Category: blaze media

Tonight, the San Antonio Spurs will face off against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 6 of the 2026 NBA Western Conference Finals. The Thunder team currently leads the series 3-2.

But a viral conspiracy theory claims that Game 5 was rigged in Oklahoma City’s favor.

Between several controversial refereeing calls — including a missed goaltending violation, a denied coach’s challenge, and a massive free-throw disparity — as well as Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama’s mysterious shutdown after dominating earlier in the series and a Google “glitch” that prematurely listed Thunder vs. Knicks as the Finals matchup, many are convinced this was a rigged outcome designed to keep the Thunder alive and boost playoff viewership.

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock believes this conspiracy theory is true.

“What tranquilizer did they shoot into Victor Wembanyama? … What were Tony Brothers and the DEI refereeing crew doing last night? What were the San Antonio Spurs doing last night?” he asks. “Adam Silver, I got some questions.”

“The NBA and Adam Silver need content,” Whitlock says, speculating that Wembanyama was told by his coaches to “conserve [his] energy” because the “refs aren’t going to allow [the Spurs] to win Game 5.”

“That’s what it looked like last night, particularly in the first half when Wembanyama couldn’t even be bothered occasionally to run full court and to even enter into the Spurs’ offense, when Victor Wembanyama hung out, 7-foot-5, spent the entire first half and most of the game just hanging out casually around the three-point line,” he explains.

To the counterargument that Wembanyama was just “worn out” or had “an off night,” Whitlock contends that “superstars” like Wembanyama may have “bad shooting nights,” “a bunch of turnovers,” and even make “a critical error at the end of the game,” but they never just stop “giving a sincere effort.”

The officiating crew’s performance was on par with Wembanyama’s, he adds, highlighting Spurs coach Mitch Johnson’s denied coach’s challenge on a play where replays clearly showed the ball going out of bounds off Thunder player Chet Holmgren’s foot.

“I’m not some crazy ‘every game is rigged’ conspiracy theorist, but you can’t tell me that game last night was on the up and up,” Whitlock says.

To hear his full game analysis, watch the episode above.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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

​Fearless with jason whitlock, Jason whitlock, Adam silver, Nba, Fearless 

Negotiators representing the U.S. and Iran have reached a tentative agreement about the ceasefire, according to various news outlets.

If signed by President Donald Trump and the Iranian regime, the ceasefire would extend for another 60 days. Trump has not yet signed off on the memorandum of understanding, according to an official who wanted to remain anonymous.

‘President Trump is not going to make a bad deal for the American people, for the US.’

“This is an agreement to get everybody to the table,” the official told Axios. “We will work out the details in the negotiations.”

If both sides agree to the ceasefire, it would lead to the Strait of Hormuz being opened to trade again and possibly lowering gas prices across the globe. Other policies to be decided include billions of dollars of frozen assets that Iran would like to regain and restrictions on its ability to refine uranium for military nuclear capabilities.

The president had lambasted previous offers from the regime and at one point called its proposals “garbage” and “unacceptable.”

RELATED: Trump offers unique insight into Iran’s ‘strange’ negotiations: ‘It won’t be pretty!’

When Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked about the deal on Thursday, he would not answer directly.

“Everything depends on what the president wants to do, and President Trump is not going to make a bad deal for the American people, for the U.S.,” he said.

This is a developing story.

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​Iran deal, Iranian regime, President donald trump, Us-israel strikes on iran, Politics 

A wild brawl recently erupted at a kindergarten graduation ceremony at Queen of Apostles School in Toledo, Ohio — and it was allegedly over seating.

WTVG-TV reported that new video of last Thursday’s dust-up is raising more questions after the arrest of one parent who told the station she’s being treated unfairly.

‘Once I was taken to the ground, it was probably four or five other guys that were on top of me, trampling me, punching me, kicking me in the head.’

Jessica Anderson was charged with felonious assault, but she told WTVG she wasn’t the aggressor and wants police to review all videos of the fight — and wants charges against her dropped.

Witnesses told the station that attendees got angry over seating. Cellphone video shows multiple punches thrown, and WTVG reported that an individual appearing to be Anderson grabbed a woman by the hair.

But Anderson emphasized to the station that the clip doesn’t tell the full story.

“I removed her from the pile, and her arm fell into a chair,” Anderson recounted to WTVG. “Then we were surrounded by people, and she was hitting me. I didn’t know what was happening, so I started swinging back.”

She also told the station, “I wasn’t the aggressor; it wasn’t my face that should have been blasted everywhere. I take accountability that I was involved. A lot of people were involved, but me being the only person charged was not fair. It wasn’t.”

Anderson is charged with felonious assault, WTVG reported, adding that a judge put her on house arrest.

RELATED: Video shows brawl after high school walkout protester allegedly hit pro-ICE man — and the man is charged with child abuse

WTVG also said cellphone video it obtained appears to show parent Craig Mays involved in the fight over seating.

Anderson told the station that after a disagreement over the chairs, Mays rushed toward one of her family members while she called 911.

“Craig Mays snatched Katie, and then the nephews got involved,” Anderson told WTVG. “He charged over there.”

The station said it spoke with Mays, and he denies that’s how things went down.

“Her whole family in the first two rows just stand up, five guys, five girls. They just all stand up. As I’m arguing with Jessica, I literally don’t remember anything. I just know I was sucker punched. Once I was taken to the ground, it was probably four or five other guys that were on top of me, trampling me, punching me, kicking me in the head,” Mays told WTVG.

Cellphone video allegedly recorded just after the initial brawl appears to show Mays climbing back to his feet, walking away, taking off his shirt, and putting up his fists while confronting and squaring up with a man dressed in a black sweatshirt, the station said.

Toledo police continue to investigate the fight, WTVG said, adding that the school has yet to announce a rescheduled graduation ceremony date.

A spokesperson for Central City Ministries, which operates the school, told WTVG-TV in an earlier story that no students were in the room during the brawl.

Gabriel Jakubisin, head of school for Central City Ministries, told the station that he’s proud of how staff members handled the situation. Staff members called 911 and went into lockdown, WTVG reported.

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​Ohio, Toledo, Police, Brawl, Arrest, Kindergarten, Graduation, Queen of apostles school, Crime 

Online reports indicate that a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was the victim of a swatting incident on Wednesday evening.

A recording posted by a self-identified Washington, D.C., photographer purportedly documents a police dispatcher ordering a police response to the home of a “high-priority resident of the county.”

‘The proper response will be putting the offender in prison for many, many years.’

The dispatcher informs the officer that personnel have been unable to call the complainant back, indicating that it may be a swatting incident.

“Units responding to suspicious noise. Be advised, we have not been able to get an answer on call back to the complainant’s phone number. Unknown if it’s going to be a swatting situation,” she says.

“Just made contact with security that’s on scene,” a male officer says. “They should be outside in an Explorer. He said he hasn’t heard anything. We’re just going to meet up with him first, just to go over anything.”

The photographer reported that the victim of the swatting incident was Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) responded to the report but did not appear to confirm it.

“Swatting is an attempt to get an innocent person killed — in this case, a sitting Supreme Court Justice,” he wrote. “The proper response will be putting the offender in prison for many, many years.”

The Fairfax County Police Department confirmed to Blaze News in an email on Thursday that officers had responded to a swatting incident at the home of a SCOTUS justice but did not identify the justice by name:

Yesterday evening at approximately 9:02 p.m., officers responded to a swatting call at the residence of U.S. Supreme Court justice in Fairfax County.

