Category: blaze media

Stephen A. Smith isn’t the only big name in sports whose actions may point to a potential career change.

Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr sat down for an interview with the New Yorker titled “Has Steve Kerr Had Enough?” — and what he said was enough to set alarm bells off in BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock’s head.

“Guess who might be the next presidential candidate coming from the sports world?” Whitlock asks on “Fearless with Jason Whitlock,” pointing out that he’s not the only one who noticed.

Political consultant Frank Luntz also senses a career change for Kerr, writing in a post on X: “Legendary Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr sounds like he could run for office.”

In the interview, Kerr told the New Yorker that when he finished college almost 40 years ago, getting a job and buying a house were much simpler.

“Now that’s out of reach for most people between student debt and home prices and the economy slanted toward the very, very top 1%,” he added.

Whitlock also points out that “Steve Kerr and the Golden State ownership are [allegedly] at odds over how far he’s pushing on the political spectrum.”

“So perhaps Steve Kerr is positioning himself for a political run,” Whitlock says, noting that he has some advice for Kerr.

“Tell the left and particularly the athletic left, the professional athlete left, tell them to grow a pair, be somewhat consistent. The silence over the consistent violence directed toward President Trump is really annoying and exposes you and all of these athletes as hypocrites,” he says.

“Maybe Steve Kerr and Stephen A. Smith can pair up and that will be the tandem running for president,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Career change, College, Economy, Fearless, Frank luntz, Golden state warriors, Home prices, Hypocrites, Jason whitlock, Left, Ownership, Political consultant, Political spectrum, President trump, Presidential candidate, Sports world, Stephen a smith, Steve kerr, Student debt, Top one percent, Violence, Youtube, Professional athlete, Blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Fearless with jason whitlock 

The next big fight over your car isn’t about gas prices, emissions, or electric vehicles. It’s about something bigger: who controls the road — and how much control they have over you while you’re on it.

What’s happening in Illinois should get drivers’ attentions. Lawmakers are advancing the Road Usage Charge Act, introduced by state Rep. Ram Villivalam (D), as a pilot program to study a mileage-based tax. On paper, it sounds routine. In reality, it’s the first step toward replacing the gas tax with a system that charges you for every mile you drive.

History shows that once a system like this exists, it rarely stays limited to its original purpose.

For decades, drivers have paid for roads through fuel taxes. You fill up, you pay your share. It’s simple, predictable, and largely invisible. But as more drivers move into electric vehicles and high-efficiency cars, gas tax revenue is declining. States like Illinois, which rely heavily on that revenue, are looking for alternatives.

Instead of cutting spending or rethinking how funds are used, they’re moving toward a system that expands oversight.

Double trouble

Illinois drivers are already paying for the road — heavily. Under Gov. JB Pritzker (D), the state doubled its gas tax in 2019, making it one of the highest in the country. Add tolls, registration fees, and local taxes, and drivers are already funding the system at a premium. Now comes the next step: charging not for fuel, but for movement itself.

A mileage-based tax — often called a vehicle miles traveled tax — sounds straightforward. Drive more, pay more. But the details matter. Some proposals rely on annual odometer reporting. Others involve installing tracking devices or using connected vehicle data.

This is where it stops being just a tax policy.

Once a system is in place to measure how far you drive, it can also measure when you drive, where you go, and how often you travel. Even groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have raised concerns about the risks that come with collecting that kind of data. And history shows that once a system like this exists, it rarely stays limited to its original purpose.

RELATED: FIRST LOOK New York International Auto Show: Cool cars, but drivers still face sticker shock

VIEW Press/Getty Images

Miles to go

Supporters argue this is about fairness. If electric vehicle owners aren’t paying gas taxes, they should still contribute to road funding. On its face, that argument makes sense. But this proposal doesn’t just target EVs. It applies to everyone — including drivers already paying high fuel taxes every time they fill up.

The result could be double taxation.

There’s also the cost of running the system itself. A mileage-based tax isn’t free to administer. It requires new technology, enforcement mechanisms, and ongoing oversight. Those costs don’t disappear — they get passed on to drivers, adding another layer of expense before you even get to the per-mile charge.

Before any of that happens, there’s a more basic question: Where is the current money going? States already collect billions through gas taxes, tolls, and vehicle fees. Before asking drivers to pay more — or pay differently — there should be clear accountability for how those funds are being used.

That question rarely gets answered.

What tends to grow instead is the system itself — more programs, more layers, more cost.

I spy

Illinois has already seen pushback on similar proposals. A 2019 effort was shelved after public backlash. Drivers understood what was at stake: not just higher costs, but more oversight and less control.

At its core, this is about how driving is changing. Driving in America has always meant a certain level of independence — the ability to go where you want, when you want, without someone tracking the details. A mileage-based system, especially one tied to data collection, begins to change that, turning driving into something that’s measured, recorded, and managed.

That’s a fundamental shift.

A better way

To be clear, declining gas tax revenue is a real issue. As vehicles become more efficient and electric adoption grows, states will need to adapt. But there are simpler ways to do it. If EVs aren’t contributing equally, adjust registration fees. Create transparent, targeted solutions. Keep the system straightforward and limited.

What’s being proposed goes further. It builds a framework that could apply to every driver, not just the segment creating the revenue gap. And once that framework exists, it won’t stay narrow — these systems tend to expand over time.

Illinois may be calling this a pilot program. But other states are watching closely.

Drivers should be asking a basic question: Is paying for the road one thing — and being tracked to use it something else entirely?

Because once the system is in place, it won’t be easy to roll back.

​Data collection, Double taxation, Drivers, Driving independence, Electric vehicles, Gas tax, Lifestyle, Mileage tax, Registration fees, Road funding, State government, State monitoring, Vmt tax, Align cars 

Over the past months or even years, you have tried to be more conscious of what you’re eating. You want to improve your physical health and maybe even your mental clarity. Your first step might have been cutting certain fast-food favorites from your diet, and you probably have no plans to break that streak, but you realize that you still have been far too indiscriminate in what you have put into your body from the grocery store, too.

Why do you still always feel sluggish and inflamed? What else can you do besides cutting out some of the most obviously unhealthy foods at restaurants and grocery stores?

You can start to answer that question when you begin to intentionally read the labels of the food you have been buying. But in the beginning, this raises more questions than it answers.

Starting the journey toward healthier eating and living may look simple, but there are a lot of problems you will need to address. This journey doesn’t begin by simply entering the “health aisle” at the grocery store — and your “healthy grocery store” is no exception.

Cooper Williamson

By the way, shouldn’t all of the aisles at the grocery store be the “healthy aisle”?

Maybe that’s a job for MAHA advocates in the long run, but for now, one has to be able to discern for oneself what the truly healthy — and trustworthy — brands are.

With some help from many health-focused resources, we have identified several brands that you can consider generally safer to consume, compared to many others sitting on the same shelves. But first, it is necessary to briefly explain the problems these brands are trying to solve.

The problems

Eating clean is far more complicated than you would think. Our food system tends to rely on cost-cutting ingredients and methods that can be linked to health problems. These ingredients include inflammatory seed oils, which tend to be less expensive and have a much higher smoke point than more natural options like butter or beef tallow. Certain preservatives and texturizing agents can also contribute to negative health effects.

That’s why so much of our food is considered “junk food” — there’s a bunch of unpronounceable junk in it!

Pick up almost any brand of bread, for example, and you will find a much longer list of ingredients than flour, water, yeast, and salt. Cooper Williamson

Companies have realized there is a growing market for healthy food — but that doesn’t mean all health brands are created equal. That just means the marketing on the front of the package will look like it.

In many cases, brands will plaster the front of their packaging with “health-coded” messages boasting about what is not used in the food, including, for example, being gluten-free, non-GMO, having no artificial flavors, or made with real ____.

A brand of chips, for example, could market itself as a healthy brand by claiming that the chips are “non-GMO, no preservatives, and no seed oils.” Sounds pretty healthy, right? But the actual ingredients, when you read the small-print ingredients label, are barely improved alternatives, like “organic palm olein oil.”

Cooper Williamson

Cooper Williamson

You will also want to watch out for ingredient labels that simply list “vegetable oil,” because that could mean many different things—or a mysterious combination of several things. Not very transparent!

You will have to dig deeper still, even if you’re at a “healthy” grocery store.

And finally, there’s the issue of cost. Healthy food is more expensive. There is less demand for it — if you are reading this article and are ready to make some healthy changes, you’re part of the solution to this piece of the puzzle. And higher-quality ingredients obviously cost more.

Your health companions

If you have made it this far, you’re convinced that it is time to make a change. However, take a look at any food package in your pantry, and you’ll quickly be overwhelmed by the number of foreign, gigantic words in the ingredients section.

What are the differences between all the cooking oils? What are monoglycerides, granulated sugar, or monosodium glutamate? Does anyone even know what it takes to make “natural” and “artificial” flavors?

And who has time to read any of that and then research all of them for every item you buy at the grocery store?

Cooper Williamson

Luckily, there are several apps that have done the heavy lifting for you, cataloging and quickly showing you all of the ingredients and other facts about the groceries you’re considering. Combining a number of these scanner apps will give you a better sense of whether you can trust the brand.

Briefly, here are the three apps that we kept coming back to, both for their ease of use and the usefulness of the information they provided:

Bobby Approved is a very popular option for scanning groceries. The simple interface enables a snap decision in the form of a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. The app also highlights the problematic ingredients and gives an explanation for why an item is not “Bobby Approved.” The app is particularly focused on the sourcing of products and seed oils. It has a 4.9-star rating from 138,000 users on the App Store and a 4.7-star rating from 16.8K users on Google Play as of this writing.Yuka is another very popular option for scanning foods as well as cosmetics. The app experience is similar to Bobby Approved, but it grades products on a more detailed scale, scoring them on a scale of 100. Yuka is helpful for diving deeper into the additives and the relative risk they pose to the human body. Yuka also has a feature that proposes healthier alternatives than the items you scan. It currently has a 4.8-star rating on the App Store from 89,000 users and a 4.7-star rating on Google Play from 178,000 users. Buy’r is very new on the scene but has proven to be very useful for highlighting ingredients as well as the source of the foods. Buy’r highlights brand ownership, since many brands pretend to be small businesses, when in reality they are owned by much larger corporations. While there is nothing inherently wrong with large corporations, this app brings transparency to the shopping experience and helps you to understand which labels are being sneaky with their packaging. Buy’r has a 4.9-star rating on the App Store from 576 users and a 4.6-star rating on Google Play from 944 users.

All three of these apps were used to compile the list below. Unlike some of the other competitors, these apps have free versions that are very usable. You can pay for expanded features, but it is not absolutely necessary for any of the apps listed above.

Using these apps was crucial for understanding the safety of the various products at the several grocery stores (at various price points) that were scoured in the preparation of this article.

