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Category: blaze media
FBI sent 55 agents to the Capitol Jan. 6, none for ‘crowd control,’ former Chief Steven Sund says
The FBI called U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund just after 3 p.m. on Jan. 6 to offer help from its SWAT teams, but the number of agents the FBI sent to the Capitol was just 55, Sund told Blaze News.
The FBI’s Washington Field Office was receiving calls from frantic members of Congress holed up in their Capitol offices after crowds breached the building at 2:12 p.m. Assistant FBI Director Steven D’Antuono, head of the Washington Field Office, called Sund just after 3 p.m. and offered help, the former Capitol Police chief said.
‘They’re not trained for it — the plainclothes guys.’
Sund said he does not understand FBI Director Kash Patel’s assertion that 274 special agents were deployed to the Capitol primarily to do “crowd control.”
He said FBI special agents wearing body armor would not be properly outfitted for crowd control.
“They’re not equipped for crowd control. They’re not trained for it — the plainclothes guys,” Sund said. “I don’t even know what training their tactical guys have, but at least they’d be a little bit better equipped with possibly tactical helmets and gas masks.”
Sund said while compiling figures from his call for mutual aid, he tallied the count from the FBI at 55 special agents.
“That evening we were calculating what resources had come in,” he said. “And the number I’ve been given all along was 55 from FBI.
“So the 17 or more law enforcement agencies that ended up coming in — I think it added up to 1,764 officers — included 55 from the Washington Field Office of the FBI. I had to get that number from somewhere. The 55 is a lot different than 274.”
Sund said he coordinated the effort with FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich.
“So I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take whatever help you can send,’” Sund recalled. “He said, ‘We’re going to send over our WFO SWAT team, but he is going to send them directly to where the members of Congress [are].’ And I said, ‘No, let’s not do that. Let’s have you come to Lot 16, and that way I can put you with a Capitol Police officer.’”
A leaked report from the House Select Subcommittee to Investigate the Remaining Questions Surrounding January 6 said 274 FBI special agents deployed to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Some of those agents responded to the scenes of pipe bombs found at the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee, the report said. Director Kash Patel said the 274 agents were sent mostly to do “crowd control” after a riot was declared at 2:20 p.m.
Just before the call from D’Antuono, Sund called the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to request law enforcement mutual aid. The National Capital Region Mutual Aid Agreement was activated, followed by a Regional Incident Communication and Coordination System message that alerted agencies over a multistate area, Sund said.
RELATED: FBI Jan. 6 report sets off a firestorm: Why did it take 56 months to disclose 274 agents at Capitol?
FBI SWAT teams patrol the U.S. Capitol and adjacent office buildings before a joint session of Congress reconvened on Jan. 6, 2021.Photo by Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
Nearly 1,800 officers responded to the Capitol as a result. The New Jersey State Police reached the U.S. Capitol before the D.C. National Guard. The Guard was delayed by three hours, 19 minutes due to resistance and interference at the Pentagon, a House investigation found.
By 3:06 p.m., tactical teams from the FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals, U.S. Park Police, U.S. Secret Service, Capitol Police, and other agencies were sweeping the Capitol to find and eject any remaining protesters. That effort started on the top level of the Capitol and moved down, according to security video.
‘The number I’ve been given all along was 55 from FBI.’
The major SWAT response was prompted in part by the 2:44 p.m. shooting of Ashli Babbitt in the hallway outside the Speaker’s Lobby.
After he shot Babbitt, Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd made a false radio report, claiming he was taking fire and was prepared to fire back. Byrd never corrected his statement over the radio. He was never fired upon, and the only shot fired in the Capitol on Jan. 6 was the one he fired, killing Babbitt.
Capitol Police security video shows that an FBI tactical team pulled up in the House Plaza parking lot in an armored vehicle at 2:32 p.m. The SWAT team entered the Capitol’s South Doors at 2:53 p.m., just minutes after an ATF tactical team.
The FBI declined a request for comment from Blaze News.
Sund said at about 6:05 p.m., while walking to brief U.S. senators with Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger, he noticed 20-25 members of what he believed to be the FBI Hostage Rescue Team.
“It could have been their SWAT team, but it sure looked like they were highly equipped, and it looked like their hostage rescue team,” he said.
RELATED: Senate sergeant at arms who oversaw January 6 found dead
Tactical teams from the FBI and U.S. Secret Service stage in a hallway at the Hart Senate Office Building at 7:02 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. Capitol Police CCTV
The HRT is not part of the Washington Field Office. Based in Quantico, Va., the HRT is the FBI’s only full-time tactical team, ready at all times for high-risk missions including counterterrorism.
Capitol Police security video shows FBI special agents wearing body armor securing the hallways of House and Senate office buildings as members of Congress prepared to resume their session on the 2020 election results after 8 p.m. on Jan. 6.
Sund was forced to resign by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) right after Jan. 6. While Pelosi and others sought to place blame for Jan. 6 on Sund, his testimony before various investigative bodies over more than four years has established that it was Pelosi, generals at the Pentagon, and former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy who created the disastrous delay in deploying the National Guard.
“[Gen.] William Walker had testified if he had been given an authorization right away when I first reached out to him, he thinks he could have had people there before they breached the Capitol, which would’ve been huge,” Sund said.
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Politics
‘Go to church’: Elon Musk amplifies Erika Kirk’s call for Christian revival
Over the past year, Elon Musk’s public comments and X activity have subtly shifted to include more frequent references to Christianity, such as sharing biblical wisdom and promoting forgiveness, while stopping short of declaring himself a true believer.
‘I think this notion of forgiveness is important; I think it’s essential.’
Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk wrote in a post on X over the weekend, “Go to church,” and Musk shared her comment. That same day, Musk slammed the Anti-Defamation League, calling it “a hate group” because it “hates Christians.”
Musk has repeatedly stated that he believes “woke” is the “religion that occupies the space previously held by Christianity.”
Last month, Musk quoted a Bible verse, Matthew 7:3, writing, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”
He also shared from the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
During an interview with Jordan Peterson last year, Musk described himself as a “cultural Christian,” explaining that while he admires “the principles that Jesus advocated,” he is “not a particularly religious person.”
Elon Musk. Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images
“I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise and that there’s tremendous wisdom in turning the other cheek,” Musk told Peterson. “And with respect to bullies at school, I think you shouldn’t turn the other cheek; you should punch them on the nose and then, thereafter, make peace with them.”
“I think this notion of forgiveness is important; I think it’s essential,” he added.
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News, Elon musk, Christianity, Christian, Erika kirk, Anti-defamation league, Adl, Politics
ADL ends its ‘Glossary of Extremism’ after listing Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA under ‘extremism’ and ‘hate’
The Anti-Defamation League is ending its list of what it considers to be extremist groups and people.
The ADL made an announcement on Tuesday evening about retiring its “Glossary of Extremism,” a list of over 1,000 entries, which it claimed “served as a source of high-level information on a wide range of topics for years.”
‘Christian Identity is a religious ideology popular in extreme right-wing circles.’
The organization admitted that an “increasing number” of its entries were outdated, while stating that many of the entries had somehow been “intentionally misrepresented and misused.”
The organization wrote on X that it will now “explore new strategies and creative approaches” to present its research and focus on “fighting antisemitism and hate.”
For the past few days, the ADL has been under intense scrutiny after readers noted its page on Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk’s organization, was listed as a hate group.
In fact, TPUSA’s backgrounder on the ADL website remains labeled with the tags “Extremism, Hate, or Terrorism” and comes from the ADL’s “Center on Extremism.”
The page relates TPUSA to extremists or extremism at least six times and claims the organization’s events have featured “far-right conspiracy theorists,” with Kirk creating a “vast platform” used by “numerous extremists.”
The ADL’s description of Kirk and his company drew widespread backlash, even from Tesla founder Elon Musk.
RELATED: Charlie Kirk assassination inspires famed ESPN commentator to run for Senate — as a conservative
Musk sent out an array of posts on X in recent days, calling the ADL a “hate group” as well as a “far left hate propaganda machine.”