The call was received through the department’s non-emergency line. Officers immediately coordinated with Supreme Court Police personnel assigned to the residence and quickly determined that the report was fictitious. No additional police resources were utilized.

The SCOTUS public information officer did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Barrett was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump in 2020 during his first term in office.

RELATED: Man who tried to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh identifies as transgender, new docs show

After the president won his second election, members nominated to his Cabinet reported being the victims of swatting incidents in Nov. 2024.

“The FBI is aware of numerous bomb threats and swatting incidents targeting incoming administration nominees and appointees, and we are working with our law enforcement partners,” read a statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the time.

This is a developing story.

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​Amy coney barrett, Supreme court justice, Swatting situation, Left-wing attacks, Politics 

A bizarre post from the White House about a dead gorilla has triggered many of the president’s critics, who are imploding with great fury and outrage.

Harambe was a 17-year-old western lowland silverback gorilla who was shot and killed by officials of the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016 in order to protect a child who had made his way into the animal’s enclosure.

‘F**k it, Iran just launch the nukes, put us out of our misery, you’d be doing us a favor.’

The gorilla died but lived on in memes and jokes that turned him into a hero of the manosphere and other online communities.

On Wednesday, the White House social media account remembered Harambe as a “legend” and a patriot.

“He became a symbol of loyalty, strength, chaos, unity, and the strange beauty of the internet bringing millions of people together for one cause: never forgetting Harambe,” the post read.

“Everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news,” the White House continued. “And somehow, a decade later, his legacy still lives on. Gone, but never forgotten.”

Not surprisingly, the outrage online has been hysterical.

“This is really abhorrent. And this will go in the National Archives,” read one popular response. “It is just more evidence, that you have zero decency, understanding, nor regard for subject matter. You are mocking the death of this animal, who deserved better in life, and now, in remembrance. It further shows how you have no respect for the responsibility you hold.”

“So many people are losing rights and our government is talking about f**king harambe, what are we doing bro,” read another reply.

“F**k it, Iran just launch the nukes, put us out of our misery, you’d be doing us a favor at this point this is EMBARASSING,” said an account with pronouns in the profile.

The post from the White House garnered more than 27 million views on social media in only 18 hours.

RELATED: Trump admin. mocks outrage of ‘unhinged leftists’ over White House ballroom construction

Former Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters, who presided over the case, said that it was the most tumultuous incident he experienced in terms of the social media response.

“We’ve had much worse cases, believe me. We’ve had serial killers. We’ve had tons of other cases, but in terms of the effect of social media in a particular case, this took the prize by a long shot,” he said to WCPO-TV 10 years later.

He added that it was an easy decision not to charge the mother of the child for negligence because he didn’t think a jury of her peers would have convicted her.

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​Harambe, Memes, Outrage, White house, Politics 

The FBI arrested a high-level spook last week who was sitting on a veritable treasure trove of allegedly purloined gold bars and cash, altogether worth tens of millions of dollars.

The bureau characterized David Rush in a May 20 federal court filing as a “former Senior Executive Service level employee at a United States government agency” with top secret compartmented information clearance and access to classified information. Sources familiar with the investigation spelled it out further, telling the New York Times that he was, up until recently, a senior CIA official.

‘A C.I.A. internal investigation identified potential violations of the law.’

According to the affidavit, there is probable cause to believe that between 2009 and this month, David Rush “knowingly embezzled, stole, purloined, or knowingly converted a thing of value of the United States or received, concealed, or retained the same with intent to convert it to his use or gain, knowing it to have been embezzled, stolen, purloined, or converted, including by obtaining a fraudulently inflated salary and fraudulently obtaining military leave, the value of which exceeded $1,000.”

Rush allegedly made several requests to the federal government between November 2025 and March 2026 to obtain a boatload of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for “work-related expenses.” The affidavit claims that Rush successfully obtained the gold and cash.

A review of the storage space at the government site where Rush had an office turned up only some of the riches the spy had acquired, according to the affidavit. The government apparently was unable to locate the remainder of the cash and bullion or any record of Rush “providing information to his employer regarding the disposition of the currency or gold bars.”

The mystery of the missing treasure was apparently solved on May 18, when the FBI raided Rush’s home in the Eastern District of Virginia.

RELATED: DOJ mysteriously drops case against Israeli linked to Chinese fraudster’s creepy alleged biolab

CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

Federal agents reportedly seized roughly 303 gold bars, each weighing a kilogram. At the time of writing, a kilo of gold was valued at around $144,900 — meaning that Rush was allegedly sitting on over $43 million in gold alone. Agents also reportedly seized roughly $2 million in U.S. currency and 35 luxury watches, many of which were Rolexes.

Besides allegedly purloining a galleon-load of treasure, Rush has been accused of lying about his credentials and fudging military leave information on his official time sheet.

Citing findings in the FBI’s investigation, the affidavit claims that Rush submitted multiple applications for government jobs “containing false information about his education background and work with the United States military.” Contrary to his statements, Rush allegedly never attended Clemson University or the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; wasn’t a pilot for the Navy; and does not have a Federal Aviation Administration certificate or pilot’s license.

“After a C.I.A. internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the F.B.I. for a law enforcement investigation,” the CIA and FBI said in a joint statement.

The FBI arrested Rush on May 19.

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​Cia, Spook, Deep state, Thief, Fbi, Gold bars, Federal agents, John ratcliffe, Investigation, Politics 

Husbands have a way of subtly revealing if their marriage will last, and the tell is broadcast on international TV, according to one amateur researcher.

An avid “Wheel of Fortune” viewer took in almost 2,000 episodes of the game show and seemingly found a distinct pattern in male contestants and how they speak about their wives.

‘Could you imagine your husband going on national television and referring to you simply as his wife?’

Split decision

Across 1,950 episodes that aired between 2010 and 2019, a content creator called Joey Toks said he categorized male contestants into two categories. First, of the 2,855 male contestants, he took the 2,016 of them that mentioned their wives while introducing themselves to former host Pat Sajak and co-host Vanna White.

He then split the contestants into those who added a complimentary adjective about their wives and those who did not. Of the 1,660 men who complimented their wives, 91 of them, or 5.48%, got divorced within five years of the date the episode aired.

However, among the 356 men who did not compliment their wives, 55 of them had a confirmed divorce within five years of their episode airing, a staggering 15.45%.

RELATED: Pope offers tried-and-true solution to Europe’s population crisis

Christopher Willard/Getty Images

Breadwinner boost

While the researcher admitted that the numbers consist of “full divorces that [he] could confirm” and that the data of course is “not perfect,” it suggests that the rate at which those who were not complimentary toward their wives got divorced was triple the rate of those who did compliment them.

Further piling onto the non-complimentary husbands, the TV savant also pointed out how many of the men won more than $40,000.

Just 7% of the 185 complimentary husbands who took home big winnings got a divorce within five years of their victory.

RELATED: ‘Jeopardy!’ champ’s Trump-trashing victory lap: ‘As an immigrant and a person of color …’

Shawn Ehlers/WireImage/Getty Images

Happy wife …

At the same time, 17% of the men who did not use complimentary adjectives for their significant other had a full divorce within five years.

The complimentary men also won big at a rate three points higher than their counterparts (11.14% versus 8.14%).

“Could you imagine your husband going on national television and referring to you simply as his wife instead of his ‘beautiful wife’ or ‘wonderful wife’?” the TikTok user asked.

In response, the official “Wheel of Fortune” TikTok account simply commented on the video, “Bruh.”

