Category: blaze media

The hardest job in American politics isn’t balancing the budget, but admitting that the other side might have a good idea.

I understand this can feel like swallowing glass, but credit belongs where credit is due.

Prices fluctuate constantly under normal market conditions. Gas prices spike during oil embargoes. Airline tickets double in December. Retailers drop prices to shift winter inventory. Every consumer understands basic supply and demand.

Sustainable commerce requires a baseline of public trust.

Now, however, there’s a new way of pricing that flouts the usual rules, one most people are still oblivious to. It’s known as surveillance pricing.

Companies harvest vast amounts of personal data. They then study behavioral quirks and calculate the maximum amount an individual will pay for a given product.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) recently signed a law, dubbed the Fair Price Protection Act, that tackles this predatory corporate practice.

Personalized price tags

When a customer goes to buy something online, the algorithm instantly detects a recent job promotion, a broken appliance, and an exhausting 20-mile commute. The system spits out a “personalized offer” that looks like a VIP discount, right up until you realize the VIP treatment is just a bespoke mugging.

New Jersey’s new law stops businesses from using personal information to construct personalized price tags for essential goods. The statute leaves traditional coupons, storewide clearance events, and opt-in loyalty programs alone. It places a hard ceiling on using private data to extract extra cash from individual wallets.

Every person participating in the economy is a target. Algorithms track physical location coordinates from cell towers, record search histories, and log exact purchasing frequencies down to the minute.

Data collection makes sense when it helps a company stock shelves or route delivery trucks. But we’re way beyond that now. High-tech logistics phases into loan-sharking when it’s used to calculate just how much price pressure you can bear before tapping out.

For example, let’s say two neighbors order identical refrigerators from the same website on a Tuesday afternoon. The first neighbor clears browser cookies, runs price comparisons across four tabs, and waits three days to buy. The second neighbor searches frantically because his old unit died overnight, threatening $300 worth of groceries. The algorithm identifies the second buyer as highly motivated (desperate) and jacks up the price tag.

RELATED: This throwback app is competing with Big Tech — using a business model out of the 1980s

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images

Grocery shopping exposes the same vulnerability that’s ready to exploit. A household managing a strict monthly budget leaves a detailed digital breadcrumb trail across meal-planning apps and store searches. Predictive software analyzes those habits and adjusts item pricing to test the family’s financial pain threshold. The family ends up paying an invisible desperation tax at checkout.

Stopping invisible pickpockets

In 1914, Congress created the Federal Trade Commission to stop trusts from fixing prices in smoke-filled boardrooms. Today, those boardrooms are replaced by cloud servers executing real-time financial extraction on millions of cell phones. Technology scales predatory practices at unprecedented speeds. Automated systems run millions of behavioral calculations every single second, adjusting prices faster than a human brain can process.

New Jersey’s law creates a blueprint for a uniform federal standard. Geographic boundaries should not dictate basic consumer protections against automated price gouging. A family driving across the George Washington Bridge into New York shouldn’t lose basic economic protections the second they cross the state line.

A national policy establishes clear boundaries for market competition. Companies should win customers by refining manufacturing, streamlining distribution, and lowering overhead costs. They shouldn’t win by writing software that hunts down strapped parents searching for infant formula at two in the morning.

Free-market economics depend on transparent pricing and informed consent. Adam Smith wrote extensively about the invisible hand of the market, but he never envisioned an invisible algorithm picking pockets in real time. Transactional freedom evaporates when a multibillion-dollar corporate server has complete information on a buyer simply trying to purchase dinner.

Capitalism for citizens

Conservatives traditionally champion market transparency, personal privacy, and fair exchange. New Jersey’s statute aligns directly with those values. True capitalism requires open competition, not rigged games where one side owns the deck, the table, and the security cameras overhead.

Companies retain every right to generate profits and return value to shareholders. Wealth creation drives technological progress and raises standard of living metrics in America and beyond. Sustainable commerce, however, requires a baseline of public trust. When consumers discover that their own personal information serves as a weapon against their bank accounts, that trust dissolves entirely.

New Jersey typically dominates headlines for political corruption trials, abysmal Turnpike traffic, and the inevitable road rage that follows. Yet Governor Sherrill’s administration managed to draw a remarkably sane line in the sand. Washington and the remaining 49 states need to adopt the exact same rule before every price tag in the country morphs into an automated shakedown.

​Surveillance pricing, Tech 

On August 4, Abdul El-Sayed, the radical progressive Muslim activist who has called for abolishing ICE, universal health care, codifying unrestricted access to abortion, and other far-left initiatives, narrowly beat Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary.

His victory bodes ill not just for the state of Michigan but for the United States as a whole, says BlazeTV host Steve Deace, because it exposes a chilling reality about America and the direction the nation is headed.

On this episode of the “Steve Deace Show,” the former Michigan resident pulls back the curtain on what’s really fueling America’s downward spiral into radicalization, mental illness, and racial idolatry.

“Gretchen Whitmer is probably the most successful Democrat politician the state of Michigan has had in a generation. … A decade as governor, queen bee of the state,” says Deace, “and she just got rolled by an Islamist in a Senate primary who won despite her endorsement of his opponent.”

What does this say about the direction of the nation?

According to Deace, we’re witnessing an “Islam surge” in the United States because the people have forgotten or rejected America’s intentional design to function like biblical Israel under the Sinai covenant — where the people obey God and receive His protecting and blessing, and as a result, the nation shines as a “city on a hill” that attracts outsiders to the true God.

“We want to be, in a civic sense, a covenantal people of the one true God. We want His favor, which means that we need to be a nation of His instruments, and you’ve seen God bless that,” says Deace. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have lasted as long as we have.”

But as it was with ancient Israel, when the people stray, God’s discipline follows.

“One of the marks of a covenantal people receiving the discipline of the God you have covenanted with that you also see in the Old Testament is you’re overrun with foreigners and foreign gods,” Deace points out.

He asks if America’s current predicament — being overrun with illegal immigrants and the rising influence of Islam — could be God’s judgment on a nation that has rebelled against the covenantal design its founders sought to emulate.

“The answer, of course, would be yes,” says Deace frankly.

“We disobey God to a point collectively that He then removes His restraining hand. This is Romans 1,” he adds.

Whether America “lost [its] zeal” for “the one true God” or deliberately embraced “foreigners and their ways,” the “outcome is the same,” says Deace: God gives us over to our sinful ways, allowing us to reap the consequences of our decisions.

That’s why Islam is growing in power and influence in the United States, he argues.

New York City’s socialist Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani “is not an outlier but a herald,” Deace warns.

“After 9/11, we imported almost 4 million people from Islam-dominated countries,” and then we embarked on “a rebranding campaign that [Islam] is not a violent religion but one of peace,” he recounts.

“These seeds,” he says, “were planted many years ago” and are now being “[fertilized]” with “pagan indoctrination,” creating a spiritual “vacuum.”

“And nature abhors a vacuum, and the fake foreign demon gods will fill it for you. And if you won’t let them, you’re a racist, of course,” Deace observes.

“Normie voters,” he says, mistakenly believe that America’s biggest problems right now are “mental illness,” “racial idolatry,” and “radicalization.” But those are merely “symptoms” of a far deeper and more terrifying root problem.

“The disease is you’re up against a rival religion,” Deace warns.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Steve Deace?

To enjoy more of Steve’s take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Abdul el-sayed, Gretchen whitmer, Illegal immigrants, Islam, Mental illness, Michigan, Racial idolatry, Radicalization, Senate primary, Steve deace, Zohran mamdani, Blazetv show 

Gretchen Whitmer is probably the most successful Democrat politician Michigan has produced in a generation. Yet her endorsement just got rolled by an Islamist in my native state’s Senate primary.

How? Why?

It is time to smash the idols before they smash us. Either we let the Lion of Judah out of His cage — or we learn what fills the vacuum.

One of the things we’ve discussed on my BlazeTV show is that if you go back to the beginning of our now 250-year-old country, the founders repeatedly drew on the covenantal language they saw in the Bible between Old Testament Israel and God.

