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An NFL rule that rewards teams for developing talent along racial lines is getting put in the spotlight.

The rule, know as the Rooney Rule, is causing confusion among the Chicago Bears’ C-suite employees, who are expecting compensation for one of their staff members jumping ship to the Atlanta Falcons. In the NFL, if a team develops a “diverse” employee who then lands a certain type of role with another team, the first team is awarded draft picks by the league.

‘I’ll be honest. I think it is a little strange.’

Bears general manager Ryan Poles was asked about the rule, as the team is currently in limbo about receiving draft picks for former assistant general manager Ian Cunningham, who is now the general manager of the Atlanta Falcons.

“I’ll be honest. I think it is a little strange,” Poles told reporters at the NFL Scouting Combine. “I mean, at the end of the day, you should want to develop your staff regardless of the color of their skin.”

“I think that’s important,” Poles continued. “I think we take a lot of pride with the Bears on how we have our setup, and I take a lot of pride in that. So to be compensated for that’s a little strange. I mean, I saw the Chiefs get a pick because of me, and then I watched that player go and play.”

When Poles left the Kansas City Chiefs in 2022 — where he was the executive director of player personnel — to become the Bears’ general manager, the Chiefs received two third-round draft picks simply because he is black, NBC Sports reported.

RELATED: Perjury, drugs, and counterfeiting — Trump pardons 5 former NFL players

The bizarre rule comes directly from the NFL’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, previously called the Workplace Diversity Committee. The rule states that teams must conduct in-person interviews with at least two “minority and/or female” candidates when hiring for a general manager or head coach, as well as at least one “diverse” person when hiring for senior-level positions.

Teams are even rewarded if their developed talent takes a job at another team. This comes in the form of third-round draft picks if an employee becomes a head coach or general manager.

The rule states that in 2020, “team owners approved a proposal rewarding teams who developed minority talent that went on to become GMs or head coaches across the league. If a team lost a minority executive or coach to another team, that team would receive a third-round compensatory pick for two years.”

The controversy with Cunningham’s move to the Falcons is that the Bears are being told they will not be compensated because his new role is not that of a primary decision-maker.

“The policy for receiving picks pertains to the head coach or the primary football executive,” chief NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told Fox 32 in a statement.

RELATED: ‘We’re doing the right thing’: NFL to continue diversity initiatives, including forcing interviews with ‘minority candidates’

Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

“The primary football executive position was filled by Matt Ryan,” the NFL spokesman added.

Poles stopped short of supporting the rule in his recent remarks, saying that if the league thinks “that’s what’s best to help incentivize, then that’s what they wanted to do.”

He added, “Like I said, that’s not the purpose of why we develop our staff.”

However, according to OutKick, the Bears are still submitting a review to the league in hopes of getting their draft picks, with Poles saying that if the Rooney Rule is in place, then he considers it to be “very clear” in terms of what should happen.

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) released a Spanish-language video Tuesday urging families to enroll their children in the city’s free 3-K and pre-K programs before Friday’s deadline, explicitly emphasizing that eligibility applies “regardless of … immigration status.”

The roughly two-and-a-half-minute video, posted to Mamdani’s official X account, features the two Democrats speaking entirely in Spanish in a studio setting with American and New York City flags behind them. Mamdani called his Spanish “rusty” before both promote what they describe as free, full-day early education for children turning 3 or 4 years old in 2026.

‘No Social Security number is required and that applications are available in more than 200 languages.’

Ocasio-Cortez states directly in the video, “Any New York City parent, regardless of your occupation, income, or immigration status, is eligible to sign their child up.”

RELATED: ‘This is disgraceful’: Mamdani raked over the coals for attack on NYPD

They stress that no Social Security number is required and that applications are available in more than 200 languages. Parents can apply online, by phone, or in person at Family Welcome Centers. The deadline for the 2026-2027 school year is Feb. 27.

While city officials frame the initiative as part of New York’s long-standing universal early education policy, critics argue the messaging shows how taxpayer-funded benefits are being promoted without regard to legal status at a time when the city is struggling with the financial impact of a historic migrant influx.

RELATED: ‘Despicable attack’: Brazen mob pelts NYPD officers with snowballs, multiple cops reportedly injured — and it’s all on video

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The programs are funded through a combination of city, state, and federal dollars. City leaders have previously touted the effort as returning an average of $26,000 annually to families by eliminating child-care costs.

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The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the sanctuary state of New Jersey after its governor banned Immigration and Customs Enforcement from some state property.

On Feb. 11, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) signed Executive Order No. 12, which declared that federal immigration agents cannot access “nonpublic areas of State property for the purpose of facilitating federal enforcement of civil immigration law” without a judicial warrant or order.

‘Federal agents are risking their lives to keep New Jersey citizens safe, and yet New Jersey’s leaders are enacting policies designed to obstruct and endanger law enforcement.’

The governor claimed that the action would “protect against ICE raids on state property.”

“I take seriously my responsibility to keep New Jersey residents safe, and as a Navy veteran and former federal prosecutor, my commitment to upholding the Constitution will never waver,” Sherrill stated. “This executive order will prohibit ICE from using state property to launch operations. To strengthen public safety, we will also give New Jersey residents the tools to report ICE activity to the attorney general’s office and ensure residents know their constitutional rights.”

The governor’s office accused the Trump administration’s ICE agents of “violently abusing power and violating Constitutional rights.”

The DOJ responded to Sherrill’s executive action by filing a lawsuit against New Jersey on Feb. 23, stating that the state’s leadership has insisted “on harboring criminal offenders from federal law enforcement.”

RELATED: ‘She is putting a target on their backs’: New Jersey governor launches online portal to track ICE agents

Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The complaint claimed that Sherrill aimed to “intentionally obstruct federal law enforcement,” adding that she “celebrates thwarting the constitutional obligation of the President of the United States to take care that federal immigration law be faithfully executed.”

The DOJ argued that Sherrill’s executive order obstructs and intentionally discriminates against the federal government. Prosecutors also claimed that the action violated the Supremacy Clause, which “prohibits a state from usurping Congress.”

“Federal agents are risking their lives to keep New Jersey citizens safe, and yet New Jersey’s leaders are enacting policies designed to obstruct and endanger law enforcement,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said. “States may not deliberately interfere with our efforts to remove illegal aliens and arrest criminals — New Jersey’s sanctuary policies will not stand.”

RELATED: Exclusive: ‘Best of the best’: DHS torches leftist media myths about ICE training

Mikie Sherrill. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Sherrill reacted to the lawsuit, stating, “I think what the federal government needs to be focused on right now instead of attacking states like New Jersey working to keep people safe is actually training their ICE agents with some modicum of training, like any law enforcement officer in the state of New Jersey would have, so they can operate better and more safely.”

New ICE recruits receive 56 days of training and an average of 28 days of on-the-job training, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

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President Donald Trump awarded several honors and medals during his historic State of the Union Tuesday night. Here is every honor Trump awarded during the joint address.

‘He was a legend long before this evening.’

