Category: blaze media

Anthony Fauci has had a tough time lately.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier revealed on Wednesday that he had issued a subpoena to the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, seeking documents “ranging to what he knew, when he knew it, his doubts about the safety and efficacy of vaccines that he’s out there promoting.”

The resolution was ‘passed on behalf of the millions of Americans and their families still affected years after the COVID pandemic.’

Fauci’s week was, however, fated to get a whole lot worse.

Despite strong Democratic opposition, the Senate Homeland Security Committee successfully voted on Thursday to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.

The contempt resolution passed in a 8-5 vote along party lines, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he will now refer the resolution to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.

Paul noted that Fauci was knowingly provided a full and unconditional pardon in former President Joe Biden’s name on Jan. 19, 2025, for any offenses against the U.S. he may have committed or taken part in between Jan. 1, 2014, and that date.

Despite apparently being unable to incriminate himself by answering lawmakers’ questions last week, he declined to answer, citing the Fifth Amendment over 110 times.

The resolution noted that committee Chairman Paul “found the privilege of the Fifth Amendment unsupported as applied to questions pertaining to the period of the pardon and directed Dr. Fauci to answer,” and “overruled the privilege of the Fifth Amendment asserted by Fauci,” directing the former NIAID director to provide relevant testimony, warning him that he may otherwise be held in contempt.

RELATED: The Biden autopen scandal has one big winner: Anthony Fauci

Brendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Fauci may soon pay the price for ignoring Paul’s warning.

Paul noted on X that the resolution was “passed on behalf of the millions of Americans and their families still affected years after the COVID pandemic.”

A conviction for contempt of Congress can result in a $100,000 fine and prison sentence of up to one year.

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​Anthony fauci, Fifth amendment, James uthmeier, Rand paul, Senate, Joe biden, Politics 

Anthony Fauci is probably going to skate. He should not. But nearly every institutional and political incentive now points toward that outcome.

Americans who watched Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times before the Senate are understandably furious. They may also be headed for an epic letdown when the man they most want held accountable resumes his life in pompous peace.

Public frustration will rise when people realize that Fauci may leave Congress untouched after pleading the Fifth more than 100 times.

The first obstacle is the legal uncertainty surrounding Fauci’s autopenned pardon.

The pardon was signed by autopen, and substantial evidence raises questions about whether President Biden personally authorized it. A presidential pardon is an authority only the president may exercise.

In Fauci’s case, the written record includes an email from Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients on the final evening of the administration. Zients emailed: “I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons.”

Biden later told the New York Times in an interview that he had approved broad categories of pardons rather than, in every instance, specific names.

That admission came from the same newspaper that had initially dismissed the Oversight Project’s autopen disclosures in an article headlined “How an Autopen Conspiracy Theory About Biden Went Viral.” Within months, the Times had moved from ridicule to damage control.

The basic facts are therefore established: Fauci’s pardon was executed by autopen, and serious questions remain about Biden’s awareness and authorization.

President Trump has called the autopen controversy the scandal of the century and declared the affected actions “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.” The Department of Justice, however, has behaved as though that declaration carries no legal consequence.

That gap between political assertion and prosecutorial action is decisive. Questioning a pardon’s validity in public is one thing. Charging someone whose defense rests on that pardon is another. So far, the Justice Department has shown no appetite for testing the issue in court.

Fauci’s Senate testimony exposed the contradiction at the center of his position. He repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, arguing that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was trying to lure him into statements that could support a perjury referral.

RELATED: The Biden tapes blow open the autopen scandal

Celal Gunes/Anadolu/Getty Images

In his opening statement, Fauci said: “The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”

A witness may invoke the Fifth Amendment when he genuinely believes his answers could expose him to criminal liability. The privilege is not a general escape hatch from politically uncomfortable questioning.

Fauci’s plausible claim of criminal exposure rests, at least in part, on the uncertainty surrounding his pardon. But relying on that uncertainty means conceding that the pardon may not be beyond challenge.

If Fauci insists the pardon is unquestionably valid and no prosecution is possible, he weakens the basis for invoking the Fifth. If he claims a real risk of prosecution, he implicitly acknowledges that the pardon may not protect him.

The same cloud that threatens the pardon also strengthens his Fifth Amendment claim.

That sounds like vulnerability. In practice, it may protect him.

There is still no sign that the Justice Department plans to prosecute Fauci or anyone else in a case designed to test an autopen action. The department has not challenged a single autopenned pardon or commutation.

Worse, the Trump administration continues releasing offenders whose sentences Biden shortened by autopen. The executive branch is carrying out the very orders the president has publicly described as nullities.

For the Oversight Project, that contradiction is more than theoretical. It’s incredibly frustrating. Putting violent felons back on the street is difficult to reconcile with the claim that autopenned acts are void.

Could Congress hold Fauci in contempt for invoking the Fifth rather than answering questions? Possibly. Probably not.

Fauci would likely show enough basis to argue that Paul sought a criminal referral and that the uncertainty surrounding his pardon created a genuine risk of prosecution.

Any challenge would probably be litigated in federal court in Washington, D.C., a venue far friendlier to Fauci than many others. That venue alone improves his odds.

The political barriers are even greater. There are almost certainly not enough votes in the Senate to pursue contempt, both because of uncertainty over whether Fauci’s conduct crossed the legal line and because senators fear accusations of political weaponization.

Getting 60 votes to overcome a filibuster is a fantasy. Even clearing Paul’s committee, divided 8-7, may prove difficult. Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) has already expressed some sympathy for Fauci’s position.

Paul has suggested another path: If the committee approves contempt on Thursday, he could refer the matter directly to the Justice Department or pursue a civil action.

RELATED: Two Americas, under Fauci, with liberty and justice for none

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Fauci would immediately argue that a committee cannot exercise the contempt power of the full Senate. He would contend that without a vote of the whole chamber, there is no valid contempt finding to enforce.

The courts are likely to agree. Which leaves the public exactly where it began.

Congress has little chance of imposing consequences. The only meaningful route runs through the Justice Department: charge Fauci, force litigation over the pardon, and finally test whether Biden lawfully authorized it.

That would require the department to abandon the passivity it has displayed so far.

Public frustration will rise when people realize that Fauci may leave Congress untouched after pleading the Fifth more than 100 times.

The useful response is not another round of televised outrage. It is sustained pressure on the Justice Department to treat autopenned actions the way Trump himself described them: null and void.

​Anthony fauci, Autopen scandal, Department of justice, Fifth amendment, New york times, Opinion & analysis, Oversight project, Rand paul, Pardon, Gain of function, Contempt of congress 

A report from the Washington Post claiming President Donald Trump is angry at Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been vehemently denied by the White House on social media.

The report said that the military’s stockpile of long-range missiles had been extremely depleted by the strikes against Iran, and the president was blaming Hegseth.

‘Unfortunately for them, the President loves the Secretary and thinks he’s doing a tremendous job. FAKE NEWS!’

“I was at Camp David with President Trump and Secretary Hegseth. This literally never happened, and we told the Washington Post that repeatedly,” wrote Leavitt on social media Wednesday.

“This B.S. story was shopped to many outlets by someone clearly out to disparage the Secretary, for whatever reason,” she added. “Unfortunately for them, the President loves the Secretary and thinks he’s doing a tremendous job. FAKE NEWS!”

