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The case against former FBI Director James Comey got a boost in recently released documents that showed how he allegedly planted narratives to push the Russian collusion story.

Current FBI Director Kash Patel released internal memos from the bureau that revealed interviews with Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman where he admitted to routinely speaking on Comey’s behalf to Michael Schmidt.

‘They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody’s ever imagined, even in other countries.’

Schmidt is a journalist who worked on Russian collusion stories at the New York Times and was among those who received a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the story.

Richman told the FBI that the goal of communicating with Schmidt was “to correct stories critical of Comey, the FBI, and to shape future press coverage.”

The memos were a part of the FBI’s investigation into leaked classified information.

Richman admitted to having access to classified information from Comey but said he did not believe he passed on any classified information to reporters. However, he said he could only make the denial “with a discount.”

“Richman was pretty sure he did not confirm the Classified Information,” one FBI memo said. “However, Richman told the interviewing agents he was sure ‘with a discount’ that he did not tell Schmidt about the Classified Information.”

Richman was quoted in articles about Russian collusion written by Schmidt, such as the following from an April 2017 Times story: “Jim sees his role as apolitical and independent. The FBI director, even as he reports to the attorney general, often has to stand apart from his boss.”

The FBI later decided against criminal charges against Comey, his associates, or Adam Schiff, who has since become a U.S. senator representing California. Schiff is also accused of leaking classified intelligence to smear Trump.

RELATED: Trump hints at ARRESTING Obama — but will he?

The Trump administration has been seeking to uncover the origins of the Russia collusion story, suspecting that the investigation was politically motivated to damage President Donald Trump. Trump even suggested that President Barack Obama was guilty of “treason” for spearheading it.

“It’s there; he’s guilty. This was treason,” Trump said in July.

“They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody’s ever imagined, even in other countries,” he continued.

Former President Barack Obama responded to the accusations and denied them in a rare statement.

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” a spokesperson for Obama said. “But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”

Comey, Schmidt, and Richman did not respond immediately to a request for comment from Just the News.

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Vance Boelter was a Christian preacher, father of five, and a former business adviser to two Democrat governors — and he’s now been accused of one of the most shocking killings in Minnesota history.

One Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband were shot dead, while another lawmaker and his wife were seriously injured.

And the alleged gunman’s story isn’t making total sense, so Blaze News investigative journalist Joe Hanneman is doing his best to change that.

“We’re just starting to get into some of the nitty-gritty details,” Hanneman tells BlazeTV host Jill Savage and investigative journalist Steve Baker on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

The suspect has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

“I spent about six weeks digging into his background, because this story, from the beginning, just simply did not make sense. This was not a career criminal. This was not a criminal at all,” Hanneman says.

“His entire life up until about the middle of May stands at great odds to what happened on June 14. And so I figured there just has to be a story behind that, something that would give us some clues,” he continues.

Hanneman then made contact with Boelter in the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, Minnesota, through the jail’s messaging system.

“He and I spent the weekend texting back and forth, probably, I mean hundreds of texts. And he’s starting to unroll what he says is his story and the reason that he was at those houses that night, which, again, has another kind of bizarre twist to it — that he did not mean to shoot anyone. He didn’t plan to shoot anyone,” Hanneman explains.

“He was, he claims, going to make citizen arrests, and this was related to the clot shot. He was doing investigations, he said, for two years on the COVID-19 so-called vaccine and the deaths that it has caused,” he continues.

This is why Boelter claims he began working in the funeral industry.

“He says now that the reason for that is he was investigating these, what they call ‘sudden and unexpected.’ And that obviously, that’s been a big issue since the COVID-19 scamdemic came up,” Hanneman explains.

“So,” he adds, “I’m trying to peel this back with him. Slowly but surely, in 200 characters at a time on a text. So as long as he keeps talking, I hope to keep learning from him.”

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No matter what stage he’s standing on, Charlie Kirk is a master at shredding leftist nonsense. Whether he’s rocking a MAGA T-shirt while schooling woke American college kids at a campus booth or suited up and wiping the floor with haughty British university elites, he’s got a knack for making progressives squirm with his quick-witted takedowns.

