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The commissioner of the National Football League addressed the public outrage over the decision to have Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny perform during the halftime show at the Super Bowl.

Many football fans were furious when the NFL made the announcement, especially after some anti-Trump comments of his resurfaced on social media.

‘He understands the platform that he’s on, and I think it’s going to be exciting and a united moment.’

Commissioner Goodell defended the decision while speaking to reporters on Wednesday after the annual Fall League Meeting.

“It’s carefully thought through,” Goodell said. “I’m not sure we’ve ever selected an artist where we didn’t have some blowback or criticism. It’s pretty hard to do when you have literally hundreds of millions of people that are watching.”

The 31-year-old rapper was born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio and has refused to perform on the mainland of the U.S. out of fear of the mass deportation policies of President Donald Trump. He has instead performed his shows in Puerto Rico, a territory of the U.S.

Many were further antagonized when Ocasio responded to the outrage by joking that anyone who wanted to understand his performance would have to learn Spanish.

“We’re confident it’s going to be a great show,” Goodell continued. “He understands the platform that he’s on, and I think it’s going to be exciting and a united moment.”

He also pointed to Bad Bunny’s popularity as the rationale for the decision.

“He’s one of the leading and most popular entertainers in the world,” Goodell said. “That’s what we try to achieve. It’s an important stage for us. It’s an important element to the entertainment value.”

RELATED: Entire staff at Deadspin fired months after they smeared 9-year-old Chiefs fan as a racist

President Donald Trump weighed in on the decision and said he had never even heard of the rapper.

“I don’t know who he is,” Trump said. “I don’t know why they’re doing it. It’s, like, crazy. And then they blame it on some promoter that they hired to pick up entertainment. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Goodell also faced criticism in February when he said the NFL would continue supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion policies despite so many companies abandoning them after Trump’s election victory.

The Super Bowl will be held on February 8, 2026, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

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​Roger goodell, Bad bunny, Super bowl halftime show, Woke nfl, Politics 

The former singer of the Welsh rock band Lostprophets, Ian Watkins, recently was attacked and killed in prison, according to authorities. Watkins was serving a sentence for multiple pedophilia-related offenses, including attempting to rape a baby.

Police in England said Watkins was murdered at His Majesty’s Prison Wakefield in Great Britain on the morning of Oct. 11.

‘Extensive inquiries remain ongoing in relation to the murder of Ian Watkins, and these arrests form part of that.’

Watkins, 48, was pronounced dead at HMP Wakefield despite being given medical treatment for injuries suffered during a “serious assault.”

Last week, British authorities announced the arrest of two men — 25-year-old Rashid Gedel and 43-year-old Samuel Dodsworth. Both suspects were charged with murder in connection with Watkins’ death.

The West Yorkshire Police Department said in a statement Tuesday that two other men — ages 23 and 39 — also were arrested in connection with Watkins’ death and charged with suspicion of conspiracy to murder. Police did not name the two new suspects.

The senior investigating officer in the alleged murder said the investigation is ongoing.

Detective Chief Inspector James Entwistle of the Homicide and Major Enquiry Team with the West Yorkshire Police Department stated, “Extensive inquiries remain ongoing in relation to the murder of Ian Watkins, and these arrests form part of that.”

“Ian Watkins’ family are being updated as the investigation progresses,” Entwistle said. “However, we do not anticipate any immediate developments at this stage.”

A spokesperson for the His Majesty’s Prison Service told the BBC that it was aware of an incident at the prison but was “unable to comment further while the police investigate.”

The West Yorkshire Police Department and HMP Wakefield did not immediately respond to Blaze News‘ request for comment.

RELATED: Pair of convicted pedophiles — one who raped, murdered 3-year-old girl — die on same night in same prison

Photo by Marc Grimwade/WireImage

The Mirror noted that HMP Wakefield is known as “Monster Mansion,” which “houses some of the U.K.’s most infamous and dangerous criminals, ranging from serial killers to terrorists and habitual rapists.”

Watkins appeared in court in 2019 after a mobile phone reportedly was discovered in his prison cell. Watkins told magistrates that he was imprisoned among “murderers, mass murderers, rapists, pedophiles, serial killers — the worst of the worst,” according to the Guardian.

Previously, Watkins was stabbed in prison while serving time for his child sex crimes.

As Blaze News reported in August 2023, Watkins was held hostage by three fellow HMP Wakefield prisoners for several hours and stabbed.

The Mirror previously reported, “The prison had to wait until a ‘Tornado Crew’ could be assembled — specialist officers trained in hostage situations. The three prisoners kept Watkins hostage for almost six hours — it is believed the attack took place on B wing, where 70 percent of the prisoners are serving life and 20 percent serving 10 years or more. So serious were his injuries, it is understood that he received emergency treatment from paramedics in an ambulance on the prison estate.”

Watkins was arrested in December 2012 and hit with several child sex crime charges.

“During trial, it was revealed that the password to encrypted files on Watkins’ computer was ‘I F*K KIDZ,'” Rolling Stone previously reported.

In December 2013, Watkins pleaded guilty to 13 charges, including conspiring to rape a child, three counts of sexual assault of children, seven counts involving making or possessing indecent images of children, and one count of possessing an extreme pornographic image involving a sex act on an animal.

The judge during the sentencing hearing described Watkins’ crimes as “plumbing new depths of depravity,” according to the Guardian.

The disgraced singer was sentenced to 29 years in prison.

Watkins’ former band, Lostprophets, was founded in 1997 and topped the U.K. charts in 2006 after the release of its third album, “Liberation Transmission.” Lostprophets broke up in 2013 when Watkins was sentenced to prison.

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​Celebrities, Celebrity arrests, Pedophile, Pedophilia, Child sex crimes, Ian watkins, Ian watkins prison, Ian watkins death, Ian watkins computer password, Ian watkins password, Monster mansion, Crime, Uk, United kingdom, Lostprophets 

President Donald Trump has announced initiatives to expand access to in vitro fertilization and reduce associated costs — as each round of IVF can cost $12,000 to $25,000 — and one round is often not all it takes.

“In the Trump administration, we want to make it easier for all couples to have babies, raise children,” Trump said at the White House on October 16.

“That’s why today I’m pleased to announce that after extensive negotiations, EMD Serrano, the largest fertility drug manufacturer in the world, has agreed to provide massive discounts to all fertility drugs they sell in the United States, including the most popular drug of all, the IVF drug,” he continued.

While many Republicans have cheered Trump’s announcement, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is not on the same page.

“Trump says that, you know, he’s unaware of conservative religious objections to IVF, but IVF is inherently pro-life. And I’ll just say it doesn’t surprise me at all that Trump has this position. IVF is extremely popular, even among Republicans, and he represents the position that a lot of people have,” Stuckey says.

“But let me just explain something,” she continues. “The pro-life position is not just ‘more babies.’ We want more babies that are conceived in loving marriages between a man and a woman. Being pro-life doesn’t mean that we are pro every form of conception. Obviously, we can agree, right, that not every form of conception is moral and ethical.”

“There is a cost to IVF. In fact, most babies, most embryos that are made via IVF, the vast majority of those embryos will never be transferred and will never make it to a live birth. In fact, the IVF industry kills more babies every year than the abortion industry does,” she explains.

“If we really believe in our pro-life ethics, that a life is a life no matter how small, that human life starts at conception, then how we treat those embryos that are created in a lab that are frozen indefinitely, that are very often eugenically discarded because they’re the wrong gender or they have Down syndrome or they have some other kind of disability or they were just that unlucky extra guy that was created and their parents don’t want them anymore,” she says.

“All of that really matters. It’s not only about not killing a baby inside the womb. It’s about not discarding and mistreating life that has been created,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Free, Video, Upload, Video phone, Sharing, Camera phone, Youtube.com, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Pro life ethics, Pro life, Ivf, In vitro fertilization, Babies, Abortion, President trump, The trump administration 

Thomas Koch, the mayor of Quincy, Massachusetts, commissioned two 10-foot-tall bronze statues to complement his city’s new public safety headquarters, a 122,000 square-foot facility that will ultimately house both the police department and the fire department’s administration offices.

