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On Saturday, July 11, longtime Republican U.S. Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham died at the age of 71. He passed away suddenly from an aortic dissection shortly after returning from a trip to Ukraine.

When he saw the news, Glenn Beck was troubled — but not because he’s a fan of Graham’s or even because death is a sad reality. He was disturbed because once again many people, including conservatives, were celebrating the tragic news.

“I haven’t agreed with Lindsey Graham in a very long time — not on the wars, not on the surveillance state, not on a dozen deals. I thought he sold out the people that elected and sent him there,” Glenn admits.

“I wanted South Carolina to retire him, but at the ballot box. … We settle things with paper and not with blood,” he emphasizes.

Right now, many Americans on both sides of the political aisle have blurred the line between loss and death.

“Lindsey Graham didn’t lose; he died — and those are not the same thing. … Stop celebrating death, America, as if it’s a political victory. It’s grotesque,” Glenn says.

“I am not going to reduce an entire man’s life to whether or not we agreed. What a dishonor. What a dishonor — not to his family or to him, to yourself,” he continues.

While Graham’s legacy is complicated, it’s full of admirable moments, Glenn argues.

Graham came from humble beginnings, was the first person in his family to attend college, and lost both his parents to tragic deaths when he was in his early 20s.

At the age of 22, Graham, the new “man of his family,” drove home nearly every weekend from Columbia University to check on his little sister, Darline.

“And when he joined the Air Force, he did something incredible. He legally adopted his sister. Why? There’s no fame in that. … He adopted her so that if he died in the military, his benefits would go to her,” Glenn adds through tears.

In 2009, Graham was the only Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote in favor of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation. A year later, he did the same for Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

Glenn says Graham was “right” to vote in favor of these liberal judges he personally disagreed with and praises him for being the only one who understood that a Senate confirmation is an “anti-corruption device” designed to prevent a president from “appointing his relatives or his cronies or his flatterers.”

“It was never meant to be a second election. Lindsey Graham understood this, … and he did what he felt was required of him, and it cost him politically,” Glenn explains.

But his favorite Graham moment happened in 2018 during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Graham passionately ripped into Senate Democrats, calling the process “the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics” for what he saw as a smear campaign to destroy Kavanaugh’s life and delay the seat until after the midterms.

“This is what a human being looks like when you write him down. It’s not a hero or a villain. It’s a ledger. There’s ink on both sides of the page,” Glenn says, “and if you think your page is going to come out any cleaner, I’d encourage you to go back and look at those pages of your life.”

He then gives Graham the honor he’s owed.

“Three decades in the uniform of the United States. Brother, guardian, father, in fact, to a 13-year-old girl who had nobody else. Lindsey Graham, I salute you. Thank you for your service to your state, to your service for your country.”

To hear more of Glenn’s commentary, watch the video above.

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Thousands of Americans are getting infected with the cyclospora parasite, and health officials are looking at Taco Bell as one possible source of the uncomfortable outbreak.

The Mexican fast-food chain reportedly stopped serving some fresh ingredients at some of its locations, and the Washington Post reported that federal and state health officials are now probing the chain.

‘FDA certainly is continuing its traceback investigation on multiple produce items, also including locations that are reported by the case patients.’

The parasite can infect hosts who eat contaminated produce and may cause weeks of watery diarrhea and “frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Tuesday, Taco Bell issued a statement saying that it had “voluntarily and temporarily removed limited ingredients” at some restaurants “as a precautionary measure.”

The chain added that it would continue to monitor the situation and “follow the guidance of public health authorities.”

Donald Prater, the acting deputy commissioner for food at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, would not confirm if Taco Bell is being investigated.

“FDA certainly is continuing its traceback investigation on multiple produce items, also including locations that are reported by the case patients before they became sick,” he said.

Officials outlined several steps people can take to avoid the discomforting parasite:

Heating food to 158 degrees F or above to kill the parasite;Peeling produce to reduce the chance of infection from the parasite being present on the surface; andWashing all fresh produce under clean running water, even if you plan on peeling it, and whether or not it was pre-washed.

RELATED: As many as 59 women were exposed to HIV infection over ‘vampire facials’ and Botox injections, health officials say

Those who believe they may be coming down with the sickness are advised to contact health officials and specifically ask for the cyclospora test.

Cyclospora infections can be treated with antibiotics, rest, and plenty of hydration.

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Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett related how her home and family were the target of a swatting report during congressional testimony on Tuesday.

Police reports from an incident in May involving a “high-priority resident” in Washington, D.C., led to media conjecture that Barrett had been the target of a swatting report.

‘One of my teenage sons opened the door to go out with friends and saw in our street, it was full of police cars who had responded to a false report of gunshots.’

The Supreme Court is asking Congress to increase funding for security in response to a surge in threats against the justices. Barrett and Elena Kagan appeared in front of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government in support of the funds.

“Maybe I lack imagination, but I didn’t expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one,” Barrett said.

She told Congress that police responded to her home on the hoax shooting call but that her security detail defused the situation.

“One of my teenage sons opened the door to go out with friends and saw in our street, it was full of police cars who had responded to a false report of gunshots and raised voices in my home,” she continued.

“I was very, very grateful that I had Supreme Court police outside my home because they were able to stop and meet with and explain to the county police that it had been a false alarm, and so the police did not actually attempt to enter our home,” Barrett added.

The Supreme Court is asking for $228.4 million in funding from Congress, an increase of $20.5 million compared to last year.

RELATED: Romanian man pleads guilty to orchestrating ‘swatting’ campaign against US lawmakers, including an ex-president

According to NBC’s report, members of Congress appeared to be receptive to the justices’ testimony, as they have also been targets of threats.

In one alarming incident, a transgender-identifying man was caught with a gun and what appeared to be kidnapping paraphernalia outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The U.S. Marshals Service said there have been 370 threats against federal judges since Oct. 2025.

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After a month of silence, Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office shared a statement alongside a proof of life photograph of McConnell sitting in what appears to be a hospital bed alongside his wife while holding this Sunday’s Washington Post newspaper.

McConnell shared that he had fallen and had to deal with a “mild case of pneumonia.”

“My doctors have confirmed that I didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion,” the statement read. “I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. I don’t have any tumors or hemorrhages. But I was briefly unconscious and was taken to the hospital.”

BlazeTV host Steve Deace isn’t totally buying McConnell’s story, calling the photo “fascinating.”

“I mean, you typically, when you see people in the hospital admitted for long periods of time, are they typically cord-free or there’s no IVs?” he asks, pointing out that McConnell is free of any IVs, cords, and he’s dressed normally.

“When I look at this, I don’t see anything. I don’t see any evidence of an IV. I don’t see any machines,” he says.

“This to me was like Soviet-level propaganda here, right? And you make sure to throw the wife in there with all the rumors that she had run off to China or something,” he adds.

“And his best friend in the Senate was Lindsey Graham,” co-host Todd Erzen chimes in.

“And he said nothing about Lindsey Graham too, because this came out hours after it was already out that Lindsey Graham had passed away,” executive producer Aaron McIntire adds.