1. Connor Hellebuyck, Presidential Medal of Freedom

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images

As goalie, Connor Hellebuyck played an integral role on the USA men’s hockey team that brought home the gold for the first time in 46 years. Trump hosted the team at the White House on Tuesday, just days after their historic victory, later inviting them to attend the State of the Union.

During his joint address, Trump announced that he would bestow Hellebuyck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. Trump also noted that he took a vote from the team members in the Oval Office as to whether he should award Hellebuyck the medal, and they unanimously supported the idea.

Trump’s address was a beacon of patriotism, and this moment was no exception.

“What special champions you are,” Trump said.

2. Andrew Wolfe, Purple Heart

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Andrew Wolfe was one of the two National Guardsmen who were ambushed and shot, allegedly by an Afghan national, just feet from the White House in November. Wolfe was not expected to survive, but he miraculously pulled through and appeared at the State of the Union alongside his mother.

To commend his service, Trump awarded Wolfe the Purple Heart.

“It was a solemn and unforgettable moment, one that ensured their courage and sacrifice were honored not only by West Virginia but also before the entire nation,” West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) said in a statement.

3. Sarah Beckstrom, Purple Heart

Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Sarah Beckstrom was the second National Guardsman recognized at the State of the Union and was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. Beckstrom was serving alongside Wolfe when she was ambushed and fatally shot in November at just 20 years old.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Beckstrom’s parents accepted the award on behalf of their late daughter Tuesday night, marking a solemn moment.

“West Virginia will never forget their service, their bravery, or their sacrifice,” Morrisey said.

4. Scott Ruskan, Legion of Merit

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Scott Ruskan, an aviation survival technician and rescue swimmer for the United States Coast Guard, was recognized for saving nearly 170 people during the floods that devastated central Texas back in July. Those rescued included children attending Camp Mystic.

Trump awarded Ruskan the Legion of Merit for his “extraordinary heroism.”

Ruskan accepted the award alongside 11-year-old Milly Cate McClymond, one of the girls he rescued from Camp Mystic.

“As the waters threatened to sweep her away, 11-year-old Milly Cate McClymond closed her eyes and prayed to God,” Trump said. “She thought she was going to die. Those prayers were answered when Coast Guard rescue swimmer Scott Ruskan descended from a helicopter above … and he lifted not just Milly Cate but 164 others to safety.”

5. Eric Slover, Medal of Honor

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover was recognized for his role in capturing Venezuelan ex-dictator Nicolas Maduro in January, successfully piloting the Chinook mission despite being shot several times and sustaining severe injuries to his legs.

Despite being severely wounded, Slover stood up in a walker to accept the highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor.

“Chief Warrant Officer Slover is still recovering from his serious wounds,” Trump said, “but I’m thrilled to say that he is here tonight with his wife, Amy.”

“The success of the entire mission and the lives of his fellow warriors hinged on Eric’s ability to take the searing pain. It was unbelievable, what’s happened to his legs,” he continued.

6. Royce Williams, Medal of Honor

Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images

Retired Navy Captain Royce Williams was also awarded the Medal of Honor Tuesday night, commending the 100-year-old veteran’s service in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. First lady Melania Trump, who sat beside Williams, bestowed the award on the war hero during the address.

In 1952, Williams found himself in a 35-minute dogfight against the Soviets, where he downed four enemy aircraft, survived a 37mm cannon, and still returned to the deck of the USS Oriskany just off the coast of North Korea. His fellow servicemen later counted 263 holes in the frame of his F9F-5 Panther.

“Tonight, at 100 years old, this brave Navy captain is finally getting the recognition he deserves. He was a legend long before this evening,” Trump said.

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​Donald trump, State of the union, Sotu, Connor hellebuyck, Olympics, Men’s hockey, Medal of freedom, National guard, Dc national guard, Andrew wolfe, Purple heart, Sarah beckstrom, Patrick morrisey, Scott ruskan, Texas floods, Camp mystic, Milly cate mcclymond, Coast guard, Eric slover, Venezuela, Nicolas maduro, Veteran, Medal of honor, Royce williams, Melania trump, Congress, Joint session, Joint address, Korean war, Vietnam war, World war ii, Politics 

Governor Kathy Hochul recently slowed, but did not stop, Waymo’s march into New York, blocking expansion beyond city limits while leaving the door wide open inside them.

These aren’t simply cars without drivers. Waymo’s robotaxis are mobile intelligence machines. They map infrastructure, catalogue faces, record ambient sound, and track movement patterns across entire cities — continuously and autonomously. Unlike a fixed security camera or an app you can delete, these vehicles move freely through neighborhoods, past hospitals, around government buildings, silently collecting everything in their path. The data never sleeps, and the cars never stop.

China’s strategy for technological dominance is anything but subtle.

No small matter, then, that Waymo’s next-generation fleet is manufactured by Zeekr, a Chinese electric vehicle company with deep, documented ties to China’s Communist Party. Zeekr is a subsidiary of Geely, one of China’s most powerful automotive conglomerates — a company that operates, as all major Chinese corporations must, in full alignment with Beijing’s strategic interests. Under Chinese national security law, any firm can be compelled to hand its data to the state. No appeal, no refusal. No exceptions.

Zeekr carries the fingerprints of a government that has spent decades playing a patient, precise long game, embedding itself in Western supply chains, Western infrastructure, and now Western streets. Part of the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, an automotive behemoth with stakes in Volvo, Polestar, and other Western car companies, Zeekr took off with significant state backing via the Yuexiu Industrial Fund and the Xin’an Intelligent Manufacturing Fund. Zeekr benefits from CCP-linked subsidies, even abusing the system to inflate sales, and exists within a corporate ecosystem where the line between private enterprise and party directive is deliberately blurred.

Hiding in plain sight

When the Waymo-Zeekr connection began attracting serious scrutiny, Waymo’s response was telling. Rather than address the security concerns directly, the company quietly rebranded the vehicles — scrubbing Zeekr’s name from its marketing materials entirely. “Waymo’s official explanation,” TechCrunch reported, “is that the company determined the U.S. public isn’t familiar with the Zeekr brand,” adding that, “of course, in the U.S. it might not hurt to ditch the name of a Chinese automaker either.” The cars didn’t change. The supply chain didn’t change. The data architecture didn’t change. Only the name did.

But China’s own strategy for technological dominance has been anything but subtle. Huawei was waved into Western telecommunications networks for years before governments finally acknowledged the obvious. TikTok spent the better part of a decade harvesting behavioral data on hundreds of millions of Americans while its ultimate obligations remained rooted in Beijing. The playbook is consistent: embed early, expand endlessly, extract continuously.

Waymo’s robotaxis are the next chapter. Former CIA analyst Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.)) cut straight to it when asked about Chinese autonomous vehicles operating on American roads: “I know what I would do with that data if I was at the Pentagon.” From someone who spent years inside America’s intelligence apparatus, that is a warning worth taking seriously.