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​Game show, Align, Marriage, Divorce, Television, Entertainment 

Hollywood is ramping up its criticism of Spencer Pratt, and BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler believes it’s a sign that his Los Angeles mayoral campaign is gaining real traction.

“The Democrats are so scared of Spencer Pratt’s strategy. And you combine that with the most recent fundraising numbers — in the last month, Spencer Pratt has raised 10 times as much money as Karen Bass,” Wheeler explains.

Pratt has raised $2.72 million in the last month, while Mayor Bass (D) raised $283,000.

“The tide has turned towards Spencer Pratt. That amount of money combined with this strategy, this brilliant political strategy that Spencer Pratt is now engaging in — giving Democrats in L.A. this off-ramp to vote for him,” Wheeler says.

And the Democrats are so scared that they have “unleashed their big guns,” which is Hollywood.

“Hollywood is the Democrats’ secret weapon,” she explains, recalling that “very cringey video that celebrities put together during COVID.”

“Celebrities are what the Democrats think are their most effective influential tool. You saw this with the Kamala Harris campaign,” she adds, before playing a clip of reality star Lisa Rinna telling a reporter she doesn’t want a “reality star” to be mayor.

“We’ve already done that. We’re not going to do that again,” Rinna said.

“Listen, I’m a reality person,” she continued. “You wouldn’t want me as mayor. … I just think we did that. Let’s have somebody that’s already been mayor. The mayor of San Jose or whoever. I don’t even know.”

“This is what the Democrats think their big guns are,” Wheeler comments. “You know, their move of desperation.”

Drew Carey also threw out an opinion on Pratt, writing in a post on social media: “Anyone who votes for, or endorses Spencer Prattfall for Mayor of LA needs to get their head out of their ass. I understand being angry/unsatisfied, but at least get behind someone competent and not some serial scammer without a soul or moral compass. F**k this guy already.”

Pratt responded in his own post on X: “Isn’t it weird how the two comedians histrionically lashing out against me are both in the ‘Epstein files’? What are the odds?”

He attached a screenshot of an email mentioning Carey from the files.

“Let me tell you what is happening here. The Democrats are so scared. They’re so desperate because they can’t run on any policy. They can’t run on Karen Bass’ record. They can’t run on Nithya Raman’s ideology,” Wheeler says.

“So what they do instead, as their sort of final move — this is one week before the election … they try to use famous people to invoke groupthink among voters,” she adds.

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​Democrats, Drew carey, Epstein files, Hollywood, Kamala harris, Karen bass, Liz wheeler, Los angeles, Spencer pratt, The liz wheeler show 

A California teacher was arrested for allegedly having inappropriate sexual contact with a student, and police believe there could be more victims.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement: “On January 28, 2026, the Riverside Sheriff’s Moreno Valley Station’s Investigation Bureau began investigating allegations of inappropriate contact with a student at a school in Moreno Valley.”

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Special Victims Unit suspects that there may be additional victims.

Police identified the suspect as 41-year-old Samantha Josephine Watson of Eastvale.

The sheriff’s office said Watson engaged in “inappropriate contact” with a student between 2017 and 2018. At the time of the alleged inappropriate contact, Watson was employed as a teacher at a charter school in Moreno Valley, according to the statement.

While the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office did not name the school, officials noted that the alleged abuse occurred at a charter school campus in the 23000 block of Sunnymead Boulevard, KCBS-TV reported, adding that an online search indicates Options for Youth Public Charter Schools “operates in the area.”

Watson is not listed as an employee in the staff directory for the Options for Youth Public Charter Schools.

RELATED: Female Christian kindergarten teacher pleads guilty to child seduction; court docs reveal she had sex with girl in church

mesh cube via iStock/Getty Images

Law enforcement on Friday executed a search warrant in Eastvale and took Watson into custody without incident.

Watson was booked into the Robert Presley Detention Center on charges of sending harmful material to a juvenile, oral copulation, and digital penetration.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Special Victims Unit suspects there may be additional victims.

The New York Post, citing property records, reported that Watson shares a $1.2 million home in Eastvale with her husband.

Watson is scheduled to appear June 8 at the Riverside Hall of Justice for her first hearing, according to jail records provided by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office.

The Options for Youth Public Charter Schools did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office told Blaze News there are no updates at this time.

Police said the investigation is ongoing.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office urges those with information on the case to contact Master Investigator D. Schell at 951-955-1704 or the sheriff’s dispatch at 951-776-1099.

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​Bad teacher, California, Child sex abuse, Child sex crimes, Samantha watson, Teacher arrested, Teacher sex scandal, Teacher student sex scandal, Riverside county sheriff’s office, Crime 

Spencer Pratt is liberal Los Angeles’ favorite new villain.

The former “The Hills” star became an unlikely political gadfly after his house burned down in the January 2025 Palisades Fire. Ever since he launched his increasingly high-profile mayoral campaign, Hollywood’s liberal elite and the prestige media can’t resist conflating the man with the heel he played on the MTV series.

‘That whole plot was scripted.’

But just because it’s called “reality TV” doesn’t mean it’s real.

Apparently the smart set now needs a refresher in what it likes to call “media literacy.”

Rube tube

In late April, Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” called Pratt “a candidate who makes white women over 40 go ‘Oh yeah! That guy … ew,'” while splicing together clips from the 2000s hit.

Host Ronny Chieng described Pratt as exhibiting “TV villain behavior.”

Rolling Stone referred to Pratt as a villain several times in its piece on Pratt, quoting several lines from the show as evidence of his character.

Same goes for “nonprofit & nonpartisan” outlet Cal Matters, which said that being “a villain on a reality TV show” and having one’s house burn down are not qualifications to become mayor of Los Angeles.

None of the 42-year-old candidate’s detractors seem to have considered what most of us find obvious: “The Hills” was made up, and Pratt was playing a role.

RELATED: Karen Bass roasted over plan for free dental care for homeless meth addicts

Charley Gallay/Getty Images

Curtain call-out

For those who require proof, the show — which drew in 6 million viewers at its height — exposed its own artifice in its 2010 finale, with star Brody Jenner watching as the backdrop literally pulled away to reveal a set, complete with producers and lighting. Jenner’s co-star then came out of a car that was shown to have driven away just seconds before.

So scripted was “The Hills” that producers even shot an alternate ending.

Pratt’s wife, Heidi, has also copped to the show’s lack of reality.

“That whole plot was scripted,” she said about a storyline involving her job promotion.

“I pretend-worked there, so it was obviously a pretend promotion,” she noted.

RELATED: Jimmy Kimmel’s sister-in-law slammed with backlash for reportedly bullying local business — over Spencer Pratt cookies

Cuba libre

Those scorning Pratt for his fictional villainy might also be surprised by the truth about other well-known “Hills” plots. Spencer dating Audrina? Whitney becoming Lauren’s boss at Teen Vogue? “Totally fake.”

In typical heel fashion, Pratt seems to relish the charges of villainy — even using them against his opponent, Mayor Karen Bass (D).

When former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Lisa Rinna suggested Pratt’s reality TV background disqualified him for office, Pratt shot back, “Hey Lisa, if you’re against me because I was on a TV show in my 20’s, wait til you learn what Karen Bass was doing in her 20’s.”

Pratt was referring to Bass’ involvement in the Venceremos Brigade, a far-left activist group tied to communist Cuba during the 1970s. The organization organized trips for young American radicals to work and train in Fidel Castro’s Cuba at the height of the Cold War, drawing everyone from Maoists to self-described revolutionaries into the orbit of the regime.