One of the statues that the city asked renowned sculptor Sergey Eylanbekov to design depicts the winged archangel Michael stepping on the head of a demon. The other statue depicts Florian, a third-century firefighting Roman soldier, dumping water on a burning building.

‘The statues of Michael and Florian honor service — not a creed.’

Despite the broader cultural significance of both figures and their longstanding association with first responders, groups loath to see any public signs of Christianity joined a number of local residents in suing to block the installation of the statues.

While the Norfolk Superior Court granted a preliminary injunction last week blocking the installation of the two statues, the city of Quincy, evidently unwilling to surrender to iconoclastic secularists, has teamed up with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty to file an appeal.

“We respect every citizen’s beliefs, religious or not. But the statues of Michael and Florian honor service — not a creed,” Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch said in a statement to Blaze News. “We’re hopeful that the court will reverse this order and allow our city to pay tribute to the men and women who keep our city safe.”

The lawsuit

The lawsuit filed in May by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, names a number of Quincy residents as plaintiffs including

a Unitarian social justice warrior; a self-identified Catholic who finds the “violent imagery” of good triumphing over evil to be “offensive”; a local synagogue member who suggested the images “may exacerbate the current rise in anti-Semitism”; an Episcopalian who believes that walking past such statues would amount to “submission to religious symbols”;several Catholics turned atheists apparently keen to avoid some of the imagery they grew up with; anda lapsed Catholic who suggested the image of Michael stepping on the head of a demon was “reminiscent of how George Floyd was killed.”

The lawsuit states that “affixing religious icons of one particular faith to a government facility — the City’s public safety building, no less — sends an alarming message that those who do not subscribe to the City’s preferred religious beliefs are second-class residents who should not feel safe, welcomed, or equally respected by their government.”

RELATED: Exposing the great lie about ‘MAGA Christianity’ — and the truth elites hate

Quincy City Hall. Photo by Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images.

The complaint hammers home the significance of Michael in Catholicism, where he is recognized as the patron saint of police, yet neglects to note that Michael also features prominently in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religious texts and traditions as well as in the Western literary canon and pop culture.

While the suit hints at possible civic or professional accomplishments on the part of Florian that could be recognized with a statue, it again suggested that as the patron saint of firefighters, a statue of the historical figure would similarly “send a predominantly religious message.”

The plaintiffs alleged in their lawsuit that the city violated Article III of the Massachusetts Declaration Rights, and suggested that the installation of the statues “will not serve a predominantly secular purpose,” but rather to “promote, promulgate, and advance one faith, subordinating other faiths as well as non-religious traditions.”

The allegation of a violation of state law as opposed to a violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution appears to have been strategic. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court has made expressly clear that “simply having religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not run afoul of the establishment clause.”

Mayor Koch rejected the plaintiffs’ thesis, underscoring in a sworn affidavit that he regarded it as “appropriate to erect statues of two internationally recognized symbols of police and fire service, an act which would also serve to inspire the men and women who work in the building.”

“There was nothing religious about this decision,” continued Koch. “The fact that Michael and Florian each happen to be saints venerated in the Catholic Church is ancillary to their significance in the Police and Fire services, respectively.”

The injunction

Quincy suggested in the suit that the plaintiffs lacked standing because they were “simply offended by the planned statues, and, unwilling to confine themselves to the ordinary means for airing ideological disagreements with the government — the political process — have sought to make a lawsuit out of it.”

Norfolk Superior Court Justice William Sullivan, who was put on the court by former Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, was evidently not persuaded.

On Oct.14, Sullivan denied the city’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit and granted a preliminary injunction against the erection of the statues, noting that the plaintiffs had demonstrated “that they are likely to succeed at proving that the permanent display of the oversized overtly religious-looking statutes have a primary effect of advancing religion.”

RELATED: Clinton labor secretary panics after Trump asks the archangel Michael for help fighting evil

Photo by: Claudio Ciabochi/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Speaking to Koch’s suggestion that the statues have secular significance and purpose, Sullivan wrote, “To the extent a statue of Saint Michael provides inspiration or conveys a message of truth, justice, or the triumph of good over evil, it does so in his context as a biblical figure — namely, the archangel of God. It is impossible to strip the statue of its religious meaning to contrive a secular purpose.”

Rachel Davidson, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts, celebrated the ruling, stating, “We are grateful to the court for acknowledging the immediate harm that the installation of these statues would cause and for ensuring that Quincy residents can continue to make their case for the proper separation of church and state.”

“Massachusetts citizens are free to practice their personal religious views by placing statues of saints or other religious iconography on private property,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. “But such religious iconography emphatically does not belong on government buildings where all must feel welcome.”

The appeal

Becket, a firm focused on protecting religious liberty, announced on Tuesday that it will join the city of Quincy in appealing Sullivan’s decision.

“If allowed to stand, the decision would push cities across the Commonwealth to strip historic symbols from civic life whenever they carry religious associations,” the firm said in a statement. “But the Supreme Court has upheld the use of symbols with religious roots in public life, including a World War I memorial featuring a cross, when they carry historical, cultural, or commemorative significance.”

Using private funding in the 1920s, the American Legion constructed the 40-foot-tall Peace Cross in Bladensburg, Maryland, to honor soldiers who perished in World War I. The sight of the cross evidently enraged iconoclastic secularists, who sought to have it toppled. While the Fourth Circuit proved more than happy to oblige them, the U.S. Supreme Court determined in its 2019 American Legion v. American Humanist Association ruling that the cross did not violate the Establishment Clause.

The court also rejected the relevance of the test articulated by SCOTUS in its 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman ruling as a way of guiding the court in identifying Establishment Clause violations, noting that the Lemon test presented “particularly daunting problems” in such cases that “involve the use, for ceremonial, celebratory, or commemorative purpose, of words or symbols with religious associations.”

While the Supreme Court has effectively rejected the Lemon test, Justice Sullivan leaned heavily on it in the Quincy case.

“Everyone is free to have their own opinions about public art, but in America, the fact that something may have religious associations is not a legitimate reason to censor it,” said Joseph Davis, senior counsel at Becket.

“Our nation, like many others, has long drawn on historic symbols — including those with religious roots — to honor courage and sacrifice. The court should reject this lawsuit’s attempt to block these symbols of bravery and courage,” added Davis.

Quincy Police Chief Mark Kennedy’s office indicated the police department will have no comment as the issue remains in the hands of the court.

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​City of quincy, Quincy, Massachussetts, Mass, Religion, Faith, Police, Firefighters, Fire, Archangel, Michael, St. michael, Florian, Saints, Statues, Aclu, Politics 

At a press conference on October 20, Democrat lawmakers announced their intention to create “a master ICE tracker” to track and document immigration enforcement operations by ICE, CBP, and other law enforcement entities.

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said the tracker will be located on the Oversight Committee “website,” though whether he meant the Democrats’ site or the general site is unclear.

‘This is a reckless assault on law enforcement that endangers ICE agents and compromises public safety.’

At the press conference, Garcia lashed out against the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown, accusing ICE of “misconduct” and “brutality.” He claimed that ICE has been arresting American citizens “because they look like me, because they are of Latino origin.”

Speaking about the upcoming ICE tracker, Garcia said, “We are going to be tracking every single instance that we can verify, that the community will be able to send us information on.” He said the tracker will launch “over the next couple of weeks.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) joined Garcia in expressing outrage over the ongoing immigration crackdown: “What is happening to undocumented immigrants is also happening to U.S. citizens, which means that this can happen to anyone, to all of us, at any time.”

Garcia praised Bass for her commitment “to ensuring that every single moment of terror, of injustice that happens here in Los Angeles, and really across the country, is recorded.”

RELATED: Illegal alien shot after allegedly ramming car into federal vehicle was once honored by Democrat

Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images

Garcia, along with Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), wrote to the Department of Homeland Security to demand detailed information on the “disturbing and increasingly frequent reports of unconstitutional detentions of U.S. citizens.” The letter went on to say that President Trump “has embraced the use of federal immigration agents to terrorize communities nationwide.”

