Category: blaze media

On May 13, 2026, CIA senior operations officer James Erdman III appeared under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He was testifying despite his agency’s objections.

Erdman had recently led an investigation for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s “Director’s Initiatives Group” into COVID-19 origins, anomalous health incidents, and UFOs. What he told the senators was explosive.

‘We just want to clear the air. We did not take back documents.’

“Dr. Fauci’s role in the cover-up was intentional,” Erdman testified. He said Fauci had steered the intelligence community’s COVID-origins analysis by supplying “a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts,” several of whom co-wrote the paper dismissing the lab-leak theory.

Inside the CIA, Erdman said, six of the seven technical experts involved in a COVID relook favored a lab-leak conclusion. Management changed the assessment anyway in what he called a “middle-of-the-night anonymous rewrite.”

Then came the allegation that set House members on fire.

“The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG personnel, their investigations, and contact with whistleblowers,” Erdman said. “When the DIG ceased operations, the CIA took back 40 boxes of JFK and MK-Ultra files being processed for declassification by DNI Gabbard.”

Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) read aloud a statement the CIA had just released calling the hearing “dishonest political theater.” Then he turned to Erdman. “I have years and years and years of built-up frustration of agencies like the CIA, Department of Justice, the FBI, HHS, snubbing our oversight, giving us the big middle finger,” Johnson said.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House declassification task force, called the episode “an internal coup.” She and Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) took to social media demanding that the files be returned. Within a day, the CIA invited them to headquarters.

On May 14, Burlison and Luna stood before the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, its 141 stars carved into white marble for officers who died in the line of duty.

They had surrendered their phones. No aides were allowed, no notepads, no recording devices. If anyone later disputed what was said, there would be no way to prove it.

They were led up an elevator to the top floor and through narrow, winding hallways. Burlison was struck by how ordinary it felt: a sterile cubicle farm straight out of a “Dilbert” cartoon.

The meeting was supposed to be with CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Instead, they were met by the agency’s archivist, a woman in her late 50s who oversaw two football fields’ worth of paper files.

RELATED: Fauci’s agency backed an experiment aerosolizing lethal Ebola — then he panicked about what it exposed about vaccination

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Ratcliffe, they were told, was “out of pocket.” They later learned he was in Cuba.

“We just want to clear the air,” the archivist began. “We did not take back documents.”

In the CIA’s telling, when President Trump ordered the JFK records released, Gabbard’s team showed up unannounced and demanded them. The CIA objected to the files leaving in the team’s personal cars and insisted on moving them in its own secure vans.

About 300 boxes were handed over, the CIA said, while 42 were at another location being processed. When those were ready, according to the agency, it notified the DNI’s office.

Burlison saw the irony. The CIA was telling the office that oversees it that it could not be trusted with the files.

“You do recognize that there’s a point of friction between the CIA and the ODNI,” he told them, “and there’s a reason ODNI came in without informing you that they were coming? There’s clearly a level of mistrust between the two organizations.”

RELATED: Deep-staters at FBI framed Trump firing Comey as a Russian op — then apparently worked to cover their tracks

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

They acknowledged it. They also agreed that the CIA spokesperson’s public attacks were unacceptable.

“The way they conducted themselves in the meeting was almost like they were a kid caught doing something wrong,” Burlison told me afterward, “and were profusely apologetic, and desperately trying to figure out, ‘How do we de-escalate the situation?'”

Burlison left without a clear answer about what was in those 42 boxes or whether the CIA had pulled them before Gabbard’s team could review them. The CIA also said there were 11 more boxes the DNI would never be allowed to see because they contained tradecraft secrets.

He wasn’t interested in de-escalating.

Two and a half months later, Luna told me the CIA had located the files and placed them in line for declassification.

But it took a whistleblower defying his own agency, a Senate subpoena, and two members of Congress walking into Langley to get there.

If the task force doesn’t survive November, who will make that walk next time?

Editor’s note: This article is excerpted from “Book of Secrets: Congress Tries to Find the Truth About the Deep State,” by Kent Heckenlively (Permuted Press).

​Anna paulina luna, Cia, Covid19, Eric burlison, Fbi, Homeland security, Odni, Opinion & analysis, Ron johnson, Senate, Tulsi gabbard, Whistleblower, Jfk files, Mk ultra 

As voting day approaches quickly, BlazeTV host Steve Deace believes Republicans are making a critical mistake: focusing too much on what they’re for and not enough on who they’re running against.

Laying out what he calls a political survival strategy, Deace urges GOP candidates at every level to embrace far more aggressive campaign messaging.

“The biggest strength we have is who we’re running against,” Deace explains, noting that this “is what the strategic plan should be.”

“I’m looking at what’s been used against me in the past and done so successfully and can I emulate it in a way that doesn’t violate my own worldview?” he says, “And in this case, the answer is yes. We’re not going to bear false witness.”

“We don’t have to, like they do calling us Nazis, but we’re just going to say they’re anti-American communists. We’re going to try to drive turnout down,” he adds.

While he admits that may sound “cynical,” he doesn’t care.

“I like my way of winning better than your way of losing,” he says.

“Drive down turnout. This is what they did in 2022. Drive down normie turnout because … basically every normie voter is going to just assume they’re voting against us. Our margins with normies are like minus 30 or something,” he continues.

Deace says that the Republican Party needs to assume that these “normies” will be “voting against us.”

“Drive down as much of that normie vote as you can,” he explains. “Make the environment as negative and toxic as you can.”

This strategy is one of survival, and Deace concludes it with three parts: “Drive down normie turnout, heighten the negative messaging on who our opponents really are, and try to heal the fractures within our coalition as best we can by what people are actually united against, rather than trying to message to them things they’re never going to be united for.”

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​Steve deace, Midterms, Election, Republicans, Democrats, Messaging, Strategy, Voting, Blazetv show 

AI is coming for our jobs. It may even come for our lives. At least, that’s the assumption increasingly baked into modern life. We’re told machines will soon diagnose our illnesses, program our software, drive our cars, and leave millions of humans wondering what, exactly, they’re still good for.

What if that assumption is badly wrong?

Alejandro Rodriguez, a 20-year-old with a 4.5 GPA who spent his formative years in gifted and talented programs, certainly believes it is. By the conventional American definition of success, he was exactly the sort of kid who should have been pushed toward a four-year college. Instead, he chose technical school and trained to become a Porsche technician. His decision points to something the AI panic often overlooks. There is still an enormous number of things humans need to know how to do in the real world, and they can’t be done with a prompt. They require skill, judgment, patience, and the ability to do something useful with your hands.

The deeper problem is not AI itself. Instead, it is the growing belief that everything humans learn will eventually become worthless. That mindset is pure poison. If young people assume AI will eventually do every meaningful task, why bother learning carpentry, mechanics, welding, electrical work, cooking, nursing, or other practical skills? Why even bother getting out of bed in the morning? The irony is impossible to ignore. The more people believe humans are obsolete, the less capable humans become.

A cultural correction

America spent decades telling smart kids that success meant sitting at a desk in a fancy office, filling out spreadsheets until their mid-60s. Now tech executives are shipping code designed to render those exact spreadsheet-fillers redundant. A cultural correction is under way. Being able to rebuild a blown engine, wire a high-voltage circuit, repair a factory line, or build a house has real value because some things still have to be done by human beings.

AI will eliminate or transform some jobs. That is true. Yet a huge canyon separates a software model generating text from a physical entity that replaces millions of workers navigating unpredictable, real-world environments. A chatbot can generate a textbook explanation of a Porsche’s dual-clutch transmission. The chatbot cannot crawl onto a cold concrete floor on a Tuesday morning to replace the clutch pack.

Certain tech prophets display a peculiar brand of fatalism. They demand that humans accept the swift death of their own relevance as an act of faith. This doctrine breeds its own fulfillment. Tell an entire generation that their talents are dead on arrival, and they stop pursuing difficult trades. When the nation runs out of people who can fix a broken water main, the technocrats blame automated progress rather than the cultural disdain that killed off the workforce.

RELATED: Our military turns off this invasive smartphone feature. So should you.

Thx4Stock/Getty images

America suffers from a competence famine. The economy needs citizens who can execute physical tasks correctly. Someone has to run the copper pipe, construct the frame, mend the bone, operate the lathe, and keep the power grid online. Software models function exceptionally well in environments made purely of data. The physical world remains stubbornly physical.

Rodriguez isn’t alone in obliterating America’s long-standing myth. A growing wave of high schoolers like him are drawing headlines of their own. “Elijah Rios won’t graduate from high school until next year, but he already has a job offer,” the Wall Street Journal recently reported, “one that pays $68,000 a year.” His Catholic high school in Philadelphia partners with companies looking for recruits before they even graduate. The Journal has been tracking such companies’ struggles to find hires from the typical job pools for years. Last year, Missouri senior Jenna Smith, with a 3.98 GPA and National Honor Society participation at Francis Howell High, chose to become a welder like her grandfather.

Guidance counselors and, often, parents can be slow to go along with the shifting tides. They have long treated technical trades as a consolation prize for academic failures. High marks meant a liberal arts degree, followed by 40 years of answering emails.

