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With the 2026 primaries fast approaching, there are three U.S. Senate seats onlookers should keep an eye on.

Republicans are currently enjoying a supermajority after sweeping the 2024 elections, controlling the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.

The freshman senator narrowly won his seat in 2020 by just one point.

After November, Republicans flipped four seats: Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Montana. These victories flipped the Senate and put Republicans in a comfortable 53-seat majority while Democrats fell back to just 47 seats.

Although the GOP has a healthy majority, there are some more potential pick-up opportunities — and losses — for Republicans going into next year’s primaries.

RELATED: Exclusive: GOP lawmaker introduces bill barring illegal aliens from ‘sabotaged’ census

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One of the most contentious Senate races will be for Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff’s seat in Georgia. Several prominent challengers have emerged in recent months, most notably with Republican Rep. Mike Collins throwing his hat in the race back in July. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has also been floated as a potential candidate, but she has not formally moved to run for the seat.

The freshman senator narrowly won his seat in 2020 by just one point against Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue. Given this razor-thin margin, Republicans have set their sights on taking back Ossoff’s seat, and early polling suggests it’s within reach.

The Cook Political Report currently rates Ossoff’s seat as a toss-up, and some polls mirror this rating. In a hypothetical race between Ossoff and Collins, the Democratic incumbent has polled with an average three-point advantage, according to RealClearPolitics. Another recent poll shows Collins trailing Ossoff by just one point, according to findings from TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics.

RELATED: Republican senator relishes ‘cray-cray’ Mamdani’s success: ‘We’ve gotten lucky’

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Another pick-up opportunity for Republicans emerged in Michigan after Democratic Sen. Gary Peters announced his retirement in January. Several Democratic candidates, like Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, have since launched their own campaign bids, but the future nominee will inevitably have to put up a fight against Republican challengers.

Former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers is considered the frontrunner among the GOP candidates in the Michigan Senate race. Rogers previously ran and narrowly lost against Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024, but he has since relaunched his Senate campaign with the hopes of flipping the swing-state seat.

Slotkin managed to defeat Rogers by just 0.3% in November, signaling the support behind the Republican challenger. Earlier in the year, Rogers was polling several points ahead of his Democratic counterparts, and Cook Political Report has rated the Senate seat a toss-up.

RELATED: Ex-Clinton adviser warns Democrats of dire midterm season: ‘Elections have consequences’

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Although Republicans are poised to potentially flip some seats, there may be some warning signs in the Midwest.

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) reportedly will not seek re-election in 2026, leaving a vacancy in the deep-red state. The Cook Political Report has rated the seat as leaning Republican, and the GOP has maintained a prominent presence in Iowa at both the local and national level.

Despite the success Republicans have enjoyed in the Hawkeye State, Democrats have begun to secure their own electoral victories. Most recently, Democrat Catelin Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch for an open state Senate seat, flipping the GOP’s supermajority for the first time in three years.

Steve Deace, a native Iowan and host of “The Steve Deace Show” on BlazeTV, told Blaze News that this swing in favor of Democrats is taking place because Iowans are not energized by any Republican candidates they have to choose from.

“There are danger signs, because if it can happen in Woodbury County, Iowa, this can happen anywhere in America,” Deace said.

“Our people are just not motivated, by and large, to vote for the Republican Party brand as a brand anymore. So you’ve got to prove to them you’re worth their time and effort for them to show up, and I think that this is a wake-up call for the next midterm.”

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested MS-13 associate Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Monday and set the stage for his deportation to Uganda.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to Blaze News, “President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator, to terrorize American citizens any longer.”

‘The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart.’

But Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland — a judge former President Barack Obama nominated — swiftly intervened to prevent the removal of the Salvadoran national. Xinis told the Trump administration it was “absolutely forbidden” from deporting Garcia, then issued a temporary restraining order to this effect.

On Thursday, the MS-13 associate asked a different Obama judge to prevent Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and all of the officials in their respective agencies from discussing his sordid history.

“Since Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was released from pretrial custody last Friday, officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security — and even the White House — have attacked Mr. Abrego in the media in numerous highly prejudicial, inflammatory, and false statements,” Garcia’s attorneys noted in the request to U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, an Obama-nominated judge who sought Abrego’s release in July.

Garcia and his legal team were especially prickled by the suggestion that he is “a known MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, wife beater, and child predator.”

While Garcia’s attorneys complained that such claims were “baseless,” it’s clear the Trump administration did not create the allegations out of whole cloth.

RELATED: Exclusive: ICE targets illegal alien who allegedly assaulted a pregnant woman

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Justice Department attorneys indicated earlier this year that in March 2019, Garcia was summoned to appear in removal proceedings. During a bond hearing, ICE stated that a confidential informant flagged Garcia as an active member of MS-13. The illegal alien’s bond was denied with the court reportedly finding “that Abrego Garcia was a danger to the community.”

When Garcia appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, an immigration judge determined in April 2019 that “the determination that the Respondent is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record.”

As with Garcia’s MS-13 link, the domestic abuser claim also did not appear out of thin air.

Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez, sought domestic violence protective orders against him in 2020 and 2021. Vasquez alleged in her 2021 protective order petition that Garcia punched her, ripped off her shirt, and both scratched and bruised her.

— (@)

The human trafficking allegation that Garcia wants DHS and DOJ officials to refrain from publicly mentioning is fleshed out in his federal grand jury indictment which accuses him of conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.

The indictment alleges that Garcia conspired to bring illegal aliens — adults and children alike — into the U.S. from countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere from 2016 until this year. He allegedly made over 100 trips over the course of this alleged human smuggling campaign.

“Over the course of the conspiracy, the co-conspirators knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no known authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 member and associates,” said the indictment.

RELATED: Homeland Security plays games while deportations fall flat

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As for the “child predator” allegation, Bondi told reporters in June that one of Garcia’s alleged co-conspirators claimed that he not only “abused undocumented alien females” who were “under his control while transporting them throughout our country” but allegedly “solicited nude photographs and videos of a minor.”

Bondi, Noem, and the White House’s repeated references to these and other skeletons in Garcia’s closet evidently infuriated him, but Garcia’s attorneys said in their Thursday request that the “pièce de resistance” was the DHS’ repost of this White House meme:

— (@)

Garcia’s attorneys claimed in the request that “if the government is allowed to continue in this way, it will taint any conceivable jury pool by exposing the entire country to irrelevant, prejudicial, and false claims about Mr. Abrego.”

His attorneys asked for a gag order prohibiting all DHS and DOJ officials involved in Garcia’s case — and all officials in their supervisory chain — “from making extrajudicial comments that pose a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing this proceeding.”

A DHS official told the Hill, “If Kilmar Abrego Garcia did not want to be mentioned by the Secretary of Homeland Security, then he should have not entered our country illegally and committed heinous crimes.”

The DHS official continued, “Once again, the media is falling all over themselves to defend this criminal illegal MS-13 gang member who is an alleged human trafficker, domestic abuser, and child predator. The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart, yet they continue to peddle his sob story.”

The Hill indicated that the DOJ declined to comment.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted in August 2024 that a major factor behind his decision to endorse President Donald Trump was the opportunity to help “Make America Healthy Again” in a future Trump administration.

“Don’t you want healthy children?” Kennedy said in a speech. “And don’t you want the chemicals out of our food? And don’t you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption? And that’s what President Trump told me that he wanted.”

Since his hotly contested confirmation as Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary in February, Kennedy has worked ardently to deliver on the promise of MAHA.

Already, HHS under his tutelage has secured numerous victories on the health front, including the:

cancellation of mRNA vaccine development contracts; elimination of the Biden-era vaccine-reporting requirement and corresponding incentive system for hospitals; termination of thousands of bureaucrats along with senior establishmentarians such as Christine Grady, the wife of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci;removal of retarding fluoride drug products for children from the market;requirement that Pfizer and Moderna add new safety warnings to their COVID-19 vaccines; andremoval of the COVID vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended vaccine schedule for healthy pregnant women and children.