Utopia with Chinese characteristics

That’s on top of the more, shall we say, pedestrian dangers. A Waymo vehicle recently struck a child in Santa Monica, exposing the technological fallibility that the industry and its urban density-obsessed allies prefer to obscure. When they do fail, as some inevitably will, there is no driver to bear responsibility, no human instinct to override an algorithm in a fraction of a second.

RELATED: Hollywood lawyers up against Chinese AI ‘slop’ as Seedance 2.0 sweeps the internet

Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto/Getty Images

To be sure, robotaxi advocates are right to observe that taking humans out of the driving loop likely leads overall to significant reductions in accidents. There’s a certain tempting logic to the riddle of improving our quality of life by taking ourselves out of the loop. But when you’re actually just looping out Americans, leaving Chinese humans with the goods and the control, what becomes of that utopian vision? A child struck by a robotaxi, as serious as that is, remains a local tragedy. A foreign government harvesting precise, continuous intelligence on American cities, American citizens, and American infrastructure is a national security crisis — one unfolding in slow motion, in plain sight, with a Waymo logo on the door.

Why hack America’s surveillance systems when you can drive right through them? To allow cars manufactured by a company with direct ties to Beijing to roam freely on American streets is, at best, breathtaking naivete. At worst? It’s the most efficiently delivered intelligence haul since the Cold War, although China’s own Typhoon hacks are a very close second.

Elon to the rescue?

While Waymo shamelessly rebadges CCP-aligned hardware and hopes no one looks too closely, Elon Musk has recently announced via a post on X that the Tesla Cybercab will retail for under $30,000 before the end of next year. It’s American-designed, American-developed, built without Beijing’s fingerprints anywhere in the supply chain. The autonomous future doesn’t have to arrive with a foreign intelligence apparatus riding shotgun. If America intends to remain the greatest nation on earth, it should probably stop subcontracting its surveillance vulnerabilities to the country most eager to exploit them.

Sadly, New York is not alone in this reckless endeavor. California has welcomed Waymo with equal enthusiasm and equal indifference to what’s underneath the hood. Together, two of America’s largest, most strategically significant states are rolling out the red carpet for a fleet built by companies that answer to a foreign flag. Both can still course-correct. Both can demand honest answers — about the hardware, the software, the data flows, and the loyalties embedded in every vehicle they’ve so eagerly waved through.

The Trojan horse isn’t somewhere outside the gates. It’s right at the curb, with a five-star rating and a pickup time of four minutes.

​Tech 

The New York City Police Department released photos of two people wanted in Monday’s mob attack on cops amid a snowball fight, which reportedly caused multiple injuries to officers.

The NYPD Facebook post indicates that “two uniformed police officers were inside Washington Square Park when two individuals intentionally struck the officers multiple times with snow and ice causing injury to their head, neck, and face. Anyone with information is asked to contact @NYPDTips or 800-577-TIPS.”

‘That doesn’t look like a snowball fight to me, Mamdani.’

The NYPD post adds that the pair are “wanted for assault on a police officer.”

Police told WABC-TV that officers responded to the park around 4 p.m. for a report of a number of people atop a roof — but officers were soon hit with snowballs, and multiple officers were taken to a hospital with facial cuts.

RELATED: ‘Despicable attack’: Brazen mob pelts NYPD officers with snowballs, multiple cops reportedly injured — and it’s all on video

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) faced criticism Tuesday over the assault on officers, with a number of political figures noting that the mayor’s history of anti-police rhetoric contributed to the mob attack.

When asked at a news conference if he supports the police department’s intention to criminally prosecute suspects in the case, Mamdani replied, “I don’t. From the videos that I’ve seen, it looks like a snowball fight.”

RELATED: ‘This is disgraceful’: Mamdani raked over the coals for attack on NYPD

The NYPD’s Facebook post concerning the two individuals wanted in the matter has received more than 17,000 comments as of Wednesday morning — and it appears after a cursory read that many of them actually mock police over the incident. One wrote, “They showed up for a snowball fight. What did they expect? I’m sure there were mass casualties.”

Others, however, weren’t happy with those caught on camera attacking cops:

“That doesn’t look like a snowball fight to me, Mamdani,” one commenter noted.”A snowball fight is when you have 2 opposing sides,” another user stated. “NYPD was not throwing snowballs as far as I can see.””The cops didn’t think it was funny. They push a couple of people who were very aggressive,” another commenter wrote. “This idea that is being pushed by some that we do not have to respect or obey law enforcement is getting out of control. Those officers showed tremendous restraint.””The mayor would demand the arrest of the officers if they threw snowballs back at the thugs,” another user observed.

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On the question of President Trump’s emergency tariffs, the Supreme Court has spoken. In the court’s view, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to impose tariffs during a declared emergency, namely, the massive trade deficits that threaten our economic security.

But the court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump was highly fractured. Only three justices — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — held that the law, under normal principles of statutory construction, does not give the president authority to impose tariffs.

A tariff wears two hats. It can function as a tax, but it can also operate as an instrument of foreign policy.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent, joined by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, quite persuasively demonstrates why that is not the case. As Justice Thomas noted in his separate dissent, the power to “regulate … importation” has throughout American history “been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports.”

The other three justices who formed the majority — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — resorted to the major questions doctrine. This principle of statutory interpretation holds that Congress must speak with super clarity on issues of “economic and political significance” for the Court to approve a delegation to the executive.

The turn to the major questions doctrine implies that the statute, under normal principles of statutory construction, authorizes the president’s action, a point that Justice Gorsuch explicitly conceded in his concurring opinion.

But here’s the rub. The court has never previously applied the major questions doctrine in the foreign policy arena — and for good reason. Under Article II of the Constitution, the president has the core responsibility for foreign policy. Chief Justice Roberts acknowledged as much, stating in the part of his opinion that garnered only three votes that “as a general matter, the President of course enjoys some ‘independent constitutional power[s]’ over foreign affairs ‘even without congressional authorization.’”

That’s quite an understatement. The failure to recognize the full measure of that fundamentally important piece of constitutional law is the first fatal flaw in the chief justice’s opinion.

The key Supreme Court case on this point is United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. (1936), which Roberts does not mention. In that case, Justice George Sutherland, writing for a near-unanimous court, articulated the principled distinction between foreign and domestic powers: “In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation.”

Then, quoting John Marshall’s “great argument of March 7, 1800, in the House of Representatives,” Sutherland added, “The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.”

The main issue in the case was whether Congress could delegate to the president the authority to prohibit the sale of arms to either side in a war between Bolivia and Paraguay. But Sutherland did not rely solely on the act of Congress. He wrote:

It is important to bear in mind that we are here dealing not alone with an authority vested in the President by an exertion of legislative power, but with such an authority plus the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations — a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress.

In other words, President Roosevelt had the power to ban the sale of arms even without the act of Congress at issue.

The same should be true in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. Thomas’ dissenting opinion convincingly demonstrates why that is the case. While the chief justice claimed that Solicitor General D. John Sauer conceded that “the President enjoys no inherent authority to impose tariffs during peacetime,” that’s not exactly what Sauer said. Rather, he argued that the statute delegated such authority to the president. Under Curtiss-Wright, a claim of inherent authority over foreign policy should still be viable.