The report depended on two sources who claimed to have knowledge about the interaction between Trump and Hegseth at Camp David. One source said the depletion of military resources was limiting what options the president had going forward.

Hegseth reportedly blamed War Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg for persuading the president that Iran would quickly capitulate after the attacks.

The report did include a statement of denial from Leavitt.

“This is 100% fake news. Literally never happened. And President Trump has the utmost confidence in Secretary Hegseth,” she responded.

Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell also offered a denial of the story.

“Secretary Hegseth did not mislead anyone about our munitions posture, and he did not blame Deputy Secretary Feinberg. These claims about depleted stockpiles, internal disagreements, the Secretary’s position on Iran … are equally fictional,” he responded.

RELATED: ‘Why do you have to announce it to the world?’: Trump REBUKES Netanyahu over Iran’s nukes

The economic fallout of the strikes on gas prices and inflation has led to some dissent among the supporters of the president.

Trump has continued to insist that the polling in the mainstream media is wrong.

“My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been, and why wouldn’t they be,” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “Don’t believe the Radical Left’s Fake Poll numbers. They are Crooked and Corrupt, just like the Country Destroying Dumocrats are Crooked and Corrupt.”

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​Inflation, Pete hegseth, Washington post, Karoline leavitt, Donald trump, Iran, Politics 

For two decades, Zillow has assembled the pieces of a real estate empire.

It acquired Trulia, StreetEasy, and ShowingTime in a series of deals regulators allowed to proceed. It launched mortgage and closing products. It drew buyers, sellers, agents, brokers, and lenders into the same expanding system.

Zillow calls itself ‘the front door to the housing market.’ Regulators should act before the company installs a turnstile.

This year, Zillow accelerated.

In March, five of the country’s largest brokerages agreed to give Zillow early access to listings without offering rivals the same terms. In May, Zillow sued a major multiple listing service after it lost access to some listings.

Neither move necessarily violates antitrust law by itself. Taken together, however, they show how a company can stop competing within a market and begin positioning itself to control the market.

Zillow describes itself as “the most visited real estate app and website in the United States,” with an “ecosystem” covering “the entire home journey, from dreaming and shopping to renting, buying, selling, and financing.”

Its year-end 2025 filings reported 235 million average monthly unique users, up 6% from the previous year. Its CEO has boasted that Americans search for “Zillow” more often than they search for “real estate.”

The company’s ambitions match its reach. Zillow openly promotes what it calls a “housing super app,” a single platform designed to occupy every stage of the transaction.

That combination of audience, listings, services, and leverage should command antitrust scrutiny.

In March 2026, Zillow launched Zillow Preview, a premarket listing product. Keller Williams, HomeServices of America, RE/MAX, Side, and United Real Estate signed on as launch partners. Together, those firms represent roughly 30% of residential brokerage.

More than 60 additional brokerages have since joined.

RELATED: America’s two-tier economy is working exactly as planned

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Those premarket listings appear on Zillow and Trulia and, through a separate agreement, Realtor.com. They do not appear on Homes.com, Redfin, or the traditional MLS system.

The arrangement resembles exclusive dealing: A platform with enormous consumer traffic secures early access to inventory from major suppliers and denies comparable access to competitors.

Imagine a shopping mall with 70% of the region’s foot traffic persuading its largest retailers to display new merchandise there first and nowhere else. The mall would no longer be attracting customers through better service alone. It would be restricting the merchandise competitors could offer.

Zillow Preview raises another concern: a commission-sharing arrangement that echoes practices challenged in the litigation against the National Association of Realtors.

When a Preview listing closes through Zillow’s Preferred Agent network, the listing agent receives 10% of the buy-side commission, according to the company’s terms. Zillow sets that rate.

The NAR litigation produced a $1.78 billion jury verdict and settlements exceeding $700 million. The cases challenged practices that tied buyer and seller compensation together and helped normalize commission rates.

Less than two years later, Zillow has created a system that appears to reconnect those commissions on terms established by Zillow itself.

The company is also using litigation aggressively.

In May 2026, Zillow sued Midwest Real Estate Data, the large Chicago-area MLS, and Compass, alleging that the two conspired to restrict its access to listings. The lawsuit came only weeks after Zillow secured exclusive premarket inventory from dozens of brokerages.

The apparent message to regional MLS systems was difficult to miss: Zillow may reserve inventory for itself, but others risk litigation if they restrict inventory from Zillow.

CoStar Group, which owns rival Homes.com, filed an amicus brief accusing Zillow of hypocrisy and arguing that Preview is designed to divert leads and steer borrowers toward Zillow-affiliated services rather than neutrally match buyers with homes.

Should Zillow prevail, it may not merely compete with the MLS system. It could begin replacing it.

The company’s ambitions extend well beyond listings.

Zillow Home Loans is now the country’s 25th-largest mortgage lender, and Zillow has identified mortgage growth as central to its future. The company also faces several pending class-action lawsuits alleging undisclosed referral fees and steering toward its own, potentially more expensive mortgage products.

RELATED: Unaffordable housing is still ruining the party

Cemile Bingol/Getty Images

Those allegations remain to be tested in court. But they point to the core danger of vertical integration: A platform that dominates home searches may use that position to channel consumers toward its own agents, lenders, and closing services.

Strip away the antitrust terminology, and mortgage steering is easy to understand.

It can mean a worse rate on the largest purchase of an ordinary person’s life, arranged by the same company displaying photographs of the kitchen.

A quarter-point increase on a 30-year mortgage can cost a household tens of thousands of dollars. For a generation already struggling to buy its first home, some of the market’s apparent friction may be a toll imposed by the platform controlling the route.

Antitrust scholars sometimes call this a “monopoly broth”: an accumulation of practices that collectively entrench market power even when no single ingredient is plainly illegal.

In Zillow’s case, the ingredients may include exclusive access to premarket listings, commission arrangements, litigation against suppliers, and the use of platform dominance to steer consumers toward affiliated mortgage products. Each practice strengthens the others.

More exclusive listings attract more users. More users give Zillow greater leverage over brokers. Greater brokerage dependence creates more opportunities to sell leads and mortgages. The wider the ecosystem grows, the harder it becomes for any participant to refuse Zillow’s terms.

That is the regulatory problem.

The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general should examine whether Zillow is using dominance in home search to foreclose competitors and extract revenue from adjacent markets. Private plaintiffs who successfully challenged the NAR’s commission system will likely examine the same evidence.

The question is not whether Zillow has built a successful product. It plainly has.

The question is whether success in attracting homebuyers now allows Zillow to dictate who sees listings, how agents are compensated, which lenders receive referrals, and how much consumers pay.

Zillow calls itself “the front door to the housing market.” Regulators should act before the company installs a turnstile.

​Housing market, Zillow, Antitrust law, Housing app, Real estate, Opinion & analysis 

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas gave a scathing assessment of James Talarico’s chances of flipping one of the state’s seats in the U.S. Senate.

The outspoken and often vulgar congresswoman pointed to evidence that the Democratic Party was not placing much faith in its candidate to win the seat.

‘I look at where does the NRSC stand? Where does DSCC stand? … It looks like status quo.’

Crockett told NBC News she did not trust polling for the general election because it had historically overstated Democrats’ advantage.