Although the Trump administration has delivered many MAHA wins, three in particular stand out as particularly consequential.

Fresh start at the ACIP

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is the federal panel whose vaccine recommendations become official policy at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and apply to the entire American population once adopted by the agency’s director — a position which, at the time of writing, was vacant thanks to Susan Monarez’s firing on Wednesday.

RELATED: Big shake-up at CDC: Director gets the boot; gay vax chief resigns, attacks RFK Jr. on way out

Photographer: Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Kennedy fired all 17 members of the ACIP in June.

While every member of the ACIP was a Biden administration appointee, the health secretary’s principle concern was not the panelists’ politics but rather their cozy relationships with some of the organizations they were tasked with scrutinizing.

For instance, data provided on OpenPaymentData.CMS.gov, a site managed by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, indicated that Edwin Jose Asturias, one of the ACIP members whom Kennedy fired, collected around $54,000 from pharmaceutical companies, including $20,705 in what appear to be consulting fees.

Blaze News previously reported that among the companies that paid Asturias what appear to have been consulting fees were Pfizer and Merck Sharpe & Dohme LLC, a bio-pharmaceutical subsidiary of the company whose pneumococcal vaccine Capvaxive the committee voted to recommend in October. Asturias also apparently netted millions in research support from Big Pharma, including over $3.1 million from Pfizer and over $730,000 from the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline LLC.

Like Asturias, Kennedy noted “most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines.”

Kennedy indicated that the individuals he appointed to the newly cleared panel were “highly credentialed physicians and scientists who will make extremely consequential public health determinations by applying evidence-based decision-making with objectivity and common sense” and had “each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.”

Nuking gender ideology

Pursuant to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14168, the HHS has taken a wrecking ball to gender ideology.

For starters, the department released guidance to the U.S. government, to the public, and to external partners that sex is an immutable biological classification and that there are only two sexes, male and female.

The department has applied this standard to civil rights enforcement, health care policy, and sports eligibility; launched federal civil rights investigations into whether various states violated Title IX by allowing men in women’s sports; canceled funding for related programs and activities; and scrubbed its websites of messaging, guidance, and language that advanced gender ideology.

The HHS has also conditioned federal funding for states’ Personal Responsibility Education Program grants on the removal of all references to gender ideology.

California learned the hard way and had its PREP grant terminated on Aug. 21. The HHS’ Administration for Children and Families noted in a release that the agency would not tolerate funding “curricula that could encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals, ‘altering their body … through hormone therapy,’ ‘adding or removing breast tissue,’ and ‘changing their name.'”

Axing artificial food coloring

The HHS outlined a plan in April to phase out all petroleum-based synthetic dyes from America’s food supply.

Vani Hari, a critic of the food industry who founded Food Babe, told Blaze News in November that the brighter artificial colors, which are helpful with sales and attractive to children, are harmful to their health.

“The science shows that these dyes cause hyperactivity in children, can disrupt the immune system, and are contaminated with carcinogens,” said Hari.

Red dye 40, for instance, has been linked in some studies to hyperactivity disorders in children, and, according to the Cleveland Clinic, has various potential side effects, including depression, irritability, and migraines.

A 2021 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Nutrition noted that blue dye 1 has been found to cause chromosomal aberrations and “was found to inhibit neurite growth and act synergistically with L-glutamic acid in vitro, suggesting the potential for neurotoxicity.”

In short order, the U.S Food and Drug Administration kicked off the process of revoking authorization for Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B in the short term and to eliminate another six synthetic dyes — FD&C Green No. 3, FD&C Red No. 40, FD&C Yellow No. 5, FD&C Yellow No. 6, FD&C Blue No. 1, and FD&C Blue No. 2 — by the end of next year.

RELATED: RFK Jr. torches vaccine panel to make consequences count again

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The FDA also requested that companies move up their timelines for the removal of FD&C Red No. 3.

“These poisonous compounds offer no nutritional benefit and pose real, measurable dangers to our children’s health and development,” Kennedy said in a statement. “That era is coming to an end. We’re restoring gold-standard science, applying common sense, and beginning to earn back the public’s trust.”

Numerous food manufacturers and fast-food chains have fallen in line or taken big steps in the right direction, including General Mills; Kraft Heinz; Starbucks; PepsiCo; Danone North America; TreeHouse Foods; Tyson Foods; and In-N-Out Burger.

In addition to tackling synthetic dyes, the HHS has paved the way for the use of food coloring from natural sources. In May, the FDA granted new color additive petitions for galdieria extract blue, butterfly pea flower extract, and calcium phosphate.

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In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment.

James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

RELATED: The deep state is no longer deniable — thanks to Tulsi Gabbard

Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network’s architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

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Language, religion, and culture can be barriers that prevent people from different backgrounds from understanding one another. But time — the ongoing flow of moments from the past, through the present, and into the future — is something that unites us in its universality, right?

Not necessarily.

It turns out that time is also subject to interpretation.

“What if I told you that for many African societies, the concept of the future doesn’t exist and that instead of time moving forwards, time actually moves backwards,” said Instagram user @mumbipoetry in a viral August 18 post.

Quoting Kenyan philosopher John Mbiti, she says, “time is a two-dimensional phenomenon with a long past, vibrant present, and virtually no future,” where the present encompasses “the now, the recent past, and the immediate future,” while “the vast endless past [is] where all events eventually go on to live forever.” But because “time is made up of events” and must be “experienced in order to be real,” the future “cannot constitute part of time” because it has neither events nor experience to legitimize it.

A year isn’t measured by Earth’s rotations around the sun; it’s measured by events. “A year is only over when those four seasons have taken place, so a year could take 365 days, 390 days — it doesn’t matter,” she explained, contrasting it with the Western world’s concept of time, where it’s treated as a “commodity” that can be “spent, saved, wasted, or lost.”

This two-dimensional understanding of time is why many African languages “don’t have a word to describe the distant future,” she explains.

The African notion of time is a real head-scratcher for Westerners, who are constantly preoccupied with thoughts of the future.

This difference, says BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre, is “so radical it makes cooperation basically impossible.”

Could this dismissal of the future be one of the reasons why much of Africa continues to face significant economic and social challenges? Could it be evidence that our two worldviews are incompatible?

“If you do not have a future, how do you understand planning for something? How do you understand a lower time preference that would allow you to build civilization? How do you understand denying yourself today so that you can thrive tomorrow?” Auron asks.

Having no concept or language for the future has sprawling implications that impact the individual person and the entire civilization, he explains. From contracts that establish future obligations to time zones, delivery schedules, and business deals, how does anyone thrive if their notion of time is that it only exists once an event takes place?

“People who do not have a word to describe this phenomenon [of the future] are going to have a very, very hard time working inside our system, adopting our customs, and they’re going to lose out in the larger global economic picture — the geopolitical picture,” says Auron, pointing out that liberals often whine that this view is “imperialistic.”

“Yes, it is Western-centric. It is ‘racist’ to the extent that it favors people of European descent who understand the world in this way,” he adds. “But that’s also why it works.”

“Maybe it’s the way [Africans] want to live, but it will fall behind people who have a different conception of reality, a different understanding of time. Again, you don’t have to hate people or make fun of people … because they have this different understanding, but you definitely need to factor that in when you’re deciding who should be in your country and whether or not your system can be applied to other people.”

To hear more of Auron’s analysis, watch the episode above.

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.

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Director Ari Aster ’s “Eddington,” which has inspired more heated discussion than it ticket sales, drops us unpleasantly back into an America at the peak of COVID-19 hysteria.

Our putative protagonist is Joe Cross, well-intentioned but beleaguered sheriff of the small desert outpost of Eddington, New Mexico.

Aster’s previous films resolve with satanic forces claiming victory over well-meaning innocents just trying to grapple coherently with temptation and strife.