But there’s something about watching Charlie mop up the uppity Oxford crowd that makes his rhetorical demolitions perhaps even more entertaining.

‘My country, America, became as great as it is because of what we inherited from you — from Britain.’

On May 20, the Turning Point USA founder was invited to participate in a formal debate with the Oxford Union, a prestigious debating society that’s been operating for over 200 years. Members, donning dressy evening attire, engage in spirited parliamentary-style debates and host prominent figures from politics, academia, and media to speak or argue on pressing global issues.

Kirk’s challenge that night? Oppose the motion: “This house believes Trump has gone too far.”

RELATED: Charlie Kirk spoofed by ‘South Park’ as America’s ‘master debater’ who totally owns liberals

– YouTube

Over the course of three speeches, Charlie heard every argument in the liberal playbook.

Oxford Union librarian Anya Trofimova, who opened the debate, argued that President Trump “tanked the American economy,” “is gutting the global economy,” “ruined NATO,” “slashed global aid,” “all but abolished the rule of law,” “deported American citizens to camps without fair trial,” adopted a budget that “will deny 14 million American citizens health care,” has insisted on “relegating women to second-class citizens,” expressed intentions to “end free speech,” is currently “bankrolling Israel’s Gaza genocide,” and has “cozied up to Putin while throwing Ukraine under the bus.”

Serene Singh, comparing Trump to an angry Donald Duck, accused him of sowing “fear and resentment” among Americans and American allies, using “fake fires” as a distraction to sidestep “real problems” like health care and women’s safety, and deflecting accountability for crises like gun violence and press freedom erosion.

Laura Smith, who closed the proposition, condemned Trump for pushing xenophobic immigration policies that defy Supreme Court rulings, echoing Andrew Jackson’s tactics to “control the narrative” and undermine democracy.

All three women recycled stale progressive narratives, accusing Trump of undermining democracy with authoritarian power-grabs, tanking the economy with reckless policies, and enabling violence against Palestinians through destructive foreign policy.

RELATED: Charlie Kirk urges Trump to reconsider reclassifying marijuana: ‘Protect public spaces for kids’

Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

After British-Nigerian political strategist Daniel Ogoloma kicked off the opposition’s counterpunch, it was Charlie’s turn with the microphone.

First he pointed directly at Trofimova and said, “I’ll give you £1,000 right now if you could tell me the U.S. citizen that was deported under Donald Trump. You said that twice.” When she couldn’t answer, he offered the same deal to the crowd.

A brave hand was raised and a person offered a name, but Kirk immediately fired back, “Wrong! Not a U.S. citizen. Citizen of El Salvador.”

When not a single person could name a U.S. citizen deported under Donald Trump, Kirk turned back to Trofimova and said, “That was a lie. You should know better than that. You go to Oxford.”

After debunking other ridiculous claims about Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as narratives surrounding January 6, the Canadian border, and the genocide aimed at white South Africans, Kirk launched into an epic speech on why Britons should be cheering for Donald Trump.

“Has Donald Trump gone too far? … The truth is this: If you dislike the West and if you hate the West’s values, if you think the West is evil fundamentally and deserves to be destroyed, then anything Donald Trump does, basically, short of surrender will be too far for you,” he began, arguing that the diametric differences between America’s and Britain’s ideas of leadership stem from the fact that “Britain has changed.”

“From my perspective, Britain is one of the greatest countries in the history of the world. … My country, America, became great, as it is, because of what we inherited from you — from Britain. When I hear the slogan, ‘Make America Great Again,’ I’m also hearing, ‘Return America to its British roots,”’ said Kirk.

He condemned Great Britain for arresting citizens for posting “offensive” messages on social media, praying silently near abortion clinics, prioritizing foreigners over citizens and Muslims over Christians, and implementing economically catastrophic green energy policies.

“I don’t want America to go the way of Britain. I want us to remain free. I want us to remain rich and innovative. I want us to remain Christian. I don’t want Americans to be replaced, but forget what I want. This is what the American people want, and in a democracy, the people are supposed to get what they want,” Kirk continued.

“That’s where Donald Trump comes in.”

‘If you want a Britain that you could be proud of, you should all be wearing MAGA hats and cheering Donald Trump.’

