Category: blaze media

Prediction markets have been harshly criticized over claims of insider trading and illegal gambling practices, leading to politicians and media demonizing them wholesale. Are their warnings symptoms of a growing problem in dire need of recourse, or is it all part of a smear campaign meant to wrest political power away from the people? Today, we dispel the myths of these “dangerous” prediction markets, highlight the differences between the top trading apps, and gain some powerful insights from our very own Stu Burguiere.

What is a prediction market?

A prediction market is a system that allows users to trade shares on the outcomes of specific events. In the words of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, “Prediction markets offer a variety of products designed to help the public forecast, plan for, hedge, and even harness perceptions of future events.”

‘When I take a position, I assume I’m going to hold it until resolution.’

Although today’s prediction markets revolve heavily around politics and sports, the first markets centered on something a little less glamorous — agriculture. The Grain Futures Administration of 1922 was a regulatory commission tasked with combating fraud among grain traders. Their efforts were so effective that, by the 1930s, the commission expanded into other products and industries. Under a new name, the Commodity Exchange Administration oversaw markets that regulated cotton, eggs, rice, butter, metals, energy, and more. Finally, in 1974, Congress passed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act, which created the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that oversees prediction markets to this day.

The important thing to keep in mind is that prediction markets are nothing new — they’ve been around for a century! However, an increase in online accessibility and notoriety has landed these legal trading platforms in hot water.

Why prediction markets are “dangerous”

If you spend any time online, you’ll see how prediction markets are vilified by everyone from politicians to the media. Most of them claim the same thing — prediction markets are a form of online gambling, a practice that isn’t legal on a federal level. In fact, some states, like Arizona, are suing popular prediction market apps, accusing them of illegal betting practices.

The New York Times even called prediction markets “dangerous,” noting that “prediction machines have become infrastructure for the legitimacy of event outcomes, no matter how outlandish.” In other words, prediction markets have the power to reveal truths and trends outside the media’s control, making them a direct threat to the left-wing media machine.

According to the chairman of the CFTC, Michael S. Selig, prediction markets exist as a way to combat the fake news, stories, and narratives of the media. Instead of relying on talking heads to tell their audience how they should feel about a particular event, users log on to their favorite prediction market app and vote on an event’s outcome based on their own knowledge and deductive reasoning. Since users are discouraged from voting in favor of outcomes they believe to be a lie, prediction markets reveal societal truths backed by real money, giving facts more weight than misinformation with an honesty incentive at the end.

Both left-wing media and politicians, like Arizona’s Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes, hate prediction markets because they take narrative power away from the elite and put it back into the hands of the people. As for the warnings of illegal gambling? That’s a lie. The CFTC classifies prediction markets as financial products similar to stocks traded on the stock exchange, which are completely legal and regulated by the federal government.

RELATED: Prediction markets let you ‘bet’ in states where gambling is banned: Here’s how

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Top prediction market apps

Thanks to prediction market apps, the markets themselves are easier to access than ever. Two apps in particular dominate the App Store and Google Play: Polymarket and Kalshi.

Polymarket is a sports-first trading app with robust stats on the MLB, NBA, NHL, golf, and more. It also offers a section for politics and weather, with more categories on the way, but if you’re a sports fanatic, Polymarket is a great place to start.

Kalshi offers a much broader range of trading options. From sports to politics to crypto, culture, and more, Kalshi’s rounded trading portfolio makes trading much more accessible for new and seasoned users who prefer more variety.

Since both apps are financial products, you will need to provide some personal information to create your account — this can include your first and last name, date of birth, phone number, home address, your Social Security number, a form of government ID (either a driver’s license or a passport), and a current selfie for verification.

Remember that prediction markets are subject to the same ethics and government regulations as the stock market. That means all trades are subject to government scrutiny, and insider trading laws do apply.

Make markets ‘Predictable with Stu Burguiere’

To get a better understanding of prediction markets and how they work, we chatted with BlazeTV resident expert Stu Burguiere. Here’s what he had to say:

Q: What are the big differences between the prediction market platforms? Are there any benefits to choosing one platform over another (taking into account the UI, trade options, trading fees, etc.)?

A: I think it’s beneficial for the ecosystem to have many different approaches. Kalshi is the best known in the U.S., they started here as a fully regulated platform in 2021. I was using the platform within their first few weeks of existence, but they didn’t get election markets until 2024 after suing the government and winning.

Polymarket took a more crypto-forward approach and mostly remained overseas in a bit of a gray area for U.S. users. They have since launched Polymarket U.S. but have only recently expanded beyond sports.

PredictIt has been around much longer but was limited in the amount you could invest in any contract until recently. Their fees have been a famous sticking point among the nerd community, of which I am a member.

There are also several other smaller players and rumors of up to a couple of dozen new prediction markets on the way. Some of these will likely partner with deep-pocketed companies and attempt to challenge the big boys.

Q: What are the pros or cons of using multiple prediction market apps?

A: If you’re a serious trader or someone investing a lot of money in this area, it is probably worth being on multiple apps and sites. Even markets with high liquidity will sometimes have differences in price by a few percentage points, and there’s little downside in chasing the best price. You also will find instances where a nearly identical-looking contract has preferable rules on one site over another.

It can get confusing to keep track of everything, but if you’re looking at this as part of a real money portfolio, it’s worth it to look for these advantages.

But for someone just getting started, I wouldn’t sweat it.

Q: Which app provides the best trading data to make a sound decision, set expectations, etc.?

A: I think you can find the information you need to trade pretty easily on most, if not all, of the various markets once you get comfortable. I wouldn’t say any of them are the places where you’re doing research, though. The most important part is to always read the rules because the headline question is occasionally more complicated than you think.

Q: Are there any delays in depositing money to trade or receiving money after a trade is complete?

A: I find it to be about as easy as funding any investment account. Kalshi, for example, offers no-fee bank transfers in one to three days, almost instant crypto transfers, and even Venmo, CashApp, Google Pay, PayPal (fees vary), and traditional bank wire transfer. Maybe even carrier pigeon.

You won’t be surprised to hear they make it very easy for you to deposit your money! But I have also never had an issue at all withdrawing funds from any of them.

If you’ve never dabbled in crypto, the overseas Polymarket exchange can be a little intimidating. The U.S. version seems to be more manageable for the average person.

Q: Are there any missing features between the mobile and desktop web versions of Kalshi and Polymarket?

A: I prefer desktop for anything complicated. It’s pretty easy to make basic trades on the apps or to see how your investments are performing. When you are looking back at your history, you’re going to want the desktop, unless you have a fetish for scrolling and clicking “more” over and over again.

Q: Is there any risk of “wash trading” or manipulation where users can sway the stock in favor of a certain outcome?

A: I don’t think manipulation presents much risk overall, especially with the current market liquidity. There are people much smarter than me trading thousands of times a week, and that’s part of the deal. But that’s not how I go about it. When I take a position, I assume I’m going to hold it until resolution. If you take that approach, it doesn’t really matter where the markets move on a day-to-day basis. In the end, you’re either going to be right or wrong, and no market actor can change that.

Q: How serious are the “illegal gambling” lawsuits, and what are platform holders like Kalshi and Polymarket doing to push back against this narrative?

A: As with any innovation, there are plenty of annoying government officials trying to screw it up. Throw in a hefty dose of established actors looking to protect their turf against competition, and the threat is serious in scope if not in argument.

Luckily, for the time being, we have Michael Selig as CFTC chair, and an administration friendly to financial innovation. Selig has correctly been aggressive in defending the authority of the CFTC to maintain oversight over these markets. Just like your state can’t ban you from buying Walmart stock, they shouldn’t be able to stop you from participating in prediction markets.

This could all change under a different Congress or a President AOC, but we can deal with that level of hell when we arrive in it.

Q: How do prediction markets handle ties? Do these come up often or rarely?

A: I would say a tie is very rare. Most of the rules are written to make them impossible. In the old days, there were sometimes markets with poorly written rules or descriptions that led to controversy. This isn’t particularly common anymore, but it does occasionally happen.

There was a recent example revolving around the removal of the leader of Iran. Kalshi is legally prohibited from listing or paying a contract that is the result of death or assassination. This was clear in the rules, but a lot of people don’t read them. So there was controversy over the required unwinding of that contract, and some overseas markets without those restrictions resolved the contract in a totally different way.

