliver federally imposed messages in every interaction. While informing users, its application in every circumstance alters the content and flow of communication itself.

All of this points to a deeper reality that AI systems cannot perfectly predict or control every output. That is not a defect. It’s a core feature of how these models generate responses from probabilistic patterns.

Artificial intelligence, and chatbots in particular, has become Washington’s latest political punching bag. Accusations of manipulation and harm are driving a slew of legislative proposals to censor this emerging technology. The GUARD Act isn’t alone. The recently introduced CHATBOT Act presents many of the same threats.

The same impulse to move quickly in Congress is playing out nationwide, with proposals in states like Minnesota, Florida, and Washington targeting chatbots through access restrictions, disclosure mandates, and content-related rules.

The Constitution doesn’t permit any government to address concerns about AI by broadly restricting protected expression. The First Amendment demands solutions that target illegal conduct without burdening the exchange of ideas.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Ai systems control, Chatbot act, Guard act, Age verification requirements, First amendment, Free speech, Ai regulation, Chatbots, Opinion & analysis 

While Americans are paying a premium for gasoline, the Iranians are filling up for just 12 cents a gallon. With the Strait of Hormuz blockaded, Iran is desperately trying to use up its oil inside the country — going as far as burning it off at wellheads and hauling it over land in pickup trucks using buckets.

But this isn’t sustainable. Sooner or later, something will have to give.

To find out what happens next and what it means for American gas prices and energy security, Glenn Beck speaks with oil and gas expert Tim Stewart.

Glenn asks Stewart how long before Iran is forced to shut down oil operations.

“From what we gather, they are almost there,” says Stewart.

He explains that oil is stored in tanks, pipelines, trucks, and ships and is in “a constant moving process.” However, the current blockage means the “floating storage” is “shut down,” which “puts intense pressure” on the other storage units. Eventually, the valve on the wells has to be turned down to compensate.

“And that’s what the Iranians actually did,” says Stewart.

But this didn’t solve their problem. Iran’s main oil fields are “legacy fields,” meaning their infrastructure is outdated.

“Those fields have water issues; they have pressure issues; they have migration issues,” says Stewart.

Given that these old fields were already running at their limit before the blockade forced production to slow, Iran will have an immensely difficult time ramping them back up to full operating capacity once the current crisis ends, he explains.

“The [current slowdown] is going to have a long-term impact on their ability to ramp up to another three million barrels a day,” he tells Glenn. “We are kind of in that endgame scenario right now.”

Iran aside, Glenn wants to know how America can address her own oil woes regardless of what’s happening overseas.

Stewart explains that the United States is now the world’s biggest oil producer, but the oil we produce — “light sweet crude” — cannot be utilized because our refineries were built to process “heavy sour crude” imported from other countries. Thus for decades now, we’ve been in an oil swapping game.

But that’s beginning to change.

Stewart notes that companies are beginning to invest in refineries that process light sweet crude oil; Wall Street has finally accepted that fossil fuels are the future; OPEC is starting to crack with the recent departure of the United Arab Emirates.

However, even with the tides turning, we’re still contending with a massive 450 million barrel global shortage.

“So there’s a long tale as to how and when that shortfall is made up,” says Stewart.

Glenn praises President Trump’s America First mindset in “setting us up to be the OPEC of the world,” but he expresses concern for the American people. While American oil companies are sure to make a lot of money from Trump’s initiative, the people themselves are financially hurting from the high prices.

“Has anyone ever said … ‘Hey, is there a way to give the American people a break here and maybe turn our profits down just a little bit?”’ he asks.

“It’s difficult because, again with the industry being bifurcated like it is, you know, the majority of my members of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association are small independent producers. We’re like farmers,” says Stewart. “It’s like when you send the cows to auction, you don’t set the auction price. The auction does.”

The same dynamic occurs in the oil industry.

“We prefer stable prices more than anything,” says Stewart, “and those prices need to be in that $67 to $85 a barrel range. … It allows us to do long-term planning.”

This stability benefits the customer too, he explains.

“The Goldilocks zone is in that $70 to $90 [per barrel range], which that translates to that $2.95, $3.15 a gallon for gas, and that’s where people seem to be able to to function well,” he adds.

Giving consumers immediate relief, Stewart says, is really up to the states.

“Have the states themselves look at what they’re charging and adjust those fees, adjust those taxes or waive them or do a holiday or something like that,” he says. “That brings some immediate relief.”

“The problem is that relief only lasts as long as we don’t get a $20 spike in crude the next day because of a tweet or because of a drone strike,” he warns.

“If things are solved, let’s say in the next four weeks, and it goes back and the strait is open … how fast does the gas price come down at the pump?” Glenn asks.

“I do think you see it this summer, particularly in the United States,” says Stewart.