“To me, the best thing that you can say is that he’s seriously hurt, which is unfortunate again for him and his family. He’s seriously hurt, and they staged this in the hospital to make it look like he was due back and didn’t consider any of the details of the kinds of things we’re asking about,” Deace says.

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Five years ago, Charlottesville’s nearly century-old Robert E. Lee statue was torn down, chopped up, and melted at the urging of woke iconoclasts. The remains are now destined to be further deformed into an African symbol by a black identitarian.

How it started

Paul Goodloe McIntire, one of Charlottesville’s top individual benefactors if not its greatest, commissioned several statues for the city in the early 20th century including one depicting Robert E. Lee.

‘Equity and justice are integral.’

The gifted Lee statue was unveiled in what is now Market Street Park on May 21, 1924, where it stood for nearly a century. It was removed, however, on July 10, 2021 — several years after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally, which the Southern Poverty Law Center allegedly had a hand in organizing — pursuant to a decision by Charlottesville City Council.

Then-Mayor Nikuyah Walker reportedly stated as the crane approached the monument, “Taking down this statue is one small step closer to the goal of helping Charlottesville, Va., and America, grapple with the sin of being willing to destroy black people for economic gain.”

In what co-founder of Charlottesville Black Lives Matter Jalane Schmidt described as “like an execution,” the bronze likeness of Lee was subsequently cut up, then melted down in 2023 before an audience of iconoclasts and so-called anti-racist activists.

This melting project — called Swords into Plowshares — was proposed by Charlottesville’s Jefferson School African-American Heritage Center and approved by the city council in 2021, reported the Guardian.

How it’s going

The JSAAHC ultimately selected the architecture firm Model of Architecture Serving Society Design Group and woke sculptor Dana King to repurpose the bronze from the Lee statue into a new work called “Rooted.”

RELATED: Their likenesses were toppled, yet they still cast long shadows

John McDonnell/Washington Post/Getty Images

Jha Amazi, principal at the design group, stated, “We are deeply inspired by the courage and persistence of everyone who made this moment possible over the past decade, and we are honored to contribute to a future shaped not by inherited symbols, but by shared values and collective imagination.”

Instead of featuring a figure of American historical import, Market Street Park will soon feature a “27-foot-tall bronze Baobab tree, a profound symbol of life, interconnection, and persistence throughout the African diaspora,” the design group said in a statement.

According to the designers, they will be “transforming a space historically defined by racialized exclusion and intimidation into a beacon for justice, dignity, and belonging.”

“The design envisions a true commons, vital and open to all,” continued the statement. “The Baobab forms a seven-sided pavilion, inviting everyone to step inside, gather, and share space. Gardens radiate around a multifunctional plaza, connecting us to the earth.”

Sculptor Dana King — who claims on her website both that “equity and justice are integral” to her work and that the medium is too “often used to elevate Eurocentric and white supremacist statuary” — told WVIR-TV that she feels a sense of gratitude that she is “able to tell the story of African descendants and our importance in this country.”

Andrea Douglas, co-founder of Swords into Plowshares, told WVIR that the use of bronze from the Lee statue was intentional.

“We were interested in creating a process that would give voices that would’ve not had voice at the time that a Lee statue was placed in 1924,” said Douglas.

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​Charlottesville, Iconoclasts, Robert e lee, Statues, Woke, Southern poverty law center, Confederacy, African, Politics 

Men in women’s restrooms? Affirmative action? Suppression of religious freedom?

CNBC’s latest “America’s 10 worst states to live in” ranking, published Saturday, appears to place a heavy emphasis on liberal policies, contributing to a bottom-10 list of exclusively red states.

‘If Texas was so bad, people wouldn’t be fleeing blue states in droves to move here.”

Among the criteria considered were crime rates, air quality, health care access, worker protections, civil rights laws, “reproductive rights,” and inclusivity.

Tennessee was deemed the worst state to live in the U.S., followed by Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, Georgia, Utah, Missouri, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

However, the methodology quickly drew criticism from conservative politicians and commentators, who argued that several of CNBC’s quality-of-life metrics effectively penalize states for enacting conservative policies.

Louisiana, for example, lost points for abolishing affirmative action requirements in the state’s civil service code in favor of a merit-based system.

“DEI has been swept out of Civil Service. Now employment decisions will be based strictly on the basis of merit,” Gov. Jeff Landry (R) proclaimed in January.

Louisiana was still awarded an “F” letter grade partly for scoring low on “inclusiveness.”

Another “F” state, Georgia, was hit hard for a state law protecting the First Amendment’s right to religious freedom.

“The bill would prevent governments from impeding on someone’s religious rights in most cases and stop the enforcement of laws that conflict with someone’s religious expression,” the Associated Press reported.

During the bill’s signing, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp affirmed, “Georgia still remains a state where there is no place for hate, and I can assure all Georgians of that today.”

Citing the ongoing migration of residents from blue states to red states, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) pushed back against Texas’ low ranking, arguing that the state’s population growth tells a different story.

“If Texas was so bad, people wouldn’t be fleeing blue states in droves to move here,” he posted on X.

RELATED: America’s best and worst states for religious freedom — and what it means for our future

Al Drago/Getty Images

For Tennessee’s bio, CNBC came out swinging with an attack on the Volunteer State’s law prohibiting transgender-identifying individuals from using bathrooms and locker rooms that don’t align with their biological sex — accusing Tennessee Republicans of imposing “a rash of state laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community.”

The recent designation of June as “Nuclear Family Month” also came under fire.

The Tennessee resolution states, “The nuclear family, consisting of one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children, is God’s design for familial structure and has been the bedrock of society since the creation of the world.”

Yet CNBC criticized the measure, arguing, “Its sponsors deliberately timed the observance to coincide with the month when Tennessee’s more than 300,000 LGBTQ+ people celebrate Pride.”

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came to Tennessee’s defense in a post on X, writing, “If Tennessee was really the worst state to live in people wouldn’t be moving there in large numbers, which they are.”

“Typical nonsense,” he added.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton joined DeSantis in blasting the methodology.

“CNBC says the ability to kill unborn babies and engage in woke racism makes states better to live in,” Fitton said, partially in reference to Louisiana and Oklahoma being dinged for having “among the nation’s strictest abortion bans.”

On the other side of the aisle, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) used the ranking to mock Republicans suffering from what he described as “California Derangement Syndrome.”

“Notice something in common?” Newsom wrote. “All led by Republicans.”

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Albert Speer, Hitler’s close friend and chief architect, was the ideal Nazi. That is, until he realized the war was lost. Just weeks before the end of WWII, Hitler ordered him to carry out the “Nero Decree”: Burn Germany to the ground to prevent the Allies and the German people from taking it.

Speer pretended to obey but secretly sabotaged the order to save what he could. This decision allowed him to escape execution during the Nuremberg trials.

Glenn Beck says that right now President Trump is “hunting” for Iran’s Albert Speer — a high-level insider who is self-interested enough to betray the dying regime in order to save himself and what’s left of the country.

This defector, he says, must be able to answer the central question: Where is the enriched uranium stockpile, and how do we get rid of it or prove it’s gone?

But this plan to find the Iranian Speer may not work.