But high intelligence has zero natural connection to desktop work. A student can master advanced calculus and still prefer the immediate reality of a machine shop.

Competence or bust

The classic path — straight A’s leading to a university degree leading to an entry-level cubicle — is breaking at the midpoint. Automated systems are devouring the very administrative roles that university graduates relied on to pay off their student debt. Higher education still serves a clear purpose for specialized fields. But the blanket belief that a four-year degree represents the sole respectable entrance into adulthood no longer holds.

In a world made of bits, AI rules supreme. Silicon Valley coders write scripts that spit out screenplays and analyze legal contracts in seconds. Outside the server farm, rain leaks through roof shingles. Electrical transformers blow out during winter storms. Hydraulic lines rupture on garbage trucks. Millions of daily crises require spatial reasoning and fingers and thumbs.

Predicting the labor market in 2045 remains a fool’s game. AI could reshape whole industries before Christmas, or it could hit insurmountable barriers regarding energy consumption, hardware limits, and regulatory lawsuits. Betting a career on doom-mongering from software salesmen is a terrible strategy. Personal responsibility demands building actual competence that holds value on any given afternoon.

America spent half a century celebrating corporate credentials and bureaucratic titles, while ignoring the dignity of skilled craftsmanship. Rodriguez picked a difficult trade. He mastered the mechanics and built a career. His smartest observation was entirely practical: These skills guarantee employment for the foreseeable future and perhaps the entirety of his working life.

Fear can be healthy, but building your working life around it isn’t. Competence remains the only reliable shelter. Silicon Valley can create a machine that writes a short story about a broken car, but when the head gasket blows on the highway, AI won’t get you off the shoulder. The future belongs to the person holding both the wrench and the ability to use it properly.

​Tech, Auto mechanic, Artificial intelligence 

An 81-year-old delivery driver struggling up a steep flight of stairs with a family’s lost suitcase caught the attention of a woman named Erin Howell — who asked him what he was doing.

The man, Don Johnson, explained that at his age, delivering an airline’s lost luggage to families in the area is the only job he was able to get.

And he needs the money.

“He’s been married to his wife for 57 years,” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck explains. “Her name is Josephine. Josephine has cancer. Treatments cost what treatments cost. Prescriptions cost more. So for three years, Don has been driving around North Texas delivering other people’s lost luggage to help pay for his wife’s care.”

“And then he drives home to the one thing he cannot afford to lose. For 57 years. A lifetime of knowing which side of the bed she sleeps on, how she takes her coffee, what she’s thinking about before she says it,” he continues.

“This is a man who made a promise in his 20s. He’s still keeping it in his 80s,” he adds.

Erin then posted the doorbell footage she had of Johnson and began a GoFundMe for him and his wife, which went viral.

“And America does what America does when we’re not busy being angry at each other and hating each other. Thousands of strangers gave hundreds of thousands of dollars. … Messages poured in from people who will never ever meet them, over and over, the same words: ‘We’re praying for you,’” Glenn says.

“A local TV crew came out. Don told them he thought he might actually be able to stop working, stay at home, take care of her full-time, and then it fell apart,” he explains, noting that GoFundMe shut down the campaign for unclear reasons.

However, before the campaign was shut down, Josephine sat down with a TV crew.

“She didn’t talk about money. She talked about the strangers who said they were praying for her.

And she said, “I can face it.”

“She said that was the big difference. She called it a joyful feeling. That’s not a woman who got a check,” Glenn says. “That’s a woman who found out she wasn’t alone.”

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​Cancer, Don johnson, Glenn beck, Gofundme, Viral, Blazetv show 

Diesel prices are at all-time highs, and panic has set in. Several Republican senators from Midwest farm states in competitive midterm races are calling on the administration to ban diesel exports. Even President Trump expressed support for the proposal. Lawmakers desperately want to curb the pain felt at the pump and throughout the agricultural industry. It’s understandable. But the knee-jerk reaction to “do something” by banning diesel exports is ill advised and would quickly backfire.

Logic might dictate that preventing all diesel from leaving our borders will allow it to fulfill our needs first. It just doesn’t work that way. Petroleum is a global market.

The only way to curtail a diesel surplus would be to cut back on crude altogether, a move that would be economically devastating.

The U.S. fuel network is not set up to distribute gas throughout our country. Nearly 55% of the nation’s refining occurs along the Gulf Coast, producing more than enough diesel for the region. But much of the surplus must be exported, as there are very few avenues to ship it to other domestic markets, like the East and West Coasts, where it is needed. Both those areas rely on imports to satisfy their diesel and other gasoline demands.

The U.S. has too few pipelines and cargo capabilities to transport energy to these locations. And storage is not an option; there is only so much space.

Refineries cannot flip a switch to produce only the diesel needed at a given time. Processing a barrel of crude oil produces certain proportions of gasoline and other distillates (like diesel and jet fuel); refiners are limited in their ability to adjust those proportions.

The only way to curtail a diesel surplus would be to cut back on crude altogether, a move that would be economically devastating.

At a time when we are already experiencing significant gasoline shortages and steep prices, constricting our supply further would only continue to inflate prices. Voters still rate the economy and affordability as their top concern; higher conventional gas prices would increase financial strain on household budgets.

U.S. diesel exports represent roughly 20% of global supply, which means they put downward pressure on global prices. Removing that portion would push those prices up, and the regions that depend on diesel imports — like the East and West Coasts — will face higher prices.

A ban on diesel and other refined products has been proposed before and soundly rejected. The Biden administration broached the topic in late 2021 but ultimately decided against it. Several analyses concluded that the action would adversely impact the country.

RELATED: The one loophole in Trump’s tariff policy

Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

A 2022 American Council for Capital Formation study predicted that such a ban would shut down roughly 1.3 million barrels a day of refining capacity. More than two-thirds of U.S. consumers would see price increases of roughly $0.15/gallon for gas and $0.45/gallon for diesel, and GDP would drop by $44 billion the following year.

McKinsey & Company similarly calculated bad news for U.S. consumers. A ban may initially provide relief for Gulf Coast and Midwest customers, but it wouldn’t last. Import-reliant regions, such as our coasts, would experience diesel price spikes due to global prices inflating by at least $0.60 per gallon.

Unfortunately, until there is a durable resolution to the geopolitical conflicts and disruptions abroad that would restore a steadier flow of resources, there is not a quick remedy that can bring energy costs down. Since energy markets and refinery operations are globally interconnected, a rash course of action has ripple effects felt across supply chain networks, some of which touch parts of our own country.

Lawmakers should focus on long-lasting solutions at home that will provide better insulation and protection from outside forces beyond our control.

Make federal land leasing more predictable and feasible for petroleum exploration and development. Streamline permitting to facilitate and hasten building energy infrastructure like refineries for processing fuel and pipelines to transport it across the country. Create a regulatory environment that fosters investment in the essential energy sources that run our economy.

A durable fix requires resisting the temptation of quick, politically satisfying moves and instead doubling down on policies that expand supply, modernize infrastructure, and strengthen the resilience of our energy system.

Banning diesel exports would raise prices for most Americans, destabilize global markets, and weaken the very regions already under strain. Rather than constricting flows in a tightly interconnected network, lawmakers should pursue reforms that unlock investment, improve distribution, and ensure that the U.S. can reliably meet its own needs.

The path to lower prices runs through growth and modernization — not restriction.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

​Export ban, Fuel, Gas prices, Midterms, Republicans, Gulf coast, Oil refineries, Crude oil, Gdp, Americans, Global markets, Energy, Midwest, Opinion & analysis, Diesel prices 

With just over one month left before Election Day, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is telling its voters to turn out — no matter what.

Blaze News received an exclusive sneak peek at a new video the committee is releasing Saturday calling on Republicans to “hold the line” in what it describes as a record number of toss-up Senate races. With thin projected margins and a slew of candidates who previously overperformed the polls, the NRSC is betting on voters pollsters are missing carrying Republicans to victory.

‘We will win.’

“American freedom, safety, and prosperity are on the line,” NRSC Communications Director Joanna Rodriguez said in a press release obtained by Blaze News. She warned of “socialist Democrats taking control of Congress.”

Rodriguez named names. She called Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed a “terrorist sympathizer.” She called Maine’s Troy Jackson, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, and Alaska’s Mary Peltola “corrupt losers.”

“The battle for Senate control in the midterms is leading to nationwide attention that could decide the balance of power next year,” the ad states.

“The fight is on,” it continues and calls Democrat triumphalism into doubt.

The ad shows Democrats sounding hopeful but not confident. Former North Carolina Democrat Governor Roy Cooper notes that the state hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly two decades. New Hampshire’s Democrat Senate candidate, Rep. Chris Pappas, calls New Hampshire “a purple state.”

RELATED: ‘Fool me once’: CNN analyst has bad news for Democrats who believe recent polls

“No matter what state you’re in, the margins are too thin,” NRSC Chairman Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) can be heard saying. “Work your tail off.”

The video also invites Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to chime in. Thune can be heard saying Democrats have “embraced the socialist wing of their party.”