Already burdened with a psychologically fragile wife (Emma Stone) and a live-in, conspiracy-obsessed mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell), Cross must now keep the peace for a populace bitterly divided over masks, social distancing, and business closures, while facing down BLM riots. His downtime doomscrolling (remember the black squares on Instagram?) offers no relief.

Six-feet showdown

Cross himself is COVID-skeptical, to the say the least, which puts him at odds with Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), the kind of slimy, fake, media-savvy politico who could give California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) a run for his money.

Watching the first half of this movie in 2025 is enjoyably cathartic. Even the audience at the screening I saw — in an art-house theater in liberal Chicago — cringed at the movie’s virtue-signaling adults and their brainwashed teens. The biggest laugh came when a father, having just been subjected to a rant from his son about “white abolition,” blurts out, “Are you f***ing re****ed? YOU’RE white!”

I doubt I have to remind anyone that only a few years ago, these reactions would have been very different.

Truther or dare

From our vantage point in 2025, Cross seems to be the most levelheaded man in town, a flawed but decent public servant trying to make sense of a world gone mad. Finally, we think, a belated but nonetheless welcome jab at the liberal delusions that held sway in our country for the last decade.

That’s when Aster pulls the rug out from under us. Our hero makes a series of choices that progress from foolhardy to downright evil, choices he ends up paying for in the most grotesque way possible. We, in turn, are punished for daring to identify with Cross. It’s as if Aster wants to leave us not merely disillusioned but utterly humiliated.

Pascal’s ostensible villain also falls away to reveal a much more formidable nemesis: the powerful corporation behind the development of Eddington’s much-contested “SolidGoldMagikarp Data Center.” These shadowy Big Tech overlords seem to validate every paranoid imagining of the online fringes, right and left: jetting in hooded, well-trained shock troops to carry out false-flag “Antifa” attacks and thwart populist dissent, distracting a divided and confused public from the very real threat they represent.

RELATED: ‘Eddington’: Portrait of COVID-era craziness wrings laughs from peak wokeness

Eric Charbonneau/A24 via Getty Images

Jabber jibber

Now … some critics may believe that this is the main message of the film. That the struggle is Them vs. Us. The real villains are the faceless “Eyes Wide Shut” cabal of world controllers who send out their minions to subvert the will of the people. “Smart viewers understand this,” the critics will say.

Well, I’m a smart viewer, and I don’t care about that. Maybe it is Them vs. Us in real life, but in Hollywood, and to Ari Aster, and to the audience in the theater on both sides of the aisle, the message of “Eddington” is clear: You can’t win.

Aster’s previous films, “Beau Is Afraid,” “Midsommar,” and “Hereditary,” all resolve with satanic forces claiming victory over well-meaning innocents just trying to grapple coherently with temptation and strife. No one is held accountable for the perpetration of this violence; there is no justice or righteous retribution.

“Eddington” turns out to be just another variation of this story, this time using COVID instead of the supernatural to torture its characters. The question we should ask is who benefits from this nihilistic message?

Certainly not the audience. Joe Cross and the people of Eddington may be stuck where they are, helpless before the whims of their sadistic creator, but there’s nothing keeping us in town. None of us would want to live in Aster World; maybe it’s time we admitted it’s not even a nice place to visit.

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Reports indicate that the American tech job market is slowing down significantly, making it increasingly more difficult for qualified individuals to find employment. However, a team of technology professionals contends that jobs are out there; they are just not being advertised to American talent.

The Economic Policy Institute found that the top 30 H-1B employers hired 34,000 new foreign workers in 2022, yet laid off at least 85,000 between 2022 and early 2023, further fueling concerns that companies are booting Americans for foreign nationals to keep wages lower.

‘We were shocked to discover these discriminatory practices are still widespread across major American companies today, keeping Americans out of jobs in their own country.’

Indian nationals accounted for roughly 71% of H-1B workers in 2024, while Chinese nationals ranked second, with 12%. Indian and Chinese nationals also represent the largest groups of foreign-born STEM workers, according to the American Immigration Council.

The background

Reports like this sparked action from fed-up tech workers who decided to establish Jobs.Now, an online job board featuring a list of positions sourced from “legally mandated PERM labor market test locations” in newspaper classified advertisements.

PERM is a permanent labor certification issued by the Department of Labor, allowing employers to hire foreign talent to work in the United States. This certification sets workers on a path to receive a green card. Many of these candidates are already working for the employer on temporary visas, such as the H-1B or the Optional Practical Training programs.

The tech workers were driven to start the online job board after Apple and Facebook settled worker discrimination lawsuits with the Department of Justice.

In 2021, Facebook agreed to pay $4.75 million in civil penalties and up to $9.5 million to eligible victims after it was accused of “routinely” refusing to “recruit, consider, or hire U.S. workers” for positions it had reserved for temporary visa holders.

Similarly, in 2023, Apple agreed to pay $6.75 million in civil penalties and establish an $18.25 million back pay fund for victims after the DOJ claimed the company “illegally discriminated in hiring and recruitment against U.S. citizens and certain non-U.S. citizens.”

RELATED: The real labor crisis? Too many visas, not too few workers

Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

“We were shocked to discover these discriminatory practices are still widespread across major American companies today, keeping Americans out of jobs in their own country,” Jobs.Now told Blaze News. “We started Jobs.Now to fight against these illegal practices and help Americans find good jobs.”

Sneaky tactics

Jobs.Now warned that some companies — particularly those seeking to fill engineering, data science, finance, accounting, and biotechnology positions — will try to hide opportunities from American workers to favor their existing H-1B employee and provide lower wages.

Under PERM laws, a company seeking to hire a foreign national must demonstrate “that there are not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified, and available to accept the job opportunity in the area of intended employment and that employment of the foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers.”

To demonstrate this, the employer must advertise the position in two Sunday newspapers and select three additional recruitment steps, which can include advertising the position at job fairs, the employer’s website, an online job board, and on radio and television, among other options.

‘Jobs.Now highlights those ads, but that doesn’t mean the company is running a new search. It’s just about meeting the compliance rules.’

The employer can hire a foreign national via the PERM process only if there are no other minimally qualified U.S. citizens or existing green card holders available.

“As a result, they put ads in newspapers with obscure application methods aiming to hide the listing from Americans, so they will not receive applications and will be able to sponsor their preferred immigrant candidate for a green card to fill the job,” Jobs.Now told Blaze News.

Jobs.Now explained that it has found some job postings that feature “hidden” characteristics — including “not being posted on the company website, not being posted on mainstream job boards, and requiring email or paper mail applications” — that could result in fewer American applicants.

Jobs.Now has also highlighted postings that refer individuals to send their applications to immigration professionals and law firms, rather than human resources workers.

“To maintain business continuity, or the wage arbitrage of hiring lower-paid immigrant workers, companies prefer to keep these existing employees rather than seek American citizens as required for permanent roles,” Jobs.Now stated. “They commonly treat PERM labor market tests as compliance exercises where they fill out paperwork, rather than actual hiring processes. As a result, they often direct applications to immigration professionals or law firms rather than ordinary recruiters.”

RELATED: Microsoft rejects idea that company is replacing American workers with foreign labor after massive layoffs

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Clashing views

While Jobs.Now highlights the labor market tests as being treated as mere formalities rather than genuine efforts to recruit American workers, recruiter Mark Fabela affirmed that these postings are meant to satisfy regulatory requirements and are “not about launching a broad hiring campaign.” Though, perspectives differ on whether this complies with the law.

“Instead, it’s about documenting for the Department of Labor that no qualified U.S. workers stepped forward during the recruitment phase. That’s why you see the mandated postings in newspapers and other outlets,” Fabela told Blaze News. “Jobs.Now highlights those ads, but that doesn’t mean the company is running a new search. It’s just about meeting the compliance rules.”