In the part of the Curtiss-Wright opinion I elided above, Sutherland noted that the president’s power over foreign affairs, “like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution.”

For Roberts, the fact that the taxing power is vested exclusively in Congress — and that any bill “for raising revenue” must originate in the House of Representatives — further confirmed that Congress had not delegated to the president any authority to impose tariffs. The point lands a bit oddly, given Roberts’ earlier willingness to treat Obamacare as a tax even though the bill originated in the Senate.

RELATED: ‘Even stronger’: President Trump optimistic even after SCOTUS strikes down tariffs

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

That move exposes the court’s second fatal flaw: a tariff wears two hats. It can function as a tax, but it can also operate as an instrument of foreign policy.

President Trump’s tariffs plainly fell into the latter category, even if they also happened to raise substantial revenue. This dual character is not unique to presidential tariffs; the Constitution itself recognizes it in a related provision. Article I, Section 10, Clause 2 provides that “No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws.”

That clause reflects the same two-hat reality. An impost or duty — akin to a tariff — can be a revenue measure, but it also can serve a regulatory end tied to a state’s police power. Congress’ exclusive authority to impose taxes under Article I, Section 8, does not erase the states’ limited ability to levy duties for a different purpose: enforcing inspection laws to protect health and safety.

So too with tariffs. The fact that duties and imposts fall within Congress’ taxing power does not negate the president’s authority to use tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy — a “plenary and exclusive” power that Curtiss-Wright describes as vested in the president as the nation’s “sole organ” in external affairs.

That distinction drives Thomas’ characteristically insightful dissent. He points, in effect, to a path by which the president may continue using tariffs while negotiating with and responding to foreign nations in his role as the sole organ of American foreign policy. Time will tell whether the court, if the president takes that route, will remain faithful to its landmark Curtiss-Wright precedent. It should.

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

​Opinion & analysis, Supreme court, Donald trump, Tariffs, Constitution, Learning resources inc v trump, United states v. curtiss-wright export corp, George sutherland, Clarence thomas, John roberts, Brett kavanaugh, Congress, Taxes 

Democrats desperate to take the wind out of President Donald Trump’s sails and torpedo his State of the Union address Tuesday with heckles, boycotts, and low-energy critiques may be upset to learn that the Americans who tuned in were overwhelmingly receptive to the speech and its contents.

A CNN poll found that a near-supermajority of “speech-watchers” said that Trump’s policies will move the country in the right direction.

‘Look at the growth President Trump made over the speech.’

David Chalian, the network’s political director, told talking head Jake Tapper, “64% say Trump’s policies would move the country in the right direction, 36% say the wrong direction.”

“Look at the growth President Trump made over the speech,” said Chalian. “So pre-speech, it was 54% of speech-watchers said his policies will move the U.S. in the right direction. After the speech, that number goes up 10 percentage points. So Donald Trump made some progress with people watching the speech from their pre-speech expectations to what they saw in the speech itself.”

Trump said a great deal on the policy front:

his tariffs might one day “substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax”; legislation should be passed “barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens”; he is “restoring American security and dominance in the Western Hemisphere, acting to secure our national interests and defend our country from violence, drugs, terrorism, and foreign interference”;he prefers a diplomatic resolution to mounting tensions with Iran;he is “ending the wildly inflated costs of prescription drugs”;his administration is leaning on major tech companies to provide for their own power needs;he is “making it easier for Americans to save for retirement”; andhe is keeping “large Wall Street investment firms from buying up, in the thousands, single-family homes.”

In an apparent effort to reassure the network’s liberal viewers, Chalian suggested that “it is a much more Republican universe that got polled here because Republicans tune in in greater numbers for a Republican president’s State of the Union address.”

Chalian added that CNN’s “poll of the overall electorate is the exact opposite of that.”

A CNN poll conducted last week found that 38% of respondents said that the policies being proposed by Trump would move the country in the right direction, and 61% said they would move the country in the wrong direction.

RELATED: ‘You should be ashamed’: Ilhan Omar melts down when asked to support Americans

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

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Ahead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) provided his Democratic peers with two options: either “attend with silent defiance” or boycott the event.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) was among the Democrats in attendance on Tuesday who apparently missed, misunderstood, or chose to ignore Jeffries’ instruction.

The Somali-born ethno-nationalist did her apparent best to interrupt the American president’s address, repeatedly screaming in concert with the radical seated beside her, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

‘Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA.’

While visibly agitated throughout the address, Omar appeared particularly unhinged when the president asked lawmakers to stand up if they agree that the “first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

Rather than stand to support the people of her adopted country, Omar repeatedly screamed, “You have killed Americans” — apparently referring to anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement activists Renee Good, who died driving her vehicle into a federal agent, and Alex Pretti, who died while interfering with a Customs and Border Patrol law enforcement operation.

Trump, responding to Democrats’ refusal to stand in support of their countrymen and the heckles from the peanut gallery, said, “Isn’t that a shame? You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

RELATED: Trump recognizes little girl grievously injured, allegedly by truck-driving Indian illegal alien

Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As Omar continued screaming, Trump asked lawmakers to “end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals” and to “enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens.”

Omar also appeared vexed by Trump’s criticism of Somalis, particularly when the president said,

The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception. Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA, and it is the American people who pay the price in higher medical bills, car insurance rates, rent, taxes, and perhaps most importantly, crime. We will take care of this problem.

While Omar has branded Trump a “liar,” the president’s critiques of Somalia and some of its exports are rooted in fact.

Somalia is a Sunni Muslim nation with a population of just over 19 million, a high rate of female genital mutilation, a GDP of $12.94 billion, and an adult literacy rate of 54%.

It is a haven for crime and terrorism, ranking 34th out of 193 countries for criminality on the Global Organized Crime Index.

In the state Omar purports to represent, approximately 54% of Somali-headed households received food stamps and 73% of Somali households had at least one member on Medicaid, according to a December report from the Center for Immigration Studies.

Numerous members of Minnesota’s Somali community have in recent months been charged and/or convicted for fraud.

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For the first time in nearly five decades, the U.S. men’s hockey team has an Olympic gold medal proudly around their necks. Last Sunday at the Milano Cortina Winter Games, Team USA defeated rival Canada 2-1 in overtime, with Jack Hughes scoring the golden goal.

The victory has sparked nationwide celebrations and displays of unapologetic patriotism — a stark contrast, BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock says, to the “anti-American sentiment” that’s characterized American sports for the last decade.

“The reason why it feels so big is because it was so patriotic at a time when athletes are being pushed to be anti-American. We’ve been dealing with this at least since 2016 when Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee,” he says.

The left, he argues, has been “trying to define” the Winter Olympics with America and Trump hatred — asking athletes, “How can you compete when Donald Trump is posting mean tweets and when ICE is trying to kick Somalians out of Minnesota?” — but their efforts were put to shame with this U.S. hockey victory.

The heart of this victory is captured in the iconic photo of Jack Hughes smiling with bloodied, chipped teeth, the American flag draped patriotically around his shoulders.