According to CBS Los Angeles, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, “The Trump administration is fulfilling the president’s promise to deport criminal illegal aliens, and any individuals who attempt to illegally interfere with operations or assault law enforcement officers will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

In a statement to Blaze News, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the Oversight Committee chairman, said: “Oversight Committee Democrats are completely unhinged. … They’re doubling down with a so-called ‘master’ ICE tracker designed to target and undermine lawful immigration enforcement. Let’s be clear: This is a reckless assault on law enforcement that endangers ICE agents and compromises public safety.”

Garcia’s office had not responded to a request for comment at time of publication.

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Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki got a brutal slap-down from the White House over comments she made about Usha Vance, the wife of the vice president.

The MSNBC host was mocking the vice president during an interview on the “I’ve Had It” podcast when she implied that his wife needed to be rescued from their marriage.

‘A dumbass who has no comprehension of the truth and has to overcompensate for her lack of talent by saying untrue things.’

“The little Manchurian candidate, JD Vance, wants to be president more than anything else,” Psaki said of the vice president.

“I always wonder what’s going on in the mind of his wife. Like, are you OK? Please blink four times. Come over here; we’ll save you!” she added.

“Agreed! Yes!” replied one of the podcast hosts.

“And that he’s willing to do anything to get there,” Psaki continued. “… He’s scarier [than Trump] in certain ways, in some ways. And he’s young and ambitious and agile in the sense that he is a chameleon who makes himself into whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear from him.”

White House director of communications Steven Cheung slammed Psaki in a post on social media that included a video of the podcast exchange.

“Jen Psuki [sic] must be transferring her own personal issues onto others. @jrpsaki is a dumbass who has no comprehension of the truth and has to overcompensate for her lack of talent by saying untrue things,” he wrote.

“Circle back on that, moron,” Cheung added.

Psaki was mocked by many on the right for overusing the phrase “circle back” during media briefings to avoid answering difficult questions for the Biden administration.

RELATED: Jen Psaki faces online mockery after she tries to blame greedy ‘meat conglomerates’ for rise in prices

Many from the right criticized Psaki for ridiculing the Vance marriage on social media.

Psaki and the liberal podcast hosts went on to opine that the vice president didn’t have the “rizz” to carry the Trump movement on his own. Rizz is a slang term invented by the youths to refer to attractiveness or charisma.

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​White house slaps back, Jen psaki, Jd vance, Usha vance, Politics 

On October 11, 6,700 women gathered at the Credit Union of Texas in Allen for Allie Beth Stuckey’s second annual Share the Arrows conference, a day filled with joy, encouragement, and sisterhood.

Worship was led by Grammy-winning Christian artist Francesca Battistelli, who performed a vibrant mix of contemporary worship songs and timeless hymns.

Speakers included Christian apologist and author Alisa Childers, homeschooling mother of 10 Abbie Halberstadt, Mama Bear Apologetics founder Hillary Morgan Ferrer, children’s rights advocate Katy Faust, non-toxic living advocate Shawna Holman, functional medicine nurse practitioner Taylor Dukes, and New York Times bestselling author Jinger Vuolo. Their talks spanned motherhood, health, and confronting cultural challenges with biblical truth.

And the best part is: We’re doing it again! In just under two hours, BlazeTV+ subscribers can join the Share the Arrows watch party. Whether you attended and want to relive the experience or missed it but want to see what the buzz is about, this virtual event is for you.

Not a subscriber? Join the BlazeTV family today. Use code sharethearrows for $40 off your subscription. Once you’re in, you’ll also have access to a year of amazing programming. See you there!

​Blazetv, Blaze media, Allie beth stuckey, Share the arrows, Blazetv specials 

Crime is bad. Violent crime is worse. That’s obvious. It’s not a partisan point. Most Democrats — I happen to be one of them — don’t cheer lawlessness. In fact, 68% of us say crime is a major problem in big cities. A few progressives have attacked police, but they sit far outside the mainstream. Most Democratic voters hold a higher opinion of law enforcement than of traditional liberal pillars like organized labor or public schools.

So if everyone agrees crime is bad, the real argument isn’t over morality — it’s over solutions.

We all agree crime is bad. The question is whether we fight it with empty theatrics or serious, sustained policing.

That’s where President Trump’s anti-crime efforts collapse. Talking tough doesn’t make streets safer. His approach wastes money, strains resources, and distracts from the hard work of policing.

The problem with militarizing cities

Trump’s main crime-fighting move has been deploying the National Guard to large cities like Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Chicago, Portland, and San Francisco are also on the president’s list. The images look dramatic, but they don’t reduce crime.

The Posse Comitatus Act bars the president from using the military as a domestic police force, which makes it unclear whether Guardsmen can legally arrest suspects or patrol neighborhoods. Most Guardsmen don’t want to cross that line — and they aren’t trained to. In Washington, the Guard’s own report lists its activities: clearing trash, spreading mulch, and painting fences. Good work, yes — but not policing.

These deployments also carry a hefty price tag. The Los Angeles mission, involving 4,000 guardsmen and 700 Marines for less than two months, cost about $118 million. Washington’s ongoing deployment could exceed that. Long-term operations in cities like Memphis, Portland, and Chicago would drive the bills even higher.

And those aren’t the only costs. The Guard is already stretched thin. Disaster relief missions during brutal wildfire and hurricane seasons have drained manpower and equipment. Overseas deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan reduced recruitment and retention. If the president keeps sending Guardsmen into American cities, they may not be ready when the country faces a real disaster — or, heaven forbid, a war.

Ignoring what works

Instead of chasing headlines, Trump could invest in what actually reduces crime. His One Big Beautiful Bill Act offered funding only for local agencies that cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. It provided nothing to hire or retain more police or prosecutors — the people who actually solve crimes and clear backlogged cases.

The solution is straightforward: Redirect the hundreds of millions spent on National Guard deployments into state and local law enforcement. Departments nationwide face critical shortages. Chicago alone needs about 1,300 more officers.

RELATED: The city that chose crime and chaos over courage

Stock Depot via iStock/Getty Images

History proves this works. Between the late 1960s and early 1990s, violent crime surged 371%. By 1991, the U.S. murder rate hit a historic peak. Then came the bipartisan 1994 Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act. The law funded new prisons, domestic violence prevention programs, and — most importantly — about 84,000 additional police officers.

The result? Crime fell sharply. Violent crime has dropped roughly 50% since then. The law had flaws — cutting inmate access to higher education was one — but safer streets remain its chief legacy.

The way to fight crime

If President Trump truly wants to make America safer, he should stop staging photo ops and start funding proven methods. Deploying the National Guard is costly, risky, and legally questionable. Hiring cops, prosecutors, and judges works — and has worked for decades.

We all agree crime is bad. The question is whether we fight it with empty theatrics or serious, sustained policing. The answer should be as clear as the problem itself.

​Opinion & analysis, Crime, Washington dc, Portland, Los angeles, Memphis, Chicago, Violent crime, Riots, Anti-ice protests, Ice, Immigration, National guard, One big beautiful bill 

Internal documents have revealed that Amazon wants to avoid the costly human experience if it can.

A scathing report by the New York Times that compiled interviews, along with what was described as a cache of internal documents, showed that Amazon executives have aspirations of replacing approximately 600,000 U.S. jobs with robots.

‘Leaked documents often paint an incomplete and misleading picture of our plans.’

The corporate decisions would allegedly pass on savings to the customer of upwards of 30 cents per item, while at the same time avoiding the hiring of about 160,000 new employees in the United States that would be needed by 2027.

In the internal documents, Amazon executives told their board members it was their hope to avoid making new hires by ramping up robotic automation, which would negate the need for more than 600,000 human jobs. This would come at the same time that Amazon expected to double its sales by 2033.

The alleged stated goal in the documents was to automate 75% of facility operations, while simultaneously executing good faith initiatives to avoid angering communities that are disparaged by the job losses. This included hosting parades and Toys for Tots programs that built upon an image of Amazon being a “good corporate citizen.”

Disturbingly, the documents reportedly discussed the idea of avoiding words that remind people of robots, an approach that Amazon strictly denied adopting.

RELATED: CRASH: Amazon Web Services outage cripples apps, megacorps, and doorbells, shocking a fragile America

A robot prepares to pick up a tote containing product during the first public tour of the newest Amazon Robotics fulfillment center on April 12, 2019, in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The New York Times reported that Amazon contemplated avoiding terms such as “automation” and “A.I.” in reference to robotics and would have rather used terms like “advanced technology.”