Once the strait opens, America’s European and Asian allies can start getting their oil supply elsewhere instead of from the U.S., resulting in lower gas prices here.

But Glenn wants to know how low prices will be.

Stewart believes the range of $2.85 to $3.15 is plausible, and it’s “where everybody’s happy.”

“You want a growing economy, which then needs energy to be able to fuel it. You don’t want demand collapse where gas is cheap but nobody’s working, right?” he says. “And so again, it’s this Goldilocks zone we’re trying to get in.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​America oil woes, Blaze media, Blazetv, Gas prices, Gasoline premium americans, Glenn beck, Heavy sour crude, Iran, Iran war, Iranians gasoline 12 cents, Light sweet crude, Oil refineries investment, Oil storage tanks, Oil swapping game, Strait hormuz blockaged, Strait of hormuz, Strait of hormuz shut down, The glenn beck program, Tim stewart, President trump america, Opec 

I remember the night my legs gave out.

I woke up to my sister standing in my doorway. She was scared. Our parents were arguing behind a closed bedroom door, voices raised, something different in the tone this time. We walked down the hallway together and knocked.

Through recovery and faith, I encountered Jesus not as religion but as relationship.

When the door opened, my father was standing there with a loaded gun pressed to his head.

My legs went numb. I collapsed onto the floor.

Long night’s journey

It wasn’t an isolated moment.

Our home was marked by ongoing conflict and instability, the kind that teaches you early how to stay alert, how to read a room, and how to survive without ever really feeling safe.

I didn’t have words for what I had just seen. I only knew something wasn’t right in a way I couldn’t fix and that whatever I thought “normal” was, it wasn’t this.

That kind of moment doesn’t always explode your life right away. Sometimes it just sits there, quiet and unprocessed, and follows you.

It followed me. It bled into my personal and romantic relationships and ultimately skewed my view of the world and of myself. I learned to survive rather than connect — to perform rather than belong. I struggled to understand friendship, trust, and emotional safety. And over time, resentment toward my parents, especially my father, became part of my identity.

Seeking ‘normal’

As I got older, that disconnect showed up everywhere. I didn’t feel like I fit in. I struggled to form real friendships. I was made fun of just for being myself, and after a while, you start to believe there’s something wrong with you. I didn’t know what the problem was. I just knew I felt it.

So when drugs and alcohol showed up, they didn’t feel like destruction. They felt like a solution. They quieted something I couldn’t explain. They made me feel normal, or at least closer to the version of myself I thought I was supposed to be.

That’s the trap, because it works — at first. What I didn’t understand was that I wasn’t fixing anything. I was covering something I didn’t want to look at.

Later, when things got worse, it was labeled a “mental health” issue.

My father struggled with mental illness, and for many years I wrestled with my own diagnoses, some of which, in hindsight, did not fully capture what was truly happening beneath the surface.

I was prescribed medical marijuana. But instead of helping, it began triggering severe adverse reactions, including escalating instability, mania, and psychosis that distorted my judgment and sense of reality.

RELATED: Camp Hope offers Christ-centered healing to America’s veterans

ptsdusa.org

Not broken

Looking back now, I don’t believe there was something fundamentally broken in me. I believe there was something unaddressed. There’s a difference.

I kept looking for something to fix the symptoms, but nothing was touching the root. And that only works for so long.

Eventually, everything catches up. It did for me.

Addiction did not destroy my life overnight. It unfolded through cycles of defiance, denial, and relapse. Each time I tried to regain control on my own terms, I fell deeper into chaos.

It culminated in a destructive spiral that led me to a reckless and disorienting bender in Atlantic City. The consequences I now faced were legal. There was no talking my way out of this or pretending it didn’t exist. I had reached a point where I could no longer outrun the reality of what my life had become.

Brought to my knees

In hindsight, I believe God had to bring me to my knees.

The illusion of control was gone. I finally realized there was no way I was getting out of this under my own power. And that’s when change finally became possible.

It became possible because faith became real — not something I grew up around, not something I understood intellectually, but something lived.

Scripture says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” And also, “You shall be called by a new name.”

I used to hear that and think it sounded nice. Now I understand it.

Redeemed and reconciled

Because my identity did change — not overnight, not perfectly, but fundamentally. I was no longer defined by what I had been through or how I had responded to it. Through recovery and faith, I encountered Jesus not as religion but as relationship. Through prayer, God revealed to me that I was not meant to be ashamed of my past but to embrace it, bring it into the light, and allow it to help others.

One of the most profound outcomes has been reconciliation with my father. The man I once viewed as the source of my wounds became part of a redemption story marked by grace, forgiveness, and healing.