The NRSC is asking voters to remember just how chaotic things can become under Democrat rule. The campaign doesn’t want voters to forget about America’s recent past.

There are others taking notice of that recent past.

For instance, CNN’s chief data analyst has found Republican turnout enthusiasm running at near parity with Democrats. With a map showing that registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats, that enthusiasm gap can make all the difference in the world.

National polls underestimated the GOP by three points in 2014, three in 2016, five in 2020, and three in 2024, according to the NRSC. If these 2026 midterms skew by a similar margin, CNN’s Enten projects a 53-47 Republican Senate majority.

Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster, contributes even sharper analysis to the argument. His analysis on Thursday found that Senate polls taken 33 days before Election Day overstated Democrats by an average of 6.2 points in Iowa, Ohio, and Michigan from 2018 through 2024. The NRSC says those same polls wrote off Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who both cruised to victory in a presidential election year.

Two of those three states, Ohio and Michigan, are on the battleground list again this year. Ruffini’s analysis may be especially serendipitous for a cycle that could defy generations of set-in-stone expectations.

The video refuses to concede the midterms as a done deal. Rather, it calls Republicans into action for an off-cycle election year. The NRSC wants Republicans to know that the future of American governance rests on committed voters turning out. Without them, Republicans may fall victim to a midterm curse that has held for almost 100 years.

“We will win,” the narrator says.

The NRSC has just over a month to make that proclamation come true.

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​Politics 

Attention car buyers: For once, Washington has some good news for you.

The federal government has finalized a major change to fuel-economy rules that could make vehicles less expensive for automakers to build. The new standards are projected to produce a fleet-wide average of about 34.9 mpg by model year 2031, down from the 50.4 mpg trajectory under the previous rules.

If manufacturers now face tens of billions of dollars less in projected technology costs, I want to know what happens to those savings.

The Transportation Department estimates the change will reduce manufacturers’ average cost by about $1,300 per vehicle and save Americans roughly $138 billion over five years.

Room to maneuver

But the number that jumped out at me is $60.6 billion.

That’s how much the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration projects automakers’ technology costs will decline through 2031 compared with the previous standards. General Motors alone accounts for an estimated $20.4 billion, followed by Stellantis at $6.6 billion, Ford at $5.8 billion, Toyota at $4.5 billion, and Honda at $4.1 billion.

Those aren’t small numbers. Change the economics of building a car that much, and eventually I want to see the difference on the showroom floor.

For years, increasingly aggressive fuel-economy requirements pushed automakers toward additional fuel-saving technology and complicated compliance strategies. Electric vehicles were one way of improving fleet averages, and product planning increasingly had to account for what Washington demanded as well as what customers wanted.

Meanwhile, buying a new vehicle has become painfully expensive. The average new-vehicle transaction price hit $50,089 in August, according to Kelley Blue Book.

Now automakers have more room to maneuver. NHTSA says its new rules give manufacturers more flexibility to build vehicles based on customer demand. The agency is also changing vehicle-classification rules beginning with the 2030 model year. Under the current system, NHTSA says manufacturers have incentives to modify vehicles so they qualify as light trucks, while hatchbacks, wagons, and other smaller vehicles are discouraged.

That’s the sort of regulatory change car buyers may actually notice.

Automakers don’t build vehicles simply because somebody in Washington thinks they should exist. They build them when the economics work.

California split

California has been pushing in the opposite direction. Its Advanced Clean Cars II program required manufacturers to meet increasingly stringent zero-emission-vehicle targets on the way to 100% by 2035. And California’s influence doesn’t stop at the state line. The Clean Air Act allows other states to adopt California’s vehicle-emission standards, and several have done so.

Congress moved against those rules last year. On June 12, 2025, President Trump signed H.J. Res. 88 into law, disapproving the EPA waiver that allowed California to enforce Advanced Clean Cars II.

California immediately sued, arguing that Congress had improperly used the Congressional Review Act to overturn a Clean Air Act waiver. That legal fight has continued, so the underlying dispute over California’s authority isn’t finished.

For car buyers, though, the direction of federal policy has plainly changed. Manufacturers have substantially more freedom under the new federal fuel-economy rules to decide which powertrains they want to sell.

My position on that hasn’t changed. If you want an EV, buy one. If a hybrid works better for you, buy that. If you need a gasoline-powered SUV or pickup, you should be able to buy that too.

Let the cars compete.

RELATED: Welcome to the new traffic stop, where it’s your word against AI’s

NurPhoto/Getty Images

No free pass

But I’m not giving automakers a free pass. If manufacturers now face tens of billions of dollars less in projected technology costs, I want to know what happens to those savings. I’m not expecting $1,300 to disappear overnight from every window sticker. Automakers still have factories, employees, suppliers, research and development, and shareholders.

But don’t tell us deregulation makes cars cheaper to build and then expect consumers not to look for the evidence.

Give us better prices. Give us more equipment. Bring back vehicles that didn’t make financial sense under the old rules. Build the smaller cars, hatchbacks, wagons, pickups, and SUVs people will actually buy.

And let competition sort out the rest.

There is a cost on the other side of the ledger. NHTSA projects that the less stringent standards will increase fuel costs by more than $1,600 over the life of a vehicle compared with the rules they replace. The agency also projects 4.6% more gasoline consumption through 2050.

That’s worth considering, especially if you drive a lot of miles or own a large truck or SUV.

Gas prices are high right now too. But today’s pump price isn’t necessarily tomorrow’s. Oil production changes. Markets change. Wars end and new ones begin. We’re going to dig into where gasoline prices are headed in a future article because that deserves its own investigation.

Right now, I’m interested in something easier to measure. Will cheaper compliance actually mean cheaper cars?

Automakers now face tens of billions less in projected technology costs. If that really gives them more freedom to build what customers want, eventually the person walking into the dealership ought to see it.

The rules changed. Now show us the cars — and the savings.

​Car buyers, Electric vehicles, Hybrids, Oil production, Clean air act, Lifestyle, Auto industry, California, Emissions standards, Automotive 

Increasing numbers of Americans are deeply opposed to building more data centers. Over the summer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) imposed the strictest data center rules in the country, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) ordered a statewide moratorium on hyperscale construction, and Gov. Greg Abbott (R) paused new approvals in Texas pending a grid audit.

At the local level, dozens of county and municipal fights have followed no reliable partisan pattern. Polling from Heatmap and Embold, collected by anonymous Substack writer Cremieux, shows data center popularity plummeting over the last year.

Any actions seen as forcing data centers on voters who do not want them will only make matters worse.

Though Cremieux argues the opposition is fundamentally driven by NIMBYism (not in my back yard), I am unconvinced. The polling seems to follow the pattern you would expect if NIMBYism were the primary driver, but posing the problem as a generic national issue produces substantially less opposition.

The arguments most central to the anti-data-center cause, namely complaints about the effect on utility costs, seem to generate an outsized amount of discourse relative to their actual effect. For example, in Virginia — the world’s data center capital and the state where I live — the State Corporation Commission estimated that shifting capacity and distribution costs from households to the large-load rate class would lower a typical residential bill by about 3.4%, or roughly $5.52 a month.

In other words, the effect is something on the order of a Subway sandwich in 2008.

I want to be scrupulous, because the complaints about data centers are often not literally false. Households are indeed suffering from a pecuniary externality created by increased demand. But it is hard to reconcile the mostly muted effects with the surging level of emotional response.

Americans’ growing dislike of data centers stems not from animus toward any single company or product but from a cumulative reaction to the momentous technological changes of the past couple of decades.

Because AI is the latest harbinger of those changes — and offers revolutionary potential — it has inherited our culture’s immune response. This means these problems cannot be adjudicated simply by changing utility regulations or even bribing local communities.

RELATED: The dirty secret behind Big Tech’s data center boom

Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Three further factors have combined with the populist anti-tech feeling to make AI and, by extension, data centers unusually unpopular.

First, AI faces a particularly unfavorable coalition of constituencies. Its association with California and the tech industry has deeply soured much of conservative America toward it, and its association with billionaires and big business has soured many progressives. Even many techies feel personally threatened by the technology.

Second, those most aggressively advocating for data centers are not building them in their own back yards. Palo Alto, where I lived while attending grad school, has spent years fighting small-cell installations. One of the most prestigious retirement homes in the U.S., Channing House, recently fought to have wireless equipment removed from its roof.

In January, the city of Palo Alto wrote to the FCC opposing a rule that would speed up wireless approvals, while at the same time supporting the infrastructure needed to run AI-enabled services, so long as it retains the power to veto unwanted projects.

When the group that appears to benefit most from a technology is also most averse to its consequences, it is natural for the public to wonder what the tech world might be hiding. The anonymous author Polimath, writing in Marginally Compelling, gets closer to the underlying problem by viewing it as another front in the culture war, an outworking of long-simmering discontent with tech culture.

Third, much of the tech world itself seems increasingly concerned about the existential risk AI might pose to humanity. For example, earlier this month, Jacob Coxon, a researcher who spent three years doing pretraining work at OpenAI and then Anthropic, publicly resigned, writing that both companies were racing toward self-improving superintelligence and “gambling with our lives.”