The Sinai covenant. The Ten Commandments. The blessings and curses of Deuteronomy. “Choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” The men who constructed this nation returned to these themes again and again because they understood something fundamental about a people hoping to endure: Obey God, and He will provide for and protect you.

In the New Testament, under the priesthood of every believer, Christians are called to become “living sacrifices” to God and then to our neighbors. That is how the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

Think of a light in the pitch dark on a summer night. The bugs cannot help being drawn to it. In the same way, our unbelieving friends and family, our unbelieving neighbors, even unbelieving nations should be drawn to the light of a people living faithfully before God. That is part of the Great Commission laid out in Matthew 28.

We are meant to be a shining city on a hill for the cause of Christ.

So when the Declaration of Independence closes with the founders appealing to the “Supreme Judge of the world” for the rectitude of their intentions, they are not merely adding religious ornamentation. They are invoking Almighty God as judge of their cause. If their revolution is unrighteous, then let Him strike it down.

Days of fasting and thanksgiving were common among the founders for the same reason. They understood themselves as accountable to something above themselves.

Yet now Islam is here, taking ground and making demands.

What does that tell us?

One of the marks of a covenantal people under divine discipline in the Bible is that they are overrun by foreigners and foreign gods.

Uh-oh.

RELATED: The socialists are coming for the Senate

Kid-a/Getty Images

I do not know how much time we have left to turn this fate around. But lying to ourselves about it will guarantee that we have none.

This is Romans 1. God has removed His restraining hand and is allowing the American freak flag to fly at full mast.

Dearborn, Michigan. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Madison, Wisconsin. New York. California. The WNBA. You name it. We suck.

Paul describes something similar in his first letter to the church in Corinth, a congregation planted in the middle of a notoriously lascivious pagan culture. Corinth’s reputation for depravity was so notorious that moral decadence itself became associated with the city.

Paul then confronts one church member engaged in a form of sexual immorality so scandalous that, as Paul says, even the pagans would not tolerate it. His command is severe: Remove the man from the church and deliver him “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.”

What does he mean?

Paul is demanding that the sinner face the consequences of his rebellion rather than allowing the church to become a nicer-than-God incubator for it. Making sin comfortable gives the sinner no incentive to repent.

So ask yourself: Do you belong to a church that behaves the way Paul prescribes?

And can the answer possibly be yes anywhere near Dearborn, Michigan — or any place becoming like it?

As we discussed last year on my show, Mayor Mamdani in New York was not an outlier. He was a herald of things to come in a land with an ungrateful and undisciplined church.

Since 9/11, the United States has admitted almost 4 million people from Muslim-majority countries. That alone would have tempted previous generations to sin in the opposite direction of our current surrender.

After Pearl Harbor, the Greatest Generation responded to Japan’s attack with the grotesque injustice of rounding up Japanese Americans and placing them in internment camps. That was evil.

But today we have raced to the opposite extreme. Rather than treat individual Muslims unjustly, we refuse to recognize Islamism as a rival civilizational and political force at all. We rebrand Islam as a “religion of peace” while importing more people from Muslim-dominated cultures in a quarter-century than live in my entire home state of Iowa.

RELATED: Stop ‘owning the libs’ and start owning institutions

Blaze Media Illustration

Where once there was overreaction, now there is willful blindness.

We are issuing Babylon an invitation.

Someone will always rule. Something will always be worshipped.

So we must stop fooling ourselves that bad politics or mental illness is the deepest enemy we face. Those are symptoms. What we are actually confronting is rival religion. And the only thing that defeats bad theology is good theology.

My fellow Americans, communism and Islamism are both ascendant in our land. It is time to smash the idols before they smash us. Either we let the Lion of Judah out of His cage — or we learn what fills the vacuum.

​Great commission, Gretchen whitmer, Islamist, Michigan, New testament, Old testament, Senate primary, Minneapolis minnesota, Zohran mamdani, Abdul el-sayed, Islam, Islamic extremism, Opinion & analysis 

The name might sound sweet, but BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says Americans shouldn’t be fooled. A federal proposal dubbed the “Save Our Bacon Act” is making its way through Congress, and Gonzales believes anyone who cares about the welfare of animals — left or right — should oppose it.

“This is the one thing, the unlikely cause bringing liberals and conservatives together. This is the one thing that we can all agree on is that it turns out, no one likes seeing pigs locked in tiny cages,” Gonzales says.

The Save Our Bacon Act, she explains, “would strip rights away from states, which regulate farming pigs.”

“‘We’re just saving the pigs. We’re saving bacon, and we’re just protecting our family farmers.’ It’s actually not. Once you get past the cute acronym, this bill is not really about bacon at all,” she says.

The bill would “restrict states from imposing certain conditions on the production of livestock products sold within their borders,” which “targets laws like California’s Proposition 12, which was designed to protect animal welfare.”

“If this were passed, it would federally preempt qualifying state and local standards. So then there would be a federal law that would preempt state laws,” Gonzales says.

“Obviously, states, not Washington, D.C., should be free to set their own laws and policies, especially when you think about how states are known for different things, different industries, some agricultural, some not,” she continues.

The purpose of the law being targeted, California Prop 12, was to give animals that we eat a better standard of living while they’re alive.

“Now, I’m not PETA, OK? I’m not PETA … I’m not a vegan. I love meat. I love eating meat. But I also support the welfare of animals. And I don’t think that we should be forcing pigs into these gestation crates where they can’t move,” Gonzales says.

“During their pregnancies, they’re kept in these crates to prevent them from being able to move. And then when they give birth, they actually have to just nurse through it … they just roll over and the babies just nurse off the pig’s nipples, but they can’t even move,” she continues.

“That is inhumane, guys,” she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Animal welfare, California prop 12, Peta, Pigs, Sara gonzales, Save our bacon act, Family farmers, Factory farming, Blazetv show 

When Chicago police arrested 23-year-old Philip Robinson late last month, police records show he was facing misdemeanor cannabis possession and resisting charges, CWB Chicago reported.

The next day — just after 9:30 a.m. July 29 — Robinson was taken for a court appearance, and the outlet said that “ordinarily, he would have been in and out of the courthouse within hours.”

‘Nice job by our correctional staff catching it upon intake.’

But Robinson’s X-ray security screening at the courthouse was anything but ordinary.

“Cook County Sheriff’s Office correctional staff recovered a loaded firearm” from Robinson — who was still in custody — “after it was detected during routine intake screening,” the Cook County Sheriff’s Office said. “The firearm — a 9mm Taurus loaded with 13 rounds including one in the chamber — was safely recovered before it could enter the secure facility.”

The gun was seen in Robinson’s groin area, according to an image the sheriff’s office released.

With that, the sheriff’s office referred the matter to the “conveniently available prosecutors for approval of felony charges,” CWB Chicago said.

The outlet indicated prosecutors signed off on three new counts: possession of a firearm with a revoked Firearm Owner’s Identification card, aggravated unlawful possession of a firearm, and unlawful use of a weapon.

RELATED: Inmate hands judge ‘wad’ of counterfeit cash to pay bond — then actually tells judge to ‘keep the change’: Police

What’s more, Robinson — who would have been automatically released from custody in connection with the misdemeanor charges under Illinois’ SAFE-T Act — got no break after Judge John Hock got word of the suspect’s security screening, CWB Chicago said.

Indeed, Robinson was detained pending trial, the outlet said.

While the sheriff’s office said, “Nice job by our correctional staff catching it upon intake,” CWB Chicago had questions: “Assuming for a moment that Robinson had the firearm as alleged, where did he get it? Or did Chicago police officers not find the firearm while searching him?”

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​Chicago police, Cook county sheriff’s office, X-ray, Security screening, Gun, Courthouse, Arrest, Crime 

When the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order in Trump v. Barbara, it settled for now in the courts who becomes a citizen at birth. It did not settle — and could not settle — whether American citizenship may be bought and sold.

