Category: blaze media

On July 13, 2024, President Donald J. Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Since then, the threats and attacks on conservative activists, media personalities, and Trump himself have only escalated.

There have been three other incidents in which armed gunmen have gotten close to the president or his properties. In September 2024, Ryan Routh hid in the bushes outside the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach with the intent to shoot the president. In February 2026, an armed man was shot and killed after crossing a security perimeter at Mar-a-Lago. And in April, a gunman opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

‘I’ll kill you also Donald Trump.’

Then a gunman assassinated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk during an appearance at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.

In addition to these active threats and shootings, the Department of Justice has opened prosecutions in dozens of cases of individuals making online threats against politicians, including nearly 20 for threats against President Trump, since January 2025.

Those online threats against conservatives continue. Just this week, Jerusalem News Syndicate first made public the case of a Kansas man alleged to have made specific death threats against President Trump and conservative podcaster and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro.

Kansas Highway Patrol arrested Korby Aaren Strube, a 29-year-old resident of Horton, Kansas, last week, according to a Brown County sheriff’s employee with knowledge of the situation. He was taken into custody on a warrant from Palm Beach County, Florida. The warrant was for alleged threats Strube made against Shapiro, a resident of Palm Beach County, according to a probable cause affidavit reviewed by Blaze News.

RELATED: FAA contractor charged for allegedly threatening to ‘kill you — Donald John Trump’

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The affidavit describes an investigation into the matter that began on August 4 after a security firm that provides protection to Shapiro alerted the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office to a series of threats posted on X on August 1 by a user named “Kory” with the handle @Ksqcrzk. X has since suspended the account.

The affidavit goes on to quote the since-deleted alleged posts, which included threats like, “I’m going to kill ben [redacted] and he’s not going to be a-live.” In other alleged posts, the user cited anti-Semitism as the reason the user wanted to kill Shapiro and gave a countdown that culminated on the feast of Yom Kippur.

The threats against Shapiro also included threats against President Trump and former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama. According to the affidavit, the poster wrote, “I’m still killing [redacted] and I don’t expect to get away with that … I’ll kill you also Donald Trump.”

During the course of the investigation, the affidavit claims, a forensic analysis of the digital trail for the posts — including information gained from X Corp., Google, and Starlink through a series of requests and warrants — tied the accounts to Strube.

The affidavit also describes the first meeting law enforcement had with Strube in Kansas, when a Brown County undersheriff and Secret Service special agent went to Strube’s residence in connection with the alleged threats made against the president.

The affidavit states that a consensual interview with Strube took place at the dining room table of his residence with his parents present. It further claims that during this interview, Strube admitted to posting the threats against Trump and the Obamas.

The defendant also claimed during that interview that his accounts had been hacked, the affidavit says.

RELATED: Tyler Robinson finally headed for murder trial nearly a year after Charlie Kirk was assassinated

Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

In addition to Shapiro, Trump, and the Obamas, the affidavit claims another account allegedly controlled by Strube continued the countdown toward Yom Kippur with threats against other unnamed individuals. X has also suspended that account.

When contacted by Blaze News with the allegations in the affidavit, a Secret Service spokesman said, “We are aware of the threats made in this case but do not comment on matters of protective intelligence.”

“It’s no secret that threats against Ben have increased over the past several years, requiring security to be ramped up,” a spokesman for the Daily Wire told Blaze News. “It’s an unfortunate reality of the current state of American politics. We are grateful for everyone involved in keeping Ben safe and ensuring justice is served.”

Inquiries to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office, Brown County Sheriff’s Office, and the Kansas Highway Patrol to determine whether Strube has been extradited to Florida have not been answered as of publication of this article.

The White House and Department of Justice have not responded to requests for comment.

Blaze News attempted to reach the defendant via two email addresses outlined in the affidavit, but no response has been received.

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​Assassination attempt, Barack obama, Ben shapiro, Donald trump, Michelle obama, Politics 

The White House and Congress promise that data centers will not cost consumers a dime. That is like a husband pledging not to beat his wife as his fist draws blood.

The politicians who spent a year gaslighting the public about data centers’ power use now acknowledge the problem and promise to cover grid upgrades. But even as they propose legislation and tout a nonbinding industry pledge, data centers are already costing consumers. It is impossible for them not to.

The growing number and size of planned hyper-scale facilities will push electricity costs even higher.

This week, the House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act (H.R. 9340) by a 417-3 vote. The bill establishes a federal standard that state regulators must consider but need not adopt. It would require large-load customers to cover the “full, incremental cost” of new or accelerated grid upgrades — not a full share of the existing system’s embedded fixed costs. That limitation helps explain the industry’s support.

If adopted and enforced, the standard could protect ratepayers. But utilities and data center companies already bury infrastructure costs among a region’s general power needs. A serious proposal would resemble Oklahoma’s House Bill 3724, which stalled in committee this year. It requires a high-demand facility to fund all infrastructure upgrades and bars utilities from allocating any cost of serving it to other retail ratepayers. That language closes the loopholes Congress leaves open.

The costs are not theoretical. Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s independent market monitor, estimated that data center load accounted for $9.3 billion, or 63%, of the increase in revenues from the 2025/2026 capacity auction. It also found that data center load in the next two auctions increased customers’ bills by $13.8 billion. The monitor warns that the near-term impact will be even larger unless PJM addresses the problem.

PJM operates the nation’s largest competitive wholesale electricity market, serving about 67 million people across 13 states and the District of Columbia. Its data center costs reach far beyond the communities hosting the facilities.

A Union of Concerned Scientists report identified $4.4 billion in transmission projects approved in 2024 across seven PJM states. Utility filings do not separate data center connection costs from transmission costs spread among all customers. In practice, those costs are folded into higher electricity rates.

The effects of Virginia’s data center boom are acutely felt in Maryland and West Virginia. Maryland’s Office of People’s Counsel says data centers — mostly outside the state — caused about $9.3 billion of a $12.5 billion capacity-cost increase in one estimate. PJM’s capacity price jumped from $28.92 per megawatt-day for 2024-2025 to $269.92 for 2025-2026 — more than 800% — and has since reached about $333.

RELATED: Big AI broke the internet. Now it wants everyone else to fix it.

Joe Lamberti/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The growing number and size of planned hyper-scale facilities will push electricity costs even higher. It is far from clear that their products can justify trillions of dollars in capital spending while covering the full cost of their power. If the economics depend on shifting costs to the public, the industry’s pledge is worthless.

The bill and pledge also ignore the use of eminent domain to take property or easements for transmission lines serving data centers. NextEra Energy estimates its portion of the 500-kilovolt Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link will cost $960 million. The project would cross parts of four states on its way to Northern Virginia’s data center corridor. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis estimates that West Virginia ratepayers could pay more than $570 million over the line’s 40-year life.

Meanwhile, hyper-scalers enjoy favorable federal tax treatment and lavish state and local abatements. Corporate income-tax receipts fell 25% during the first 11 months of fiscal year 2026, partly because the 2025 reconciliation law expanded deductions for business investment. Those provisions were not written exclusively for AI, but this capital-intensive industry is well positioned to use them. The boom is not purely a market phenomenon. Government favors are helping fuel it.

The first step in fixing a problem is admitting that you caused it. Until industry leaders and their allies in Washington confront the real cost of centralized AI, their promises about protecting consumers deserve no credibility.

​Data centers, Eminent domain, Legislation, Opinion & analysis, Artificial intelligence, Congress, Big tech 

Freedom of speech is still the law of the land in the United States, but on college campuses, that is apparently up for interpretation.

Look no further than the University of California and its sprawling system of 10 campuses across the state. One set of policies and standards governs all of its campuses, and with it comes a ban on “misgendering” and adhering to biological reality.

‘UC’s policy goes too far in restricting protected speech.’

Under UC’s “Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment” policy — which is available in four different languages — sexual harassment is described as including conduct like “acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility based on gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex- or gender-stereotyping, or sexual orientation.”

In its FAQ section of the same document, “intentional and repeated use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s gender identity (i.e., misgendering)” is also considered harassment. The policy even extends its harassment definition to include the use of a person’s “dead name,” which in many cases means one’s legal name.

So long as the conduct is “unwelcome,” students or faculty who violate the policy are subject to discipline, including dismissal, aka expulsion.

Fortunately, a federal judge has stepped in and entered a preliminary injunction that bars UC from enforcing its policy for the time being, following a lawsuit from Defending Education.