“By the time these ads appear, the role is often already filled by someone, usually an H-1B worker the company is already employing,” he said, dismissing Jobs.Now’s claim that the posts aimed to hide jobs from Americans.

‘Only after no US worker can be found will the PERM application be approved. Whether the foreign worker is already performing the job is immaterial.’

However, other experts challenge Fabela’s perspective, asserting that the law requires genuine efforts to hire Americans, even through the labor market tests posted in the newspaper.

“Employers must conduct good-faith recruitment of U.S. workers and offer that position to any qualified and willing U.S. applicant,” Dr. Ron Hira, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Howard University, told Blaze News. “Only after no U.S. worker can be found will the PERM application be approved. Whether the foreign worker is already performing the job is immaterial.”

Hira called the law “crystal clear” but noted that even the DOL “has been guilty of administrative malpractice in enforcing PERM regulations.”

RELATED: AI, global power, and the end of human jobs — are we ready?

Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“For the past few decades, DOL has turned a blind eye to rampant employer discrimination against U.S. workers in the PERM recruitment process,” he explained. “Everyone, including DOL, knows that discrimination is more common than not in PERM applications.”

The DOL admitted in a 2020 report that the PERM program “relentlessly has employers not complying with the qualifying criteria.” It also stated that it has “limited authority over the H-1B program as it can only deny incomplete and obviously inaccurate applications and conduct complaint-based investigations, challenges in protecting the welfare of the nation’s workforce.”

“Therefore, the PERM and H-1B programs remain highly susceptible to fraud,” the DOL concluded.

Hira called for Americans to petition the Trump administration “to start enforcing the plain language of the law.”

‘Americans don’t have a real shot at these jobs; they were already displaced long ago when the employer hired the worker on a temporary visa.’

Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, echoed Hira’s concerns about enforcement failures, calling the PERM process “a charade.”

“The reality is that nearly all of these employers already have a foreign worker in the job and are just seeking to check off the boxes that the law requires,” Vaughan told Blaze News. “Americans don’t have a real shot at these jobs; they were already displaced long ago when the employer hired the worker on a temporary visa.”

Congress fueled some of these issues by adjusting the eligibility criteria for green cards to more closely align with those for temporary visas, Vaughan explained.

“That means there are more temporary workers now seeking to get green cards to stay permanently, and they are willing to work for less money on that promise. However, they have a long wait for the green cards, and the employers don’t want to have to consider Americans for these jobs, since they promised them to the foreign workers, and they can get away with paying them less,” Vaughan stated.

Concerning any “good faith” efforts to find Americans to fill these positions, Vaughan reasoned that there is “little enforcement of the requirement” because employers have found ways to circumvent rules.

Fabela acknowledges that issues exist within the current process, including a lack of modernization with the print newspaper ad requirement. He also noted that some job requirements are so “overly narrow” that they “effectively match one candidate’s resume.” The most concerning issue is “wage-level manipulation,” according to Fabela.

“Bad actors will write dumbed-down job descriptions in a way that understates the role’s actual skill level. That allows them to pay experienced candidates significantly less while still clearing the prevailing wage test,” Fabela told Blaze News.

Jobs.Now also highlighted issues with the manipulation of the “overly broad” prevailing wage standard, which “allows companies to slot jobs into categories that could include far less advanced roles, which have lower wage standards.”

America First reforms

Amid an uncertain tech job market and ongoing criticisms of the PERM process, advocates like Jobs.Now are pushing for reforms to address the root problems and restore priority to American workers.

Jobs.Now is calling for changes to H-1B and PERM regulations, as well as the cancellation of the OPT visa program, to open more job opportunities to American workers, including entry-level recent college graduates.

‘We think the regulations must be changed so that labor market tests give American citizens the right they deserve to be considered first for jobs in America, rather than the formality they are currently treated as.’

Companies should also be required to prove that there are no qualified American candidates available for a position before issuing an H-1B visa, Jobs.Now stated.

The tech workers behind the job board website are advocating for companies to be required to post all labor market tests on their website’s career page, accept digital applications, and post on high-traffic job boards like LinkedIn or Indeed, rather than newspaper classifieds.

RELATED: America last? Foreign workers fill jobs while Americans are left out

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“In short, we think the regulations must be changed so that labor market tests give American citizens the right they deserve to be considered first for jobs in America, rather than the formality they are currently treated as,” Jobs.Now told Blaze News.

Fabela agrees that the H-1B program is flawed and in need of reform to prevent abuse. However, he noted that he is “unapologetically pro-H-1B,” expressing concern that China would win the tech race “without firing a shot” if the U.S. closes the door on foreign talent.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has vowed to clamp down on employment bias by increasing investigations, compliance checks, and litigation.

“The EEOC is putting employers and other covered entities on notice: If you are part of the pipeline contributing to our immigration crisis or abusing our legal immigration system via illegal preferences against American workers, you must stop,” EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas stated in March.

“The EEOC is here to protect all workers from unlawful national origin discrimination, including American workers,” Lucas remarked.

The DOL did not respond to a request for comment.

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In their co-authored best seller “Dark Future,” Glenn Beck and Justin Haskins predicted a day when global leaders would rely on artificial intelligence to help them govern nations.

Just two years after the book’s publication, their premonition has already come true. Earlier this month, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson admitted in an interview with the Swedish business newspaper “Dagens Industri” that he frequently uses AI tools, such as ChatGPT and LeChat, to seek “second opinions” on policy decisions.

Before proposing or enacting a new policy, Kristersson asks AI chatbots questions like, “What have others done? Should we think the complete opposite?” says Haskins, adding that the PM also utilizes AI platforms to conduct research and bounce ideas around.

But it’s not just him. “In the interview, he says … his colleagues in the legislature are also doing this exact same thing. They’re using AI as sort of an adviser,” he tells Glenn.

While Kristersson swears up and down that he doesn’t blindly follow ChatGPT’s advice or share sensitive information with the database, there are still “huge problems” with his reliance on AI.

Haskins believes Sweden isn’t actually the first country to use artificial intelligence in governance; it is just the first to admit it. “I guarantee that American politicians are using it all the time,” he says, warning that “this is going to be a huge problem moving forward.”

Glenn, who regularly uses artificial intelligence as a tool, says that Kristersson’s AI usage isn’t necessarily a problem in and of itself.

The real concern, he says, is “what comes next.”

Glenn foresees a day when AI is valued above and trusted more than human intuition, intelligence, and experience. “That’s when you’ve lost control,” he warns.

“That’s exactly right,” says Haskins, “and how do you argue against something’s decision when that something is smarter than literally everybody in the room?”

“And it’s learned how to lie,” adds Glenn.

Haskins agrees, noting that current AI systems “lie all the time.” It’s not uncommon for users to report that various AI systems make up information, invent sources, and skew hard data.

“It’s feeding you what it thinks you want to hear,” says Glenn.

While it’s true that human beings are also capable of lying and manipulation, artificial intelligence is a far greater threat because it can “manipulate huge parts of the population all at the same time,” says Haskins.

Further, “[AI] doesn’t necessarily have the same goals that a human would have. As it continues to grow, it’s going to have its own motive, and it may just be for self-survival,” adds Glenn.

“That’s the world that we’re already living in. … It’s not hypothetical,” sighs Haskins.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the video above.

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Louisiana residents are horrified by the discovery of the remains of a missing 12-year-old who was reportedly killed by alligators, but previous allegations against his mother make the case even more disturbing.

The remains of Bryan Vasquez were found by a volunteer of the United Cajun Navy with the aid of a thermal drone after a massive search that lasted for 12 days. The boy had been reported missing from his home in the Michoud neighborhood of New Orleans.

He was suffering from a fractured skull, a collapsed lung, retinal hemorrhages, fractured ankles, and fractured legs as well as a punctured lung.