Bass has acknowledged traveling to Cuba multiple times with the group as a young activist, though she has downplayed suggestions that she held any leadership role.

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​Align, Comedy central, Los angeles, Spencer pratt, The daily show, Politics, Reality tv, Entertainment 

A 12-year-old male is accused of kicking in a home’s door and breaking its frame in Howell, New Jersey, earlier this week, but the homeowner wasn’t having any of it — and chased the kid.

The homeowner called police just before 3:30 p.m. Monday to report someone trying to break into the Princeton Drive home, Lt. John Barroqueiro told Patch.

‘At this point in time, no evidence is available to substantiate the later allegations.’

Arriving police found the homeowner holding the 12-year-old on the ground, Barroqueiro added to the outlet.

The homeowner told police he heard a loud bang at the front of his home, Patch reported. When the homeowner went to his front door, he found it had been forced open, and the door frame was broken, Barroqueiro told the outlet.

What’s more, the homeowner told police he saw the boy running toward his driveway, getting on an e-bike, and riding away, Barroqueiro noted to Patch.

But the homeowner wasn’t letting this one go.

Police told the outlet the homeowner followed the boy in his vehicle, caught up to him a short distance away, got the boy to stop, and then held him on the ground until officers arrived.

The homeowner was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals, and he was not carrying anything during his interaction with officers, Barroqueiro added to Patch.

The homeowner then showed officers Ring camera video from his front door, the outlet said, and officers saw the boy come up to the front door, turn around, and give the door a hard kick, which forced the door open and damaged it, Barroqueiro told the outlet.

Officers discovered significant damage to the front door when they went to the house to check it, police told Patch.

The boy was arrested and charged with criminal mischief, then released to his father at police headquarters, Barroqueiro noted to the outlet.

RELATED: Teens definitely pick wrong homeowner to ‘ding-dong ditch’; cops say he came out of house with gun, opened fire after prank

Image source: Howell (N.J.) Police Department

However, the boy’s mother came to police headquarters on Monday evening and alleged the homeowner pointed a gun at her son, Barroqueiro told Patch.

Officers went back to the scene and reviewed all available surveillance video and spoke to several eyewitnesses, Barroqueiro noted to the outlet, adding that witnesses told police the homeowner never pointed a gun at the boy, and there was no firearm present during the incident.

“At this point in time, no evidence is available to substantiate the later allegations,” Barroqueiro told Patch.

Anyone with information about the event or who witnessed it is asked to call Patrol Officer Elie Lavarin at 732-938-4575, ext. 2722, the outlet said.

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​New jersey, Howell, Police, Arrest, Boy, Criminal mischief, Door kicked, Chase, Crime 

Americans have become strangely accustomed to driverless cars. In cities like San Francisco and Austin, people casually summon Waymo robo-taxis the way they once called Uber.

Now imagine the same technology attached to an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer moving at highway speed.

My fellow truckers already know the problem. Modern collision-avoidance systems have been triggered by shadows, weather conditions, lighting changes, and animals.

It’s happening; large carriers are already purchasing hundreds of robotically operated highway trucks as they prepare to eliminate one of the country’s most common occupations: the truck driver.

Supermarket swindle

Those pimping the technology tell us it is the necessary solution to a catastrophic shortage of truckers, with the additional benefit of making the roads safer. As I explain in my new book, “End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers,” neither claim holds up under scrutiny.

This hardly matters, as the demand for more road robots is hardly organic. Instead, it is the product of a massive marketing campaign designed to acclimate us to a radical new future, one that may ultimately curtail the rights of all American drivers. Picture something like the “motor law” envisioned in the classic Rush track “Red Barchetta.” The late Neil Peart was a man who understood the precious freedom of the open road.

Waymo robo-taxis already roam San Francisco and Austin, while autonomous tractor-trailers test on Texas interstates. The technology, however, remains immature and heavily dependent on human oversight.

You won’t see this mentioned in recent paid content from Aurora Innovation, one of the leading developers of autonomous big-rig systems. Almost seamlessly inserted among actual articles on online news platform Axios, the piece’s headline promises to explain “the link between autonomous trucks and your grocery bill.”

The article opens with a bold claim: “Autonomous trucks — trucks that operate without a driver — could lower shipping costs, helping reduce grocery prices while improving safety and supply chain efficiency.”

But what the slick interactive video infographic and official-looking statistics fail to reveal is that the cost of trucking, in general, only represents between 1% and 3% of any consumer product. Consider that the industry has spent the last four years in a “freight recession” driven by weak demand, oversupply, and depressed rates. Did you notice your groceries getting cheaper? Of course you didn’t.

‘Shortage’ scam

Aurora’s advertorial also employs one of the autonomous truck lobby’s favorite justifications: the so-called shortage of truck drivers. This “crisis” has been going on since the 1980s, when deregulation and the attendant sharp decline in truck driver pay and working conditions created massive turnover in the industry. Now it is being used to convince investors and lawmakers that we don’t need truck drivers at all.

The problem is that even the trucking industry itself has largely stopped pretending the shortage exists.

Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Associations, allegedly declared that the “truck driver shortage is gone” at a recent carrier conference in Florida; just prior to this, he told trucking media outlet CCJ Digital that “what we have in the United States is a quality problem around drivers, much more so than an absolute number.”

That distinction matters because the trucking industry, like much of the country, has spent years lowering standards. The Biden administration’s de facto open borders policy opened the industry to large numbers of illegal aliens, refugees, and dubious asylum-seekers. Truckers — and the motoring public — have been dealing with the consequences ever since.

RELATED: The deadly trucker crisis — and why mass migration is to blame

Justin Hamel/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Unsafe at any speed

Road safety could improve overnight by revoking the questionable CDLs and driver’s licenses handed out to poorly vetted, poorly trained migrants in recent years. Instead, declining standards are quietly accepted while automation is presented as the solution. One doesn’t have to be a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist to wonder whether a more chaotic and less trustworthy driving environment makes the public easier to sell on “safer” autonomous systems.

As mentioned above, however, these “driverless” systems still depend heavily on human oversight. Aurora, for example, requires remote operators to monitor its trucks. In a July 2024 investor report, the company promised to reduce the number of such operators by increasing the number of trucks under each assistant’s watch. In the report, that number is 100.

Most readers will understand how difficult it can be to keep an eye on all of the traffic around you while operating one vehicle. What Aurora is proposing here is that the company will hand off the responsibility for 100 tractor-trailers to one remote “driver.”

Controller cowboys

And what skills does it take to pull this off? Anyone with a CDL or actual road experience can move to the back of the line; apparently this is a job for gamers and flight simulator enthusiasts.

The autonomous taxi industry is no better. Waymo has admitted it uses remote operators in the Philippines. An insider tells me Kodiak Robotics, whose supposedly driverless trucks operate in Texas’ Permian Basin, does the same. America’s highways already resemble “Mad Max” often enough. Soon they may look more like “Grand Theft Auto: 18-Wheeler.”

To be fair, language recently added to the proposed Build America 250 Act would require remote operators to possess CDLs and be based in the United States. Whether that language survives the lobbying process remains to be seen.

Virtual insanity

The industry’s safety claims deserve skepticism for another reason: Much of the confidence behind autonomous systems comes from “virtual miles,” simulations where AI software learns by effectively playing billions of miles of video games. Real-world highway testing – which subjects drivers to less predictable, more challenging situations — remains only a tiny fraction of that total.

Waymo, the current leader in autonomous cars, already accounts for most autonomous vehicle incident reports filed with the California DMV. Those are only the incidents publicly reported. What happens once thousands of autonomous semis begin operating across Texas?