“This is going to be one of the most memorable … pictures in sports,” Whitlock says, calling Hughes’ grit and determination to keep playing despite broken teeth “a great moment … in male masculinity.”

While many are calling the victory “Miracle on Ice 2.0,” Whitlock says it’s closer to “the empire striking back.”

He plays a montage of various American Olympic competitors, including freestyle skier Hunter Hess, figure skater Amber Glenn, and alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, expressing conflicting emotions over competing for the United States.

But despite these “woke white athletes,” Whitlock says, the dominant feeling of this Winter Olympics is one of pride, largely due to the men’s hockey team and its historic victory.

“They wanted to woke up this Winter Olympics, and the empire struck back,” he says.

“This hockey team, Team USA, and the patriotic national anthem and the whole feel-good moment going on in sports — that’s what we’ll remember.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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Winter storms this year didn’t just freeze roads. They exposed a harder truth: Government can no longer reliably perform the most basic functions of a modern society.

Across the country, public systems failed under predictable stress. In New York, snowstorms everyone saw coming left streets impassable for weeks. In Nashville, an ice storm knocked out power and left more than 100,000 people in the dark for days. In Washington, D.C., officials are still scrambling to contain the largest wastewater spill in city history, with repairs expected to take months.

The resilience America needs will not come from another government task force. It will come from policies that empower Americans to secure their own energy future.

These are not isolated mishaps. They are recurring failures — signs of national decay.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Americans endured an average of 11 hours of power outages in 2024. Eleven hours in the dark in the wealthiest, most technologically advanced country on Earth. Reliability is slipping while electricity prices climb. Families pay more and get less, even as utility companies demand higher rates.

That path is unsustainable for families already stretched thin. It is dangerous for small businesses operating on razor-thin margins. And it is a strategic liability for a country competing with communist China in the AI race.

Artificial intelligence data centers consume electricity on a staggering scale. A single data center campus under construction in Texas is expected to use more power than the city of Chicago. If America intends to lead the world in AI — and defeat China in the defining competition of this century — it first must lead in energy production.

Yet Americans are asking an obvious question: If government can’t plow streets or keep a sewer system running, why should anyone trust it to keep the lights on?

The Trump administration is right to pursue an all-of-the-above energy strategy. We have no choice but to build nuclear, expand natural gas, and unleash domestic production across the board. But large power plants take years — sometimes decades — to come online.

America needs more energy now.

The fastest, cheapest way to add flexible capacity is battery storage.

Home batteries can be bought off the shelf and installed in days. They can be charged by rooftop solar, small-scale generators, or power from the local utility. They store energy when supply is strong and release it when demand spikes. They keep homes running when the grid fails. And when thousands of them are networked together, they can function like a virtual power plant — pushing electricity back onto the grid to stabilize it during emergencies.

RELATED: How Americans can prepare for the worst — before it’s too late

Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images

Instead of relying entirely on aging transmission lines and centralized monopoly utilities that repeatedly fail, Americans can build resilience at home and in their neighborhoods. Power generated and stored closer to where it is used means fewer cascading failures, less strain on fragile infrastructure, and a more reliable grid for everyone.

In other words, instead of waiting on distant bureaucracies, Americans can take ownership of their own energy security.

If government can no longer guarantee basic services, it should at least stop blocking the people who can help provide them. Regulators should remove barriers to battery deployment. Market rules that sideline distributed energy should be updated. And Big Tech companies demanding enormous new power loads should help fund home battery programs instead of shifting those costs onto working families.

The resilience America needs will not come from another government task force. It will come from policies that empower the people to secure their own energy future.

This winter delivered the warning. We cannot assume someone else will keep the lights on. But with the right policies, the American people can.

​Opinion & analysis, Power grid, Power outages, Infrastructure, Winter storm, Power plants, China, Artificial intelligence, Department of energy, Batteries, New york city, Data centers 

Most Americans don’t spend much time thinking about health care policy. They don’t have to. They feel it every year when premiums rise, deductibles climb, and another chunk of their paycheck disappears into a system that rarely seems to work in their favor.

American health care is expensive, confusing, and quietly disempowering. Money moves constantly — from workers to employers to insurers to administrators and eventually to providers — but too rarely stays with the people who earned it. When the bills arrive, families are told what they owe, not what they saved or controlled.

A system that won’t let people save for their own medical needs is not protecting them. It is protecting itself.

That should bother us.

Health savings accounts were designed to fix part of this imbalance by giving people something rare in modern health care: ownership. An HSA lets individuals set aside money for medical expenses, invest it if they choose, and carry it with them year after year. The money is theirs. It doesn’t expire. It isn’t reassigned. Institutions do not manage it on their behalf.

Ownership changes behavior. People who control their own money plan differently. They ask questions. They think long-term. They stop acting like passive participants in a system that treats them as cost centers instead of decision-makers.

Yet millions of Americans are barred from opening an HSA.

Not because they don’t need one or cannot afford health care. It’s simply because the law says they are not allowed.

Under federal rules written more than two decades ago, HSA eligibility is tied to a narrow category of insurance plans. As a result, more than 140 million Americans — including many with traditional employer coverage and rising out-of-pocket costs — are blocked from saving for health care the way they save for retirement or education.

In no other area of American life do we accept a rule that says: You may pay continually, but you may not save.

No one is barred from opening a retirement account because of the kind of pension an employer offers. No one is blocked from saving for college because of where a child goes to school. Yet in health care — often the largest and most unpredictable expense a family faces — ownership remains conditional.

That is no accident. It’s the predictable result of a system built around institutions rather than individuals. Complexity gets rewarded. Intermediaries profit from it. Ordinary people are expected to navigate the maze without meaningful control over the dollars they contribute.

Prices often remain opaque until after care is delivered, which means families learn what something costs only when the bill arrives — too late to make an informed choice.

RELATED: Would you want AI making decisions for your doctor while you are under the knife in the operating room?

PhonlamaiPhoto via iStock/Getty Images

The result is a system where spending rises, trust erodes, and prevention gets talked about far more than it gets practiced.

Expanding access to health savings accounts would not solve every problem in health care. But it would address one of the most basic ones: the absence of real personal agency.

The fix is not complicated. It requires trusting people with their own money.

Every American should be able to open an HSA, regardless of insurance type.

This is not a call for a new entitlement or government program. HSAs are privately owned accounts. They rely on responsibility, not mandates. They rest on a simple belief: When people have control, most will use it wisely.

That assumption may feel unfashionable in modern policymaking. It still reflects how Americans live. People save for retirement. They save for education. They save for emergencies. Health care should not be the lone exception — especially when the costs are so high and the stakes so personal.

A system that won’t let people save for their own medical needs is not protecting them. It is protecting itself.

If we want health care that costs less and works better, the answer is not more management. It is more ownership.

The real question is not whether Americans can be trusted with their health care savings. It is why we have spent so long pretending they can’t.