Even though President Trump is making progress with China and Russia, says Glenn, “as long as Moscow and Beijing look like they’re going to catch the regime if it falls, nobody on the inside of that regime is going to wake up and conclude that the ship is sinking.”

“How does Trump send the message that he needs a Speer?” he asks. “Well, he doesn’t send the message. You can’t stand at a podium and announce you’re shopping for a traitor. You’ll get the honest men killed and the regime put on alert.”

Trump, he argues, needs to take a page out of Roosevelt’s book and “build a channel quietly.” During WWII’s Operation Torch, he quietly sent undercover Americans to contact French officers in North Africa ahead of the invasion, so they would switch sides and stop fighting once the Allies invaded.

“That’s the work,” says Glenn, “and I’ll bet you that we’re not doing that work.”

“I’ll bet you the ones who probably have the people in place to lay that path are the Israelis, but the Qataris, the Omanis, they’re doing back channels as well, I’m sure — private assurances, personal and specific to individual figures,” he continues.

What Americans need to come to grips with, Glenn argues, is that the man we need is probably not a man we want to partner with.

“The man who can deliver the uranium may be a man we may never want to stand next to,” he says candidly.

Finding — or creating —- this man, Glenn argues, is “the best card that we have.”

“Here’s what Trump has to do. … Keep the pressure on. Do what he’s doing: hard, visible, unrelenting diplomatic, economic, and military pressure. That’s the only thing that will build the private thought inside the one guy’s head like this ship is going down … and underneath it, run the quiet wire,” he explains.

“Keep an off-ramp open … so that some morning, some senior man might look around and sees … this ship is sinking and he knows there’s a lifeboat, and he knows he’s going to get him and his family into that lifeboat.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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A New Jersey female is accused of sexually assaulting a child and recording video of the act, officials told Patch.

Victoria Anne Cranmer, 25, of Little Egg Harbor is charged with sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child, manufacturing child sexual abuse material, and possession of child sexual abuse material, the outlet said, citing the Ocean County Department of Corrections.

A search warrant uncovered additional videos of Cranmer and the boy in the bathroom, officials told Patch.

The charges stem from allegations involving a child younger than 13 in May, News 12 reported.

Cranmer had been living with a woman identified as Ms. P, who gave Cranmer an iPhone and paid for the cell service, Patch said, citing the affidavit of probable cause filed in Cranmer’s arrest.

Several months later, Cranmer was kicked out of where she was staying, and Ms. P asked Cranmer to return the cell phone — and Ms. P discovered video on the phone, Patch said, citing the documents.

More from Patch:

On Cranmer’s Snapchat, she found a video of the young boy touching Cranmer’s exposed vagina while she sat on the toilet laughing, according to the affidavit. Ms. P knew it was Cranmer due to distinctive tattoos, her voice, and the fact that it was filmed in her own bathroom, the affidavit said.

Ms. P “freaked out,” according to the affidavit, and saved the video to her phone before locking Cranmer out of the Snapchat account so it couldn’t be deleted.

While Cranmer was living with Ms. P, she would often babysit her daughter and the young son of a woman identified as Ms. H, the documents said. The son’s age was not stated, however, documents refer to him being in diapers.

Ms. H began to notice her son behaving oddly after spending time with Cranmer, and he began to not like the bathtub, according to the documents. She learned that Cranmer bathed herself with the boy, officials said.

A search warrant uncovered additional videos of Cranmer and the boy in the bathroom, officials told Patch.

RELATED: Father learns his fate after pleading guilty to having sex with his daughter who months later took her own life

Image source: Image source: Ocean County (N.J.) Jail

According to the affidavit, the prosecutor approved the charges on July 7, News 12 reported, adding that Cranmer was arrested and taken to the Ocean County Jail pending court proceedings.

Cranmer on Tuesday remained behind bars with no bail amount or hearing information listed in her jail record.

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​Arrest, Endangering the welfare of a child, Jailed, Manufacturing of child sexual abuse material, New jersey, Sexual assault, Crime 

During comments about WNBA coaches, star Paige Bueckers declared black women deserve the same opportunities as white women.

The remarks came during a postgame press conference on Sunday, after a 96-91 win over the Chicago Sky.

‘I understand, like, how amazing they are.’

While the Dallas Wings guard is the No. 1 scorer on the team, it seems she also is looking to become the team’s No. 1 social justice warrior. Bueckers was asked by a reporter how to go about getting more black female coaches in the WNBA, and the 24-year-old’s answer was nothing short of progressive.

“I’m for equal opportunity, no discrimination based on what you look like, who you like, and anything of that nature,” Bueckers began, with an unidentified piece of paper in front of her.

“I grew up with a lot of prominent black women in my life that were very important to me in how I was raised and how I grew up, being my stepmom, [and] my AAU coach,” Bueckers said.

The Minnesota native continued, stating she believes black women deserve equality.

“I understand, like, how amazing they are and how they should get the same equal opportunity as a white woman, as a white man, to be an important piece of this league.”

RELATION: The dark religion behind ‘manifesting’

Bueckers then echoed previous comments made by Indiana Fever superstar Caitlin Clark and declared the WNBA was “built on a lot of black women.”

“It’s definitely right for them to get the same equal opportunity as everyone else,” Bueckers added.

Clark made very similar statements in 2024 as a rookie, when she said, “This league has kind of been built on them,” referring to “black players” in the WNBA.

“The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important,” Clark said at the time.

Clark even went as far as to say that although she wanted to claim her success was her own doing, at least some part of it was due to having white “privilege.”

RELATION: Caitlin Clark’s coach rampages about ‘racism’ and ‘homophobia’ after on-court abuse: ‘So much more toxicity’

Michael Reaves/Getty Images

“I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” Clark announced. “The more we can elevate black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing,” she explained.

Clark’s comments sparked significant backlash at the time, and she soon walked them back.

“I feel like I’ve earned every single thing that’s happened to me over the course of my career,” she told Time just a couple days later.

Bueckers said as a rookie in 2025 that white athletes have more “marketability” and get more coverage than black athletes. She also took time to note that she believes all white people have “white privilege” and “there’s white privilege every single day” in the WNBA.

Bueckers is also reportedly in a romantic relationship with her teammate, the Wings’ third-leading scorer, Azzi Fudd.

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Tech investor and influencer Chamath Palihapitiya says he has made a 180-degree turn on the negative image he had of President Donald Trump.

The podcaster told CNBC News on Tuesday that he was trying to avoid the ideological tunnel vision that many people find themselves in after being besieged by media bias.

‘Why did these other people just fabricate what they wanted to say so that they could essentially assassinate his character?’

“There’s enough people that I hear that are lazy and reductive, and they’re going to end up where they’re supposed to end up — in a little cul-de-sac of their own making,” said Palihapitiya.

“The reality is that most of us were lied to by the media about President Trump. And if you just go back to the source material, you should take away two things: One, he didn’t say half the things he said,” he said.

“Two, why did these other people just fabricate what they wanted to say so that they could essentially assassinate his character?” Palihapitiya continued. “I think that that second thing is completely unacceptable in America, and there have still been no repercussions, really.”