It remains well within the power of Congress and the president to shut down the contracts, clinics, agencies, and visas that convert foreign money into American citizenship — without amending the Constitution or defying the court. Until the court revisits the issue, the political branches are solely responsible for overseeing the marketplace, and they have no excuse to delay.

Why buy a visa when you can commission a citizen?

If you doubt that such a marketplace exists, meet the Simpson triplets.

Nearly 20 months ago, Kyla Simpson of St. Augustine, Florida, gave birth to triplet boys as a gestational surrogate for an intended parent she had never met: a single man in China. He never came. Not during the boys’ two months in the NICU, not through the year and a half the Simpsons raised them, and not even when one of the triplets died of RSV.

When the man from China sent two strangers in a black SUV to collect the boys, Simpson refused. Then, she moved to terminate his parental rights, and he resurfaced with a lawyer and an emergency pickup order, which a Florida judge granted. The surviving twins, 20-month-old American citizens, now sit in state care while his attorneys obtain travel documents.

Why would a Chinese man pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for children he has never crossed an ocean to meet? Because he wasn’t buying children. He was buying American citizens.

A surrogate-born child of a foreign national receives a birth certificate, Social Security number, and passport at birth. When the child reaches age 21, he can petition for green cards for his parents and siblings, turning one commissioned pregnancy into chain migration for an entire family, at a fraction of the cost of the half-million-dollar EB-5 investor visa.

Why buy a visa when you can commission a citizen?

Birth tourism in overdrive

This citizenship-for-sale system has three serious dangers.

First, the burgeoning international surrogacy industry is a clear example of immigration fraud and abuse. For example, within days of President Trump signing the executive order on birthright citizenship, the agency Surrogate First issued workaround guidance for prospective parents, explaining that for international clients, “the certainty of their child obtaining U.S. citizenship at birth is a significant factor” in choosing America.

Likewise, Creative Family Connections advertised a “2-step birth certificate process” to guarantee citizenship for the children of foreign clients regardless of executive action. Prior to that, another agency pitched surrogacy as cheaper than the EB-5 investor visa.

RELATED: 1776, not 1608: What the Supreme Court got wrong on birthright citizenship

Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

The co-founder of one California agency told NPR that dual nationality would be “a win-win situation for your children.” A fellow agent admitted many of her clients were “high-level Communist Party officials and celebrities” seeking American citizenship for their children.

Second, the international surrogacy industry is a national security threat that intensifies every year. Children with American passports who are raised under Chinese Communist Party rule can vote as adults in U.S. elections, join our military, work in sensitive research, and even run for president.

Beijing exploits every vulnerability American citizenship offers, whether the parents intend it or not. Why would it ignore this one?

Third, the industry is a child-welfare catastrophe. Authorities found 21 surrogate-born children in the home of a former CCP official tied to immigration fraud and smuggling — discovered only after an infant arrived at a hospital with severe head trauma in Arcadia, California. Chinese billionaire Xu Bo has reportedly commissioned 100 children and counting through American surrogates to build a personal dynasty.

According to data in the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s own journal, surrogacy cycles commissioned by foreign intended parents surged 78% from 2014 to 2019, from 2,758 to 4,905 embryo transfers a year, with Chinese nationals the largest customer base at 41.7% — quadruple the next country.

More than 107 Chinese-owned surrogacy agencies operate in Southern California alone, many with Mandarin-only marketing and some listing offices in mainland China, where surrogacy is illegal. Indeed, international commercial surrogacy is merely the newest wing of a larger operation. Conventional birth tourism results in an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 annual U.S. births to Chinese nationals — a phenomenon that, according to investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, Chinese sources themselves describe as massive.

Since 2013, he estimates that more than one million “U.S. citizens” are being raised in China because their mothers came here to give birth.

Pulling up anchor

Yes, the Trump v. Barbara majority misread the 14th Amendment, whose author said it excluded “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens.” A future court should revisit the issue, with the Simpson case as Exhibit A. In the meantime, however, there are concrete actions Congress and the executive branch can take to address birth tourism.

Close the state loophole with federal law. Earlier this year, Florida became the first state to prohibit surrogacy contracts with foreign nationals from adversarial nations, including China, Russia, Iran, and others. But the law does not stop Florida citizens from working with a California-based agency.

We need federal action to shut this market down. As Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) proposed via the SAFE Kids Act and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn.) introduced via the Preventing International Surrogacy Exploitation Act, Congress should ban international commercial surrogacy outright by prohibiting foreign nationals from contracting with American surrogates or agencies.

Notably, the vast majority of developed nations — aside from the United States and Ukraine — already have a law like this in place.

RELATED: Where is the outrage over our stolen birthright?

Douglas Rissing/Getty Images

Cut off the travel and count the trade. Congress and the State Department should deny visas to anyone traveling to the U.S. to commission or collect a surrogate-born child. They should also mandate federal reporting, through the CDC or another agency, of every commercial surrogacy contract and resulting live birth, including the client’s nationality.

There is no reason to regulate the export of technology more carefully than the export of our own citizens.

Make the buyer, not the baby, pay the price. Heritage Foundation Vice President Roger Severino has proposed the boldest remedy. Vice President JD Vance has already endorsed Severino’s plan to end birth tourism citizenship in U.S. territories, which China has exploited.

Every solution so far has focused on the “anchor.” Severino’s plan, by contrast, targets the “boat.” Under existing law, the president has broad authority to bar any class of foreign nationals whose entry he deems detrimental to U.S. interests.

He should use that power to give every foreign national without permanent residency who has a child on U.S. soil a simple choice: Relinquish the child’s American citizenship, or never legally set foot in the United States again.

This doesn’t remove citizenship from the children. But it does mean that the parents who refuse would become permanently ineligible for any visa, asylum, refugee status, or temporary protected status; any lottery or family-based entry; or any future path to residency or citizenship, including through marriage to an American.

The Supreme Court says these children are citizens. Very well — then act like it.

American citizens should not be purchased for export, warehoused unclaimed, or shipped beyond the reach of American courts. The 14th Amendment was written so that no one born on American soil could be bought or sold. It’s time to extend that same protection to children born via international commercial surrogacy schemes.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

​Birthright citizenship, Child trafficking, Immigration fraud, Jd vance, National security, Social security, Supreme court, Temporary protected status, Opinion & analysis 

While suburban consultants call in sick with mild lower-back aches from ergonomic office chairs, Iowa corn growers lose arms to steel PTO shafts on 200-horsepower tractors.

Agricultural labor is unforgiving. In fact, farming is more dangerous than working as a police officer or firefighter, with 23 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers.

I am the son of a farmer. I know firsthand what backbreaking labor actually costs and how brutally the modern system devalues it.

Bitter harvest

Heavy steel farm implements chop, grind, and crush human tissue without delay. Spinning driveshafts running at 1,000 revolutions per minute yank loose shirttails into gearboxes within milliseconds. Grain bin entrapments swallow dozens of operators every harvest season, suffocating men under 50,000 pounds of shelled corn in 20 seconds flat.

Even so, today some of the greatest dangers facing American farmers aren’t found in the fields. They’re found on the balance sheet.

U.S. Department of Agriculture reports project total farm debt to hit $624.7 billion very soon. A brand-new John Deere combine can cost as much as $1 million on the lot, while the increasing computerization of farm equipment has produced a years-long battle over whether farmers can repair machines they ostensibly own. In July, the Federal Trade Commission and five states reached a settlement with Deere & Company requiring it to give farmers and independent repair shops access to software and other repair tools previously available only to authorized dealers.

That is a rare piece of good news. American Farm Bureau Federation records show that Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies rose by 46% last year, with more than 315 cases filed in federal court. Farm families sign multimillion-dollar operating notes every spring, gambling their ancestral property on diesel prices and unpredictable rainfall.

For too many farmers, crushing debt becomes a death sentence. Centers for Disease Control data shows farmers take their own lives at a rate 3.5 times higher than the national workforce average. The official body count stands at 43.2 suicides per 100,000 farm workers. Behind every statistic is a family who loses a husband, father, brother, or son.