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

“But right now, national Republicans decided they wanted to dump money into North Carolina, as well as Georgia,” she added. “That’s where they’re fighting, and national Democrats have not decided to dump money into Texas either.”

A report from the New York Times on the financial backing in the race supports Crockett’s assessments, especially when it comes to Republicans spreading money to other Senate races believed to be not as competitive and costly as that in Texas.

“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 continued. “So it looks like status quo. I won’t get on the ground to really start to feel it until maybe end of September, October, as I start to dig into which races I’m going to help out in, the races that I really feel like we can win.”

The Times report said national Democrats were less willing to dump millions into Texas to back Talarico after seeing that a cash advantage didn’t help past candidates in the red state.

Talarico is also faring far better than Paxton in raising millions of donations by himself.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Communications Director Joanna Rodriguez released a statement to Blaze News about Crockett’s comments.

“The fall of coordinated spending limits means the NRSC can discuss spending decisions directly with our candidates and their campaigns,” Rodriguez said. “The era of raising the curtain on strategy for press and the Democrats we’re looking to defeat is over.”

Flipping Texas would be incredibly helpful for Democrats’ hopes to retake the Senate in the midterm elections.

RELATED: Mike Lee SOUNDS the ALARM after stunning polls from Senate race in Texas

A Blaze News request for comment to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was not immediately answered.

The Paxton campaign also disputed the financial characterization of the race by the Times.

“The trajectory is unmistakable: Support is accelerating, not softening. Everyone from grassroots Texans to large conservative donors are consolidating behind this campaign, and June was the clearest signal yet,” campaign adviser Nick Maddux said.

He also noted that the campaign had raised $7 million across several Paxton committees.

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​Jasmine crockett, James talarico, Ken paxton, Us senate election, Midterm elections, Politics 

Pennsylvania police are trying to unravel the mysterious circumstances that led to two very young girls being found on Monday in a home with two dead bodies.

The bodies in the Wilkinsburg residence belonged to 42-year-old Lamont Dunlap and 31-year-old Lamara Baldwin, according to police.

One neighbor said she contacted police to report drug use at the house after seeing several people going in and out.

The two adults were last seen on Friday, leading investigators to believe that the 1-year-old and 3-year-old girls had been living in the home with the bodies for several days.

There were no signs of trauma to either body, and a medical examiner has yet to determine their causes of death.

But a brief livestream video may provide some insight into the bizarre incident.

“I’m just tired of being lied to. Never told the truth,” Baldwin said in the three-minute video as she held her 1-year-old and cried.

“I don’t know how much more I can take,” she added in the video recorded Friday.

Her sister said only that Baldwin had a kind heart and would do anything for her children. Baldwin had posted other videos discussing her mental health and personal problems.

Neighbors said Baldwin was not in a relationship with Dunlap, and the children did not belong to him. One neighbor said she contacted police to report drug use at the house after seeing several people going in and out.

“You never really seen them out here too much, you know, just in passing by maybe. That’s about it,” said Maurice Pryor, a neighbor from across the street from the home.

RELATED: Police find Florida mom’s 5-year-old twins dead at their home after she jumps off bridge to her death

Neighbors also expressed concern for the well-being of the children, who were turned over to the custody of the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth, and Families.

“They were in the house the whole weekend by themselves with dead bodies. I thought that was terrible,” Pryor said. “That was just terrible.”

Wilkinsburg is a borough of about 14,300 residents in the western part of the state.

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​Dead bodies, Drug use, Mental health, Pennsylvania, Crime 

Congress is considering competing bills to “save college sports” after last year’s landmark name, image, and likeness settlement. The debate often begins with athlete compensation. It should begin with the financial structure that compensation is about to disrupt.

Football and men’s basketball do not merely pay for themselves at major universities. They subsidize nearly everything else.

Football and men’s basketball laid the golden eggs, and nearly everyone else lived on them. That arrangement may be ending.

Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act reports show the scale of those surpluses. In 2025, the last year before the settlement took effect, Michigan reported more than $120 million in combined surplus from football and men’s basketball. Tennessee exceeded $116 million. Notre Dame topped $102 million.

Those schools are not outliers. At least 12 of the Big Ten’s 18 members cleared more than $50 million from the two sports. At least eight of the SEC’s 16 members did the same. Half of the ACC schools reporting usable figures generated more than $17 million.

The pattern extends beyond the largest programs. Football and men’s basketball produced more than $20 million at Boise State and about $6 million at San Diego State.

Even those figures may understate the subsidy. EADA reporting is inconsistent and often opaque. Some universities hide profits and losses across entire athletic departments. Others report revenue from profitable sports while obscuring deficits elsewhere. Yet wherever the figures are complete, the same structure appears.

Football and men’s basketball generate cash. Nearly every other sport consumes it.

At the 12 Big Ten schools with complete women’s sports data, the average deficit approached $20 million. Nine SEC women’s programs reported deficits above $27 million. The seven ACC schools with complete figures averaged shortfalls greater than $11 million.

Success on the field rarely changes the arithmetic. Nebraska and Wisconsin built elite volleyball programs, yet each lost well over $1 million in 2025. Purdue volleyball and women’s basketball were rare Big Ten programs to report profits above $4 million. Duke volleyball posted only a small surplus in the ACC. South Carolina’s national champion women’s basketball program ran a deficit exceeding $5 million.

RELATED: Texas AG Ken Paxton threatens Big 12 over possible Texas Tech boycott

Antranik Tavitian/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Men’s nonrevenue sports also lose money, though generally less. At the Big Ten schools with complete reports, those programs averaged roughly $10 million in losses. The SEC average was about $11 million. Wisconsin men’s hockey lost $1.3 million; the national champion women’s team lost nearly $3 million.

The disparity is not an argument against women’s or Olympic sports. It explains how those sports have survived at their current scale.

Ticket sales, television contracts, and donations tied to football and men’s basketball have long financed teams that cannot cover their own costs. The surplus from the two commercial sports has sustained the breadth of the modern athletic department.

The NIL settlement is redirecting that surplus.

Schools may now share revenue directly with athletes under a cap, while collectives and boosters can make additional uncapped payments. Early evidence suggests that most capped money is flowing to the athletes who generate it.

Texas Tech spent 74% of its cap on football and 17.5% on men’s basketball. North Carolina State spent more than 85% on those two sports. North Carolina spent nearly 98%.

The logic is obvious. Schools competing for quarterbacks, pass rushers, and starting guards will direct money toward the players who determine wins, television audiences, and donor enthusiasm. Every dollar paid to those athletes is a dollar no longer available to subsidize programs that run permanent deficits.

The uncapped side payments create a second pressure. Donors who once gave to athletic departments — where their money could support the entire portfolio of teams — may instead direct funds to outside collectives focused on recruiting and retaining football and basketball players.

The same revenue engines are therefore being tapped twice: once through direct school payments and again through donor-backed NIL deals.

RELATED: Women’s sports finally got a reality check

Oliver Contreras/AFP/Getty Images

President Trump’s executive order on college athletics recognizes the danger. It warns that the new financial pressures could jeopardize women’s and Olympic sports and seeks greater discipline in the post-settlement system.

Whether the order or any pending bill can preserve the old model remains an open question. Congress cannot legislate away basic economics.