RELATED: America doesn’t need Dario Amodei’s permission to build

Jason Henry/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Evan Hubinger, an alignment lead at Anthropic, replied that he agreed and put the odds of AI killing everyone within the decade above 10%. From talking to my friends at these labs, the modal person really does seem to think they are summoning the machine god. That prospect naturally feeds public opposition to AI.

Taken together, these factors help explain the public’s anger. The lines of the current debate have already hardened, and the grievances far predate the specific events of the day. Any actions seen as forcing data centers on voters who do not want them will only make matters worse.

But the centers will be built regardless. Demand is so enormous, and suitable locations are sufficiently plentiful, that only a small number of permissive communities, such as Loudoun County, are needed. If localities want to opt out, I see little reason to stop them.

However, the industry could take an important step if it wants to win broad American support.

Specifically, Big Tech should make a visible effort to build data centers near the communities where its executives and employees live. This would give them a way to begin convincing Americans that data centers are an asset worth having, not a liability worth dodging.

Concerns about water and electricity are simply not what most people are worried about, and addressing them will do nothing to solve the larger problem. Since these reasons are selected ex post to justify pre-existing opposition, defeating any single point will merely invite a hundred more.

If you are opposed to data centers, my guess is that saving $5 on your monthly utility bill wouldn’t be enough to change your opinion.

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

​Ai, Americans, Big tech, Data centers, Fcc, Superintelligence, Virginia, Polling, Nimby, Culture war, Openai, Anthropic, Opinion & analysis 

A man who founded an LGBTQ+ therapy practice was arrested after he was accused of sexually assaulting two of his patients.

Joseph LoGiudice founded the “Liberation Psychotherapy” practice and acted as a clinical director when the assaults occurred, according to a press release from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

‘While expressly described as an LGBTQ-centered practice, we allege that LoGiudice abused the trust placed in him as a therapist to sexually assault members of the LGBTQ community he serves.’

One of those who accused LoGiudice did so after hearing about a separate indictment against Remington Yhap, another worker at Liberation Psychotherapy who specialized in LGBTQ+ mental health.

Yhap was arrested for allegedly raping a teenage patient he had been providing therapy to for many months.

“Liberation Psychotherapy’s clinical director, Joseph LoGiudice, allegedly sexually assaulted two patients in his care at the very practice he founded,” said Bragg in a statement with the press release.

LoGiudice had run the clinic’s Gay Men’s Therapy Group and is a licensed clinical social worker.

One victim was assaulted by LoGiudice in Nov. 2022 after engaging in “sexual misconduct” with the patient twice.

A second victim was assaulted by LoGiudice in Jan. 2024 after a group therapy session and again in Jan. 2026 during a private therapy session, according to Bragg.

“While expressly described as an LGBTQ-centered practice, we allege that LoGiudice abused the trust placed in him as a therapist to sexually assault members of the LGBTQ community he serves. This investigation is ongoing.

LoGiudice is facing a total of 24 counts related to the alleged abuse, which includes 10 counts of third-degree criminal sex acts, 13 counts of third-degree sexual abuse, and one count of third-degree rape.

RELATED: Officials of ‘Latinx’ LGBTQ+ center outraged that months-long fecal attacks are not arrestable

Bragg asked for any other possible victims to contact his office.

A profile at Huffington Post said LoGiudice had published a book titled “Our Naked Lives: Essays from Gay Italian-American Men” in 2013. He wrote an article claiming that capitalism had destroyed people emotionally and psychologically.

He was also married to Michael Carosone, who was also a therapist at Liberation Psychotherapy, according to posts online objecting to anti-Semitic statements he allegedly made.

“His interests and passion are in understanding and advocating for individuals who are marginalized, vulnerable, and stigmatized, particularly LGBTQ individuals with disabilities, while utilizing perspectives from disability studies and intersectionality,” read a line from the profile.

His profile at his website has been scrubbed from the internet but can still be viewed at the Wayback Machine internet archive. His website has also been scrubbed.

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​Capitalism, Lgbtq, Sexual assault, Rape, Lgbtq agenda, Crime 

One of the first things I did when we moved into our semi-furnished rental last year was place a 12-inch concrete statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary — one of the few possessions I’d recovered from the ashes of our house in the Palisades — by the front door.

I thought the place needed a brazenly Catholic touch to counteract the tasteful Westside L.A. “spirituality” already on display: the Native American kitsch, the Henry Miller quote in the powder room, the reclining Buddha in the garden by the front door.

The closer Francis drew to Christ, the more intensely Catholic he became.

Never mind that next to the Buddha the owner had already put one of the Church’s most famous saints: a tonsured St. Francis of Assisi, cradling a dove in his hands, rabbits gathered around the birdbath at his feet.

That Francis was even welcome at such an ecumenical gathering seemed to confirm my general impression of him as a kind of generic Christian Zen master. The statue looked like a glorified garden gnome to me.

Without even realizing it, I’d bought into modernity’s slow domestication of one of the most radical Christians who ever lived.

Sainthood without sanctity

G.K. Chesterton noticed the problem more than a century ago. Modern admirers, he wrote, had learned to “appreciate the saint almost without the sanctity.”

Francis did not grow up poor. He was born in Assisi in 1181 or 1182, the son of a prosperous cloth merchant. As a young man, he enjoyed fine clothes, spent money freely, and dreamed not of feeding sparrows but of military glory.

Around the age of 20, he went to war against neighboring Perugia, was captured after Assisi’s defeat, and spent months as a prisoner. Illness followed. Another attempt at a military career ended with Francis turning back before he had really begun it.

His conversion came slowly, through humiliation, failure, illness, and prayer.

Look at one of those garden statues of Francis, surrounded by birds and rabbits, and it’s easy to imagine sharing at least a little in his saintliness. I like animals. I can be nice to a bird.

But Francis learned to love God’s creation from the bottom up, beginning with nature at its most capriciously cruel and monstrous: leprosy.

Sweetness of soul and body

The disease could horribly disfigure the human body, and in Francis’s world, its sufferers lived largely apart from everyone else. Francis, like everyone else, was repulsed by them.

Thomas of Celano, his earliest biographer, says that Francis once found even the sight of leper houses unbearable. If he spotted one from two miles away, he would cover his nose with his hands.

Then, Celano writes, Francis encountered a leper and did what would previously have been unthinkable: He approached the man and kissed him.

Francis’ own account is less dramatic but probably more revealing. “The Lord himself led me among them,” he wrote near the end of his life. He began showing them mercy, and what had once seemed bitter became “sweetness of soul and body.”

Celano tells us what that mercy looked like. Francis went to live among lepers, washing them and cleaning the pus from their sores.

To repair the Church

According to Franciscan tradition, Francis was later praying before a crucifix in the crumbling church of San Damiano outside Assisi when he heard Christ tell him to repair His church. Francis, quite reasonably, took this literally, rebuilding San Damiano and helping restore other dilapidated churches around Assisi. Only later would the command acquire its more famous second meaning. Francis would spend the rest of his life repairing the Church in a rather more ambitious sense.

His new life brought him into increasingly bitter conflict with his father. Pietro Bernardone had spent years building a prosperous business and raising a son who now seemed determined to give the proceeds away. The dispute culminated in dramatic fashion. Standing before the bishop of Assisi, Francis surrendered his claim to his father’s property and stripped off the clothes his father had provided him. The bishop covered the naked young man with his cloak.

The movement that formed around Francis eventually became the Order of Friars Minor. Its members worked, prayed, preached, cared for the sick, and lived without the ordinary security provided by possessions. Francis himself insisted on manual labor. “I worked with my hands, and I still desire to work,” he recalled near the end of his life.

Chesterton put the intensity of his asceticism more colorfully: “He devoured fasting as a man devours food.”

The peace of Christ

None of this means the familiar Francis of birds and flowers is a fraud. Francis really did possess an extraordinary love for creation. His “Canticle of the Creatures” praises God through Brother Sun, Sister Moon, wind, water, fire, and “our Sister Mother Earth.” The poem later supplied the title of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato si’.

But Brother Sun and Sister Moon did not emerge from a pleasant afternoon spent admiring the Umbrian countryside. Francis composed the first part of the “Canticle” near the end of his life, sick and suffering at San Damiano.

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope in 2013, his friend Cardinal Claudio Hummes embraced him and said, “Don’t forget the poor!” Bergoglio later recalled that he immediately thought of Francis of Assisi — the man of poverty, peace, and creation. He became the first pope to take the name Francis.

Visiting Assisi later that year, he addressed the Francis most of us think we know.

“Franciscan peace is not something saccharine,” the pope said. Nor, he added, was it “a kind of pantheistic harmony with forces of the cosmos.”

Behind enemy lines

Pope Francis’ contention that “the peace of Saint Francis is the peace of Christ” helps illuminate one of the most striking episodes of Francis’ life.

In 1219, while Christian and Muslim armies were fighting the Fifth Crusade in Egypt, Francis crossed the battle lines near Damietta and entered the camp of Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil.

An eyewitness account helps us understand how extraordinary this was. Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre, wrote the following year that this unarmed friar had walked into enemy territory in the middle of a war and preached to the Muslims for several days. The sultan eventually had him returned safely to the Christian lines.