​Opinion & analysis, Health savings account, Healthcare, Congress, Regulations, Freedom, Money, Hospitals, Health insurance, Planning, Bills, Insurance premiums 

Britain’s media no longer tells the public what matters — it tells them what is safe to be angry about. A single word can dominate headlines for weeks, while violent crimes that challenge elite dogma quietly fade from view.

That imbalance was exposed recently after petrochemicals billionaire and Manchester United chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe came under heavy criticism for saying Britain has been “colonized by immigrants.”

After following her home, he stabbed her 23 times, later celebrating with other asylum seekers using a government-issued debit card.

Ratcliffe was not referring to a specific crime. He was making a broad claim about mass immigration and national cohesion. Yet the media response to his phrasing was immediate and intense — especially when contrasted with the muted coverage of serious crimes committed by illegal migrants around the same time.

Defining issue

Mass migration is the defining issue in British public life. It has accelerated demographic change, worsened the housing crisis, fueled sectarianism, and introduced de facto blasphemy norms shielding Islam from criticism. More troubling still, it has coincided with the arrival of violent criminals and sexual predators, often housed at public expense in struggling communities.

One recent example is Ahmad Mulakhil, an Afghan asylum seeker convicted of abducting and raping a 12-year-old girl. The crime was horrific. The coverage was fleeting. It barely registered in the national conversation.

That silence makes the backlash against Ratcliffe revealing.

In a Sky News interview, Ratcliffe gave voice to a concern widely shared but rarely permitted: that housing tens of thousands of young men from the developing world — often with minimal scrutiny — has placed women and girls at greater risk.

Rather than debate that claim, the media fixated on his language — his use of the word “colonized.”

Hysterical reaction

Ratcliffe was branded racist, greedy, and offensive. The BBC treated his remark as a national emergency. Prime Minister Keir Starmer demanded an apology. There was no serious engagement with the substance of his argument — only tone policing and moral posturing.

Some critics accused Ratcliffe of hypocrisy because Manchester United employs foreign players. The argument is so stupid it barely needs rebutting. Bruno Fernandes did not arrive illegally via people smugglers. He entered Britain lawfully to perform a skilled role at the highest level. Conflating elite athletes with illegal migrants crossing the Channel is deliberate obfuscation.

Misdirected outrage

Ratcliffe’s comments came amid a series of crimes that underscore the stakes of Britain’s immigration failures. Deng Chol Majek, a Sudanese national who entered the U.K. illegally while posing as a teenager, was sentenced to 29 years for the murder of Rhiannon Whyte. Majek lived in a taxpayer-funded hotel where Whyte worked. After following her home, he stabbed her 23 times, later celebrating with other asylum seekers using a government-issued debit card.

As someone who lives in Britain, I can attest that Ratcliffe’s description reflects visible demographic change. In parts of Birmingham, white British population has fallen into the low single digits in terms of percentage, reflecting how sharply local demographics have shifted. According to the 2021 Census, London’s white British population has fallen to 36.8%, with most boroughs now majority non-white British — a dramatic shift from 1961, when it stood at 98%. Similar patterns exist in Leicester, Luton, and Slough. Projections suggest white British people will become a national minority by 2063.

RELATED: The Great Replacement is real — and happening to Ireland

Paul Faith/Getty Images

‘Colonize them for life’

Against this backdrop, outrage over vocabulary feels grotesquely misplaced.

Since the turn of the millennium, Britain has welcomed millions from the developing world, often driven by what can only be described as suicidal empathy. The consequences have been deadly. The past decade alone has seen Islamist terrorists and the children of recent migrants murder British soldiers, concert-goers, schoolchildren, and a sitting member of parliament.

Yet we are told the real scandal is a word.

The reaction to Ratcliffe’s remark exposes a familiar hypocrisy. Colonization appears regularly on protest signs, in activist poetry, and even on the London Underground. Immigrants themselves use it freely. As one French-Algerian man told Rebel News, “They’ve colonized us for 132 years, and now we’re going to colonize them for life.”

As the meme puts it: It’s cool when they do it.

Ratcliffe had every right to speak plainly about his country’s decline. The fixation on his phrasing is not a sign of moral seriousness but of moral evasion — and it allows those in power to avoid confronting the real and growing costs of their own policies.

​Uk, Britian, Mass migration, Colonizer, Crime, Migrant crime, Uk demographics, Lifestyle, The rape of europa, Keir starmer 

Federal officials said they rescued a 13-year-old girl from sexual and physical assault from a man who groomed her online and lured her to a California motel.

Eighteen-year-old Matthew Edward Pysher of Bangor, Pennsylvania, traveled by plane to Los Angeles on Feb. 20 to meet the victim near her home and take her to a motel in Castaic, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release.

In the motel room, investigators found condoms, a knife, lubricant, razor blades, bloody tissues, and a boarding pass.

Pysher had been grooming the girl for several months after meeting her in a chat room on the Discord app for people suffering from mental illness, according to prosecutors.

The girl’s mother contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Feb. 10 because she believed her daughter was being coerced into harming herself by a man named Matthew.

A suicide note from the girl was found by her family, according to the criminal complaint.

Investigators were able to trace Pysher to the motel room, where they found the teenager hiding in the bathroom. She allegedly told them that Pysher had used a knife to repeatedly cut her and that they had engaged in sexual conduct.

In the motel room, investigators found condoms, a knife, lubricant, razor blades, bloody tissues, and a boarding pass. They also found near the girl’s cell phone a Faraday bag, which is used to block electric transmissions.

The girl said he told her they were going to commit suicide together by jumping off the top of a hotel.

Investigators said Pysher had groomed the girl to send him material of herself committing sexual acts and also images of herself committing self-harm in the months before flying out to meet her. The criminal complaint had screenshots of texts he allegedly sent her where he explicitly discussed cutting instructions.

Pysher was charged with travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.

RELATED: ‘Pure evil’: Feds charge alleged leader of ‘unthinkably depraved,’ violent group involved in child sextortion

Investigators determined that Pysher was a part of a “nihilistic violent extremist” ideology that sought to manipulate vulnerable young people into self-harm. Members of an NVE group called 764 have coerced victims into hurting others and even committing suicide.

First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said the case should serve as a warning to parents with children on the internet.

“If your children have access to use the internet, sadistic predators may have access to your kids,” he said. “Law enforcement will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute those who seek to harm children. We advise parents to keep their kids offline.”

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Frida Baby, a top-selling baby and postpartum care brand, came under significant public criticism and backlash early this month for its use of sexual innuendos in its marketing.

The controversy erupted in early February 2026 when a now-deleted social media post promoting Frida Baby’s rectal thermometer with the caption, “This is the closest your husband’s gonna get to a threesome,” sparked intense backlash, prompting the rapid resurfacing and viral spread of other old advertisements, posts, and packaging with similar suggestive phrases on platforms like X and TikTok.

“This story is extremely disappointing to me because I and every other mom I know has used the Frida Baby products,” says BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie breaks down the controversy, exposing what’s really fueling Frida Baby’s “sick campaign.”