Musk also wrote that the ADL “sells hate” and “hates Christians, therefore it is is a hate group.”
The “Christians” post was in response to the ADL’s page on the “Christian Identity movement,” which is also listed under “Extremism, Hate, or Terrorism” by the ADL.
“Christian Identity is a religious ideology popular in extreme right-wing circles,” the ADL writes. “Adherents believe that whites of European descent can be traced back to the ‘Lost Tribes of Israel.’ Many consider Jews to be the Satanic offspring of Eve and the Serpent, while non-whites are ‘mud peoples’ created before Adam and Eve.”
It adds — still in the introduction — that the movement holds “virulent racist and anti-Semitic beliefs” that are usually accompanied by “extreme anti-government sentiments.”
Musk had said that “the ADL needs to change this now” in response to a screenshot from the group’s page about TPUSA, which was last updated in 2023; but the page has since seen changes.
Much of the verbiage seems to have simply been reworded, but the page no longer lists TPUSA as a right-wing organization in its very first point. Some of the points have also been toned down. For example, the page allegedly used to say TPUSA “has promoted numerous conspiracy theories,” but now says it “has promoted some conspiracy theories.”
As reported by Fox News, the now-defunct glossary had listed groups like the Nation of Islam, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and more as extremists. It also included TPUSA and the “America First” movement, but not Antifa or Black Lives Matter.
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News, Tpusa, Charlie kirk, Turning point, Adl, Anti-defamation league, Anti-semitism, Anti-christian, Christianity, Poltiics
Government grinds to a halt after Democrats force first shutdown in 6 years
While congressional Democrats continue to dig their heels in, the federal government has officially shut down for the first time in over half a decade.
The government shut down at midnight on October 1 after Democrats continuously blocked the Republican-led funding bill in the Senate. The GOP’s funding bill is a clean, 91-page continuing resolution with no partisan anomalies. The only new provision in the Republican bill is a bipartisan provision that boosts security funding for politicians in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s horrific assassination.
‘The ball is in the Democrats’ court.’
Rather than passing the clean bipartisan resolution, Democrats have insisted on ramming through their $1.5 trillion funding bill that reverses every meaningful legislative accomplishment Congress passed earlier in the year with President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Some of these Democratic priorities include continuing $350 billion worth of Biden-era subsidies, reviving federal funds for PBS and NPR, and reinstating public health care benefits for illegal aliens.
“House Republicans passed the SAME clean, nonpartisan CR that Chuck Schumer himself voted for back in March — and called ‘the right thing to do,'” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote in a post on X. “The ONLY thing that’s changed since then is pressure from his base to close down the government. That’s not leadership, it’s cowardice.”
RELATED: White House dares Democrats with nuclear response to looming shutdown
Annabelle Gordon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“The ball is in the Democrats’ court,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said in a post on X. “But Chuck Schumer wants a Schumer shutdown.”
The House previously passed the GOP’s continuing resolution in a 217-212 vote, with just one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, joining Republicans to keep the government open. Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted against the bill.
The Senate eventually took up both the Republicans’ clean CR and the Democrats’ hyper-partisan funding bill on Tuesday, both of which failed. Although Republicans enjoy a supermajority in Congress, the CR needs 60 votes to pass the Senate. Assuming all 53 Republicans vote for the bill, at least seven Democrats will have to cave to reopen the government.
Notably, Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania as well as independent Sen. Angus King of Maine voted in favor of the Republican funding bill. One GOP senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted against it. Both bills will be up for a vote again in the Senate on Wednesday.
Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Although shutdowns have historically proven to be unpopular, Republicans are seizing the opportunity to continue implementing the MAGA mandate.
Ahead of the shutdown, Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget began circulating a memo directing different agencies to identify programs whose funding would lapse following the shutdown and to begin drafting reduction in force notices for employees who would be affected.
As of this writing, Vought announced that roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects have been halted to “ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles.”
“It is unclear how long Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of the shutdown difficult to predict,” Vought wrote in a memo released Tuesday. “Regardless, employees should report to work for their next regularly scheduled tour of duty to undertake orderly shutdown activities. We will issue another memorandum indicating that government functions should resume once the president has signed a bill providing for appropriations.”
Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images
To Vought’s point, it remains unclear how long Democrats will allow the government to stay closed. The last shutdown began on December 22, 2018, during Trump’s first term, after Congress failed to approve a spending package that included funding for Trump’s border wall. The shutdown lasted 35 days, the longest in history.
The government eventually reopened on January 25, 2019, after Congress reached a deal to pass a temporary spending bill without border funding, and Trump signed it.
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AI in the classroom is here — what parents need to know
For decades, artificial intelligence was something students only encountered in science fiction books. They read stories about robots, ultramodern computers, and machines that could think for themselves. But in just the past few years, the AI revolution has leapt off the page and into real life, quickly reshaping virtually every aspect of our society, including our education system.
The AI revolution is happening so quickly that we must work fast to wrap our heads around the reality and implications of it in education before it’s too late. For parents, especially those concerned about what’s happening in our schools, AI represents both an opportunity and a potentially serious threat. Like social media before it, this technology is advancing faster than most of us can keep up with, and the decisions we make today will determine how it influences our kids for the rest of their lives.
AI doesn’t have to be a threat to our children. But if parents don’t get involved now, this powerful technology will shape our kids without our vital input.
If you are a parent, you cannot afford to ignore what AI is doing in education. Here are five things every parent must understand:
AI is already in your child’s classroom
The AI revolution isn’t some looming event; it’s already here. Schools throughout the country are already adopting “smart” learning platforms, tutoring apps, and grading and curriculum systems powered by AI.
Some school districts are experimenting with AI software that generates lesson plans, constructs writing assignments, and even helps teachers communicate with students. One platform called MagicSchool bills itself as “the go-to AI assistant for educators worldwide, designed to simplify teaching tasks, save time, and combat teacher burnout.” MagicSchool has existing relationships with numerous public school systems, including Atlanta, Denver, New York City, Seattle, and many others.
This means decisions about how your child learns, what material they see, and even how their performance is evaluated are increasingly influenced by Big Tech algorithms. The question is: Who controls those algorithms, and what values are embedded into them? Parents deserve answers before handing their children’s education to algorithms.
AI is a great tool and could be a great indoctrinator
AI can certainly be a valuable tool for educators and students. It can open the door to new levels of personalized learning that provide help to struggling students.
Used well, it can identify where a child is falling behind and provide extra practice, tailor lessons to a student’s strengths and weaknesses, and even spark new excitement for subjects that once felt out of reach. In an educational environment where one-on-one interaction is lacking, AI could offer desperately needed specialization.
AI can also carry significant hidden biases. The people who design AI systems decide what information is “correct,” what is “misinformation,” what viewpoints are acceptable, what viewpoints are “harmful,” and how to present material. For example, several studies show that the leading AI models have left-leaning political slants. These entrenched biases, coupled with the personalization capabilities of AI, could be a very powerful tool for indoctrination.
If you think debates over curriculum were intense before, imagine an invisible algorithm quietly steering how your child learns history, civics, or even basic facts about the world. AI could become the most effective indoctrination device ever placed in a classroom.
AI comes with major privacy and safety risks
AI feeds on data. And when it comes to schools, that is your child’s data. Everything from test scores and study habits to behavioral patterns and even emotional responses can be collected, stored, and used to refine Big Tech algorithms.
Where does that data go? Who has access to it? Can it be sold, tracked, or used years later when your child applies for a job or college? Parents must demand transparency and strict limitations. Protecting the privacy of all children in the age of AI is essential.
Lawsuits are already popping up on this issue. For instance, Google is currently facing a lawsuit over allegations that it collected data on millions of students through its educational tools, raising serious privacy concerns about how much information tech companies gather on kids without parental consent.
AI can damage mental health
Education is about far more than memorizing facts. It includes mentorship, human connection, and building social and emotional skills that prepare kids for life. If AI tutors, chatbots, or grading systems replace too much of a teacher’s role, children risk becoming isolated and less resilient.