Today, I live a life that is sober and grounded in faith. I’ve worked the Twelve Steps and now help guide others through the process. I am actively involved with Chain Breakers and bringing Christ-centered recovery to those who need it.

If there is one message I hope to share, it is that unhealed childhood trauma, misunderstood mental health struggles, and substance abuse are deeply interconnected. Healing requires both spiritual surrender and honest conversations about mental health.

I share this with humility, knowing I too remain a work in progress. It’s my hope that the more we bring stories like mine into the light, the less power shame and isolation will have over those who are still struggling.

​Addiction, Christianity, Conversion, Faith, Fatherhood, Grace and forgiveness, Lifestyle, Mental health, Recovery, Surrender and faith, First-person 

An English musician was kicked off a U.S. tour just hours after videos surfaced of her saying she supports Republicans.

Rapper M.I.A., whose real name Mathangi Arulpragasam, is of Sri Lankan descent but was born in London in 1975. Aside from having hit records, the artist has generated headlines in recent years for calling out the music industry as a bastion of Satanism that pushes degeneracy.

‘I won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks.’

Now, the “Paper Planes” artist has found herself booted off the American tour of five-time platinum rapper Kid Cudi. M.I.A. was taken off the Rebel Ragers Tour this week — with more than two dozen stops remaining — after she was recorded making remarks that allegedly offended the headliner’s fans.

Cudi’s cowardice

“I’ve been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter,” she told one audience. The rapper also said she “can’t do ‘Illegal,'” referring to one of her songs, but added, “though some of you could be in the audience.”

Apparent backlash from the remarks was enough to garner a response from Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi.

Mescudi responded on his Instagram page on Monday, writing that he was kicking the 50-year-old Brit off his tour.

“TOUR UPDATE: M.I.A is no longer on this tour,” he wrote, per Variety. “I told my management to send a notice to her team before we started tour that I didn’t want anything offensive at my shows, cuz I already knew what time it was, and I was assured things were understood.”

RELATED: Fighting the darkness: M.I.A. on music, spirit, and breaking free from industry chains

– YouTube

The 42-year-old then claimed he had been “flooded with messages from fans” that were upset by M.I.A.’s on-stage remarks.

“This, to me, is very disappointing,” Cudi went on, “and I won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase. Thank you for understanding. Rager.”

Devil music

M.I.A. did not mince words in her reply, saying that her commentary had been misconstrued and that Cudi was, in effect, doing Satan’s work.

“I wrote ‘illygal’ on the Maya LP a song from 2010. I started this intro to the song with the statement saying I’m illygal, and I said my team hasn’t gotten visas yet. Then played a song that had lyrics saying ‘Fu&% the law’, which I still believe, if the law is unjust f@%& it,” the rapper wrote on X.

She continued, “Do not gas light my words. That is the work of Satan.”

The Londoner added that she wrote her hit songs before Kid Cudi “thought immigrant rights were cool.”

“I’ve had [these] battles by myself without the help of millions of fans backing me. I don’t need this virtue signal era to all of a sudden erase an entire life I’ve led. Jesus was an immigrant and a rebel.”

RETURN: M.I.A. explains why artists like Cardi B are destroying the music industry: ‘What is cool is Satan’s playground’

Blushing bride

Cudi is no stranger to controversy, in part because of his close relationship with Kanye West. In 2020, he disavowed his friend’s association with Donald Trump.

“We just don’t talk about it. I totally disagree with it,” Cudi said.

In 2021, Cudi attempted to make a statement by wearing a wedding dress to a fashion awards show. The Cleveland native walked hand in hand on the red carpet with designer Eli Russell Linnetz, who told People he texted the artist ahead of the show, “Will you be my bride?”

Cudi has also been open about his battle with depression, even allegedly checking into rehab in 2016 over “suicidal urges.”

M.I.A. said on Monday that she believes Jesus has returned to “lead the world justly because there is injustice in this world.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Align, American, Christianity, Faith, Hip hop, Kanye west, Musician, Rap, Republicans, Satan, Entertainment 

Lights! Camera! OnlyFans!

“My Name Is Earl” alum Jaime Pressly is the latest starlet to embrace the provocative web portal. The 48-year-old star follows in the footsteps of Shannon Elizabeth and Drea de Matteo, who also found a home on a site known for very adult material.

We don’t need Columbo to figure out who killed late-night TV. It was a homicide committed in plain sight.

“I’ve always believed in evolving with the times. … This is another way for me to connect directly with my audience, on my own terms, with creativity and intention. I’ve loved meeting fans at various Comic Cons, and the excitement of having those real face-to-face moments made me want to seek options like OnlyFans.”

Not sure it’s your face they’ll be coming to see, Jaime.

To be fair, not all OnlyFans content is adult in nature, but aligning yourself with the porn-centric platform does generate certain expectations — and a lot of buzz.