“Almost alone, Donald Trump has changed the course of history. He’s destroyed the assumption that the left’s victory was inevitable. … America was treated as a pile of wealth for the rest of the planet to plunder at will. Now that is all stopping,” he argued.

He then went on to lambast the cancer that is DEI, calling it “tyranny” that spits in the face of America’s Constitution, which protects against racial discrimination.

“People were denied jobs and denied promotions. Kids were shut out of universities based on the color of their skin rather than their ability. Companies were denied federal contracts because their owners didn’t look a certain way. People who didn’t discriminate enough in hiring could be sued by the government,” Kirk recounted.

“Every company in America lived in fear of their government deciding to target them for offenses against DEI. Trump has ordered DEI to be torn down.”

Kirk concluded his speech by addressing the “toxic social contagion of transgenderism.”

“In Joe Biden’s America, public schools and medical organizations were co-opted into endorsing this insanity. They urged children just 10 years old or younger to take barely tested hormones and surgically alter their bodies. In some of America’s liberal states, a parent who objects to their child’s transition can lose custody. … President Trump has taken steps to stop promoting this lunacy.”

He ended with the following blunt remark: “If you are honest with yourself, if you want a Great Britain again, not a mediocre Britain, if you want a Britain that you could be proud of, you should all be wearing MAGA hats and cheering Donald Trump.”

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Servando Gomez Martinez was so disillusioned about his low pay as a school teacher in Michoacan that he apparently founded the Knights Templar drug cartel and orchestrated human sacrifices to instill fear in his followers.

Martinez, whose nickname was “La Tuta,” was among 26 cartel figures whom the Mexican government agreed to transfer to U.S. law enforcement for prosecution this week.

‘Under this Department of Justice, they will face severe consequences for their crimes against this country.’

The agreement is a part of President Donald Trump’s promise to dismantle Mexican drug cartels in order to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S.

“These 26 men have all played a role in bringing violence and drugs to American shores — under this Department of Justice, they will face severe consequences for their crimes against this country,” reads a statement from Attorney General Pam Bondi. “We are grateful to Mexico’s National Security team for their collaboration in this matter.”

Other figures who were transferred include those allegedly related to the Sinaloa cartel, the Los Zetas cartel, Jalisco New Generation, and the Guadalajara cartel. Another one of the defendants is accused of killing a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy in 2008.

In order to secure their transfer, the U.S. agreed not to seek the death penalty against the alleged vicious cartel members. Mexico officially banned capital punishment in 2005.

RELATED: Trump administration mocks Mexicans rioting over American citizens immigrating to Mexico City

The transfer is the second group Mexico has handed over to the U.S. this year.

Gomez Martinez was arrested in 2015 and convicted four years later for running the drug-trafficking organization. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison.

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The state of Arkansas won a court victory to reinstate a ban on transgender medical interventions for minors that was passed in 2021.

The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled 8-2 to overturn a lower court ruling and said the ban was not unconstitutional. The court cited a Supreme Court ruling that upheld a similar ban in Tennessee.

‘This is not medicine; this affirmation is not science. We are mutilating kids.’

However, the appeals ruling went further than the Supreme Court decision and said that the transgender ban did not violate the parents’ 14th Amendment rights to due process.

“This court finds no such right in this Nation’s history and tradition,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Duane Benton in reference to the contested parental right to procure transgender medical treatment for children.

U.S. Circuit Judge Jane Kelly wrote in her dissent that there was a “startling lack of evidence connecting Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care with its purported goal of protecting children.”

“I can’t tell you how many times over the last four years people have asked me, ‘When is this gonna happen? We’ve got to stop this castration, chemically, surgically, of children.’ They need to be protected. And we’ve waited patiently, and today’s a good day,” said state Rep. Robin Lundstrum, a Republican who sponsored the bill.

The Arkansas legislature voted to override a veto from then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is also a Republican, in order to pass the ban. The law was the first of its kind, but many other states have since passed similar bans on transgender medical interventions.

RELATED: USA Today obliterated online over bizarre claim about transgender athletes

ACLU executive director Holly Dickson released a statement excoriating the ruling.