Parents need to insist that AI supplements teachers, not replaces them. A screen is no substitute for a caring adult who knows your child, believes in them, and holds them accountable.
Another risk comes from what researchers call “AI sycophancy.” This is when chatbots or AI tutors simply tell students what they want to hear, reinforcing their opinions instead of challenging them. Over time, that can stunt critical thinking and give kids a distorted sense of reality. This is especially troubling in an educational setting.
Parents must be the first line of defense
The lessons of social media are clear: Parents cannot rely on bureaucrats, politicians, or tech companies to put kids’ best interests first.
The same is true with AI. Parents have the right and responsibility to ask tough questions. What AI tools are used in your child’s school? What data is being collected? What guardrails are in place? And most importantly: Who is in control?
RELATED: Virtual schooling a viable alternative? Thank woke teachers, school closures, and AI
Photo by JackF via Getty Images
Parents should also demand policies that protect children’s privacy, dignity, and freedom of thought. Our kids’ future is too important to leave in the hands of unaccountable algorithms.
AI doesn’t have to be a threat to our children. But if parents don’t get involved now, this powerful technology will shape our kids without our vital input. Parents must lead the way in demanding transparency, accountability, and human-centered education.
Our children deserve schools that prepare them for the future without compromising their privacy, freedom, or humanity. That’s only possible if parents step up now, before it’s too late.
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‘War from within’: ICE agents descend from helicopters to nab suspected TDA gangsters in Chicago apartment
Operation Midway Blitz, the immigration enforcement surge underway in Chicago since the beginning of September, continued with a large show of force targeting gang members. Tensions are running high among different leaders as Trump continues to execute on his deportation mandate.
On Tuesday, federal agents descended on a building in Chicago in a raid targeting illegal aliens, some with suspected ties to Tren de Aragua. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surrounded a building, with some agents rappelling down from Black Hawk helicopters.
‘If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return.’
Nearly 300 federal agents from FBI, Border Patrol, ICE, and the ATF assisted in the operation in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Newsweek reported that roughly 30 illegal aliens were detained, some with suspected Tren de Aragua affiliation.
President Trump designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization at the beginning of his second term.
Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino has spearheaded deportation raids in Illinois. (Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
On Tuesday morning, Trump called out the largest of the infamous sanctuary cities, describing the deportation operations as a “war from within”: “What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places. And we’re going to straighten them out one by one.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) fired back at Trump’s message on X. “To Donald Trump: Stop using military troops and ICE to invade and disrupt American cities. Stop calling your political opponents ‘enemies’ of the U.S. Stop attacking the 1st Amendment. Our troops and our nation deserve better than you acting as a petty tyrant.”
Operation Midway Blitz was announced on September 8, 2025, in honor of Katie Abraham, a young woman killed by an illegal alien in Illinois.
“For years, Governor Pritzker and his fellow sanctuary politicians released Tren de Aragua gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers on Chicago’s streets — putting American lives at risk and making Chicago a magnet for criminals,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin at the beginning of Operation Midway Blitz. “President Trump and Secretary Noem have a clear message: No city is a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens. If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return.”
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Panhandler pushes 82-year-old woman face-first to ground, breaking her knee, after she wouldn’t give him money, officials say
A Chicago panhandler pushed an 82-year-old woman face-first to the ground last month, breaking her knee, after she refused to give him money, CWB Chicago reported, citing officials.
Prosecutors said 49-year-old Dion Rance was panhandling near the drive-through of a McDonald’s in the 1000 block of West Wilson Avenue around 10 a.m. Sept. 15 when the victim — who visits the restaurant for breakfast almost every day — exited the fast-food restaurant, the outlet reported.
‘People in Uptown are racist and don’t give any money.’
Prosecutors added that surveillance video allegedly shows Rance following the victim along a sidewalk before shoving her in the back, CWB Chicago said, adding that the woman fell face-first upon the concrete and screamed in pain as Rance walked away.
More from CWB Chicago:
A passerby rushed to help the woman, who returned to her nearby apartment building, where a staffer called 911. She was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center with a fractured knee and additional injuries to her face and body from the fall, prosecutors said.
Police who reviewed the surveillance video immediately recognized Rance and placed his image into a photo lineup. But the victim, who suffers from cataracts, could not identify him, according to a detention filing.
Officers recently found Rance walking in the 5300 block of North Clark in Andersonville and took him into custody.
Prosecutors said Rance admitted to asking the woman for money but claimed he pushed her because she called him the N-word — in Chinese, the outlet noted.
Rance told officers he went to school with “a Chinese guy who taught him a lot,” CWB Chicago said, citing the detention filing.
However, a court document states that the victim speaks Japanese, the outlet noted.
Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune
Rance also allegedly told investigators that “people in Uptown are racist and don’t give any money,” CWB Chicago added.
Judge James Murphy III ordered Rance detained on charges of aggravated battery of a victim over 60 and aggravated battery in a public place, the outlet noted.
Jail records indicate Rance was booked Sept. 18 on no bond, and he remained behind bars Wednesday morning. His next court date is scheduled for Oct. 10, jail records say.
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Mark Levin destroys Jimmy Kimmel’s narrative on Charlie Kirk’s death
It’s not hard for BlazeTV host Mark Levin to dismantle Jimmy Kimmel’s narrative about Charlie Kirk’s assassination — because it was false — nor is it hard for him to dismantle the free speech outrage that followed his warranted suspension.
Levin points out that while Kimmel claimed the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” all he really did was use ABC’s platform to lie.
“Well, first of all, that is a flat-out lie, and it is an attempt to politicize and exploit what took place, and people who love Charlie and his supporters trying to upset them, and he succeeded,” BlazeTV host Mark Levin says on “LevinTV.”
“Now, is that free speech? Is that constitutionally protected free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution? There’s a difference between constitutionally protected free speech and just free speech,” he continues.
“The Kimmel suspension was never a battle over free speech or government control of speech. Kimmel was dropped because he’s a loathsome punk who made a highly inappropriate comment about the political assassination of Charlie Kirk. It is Charlie Kirk who was murdered because of his speech. Did Kimmel even talk about that? No. He lied,” he adds.
Levin also points out that ABC is a private company and has every right to fire its employees for what they say.
“I would ask you,” Levin says, addressing the audience, “most of you are employees, right? So if you say something that’s outrageous or inappropriate or something of that kind, and you’re fired, do you jump up and down and say, ‘Hey, my free speech rights! Hey, my free speech rights!’”
“You are careful to some extent because you know if you don’t have a governor on your mouth, you will be fired. Whether it’s your free speech or not, it’s irrelevant. Employers can and do fire employees for things they say,” he continues.
“The chairman of the FCC had no role in any of it, no matter what he said or didn’t say. He can’t even act on his own. He needs a majority of the commissioners,” he says, adding, “But he didn’t actually do anything. So there’s no First Amendment at issue, despite the best efforts to concoct one.”
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Does anyone think we’re up to the task of controlling AI?
So many slide decks and white papers promise a future of AI under human control, a project framed not as a technological sprint but as a long journey. The language is meant to reassure, a steady hand on the shoulder of a jittery public. Yet the very premise of the journey implies a certain departure, a recognition that the systems we are building now operate at a speed and complexity that have outstripped our capacity to easily oversee. One might nervously wonder whether the center will hold.
One answer to this predicament is “interpretability,” a technique for examining an AI model to figure out why it did what it did. It’s the equivalent of reading a plane’s flight recorder after a crash. But a system making thousands of autonomous decisions a second offers no time for such leisurely forensics. A failure may not be an event but a condition, a constant state of potential deviation.
The new thinking, then, is to move from forensics to architecture. The goal is to build in the oversight, to treat governance, not as a secondary analysis, but as a foundational requirement, an immutable audit trail that logs not just a model’s output but its entire lineage: the data it was fed, the model version that made the call, the key inputs that shaped its rationale. We are no longer merely watching the machine; we are building a watchtower.