Palihapitiya went on to say that he took time to learn more about the 2017 rally in Charlottesville and how the media falsely connected racism there to the president. He related the experience on his podcast, which has millions of listeners.

“The first person to call me: President Trump. I got to know him, and I put the phone down. I called my wife, and I said, ‘We got it totally, totally wrong. We were lied to,'” said Palihapitiya.

“Then I got to know him, and he is fantastic!” he added.

RELATED: Liberals are furious at billionaire Democrat ‘mega-donor’ for admitting Obama and Biden were unresponsive compared to Trump

Trump’s comments on the 2017 Charlottesville rally have been mischaracterized by many on the left, including former President Joe Biden, to accuse him of calling white supremacists “very fine people.”

Even Snopes, the left-wing fact-checking website, admitted that Trump was not referring to the “neo-Nazis and white nationalists,” who he said should be condemned.

Palihapitiya’s comments were posted to social media, where they were widely circulated by critics of the mainstream media.

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The people of a quaint English village took a dramatic step on July 4 toward possibly seceding from the United Kingdom over the Labour government’s plans to dump over a thousand military-age male migrants in their backyard.

The Home Office announced late last month that the leftist government was considering turning Ministry of Defence Bicester — an inactive military base roughly 2 miles away from Piddington in the southeast English county of Oxfordshire — into a “largely self-sufficient” destination for “people seeking asylum.”

‘I want my kids to grow up safe.’

The Home Office noted that the site would operate for at least 10 years; be used as a destination for single adult male migrants between the ages of 18 and 65, many of whom “arrived in the U.K. by an illegal route”; be run by “an experienced, specialist provider of asylum accommodation”; and have 24/7 security.

The BBC reported that the Home Office plans to house 1,250 migrant men at the Bicester base. The population of the migrant base would therefore be roughly 250% greater than the population of Piddington, which was 358 as of 2021.

The site, which migrants will apparently be able to enter and leave at their pleasure, would reportedly be within earshot of an existing play area for children and families.

Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrats MP for Bicester, said in a June 26 letter to the minister for border security and asylum that “this is the wrong location for such a facility.”

“I cannot understand how the Government could consider this rural location an appropriate site to house over 1,000 people,” Miller added.

RELATED: ‘Islamophobia’: Pakistan-born MP attacks Restore colleague for exposing Muslim rape gangs to Joe Rogan

Ben Montgomery/Getty Images

Protesters have in recent days taken to the streets of Bicester — a town with a population of 56,200 just northwest of Piddington — to express their concerns over the safety of the nearby base’s transformation into a stomping ground for foreign military-age men.

Kelsey Day, a mother who attended the protest with her three sons and husband, told the BBC, “We’re not against migrants coming over here, but they should come legally.”

“We don’t know who these men are, we don’t know where they’re from and what they’re about,” Day continued. “I want my kids to grow up safe.”

Another protester identified only as Sam blasted the use of the site as a “male-only dumping ground.”

“I feel we’re constantly being called racist, and that’s not the case. I don’t care what color you are or where you come from; if there is a risk to my children, that’s enough for me,” Sam said.

The people of neighboring Piddington — some of whom are not only worried about rapacious foreigners skulking around their village but about a possible devaluation of their real estate — have gone a step further in their opposition to the proposed migrant accommodations.

Taking a page out of the book of rebels across the Atlantic 250 years ago, the village voted on July 4 to hold a referendum on seceding from Britain. According to the Express, 175 adult villagers voted in favor of holding the independence vote, and only seven voted no.

Parish Council Chair Tim McNally told the Express, “We had an incredible result with almost two-thirds of the village voting — the rest were children — and an acceptance of 96%. It was truly astonishing.”

“Self-determination is what people want whilst they are being ignored and driven into a corner. This is a natural human instinct and reaction,” McNally continued. “The Principality of Piddington, the village that roared, will put together their council and representatives to empower themselves.”

McNally’s plan is to take the result to Cherwell District Council and his member of parliament and — in the event of a successful leave referendum and subsequent declaration of independence — notify the U.S. ambassador and, ultimately, President Donald Trump.

The Home Office statistics show that at the end of March 2026, 48,758 foreigners were awaiting an initial decision on their asylum claims, and 97,519 foreigners were receiving asylum support in the United Kingdom. There were 54,179 single applicants and 43,340 members of family groups receiving government support at taxpayers’ expense.

UK Home Office

As of the end of March, there were 14 supported asylum seekers per 10,000 residents of the United Kingdom. In the North East and North West of England, however, the numbers are much higher — 26 and 25 foreigners supported per 10,000 residents.

In addition to the proposed migrant base in Oxfordshire, the Home Office is planning possible migrant accommodations in the counties of Essex, North Yorkshire, and Suffolk.

The leftist government has also committed to increasing the number of migrants housed at Ministry of Defence Police Wethersfield, a former Royal Air Force base in north Essex, from 800 to 1,220.

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​United kingdom, England, Asylum seekers, Immigration, Replacement, Britain, Secession, Politics 

Outrage over damaging scandals eventually forced Graham Platner out of the pivotal Senate race in Maine, but at least two media companies allegedly helped Democrats bury those stories.

A media survey indicated that Google News and Apple suppressed stories detailing the allegations made against the failed candidate.

‘Millions of smartphone users were denied the truth while Platner was politically useful and finally allowed to see it once he wasn’t.’

Between Nov. 2025 and May 2026, neither news outlet published stories damaging to the Democrat’s campaign, according to the Media Research Center study. These included the Nazi-like tattoo he obtained as well as offensive posts on the Reddit online platform.

The final straw came when Platner was accused of sexual assault by a former girlfriend. He denied the allegations but suspended his campaign regardless.

The MRC report found that the tech platforms ignored at least 112 stories from conservative-leaning news outlets documenting Platner’s transgressions.

“For months, while Platner looked like the one Democrat who could beat Susan Collins, the two most powerful news apps in America buried scandal after scandal,” MRC President David Bozell said. “Then the polls turned, Platner became a liability, and suddenly the blackout ended. News judgment had nothing to do with it.”

“Millions of smartphone users were denied the truth while Platner was politically useful and finally allowed to see it once he wasn’t,” he added.

Google has denied the allegations.

“These claims are totally false and based on a completely flawed methodology,” a spokesperson said to Fox News Digital. “The study checked Google News once a day from a single account, ignoring the fact that Google News automatically updates throughout the day, and shows news personalized to your interests and location. You can also easily select sources you want to see more often in News and Search.”

Bozell shot back and defended the MRC findings: “Google wants us to believe that checking their platform once a day missed the magic window where they actually allowed negative news about Graham Platner to exist. That is an insult to the intelligence of every consumer and investor.”

Apple has not responded to requests for comment about the report.

RELATED: Donna Brazile gets CRUSHED online over bizarre reply to allegations against Graham Platner

Democrats now have to choose Platner’s replacement in hopes of unseating incumbent Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) and gaining another seat in their quest to retake the Senate.

Recent polling shows that Collins is tied with three possible candidates to replace Platner in the race. The same survey found that two-thirds of respondents wanted Platner to drop out of the race.