Volunteer Jon Gusanders said in a press conference Thursday that he saw a “violent movement under the water’s surface” that led him to find the body in a lagoon.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said, “and I hope to never see anything like that again.”

He said that two alligators, one about 11 feet long and the other about 6 feet long, were holding the boy’s body underwater before they were spooked by the drone.

Gusanders said that he used the drone to distract the alligators from recovery efforts since they kept returning to the boy’s body and pushing it deeper into the lagoon.

A coroner found that the boy died from blunt force trauma and drowning in the alligator attack.

“We did everything we could to protect his body, to protect his honor, while the NOPD got their boat out to successfully recover him,” he added.

The boy had been missing since Aug. 14 after he slipped out of a window. A neighbor’s security camera appeared to capture him in him walking by in a diaper.

Police have obtained a search warrant in the case and confiscated the woman’s cell phone in the investigation.

On Thursday, WDSU reported disturbing details in a conviction against Hilda Vasquez, the mother of the child. In 2013, the boy was rushed to the hospital when only 3 months old because he was vomiting blood and had stopped breathing.

His mother said that they were watching television when the boy began screaming as if “someone was squeezing him.”

Doctors said the boy was the victim of child abuse after noting that he was suffering from a fractured skull, a collapsed lung, retinal hemorrhages, fractured ankles, and fractured legs as well as a punctured lung.

RELATED: Family of 10-year-old girl allegedly tortured to death says CPS ignored dozens of warnings

The mother was sentenced to five years for child abuse but later received probation. She was eventually able to regain custody of the child.

While she described the boy as autistic and nonverbal, a report from the Department of Children and Family Services in 2021 said that his disability had been classified as “traumatic brain injury (non-accidental).”

A representative for the Vasquez family released a statement blaming domestic abuse for the previous conviction.

“All I can say is that as a community advocate for this community, I know for a fact in Hilda’s past she was a victim of domestic violence,” Cristiane Rosales-Fajardo said. “I know that in her past she has done everything to protect her children and that her child was living with her at the time he walked out of the house. All four of her children was living with her, so if the state and DCFS believe she is a danger, then that means they failed him again.”

Fajardo has also opened a GoFundMe account to raise funds for the family.

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Conservatives often imagine that winning statewide elections means gaining control over the machinery of government. But this is wrong — and dangerously so. For far too long, red states have confused the two. The assumption that political victory automatically confers political authority is one of the chief falsehoods circulating on the right. It is the reason Republican states often look like Democrat ones, only with different bumper stickers.

This is an uncomfortable but necessary message for conservatives to hear: Red states are facing a major crisis of governance.

Red states have built conservative brands on progressive machinery.

The State Leadership Initiative’s new “Index Report” lays out the evidence in extensive detail. By the most basic measures of lean, accountable, and ideologically grounded government, red states are failing. Many of the policies their representatives are voting for and their governors are signing into law are profoundly out of step with the wishes of voters. Bureaucracies are bloated, universities multiply administrators faster than scholars, schools have fewer teachers than administrators, New York-style regulations pile up in red states like Texas, and seven of the 10 most federally dependent states wear the Republican label.

The key takeaway is not just that red states are doing poorly — it is that red states are almost indistinguishable from blue states on the metrics that matter.

This is not conservative governance. It is branding atop the chassis of managerial progressivism. Governors may cut a ribbon, sign a bill, or post a slogan, but beneath the surface, the operating code of their states is indistinguishable from California’s.

How can this be the case?

The bureaucratic cartel

The deeper reason for this unfortunate reality is explored in the State Leadership Initiative’s second major publication, the “Shadow Government Report.” It shows how state bureaucracies have been colonized — quietly, methodically — by a cartel of national associations and professional guilds no voter ever approved. These groups wield more influence over daily governance than most state legislatures, yet they are invisible to the public, untethered from electoral accountability, and drenched in progressive orthodoxy.

These associations are neither think tanks nor trade associations in the old sense. Yet they wield massive powers: They write standards, provide training, host conferences, and broker grants. These guilds credential personnel and tell agencies what “best practice” means.

Because legislators rarely read the fine print in the legislation they pass, the blueprints crafted by these associations become the law of the land by default. When the public wonders why every state suddenly adopts the same jargon, the same metrics, and the same “tool kits” on climate, equity, and inclusion, the answer is almost always because the same group of associations decided it.

The depth of ideological capture in these associations is astounding. The examples border on parody. The National Association of State Treasurers insists that environmental, social, and governance investing is a fiduciary duty and trains treasurers in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The National Association of Medicaid Directors declares equity — not health outcomes — the “foundational principle” of Medicaid reform and pushes race-based service priorities.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials maintains that “structural racism” is a public health emergency and coordinates messaging on abortion, climate, and even online speech with the White House.

The National Association of State Procurement Officials encourages states to embed race- and gender-based scoring rubrics into contracting, turning neutral bidding into an ideological loyalty test.

The National Governors Association, which is supposedly a bipartisan forum of executives, functions as a relay for the left, peddling DEI and ESG tool kits like a traveling salesman.

These examples are far from exhaustive.

National associations operate outside democratic oversight while having a greater influence over shaping state policy than most legislatures. They are the Trojan horses of managerial progressivism. While legislators debate property-tax rates or curriculum, these associations push a suite of prepackaged policies — procurement guidelines, Medicaid waivers, regulatory thresholds — that heavily favor the status quo.

Protecting progressives

Civil service rules protect progressive careerists from political oversight. University boards rubber-stamp DEI because accreditation bodies — another arm of the cartel — say so. Procurement officers copy and paste National Association of State Procurement Officials templates. Medicaid directors take their orders from the National Association of Medicaid Directors rather than the governor.

The bureaucrats Republican governors inherit have been trained in association doctrine, are credentialed by association certifications, and are acculturated in association conferences. Even the vocabulary their agencies use — “resilience,” “inclusion,” “climate readiness,” “public-private partnership” — is imported from slide decks in Washington, D.C.

Our adversaries built the shadow government that now runs the states. The only question is whether conservatives will summon the courage to challenge it.

You may elect a conservative governor. But if his health agency still sends staff to Association of State and Territorial Health Officials trainings, his Medicaid office still uses National Association of Medicaid Directors templates, and his treasury department still follows the National Association of State Treasurers guidelines, the day-to-day governance is leftist by default.

Even if personnel are swapped out, the new trainees will be accepting “best practices,” model regulation, and training seminars from supposedly neutral industry experts. But this neutrality is a farce.

The result is a peculiar kind of political theater. Voters think they have chosen a government. Governors think they are in command. But the machinery hums along, indifferent to election returns and guided by national bodies whose values are taken from the faculty lounge and the federal bureaucracy. It is government by autopilot — and the autopilot was programmed by the left.

Rooting out the cartel

The cartel of leftist national associations needs to be dealt with in order for red states to prosper. The remedy is not tinkering around the edges but an aggressive structural overhaul.

First, states must begin by auditing and restricting association membership. Every agency should disclose its dues, trainings, grant pipelines, and template adoptions. Sunshine is a good disinfectant.

Second, agencies should be barred from importing association policies without legislative approval. If a procurement office wants to adopt National Association of State Procurement Officials rubrics, let it defend that choice in front of elected representatives in open hearings.

Third, association-led DEI trainings should be prohibited outright; they are not professional development but bureaucratic catechism.

Fourth, rival associations must be built, as the State Financial Officers Foundation has already done, to provide training and credentials aligned with republican self-government.

Finally, and most importantly, political leadership must penetrate the bureaucracy — more appointed positions, stronger sunset rules, and the restructuring of state agencies that resist accountability.

Some will protest that this sounds radical. It is not — it is the work of self-government. The radicalism lies in the present arrangement, in which anonymous guilds in a faraway capital dictate to sovereign states what their procurement contracts should look like or what principles guide their Medicaid systems. The radicalism lies in states whose constitutions enshrine republican rule yet whose daily operations are outsourced to entities their people cannot name.