Instead of “robot,” the word “cobot” was discussed being used because it implies collaboration with humans.

Amazon told the NYT, however, that executives are not being told to avoid certain terms when referring to robotics and that its community relations plans had nothing to do with its automation plans. It said the documents were incomplete and did not represent Amazon’s overall hiring strategy.

The Verge, which received a statement, quoted Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel to the effect that “leaked documents often paint an incomplete and misleading picture of our plans, and that’s the case here. In our written narrative culture,” Nantel continued, “thousands of documents circulate throughout the company at any given time, each with varying degrees of accuracy and timeliness. We’re actively hiring at operations facilities across the country and recently announced plans to fill 250,000 positions for the holiday season.”

RELATED: Microsoft rejects idea that company is replacing American workers with foreign labor after massive layoffs

Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Reporter Lewis Brackpool from Restore Britain told Return that while the numbers were troubling, the push for robotics could stand as a solution for the mass import of foreign workers.

“While in a perfect world citizens could thrive in their employment without the worry of being replaced by overseas workers, ditching foreign labor in exchange for robotics seems more preferable than our current situation,” Brackpool theorized.

“A socialist-communist journalist by the name of Aaron Bastani once wrote a book called ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism,'” the commentator continued. “The book outlines a vision of a post-scarcity, post-capitalist society driven by technological advances such as automation, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology. Even that is more preferable than to be replaced by the third world.”

Amazon employs approximately 1.1 million in the United States, representing about 70% of its global workforce, according to Red Stag Fulfillment.

The company peaked at 1.61 million employees in 2021 and has a minimum wage of $18 per hour for all seasonable employees.

Average pay reportedly increases by 15% for those employed for over three years.

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​Return, Robots, Amazon, Immigration, Economy, Jobs, Tech 

The Department of Homeland Security has provided the names and criminal histories of the illegal aliens who were arrested during an operation on New York City’s infamous Canal Street black market.

Federal agents swept through the area on Tuesday, as it is not uncommon for street sellers to be in the United States illegally. The operation turned chaotic after bystanders formed a mob to chase agents away, demanding they not target illegal aliens.

On Wednesday, DHS said the illegal aliens arrested have “violent rap sheets” that include allegations of robbery, burglary, domestic violence, assaulting law enforcement, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, drug possession, and forgery. Each of the men arrested is from Africa, and at least five of them were released into the United States by the Biden-Harris administration.

RELATED: Illegal alien shot after allegedly ramming car into federal vehicle was once honored by Democrat

— (@)

Mamadou Ndoye, “a criminal illegal alien from Mali, issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in 2008, was previously arrested for crimes including assault, recklessly endangering, counterfeiting third degree, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, criminal sale of narcotics, possessing a controlled substance, possession of marijuana for sale, making false reports to law enforcement, and resisting arrest.”Muhammad Ndiaye, “a criminal illegal alien from Senegal, with previous arrests for domestic violence, robbery, receiving stolen property, burglary, fraudulent accosting, forgery, counterfeiting, sale of a controlled substance, obstruction, and disorderly conduct. He entered the U.S. on a B2 tourist visa that required him to depart in 1995.”Aboubakar Diakite, “a criminal illegal alien, with previous arrests for counterfeiting.”Sergigne Diop, “a criminal illegal alien from Senegal who entered the U.S. in April 2024 at the southwest border, was previously released into the U.S. by the Biden administration.”Alioune Sy, “an illegal alien from Senegal, entered the U.S. in May 2023 and failed to depart after his tourist visa expired.”Amadou Diallo, “a criminal illegal alien from Guinea who entered the U.S. November 2021 at the southwest border and was released by the Biden administration into the interior of the country.”Idy Sarr, “a criminal illegal alien from Senegal, issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in 2010 and previously arrested for obstruction, possession of forged instrument, counterfeiting, failure to disclose origin of recording, drug possession, and criminal possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell.”Bokar Soko, “a criminal illegal alien from Mauritania, previously arrested for counterfeiting second degree THREE times. He entered the U.S. illegally on May 24, 2023, in a caravan of 26 people [and] was released by the Biden administration into the interior of the country.”Modou Mboup, “a criminal illegal alien from Senegal, previously assaulted Mexican law enforcement, and he entered the U.S. in September 2023 in a caravan of 140 people at the southwest border and was released by the Biden administration into the country.”

“Thanks to the New Yorkers who mobilized quickly. #ICEOutOfNYC,” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said.

“Today [Trump’s] agents used batons and pepper spray on street vendors and bystanders on Canal Street. You don’t make New York safer by attacking New Yorkers,” Governor Kathy Hochul complained on X.

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​Politics 

House Democrats’ second in command provided a jaw-dropping justification for the suffering inflicted on American families during the government shutdown, and the White House is having none of it.

As the government shutdown approaches its fourth week, Americans are bracing themselves to miss paychecks and key government benefits like SNAP. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) admitted that the Democrat-induced government shutdown has been painful for families across the country but justified it because “it is one of the few leverage times [Democrats] have.”

‘At some point, the Democrats are going to have to take yes for an answer.’

“I mean, shutdowns are terrible,” Clark said in a recent interview. “Of course, there are going to be families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously.”

RELATED: Democrat senator blocks vote to end shutdown to protest Trump’s ‘authoritarianism’ in drawn-out rant

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Democrats are holding federal paychecks hostage and using government benefits as leverage to accomplish a policy agenda Americans rejected at the ballot box last November. Rather than voting for the Republicans’ clean, nonpartisan funding bill, which notably keeps spending levels at the same rate Democrats voted for over a dozen times in the past, Democrats are set on ramming through their own policies.

The White House quickly condemned Clark’s comments, calling Democrats “sick” for using the American people as leverage.

“Not only are Democrats refusing to reopen the government and knowingly inflicting pain on the American people, but now they’re bragging about using struggling American families as leverage for their radical left agenda,” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson told Blaze News. “These people are sick.”

The Democrats’ counter funding bill would cost taxpayers $1.5 trillion to effectively reverse every legislative accomplishment Republicans secured through President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Democrats are also demanding that Congress address Obamacare subsidies immediately despite the fact that they expire at the end of the year.

RELATED: Trump administration mocks outrage of ‘unhinged leftists’ as construction of ballroom begins at White House

Allison Robbert/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Although Democrats have remained stubborn, their efforts are ultimately futile. Republicans hold a supermajority, meaning Democrats will never have the support to pass legislation on their own during this Congress. Even though Democrats are trying to force the GOP’s hand, top Republicans have maintained that they are not responsible for the shutdown and that it’s up to their colleagues across the aisle to do the right thing and reopen the government.

“If the Democrats want to talk about subjects unrelated to … getting the government open again, we’re happy to have those conversations,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday. “But we’ve repeatedly now gone through this, and at some point, the Democrats are going to have to take yes for an answer.”

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​Katherine clark, House democrats, Democrat leadership, Senate democrats, Donald trump, John thune, Senate republicans, House republicans, Obamacare, Aca subsidies, One big beautiful bill, Congress, Government shutdown, Continuing resolution, Spending fight, Snap, Politics 

More information has been released regarding Carlitos Ricardo Parias, the man federal authorities say attempted to use his vehicle to ram agents’ cars as they carried out his arrest before having to shoot him in self-defense.

Parias, originally from Mexico, was known to law enforcement prior to Tuesday’s shooting. He had established a social media presence by following U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol operations in the city and live-streaming their actions.

‘Vehicles are deadly weapons.’

Known as “Richard LA,” he was honored by the office of Democratic Los Angeles Councilman Curren Price with a “Certificate of Recognition” for documenting ICE operations on TikTok. Just after news broke of the shooting, Price’s official Instagram account posted a photo of Parias receiving the award, calling Parias a “fearless citizen journalist.”

Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli provided a screenshot of a video from the shooting incident on Tuesday appearing to show a suspect turning the wheels of his car while being boxed in by federal agents. Essayli identified the suspect as Parias.