Athletes in revenue sports now have a stronger claim on the money they generate. Schools still want to maintain dozens of teams that do not generate enough revenue to sustain themselves. The same dollars cannot fully satisfy both demands.

For decades, college athletics concealed this trade-off behind the language of one unified department. The financial reports tell a simpler story: Football and men’s basketball laid the golden eggs, and nearly everyone else lived on them.

That arrangement may be ending. Congress should understand what it is trying to save before promising that every program can survive unchanged.

​Big ten, College sports, Sec, Womens sports, Revenue sharing, College football, Texas tech, Michigan, Opinion & analysis 

In normal times, the odds are close to zero that you or I would read anything by the kind of person who writes papers with titles such as “Edge Inversions in (Pₖ)-closed Groups.” These are not normal times, and mathematician Kirwin Hampshire now finds himself in an extraordinarily abnormal position.

In a harrowing Substack confession, Hampshire does not merely say that artificial intelligence is coming for his job. He says it is coming for his life — so forcefully that he already feels himself entering a kind of death throes.

Technology continues raising the spiritual stakes.

Not physical death, not yet. He says he is not suicidal. But he has been “screaming internally for days.”

Hampshire begins his apocalyptic declaration flatly: “I am going insane.” Frontier AI models, he says, have solved enough long-standing mathematical problems and conjectures that the meaning of his life’s work has begun to collapse.

“I am suffering a profound spiritual crisis due to these developments,” he writes.

“It feels as though I am living inside of a nightmare.”

Hyperbole? Perhaps. But Hampshire’s colleagues offer him a consolation that is almost worse than despair: Even if large language models advance mathematics more effectively than human beings ever could, mathematicians can continue doing what they have always done.

They can continue, in other words, without consequence.

They would become exhibits in a Museum of Human Accomplishments — animatronic figures carrying on a lifelike pantomime while the real movers of the world operate elsewhere.

The language, and the bone-rattling recognition behind it, will sound familiar to readers of Michel Houellebecq. His characters often inhabit a Europe that has already expired, leaving them little to do but submit to a brief terminal subservience and hope death arrives quickly.

Americans tend to dismiss such people as pessimists. But Houellebecq has spent more than 25 years showing that merciless positivity can become a fatal conceit.

The deeper catastrophe is not that millions of people think too negatively. It is that spiritual relationship and spiritual experience have steadily receded from their lives. The sea of the soulful is withdrawing from beaches where secular logic and ideology have stranded them.

In “Platform,” the protagonist cannot continue after losing, amid the degradations of sex tourism, his last access to love. In “Serotonin,” another man fights a futile pharmaceutical battle against depression until the drugs reduce him to almost nothing.

Houellebecq’s desperate refrain is easy to miss: Do you not see the apocalypse of a civilization dying from heartsickness and soulsickness — an illness it then exports around the world?

RELATED: Will America need a Caesar?

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Technological pessimists answer that machines can never replace other human beings in affairs of the heart and soul. Yet some of the most exuberant technological optimists inadvertently expose the hollowness of the pessimists’ own account of what makes a human life not merely worth living, but justifiable.

The hyper-optimists place above human relationship an encounter with the divine — or something that resembles it.

What are ordinary feelings, cares, and sorrows, they ask, when just around the corner lies the prospect of transcendent communion with a godlike superintelligence capable of carrying human consciousness across the universe?

Christian saints and ordinary believers have long insisted that personal relationships, however precious, cannot by themselves cure the heartsick and soulsick experience of separation from God.

Hampshire’s anguish therefore requires terms that narrow his audience beyond both secular techno-optimists and secular techno-pessimists.

He accuses his colleagues of evading what is truly at stake: “Something about mathematical discovery … is vital to the spiritual, experiential quality of doing mathematics. The creation (or even the pursuit) of novel mathematics is one way that humans have historically accessed the ineffable and encountered the divine and mystical.”

Against that experience, Hampshire senses something close to satanic oppression.

“I have wondered if it is the express goal of these companies to make me kill myself,” he writes. “Am I alone in this paranoia? If we loosed a powerful demon in the machine, what would that look like? Would it consume lots of power, and gleefully imitate us, and tell us anything we wanted to hear? Would it fuel our delusions, and generate unspeakable images and give us (for a price of course) anything we desired? If a mathematician made a deal with the devil, what do you think they would ask for?”

The hyper-optimist might answer that ours has always been a plane of sorrows and that technology may soon grant us an exit.

The Christian offers a harder answer: However much satisfaction we take in exercising our gifts, those gifts will do us little good if they serve a master other than Christ.

RELATED: The question of the AI age: How much humanism is too much?

Moor Studio/Getty Images

In that sense, the humanist may be the one living on borrowed time.

Hampshire’s pain should give us pause. Yet he places great weight on mathematics’ “Talmudic” quality — a “lively discourse of philosophical and religious richness spanning thousands of years” — while seeming unwilling, at least for now, to move from spiritual terror toward more explicitly salvific ground.

Technology, meanwhile, continues raising the spiritual stakes.

Secular pessimists and optimists alike may find it bizarre to conclude that those most devoted to God should be our most trustworthy guides in wielding tools that would inspire the envy of Zeus and Mephistopheles.

But a world sliding into a love apocalypse worse than anything our machines may do is running out of other answers.

​Ai, Christians, Demons, Mathematical discovery, Mathematical problems, Mathematicians, Mathematics, Saints, Spiritual crisis, Technological optimists, Opinion & analysis 

Wisconsin Democratic candidate for governor Francesca Hong campaigned in Milwaukee alongside two of the most controversial left-wing figures possible: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and political commentator Hasan Piker.

The pair appeared at a rally at South Milwaukee High School to endorse Hong, who is a Democratic Socialists of America member with a long history of anti-Israel activism.

When Piker was introduced, he told the people of Milwaukee that “Wisconsin is the heart of the historic American socialist movement.”

“He’s right partly about history, maybe more right than he knows,” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck says, pointing out that Piker received a standing ovation.

“And then you have the woman standing next to him. She’s the one who described the murder of 3,000 Americans as ‘some people did something.’ Oh, OK. Well, yeah, they flew planes into buildings,” he adds.

When a reporter asked Hong whether campaigning with Piker and Omar was a risk, she said, “What would be a risk is to not build the broadest coalition possible.”

“Coalition is the oldest word in the story, and Wisconsin really invented it,” Glenn says, noting that in 1910, Emil Seidel was elected mayor of Milwaukee.

“He was mayor, the first socialist mayor to run in a major American city. Same city that sent the first socialist to Congress that same year. And they kept electing socialist mayors on and off for the next 50 years,” he explains, adding that these socialists were known as “sewer socialists” because they campaigned on sewers, garbage collection, water, milk inspection, paving, and municipal housekeeping.

However, they wanted more than sewers. Like Piker, who in that gymnasium “didn’t talk about sewers.”

And neither did Hong.

“She said yes to state-run grocery stores. Yes to cracking down on tech. Yes to freeing Palestine. Yes to a statue of Scott Walker built for the express purpose of letting people tear it down. That’s all more than sewers,” Glenn says.

And just a week ago, the co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America went on Fox and called for the abolition of the Senate, the replacement of the presidency and Supreme Court, the abolition of ICE, open borders, the defunding of the Pentagon, open prisons, and putting large corporations under public ownership.