In the loop?
At the heart of this new architecture is the “human-in-the-loop,” a concept whose neatness belies anxiety. The human, we are told, will shift from a passive reviewer to an active designer, engage in a continuous loop of governance that sets the boundaries and defines the goals. But the very act of depending on these systems can engender a state of cognitive offloading, a subtle atrophy of our own critical faculties. We are asked to be the system’s ultimate arbiter at the very moment the system is eroding the instincts required for the job.
The friction is everywhere. We see it in the laboratory, when a researcher at the University of Washington uses deep learning to design functional proteins that have never existed in nature, opening doors to novel medicines and biosensors. We see it in the game of Go, when a machine makes a move that defies centuries of human wisdom, a move of startling, alien creativity. The promise is one of discovery, of accelerating the scientific method. The possible reality is a “theory glut,” a condition in which the bottleneck shifts from ideation to validation. We find ourselves in a world that can generate hypotheses at a superhuman rate, but our capacity to test them, to ground them in the physical world, remains stubbornly, irreducibly human. We might drown in brilliant answers to questions we have not yet learned how to ask.
This dissonance echoes in the most intimate spaces of our lives. We are offered “digital twins,” virtual replicas of our own physiology, updated in real time, upon which a surgeon can rehearse a procedure in a risk-free environment. We are told that AI copilots will save the legal profession a great number of hours per year, freeing lawyers from the drudgery of document review to focus on the higher arts of deepening client relationships.
RELATED: Female avatar appointed as Europe’s first AI government official
Photo by SFOTO / Contributor via Getty Images
Free and fragile
The narrative is one of liberation, of efficiency begetting connection. And yet, this reclaimed time exists within a system of escalating expectations. The Jevons paradox, a 19th-century economic observation, finds its modern footing here: As efficiency increases, so sometimes does demand. The two hours a sales professional saves each day are not banked for leisure; they are reinvested into the pursuit of higher quotas. The freedom from menial tasks does not lead to rest, but to the creation of new, more complex work.
And beneath it all, there is a persistent hum of vulnerability. The very transparency we engineer for control becomes a new attack surface. An adversary can engage in “data poisoning,” slipping malicious information into a training set to warp a model’s output in subtle, insidious ways. The system built for audibility becomes uniquely susceptible to a kind of attack that leaves no obvious trace, a hidden vulnerability that could lie dormant for years in a system that guides autonomous vehicles or calibrates antibiotic dosages. The solution, it turns out, has problems of its own.
The long journey points not toward a destination but toward a state of perpetual negotiation. The most critical constraint is not hardware or networking or power. It is talent. The crisis is human. The skill gap between the demand for those who can manage these systems and the available supply is the true bottleneck. The government may frame this challenge as a matter of national security, an imperative to maintain a competitive advantage. But it seems to be something more fundamental. A controllable AI future is not about building smarter machines. It is about the far more complex and uncertain project of building a more resilient and healthy human society, one capable of managing the strange and brilliant weather of its own creation.
Tech, Ai, Jevons paradox, Artificial intelligence
The carnage no one talks about: Drunk driving and illegal aliens
Conservatives have long noticed a disturbing pattern: Hispanic illegal aliens appear again and again in drunk-driving cases. Recent news searches bring up multiple examples, some involving the deaths of children.
This summer’s tragedy in Wisconsin made the problem impossible to ignore — yet the corporate left-wing press tried to do just that. Two high school sweethearts, Hallie Helgeson and Brady Heiling, died when a drunk driver going the wrong way slammed into their car. Just weeks earlier they had gone to prom together.
Americans deserve more than platitudes and silence. They deserve honesty about the cultural, biological, and policy factors behind drunk driving.
The driver was Noelia Saray Martinez-Avila, a Honduran illegal alien who had racked up multiple drunk-driving charges. She lived in a sanctuary jurisdiction that shielded her from deportation. Only under the Trump administration’s renewed immigration enforcement did local authorities finally hand her over to ICE.
A cultural problem that fuels tragedy
The Wisconsin case was heartbreaking, but it was not unique. In 2007, the Raleigh News & Observer published a rare report on the problem. A Mexican man admitted he thought he “drove better after a few beers” and that drunk driving was normal in Mexico. At the time, alcohol-related crashes caused by Hispanic drivers in North Carolina were three times higher than for non-Hispanics.
The national data confirms the trend. Hispanic drunk-driving rates are roughly double those of whites. Alcohol-use disorder is three times as common. More than a third of Hispanic alcohol-dependent users relapse, compared with 23% of whites.
Binge-drinking drives much of the danger. Hispanics are more likely than whites to consume large amounts of alcohol in one sitting. Forty-two percent of Hispanic drinkers admit to three or more drinks per day, compared to 30% of whites.
The numbers don’t lie
Mexicans, who make up half of the illegal alien population, show the highest risk. Mexican-Americans are three times more likely than whites to develop alcohol-use disorder. FBI crime data reported last year shows that Hispanics, 19% of the U.S. population, account for 30% of drunk-driving arrests and 44% of public drunkenness arrests.
In California, where Hispanics made up 37% of the population at the time, they represented 44% of DUI charges in 2012 (the latest I could find). In North Carolina, Hispanics were just 8% of the population but accounted for 18% of 75,000 DUI arrests in 2007.
New Mexico illustrates the deadly stakes. With a population that is half Hispanic, the state suffers nearly three times the national alcohol-related death rate. Five people die every day from alcohol. Before reforms in the 2000s, New Mexico’s DUI crash rate stood 70% higher than the national average.
The pattern reflects Mexico itself. In the United States, drunk drivers cause 31% of traffic deaths. In Mexico, the figure is over 70%. About 24,000 Mexicans die annually in alcohol-linked crashes — more than twice the U.S. toll despite the population difference. Until recently, most Mexican states had no legal blood-alcohol limits, and licensing often required little more than paying a fee.
Native populations face even steeper risks. In McKinley County, New Mexico, where the population is 80% Native American, the alcohol-related death rate is three times higher than the state average and ten times the national average.
Research points to genetic factors. Enzymes that mediate alcohol’s effects vary by ethnic group. Indigenous populations, exposed to alcohol only in the last 300 years, show far higher vulnerability. With Mexicans being heavily Mestizo — roughly 20% indigenous and 60% mixed indigenous (Mestizo) — the biological risk compounds the cultural one.
The media silence
Given decades of national campaigns against drunk driving, one might expect attention to this ethnic dimension. Instead, the media downplay or ignore it. An America First lobbying group once tried to enlist Mothers Against Drunk Driving to raise awareness, but the effort went nowhere.
c_sorvillo via iStock/Getty Images
Academics sometimes excuse the problem by claiming Hispanic immigrants drink out of depression or isolation. Yet the biggest consumers are Puerto Ricans, not Mexicans. Cuban-Americans drink the least. Mexican women report the lowest rates of all, meaning the averages are driven almost entirely by men.
And claims of “racial profiling” ring hollow. Most offenders are caught at night, their identities confirmed by arrest records, not stereotypes.
Why it matters
Democrats dismiss these realities for the same reason they ignore illegal aliens’ broader lawbreaking: victimhood politics. They portray Hispanics as downtrodden and conservatives as cruel.
But the grief of families like the Helgesons and Heilings is not a talking point. It is permanent loss. It is trauma that echoes for generations.
Americans deserve more than platitudes and silence. They deserve honesty about the cultural, biological, and policy factors behind drunk driving. They deserve leaders who will enforce immigration law, reject sanctuary loopholes, and tell the truth about the risks that put their families in danger.
Opinion & analysis, Illegal immigration crime, Illegal aliens, Drunk driving, Drunk driving deaths, Mexico, Alcoholism, California, New mexico, Native americans, Hispanics, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Sanctuary cities, Dui arrests, Media bias, Hallie helgeson, Brady heiling, Noelia saray martinez-avila, Genetics
Meet AI ‘actress’ Tilly Norwood. Is she really the future of entertainment?