Those rare examples get lots of press but occur in a tiny percentage of the markets available. Most people will never even experience one of them.

Q: Do you have any tips, tricks, or advice for new users who are just starting to get into prediction markets?

A: Start small and assume you’re wrong more often than you think you are. Challenge yourself on your priors, and especially in politics, make sure you’re not investing with your heart. I always feel better investing in a race when I’m on the side of the candidate I want to lose. At the very least, if I’m wrong, I’m happy with the outcome in real life. And if the candidate I dislike winds up winning, at least I’m being paid for my pain. It’s hedging your life.

Oh yeah, and hang out with us at PredictableShow.com.

Tune in

Still curious about prediction markets? Maybe you want to throw some of your own cash on a current event, but you’re not sure how to get started? Check out Stu’s new show — “Predictable with Stu Burguiere” on YouTube and Substack — for the latest prediction market news, updates, insights, and more.

​Tech, Prediction markets, Stu burguiere, Cftc, Polymarket, Kalshi 

When news breaks that foreign aid programs are being paused or restructured, many Christians understandably fear the world’s most vulnerable will be left behind.

It is a fair concern. But it also raises a harder question: What if some of what we have called “help” was not helping in the way we thought?

The recent restructuring of foreign aid creates an opportunity. It allows the United States to reconsider not only how much it gives, but how it gives.

Imposed values

For decades, American foreign assistance has done real good in many places. But too often it has also come with expectations that placed struggling nations in an impossible position. Funding was tied to adopting policies on family life, sexuality, and bioethics that did not reflect the values of the communities receiving that aid. Governments that resisted those conditions risked losing support their people depended on.

From a Christian perspective, that should give us pause. Care for the poor is a moral calling. But care that requires communities to compromise their deepest convictions is not compassion. It is pressure, even if it is delivered in the language of progress.

Scripture calls us to love our neighbor, not to remake our neighbor in our own image.

Pursuing the good

That is why the Geneva Consensus Declaration matters. Today, 41 nations representing more than 2.5 billion people have joined this coalition, affirming that international law does not establish a universal right to abortion and that each country has the authority to determine its own laws on life and family.

These nations were not forced into agreement. Many joined because they were weary of outside institutions attempting to impose agenda-driven frameworks through funding conditions and international pressure. What they were seeking was not isolation, but partnership. They wanted to be treated not as projects to be managed, but as nations capable of shaping their own future.

This reflects a principle Christians should recognize. Human dignity includes moral agency. It includes the freedom of communities to pursue the good, before God, without coercion from more powerful actors.

RELATED: New book from Eric Metaxas shares the American Revolution’s forgotten Christian roots

ericmetaxas.com

The Protego framework

There is also a practical reality the United States cannot ignore. Countries like China are expanding their influence across Africa and Latin America by offering infrastructure and investment with fewer visible conditions. America’s advantage lies in offering something China cannot: genuine partnership that respects the nations it serves.

In practice, that means moving from a model of control to a model of partnership.

At the Institute for Women’s Health, we have sought to do this through what we call the Protego framework. Instead of arriving with predesigned solutions, we work alongside national leaders, faith communities, and local institutions to build programs that reflect the values and needs of each country.

In one African nation, this has meant developing a national framework for health and life-skills education with input from across society, including interfaith leaders. It is designed to reach tens of thousands of educators and health workers. The program belongs to that nation. The values behind it are its own. And when the partnership ends, the capacity to sustain it will remain.

This kind of work is slower. It requires listening, humility, and trust. But it reflects something essential to a Christian understanding of service.

Human flourishing

We are not called simply to deliver outcomes. We are called to serve people as people, not as instruments of our own priorities.

Faithful foreign engagement takes seriously the dignity of every nation and every community. It refuses to make care for the vulnerable conditional on ideological agreement. It invests in what supports human flourishing, strong families, healthy communities, and the well-being of women and children, while ensuring that these efforts are shaped locally rather than imposed from outside.

The recent restructuring of foreign aid creates an opportunity. It allows the United States to reconsider not only how much it gives, but how it gives.

For Christians, the goal should not be to defend every existing program. It should be to ensure that our engagement reflects the character of the One we serve. We are called to help the vulnerable. But faithful service cannot be separated from humility, respect, and truth about the human person.

​Africa, China, Christianity, Christians, Culture, Family life, Geneva consensus declaration, Latin america, Protego framework, Sexuality, Institute for womens health, Pro-life, Abortion, Lgbtq, Faith 

A former Christian school teacher in Indiana has learned her fate after pleading guilty to child sex crimes with a student, according to court records.

Torrie Lemon, 24, pleaded guilty to felony child seduction in Hamilton County last Thursday, according to WTHR-TV.

‘It started with hugs, then longer hugs, then kissing, and then sexual acts.’

Lemon was sentenced to 40 days in prison and nearly four years of probation.

Law enforcement launched an investigation in April 2025.

Lemon — who taught at Colonial Christian School, which includes pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade students and is located on the north side of Indianapolis — was accused of having sex with a student while she was a chaperone on a school trip to South Carolina.

Citing court documents, WXIN-TV said a friend of the victim reportedly borrowed the victim’s phone and found sexual text messages between Lemon and the victim — and the friend told a teacher.

The IndyStar obtained court documents saying a student informed a teacher after finding a video on the victim’s phone of Lemon and the victim kissing.

Court docs said the teacher confiscated the student’s phone, informed the victim’s parents, and filed a report with the Indiana Department of Child Services as well as with police in South Carolina.

The victim told an officer with the Greenville Police Department that she was “in a relationship” with Lemon, according to court documents.

Lemon informed a Greenville officer that she “was having an inappropriate relationship with a student from her school” for a few months, court records stated.

Court documents added that school officials immediately sent Lemon home from the South Carolina trip, and the parents of the victim picked up the victim.

RELATED: Former girls’ high school basketball coach hit with 32 sex charges, including ‘deviant sexual intercourse with a student’

On April 14, a detective with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department interviewed the victim.

The student said she started texting and hanging out with Lemon in January 2025 as friends, but the messages “quickly began turning sexual,” WXIN reported.

The student told police she never intended their relationship to turn sexual since “she knew it was wrong,” but the pair did have sexual relations in March 2025, according to court documents the IndyStar obtained.

The IndyStar reported that the detective also learned that the two “had sex at Lemon’s on-campus apartment, in a church, and at the student’s house.”

The student’s mother told a detective she considered Lemon a “family friend,” and the family allowed Lemon to stay at their house on several occasions after she moved to Indiana from New Hampshire, according to court records.

Court documents also indicated that the student’s father said his daughter began talking about age of consent laws in Indiana after the two met.

‘I love you more than I can describe.’

The mother told authorities that her daughter and Lemon “quickly” developed a friendship over a few months, court documents stated.

Court records also show that the mother discovered text messages between Lemon and her daughter that read “I can’t wait to see you,” and “I saw you across the room and wanted to give you a hug.”

According to court documents, the mother confronted Lemon, who told the mother nothing inappropriate was happening.

The mother was “upset” after sexual misconduct accusations surfaced, court docs said.

Court records also said detectives examined the daughter’s cell phone for evidence, but most of the text messages between the student and teacher had been permanently deleted.

The digital forensics unit of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department could not recover most of the deleted data from the student’s phone, but the unit did recover some communications between the pair, according to court documents.

The IndyStar reported that some of the messages read, “Thank you for an amazing night and morning,” and “I love you more than I can describe.”

RELATED: Teacher allegedly sexually abused 5th-grade boy in classroom closet, kissed him in front of her own young child in classroom

Lemon was fired from her teaching position in June 2025, WXIN reported.

In Lemon’s exit interview with the school’s principal, she confessed to having an inappropriate relationship with a student and said that “it started with hugs, then longer hugs, then kissing, and then sexual acts,” according to the IndyStar.

WXIN reported that the victim said they “started out as just friends,” but that she and Lemon “began making sexual jokes and talking about attraction to women.”

Court docs say the victim told investigators that she and Lemon “wanted it to just be a friendship” because they knew a sexual relationship “went against their beliefs as Christians, and it was also against the law.”