This reform in red states is not optional if conservatives mean to govern.

Changing the machinery

The Index reveals the failures; the Shadow Government Report reveals the cause. Paired together, they teach a crucial lesson: Red states have built conservative brands on progressive machinery. They talk like Jefferson but regulate like Albany. They thump their chests about liberty while paying dues to organizations that smuggle equity quotas into their hiring manuals.

RELATED: The deep state is no longer deniable — thanks to Tulsi Gabbard

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

To continue on this path is to win hollow victories, mistaking campaign slogans for statecraft. It is to send governors into battle armed with speeches while the other side controls the maps, the supply lines, and the ammunition. The work ahead is not to shout louder but to actually govern — to tear down the scaffolding of association rules and build institutions that are faithful to the people they’re supposed to serve. Until that is done, every red state risks being a blue state in disguise.

Governance is not automatic. It is not the inevitable byproduct of winning elections. It is the patient, disciplined, steady construction of institutions aligned with the people’s will. Our adversaries have known this for decades. They built the shadow government that now runs the states. The only question left is whether conservatives will summon the courage to challenge it.

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

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The Trump administration’s border czar announced Friday that federal officials have found tens of thousands of the missing children lost under the Biden administration.

Tom Homan made the comments on Fox News as the administration released some data about President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

“Out of the 300,000 children — I looked at the numbers just yesterday — we’ve located over 23,000 of them,” Homan said.

‘That’s a big plus for the administration because the last administration wasn’t even looking for them.’

“So 23,000 locations of 300,000. President Trump’s committed. We’re not going to stop until we find every one of them or at least run every lead down on those 300,000 children. That’s a big plus for the administration because the last administration wasn’t even looking for them.”

The 300,000 figure is taken from a government report in 2024 about unaccompanied migrant children who had been released to sponsors or family members within the U.S. The report said that 32,000 of those children failed to show up to immigration court between 2019 and 2023, but another 291,000 of those children didn’t receive court notices at all.

Critics say the children aren’t actually missing but that it is more of a bureaucratic “paperwork issue” of the government.

“That doesn’t mean something bad happened to them,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council to the BBC. “It means you missed a court hearing.”

However, Reichlin-Melnick admitted that some of those children are at higher risk for trafficking and abuse, a finding included in the 2024 report.

RELATED: Online outrage erupts over video of illegal alien arrest — then his horrific charges are revealed

A Department of Homeland Security official told Fox News that total deportations had reached 350,000 removals under Trump.

“President Trump and Secretary Noem have jump-started an agency that was vilified and barred from doings its job for the last four years,” the official said. “In the face of a historic number of injunctions from activist judges, ICE, CBP, and the U.S. Coast Guard have made historic progress to carry out President Trump’s promise of arresting and deporting illegal aliens who have invaded our country.”

The spokesperson added that migration through the Darien Gap in Panama is down 99.99%.

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President Donald Trump’s efforts to impose tariffs on imports from foreign governments hit a massive stumbling block in the form of a federal appeals court decision on Friday.

The 7-4 ruling of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that the president exceeded his authority when he cited a 1977 emergency powers act to implement many of his tariffs. If upheld, tens of billions of dollars in tariff revenue would have to be returned.

‘None of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax.’

The ruling will not take effect until Oct. 14 to allow the administration to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The statute bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax,” reads the order from the court.

The ruling applies to those tariffs made under the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act but not those passed by the president through other laws.

Trump has said that the billions of dollars of revenue from the tariffs would help balance the budget and erode the massive government debt. He has also used the tariff threat to force companies to bring back manufacturing to the U.S.

RELATED: Trump says he’s considering ‘a little rebate’ for Americans from tariff revenue

“The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” Trump said in comments from April. “Always have, I’ve used them very well in the first administration, as you saw, but now we’re taking it to a whole new level, because it’s a worldwide situation, and it’s very exciting to see.”

Critics say that the Constitution specifically granted the power of tariffs to Congress and that tariffs usually lead to trade wars, lost jobs, and inflation.

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While Christians on the right may be viewed as “radical” in the eyes of the left, they’re not even as close to how radical the left has become.

And BlazeTV host Steve Deace believes that needs to change if Americans want their children marked safe from the kind of evil that the left’s most radical are capable of unleashing — like the recent shooting of school children at church in Minneapolis.

“Even as radicalized as we’ve all become in the last few years, we are still not to the level of radicalization that we are up against. Now, I would not be a supporter of equaling their radicalization because I think that would call us to do things that God’s word says that we cannot,” Deace says.

“That being said, I think being more aware of their radicalization will make us more prone to do the preparation that God’s word says we must. And we haven’t,” he continues.

And that radicalization of the other side was on full display in Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s comments regarding the horrific shooting on CNN.

“Obviously, I’ve heard about the rhetoric and the narrative that is being pushed out. But here’s the thing. Anybody that is going to use this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any community has lost touch with a common humanity,” Frey told reporter Erin Burnett.

“We’ve got to be operating not out of hate for any group, but out of a love for our children,” he added.

“Straight up demonic levels of gaslighting,” Deace says.

“How can the mayor of Minneapolis say that level of gas lighting with conviction? There was real conviction there. That’s not BS at all. That’s not virtue signaling. That’s real, because this is his religion, and he’s committed to it, and he’s more committed to it than most of you are,” Deace continues.

“That level of conviction there is biblical, man,” he adds.

And while many liberals have been touting the line that “prayer is not enough,” Deace is actually in agreement.

“Words are not enough, and we need some commonsense gun control. Anybody who has ever sought any level of counseling, I don’t care if they’re 8 or 108, any level of counseling on quote, ‘gender affirming care,’ can never own a weapon,” Deace says.

“What needs to happen is tranny madness needs to be completely eradicated from every social institution and polite conversation in the United States of America and not just for children. Any age regardless. It cannot happen,” he continues.

“The sheer lunacy of this, no human civilization can be civilized and sustain it,” he adds.

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President Donald Trump and his administration are expanding their efforts to carry out the largest deportation initiative in the nation’s history.

Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security is planning an operation in Chicago that would involve 200 agency officials and the use of the Naval Station Great Lakes, according to the New York Times.

‘The first day in Chicago, we took nine child predators off the street.’

“President Trump has been clear: We are going to make our streets and cities safe again,” a senior DHS official told Blaze News. “Across the country, DHS law enforcement are arresting and removing the worst of worst including gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and rapists that have terrorized American communities. Under Secretary Noem, ICE and CBP are working overtime to deliver on the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe again.”

The DHS’ draft request, which awaits review by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, reportedly stated that the agency will use the naval base for “facilities, infrastructure, and other logistical needs” for a 30-day operation in the Chicago Metropolitan area.

It requests space for 250 department personnel and a “Tactical Operations Center,” an “Incident Command Post,” bathrooms, laundry facilities, and parking for 140 vehicles, according to the document reviewed by the Times. The draft request also seeks storage space for medical supplies and weapons, such as rubber bullets and tear gas, the outlet reported.

RELATED: Watch how Mayor Brandon Johnson reacts when asked if he will accept more police funding in Chicago

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

“These operations are similar to what occurred in Los Angeles earlier this summer. Same DHS team,” Navy Cpt. Stephen Yargosz, the commanding officer of the naval base, wrote in a Monday email to his leadership team, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

“This morning I received a call that there is the potential to also support National Guard units. Not many details on this right now. Mainly a lot of concerns and questions,” Yargosz added.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have made at least 1,400 arrests in Illinois between the beginning of Trump’s second term and the end of July.

The Trump administration has repeatedly warned sanctuary leaders, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D), that it plans to focus law enforcement efforts in jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.

RELATED: ‘Flood the zone’: ICE fires back at Boston Mayor Wu’s sanctuary defiance

Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“Right after the election, when President Trump took the White House, the first operation that I was involved in was Chicago. [Mayor] Brandon Johnson says I wasn’t welcome in Chicago. Well, the very next day, I was in Chicago along with the task force,” Border czar Tom Homan told Fox News on Thursday. “The first day in Chicago, we took nine child predators off the street.”