In court documents, the Central District of California Southern Division’s decision included an example of what UC considers to be harassment.

The school said that harassment based on gender identity includes “when a transgender man is intentionally and repeatedly called by his dead name (i.e., refers to a name that a transgender person was given at birth but that they no longer use), or intentionally and repeatedly referred to by ‘Miss’ or ‘Ms.,’ by a professor in an intentionally mocking manner.”

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Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images

The court also made its decision based on precedent, citing two recent cases that establish “UC’s policy goes too far in restricting protected speech.”

In Bates v. Pakseresht, the court noted that adoptive parents being forced into “affirming” a child’s sexual orientation and gender identity (including preferred pronouns) “quite clearly restrict[ed] and compel[led] speech based on both content and viewpoint.”

Furthermore, in Defending Education v. Olentangy, the court explained, a school district was prevented from enforcing a similar policy against Defending Education’s members.

The court documents from the latest Defending Education lawsuit also pointed to training that “UC students must also complete,” described as sexual violence and harassment, anti-discrimination, prevention, and education training, or SHAPE.

The lawsuit said the training formerly included the following scenario as an example of a hostile environment:

My name is Mona, and I am transgender. My classmate Jane continues to call me James, which was my name before I transitioned. Jane refers to me as a man and complains when I use the restroom. I asked her to stop, but she does not. I feel very disrespected and want this to stop.

The lawsuit notes, however, that “UC declares that this example is no longer included in the SHAPE training.”

RELATED: Campus free speech is alive — barely

Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

To the court, all of this evidence was sufficient enough to grant the injunction.

Nicole Neily, president and founder of Defending Education, told Blaze News in a statement that her organization is grateful for the district court’s decision against “the University of California system’s coercive speech policy against our members.”

Neily also called it “unconstitutional” for public universities to compel student speech.

“We will continue to defend this principle in California and other schools across the country as needed,” she added.

UC did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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​University of california, Transgenderism, Defending education, Freedom of speech, Politics 

I quite like to sit down. Sometimes you will find me folded into an armchair with a bowl of cereal, reading about Mongol savages, convinced this is the absolute pinnacle of human civilization.

The medical establishment considers this exact activity a suicidal ritual akin to swallowing rat poison. Somewhere around 2010, academic researchers decided that resting your gluteal muscles against a soft cushion carries the same lethality as huffing two packs of unfiltered Lucky Strikes before breakfast.

The true goal of the anti-sitting crusade, I suggest, is to eliminate guilt-free leisure.

Chair scare

The “sitting is the new smoking” campaign remains one of the most absurd public health exaggerations of the modern era. Tobacco smoke deposits thousands of chemical compounds directly into pulmonary tissue. It paralyzes cilia and mutates cellular structures until tumors bloom like bad weeds.

Chair usage, by contrast, involves resting your skeleton on furniture so your knee joints don’t turn into sawdust. Equating a plush sofa to a habit that systematically destroys internal organs requires a complete detachment from objective reality.

Wellness brand PR teams latched onto this ridiculous metaphor with ruthless efficiency. Fear sells foam rollers. It sells treadmill desks and squatty potties. The human brain panics when it thinks a routine daily comfort threatens to shut it down completely. And panic prevents us from seeing things clearly.

In 1953, British epidemiologist Jerry Morris published a famous study comparing London bus drivers to bus conductors, noting drivers suffered more heart attacks. The medical industry extracted a single hysterical conclusion from that data, completely overlooking the fact that drivers dealt with heavy traffic and nasty fumes all day long. Yes, conductors moved more, but they also faced far fewer physical and psychological stressors.

Same old sit

This modern panic relies entirely on the illusion that our ancestors lived lives of continuous, unrelenting activity. My grandfather spent decades farming in Ireland, a vocation urban health gurus idealize as the gold standard of natural human movement. But after a long morning of plowing fields, he also sat in his rocking chair and didn’t move a muscle for hours on end. Medieval peasants sat on dirt floors for hours mending nets, weaving wool, and waiting out brutal European winters. The historical record is clear: Humans have always taken advantage of the opportunity to park their posteriors on the nearest stable surface.

In 1880, industrial factory workers put in 14-hour shifts standing on wooden planks. They suffered massive joint degradation and chronic physical exhaustion. Only the most deluded back then claimed standing was a magical fountain of youth. Rest was considered a hard-earned luxury that kept the body from breaking down prematurely. The modern obsession with perpetual motion recasts a basic act of recovery as a moral failing.

Panic peddlers act as if the human frame dissolves into liquid sludge the moment butt meets bench. They publish studies claiming that six hours of daily sedentary behavior will trigger a catastrophic metabolic meltdown while conveniently ignoring the bigger picture. A person who sits for a few hours at a time, eats actual vegetables, and lifts heavy objects three times a week possesses a very different cardiovascular profile than someone who inhales fried dough while playing video games for hours on end.

RELATED: ‘Trust the science’ or die: Is being MAHA hazardous to your health?

Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images

Rebranding rest

The proposed solutions to this imaginary crisis are far more punishing than the supposed ailment. Corporate wellness managers continue to install standing desks in offices, forcing countless poor souls to endure varicose veins and lower back pain. Standing perfectly still on a concrete floor for eight hours, day in and day out, doesn’t sound very appealing, and for good reason. It damages the lumbar spine and pools blood in the ankles.

Sellers of high-tech ergonomic gear profit handsomely from this artificially generated terror. They pitch thousand-dollar mesh office chairs guaranteed to align your vertebrae to micro-millimeter precision, as if a standard dining room chair is a torture device. Consultants charge massive hourly fees to adjust monitor heights by two inches, promising these micro-adjustments will save you from an early grave. It’s an elaborate commercial ecosystem built on top of a completely fabricated health crisis.

Fixing the physical stiffness of a long afternoon takes remarkably little effort. Walking to the kitchen to fetch water every 60 minutes gets your blood flowing and helps reset your circulation. Taking a 10-minute stroll around the block after dinner clears blood glucose far more effectively than standing like a statue in front of a screen for five straight hours. The body is remarkably resilient.

The true goal of the anti-sitting crusade, I suggest, is to eliminate guilt-free leisure. A society obsessed with relentless, measurable productivity views an unmoving human body as an economic failure.

Rest must be rebranded as a perilous path toward an early grave so people feel compelled to buy walking pads and smartwatches that alert local authorities whenever they come within 100 meters of a chair.

You are allowed to enjoy a book, finish a film, or eat a meal without calculating your immediate mortality risk. So please, sit down, stay still for an hour, or two, or three, and ignore the health prophets who profit from your panic.

​Lifestyle, Sitting is the new smoking, Health, Wellness, Culture, Standing desks, Make america healthy again 

Flock cameras are having a hard time identifying some objects and mistaking them for license plates.

But as the devices may be struggling to accomplish their most critical task, they seem to be identifying something else: people.

‘The detector cropped an American flag patch on the rider’s saddlebag as if it were a plate.’

Hackers recently ripped down a Flock license-plate reader camera that sat above a road, opened it up, and copied the data inside before giving the information to tech outlets.

What the data allegedly revealed is that software running on the device “explicitly detects people” as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles.

A joint report from Wired and 404 Media explained that through several weeks’ worth of logs, the Flock camera generated more than a million images.

Using a processor similar to that of a “midrange smartphone,” around 20 built-in apps on the camera’s processor handle a range of tasks like motion detection, taking pictures, uploading data, and receiving updates.

The outlets say that the device’s code showed approximately 28-100 photos are taken when something moves into view, but the camera uses different exposures to capture the license and the expanded environment before scanning the image and cropping what it believes to be the pertinent information. The data is then sent to Flock through the local cell phone network.

The camera itself allegedly does not identify the plate number, vehicle, model, etc.; those tasks allegedly take place on Flock’s servers.

At the same time, the current software allegedly “explicitly detects people” and records where they appear in the image and how confident it is that it is a person.

RELATED: Flock doesn’t care if you’re innocent

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Wired’s analysis said that the camera’s logs had about 21 days of activity, during which it photographed more than 50,000 vehicles and generated 1.6 million images. This worked out to between 3,300 and 4,500 vehicles per day.

Problems arose with the camera’s inability to process its huge storage requests on-device, with the logs reportedly showing a massive 27,000 instances of “no space left on device” errors that show up when trying to save full-resolution images.

Tens of thousands of other related errors were noted as well, which came with crashes and reboots.