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​Graham platner, Scandals, Susan collins, Media bias, Tech companies, Politics, Google, Apple 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to be hitting pause.

The agency has reportedly ordered officers nationwide to stand down on most vehicle stops, multiple law enforcement sources say — with one exception: operations targeting serious criminal offenders. Everyone else is on hold while agents go through updated training on the tactic.

‘Numbers are going down, we can’t do s**t.’

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security has confirmed the pause, or the reasoning behind it, in an on-the-record statement.

An ICE spokesperson told Blaze News that the agency is “always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets,” adding, “We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics.”

The directive doesn’t appear to be a written policy. Three Homeland Security sources told the Daily Wire they were simply informed “no more vehicle stops for now.”

CNN, citing a source familiar with the guidance, reported that it applies to agents under Enforcement and Removal Operations, ICE’s arrest-and-deportation branch, and pauses their ability to initiate stops — pushing officers toward other tactics for routine immigration enforcement and requiring coordination with partner agencies to pull over someone wanted on a criminal warrant.

RELATED: President of Mexico VOWS to take action over lethal ICE shooting of illegal alien in Houston

RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images

One agency source, frustrated by the impact on arrest numbers, told the Daily Wire: “Numbers are going down, we can’t do s**t.”

The timing traces back to two shootings in the last week. Last Tuesday, an ICE officer in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a vehicle stop. ICE claims he rammed a law enforcement vehicle and tried to run down an officer.

Six days later, on Monday, agents in Biddeford, Maine, shot and killed a man identified as Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian national. ICE confirmed that the deceased was an illegal alien with a final removal order, but whether he was the intended target of the operation is unclear.

In its statement on the Maine shooting, the DHS said the man “attempted to flee the scene” and that, “fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”

RELATED: ICE confirms man shot and killed in Maine was illegal alien who had received order of deportation

Ryan Murphy/Getty Images

Maine Sen. Angus King (I), who was briefed by DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, told CNN, “We haven’t seen evidence” yet that the officer feared for his safety or anyone else’s, and he pushed for a transparent investigation.

The two deaths add to a string of violent encounters ICE says its officers are facing — the DHS has cited a more than 1,300% increase in assaults on its officers — as the agency’s deportation operations have expanded under the Trump administration.

Vehicle stops have been one of ICE’s primary tools for locating and arresting targets away from homes and workplaces. Pulling back on that tactic, even temporarily, could slow arrest numbers in the near term.

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​Deportation, Homeland security, Ice, Illegal alien, Maine, Politics 

The fallout from the Epstein files continues to shake the upper echelons of society as one of the world’s richest men made a surprise change of plans.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has delayed his usual mid-year donation to the Gates Foundation pending an investigation into the foundation’s connections with Jeffrey Epstein.

‘Of course, mortality is unpredictable, but my remaining shares will be donated to the four foundations one way or the other by December 31, 2034.’

Buffett, 95, announced on Tuesday that he intends to continue disposing of his Berkshire Hathaway fortune by way of donating shares to foundations associated with his family. He made no mention of the Gates Foundation, to which he has historically donated large sums of shares around this time of the year.

In 2025, for example, a similar announcement shows a donation of 9,000,000 shares to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This marks a significant change in the destinations of Buffett’s remaining shares.

This year, 9,000,000 shares are intended for the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, and 1,000,000 shares each are intended for the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the Novo Foundation.

A spokesperson for the Gates Foundation gave Blaze News the following statement on Tuesday:

“The Gates Foundation is grateful to Warren Buffett for his decades of support for our work. His gifts, totaling more than $47 billion, have helped us expand and deliver on the foundation’s mission to improve health and opportunity for people around the world. The foundation continues from a position of financial strength to advance our work through 2045, supported by Bill’s $200 billion commitment.”

RELATED: Bill Gates ‘voluntarily’ explains his Epstein ties to Congress

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

According to the statement, Buffett is seeking to donate his remaining shares by the end of 2034, noting that his “children are unfortunately growing older.”

“Of course,” he continued, “mortality is unpredictable, but my remaining shares will be donated to the four foundations one way or the other by December 31, 2034. The goal is to have the grants grow annually to each of the three foundations managed by each of my children and the annual grant to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation grow at a somewhat greater rate.”

Warren Buffett announced his plan to give away his vast fortune in 2006. Since then, he has given annual donations to the Gates Foundation. Buffett has been a longtime friend of Bill Gates, though in 2024, Buffett announced that he would cut off donations to the Gates Foundation following his death. This development speeds up that decision, unless he resumes donations following the conclusion of an investigation.

The Associated Press reported that Buffett said that he hadn’t spoken to Gates for months prior to the release of the Epstein files in the fall of 2025.

He told CNBC that he was amazed by the number of rich and powerful people pulled into the Epstein scandal:

“I mean, it, here you had a guy that was a convicted guy, a sensational con man, and the percentage of people that he knocked off,” Buffett said. “I mean, whether it was, he found their weakness. It might have been sex. It might be power, it might be, whatever it might be. And I don’t see how anybody could have pulled that off.”

In April, the Gates Foundation announced the beginning of an investigation into its connections with Epstein as it assesses future giving. The foundation expects to receive an update this summer.

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​Berkshire hathaway, Epstein files, Gates foundation, Warren buffet, Politics, Bill gates 

The United States has by far the most data centers of any country in the world, but that growth will slow for least some time in New York state.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) weighed in on one of the most controversial topics of the modern tech era this week, saying data centers create a high degree of uncertainty for her constituents.

‘New York will lead the way.’

Hochul signed an executive order on Tuesday, making her position on the current status of data centers clear.

“As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” the governor said, per Politico.

Hochul and New York will block the construction of any new large data centers for up to one year, which, as reported by Reuters, is classified as any data center using 50 megawatts or more of power.

The purpose is to allow New York state to create the framework surrounding environmental and energy regulation in relation to the data centers.

“New York will lead the way in creating the strongest standards in the nation for data center development, ensuring that when companies succeed because of New York, New Yorkers succeed too,” Hochul added.

RELATED: US company will use Chinese humanoid robots at Michigan data center

Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty Images

At the same time, the state will develop a “community investment framework” that has the stated intention of helping local communities access “economic benefits” that mitigate “potential negative effects” of new data centers.

The framework would create an investment fund that data center developers would put money into to help pay for energy costs and public services. In addition, the data center developers would have to allow labor unions to weigh in on construction, local hiring, and workforce development.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, Hochul’s Republican counterpart in the gubernatorial election, opposes the statewide moratorium. The Associated Press reported that Blakeman said local governments should be allowed to make deals with companies on their own accord if the projects promise sufficient economic benefits.

RELATED: Cattle rancher battles Amazon data center accused of poisoning water supply, causing miscarriages

Mario Tama/Getty Images

New York has seen significant resistance to data centers in areas like Rockland County, where residents packed the town hall to the rafters in opposition to DataBank’s Orangeburg Campus, which is about 25 miles north of Manhattan.

The United States leads the world in data centers, with over 4,400, according to Statista. The second-highest nation is the United Kingdom with over 550, then Germany with more than 520.