According to court documents, the 17-year-old girl told police that Lemon kissed her during a school trip to Wabash, Indiana.

WXIN reported:

The victim then said she and Lemon began touching each other sexually while hanging out in March at her parents’ house. This reportedly escalated, with the victim regularly visiting Lemon’s apartment — located on Colonial Christian School grounds — to have sex.

Lemon was arrested in Hamilton County in June 2025 and pleaded guilty to felony child seduction.

Lemon also was hit with two additional counts of child seduction tied to the same investigation in Marion County, according to WXIN.

WXIN reported that Lemon was booked into Marion County Jail on Nov. 9, 2025, and released the same day after posting a $15,000 surety bond.

Lemon is set to appear Friday in a Marion County court where she is set to be sentenced after a change of plea hearing, WXIN added.

Neither the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, nor Colonial Christian School immediately responded to Blaze News‘ requests for comment.

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​Torrie lemon, Child sex abuse, Crime, Indiana, Christian school, Teacher 

David McGuinty, Canada’s liberal defense minister, boasted late last month that the DEI-ed Canadian military had surpassed its regular force recruiting target for the second consecutive year, enrolling 7,310 new members in fiscal year 2025-26. That brings the total of full-time military members to 67,827. Another 25,054 souls are in the reserves.

“The Canadian Armed Forces’ continued recruiting success signals more than progress — it reflects a renewed strength at the core of our military,” said McGuinty.

‘I think we are representative of the Canadian demographic.’

What McGuinty neglected to mention in his optimistic press release was that nearly 20% of these recruits aren’t actually Canadians, thanks to a 2022 decision by then-Trudeau Defense Minister Anita Anand — the daughter of Indian migrants — to drop the military’s citizenship requirement.

It has become abundantly clear that having multitudes of permanent residents from the third world join up in exchange for expedited naturalization isn’t so much a value added as a massive liability.

A damning and confidential Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School report that was authored by Lieutenant-Colonel Marc Kieley and obtained both by Juno News and the National Post highlights some of the various problems foreign recruits have created for the military.

RELATED: US calls Canada’s bluff on defense spending; ‘pauses’ 86-year-old alliance

Creative Touch Imaging Ltd./NurPhoto/Getty Images

The report, which was also leaked online, notes that in Quebec’s first noncitizen Francophone platoon, only 48% managed to graduate and there were constant ethnic clashes, specifically between the Cameroonian and Ivory Coast candidates.

More generally, noncitizen recruits in the Canadian military — some of whom had been in the country for only three months — have demonstrated a profound lack of “respect toward women” superiors and peers.

“For many candidates, it is the first time they have lived with members of a different sex, and for some it is also the first time they have been expected to treat women as their peers,” said the report. “Platoons are also reporting inter-candidate cultural frustrations, with lack of respect towards women being the most common concern.”

Some foreigners apparently also have issues taking orders from younger superiors.

“Older candidates from certain cultural backgrounds are also more likely to experience friction when responding to younger CFLRS instructors due to cultural hierarchies based on age,” said the confidential report.

In addition to a failure of baseline competency, ethnic infighting, communication issues, and a rampant disrespect for women and junior officers, foreigners also have unrealistic expectations going into their training.

The report noted, for instance, that a “surprising number of permanent resident candidates believed they would simply go home after basic training” and that foreigners in officer training “are more likely to imagine a CAF officer position as a public service job, rather than a military occupation.”

Physical fitness is also an issue for those recruits McGuinty is hoping will renew the Canadian military’s strength. Permanent residents failed the initial basic training fitness screening test last year at a rate of 14.79% compared to 7.89% for citizens within the same period.

There has been some internal pushback.

According to the report, “On French (officer) platoons, where permanent residents have made up 50%-80% of all candidates, there have been more emotional responses, with Francophone staff openly raising the question of whether it is appropriate for officer commissions to be granted to non-Canadian citizens.”

Commodore Pascal Belhumeur, a spokesman for the Canadian Department of National Defense, told the National Post, “I think the Canadian Armed Forces that we are recruiting is a representation of Canadian society now.”

According to Statistics Canada, 23% of the persons presently in Canada are immigrants.

“If you look at the number of Canadians that are foreign-born and the number of people who we’re bringing into the Canadian Armed Forces, I think we are representative of the Canadian demographic,” said Belhumeur, adding that the military is “proud to reflect the diversity of Canadian society.”

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​Canada, Canadian, Dei, Diversity, Foreigners, Immigrants, Military, Recruitment, Woke, Politics 

Perhaps the most outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement in San Diego was seriously injured after what the California Post called a “brutal attack” outside the man’s infamous “Trump House.”

Around 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Escondido police arrived on the scene to find a man with severe injuries lying on the ground while a utility worker reportedly restrained another individual.

‘Whenever I went to visit, I made sure to swing by that place and shout stuff at them.’

The injured man was rushed to a nearby trauma center in what is believed to be critical condition. The Post did not identify the injured victim but indicated he is the owner of the “Trump House” on Buchanan Street and that he is “fighting for his life.”

According to the Post, blood could be seen dripping from the curb near the home, and one suspect was arrested.

Escondido Police Department Lt. Robert Craig confirmed that the department had responded to a report of an assault, that one suspect is in custody, and that the “investigation is still ongoing,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

RELATED: Judge APOLOGIZES to suspected would-be Trump assassin — and compares him to Jan. 6 defendants

For years, the notorious Escondido residence has been covered with pro-Trump, pro-MAGA, and pro-America paraphernalia, including flags, signs, and red, white, and blue colors, an ostentatious political display that has generated feelings of animosity among other residents.

According to the Post, one online commenter said of the “Trump House,” “My buddy lived down the street from him. Whenever I went to visit, I made sure to swing by that place and shout stuff at them.”

Another called for the owner to be reported to authorities for allegedly violating state election laws. “Any neighbor can complain to the city. No campaign flags or signs are allowed more than 90 days from an election,” the person said. “California state law. Please file a complaint. The more the better.”

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​California, Donald trump, Maga, Politics 

Can populism and optimism mix? These days, the contentious AI debate is fueling the false impression that the answer is no. But recent polling convincingly shows that there’s one important tech issue on which an overwhelming majority of Americans support an empowering, freedom-enhancing change: unlocking mobile phones.

In comparison to the titanic struggle over things like data centers, the simple act of requiring providers to let consumers take their cell phones with them — without penalties or fees — might, at first glance, seem like small ball. Take a moment to look at the numbers, however, and the truth is revealed.

In the shorter term, unlocking the nation’s phones unlocks potentially life-changing savings for most Americans. In the longer term, the move helps establish a crucial baseline for applying pro-freedom, pro-ownership device policy to the myriad next-gen devices — even more powerful than smartphones — soon to fill up our everyday lives.

The momentum for change isn’t confined to consumers crying out for relief.

Start with the polls. A startling nine in 10 consumers, regardless of partisan affiliation, support the right to take their phones with them when changing service producers. But the real stunner is why.

More than a mere preference (who wouldn’t default toward more choice?), consumers are highlighting a hidden pain point that hasn’t seemed to catch the eye of analysts without much to worry about at the kitchen table. Phone locking doesn’t just block customers — and today, who isn’t a smartphone customer? — from taking their phones with them. It blocks them from shopping freely for better, more affordable deals.

We’re not talking couch-change savings here. Switching plans can save thousands. In a household with just two phone lines, a savvy switch cashes out to as much as $1,200 per year, according to the Internet and Television Association.

And for most families, of course, two smartphones are table stakes. A Consumer Affairs report shows the typical household has an average of around 20 connected devices. Almost all children receive their own phones by age 15. Most Americans ages 18 to 29 live in a household with three or more phones. Consumer research from WhistleOut concludes a truer estimate of household cost savings from unlocking consumer phones is closer to $2,000 a year — and as high as $2,200.

Saving enough to save a life

Let’s pause to emphasize what that means in real-world terms. For average American households, $2,000 represents 2.5% of their annual budget — fully one-third of their monthly budget, roughly equal to their entire average housing cost per month. Meanwhile, fewer than half of U.S. households have the cash or savings to cover a $2,000 emergency expense, according to household economics and decision-making data from the Federal Reserve.