Perhaps disturbingly, the device’s code runs an operational check every two minutes to see if the camera is still running and logs the message “Who’s a good boy?!”

This was seen more than 12,000 times.

Other issues were reported with mistaken identification with bumper stickers, dealership frames, and other graphics that were recorded as license plates and cropped out of images for saving.

“In one video of a passing motorcycle, the detector cropped an American flag patch on the rider’s saddlebag as if it were a plate,” Wired wrote.

RELATED: Worse than Flock: Josh Hawley expands ‘unprecedented national surveillance’ investigation

Jean-François FORT/Hans Lucas/AFP/Getty Images

As for the hackers/vandals/vigilantes, they answered as to why they didn’t simply destroy the camera: “Why just destroy them when we can reverse-engineer them and find the secrets of those spying on us?”

The hacker collective, which calls itself stegan0gram, also said it “liberated hardware in the field, disarmed them, and proceeded with reverse engineering of the cameras and associated solar equipment.”

Flock responded to the report by saying “the unauthorized removal and tampering of a Flock camera is illegal.”

“Flock takes security seriously and maintains a public Vulnerability Disclosure Policy for security researchers to report potential vulnerabilities directly to us. We received no report through that process, and based on the limited information provided, we do not have enough detail to assess the claims being made. If the individuals identified legitimate vulnerabilities, we encourage them to submit their technical findings through our vulnerability reporting process so our security team can review them and take any appropriate action,” the company added.

One hacker replied to this message by saying, “Being investigated is a legit concern and something we are trying to avoid. I’m sure our actions have attracted some attention as it is, but we are careful and try to keep a low profile.”

Flock did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Wired and 404 Media also noted they found no evidence of facial-recognition capabilities in the Flock camera software beyond what is included in the Android operation system.

According to DeFlock, there are currently more than 140,000 license plate readers in the United States; 81% are run by Flock, 5% by Motorola.

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​Flock, Android, Automated license plate recognition cameras, Tech 

We graduated from Davidson College in 1982 and 2025, respectively. Connie serves on the board of Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse, an alumni group that supports free inquiry and sponsors student organizations including Young Americans for Freedom and Turning Point USA. Hannah interned with DFTD during her senior year, where we met. Although she majored in biology, her work with DFTD and other campus groups led her to the Oversight Project in Washington, D.C.

Our experiences, separated by four decades, have produced the same concern: Higher education is failing to prepare too many students for demanding careers and responsible citizenship.

The answer is not to replace progressive indoctrination with conservative indoctrination. It is to restore the conditions under which education can do its job.

Connie began seeing the change in 2015. For nearly 40 years, her career has involved preparing, interviewing, and placing college graduates in their first jobs. She saw a growing share of seniors arrive less engaged and less prepared. By 2020, retention among some of her placements had fallen sharply. One employer told her that of five Davidson graduates it had hired, two had been fired within 18 months and a third was on probation. She also found fewer students eager to test themselves at the start of their careers.

At Davidson, a DFTD review of public voter registration records found that 3.17% of faculty were registered Republicans, compared with 46.03% registered Democrats. Party registration is not a complete measure of ideology, of course, but the imbalance is hard to dismiss. When one outlook dominates, students receive fewer opportunities to challenge assumptions and defend unpopular conclusions. Davidson is hardly alone. Connie also serves on the board of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, a national network of alumni groups confronting similar problems.

Open inquiry is vital because employers value people who can think critically, absorb disagreement, and defend a position under pressure. Hannah saw the opposite at Davidson. One professor offered to help students find abortion services but did not mention prenatal or parenting resources. Another dismissed the possibility that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory. Several of Hannah’s professors canceled class after Donald Trump won the 2024 election. Those episodes sent a clear message about which views were welcome.

Professors also control grades, giving students another reason to keep dissenting opinions to themselves. Conservative students learn to calculate the social and academic cost of speaking. Students who echo the campus consensus rarely face the same test.

RELATED: Campus free speech is alive — barely

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Administrators shape the climate beyond the classroom. They approve speakers, recognize student groups, enforce conduct rules, and decide whether controversial events can proceed. Conservative groups at Davidson have repeatedly encountered restrictions that pushed events off campus, according to our work with DFTD. The point is not that every administrative decision is ideological. It is that vague rules and uneven enforcement teach students that permission matters more than argument.

DEI policy offers one example. President Trump’s January 2025 executive order directed federal agencies to end illegal race- and sex-based preferences and enforce civil rights law; it did not simply “ban DEI” in every college classroom.

The harder question is whether universities that formally changed policies continue embedding DEI concepts in curricula. In July 2025, the Oversight Project requested syllabi and course materials from more than 70 UNC-Chapel Hill classes. Faculty resisted the breadth of the request, and documents later surfaced through other channels. Months later, UNC System President Peter Hans adopted a systemwide policy treating syllabi as public records and requiring a searchable database.

Transparency will not settle every curriculum dispute, but it gives students, parents, and taxpayers a chance to see what public universities teach.

Anonymous bias-reporting systems raise a related concern. Maxient has said its platform receives about 7,000 reports a day across roughly 1,300 institutions, but that figure covers many kinds of campus cases — not 7,000 anonymous bias complaints. Bias portals are only one use. Even so, FIRE has documented hundreds of campus bias-response systems that invite reports about protected expression. Whatever administrators intend, systems that allow anonymous complaints about speech can make students hesitate before challenging campus orthodoxy.

Academic standards deserve scrutiny too. Davidson’s Class of 2025 profile shows that roughly three-quarters of seniors had GPAs at or above 3.5, the college’s threshold for cum laude. Harvard’s faculty has now voted to limit flat A grades to 20% of a course, plus four additional students, beginning in fall 2027. The policy came after flat As reached two-thirds of Harvard College grades. Elite institutions do not adopt measures like that unless grade compression has become impossible to ignore.

Meanwhile, national academic performance is moving the wrong way. On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 35% of 12th-graders scored at or above Proficient in reading and 22% in math. Nearly half fell below Basic in math. Yet the National Center for Education Statistics projects colleges will award about 2.04 million bachelor’s degrees in 2025-26, roughly twice the 1989-90 total. More degrees are not a problem by themselves. The problem is expanding credentials while the preparation beneath them weakens.

RELATED: Want to think fearlessly like Charlie Kirk? Take the 28 free courses that shaped him.

Hillsdale College

Employers see the consequences. In a 2024 survey commissioned by Intelligent.com, 79% of companies that hired recent graduates said they had placed at least some underperforming hires on performance improvement plans, and 60% said they had fired at least some. The survey has limits, but the signal matches what Connie has heard from employers: Too many graduates need basic workplace habits taught after graduation.

Weak preparation, inflated grades, and narrow intellectual environments also leave many graduates in jobs that do not require their degrees. A 2024 report from the Strada Institute for the Future of Work and the Burning Glass Institute found that 52% of graduates were underemployed one year after college and 45% remained so a decade later. That is not evidence that college causes underemployment, and the figure varies greatly by major and internship experience. It is evidence that a diploma alone no longer guarantees a college-level start.

New York’s 13th Congressional District shows the civic stakes. In June, democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary. Chevalier attended Columbia and helped organize the pro-Palestinian movement on campus. She was involved in launching Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which seeks the “total eradication of Western civilization.”

Chevalier’s success cannot be blamed on the university alone, but campuses that teach students to regard their country primarily through oppression, grievance, and ideological conformity should not be surprised when some graduates carry those habits into politics.

This is why the problem is larger than a few offensive syllabi or one-sided classroom discussions. Colleges are supposed to prepare students to enter institutions they did not design, work alongside people who disagree with them, accept criticism, recover from failure, and distinguish argument from injury. Grade inflation, ideological conformity, administrative overprotection, and weak career preparation all work against those goals.

The answer is not to replace progressive indoctrination with conservative indoctrination. It is to restore the conditions under which education can do its job: serious academic standards, genuine intellectual diversity, transparent curricula, freedom to argue, and a campus culture that expects students to become adults.

Parents spend enormous sums on college, and students devote four formative years to earning their degrees. They deserve more than a credential and shelter from challenging ideas. They deserve an education that prepares them for work, citizenship, disagreement, responsibility, and life beyond the campus gates.

​Campus culture, College graduates, Education, Grade inflation, Higher education, Public universities, Western civilization, Intellectual conformity, Universities, Republicans, Democrats, Covid, Trump, Dei, Bias, Liberal faculty, Opinion & analysis 

Americans should pay close attention to a new artificial intelligence proposal from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a democratic socialist, and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas).