Texas became the center of autonomous truck testing precisely because regulators took a light-touch approach. Investors certainly appreciate that; the public, unwittingly enlisted in the beta testing of this technology, may not.

Phantom menace

A major potential danger is phantom braking, a problem the industry is barely willing to acknowledge. As Dr. Missy Cummings, a former Navy fighter pilot and director of the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center at George Mason University, recently warned the New York Times: “There is no identified solution on the horizon for phantom braking. And it will not be addressed soon, because nobody wants to admit that it’s happening.”

Cummings added that this malfunction — which has already caused incidents with robo-taxis — will likely have far more dangerous repercussions in significantly heavier class-eight semis.

My fellow truckers already know the problem. Modern collision-avoidance systems in human-operated trucks have been triggered by shadows, weather conditions, lighting changes, and animals, sometimes causing jackknife accidents.

Human touch

Autonomous driving technology is clearly flawed, and there’s no reason to assume that more bugs won’t emerge in the future. Yet developers continue to insist that software-driven vehicles are safer than those operated by humans. The steady drip of dramatic dashcam crash footage on social media subtly encourages this view.

But human drivers are already remarkably safe overall. Automotive site Jalopnik calculated that autonomous vehicles would need to avoid crashes 99.999819% of the time just to outperform human drivers.

Even if autonomous driving were capable of meeting such a high standard, we would have to consider the economic impact. What is being proposed here is not some minor technological upgrade. Truck driving directly employs roughly 2.5 million Americans, while the broader trucking industry supports around 8 million jobs and contributes an estimated $200 billion annually in wages.

The math pushed by autonomous vehicle boosters is absurd. They tell us that every 1,000 autonomous trucks will “create” 190 jobs, while conveniently ignoring the hundreds — perhaps thousands — of driving jobs simultaneously eliminated.

Who gets to DRIVE?

If we take the inevitability of driverless vehicles as a given, at the very least the people pushing that inevitability should be much more honest about the consequences. Lawmakers ought be more concerned for their constituents, rather than pandering to tech investors or indulging in baseless fearmongering about China flooding the market with robot vehicles.

At least three bills currently before Congress seek to accelerate autonomous vehicle deployment. One of them, sponsored by Republican Rep. Vince Fong of California, would effectively prevent states from regulating autonomous vehicle technology on their own roads.

So much for federalism.

The name of Fong’s bill? The “America DRIVES Act.” Ironic, considering that the people behind these policies seem to want a future in which Americans no longer drive at all.

As a trucker who has spent nearly 30 years on the road without a single collision, I have one response to all of this: No thanks. I’m sure millions of Americans agree.

​Autonomous trucks, Cdls, Culture, Driverless cars, Immigration, Immigration and customs enforcement, Tractor trailer, Trucking industry, Waymo, Lifestyle 

A blade-brandishing Sikh named Vickrum Digwa has finally been brought to justice after a deadly attack on a white teenager in the U.K. who seemed to be minding his own business.

On December 3, 2025, after a night out with his soccer team, 18-year-old Henry Nowak started for his home in Portswood, a suburb of Southampton, England. While happily singing to himself and sending Snapchat videos to friends, the English teen encountered Digwa.

In an unprovoked and vicious attack, the Sikh stabbed the University of Southampton finance student repeatedly with an eight-inch blade — a blade that Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, would ultimately hide in an effort to aid her killer kin.

‘In the moments before he lost consciousness, [Nowak] had been handcuffed and arrested.’

When police arrived on the scene of the attack, the killer and some of his family members told officers that Digwa was the real victim — that Nowak, then drowning in his own blood, was the real aggressor and a racist who had knocked his turban off.

Officers from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary proceeded to arrest and handcuff the dying Nowak. The handcuffs were removed only after the “severity of his condition was becoming clear,” police alleged.

While police clearly entertained Digwa’s tall tale, the jury in the Sikh’s murder trial rejected it outright, convicting him on Thursday of murder and carrying a knife in public. The murderer’s mother was found guilty of assisting an offender.

In his closing remarks, prosecutor Nicholas Lobbenberg said that Digwa — who stabbed Nowak five times, including in the chest, in the face, and twice in back of the legs — “chose to be on the streets of Southampton with a 21cm knife. He wasn’t at a temple; he had been helping with his brother’s work for Deliveroo. This is a man who chooses to sleep in his bedroom with an arsenal of weapons. This is a man who likes weapons.”

RELATED: Truck-driving illegal alien from India arrested for horrific hit-and-run that killed 2 young Americans

L-R: AAron Ontiveroz/Denver Post/Getty Images; Alex Pantling – RFU/The RFU Collection/Getty Images

“Racism was his trump card to try to make sure what he had done was lawful. We say that was a wicked lie about a dying man,” said Lobbenberg.

“This is not a case about racism. This is a case about murder.”

The murderer will be sentenced on Monday.

Robert France, the temporary deputy chief constable for the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, apologized for police’s grievous mistreatment of Nowak as he lay dying but suggested that police couldn’t have saved his life.

“I am sorry that in the moments before he lost consciousness, [Nowak] had been handcuffed and arrested,” France said in a video statement on Thursday. “The facts heard in court should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind who was lying to officers that night and why we didn’t immediately understand what had happened.”

“During the 999 call, when officers first arrived at the scene, and even when Henry’s condition was deteriorating quickly, his killer continued to divert the blame, obstruct our enquiries, and never admit the serious harm which had been done,” said France.

Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, British lawmakers, and others have demanded accountability from the police over what Robinson called their “f**king outrageous” abuse of Nowak.

According to France, the constabulary has referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, a watchdog that will supposedly conduct an independent investigation into officers’ response to the incident.

After Digwa’s guilty verdict, the United Kingdom’s Sikh Federation issued a statement both complaining about the “abuse and hate” the Sikh community allegedly faced during the trial and clarifying that the British law permitting Sikhs to carry a kirpan knife for religious reasons does not allow for its use as “an offensive weapon” in an act of violence.

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​Britain, Crime, Elon musk, England, Henry nowak, Murder, Sikh, Uk, Vickrum digwa, Racism, Woke, Racist, Politics 

E. Jean Carroll, a co-founder of multiple hookup sites whom Elle fired as a columnist in 2020, has accused numerous men of sexual abuse decades after the alleged incidents supposedly happened.

Whereas other allegations didn’t go much further than the pages of her imaginative tell-alls, Carroll’s allegations against President Donald Trump ended up centering a pair of civil lawsuits — one in which she alleged that Trump sexually abused her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan back in the 1990s and the other in which she alleged defamation over Trump’s denial that the incident happened.

‘Her counsel sat by and allowed her to do so, knowing full well that her testimony was false,’ Trump’s attorneys claimed.

Carroll’s legal offensive ultimately left the president on the hook for a $83.3 million jury award — but now, she may have to go on defense.

The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into Carroll, sources familiar with the matter told multiple publications, including CNN and the New York Times. Investigators are reportedly looking into whether the fired columnist committed perjury in testimony linked to her lawsuits against Trump.

The probe reportedly focuses on Carroll’s assertion in a 2022 deposition statement that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, which was later shown to be demonstrably false.

RELATED: Trump’s anti-weaponization fund puts GOP cowards on trial

Anti-Trump activist Reid Hoffman. Jason Alden/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

When asked on Oct. 14, 2022, whether anyone else was paying her legal fees, Carroll definitively answered, “No.”

A jury found Trump civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation in May 2023.