“Parias rammed a Toyota Camry into the law enforcement vehicles in front of and behind him, spun the Camry’s tires, spewing smoke and debris into the air, causing the car to fishtail and causing agents to worry for their safety. An agent breaking the Camry’s driver’s side window was not enough to subdue Parias,” Essayli wrote.

A witness told Fox LA reporter Matthew Seedorff that agents attempted to arrest Parias for nearly 15 minutes before shots were fired. Sound from the video the witness provided indicated that someone was screeching car tires as Essayli described.

RELATED: DHS: Illegal alien shot after ramming federal vehicle during operation

City of Los Angeles

Parias and a U.S. marshal were wounded in the shooting. Both are expected to recover from their injuries, Essayli added.

Essayli revealed that Parias, “a 44-year-old illegal alien from Mexico living in South Los Angeles, is now charged in a criminal complaint with assault on a federal officer” and could face up to eight years in prison if convicted.

“Vehicles are deadly weapons,” Essayli continued. “Anyone who uses them against federal agents risks arrest, imprisonment, and life-threatening injuries. We will continue to use every tool in our legal arsenal to protect our agents and enforce immigration laws passed by Congress.”

As previously reported by Blaze News, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin blamed Democrats for creating a dangerous environment for federal agents carrying out lawful operations.

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​Politics 

A 42-year-old man followed another customer into the Pink Beauty Supply store in Compton, California, on Sunday afternoon and “groped her once inside” the store, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lieut. DeJong told KCBS-TV.

When employees told him to leave, the man allegedly refused and began to verbally assault them and some customers before he started throwing objects inside the store, KCBS added.

‘In this day and age where there are no boundaries and everyone believes that they can do whatever they want, without fear of prosecution or penalty, this is the proper way to handle it. Good for her.’

Employees and customers noted that the male had an object in his hand that they believed was a knife, the sheriff’s department said, adding that the male made verbal threats that he was going to kill and harm everyone in the store.

With that, one of the customers — not the one he allegedly groped — pulled out a gun, KCBS said.

Fearing for the store employees, herself, and other customers, the sheriff’s department said she fired a warning shot at the male. But the male turned toward her, officials said — and fearing she was going to be attacked, she fired a second shot, striking the male.

DeJong noted to KCBS that “he went down.”

RELATED: Gun-toting woman opens fire on career criminal amid alleged home burglary. Now crook’s career is over.

The sheriff’s department said the shooting took place just before 3:30 p.m. and that Compton Fire Department personnel responded and pronounced the male dead at the scene.

Investigators noted to KCBS that the woman who pulled the trigger was a customer at the store, and she remained at the scene to cooperate with officials.

Detectives added to the station that parking lot surveillance video indicates the man was loitering in the area and drinking alcohol.

“He alleged he was a gang member, and LASD says it appears he was a gang member; unknown if still active,” DeJong told KCBS while adding that the male had a lengthy criminal history that included assaults, robberies, thefts, and disturbing the peace.

The station said it’s unclear whether the woman will face any charges for the shooting, and it hasn’t yet been determined whether it was done in self-defense.

KNBC-TV said the woman is in her 50s, that she surrendered the gun, and that no one was arrested.

RELATED: Stalker shows up at woman’s workplace, begins punching her, cops say. But victim has a gun — and she uses it.

The sheriff’s department is asking the public for information about the shooting, noting that individuals can contact the sheriff’s Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500. Those who prefer to provide information anonymously can call “Crime Stoppers” by dialing 800-222-TIPS (8477) or use their smartphones by downloading the “P3 Tips” Mobile App on Google play or the Apple App Store or by using the Crime Stoppers website, officials said.

Nearly 5,000 comments have rolled into a Los Angeles Times story about the shooting, which Yahoo News republished. The latest reactions reflect strong support for the woman’s actions:

“Firing a WARNING SHOT was pure genius!” one commenter wrote. “Unfortunately, this criminal made a fatal decision by ignoring it! One less criminal on our streets! Congrats!””Another person [who] deserves to never pay for any alcohol in their area,” another commenter said. “Good job following through on the reason you carry in the first place. I know that was a very hard decision, but if it’s you or them, always choose them. She is a HERO and deserves a hero’s welcome.””In this day and age where there are no boundaries and everyone believes that they can do whatever they want, without fear of prosecution or penalty, this is the proper way to handle it,” another commenter noted. “Good for her.””Unfortunately, citizens are having to defend themselves more frequently these days, [and] her response was appropriate for the situation,” another commenter opined. “Given our legal system, he would have been out in hours and recommenced doing the same…””Justice can come swiftly and in different forms; he got his,” another commenter said. “Offenders beware: Many people [nowadays] are armed.”

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​Crime thwarted, Guns, Gun rights, 2nd amend., Los angeles county, Compton, California, Fatal shooting, Woman shoots male, Groping, Sexual assault, Beauty supply store, Threats, Self-defense, Crime 

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales has been called everything from a transphobe to a bigot for calling out drag performers as child groomers — but now she has some seriously damning receipts.

Kiba Walker, who goes by Salem Moon, is a man she has called out many times for his “all-ages” drag performances in Dallas, Texas. Recently, Walker even celebrated kicking Gonzales out of one of his drag shows.

“And in the words of our good friend who we removed from the building, Sara Gonzales, ‘The pressure worked, y’all.’ … She’s no longer here, and she’s not going to get in here and try to tarnish our amazing event,” Walker said.

While Walker sounded confident in his speech, Gonzales is having the last laugh.

“Well, it turns out that he was accused of trying to groom underage boys. Uh-oh,” she mocks. “Some trouble, some trouble for Kiba, who is the first to tell you that I’m the problem, I’m the crazy one.”

“I’m just a bigot for saying that perhaps it’s a bad thing when you have grown men who want to dress up and dance provocatively around young children. Maybe that’s a red flag we should be looking into,” she continues.

While she notes that Walker is “innocent until proven guilty,” she also has receipts.

“The victims have been posting about it online,” she says.

The first alleged victim goes by the online name “Blade” and posted a long exposé about Walker making advances toward him when he was a teenager.

“My experience with Kiba Walker (A.K.A. Kyle Davis or ElexVTuberEN). A recount of events from my teenage years that left me with lingering issues building trust and real connections with people. TW// Grooming, Pedophilia,” Blade wrote in a post on X, with a Google doc of his experience attached.

The grooming allegedly began when Walker slid into the 15-year-old’s DMs, offering him free singing lessons.

“Wow, what a nice gesture,” Gonzales scoffs. “That’s when he started littering in sexual references here, there. Oh, just a joke. They’re just jokes. Then that moved to flirting and then of course requests to trade nudes.”

Blade also recalled Walker sending him porn that he “liked” and making a “game out of trying to arouse him at school.”

“By the way, he also asked for videos of the kid jerking off. But I’m the witch, right? I’m just being transphobic. I’m just being transphobic for saying that any grown man who wants to perform like that in front of children is the problem,” Gonzales says.

Walker then apologized to the boy for making him uncomfortable by sexting him, and left him alone — but came back later when he was only 16 years old, at which point the unsolicited sexting got worse.

Another accuser compiled a document of similar evidence and shared it online as well.

“I know you’re sick. You’re sick to your stomach,” Gonzales tells her audience. “I’m sick to my stomach too. But I think it’s important that we expose these people for who they really are because I’m getting sick and damn tired of being told I’m just hateful.”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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

​Camera phone, Free, Sharing, Upload, Video, Video phone, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Drag queen, All ages drag show, Drag queen story hour, Dallas drag queen, Kiba walker, Salem moon, Grooming 

An Olympic gold medalist who failed gender testing has returned to competition for the first time.

Not to be confused with Algerian Olympic champion Imane Khelif — whose gender is confirmed to be male — Taiwan’s Lin Yu‑ting also brutalized women at the Paris 2024 Olympics under tough scrutiny.

‘Pan Yan-fei’s coach threw in the towel.’

The boxer dominated the women’s 57kg division last summer, despite having been disqualified by the International Boxing Association in 2023. That March, Lin was denied a bronze medal after failing to meet gender eligibility requirements. The IBA also disqualified Khelif from the same event, and the Algerian was later exposed as a male in three other reports.