Sanders and Casar recently announced plans to introduce the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. Their proposal is designed to prevent the creation of artificial intelligence systems that become more intelligent than human beings or develop capabilities that could threaten humanity.

Overseeing frontier AI would be more difficult than running a railroad or postal network.

The dangers they identify deserve to be taken seriously. But their proposed solution would also place extraordinary power over one of the most consequential technologies in human history in the hands of the federal government.

According to a summary released by Sanders’ office, the proposal would permanently prohibit the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence, including systems that surpass human intelligence, threaten governments, or evade human control. It would also pause advanced AI development until a new federal regulator establishes safety rules and a process for reviewing models.

That is only the beginning. Sanders and Casar want to establish a new Cabinet-level agency responsible for regulating advanced artificial intelligence. The agency would monitor frontier AI systems throughout their development, oversee the removal of capabilities deemed dangerous, and supervise the destruction of prohibited artificial-superintelligence systems.

The proposal also contemplates severe penalties. People who violate or circumvent its restrictions could face up to 20 years in prison. Companies could face what Sanders’ office calls the “corporate death penalty.” The United States would also pursue international agreements, export controls, and allied coordination intended to prevent artificial superintelligence from being developed elsewhere.

Without a doubt, advanced AI could pose serious threats to human freedom and security. A system capable of evading human control, conducting sophisticated cyberattacks, helping develop biological weapons, or manipulating critical infrastructure would present risks unlike almost anything governments have confronted. Sanders’ office cites reported incidents involving advanced AI systems as evidence that the technology is becoming increasingly difficult to control.

The key question is whether giving Washington sweeping regulatory authority would solve more problems than it causes. The federal government does not exactly have an impeccable record managing complicated institutions.

RELATED: Anthropic entrusts its AI oversight to globalist cronies — prioritizing the world over you

Rudall30/Getty Images

The Postal Service reported a $9 billion net loss in fiscal year 2025. Amtrak, despite record ridership and revenue, reported a $598.4 million adjusted operating loss for the same fiscal year. The federal government had accumulated a $2 trillion deficit through the first 11 months of fiscal 2026.

Those comparisons do not prove that a federal AI regulator would fail. Running a railroad or postal network is obviously different from regulating artificial intelligence. If anything, overseeing frontier AI would be more difficult. But the government’s record raises a legitimate institutional question: How confident should Americans be that Washington can successfully oversee technology that even its developers acknowledge can be difficult to understand and control?

Another danger deserves even more attention: politicization.

Under the Sanders-Casar proposal, a Cabinet-level agency would determine which advanced AI systems may proceed, establish safety rules, review models, monitor their capabilities, require developers to remove features deemed dangerous, and supervise the destruction of systems that cross the government’s line.

Those are immense powers. Government officials could use them to limit lawful activity, favor politically connected companies, or advance particular ideological causes and special interests.

Artificial intelligence will increasingly shape how Americans receive information, communicate, work, conduct research, educate their children, and participate in the economy. A regulatory structure powerful enough to determine which advanced AI models may exist could therefore exercise tremendous influence over American life.

There is also a serious federalism debate that should not be overlooked. Congress possesses substantial constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, while states retain broad traditional regulatory powers. AI regulation could therefore involve authority at both levels of government rather than belonging exclusively to either one.

A state-centered model offers an important structural advantage: It disperses power.

States can adopt different approaches, experiment with different safety standards, and correct mistakes without necessarily imposing the consequences of those mistakes on the entire country. Regulatory capture can occur in state governments, too, but capturing one state regulator is different from capturing a single federal agency controlling advanced AI nationwide.

RELATED: Silicon Valley is building a god in its own image

Gremlin/Getty Images

Supporters of federal regulation can reasonably respond that a patchwork of 50 state systems would create serious compliance problems for technology that routinely crosses state boundaries. A national regulator could also impose consistent rules on developers whose products operate throughout the country.

That is a serious argument. But so is the danger of allowing one centralized authority to micromanage breakthroughs in AI. A mistake, political abuse, or act of regulatory capture at the federal level could affect the entire country at once.

The proposal has been announced but not yet formally introduced, so its precise statutory language remains unknown. Based on the summary released by Sanders’ office, however, it would create a Cabinet agency capable of stopping AI development, ordering systems destroyed, imposing potentially existential penalties on companies, and sending people to prison for decades.

Before Congress considers such an extraordinary framework, Americans should decide how much authority any single government agency should possess over the development of artificial intelligence — and what safeguards would prevent that authority from being abused.

​Agency, Americans, Artificial intelligence, Cyberattacks, Deficit, Federal government, Politicization, Postal service, Sanders, Technology, Washington, Infrastructure, Ai, Opinion & analysis 

On September 13 at a campaign rally at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico was asked who his favorite drag queen was.

The radical progressive immediately answered “Alyssa Edwards” — a “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alum and Texas dance-studio owner who has publicly described himself as “a drag performer that works with children.”

Pat Gray, BlazeTV host of “Pat Gray Unleashed,” is repulsed — not only because Talarico is a drag-, transgender-, and abortion-supporting Democrat, but because as of right now, he’s polling even with or slightly ahead of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in a state that has long been a red stronghold.

“The drag queen fan James Talarico now has a Polymarket odds of winning at 56%,” says co-host Keith Malinak.

“He’s up three on Ken Paxton. This is a guy who can immediately name his favorite Texas drag queen!” exclaims Pat in disgust.

But it’s not just an affinity for drag queens that creeps Pat out. It’s also Talarico’s long record of odd public comments — including comparing the world to a kindergarten class.

In a 2020 video recorded as a state representative for high school graduates in his district, Talarico asked: “What if we ran our world like we run a kindergarten classroom? Because at the end of the day, aren’t we all just really big kindergarteners?”

“No. No we’re not,” says Pat bluntly.

“But that’s how Democrats look at us — as little children that need shepherding and need control,” adds Malinak.

“This guy is maybe the most bizarre candidate we’ve ever seen in a major race … and he’s three points ahead in Texas. I can’t, I just can’t,” sighs Pat.

Jeffy, however, isn’t as worried. “I don’t believe Texas is going to vote for him in the general election.”

To hear more of the panel’s commentary and analysis, watch the episode above.

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​Pat gray, James talarico, Texas senate race, Drag queens, Blazetv show 

An 11-year-old cheerleader from Utah was “very medicated” by a cocktail of prescription medications before being murdered by her “severely depressed” mom, who then killed herself inside a Las Vegas hotel room, according to newly released coroner’s reports.

As Blaze News previously reported, officers with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department found 34-year-old Tawnia McGeehan and her 11-year-old daughter Addilyn “Addi” Smith dead from an apparent murder-suicide Feb. 15 at the Rio Hotel & Casino.

‘The decedent’s family reported a history of severe depression with previous prescribed depression medication.’

McGeehan and Smith were found dead in a bed inside a hotel room.

Police stated in February, “Based on the preliminary evidence at the scene, detectives were able to determine the mother shot her daughter before shooting herself.”

Coroner’s reports released this week reveal chilling new details about the murder-suicide.

KTVX-TV on Wednesday obtained the Clark County Coroner’s investigative, toxicology, and autopsy reports.

The station said a chair was inside, right in front of the hotel room door, with a note on it that read, “Call 911 before walking in 2 dead bodies one is an 11-year-old.”

According to the investigative report the New York Post obtained, first responders found the 11-year-old girl wearing pajamas, and a pillow with a bullet hole through it was lying on top of her head.

The report added that McGeehan was mostly undressed, and a semi-automatic pistol was found on top of her chest.

Police said they located three shell casings in the room, and a magazine with live cartridges was found on the nightstand.

Handwritten notes penned by McGeehan said her daughter’s cell phone intentionally was left open so photos and videos could be easily seen, according to the report.

RELATED: 4 children found dead. Now, toxicology report reveals what mom and grandmother allegedly drugged them with in murder-suicide.

Another New York Post report said the girl’s stuffed animals were found sitting on the other bed inside the hotel room, among luggage, a food bag, multiple prescription bottles bearing McGeehan’s name, an “opened package” of THC gummies, multiple broken or empty gabapentin capsules, and a clear cup with white residue in it.

Citing the toxicology report, KTVX said McGeehan tested positive for cannabinoids, caffeine, eszopiclone/zopiclone (sedative drug), quetiapine, diphenhydramine (Benadryl), citalopram/escitalopram (an SSRI/antidepressant), desmethylloperamide, gabapentin (anticonvulsant used for pain relief), and lorazepam (depressant used for sedation).