“This is a tragically unjust result for transgender Arkansans, their doctors, and their families,” Dickson said.

“The state had every opportunity and failed at every turn to prove that this law helps children; in fact, this is a dangerous law that harms children,” she added. “The law has already had a profound impact on families across Arkansas who all deserve a fundamental right to do what is best for their children.”

State Sen. Alan Clark (R) disagreed.

“This is not medicine; this affirmation is not science. We are mutilating kids,” he said.

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​Arkansas ban on transgender, Transgender ban, Safe act, Transgender surgeries minors, Politics 

A recent New York Times expose reveals photographs and letters from inside Jeffrey Epstein’s former New York City residence — and they’re nothing short of disturbing.

“Dozens of framed prosthetic eyeballs lined the entryway. A sculpture of a woman wearing a bridal gown and clutching a rope was suspended in a central atrium.”

“And the director Woody Allen described how the dinners reminded him of Dracula’s castle, ‘where Lugosi has three young female vampires who service the place,'” the article reads.

In the office, according to the New York Times, Epstein had a green first edition of “Lolita” on display — a novel that features a grown man developing a sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl before repeatedly raping her.

Epstein’s private jet had been nicknamed the Lolita Express by locals on Epstein Island who repeatedly saw him bringing what appeared to be underage girls back to the island.

The massage room reportedly featured paintings of naked women, a large silver ball and chain, and shelves shocked with lubricant. Epstein would regularly bring teenage girls to this room to massage him while he was naked.

“Sometimes he masturbated in front of them, according to court records and interviews with victims. Sometimes he raped or assaulted them,” the New York Times says.

“The crimes that this man committed against young girls are heinous. And this New York Times expose, listen. I’m the first person to criticize the New York Times for being biased, for being propagandists, for being outright liars, for vilifying not only their political opponents but actually laundering the lies created by the deep state in order to take out Donald Trump,” BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler says.

“But this expose gives us, in my opinion, a very chilling reminder of just how demented Jeffrey Epstein was. You walk into his Manhattan townhome, and this stuff is demonic. And it’s an unsettling reminder of the evil that Epstein perpetrated,” she continues.

“This is why,” she adds, “we react so angrily when things about Jeffrey Epstein are hidden from us. Because as much as our culture has gone off the rails, the one thing that almost every person in the United States of America agrees on is that crimes against children are evil.”

Want more from Liz Wheeler?

To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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The Polk County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office said deputies were dispatched to the Seven Star store at 6940 Old Highway 37 in Bradley regarding a physical attack against a store employee on the evening of Aug. 3.

RELATED: Violent suspect actually bites K-9’s ear amid arrest, Florida sheriff says: ‘You can’t make this stuff up’

Image source: Polk County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office

Authorities said first responders found the adult male victim “bleeding profusely” above his right eye — an injury that required 10 stitches and apparently resulted in a concussion.

‘You ain’t gonna do nothin’ to me, boy!’

An investigation revealed that a suspect entered the store along with two other men and accused the victim of “staring at him,” officials said.

The victim told the suspect to get his items and leave, officials said.

As you might guess, the suspect apparently didn’t take too kindly to the directive.

Authorities said the victim and suspect continued to “loudly” exchange words, after which the suspect “threw a full, unopened, plastic 2-liter [bottle] of Orange Crush at the victim’s head.”

The victim fell unconscious, officials said, and the suspect and his friends left the store.

In the below video of the attack, the suspect appears to state, “You ain’t gonna do nothin’ to me, boy!” after knocking the store employee to the floor.

RELATED: Thug with long rap sheet attacks 64-year-old ex-girlfriend in convenience store; when good Samaritan tries to intervene, attacker beats him unconscious: Authorities

Detectives identified the suspect as 30-year old Terry Lamar Johnson Jr. of Mulberry, officials said, adding that an arrest warrant was obtained for Johnson with a charge of felony battery causing great bodily harm.

The sheriff’s office on Wednesday afternoon told Blaze News that Johnson hasn’t been arrested in connection with the incident — but that he was in jail in May after a charge of possession of marijuana and driving with a suspended or revoked license.