However, several weeks earlier, Carroll’s attorneys admitted in an April 10, 2023, letter that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a big-time Biden donor and anti-Trump activist, had been funding Carroll’s lawsuit, prompting Trump’s legal team to raise hell.

Attorneys for the president said in an April 13, 2023, letter to U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan — the Clinton-appointed judge overseeing the case — that the belated disclosure “raises significant concerns as to plaintiff’s bias and motive in commencing the instant lawsuit.”

Trump’s attorneys also rejected the suggestion that Carroll suddenly remembered all that money didn’t come ex nihilo:

Of course, the proposition that plaintiff has suddenly “recollected” the source of her funding for this high-profile litigation — which has spanned four years, spawned two separate actions, and been before numerous state, federal, and appellate courts — is not only preposterous, it is demonstrably false. Indeed, it simply defies logic to believe that plaintiff’s attorneys — four of whom were present at her deposition — were unaware that their own firm had “secured additional funding from a nonprofit organization” to bankroll their client’s various lawsuits and ensure their bills were being paid.

Trump’s attorneys noted in summary that Carroll “apparently perjured herself during her deposition; her counsel sat by and allowed her to do so, knowing full well that her testimony was false; and then they conspired to conceal the truth for nearly six months, only to disclose it on the eve of trial.”

At the time, Kaplan denied the request by Trump’s attorneys to delay the case so they could properly investigate the funding issue.

Carroll’s lawyers, meanwhile, suggested that the outside funding — from the largest donor to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin — was irrelevant, even though it buttressed Trump’s 2019 claim that the lawsuit was a setup intended to “carry out a political agenda.”

Carroll’s lawyers also claimed that she had nothing to do with securing the outside funding or outsider funding source.

The inquiry into Carroll was reportedly launched by the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Andrew Boutros. Having previously represented Trump, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has allegedly recused himself from the investigation.

Carroll did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News, and the DOJ declined to comment.

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​Criminal investigation, Defamation, Democratic party, E jean carroll, Us district court, Sex, Rape, Donald trump, Perjury, Reid hoffman, Justice department, Politics 

“George Floyd Square” in Minneapolis was packed this Memorial Day as residents came to remember the sixth anniversary of Floyd’s death — which BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock finds “extremely unhealthy.”

“He’s set off a toxin in global society and particularly in American society. His death, a tragedy, has been exploited to spark more racial division and, you know, George Floyd-19 disease,” Whitlock tells his panel on “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”

Shemeka Michelle agrees, asking, “What exactly are we celebrating?”

“This man should not be any type of hero to the black community. He didn’t even lay down his life willingly. … To actually acknowledge this, in my opinion, on Memorial Day when we had people who actually went into battle to fight for our freedom, who lost their lives, and we’re acting as if he compares in some type of way,” Michelle explains.

“He didn’t raise his hand to say, ‘Hey, let me die for a cause. Let me die for America. Let me die for the freedom of people.’ This just happened because he was high on drugs,” she continues, pointing out that even Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Bernice King, was publicly honoring Floyd.

“What? Your father was Martin Luther King Jr. … How is George Floyd even coming out of your mouth?” she asks.

And those celebrating George Floyd could use a little history lesson.

“We’re so far removed from the truth and our own history that we have no reverence for Memorial Day. And it was started by black people that were thanking Union soldiers for fighting in the Civil War and sacrificing their lives,” Whitlock explains.

“And somehow celebrating George Floyd takes precedence over celebrating Memorial Day. It’s just sad and tragic to me,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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

​Jason whitlock, George floyd, Memorial day, Shemeka michelle, The blaze, Martin luther king jr, Bernice king, Fearless, Jason whitlock harmony 

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe says Los Angeles writers are living in an unfunny liberal bubble of mental illness, and that includes those who write for Chelsea Handler.

Hinchcliffe’s reaction to Netflix’s roast of Kevin Hart aired on Monday during his show “Kill Tony,” which was filmed the day after he went head-to-head with Handler in front of the world.

‘They just read what the writers wrote for them without any originality whatsoever.’

Heil Handler

During the roast, Handler called Hinchcliffe and fellow star Shane Gillis white supremacists and Nazis who would rather spend their time burning crosses, while Hinchcliffe poked fun at how the 51-year-old comedienne constantly brags about being childless and single.

Hinchcliffe wasted no time getting right into the good stuff on Monday, saying that the roast was the first time he had been “called a Nazi multiple times in just a few hours.”

The Ohio native recalled that while everyone human he has interacted with told him his performance was “unbelievable,” fake news media was busy trying to convince the general public otherwise.

“There’s news articles — because the news isn’t real. Nothing is real — that say that I got lit up by Chelsea Handler, which is very, very funny because that’s not what happened at all.”

The “Kill Tony” host described Handler as a “c**t” who “just kept coming at me” despite making false claims like he had taken money from Saudi Arabia.

“The teleprompter only went down during my set,” Hinchcliffe recalled. “And it gave me a lot of opportunity to remind Chelsea Handler what she looks like and where her life is, because she had it coming.”

RELATED: Chelsea Handler learned a valuable lesson — if you’re going to attack Tony Hinchcliffe, don’t go first

Bubble-brained

Hinchcliffe blamed Handler’s lack of creativity on her writers, describing L.A. writing circles as “a lot of mentally ill liberals” who call him a Nazi but somehow can’t tell that his show is performed with a bunch of “blacks and Jews and Mexicans” around him. Hinchcliffe was referring to his trio of Mexican brass musicians, his Mexican drummer, and his black keyboard player and black guitarist (who is also blind).

“I guess I’m a f**king Nazi somehow,” Hinchcliffe added. “I guess the guy that pulls names out of a bucket, giving everybody an opportunity, is a Nazi. Isn’t that something?”

Hinchcliffe described those putting racist labels on him as people who have “never written anything in their lives,” summing them up as being cue-card and teleprompter readers.

“They just read what the writers wrote for them without any originality whatsoever,” he explained. While some of the others are good writers, the 41-year-old admitted, “the rest of them are just living in a bubble of mental illness, and it’s very exciting.”

RELATED: ‘ROAST’ BEEF: Chelsea Handler scolds fellow comics for ‘racist,’ ‘sexist’ jokes

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Roast redux

While Hinchcliffe disagreed with the idea that comedians like Handler should go first in the broadcast, he said it gave him the opportunity to watch what she was doing and prepare for the onslaught he was about to deliver.

Hinchcliffe paraphrased that even though he “got called a Nazi, gay, [and] a racist over and over again,” he is “none of those three things,” but those he made fun of are in fact “fat, ugly, black, [or] Jewish.”

The “Kill Tony” crowd went wild after those comments, as Hinchcliffe concluded, “Anyway, it was fun.”

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​Align, Comedy, Tony hinchcliffe, Chelsea handler, Kill tony, Netflix, Entertainment 

Traditionally, one advantage of living in rural America was the ability to escape insufferable leftists. The trade-offs were obvious: fewer jobs, fewer restaurants, less entertainment, and fewer institutions built for upward mobility. But distance from liberal cultural centers meant the average community could preserve a sane, conservative, patriotic outlook — the kind of place where normal people could still breathe without asking permission from their urban cultural commissars.

That escape has narrowed. As media and universities became more radical, their disciples moved into rural America through government-mandated institutions like schools and libraries. Progressivism became harder to avoid no matter how far someone moved from the city. Thus the hicklib was born.

The fail-lib was promised luxury and elite influence. Now she serves people she despises while searching for any opportunity to make their lives worse.