Brands you can trust (more than most)

Here’s the best advice we can give you: Buy local. Even better: Get to know your producers.

The major benefit of buying local, besides the better chance of getting fresh, whole foods, is that the brands are less likely to need to use an obscene amount of preservatives, texturizing agents, emulsifiers, and artificial coloring.

The following list, however, recognizes that buying locally is not always possible due to cost, where you live, or any other reason. Some bigger brands at your grocery store have actually risen to the occasion and provide healthier options than your average big-name brands.

Cooper Williamson

Many of the following brands have many different products, especially store brands. It’s natural that different products use different ingredients, but the following brands are generally considered safe by the scanner apps and other health-focused resources. But it’s always best to check for yourself to make sure the standards remain high across different foods.

Given that constraint, each brand that can be considered trustworthy has been identified with one product in a particular category among household staples. We have given a brief description of the brand as well as some of the other foods that you can expect to find under the same label.

Half and half

Simply Nature is one of Aldi’s in-house brands that emphasizes organic and non-GMO products. Alongside the half and half, Simply Nature has been a provider of pantry staples and fresh foods since 2014. On its “food philosophy” page, Aldi says “we keep a close eye on the ingredients and materials that go into all our products to ensure they meet the highest standards for our commitment to quality, health, and safety.” Aldi expresses its commitment to producing food that aligns with the highest standards of the USDA Organic seal and has opted to avoid using monosodium glutamate, certified synthetic colors, and bisphenol-A (a potentially harmful material found in food packaging).

Cooper Williamson

You can buy Simply Nature half and half at Aldi for around $4.25.

Milk

365 by Whole Foods Market is similarly an in-house brand offering a vast array of pantry staples. Whole Foods boasts that it offers over 3,500 products under this brand label, which adheres to high standards and has a long list of over 550 banned ingredients. The brand says “we strive to respond by following emerging research and our customers’ expectations,” adding that it banned MSG in 1992, hydrogenated oils in 2003, and high-fructose corn syrup in 2011.

You can buy 365 milk at Whole Foods for $4.79 per gallon.

Yogurt

Maple Hill, founded in 2009, has been committed to producing the highest-quality dairy products on the market. The company’s mission is “to bring healthy, organic, 100% grass-fed dairy products to families all over the United States,” even claiming to be the “original” company to try to meet these standards. Maple Hill explicitly says that its cows are only on the 100% grass diet, which the company says improved its cows’ health when it made the transition from grain supplements years ago. Alongside its Greek yogurt line, you can find Maple Hill milk, salted and unsalted butter, cream-on-top yogurt, and a few varieties of kefir.

Cooper Williamson

You can buy a 32-ounce container of Maple Hill yogurt for $5.99 as a Whole Foods member or at the regular price of $7.49.

Butter

Kerrygold has become a well-known name for all things butter. Kerrygold’s products don’t stop at varieties of butter, though. The company also offers a selection of different cheeses, including cheddar, skellig, and blarney cheese. Owned by Ornua, the company says its products, including those sold in the U.S., are certified to Ireland’s “Grass Fed Dairy Standard,” meaning the cows are given a 95% or higher grass diet.

You can buy four sticks of Kerrygold butter at Whole Foods, for example, for $10.99.

Cheese

Organic Valley prides itself on not using GMOs, antibiotics, added growth hormones, pesticides prohibited under the USDA’s National Organic Program, or artificial flavors or preservatives. Founded in 1988, Organic Valley offers a wide range of dairy products including milk, butter, cheese, cream, half and half, sour cream, cream cheese, cottage cheese, and eggs. You can find its products at Whole Foods, Walmart, Amazon and Amazon Fresh, Sprouts, and Kroger.

You can buy Organic Valley cheese slices at Whole Foods for $6.49.

Bacon

North Country Smokehouse boasts that “we don’t simply meet the standards, we exceed them.” The company is one of the last vertically integrated farm networks, meaning it controls the process “from feed to fork.” Proud to be USDA Organic, the company’s meat can be found in many specialty grocery stores as well as Whole Foods and Target.

The key, according to Bobby Approved and other health apps, is to avoid bacon that has sugar or preservatives, specifically nitrites and nitrates.

A pack of North Country Smokehouse bacon costs $6.52 at Whole Foods. The Whole Foods Market option, also approved, costs a little more at $6.99.

Beef

Exclusively available at Whole Foods, Organic Rancher is dedicated to treating the animals, the people, and the land well. The company promises you will enjoy the flavor of “organic, 100% grass fed and 100% grass finished, free range beef,” which is free from GMOs, antibiotics, added hormones, synthetic chemicals, and artificial ingredients. You can find several cuts of meat, ground beef, and the “popular” new meatballs.

Cooper Williamson

You can buy Organic Rancher ground beef at Whole Foods for $10.49 per pound.

Chips

Siete Foods, and especially its chips, have become a popular, clean alternative for a chip with simple ingredients in a market full of seed oils and junky preservatives. Although it was acquired by PepsiCo at the beginning of last year, the PepsiCo CEO said the company is “dedicated to preserving its special attributes while making the brand more widely available and accessible on a broader scale.” Siete offers a variety of snacks, dips, sauces, and seasonings with simple ingredients across the board.

Cooper Williamson

You can get a bag of Siete chips for $3.69 at Whole Foods, though they are available elsewhere as well.

Chips

Founded by brothers John and Mark Maggio in Boulder, Colorado, in 1994, the vision behind Boulder Canyon was to create a chip that was better for you. All these years later, the clean ingredients don’t lie: The company uses avocado oil rather than other seed or vegetable oils to cook the chips. Now owned by Utz Brands, Boulder Canyon remains one of the cleanest, simplest bags of chips on the market.

Though available at other grocery stores too, you can buy a bag of Boulder Canyon Chips for $4.49 at Whole Foods.

Snack bars

Epic Provisions, a meat-based snack-bar company, uses very clean ingredients in a wide selection of products, including the “perennial bestseller” bison bacon cranberry bar. Take your pick from a variety of beef, chicken, venison, and bison bars among other products like bone broth, pork rinds, animal fats, and snack strips, all from a company committed to leaving the land better than it found it through partnerships with regenerative farming initiatives.

Crackers

Crunchmaster prides itself on producing a variety of snack crackers with pronounceable, simple ingredients. The company says it believes a cracker “should come with bold flavor, better ingredients, and nothing to hide.” On its website, the company is very forthcoming about its ingredients, which are, almost without exception, whole foods like seeds, flour, and salt.

You can get a 20-ounce box of Crunchmaster crackers at Sam’s Club.

Oatmeal

Started in 2009 and run by Elizabeth Stein, Purely Elizabeth has enjoyed massive success and growth over the last 17 years, However, the ingredients have remained simple and clean across the company’s lines of granola, cereal, and oatmeal.

Cooper Williamson

A box of Purely Elizabeth oatmeal costs $4.68 at Whole Foods.

Cooking oils

Chosen Foods is a well-regarded option for healthy avocado oil. The type of oil you use for cooking is crucial for your health, yet the vast majority of food on the shelves is cooked in foul options like cottonseed oil, grapeseed oil, corn oil, canola (rapeseed) oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, or sesame oil, to name just a few. Avocado oil is a cleaner alternative to these oils, while it also retains a higher smoke point than butter. Alongside multiple avocado oil options, Chosen Foods offers a selection of dressings as well. The company says it is on a mission to make the world a better place, “replacing bad fats with the good fats of 100% Pure Avocado Oil.” Chosen Foods products are available in most grocery stores.

Cooper Williamson

Chosen Foods avocado oil, widely available, costs $13.59 per 16.9 fl oz at Target (cheaper than Whole Foods: $15.99 for the same bottle.)

Chocolate

Now for some dessert. First, you should assume from the outset that any candy’s ingredients are questionable at best and harmful at worst. However, there are still some relatively healthy options for those with a sweet tooth. Acquired by Oreo maker Mondelez in January 2021, Hu Chocolate promises to have “no weird ingredients. Ever.” Boasting the USDA Organic certification, Hu says it never uses ingredients like refined sugar, cane sugar, sugar alcohols, erythritol, soy and gluten, palm oil, lecithins, and emulsifiers. Hu was created after its founders couldn’t find any chocolate bars that met their standards. Now its wide variety of milk and dark chocolate bars and bites are available at 34,000 stores nationwide including Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, Kroger, Sprouts, and Amazon.

Cooper Williamson

You can get a range of Hu Chocolate products at Whole Foods from $7.49/4 oz -$7.99/2.75 oz.

Some tricks to keep in mind

As mentioned earlier, the positive desire for healthier, cleaner food has caused companies to adopt a flood of labels to appeal to the health-conscious consumer.

Unfortunately, not all of these labels mean much at all, yet one could easily mistake the illegitimate labels for the legitimate labels due to their ubiquity and similar appearance.

Consumers could not be blamed for thinking that they are making good choices because of these labels, but they can also be more aware of what the labels mean — and which ones actually signify that they meet regulatory standards.

Thankfully, buried in the depths of the USDA website, these distinctions have been officially made. Here are a couple of sets of labels of which you should know the meaning and for which you should watch out.

‘Organic’

Everyone has seen products that prominently feature the word “organic” on the packaging, which most people associate with being a healthier choice. While this may be partially true, the reality is a bit more complicated.

It’s first helpful to know what the term generally means. The USDA defines “organic” as “a labeling term that indicates that the food or other agricultural product has been produced through approved methods.” The approved methods, the USDA definition continues, “integrate cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity.” Most importantly — and some may be alarmed to discover that these methods are not necessarily off the table in non-organic foods — “synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering may not be used.”

“Organic,” it turns out, is only one of four different labels that a product can have, and the labels actually denote different “tiers” of organic products.

Health-conscious consumers would do well to seek out products that have the USDA Organic seal. This covers the top two tiers of the labeling system, “100 Percent Organic” and “Organic,” the latter of which is any product that contains a minimum of 95 percent organic ingredients.

The bottom two rungs of the “organic” ladder are a bit less transparent. First of all, neither of them are allowed to feature the USDA Organic label, which, for what it’s worth, likely does signal a higher standard of production. The third tier can include “made with organic _____” and list the organic ingredients. The final product at this level must contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients.

The bottom tier can only list specific organic products in the ingredient label on the back of the packaging, meaning it cannot and will not be marketed as an organic product.

As stated before, the health-conscious consumer will become much more accustomed to reading and understanding these labels, which many companies only use as marketing tricks. Don’t take my word for it, though — check out what the USDA has to say about “voluntary labels” on livestock products like meat and eggs.

Voluntary labels

Just as you have almost certainly seen all four tiers of the organic label, you have also probably seen all of the following additional labels for meat and eggs, for example: Free-range, cage-free, natural, grass-fed, pasture-raised, and humane.

This is where they really get you.

As it turns out, most of these labels have some caveats that a consumer at the grocery store is probably not aware of.