The sheriff’s office also told Blaze News that Johnson previously has been charged with grand theft, aggravated assault, battery, resisting, and “numerous” weapons violations.

Officials said those who know where Johnson is should call the sheriff’s office at 863-297-1100. Those who wish to remain anonymous and become eligible for a reward should contact Heartland Crime Stoppers in one of four ways, officials added:

Call 1-888-400 TIPS (8477) Heartland Crime Stoppers Florida;Dial **TIPS from your cell phone;Visit http://heartlandcrimestoppers.com and click on “Submit A Tip”;Download the free “P3tips” app on your smartphone or tablet.

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​Physical attack, Polk county sheriff’s office, Convenience store worker, Florida, Bradley, Staring, Felony battery causing great bodily harm, Warrant, Terry lamar johnson, Jr., Repeat offender, Crime 

UFC President Dana White revealed that President Donald Trump gave a special assignment to a member of his inner circle for the proposed UFC event at the White House.

White appeared on “CBS Mornings” on Tuesday to discuss a new merger with Paramount, parent company of CBS, when he was asked about a possible UFC event on White House grounds.

The POTUS and UFC reportedly agreed in early July to a future event on federal property, but now that the UFC will simulcast some of its broadcasts on live television, the hosts at CBS were keen to find out if the White House event was officially on the books.

‘You have to tune in. It’s a destination.’

“It is definitely going to happen,” White told hosts, Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil, and Nate Burleson.

After the UFC president expressed how proud he was of his company’s new streaming deal, one of the hosts prompted him with rumors that a Trump confidant had been assigned to oversee the event.

“Word on the street is that Ivanka Trump is involved in this, is that true?” King asked.

White did not beat around the bush.

RELATED: MMA star’s miracle faith awakening: Ben Askren finds Christ after defying death by surviving double lung transplant

“When [Trump] called me and asked me to do it, he said, ‘I want Ivanka in the middle of this,'” White revealed.

The promoter added, “So Ivanka reached out to me, and her and I started talking about the possibilities. Where it would be, and I put together all the renderings.”

White said he had plans to show the president and Ivanka Trump all of the details when he meets with them at the end of August.

The 43-year-old first daughter may seem like an obscure choice to spearhead the event, but Ivanka has publicly shown that her family is deeply into martial arts. Boasting about the benefits jujitsu has provided her family, Ivanka even appeared in an ad for a martial arts gym in Miami Beach, Florida, in March.

While it remains unclear whether or not the event will air on CBS or on Paramount’s streaming service Paramount+, White said it certainly sounded good to have the UFC live on CBS from the White House on the 250th birthday of the United States.

RELATED: One company may just have killed pay-per-view forever

President Donald Trump watches the Ultimate Fighting Championship fight at the Kaseya Center on April 12, 2025, in Miami, Florida. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The recent $7.7 billion deal between the UFC and Paramount is coupled with a $1.6 billion deal between ESPN and the WWE; the UFC and WWE are both operated by TKO Group Holdings.

Both agreements move away from pay-per-view models and will give streaming app customers access to the marquee events, with some of those events broadcasted on traditional cable channels like CBS and ESPN.

“If you see where we started and where we came from, to be sitting here today having this conversation with you is one of the massive major milestones in my career and in the history of the sport,” White told the CBS hosts.

Despite these moves, White said that he believes pay-per-view is still “very much alive.”

“With these streaming services, it absolutely makes sense. … Live sports, you have to watch live. You have to tune in. It’s a destination,” White concluded.

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After meeting on Wednesday with Nigel Farage, the head of the Reform U.K. party that is now leading in the polls, Vice President JD Vance met with American troops at Royal Air Force Fairford in Gloucestershire, England.

A source familiar with the vice president’s visit noted to Blaze News that “the U.S. Air Force operates RAF Fairford, and it is the USAF’s only forward operating location in Europe. As such, it’s our only European airfield used specifically for heavy bombers.”

‘Every time a great victory is won … it is almost always the Brits and the Americans that do it together.’

Vance, speaking with a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft parked behind him, emphasized in a brief speech his admiration for the 501st Combat Support Wing “Pathfinders” and the 99th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron “Red Dragons” as well as the continued importance of America’s relationship with Great Britain.