What Francis and al-Kamil said to each other is harder to know. Later accounts supplied increasingly elaborate details, including Francis offering to undergo an ordeal by fire.

But we do know what Francis thought friars should do among Muslims, because he wrote it down. They could live among non-Christians “without quarrels or disputes,” he instructed, acknowledging themselves as Christians. Or when they believed it pleased God, they could explicitly proclaim the Christian faith. Francis had walked unarmed across a battlefield to do exactly that.

Closing the gap

Francis’ quieter contributions to Christianity proved just as enduring. In 1223, at Greccio, Francis arranged a manger with hay, an ox, and a donkey so worshipers could contemplate the conditions in which Christ had been born. A priest celebrated Mass over the manger. While there were no statues playing Mary, Joseph, or the infant Jesus, the celebration nevertheless became the ancestor of the Christmas crèche now found in homes and churches around the world.

Greccio also tells us something about the peculiar intensity of Francis’ mysticism. Again and again, he seemed determined to collapse the distance between himself and the physical life of Christ. At Greccio, he wanted people to encounter Bethlehem almost as if they had been there: the hay, the animals, the feeding trough, the poverty into which Christ had been born.

A year later, at La Verna, that identification with Christ became more mysterious — and, if the Franciscan accounts are true, physical. During a mountain retreat, Francis experienced a vision of the crucified Christ and received wounds corresponding to the wounds of the crucifixion — the stigmata. The claim did not first surface centuries later. Brother Elias announced the wounds in a letter sent after Francis’ death, and Thomas of Celano described them in the biography he wrote for Francis’ canonization.

Francis himself left no account of receiving them.

RELATED: Pope Leo XIV: The right leader for a church in crisis

Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images

Brother Fire

By then, his body was falling apart. Francis was losing his sight to a painful disease of the eyes. Doctors tried plasters and eye washes. They opened his veins to bleed him. His condition only grew worse. Finally, a physician proposed something more drastic: burning the flesh around his failing eye with a red-hot iron.

When the doctor placed the instrument in the fire, the man who had written of Brother Sun and Sister Moon extended his friendship to the very element about to cause him terrible pain.

“My Brother Fire,” Francis addressed it, asking it to “be courtly to me in this hour.”

The hot iron was drawn across his face from his ear toward his eyebrow. It didn’t work. Near death, according to Thomas of Celano, Francis asked his brothers to lay him naked on the bare ground so he could greet yet another member of his family of creation: “our Sister Bodily Death.” On the evening of October 3, 1226, at the Portiuncula, she arrived. Francis was probably 44 or 45 years old. Two years later, Pope Gregory IX declared him a saint.

Today, October 3, marks exactly 800 years since Francis’ death. Few Catholic saints have traveled as far outside Catholicism as Francis. Environmentalists claim his love of creation. Peace activists invoke his encounter with the sultan. Protestants have found plenty to admire too. Christianity Today has included him among its “131 Christians Everyone Should Know.” One evangelical writer simply called him “our Francis, too.”

And of course, he turns up beside Buddhas in Los Angeles gardens.

Catholic to the core

But the Church is observing his 800th anniversary in unmistakably Catholic fashion. At the direction of Pope Leo XIV, a special Jubilee Year of St. Francis began January 10 and continues through January 10, 2027. The Apostolic Penitentiary is offering Catholics a plenary indulgence for pilgrimages to designated Franciscan churches and other places connected to Francis, accompanied by the prescribed prayers and observances and the usual conditions of confession, Communion, and prayer for the pope’s intentions.

A plenary indulgence is not the first thing that comes to mind when most people look at the little friar holding the bird. But neither, probably, is Francis’ “Testament.”

Francis dictated the document near the end of his life, partly to make sure the movement he was leaving behind remained recognizably Catholic. There he writes of his reverence for priests “according to the manner of the holy Roman Church.” He says he sees in this world nothing bodily of Christ except the Eucharist, which he wants “honored above all things.” He recalls that when God first gave him brothers, he wrote down their way of life and “the Lord Pope confirmed it for me.”

The “Testament” ends by telling his friars to keep it alongside their Rule and read the two together, so that they might observe the Rule “in a more Catholic manner.”

You don’t need a specific creed to admire Francis, or even to follow him for quite a distance. But follow Francis far enough, and you eventually find yourself at the threshold of the Church and all it contains: the Eucharist, priests, confession, obedience, the pope.

At the same time, his example strips away centuries of polemic and invites us to see the Church more clearly. Here was a man almost comically ill-suited to the idea that Christianity is fundamentally about clericalism, bureaucracy, or institutional power. He owned nothing. He wasn’t a priest. He preached to lepers and Muslims, slept on the ground, rebuilt ruined churches with his hands, and founded a movement whose very name emphasized the littleness of its members.

And yet the closer he drew to Christ, the more intensely Catholic he became.

Chesterton saw in that relationship something of the mystery of the Church itself: a human institution that somehow provides a path to the divine. “The casket that was locked in Palestine can be unlocked in Umbria,” he wrote, “for the Church is the keeper of the keys.”

​Blessed virgin mary, Catholic saints, Eucharist, Gk chesterton, Pope francis, Pope gregory ix, Sacramental confession, St francis, St francis of assisi, Sultan almalik alkamil, Stigmata, Catholicism, Christianity, Culture, Lifestyle, Pope leo xiv, Faith 

Walt Disney Animation Studios’ upcoming fantasy-comedy “Hexed” — which follows teenage witch Billie Doe as she discovers her magical powers and leaves behind normal life to join the world of witches — is set to hit theaters this November.

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey already has major concerns about the film, starting with the premise.

“It’s presenting witchcraft and being a witch not as a bad thing — not as like the evil witch from ‘Snow White’ — but actually possibly as a good thing, as a neutral thing, or even as a superpower,” she says.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie is joined by Jenn Nizza, a former psychic medium who left the New Age after converting to Christianity, to explore how witchcraft and occultism have seeped their way into mainstream culture, including the areas that most impact children.

While movies like “Hexed” and “K-Pop Demon Hunters,” among others, deliberately lean into open witchcraft and demonic themes, other kid films and forms of entertainment take a more subliminal approach.

Allie shares that she recently had to stop her young daughter from listening to Barbie music.

“Every single song is about loving yourself and believing in yourself … and if you are just more yourself and you live out your authentic expressions, then you’ll have all the power that you need to accomplish anything that you want in life,” she says.

“It’s laying the exact opposite theological foundation than the one that I want to be set for her, which is that all of your sufficiency and strength and wisdom and power is going to come from Christ, not from yourself at all,” she adds.

Nizza argues that even something as seemingly benign as Disney’s classic “wishing upon a star” trope is designed to confuse and corrupt a child’s identity.

“It just looks like something … hidden in a Barbie movie. I mean, nostalgia plays a big part. It’ll be something again that focuses on yourself, on the idea of your heart, of love, wishing on things like the Disney wishing upon a star,” she says.

“Unfortunately, we’re seeing such disastrous things going on in our culture that are very terrifying quite honestly that revolve around ‘you can be whoever you want, and if you’re not comfortable with where you are, you can change things about yourself.’ … It’s a confusion of identity. That’s what it is,” she declares.

It’s no surprise to Nizza, however, because she believes Satan almost always “attacks through identity.”

“Sex, gender, weight, hair color, whatever it may be. Anything to confuse that person and get them away from having a real identity, a liberating and salvific identity in Christ Jesus,” she says.

“We want [our kids] to know they’re made in the image of God, that He fearfully and wonderfully made them and all of those things, but we need to make sure that they are deriving their confidence from the right places — not from their own power because to me that’s what lays the groundwork for some of this really, really dark and evil stuff,” adds Allie.

To hear more, watch 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.

​Allie beth stuckey, Christianity, Entertainment, Jenn nizza, New age, Occult, Witchcraft, Blazetv show, Disney, Barbie 

The democratic socialist mayor of New York City gave his personal definition of socialism while on a podcast this week, and many found it to be naive and unserious.

On Thursday’s episode of his “This Past Weekend” podcast, comedian Theo Von asked Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) to define socialism.

‘That’s not socialism, that’s fantasy.’

“I want to talk a little bit about socialism, right, because it’s a buzzword, right?” Von said. “… Will you define socialism for us? Because people say it a lot and don’t know what it is. And sometimes, those people are me.”

Mamdani laughed.

“I’m so happy to be with those people right now,” he responded.

“Socialism, to me, it means that you will have whatever you need to live a dignified life and that it is the government’s job to deliver on that, right?” Mamdani said.

“It’s a belief that you shouldn’t live in a place where all you can do is pick your own leaders,” he added. “You should also be able to have that power in the rest of your life, right? People talk about it as the extension of democracy from the ballot box to the rest of your life.”

The exchange can be viewed below on Von’s podcast.

RELATED: Outrage erupts at apparent insult from Mamdani during 9/11 ceremony

He then explained what dignity meant under his political beliefs.

“When people say dignity, I want to be very clear, we’re talking about the things that allow you to take a breath: housing, child care, right, public transit,” the mayor said. “No one should be priced out of these things. These are non-negotiables; you need these to live.”