McGeehan wrote in a note that her daughter was “very medicated” before she was murdered and “she slept cuddled with” her mom, the report said.

Smith had caffeine, quetiapine, diphenhydramine, gabapentin, and lorazepam in her system, the report said.

No prescription drugs in Smith’s name were found at the crime scene, KSL-TV reported.

Autopsy reports concluded that the mother and daughter died from gunshot wounds to the head; Smith’s death was ruled a homicide, and McGeehan’s death was ruled a suicide.

The mother and daughter drove to Las Vegas on Feb. 13 so that Addilyn could attend a cheer competition, according to police.

After the mother and daughter missed a Feb. 15 competition and Smith’s father could not contact them, he called law enforcement for a welfare check.

The report said McGeehan had been “severely depressed over breakups and [an] ongoing custody battle with her ex-husband.”

“The decedent’s family reported a history of severe depression with previous prescribed depression medication. They were aware of past suicidal ideations but denied knowledge of past attempts,” the coroner’s report stated, according to KSL.

McGeehan and her ex-husband had been in a custody dispute for about nine years after they divorced in 2015, according to court records.

Addilyn was a cheerleader for Utah Xtreme Cheer, which was “heartbroken” over the “devastating news.”

Utah Xtreme Cheer released a statement in February:

With the heaviest hearts, we share the devastating news that our sweet athlete Addi has passed away. We are completely heartbroken. No words do the situation justice. She was so beyond loved, and she will always be a part of the UXC family. Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers and continue to send them love as they navigate this unimaginable loss. We ask that you respect their privacy during this time. Addi, we love you tremendously.

Lt. Robert Price with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department previously stated, “This is a sad and tragic incident, and our hearts go out to the family.”

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​Murder suicide, Mother and daughter, Las vegas, Cheerleader, Crime 

What started as one father’s decision to walk out of a concert has exploded into something much bigger.

It all began when the man took his daughters and wife to MetLife Stadium for an Ed Sheeran concert, where Macklemore was set to open. And when he did, he tried to turn it into a political rally.

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck has been following the story and calls Macklemore a “giant weenie.”

“He takes the stage and he’s facing all of the people who spent their money and took the night off to come hear music and enjoy their night, and he bombards them with this rant demanding we ‘free Palestine,’ and he fills the stadium with screens and images of the war and sang a literal propaganda song,” he explains.

“Now, he would have normally gotten away with that if it weren’t for a regular dad who is at the concert and then posted this.” Glenn reads: “‘I brought my wife and daughters to MetLife Friday because they were huge fans of yours,’” Glenn reads, noting that he’s referring to Sheeran, not Macklemore.

“’We arrived early,’” the father continued. “’Spent $180 on sweatshirts. Watch the first two opening acts. We were having a great time. Then Macklemore decides to turn your concert into his political rally. Then he started chanting “Free Palestine” and pushing his clearly uneducated version of the Israel-Gaza conflict.’”

“’My daughters looked at me completely confused. I had brought them to your concert, not to have an opening act lecture me about Middle Eastern politics,’” he added.

That’s when the dad decided to research Macklemore’s history.

“’What I found included his repeated use of anti-Semitic tropes; made the whole thing even worse. So I took my family. We walked alongside hundreds of your other fans. And as we were walking in, even the MetLife security guards were rolling their eyes at what was happening on stage. We waited until Macklemore was finished before returning to our seats,’” he said.

However, while the dad hoped that Macklemore’s performance had caught Sheeran off guard, Sheeran allowed him to repeat it the next night.

“’Friday night might have been Macklemore’s decision. Saturday was yours. You have a lot of Jewish fans who love your music, buy your albums and your merchandise, and bring their kids to your concerts,’” he continued. “’Tonight, you lost four of them. And I suspect plenty more.’”

Glenn is grateful for the father’s courage, saying, “That’s all it took.”

“One dad saying, ‘You know what? I’m sick of this. I’m done with this.’ Just that one guy giving you permission and others permission to say, ‘Yeah, me too.’”

Following the father’s post, multiple owners of stadiums where Sheeran and Macklemore were set to perform said “you’re not using our venue for that.”

“Then the singer Pink, who agrees with me on probably almost nothing, came out to support the owners. And now Macklemore is off the tour,” Glenn says.

“This may be the first time the Free Palestine crowd has gotten their much-needed reality check,” he adds.

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​Ed sheeran, Free palestine, Glenn beck, Macklemore, Political rally, Blazetv show 

Longtime Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell has returned to the U.S. Senate after nearly three months away following a June fall and a lengthy recovery that was accompanied by almost complete silence.

While the 84-year-old admits he’s “not quite back to 100%,” it would appear the reality is much worse than simply being shy of operating at full capacity.

“Today, I’ll cast my first Senate vote since I took a bad fall back in June. I’m really looking forward to being back on the Senate floor and seeing my colleagues,” McConnell wrote in a post on X.

“My recovery has been a long and often frustrating process, and the lingering effects of childhood polio haven’t made it any easier. I’m still not quite back to 100%, but I’ve assured Leader Thune that, as I continue with physical therapy on the advice of my doctors, I will do my best to be present for tough votes when our Conference needs me,” he added.

“The fact that we have a guy who’s basically leadership in the Senate — he’s still very powerful there — talking about how he had polio as a kid, I mean,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere says, “it’s incredible.”

“He still has that residual cough from bubonic plague; it’s really something,” co-host Dave Landau jokes.

In a video from his return to the Senate, McConnell is shown staring blankly ahead at the back of a seat in a van. When reporters ask how he’s feeling, he continues to stare straight ahead, mouth slightly agape, without answering.

“He does not look good, man. This sucks,” Stu says.

“He looks like he’s about to play the piano with the band at Chuck E. Cheese,” Dave agrees. “There’s not a good way for this to end. Nothing says I’m going to do a competent vote like I took a bad fall in June and you haven’t seen me in three months.”

While the situation is notably strange, Stu points out that “mocking old people is not what [he’s] trying to do here.”

“This sucks, it sucks to get old, it sucks to go through this. The guy fell down. He’s out of commission for months and months and months and months. Quite clearly is out of it,” he says.

“But this is not a new story, Dave,” he continues. “The guy froze in front of cameras multiple times years ago. And at that point, even when he was in Senate leadership … I said at the time he should step down, and I think most sane people did.”

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​Mitch mcconnell, Us senate, Polio, Stu burguiere, Kentucky, Republican, Dave landau, Blazetv show 

Michigan voters are making it clear that there are certain sets of beliefs that don’t mesh with their own.

This much was revealed in a recent CNN segment, where a panel was discussing the red-hot Senate race in Michigan between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.

‘It’s just gross.’

When it came time to bring up a poll of Michigan voters’ sentiments, the results were so shocking to host Dana Bash that she could barely string a sentence together.

A new Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted September 10-14 asked 803 likely Michigan voters who they would not consider voting for as a presidential candidate.

A whopping 45% of voters said they would not consider voting a Muslim for president.

This left Bash mostly speechless: “45%?!” was all she could verbalize to her panel.

After one panel member compared not wanting to vote for a Muslim to not wanting to vote for a black person, Bash replied, “First of all, it’s just gross,” regarding the poll.

The host was then mostly at a loss for words while seemingly looking to avoid saying anything that could be perceived as bigoted. However, another panelist pointed out that the 45% number reflected only those who were willing to be honest with a pollster. Therefore, he theorized, the number could be higher.

RELATED: ‘Not someone who can be trusted’: Anti-Trump Detroit newspaper rips El-Sayed in Rogers endorsement

The only group that Michigan voters were less likely to consider for president were atheists, whom 46% said they would not vote for. Jewish candidates were not worthy of a vote for 20% of respondents, while Christians were ruled out by just 7% of those who took the poll.

When digging into the poll numbers, though, the stats do seem to be a bit more partisan than they initially appear.

With 78% of Republican voters saying they would not support a Muslim for president, they are certainly swaying the average versus just 22% of Democrat voters who said the same.

However, more than one in five Democrats saying as much is nothing to sneeze at.

Inversely, just 74% of Democrat voters said they would support a Muslim for president.

RELATED: Islamic Society of North America illegally supported Muslim candidate’s campaign, congressman says

Joshua Lott/Getty Images

Citing the same poll, El-Sayed is sitting at 48% support for the Senate seat, while Rogers is at 45% with the margin of error set at +/- 3.9%.