And sometimes the buzz is enough. Elizabeth reportedly made $1 million in her first week — and if disgruntled Reddit users are to be believed, she did it without posting anything racier than bikini pics.

The bigger picture? Starlets often struggle in youth-obsessed Hollywood to find steady work, forcing more … creative options after the age of 40.

For de Matteo, her unwillingness to follow draconian pandemic protocols helped push her out of Hollywood Inc. Progressive Hollywood, with all its MeToo starlets, didn’t have her back.

Hamill’s dark side

The force is wrong with this one.

Actor Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill shared an image of a dead President Trump on, where else, Bluesky, with the phrase “If Only” attached. The “Star Wars” icon loathes the president, but this seemed an escalation that most — but not all — celebrities wouldn’t go near.

The post got plenty of attention, including some from major entertainment news sites. They usually hide stories that paint liberal stars in a bad light, but this was too ugly to ignore.

That spurred Hamill to backtrack, somewhat, but show little actual remorse.

“Accurate Edit for Clarity: ‘He should live long enough to… be held accountable for his… crimes.’ Actually, I was wishing him the opposite of dead, but apologize if you found the image inappropriate. 💙-mh”

Some “apologize” (sic). And sick …

No-kill Bill

Here’s betting Bill Maher isn’t eager to chat up Hamill.

The “Club Random” podcaster is liberal, like the erstwhile Skywalker, but he draws the line at wishing his political opponents dead.

He’s old-school like that.

In fact, Maher admonished some of his fellow Democrats for joining Team Hamill.

“If you’re one of these people — and there’s many in this country — who watched that and was disappointed the president wasn’t killed … you’re not a good person. Or a smart person.”

But, chances are, the ones who felt that way were watching Jimmy Kimmel that night …

RELATED: ‘Crawl’: Killer gators make for gruesome guests in overlooked creature feature

Paramount Pictures

Kombat pay

“Mortal Kombat II” is barely a movie. The sequel to the 2021 reboot hits theaters May 8, and it’s earning begrudgingly positive reviews — currently at about 69 percent “fresh” at Rotten Tomatoes.

That’s not shabby for a film with all the depth of a late spring puddle. Call it Extreme Guilty Pleasure Cinema.

Producer Todd Garner wasn’t satisfied, apparently, with that reasonably positive rating.

“Some of these reviews are cracking me up. It’s clear they have never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or ANY of the rules/canon of Mortal Kombat.”

He may be partially right. It is a film meant for gamers, first and foremost. And it’s still a movie-movie, and many producers would be tickled to get reviews above the 60% mark.

At least Garner didn’t single out a particular critic and cry, “Finish him!”

Murder, they wrote

Remember how Lieutenant Columbo would sniff out the killer, often by attempting to leave the room before returning with a final question?

“Just one more thing,” he’d croak, and the villain would get very nervous. Viewers knew the gooses were about to get cooked.

We don’t need Columbo to figure out who killed late-night TV. Endless one-note monologues and ostracizing half of the country proved the weapons of choice. It was a homicide committed in plain sight.

Even David Letterman, the old guard who put the funny first, thinks the format may go the way of the 8-track tape in a year.

The murder suspects are planning to gather later this month to honor the host set to depart first.

Stephen Colbert’s farewell tour as “The Late Show” host will bring Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and John Oliver on for one the CBS show’s final episodes. The quintet, comically dubbed the Strike Force Five for their brief pandemic podcast, will help wish Colbert a fond farewell.

And perhaps they’ll take turns telling Trump jokes for old times’ sake. Chances are, this will be a recurring featuring until it’s finally “and then there were none” time.

​Donald trump, Michael, Entertainment, Culture, Movies, Daily show, The view, Toto recall, Mark hamill, Star wars, Only fans 

As the divide between the right and the left continues to deepen, BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre explains that Americans are writing off what they don’t understand about each other as a “form of mental illness.”

“This is understandable when it comes to horrific crime. Someone like a serial killer is so violent and twisted that it’s hard for us to comprehend their actions, and there is certainly a fair amount of mental illness that plays a factor,” MacIntyre says. “But today people often use this explanation when it comes to political disagreements.”

“Abortion, hatred for Christians and white people, the mutilation of children to turn boys into girls — these beliefs are so horrible that they can only possibly be explained by a malfunctioning brain,” he continues. “Of course, that’s not the only explanation.”

“The other option is that some people have a very different set of values that drive them to pursue goals that we view as evil. The average American would like to avoid this truth, because it comes with an unnerving conclusion: Your political enemies aren’t crazy; they are sane people who hate you and want to hurt you,” he adds.

MacIntyre explains that believing that a radical leftist who wants to mutilate children is mentally ill “is far easier than addressing the alternative.”