The savings unlocked by the simple regulatory act of unlocking smartphones aren’t chump change. They’re enough to change lives — or save them.

And it doesn’t stop there. Locked phones are a rip-off when it comes to resale value, dinging sellers 20% to 40% of their value compared to the same phone unlocked. That’s around $125 to $150 in lost value for the seller of a locked iPhone likely to sell today. If the seller can’t unlock the phone, he’ll have to consider buying a new one earlier than desired, adding hundreds more to costs.

Calculating conservatively, the total cost phone locking imposed on American households pencils out to around $2,400 or higher — more than they pay monthly on average for housing and over twice their monthly outlay on transportation, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys.

RELATED: Social media scams are up 700%. Here’s how to stay safe.

Media Trading Ltd/Getty Images

Not a pretty picture. And little excuse. The good news is that the momentum for change isn’t confined to consumers crying out for relief. Led by Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), key senators are throwing their political weight behind the idea and asking the FCC to unlock our phones.

Although phone lock reform has been held back in the past by valid fraud concerns, as Lummis and her co-signers write in a recent letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, they’re “confident … that the Commission will be able to appropriately balance those concerns by adopting a reasonable waiting period — e.g., 180 days – before a device must be unlocked. Such a period addresses concerns of fraud while still achieving the important objectives that unlocking delivers, including expanding consumer choice, preserving competition, and improving affordability.”

All in all, it’s a slam-dunk policy shift — the kind of low-hanging fruit that easily delivers outsized and long-overdue relief for millions.

Today our phones, tomorrow our bots?

But to bring us back to the bigger picture of transformative technological change in America, unlock reform is more than a one-and-done change. It’s a crucial marker laid down just in time to help set the tone for a freedom-forward, pro-ownership approach to the next-gen devices about to proliferate across American business and private life — drones, robots, the works. In all likelihood, these devices will fall under the purview of the Federal Trade Commission, not the FCC, but, taken together, the principled logic behind mobile unlocking and the FTC’s work preventing smart-home device bricking and forced ecosystem lock-in shows a clear and powerful synergy. Together, the commissions can and should advance a strategic populist policy of ensuring that producers’ software restrictions don’t limit consumers’ physical ownership rights.

At this critical juncture, unlocking the phones is the next step in tech policymaking that preserves American rights while saving Americans money. What could be more American than that?

​Opinion & analysis, Mobile phone, Fcc, Ftc, Populism, Artificial intelligence, Ownership, Cynthia lummis, Regulation 

A few years ago, journalist Ezra Levant received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for defending freedom of expression after refusing to “bend the knee” and publishing Danish cartoons of Muhammad.

Now, the prime minister of the United Kingdom has banned him from the country.

“To have the prime minister of the United Kingdom ban me, a journalist … I’ve never done anything illegal in my life. I’ve never even had a parking ticket in the U.K. When I go there, it’s to do journalism,” Levant tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck.

“Glenn, your radio and you would be shut down within a week; I’m sorry to say it,” he continues. “Your First Amendment in America is more important than almost anything else, because with that, you can fight for all your other freedoms. Never give up your First Amendment.”

While everyone assumes other Western countries have the same First Amendment rights, Levant explains that they’re different.

“In the United Kingdom, according to the Times of London, a very prestigious newspaper, on any given day, on average, 30 people are arrested for what they post on social media. 30 a day. I’m not a fan of Russia, but even they don’t arrest 30 people a day for word crimes,” Levant says.

And the government doesn’t go after those who are actually harming others.

“They’re targeting people who criticize the government, especially on the issue of mass immigration. And the number-one thing that they’re scared about talking about is the rape gangs of largely Pakistani Muslim men targeting white girls,” Levant explains.

“When people have a march or a rally against these rapes, the government goes into freakout mode because it challenges the entire multiculturalism and immigration structure of the U.K.,” he says.

“So,” he continues, “never give up your free speech, Glenn, because you can see it in real time in the U.K.”

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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​Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Conservative, Ezra levant, First amendment, Free speech, Glenn beck, Globalist agenda, Government, Journalism, Mass immigration, Muhammad, Prime minister, Russia, Social media, The glenn beck program, Times of london, United kingdom 

The Pentagon appears to be sending Ottawa a message: Rhetoric is no substitute for military capability.

The Department of Defense announced Monday it was “pausing” the 86-year-old Permanent Joint Board on Defense between the United States and Canada, according to Undersecretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby. The move comes amid mounting frustration in Washington over Canada’s chronic defense underinvestment — and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s increasingly confrontational rhetoric toward President Donald Trump.

‘We can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Real powers must sustain our shared defense and security responsibilities.’

Established in 1940 by President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, the board became one of the earliest pillars of continental defense cooperation. Coming as Nazi Germany tightened its grip on Europe and fears grew over Atlantic security, the agreement reflected Roosevelt’s recognition that American and Canadian security could no longer be treated separately.

That alliance eventually evolved into NORAD and decades of deep military integration between the two countries.

All talk

Now Washington appears to be signaling that the relationship cannot continue on autopilot.

“We can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality,” Colby wrote on X. “Real powers must sustain our rhetoric with shared defense and security responsibilities.”

Colby argued that while a militarily capable Canada benefits the United States, Ottawa has repeatedly failed to meet its defense commitments in a credible way.

The timing is awkward for Carney, whose government has loudly projected Canadian independence from Washington while remaining vague about how it intends to rebuild the country’s depleted armed forces.

RELATED: ‘AMERICAN INVASION’: Flailing Canada PM Mark Carney invokes historical grudge in latest lob at Trump

George Rose/Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Jet blues

Although Ottawa recently claimed the government had finally reached NATO’s benchmark of spending 2% of GDP on defense, critics have questioned how the government arrived at that number. Media reports have indicated that the Liberals counted items such as landscaping at military bases and civilian airport infrastructure upgrades as defense expenditures.

More tellingly, Carney’s April 28 Spring Economic Statement reportedly contained little detail on major procurement priorities.

That uncertainty now extends to Canada’s planned purchase of 88 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets. Despite years of delays and political debate, the Carney government is still reviewing the order, with Defense Minister David McGuinty recently confirming that alternatives remain under consideration.

One possibility floated by Ottawa is a mixed fleet pairing the American-made F-35 with Sweden’s Saab Gripen fighter. But U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has repeatedly warned that Canada’s role in NORAD could be jeopardized if Ottawa fails to follow through on the full F-35 purchase.

Buy or beware

The concern is not merely political but operational. Every branch of the U.S. military that flies fighter aircraft is transitioning to the F-35 platform, which is also used by several of Canada’s closest defense partners, including the British Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force. Hoekstra has argued that the Gripen would create interoperability problems inside a continental defense structure increasingly built around the F-35 ecosystem.

For Washington, the frustration is becoming increasingly obvious: Canada wants the diplomatic stature and moral authority of a serious middle power while continuing to hesitate on the military commitments required to sustain that role.

The Pentagon’s decision to pause the defense board may ultimately prove symbolic. But symbols matter in alliances — especially when they come from Washington.

After decades of assuming continental defense cooperation was automatic, the United States now appears willing to publicly question whether Canada is prepared to carry its share of the burden.

​Defense department, Canada, Culture, Donald trump, F35 fighter jets, Franklin roosevelt, Lockheed martin, Mark carney, Norad, Pentagon, Pete hoekstra, William lyon mackenzie king, Letter from canada 

California Highway Patrol officers responded around 12:20 p.m. on Tuesday to a multiple-vehicle crash near Lodi that left two young Americans dead. The man believed to be responsible for the carnage — an illegal alien from India — reportedly fled the scene on foot.

The suspect, 24-year-old Manvir Singh, was quickly tracked down and arrested by San Joaquin County sheriff’s deputies and taken to the county jail, where he remains in custody as of early Thursday.

‘This criminal illegal alien from India should never have been behind the wheel of a semi-truck and allowed to kill.’

The deceased, ages 20 and 16, were sitting in a Kia Forte and slowing to a stop behind a Nissan Frontier and a Toyota Camry in the far right lane of northbound Highway 99 when a heavy-duty truck driven by the suspect and carrying a fully loaded semi-trailer smashed into them, reported Freight Waves.