“You just have to wonder what is going through the mind of someone that is, like, creating the packaging and marketing for something that, you know, detects a fever in your child and thinks threesome,” Allie says of the social media post that triggered the controversy.

She also displays other resurfaced controversial Frida Baby marketing examples, including packaging for a touchless thermometer that reads “How about a quickie?”; humidifier instructions titled “I get turned on easily”; and a nasal aspirator box featuring the phrase “I’m a [power] sucker.”

But the advertisement Allie finds most “disturbing” comes from an Instagram post promoting the brand’s nose sucker. The since-deleted post features a baby with snot on his/her face with the caption, “What happens when you pull out too early.”

“People kind of dug up who their marketing team was. … It’s men and women on this team, but it did seem like it was a male team that was in charge of marketing, which I just think is odd,” says Allie. “Like this is obviously a female brand. I’m not saying that you can’t hire men at all, but why would men know what attracts a woman to a particular product?”

Frida Baby responded to the backlash, but “they certainly didn’t apologize,” she adds.

“I just don’t understand when it became acceptable to use kids as fodder for sexual jokes — like publicly, commercially. … There are just perverts out there who love this kind of stuff, and it just ends up like infesting people’s brains, and it changes how we talk about children and how we think about this stuff,” Allie laments.

“I really just think it’s glossing over one of the biggest evils in the world, which is the sexualization [and] objectification of children.”

Christians for the last 2,000 years, Allie says, have been the ones to call out child exploitation for the evil that it is, and she encourages current believers to continue this tradition.

“We still have a responsibility to do that,” she urges.

“We really shouldn’t have any level of tolerance of this kind of stuff, which is really a bummer because some of [Frida Baby’s] products are super effective, and it just wasn’t necessary. I think they could have been very successful without this, and unfortunately they’ve normalized something really wicked.”

To learn more, watch the episode above.

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The president told Americans that their electricity prices will drop if they live near Big Tech data centers.

During his State of the Union address, President Trump spoke on the electrical bills of Americans who live near hubs where tech companies are quickly building AI infrastructure that require massive amounts of energy.

‘They’re going to produce their own electricity.’

Over the last two years, companies like Amazon, Apple, and Meta have all announced plans to build sprawling campuses that will require dedicated power sources or risk overwhelming local grids. In some cases, states have begun planning small modular nuclear reactors to supplement power and therefore attract tech companies (like Amazon). Where these reactors aren’t built, the consumer will pay downstream.

During the State of the Union, Trump explained surging energy costs from heightened demand is a big concern for Americans in those areas, and he plans to do something about it.

“Tonight, I’m pleased to announce that I have negotiated the new rate payer protection pledge,” Trump began.

“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs.”

“They can build their own power plants as part of their factory so that no one’s prices will go up, and in many cases, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially down,” the president continued. “This is a unique strategy never used in this country before.”

RELATED: Melania’s bold AI message to America’s youth: ‘Use AI as a tool, but do not let it replace your personal intelligence’

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

“I’m telling them, they can build their own plant,” Trump added after saying the current electrical grids could never handle the power that is needed.

“They’re going to produce their own electricity. It will ensure the company’s ability to get electricity, while at the same time, lowering prices of electricity for you.”

Two weeks prior, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) announced the Guaranteeing Rate Insulation from Data Centers Act, aimed at preventing price increases for Americans via data centers.

According to Hawley’s website, the act will “guarantee consumers [are] first priority” on the grid, ensuring new data centers get their power from separate sources, while establishing new transparency measures around data center utility usage.

“Data centers never sleep,” said James Poulos, editorial director of Return. “They eat energy to run the computers, and they drink water to cool the computers.”

The more the public uses AI services and apps, he explained, “The more energy they require.”

“Trump is moving to make assurances that, whatever your relationship to AI, you won’t be priced as a consumer out of local energy markets wherever data centers appear.”

A Department of War contractor told Return that Trump’s plan could turn what is a potential strain on the grid into a “long-term advantage” if handled correctly.

“Instead of massive AI data centers pulling huge amounts of electricity from an already aging system and driving up costs for everyday customers, requiring major tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to build and supply their own power forces them to take responsibility for the energy they consume,” explained Tyler Saltsman, CEO of EdgeRunner AI.

Saltsman added, “That means private money, not taxpayer dollars, would fund new power plants, whether natural gas, nuclear, or large-scale renewables, which could ease pressure on the public grid and even add extra supply in some regions.”

RELATED: Watch the State of the Union tonight on BlazeTV’s YouTube Channel

The Trump administration has been incredibly open about its pursuits in artificial intelligence in the president’s second term.

Last November, the Department of Energy launched Genesis Mission as a “national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing challenges.”

Then in December, the federal government launched the Tech Force and asked for the public to apply for 1,000 advanced roles. The job listings procured a whopping 25,000 applications.

This has all transpired as the administration has partnered with different American AI companies — including Elon Musk’s xAI — to help with the handling of government operations as well as the aforementioned goal of American AI supremacy.

The latter has been of particular focus for government agencies like the Department of War, which has been focused on getting ahead of the Chinese communist government, which has appeared to have made leaps and bounds in AI over the last year.

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In President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union speech of his second term in office, his tariff policies were sure to be mentioned. And, as President Trump noted, February has been a significant month for tariffs, with many new developments occurring just days before the anticipated speech.

On Tuesday night, President Trump explained his plan for tariffs in the future and explained his critique of the recent Supreme Court decision striking down a particular use of a particular type of IEEPA tariffs.

‘Congressional action will not be necessary; it’s already time-tested and approved.’

Trump began by recounting the overall success of his administration’s tariff policies since the beginning of his second term, noting that the United States is “making a lot of money”: “The big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly and 22 Nobel Prize winners and economists didn’t. They got it totally wrong. They got it really wrong.”

However, these policies faced a challenge from the Supreme Court last week, as Trump lamented in his speech: “And then just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court. It just came down. Very unfortunate ruling.”

RELATED: Trump finally gets his answer on legality of tariffs in new SCOTUS decision

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Despite this potential setback, Trump offered his assurances that many companies wish to “keep the deal that they already made … knowing that the legal power that I, as president, have to make a new deal could be far worse for them, and therefore they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement.”

Last Friday, the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump ruled that Trump’s tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were not within the president’s authority. As a result, Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs seemed doomed less than a year after they were announced.

Trump emphasized on Friday that despite his disagreement with the court over the IEEPA tariffs, the ruling had in fact clarified and strengthened the president’s authority under other statutes, including the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the Trade Act of 1974, and the Tariff Act of 1930. On Tuesday night, he said:

So despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful, country-saving … peace-protecting — many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs … will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes. And they have been tested for a long time. They’re a little more complex, but they’re actually probably better, leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before. Congressional action will not be necessary; it’s already time-tested and approved.

On top of that, Trump signed a proclamation ordering the initiation of a temporary 10% global tariff, which he announced on Saturday would be raised to 15%. The 10% import surcharge will be effective for 150 days to “address fundamental payments problems.”