Free-range is probably the most meaningful and straightforward term from the above list since it indicates that the flock was provided shelter, food, and water and was allowed continuous access to the outdoors.

Cage-free has similar criteria to free-range, but the animals are not required to be given access to the outdoors; they can roam the enclosed area indoors. Free-range and cage-free can bear the same “USDA grade shield,” according to a USDA infographic showing the differences between 12 distinct egg labels, so it is important to know the difference between them.

Natural generally means that the food was minimally processed and contains no artificial ingredients. “However,” the USDA says, “the natural label does not include any standards regarding farm practices and only applies to processing of meat and egg products.” The USDA explicitly goes on to state that the “natural” label is not regulated at all if the product does not contain meat or eggs. Therefore, watch out for labels boasting about being “natural” — it may not mean anything!

Grass-fed: Here’s where it gets a little convoluted. Grass-fed, which is regulated by the USDA, “does not limit the use of antibiotics, hormones, or pesticides.” This section of the USDA’s page makes an interesting distinction between organic and grass-fed, which can also appear on the label together in some circumstances. The USDA says, “Grass-fed animals receive a majority of their nutrients from grass throughout their life, while organic animals’ pasture diet may be supplemented with grain.”

Finally, there are two labels that you should probably at least treat with suspicion if you see them on your groceries: pasture-raised and humane. Neither of these are regulated by the USDA and are considered to have too many variables to develop a policy. They are therefore the closest thing to a marketing ploy and can safely be treated as such in most cases.

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​Culture, Lifestyle 

Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey has surrendered to police in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday.

Comey was indicted on charges related to threatening the life of the president after he posted a message on social media many believed to be calling for political violence. CNN reported that he would be “placed under arrest ahead of his first appearance in court.”

‘A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director, and you don’t know what that meant? That meant assassination.’

He briefly appeared in the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia for a hearing but entered no plea.

“I don’t see why they’d be necessary this time,” said Judge William Fitzpatrick.

In May 2025, Comey posted an image on his social media account of a seashell formation he said he found at the beach.

“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” he wrote in the post.

However, many immediately took the message spelled out by the seashells, “8647,” as a veiled reference calling for violence against President Donald Trump. The phrase “86” in slang commonly refers to getting rid of something, and the number “47” is assumed to be a reference to Trump, who is the 47th president of the United States.

After seeing the furor, Comey deleted the post and tried to explain it away.

“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” he wrote. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

On Tuesday, he was charged for making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce.

RELATED: James Comey subpoenaed in ‘grand conspiracy’ against Trump: Report

“He knew exactly what that meant,” said Trump about the seashell post. “A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director, and you don’t know what that meant? That meant assassination.”

Comey had also been previously indicted by a grand jury for allegedly abusing his office out of political motivation. Those charges were dismissed by a judge, who found that the administration had improperly filled the office of interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

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​James comey indicted, James comey arrested, Charges against comey, Comey 8647 threat, Politics 

President Donald Trump’s pick to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell just got one step closer to confirmation.

The White House can breathe a sigh of relief after the Senate Banking Committee advanced Kevin Warsh’s nomination along party lines in a 13-11 vote on Wednesday. Warsh’s nomination is now headed to the Senate floor, where he is expected to be confirmed in a simple majority vote.

‘This is a necessary and appropriate measure.’

Warsh’s main hurdle was none other than Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who vowed to oppose the nominee until the administration dropped its investigation into Powell’s overbudget construction project of the Fed building.

The retiring Republican’s calls were heard by the White House, and the DOJ’s investigation was punted to the inspector general, which was enough to regain Tillis’ support for the committee vote.

RELATED: Trump administration calls off criminal probe into Fed Chair Powell

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

“I welcome the Inspector General’s investigation,” Tillis said in a post on X, despite his vehement opposition to the DOJ-led investigation into Powell. “This is a necessary and appropriate measure, and I have confidence it will be conducted thoroughly and professionally.”

“Only a criminal referral from the inspector general would cause a reopening of the investigation,” Tillis added. “With these assurances, I look forward to supporting Kevin Warsh’s confirmation.”

Powell, whose term expires in May, said he will remain in the role until his replacement is officially confirmed.

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​Department of justice, Doj, Donald trump, Federal reserve, Inspector general, Jerome powell, Judge boasberg, Kevin warsh, Senate banking committee, Senate democrats, Senate republicans, Thom tillis, Politics 

Brian Cole Jr., the FBI’s suspect in the Jan. 5 to 6, 2021, pipe-bomb case, appeared before a federal judge on April 22 and pleaded not guilty to the two additional felony charges filed against him in a second superseding indictment.

Federal authorities arrested Cole in December, accusing him of planting two pipe bombs, one outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters and one outside the Republican National Committee headquarters, in the hours leading up to the Jan 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol. The bombs did not detonate.

A ‘real mic-drop’ moment.

A second superseding indictment, filed Apr. 14, included the original charges of interstate transportation of explosives and a malicious attempt to use explosives. It also added two additional charges: an attempt to use weapons of mass destruction and an act of terrorism while armed. If found guilty of these new charges, Cole could face a sentence of life in prison.

The status hearing last week included an arraignment for the additional charges, to which Cole pleaded not guilty.

Cole’s defense team requested early in the hearing to discuss setting a trial date, suggesting early December, according to the hearing’s transcript obtained by Blaze News.

Prosecutors proposed holding another status hearing before setting a trial date, explaining that they were not yet prepared to estimate how long the trial would take, particularly with the additional charges.

Cara Castronuova, a reporter with LindellTV, called the defense’s request a “real mic-drop” moment.

“I think that really surprised the prosecution. Their mouths sort of fell open. A lot of the FBI agents and the DOJ that were sitting there watching sort of looked at each other in disbelief,” Castronuova stated.

RELATED: Brian Cole Jr.’s physical presence, posture, mannerisms are no match to FBI’s hoodie-clad pipe-bomb suspect

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

“I don’t think that they expected that. I think that they added all of these new charges sort of hoping that this young man, Brian Cole Jr. … would be scared and plea out.”

The attorneys for both sides provided the judge with an update on the discovery process.

Prosecutors stated that they had obtained “over a terabyte of data” and that they were still gathering additional information, including witness interview materials.

Cole’s attorney, Alex Little with Litson PLLC, said the defense intended to subpoena Congress for Jan. 6 committee records. Little explained to the judge that they had plans to review lawmakers’ investigation into the pipe bomber, stating that he believes that they may “have materials that we think would be useful.”

The defense also shared potential plans to present “a third-party perpetrator defense” and indicated that they want to “rebut potential alibis of that third party.”

During the hearing, the attorneys and judge also discussed the controversy surrounding a recent motion filed by the defense team.

Cole’s legal team previously filed a motion on Apr. 1 claiming that former Capitol Police Officer Shauni Kerkhoff was “named as a person of interest in the January 5–6, 2021 pipe bomb investigation.” The court filing claimed Kerkhoff was subjected to an FBI polygraph examination and that she “failed” after she was asked, “Did you place those pipe bombs?” and “Did you place those pipe bombs that evening?” Cole’s attorneys further noted that the polygraph examiner called Kerkhoff’s responses “seemingly rehearsed.”

Kerkhoff has been officially cleared by the FBI and is no longer a suspect in the case.

Federal prosecutors argued that the motion violated the case’s protective order, which set guidelines for handling confidential and sensitive discovery materials, including identifying information. Prosecutors requested that the judge hold Cole’s attorneys in contempt for the public filing.

RELATED: Former Capitol Police Officer Shauni Kerkhoff files lawsuit against Blaze Media

Andrew Leyden/Getty Images

Cole’s defense team asserted that the motion did not violate the protective order in the case, stating that they “were surprised” the government believed it did.

“Your Honor, they immediately jumped to ask to hold me in contempt,” Little stated.

“I find it important to make this record for the court. There was nothing in that protective order that we believed are satisfied by the things we put in that motion. We wouldn’t have filed them. That’s not the way we do things.”

He expressed regret and referred to as a “mistake” that the motion contained an individual’s home address. He noted that the address should have been removed.

Cole’s attorney stated that other than that one instance, prosecutors did not specify any other personally identifiable information in the motion. He claimed that prosecutors were unnecessarily labeling discovery materials as sensitive, including “photographs of shoes that you can get on the web.”

“I think the difficulty is when we have now two terabytes, three terabytes of discovery, do I need to show the government a draft of each of my motions to decide whether the information” could be submitted in a public court filing, Little stated, adding that prosecutors had made “half” of the discovery material “sensitive.”

Prosecutors argued that the defense’s “gambit worked,” stating that the public motion “went everywhere” and was “covered by the media.”

“The damage was done,” a federal attorney told the judge.

Little stated that they “immediately” moved to get the motion “under seal” after being notified by prosecutors that the address was in the public motion.

The defense withdrew the motion, which removed it from the public docket, and filed it under seal. Cole’s team then requested that the motion be unsealed with redactions.

The judge ordered counsel to confer and come back to the court with “a proposed redacted version” of the defense’s motion.

Castronuova highlighted a moment when the judge reportedly “just started yelling” at the defense attorneys.

“He went from zero to 10 out of nowhere on the defense,” she continued. “No one really understood why. He just got angry at something they said and just started reprimanding them, embarrassing them, and yelling at them in court.”

At multiple points throughout the hearing, the judge told the defense to “stop talking,” according to the transcript.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) reacted to updates from the status hearing last week, suggesting that the defense “put the plainclothes Capitol Police officers who ‘found’ the second bomb on the stand.”

Massie urged them to ask, “Why didn’t you immediately begin looking for a third bomb?” “Who told you to go to that area and look for it?” and “Why was the bomb not immediately dealt with?”

“And a new question: why did you look so intently under the empty bush where the pipe bomber dwelled for so long the night before?” Massie continued.

“This trial could get interesting.”

Cole’s defense team declined to comment. He is scheduled to appear back in court on May 29 for another status hearing.

On Friday, Cole’s defense team submitted a motion further arguing for the dismissal of the case due to a lack of jurisdiction. His attorneys previously contended that President Donald Trump’s broad pardons related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, which applied to “individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol,” should also cover Cole’s case.

The government rejected the argument, stating that Cole had no pending indictment at the time the presidential proclamation was issued on Jan. 20, 2025. Prosecutors also asserted that the pipe bombs were placed on Jan. 5, 2021, and therefore were not related to the protest on Jan. 6.

Cole’s lawyers responded to the government’s arguments by stating that “a strict time limit does not exist in the text of” the president’s pardon and, therefore, should not be inferred from it. They claimed it was “an on-going directive.” They also reasoned that the timing and proximity of the pipe-bomb incident to the Jan. 6 protest indicate a connection.

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A former Parent Teacher Association board member in Texas was arrested by federal agents on Thursday for possession of child pornography, according to a Department of Homeland Security press release exclusively obtained by Blaze News.