“The idea that half of America is crazy because they don’t share your political views is obviously absurd,” he says. “The truth is much darker. We’re at least two societies, with mutually exclusive understandings of morality and purpose, trapped in one country.”

“The theoretical neutrality of the liberal system allowed this drift to occur under the surface, but the differences have become too extreme to ignore. Both sides have their own internally consistent understanding of the world, but they’re entirely incompatible with each other,” he explains.

“One side is going to win and one side is going to lose, and the winning side is going to impose its way of life on the other. There is no way to avoid this reality,” he continues. “And obscuring the truth with comforting fictions about mental illness only ensures that you’ll be on the side that loses.”

Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist’s commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Abortion, Americans, Auron macintyre, Blazetv, Christians, Evil, Hatred, Mental illness, Neutrality, Political enemies, Radical leftist, Serial killer, The auron macintyre show, White people, Morality, Leftism, The blaze, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals 

Politicians are progressively pushing for harsher age verification legislation. Some lawmakers think certain apps should require an ID to sign in, while others want to limit the reach of AI chatbots under the guise of child protection.

Now, a new bill proposed by Democrat Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.) would require operating system developers — including Apple, Google, and Microsoft — to verify the ages of their users when setting up a new device.

The bill is actually a Trojan horse for mass data collection.

This is the Parents Decide Act

The new bill, unassumingly named the Parents Decide Act, includes several key requirements that all platform holders would have to recognize if the bill passes. These include:

Strict guidelines that state OS platform holders must verify the age of every user when they set up a new device. The bill is clear that it’s not enough to have users self-report their date of birth and age; hard-proof verification is required.Custom content controls that let parents set age-appropriate parameters on their children’s devices. This includes the ability to limit access to social media, apps, and even AI platforms.A pathway to ensure that all apps installed on a device are tuned to adhere to the custom controls in the previous point. No workarounds or exceptions will be allowed.A trusted multi-platform standard that bans children from accessing what the government labels “harmful” or “explicit” content on any device made by any OEM on any software platform. On the surface, this can include adult content and conversations with AI chatbots, although “harmful” or “hateful” speech has taken on different meanings to the left over the years, usually to describe speech that doesn’t align with their views.

To be clear, the Parents Decide Act would require these protections to be built directly into the software of every device — it would become a core feature within iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. There are questions as to how the government would enforce the bill on open-source Linux, but it will certainly try.

The quiet part of the bill

The piece that’s missing from the bill announcement is how platform holders will verify the ages of their users. At this time, a government-issued ID is the only valid method on the table. Essentially, the government is asking Big Tech platform holders to create a system that stores and verifies the digital IDs of their users — a database filled with users’ names, dates of birth, heights, weights, and, of course, a recent photo.

Glenn Beck has spoken enough about the dangers of digital IDs to know this is a very bad idea.

RELATED: Glenn Beck sounds the alarm on Apple’s digital ID: ‘Control of absolutely everything’

Blaze Media

The irony is palpable

This bill proposal couldn’t come at a better time as leftist politicians argue the faux injustice of the SAVE America Act, which would require American citizens to show a valid ID at the voting booth to participate in our elections.

Of course, there’s a reason Rep. Gottheimer doesn’t outright admit that a valid ID is necessary to make the Parents Decide Act work. That would expose the absolute hypocrisy of the left that wants to leave voting rights open to noncitizens but limit the access of digital technology and the internet to everyday Americans unwilling to give their ID to Big Tech or the government.

What’s in a name?

Democrats love to misname bills — like the Inflation Reduction Act, which weaponized the IRS against the American people.

Keeping the tradition alive, the “Parents Decide Act” is less about parental control and more about government control. It requires all users — namely adults (since children rarely have valid forms of identification) — to submit their photo IDs to verify their ages. Parents don’t get to opt their children out of this process, so that’s clearly not the decision parents get to make as part of the bill. Parents don’t get to protect their kids from government overreach, so that’s not a decision either.

In fact, if the bill did what its title suggests, it wouldn’t exist at all! Instead, parents would have the freedom to decide whether their children have access to an internet-connected device on their own terms. Right?

While the Parents Decide Act may be disguised as a benevolent way to protect children, the bill is actually a Trojan horse for mass data collection, digital ID databases, and a power grab to control young users’ access to information. Why? I’m going out on a limb, but since Democrats are finally losing control over the education system, they have to find new ways to keep children from learning things they don’t want them to know, and restricting internet access is one of the best ways to do it.

Bad problem, worse ‘solution’

If there’s any grace worth throwing at the Parents Decide Act, it’s this: It’s true that many places online aren’t meant for children (they’re not meant for adults either, if we’re being honest). But legislation isn’t the answer. Parents should have complete control over their children’s access to devices and the internet from inside their home. Not the government. Adult users also shouldn’t be forced to provide an ID to use their devices and the internet.