He also repeated the well-worn trope that the country was already operating under socialist principles.

“And what I think is so confusing is there’s parts of life in our country that line up with this belief,” Mamdan said. “Public education — we believe that everyone should be able to go K through 12 for free, and they do. Libraries — we believe that everybody should be able to read a book that they’d like to for free, and they do. But when it comes to early childhood education, right — before kindergarten — we’re comfortable with people paying $20,000 a year to afford it.”

Mamdani added, “As a socialist, what I’m fighting for is that nobody is priced out of dignity.”

Many criticized Mamdani for the hollow definition.

“That’s not socialism, that’s fantasy. And that’s what this podcast between Mamdani and Von was all about,” responded columnist Libby Emmons.

“Socialism is very much like the plantation owner-slave relationship,” replied one X user. “You are housed and fed and kept relatively healthy so that you can be of some use to the state and its ruling elites. If Democrats are successful selling this to American descendants of slaves it will be the biggest con job in human history.”

“Some bureaucrat gets to decide what you need and what a dignified life is. I’d rather have no government at all,” said another critic.

A poll in 2020 found that Americans favored capitalism over socialism by a 2-1 margin, but more recent polling has seen many Americans turning toward socialism because of inflation and the affordability crisis.

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​Theo von, New york city, Zohran mamdani, Socialism, Politics 

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said in an interview that he is considering retiring next year.

Alito told CBS News that the harassment and physical threats judges are receiving are a new danger to the judicial system.

‘We are not part of any political movement. And we are not attempting to further any political agenda.’

CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford asked him if there was a decision that required particular courage, and he said the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was the leading example.

“I think that required courage by all of the justices in the majority,” said Alito.

“Of course … we didn’t know it at the time,” he added. “We didn’t know it when we produced the draft that was leaked, but it required courage to go ahead with that because of the implications.”

He said he had even lost old friendships because of that decision.

“That’s something you have to live with,” Alito added.

“Is that just part of the job being a justice?” she asked. “You’re going to lose friends, you’re going to get protested, you’re going to have death threats, you’re going to have to wear a bulletproof vest today?”

“It’s part of the job that you’re going to displease people by making decisions on controversial matters, because one side or the other is going to really dislike you because of the decisions,” Alito responded.

“The physical threats and the harassment represent something new in our society and something that’s quite disturbing. And I think it’s a danger. It’s a danger for the courts,” he added.

“And it’s a danger for others in public life,” Alito warned.

The 76-year-old went on to say he will consider retiring next year but said it was difficult to predict the political circumstances surrounding the decision.

He also criticized recent presidents for being more vitriolic in their opposition to Supreme Court decisions.

“Did [President Donald] Trump change that?” Crawford asked.

“It’s been bipartisan,” said Alito.

“I want to be evenhanded on this. The criticism of the court by President [Joe] Biden and justices by President Biden and his administration was very harsh. And President Trump has been very harsh.”

RELATED: Supreme Court sides with middle school transgender girl, Alito and Thomas dissent

Win McNamee/Getty Images

He also denied that the judges had a partisan motivation.

“We are not part of any political movement. And we are not attempting to further any political agenda,” said Alito. “We are trying to interpret the Constitution as best we can and apply it in cases that come before us.”

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​Dobbs decision, Political violence, Samuel alito, Us supreme court, Politics 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims yet another scam that he says robbed taxpayers of billions from Medicare.

Kennedy made the comments during the “Make America Healthy Again” conference Tuesday while speaking with Vice President JD Vance.

‘We were on par, on track to spend $23 billion this year. … And we stopped it. We put an end to it, and we’ve now driven that down.’

“We have perverse incentives in the department, and we gave the people opportunity to steal, and we made it almost irresistible,” said Kennedy.

He went on to give “skin substitutes” as an example, defining skin substitutes as “simulated skin that you put on certain wounds after dressing them carefully.”

“These skin substitutes … the doctors who prescribed them would get 6% of the sales cost. And so they were incentivized to prescribe more expensive products,” he explained.

“So 2019, we were paying $200 million. Last year, we spent $14 billion. All stolen. It’s all stolen,” he claimed.

“And we were on par, on track to spend $23 billion this year. … And we stopped it,” Kennedy said.

“We put an end to it, and we’ve now driven that down,” he added. “That cost down to somewhere around $1 billion. And we saved that money, but it was allowed to get out of control. And you’re seeing — I mean, we can tell our stories. You and I can sit here all day long and just tell insane stories about the level of theft.”

RELATED: RFK Jr. shuts down $1 BILLION in funding to California and Minnesota

Also during the fireside discussion in the summit at the Waldorf in Washington, D.C., Kennedy touted the benefits of artificial intelligence in the medical field.

“If somebody tells you, ‘Masks work, trust the experts,’ AI may tell you otherwise. If somebody tells you, ‘Social distancing works, trust the experts,’ AI may correct that,” Kennedy said.

“And if somebody tells you that a vaccine will prevent transmission and infection — ‘Oh, you need to take it to protect your grandmother’ — AI may say it actually doesn’t do that,” he added. “So it really has the capacity to … free us from medical tyranny.”

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​Medicare, Robert f kennedy jr, Scam, Fraud, Make america healthy again, Politics, Jd vance 

Paul Joseph Tinkle told Blaze News he has been a shoe-leather Republican campaigner in Indiana since he was a teenager. His activism ended with him working as an operative for the Indiana Republican Party. He was unceremoniously fired on Tuesday after making the “OK” sign in a picture, he claims.

Tinkle spoke exclusively to Blaze News on the events surrounding his firing, the behind-the-scenes operatives seemingly stirring up hysteria, and what it means for the party moving forward.

‘Indiana is a place that a lot of people are worried is trending purple, and it’s the liberal Republicans … that are making us go purple.’

The trouble started for Tinkle after a social media group picture was published on Sunday morning, Tinkle told Blaze Media. In that photo he is seen making the “OK” sign.

“That Sunday morning, I received texts from a couple of different people in this program — supervisors in this [Indiana GOP] program,” Tinkle told Blaze News.

“One of them showed me a text that had been sent to them by someone in Hamilton County,” Tinkle said. “And they just asked, ‘Well, explain yourself. Like, what’s going on here?'”

“I explained over text,” Tinkle told Blaze News. “I didn’t get an in-person meeting or anything.”

In between Tinkle’s stints working on Republican campaigns and for the Indiana state GOP, the 27-year-old told Blaze News he spent three years with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program, working as an educator in Japan. The program is sponsored by Japan’s government.

As evidenced by photos posted by Tinkle on X, the “OK” symbol is a common hand gesture in Japan when taking photographs.

RELATED: The right is building its own lawfare defense machine — finally

Paul Joseph Tinkle/X; used with permission

Regarding the texts Tinkle claims referred to “Hamilton County,” the chair of that county’s GOP, Mario Massillamany, denied playing a role in Tinkle’s firing. He told Blaze News that he informed the Indiana state GOP of concerns raised by anonymous individuals and removed the photo out of an “abundance of caution.”

“I was not instrumental in getting him fired,” Massillamany told Blaze News. “I have had nothing to do with firing him.”

Massillamany also insisted, “I did not know what his sign was.”

Tinkle offered Blaze News a different version of events.

“I was told Mario’s really angry. He’s reached out to people [at] the top of the party,” Tinkle said. “I didn’t get to explain to anybody in person. I didn’t get to talk to Mario. I didn’t get to talk to the Republican chair.”

Blaze News also reviewed a text sent to Tinkle by a state GOP “supervisor” Tinkle declined to name. The text appeared to support at least some of Tinkle’s claims.

“Mario thinks you dropped a white power symbol and no one will be able to convince him otherwise,” the supervisor told Tinkle just prior to his termination, one text showed.

RELATED: Are America’s jails being run by foreigners?

Courtesy of Paul Joseph Tinkle; used with permission

Two sources familiar with the Hamilton County GOP confirmed Tinkle’s account and further told Blaze News that it fits a pattern of anti-whiteness by Massillamany.

Massillamany has ruffled feathers with loyal Republicans lately.

Massillamany previously told Larry Lannon in an interview that diversity and female candidates were essential to his political philosophy. He described his approach as “getting more people from diverse communities” to run for office in Hamilton County.

In that interview, Massillamany also described criticism levied at Secretary of State Diego Morales as racist.

“I think that some of the attacks that he’s received would not have been received if he were the prototypical white male from Indiana, but he’s a short Hispanic from Guatemala that has a thick accent,” Massillamany told Lannon.

“He’s got a bigger target on him.”

When Blaze News attempted to ask Massillamany about his views on DEI and diversity, he hung up the phone.

Massillamany also publicly distanced the county party from Save Heritage Indiana in July, an anti-mass-migration group that held a rally on Aug. 1 in Fishers featuring Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith.

“Save Heritage Indiana is not affiliated with the Hamilton County Republican Party,” Massillamany told the Indiana Citizen. “I had not heard of the organization or of Nathan Roberts or of Daniel Poynter prior to this inquiry, and neither has attended or participated in any Hamilton County GOP event.”