The hicklib is usually a social outcast, a failson who needs a moral explanation for why he hates the community he never fit into. His resentment searches for a theory that will dignify his rage, and the progressive missionaries installed in local institutions are happy to provide one.

Teachers tell the hicklib his country is evil. His family and neighbors are racist, sexist, backward religious fanatics destroying the lives of minorities who do not even live in town. The white Christian culture that dominates rural America is primitive and responsible for the evils of the world. The hicklib’s failure to fit in becomes proof of moral superiority.

So the hicklib shows up at town council meetings in a Black Lives Matter shirt to denounce minority oppression in a community with no actual black people. That absence, naturally, becomes further proof of the town’s intolerance. He loudly organizes Pride events attended by two other hicklibs. The clique stages protests, distributes flyers, and imitates urban activist rituals.

By practicing the sacraments of their faith, they hope to summon the spirit of the age to judge their reactionary little town.

The hicklib has become one of rural America’s petty plagues. But as the value of college degrees collapses, a new breed is emerging: the fail-lib.

The fail-lib worked hard in high school and gave progressive teachers every approved answer. She wrote her college entrance essay on the oppression of transwomen of color in coal mining. On campus, she became an activist. She secured a degree in some woke humanities discipline and earned straight A’s by repeating everything her communist professors told her.

The path to success was laid out before the fail-lib was born. She followed it perfectly. All that remained was the cushy corporate HR job and her rightful place making ordinary people miserable.

Then the plan failed.

RELATED: Your enemies aren’t mentally ill. They apparently just want to kill you.

Blaze Media Illustration

The college degree that cost $100,000 was supposed to guarantee success. The debt would be worth it because the credential would deliver a salary large enough for an apartment, a car, and monthly student loan payments. But the degree was not merely about financial security. It was also a symbol of status. College graduates were supposed to rule over the simple plebs who never left home.

The degree would confer wealth, power, and privilege. Instead, it turned out that too many people held degrees and too few jobs required them. Corporations began cutting HR departments that wasted resources and reduced productivity. Poor oppressed immigrant workers somehow found work while the fail-lib remained unemployed, though a good progressive would never complain. She could never explain how, but she knew the white Christian patriarchy was responsible for this injustice.

Earlier generations of college students had an insult for the ordinary residents of college towns: townies. The townie was contemptible because he was not merely passing through before collecting a credential and moving on to rule the world. He belonged to the place the student planned to use and abandon.

The arrogance required to insult the permanent residents of a community while you are a temporary visitor is staggering, but the slur was common. It revealed the sneering condescension of the would-be liberal elite. Now the tables have turned.

The college degree was once a ticket to the top. Now it is an expensive lottery ticket with worsening odds. More graduates emerge from extended stays in higher education with mountains of debt and few prospects.

The fail-lib spends a year unemployed, desperately seeking even the entry-level positions her fancy degree was supposed to let her bypass. After burning through savings and taking on more debt, she accepts a management job at the local Starbucks or retail outlet. If she gets lucky, she might run the local Apple Store.

The hicklib may be insufferable, but the fail-lib is worse. She was destined to leave the college town behind and move to a big liberal city like New York. She was supposed to be the person ordering lattes and $30 burrito bowls for important work lunches, not the person making them. Once, she mocked the parochial townies trapped in their backward existence. Now she is stuck among them with no escape.

RELATED: Almonds feed a people. AI feeds a machine.

Blaze Media Illustration

The fail-lib is not merely trapped in the backwater town. She is poor and low-status. A management job at Target might provide a decent life in a small town where prices remain low, but the fail-lib has a mountain of student debt she can never repay on a retail wage.

Plumbers, cops, firefighters, and mechanics all seem to make more money and enjoy more status in the community. The fail-lib was promised luxury and elite influence. Now she serves people she despises while searching for any opportunity to make their lives worse.

Artificial intelligence will intensify the problem. The bureaucratic make-work jobs progressive college graduates once dominated are among the easiest to automate, consolidate, or eliminate. The bitter entitlement of a psychology major with $100,000 in debt helping you find the cereal aisle will become more common.

The fail-lib may make less money than you. She may be less respected than you. She may even be despised by the townies she once mocked. But in her heart, she knows she is superior.

Nothing could convince her otherwise.

And she will spit in your burrito just to remind you who was supposed to be in charge.

​Opinion & analysis, Woke culture, Colleges and universities, Leftism, Rural america, Christianity, Employment, Human resources, Artificial intelligence, Jobs, Hicklibs, Debt, Affordability 

A pilot allegedly threatened to call authorities this month over a Wi-Fi name that was determined to be a potential security threat.

The story came from a person who claimed to have been a passenger on a United Airlines flight that featured an awkward moment when the pilot addressed the travelers and issued a warning.

‘You could feel everyone looking around.’

The alleged passenger said the pilot came over the speaker “sounding extremely serious” and said the name of the Wi-Fi hot spot was being interpreted as a potential threat and security issue, Simply Flying reported.

According to the witness, the pilot warned whoever was hosting the network labeled “Free Palestine, F Zionists” had “30 seconds” to disable it or remove it from public view or he was going to have the FBI meet the aircraft when it landed.

“FBI will meet the plane,” the passenger recalled hearing.

“The entire cabin got dead silent,” the witness alleged in a post on Reddit. “You could feel everyone looking around, trying to figure out who it was.”

RELATED: Dear airlines, please stop pitching your credit cards at 33,000 feet

Karl Gehring/Denver Post/Getty Images

The social media user also claimed that while some of the passengers looked nervous, others were laughing because they thought it was an absurd situation.

The storyteller said it felt like an example of hyper-political-polarization, where regular people are bringing political messaging into almost any situation, causing institutions to react with full force rather than risk missing a warning sign.

The quick escalation is what the storyteller found most startling, noting that there was no request from a flight attendant, but rather a serious public announcement that turned an “edgy hot spot name” into a security issue.

However, it is not irregular for pilots or flight crews to raise the alarm over Wi-Fi names out of an abundance of caution.

RELATED: ‘Fewer choices = higher prices’: Elizabeth Warren laments Spirit shutdown she helped cause

Nasir Kachroo/NurPhoto/Getty Images

In February, Hungarian airline Wizz Air had fighter jets scrambled during a flight from London to Tel Aviv over a Wi-Fi network labeled “Terrorist” written in Arabic. According to PYOK, security forces were waiting to meet the plane at Ben Gurion Airport.

PYOK also reported on an incident from January when fighter jets from both France and Spain were scrambled over a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Barcelona. This incident related to a network named “I HAVE A BOMB. EVERYONE WILL DIE.”

United Airlines did not respond to a request for comment about the recent alleged incident.

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​News, United airlines, Fbi, Aviation, Terrorism, Politics 

This week at Google I/O 2026, the company announced what it called “the biggest upgrade to our Search box in over 25 years.” Translation: It’s officially done pretending Search is about helping you find websites.

The centerpiece is a new AI-powered Search box running Gemini 3.5 Flash. It expands as you type, accepts text, images, files, videos, even Chrome tabs as input, and spits back AI-generated answers where the blue links used to be. Google also unveiled “Search Agents,” AI systems that monitor blogs, news sites, and social platforms around the clock to proactively ping you when something matching your criteria happens. There are agentic booking features and custom AI-generated interfaces that build dashboards instead of sending you to actual websites.

It’s seamless. It’s free. And the traffic to the websites that actually created the information? That’s not Google’s problem anymore.

Google’s AI is a factory trawler scooping up everything in its path, indifferent to whether the fishery collapses behind it.