“There’s a lot more to do. President Trump is committed to making Chicago great again, making it safe again, since they failed to do so,” Homan said, adding that ICE’s current operation in the city is “about to get a lot bigger.”

The offices of Johnson and Pritzker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Vice President JD Vance forcefully rejected a report in Politico that tried to undermine the reputation of the administration’s envoy for peace in the Ukraine-Russia war.

Vance said the Politico reporter had participated in a “literal foreign influence operation” that was meant to undermine the peace process. He also accused the writer of intentionally leaving out comments from prominent figures that expressed confidence in Steve Witkoff.

‘Felicia is just not very smart, and allowed herself to be used by deep state con men. Or she’s in on it, and used her position to willingly participate in a literal foreign influence operation.’

“This story from Politico is journalistic malpractice. But it’s more than that: it’s a foreign influence operation meant to hurt the administration and one of our most effective members,” the vice president said on social media.

“Notice how all of the people attacking Steve are on background? That means it’s two or three deep staters who are angry that Witkoff has succeeded where they’ve failed,” he added.

The article by Felicia Schwartz cited many anonymous sources who characterized Witkoff’s efforts to secure a peace deal between Putin and Ukraine as disorganized and beyond the envoy’s abilities.

Vance said the writer left out his quote on the story as well as those from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner, a former Trump senior adviser. He implied that the article was written in service to a foreign power trying to implode the peace negotiations.

“They have an agenda to blow up the president’s efforts to make peace, and they saw her as a useful vessel to launder garbage into the conversation, truth be damned,” he added.

He also blamed actors of the deep state.

“There are two possible explanations: Felicia is just not very smart, and allowed herself to be used by deep state con men. Or she’s in on it, and used her position to willingly participate in a literal foreign influence operation. Either way, it’s disgraceful,” Vance continued.

RELATED: Pentagon spox responds to Blaze News reporter on Ukraine saying aid reduction will embolden Russia

“To set the record straight: Steve Witkoff is an invaluable member of our team,” he added. “He did not mislead anyone on what the Russians told him and what the Russians conceded. (Trust me, I’ve seen the intel.) The fruits of his negotiations are that we have narrowed the list of open issues in the Russia-Ukraine war to a set of clearly defined issues — specifically, security guarantees and territorial concessions.”

He went on to call the article full of “outright lies.”

Schwartz argued that the lack of progress in the meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska was evidence that Witkoff’s efforts were failing. There are no plans for a second meeting, and Russia has continued pummeling Ukraine.

Blaze News reached out to Schwartz and Politico for comment on the accusations from Vance but did not receive a response.

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Several foreign nationals in Florida were allegedly caught cheating on their commercial driver’s license tests, further fueling national concerns about road safety due to an influx of non-English-speaking drivers in the American trucking industry.

‘This story, when viewed in the larger context, points to the phenomenon that we identified late last year: labor dumping.’

Five men were arrested and are facing felony charges after Florida Highway Patrol investigators claimed they were involved in a scheme to use hidden phones and earpieces to cheat on DMV tests in Jacksonville, WTLV-WJXX reported.

Each man taking the CDL test allegedly used a harness to strap a phone to his chest, hiding it under a T-shirt with a small hole that exposed the camera lens. This allowed the phone to record the English-language questions displayed on the DMV computer screen.

The live video was streamed to an accomplice outside the facility, who then fed the correct answers back to the test-takers in real time in a language they understood, according to investigators.

Some of the men wore button-up shirts over their altered T-shirts to better conceal the hole, according to investigators. Once seated in front of the computer, they supposedly unbuttoned their shirts to ensure that the phone camera could capture the questions displayed on the screen.

RELATED: American trucking at a crossroads: Deadly crash involving illegal alien exposes true cost of Biden’s border invasion

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Florida Highway Patrol Sergeant Dylan Bryan called the scheme “organized fraud,” adding that similar operations could be taking place across the state.

All of the men who were arrested claimed they could not speak or read English and requested interpreters.

RELATED: Florida teams up with ICE to crack down on illegal alien truckers after deadly crash

Photo by Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images

“This story, when viewed in the larger context, points to the phenomenon that we identified late last year: labor dumping,” Shannon Everett with American Truckers United told Blaze News. “Approximately 10 states are responsible for the majority of noncitizen truck drivers being dumped onto the interstate system. This has been done with a combination of corrupt DMVs, fraudulent testing, and no enforcement for the last four years. Florida is one of the 10 states.”

State Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on Monday that Florida would ramp up its efforts to enhance road safety by turning some of its truck weigh stations into Immigration and Customs Enforcement checkpoints. This decision by Florida officials followed a fatal accident on August 12, which involved a truck driver from India. The driver received his CDL in California despite being unable to speak English.

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The day after a trans-identifying man shot up a Catholic church full of children in Minneapolis, an apparent trans-identifying radical allegedly opened fire in Massachusetts — this time leaving a father dead who had just walked his 6-year-old boy to school in Shrewsbury.

The Shrewsbury Police Department indicated they received a 911 call just before 9 a.m. Thursday from an individual being attacked on the pathway near Jordan Park, just east of Lake Quinsigamond. The police dispatcher not only heard gunshots during the 911 call but also reportedly heard 56-year-old victim Kevin Doherty say, “He shot me.”

‘We should kill them all.’

Police arrived at the scene, finding Doherty wounded on the ground.

After administering first aid, police took the victim to the UMass Medical Center, where he succumbed to his injuries. As the suspect had fled the scene, law enforcement issued a shelter-in-place order, locking down the nearby school, then launched a manhunt.

Shrewsbury Police — working with the Massachusetts State Police’s Special Tactical Operations Team and supported by other police departments in the area — tracked down the suspect using drone technology. SWAT ultimately captured the suspect at his home without incident.

According to court records reviewed by MassLive.com, the 26-year-old male suspect, Snehal Ansh Srivastava, has been charged with armed assault with intent to murder and carrying a firearm without a license. During his Friday arraignment, Srivastava pleaded not guilty.

Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said during a news conference that Doherty was on his way home from taking his boy to school when he spotted an individual spray-painting an overlook near Jordan Pond. Evidently concerned about keeping his neighborhood clean, Doherty took a photo of the alleged vandalism — and that apparently did not sit well with Srivastava.

RELATED: Dead Minnesota church shooting suspect identified. Video suggests he was transgender and anti-Trump.

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

According to local paper Community Advocate, Srivastava identifies as a “transgender.” Srivastava — who appears bearded in various photos in videos but wears women’s clothing — allegedly notes on his Instagram page that he uses “she/her/hers” pronouns.

One of the suspect’s apparent websites is replete with murderous rhetoric, including calls for genocide.

Srivastava allegedly shared a number of “decrees” on a site titled “Nation of Ayodhya,” which is linked from the aforementioned Instagram page. In one of the decrees, Srivastava allegedly states:

I call on the Gangstas to assemble towards Revolution. Gangsta is an African Indigenous reclamation of Turtle Island. By the power vested in me by Mami Wata, and my ancestors descendent; I hereby bless every Blac(k) American Gang to establish themselves as a Tribal Society to be represented in the democratic republic of Black Hawk Nation. I authorize every Black American Gang to reclaim their territories as their Blac(k) American Indigenous homelands.

Srivastava allegedly also calls Israel a “terrorist organization”; condemns “f**khead crackers”; says of Israelis, “we should kill them all, save Palestine and be jus [sic] be done with it”; states that “the protection of Palestine requires the eradication of western based genocidal white supremacy”; and calls for the arrest of Elon Musk and the dismantling of all American law enforcement agencies.

It appears Srivastava also wears his extremism proudly.