This is complete, authoritarian-level control over device and internet access that affects all Americans.

Rep. Gottheimer isn’t the only Democrat fighting for age verification either. California is already initiating its own state-level bill titled Digital Age Assurance Act. However, we expect these kinds of restrictions in a left-wing hub. If passed, the federal Parents Decide Act would make age verification mandatory for the entire country, and once it’s signed into law, none of us are exempt. You will comply, or you will lose access to your phone, your laptop, your tablet, and the internet.

​Tech, Big tech, Parents decide act 

While many Americans claim that the founding fathers were not deeply shaped by Christianity but rather secular, president and CEO of the Museum of the Bible Dr. Carlos Campo and BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey beg to differ.

“Is that true what we hear — that all of the founders were just deists, that they didn’t really have any faith imbued in our founding documents?” Stuckey asks Campo, whose museum is currently showing an exhibit on the founding of America and the role of the Bible.

“Can we say that every founder was an orthodox Christian? No. And we wouldn’t say that. See, we have a mandate, unlike other places, that we have to tell the story fully and faithfully,” Campo tells Stuckey.

“But if we could only exhume the bodies of these men and talk to them again, I don’t think we can even fully understand how the Bible was truly part of the air that they breathed,” he explains.

“Even as we look at the different versions of the Declaration … this was a text they worked on together, and that they added the word ‘Creator’ with a capital ‘C’ — that in and of itself tells us, perhaps in many ways, all we need to know,” he adds.

“That’s such a good point that it was so ubiquitous in their culture … that they just didn’t realize how special and unique it was,” Stuckey responds.

The principles of the gospel, she explains, “filled them with this really radical and revolutionary idea that your rights don’t come from a monarch.”

“They come from you being a human being. … But of course, I think through the Holy Spirit they did put some of those principles into our founding, which is amazing,” she continues.

Stuckey even pulls out a quote from John Adams, who once said, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity, as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

“So I don’t think anyone who studies the founding of our country could say, ‘Well, yeah, they were just kind of agnostic. They had a relativistic moral worldview,’” she says. “That’s clearly not true.”

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Recently, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett revealed that the White House is contemplating issuing an executive order that would regulate and evaluate AI models similar to how the Food and Drug Administration evaluates new food and drugs.

This is a good idea that deserves serious consideration. Here is why.

Frontier models are automating complex, multistep cyberattacks at ‘machine speed.’

There are several major concerns with AI cybersecurity that haven’t been fully addressed.

There is the use of AI to attack a cyber asset (adversarial), and there are attacks on AI tools like chatbots and voicebots that AI can accomplish with amazing speed and cleverness (AI security).

There is the use of AI in phishing attacks, and there are deepfakes. All of these pose grave threats to American businesses and the federal government, with the potential to affect financial information, privacy, personal data, trade secrets, and national security.

The CEO of CrowdStrike recently sounded the alarm on this issue.

We’re seeing an explosion of new threat actors that may not have all the superior skills to figure this out, but they can use generative AI to advance their attacks very quickly and to make them scalable. There’s going to be a greater proliferation of adversaries than we’ve ever seen. And that is just going to grow, probably exponentially.

A recent report by the National Counterintelligence and Security Center highlighted findings from the AI Security Institute showing that frontier models are automating complex, multistep cyberattacks at “machine speed.”

With some models already matching the pace of human experts at a fraction of the cost, and other models and systems completely outpacing humans, the threat is accelerating due to both the expanding expertise of humans and the expanding capabilities of the AI models, as recently announced by Anthropic about its latest models’ ability to find vulnerabilities in “well-tested” systems.

Another report by ReliaQuest described how a new malware strain called “DeepLoad” can use AI-enabled obfuscation to bypass traditional static defenses in enterprise environments.

These kinds of reports are useful, but it is difficult for us mere humans to keep up with the new daily threats. We need a machine-readable database, much like the computer virus databases that have existed for decades.

The great variety of threats that are invented on a daily basis is extremely concerning. While the Open Worldwide Application Security Project AI Top 10 list is a useful start, it is far from what today’s systems need to address emerging threats.

Our federal government must prioritize a framework solution immediately.

The technology industry has databases of cyber threats, but we also need to share information on how to mitigate them. This can be deeply technical and require specialized knowledge, not just of large language models but of other complicated technologies like audio signal processing.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a non-regulatory federal agency within the Department of Commerce, has been a leader in providing recommendations for responsible AI; however, it needs greater enforcement authority.

RELATED: The terrifying scale of the data center land-grab

Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Governments are usually slow to update anything, as they should be. Legislative branches are even slower. Congress should not be writing detailed technical metrics and methodologies for cybersecurity.