However, Cleanview reports there are only about 1,200 operating data centers in the United States, with another 1,700 planned, bringing the total of current and future sites to just under 3,000.

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​New york, Kathy hochul, Data centers, News, Tech 

Many conservatives across the country were tuned into Republican candidate Spencer Pratt’s audacious, underdog run against incumbent L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (D) — but few know about the “creative genius” behind Pratt’s wildly popular social media campaign.

On a recent episode of “Rufo & Lomez,” Pratt’s creative director Gabriel Mann joined the program to pull back the curtain on the raw, grassroots operation that terrified the L.A. political establishment: zero consultants, lightning-fast video production, paid ballot harvesting in South L.A., explosive fraud allegations, and the Hollywood machine that blacklists conservatives while protecting its own.

Mann tells the hosts that unlike the scripted, consultant-heavy world of modern politics, Pratt’s operation ran with zero political advisers.

“I know a lot of people try to portray their campaign as grassroots, but I mean this was legitimately grassroots. … It was an experiment in completely upending the traditional politico paradigm, so we didn’t have any political advisers. It was just me and Spencer,” he tells hosts Christopher Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman.

This bare-bones team streamlined the video production process, expediting response ads.

“[Pratt’s opponents] were trying to attack him for not physically living in the Airstream even though that’s a sniper’s wet dream, so like his security would not let him be on the lot, but people were attacking him saying, ‘Oh, he’s bougie. He’s living in Santa Barbara,”’ Mann recalls.

“We decided to just immediately attack right back, and so we made this ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ video … to turn the energy around because we didn’t have any political advisers telling us, ‘Oh, we should focus group this,’ ‘Oh, you shouldn’t say that.’ … ‘Your tone should be like this,”’ he adds. “All we had was Spencer with his instincts and a filmmaker, not a political guy.”

One of the most eye-opening revelations, however, was Mann’s description of how the campaign built its own “ground game” in “hostile territory,” paying approximately $100,000 to Bloods and Crips members to perform ballot harvesting in South L.A. neighborhoods.

He explains that because there is “literally no Republican infrastructure in Los Angeles,” they had to get creative in how they reached voters.

“I’m not joking, like totally above board, totally legal, we paid the Bloods and the Crips to go do ballot harvesting for us in their neighborhoods, and that was the one thing that Spencer did that I think shocked a lot of people,” he tells Rufo and Keeperman.

Mann also pulled back the curtain on Hollywood’s ruthless political machine. While the industry famously protects its own, it blacklists conservatives without mercy. He recounted a crew member being fired on the spot simply for giving Spencer a tour of a “Baywatch” set.

“We’re with Bass. The union is supporting Bass,” was the explanation. Yet behind the scenes, some of the biggest names in entertainment were quietly rooting for Pratt. Mann revealed, “You have no idea how many … but [they] wouldn’t allow us to trot them out in public.”

Yet perhaps most explosive were the questions surrounding the final vote count itself. On election night, Pratt was neck-and-neck with incumbent Karen Bass and leading democrat socialist Nithya Raman as expected. But in the days that followed, as late mail-in ballots poured in, Raman overcame a roughly 40,000-vote deficit — a stunning net swing of more than 43,000 votes that flipped the race.

“They try to explain it away like, ‘Oh well, Democrats vote late. They vote by mail.’ OK, but just for the one third place candidate? There were two Democrats in the race, so why is it only for the third place candidate, the one person who actually needed the votes?” says Mann, “And the thing is the media will always say that, ‘Oh, there’s no evidence of fraud.’ That is evidence.”

“Now evidence is not the same as proof, but a statistical anomaly like that, you ask any forensic auditor they’ll tell you yeah that is evidence of fraud, and it needs to be investigated, and so Spencer has been doing this by the books. He’s been collecting evidence,” he continues, noting that they’ve built a case with this evidence and have shared it with law enforcement.

For the full, unfiltered conversation and all the behind-the-scenes details, watch the complete episode above.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Rufo & lomez, Chris rufo, Jonathan keeperman, Spencer pratt, La mayor race 

Keir Starmer is out as prime minister of the United Kingdom, but the country is still locked in a crisis of diminishing freedoms over oppressive censorship, invasion of digital privacy, and an Islamic takeover that quite literally threatens the safety of white British women. Continuing its descent into an authoritarian hellscape, new rules for YouTube and its vast network of content creators aim to promote approved mainstream media while relegating independent voices to the darkest corners of the platform where few can find them.

The rise of alternative TV

Television has changed drastically since the smartphone revolution. Where families once gathered around set-top boxes to watch live news broadcasts, TV shows, and movies, now a majority of consumed content comes from other mediums and platforms.

There’s still time to speak up.

According to Advanced Television, live TV only accounted for 45% of all viewed content in the U.K. in 2025. In second place, livestreaming services and video on demand, largely accessed through smartphones and smart TV apps, made up 38% of viewed content. The final 17% was unaccounted for in the report.

YouTube especially poses a threat to U.K. Public Service Media. Out of all users who watch on Google’s video platform, TV was the most used device over smartphones and tablets, signaling that viewers who turn on their televisions are actively opening YouTube for entertainment and information instead of local networks. The competition is so stiff that YouTube is tied with the BBC as the most-watched channel in the U.K., while ITV, SKY, and Channel 4 all sit well below.

This is a big problem for a government that wants to use television to “shape attitudes to social issues” for its citizens.

New YouTube rules

With YouTube beating out Public Service Media for attention, established channels like the BBC have begun to put their content directly on YouTube in hopes that viewers will watch it. The “problem” is that no one can force users to consume BBC shows over independent networks and creators. This is where the U.K.’s new rules come in.

In a green paper proposed by Ian Murray, minister for creative industries, media, and arts, PSM would receive algorithmic preferential treatment on third-party platforms compared to other content. Not only does Murray want mainstream outlets like the BBC available on YouTube, but he wants all third-party platforms to “work together to ensure PSM content is prominent and on fair commercial terms.” More bluntly, he’s asking for YouTube to promote approved mainstream media while down-ranking independent and alternative media. Even worse, he believes “the government should consider underpinning this with legislation” to ensure mainstream media is always more prevalent.

Why YouTube is a problem for the UK government

YouTube threatens the U.K. government on several key fronts:

Public Service Media is a dying medium. By the U.K. government’s own admission, 74% of viewers ages 16-24 and 69% ages 25-34 watch streaming services. On top of that, 28% of viewers ages 4-15 watch YouTube, making it the most-watched platform for children. The more often viewers choose independent media, the less likely they are to receive mainstream viewpoints that shape personal thoughts, beliefs, and philosophies.

RELATED: The EU forced through full scans of email and messages. Now it’s coming for encrypted texts too.

SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/Getty Images

PSM is easier to influence than YouTube. Although the U.K. government can’t dictate the editorial coverage of channels like the BBC and ITV, it can use each network’s charter agreement to influence their funding and tighten regulations if the government disapproves of their coverage. YouTube, on the other hand, has no such charter to access public airwaves.