Homeland Security Investigations agents, alongside the Corpus Christi Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Unit, executed a search warrant at the home of 42-year-old Benjamin Milfelt.

‘This sicko was in several positions of trust with children of his community, including as a Parent Teacher Association board member and elementary school volunteer.’

Law enforcement agents discovered more than 2,000 images of child pornography on Milfelt’s phone, the press release claimed.

The DHS stated that Milfelt previously served on the PTA and was a member of WATCH D.O.G.S., a volunteer group at Mireles Elementary School in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Local news outlet KRIS reported that the volunteer group is “part of a national education initiative that brings fathers, grandfathers, and other male role models into school to volunteer.”

RELATED: Tim Tebow shows disturbing map of the child sexual abuse material epidemic on US soil

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Corpus Christi Independent School District issued a letter to parents regarding Milfelt’s arrest, although he is not named in the letter.

“CCPD notified Mireles of the situation involving the former volunteer, who has not been on school property since prior to the notification,” the district’s notice read. “Out of respect for the important work of law enforcement, we cannot share any additional information.”

RELATED: Fresno candidate’s registered child sex offender status sparks outrage after city council campaign launch

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

KRIS reported that law enforcement investigators discovered two phones in Milfelt’s pickup truck, one of which allegedly contained several explicit videos and images of children, both male and female, between the ages of 10 and 14 years old.

“This sicko was in several positions of trust with children of his community, including as a Parent Teacher Association board member and elementary school volunteer. He possessed thousands of images of child pornography,” DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis alleged in a statement. “Thanks to the work of the brave men and women of ICE law enforcement, this disgusting criminal is off the streets and can no longer prey on innocent children. He now is being brought to justice for his heinous crimes against children.”

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Newly released court documents reveal that the third alleged would-be Trump assassin snapped a selfie just moments before opening fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.

Just half an hour before the attack, the suspected gunman, identified as 31-year-old Cole Allen, apparently snapped a mirror selfie in his Washington Hilton hotel room showing firearms and ammunition strapped to his body.

‘It was, at its core, an anti-democratic act of political violence.’

According to the new court documents, the image shows Allen smirking in the mirror while “wearing a small leather bag consistent in appearance with the ammunition-filled bag later recovered from his person,” as well as a holster and two sheathed knives.

The documents also contain images of the shotgun, handgun, and knives the suspect was carrying when he rushed a security checkpoint and fired shots in the Washington Hilton lobby.

“Had the defendant achieved his intended outcome, he would have brought about one of the darkest days in American history,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Jones wrote.

RELATED: Karoline Leavitt names and shames Democrats who inspired WHCD assassination attempt

President Trump, Truth Social/Anadolu/Getty Images

Allen was ultimately charged with one count of attempting to assassinate the president, interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition with intent to commit a felony, as well as discharge of a firearm during a violent crime.

“This was a planned attack of unfathomable malice that risked the lives of hundreds of people whose only transgression was attending an annual event celebrating the media and featuring the President of the United States,” Jones added.

“It was, at its core, an anti-democratic act of political violence.”

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The Supreme Court issued a shocking ruling on Wednesday about a congressional map in Louisiana that was drawn to give black voters a boost in representation.

The case, Louisiana v. Callais, involved a challenge by Louisiana voters in a congressional district that was redrawn after the 2020 census. The Supreme Court struck the map down, concluding it is an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander” that cannot be justified under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

‘That map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.’

Justice Samuel Alito penned the majority opinion of the court and was joined by his five fellow conservative justices. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, and Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in which he was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The Supreme Court decided that the “time had come” to deliver a clear answer on what for 30 years had simply been assumed about Voting Rights Act case law.

RELATED: SCOTUS rules on law banning ‘conversion therapy’ — and 2 liberal justices break rank

Chip Somodevilla/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

Succinctly put, the opinion of the court, stated in the syllabus, holds: “Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion, went farther, arguing that the prevailing wisdom of the last 30 years of VRA case law and districting practices has been fraught with error. The court “led legislatures and courts to ‘systematically divid[e] the country into electoral district along racial lines,'” thus rendering Section 2 “repugnant to any nation that strives for the ideal of a color-blind Constitution,” he wrote.

Thomas concluded his concurring opinion with the proclamation: “No §2 challenge to districting should ever succeed.”

The liberal justices of the Supreme Court lamented the decision and its implications for Section 2: “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon celebrated the decision of the court on social media: “Extremely gratified to see this decision we’ve been waiting for! I was proud to co-author the brief for the United States as amicus in this important case, perhaps one of the most important developments in decades in Voting Rights Act jurisprudence!”

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Armed individuals allegedly entered a Kent, Washington, home in the middle of the night earlier this week, but the homeowner also was armed — and opened fire. Kent is about a half hour south of Seattle.

Officers were dispatched to the residence on Hampton Way shortly before 3 a.m. Monday, KOMO-TV reported.

‘It’s just terrifying.’

The victims told officers that several armed people entered the home, the station said.

But the homeowner shot at the intruders and hit one suspect several times, KOMO noted, citing a Kent Police Department spokesperson.

The other suspects fled before officers arrived, the station said.

Police entered the home, cleared it, and began treating the wounded suspect until medics arrived and took him to Harborview Medical Center, KOMO reported.

While a K-9 team tried to find the other suspects, the station said none were located.

RELATED: ‘I didn’t have any hesitation’: Gun-toting homeowner says he spotted intruder in his house and ‘just let it fire’

“It’s just terrifying,” neighborhood resident Sarah told KOMO. “We have kids here, two schools, we’ve got a middle school, an elementary school.”

Many commenters underneath the station’s story seemed squarely behind the homeowner’s actions:

“I love starting the day with a feel good story,” one commenter said.”Too bad this was in King County,” another commenter wrote. “The homeowner will likely need to hire a lawyer and spend lots of $$. Even though this was pretty clear[ly] a justified shooting.””Excellent,” another commenter stated. “Well done, sir!””Awesome!” another commenter declared. “Too bad he didn’t drop all of them!””I love a ‘good news’ story to start off the week,” another commenter quipped.”More target practice is required,” another commenter observed.”FAFO,” another commenter stated. “YOU are the first responder.””Great job by the homeowner!!!” another commenter exclaimed. “Need more of this kind of rock-solid SELF-protection. Thank you!”

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The Chinese communist government stepped in to block Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta from completing a company takeover in what has been described as an extraordinary late-stage intervention.

However, the CCP preventing a U.S. company from bringing a Chinese tech firm to the U.S. comes as no shock to other analysts who say it was strange the deal was allowed to get to this stage.

‘It’s got Chinese founders, and those Chinese founders are in China.’

In December for $2 billion, Meta acquired Manus AI, an agentic AI that resembles chatbots like ChatGPT. However, its differentiating factor has been that Manus AI “independently plans and completes” tasks without the need for continuous prompts from the user.

The company is Chinese founded but has since settled in Singapore. This did not stop China’s National Development and Reform Commission from rejecting the acquisition, in what was labeled as a mandatory “unwinding.”

The commission reportedly said in a statement that it was prohibiting foreign investment in Manus in accordance with laws and regulations. It also said that Meta’s acquisition had violated Chinese rules on foreign investment.

RELATED: This Big Tech patent tracks your brain, eyes, and body — with earbuds

Meta said on Monday, however, that it “complied fully with applicable” laws during its transaction.

“We anticipate an appropriate resolution to the inquiry,” the company said in a statement. The Times also reported that Meta has described itself and Manus as being two teams that have already become “deeply integrated.”

Some experts, like Matt Bloxham from Bloomberg Intelligence, were not surprised that the Chinese government stepped in.

“Manus was originally a Chinese-founded business and reincorporated in Singapore, but it’s got Chinese founders, and those Chinese founders are in China, and they’re being blocked from leaving the country,” Bloxham said on Monday. “So I think clearly, you know, this is an issue about technology transfer from one superpower to another, and that’s why we’re seeing this Chinese clampdown.”

Bloxham added that in his mind it was “a little bit surprising” that the acquisition had actually been “waved through” up to this point.

RELATED: Meta is using its own employees to train AI agents for ‘everyday tasks’

Raul Ariano/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The White House provided a vague statement on Monday about protecting against foreign interference in its technology sector.

The Trump administration will “continue defending America’s leading and innovative technology sector against undue foreign interference of any sort,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, per the Washington Post.

Other features of Manus AI include interacting with a user’s browser and other software to complete tasks, with the capability of generating text and images across other user applications.

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After the nation watched President Donald Trump survive the third credible assassination attempt against him on Saturday, many people have begun wondering what exactly is going on with his security detail, the Secret Service.

For what is thought to be the most elite security detail that protects arguably the most important — and the most targeted — man on the planet, there seems to be an astronomically high number of “security failures,” and that doesn’t count the many other threats against Trump.

‘When the lights came on, a neatly dressed young man, a complete stranger, was standing next to FDR.’

However, a look back at history reveals a remarkable pattern of “failures” to secure the president’s person — even aside from the successful assassinations of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865, James Garfield on July 2, 1881, and William McKinley on September 14, 1901.

RELATED: Secret Service accused of trying to ‘cover up’ motorcade accident involving VP Kamala Harris

Trump Campaign Office/Handout/Anadolu/Getty Images

Here’s a breakdown of some of the most remarkable security breaches since the beginning of the 20th century — after the president’s security team supposedly “got serious.”

Theodore Roosevelt

Not long after the assassination of his predecessor, President McKinley, President Theodore Roosevelt found himself in harm’s way. As the story goes, according to Andrew Tully’s book “Treasury Agent: The Inside Story,” a man wearing a top hat, white tie, and tails told an usher at the White House that President Roosevelt was expecting him. Though he did not recognize the man’s name or expect a visitor, Roosevelt agreed to meet with him in the Red Room. After a few minutes of speaking with the man, Roosevelt summoned the chief usher and told him to “take this crank out of here.”

The man was searched after his meeting with the president and was found with a revolver in his back pocket.

Famously, Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest while running for re-election in 1912, three years after he left office, but he went on to deliver a speech as planned. However, the Secret Service did not start protecting major presidential candidates on the campaign trail until 1968, so they cannot be blamed for this incident.

William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft’s presidency saw what could be described as a more violent threat at the White House. Illinois’ the Day Book reported in 1912 that a man identified as Michael Winter, supposedly a German, was arrested “after twice forcing his way into the private part of the executive mansion.” According to the Day Book, he reached the White House, “ran swiftly up the steps, dashed past the doorkeeper, and for a moment was lost in the darkness of the hall.”

The man, who was later deemed “mentally incompetent” and booked in an asylum as “harmless,” explained that he had been twice denied an introduction to President Taft by German Ambassador to the U.S. Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, but insisted on meeting with him without further explanation: “I want to see the president. I must see him.”