However, as of Tuesday, the BBC reported that the additional tariff rate was only instated at the previously established 10%, citing a U.S. Customs and Border Protection document published Monday.

RELATED: Watch the State of the Union tonight on BlazeTV’s YouTube channel

Concluding his remarks on tariffs, Trump said, “And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.”

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​Politics, Trump, President trump, Tariffs, Supreme court, Scotus, Global tariffs, Donald trump, State of the union, Sotu 

During President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night, he highlighted his administration’s successful immigration enforcement efforts as the Department of Homeland Security shutdown entered its 11th day.

Trump called the past year “a turnaround for the ages” in the United States after the prior administration allowed “11,888 murderers” to enter the U.S.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

“After four years in which millions and millions of illegal aliens poured across our borders, totally unvetted and unchecked,” Trump stated, “we now have the strongest and most secure border in American history by far. In the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States. But we will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”

ICE has hired 12,000 additional officers and agents. During Trump’s first year back in office, his administration has removed an estimated 3 million illegal aliens, including 2.2 million self-deportations and 675,000 deportations.

Trump was joined at the SOTU address by the parents of Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old National Guard soldier who was fatally shot in Washington, D.C., allegedly by an Afghan man allowed into the country during former President Joe Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal.

Dalilah Coleman, a child who was left with critical and life-altering injuries at 5 years old as a result of a multi-car wreck caused by an illegal alien truck driver, also attended the event. Trump called on Congress to pass Dalilah’s Law, which would bar any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.

RELATED: Exclusive: ‘Best of the best’: DHS torches leftist media myths about ICE training

Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Trump slammed Democrats for the ongoing DHS shutdown, which prompted the agency to implement emergency measures to conserve resources, including halting all Federal Emergency Management Agency non-disaster-related response efforts, Global Entry, and airport police escorts for members of Congress.

“As we speak, Democrats in this chamber have cut off all funding for the Department of Homeland Security. … Now they have closed the agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorists and murderers. Tonight, I am demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the border security, Homeland Security of the United States,” Trump said.

The president urged lawmakers to demonstrate their commitment to prioritizing the protection of American citizens.

“If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” Trump told lawmakers.

Republican lawmakers stood up in response, while most Democrats remained seated.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Trump told Democrats who refused to stand. He also called on lawmakers to “end deadly sanctuary cities” and pass the SAVE America Act, which aims to keep noncitizens from voting in federal elections.

RELATED: Watch the State of the Union tonight on BlazeTV’s YouTube channel

Photo by DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

The DHS previously criticized Democratic lawmakers for causing three shutdowns that have impacted the agency.

“This is the third time that Democrat politicians have shut down this department during the 119th Congress,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stated Sunday. “Shutdowns have real-world consequences, not just for the men and women of DHS and their families who go without a paycheck, but it endangers our national security.”

Negotiations to end the shutdown appear to be stalled, with Democrats demanding ICE reforms.

“It is our view that immigration enforcement in this country should be fair, it should be just, and it should be humane,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) stated last week.

“That’s not what’s happening now in the United States of America, and that’s why ICE needs to be reformed in a dramatic, bold, meaningful, and transformational manner,” Jeffries continued. “And if that doesn’t happen, the DHS funding bill will not move forward.”

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Partap Singh, an Indian national who illegally stole into the United States in 2022, reportedly managed to obtain a commercial driver’s license from California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom’s Department of Motor Vehicles.

On June 20, 2024, Singh allegedly caused a multicar pileup that left numerous Americans grievously injured, including then-5-year-old Dalilah Coleman.

‘Against all odds, she is now in the first grade, learning to walk.’

During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, President Donald Trump recognized Dalilah and her struggle for a normal life after the horrific incident, adding that legislation is in the works that would hopefully spare future Americans from a similar fate.

“Doctors said Dalilah would never be able to walk or talk have a good life,” said the president.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Dalilah suffered a broken femur and skull fractures in the accident; was left in a coma for three weeks; and has since been diagnosed with both diplegic cerebral palsy and global developmental delay for which she will require lifelong therapy.

“But against all odds, she is now in the first grade, learning to walk — and she’s here this evening with her dad, Marcus — a fantastic man.”

Trump added that Dalilah is a “great inspiration.”

Dalilah, lifted and kissed by her father, smiled and waved to the president and officials below.

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Department of Homeland Security

“Dalilah Coleman’s life was forever changed when an illegal alien driving an 18-wheeler slammed into her and her family. This tragedy was entirely preventable,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in September.

“How many more innocent people must become victims before Gavin Newsom stops playing games with American lives? DHS is working around the clock to remove dangerous aliens — like Singh — who have no right to be in the U.S.,” added Noem.

After noting that many of the illegal aliens who have taken to American roads “do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger, or location,” Trump called on congressional lawmakers to “pass what we will call the Dalilah Law, barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.”

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During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Donald Trump referred to some of the historic peace deals that he has brokered between warring nations, then turned his attention to Iran and its “sinister ambitions.”

The president suggested that Iranians want to make a deal but have yet to say “those secret words: We will never have a nuclear weapon.”

“My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy,” said the president, “but one thing is certain: I will never allow the world’s number-one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can’t let that happen — and no nation should ever doubt America’s resolve.”

Trump noted further, “I will make peace wherever I can, but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must.”

Recent polling indicates that American voters are not particularly keen on getting embroiled in another Middle Eastern conflict. Their elected representatives, on the other hand, appeared receptive to the president’s discussion of possible military actions against the Shiite country.

In recent weeks, Trump has assembled the greatest U.S. military air presence in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq invasion.

‘It will be something easily won.’

Negotiators from Tehran and the U.S. are scheduled to convene in Geneva on Thursday for what some suspect might be the last attempt at a deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

A regional source familiar with the talks told CNN, “This Thursday will decide everything — a war or a deal.”

A potential sticking point might be whether the Iranians are willing to commit to putting off uranium enrichment entirely.

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Abbas Araghchi, the country’s foreign minister, recently suggested that is a nonstarter, as the county has invested heavily in the technology and its progress to date is supposedly a matter of national pride.

Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, noted last week, “The Americans say, ‘Let’s negotiate over your nuclear energy, and the result of the negotiation is supposed to be that you do not have this energy!'”

“If that’s the case, there is no room for negotiation,” continued Khamenei.

Trump has reportedly received several briefings on military options, including decapitation strikes on Iran’s political and military leaders with the goal of regime change and/or strikes on nuclear and ballistic-missile facilities.

Multiple reports have alleged that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine and other military leaders warned the president and top officials in such briefings that a military campaign against Tehran carries significant risks, including another protracted conflict.

Trump noted in a Truth Social post on Monday, however, that “if a decision is made on going against Iran at a Military level, it is [Caine’s] opinion that it will be something easily won.”

“Everything that has been written about a potential War with Iran has been written incorrectly, and purposefully so,” wrote Trump.

The president added, “I am the one that makes the decision, I would rather have a Deal than not but, if we don’t make a Deal, it will be a very bad day for that Country and, very sadly, its people, because they are great and wonderful, and something like this should never have happened to them.”

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