Hollywood talent agencies are about to sign their first AI (non-human) actor-entity.
The AI entity seducing the film industry goes by the name of Tilly Norwood. Tilly is the creation of Eline Van der Velden, herself a human actress/comedian. Van der Velden seems to be more than happy to play the role of bridge between the film executive looking to save money and the technologist looking to provide cost-saving solutions in the form of digital representations on-screen. Van der Velden has sought for some years now to facilitate the corporate-technological gap within the film industry. Mission accomplished.
In the music industry, where life has never been the same since Napster, the ravages of tech are well known, and the response to AI reflects it. Spotify is rejiggering its algorithm to allow for select, curated AI music applications to flow on its platforms. Spotify has signaled that its policy revisions will target AI impersonation, spamming of the algorithm by AI slop producers, and, most notably, steps toward an international standards agreement regarding disclosure of AI content.
This role — creating fake people to act out what used to be a soulful calling for humans — we could call ‘non-human avatar technician.’
Spotify moving to increase its protections and analysis with respect to AI music is a great step. Maybe we’re winning. Somewhere in the corporate cloud are human ears listening to human voices crying for authenticity. Spotify’s latest forays into adjusting the relationships between these digital entities and humanity will provide an initial template for other corporations to build on. Wise human feedback must be incorporated as the process of adjustment proceeds.
Before we start slapping each other on the back, a nagging question: Why did the premier AI corporations roll out the creative stuff first? Why not remake HR, or paralegals? Maybe it’s too conspiratorial, but one wonders if it’s an example of “little Suzie, do you want peas or carrots?” Which is to say, if we avoid the AI ultra-slop in the arts, can we, human beings who live here on planet Earth among other humans, mitigate the creep toward the managerial, juridical, and religious AI slop flood? We better.
Conspiracy theorists of old used to talk about divide and conquer with reference to the unfolding forces (or secret agents) of history, and it’s hard to avoid seeing the way that the left is divided from the right with respect specifically to art and technology. In this latest reassessment, Spotify removed 75 million fraudulent songs. Not bad. This substantiates, to some degree, the company’s genuflection toward the sanctity of the art and the artist. Still, the company’s history and the pressures of making “number go up” suggest that audiences and critics should remain vigilant.
RELATED: A penguin avatar will be the new leader of a Japanese political party
Photo by Bloomberg / Contributor via Getty Images
Neko Case, the powerhouse PNW singer/songwriter (one given to voicing the occasional lefty political opinion), recently lamented of her latest album: “I had the privilege of making this record in a studio and maybe got the last advance anybody’s ever gonna get. And so I wanted to make sure all the sounds on the record were made by real people.”
We can imagine, and the discourse will soon provide, some lukewarm verbiage-gruel smeared over the only mildly interesting notion of AI fronting for an artist. “Puppeteer” simply wouldn’t do to substantiate the recursive pretension required to float a profession that (if it takes off) is just corporate and tech logic merging to feed the maw of public appetite for jejune psychic diversion. This role — creating fake people to act out what used to be a soulful calling for humans — we could call “non-human avatar technician” and stem the otherwise inevitable flow of false accolades.
There are many who say of this moment that AI and the intensity of investment ($500 billion from the U.S. government, as one example) suggest merely another financial bubble that, much like previous bubbles, is preceded by a massive fear of missing out. There’s some of that FOMO involved in this latest swing from Hollywood executives and music industry decision-makers. There’s a sense that they don’t know what’s next. Which isn’t surprising, because all such executives have ever known is how to buy true creative talent. Is AI true creative talent? Nope.
Hollywood needs to do what it can to limp along. Artists such as Case, despite whatever ideological or political differences they may have with Christians (and there are plenty), will need to look toward firmer spiritual ground if they hope to avoid total obliteration. For now, the audiences prefer human hands on instruments and genuine human vision in their storytelling. If the battle comes down to corporate costs vs. customer preference, however, we may need to begin looking at other options soon.
Tech, Culture
Calling MAGA ‘fascist’ is the smear of the century
No political insult gets thrown around more recklessly these days than “fascist.” The word has been gutted of meaning, reduced to a club progressives swing at President Trump and people like Stephen Miller and the late Charlie Kirk. Democrats and their media allies casually smear conservatives as extremists who follow the “fascist playbook.”
Joe Biden himself dragged the rhetoric to a new low. In September 2022, standing in front of Liberty Hall in Philadelphia, he declared that “MAGA Republicans” are extremists and enemies of democracy.
“They embrace anger,” Biden thundered. “They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth, but in the shadow of lies.” Weeks earlier, at a fundraiser in Maryland, he even called the MAGA movement “semi-fascist.”
The smear reveals less about conservatives and more about the authoritarian streak buried in the left’s own philosophy.
Say what you want about Trump’s sharp elbows in politics, but he never demonized American voters as enemies of the republic. Biden did — and Democrats have repeated the smear ever since. The question is: What happens to a country when its leaders brand millions of citizens “fascists”?
The goals of the MAGA movement are plain: Protect natural rights, foster prosperity, expand energy access, secure the border, reduce crime, preserve domestic peace, and pursue a foreign policy rooted in prudence. These aims hardly resemble fascism. Yet defenders of liberty now find themselves caricatured as authoritarians.
To see how absurd this charge is, it helps to remember what fascism actually means.
A (very) short history of fascism
The intellectual father of fascism was Giovanni Gentile, an Italian philosopher born in 1875. Following Hegel, he saw the rational state as the end point of history. He defined “true democracy” not as liberty but as the individual’s willing subordination to the state.
For Gentile, public and private interests were one and the same. To serve society was to serve the state. His student, Benito Mussolini, turned this philosophy into doctrine: “All is in the state, and nothing human exists or has value outside the state.”
Contrary to today’s rhetoric, fascism did not begin on the right. Mussolini himself was a Marxist. He and Antonio Gramsci broke with Leninist revolution but retained socialism’s collectivist core. Fascism emphasized nationalism, racial particularity, and the total authority of the state — summed up in the term “blood and soil.” Its very name came from the Latin word fasces, the Roman bundle of rods bound to an axe — symbolizing unity and power.
Fascism arose in the economic chaos of the 1920s and ’30s. Italy and Germany launched massive public-works programs, funded by confiscatory taxes, borrowing, and printing money. As with communism, fascism treated every citizen as an employee and tenant of the party-run state. Force and coercion were essential. Mussolini was blunt: The individual’s “anti-social right” to resist the state did not exist.
In his 1928 autobiography, he wrote:
The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill.
Fascism and the New Deal
The American version of the 1930s response to the Great Depression, of course, was Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Today it’s remembered as democracy’s answer to authoritarianism. But at the time, many noted striking similarities between Roosevelt’s programs and those of Mussolini and Hitler.
John T. Flynn, a leading conservative writer, warned in “As We Go Marching” (1944) that the New Deal looked like a “good fascism” — regulation and planning at home, military adventures abroad, and growing state power. Others saw the same trend: massive public-works projects, charismatic leadership, centralized propaganda, and the creation of a “voluntary compulsion” that blurred the line between civic duty and government coercion.
Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s remarkable 2006 book, “Three New Deals,” compares the era’s regimes. He did not equate Roosevelt with Mussolini or Hitler, but he highlighted the parallels: grand projects like the TVA, monumental architecture, direct appeals from the “leader” to the people, and the constant use of war imagery. Roosevelt even warned that those who resisted his programs were “enemies” of recovery.
The difference, of course, was that America retained constitutional checks that Europe discarded. Yet the centralizing impulse — and the temptation to vest extraordinary authority in a leader — was real.
Progressive roots
The resemblance should not surprise us. European fascism and the New Deal both grew from the same philosophical soil. The American founding drew on John Locke and natural law. “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one,” Locke wrote. “And reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind.” The Declaration of Independence, in turn, proclaimed that rights are endowed by the Creator and cannot be erased by government.