The U.K. government wants users to consume approved messages. In a brazen admission, Murray remarks in the green paper that “people who watch news on PSM providers are more likely to be politically active, well-informed, and trusting of institutions.” In other words, viewers who watch approved content are implored to adhere to the political information espoused by PSM and encouraged to support institutions that largely lean left.

What happens next?

On the bright side, Murray’s proposal isn’t a law yet. This green paper must be evaluated by Parliament before it becomes official. That means there’s still time to speak up.

YouTube has already taken a stance against the new U.K. rules, stating, “YouTube has always operated on the principle that every creator gets a fair shot. But new U.K. proposals could change that — requiring us to put some channels above others. This could severely limit your channel’s ability to grow. #KeepYouTubeYours.”

As for viewers in the U.K., they can submit their responses — either for or against the proposal — to the U.K. government via an online form or email.

​Tech, Youtube, Ian murray, Keir starmer 

Comedian and co-host of BlazeTV’s “Stu and Dave Do America” Dave Landau dropped by Monday’s rendition of “Kill Tony,” and it wasn’t an episode for the easily offended.

Landau bolstered the hit stand-up comedy show, which featured a plethora of hysterical jokes that took no prisoners.

‘You don’t want to use your A material.’

Amateur hour

Landau dropped into the Comedy Mothership in Austin, Texas, for a night that was never short on jokes about autism and liberalism.

This included jokes from autistic comedians and comedians with autistic kids. However, some of Landau’s biggest laughs came from poking fun at the amateur comics who have just 60 seconds to impress the panel of comics. The panel included Landau, comedian Brian Moses, as well as hosts Tony Hinchcliffe and Brian Redban.

The panel was truly astonished by a 59-year-old rookie comedian’s outdated jokes, which included a Ross Perot/”Indecent Proposal” joke, references from 1992 and 1993. When the comedian said he wasn’t sure if he should have used that joke, Landau hilariously remarked, “Yeah, you don’t want to use your A material your first time.”

RELATED: Another $30 billion could leave California as state stands in the way of a massive corporate merger

Yes, slur

For the duration of the show, racial jokes were flying in every direction, including from a homeless comedian from Montenegro who crudely referred to himself as a Montenegrin combined with a slur for a black person.

The man said he didn’t have a work permit, so he wasn’t working, and he didn’t want to cheat the system. This prompted Landau, who said he had been saying racial slurs “in my head all night,” to ask the homeless comedian for a favor.

“Tell that to every Mexican here,” Landau asked.

RELATED: Pop star Olivia Rodrigo hosts all-female music fest to fund Planned Parenthood; ‘I am so ecstatic’

Comic-kaze

When comedian Dedrick Flynn took the stage, the panel couldn’t help but make impressions of Japanese prisoners when Flynn recalled the time he spent in a Far East prison.

This prompted Landau and Hinchcliffe to wonder how scared his Japanese cellmates must have been of the American. When Flynn explained that his prison experience helped him befriend the Japanese inmates by showing them how to write letters to the judge, Landau brutally joked about the irony of Flynn teaching them to “read and write.”

Landau is currently on tour, with upcoming stops in Springfield, Missouri, and Albuquerque.

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​Stand-up comedy, News, Kill tony, Dave landau, Tony hinchcliffe, Entertainment 

President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he will be addressing the nation at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday.

A pair of White House officials told MS NOW that in his speech, the president — who will be joined by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel, acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin — will detail a foreign nation’s plans to interfere in the 2020 election.

‘These analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tended to disagree with the [Trump] administration’s policies.’

It is presently unclear which nation the president plans to name.

However, the publication of new evidence of foreign interference would further undermine the assessments rushed out by the Biden administration following the geriatric Democrat’s inauguration in January 2021.

The Biden DOJ and DHS issued a joint report in March 2021 stating that there were several incidents where Russian, Chinese, and Iranian government-affiliated actors “materially impacted the security of networks associated with or pertaining to U.S. political organizations, candidates, and campaigns during 2020 federal elections.”

The report claimed, however, that the DOJ, FBI, and DHS had “no evidence that any foreign government-affiliated actor prevented voting, changed votes, or disrupted the ability to tally votes or to transmit election results in a timely manner; altered any technical aspect of the voting process; or otherwise compromised the integrity of voter registration information of any ballots cast during 2020 federal elections.”

The National Intelligence Council also dropped a report in March 2021 casting doubt on foreign interference in the 2020 election, stating, “We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”

The intelligence community report said that:

state-linked Russian actors sought to denigrate Biden’s candidacy, support Trump, and undermine confidence in the electoral process;Iran “carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s re-election prospects”; andadditional foreign actors, including Hezbollah and Cuba, “took some steps to attempt to influence the election.”

The intelligence community’s report downplayed the possibility of attempted interference efforts by China — an assessment that did not age well.

RELATED: JD Vance says Democratic mayor responded ‘aggressively’ to 2020 election fraud probe

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Last year, the FBI uncovered intelligence from August 2020 detailing an alleged Chinese communist plot to rig the 2020 mail-in vote for Biden.

According to an Intelligence Information Report from the FBI’s Albany Field Office in September 2020 that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) claimed was promptly recalled and suppressed by the bureau, a collaborative source obtained information about the alleged plot from a sub-source, “who claimed they obtained the information from unidentified PRC government officials.”

The alleged plot involved the Chinese regime’s production and export of fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses to Chinese sympathizers in the homeland “in order to create tens of thousands of fraudulent mail-in votes for U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden.”

Patel claimed last year that the allegations had been “substantiated.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced on July 27, 2020, that between Jan. 1 and June 30 of that election year, CBP officers at the International Mail Facility at Chicago O’Hare International Airport had seized 1,513 shipments containing fraudulent documents, including 19,888 counterfeit U.S. driver’s licenses.

The CBP noted at the time that “the majority of these shipments were arriving from China and Hong Kong” and were mostly intended for college-age students across various states.

The decision to suppress the intelligence report may have been driven by politics.

The intelligence community’s then-analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf indicated in a Jan. 6, 2021, report on a number of election security intelligence issues that “China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. These analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tended to disagree with the [Trump] administration’s policies, saying in effect, ‘I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.'”

In addition to possible evidence of a nationwide foreign interference plot, the Trump administration has apparently found evidence that voting machines still have significant vulnerabilities that could be exploited.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence report detailing these findings has been delayed for months, with some White House officials fearing it could undermine voter confidence, reported Reuters.

Blaze News has reached out to the White House for comment.

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​2020 election, Donald trump, Foreign interference, Fraud, Joe biden, Rigged, Stop the steal, Voter fraud, Politics, Kash patel, Markwayne mullin 

Every time tensions flare somewhere in the world, gasoline prices seem to jump overnight. Drivers expect it. The news blames geopolitics, oil traders blame uncertainty, and politicians blame each other. But here’s the question almost nobody is asking: If computers can raise prices within hours, why do they suddenly become so patient when it’s time to lower them?

Americans have lived with this frustration for decades. The price of crude oil climbs, and gas stations respond almost immediately. Crude oil falls sharply, and suddenly we’re told to be patient. Refiners need time. Distributors need time. Retailers need time. Somehow, that urgency only seems to work in one direction.