According to CHP, the 80,000-pound truck hammered the rear of the Kia and launched it into the Camry, killing two Americans and sending five others to hospital, two of whom suffered critical injuries.

Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy revealed that Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom’s California — where an estimated 35% of the commercial drivers are Sikh, an Indian religious group — issued Singh a commercial driver’s license in March 2025.

RELATED: Fraudulent trucking carriers just ran out of road with new registration system, DOT says

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Duffy noted further that Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration investigators “are looking into how this illegal got his CDL and will investigate the trucking company who employed this driver.”

Amritsar Trans Inc., the intrastate freight company that reportedly operates the truck, is registered in Manteca, California; owns or leases five vehicles; has nine drivers; is unrated by the FMCSA; and is apparently run by Baljeet Singh.

Freight Waves highlighted that the company was cited for six violations across 11 inspections in the two-year window that ended April 24, 2026. One of the violations was for speeding 15 or more miles per hour over the posted limit, and another was for falsifying duty status to conceal having driven over hours.

Manvir Singh has been charged with felony vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, felony hit-and-run resulting in death or injury, and obstructing or resisting arrest. The Indian, whose bail has been set at $185,000, is set to appear in court Thursday afternoon.

The Department of Homeland Security told Fox News that Manvir Singh illegally entered the country through Arizona in 2023 and was subsequently released into the U.S. by the Biden administration.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged a detainer request in hopes that California authorities will ultimately transfer the illegal alien into federal custody.

“This criminal illegal alien from India should never have been behind the wheel of a semi-truck and allowed to kill two innocent people in a multi-vehicle crash in California,” DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. “He is now charged with vehicular manslaughter, hit and run resulting in death or injury, and resisting a police officer.”

“This is yet another example of why illegal aliens should not be operating trucks on American highways,” added Bis.

Transportation Secretary Duffy emphasized that “Dalilah’s law would have revoked this illegal trucker’s license. Congress must pass Dalilah’s Law NOW.”

H.R. 5688, Dalilah’s Law, would ban states from issuing commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens and limit issuance to U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and holders of specific work visas. The legislation would also require the revocation of any existing ineligible CDLs.

The legislation takes its name from Dalilah Coleman, a little girl grievously injured in a car accident that was caused by an illegal alien from India who reportedly obtained a commercial driver’s license from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Department of Motor Vehicles.

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​California highway patrol, Hit and run, Illegal alien, Department of homeland security, Indian, Truck driver, Truckers, Immigration, Transportation, California, Gavin newsom, Accident, Killer, Politics 

We’re learning a lesson that should be unmistakably clear as the world watches instability ripple outward from the Middle East: Geography still matters.

The war with Iran and the ever-present threat of disruptions at the Strait of Hormuz are exposing how fragile global energy supply chains have become. When choke points half a world away can rattle prices at the pump throughout the nation, it is time to rethink how and where America produces its energy.

Alaska offers our nation something rare: stability, security, and strength without choke points.

That rethink points north to Alaska.

Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz. When tensions rise, insurance rates surge, shipping slows, and prices spike. Families feel it immediately, particularly young families already struggling with affordability. These price shocks do not stem from resource scarcity; they stem from dependence on unstable routes and hostile actors.

Alaska has no Strait of Hormuz

What Alaska has is something the rest of the nation desperately needs right now: secure access to energy, open ocean shipping lanes, and proximity to Asian markets without relying on canals, narrow passages, or adversarial regimes. From the Gulf of Alaska, resources can move freely across the Pacific without transiting choke points that can be threatened, closed, or weaponized.

This geographic reality significantly cuts travel days and costs; it embodies freedom of access. It is geography that is Alaska’s destiny — and America’s — if we act on it.

For years, Alaska has been sidelined in national energy conversations, despite holding nearly all the critical minerals the United States depends on and vast reserves of oil and natural gas. Here at home, Alaskans pay some of the highest fuel prices in the nation, in part because we lack refining capacity and sufficient infrastructure to fully use what we already have.

A failure, not a shortage

When conflicts like the Iran war inject chaos into global markets, Alaska should be part of the solution. Responsible development of Alaskan oil, gas, and minerals strengthens national security, lowers costs for American families, and reduces reliance on adversaries who do not share our values or our interests.

Alaska should be treated as a critical asset, not an afterthought. That means advancing energy projects, encouraging refining capacity, and opening pathways for responsible exports. It also means making sure the benefits of development flow first to Alaskans — through jobs, lower costs, and long-term economic stability — rather than being locked away by red tape or federal neglect.

RELATED: The Iran war is causing another shortage — and it will directly affect every American

Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

The cost of service

The lesson of today’s uncertainty is not that America should retreat from the world, but that we should stand on firmer ground at home.

Wars are not measured by headlines, speculation, or the arguments that swirl in the middle of the conflict. They are measured at the end. If this conflict concludes with Iran defeated, its ability to threaten the world diminished, and our troops coming home safely, then Americans should unite in gratitude and pride.

Alaska understands the cost of service. We have one of the highest rates of veterans per capita in the nation. Our communities know sacrifice, duty, and resilience. If our sons and daughters in uniform succeed and return home victorious, we should celebrate their service and the removal of a dangerous foe from the world stage.

Alaska offers our nation something rare: stability, security, and strength without choke points. There is no Strait of Hormuz here, only opportunity. It is time we seize it. The time is right for Alaska and for the whole nation.

​Alaska, Middle east, Strait of hormuz, Supply chains, Gas prices, Global markets, Iran war, Opinion & analysis 

It doesn’t take a genius to manipulate the population. It just takes some mid-level AI chatbots with a mean streak.

That thought haunted Glenn Reynolds, the author of the new book “Seductive AI.” The tome doesn’t look to a near future in which artificial intelligence has a profound impact on our lives and culture.

‘The media actually had shame back then. You could browbeat them into correcting [mistakes].’

He sees its disruptive potential in the here and now.

Digital Don Juan

“There’s no reason why AI couldn’t be designed to manipulate human beings,” says Reynolds, known for his decades-old Instapundit.com website. “Raw brain power isn’t the best way to do it.”

Yes, the book explores the literal seductive power of an AI-powered device, whether an app, software program, or, eventually, a life-size sexbot coming to a Best Buy near you.

It also shares how manipulative AI can already be and some possible guardrails to prevent it from harming us.

Pop culture already warned us about AI’s seductive power. Think 2013’s “Her,” starring Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely man who falls for a bot voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Or even “The Big Bang Theory,” when the awkward Raj (Kunal Nayyar) falls in love with his Siri device.

“Seductive AI in the crudest sense … is looking more realistic as time passes,” Reynolds says. “You’ve seen these stories. … Women marrying their AI boyfriends. There’s just enough of that out there. You can’t dismiss it as ridiculous.”

The case of the 14-year-old Florida boy who took his own life after sharing suicidal thoughts with an AI bot named after “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen is hard to forget.

Blind faith

And it could soon get worse.

“One of my recurring themes in the book … year after year, the machines get better and people stay about the same,” he says, a scary thought given the technological progress we have already seen. “People’s ability to see through this stuff is a flat line.”

Humanity’s wobbly mental health status makes “Seductive AI” fears more profound.

“There’s a large number of people who are losing contact with objective reality. It’s encouraged by social media and a lot of machine affirmation. … The various AI chatbots will basically tell you how smart you are,” he says.

Even some terrible ideas, when fed into an AI bot, will spit back encouraging banter.

“All these platforms … not just the AI ones, foster engagement by pushing various emotions — fear, hatred, sometimes love,” he says.

RELATED: 6 movies that warned us about AI

Sunset Boulevard/Getty Images

The bot stops here

“Seductive AI” offers some possible guardrails, like suggesting that AI firms have a fiduciary duty to the person impacted by their expertise. That could allow people to sue if the bot’s behavior is in breach of that contract.

“The company producing the entity should be held liable for any breaches, exactly as if they had been made by a human employee acting for the company itself,” he writes in the book.

Reynolds says mainstream media outlets have done their part to promote the upside of AI, like fawning press over the rise of self-driving cars.