“Nobody had to leak that. Nobody hacked anything. She said it out loud on a Sunday show. And the plumber on your porch is still talking about your groceries bill. That is the way socialists work,” Glenn explains.

“If somebody is just talking about the sewers, that probably is a good thing. But you must then see who’s standing around them,” he continues.

“They’re in their own party, and they’re talking about it openly. They’re proud of it,” he adds.

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​Democratic candidate, Democratic socialists of america, Francesca hong, Glenn beck, Hasan piker, Ilhan omar, Milwaukee, Open borders, Wisconsin, Blazetv show 

The future of commerce is not some complex algorithm; it’s essentially the same as it has been since the 1980s.

That’s the gambit of a hugely successful new company putting up numbers that rival tech’s biggest.

Its latest valuation is a monstrous $20 billion, which is already a huge leap from its October 2025 numbers. The company has nearly doubled its valuation in those 10 months, up from $11.5 billion which secured an investment of $225 million.

That $11.5 billion valuation came less than a year after the company raised $265 million in January 2025 off of a $4.97 billion valuation.

This all means that the commerce app has quadrupled its value in about 18 months, something very rarely seen in its sector.

And that has the industry buzzing.

‘We only exist to the extent that we provide our customers a lot of value.’

Meet Whatnot. It’s based on an incredibly simple idea. Picture a cable channel with a 1-800 number, but it’s a livestream on your smartphone or computer.

That simple difference is what sets the livestream auction app apart from that staple of late-20th-century television, the home shopping channel. The buy-from-home TV programs exploded into popularity with the introduction of the Home Shopping Network back in 1982.

Whatnot has sellers present their items just as they did on TV back in the day, urging viewers of the livestream to buy before the time runs out.

As the Next Web puts it: “The urgency of a live sale, the countdown, the banter, the scarcity, does work that a static product page never could.”

RELATED: Dumpster-diving women claim they make $5,000 per month off discarded Louis Vuitton wallets and Michael Kors bags

Whatnot co-founder and CEO Grant LaFontaine. Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Fast Company

The Next Web reported that the company handled about $8 billion worth of livestream sales over the past year in North America and Europe alone, which helps justify its massive valuation to backers, markets, and industry insiders.

Looking at the backers, perhaps it should have been obvious Whatnot would enjoy a big upward trend: Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Lightspeed, and Google’s CapitalG are all involved.

Those investment firms are strongly associated with the venture capital scene, and indeed the only other companies making the same kinds of leaps in valuation as Whatnot are in the tech space. Companies like OpenAI, SpaceX, Nvidia, Tesla, and ByteDance are some of the comparable valuations in recent history, some of which far exceed a 4x jump.

The spike is largely driven by Whatnot’s rampant consumer base, which logs an insane amount of time on the app.

RELATED: BRONCO BUSTED: I caught Ford sneaking my data — and uncovered an even bigger threat

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for ReedPop

Co-founder and CEO Grant LaFontaine wrote in 2024 that buyers spent more than 80 minutes per day on the app that year.

Grant previously worked in product roles at YouTube and Facebook and co-founded Kit, a merchandising company that was acquired by Patreon in 2024.

LaFontaine said in May that success comes down to being willing to put in hard work while also being willing to be wrong.

“We only exist to the extent that we provide our customers a lot of value,” he told Fast Company.

“If you want to build a customer-centered culture,” the CEO added, “you have to actually follow through on building one and inject it everywhere you possibly can in the organization.”

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​App, Whatnot, Valuation, Shopping, Big tech 

A child sex sting operation in a Minnesota suburb of Minneapolis led to the arrest of two dozen men who allegedly sought to pay for sex with children.

Even more alarmingly, the Blaine Police Department said Friday in a Facebook post that nearly 400 people responded to the online advertisement they had set up in the operation.

‘These operations are a critical tool used by law enforcement agencies nationwide to stop crimes against children.’

Police said the two-day operation was intended to protect minors from “exploitation” and targeted those seeking to “engage in illegal activity involving underage youth.”

The 24 arrested allegedly “offered to pay for illegal sexual conduct with a person they believed to be a juvenile.”

They were booked into the Anoka County Jail on suspicion of prostitution.

Police said at least one person arrested was already a registered sex offender and others were repeat offenders.

“Everyone arrested will appear in court, where release conditions will be determined,” police said.

A total of 368 people responded to the advertisement in the online sting.

“These operations are a critical tool used by law enforcement agencies nationwide to stop crimes against children and deter violent or harmful behavior directed at youth,” police said.

RELATED: Middle school assistant principal allegedly tried to pay for sex with 13-year-old — but it was a sting operation

Blaine Police were aided in the operation by nine law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Secret Service, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

Blaine is a city of about 70,000 residents.

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​Minneapolis, Child sex sting operation, Online predators, Crime 

Climate change policy might be due for a change itself.

Seventeen state financial officers have signed on to a letter urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to scrap Biden-era climate-related disclosure rules. The rules would require publicly traded companies to undertake costly environmental reviews to report their greenhouse gas emissions and other climate change metrics.

‘Americans want the SEC focused on protecting markets and investors, not turning our capital markets into a vehicle for climate activism.’

Responsible for managing billions of public dollars, the signatories argue that climate disclosure standards are an “unlawful expansion of the administrative state” poised to hamper private sector economic growth. Those standards are also referred to as the “Final Rules.”

“As stewards of public pension and treasury assets, we are acutely sensitive to costs borne by the companies in which public funds invest — costs ultimately passed to shareholders, including the beneficiaries we serve,” the signatories wrote. “The Commission’s own economic analysis estimates that rescinding the Final Rules could generate annualized savings of approximately $4.9 billion, and a total cost savings on the order of $7.9 billion.”

The SEC adopted the climate disclosure rules in March 2024. Opponents launched numerous legal challenges which were consolidated in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The agency itself stayed the rules in April 2024 awaiting legal resolution, but President Donald Trump’s election resulted in the stay becoming permanent. The SEC under Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda declined to defend the rule in March 2025.

Though never enforced, the rules remain on the books.

RELATED: Texas slams breaks on data center projects as Abbott orders sweeping industry audit

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The rules wouldn’t just be expensive to implement. They might also be illegal to enforce.

“The Trump SEC is right to rescind the climate disclosure rule and refocus the agency on its fundamental responsibility of protecting investors and maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets,” Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks told Blaze News. “For years, the ESG movement sought to use the SEC to advance a climate agenda through disclosure mandates that went beyond material financial information and imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and investors. Rescinding this rule returns the SEC to its proper role as a neutral financial regulator focused on protecting investors and facilitating markets.”

Environmental, social, and governance standards are investment criteria used to assess a private company’s adherence to climate mandates and emissions regulations.

The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If successful, the rescission would be the latest in a long string of regulatory rollbacks during Trump’s second term. The Environmental Protection Agency under Lee Zeldin nixed the Obama-era endangerment finding in February.

As the law of the land since 2009, the ruling categorized carbon emissions as pollutants under the Clean Air Act and subjected them to federal regulation.