The group’s website lists state Rep. Chris Jeter (R), who represents House District 88, among its endorsers. Jeter is a founding partner of Massillamany’s own Fishers law firm, Massillamany Jeter & Carson.

In firing Tinkle, the Indiana state GOP may have lost one of its most loyal operators.

“I have worked in Republican Party politics since before I could even vote,” Tinkle told Blaze News. “Maybe they think I’m a young infiltrator or something, but it’s quite the opposite.”

“When I was 16 in 2016, I worked the primary election, because you can do it at 16,” Tinkle said. “I remember all the way back then. I love Trump.”

Tinkle told Blaze News that Republicans like Massillamany are endangering the party’s future in Indiana.

“Indiana is a place that a lot of people are worried is trending purple, and it’s the liberal Republicans that are making us go purple.”

The Indiana state GOP did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

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​Fired, Hysteria, Japan, Secretary of state, Trump, Politics 

The explosive allegations against seven members of Cornell University’s Chi Phi fraternity have reignited a national debate over campus culture, consent, and accountability.

But BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock believes the story has taken over the news cycle for a deeper reason.

“Why did this all of a sudden become national news? … I guess it’s intriguing or interesting, but … see, it’s like they want us talking about this or it wouldn’t be getting the attention that it’s getting,” Whitlock says.

“The Cornell 7 wouldn’t be all over … social media. Rape allegations go on all the time. Rape allegations on college campuses go on all the time. But clearly there seems to be something,” he continues.

“Maybe it’s conservatives. Maybe we’re pushing for this conversation. Maybe we want to expose the wrongs of feminism because the Lindsay Clancy case and this case seem to be putting those things in clear focus,” he adds.

“I think conservatives do want to show how wrong it is or how hurtful feminism has been,” Shemeka Michelle agrees, though she notes that “on the other side,” that’s not their motive.

“I think they believe they can show us just how terrible patriarchy is,” she says.

Meanwhile, Michelle points out that since the Clancy trial, she keeps seeing news stories about women harming their children.

“So it’s crazy because we’re seeing these cases, and so many people are just thinking, ‘Oh my God, women have to be protected. Look at what they’re going through. Look at what’s happening,’” she says.

“Conservatives are saying, ‘Hey wait a minute. This is not OK.’ But we keep seeing these stories because so many left-leaning lunatics want to actually prop up women like Barack Obama thinking that they can actually run the world and do it better,” she adds.

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​Cornell university, Jason whitlock, Rape allegations, Shemeka michelle, Patriarchy, Feminism, Blazetv show 

Media reports on the death of prior traffic stop rules for immigration operations are greatly exaggerated, according to the feds.

Many in the media rushed to report on a memo outlining traffic stop rules in order to imply that the administration is reacting to criticism by weakening engagement standards.

‘This memo makes no changes to how ICE conducts vehicle stops. ALL officers have always received vehicle stop training.’

The memo indicated that there were no circumstances where officers would be “authorized to engage in vehicle pursuits or [precision immobilization technique] maneuvers” against vehicles with drivers who refuse to pull over.

“ICE issues new instructions on vehicle stops after shootings, new guidance shows,” said a CNN headline Thursday.

“New ICE guidance bans high-speed car chases and sets tighter rules for traffic stops, a memo obtained by the AP shows,” was the headline at the Associated Press.

“ICE Forced to Rein In Two Controversial Tactics Within 24 Hours,” blared out Newsweek.

When a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement was asked to comment on the “new” rules, they said there was “nothing new” in the memo.

“Occasionally, ICE leadership issues guidance reminders to law enforcement officers,” read the spokesperson’s statement to ABC News. “This memo makes no changes to how ICE conducts vehicle stops. ALL officers have always received vehicle stop training.”

The spokesperson added, “Vehicle stops and arrests of illegal aliens continue.”

RELATED: Illegal alien bites 3-year-old’s face in horrifying random attack — DHS blames Biden policies

The latest controversial shooting involved a migrant named Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, who was DoorDashing in Austin, Texas.

Perez initially complied with immigration officers’ demands on September 20 but then allegedly fled in his car and also allegedly clipped an officer with the side mirror on his car. After a car chase, an officer shot him in the back.

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​Traffic stop, Immigration and customs enforcement, Illegal immigration, Mainstream media, Politics 

Four suspects charged in a viral road-rage beating and robbery of a 63-year-old man in the St. Louis area were left behind bars on $250,000 cash-only bonds after a court hearing Thursday, KSDK-TV reported.

St. Louis County Prosecutor Melissa Price Smith added to the station that it should stay that way: “They are a danger to the community, all four of them.”

‘I apologize for kicking and slapping him. I was in the wrong.’

Mary Moore, Tamara Logan, Davion Alfred, and Martinez Logan each face felony charges of second-degree robbery, third-degree assault, and second-degree burglary in connection with the incident, KSDK said.

Price Smith added to the station that they could face a maximum of 29 years each in the Missouri Department of Corrections.

The foursome’s court appearance came just hours after the victim was released from the hospital, where he was recovering after being stomped, punched, and robbed — all after a fender bender on a Jennings street Sept. 19, KSDK said.

Price Smith said “the individual who hit the back of their car went to check on them,” and “they brutally attacked him. This is not the way people behave in civilized society. This bond is appropriate for this charge,” the station said.

More from KSDK:

During Thursday’s hearing, three of the suspects chose to waive their bond hearings and opted not to request a reduction. Meanwhile, Davion Alfred represented himself in court to argue for a lower bond amount, but Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Doug Dolan opposed any modification, citing public safety concerns and flight risk. The judge agreed with prosecutors and denied Alfred’s request, keeping the $250,000 cash only bond intact for all four individuals.

Following the brutal attack, the suspects stole $100 from the victim’s wallet and went through his vehicle, even taking bags full of items intended as Goodwill donations, the station said, citing court documents.

Bystanders recorded video of the attack, and the footage went viral, KSDK said.

What’s more, the county prosecutor told the station she first became aware of the incident through media reports before formal charges were submitted to her office, the station reported.

RELATED: Brutal beating: Man, 45, bumps into teen at state fair, then gang of a dozen ‘kicked and stomped’ on man’s face, fiancée says

Charging documents include confessions from the suspects, KSDK reported, adding that prosecutors said an interview with suspect Tamara Logan that KSDK broadcasted assisted with their investigation. The station said Tamara Logan admitted on camera to her role in the attack.

“I apologize for kicking and slapping him. I was in the wrong,” Logan said, according to KSDK.

Moore also told the station, “At that moment, my mindset was, ‘I’m angry, I’m upset, my kids are hurting, my vehicle is gone. I wasn’t really thinking, ‘Oh, this is an elderly man.’ My actions, they’re not OK at all. I am hurt and I am disappointed in myself.”

Price Smith told KSDK that “this kind of behavior will not be tolerated.”

A preliminary hearing is set for Oct. 21, the station noted.

According to a previous KSDK story, court records state that victim Lance Jeffries was driving his Chrysler Caravan when he rear-ended a vehicle. Police told the station Moore, Alfred, their children, and extended family members were returning home from a trip to the zoo.

Jeffries pulled over and exited his vehicle to check on the group, which had pulled in front of him, the station said.

Moore, Alfred, and Martinez Logan got out of the car, and Tamara Logan arrived at the scene a short time later, KSDK said.

Police said Alfred repeatedly punched Jeffries in the head, after which he fell to the ground, the station said, adding that police said Moore repeatedly kicked Jeffries, Tamara Logan stomped him while he was on the ground, and Martinez Logan dragged him.

Jeffries at one point blacked out, KSDK reported.

Police said Alfred took Jeffries’ keys and went through his wallet, the station noted, adding that Alfred and the others went through his car and removed trash bags filled with his Goodwill donations.

“They took my dad’s wallet. They went in his car. They robbed my dad,” Valancia Jeffries, the victim’s daughter, told KSDK. “They kicked my dad in the face. They kicked him in the chest. When I say we were so devastated and so heartbroken. We just want justice for my dad.”

Police said Jeffries’ keys, wallet, and cell phone were found on top of his car, and his wallet had been rummaged through and was missing $100, the station said, adding that Jeffries was unable to speak and was taken to the hospital. The group of attackers claimed Jeffries was drunk, police told KSDK, and made no mention of the beat-down.

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​St. louis county, Missouri, Arrests, Road rage, Physical attack, Robbery, Burglary, Assault, Crime 

Recent polling generally indicates that congressional Democrats are poised to come out on top in the midterm election. CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten is not convinced, however — especially considering pollsters’ track record.

“We’ve had really good Democratic polls coming out from Ohio, Michigan, Iowa,” Enten told “CNN News Central” talking head John Berman on Wednesday.

‘There’s a very, very strong chance that Republicans hold onto the United States Senate.’

A Marist Poll published on Wednesday showed U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) leading former Rep. Mike Rogers (R) 51%-44% in Michigan. The latest USA Today/Suffolk University poll shows Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown leading Republican Sen. Jon Husted 47%-44% in Ohio. According to a Fox News survey conducted from Sept. 24-28, Democrat Josh Turek has a two-point lead over Republican Ashley Hinson in the U.S. Senate race in Iowa.