RELATED: The day my father handed me the gun

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Extreme isolation

A grower drags himself out of bed at four in the morning to pull 16-hour shifts in 100-degree heat. He provides endless tons of cheap grain for coastal grocery chains. His personal paycheck yields negative operating margins and endless bank interest notices.

Extreme isolation magnifies the misery, leaving men alone for hours on end, with overdue land mortgages and loaded shotguns. Rural mental health services remain nonexistent, forcing decent, hardworking Americans to fight crippling depression with manual labor until their bodies give out.

America lost 15,000 individual farm operations in 2025, an average of 41 every single day. Thomas Jefferson championed a nation of independent yeoman farmers owning land free of debt. Wall Street hedge funds buy up those foreclosed family tracts on county courthouse steps today.

The USDA found that the only sales category in which the number of farms actually increased was farms with annual sales of $1 million or more. Half of all American farmland is now operated by farms with sales of at least $500,000.

Global fertilizer empires and multinational grain trusts operating from high-rise office buildings accelerate this destruction. Commercial nitrogen fertilizer costs continue to surge, making every harvest more expensive and turning the simple act of breaking even into a Sisyphean struggle.

Future foreclosed

Who would willingly sign up for such a life today? The numbers reveal a troubling answer.

The average American farm owner is 58 years of age. Farm kids watch their fathers spend a lifetime battling debt and despair only to see little reward at the end. Many understandably walk away from the family business. America is running out of farmers, and the consequences will reach every dinner table in the country.

I’m not an American citizen, but I am the son of a farmer. I know firsthand what backbreaking labor actually costs and how brutally the modern system devalues it. When you grow up on a farm, you learn early that livestock don’t take holidays. The crops don’t wait for good weather, and equipment breaks precisely when you need it most.

It is an existence defined by physical risk and absolute exhaustion. The work is thankless, and the farmer lives a largely invisible existence. He is ignored by many and mocked by those who have never done a day of physical work in their lives.

To ignore or mock the farmer is to undermine the very foundation of self-reliance. A country that destroys its independent producers surrenders its national independence to foreign supply chains and corporate conglomerates. Conservative ideals depend on preserving private property rights and local community ownership.

And American food security depends on those who begin work at sunrise and end long after it has set. Saving the American farmer requires restoring basic economic sanity to rural property rights. Urgent action is needed before the damage becomes irreversible.

​Farming, Lifestyle 

When Catherine Herring found out she was pregnant with her third child, her husband began behaving in strange ways — including obsessing over her hydration.

After an emergency left her and her unborn child on death’s doorstep, Catherine hired a private investigator to look into her husband. What she discovered led to their divorce and his arrest.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey sits down to hear Catherine’s harrowing story.

In 2022, Catherine found out she was pregnant a week after she and her husband decided to separate. The news resulted in him choosing to stick around, but his behavior was markedly changed.

“[One] morning, he brought me a plastic cup of water and a biscuit and said that he had noticed I wasn’t drinking enough water, and for the sake of my pregnancy, he wanted me to stay hydrated, and then he added that he was not going to leave until I had finished the entire glass of water,” Catherine recalls.

“As time progressed and I drank more of the water and ate more of the biscuit, he started urging me to drink faster, and he ultimately was standing over me urging me to chug the water. And when he did that, that was the first time I actually looked down into the cup, and I realized that the water was not clear. It was kind of creamy, almost milky,” she adds.

When she questioned him about the drink, he shrugged it off and acted like he had mistakenly used a dirty cup. But when “violent cramping” and complete loss of bodily control began 30 minutes later, Catherine knew something was terribly wrong.

“Something had been in that cup,” she tells Allie.

Amid the chaos, Catherine recalled an article she had recently read about Google blocking a pro-life group’s advertisement for abortion pill reversals.

“I thought about that article, and I ended up googling abortion pill reversals, and a pregnancy hotline number came up … and I said, ‘This is going to be the craziest thing you’ve ever heard, but I think my husband put something in my drink this morning,’” Catherine recounts.

“[The nurse] frantically was trying to get me a prescription for progesterone, which I always find so ironic now. You don’t have to have a prescription to obtain chemical abortion pills at this moment in the United States of America, but you do need a prescription for progesterone to counteract the abortion pills to do the reversal,” she explains.

Miraculously, Catherine already had progesterone pills from a previous pregnancy and was able to get a dosage in her system shortly after drinking the water her husband brought her.

But her symptoms didn’t stop.

“I kept getting sick throughout the day, and then I started bleeding heavily, and I was still in touch with the hotline nurse, and she urged me to go to the emergency room,” says Catherine.

When she got to the ER, a “solid black” urine sample alerted doctors and nurses that her kidneys were failing.

“They started an IV, started me on antibiotics, and then they also conducted an ultrasound, and that was the first time that I saw my daughter’s heartbeat,” Catherine recalls.

But because hospitals “cannot test for prescription drug poisonings,” Catherine couldn’t get a clear answer about what her husband had put in her water that morning, so she partnered with a private investigator, who instructed her to go back home and “pretend” to take the drinks her husband gave her in order to collect evidence.

In the end, they discovered he attempted to poison her and the baby “six more times.”

“We ended up finding two sets of abortion pill packaging in my trash, and one of the poisoning attempts he did in front of two eyewitnesses. And then the seventh and final drink, we caught him making it on a hidden camera that we had placed into my kitchen air vents,” says Catherine.

“It was so terrifying because he was still to my face saying that he loved me, that he cared about me, that we were going to work this out,” she adds.

Forty days after the first of seven total poisoning attempts, Catherine finally had enough evidence to go to the police. A month later, her husband was arrested and charged with felony assault to induce abortion, felony assault of a pregnant person, and then felony assault injury to a child.

“Ultimately he took a plea deal,” says Catherine. “The felony assault to induce abortion was dropped, and his plea deal was for 180 days in jail plus probation for the attempted murder of our daughter seven separate times.”

“I think these plea deals and weak sentences, they only embolden abusers, and so it’s been really scary,” she says, calling his sentence “a slap on the wrist.”

In the divorce proceedings, it came out that Catherine’s husband had long been “living a double life,” including engaging in an extramarital affair. Today, he is serving an eight-year prison sentence after repeatedly violating a protective order that barred him from contacting her.

But life is looking up for Catherine and her children — including her youngest daughter, Josephine Grace. Despite being born prematurely with multiple developmental issues, Josephine is thriving today.

“If she walked in the room, you would have no idea that she had overcome so much in four short years. She is a true inspiration, and I’m so grateful to be her mom,” says Catherine.

To hear more of Catherine’s story and the advocacy she’s doing today around domestic violence and the weaponization of abortion pills, check out the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Abortion, Abortion pill, Allie beth stuckey, Domestic violence, Blazetv show 

A stretch of roadway near the South Chicago Chapel on East 95th Street was shut down as investigators continued to process the dozens of bodies found improperly stored at the funeral home.

Multiple law enforcement sources told WGN-TV that at least 50 decomposing bodies were found on Thursday stuffed into closets and the garage at the business in Chicago, Illinois.

She was cited for leaving bodies in an unrefrigerated area that had a ‘rodent infestation, causing decomposition and maggot infestation.’

The Chicago Police Department said the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation called officers to the business on a “license investigation.”

WLS-TV reported that the owner of the funeral home was recorded as Clark Morgan, whose name matches that of the person who ran Chicago Heights crematory. That business was shut down after more than 100 bodies were found improperly stored on trailers last year.

Morgan’s wife, Johanna, was listed as the funeral director at South Chicago Chapel, but her license was suspended on Wednesday after a history of disciplinary action.

In one incident, she was cited for leaving bodies in an unrefrigerated area that had a “rodent infestation, causing decomposition and maggot infestation.”

Residents near the funeral home said they smelled a very foul odor for about a year.