The Community Advocate noted that his house is spray-painted with leftist tags and slogans including “BLM” and “Free Palestine.”

RELATED: Liberal media bends over backward to avoid ‘misgendering’ gunman who murdered kids in church

Unsurprisingly, Srivastava’s arrest Thursday was not his first run-in with the law.

In July 2021, police reportedly arrested Srivastava on charges of assault and battery, assault and battery on a police officer, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and malicious destruction of property.

In September 2022, the Westborough Police Department arrested Srivastava on charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, disorderly conduct, and mayhem. Witnesses told police at the time that Srivastava allegedly “drove his vehicle toward the victim in an attempt to run him over and then exited his vehicle wielding a machete which he used to cut the victim during the altercation.”

He apparently was arrested again for an outstanding warrant in March 2023.

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On Wednesday, August 27, Robin (formerly Robert) Westman, a 23-year-old transgender-identifying person, opened fire through the windows of Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis during a school Mass, killing two children and injuring 17 others. Westman, a former student, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, left behind writings and videos expressing hate toward multiple groups and an obsession with mass shooters.

“Minneapolis didn’t just let a massacre happen. It helped make it happen,” says Jill Savage, BlazeTV host of “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

And two people stand under a harsh glare of blame: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D).

Minneapolis’ reputation was already waning thanks to the George Floyd riots and its defund-the-police crusade when Tim Walz made the state a transgender sanctuary in 2023.

But even though this move has proved disastrous, Mayor Frey has doubled down in his support for Minneapolis’ transgender community. “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity,” he said at a press conference on August 27. The next day, he reiterated the sentiment in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“Should we be talking about the trans community and making sure that they feel our love and support, or should we actually be looking at the Catholics right now — the ones that were actually killed yesterday in that church?” says Jill.

“This is the 42nd or maybe 43rd attack on an American Catholic church this year alone in the United States. It is over 520 attacks on Catholic churches here since 2020,” says Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford.

“They’ve been satanic; they’ve been anti-Catholic; they’ve been pro-abortion; they’ve been pro-trans.”

But they haven’t been that surprising.

“Minneapolis and Minnesota have had an extreme tolerance for evil and promoting evil,” says Bedford, condemning the state’s “permissive abortion laws” and policies allowing the state to take children away from parents who oppose “gender-affirming care.”

Bedford stresses the need to investigate how things like cross-sex hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and mutilating surgeries impact a transgender-identifying individual’s behavior. Perhaps Westman was just a case of mental illness; perhaps there were drugs related to his gender transition that influenced his deadly actions. “I think that’s something that’s absolutely worth investigating,” he says.

As for Walz, Bedford says he “deserves condemnation for his anti-Catholic sentiments.” The woke governor denied Catholic schools’ requests for security funding in 2022 and 2023, despite an $18 billion state surplus, leaving nonpublic schools without access to safety grants provided to public schools. He also allegedly denied Catholic school students access to Minnesota’s Postsecondary Enrollment Options program, preventing them from earning tuition-free college credits, despite their academic eligibility.

“These are the sorts of things that are going on in the United States and are being allowed by our politicians. … It’s soft on evil, and it allows it to fester,” he says.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from ‘Blaze News: The Mandate’?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Blaze news | the mandate, Jill savage, Chris bedford, Tim walz, Jacob frey, Minneapolis, Minneapolis shooting, Catholic church, Robert westman, Robin westman, Blazetv, Blaze media, Blaze news tonight 

A pastor in Chicago passionately argued against claims from Democrats about crime as President Donald Trump is preparing to send federal troops into the beleaguered Illinois city.

Chicago lawmakers and community leaders have pointed to recent statistics showing that crime has decreased in the Windy City in order to accuse the president of authoritarianism. Pastor Corey Brooks pushed back in an interview with “Fox & Friends.”

‘We still have mothers who are burying young boys, and their sons are dying prematurely. That is a serious issue.’

Brooks, who runs a violence-prevention organization called Project H.O.O.D., said the current level of crime completely justifies the federal surge of troops. He pointed to the fact that there have been 254 deaths since the beginning of the year and that 80% of those victims were black males.

“For anyone in our community to say that things are getting better and that people are safe, that is an outright lie!” the pastor said.

“One of the number-one priorities of government is to make sure that the citizens of America stay safe. And that should be the number-one priority of the governor and the mayor, but it’s not,” Brooks added. “The only thing that they’re really concerned [with] when it comes to black lives that matter is black lives that matter that vote.”

The federal surge implemented in Washington, D.C., also led to outrage from some local leaders, but others, like D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), admitted that the troops helped bring down crime tremendously.

“There’s no doubt about it that crime is still a serious problem in the city of Chicago,” Brooks continued.

“We still have mothers who are burying young boys, and their sons are dying prematurely. That is a serious issue. And for individuals to make us try to feel as if we’re witnessing things getting better, that’s not right.”

RELATED: Mother hid from home invader in closet with her baby — then shot thug in the head, police say

Brooks went on to say that ultimately the solution to crime must come locally but that a federal surge would help that effort.

“I realize that the National Guard is a temporary fix, but it will calm things down,” he concluded. “It’s up to organizations like ours to continue to do the solutions and bring the help that we need. But we have to speak out. We have to say something.”

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The intrigue associated with the accusations against Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) regarding threats of violence and revenge porn continues as a hearing about a restraining order looms next week.

While the hearing for an injunction for protection against dating violence is scheduled for the morning of September 5, attorneys for Mills and the petitioner, reigning Miss United States Lindsey Langston, can’t seem to come to an agreement about a major detail.

‘Being a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives does not exclude [Rep. Mills] from the requirement of appearing in person for hearings on complex matters.’

Florida Circuit Judge Fred Koberlein ruled previously that the hearing would be held in person at the Columbia County Courthouse. However, Mills and his attorney, Aaron Delgado, have petitioned the court for permission to attend via Zoom, court documents obtained by Blaze News showed.

Mills “must be in Washington, D.C., on that date to fulfill his voting duties,” and Delgado “is dealing with serious health issues that will make him unable to travel the three (3) hours, one-way, to make it to the Columbia County Courthouse in person,” a motion from Delgado said.

A response from Langston and her attorney, Bobi J. Frank, seemed to throw cold water on Mills’ reason for being unable to attend in person. “A brief investigation” of the published calendar for the House of Representatives revealed that the lower chamber of Congress “is not in session on September 5, 2025,” said the document from Frank.

The only congressional group scheduled to meet that day is the House Committee on Natural Resources, evidence included in Frank’s filing showed.

“Undersigned Counsel could not find any published document confirming that Respondent is a member of the Natural Resources Committee; therefore, if he is not, the September 5, 2025, 10:00 a.m. meeting does not hinder Respondent’s in-person participation in this matter,” Frank wrote.

The website for the Natural Resources Committee appears to confirm Frank’s claim.

RELATED: Panicking? Cory Mills allegedly harasses Miss United States to try to kill bombshell story

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

Frank also asserted that presenting evidence through technology would hamper her case, especially since the technology will likely cause “delay and interruption.”

“Being a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives does not exclude Respondent from the requirement of appearing in person for hearings on complex matters,” Frank argued, adding that Mills should “be treated no differently than any other person in a Court of Law.”

Delgado did not respond to a request for comment by Blaze News, and Frank declined to give one.

It is unclear whether the court will permit Mills and/or Delgado to appear virtually at the hearing.

Mills and Langston were in a romantic relationship for more than three years when they broke up in February after another woman called police and claimed Mills had been violent with her at his penthouse apartment in D.C. The woman later recanted her story, and Mills was never charged.

To this day, evidence indicates that Mills is still married to Rana Al Saadi, though Mills has previously stated that they are separated.

After Langston dumped Mills, he allegedly threatened to harm her future dating partners as well as to share with them intimate photos and videos of Langston. He also allegedly harassed her after he learned she had reported her accusations to the police and to the media, including Blaze News.

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