Winter was carrying a long blade with a guard to protect the hand “in case it were used as a weapon.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Though the Secret Service surely learned from these mistakes and beefed up its security measures in the following decades, “slip-ups still occurred,” Margaret Truman, President Harry Truman’s daughter, wrote in her book, “The President’s House: The Secrets and History of the World’s Most Famous Home.“

In her book, Margaret Truman recounts an almost unbelievable snafu in the FDR White House that is worth quoting in full:

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s oldest son, Jimmy, tells a story that the Secret Service would rather forget. One night during World War II, he was home on leave and joined his parents at the White House for dinner. Afterward they watched a movie. When the lights came on, a neatly dressed young man, a complete stranger, was standing next to FDR.

Instead of brandishing a weapon, however, the interloper asked for the president’s autograph. Somehow, apparently for a lark, he had gotten past the doormen and the Secret Service to penetrate the heart of the house. FDR gave him the autograph and the embarrassed Secret Service men escorted him to the door.

Richard Nixon

In 1974, Army private Robert K. Preston stole a military helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland, and led two police helicopters on more than an hour-long chase around the D.C. area. He reportedly hovered near the Washington Monument before flying close to the White House. Police shot the helicopter, forcing Preston to land on the White House lawn, where he was tackled and placed under arrest.

Preston was reportedly upset about being a “washout from Army flight training,” as the Associated Press reported at the time.

New York Magazine reported that Preston’s flight was partially successful, however. Officers described his flying as “masterful.”

Gerald Ford

The White House was understandably upset with the Secret Service after Gerald Bryan Gainous Jr. was able to gain access to the White House grounds a total of four times between 1975 and 1976. And it somehow gets worse: Two of those incidents occurred within the span of 10 days.

The New York Times reported at the time that the White House ordered an immediate report from the Secret Service on how Gainous was able to breach the perimeter on the night of November 26 and again during the day on December 6, 1974. On the first occasion, the intruder “spent two hours lurking about the grounds and came within five feet of the president’s daughter, Susan, before being apprehended.”

Gainous allegedly told police that he was “trying to see the president to seek a pardon for his father, an Air Force sergeant convicted of smuggling drugs.”

Ronald Reagan

A New York Times report from January 31, 1985, detailed a White House intrusion in which a man, identified as Robert Latta, was able to “slip into the White House last Sunday and roam around, unchecked, for 14 minutes.”

A representative, who shares the intruder’s surname but bears no relation to him, explained the strange way the man was able to access the supposedly secure perimeter of the White House:

I understand that a Robert Allen Latta was arrested and charged with unlawful entry at the White House during the inaugural activities. The Secret Service informed me that he had entered the White House with the Marine Corps Band. A court date is set for March 5. He is not a relative of mine, and he is from Denver, Colo. By coincidence I do have a son, Robert Edward, who is an attorney and lives in Bowling Green, Ohio.

George W. Bush

On April 9, 2006, Brian Lee Patterson, a New Mexico man who said he had “intelligence information for the president” and claimed that his “family is being poisoned in New Mexico,” ran “well inside” the White House perimeter before being apprehended by officers, according to a CNN report at the time of the incident.

His incursion onto the White House lawn was his fourth time jumping the White House fence.

Barack Obama

According to a CNN report, two uninvited guests, identified by the Washington Post as Tareq and Michaele Salahi, were able to gain access to President Obama’s first White House state dinner on November 24, 2009.

The couple was able to get close enough for photos with then-Vice President Joe Biden and Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, photos which Michaele Salahi reportedly posted on Facebook after the event.

During his congressional testimony regarding the incident, Mark J. Sullivan, the director of the United States Secret Service at the time, said that “a mistake was made”:

In our line of work, we cannot afford even one mistake. In this particular circumstance, two individuals, who should have been prohibited from passing through a checkpoint and entering the grounds, were allowed to proceed to the magnetometers and other levels of screening before they were then allowed to enter the White House. Although these individuals went through magnetometers and other levels of screening, their entry into the White House is unacceptable and indefensible.

Another event during the Obama administration deserves mentioning. On November 11, 2011, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez fired a rifle at the residential wing of the White House at least seven or eight times, according to multiple reports. One bullet struck a bulletproof window on the second floor, steps away from the first family’s formal living room. Another got stuck in a window frame, and others bounced off the roof, sending debris to the ground.

Although a tip led to the arrest of Ortega-Hernandez at a hotel in Indiana, Pennsylvania, five days later, the Washington Post reported some remarkable, previously unreported details about the incident.

According to the Post, Secret Service officers “initially rushed to respond.” Snipers on the roof, standing only 20 feet away from where one of the bullets struck, were searching for signs of an attack.

However, the officers soon received a surprising order: “No shots have been fired. … Stand down.” The loud sounds were attributed to a backfire from a nearby construction vehicle, contrary to CNN’s report that the officers thought that there were gunshots but that they believed the shots were gang-related and not directed at the White House.

It took the Secret Service four days to discover that the White House had been shot at multiple times, and that discovery “came about only because a housekeeper noticed broken glass and a chunk of cement on the floor.”

President Obama and first lady Michelle were not in Washington at the time, though their daughter Sasha and Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson, were inside the residence, and Malia was expected to return around the time that the shooting occurred.

Donald Trump

While many people are able to recount the assassination attempts on July 13, 2024, by Thomas Matthew Crooks; September 15, 2024, by Ryan Routh; and April 25, 2026, allegedly by Cole Tomas Allen, President Trump has faced other security threats that should have been prevented much more quickly than they were.

For example, on March 10, 2017, a man identified as Jonathan T. Tran breached the White House grounds and roamed around for 15 minutes before he was arrested by Secret Service agents just steps from the main door. He was reportedly carrying a backpack with mace and a letter for President Trump. According to a CNN report, two Secret Service agents were fired over the handling of the incident.

President Trump was at the residence at the time of the fence-hopping incident.

More recently on February 22, 2026, an armed man was able to breach the perimeter of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. The man, identified as 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin, was carrying a shotgun and a fuel can.

He was shot and killed by Secret Service agents after they discovered him.

This is not an exhaustive list of threats against U.S. presidents in the history of the Secret Service. The USSS has successfully mitigated countless threats against presidents throughout history, yet the surprisingly consistent security breaches during these administrations may still raise some eyebrows.

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Many leftists pin their hatred of Donald Trump on their unproven claim that he was involved with Jeffrey Epstein — but that isn’t stopping them from supporting an alleged abuser at the box office.

And BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is tired of the hypocrisy.

“They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, we hate pedophiles. We are the party against pedophiles, and the Republicans are always protecting pedophiles. If there’s anything we hate, it’s pedophiles,’” Gonzales mocks.

“Actually, that’s historically not been the case. Has not been the case, as documented with all of these Democrats involved with Jeffrey Epstein, but also they have apparently been crawling all over each other to go watch a movie about [an alleged] renowned kiddie diddler,” she continues.

The movie is Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic, which brought in a whopping $218.8 million globally over its opening weekend and became the biggest domestic opening of all time for any biopic.

“Michael Jackson, when it comes to him, technically he was cleared in the legal system in 2005,” Gonzales says, though she isn’t buying it.

And according to a report in People magazine, Gonzales may be on to something.

The report claims that the director of the biopic allegedly made an extra $25 million to remove child sex abuse allegations.

“That’s a lot of money to pay the director and a producer to remove things from the movie if they weren’t true,” Gonzales says, pointing out that it’s not the first time allegations of abuse have been suspiciously squashed.

“You also had the documentary ‘Leaving Neverland,’ which was 2019. And the biggest accusations that came out were highlighted in this. … But guess what? If you missed it and you want to go back to check it out, you’re not going to be able to see it because the Jackson Estate sued to remove it from the internet, just like they buried it in the movie and got paid off,” she continues. “Are you sensing the trend yet?”

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For the first time in nearly 35 years, a British monarch has addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

King Charles III, no doubt sensitive to the recent political friction between the U.S. and Britain over the matter of the war in Iran, noted at the outset Tuesday night that these are “times of great uncertainty, in times of conflict, from Europe to the Middle East, which pose immense challenges for the international community and whose impact is felt in communities the length and breadth of our own countries.”

Charles emphasized, however, that even in such times, it remains clear that America’s and Britain’s destinies are entangled and that the two countries share a special “bond of kinship and identity” that is “irreplaceable and unbreakable.”

After reassuring lawmakers that his presence stateside was not “part of some cunning rearguard action” and lauding the American founding fathers both as “bold and imaginative rebels with a cause” and inheritors “of the British Enlightenment,” Charles hyped the need to build upon and renew the Anglo-American partnership, particularly in the military space.

On the theme of renewal and in an apparent nod to President Donald Trump’s repeated insistence that North Atlantic Treaty Organization members boost their defense spending, Charles noted that the U.K. “has committed to the biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the Cold War.”

RELATED: Pentagon floats ousting Spain from NATO, punishing allies for not toeing the line on Iran

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer committed last year to spending 2.5% of GDP on core defense by April 2027. The U.K., which spent an estimated 2.3% of GDP on defense in 2024, has since entertained the possibility of increasing spending to 3% in the next Parliament — an increase that Starmer said would be made possible by reductions to aid spending.

Charles, speaking weeks after the Trump administration signaled an interest in pulling the U.S. out of NATO, said the military alliance is as relevant now as it was during the Cold War and “in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when NATO invoked Article Five for the first time.”

The king — who acknowledged that “the commitment and expertise of the United States Armed Forces and its allies lie at the heart of NATO” — suggested further that the alliance was imperative to keep “North Americans and Europeans safe from our common adversaries,” singling out Ukraine as a nation now in need of defense.

Charles closed his speech with an apparent knock at isolationism, stating, “I pray with all my heart that our alliance will continue to defend our shared values with our partners in Europe and the Commonwealth and across the world and that we ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking.”

The last royal address to Congress was given by Charles’ late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in the wake of the Gulf War. Elizabeth similarly spoke with interest about nurturing Britain’s “long-standing friendship with the people of the United States.”

“We want to build on that foundation and to do better,” said the queen. “And if the going gets rough, I hope you can still agree with your poet Emerson, who wrote in 1847, ‘I feel, in regard to this aged England, with a kind of instinct, that she sees a little better on a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon.’ You will find us worthy partners, and we are proud to have you as our friends.”

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​Alliance, Britain, British monarch, Congress, Defense spending, Foreign entanglements, Gulf war, International community, Isolationism, King charles, King charles iii, Military, Monarch, Nato, Queen elizabeth ii, Shared values, Speech, United states armed forces, Us congress, War in iran, Politics 

The advocates of enforced age verification promise safe and secure technologies that protect user privacy.

Age verification mechanisms have, they insist, developed sufficiently, users need not fear, and skeptics’ arguments are relics of a bygone time. The newest security protocols, they argue, have rendered the privacy and cybersecurity concerns once attached to age verification outdated.