Lin had not been seen in competition for over a year until his recent appearance at the Taiwan National Games. Reduxx reported that the competition does not have any known sex testing protocols in place, so the 30-year-old was allowed to compete in the women’s 60kg category.

It did not take long for Lin to overwhelm an opponent, defeating 19-year-old female Pan Yan-fei in just one minute and 34 seconds. After repeated punches to the head, Pan’s coach threw in the towel.

Pan was, “a little breathless because of being hit on the head,” Taiwanese outlet CNA reported. “Then Pan Yan-fei’s coach threw in the towel and gave up the game.”

If Lin wins the tournament, that would make six consecutive national titles for the controversial boxer.

The Trump Olympic ban

The controversy around Lin’s gender is parallel to Khelif’s, as the latter was proven by a multitude of sources to be, in fact, a male. However, less is known about Lin specifically, although it was discussed internally at the Olympics that the boxer had failed gender testing.

RELATED: Trump wins: US Olympic Committee bans men from women’s sports

Photo by MOHD RASFAN/AFP via Getty Images

The Guardian reported at the time that the International Olympic Committee had prior knowledge that Lin was “stripped of her bronze medal after failing to meet eligibility requirements based on the results of a biochemical test,” and noted such in its internal system.

This came after IBA president Umar Krevlev told Russian outlet TASS that both Lin and Khelif had “XY chromosomes.”

While the IBA has faced criticism over its credibility, it was proven to be right about Khelif.

Still, neither boxer is likely to see the ring at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. New IOC president Kirsty Coventry and President Donald Trump have made it clear that males will not be beating up females in the United States.

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee announced a rules update in July that stated it would “ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201.”

Executive Order 14201, Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports, bans males from participating in “all-female athletic opportunities” or entering “all-female locker rooms.”

After their Olympic performances, Lin and Khelif were not permitted to box in other competitions until Lin’s latest appearance.

Khelif, though, has vowed to compete in the 2028 Olympics and even submitted an appeal to World Boxing after being booted from a Dutch event in June. The boxer asked to be declared “eligible to participate in the 2025 World Boxing Championships from 4 to 14 September,” without having to submit to a genetic test.

The ban stood. Lin was also not permitted to compete at the world championships.

RELATED: New Olympic president strikes huge blow to transgender athletes ahead of 2028 games in LA

Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images

Lin’s latest opponent

Lin’s opponent, Pan, was a young boxer who was making her first appearance at the senior national games after winning a national high school title in 2023.

She previously competed in Taiwan’s under-22 category at 54-57kg.

Despite the brutal loss, event officials reportedly examined her after the fight, and she did not suffer any serious injuries. She was able to walk unaided and was described as stable.

Lin reportedly declined to be interviewed after the fight.

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​Fearless, Boxing, Women’s sports, Transgenderism, Woke, Olympics, Taiwan, Sports 

As some of you may know, I am counsel to the plaintiffs, together with my co-counsel Ron Coleman, in the case 4chan Community Support LLC and Lolcow LLC dba Kiwi Farms v. the UK Office of Communications aka Ofcom.

That case concerns the question of whether the U.K. can enforce its domestic censorship laws within the United States. I am quite unable to talk about the legal aspects of the case, and I also do not discuss English law. This article is about general principles regarding cross-border enforcement of censorship codes, in particular EU law, as I observe a change of mindset among European lawyers as they start to ask hard questions about the offshore enforceability of their censorship laws.

This article also sets out a new doctrine for transatlantic free speech defense, a doctrine that can be used to beat inbound censorship and will eventually become more widely recognized in the U.S. and European legal communities, which I can sum up in one line: “The law of the server is the law of the (web)site.”

Or, for the more classically minded among you: Lex loci machinae.

We Americans already know that emailed demands from European speech and data protection regulators are not legally binding in the United States.

This article is prompted by a knowledge update published by London law firm Taylor Wessing about the 4chan litigation. TW correctly identifies the general legal point that, if Americans can obtain confirmation from U.S. courts that European notices sent by email are not legally binding, it’s not just the Online Safety Act that will become difficult to enforce — it’s the Digital Services Act and the EU General Data Protection Regulation too.

This is in contrast to other takes in the London legal market, such as this piece written by the London office of Katten — titled “A (Byrne &) Storm Is Brewing,” in reference to my law firm — warning Americans to not “ignore the Online Safety Act’s international reach.”

Respectfully, the United States, not Ofcom or the European Commission, sets the rules on what orders Americans may safely ignore in the United States. Although the Europeans may not know this, we Americans already know that emailed demands from European speech and data protection regulators are not legally binding in the United States. They’re also almost certainly unenforceable here even if validly served.

Although a new precedent would be nice, as a practical matter, we don’t especially need one — these points are largely settled law in the United States, and indeed there’s a recent example from February of earlier this year that, because it involved a couple of conservative social media websites, went largely unnoticed. Foreign censorship mandates are just something the U.S. judicial system hardly ever sees, because European censorship colonialism was fairly uncommon until this year. More on that below.

But back to the firm’s article, Taylor Wessing writes:

Scope creep: If the challenge is successful, it has potential implications for a range of other extra-territorial effect UK and EU laws subject to the wording of the judgment and the wording of the legislation in question. It may impact both how to enforce (ie whether it can be done by email or whether the Treaty procedure has to be followed), and whether enforcement is even recognised under US law. The Trump administration is already pushing back on what it sees as foreign interference with US companies as a result of recent EU and (to a lesser extent) UK digital legislation, so this challenge, if successful, could impact more than just the OSA.

As a general rule, laws are contained by sovereign boundaries: Legal notices issued in or by one country are not legally binding on persons or entities in any other country. This is an ancient principle of international comity, practically as old as the Westphalian system itself.

This can present some coordination problems among countries that share significant links, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, or the United States and many of the member states of the European Union. For this reason, the United States has executed treaties with these countries, either reciprocal treaties such as Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties for criminal proceedings or the Hague Service Convention for civil proceedings, to deal with the issue of what happens when a legal process in one country needs to have legal consequences in another.

RELATED: Britain’s Big Brother ID law is the globalist dream for America

Photo by SOPA Images / Contributor via Getty Images

Taylor Wessing observes that Ofcom, under the OSA, has the power to serve via email. The firm points out that in many European countries, “emails are routinely used to exchange official correspondence.”

“Official correspondence” here means legal orders. America does not, as a rule, use email to communicate legally binding orders, because the U.S. Constitution imposes due-process requirements that require judicial supervision of any process that would deprive Americans of their constitutional rights or compel the disclosure of information or the seizure of property.

Ergo, as I said to the BBC about the 4chan case a month ago, having chosen my words extremely carefully, “Americans do not surrender our constitutional rights just because Ofcom sends us an email.”

I’m sure a lot of lawyers in London read that and thought I was firing off a snarky quote as bluster and/or in lieu of a coarser retort to the U.K., to which I would remind them that Americans are, despite our reputation, quite capable of subtlety. In fact, I was communicating to European politicians that, to get an American to do something, you cannot simply send them a message. You must send them process. That process must comport with American due-process requirements, and in the case of a foreign order, that means utilizing the relevant treaty.

This brings us to the subject of the European Union.

As the EU seeks to export its regulatory schemes to American shores, practitioners would do well to remember that, where U.S. law is concerned, the rule that we will wind up applying here after enough litigation works its way through the courts is simple: The law of server is the law of the site.

The ruling on a motion for a TRO by the plaintiffs in Trump Media and Technology Group v. De Moraes — which held, while denying the TRO, that the service of the Brazilian censorship orders outside of a treaty procedure is of no force and effect in the U.S. — is the first time a component of this principle has won in our courts. There will be more such wins as the Europeans try to enforce their rules here.

Per the Court’s ruling in Trump Media:

The Court finds that the pronouncements and directives purportedly issued by Defendant Moraes, (Dkts. 16-1, 16-2, 16-3, 16-4, and 16-5), were not served upon Plaintiffs in compliance with the Hague Convention, to which the United States and Brazil are both signatories, nor were they served pursuant to the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between the United States and Brazil. The documents were not otherwise properly served on Plaintiffs. Additionally, the Court is aware of no action taken by Defendant or the Brazilian government to domesticate the “orders” or pronouncements pursuant to established protocols.