European thought took another path, from Machiavelli to Hegel, exalting the state as the source of order and authority. By the late 19th century, American Progressives imported this vision. Woodrow Wilson and other intellectuals trained in German universities rejected the founders’ natural-rights philosophy and embraced statism.
RELATED: The next generation of Marxists is marching through the institutions
Photo by Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Daily News via Getty Images
Progressives, like their European cousins, placed the state at the center of political life. They taught that rights flow not from God but from government — positive, material entitlements dispensed by bureaucrats. Over the past century, Democrats from Wilson and FDR to Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama have built a regime that subordinates every aspect of American life to the federal leviathan.
The real irony
Given this history, 21st-century progressives should think twice before flinging “fascism” as a slur. Their own intellectual lineage shares far more with Mussolini and Gentile than anything found in the MAGA movement.
Trump supporters want liberty secured, prosperity restored, and sovereignty defended. Progressives want the state elevated above all. The smear reveals less about conservatives and more about the authoritarian streak buried in the left’s own philosophy.
Fascism, Fascist, Opinion, Opinion & analysis, Maga, Donald trump, Hegel, Joe biden
Man chokes wife to death and dismembers her body because she couldn’t lose weight after giving birth, police say
A Los Angeles man allegedly murdered his wife and dismembered her body because she had a difficult time losing weight after giving birth to his child.
Jonathan Renteria, 25, confessed in a handwritten letter to killing his 37-year-old wife, June Renteria, according to a criminal complaint.
‘My wife, June Renteria, is deceased in her apartment. I kill her. I am truly sorry.’
On Sept. 11, the man was found “inside a hotel room in Ventura County lying in a bathtub bleeding from a puncture wound to his forearm” at about 12:30 p.m., according to prosecutors.
A note was found in the room reading, “My wife, June Renteria, is deceased in her apartment. I kill her. I am truly sorry,” with an address in Hollywood written on the back.
Police were sent to the apartment address on a welfare check and reported a “foul” odor emanating from the door.
Once they gained entry into the residence, they discovered his wife “in a state of decomposition with her arms and legs severed.”
Security video obtained by police showed the man leaving the apartment with the couple’s 1-year-old child about five days before he was found bleeding in Ventura.
Jonathan Renteria was treated at a hospital and then interviewed by police. He allegedly confessed to the crime and told investigators that he had gotten into an argument with his wife “about her failure to lose weight following her pregnancy.”
He said his wife threatened to leave him and ensure he never saw his daughter again. He reacted by getting her into a “rear-naked chokehold,” which he learned in jiujitsu. That admission corroborated a medical examiner’s finding that she had died from “traumatic neck injuries.”
Prosecutors also claimed that he had sent an email to his father confessing to the crimes.
“The only thing I could do in the moment was choke her. And I did. I held it for as long as I could until my arms gave out. I was horrified at myself. Right after this I took a lot of drugs to get through it,” he allegedly wrote.
Jonathan Renteria was arrested and charged with murder and the mutilation of human remains. His bail was set at $4,000,000.
The suspect met the victim on social media, and she moved to the United States from Scotland to be with him.
A GoFundMe page set up for the family of June Bunyan, the maiden name for June Renteria, said that she had been proud of earning a law degree and had moved to the U.S. in pursuit of becoming a defense attorney.
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Dismembered wife, June renteria, Murder over birth weight, Jonathan renteria murder, Crime
How radical professors turn classrooms into training grounds for Antifa
President Donald Trump announced last month on Truth Social that he would designate Antifa as a “major terrorist organization.” His move followed the assassination of Charlie Kirk, in which the alleged shooter etched Antifa-linked slogans onto bullet casings.
The announcement was overdue. But it isn’t enough. The deeper problem lies in the way far-left ideology has wormed its way into America’s universities. For more than a decade, Antifa sympathizers in higher education have used their influence to normalize radical tactics and ideology.
Studying radical groups is not the problem. The problem is activist educators who weaponize academic freedom.
Hiding behind “academic freedom,” these activists have seized positions of authority, cloaked propaganda as scholarship, and worked to sanitize Antifa’s record of violence. Their work not only whitewashes street-level thuggery but also lends intellectual credibility to other radical movements.
Radicalized classrooms
In the fall of 2020, Rutgers University’s Rutgers Today gave Professor Mark Bray a glowing profile. Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” softened Antifa’s image by claiming the movement simply wants to “change the world dramatically.” He insisted its “strategic focus” is to shut down the far right and “protect progressive social movements.”
That framing wasn’t neutral scholarship. It was spin. Bray is a proudly outspoken leftist. His book is an apology for and encomium to Antifa’s “direct action” tactics.
Across the country, courses that elevate Antifa are now showing up in university catalogs. They are not taught as dispassionate examinations of an ideology. They are taught by activists who share the movement’s goals.
At the City University of New York, an English course titled “Global Antifa” promises to explore “antifascist traditions” and link them to “racial justice, anti-imperialism, intersectional feminism, and critiques of capitalism.” In practice, the course serves as movement training, rather than academic analysis.
Over the summer, video from the Socialism 2025 conference revealed the professor behind the CUNY course openly endorsing a boycott of the fossil fuel industry. Other footage showed a Seattle University law professor calling on activists to “break laws and rules” to hide people from ICE and “the cops.”
Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Their classrooms mirror their activism. A review of one law professor’s 2019 “Race and Law” syllabus confirmed the bias. The reading list included Bray’s “Antifa Handbook,” a comic book glorifying Antifa, Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” and a stack of pro-Palestine and pro-Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions tracts.
Unfortunately, pro-Antifa materials are not confined to graduate seminars. They have also seeped into undergraduate classrooms.
At Harvard, the Department of Government offered a course titled “#Abolish Police.” The syllabus included Bray’s book and assigned a unit on solidarity with the BDS movement and the Palestinian cause.
Rutgers went even farther. A 2018 sociology course openly declared its aim: to study the “rise and success” of resistance movements like the Black Panther Party, Anonymous, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the “Anti-Trump resistance movement.” This is clearly not neutral instruction. It is activism disguised as scholarship.
From the ivory tower, these ideologies trickle down. What begins in university courses eventually lands in teacher training programs, K-12 classrooms, and education conferences. The process has a name: “idea laundering.” Academic activists flood journals, dissertations, and repositories with work that favors Antifa, then cite that same “research” to legitimize the movement.
The results can be laughable — or dangerous. One sociology dissertation at Mississippi State University read more like agitprop than analysis. The author admitted that Antifa “embraces the concept of violence and intimidation,” but brushed it off as a minority tendency. The dissertation concluded that the real problem wasn’t Antifa’s violence but the “negative press” it receives, while claiming fascist groups are the greater threat.
RELATED: Democrats falsely claim Antifa does not exist after movement gets terrorist designation
Photo by Jeff Halstead/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Another paper, brazenly titled “Plantifa: Antifascist Guerrilla Gardening Curriculum,” shows just how far the indoctrination has gone. It links Antifa’s radical ideology with environmental “justice,” turning classrooms into training grounds for activism. The stated goal is to condition students in anti-fascism, to “plant seeds of love against hierarchies.” Translation: Enlist kids into a movement that openly rejects Western civilization.
Cleaning house
President Trump’s designation of Antifa as a terrorist organization is a long-overdue step. But stopping street violence is only part of the battle. The ideological campaign waged inside universities must be confronted with equal seriousness.
Studying radical groups is not the problem. Academic freedom allows rigorous analysis of movements and ideas. The problem is activist educators who weaponize that freedom. They smuggle their politics into classrooms, presenting indoctrination as scholarship. They use liberal values — free inquiry, free thought, dissent — as camouflage for an anti-Western ideology bent on dismantling the United States and its allies.
Universities ignore this threat at their peril. Antifa’s intellectual allies behave like a parasitic wasp: They burrow into the institution, feed on its resources, and, eventually, kill the host. If higher education refuses to police itself, the rot will spread unchecked — leaving the next generation radicalized and the nation badly weakened.