But promises of what can, theoretically, be done by public policy often founder when implemented — when practical, technological, and human constraints mount a counteroffensive against the best-laid plans of academics’ white papers.

If privacy is to be forfeited, the citizenry can demand evidence that their sacrifice will yield significant benefits, but the data provided so far gives little assurance.

The claims of robust security can be dispensed with: Age verification services routinely succumb to hacks, data breaches, leaks, and sloppy data-management practices. These failures publicize users’ government-issued documentation and other personal information.

The latest case study from the European Union lends no assistance to the advocates of age verification.

Only hours after Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, announced the EU’s new age verification platform, soon to be made available — and mandatory — to the continent, the app proved rotten.

Security consultant Paul Moore, as reported by Politico, claimed to have hacked the app in under two minutes. He found in the application myriad deficiencies, including one that enabled users to evade the verification process altogether. The EU repaired its code, but Moore quickly dismantled the updates.

The EU has stumbled, joining a lengthy list of compromised verification platforms. Count among their number Outabox, AU10TIX, and two third parties employed by Discord. Add to these a breach of IDMerit, which alone compromised 1 billion records of personal data.

In March, hundreds of security and privacy academics signed a letter “call[ing] for a moratorium on [age verification] deployment plans” — at least “until the scientific consensus settles on the benefits and harms” of the technologies in question.

The manifest dangers of age verifications remain unresolved, even as regulators rush to enact mandates that would precondition access to everyday digital services on the user’s willingness to give up sensitive information about himself to vulnerable digital databases.

“Two critical issues have not been addressed: whether age assurance is efficacious and what the potential damages to general security and privacy are,” the letter reads.

Besides the privacy failings, the letter raises another inconvenient question: the efficacy of age-verification regimes. If privacy is to be forfeited, the citizenry can demand evidence that their sacrifice will yield significant benefits, but the data provided so far gives little assurance.

RELATED: The FBI should get a warrant before reading your messages

J. David Ake/Getty Images

The implementation of the Online Safety Act in the United Kingdom was met with a rush of British users resorting to virtual private networks, which allowed them to circumvent the age verification process.

Australia attempted to bar minors from major social media platforms, instituting age verification to effect the mandate. And yet, according to the findings of the Molly Rose Foundation, “three fifths (61%) of [12- to 15-year-olds] who previously held accounts on restricted platforms continue to have access to one or more active accounts.” Moreover, seven in 10 children called it “easy” to dodge the law.

Children are by nature troublemakers and hell-raisers. They carry these qualities — at once endearing and enraging — into the digital world. The government cannot ensure that children remain safe online, because it cannot love or know children as parents can, nor can it monitor children’s operations in the digital world.

Age verification is sold to credulous legislators as the one-size-fits-all fix for a world populated by innumerable young people, diverse in their abilities, proclivities, desires, and weaknesses. As extant age verification mandates demonstrate, noncompliance is, quite literally, at the fingertips of minors enterprising enough to best the regulatory requirements they confront.

No government knows enough about any given child or what he does every day to parry his every thrust. Once more, the responsibility comes home to parents, who must raise and protect their children as vigorously in the digital world as in the physical one.

From one vantage, it seems logical to support enforced age verification. But the technological and human facts of the case reveal the policy’s manifest dangers and scant chances of success.

Traditional child-protection standards lodge primary responsibility for children’s formation and well-being in the family — with parents. The digital world is novel, but human nature is eternal. Even in the digital world, the remedy is to be found at kitchen tables, not in legislatures.

​Age verification, European union, Social media platforms, Personal data, Social media restrictions, Free speech, Censorship, Eu, Opinion & analysis 

A ProPublica investigation portrayed a pregnant mother, Cherise Doyley, as a victim of Florida’s “fetal personhood policies” after she was forced mid-labor into a virtual court hearing and told she would be compelled to undergo a cesarean section if an emergency developed. However, the story, which numerous left-leaning outlets and advocates amplified, overlooked an important detail that Doyley’s doctors claimed sparked the drastic intervention to protect her unborn baby’s life.

A transcript and video of the hearing obtained by Blaze News revealed additional details about the hospital’s decision to alert the state about Doyley’s case.

‘We were concerned that she would not want to act in the best interest of her infant, even if it came to that.’

In Sept. 2024, Doyley, a doula and then-student midwife, arrived overnight via ambulance at the University of Florida Health in Jacksonville after her water broke while over 41 weeks pregnant, according to the hospital’s doctors.

Doyley had been receiving prenatal care from UF Health throughout her pregnancy and had adamantly expressed that she wanted to have a vaginal birth after cesarean section, instead of a fourth C-section.

By her 12th hour of contractions, Doyley was forced to attend a court hearing via Zoom video call from her hospital bed. Joining her on the call were Circuit Court Judge Michael Kalil, lawyers, and hospital staff.

Judge Kalil explained to Doyley that the state had filed an emergency petition requesting that the court order her to undergo a C-section. He called these types of hearings “extraordinary,” noting that such petitions are “infrequently filed.”

The order granting the emergency petition for declaratory judgment explained that the petitioner, the state of Florida, had “a compelling interest in the preservation of the life of an unborn child and the protection of innocent third parties, such as Unborn Child, who may be harmed by the parental refusal to allow or consent to life-saving medical treatment.”

Doyley, who insisted that she had not been notified in advance, repeatedly requested her own legal representation or a patient advocate before proceeding with the hearing. This request was denied after Kalil and the state prosecutor concluded that there is no constitutional right to legal counsel in emergency civil proceedings.

RELATED: The truth about the brain-dead mother giving birth — and why it’s the right choice

BSIP/Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

The hearing: What the transcript shows

Arguments in the hearing began with Dr. Erin Burnett, an attending physician at UF Health, detailing Doyley’s medical history, including noting that the pregnant mother had never had a successful vaginal birth in her three prior pregnancies. According to Burnett, these included a failed induction at 42 weeks with her first child, an attempted trial of labor after cesarean with her second that ended in a repeat C-section after a uterine infection with her newborn, requiring a two-week NICU stay, and potential fetal heart rate decelerations during her third labor that also resulted in a C-section. Burnett further testified that Doyley had a “uterine window,” or thinning of the scar tissue from a prior C-section, which increased the risk of uterine rupture.

Burnett acknowledged the risks associated with C-sections and that Doyley had “some very bad experiences” trying to heal from those prior surgeries, including suffering from hematomas that required drains and other complications that impacted her ability to care for her children during her weeks-long recovery.

When Doyley arrived at UF Health around 2:00 a.m., Burnett stated, she was experiencing contractions, had ruptured membranes, and was three centimeters dilated. Burnett assessed that Doyley was unlikely to have a successful vaginal birth because, during her time at the hospital, dilation had progressed only to five centimeters and her contractions had become less frequent. For a successful vaginal delivery, the cervix must fully dilate to 10 centimeters.

Without a C-section, Burnett expressed concern that the unborn child might sustain brain damage or brain bleeds.

“I think the most, or more, concerning thing was her fetus,” Burnett testified. “When she got here, the fetal tracing was much more reassuring. But for the past six to eight hours, the fetus has lost what we call fetal heart rate variability, which … essentially tells you if the baby is getting acidotic or not.”

Burnett claimed the baby’s heart rate had dropped to the 50s, whereas the typical range is in the 110s to 160s. She explained that when the baby’s heart rate returned to normal, it was then that the hospital recommended a C-section, per its protocol, hoping to avoid another potential heart rate drop that could lead to an emergency.

When staff approached Doyley about this, she refused and “made the comment that if her baby dies, so be it,” Burnett alleged.

She stated that Doyley’s alleged comment about her unborn child’s life, which was not mentioned in the ProPublica articles, was what sparked the hospital’s intervention.

“We were concerned that she would not want to act in the best interest of her infant, even if it came to that,” Burnett said.

Jenny Van Ravestein, the then-division director of women’s services at UF Health Jacksonville, reiterated the reason that the hospital decided to intervene. Van Ravestein testified that the “concern from my nurses … and from the physician, I truly believe, was about the welfare of this infant.”

While Van Ravestein was not on site to witness the interaction firsthand, she alleged that “when I was put on speaker [phone] with the patient in her room, she said that the baby could just die, it was okay if the baby just died, she was not going to have a C-section.”

“I heard her say, ‘I’m not gonna have a C-section. If the baby dies, the baby just dies,'” Van Ravestein alleged again a few moments later.

“That, to me, was what was extremely upsetting to my team,” Van Ravestein added.

Transcript and video of the hearing reveal that Doyley did not explicitly deny making the remarks, but did claim they were “taken out of context.”

Referring to Van Ravestein, Doyley told the judge, “She actually was not in the room, so this statement is being taken out of context, which makes sense because she was over the phone. But the statement was in regards to, if it is my life or the baby’s life, the baby’s going to have to die. And I stand on that because I have three other children that I have to take care of.”

Van Ravestein testified that as a result of Doyley’s alleged comments about her infant, the hospital staff reached out to risk management and the hospital insurance program, which instructed her to contact the hospital’s legal team, setting off the chain of events that led the state attorney’s office to file an emergency petition.

While ProPublica’s reporting noted that Van Ravestein said she and her staff were “very concerned about the baby’s welfare,” the outlet did not include her statements about Doyley’s alleged remarks.

When reached for comment about why it did not include these alleged remarks by Doyley, ProPublica told Blaze News, “We stand by our reporting. In the hearing, neither Dr. Burnett nor Jenny Van Ravestein testified that they directly heard Ms. Doyley make that statement, and Ms. Doyley disputes that she said this. It’s secondhand information that has not been substantiated and therefore wasn’t included in the story.”

The State Attorney’s Office confirmed that the hospital reported Doyley’s case partly due to the alleged comments she made about her preborn baby’s life.

“UF Health alerted the State Attorney’s Office that a 41-week, full-term baby was facing grave risk of death without medical intervention,” the State Attorney’s Office told Blaze News. “The mother was refusing that care. In accordance with our legal duty, our office brought the matter before the Circuit Court, which held an evidentiary hearing. After hearing from the mother and medical professionals, the court determined a cesarean delivery was necessary to protect the child’s life and mother’s health.”

“The State Attorney’s Office does not make medical decisions — we ensured the court was presented with the facts so a judge could make his determination under the law,” the office added.

Dr. John Davis, professor and chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Florida College of Medicine, Jacksonville, told Doyley during the hearing that the hospital has been recognized for its low C-section rate and performs them only when required.

“I think I can say … to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, you are not going to be able to deliver vaginally,” Davis testified, stating that it was his understanding that she had never dilated beyond seven centimeters during any of her previous pregnancies.

“The longer this labor goes on, there are increasing likelihood of complications for the baby — infection, brain damage, death — but also increasing risk of complications for the mom, including infection, uterine rupture, and death.”

Doyley’s response and the risks

Several times during the hearing, Doyley stated that she was willing to consent to a C-section in the event of an emergency. Hospital staff on the call acknowledged Doyley’s expressed openness to an emergency surgery.