A solution is that Congress should empower a regulatory agency to monitor and enforce AI safety standards. A somewhat similar example is the FDA, which protects public health by ensuring the safety and security of food, drugs, biological products, and medical devices. It regulates products by reviewing research and conducting inspections.

What Congress should do is address the need for an AI cybersecurity framework by statutorily tasking NIST with creating and managing a centralized AI cybersecurity threat database to which all software vendors can (and should) submit new threats.

While NIST would be a great place to centralize communications of the resources, it is the private sector that will provide most of the intelligence around what the threats are and how to mitigate them.

After all, NIST is already mandated to provide similar resources as part of the Secure Software Development Framework under federal cybersecurity policy and Executive Order 14028, and through the National Vulnerability Database.

We need a framework that not only keeps up with attacks, but is ahead of the antagonists in the AI war, no matter who they are or what their intentions may be. A NIST-led national framework would ensure that Americans, businesses, and the federal government can be protected from the lightning-fast, ever-advancing cybersecurity threats.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Ai models, Ai regulation, Ai security, Deepfakes, Executive order, Generative ai, National security, Large language models, Privacy, Opinion & analysis 

A 29-year-old Florida female and her children’s 15-year-old male babysitter are accused of shooting at a woman’s car after a Facebook dispute earlier this week.

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday night’s shooting outside a Deltona home stemmed from a dispute between the female suspect — Ines Jonjic — and the victim, WESH-TV reported.

‘Are you guys sure he’s a babysitter?’

The station, citing the arrest report, said the victim became “highly upset” after Jonjic “took an image of [the victim’s] infant from her Facebook page, added malicious comments, and sent it to [the victim].”

Deputies said the victim then decided “she wanted to have a face-to-face conversation with Jonjic” and drove to Jonjic’s home on Hemingway Drive, WESH reported.

However, deputies said Jonjic and a 15-year-old boy — whom they later discovered was the babysitter for Jonjic’s children — pointed guns at the victim and fired several shots at her vehicle, the station said.

More from WESH:

The victim drove away and noticed she had a flat tire. However, according to the arrest report, “instead of immediately notifying law enforcement, she called roadside assistance, had her tire repaired, and drove home.” Deputies eventually met with the victim and discovered bullet holes in several of her car windows.

Investigators said it took about five hours for Jonjic and the teen to exit the home after deputies arrived. Once inside, deputies said they found marijuana and cocaine throughout the residence.

Detectives located .380-caliber and 9-millimeter shell casings in the garage. Jonjic admitted to shooting at the victim’s vehicle, according to the arrest report.

Jonjic was charged with shooting into an occupied vehicle, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a specified area, possession of a Schedule II controlled substance, possession of a Schedule IV controlled substance, two counts of possession of a new legend drug without a prescription, and possession of narcotics paraphernalia, the station said.

Jail records indicate that Jonjic was still behind bars as of Friday afternoon.

RELATED: Florida mom accused of kicking youth football player on field; during arrest she actually screams, ‘I’m the one who got hit!’

The 15-year-old babysitter denied firing a gun at the victim, WESH reported.

However, the station said he was charged with shooting into an occupied vehicle, possession of a firearm by a delinquent, trafficking in cocaine, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a specified area, and violation of probation.

WESH added that he already was on probation for an unrelated drug possession charge.

The Facebook post from the sheriff’s office about the incident has attracted more than 1,000 comments, and the commenters haven’t held back — particularly in regard to the teenage male’s stated job.

“Babysitter sure lol,” one commenter said.”That ain’t a ‘babysitter’…” another user declared.”Are you guys sure he’s a babysitter?” another commenter wondered.”Who has a 15-year-old male with priors babysitting at their house at 5:30 a.m.?” another user asked. “Sounds like she’s missing a few charges.””A 15-year-old babysitter @ 5 a.m. while she is home?” another commenter queried.

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Adults who never want to grow up emotionally have created a generation of children who, like Cypher in the movie “The Matrix,” want to — or sometimes are even forced to — perpetually escape into technology as a means of finding their bliss.

According to a recent study, these kids are desperately overprotected from honestly engaging with the real world while simultaneously allowed to wander aimlessly in a technological fantasy land from a very early age.

They don’t mind if their kids are afraid and distant all the time, as long as they are afraid and distant just like them.

While 30% of 7-year-olds and 60% of 11-year-olds have a smartphone, the data also shows that about 60% of 17-year-olds aren’t allowed to leave their neighborhood without supervision.

This madness is born of modern adults’ addiction to being comfortable and distracted at all costs as they perpetually coddle the scared children living inside them, rather than accept their God-ordered duties to raise their actual children into future adults. Remember, self-medication doesn’t always have to come in drug form.