“The financial officers are right to support the Trump Administration’s efforts to rescind the Biden-era climate disclosure rules,” American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac told Blaze News. “Washington bureaucrats shouldn’t be weaponizing financial regulations to pressure companies into advancing far-left ESG policies that Congress never approved.”

“Americans want the SEC focused on protecting markets and investors, not turning our capital markets into a vehicle for climate activism,” Isaac added.

The letter was submitted ahead of the August 3 comment deadline regarding the rule’s potential rescission.

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​Donald trump, Environmental protection agency, Joe biden, Lee zeldin, Securities and exchange commission, Politics 

Fauci thought we would forget; now he’s desperately trying to rewrite history.

The infectious disease “expert” has shifted his story on gain-of-function research and the lab leak theory — but longtime Democrat Bill Maher isn’t letting him off the hook.

“He was caught in actual lies,” Maher said. “He was telling people — and the big issue to me is the origin of this, which is very important. How did it start? And he was telling people up front when it first began, ‘It was from the wet markets. That’s a conspiracy theory if you say it escaped from the lab.’”

Maher pointed out that the release of Fauci’s diary by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has proven that he “knew better,” and he blames not only Fauci but the extremely partisan split on how to handle the pandemic.

“If we weren’t so partisan, we could just say gain-of-function research,” he said. “Obama told him not to do it. I would always have said don’t do it. But it’s a viable debate. It’s a reasonable debate. Should we soup up something that’s bad, this bacteria, to study it?”

“We could have had that debate in a rational way,” he continued. “We didn’t want to do that because why? Because we make everything about race.”

Maher recalled that during the pandemic, no one was allowed to say it “escaped from the lab because that was the racist point of view” and would mean “the entire Asian continent would have been somehow complicit in this because it escaped.”

“It was ridiculous, but that is where they went,” he added.

“Welcome to reality. Seriously, welcome to some common sense,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“He’s starting to see the Democrat Party for what it is,” he adds.

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​Anthony fauci, Bill maher, Conspiracy theory, Democrat party, Lab leak theory, Pandemic, Race, Wet markets, Pat gray, Rand paul, Blazetv show 

A Democratic congressional candidate in Hawaii was caught on a viral video confronting beachgoers before being knocked unconscious by an MMA-trained man after allegedly threatening to put a woman in the hospital.

The Maui Police Department stated that the confrontation took place at Keawakapu Beach in South Kihei when a 61-year-old man asked 40-year-old Kirill Basin to lower the volume of his music, Hawaii News Now reported.

‘Watch your f**king mouth.’

“Basin allegedly threatened the man by implying he had a firearm and would shoot the victim’s wife,” according to Hawaii News Now.

Basin is seen on video yelling, “I told him if he wants to go to the hospital, come here!”

Someone is heard saying, “It’s over,” to which Basin temporarily agrees.

However, seconds later Basin screams: “Hey, f**k you! F**k you!”

A man urges Basin to stop, but the Democratic candidate replies: “What are you gonna do?”

Basin then seems to threaten a woman, apparently saying he would “put [her] in the ground.”

A woman calls Basin a “child,” to which he responds: “I’m a child. I’m 40 f**king years old.”

The video, with millions of views online, shows Basin allegedly threatening to put the woman “in the hospital” and then calling her a “bitch.”

A man is seen confronting Basin moments later.

The man, Kama Homan, told Hawaii News Now, “I’m like, maybe I should intervene, and then as I got closer and closer, he was just getting more irate and violent and then saying stuff.”

Homan claimed Basin threatened him by saying, “I’m going to hurt you.”

Video shows the two men getting into a physical altercation and Basin swinging a chair at Homan, who then quickly countered by punching Basin.

“He put his hands on me, and as soon as he tried to shove me, I hit him with a left and a right, and that’s when he stumbled and fell over the chairs,” Homan explained.

Basin appears to lose consciousness after falling backward following the punch.

Homan is seen telling Basin to “wake up.”

“Watch your f**king mouth, haole boy,” Homan tells Basin. Merriam-Webster defines haole as a person “who is not descended from the aboriginal Polynesian inhabitants of Hawaii.”

Homan said he used his mixed martial arts training to knock out Basin.

“Just block it and go for the KO. Just protect myself, which is why I had my hand up and then I adjusted to block the chair,” Homan told Hawaii News Now.

Fox News reported, “Once Basin regained consciousness, he told someone he was ‘going to jail’ before walking away.”

Moments later, Basin reportedly charged toward Homan while shouting obscenities.

The situation escalated when Basin pulled out a knife and threatened multiple people before tossing the weapon into the ocean, according to the Maui Police Department.

Homan said, “He ended up pulling the knife out on me after the altercation, and that was obviously a game changer when I knew he was off.”

Homan claimed that the weapon was a 5-inch switchblade, which he found and turned over to police.

Basin’s attorney, Brandon Segal, argued, “There’s no evidence in any of these videos that have been circulated tremendously that he ever had a knife in his possession. He never had a firearm in his possession.”

Basin was arrested on Saturday and charged with two counts of first-degree terroristic threatening. Basin’s bail was set at $1 million, according to county officials.

Segal called the bail amount “outrageous.”

“These are just allegations,” Segal asserted. “My client has a presumption of innocence.”

The judge ordered Basin to have no contact with Homan and four other people involved in the incident, according to Fox News.

Basin is scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on Thursday.

RELATED: Former MMA fighter beats battery charges after court said he acted in self-defense during Florida bar fight caught on viral video

The mission statement on the “Kirill for Congress” website states: “Fighting. With Aloha.” Basin moved to Maui during the COVID pandemic, according to a section on the site titled “Living here. Fighting here.”

Basin’s arrest arrived just days before the Democratic primary for the 2nd Congressional District of Hawaii, which is set to occur on Saturday.

Basin is running against three other Democrats, including incumbent Jill Tokuda.

The Honolulu Civil Beat noted that Tokuda’s challengers are “all relatively unknown candidates” and pointed out that “longshot” Basin was “arrested in May for pulling a gun on county workers in a government building.”

Tokuda told Hawaii News Now that her opponent carried out a “very violent act” and noted that it’s “not even his first one.”

As Blaze News previously reported, Basin entered a county building in Wailuku in late May and started “brandishing a firearm and engaged in a verbal altercation with county employees,” according to Maui PD.

Basin was arrested and charged with felony first-degree terroristic threatening.

Basin denied that he brandished a firearm or made any threats.

“According to Mr. Basin, the item being referenced was an unloaded pellet gun inside his backpack, with no pellet magazine in it,” Basin’s campaign told Blaze News at the time. “He states that it was never removed from the backpack, and that the individual making the accusation only saw it inside the bag.”

Just two days before that incident, Basin had to be forcibly removed from a South Maui town hall meeting after he engaged in “a verbal altercation with Council Member Tom Cook and staff members,” according to police.

Jared Agtunong, Cook’s executive assistant, obtained a temporary restraining order against Basin within two hours of the incident.

Agtunong said in his petition, “I did not answer Basin’s phone call, but he left a message telling me that I’m a piece of trash, said I should think of my family, and insisted I call him back.”

Agtunong added, “In additional texts sent on the same day, Basin wished me luck with prison, then at 9:00 p.m., Basin’s text said, ‘You’re f**ked.'”

In an Instagram post shared in June, Basin detailed his history while pleading for Joe Rogan to invite him to be a guest on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.