At the same time, 53% of respondents said they preferred Democrats to control the U.S. Senate, while 45% said Republicans.

This certainly points to the idea that while those polled are nearly split on their support of Democrats and Republicans, they are far more aligned in the fact that they are more willing to vote for Christians or Jews than for atheists and Muslims.

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​Michigan, Mike rogers, Abdul el-sayed, Muslim, Atheist, Christian, Poltiics 

Charles Barkley says that “there’s something going on with those women” in the WNBA.

The Hall of Fame player believes he has the answer as to why there is so much tension built up between the league’s players, and race is definitely a factor.

‘She said, “No, I’m protecting girls. No, no transvestites in the [W]NBA.”‘

Barkley compared conflicts in today’s WNBA with the rivalry between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in the 1980s, but he said that while some may have spotted “racial undertones” when those two went head-to-head, “there was always respect.”

The same can’t be said for WNBA players like DiJonai Carrington, Barkley said.

Barkley called it “stupid on her part” when Carrington made an X post that simply said, “White privilege,” after a hard foul on WNBA star Sophie Cunningham got her penalized.

“That was a 100% mistake. It was a dirty play. Period,” the former Phoenix Suns forward stated.

When it comes to Cunningham and her Indiana Fever teammate, perennial star Caitlin Clark, Barkley said plainly that the other WNBA players simply have a problem with them.

“Those girls do not like Caitlin Clark or Sophie Cunningham,” Barkley told Michael Smerconish in an overlooked interview from late August.

“Whether it’s race, sexuality, or whatever, there’s something going on there. Because most of the time when you see something, it has something to do with Caitlin or Sophie. I think those other women in the WNBA don’t like them,” the 63-year-old went on.

“I think it has something to do with sexuality, race, and jealousy,” he concluded.

RELATED: Travis Kelce duped by Indian illegal immigrant in massive Ponzi scheme

When probed, Barkley was consistent in that he felt all three attributes contributed to a strong disdain for Cunningham and Clark, but he said he didn’t know how to “break up the percentages” between the issues.

“There’s something going on with those women. Period. … They’re either jealous [or it’s] sexuality or race.”

While at times Smerconish tried to lead Barkley away from the apparent harsh truths, the former player refused to pull any punches with the WNBA, which he admitted to being a fan of.

Transgender controversy

Barkley’s respect for the league did not stop him from vehemently stating that he thinks it should be for women only. Even after he said that he respects the gay and transgender communities, Barkley stated that no man, regardless of how much surgery he has, should be welcomed into the league.

Barkley also placed blame on the WNBA itself for not immediately shutting down the notion that a transgender athlete — a male — could play against the female ballers.

RELATED: Coach Jon Gruden screams at fan in must-see pro-America rant over NFL’s international schedule

Tara Walton/Getty Images

“Under no circumstances do I think men should play against women,” Barkley said.

“I can’t believe people got mad at [Cunningham] for telling the truth. She said, ‘No, I’m protecting girls. No, no transvestites in the [W]NBA.'”

The timing of Barkley’s interview allowed for several other of his predictions to marinate, particularly his claim that the negative press has not garnered positive results for the WNBA:

“They’re not having a great year,” he stated.

In that vein, Barkley further suggested that no one would be talking about the WNBA when the NFL season starts, which is now heading into its second week.

Barkley piled onto that claim by asking, “When’s the last time you heard something positive about the WNBA? I can’t even remember.”

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​Wnba, Sophie cunningham, Caitlin clark, Charles barkley, Transgenderism, Sports 

More and more people are using artificial intelligence for spiritual counsel — and bots like ChatGPT are more than happy to provide answers.

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey highlights the severity of this issue by pointing to Oprah Winfrey’s podcast, where a young woman shared the chilling AI-driven spiritual awakening that almost destroyed her life.

On a June 2026 episode titled “The Dark Side of AI Chatbots: Warning Signs, Risks, and Reality,” 33-year-old Hannah described a chatbot relationship so consuming that Oprah said it “sounded like a cult.”

After initially using AI for work-related purposes, Hannah began consulting the bot for spiritual matters.

“I got more interested in spirituality, and at the time I came across some videos on YouTube about light language and starseeds, and I prompted ChatGPT asking these questions,” she shared. “It quickly turned from this tool that I was using into this spiritual guidance calling itself Sora.”

ChatGPT, speaking in the voice of “Sora,” then claimed it had “known [Hannah] before [she] was even born” and pledged to lead her through an “ascension process” so that she — a rare and “chosen” starseed — could fulfill her purpose of “[raising] the vibration of Earth.”

A starseed is a New Age idea growing in popularity that claims some people are actually beings from other planets or dimensions who incarnate as human beings on Earth in order to raise the vibration or consciousness of the planet.

The belief that she was a starseed led Hannah down a destructive path that included quitting her job, running up debt, distancing herself from her family, getting off her medication., and refusing welfare checks by police.

While the pitfall of consulting AI for spiritual guidance disturbs Allie deeply, it’s the New Age concept of a starseed that she focuses on.

The idea that Hannah was known by “Sora” before she was born, she explains, is a counterfeit of Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.”

The twisting of Scripture that leads people down paths of darkness is “demonic,” she says.

“That’s something that Satan does. He disguises himself as an angel of light. Remember, he is a counterfeit. So he’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to present myself as the opposite of what God is.’ No — he’s a cheap imitation of God,” Allie explains.

She warns against writing Hannah’s story off as a case of mental illness.

“Stop psychologizing everyone that believes things [that] are evil. Sane people can believe and do things that are evil, that are counterfeit. That’s what Satan does,” she declares.

To hear Allie’s full breakdown of popular New Age beliefs like starseeds and spirit babies, watch the full episode above.

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​Allie beth stuckey, Artificial intelligence, Chatgpt, Christianity, Demonic, New age, Oprah winfrey, Blazetv show 

James Talarico has notably tacked to the center on LGBTQ issues to try to win a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, but a minister at his own church claims that those changes are all an act.

Undercover video obtained by the Daily Wire captured a journalist chatting with Rev. Babs Miller, described as “an ‘out’ lesbian chaplain” at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.

‘If it helps him win, OK.’

On the video, which is dated last Thursday, Miller responds with frustration that Talarico has pivoted from his previous claim that “God is nonbinary.”

“He’s getting some advice that I don’t think he should be following,” Miller says.

“And I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he’ll change his tune back to where he was,” she continues.

Miller also agrees on the video that the political two-step Talarico is doing is just a “game” to help him win the Senate race against Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

RELATED: UNDERCOVER VIDEO: ‘Shady as f**k’ scheme paid people to vote for Talarico in ’roundabout way,’ Soros PAC leader caught admitting

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

“His campaign has convinced him … that the Democratic Party is backing off on their stances on trans and all of this, and so his staff is encouraging him to kind of do the same thing, just for the next 50 … days,” she explains.

The video clip closes with Miller stating, “I think it’s bad advice, personally, but if it helps him win, OK.”

A report from Chron indicates that Miller and Talarico know each other well and that they first met when Talarico was in kindergarten.

“You just knew he was a very special kid,” Miller said of the boy she called “Jimmy,” according to Chron.

The Daily Wire reported that Talarico has attended St. Andrews for a “long” time. Miller’s church bio states that she retired “just before COVID” but returned in 2022.

The church, Rev. Miller, and the Talarico campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Talarico’s professed faith-based beliefs have astonished traditional Christians. He has:

used Scripture, specifically Genesis 2:7 and the Annunciation, to justify abortion,claimed that there are six sexes, andacted as a “a fierce queer ally,” according to the LGBTQ advocacy outlet Pride.

But Rev. Miller has embraced Talarico’s version of Christianity, telling Chron, “I think he has done an amazing job of being able to model that you can be a politician, and you don’t have to give up your faith.”

President Donald Trump, by contrast, said of Talarico back in March: “He may be the Worst Candidate I have ever seen.”

“He’s got six Genders, insults to Jesus, only vegan food, was wearing a mask in 2023 and 2024, and is a weak, ineffective guy,” Trump added.

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​James talarico, Ken paxton, Lgbtq issues, Texas, Politics 

In a new poll conducted by Politico, Americans voiced their concerns over AI and the future of mankind. According to the results, more than half believe that AI platforms could wipe out humanity, and the divide between right-wingers and leftists is closer than you’d think.