“Every time I come through here, I smell a foul smell in the air, and I was wondering what that smell was, and I kept thinking maybe it was the sewer,” Frank Dower said. “That is so awful, but I hope they get it resolved. I hope they get it resolved and put the bodies away properly like they’re supposed to be, and justice for the families.”

“Oh man, it’s awful,” Valkiery Velez said. “I’ve lived here for about a year, and I could smell it this entire year. It’s like dead rodents, dead animals. You can smell it, yeah.”

Officials said that forensic pathologists found bodies in different states of decomposition.

RELATED: Florida man found dead from self-inflicted gunshot wound after being accused of sexually abusing corpse at funeral home

The families of the people at the funeral home have been left in limbo as the investigation continues.

“We don’t know if Melody is in there or not,” Patrice Halliburton said, referring to her sister, who had been cremated at the funeral home. “So right now, we’re more fearful that she is than we are angry.”

Local Alderman Peter Chico released a statement about the incident Friday.

“I was horrified when I found out about the bodies at the South Chicago Chapel Funeral Home,” he said. “My thoughts and prayers go out to the families who may have had loved ones there.”

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​Decomposing bodies, Chicago, Illinois, Abuse of corpse, Crime 

President Donald Trump lit into the far-left victor of the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Michigan after the highly anticipated contest.

Abdul El-Sayed, 41, was able to defeat establishment candidate Haley Stevens despite polling showing that she had the advantage over the Republican candidate.

‘He doesn’t love Israel; he doesn’t love Jewish people. He hates them. He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart.’

“The polls were wrong again last night when they thought it would be a landslide victory for a hater of Jews and a hater of Israel,” the president said during an event in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

“This guy hates Jews,” he continued. “Somebody said, ‘Oh, that’s a little strong.’ No, he hates Jews, and hates Israel.”

“Abdul El-Sayed, can you believe this? This could only happen to me. Abdul El-Sayed, lovely gentleman. He’s a man of hate, and now he’s going around saying, ‘Oh, I love everybody.’ He doesn’t love everybody. Put him in office, and you’re going to find out what he loves!” Trump said.

El-Sayed has been criticized widely for his far-left progressive values, and his narrow victory is seen as another defeat for the establishment wing of the party trying to keep control away from the extremist fringe.

“He doesn’t love Israel; he doesn’t love Jewish people. He hates them. He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart, and there’s not a frickin’ thing he can do about it,” the president continued.

“When I watch Abdul, he’s full of s**t!” he added to laughter and applause.

El-Sayed will face 63-year-old Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, who ran unopposed for the Republican nomination.

RELATED: Far-left Democrat promised driver’s licenses for illegal aliens in video unearthed from his past

Speaking to his supporters on Wednesday, El-Sayed invoked his Muslim religion when asked how he would beat Rogers.

“I want you to remind them that if we come through this, when we come through this — inshallah — that we’ll have taken $70 million on the chin and kept fighting back,” he said.

Inshallah means “God willing” in Arabic.

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​President donald trump, Abdul el-sayed, Us senate, Michigan, Democratic primary, Muslim, Islam, Politics 

For three decades, William Allen lived as “Maggie,” believing that transitioning was the answer to feelings that had followed him since childhood. He also believed that while he was pretending to be a woman, he was a Christian.

Today, however, the author of “Not Man Enough to Be a Woman” tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey that he began to change his mind when he realized how dramatically the transgender movement was changing.

“Back in the day, it was called gender identity disorder. There were transvestites and transsexuals. Transvestites just were men who dressed up as women for sexual gratification. They didn’t want to be a woman,” Allen tells Stuckey.

“Transsexuals actually either felt they were a woman or wanted to be a woman,” he continues, noting that all transsexuals wanted to do “was transition and blend into society and get on with our lives.”

“The last thing we wanted was attention, very unlike what we see today,” he says. “I mean, we took care in our presentation. I mean, I had my beard removed with electrolysis. I went to a voice coach. I was able to retrain my voice.”

“And my gosh, today it’s just so in your face. The movement, they’re militant. They’re demanding. They’re coercive. It’s just gotten so out of hand,” he says.

And years ago, when Allen was still living as “Maggie,” he heard about drag queen story hours and looked into it.

“I saw a news report or something, and it talked about drag queens reading books to children. I thought, ‘Oh, that can’t be right. That’s not happening.’ But I kept hearing about it. Sure enough, it was happening. Of course, people would deny it,” he tells Stuckey.

“And that same thing keeps happening. It went from drag queen story hour to bringing these books into the classrooms and into school libraries, elementary school kids, and then indoctrination and now a whole bunch of teachers. Teachers who are trans and gay now are influencing children,” he adds.

And when Allen went to a support group meeting for transsexuals, what he saw was “horrifying.”

“I went on in, and everybody in there — probably 20, 30 people — they’re all dressed just like the people you see in all the Antifa riots and the BLM riots. They’re all tatted and pierced and multicolored hair and stuff,” he explains.

“I walked in there as Miss Maggie, and … it came around to me. And I just said, ‘My name’s Maggie,’ and I started talking, and they all screamed at me, ‘Pronouns!’ And this was my first exposure to this pronoun hysteria,” he says.

“It had taken such a turn,” he adds.

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​Christian, Transsexuals, Transvestites, Drag queen story, William allen, Transgender, Allie beth stuckey, Antifa, Pronouns, Blazetv show 

A former National Basketball Association center has announced his eligibility to play in the Women’s National Basketball Association.

Enes Kanter Freedom posted a video of himself Friday dressed in a WNBA hoodie and saying he was not intending to mock anyone’s personal choices with his announcement.

‘I’m simply asking that the current rules be applied equally to everyone — the rules that represent the very values many WNBA players and coaches have publicly advocated for.’

“After careful consideration and reviewing the current eligibility guidelines, I’m officially declaring myself a @WNBA prospect,” wrote Freedom in a statement on social media.

“If simply declaring who you are is all that’s required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA,” he added. “My team and I have carefully examined the WNBA’s eligibility criteria and governing framework surrounding self-identification and inclusion. Based on the current guidelines, I can and am officially declaring my eligibility for the upcoming WNBA draft in April 2027.”

Freedom is a human rights activist and has spoken out against the regime in Turkey, his home country, as well as the communist government of China. In 2021, he changed his name to add “Freedom” after gaining his U.S. citizenship in order to cement his commitment against despotism.

“I know my presence on the court will stir up strong opinions. I am definitely not here to mock, make fun of, or disrespect any community or personal choices,” he continued. “I’m simply asking that the current rules be applied equally to everyone — the rules that represent the very values many WNBA players and coaches have publicly advocated for.”

Freedom did not mention transgender-identifying athletes in his statement and did not declare himself transgender. The 34-year-old former NBA center stands 6’10”, according to Basketball Reference.

Freedom’s announcement follows statements from players such as Gabby Williams, who has worn a shirt reading “Black Trans Lives Matter,” according to a Thursday X post.

Williams in May said she would welcome a transgender-identifying person on her team.

RELATED: Former NBA player Enes Freedom quips about donning a wig and competing in the WNBA

Freedom previously stated his opposition to men pretending to be women and playing in the WNBA. He called out feminists and women’s rights activists on their silence about the issue.

He finished his statement by calling on the WNBA to live up to its stated principles of inclusion.

“See you at training camp,” he concluded.

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​Enes kanter freedom, National basketball association, Womens national basketball association, Sports, Transgender 

An underwater videographer may have a new job as a pirate after he discovered a sunken treasure off the coast of England.

While exploring a shipwreck near Dover, England, a Belgian named Stefan Panis found what appeared to be a piece of cargo that has been overlooked for more than 160 years.

‘There might be more cases.’

Beer goggles

In the depths of the wreck of an English ship called the Mindora, Panis found a treasure that is likely to please historians and beer drinkers alike: bottles of Guinness from 1864.

The Irish Times reported that Panis found up to 20 bottles of the stout in 2025, but only recently connected the bottles to the ship wreckage via a cargo report.