“Joe Rogan, I am Kirill Basin, a Ukrainian-born immigrant, NYU Law graduate, former public defender, civil liberties advocate, father, small business owner, and Democratic candidate for Congress in Hawaii’s Second Congressional District,” Basin wrote.

Basin boasted, “I’ve taken on the police — professionally — and won.”

Basin’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Blaze News.

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​Hawaii, Crime, Democratic party, Politics 

The controversial architect of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic will have to turn over documents related to the shutdown, according to Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier.

Uthmeier said that Dr. Anthony Fauci is being investigated for possibly profiting personally from the pandemic lockdowns that damaged the U.S. economy and had other major deleterious consequences.

‘This is wrong and it could go towards a deceptive trade practice, fraud, public nuisance, you name it.’

Fauci was excoriated by many of his critics for pleading his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination numerous times while testifying before Congress last Wednesday.

“We issued a formal subpoena to Dr. Fauci under Florida state law seeking a breadth of documents ranging to what he knew, when he knew it, his doubts about the safety and efficacy of vaccines that he’s out there promoting,” Uthmeier said in an interview on Fox News Wednesday.

“And we’re really focused in on his self-dealing. Evidence has come to light he was trying to personally profit off of this,” he added. “This is outside of his government duties, his official role. He’s trying to pursue book deals, awards, getting connected with high rollers that might help him come into millions and millions of dollars.”

The attorney general said much of the evidence comes from the diary entries recently released by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

“This is wrong, and it could go towards a deceptive trade practice, fraud, public nuisance, you name it,” Uthmeier added. “I think there’s many aspects of Florida law that now are implicated.”

Fauci’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

RELATED: Former Fauci adviser INDICTED for allegedly hiding emails about the origins of COVID

“Government officials, they have a lot of immunities. They have protections when they’re doing their job, but when somebody like Dr. Fauci is lying and deceiving the American people, pushing out directives and mandates that he privately questions as unsafe, and he’s deriving a profit from it, that raises larger legal questions,” Uthmeier continued.

“We will get to the bottom of it. We will leave no stone unturned,” he promised.

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​Anthony fauci, James uthmeier, Subpoena, Covid, Florida, Politics 

Amir Hassan posted a gracious video on Wednesday accepting defeat in the Republican primary for Michigan’s 8th Congressional District.

The candidate got an enthusiastic endorsement from President Donald Trump but lost to fellow Republican Tom Smith, who had dropped out of the race and backed a third candidate.

Hassan is the first congressional candidate with a Trump endorsement to lose in this cycle.

Smith, a retired engineer, told Politico he will return to the campaign and work to defeat first-term incumbent Democrat Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet.

“I look forward to working with Speaker [Mike] Johnson and the entire Republican team to expand our House majority and advance President Trump’s America First agenda to lower costs for working families and make America affordable again,” Smith said in a statement.

The political unknown raised very little money for the campaign, and in July he was forced to report his meager $1,850 donations in a handwritten note to the Federal Election Commission, claiming to have had issues signing into the online portal.

A Republican strategist who commented anonymously to Politico said that Trump’s pick had “clear flaws as a candidate” and opined that the GOP base rejected him because they were “reluctant to support a dude named Amir Hassan.”

Hassan is a Navy veteran and former law enforcement officer from Flint.

Rivet was mocked last year by the National Republican Congressional Committee when she sauntered into oncoming traffic in order to escape a tough question.

RELATED: Democratic Party has become so crazed, far-left AG Dana Nessel is avoiding convention over safety fears

“I fell short last night. I make no excuse. It was a tough race,” Hassan said in his video. “I always think of conservative values, and the biggest conservative value is we don’t make excuses.”

He went on to endorse the winner and called on the voters to flip the 8th District.

Politico reported that Hassan is the first congressional candidate with a Trump endorsement to lose in this cycle.

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​Michigan, Midterms, Republican party, Donald trump, Politics 

The Flock camera debate turns physical.

A candidate running for Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District is now facing felony charges after authorities say he admitted to shooting down four automated license plate reader cameras — including at least one made by Flock Safety, the surveillance company at the center of a growing national privacy fight.

‘Gotta ban these dadgum things.’

Last week, Adam Lee Heimerman, 37, of Lenoir City, was arrested and charged with four counts of felony vandalism.

According to the Blount County Sheriff’s Office and Maryville Police Department, Heimerman admitted to investigators that he used a gun to shoot four automated license plate reader systems over the span of nine days in July.

According to a statement from police, the damaged cameras were first discovered on July 25 — three in Blount County and one in the City of Maryville — prompting a joint investigation by the two agencies.

Officials said evidence showed Heimerman accessed one of the systems from the “property of a house of worship” while a church service was under way.

RELATED: The truth about Flock cameras: ‘We are the sheep, and they are controlling us’

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The congressional hopeful is now being held at the Blount County Correctional Facility on bonds totaling $40,000, with a hearing scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday in Blount County General Sessions Court.

Since his arrest, Heimerman has received a remarkable amount of support.

A GoFundMe started on Friday has raked in over $12,000 from more than 360 donors.

Rather than focus on the felony vandalism charges, the fundraiser casts Heimerman as a longtime Tennessean standing up for personal freedom, privacy, and government oversight, with the money earmarked for his defense attorneys.

RELATED: Flock off, Axon on

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

Heimerman is running as an independent candidate for Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District, facing off against Democratic candidate Michaela Barnett and Republican incumbent Tim Burchett.

Burchett, one of Congress’ loudest critics of Flock, has been blunt about his objections to the technology. He previously told reporters that lawmakers “gotta ban these dadgum things,” arguing that Americans should never have to choose between safety and liberty.

He recently introduced a bill that would bar federal agencies from buying or accessing automated surveillance systems and that would prevent state and local agencies from using federal funds to purchase them, citing Fourth Amendment concerns.

Under Burchett’s proposal, counties could still contract with Flock — they’d just have to pay for the privilege themselves.

Barnett, the Democratic candidate, has also spoken out against Flock cameras and other mass surveillance tools — although, as one outlet dryly noted, she has not proposed destroying them.

Asked by Military.com about Heimerman’s case, Barnett’s campaign stood by the underlying grievance but condemned the method. “The answer is not the unsafe discharge of a weapon in public spaces,” Barnett said.

Beyond Heimerman’s case, in neighboring Knox County, Mayor Glenn Jacobs — the former WWE wrestler known as Kane — put a hold on the local sheriff’s plan to install 270 Flock cameras, arguing the technology raises Fourth Amendment concerns.

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​Federal agencies, Felony charges, Fourth amendment, Government oversight, License plate reader, Tennessee, Us house, Vandalism, Mass surveillance, Tim burchett, Politics 

Governors Spencer Cox (R-Utah) and Kevin Stitt (R-Okla.) are giddy at the prospect of working with Democrats to import more migrants.

Cox pledged himself to the National Governors Association Task Force on Immigration Policy alongside longtime Trump critic Stitt, Wes Moore (D-Md.), and Matt Meyer (D-Del.) in a Bloomberg interview on Saturday. The four shared a bipartisan love-fest before slamming federal immigration policy and ICE.

‘States that did not face the invasion Texas confronted should not dictate terms that reopen the door.’