“Every single story you read in the automotive press was positive,” he says, downplaying the potential for fatal accident. “AI stuff was all super positive for a while. … Now that seems to have faded.”

The Blogfather

Reynolds previously wrote “The Social Media Upheaval” (2019) and “An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths” (2007).

He’s best known in conservative circles for Instapundit.com, an old-school site with constantly updated links to the latest news and commentary. He was part of the early blogging wave that challenged mainstream media, with some stunning successes. In fact, he was so influential on other DIY pundits that he earned the nickname the Blogfather.

“The media actually had shame back then,” he says. “You could browbeat them into correcting [mistakes].” Take Dan Rather’s National Guard story, in which the CBS anchor claimed President George W. Bush shirked his duties based on manufactured evidence. The story might have stood unchallenged if not for several citizen journalists like the team behind Powerlineblog.com.

A simpler time

And he has his “beefs” with the current right-leaning media landscape. He recalls a simpler time in the digital arena.

“The period of 2004 to 2008 was kind of a golden age of independent media, before the walled gardens of Facebook and other platforms took over,” he says. It helped that journalists took criticism more seriously at the time.

The early blogging days also saw friendlier ties between left- and right-leaning bloggers. Now, that sense of brotherhood is gone, he says.

“It’s hard to have a civil discussion about anything now,” he says. “It’s a very unhealthy environment.”

As for his latest project, he admits the alluring nature of this technology boils down to something elemental.

“Yes, AI is extremely useful,” he says. “That’s another way of being seductive.”

​Artificial intelligence, Glenn reynolds, Culture, Lifestyle, Chatbots, Sexbots, Books, Interview, Independent media 

A former manager of a McDonald’s restaurant allegedly posted a video of herself “contaminating” french fries on social media and now faces prison time.

Kaylie Santos, 22, of Southbridge, Massachusetts, was arrested for the video that went viral on Facebook that showed two workers participating in the alleged contamination.

The video apparently showed Santos shoving the fries into her mouth before placing them in the fries carton.

Santos was apparently targeting her ex-girlfriend, who went through the drive-through of the restaurant on April 8, according to investigators. The video apparently showed Santos shoving the fries into her mouth before placing them in the fries carton.

“She wants french fries today, right?” Santos is heard saying, according to police.

Investigators also were able to obtain surveillance video from the store showing that she spit into the carton of fries.

When they interviewed the alleged victim, she said that she had ordered two sodas but that Santos gave her a bag of fries too. She didn’t think anything of it and ate the fries.

She also claimed that Santos had been harassing her and the customer’s new partner.

Santos faces one count of giving a person food “containing a foreign substance, which was intended or might reasonably be expected to cause injury.”

Investigators said they tracked down the victim by searching the license plate on the video from the drive-through.

WBZ-TV reported that the video on Facebook garnered tens of thousands of views.

RELATED: Grade school janitor contaminated children’s food with his bodily fluids and posted on social media, New Jersey police say

The owners of the restaurant said they were cooperating with police and that they had obtained a no-trespass notice against the former manager.

“The actions of these individuals are unacceptable and do not reflect our organization’s food safety standards or values,” they said. “The well-being and safety of our Southbridge community remains our top priority, and we are taking swift, appropriate actions.”

Entry-level McDonald’s managers make about $48,000, while general managers can make up to $90,000 in that part of the country.

A poll of Americans found that McDonald’s french fries blew away the competition for most popular fries among fast food restaurants.

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​Contaminated food, French fries, Mcdonalds, Viral video, Crime 

The U.S. House of Representatives will soon vote on a housing bill that supposedly addresses the nation’s very real affordability crisis and, even more important, lets politicians claim they are doing something about it.

The Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act in March by an 89-10 vote. Democrats backed it almost unanimously, and all but one of the no votes came from Republicans, even though President Donald Trump pushed hard for the bill.

States have the right to be stupid or smart. The federal government has no constitutional authority to make that choice for them.

One provision separates the Senate and House versions, and it matters a great deal.

The Senate bill would require investors who own more than 350 single-family rental properties to sell the excess after seven years. It exempts large institutional investors that build or buy new single-family homes for the rental market, but even they would have to sell those properties to individual homeowners after seven years.

The House bill drops that provision. That may be its best feature.

The Senate’s ownership cap is not only arbitrary and unfair; it is economically backward. Driving investors out of the market would raise prices, not lower them. It would shrink the pool of potential investors, reduce incentives to build and maintain housing, and leave buyers competing for a smaller supply of homes.

Those effects would push housing prices higher.

The only Democrat to vote against the Senate bill, Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, blasted the seven-year forced-sale provision on the floor, calling it “bananas” and “a very bizarre thing” to restrict ownership by businesses other than hedge funds. The bill “demonize[s] people who want to build rental housing,” Schatz said.

He was right. The Senate version would do serious damage to housing supply. As Schatz put it, “This is positively Soviet.”

The two versions reflect sharply opposing views not only of housing, but of markets and government power in general. The real question is whether housing unaffordability reflects a “market failure” requiring federal and state correction, or whether markets work best when government limits itself to preventing force and fraud.

RELATED: When your ‘rich’ neighbor can’t afford furniture

SDI Productions / Getty Images

Today’s housing crisis is not a market failure. It is the product of government interference.

As I explain in my new Heartland Institute policy study, “Housing Affordability: America’s Short-Term Crisis and Long-Term Problem,” the immediate affordability crunch began with the rapid rise in federal spending starting in January 2021. The Federal Reserve accommodated that spending by expanding the money supply, helping ignite inflation across the economy.

Housing prices rose sharply and crossed into statistical unaffordability in May 2021. They then surged further as inflation spread throughout the economy. The Federal Reserve later raised interest rates to contain the damage, which only made housing less affordable as mortgage rates climbed to levels not seen since the early 1980s.

At the same time, the country was already suffering from years of weak housing-stock growth after the 2008 financial crisis, another disaster created by the federal government and the Fed. Add a rapidly rising population driven by mass immigration, along with Millennials and then Gen Z entering prime homebuying years, and a long-running squeeze turns into a full-scale crisis.

That is the mess Congress and Trump now want to address.

Their answer is to tweak some federal regulations in the hope of encouraging more construction. That may help at the margins. It will not do much to expand supply, and it will do nothing to address the inflation that turned a difficult market into a crisis.

As I write in the policy study, “The solution to the inflation-inflicted affordability problem is significant cuts in federal spending,” though such cuts appear to have little political support.

The long-term solution is straightforward: Build more houses.

Here again, government is the main obstacle. Zoning restrictions, taxes, overregulation, rent control, urban-growth boundaries, land rationing, impact fees, excessive building-code requirements, and countless other local barriers have choked construction and sales.

Those policies mostly come from states and localities. The federal government, however, encourages them through housing and urban-development spending.

RELATED: Trump needs to denounce the Dignity Act

Alex WROBLEWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Both versions of the current bill try to reduce some of that federal encouragement of excessive state and local regulation. That is the right direction because under the Constitution, housing regulation belongs to the states.

States have the right to be stupid or smart. The federal government has no constitutional authority to make that choice for them. Congress and presidents have usurped that authority for decades and should relinquish it entirely.

The proper remedy is simple: The federal government should confine itself to the powers the Constitution actually grants. That would mean no federal spending on housing at all.

Such a change would end Washington’s manipulation of the housing market, a game that always favors major players and hurts ordinary people. It would also reduce federal spending and ease inflationary pressure.

Both versions of the bill include a provision blocking the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency through 2030. That is a good provision, though House fiscal conservatives wanted a permanent ban. They were right.

In practical economic terms, the solution to the housing crisis is simple: Build more homes and stop inflating the currency. Politically, however, that solution remains unlikely.

To Congress and the president, the bill’s most important function is political. It will do little to calm public anxiety about housing affordability, but it will let politicians say they acted. In Washington, that usually matters more, and costs much less, than doing something useful.

​Soviet, Congress, Senate, Democrats, Affordability, Constitution, Trump, Road to housing act, Opinion & analysis, Housing crisis 

The artificial intelligence boom has become one of the biggest engines of the American economy. It has also triggered a growing backlash against the data centers that make the boom possible. Tech moguls have rushed to build giant warehouses packed with the computing power needed to run AI systems, but they have done almost nothing to explain to ordinary Americans why those facilities deserve so much land, water, electricity, and political favoritism.