Panis told the BBC that the beer is now with scientists who are studying to see if it is still drinkable, with the photographer citing that the same team previously tested a bottle of champagne that is just as old and was still OK to consume.

It depends on whether or not “sea water has come into the bottle through the corks,” Panis said.

At the same time though, the 162-year-old beer is also the focus of a different project for Panis and his Polish cohort Paweł Truszynski, which they are calling “Project Jurassic Beer.”

The duo is having the contents of the Guinness bottles analyzed to see if they can recreate the original recipe.

RELATED: God save the English pub

Vincent Isore/IP3/Getty Images

Bottoms up

With the help of a microbiologist from Brussels, the group wants to recreate exactly how the beer would have tasted in 1864.

Professor Kevin Verstrepen said this comes down to the yeast cells in the bottle; the group will try to retrieve living cells, but if they can’t, they will take a “modern sibling” to get as close to the original as possible.

Diageo, parent company of Guinness, told the Irish Times that the Guinness Archive team “has been in communication with the divers to gather more information and evaluate the find.”

“Discoveries like this provide a fascinating window into our past and help build a deeper understanding of our heritage,” the spokesperson added.

As for the case of beer, Panis believes the bottles “definitely” came from a case of 24.

“But there might be more cases,” he claimed.

RELATED: Boys will be boys: Shane Gillis’ record-breaking Philadelphia show was more than just a comedy set

Secret stash

The diver said that the Mindora has been searched throughout the last decade, but the beer somehow went undetected. He theorized this was likely due to sand covering his discoveries, which also reportedly included items like pickled vegetables.

The Mindora set sail from London to Vancouver, Canada, in November 1864, and traveled for approximately a week before it allegedly collided with another vessel off the coast of Dover on November 27.

Not much of the recent discovery is verified, as Panis’ team did not make their dive in cooperation with official authorities.

“The story of the shipwreck is never-ending,” Panis said, adding that pieces of history “appear one year and disappear the next year.”

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​Guinness, Beer, England, Belgium, Lifestyle 

An appeals court ruled against the Trump administration and blocked the construction of the White House ballroom on the basis that it was not properly approved.

President Donald Trump has urged the speedy construction of the ballroom after the alleged attempt on his life at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April.

‘The bold assertion that the Executive can act with utter lawlessness, destroying treasured national landmarks and harming the interests of individuals, and that no court can stop it flouts our constitutional order.’

On Friday, an appeals court ruled in a 2-1 decision that the president had acted “lawlessly” by demolishing the East Wing of the White House in order to build the ballroom without congressional approval.

“Executive actions that take control of that property out of the hands of the people’s representatives while irreparably harming the historical and visual architecture of perhaps the most prominent public building in the United States seriously intrude on the public interest,” two judges wrote in the joint majority opinion.

However, the administration has two weeks to seek relief from the U.S. Supreme Court.

If the court does not intervene, above-ground construction at the White House would need to stop.

RELATED: Liz Warren launches investigation into Trump’s White House ballroom — the backlash is hilarious

The president has argued that security concerns necessitated the construction of the ballroom with increased law enforcement features. The appeals court found that these concerns could have been addressed without ignoring federal statutes on project funding.

“The bold assertion that the Executive can act with utter lawlessness, destroying treasured national landmarks and harming the interests of individuals, and that no court can stop it flouts our constitutional order,” the two judges said.

“While this court accords great weight and deference to invocations of national security and the safety of the President, such arguments are not an automatic get-out-of-law-free card,” they continued.

In her dissenting opinion, Judge Neomi Rao agreed with the administration and said the security concerns outweighed the legal concerns brought up by the plaintiff, the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The group praised the decision in a statement, citing the 250th anniversary of the country.

“This is a great day for our country and for the American people’s right to voice their opinions about the historic places they cherish, including the White House,” the trust said. “From the beginning, our position has been clear and consistent: The law states that only Congress can authorize the construction of a ballroom at the White House.”

While the president has touted the private money being used to construct the ballroom, the contractor has since said the budget has surged to $600 million, according to a Washington Post report. The gap will reportedly be filled in by taxpayer funding.

The two judges who ruled against the ballroom were Patricia Millett, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, and Bradley Garcia, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

Judge Neomi Rao is a Trump appointee.

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​Trump administration, White house ballroom, Us supreme court, Balance of power, Federal court ruling, Politics 

“The new socialist star” on the far left has emerged, but her reign may be short-lived.

Francesca Hong, a self-described democratic socialist, is running for governor in Wisconsin. However, the people of Wisconsin don’t seem that impressed with her belief system.

“Now, I don’t think people in Wisconsin love socialism,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere tells co-host Dave Landau. “The polling doesn’t say that.”

Pointing to a Marquette Law School poll, Stu reveals that 31% of Wisconsin voters view DSA candidates favorably, while 54% view them unfavorably.

But even worse than Wisconsin voters’ views of socialism, Hong doesn’t even view her own son favorably.

She made this clear in an interview on Listen MKE. In the interview, Hong explained that as a child of immigrants who married a white man, her child has a negative proximity to whiteness.

“I wasn’t always aware of the struggles of other communities of color because for me assimilation always kind of took over. And so I did marry — and proximity to whiteness continues, right? My son is biracial. He’s half white and half Korean,” Hong said in an interview.

“And I think navigating, you know, what his identity is and how people perceive him is always at the back of my mind as well,” she added.

“Can you imagine saying that about your own kid?” Stu asks.

“What I don’t get about these people is they’re always like, ‘We must dismantle this racist system of, you know, white supremacy that disempowers the LGBTQ plus.’ Also, this is my husband, Chad,” Dave says.

“We see that a lot,” Stu agrees.

“The truth of the matter,” Stu continues, “is the way to solve racism is to stop making decisions based on race. That’s the way to solve it … it’s not to say, ‘Well, that group is evil, and we should kill all of them.’ That’s not the way to solve this.”

“That is what the Ibram Kendi’s of the world, and our good friend Hong seem to believe. If we just turn the discrimination and turn the racism and turn the hate toward the right color, everything will be solved,” he adds.

“Exactly,” Dave agrees. “That’s the problem. And do you want to be talking about your own kids’ ethnicity like they have lupus? It’s not a good thing.”

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​Francesca hong, Democratic socialist, Stu burguiere, Dave landau, Wisconsin, Socialism, Racism, Blazetv show, Ibram x kendi 

Owing to their nation’s Temporary Protected Status, hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants have avoided deportation despite greatly adding to the strain on American resources in places such as the blue-collar city of Springfield, Ohio, where they were accused by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump of “eating the pets of the people that live there.”

After a protracted legal battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the activist judge who initially held up the process has finally conceded that the Trump administration can start giving Haitian migrants the boot.

How it started

The Trump administration announced last summer that Haiti’s TPS was, after 16 years, finally coming to an end, having determined that the Caribbean nation no longer meets the conditions for special status, owing largely to significant improvements in domestic safety and stability.

‘You don’t have status inside this country any more.’

The revocation was, however, held up in the courts.

In Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes — a foreign-born, Biden-appointed, lesbian judge who previously worked as a lawyer to fight the first Trump administration’s immigration policy and helped the U.N. secure asylum for so-called refugees — gave her fellow immigration activists cause to hope on Feb. 2, blocking the revocation of Haiti’s TPS.

Reyes, originally from Uruguay, claimed that former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem not only violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause when terminating the TPS designation for Haiti but had likely done so “because of hostility to non-white immigrants.”

RELATED: Trump-hating Republican governors conspire with Democrats to smuggle in even more migrants

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia declined in March to block Reyes’ ruling and kept Haiti’s special status in place, the government kicked the matter up to the nation’s highest court.

In late June, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered the Trump administration a huge victory, overturning the lower court’s ruling.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito rejected the suggestion that race was a motivating factor behind the TPS revocation and emphasized that the “TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims.”

How it’s going

In the wake of the Supreme Court making mincemeat out of her ruling, Reyes issued an order on Wednesday acknowledging the reversal of her judgment and what it necessarily entails.