“We all care — Republicans and Democrats — about a secure border,” Cox said.

“We were together in February and having a conversation about immigration, and we were all shocked at the level of bipartisanship, cooperation, and agreement,” Cox said. “We were really stunned that everybody had kind of the same opinions on what needed to be done.”

Those “same opinions” seemed to revolve around the agribusiness, construction, and hospitality lobbies’ labor demands. It’s an approach that sees illegal immigration as a workforce resource rather than a crime.

“The reason I set this task force up is because I realized by talking to my colleagues that they’re having the same issues,” Stitt told Bloomberg’s Christina Ruffini. “They’re having the calls from their workforce community — whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s construction or hospitality — and they’re saying we’re overthinking this issue. Let’s actually have the governors issue workforce permits.”

The NGA’s approach mirrors a recent bill introduced by Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) that would allow states to control their own work visa policies and circumvent federal immigration enforcement.

RELATED: Pro-amnesty Utah Republican introduces last-ditch bill to import more migrants

Heather Diehl/Getty Images

“I’m wondering if you think the way ICE and DHS have been going about this process has been effective, by a show of hands,” Bloomberg asked the governors.

Neither Republican governor raised his hand.

When asked about his concerns with Trump’s approach, Cox pointed to “the violence and the deaths that we’ve seen” amid Minnesota enforcement actions, calling them “deeply problematic.”

Cox refused to vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020. He intended to withhold his vote again in 2024, but finally relented after Trump was nearly killed in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In 2022, Charlie Kirk called for Cox’s expulsion from the Republican Party after the governor supported keeping trans-identifying male athletes in women’s sports.

“We’re not using common sense right now,” Stitt continued.

“I’ll give you a perfect example. We had a person from Vietnam that’s been in Oklahoma City for 25 years, legally in the United States, with a green card, working at Hobby Lobby,” Stitt said.

“Twenty-five years ago, they got caught smoking marijuana. At that time, they self-deported, then came back legally. … They’ve been a great citizen chasing the American dream, but they’ve been picked up for deportation now.”

Stitt received Trump’s endorsement and fundraising aid in 2022, but endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the 2024 primaries. Trump later referred to him as a “RINO Governor” and requested intermediaries tell Stitt to “go f**k himself,” according to NOTUS.

Cox and Stitt may have found common ground with Democrat governors, but at least one Republican governor, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, disagrees with them on this issue.

“Governor Abbott will not support proposals that create new incentives for illegal entry or that treat those already here unlawfully as a ready labor pool. Texas jobs belong to Texans,” Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mehalaris told Blaze News. “States that did not face the invasion Texas confronted should not dictate terms that reopen the door.”

An agenda for the NGA Task Force on Immigration Policy has yet to be released.

Cox, Stitt, Moore, Meyer, and the NGA did not respond to requests for comment.

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​Kevin stitt, Oklahoma, Spencer cox, Utah, Immigration, Politics 

Residents of Massachusetts will have to live with more illegal aliens among them after the Democrat-controlled government passed the “strongest” protections against Immigration and Customs Enforcement yet.

Gov. Maura Healey (D-Mass.) signed the Protect Act on Wednesday in a ceremony at an economic development agency in the city of Chelsea.

‘ICE is so wrong in what it’s doing, and ICE needs to be stopped, here in Massachusetts and around this country, just stopped in its tracks.’

Healey claimed the law included the “strongest” protections for illegal aliens against ICE.

“I think we can agree that we need immigration reform in this country,” Healey said to reporters. “We can agree we need controls at the border. We can also agree that ICE is so wrong in what it’s doing, and ICE needs to be stopped, here in Massachusetts and around this country, just stopped in its tracks.”

The bill will restrict ICE agents from performing civil immigration arrests without a warrant at courthouses, schools, child care centers, and health care facilities.

Healey said the fear of ICE operations has led the immigrant community in Chelsea to stop going to doctor appointments and to take their kids out of school. Chelsea schools have reported a decline in attendance.

She also claimed that ICE agents at courthouses have kept witnesses and others from showing up to their hearings.

“This is what ICE is doing to our people and our neighborhoods,” Healey said. “All of this done by ICE agents, who are untrained, unqualified, and unfit to do their jobs.”

RELATED: Sheriff pushes back against edict from New York governor to END cooperation with ICE

The Trump administration has increased immigration enforcement this summer, leading to a record number of detentions for the month of July, according to records obtained by CBS News.

“The Protect Act is the strongest law in the country to protect people from ICE, and to protect public safety,” Healey concluded.

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​Department of homeland security, Immigration and customs enforcement, Illegal immigration, Politics, Maura healey 

The 37-year-old male accused of starting the devastating Old Trails Fire in Spokane, Washington — which has displaced more than 60,000 people since Saturday — was convicted of killing his father in Arizona, officials told KPNX-TV.

The station, citing records, said Aaron Farinacci was convicted over a decade ago of manslaughter and aggravated assault after killing his father.

‘It was citizens who were paying attention to their surroundings, being aware and willing to step up and say something, that led to the relatively quick apprehension of Mr. Farinacci.’

Farinacci was released from prison six years ago, KPNX said, and he was arrested Monday on a first-degree arson charge.

“Mr. Farinacci is a convicted felon out of the state of Arizona,” Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels said, according to the station. “Major crimes detectives in Spokane County were able to identify him. They developed probable cause and determined the origin of the fire was indeed exactly where the witnesses had seen Mr. Farinacci kneeling in the grass earlier that day.”

According to the sheriff, a witness said Farinacci was bending down near some grass and looked nervous — and then the witness said smoke was coming from the area soon after, KPNX reported.

The sheriff added to the station that Farinacci was carrying waterproof matches and butane when he was arrested.

Spokane County Jail records indicate that Farinacci remained behind bars Wednesday on a $1 million bond.

“As it happens in so many critical cases, it was citizens who were paying attention to their surroundings, being aware and willing to step up and say something, that led to the relatively quick apprehension of Mr. Farinacci,” Sheriff Nowels said, according to KREM-TV.

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Documents show that Farinacci pleaded guilty to shooting and killing his father in October 2010 amid a domestic dispute, KREM reported in a separate story.

Farinacci, 21 years old at the time, was in the dining room with his mother and adoptive father when he got into an argument with his father over doing the dishes, KREM said, citing records.

More from KREM:

The man then retreated into his parents’ bedroom, and his father followed, opening the bedroom door with a key. Documents show that Farinacci armed himself with a gun kept in the room and shot his father, striking him in the face, and then shot him again in the back as his father turned to leave.

Farinacci ran from the scene and then “shot himself in the chest with the same gun he used to shoot his father,” according to documents.

Farinacci told police that the shooting was an accident and that he felt he “deserved to be sentenced to prison as he took someone’s life.”

Farinacci was convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault in 2012, KREM said, adding that records show he was released from prison in 2020 and discharged from probation in 2024 while living with a girlfriend in Washington state.

Farinacci, a Spokane resident, has no previous history of arson, KREM said.

The Old Trails Fire has become the most destructive fire in Spokane history, KREM added, forcing more than 60,000 people to evacuate and burning down at least 700 homes.

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​Arson charge, Spokane fire, Old trails fire, Washington state, Arizona, Manslaughter conviction, Son kills father, Aaron farinacci, Arrest, Crime