A slow suffocation

This didn’t happen overnight. Google has spent three years systematically strangling the open web that built its empire.

September 2023: The helpful content update

Google pushed an algorithm change targeting content “created for search engines instead of people.” Sounded reasonable. Then, independent publishers watched their traffic crater. Recipe bloggers, how-to sites, product reviewers. They never got that traffic back. The message was clear: Your content exists at Google’s pleasure, and Google decides what’s “helpful.”

March 2024: Core and spam update

Google promised to reduce “low-quality, unoriginal content” by 40%. It folded the Helpful Content system into its core engine and introduced spam policies against scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse, and expired domain abuse. The targets sounded like bottom-feeders. By April, Google announced it had exceeded its 45% reduction target. Translation: 45% fewer reasons to visit the websites that used to rank.

From there, the updates kept coming: August 2024 core update, November 2024 core update, December 2024 core update, March 2025 core update, June 2025 core update, August 2025 spam update, December 2025 core update, and March 2026 core update. Nine major confirmed updates in under two years, each tracked by Search Engine Journal. Each one was another announcement that Google had “improved quality,” with no real transparency, no appeals process worth the name, and zero accountability for the livelihoods it flattened.

What the numbers actually say

The data is not ambiguous. Multiple independent studies tracking billions of search queries tell the same story, compiled in aggregate by the SEO Spot from Chartbeat, Seer Interactive, Ahrefs, and similar data providers:

Organic click-through rates on queries with AI Overviews dropped 61% between June 2024 and September 2025;Position-one CTR fell 34.5% on queries triggering AI Overviews;Overall CTR across the top 10 positions dropped 36% as AI Overviews went from under 7% of queries to nearly 30%;Global Google search traffic to publishers dropped 33% year-over-year; in the U.S. it fell 38%;When an AI Overview appears, only 8% of users click any link below it. When there’s no AI summary, 15% do;58.5% of U.S. Google searches result in zero clicks at all.

Even when users click a link inside an AI Overview, 43% of those links don’t go to external websites. They just run another Google search. Google replaced the web with a layer of summaries that links back to itself.

The casualties

NPR reported extensively on the damage. The travel blog the Planet D lost 90% of its traffic and shut down entirely. CNN dropped roughly 30% year-over-year. Business Insider and HuffPost both saw traffic plunge around 40% year-over-year. Business Insider cut 21% of staff. NPR reported the Verge’s publisher calling it an “extinction-level event.”

RELATED: ‘Anti-clanker’: Why millions of people are cheering this android’s humiliation

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images

Digital Content Next, a trade organization for digital publishers, measured median referral traffic from Google Search down 10% in just eight weeks. Non-news brands lost 14%. News brands lost 7%. Declines outnumbered gains two to one. Meanwhile, Google’s own advertising revenue shifted from a roughly 50/50 split with the rest of the web to over 90% flowing to Google itself.

The question Google won’t answer

Here’s the part that should worry everyone, not just publishers.

Google’s AI is trained on the open web. It ingests billions of pages written by journalists, researchers, hobbyists, bloggers, doctors, chefs, and travelers. It paraphrases their work, synthesizes their expertise, and presents it as its own answer. Then, it sends fewer readers to the originals. Then, the originals, starved of traffic and revenue, stop publishing. Then, the AI has nothing fresh to train on.

This is the information ecosystem equivalent of overfishing. Google’s AI is a factory trawler scooping up everything in its path, indifferent to whether the fishery collapses behind it. The only thing that could force a course correction is monopoly accountability, and Google is fighting that on multiple fronts, from the Justice Department’s search antitrust case to EU antitrust complaints.

Google’s sitting on 95% of the mobile search market. Publishers who want out of AI training must opt out of Google Search entirely, which is corporate suicide. As the News/Media Alliance put it, “Google is using our content without compensation, offering no meaningful way to opt out, and then turning around and using that same content to compete with us.”

The endgame

What Google announced at I/O 2026 isn’t innovation. It’s enclosure, the final stage of the monopoly playbook. You build the infrastructure everyone depends on. Then, you extract rent. Then, you replace the producers entirely and capture all value inside the platform.

The Search Agents Google launches this summer for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers will monitor publisher blogs and news sites in real time, pull the information, and deliver it to users without the user ever visiting the source. Google’s Search box won’t just summarize the web anymore. It will replace it.

Google executives say users prefer this. Sure. People prefer free music, free news, and free social media too, right up until the platforms that gave them those things finish strip-mining the industries that produced them.

The open web worked because it was a virtuous cycle. Search engines indexed content. Users clicked through. Publishers earned revenue. Publishers produced more content. Search engines had better results. Google’s AI strategy breaks that cycle. It takes the content, kills the revenue, and hopes nobody notices that an AI trained on a shrinking corpus of old information is just a very expensive echo.

Liz Reid, Google’s head of Search, called the new Search box “the biggest upgrade in 25 years.” For the publishers who built the web Google is now devouring, it’s the biggest downgrade since Search began.

​Tech, Google, Search, Ai 

An elderly woman, her 50-year-old daughter, and her 24-year-old granddaughter were all arrested Wednesday for the alleged “horrific abuse and torture” of a 7-year-old girl.

Paramedics were sent to a residence in Bayport on December 29, 2025, at about 10:30 a.m. after being alerted about a child who was unresponsive.

‘This was not an alleged single act of violence. It was months of alleged systematic cruelty and sadistic abuse, meticulously documented.’

Jor’Dynn Duncan was rushed to NYU Langone Hospital-Suffolk, where she was pronounced dead from a cardiac arrest.

Prosecutors said Barbara Renner, her daughter Emily Kelly, and Kelly’s daughter Elyssa Seymore each had a part in the “prolonged torture, abuse, and the brutal murder” of the “defenseless, innocent child.”

The Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office was able to document 90 injuries to the child’s body at her death, which led to a homicide investigation being opened.

Investigators said Duncan was the daughter of Kelly’s fiance, who is incarcerated, and that Kelly requested the child be placed into her care in Dec. 2024 by Child Protective Services. By April 2025, Kelly obtained full custody and guardianship of the girl.

Digital evidence from Kelly’s cell phone and cloud services allegedly revealed “prolonged abuse and torture” of the girl that included physical injuries, prolonged restraint, and lack of medical attention for the injuries since Jan. 2025.

One of the texts allegedly read, “You can’t hit her face. You gotta hit her body if you going to hit her. That’s another thing we gotta hide.”

The girl was also kept from attending school for a total of 40 days, allegedly in order to conceal the torture and her injuries.

Kelly was indicted on numerous charges that included murder in the second degree, Renner was indicted for second-degree manslaughter, and Seymore was indicted for unlawful imprisonment in the first degree.

“This was not an alleged single act of violence,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said. “It was months of alleged systematic cruelty and sadistic abuse, meticulously documented. The child was allegedly left to die while these defendants watched her deteriorate. No child should ever endure such horror, and we will seek justice for Jor’Dynn.”

Officials are now calling for accountability from the government organizations that were intended to detect these kinds of cases.

“How was this child placed in the hands of somebody who could be this unfit and this abusive?” County Legislator Rebecca Sanin asked. “How could the school not see her for 40 days over the course of a year and not ask questions?”

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Neighbors said they were shocked to find out about the horrific abuse allegedly perpetrated on the child.

“The cutest little thing that you want to see in your life,” Tim Lowe said. “I never saw any marks on her face.”

Relatives of the 7-year-old girl refused to comment to CBS News about the case.

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​Cardiac arrest, Child murder, Child torture, Child guardian murder, Crime