For these reasons, under well-established law, Plaintiffs are not obligated to comply with the directives and pronouncements, and no one is authorized or obligated to assist in their enforcement against Plaintiffs or their interests here in the United States. Finally, it appears no action has been taken to enforce Defendant Moraes’s orders by the Brazilian government, the United States government, or any other relevant actor.

Lex loci machinae holds that an American company engaged in constitutionally protected conduct through the operation of a website must comply with the legal rules where it actually operates, not the legal rules of a much wider world in relation to which it has no connection, save that its American servers may merely be accessed from there remotely via the Internet.

European speech rules don’t govern American metal, American communications, and American conduct on American soil.

The United States has fought multiple wars to settle that issue. The case law is out there, too, if you want to look it up. When speech or the hosting of speech is lawful in the U.S. and the hosting and editorial acts occur here, no foreign regulator may compel acts on U.S. soil or export penalties into the U.S. by email. They must use the treaty and clear U.S. constitutional review.

An American site is only obliged to obey American law, and any purported foreign attempt to the contrary — to be properly served — must also comply with American law, namely the applicable treaty. For that demand to then be enforced, it must comply too with the rest of our laws, including the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.

Sending an email that demands unconstitutional censorship, data disclosure, or self-incrimination — for example — doesn’t comply with any of that. This has not stopped Europe from sending America a great many emails, or from planning to send a great many more. Nor has it stopped Americans, for the most part, from obeying those emails, even when they don’t have to.

The failure of lawyers on two continents to notice or do very much to stop Europe’s failure to adhere to our due-process requirements has occurred, in my view, for two principal reasons:

First, because international law firms have, historically, largely refused to represent U.S. companies who were targets of global censorship efforts and therefore have no experience in this area; andSecond, because the Big Tech companies those law firms represented have, historically, been willing to comply with European rules as they have domestic European establishments, meaning that it doesn’t make a lot of business sense for them to consider their U.S. constitutional defenses.

To give you some idea of how thin Big Law’s bench is in this area, until Ofcom tried to extract a fine from 4chan, as far as I am aware, the only time a U.S. company has refused a European censorship fine — ever — was when the most long-standing of the European online censorship laws, the German “Network Enforcement Act,” known also as the “NetzDG,” purported to enforce a fine on U.S. social media company Gab, which operates a strict moderation policy that explicitly follows the U.S. First Amendment. Accordingly, for nearly a decade, Gab has been targeted for destruction by politicians and activist groups alike.

That particular German case was, again to my knowledge, also the only time that a U.S. MLAT procedure has ever been knowingly and intentionally utilized by a foreign government to try to restrain constitutionally protected speech and conduct. (The German Federal Office of Justice also fined Telegram in 2022, but Telegram is a BVI company with operations in the UAE and no operations in the U.S., hence not entitled to American constitutional protection.) This happened under the first Trump administration and later the Biden administration. I had a word with a couple of Hill staffers about it earlier in the year, and the notices from Germany have since ceased, presumably because they are now being blocked by the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Justice.

When contacted by Der Spiegel to explain its refusal, Gab replied plainly that “Germany lost the chance to regulate American free speech in 1945.” Gab was also one of Ofcom’s American social media targets, all four of whom I represent against the agency, and all four of whom, lawfully exercising their constitutional rights, refused Ofcom’s orders. I note for the record that, despite eight years of attempts, the Germans have not been able to enforce the NetzDG on American soil.

Because they can’t.

It is therefore unsurprising that there are few direct precedents in this area. It’s also entirely expected that it never occurred to anyone working at big law firms — with one notable exception, chiefly, counsel for the plaintiffs in Trump Media from Boies Schiller and DLA Piper — that funneling an EU regulatory demand through a treaty, where it would presumably go no further or expose itself to U.S. judicial or executive branch scrutiny, was a viable option. This is why law firms, particularly European law firms, are only starting to write public-facing notes about this now and — judging from the hedging in those notes — still haven’t wrapped their heads around the applicable law.

I would expect that the U.K.’s blitzkrieg global rollout of the OSA was enough of a shock that larger U.S. companies are starting to review their global compliance posture and are beginning to figure this out for themselves.

Popular U.S.-based image-sharing site Imgur certainly appears to have gotten the memo. The company, in response to a threatened U.K. regulatory fine, pulled out of the U.K., invoked the Constitution, and told British regulators to go to hell — a move that is being referred to as the “4chan maneuver” online.

Taylor Wessing’s note correctly identifies that practically all European tech regulation, including the EU DSA and the EU GDPR, is potentially vulnerable if U.S. companies decide to force European speech and data protection regulators to behave like any other European state or non-state actor, and render service through the treaties — service which may not be waved through (in the case of MLAT) or, if it gets through one way or another, becomes vulnerable to constitutional attack the moment it is properly served, if not sooner.

It is difficult to see how the EU’s tech regulations will be effective at carrying out their objectives at all if U.S. lawyers begin to challenge them, through our actions and in our courts.

It would be nice for the U.S. Congress to enact a law like the SPEECH Act that created more robust defenses for American companies and American internet users. In the meantime, American lawyers have plenty of procedural machinery available to us to bring foreign censorship to a grinding halt at our shores.

Europe will be able to do very little in the face of mass refusal of its orders and daring them to utilize a treaty procedure, and U.S. litigation, to attempt to enforce them in U.S. courts.

I doubt the Europeans have the stomach for that.

​Tech, Censorship, Uk, Eu 

Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon is gunning for a record-breaking filibuster in hopes of blocking President Donald Trump’s “attempts to trample on the Constitution.”

Merkley began his filibuster Tuesday night in order to prevent Trump’s “authoritarianism” in the form of a clean, nonpartisan continuing resolution that Democrats have blocked nearly a dozen times. As of early Wednesday afternoon, over 18 hours into his Senate floor spectacle, Merkley appears to be aiming to beat New Jersey Democrat Sen. Cory Booker’s record-breaking 25-hour filibuster back in April.

Democrats’ $1.5 trillion funding bill aims to undo every policy implemented by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Addressing an empty chamber, Merkley railed against Trump’s efforts to address crime in Portland after an appeals court ruled in favor of the administration deploying the National Guard.

“Portlanders have responded in a very interesting way,” Merkley said. “They are demonstrating with joy and whimsy.”

RELATED: Trump administration mocks outrage of ‘unhinged leftists’ as construction of ballroom begins at White House

Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images

The whimsical response from Portland residents included a horde of naked cyclists temporarily blocking an ICE facility’s driveway to protest the crime crackdown. Several arrests were later made after some protesters became rowdy, refusing to move out of the driveway.

“They want to make it clear to the world that what Trump is saying about there being violent protests or a rebellion in Portland,” Merkley said, “it’s just not true.”

RELATED: Appeals court rules Trump can lawfully order National Guard troops to Portland

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Due to Merkley’s drawn-out floor speech, the Senate has not been able to schedule another vote to reopen the government as the shutdown approaches its fourth week.

Democrats originally shut down the government after they blocked the Republican-led funding bill, allowing the September 30 deadline to lapse. Despite Democrat posturing, the GOP’s bill remains a clean continuing resolution with no partisan anomalies.

In contrast, the Democrats’ $1.5 trillion funding bill aims to undo every policy implemented by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Democrats are also insisting on addressing Obamacare subsidies even though they expire at the end of the year.

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​Jeff merkley, Senate democrats, Filibuster, Cory booker, Government shutdown, Donald trump, Schumer shutdown, Portland, Crime crackdown, National guard, Politics 

Graham Platner, a Maine-based oyster farmer, announced in August that he was running as a Democrat to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins, quickly securing the endorsement of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.).

While the entry of Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) into the race last week was undoubtedly bad news for Platner, competition from a geriatric fellow traveler is hardly the greatest threat now facing his campaign.

‘Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff.’

Last week, a number of damning posts Platner previously made on Reddit came to light — including posts where he apparently identified as a communist, branded rural white Americans as racists, suggested service members worried about being raped should buy “Kevlar underwear,” and smeared all police officers as “bastards.”

Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told CNN that Platner’s posts were not disqualifying.