“Where we were at this morning, where she was refusing regardless, is much different than where we’re at now,” Burnett told the judge.

“I’m very happy that she has consented in the event of an emergency to undergo a C-section. … When we initially kind of initiated all this stuff, she was in a much different state of mind.”

Although Doyley agreed to the C-section in an emergency, she disagreed with the doctor’s evaluation of the urgency of the situation. She argued that the baby’s heart rate was normal and pointed out that the doctor had not checked her dilation status for at least four hours.

“For them to say that I have not made any cervical change and that the baby’s life is in danger without exhausting all options is completely false,” Doyley told the judge. “And I feel it all boils down to people, doctors, thinking that they know and understand my body better than me.”

She also stated: “I am concerned about the well-being of my child, but at the end of the day with my background, I can read a trace just like they can. And there’s nothing that is saying that this is an emergency situation that I have to be rushed into a C-section within a hour.”

Doyley emphasized that the risks associated with a C-section are significantly higher than those of a vaginal birth and that she had “a major complication” with each of her prior C-sections.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which sets guidelines for pregnancy and birth care, strongly endorses VBAC for patients with one prior C-section and considers it reasonable to offer the option for those with two. However, it does not outright endorse or oppose VBAC for women who have undergone three or more prior C-sections, citing limited data. However, the group firmly stands behind a pregnant patient’s “right to refuse treatment, even treatment needed to maintain life.”

‘This case demonstrates that Florida is committed to both protecting innocent life and upholding the rule of law. Hospital staff and the judge lived up to that in this situation.’

Doyley, who accused the hospital staff of pushing for surgery based on “a lot of what-ifs and maybes,” highlighted ACOG’s guidelines to the judge, stating that the organization “do [sic] not have any specific policy that says that someone cannot have a vaginal birth after three C-sections.”

“Any time you go into childbirth, whether you do a vaginal or a C-section, there’s inherent risk to the mother and the baby,” she added. “So if it’s between them choosing whether I have to live or the baby has to live, I did tell them that I want to live. I have other children out here in the world that need me.”

Dr. Christina Francis, a board-certified OB-GYN speaking on behalf of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, detailed the risks of VBAC in a statement to Blaze News, stating that “there’s not a lot of data out there on … women laboring with three or more C-section scars.”

Francis cited one study, which she noted was “a little bit of an outlier,” that showed uterine rupture risks were under 1% for multiple prior C-sections. Other studies, she stated, showed a risk of uterine rupture from 2% to 3.5%.

“The way we counsel most patients with that many C-sections is, because of that increased risk, it likely is safer to do a scheduled repeat C-section,” Francis said.

Francis also addressed the data on repeated C-sections, calling it “very mixed” and stating that many studies show the risks associated with repeat surgeries are “actually higher than a woman going through a trial of labor, even if she has that many previous C-sections,” including risks of hemorrhage and infections.

“It really is not a clear decision, I would say,” Francis remarked, emphasizing the importance of “shared decision-making” between a pregnant woman and her doctor, describing it as “a travesty” that Doyley felt unsupported by hospital staff.

During her testimony, Doyley rejected claims that there was nothing else the doctors could do to help her achieve a natural birth. She repeatedly insisted that UF Health transfer her to another hospital where she could receive a second opinion. UF Health staff explained that a transfer was unlikely to occur on such short notice, since another hospital would first have to agree to accept her as a patient.

She criticized the hospital for not having “one person of color that is on this floor working,” adding, “I have 20 white people against me.” She accused the hospital staff of trying to take her rights away, comparing it to “slavery.”

“Just knowing what we know, as far as black maternal health in America and how black women are three times more likely to die during childbirth, a lot of that comes from medical negligence and medical racism, where we have a group of white doctors that think that they know what is best for black bodies and black babies,” she testified.

At the conclusion of the multi-hour hearing, Kalil determined that Doyley could continue laboring to attempt to have a natural birth but that the hospital could force Doyley to undergo a C-section in the event of an emergency, to which Doyley agreed. The judge’s order defined emergency events as fetal bradycardia, fetal heart tracing category 3, or signs of uterine rupture.

The infant was ultimately delivered via C-section after doctors said her heart rate dropped overnight for seven minutes, ProPublica reported. While Doyley recovered from the surgery, the baby was brought to the NICU due to respiratory distress and placed on a continuous positive airway pressure machine to assist with her breathing.

The court’s jurisdiction in the matter terminated upon the child’s successful delivery.

A spokesperson for UF Health Jacksonville declined to comment, citing privacy regulations that prevent the hospital from discussing patient information.

RELATED: ‘PRAISE GOD!’ Florida defeats radicals’ attempt to enshrine nearly limitless abortion as a right

LUIS ROBAYO/AFP/Getty Images

The reaction to Doyley’s case

Progressive advocates have used Doyley’s experience to argue that Florida’s pro-life laws have gone too far and infringe on pregnant women’s medical freedom.

ProPublica wrote that while “mentally competent patients typically have the right to choose their medical care — or refuse it,” pregnant patients do not. The outlet highlighted this as an “inconsistency” in Florida, noting that the state has championed expanded medical autonomy for patients wishing to avoid vaccines and fluoridated water.

“In Florida and many other states, court-ordered medical procedures are just one of the ways pregnant patients’ rights are restricted. The effort to chip away at those rights is rooted in the concept of fetal personhood — that a fetus has equal and, in some cases, more rights than the woman sustaining it,” ProPublica wrote, claiming that “even a state prisoner on a hunger strike has more rights to make medical decisions” than a pregnant woman.

Francis suggested that the hospital’s intervention may have been driven by concern over serious complications and potential malpractice liability.

“As the ProPublica piece is referring to, I don’t think that it probably centered around placing the personhood of her preborn child ahead of the consent of the patient,” Francis said, adding that Doyley’s case “highlights a significant problem in this country” that has “nothing to do with abortion laws or fetal personhood laws” but rather a fear of malpractice lawsuits. A 2023 American Medical Association report found that 62.4% of OB-GYNs had faced a lawsuit.

The author of the ProPublica report, Amy Yurkanin, seemed to give Kalil some credit for his ruling, stating that judges in these cases are in a “difficult position.”

During an interview with WJCT’s “First Coast Connect,” Yurkanin stated, “I think he did try to thread the needle really with his ruling.”

“The hospital wanted him to court-order a C-section. He declined to sort of issue that blanket court order,” she remarked.

State Rep. Berny Jacques (R) shared his thoughts on Doyley’s case with Blaze News.

“This case demonstrates that Florida is committed to both protecting innocent life and upholding the rule of law. Hospital staff and the judge lived up to that in this situation,” Jacques said. “It’s especially refreshing that in a time when we’re seeing a lot of activist judges who ignore the law to score political points, the judge in this case simply followed the law as written and did the right thing.”

Jacques added that he wishes the mom and child “all the best.”

When Blaze News contacted Kalil for comment, the Fourth Judicial Circuit’s general counsel stated that the court “is unable to provide any comment or participate in any public discussions regarding these matters.”

Doyley did not respond to requests for comment.

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​Cherise doyley, Csection risks, Fetal personhood, Florida, Jacksonville, News, Preborn, Prenatal care, Pro-choice, Pro-life, Propublica, Uf health jacksonville, Unborn child, University of florida, University of florida health, Politics 

Some like to imagine that the digital world has freed us from the physical one, that computing lives somewhere above the friction of pipelines and permits and power lines, in a clean, abstract place we have named, without irony, the cloud. That illusion is dispelled when a transformer shortage causes a delay in the construction of data centers.

To give a sense of the amount of energy throughput required to keep building, the following numbers come from federal laboratories and utility research organizations: In 2023, American data centers consumed approximately 176 terawatt-hours of electricity, or 4.4% of all the energy the country used. By 2028, that figure is expected to reach somewhere between 325 and 580 terawatt-hours. By 2030, data centers could account for between 9% and 17% of national electricity consumption. Virginia, which already hosts more data-center capacity than any other state, could find itself directing between 39% and 57% of its electricity to the machines by decade’s end.

The political consequences are becoming visible at an unsettling pace.

What Sightline Climate reported in February 2026 is clarifying in its plain arithmetic: At least 16 gigawatts of data-center capacity were supposed to come online in the United States during 2026. Of that, roughly five gigawatts were under construction. The remaining 11 gigawatts had been announced but showed no construction progress. Given this delay, between 30% and 50% of the year’s projected capacity is unlikely to exist by year’s end. The buildings are failing to rise not because of any shortage of ambition or capital, but because the electrical systems that would bring them to life are themselves a constrained resource.

Tech acceleration, electricity slowdown

The technology industry tends to describe its obstacles as temporary inconveniences, friction to be optimized away. The power problem is not that kind of obstacle. A modern data center, before it is a real-estate asset or a monument to computational ambition, is an electrical system. IT equipment can represent 95% of its total demand. Cooling systems are themselves power-electronics loads. For the highest-performing AI facilities, operators have begun to omit traditional backup protection for their servers, relying instead on software checkpointing and restart logic, because the weight of the electrical infrastructure has become something to work around. “Construction complete” does not mean the facility can be turned on. Completion requires that the utility interface, the internal electrical architecture, the backup strategy, and the thermal system are synchronized and tested. The construction is the least of it.

The physical bottleneck is in a part of the supply chain that is rarely mentioned. Distribution transformers, the equipment that turns high-voltage transmission power into the voltages that buildings can actually use, are in short supply. Lead times that ran three to six months in 2019 stretched to 12 to 30 months by 2023. Large power transformers are custom-made, difficult to substitute, expensive to stockpile, and dependent on grain-oriented electrical steel, aluminum, and copper, all of which faced their own post-pandemic constraints. When a hyperscale campus needs utility service, substation capacity, and specialized transformer equipment at the same moment as the broader grid, delay is the usual result.

RELATED: How AI could decide the midterms — with $200 million to sway your vote

Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images

Why they weren’t ready

A relevant historical parallel is the railroad age. There is a structural similarity beyond the lazy metaphor that “data centers are the new railroads.” The railroads began as a private development wave and became a problem of political economy. They forced changes in public regulation, organizational form, and the distribution of costs and benefits that their builders had not anticipated. The data center is following a similar path. American electricity demand is being reshaped at a pace unseen since the postwar industrial boom, but with a crucial difference: Today’s growth arrives in enormous concentrated parcels, in specific counties, on venture-capital timescales. The grid, in contrast, expands on utility and regulatory timescales. These are not the same.

The political consequences are becoming visible at an unsettling pace. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered PJM Interconnection, a regional grid operator, in December 2025 to write clearer rules for serving AI-driven data centers. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation reported in 2025 that 13 of its 23 assessment areas face resource-adequacy challenges over the next decade. The Energy Information Administration announced in March 2026 that it was launching pilot studies on data-center energy use, covering electricity consumption, cooling systems, server metrics, and site characteristics. For two decades, data centers were background infrastructure. The regulatory apparatus of the federal government now wants new instruments to see them clearly.