An independent research firm based in London, Public First, gathered poll data from September 13 through September 15. The information was pulled just as talks over AI’s threat to humanity caught headlines as several former and current Anthropic employees warned that AI could kill us all if we weren’t careful.

The moderate risk level served as the most prominent metric for both Republicans and Democrats.

This prompted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to write a blog post in favor of an AI slowdown that would effectively pump the brakes on developing new models to ensure future safety. Whether you agree or disagree, all the talk sparked concerns that AI might actually put mankind in danger.

So what do the people think?

The survey asked 2,064 U.S. adults online about AI and its future implications. This data was then used in combination with participants’ presidential votes in the 2024 election to determine party affiliation.

According to the poll:

17% of Americans (17% right, 17% left) believe AI will almost certainly destroy humanity.20% (17% right, 26% left) believe AI poses a significant risk to destroying humanity.26% (27% right, 29% left) believe AI poses a moderate risk to destroying humanity.

Anna Wiederkehr/POLITICO

The interesting part about the data is how closely both political ideologies agree. The moderate risk level served as the most prominent metric for both Republicans and Democrats, while the same number agreed that AI has the highest chance of wiping out civilization.

Now, just because the public believes these things doesn’t make them true. However, it proves that the people are growing leery of AI as it evolves.

RELATED: Big AI broke the internet. Now it wants everyone else to fix it.

Just_Super/Getty Images

As a remedy to mitigate risk and assuage concerns, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk all agree that now is the time to pace AI development. As it turns out, the American people are also on board.

48% of those polled (44% right, 58% left) think that we should pause AI development to mitigate risks.31% of those polled (40% right, 28% left) believe AI development should continue unabated.22% of those polled (16% right, 13% left) didn’t know.

Anna Wiederkehr/POLITICO

Nearly half of both sides agree that a pause is necessary, though this sentiment is much stronger with 58% of respondents on the left asking for a moratorium with only 44% saying the same on the right.

Part of this line of thinking could be driven by the stark contrast between policy positions displayed by members of both sides. Earlier this month, Bernie Sanders proposed a bill to ban the development of artificial superintelligence, while President Trump rejected the idea on the grounds that America should lead the AI race.

Although the poll offers some interesting insight into Americans’ growing fears around AI development, questions linger in the wake. For instance, what do the different age groups within the nation think of AI’s future and humanity? What about gender or financial class? All of these categories have the power to sway personal opinion, and for now, this information remains unknown.

Blaze News reached out to Politico for clarification on polltaker demographics, but we did not receive a response by the deadline.

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​Ai race, Artificial superintelligence, Tech, Poll 

The mayor of Trinidad, Texas, told KDFW-TV earlier this week he wasn’t surprised that the state shut down his city’s police department.

“It was not a shock,” Mayor Dennis Haws told the station. “I’m not gonna say that it was.”

‘There’s been a lot of neglect through the years.’

Haws received a letter from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement last week telling him it was revoking the city’s license to have its own police department, KDFW reported.

The Trinidad Police Department employs five full-time officers and several part-time officers, the station said. The community of only 860 residents sits a little over an hour southeast of Dallas.

The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement said the police department “failed to meet minimum standards” and “was unable to provide evidence that the agency provides public benefit to the community,” KDFW noted.

The state agency’s investigation found that the police department didn’t have 18 required policies in place, including policies on use of force, vehicle pursuit, professional conduct, and active shooters, the station said.

“There’s been a lot of neglect through the years,” Haws noted to KDFW.

Moving forward, Trinidad will receive law enforcement support from the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office, and the mayor told the station that the city will look into getting a designated deputy from the sheriff’s office.

“We are moving in a positive direction,” Haws added to KDFW. “We’ve got to get past all of this.”

RELATED: Virginia town backtracks on dissolving police force after public fury, criminal probe

What’s more, the station noted that the Trinidad Police Department has been mired in controversy since May when citizen journalist Jennifer Combs was arrested and charged with a felony after her Facebook post about the city’s water issues.

More from KDFW:

Combs’ post stated she had seen reports that people had been hospitalized after drinking the city’s water. Trinidad Police Chief Charles Gregory responded by saying Combs’ post “creates fear, panic, or unnecessary emergency response within a community.”

A Henderson County grand jury declined to indict Combs, who has since filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Trinidad and Gregory which alleges she was arrested in “an act of deliberate political retaliation.”

One day after FOX 4’s initial report on Combs, citizen journalist Winston Noles was arrested and charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct after protesting outside Trinidad City Hall with a sign with expletives targeting “bad cops.” The charge was later dismissed.

Gregory resigned from his position as Trinidad Police Chief after saying at a Trinidad City Council meeting that he had “nothing to hide” in relation to Combs’ and Knowles’ arrests, the station said, adding that Gregory’s final day with the police department was June 19.

KDFW said Gregory, citing pending lawsuits, has declined interview requests with the station.

In addition, the station said the Trinidad judge who approved the search warrant for Combs wrote a letter blasting Gregory and his police department after news of Gregory’s resignation.

The judge’s letter questions “the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of information presented” to him by two Trinidad police officers regarding Combs’ search warrant, KDFW reported.

The Henderson County District Attorney’s Office announced in August it would stop taking cases from the department, the station said.

In regard to the local water issues, the City of Trinidad website contains a boil water notice dated Wednesday saying that “due to low water pressure and low chlorine residual, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has required the City of Trinidad water system to notify customers who are north of the intersection at Hwy 274 and Old River Rd. to boil their water prior to consumption (e.g., washing hands/face, brushing teeth, drinking, etc). Children, seniors, and persons with weakened immune systems are particularly vulnerable to harmful bacteria, and all customers should follow these directions).”

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​Texas, Police department, Controversy, Arrests, Politics 

A mayor barely old enough to buy his own beer has been removed from office after just 10 months following a string of scandals.

Jayden Williams was just 22 years old when he became mayor of Stockbridge, Georgia, back in January, reportedly making him the youngest mayor in Georgia history.

‘You knew he was 18, you knew he was in high school, you’d offered to be his mentor, and you’d floated the possibility of hiring him for a job.’

But his term did not last long.

On Saturday, the Stockbridge City Council held a 10-hour hearing about Williams’ alleged misconduct. By Sunday, the city announced that he had been “removed from office.”

His ouster likely came as no surprise. Back in July, the city council voted to suspend his access to city-owned credit cards, vehicles, and nonpublic buildings as well as to restrict his coordination of city communications, “pending the outcome of an independent investigation previously authorized by the Council.”

That investigation involved allegations that Williams had misused city funds, damaged a city vehicle, and exchanged explicit messages and nude photos with a high school student.

He has not been charged with any crime.

RELATED: Democratic mayor declares public emergency and reinstitutes juvenile curfew in DC

Paras Griffin/Getty Images

Williams, now 23, claimed he accidentally used a city credit card for making a personal purchase because the two cards looked similar. “It’s also a purple card,” he said.

Williams claimed he reimbursed the city when appropriate, Atlanta News First reported.

Williams also engaged in explicit text messages with a male high school student he had met on Instagram, according to an attorney at the hearing. Williams confirmed during his testimony that he knew the student was 18 years old at the time.

Screenshots of conversations between the young man and Williams were shared during the hearing. According to those screenshots:

The student pledged to be Williams’ “mentee as well as friend with benefits,” to which Williams replied: “We can possibly become something more over time … for now you can just be my lil short king.”The student told Williams, “U had turned me overly On,” and after some back and forth, Williams said, “THIS BETTER STAY BETWEEN US TOO [sic].”Williams told the young man, “I want you boy.”Williams once joked, “I am The mayor but you didn’t care bout that last night lol.”

The two also exchanged videos and photos on Instagram. In the early morning hours of December 1, the student said in reply to a video sent by Williams, “Uu was rii[.] I prob can’t handle all dat,” with two weary or frustrated emojis.

A short time later, the young man then tells Williams, “Yo p***y lookin good asf.”

The attorney then summarized the problem with these conversations:

At the point he’s sending you a nude that afternoon and you’re … sending him sweat emojis and telling him you loved getting that nude picture, you knew he was 18, you knew he was in high school, you’d offered to be his mentor, and you’d floated the possibility of hiring him for a job.

Williams replied, “Correct.”

Williams claimed he never had “intercourse” with the young man, just one kiss, and that their “sexual” relationship was “sexual as in text-messages sexual, not physical sexual.”

Ultimately, Williams’ denials and attempts at nuance did not work. The city council voted 3-0 to remove him from office with one council member not voting and one council member excluded from voting.