The foreign-born judge, who previously had a great deal to say about the matter, kept her admission of defeat brief, noting that her stay of termination “is no longer in effect.”

Despite Reyes’ insinuation that the government was waiting on her say-so, James Percival, general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, noted, “Haiti TPS ended when the Supreme Court mandate issued on July 27. I will give Judge Reyes kudos though for taking the L with grace and not doing something bonkers like many of her colleagues.”

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin issued a message to Haitians with suspended special statuses: “We’re going after them right now. We are giving them an opportunity to either leave on their own, and we’ll help you, or we’ll arrest you and send you back.”

“Either way, you don’t have status inside this country any more,” continued Mullin. “That has been litigated. The courts spoke very clearly. We knew that we were going to win this because in its name itself it says, ‘Temporary Protected Status.'”

Steve Foster, the immigration policy coordinator for the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, told ABC News, “Haitians with TPS, regardless of whether they have a pending asylum claim, have gotten a ‘DHS Call-In Letter’ to appear at ICE offices in person.”

Foster said that some Haitians have reportedly been assigned future court dates and given ankle monitors.

These efforts are reportedly under way in Springfield — an Ohio city that has in recent years heard allegations of Haitians eating pets and wildlife and seen a significant spike in Haitian-caused traffic accidents.

In 2024, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue admitted that the tens of thousands of Haitians who had recently poured into his city — a city that had a population of just over 58,000 in 2020 — “taxed” the “infrastructure of the city, our safety forces, our hospitals, our schools.” According to the city, there were more than 15,000 migrants presently residing in Clark County alone.

Viles Dorsainvil, the head of a Haitian support group in Springfield, confirmed the government’s efforts to get the ball rolling on Haitian migrants’ ouster.

“We are just helping these folks to go to this appointment, and when they get there, they interview them and eventually put [an] ankle monitor on them,” said Dorsainvil.

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​Activist judge, Department of homeland security, Deportation, Haiti, Haitians, Immigration activists, Justice samuel alito, Markwayne mullin, President donald trump, Springfield ohio, Temporary protected status, Us supreme court, Politics 

Some rockets go up. Some come back down. And some, well, blow up.

At a glance, it’s business as usual for SpaceX, and it comes at a cost: a net loss of $541 million in the second quarter of this year. Market jitters about the company’s enormous AI spend, in a crowded field with deep-pocketed competitors, pushed its stock down around 10%, enough to fuel jeers from Elon Musk’s sizable audience of haters and skeptics.

‘They desperately want to blow themselves into tiny pieces.’

On SpaceX’s Q2 earnings call, however, Musk himself couldn’t hold back a laugh or two.

After all, despite his participation in the ultra-high-spend AI industry, SpaceX is, first and foremost, about space.

“Rocket science is literally our daily business,” he said on the call. “And rocket science is an idiomatic expression for extreme technological difficulty, and there’s a reason for it. Because let me tell you what rockets desperately want to do every flight. They desperately want to blow themselves into tiny pieces. And then the engineering struggle is to convince the rocket not to blow itself into tiny pieces and actually deliver payload to orbit.”

In the chat with investors, Musk went on to accentuate the positive: massive revenues that surpassed expectations. All told, the earnings report noted, revenues were up 92%.

In fact, following its initial public offering in June, SpaceX managed to blast by revenue expectations by nearly one billion dollars. CNBC reported that Q2 2026 revenue expectations were set around $6.93 billion, but SpaceX outpaced estimates and brought in $7.81 billion.

SpaceX is still not yet profitable, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. That $541 million loss is a near half-billion improvement from the $1 billion in the red notched the same quarter last year.

Much of the company’s losses came from research and development in the space sector, where as Grok/xAI and Starlink sectors proved to be far more positive.

None of this prevented Musk from verbalizing everything from bold predictions to astronomical promises.

In discussions about SpaceX’s Starship and its impact “on the future of civilization,” Musk detailed a goal of delivering one million tons of payload to orbit per year, including satellite, hardware, and cargo, eventually increasing that figure to 10 million tons per year.

To put that into perspective, SpaceX’s current annualized run-rate of payload into space is roughly 2,500 metric tons.

RELATED: Mars Needs Cowboys

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Musk urged and encouraged his competitors to copy what his company is doing, an easy stunt to pull given none of them have come close to SpaceX’s achievements. Referring to an internal graph comparing launch volume of similar companies, Musk said that his “next competitor was one pixel high” on the screen.

“I think our competitors are very smart people, but despite being very smart, the rockets still blow up,” Musk laughed.

RELATED: Tech-crazed Chinese are selling — and stealing — human faces. Are we next?

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell, also on the call, focused on the growth coming from an increase in subscribers to xAI’s internet company Starlink, which added more than 1.7 million customers in Q2. This represented the company’s biggest increase to date, which now totals 12 million subscribers.

With more than 10,000 satellites in orbit, Musk detailed the sheer computing power being used by the company would be more than two gigawatts by the end of the year and between five and 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.

By comparison, a single data center used by Meta takes about 2.2 gigawatts of power.

It should come as a surprise to no one that Musk continues to nurse his goals on the grandest scale. He even admitted, “I know this sounds totally nuts,” before later declaring, “We are going to land a lot of tonnage on the moon. We’re going to build the factories on the moon. The robots will be helpful with that.”

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​Elon musk, Spacex, Grok, Starlink, Tech 

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said the sentence against Gerald Pitts was intended to show that law enforcement officials take racially motivated violence seriously.

Santos Tejas Gonzalez was trying to get around Pitts on a Los Angeles Metro Bus in March 2023 when Pitts yelled racial slurs at Gonzalez.

‘Gerald Pitts attacked a complete stranger because of his race or perceived race, repeatedly stabbed him, and kept attacking him even after the victim fell from the bus.’

When Gonzalez tried to get off the bus at the next stop to avoid further confrontation, Pitts stabbed him in the face and kicked him in the head after the victim fell off the bus.

At one point before Gonzalez fell to the ground outside the bus, the knife can be seen protruding from his face in a graphic bus surveillance video the district attorney’s office released.

The victim also was stabbed numerous times in the abdomen, arm, and hand.

Pitts was arrested and charged with attempted murder along with additional crimes, including a hate crime designation. In June, a jury found the 67-year-old guilty, and on Thursday Pitts was sentenced to life in state prison plus another seven years.

“A hate crime is more than just a criminal act against one person; it tears at the fibers that hold our community together,” L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement.

“These crimes are meant to intimidate entire communities and weaken the trust that holds us together. Gerald Pitts attacked a complete stranger because of his race or perceived race, repeatedly stabbed him, and kept attacking him even after the victim fell from the bus,” Hochman added. “We’re grateful the victim survived and relieved that he is continuing to recover. This kind of violence is exactly what hate crime laws are meant to address.”

The district attorney did not mention Pitts’ race in his press release, and news outlets also neglected to mention it. However, Pitts’ booking record listed him as a black man.

RELATED: Fresno man charged with hate crime over note left at vandalized bakery, police believe he mistook Christian owners for Jews

Hochman tied the attack on Gonzalez to other hate crimes committed in L.A. County, including one on a transgender shopkeeper.

“This office will not tolerate hate incidents and crimes in our communities and will respond with the full force of the law,” Hochman added.

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​Hate crime, Knife attack, Attempted murder, Los angeles, Race, Politics 

There are plenty of reasons for an electric car company to fail.

Maybe the car is badly engineered. Maybe the range disappoints. Maybe the software is a mess. Maybe buyers simply don’t like the product.

There are only so many Americans willing and able to spend close to six figures on an electric vehicle.

Lucid has a more troubling problem: It makes an excellent car.

Driver’s ‘Dream’

I’ve driven Lucids, including the spectacular Air Dream Edition, and there is very little to complain about from behind the wheel. The Air is fast, beautifully finished, extraordinarily efficient, and capable of the kind of range that makes most other electric vehicles look dated.