Regulators have already gone after algorithmic pricing in apartment rentals, and they’re looking at hotel rooms, airline tickets, and online retail.

Now a new California lawsuit and a federal push to investigate gasoline pricing suggest there may be another piece of the story that deserves far more attention. It isn’t simply about oil markets anymore. It’s about artificial intelligence, algorithms, and whether software designed to maximize profits is quietly changing how fuel prices are set across America.

If that sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, think again.

Kalibrating the market?

Kalibrate is a real pricing platform. The company markets its software as an advanced pricing solution that analyzes competitor prices, wholesale costs, local demand, traffic patterns, and countless other variables before recommending the “optimal” price at the pump. By the company’s own marketing, it serves many of America’s largest fuel retailers and convenience store chains. Retailers use it because it promises to increase profit margins while staying competitive.

There is nothing inherently illegal about any of this. Every major industry now runs on data analytics.

The concern begins when pricing software stops simply reacting to the market and starts shaping it.

On June 22, three California drivers filed a federal class-action lawsuit in Sacramento — and they didn’t just sue the software company. They sued the gas stations. Kalibrate is the lead defendant, but so are Marathon, BP, Circle K, 7-Eleven, Speedway, Walmart, Sam’s Club, and Albertsons. According to the complaint, Marathon alone runs more than 1,000 ARCO stations in California and has been letting Kalibrate set prices at them since 2020. Circle K, plaintiffs claim, has more than 400 stations on the software. Albertsons, they allege, has been using it since at least 2009.

The complaint alleges that Kalibrate allowed competing retailers to share competitively sensitive information and receive pricing recommendations that discouraged aggressive competition. It describes a “restoration” feature that plaintiffs say lets nearly all the stations in a market raise prices at the same time.

It also quotes Kalibrate’s marketing, which according to the complaint tells operators that even in the face of “falling oil prices … it’s critical to avoid a race to the bottom,” and warns that cutting your price to win customers “could be making a change that triggers a downward spiral.” The plaintiffs call the platform the “central nervous system for a conspiracy to extinguish retail price competition among gas stations.”

Price pumping

What does that cost you? Research cited in the complaint found that stations switching to this kind of software raise prices by about 6 cents a gallon on average — and by as much as 30 cents where most of the stations in an area are running it. Plaintiffs point to a real-world example too: They allege that when one California Albertsons turned Kalibrate on, its pump price climbed 3 to 4 cents within days. That sounds small. It isn’t. By the complaint’s math, a single penny on the statewide average drains $134 million a year from California drivers’ wallets.

Kalibrate says it disagrees with the allegations, calls its technology lawful, and intends to defend itself. The retail chains have not yet answered the complaint. No court has ruled on any of it.

But what happens when thousands of competing businesses begin relying on the same algorithm to determine prices?

Price fixing has been illegal in California for more than a century, and the plaintiffs are suing under that old law. What’s new is a statute that took effect on January 1 — AB 325, the Preventing Algorithmic Collusion Act — which says plainly that you cannot escape a price-fixing charge by routing the conspiracy through software. Using pricing software is still perfectly legal, but using it to coordinate with your competitors is not.

AB 325 makes it unlawful to use or distribute a “common pricing algorithm” — software that uses competitor data to recommend, align, or stabilize prices — as part of an agreement to restrain trade. Whatever you think of Sacramento, it closed that loophole first, and this case is the first real test of it.

The A-word

Washington is applying pressure of its own — though it is worth being precise about what kind.

On July 3, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission sent every state attorney general a letter urging them to investigate whether antitrust violations or price gouging are keeping gas prices artificially high. “Recent volatility in crude oil prices does not suspend either the antitrust laws or state consumer protection laws,” they wrote, “and it does not authorize companies to manipulate retail prices or collude with their competitors.” The letter followed President Trump’s complaint, posted to Truth Social on June 23, that falling crude prices weren’t reaching drivers.

But read that letter closely and you’ll notice something. It never mentions algorithms. Not once. The federal government is going after gas prices with the same tools it has always used, while the argument about the software is being made by three drivers and their lawyers in a Sacramento courtroom. Nobody in Washington has said the word yet. And whether any of these investigations turns up illegal conduct remains to be seen.

Anyone who has driven for more than a few years knows the pattern. Prices spike within days of a geopolitical event, then drift down at a painfully slow pace. Economists even have a name for it: the “rockets and feathers” effect, and they have studied it for decades. Researchers point to several reasons, including inventory replacement costs, consumer behavior, and local competition. None of those explanations necessarily involve illegal activity.

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Dirty work

But artificial intelligence introduces an entirely new variable.

Unlike traditional pricing models, today’s software can monitor competitors continuously, process enormous amounts of market data instantly, and recommend price changes faster than any human pricing manager ever could. If dozens or even hundreds of competing retailers rely on similar recommendations generated from comparable market data, the practical result may be less price competition — without anyone ever picking up the phone to coordinate prices.

That possibility isn’t unique to gasoline.

Regulators have already gone after algorithmic pricing in apartment rentals, and they’re looking at hotel rooms, airline tickets, and online retail. The Justice Department sued RealPage over the software landlords used to set rents and settled the case last November. The concern in every case is the same: that algorithms may accomplish indirectly what competitors have long been prohibited from doing directly.

It’s worth being precise about what that settlement did and didn’t say. RealPage paid no penalty, and the government made no finding that it broke the law. What the DOJ objected to was the use of nonpublic information from competing landlords — not the software itself. Using an algorithm to price your product isn’t illegal. Feeding it your competitors’ private numbers is where the trouble starts. That distinction is going to decide the gas station case too.

Technology moves faster than regulation.

Thin margins

This debate also exposes another misconception. When Americans get angry about gas prices, they aim that anger at the oil companies. In reality, what you pay at the pump includes crude oil costs, refining expenses, transportation, taxes, distribution, and retail pricing. Gas stations generally operate on thin per-gallon margins — the National Association of Convenience Stores puts the net at roughly a dime a gallon once credit card fees and operating costs come out — while state taxes and regulatory costs can dramatically affect what you pay locally, particularly in a state like California.

If gasoline prices are rising because of global supply disruptions, consumers may not like it, but they can understand it. Markets move. Wars affect energy. Hurricanes interrupt refining.

But if pricing software is reducing competition by encouraging retailers to move together instead of competing aggressively for customers, consumers deserve answers.

Artificial intelligence is quietly becoming the invisible middleman in countless financial decisions Americans make every day — insurance rates, airline tickets, hotel rooms, online prices, and now what you pay every time you pull up to the pump.

Most consumers never know an algorithm was involved; they simply assume that’s what the market decided.

Algorithms don’t care whether you’re commuting to work, driving your kids to school, or trying to keep your small business afloat. They don’t understand household budgets or family vacations. They optimize. That’s what they were built to do.

The question was never whether artificial intelligence can set prices more efficiently. It’s whether we’ve quietly allowed machines to redefine what competition means.

Because if software can determine the price of something as essential as gasoline today, what will it be deciding tomorrow?

​California law, License plate cameras, Price gouging, Retailers, Artificial intelligence, Ai, Gas prices, Price fixing, Kalibrate, Automotive