But this isn’t just somebody else’s problem. It is also present within many Christian families today, where the explicit narrow road of the rugged cross is always buried under the never-ending pursuit of flat-earth feel-goodisms. It doesn’t take much for children, after watching such obvious fraud and emptiness persist year after year, to gladly latch on to false gods of their own.

We are plagued by adults who, more than anything else, just want whatever they want whenever they want it. Instead of doing the hard work of preserving a world that can be passed down, they let their own social media and technology flags fly while other traditionally fundamental social structures and relationships die.

The cycle works like this: The schools fall apart because the adults are too selfish to be involved. Then the parents overprotect their children from the screwed-up society those broken schools helped create.

This, in turn, leaves the kids to desperately reach out for meaning and adventure using social media — even though it is every bit as dangerous as the real world. The parents, however, are too busy pleasuring themselves to prevent that pitfall because of the very emotional addictions, distractions, and comforts that caused this whole cycle in the first place.

No, you don’t just love your kids and want them to be safe from a scary world. You just love yourself too much to fight for them. Your emotions became your worldview, and your children an actual human sacrifice.

RELATED: College professors want your child’s soul. Here’s how you can stop them.

Angela Lewis/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Worse yet, we are likely going to be mired in this era of systematic epistemological obstruction for a long while. It is the sad but inevitable next step of what postmodernism and moral subjectivism look like if there are no absolute standards other than me, myself, and I.

Since the church decided it was going to take a generational coffee break from doing its job of discipleship and stewardship, the parents and families all thought they had the green light to let their electric boogaloo go to infinity and beyond.

Our smartphones are putting more questionable information in front of us than we’ve ever had in the history of our species, and most of it rhymes with ‘Did God really say?’ from the Garden of Eden. I mean, the original happy couple of the book of Genesis couldn’t even hold back the temptation of a single tree, but I’m sure the modern parent and child alike will find all the meaning and protection they need from the internet!

Imagine the parent who is too worried and distracted to encourage his kid to pursue goods like going on a date, getting a job, or reading the Bible but is just fine with him slurping infinite but obnoxious meaning from tech addictions because that feels just like looking in the mirror. These parents don’t mind if their kids are afraid and distant all the time, as long as they are afraid and distant just like them.

That millstone is heavy enough, though, to pull both parent and child into the abyss at the exact same time.

You weren’t designed by your Creator to be anonymous, alone, inside, and hooked to technology, yet many parents are feeding their kids that life as though they are proudly sending them off to earn a Ph.D. in divinity from Harvard. We must do better.

The way, the truth, and the life is not an iPhone app. It is an adventure that calls us to go forth to all the world, but how are we supposed to do that if parents not only keep their children’s spiritual training wheels on too long but never plan on taking their own off, either?

​Adults, Children, Garden of eden, Postmodernism, Social media, Discipleship, Growing up, American adults, Immature, Opinion & analysis 

The brutal and senseless attack on a 77-year-old man by two males in downtown Seattle in April was captured on surveillance video and released to the public as police sought one of the suspects.

The two men appear to be laughing as one rears back to punch the elderly victim with great force from behind.

The two left the man bleeding on the sidewalk.

The victim drops to the ground, and one of the assailants pretends to kick him before pulling back at the last second, according to an account by prosecuting attorney Ryan D. Turner.

The two left the man bleeding on the sidewalk. Police found him with a head injury, as well as a broken arm and knee.

Tips from eyewitnesses led police to identify one suspect as 29-year-old Ahmed Abdullahi Osman. Osman was released after being charged with second-degree assault but was later the subject of a $200,000 warrant from King County Superior Court.

A second suspect was identified as 27-year-old Jessean Tyrell Elion and arrested on Monday based on tips from the public after the video of the attack was released.

Elion was booked into the King County Jail before a judge set a bail of $100,000 for second-degree assault.

“The allegations of an attack on a stranger is very serious,” a judge said about the incident.

Police said they only learned of the second alleged assailant after reviewing surveillance video. Casey McNerthney with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office told KING-TV the video was key to arresting the second suspect.

“It’s absolutely helpful, it’s so helpful when you have that because jurors now expect that, and even when you have great witnesses, there’s always the question if you don’t have video or why isn’t there video,” McNerthney said.

RELATED: Adult son beat his elderly father to death with ceramic bowl and then played video games, police say

“When you have cameras like that you see higher rates of referrals to prosecutors and often times higher conviction rates,” he added.

The KING report pointed out that Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, a democratic socialist, has criticized the surveillance system that captured the video of the assault. Her office offered no new comments about the incident.

Redmond Police said their Real-Time Information Center aided police in identifying the suspects.

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​Brutal attack, Surveillance video, Elderly victim, Seattle attack, Crime