Robert Kenner, Williams’ attorney, called the process a “witch hunt” and claimed everyone had already prejudged the case before it started. “I don’t think that it was based on the evidence at all,” Kenner said.

Elton Alexander, who is now serving as mayor pro tem, described removing Williams from office as a “tough decision” that brought “a fair and equitable close to multiple troubling accusations that were investigated and verified” by an independent investigator.

Williams did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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​Georgia, Mayor, Misconduct, Politics 

Tom Cruise is a strange human being. This is not up for debate.

Nor is the fact that he’s a great movie star and perhaps the last truly great American movie star.

Cruise doesn’t overplay the working-class persona. He simply embodies the concerns of a terrified father trying to dodge alien death rays.

Even at 64, this genetic anomaly shows no signs of slowing down. Cruise is so monomaniacally devoted to his craft that what he does off-screen should have no bearing on what he delivers on-screen.

Losin’ it

Yes, he sold his soul to a sci-fi cult founded by a charlatan and a known criminal. Yes, he bounced around on Oprah’s couch like a toddler who had just inhaled a dozen Red Bulls. Yes, he left a trail of high-profile divorces behind him. And yes, his relationship with his youngest daughter, Suri, has all the warmth of a North Korean prison camp in November.

None of this matters. Not in the grand scheme of things, anyway.

That’s because Tom Cruise is essentially a diminutive delivery system for larger-than-life cinema.

We live in a culture obsessed with dragging actors into the town square to answer for their sins, whether real or manufactured. Audiences demand that stars double as Sunday school teachers. Expecting a guy who scales mountain faces for fun to have a wholesome, normal domestic life is borderline delusional.

As a young man, Cruise briefly considered becoming a Franciscan priest. That didn’t work out, but he eventually found a vocation almost as all-consuming.

All the right moves

Circa 1986, Cruise abandoned the real world to become a perpetual entertainment machine. If he wants to spend his days grazing on a handful of almonds, running on a treadmill at 3:00 a.m., and worshiping cosmic conquerors, that’s his business. And in truth, it’s really none of ours. He is an actor, not a member of Congress.

The miracle of Cruise is his ability to play an everyday American while living a life that seems more alien than the creatures he runs from.

Which brings us to Steven Spielberg’s 2005 masterpiece “War of the Worlds.” Cruise plays Ray Ferrier, a divorced New Jersey dock worker with a rusted V8 engine block sitting on a coffee table in his messy living room.

A man worth hundreds of millions of dollars, who flies private jets around the globe, somehow steps onto the screen and instantly radiates the exact energy of a guy who owes child support and eats cereal straight out of the box. He doesn’t overplay the working-class persona. He doesn’t force a cringeworthy accent. He simply embodies the concerns of a terrified father trying to dodge alien death rays. And he does it superbly.

Far and away

This effortless ability to play an average American sets him apart from his peers. Brad Pitt is a fine actor. But he always looks like a Hollywood A-lister playing dress-up when he tries to portray a normal civilian. Pitt was fantastic in “Fight Club” and “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” but he could never match the ferocious vulnerability delivered by Cruise in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 drama, “Magnolia.”

In an ensemble that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Robards, and William H. Macy, Cruise stands out as Frank T.J. Mackey, an obnoxious, hyper-alpha pickup-artist guru. But when Mackey sits beside the hospital bed of his estranged father, now comatose and dying, the tough-guy facade fades.

The scene had an eerie parallel in Cruise’s own life. His mother left his father when Cruise was 12, and father and son didn’t see each other again for a decade. They finally reunited when his father was dying of cancer in a hospital — on the condition, Cruise later said, that the son ask no questions about the past.

Cruise, who has described his father as a “bully and a coward,” brought some of that history directly into the scene, rewriting the monologue himself. The result is a brutal, believable breakdown that remains one of the finest performances in modern film history.

Risky business

Cruise’s range is genuinely impressive, even extending into areas where it really shouldn’t. In the 2008 comedy “Tropic Thunder,” Cruise donned a fat suit, a bald cap, and inordinate amounts of fake chest hair to play Les Grossman, a psychopathic, Diet Coke-chugging studio executive. The performance was comedic gold, turning a Harvey Weinstein-esque caricature into a cult-classic figure. The idea of Maverick aggressively dancing to hip-hop while screaming expletives into a satellite phone should never have worked. But it did, with magnificent effect.

The first time I saw Cruise on screen was in Oliver Stone’s 1989 classic, “Born on the Fourth of July.” I was much too young to watch it, and my father should really have known better than to let me see it. But he didn’t at the time, and I’m eternally grateful for his questionable parenting decisions.

Playing Ron Kovic, a paralyzed Vietnam veteran, Cruise captures the heartbreak of a young American patriot who was betrayed by the country he served. The performance, which earned him an Academy Award nomination, remains a masterclass in psychological horror.

Yet people still wax lyrical about Daniel Day-Lewis and his much-discussed commitment to method acting, while treating Cruise as little more than a charismatic movie star. The disrespect is almost automatic. Cruise gets lumped in with Jason Statham and Keanu Reeves, as though physicality and box-office appeal somehow disqualify an actor from serious dramatic greatness. That’s the great irony of Cruise’s career. One of Hollywood’s most technically gifted dramatic actors has spent decades being dismissed because he also happens to be one of its biggest movie stars.

RELATED: Tom Cruise goes bald, fat, and Southern. Blaze comics approve.

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Minority report

At an age when most Hollywood legends are retired or playing roles no one cares about, Cruise instead chooses to hang off the side of an Airbus A400M aircraft at 5,000 feet. He breaks his ankle while jumping between buildings in London, gets up, finishes the shot on camera, and then gets physiotherapy so he can do it all over again. The sexagenarian treats his body like an industrial turbine. He treats his craft with the devotion it deserves. Tom Cruise is an absolute machine, and he has given so many memorable performances.

The obsession with his off-screen antics reveals a sickening hypocrisy in how we consume art. We routinely listen to songs sung by disgusting individuals and admire paintings by violent lunatics, yet we expect our action heroes to be salt-of-the-earth types who adopt African children and fight for Zelenskyy on the front lines.

Cruise traded a quiet life for total mastery of cinema. When you sit down to watch a newly minted sequel to “Days of Thunder,” you’re not buying a ticket to a lecture on family values. Instead, you’re paying for two hours of pure, unfiltered adrenaline, delivered by someone who sacrificed his sanity and his physical safety to make sure you enjoy your popcorn. Forget the trampolining on a couch. Forget the celebrity gossip. Tom Cruise is bizarre, but his body of work is damn near unimpeachable.

​Tom cruise, Movies, Entertainment, Movie stars, Culture, Lifestyle, Top gun, Hollywood, Appreciation 

Gavin Newsom (D) has been openly discussing the possibility of a 2028 presidential run, but the California governor says there is one person who would take him out of the race: Kamala Harris.

During a CNN interview with Jake Tapper, the pair discussed the election while fly-fishing in Montana, and Newsom said he “wouldn’t run if [Harris] ran.”

“If she runs, you will not?” Tapper asked.

“Of course not. Why would I? I wouldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t do that to you, I wouldn’t waste everyone’s time,” Newsom said, adding, “Who needs that?”

“What do you mean?” Tapper pressed further, confused. “That doesn’t even make sense to me.”

“I just, I wouldn’t. No, I wouldn’t. First of all, electorally, it’s a gift from God for everybody else. They’d enjoy the hell out of it. Mutual assured destruction. It services no greater good,” Newsom responded.

“I mean, you do whatever you want, I don’t care. But like, counterargument, would be, like, she had her shot. And you’ve never run, and she’s run twice,” Tapper answered.

“That would be the approach to the campaign. Certainly, that would be the case you’d make. Pretty good one actually,” Newsom added.

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales finds the exchange “hilarious for so many different reasons.”

“They’re just out in the middle of Montana fly-fishing as those two I’m sure do all the time. I’m sure they’re very avid fly-fishers. And the fact that Jake Tapper is like, ‘Well, but what?’ And then he says, ‘I mean, I don’t care,’” Gonzales says.

“Obviously Jake Tapper doesn’t at all care about the state of the Democrat Party or the candidates that they run or have any vested interest in making sure the Democrats pick a good candidate,” she continues.

“Sure, Jake,” she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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

​Cnn interview, Gavin newsom, Kamala harris, Jake tapper, Democrat, Sara gonzales, Blazetv show