California Rep. Ro Khanna (D), who previously endorsed Platner, also rushed to defend the Democratic candidate, stating, “I respect Platner’s journey & the man he is today,” adding, “I stand by my endorsement. I won’t cower to the establishment.”

RELATED: ‘Cracks in the Schumer armor’: White House adviser says government shutdown may be ending soon

Rep. Rohit Khanna. Photo by PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images

Within days of Platner issuing an apology for his past remarks on Reddit and Khanna’s defense, the Collins challenger found himself once again having to address poor decisions from his past.

Footage recently went viral showing Platner lip-syncing to a Miley Cyrus song with his shirt off. Astute observers noticed in the newly resurfaced video that Platner had a “totenkopf” tattoo on his chest.

Totenkopf, which is German for “death’s head,” is a skull image popularized by Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel elite guard and adopted as the symbol of the SS-Totenkopfverbande, the branch that guarded the concentration camps.

“It was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol,” Platner said in a statement to Politico on Tuesday. “I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that — and to insinuate that I did is disgusting. I am already planning to get this removed.”

Genevieve McDonald, who resigned as the political director of Platner’s campaign last week over the Reddit posts, noted in a Facebook post that “Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”

McDonald suggested that Platner’s campaign released the footage “to try to get ahead of it.”

Blaze News has reached out to Sen. Collins’ office for comment.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee was among the groups that made hay of the tattoo, sharing a screenshot from the video and referring to the totenkopf image as a “Nazi tattoo.”

“This tattoo appears to be a ‘death’s head’ symbol used by the SS, the organization most responsible for the genocidal murder of 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during WWII,” Zach Schwartz, director of the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s Jewish Community Relations Council, said in a statement. “We hope that Mr. Platner would condemn, in no uncertain terms, the meaning behind this tattoo and everything it stands for.”

On the Monday episode of the podcast “Pod Save America,” Platner said, “I’m not a secret Nazi.”

“I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and anti-Semitism and racism in general,” added Platner, whose comment history on Reddit also hints at an affinity for Antifa.

Sanders has underscored his continued support for Platner’s campaign, suggesting to Politico that Platner got the Nazi tattoo while inebriated and is “not the only one in America who has gone through a dark period.”

“People go through that, he has apologized for the stupid remarks, the hurtful remarks that he made, and I’m confident that he’s going to run a great campaign and that he’s going to win,” added Sanders.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) told Semafor on Tuesday that he too continues to support Platner, stating, “The Democratic Party needs to be big enough to accept people who have hard lives, who have made mistakes and have actually owned up to those mistakes. And that’s what he’s done.”

Heinrich, who has reportedly directed money from his leadership PAC to Platner, suggested that while he does not like some of the Maine candidate’s past remarks, he likes “what he’s campaigning on and the way he’s connecting to working-class voters.”

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​Graham platner, Platner, Bernie sanders, Ro khanna, Dnc, Senate, Susan collins, Leftism, Radical, Nazi, Totenkopf, Radicalism, Maine, Politis 

New details emerged Wednesday morning after a driver crashed a vehicle into a Secret Service barricade close to the White House.

On Tuesday night, a driver drove his vehicle into a Secret Service gate on 17th and E St, NW in Washington, D.C., at approximately 10:37 p.m. local time, a United States Secret Service spokesperson told Blaze News.

‘Charges for Unlawful Entry and Destruction of Government Property are currently pending.’

The suspect “was immediately arrested and transported to an area hospital for a mental health evaluation,” the spokesman added in an update to Blaze News Wednesday morning.

The Secret Service spokesperson said that “charges for Unlawful Entry and Destruction of Government Property are currently pending.”

RELATED: Suspect arrested after crashing vehicle into barricade near White House

Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images

“We appreciate the swift actions of our Uniformed Division officers and are grateful for the Metropolitan Police Department for their prompt response,” the spokesperson concluded in the statement.

Blaze News contacted U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro’s office for comment on the pending charges.

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​Politics, White house, Secret service, Secret service spokesperson, Mental health evaluation, Unlawful entry, Destruction of government property, Jeanine pirro, Criminal charges, Us attorney jeanine pirro 

Like you, I take my phone everywhere. I check my email, I scroll X, I call my wife and ask her if there’s anything she needs me to pick up on my way home.

And I take photos and videos. Of everything. The lake, the gulls, the mountains, the houses, the flowers, the woods, my son, my daughter, my wife, my life. Every video in my phone is less than 30 seconds, and most aren’t more than 10.

Who would have thought that the iPhone would essentially eliminate what we used to call ‘home movies’?

A little clip of a deer behind the house. A shot of a kid cracking a wiffle ball or running the bases. My phone is full of these short little bursts.

That’s something different about our era. My parents didn’t take hundreds of five-second clips of my brother, sister, and me. They took long, 10-minute videos with a camcorder. Remember those?

Focus on the family

They’d record these long videos at birthday parties, in the car on family trips, or at my uncle’s cabin. A whole inning of Little League, the soft lull of conversation between Mom and Dad in the background. My mom would ask us questions, interviewing us kids like little adults for what felt like eternity, the zoom moving in and out as we reluctantly answered her questions.

Those old family videos feel so much slower and so much less frantic. I don’t know what it is exactly, but in the short ones on our iPhones, it feels like life is happening in a disjointed fashion. Or like people are performing. Or like everything is sped up 20%. I suppose it’s because we don’t get a sense for the scene or the place. We have no context. All we have is an eight-second clip and a question, years later, about where that was.

On the old videos, mom and dad would narrate in a kind of family documentarian way, as if curating historical footage for future reference. “So it’s August 17, 1996, and we are visiting Grandma at the cabin. It’s about 85 degrees, and this is the last trip of the summer. How’s everybody doing? What did you think, kids? Are you having fun?” Stuff like that.

Mom and dad would walk around the house with the camera, coming upon a kid in the bedroom reading or playing, film the kid from a distance, zooming in on fingers or eyes, the camera shaking.

They’d find my grandparents at the table and joke about a few things. My dad would zoom in on my mom getting dinner ready in the kitchen, the soft hum of the tape heard on the mic. My mom would frame a long shot of my dad, outside, smoking his pipe, reading.

Video vérité

Those long shots on the camcorders were slices of life as it really was. Watching the videos, you feel the time and place and even the real — or more real — behaviors of the people on the screen. Walking slowly with Mom or Dad around the house stirs memories of bedrooms, bathrooms, hallways, and living rooms in ways the short little iPhone clips can’t.

Realizing this, I bought an old camcorder. I found a Sony Handycam DCR-SR62 on eBay for 50 bucks and a battery on Amazon for 12.

It’s old-school but not too old-school. The most annoying thing about the old camcorders was the hassle of bringing analog footage into the digital age. If you want to transfer tape onto computer, it takes a long time. If you have a two-hour video, it takes two hours to get it on the computer.

What’s nice about the Sony Handycam model I bought is that there are no tapes or disks. All video is stored on an internal hard drive, which can then be transferred to your computer just as easily as you transfer photos from any digital camera. Essentially, you get the best of both worlds: digital transfer speed and long-form family video.

RELATED: Forget streaming — I just want my Blockbuster Video back

James Laynse/Getty Images

Real to reels

In theory, we should be able to record 10-minute slice-of-life videos on our iPhones. But we don’t. The format of the technology pushes us in a different direction. Consuming reels on Instagram nudges our tastes toward short-form portrait and away from long-form landscape.

The technology we use shapes the way we live. That’s obvious, of course, but it’s a realization that seems to be continually rediscovered, or revealed, in ways that we never could have anticipated. Who would have thought that the iPhone would essentially eliminate what we used to call “home movies”?

I took my Sony Handycam to the beach at the end of the summer. I filmed my kids eating string cheese and sharing a can of sparkling water. I zoomed in on sailboats in the distance, walked up and down the beach recording the kids running in front of me, and interviewed them just like my mom interviewed us.

“So it’s September 30, 2025, and we are at beach. How’s the food? Can you believe we are swimming in September? Did you guys jump in the water? What do we think, was it cold? What was your favorite thing we did this summer?”

​Men’s style, Lifestyle, The root of the matter, Sony handycam, Home movies, Iphones, Instagram, Family, Tech