Opinion & analysis, Antifa, Antifa portland, Donald trump, Terrorism, Terrorist organization, Leftism, Colleges, Universities, University of seattle, Radicalism, Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, Black bloc, Mark bray, Antifa handbook, Left-wing professors
Body positivity activist brags about cutting off family over Palestine
Body positivity activist and “plus-size” model Tess Holliday took center stage at the September 20 Teen Vogue summit to give some horrible advice — as she’s done before regarding body positivity — to those listening.
In the clips, when Holliday is not trying to tear down other celebrities who have lost weight, she tells the audience that she is not speaking to multiple members of her family because they stayed “quiet when so many injustices are happening” in places like Palestine, Sudan, and Congo.
“I literally blocked my brother yesterday. I’m not speaking to my mom, my stepmom, my dad. I’m collecting them like Pokemon. I’m like, ‘Who can I block next?’” Holliday said in a clip from the summit.
“And it stinks, but I just think that you have to stand for something. And I think as you get older and mature — and I feel like you guys are already far more mature than I was at your age — you have to stand for what matters to you,” Holliday continued.
“And when you see things happening, you have to say something, in my opinion. And I understand that there’s safety concerns, and I have a lot of privilege as a cis white woman saying those things,” she added.
“Body positivity activist,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray says, shocked.
“She blocks people that don’t support her views on the Palestinian people. … She blocks her brothers just because they don’t think there should be a Palestinian state,” executive producer Keith Malinak comments.
“Wow, well that’s beautiful. That’s a wonderful person right there,” Gray says.
“And what do you want to bet, she knows nothing about it,” he adds.
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Free, Sharing, Camera phone, Upload, Video, Video phone, Youtube.com, Pat gray unleashed, Pat gray, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Body positivity activist, Tess holliday, Palestine, Cutting off family members, Cult, Pokemon, Liberals, Liberal politics, Liberal agenda, Teen vogue
Smash the health care cartel, free the market
Obamacare was supposed to solve the problem of a small minority of people who couldn’t afford health insurance but weren’t eligible for Medicaid. Fifteen years later, Democrats now admit their plans are so expensive that unless taxpayers cover nearly the entire cost, they remain unaffordable.
Instead of regulating and subsidizing the market into insolvency, Republicans should finally offer a bold alternative to the largest sector of the economy and the most expensive line in a household budget.
$40 billion a year goes to insurers to pad numbers and keep insolvent plans alive.
News of a possible government shutdown dominates headlines, but few understand what triggered the standoff over fiscal year 2026 funding. Democrats insist that Biden’s COVID-era expansion of Obamacare subsidies be extended or made permanent. In other words: more debt to prop up a broken system. Just what we need.
Subsidizing greed, debt, and inflation
Through the 2021 COVID bill and the Orwellian-named 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats raised the income cutoff for subsidies from 400% of the federal poverty line to 800%. That’s roughly $300,000 for a family of five. The change placed nearly everyone outside employer coverage under government subsidies. Millions now pay nothing for premiums. The bill goes straight to the national debt.
Insurers responded as any vendor feeding at a public trough would: They raised prices. Family premiums have jumped 20%-25% since 2021, with another 6.5% hike expected next year — the largest increase in 15 years. Because government, not consumers, is now the customer, companies treat subsidies as free money. The result: Health care drives the deficit spending that makes everyday living more expensive.
Small businesses suffer most. Employer plans aren’t subsidized, so workers lose potential wage increases to soaring premium costs. Since 2014, family premiums have climbed 52%, the worker’s share 31%. Deductibles for individual plans have surged 53%, reaching $1,787 in 2024.
The grift goes farther. Paragon Institute data shows that nearly 12 million enrollees never used their coverage. Before Biden’s credits, only 4 million filed no claims. Today, 45% of the 24.3 million exchange “enrollees” are phantom accounts — people auto-re-enrolled, some without even knowing it.
Free money fuels fraud
Once Biden pushed full subsidies for those earning up to 150% of poverty — 55% of 2025’s enrollees — brokers saw a jackpot. With clients paying nothing, brokers collected thousands in commissions per sign-up. Some pocketed $6,000 per plan. Insurers happily billed the government while HHS looked the other way. Paragon estimates that 6 million people received full subsidies despite earning above the threshold.
That means $40 billion a year goes to insurers to pad numbers and keep insolvent plans alive.
RELATED: Medicaid for millions, misery for the middle class
MCCAIG via iStock/Getty Images
Breaking the cartel
The real fix is simple: Stop inflating prices with subsidies and break the insurance cartel.
With more than 70 million already pushed onto Medicaid, why not put everyone else into one competitive market where consumers choose freely and insurers compete with unregulated plans?
Trump and congressional Republicans should counter Democrats’ proposal with a market-based plan that:
Allows insurers, employers, trade associations, and states to offer unregulated alternatives — including expanded “short-term” three-year plans revived from Trump’s first term.Expands HSAs by raising contribution caps to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for joint filers and allows tax-free use for premiums, concierge fees, and health-sharing ministries. Employers should get equal tax treatment for these alternatives.Demands price transparency by prohibiting contracts that block providers from offering discounts to self-pay patients. Repeal the HMO Act and subject managed-care giants to antitrust law.Lifts the ban on physician-owned hospitals to restore competition and shore up rural care.
Federal health spending has ballooned from $85 billion in 1987 to nearly $1.5 trillion today — double since Obamacare. Employer-based insurance, warped by government tax policy, adds another $1.1 trillion. More subsidies will only deepen the hole.
Republicans should seize the chance to present a real alternative: consumer choice, price transparency, and competition. That’s the only way to bring health care costs down without bankrupting families or the nation.
Opinion & analysis, Obamacare, Health insurance, Healthcare, Subsidies, Donald trump, Congress, Medicaid, Entitlements, Inflation reduction act, Covid-19, Republicans, Democrats, Insurance companies, Cartel, Premiums, Hmo act, Health savings account, Debt
Pro-life activist to file civil lawsuit after Democrat DA missed deadline to press charges on assault caught on video
The pro-life activist who was violently attacked while arguing with a woman about abortion says she will file a civil lawsuit after a liberal district attorney accidentally forgot to file charges before a deadline.
Savannah Craven Antao was filming interviews with random people in April for the Live Action pro-life group when a woman punched her in the face without warning. The exchange was caught on video by Antao’s husband and published online, as previously reported by Blaze News.
‘Failing to prosecute these clear-cut charges sets a dangerous standard for how our society responds to violence against those engaging in democratic dialogue.’
“The woman became aggressive and violent upon learning Savannah’s pro-life stance,” Antao’s husband said. “I intervened to protect my wife, and we immediately called 911. The police arrived, and we provided them with the assailant’s photo and description. We hope justice will be served soon.”
The suspect was arrested and identified as Brianna Rivers, but the charges against her were dropped when Democrat District Attorney Alvin Bragg claimed that his office had accidentally missed a filing deadline.
Antao said she wasn’t even contacted about the development and learned about it from Rivers’ social media.
Bragg’s office released a statement of apology.
“Every victim deserves their day in court, and our office has reached out to apologize to Ms. Craven for the unacceptable error of missing the discovery deadline. We are taking immediate internal steps in light of this case,” the statement reads.
Christopher Ferrara, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, is representing Antao and excoriated Bragg’s actions.
“District Attorney Bragg’s shocking refusal to uphold justice only works to undermine confidence in the system, especially when our political climate has become as fraught as it is now,” Ferrara explained. “Failing to prosecute these clear-cut charges sets a dangerous standard for how our society responds to violence against those engaging in democratic dialogue.”
RELATED: Woman who punched pro-life activist during street interview claims she was antagonized
Antao says she will file a civil lawsuit against Rivers. The assault led to Antao needing stitches and racking up $3,000 in medical bills.
“It just goes to show, right now in our country, we are experiencing leftist violence, political violence, at an all-time high. And it has to be shown,” Antao said. “The left always loves to say it’s the conservatives that are all violent, and they’re hurting people because they have different beliefs — but I am proving that it’s the complete opposite.”