“We’ve got a beautiful country here,” the vice president said. “We’ve got a beautiful alliance.”

“For over 100 years, we have worked with our friends from the United Kingdom to achieve great victories,” Vance said. “And if you look at the long sweep of history, every time something big happens for the world, every time a great victory is won for freedom and for peace and for prosperity, it is almost always the Brits and the Americans that do it together — and we win every single time we go to war together. You guys know that as well as anybody.”

Vance, who once quipped in a National Conservatism Conference speech that the U.K. might become the “first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon,” has in recent months raised concerns about Britain forsaking its heritage and common ground with America.

On this trip, however, Vance has so far erred on the side of positivity, playing up the unique relationship between the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

RELATED: Liberals freaked out over Vance’s Munich speech. Just wait till they read the State Department’s Substack.

Kin Cheung – Pool/Getty Images

Last week, Vance went carp fishing with British foreign minister David Lammy — an outing that might end up costing Lammy thousands of dollars, as he lacked a fishing rod license, which is apparently required of Britons. The BBC noted it was unclear if Vance bothered with purchasing the right to cast a line.

— (@)

Vance’s engagements with Lammy appeared fairly chummy, which might come naturally on account of their allegedly similar backgrounds.

‘I just don’t want other countries to follow us on what I think was a very dark path under the Biden administration.’

The foreign minister claimed he cried when reading Vance’s memoir and likened himself to the vice president in a recent Guardian interview, noting, “We are not just working-class politicians, but people with dysfunctional childhoods.”

After their fishing excursion, the vice president kept the tone relatively light, saying, “The one strain on the special relationship is that all of my kids caught fish, but the foreign secretary did not.”

With a mind to maintain common ground and common cause with the U.K., Vance did, however, criticize Britain’s plan to recognize the state of Palestine and raised concerns that England is now aping the censorial practices embraced by the Biden administration.

“The entire collective West — our transatlantic relationship, our NATO allies, certainly the United States under the Biden administration — got a little too comfortable with censoring rather than engaging with a diverse range of opinions,” Vance said. “I just don’t want other countries to follow us on what I think was a very dark path under the Biden administration.”

Vance told the troops on Wednesday, “Over the past couple days, I’ve met with a number of leaders across the U.K. — across political parties, across the generations. That’s one of the great things about the U.K.’s special relationship with the United States. It cuts across political alliances. It cuts across political parties. It cuts across generations because we’ve been working together for literally centuries.”

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​Jd vance, Vance, England, Uk, Speech, Censorship, Special relationship, Politics, Atlantic, United kingdom, Lammy 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia tossed out the February order of a Biden-appointed district judge on Wednesday and delivered the Trump administration a big win.

How it started

President Donald Trump ordered a pause in foreign aid on his first day back in office, eliciting backlash from beneficiaries abroad and vested interests at home.

Trump, convinced that the U.S. “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” ordered a 90-day pause in foreign aid, affording his administration an opportunity to review relevant programs “for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy.”

‘The grantees failed to show they are likely to succeed on the merits.’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio subsequently suspended new funding obligations for the State Department; terminated thousands of grant awards; and shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Grantees of foreign-assistance funds promptly sued to get their hands on nearly $4 billion for global health programs and over $6 billion for AIDS programs that had been appropriated by Congress to be disbursed by the State Department and USAID.

Foreign-born U.S. District Judge Amir Ali helped them in February to keep the gravy train moving.

Ali, a Biden appointee, issued a universal injunction — the kind the U.S. Supreme Court determined on June 27 “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts” — that barred the Trump administration from “suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing the obligation or disbursement of appropriated foreign-assistance funds in connection with any contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, loans, or other federal foreign assistance award that was in existence as of January 19, 2025.”

How it’s going

In a 2-1 decision on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia did what the Supreme Court refused to do in March: vacate Ali’s order.

RELATED: ‘A more direct solution’: State Department rolls out key strategy to prevent foreigners from overstaying their welcome

The majority on the panel — comprising a George H.W. Bush appointee and a Trump appointee — concluded that “the district court abused its discretion in granting a preliminary injunction because the grantees failed to show they are likely to succeed on the merits.”