Yet the company behind it is once again confronting the brutal economics of building cars.

Lucid announced this week that it is embarking on what management calls an “operational reset,” with plans to cut costs by roughly $1.4 billion this year. The company is reducing spending and inventory while delaying the launch of its more affordable midsize vehicles until the second half of 2027.

That delay may be the most important part of the story.

Lucid desperately needs a vehicle ordinary luxury-car buyers can afford. Instead, it remains heavily dependent on expensive models at precisely the moment the upper end of the EV market is getting harder to crack.

Pulling a Tesla?

Lucid’s problem isn’t really its product. That’s unusual among struggling EV start-ups.

Fisker had serious product and execution problems. Other newcomers have arrived with cars that felt unfinished, badly priced, or both.

The Lucid Air is different. It demonstrated from the beginning that a start-up could challenge Tesla on efficiency, range, performance, and luxury.

But engineering a great car and building a sustainable car company are very different skills.

Lucid entered the market primarily with expensive sedans, then followed with the Gravity SUV. That gives the company impressive halo vehicles, but it limits the pool of potential customers.

There are only so many Americans willing and able to spend close to six figures on an electric vehicle.

Tesla confronted this problem years ago by moving down-market after establishing itself with expensive cars. Lucid has been trying to do something similar, but the cheaper model it needs keeps getting pushed further into the future.

Lucid now says those midsize vehicles won’t arrive until the latter half of 2027.

That’s a long time when you’re burning cash.

Changing market

Lucid isn’t dealing only with its own growing pains.

The entire electric vehicle industry has gone through a reset.

Automakers that once talked about replacing nearly their entire gasoline-powered lineups with EVs have pulled back investments, delayed factories, canceled models, and rediscovered hybrids.

The problem isn’t that Americans don’t buy electric cars. Millions do.

The problem is that demand never followed the straight upward line many executives and government planners assumed it would.

The affluent early adopters were relatively easy to reach. The next group of buyers is much more price-sensitive and much less willing to change how they drive simply because an automaker wants to sell them something electric.

That matters enormously for Lucid because the company remains concentrated near the expensive end of the market. At some point, you saturate the group of buyers who can afford a six-figure vehicle.

That’s precisely why a $40,000 or $50,000 Lucid could be transformative — if the company can survive long enough to build one.

RELATED: FIRST LOOK New York International Auto Show: Cool cars, but drivers still face sticker shock

VIEW Press/Getty Images

No second mover

Automotive executives love saying they want to “do what Tesla did.”

That is much harder than it sounds.

Tesla had something no new EV company can recreate: years in which it essentially owned the premium electric car category.

The Model S arrived before almost anybody else had a credible answer. Tesla built an enormous base of customers, developed a charging network, became a cultural phenomenon, and had Elon Musk turning every product announcement into news.

Whether you love Tesla or hate it, that position cannot simply be duplicated by making another good EV.

Today’s start-ups aren’t entering an empty market. They’re fighting Tesla, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Ford, Rivian, and an increasingly formidable group of Chinese companies around the world.

Lucid built a technically brilliant car. It didn’t build it in a vacuum.

Deep pockets

Lucid does have one enormous advantage over many failed start-ups: financial backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

That support has given the company a lifeline other manufacturers could only dream of.

But outside investment doesn’t repeal economics.

A manufacturer eventually has to produce cars at a sustainable cost and sell enough of them at a sustainable price. Constant infusions of capital can buy time, but time has to lead somewhere.

Lucid’s current plan involves cost reductions, the Gravity SUV, a future midsize platform, autonomous-vehicle partnerships, and increased manufacturing in Saudi Arabia. Reuters reported that the company still expects those initiatives to provide a path forward, despite continued losses and weaker-than-expected deliveries.

Holding the bag

Maybe they will.

I hope so, because the automotive industry is better when companies like Lucid force everybody else to improve.

But consumers should understand the risk when buying from a young automaker.

If the company disappears, the vehicle doesn’t disappear with it. You still own the car. You still need replacement parts, software support, warranty work, body panels, service technicians, and somebody maintaining all those cloud-connected features.

Fisker owners already learned what happens when the company behind a highly computerized automobile suddenly isn’t there anymore.

Grind behind the glamour

For years, Silicon Valley treated automobile manufacturing as though Detroit had simply failed to understand software.

Build a better battery. Hire good programmers. Raise enough venture capital. Disrupt the dinosaurs.

The reality has turned out to be far less glamorous.

Cars require factories, suppliers, repair networks, inventories, regulatory compliance, financing, parts distribution, warranty reserves, and enormous amounts of capital long before the manufacturer knows whether buyers will show up.

Lucid has already proved it can build a remarkable automobile.

Now it has to prove something harder: that it can build a viable company around it.

​Auto industry, Automobile manufacturing, Elon musk, Ev market, Lifestyle, Lucid, Saudi arabia, Silicon valley, Tesla, Automotive 

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — a nominal Republican up for re-election in 2028 — appears desperate to undermine the MAGA agenda and prevent President Donald Trump from getting his ducks in a row.

Murkowski — who in recent months repeatedly voted against funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection; voted to reign in Trump’s war powers; voted to block Trump’s tariffs; voted unsuccessfully to keep taxpayers on the hook for USAID and other foreign funding; voted against multiple Trump nominees, including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Under Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao; campaigned against the SAVE America Act; and complained with Democrats about ex-FBI Director James Comey’s indictment — revealed Friday she will vote against Todd Blanche’s confirmation for attorney general.

‘She’s not good.’

With the continued absence of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), this effectively means that the fate of Blanche’s confirmation could be decided by Bill Cassidy — a U.S. senator whose hopes of a third term Trump helped dash in Louisiana’s May Republican primary.

Murkowski, who started the year with an approval rating of 37%, noted in a lengthy X post that she has had numerous “constructive meetings” with Blanche and credited him not only as being “decent and capable” but also as having “made several noteworthy decisions that will benefit our state and the nation.”

The 69-year-old senator nevertheless vowed to “oppose his nomination.”

It appears Murkowski is less opposed to the man and more opposed to the administration. After all, some of her complaints have to do with actions taken at the Justice Department prior to Blanche’s April promotion to acting attorney general.

RELATED: Mitch McConnell releases new statement about his health status — but he’s not yet returning to the Senate

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

“The politicization — even weaponization — of the Department did not start with this administration but has accelerated during it,” wrote Murkowski. “I take issue with the handling of the release of the Epstein files; the sweeping immunity protections granted to the president, his family, and their businesses; the statements that have been made to anti-abortion groups; and the repeated targeting of individuals ranging from former administration staff to sitting U.S. senators.”

Murkowski also expressed skepticism about the scrapping of the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that would have compensated MAGA victims of Democratic lawfare, noting that while it was taken off the table “because this nomination is pending and the Senate has leverage,” there “is no telling what the future holds.”

The senator said in conclusion that she does not have confidence that Blanche can “check the worst impulses of this administration.”

There is no love lost between Trump and Murkowski.

“I’m against Murkowski,” the president recently told Punchbowl News. “I do more for Alaska than any president in history. No president’s done for Alaska what I’ve done. She’s not good.”

In June, Trump called the Alaskan U.S. senator “Trump deranged.”

Murkowski is not, however, the only Republican lawmaker keen to torpedo Blanche’s confirmation.

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins — the Maine Republican whose challenger in the midterms is a leftist reportedly married to his second cousin — complained that while Blanche is a “capable lawyer,” he “has taken several actions that have further eroded the Department’s independence.”

Cassidy, a vociferous Trump critic and the remaining undecided Republican, has declined to indicate whether he’ll support Blanche, reported The Hill.

The Senate is expected to vote Friday or sometime over the weekend to get the ball rolling on a final confirmation vote.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement, “Todd Blanche is exceptionally qualified and should be confirmed as the next attorney general of the United States so the administration can continue to keep America safe.”

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​Rino, Todd blanche, Department of justice, Republican, Alaska, Susan collins, Attorney general, Politics, Lisa murkowski