That failure should have created an obvious opening for libertarians. Governments shower data-center projects with subsidies, wield eminent domain to seize land, and help politically connected corporations reshape local communities in the name of technological progress. A coherent libertarian response would attack the merger of state power and corporate power.

The first great use of AI will not be liberation. It will be surveillance and control.

Instead, many libertarians have chosen to cheer the expansion without asking what the technology will be used for or whom it will serve. Their quasi-religious loyalty to capital has pushed them into another foolish position and exposed the danger of turning an economic theory into a full worldview.

The tech elite insist that AI will revolutionize the world, but they have done almost nothing to tell average people how their own lives will improve. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs spin wild stories about superhuman intelligence and the automation of tens of millions of jobs. That does not sound like a sales pitch. It sounds like the setup for a science-fiction dystopia. The one concrete justification they offer is strategic: AI will supposedly define the future of warfare, and America must stay ahead of China.

That argument would carry more weight if the same people pushing AI were not also so committed to building the kind of technology most likely to be used against Americans. They are not preparing some noble shield for the republic. They are building tools that can make the United States look a lot more like the techno-authoritarian China they claim to fear.

Data centers consume staggering amounts of electricity, sometimes drawing as much power as a moderate-sized city. They also use enormous volumes of water, create nonstop noise, and disfigure the landscape. Developers have found ways to soften some of those costs by building new power infrastructure and improving cooling efficiency, but none of the problems have been solved. In the meantime, local communities absorb the burden.

The economic case is weak as well. Data centers create construction jobs while they are being built, but once construction ends, they employ surprisingly few people. Governments usually justify subsidies by promising long-term economic activity and job growth. In the case of data centers, corporations collect the incentives while communities get very little in return.

A sane political movement would notice that. Many libertarians have not. Instead of challenging subsidies and land seizures, they have fought to champion the projects. Nick Gillespie of Reason recently posted a chart showing that almond farms use far more water than AI data centers. Almonds are notoriously inefficient in water use, and agriculture probably does consume more water overall.

But the comparison gives away the problem. People eat food. AI, at least so far, mostly offers job displacement and surveillance.

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

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Libertarianism grew, in part, out of the Austrian school of economics, which is useful for understanding markets. It was never meant to serve as a complete theory of human life. Like Marxists, however, many libertarians have turned an economic framework into a totalizing ideology. Free markets, contract law, and voluntary exchange become an all-encompassing lens through which everything must be judged. Once that happens, it becomes difficult to see anything that does not show up in GDP.

The real question is not how much of a resource gets spent, but for what purpose. Most people would not give up a hand to save a cockroach. Most would give up their lives to save a child. On paper, preserving the cockroach may look like the more efficient transaction. Only a lunatic would fail to understand why no sane person would ever choose it over the child.

Economics helps explain financial exchange, but in its hunger for abstraction, it often strips away the human element that drives actual decisions. Treat almonds and AI as interchangeable “economic activity,” and you erase the context that gives moral meaning to both. That is the error every ideology makes. Grand unified theories comfort the rational mind because they promise predictive clarity. Then they collide with actual human beings living in actual places.

Kevin O’Leary recently went on Tucker Carlson’s podcast to praise the record-setting data center he wants to build in Utah. Carlson pressed him repeatedly to name a job AI would create for ordinary Americans. O’Leary could not identify a single one. He fell back on vague assurances that new technologies always create jobs somewhere in the future. The one benefit he seemed sure about was that AI might help America defend Taiwan in a future war with China. That is a revealing answer to citizens asking how this technology will help their own country.

RELATED: The liberal guide to committing national suicide

Blaze Media Illustration

Many libertarians now seem to support data centers out of sheer loyalty to capital itself. Economic activity becomes an end in itself. Progress, no matter the cost, is presumed to produce more liberty. That is delusional. The first great use of AI will not be liberation. It will be surveillance and control. The same corporate and political class that backed vaccine mandates, digital surveillance, censorship, and biometric passes during COVID is now demanding trust on AI. Nothing in its conduct suggests a change of heart.

Our tech oligarchs lined up with Democrats, outsourced American jobs, embraced censorship, and showed enormous appetite for monitoring the population. They are not trustworthy allies.

The backlash against data centers may lack intellectual polish, but the instinct is sound. The elites driving AI are not on our side, and Americans have no reason to sacrifice their communities, resources, and liberty on behalf of people who plainly intend to use this technology against them.

​Control, Data centers, Elites, Free markets, Kevin oleary, Libertarians, Opinion & analysis, Progress, Surveillance, Tucker carlson, Water usage, Austrian school of economics, Libertarian, Employment, Artificial intelligence, Nick gillespie, Reason, Economics 

James Talarico and Graham Platner are two of the most controversial Democrats running for office this year, but one new ridiculous Democrat star is now joining their ranks — and her name is Shelby Campbell.

Campbell, who is running for Congress in Michigan, is using a different campaigning method.

That is, she’s posting videos of herself twerking on social media.

“She’s 32 years old. She is apparently a law student. She’s a single mom. Gosh, who would have thought the woman twerking on social media would be a single mom? And she has four mug shots on her campaign website,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales explains.

“This is the absolute state of the Democrat Party,” she adds, before playing a TikTok video Campbell posted.

“It’s our time: the wine-mom gang,” Campbell says in the video while dancing around in a big T-shirt and disheveled hair.

“White ladies, I’m glad that we are becoming the enemy to the white man as well. I’m proud of you. Now, let’s get it, girls,” she adds.

But that’s not the worst of it.

“Let me present to you: Shelby Campbell mocking people who pray for child gunshot victims,” Gonzales comments, before playing another clip.

“Sky Daddy, please, please save the children from being shot with guns. Not by reforming the laws, but just by praying to you. Please, Sky Daddy. Dumb. Idiotic,” Campbell says in the video, again looking disheveled.

“At a certain point … we just need to come to terms with the fact that this is their best and brightest,” Gonzales says.

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​Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Congress, Democrat, Michigan, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Social media, Twerking, Sara gonzales, Voting 

An analysis of the states that have redrawn congressional districts for partisan advantage found that Republicans are winning the battle.

CBS News elections analyst Anthony Salvanto looked at the midterm elections map with Crystal Ball managing editor Kyle Kondik on Tuesday.

‘My best guess … is a Republican gain of seven seats, but there’s a range on that. It could be a little lower, it could be a lot higher than that.’

Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri have redistricted in favor of Republicans and garnered the party between 10 and 16 extra seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Democrats have only been able to gain seats in California and Utah, for a possible gain between four and six seats, according to the analysis.

Overall, Republicans could have as many as 12 extra seats, while Democrats could only whittle down the advantage to four for the Republicans if everything went their way.

In addition, there are three states where efforts are pending and Republicans could pick up more seats. Those are Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

“The argument sort of goes back and forth. Is it maybe nine seats? Is it maybe six seats when this all nets out?” Salvanto said.

According to their analysis, there are only about 16 actual toss-up seats to be determined, and Republicans have an estimated 211 to 208 seat advantage. Whichever party gets to 218 seats will determine control of the House.

“Obviously we got to have the election first to determine what the actual effect of the redistricting was,” Kondik responded. “My best guess … is a Republican gain of seven seats, but there’s a range on that. It could be a little lower, it could be a lot higher than that.”

Salvanto pointed out one possible weakness for Republicans were Hispanics in Texas districts who had moved to the Republican Party in 2024 but may not show up in as significant numbers for the midterms.

RELATED: Utah Supreme Court justice abruptly RESIGNS after accusation involving redistricting attorney

“Just because you change a map to benefit yourself, it’s not necessarily gonna do that,” Kondik added.

“I would specifically look at the Republican redraws because 2026 is gonna stress test those maps in a way that they won’t necessarily be tested for Democrats because this is probably gonna be a Democratic-leaning year.”

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​Control of house, Midterm elections, Redistricting, Republicans, Politics 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has identified 12 possible future outcomes of artificial intelligence — ranging from a perfect utopia to complete human extinction.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray enjoys some of them, while others are deeply unsettling.