The grid at a crossroads

Maine, in April 2026, approved the first statewide moratorium on large-scale data centers in the United States, halting approvals for facilities above 20 megawatts while a state council studies grid, air, water, and cost impacts. Only Democrat Gov. Janet Mills’ veto stopped the push (for now). In Mississippi, a lawsuit accused a major AI company of operating gas turbines near Memphis without the required permits, the speed-to-power logic having collided with environmental permitting. In March 2026, the Trump administration announced a pledge under which major hyperscalers agreed to build or buy new generation and cover the cost of power-delivery upgrades rather than passing those costs to households. Whatever the durability of that commitment, the political signal is clear: Once officials begin publicly assuring households that they will not be asked to subsidize AI infrastructure, the issue has moved from sectoral regulation to the politics of fairness.

The “cloud” always involved a rhetorical stance. It described a physical system as if geography, electricity, and equipment lead times were incidental to it. The transformer shortage, the interconnection queue, and the emergency turbines pierce through that description. The internet reappears as pipes, wires, substations, permits, emissions, and cost-allocation fights. It arrives in a specific county, draws on a specific grid, and asks specific communities to absorb consequences that were designed, by the grammar of cloud computing, to belong to no one.

Delay is the form this revelation takes. It forces governments to decide what may be built, at whose cost, and on whose timeline.

​Tech 

The family of a 25-year-old man is mourning his loss after he was stabbed in the heart over a dispute about a chicken dinner, according to Wisconsin police.

Mikayla Kloth, 27, allegedly attacked Lukas Rosch at her apartment in Okauchee on Friday after he came over to cook chicken drumsticks.

‘About a week before the incident, Rosch told people that Kloth had bitten his thumb and that he was scared of her.’

Lac La Belle Village police said they arrived at the apartment at about 6:50 p.m. to find the man lying on his back and a landlord applying pressure to his chest.

Kloth admitted that she stabbed her longtime boyfriend because she wanted to go out for dinner that evening, and he wanted to cook instead, according to police.

Police said they asked Kloth if there had been a struggle, and she replied, “No, I did stab him.”

Kloth also told police she got angry after Rosch grabbed the knife by the sharp edge, and she went on to plunge the knife into his chest.

“She admits, ‘I stabbed him. You have to take me to jail? OK.’ She didn’t hesitate with her discussion with officers,” said Waukesha County Court Commissioner David Herring in court.

Rosch was transported to a hospital but was later declared dead.

Kloth faces one count of first-degree intentional homicide and if convicted could face life in prison.

She also admitted that she should have just gone to a bar instead.

The family of the victim released a statement about the incident.

“We are completely broken at the tragic and senseless loss of our son, Lukas John Rosch, the most loving, giving, kind-hearted person anyone could ever meet,” the statement reads. “We are just asking for privacy at this time as we try to process.”

RELATED: Illegal alien allegedly bites 3-yr-old’s face in horrifying attack — DHS blames lax Biden immigration policies

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that about a week before the incident, Rosch told people that Kloth had bitten his thumb and that he was scared of her.

Kloth’s cash bond was set by a court commissioner at $2 million.

Okauchee is an unincorporated area inside the Village of Lac La Belle.

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​Mikayla kloth, Stabbed in the heart, Murder over chicken dinner, Dinner dispute death, Crime 

Everything feels more expensive in 2026, and health care is no exception.

While gas prices and grocery costs tend to dominate the political conversation, health care affordability remains one of the biggest financial pressures on working families.

One major reason is a lack of real competition. More than 95% of health insurance markets in the United States are highly concentrated, dominated by one or two companies with the power to drive up costs and limit consumer choice.

That is exactly why the Trump administration’s antitrust policy is so important.

The Trump administration has not hesitated to confront corporate behavior that distorts markets or threatens American interests.

The Federal Trade Commission’s new health care task force signals that President Trump understands what Washington too often ignores: When markets stop working for everyday Americans, government needs to step in to restore competition, lower prices, and protect consumers.

Trump’s antitrust policy, which is pro-consumer, pro-competition, and grounded in common sense, is making real progress toward that restoration.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson made that clear last year when he said the agency would stop “picking winners and losers” and focus instead on removing regulatory barriers that suppress innovation and hurt the American people.

That approach reflects a return to the traditional consumer welfare standard, the idea that antitrust enforcement should focus on whether consumers are actually being harmed by reduced competition. This ensures regulators are focused on results and not politics.

The results on this are clear. The Trump administration has not hesitated to confront corporate behavior that distorts markets or threatens American interests.

For example, the FTC has challenged the left’s toxic corporate practices like DEI and environmental, social, and governance investing. Earlier this year, Ferguson sent a letter to 42 big law firms, warning them that their use of DEI constituted an anticompetitive business practice and could bring legal consequences.

The FTC has tackled ESG too, threatening litigation against investors who attempt to block U.S. coal production in favor of a “net-zero” energy agenda, among other actions.

Meanwhile, the antitrust cases against Meta and Google are still moving forward because the concern is real: These companies have become so powerful they can choke off competition and influence what millions of Americans see online.

Last year, the Trump administration also secured a $2.5 billion settlement with Amazon over its unethical business practices.

RELATED: Hospital consolidations and ‘nonprofit’ tax breaks are driving up medical costs

Carol Smiljan/NurPhoto/Getty Images

This is what Democrats fail to understand about Trump. He is willing to take on corporate power to ensure markets work for the people.

That is also why the administration made the right call in stepping away from absurd Biden-era enforcement like the case against Pepsi over discounts offered to large retailers. During inflation, the last thing Americans need is government attacking lower prices.

The same logic applies to strategic deals that strengthen America against foreign adversaries. The Trump administration allowed the Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks merger to move forward after Biden blocked it. A stronger American tech company would be better positioned to compete with Huawei, the Chinese giant tied to espionage and intellectual property theft.

Trump’s team understands what the last administration did not: Antitrust does not exist in a vacuum. Competition matters, but so does national security.

Trump’s antitrust agenda is revealing a broader shift away from ideology and back toward realism. By restoring the consumer welfare standard, his administration is focusing on protecting consumers, strengthening domestic industry, and defending American interests.

Trump and Ferguson understand that antitrust policy can push back on ideological coercion, protect America’s competitive edge, and make life more affordable for working families, all while keeping consumers and competition at the center of the analysis.

For families being squeezed by rising health care and grocery costs, this is real relief. The FTC may fly under the radar, but under Trump it has become an important part of a broader America First agenda built on common sense and affordability.

​Antitrust policy, Dei, Hospital consolidations, Inflation impact, Meta and google, Trump, Trump administration, Economy, Opinion & analysis 

Last week was a hard one for the atheists. President Trump read from the Bible in the Oval Office, and a federal court upheld the right of Texas to display the Ten Commandments. You can just hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

A recent legal challenge, one of many in a long line of church-state disputes, raises a now-familiar question: Can the government display the Ten Commandments without violating the First Amendment?

If government exists to protect what is of highest value, then it cannot remain agnostic about the source of those values.

Predictably, the answer from modern critics comes quickly. We have lived under an ACLU regime for 50 years, which has gaslighted us into believing any such display is wrong and illegal. The atheist insists that any public reference to the Bible is unconstitutional. The pluralist adds that if one religious text is displayed, then all must be.

Together, they present what appears to be a dilemma: Either scrub public life of all religious content, or open the floodgates to every creed imaginable.

Both claims, however, rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of the American founding.

To see why, we need to begin with the principles that shaped the United States itself. These are the principles articulated most famously in the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration does not speak in the language of neutrality. It speaks of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It grounds human equality in the fact that we are “created” and “endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

These are not neutral or secular claims. They are claims rooted in what philosophers have long called natural theology: the idea that reason and creation reveal truths about God.

The First Amendment must be read in light of these founding principles, not in isolation from them.

The text itself is straightforward: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Notice what it does not say. It does not say that the government must be silent about God.

It does not say that public institutions must pretend religion played no role in the nation’s founding. And it certainly does not say that acknowledging moral truths found in Scripture is forbidden.

What it prohibits is the establishment of a national church and the interference with religious worship.

This distinction is crucial. The founders were not secularists in the modern sense. Many of them (though differing in theological detail) shared a conviction that moral law is grounded in God. That conviction did not lead them to impose a church on the people, but neither did it lead them to erase God from public life.

That is where the Ten Commandments come in.

For centuries, the Ten Commandments have been understood not merely as a religious text, but as a concise summary of the moral law. Prohibitions against idolatry, murder, theft, perjury, and covetousness form the backbone of legal systems throughout the Western world. Even those who reject their divine origin often recognize their ethical clarity.

But here is an often-overlooked point: When the Ten Commandments are displayed, they are displayed as a whole.

This matters because critics frequently attempt to reduce them to commandments five through 10. We can call this the “horizontal” commands governing human relationships. But the full Decalogue begins with the “vertical” commands: to worship God alone, to reject idols, and to honor His name and His day.

To display all 10 is to acknowledge that law is not merely a human construct. It reflects an order that begins with God and extends to human society. That idea is foundational to American law.

This fact is why the atheist objection fails. The claim that the First Amendment requires strict secularism reads modern assumptions back into an 18th-century document. The founders did not believe that public acknowledgment of God violated liberty. On the contrary, they believed liberty depended on it.

Without a grounding in something higher than human will, rights become negotiable and law becomes an instrument of power rather than justice. The very idea of equality (so central to the American experiment) loses its foundation.

The pluralist objection fares no better. It assumes that fairness requires equal representation of all religious claims in public displays. But the United States was not founded on a principle of religious equivalence. It was founded on a particular understanding of God, law, and human nature. This was an understanding shaped by Christianity.

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ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

The Christian nature of American law does not mean that citizens of other faiths are excluded. The First Amendment ensures they are free to worship without government interference. But freedom of worship is not the same as a requirement that the state treat all religious claims as equally foundational to its own identity.

A courthouse displaying the Ten Commandments is not making a claim about every religion. It is recognizing the historical and philosophical roots of its own legal system.

And this brings us back to the central issue: What is the role of government?

If government exists to protect what is of highest value, then it cannot remain agnostic about the source of those values. The founders were clear: These rights come from God. To acknowledge that is not to establish a church; it is to affirm the very basis of the nation’s laws.

Displaying the Ten Commandments alongside the Declaration of Independence is not a constitutional violation. It is a historically informed reminder of where our ideas of law and equality come from.

It tells the truth about the American founding.

In an age increasingly confused about the source of its own principles, telling that truth and teaching it to the next generation is the right thing to do.

​10 commandments, Antichristian, Atheists, Bible, Christianity, Declaration of independence, First amendment, Founding principles, Legal systems, President trump, Role of government, Texas, Opinion & analysis