“Fool me once, shame on you,” continued Enten. “Fool me four times, I just have to ask the question: Could it happen again?”

Enten highlighted how the GOP outperformed September 2024 polls concerning Senate races and the White House by 9 percentage points in Iowa, 6 points in Ohio, and 5 points in Michigan. That same September, national polls suggested that Kamala Harris would win a presidential election that she ultimately lost in a landslide.

“I will note that the leads that the Democrats have in all of these races right now are under how much the GOP outperformed back in 2024,” said Enten. “So you look at this, and you go, ‘You know what? Maybe we should just hold on a second here because we’ve seen this dance before’ — and it was not a dance that Democrats like when the votes were actually cast and counted.”

RELATED: CNN analyst pours cold water on Democrats’ dream of a political takeover in November

Emily Elconin/Getty Images

Berman insinuated that Trump not being on the ballot this time around might be a factor, but Enten noted that the lesson from the 2018 election — Trump’s first midterm election — is that “it’s the same exact story.”

“The GOP outperformed September polls in the major 2018 statewide races by 6 points in Iowa, 6 points in Ohio, and 8 points in Michigan,” said Enten. “The bottom line is this: Over the last few [election] cycles, whether it be 2018, 2016, 2020, 2024 — Republicans have outperformed their September polls by at least 5 points in all these three states where Democrats right now are ahead.”

The data analyst suggested further that if Republicans outperform their Midwest polls as they did in 2018 and 2024, then even with Democrats carrying states such as Alaska, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas, there could end up being a 50/50 split in the U.S. Senate with Vice President JD Vance serving as the tie-breaker.

“So if history holds in terms of the GOP outperforming their September polls, well, there’s a very, very strong chance that Republicans hold onto the United States Senate, even if Democrats win in places they don’t historically win in, like Texas,” said Enten.

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​Midterm election, Congress, Senate, House, Polling, Harry enten, Cnn, Abdul el-sayed, Mike rogers, Sherrod brown, Jon husted, Politics 

Those of a certain age will remember the era of infomercials and QVC.

For the younger set, “infomercials” were long-form commercials on cable TV, usually late at night. They ran for five, 10, even 30 minutes, incorporating elements of narrative — usually with laughable skill — to give the feeling that you were watching an actual show rather than a paid advertisement. They hawked products for the home and kitchen with a number to call to place your order.

Most of us are just going to click onto the next thing, unaware that the News-ique (TM) item left a Truth-ette (TM) trace in our minds.

QVC — “Quality, Value, Convenience” — was/is a TV channel that was nothing but one big infomercial, with on-camera hosts showing off products and bantering with each other and customers who called in. It was online shopping before there was an online.

Both marketplaces were famous for offering products that simulated much more valuable items. One such product was the pinnacle: a cubic zirconia stone that was (supposedly) visually indistinguishable from a diamond. It’s got everything: sparkle, allure, and the look of a real diamond at a fraction of the price!

Diamonique is forever

The best part is the name: Diamonique. Those branding this luxury obviously followed the old drag queen convention for choosing a stage moniker: Take a name denoting quality, seriousness, or at the very least referring to an actual person, then give it a little comic twist that lets you know immediately you’re dealing with an imitation. Classic drag queen names of this type include:

Hedda Lettuce

Virginia Hamm

Anita Mann

… to name just a few.

As you can see, Diamonique fits right in.

So glittering was Diamonique that this imitation spawned imitators of its own, the best of which is Diamelle. When you can’t afford Diamonique, turn to Diamelle!

Authentic imitation news

What’s amusing in jewelry marketing doesn’t carry over in news and journalism — or what is alleged to be news and journalism. There’s a “news” marketing practice all over social media that gives you what appears to be a news story but is not.

I call this News-ique (TM). It has the look and feel of real news but at less than .01% of the value. It’s all over Twitter/X and other social media platforms.

The News-ique (TM) formula:

Choose a topic guaranteed to rile people whether they’re left, right, or center. The closer the topic is to today’s “discourse” on social media, the better.Write a lede sentence or short paragraph making a claim that flatters the interests, views, but especially the biases of the reader. The text should confirm the reader’s prior assumptions.Include an image that looks very much like it is advertising a published news story, but do NOT include a link to that apparent story. It might or might not be published somewhere, but you can’t know from the original post — that’s the News-ique Difference (TM)!

Post nothing else. Do not follow up with a link. Watch outrage flow, and collect clicks and cash.

Know your News-ique

Here is an example of News-ique (TM), a post on X from an alleged news account, Europa.com. The post includes a picture of the subject against a background that looks “newsy” and “official.”

It says this:

Poland’s Spokeswoman for Children, Monika Horna-Cieślak, used her official powers to take the children of a woman who was rude to her and place them in an orphanage.

Horna-Cieślak, 36, who is herself childless, had intervened in a public park in Warsaw before being told by the mother of an unruly child to mind her own business. She then leveraged her authority to have the children seized and placed into care.

Why is it News-ique (TM) and not news? Because there’s no link to a fuller source or documentation. There is no follow-up in the thread, only responses from X users.

I do not know if this item is real. I have not checked by doing my own search. It does not matter if this particular item is real or not; it is representative of countless posts every day that use the News-ique (TM) formula. My concern is not the content of the story, but the packaging, intent, and effect.

News-ique (TM) works because it presents plausible outrages. It’s believable that a head of a government ministry for children’s concerns would abuse her position and target a mother who criticized her. This type of thing happens. We know government officials sometimes abuse their authority and get away with it.

Filling in the gaps

But what if there is more to this story about a Polish official?

What I’m about to write is pure speculation used to demonstrate possibilities. I’m not giving you facts; I don’t even know if the original claim is true.

Let’s assume the core of the claim is true. What if the mother did not merely tell the minister to mind her own business? What if she smacked her with her purse? What if she made false and defamatory claims about her online? What if the minister observed that mother abusing her child?

The whole story changes if any of those factors are true. If the mother were abusing her child and the minister intervened, then the minister would have been doing the job she is in office for. She looks like a heroine instead of a villain.

Again, everything I just wrote was speculation. That’s the point: Without context, detail, and at least some provenance for the original claim, all we are doing is writing fiction while treating that fiction as fact.

The political and cultural content cuts in both directions. This example plays to the fears — often real and legitimate — of people with a right-wing bent and to libertarians and other freedom-minded people. But News-ique (TM) items just as often flatter the assumptions of left-leaning people.

RELATED: FACTION NEWS: The day the media taught me it’s always wrong to be right

H. Armstrong Roberts/Classicstock/Getty Images

New pollution

The News-ique (TM) approach contributes to political, cultural, and emotional pollution. It leaves an impression of truth in the minds of readers and “consumers.” And no, it doesn’t just work on “stupid people.” It works on most people, smart and stupid, left and right, hysterical or stoic. Items that flatter and confirm our prior assumptions are mentally sticky; they leave a trace you might call Truth-ette (TM). Few are immune.

At best, News-ique (TM) is irresponsible and lazy when the content is real and tells a true story. At worst, and I suspect in the majority of cases, it’s a deliberate choice to shade the truth and deprive readers of full context. Outrage gets clicks and cash; sober consideration does not.

Some might push back: “You can use Google/Siri/Whatever to check for yourself.” True. But most people won’t. Not even smart people will usually take the time unless they’re going to comment or use it in an essay or podcast. Most of us are just going to click onto the next thing. We won’t necessarily be aware that the News-ique (TM) item left a Truth-ette (TM) trace in our minds.

Sometimes, we’ll subconsciously incorporate that item into our view of what’s true about the world. This has happened to me and has probably happened in cases I’m unaware of. When I become aware that I’ve been foolish and failed to check veracity, I admit it in the same thread where I made the claim. Better not to react without having the facts first.

Unstoppable

There is nothing you or I can do to stop News-ique (TM). There is no way to change the social media incentive structure so this is not a profitable game. The only thing we can do is increase our skepticism and discernment.

“Then just stay off social media” is not a workable answer either. Social media is toxic and full of mind games. But it is also the medium through which we can learn many actually true things happening in the world that mainstream news simply will not tell us.

Social media is where we can find “citizen journalists” like Nick Shirley who document problems like fraudulent Somali day cares paid for by American taxpayer dollars. When mainstream media gets wind of stories like Shirley’s, it works hard to discredit them, as you see in this CBS News piece. It is also where we can hear directly from politicians and government officials without ABC/NBC/CBS/NPR/NYT leaving out important words to slant the story.

We are never going to have a world “back” where “official news” can be relied on. That world never existed anyway; we just didn’t have any way to fact-check the fact-checkers before.

If you see a “news story” on Twitter/Instagram/TikTok, make sure you know whether it’s news or News-ique (TM). Check whether context or links are given. If they are, cross-reference the claim against other sources. If they are not, you are reading News-ique (TM).

Diamonique can give you sparkle for the soirée at an affordable price. News-ique (TM) is a bad bargain at any price.

​Cable tv, Mainstream media, Qvc, Social media, Skepticism, Lifestyle, Culture, Intervention, News