“The libertarian utopia: AI brings prosperity and AI-driven automation replaces most human jobs. The AI is vastly more intelligent but does not interfere with humans, leaving them to co-exist in separate zones,” Gray reads.

“The egalitarian utopia,” he continues reading, “AI and robotics lead to extreme abundance. Ownership becomes obsolete because robots produce everything needed, and resources are essentially free.”

“That’s like a ‘Star Trek’ outcome,” he adds.

The next is the “benevolent dictator possibility.”

“A super intelligent AI runs the world, making decisions that are 0% corrupt and perfectly fair,” Gray says, noting that the “first three are pretty decent options.”

However, after those three, the AI starts to get a little more controlling.

“The gatekeeper: A single all-powerful AI controls all technology and prevents humans from developing any other dangerous technologies, ensuring safety at the cost of freedom,” Gray explains, before moving on to the “protector god.”

This AI is “developed specifically to defend humanity, acting as an omnipotent guardian against existential threats.”

One concerning option is the “zookeeper option,” which keeps humans in “a protected, comfortable state similar to a nature reserve.”

Even scarier is the “1984 surveillance state possibility.”

This AI would “create an inescapable totalitarian surveillance state where every action is monitored and dissent is impossible.”

“We’re almost there now,” Gray says, before moving on to the “cyborg enhancement path,” which involves humans integrating “AI directly into their bodies and minds.”

The “self-preservation replacement scenario” follows, where “AI is developed, but its goals diverge from humanity’s, leading to the eradication of humans.”

“Not out of malice, but because humans are in the way of its goals,” Gray says. “Man, I could see that happening.”

Then there is the “apocalyptic future,” which features a “poorly designed super intelligent AI” breaking free and “destroying civilization,” and “the boredom scenario,” where “AI does everything so well that humans lose their sense of purpose.”

The final scenario is the “oops scenario,” where “humans try to create a controlled AI but fail, creating something they cannot understand or control, leading to unpredictable, potentially catastrophic results.”

“So,” Gray says, “there’s a few.”

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​Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Blazetv host, Pat gray unleashed, Surveillance state, The blaze, Artificial intelligence, Mit, Human extinction 

A former pastor known for leading a gay conversion therapy ministry was caught trying to meet what he thought was an underage boy for sex, according to Florida police.

Alan Chambers, 54, allegedly sent lewd messages including sexual photographs to an undercover police officer he believed to be a 14-year-old child.

He apologized to the gay community for ‘years of undue suffering and judgment at the hands of the organization and the church as a whole.’

Prosecutors say Chambers sent the sexually explicit messages via Telegram and Snapchat between February and May while trying to arrange a meetup with the fake underage child.

Chambers allegedly talked about “forbidden love” and sent a photograph that showed a “white [male’s] torso laying in bed where the end of their penis was visible.”

The detective pretending to be a boy said that on April 10, Chambers asked him to take an Uber and meet with him. He also allegedly deleted many of the messages out of fear of getting in trouble.

Chambers made headlines in 2013 when he turned against conversion therapy after admitting that he was attracted to men despite being married to a woman. He also shut down the conversion ministry and said he was going to work to build bridges between Christians and gay people.

He apologized to the gay community for “years of undue suffering and judgment at the hands of the organization and the church as a whole” and said his new ministry would have “peace to be at the forefront of anything we do in the future.”

RELATED: Memphis pastor charged with trafficking and sexual exploitation of a minor — after different pastor at same church convicted

Chambers was arrested on Tuesday during a traffic stop at Aloma Avenue and Strathy Lane.

The man was booked on charges of solicitation of a minor, transmission of harmful material to a minor, and unlawful use of a two-way communication device.

His bond was set at $15,000, and he was ordered to not have any communication with anyone under the age of 18 years old.

“Today our detectives stopped a predator before he had the chance to harm a child. … Parents, please monitor your children’s internet and social media activity — you are the first line of defense,” reads a statement from the Orange County Sheriff’s office.

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​Child sex sting, Solicitation of a minor, Undercover police officer, Politics, Lgbtq 

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos ripped into many of the policies on the left in a recent interview that was clipped widely on social media.

Bezos took aim at schemes to raise taxes on the wealthy and advocated lower taxes on Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder. He made the comments from the factory floor of his Blue Origin aerospace company during an interview on “Squawk Box” with CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin released Wednesday.

‘We shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington. They should be sending her an apology!’

When pressed on the issue of taxes, Bezos said half of Americans shouldn’t pay federal income taxes at all. He cited the example of a theoretical nurse in Queens who earns $75,000 a year and pays about $12,000 in federal income taxes.

“People talk about making the tax system more progressive. How about we start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes? At all,” he said.

“Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year paying more than $1,000 a month in taxes? That’s $1,000 a month that could help with rent or groceries or anything. And by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes,” Bezos added.

“It’s only 3%. We can find 3%. It’s a small amount of money for the government,” he continued. “And the more I thought about it, to me it’s kind of absurd that we’re doing this. You know, we shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington. They should be sending her an apology! It really makes no sense!”

Bezos said it was fine to debate what the wealthy should pay in taxes but went on to accuse politicians of distracting voters by vilifying the wealthy. He added that politicians were ignoring the root problems causing inflation and other economic problems.

“If you’re really being honest about it, we don’t have a revenue problem in this country. We already have the most progressive tax system in the world,” Bezos said. “The top 1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all tax revenue, the bottom half pay only 3%, and I think it should be zero.”

“We actually have a spending problem,” he added and cited the $44,000 that is spent on every child in the New York City school system with worse outcomes than other cities.

“If we ran Amazon the way New York City runs their school system,” Bezos joked, “packages would take six weeks to arrive, we would charge you a $100 delivery fee, and when the package did finally arrive, it would have the wrong item in it!”

Sorkin didn’t laugh.

“That’s a skills issue!” Bezos added. “It’s just competence.”

RELATED: Leftists lose their minds after Jeff Bezos announces new direction for WaPo in favor of freedom

Bezos also argued that the government could double the taxes he pays and it wouldn’t help the theoretical nurse in Queens because government spending is so out of control.

“You can’t connect those two things, not logically,” he said.

The entire segment on taxes with Bezos can be viewed on CNBC’s YouTube channel.

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​Federal income taxes, Government spending, Jeff bezos, New york city, Politics, Tax system 

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is sounding the alarm over what he sees as a cultural road map America could soon follow if conservatives fail to maintain the momentum of the Trump era.

“If we don’t get a Marco Rubio, or whoever is running and is the candidate, in line with what Donald Trump is doing right now — if we don’t get that, we’re going to be back here with a vengeance,” Beck warned.

“We’ll be right behind you,” he tells Peter McIlvenna.

McIlvenna, who grew up in Northern Ireland as well as in the Republic of Ireland in Dublin and Limerick, tells Glenn that he’s right — and that the cities there are “not Irish at all.”

“Ireland is an interesting test case, going from probably the most staunchly Christian Catholic country to now the most liberal country. What happened on the abortion laws was unbelievable. The rush to same-sex marriage so quick,” he explains.

“Part of that was the sex scandals that were in the Catholic Church were then used to destroy any remnant of Christianity within the country. Instead of saying ‘this is happening in parts of Church; we need to address it,’ the Church was decimated,” he continues.

The hypocrisy, McIlvenna points out, is when you point out that Islam has the same problems — or worse — the response is that it’s “a few bad apples.”

“It was a concerted attack on the Church, destroying the Church’s role as a guiding light for Irish society to now being dismissed and ridiculed and rejected,” he explains.

But it’s not just Ireland. The decline of Christianity and embrace of Islam are happening all over the United Kingdom.

“Islam presents itself as dominant and gives them an identity. And I think that’s the thing we are lacking as a nation. We don’t know our identity,” he says. “We have ripped out Christianity from the nation.”

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​Abortion laws, America, Blaze media, Blaze media cofounder, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Candidate, Catholic church, Christianity, Conservatives, Decline of christianity, Donald trump, Dublin, Embrace of islam, Glenn beck, Hypocrisy, Ireland, Islam, Marco rubio, Northern ireland, Republic, Same sex marriage, Sex scandals, The blaze, The glenn beck program, Trump era, United kingdom