Rivers claimed that she was antagonized by Antao and points to the edits in the video released as evidence for her claim.
“She needs to release the unedited footage with her relentless antagonization on a subject that is very touchy,” she wrote. “I will not allow my image to be defamed by this woman’s actions. Anyone who knows me knows how respectful I am, I don’t even litter, there’s no way you believe I’m punching people for disagreeing with my POV.”
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Alvin Bragg drops charges against woman who attacked pro-life advocate
In the middle of conducting man-on-the-street-style interviews for her YouTube channel, “Her Patriot Voice,” pro-life advocate Savannah Craven Antao was attacked by a woman named Brianna Rivers — and New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg just dropped all charges against her.
“She’s out there on the streets. This woman walks up and the interview — I don’t know, I’m going to say it escalated very quickly,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments.
Antao asked basic questions about Rivers’ beliefs surrounding abortion, to which the woman answered that if a woman doesn’t want a baby, she should “just get rid of it.”
“What happens in an abortion?” Antao asked.
“They literally suck the life out of you. They’re going to take the whole baby out. And as they should, because I shouldn’t be a taxpayer paying child support and food stamps,” Rivers replied, audibly yelling.
“You should be a taxpayer paying for abortions?” Antao asked again.
“Exactly. For a woman who didn’t want the baby in the first place, that doesn’t make sense to me. Don’t ever sit here and lock yourself down with a man who already told you he doesn’t want to be with you,” Rivers said.
“But you don’t get to kill the baby just because their dad didn’t want that,” Antao replied.
“You can,” Rivers said, to which Antao replied, “Should we kill the kids in foster care?”
“Why not!” Rivers screamed.
When Antao brought up that the woman appeared to be okay with killing not only unborn babies but babies in foster care, Rivers punched her in the face.
Antao was faced with stitches and $3,000 in medical bills, and Rivers was charged with second-degree assault.
“But it was dropped because Alvin Bragg’s office apparently is full of DEI hires, I guess. I don’t know. They missed a key filing deadline, and they didn’t even turn over evidence to the court in time,” Gonzales says. “Imagine letting the real criminals, the violent criminals, run free because you can’t be bothered to hit your deadlines.”
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Exclusive: DHS disputes ‘false’ narrative from legacy media — ‘ICE does NOT arrest or deport US citizens’
A New York Times report published on Monday claimed that at least 15 American citizens have been “arrested or detained and questioned” by law enforcement officials as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The Department of Homeland Security rejected the Times’ accusations in a press release obtained exclusively by Blaze News.
The Times claimed that the DHS has “roamed the streets, courthouses and workplaces demanding proof of citizenship from residents,” particularly in Southern California communities.
‘Any US citizens arrested are because of obstructing or assaulting law enforcement.’
The DHS rejected the Times’ accusation, emphasizing that its operations are “highly targeted” and do not result in the arrest of U.S. citizens.
“We do our due diligence,” the department explained. “We know who we are targeting ahead of time. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement is trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability. ICE does not arrest or detain U.S. citizens.”
The Times further reported that Americans had been detained overnight in immigration facilities without access to a lawyer or a phone call.
The DHS stated this was not true, noting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers have higher standards “than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”
RELATED: Pam Bondi issues zero-tolerance order on violence against federal officers
Photo by BENJAMIN HANSON/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
“Any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false,” the DHS said.
“All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members,” the DHS continued.
The Times highlighted several cases, including those involving Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, Jason Brian Gavidia, Javier Ramirez, George Retes, and Leonardo Garcia Venegas. The outlet reported that all the individuals were American citizens who were unjustly targeted by the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement.
According to the news outlet, Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, was riding in his employer’s truck with his co-workers in May when the Florida Highway Patrol pulled them over. After Laynez-Ambrosio and the other vehicle occupants refused to exit the vehicle, troopers forcibly removed them, the Times reported. Laynez-Ambrosio was allegedly held at a nearby Border Patrol facility for roughly six hours, despite repeatedly telling officials he was a U.S. citizen.
The DHS argued that Laynez-Ambrosio, who was in the vehicle with “several adult male illegal aliens from Guatemala,” resisted arrest during the traffic stop. Border Patrol agents, who were responding to a request for assistance from the FHP, arrested the illegal aliens.
Law enforcement officials detained Gavidia, 29, and Ramirez, 32, after conducting an operation at their place of business in East Los Angeles in June. The Times claimed that both were American citizens who were improperly targeted.
“Gavidia was arrested for assaulting a law enforcement officer and interfering with agents performing their duties,” the DHS stated. “Javier Ramirez was detained on the street for investigation for interference and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants.”
RELATED: Pot farm raid update: Trump’s DHS found convicted rapists and kidnappers working near migrant kids
Glass House Farms protest. Photo by BLAKE FAGAN/AFP via Getty Images
The Times reported that law enforcement agents unjustly detained Retes, a 25-year-old U.S. Army veteran, in July. During the detainment, officers allegedly broke his windshield and pepper-sprayed him after mistakenly identifying him as an unruly protester. Retes was on his way to work as a security guard for Glass House Farms, a marijuana farm in California. At the time of the incident, the farm was the site of a federal law enforcement operation, which sparked an anti-ICE demonstration.
The DHS claimed that Retes “became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement” while they were executing criminal search warrants at the farm.
“He challenged agents and blocked their route by refusing to move his vehicle out of the road. CBP arrested Retes for assault,” the department said.
The Times reported that authorities wrongfully targeted Venegas while he was working at a construction site. He began recording the officers after witnessing them push his brother, who is an illegal immigrant, to the ground, according to the news outlet. An officer allegedly tackled Venegas and kept him handcuffed for hours.
“During a targeted worksite operation, Garcia Venegas attempted to obstruct and prevent the lawful arrest of an illegal alien,” the DHS wrote. “He physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest and refused to comply with numerous verbal commands. Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties, including U.S. citizens, will of course face consequences which include arrest.”
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated, “We have said it a million times: ICE does NOT arrest or deport U.S. citizens. Not even a week after the terrorist attack targeting ICE in Dallas, the media is once again shamefully peddling a false narrative, attempting to demonize our DHS law enforcement agents, who are already facing a 1,000% increase in assaults against them.”
“Any U.S. citizens arrested are because of obstructing or assaulting law enforcement,” McLaughlin declared.
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Suspicious package detonated by police at university ahead of Turning Point USA event
An evacuation was ordered at Utah State University after a suspicious package was reported just ahead of a scheduled event for Turning Point USA.
Witnesses watched as police officers detonated the package and state police later said the university was cleared of any threat.
‘Out of an abundance of caution, the bomb squad detonated the suspicious device.’
Video on social media from journalism professor and reporter Erin Cox showed students being evacuated from the Old Main building of the university. She added that police were bringing K-9 crews into the building as well.
An alert was sent to students telling them to evacuate the building.
An evacuation has been ordered for the Old Main building on Logan campus. Leave immediately using the nearest exit. Use stairs, not elevators. Take only essential items. Go to your department’s evacuation area if applicable. Follow instructions from emergency personnel. Updates will follow.
After hearing officers yelling, “Fire in the hole,” an explosion was heard from inside the building.
“A suspicious device was found near the exterior of Old Main. University and Local law enforcement were dispatched to the scene. A device was located and deemed to be a non-explosive device,” reads a statement from the Utah State police.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the bomb squad detonated the suspicious device,” they added. “Old Main building is now clear and safe. All scheduled events may resume as normal.”
Cox noted that Charlie Kirk, the founder of TPUSA, had been scheduled to speak at the event before he was assassinated. There had been plans for day events preceding the evening event, but those were canceled.
Prior to Kirk being killed, some students organized a petition to prevent him from speaking at Utah State University, and they garnered all of 34 signatures. After his death, some students organized a petition to prevent TPUSA from its presentation at the university. That endeavor garnered all of 31 signatures.
Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10 while debating students on his national campus tour at Utah Valley University.
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