The majority also determined that “the grantees lack a cause of action to bring their freestanding constitutional claim” and “have no cause of action to undergird their [Administrative Procedure Act] contrary-to-law claim.”

‘We will continue to successfully protect core Presidential authorities from judicial overreach.’

In her dissenting opinion, Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee and daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, accused her colleagues of reframing the case to help the government.

“The majority concludes that the grantees lack a constitutional cause of action — an issue that the government did not mention in its opening brief and did not fully develop even in its reply brief,” wrote Pan.

The Biden-appointed judge wrote that the government instead argued that the grantees lack a statutory cause of action to force President Donald Trump to obligate the funds in question.

Pan also suggested that the majority opinion “misconstrues the separation-of-powers claim brought by the grantees, misapplies precedent, and allows Executive Branch officials to evade judicial review of constitutionally impermissible actions.”

Blaze News has reached out to the State Department for comment.

Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the victory, noting, “In a 2-1 ruling, the DC Circuit lifted an injunction ordering President Trump to spend hard-earned taxpayer dollars on wasteful foreign aid projects. We will continue to successfully protect core Presidential authorities from judicial overreach.”

“Today’s decision is a significant setback for the rule of law and risks further erosion of basic separation-of-powers principles,” stated Lauren Bateman, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group who represented some of the grantees. “We will seek further review from the court, and our lawsuit will continue regardless as we seek permanent relief from the administration’s unlawful termination of the vast majority of foreign assistance.”

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Tennis star Emma Raducanu has fans split on whether she was justified in asking match officials to take action against a baby during the Cincinnati Open.

World No. 39 Raducanu was in tough competition on Monday when she drew No. 1 player Aryna Sabalenka in the Round of 32. In a very close match, Raducanu was behind by just one game in the third set, but before serving, the British player paused and stepped away from the court to make a complaint to the umpire.

‘I can call in, but we have to continue for the moment.’

As a baby is heard crying in the distance, Raducanu looked visibly bothered before motioning to the sidelines and saying, “It’s been like 10 minutes,” referring to the baby in the stands.

The umpire responded to the 22-year-old, bluntly saying, “It’s a child. Do you want me to send the child out of the stadium?”

Shockingly, a group of fans shouted “yes” as Raducanu gestured in agreement with the crowd.

The umpire quickly revealed she would take action.

RELATED: Tennis player cries on the court, then hides after recognizing ‘fixated’ fan who gave her a note the day before

“I can call in, but we have to continue for the moment,” the umpire explained.

The crowd applauded as Raducanu returned to position to serve. Although Sabalenka botched the next point, the top women’s player went on to win the match. She eventually fell to No. 12-ranked American Amanda Anisimova in the semifinals.

Talksport pundit Simon Jordan agreed with Raducanu and took issue with the idea of not banning children from sporting events.

“If they’ve got a baby inside an auditorium: A, I don’t think it’s particularly responsible parenting. And B, it’s not reflective of the environment a child should probably be in!” Jordan claimed, per the Mirror. “And C, you’ve then got the distraction that tennis player, or anyone playing an individual sport that requires a degree of concentration, is going to be affected by.”

RELATED: ‘Showering is not an entitlement’: Tennis anti-doping unit announces players must shower ‘in full view’ of officials

Aryna Sabalenka reacts to defeating Emma Raducanu of Great Britain in the third round on Day 5 of the Cincinnati Open at Lindner Family Tennis Center on August 11, 2025 in Mason, Ohio. Photo by Robert Prange/Getty Images

While many fans agreed that players need silence, others compared the scenario to other sports — such as boxing or darts — where the players do not have a choice.

“Meanwhile players in football, cricket, basketball etc.. playing with 200 freaking decibels of loud noises from tens of thousands in crowd,” a fan said in reaction to the video on X.

“Not like she’s playing chess,” another viewer wrote.

Multiple viewers also joked about the idea that while Raducanu was bothered by the baby’s cries, she did not seem to take issue with Sabalenka’s loud grunts when she hits the ball.

Interestingly, despite having issues with the chatty infant, Raducanu also received a lecture from the umpire in the same match for approaching her coach to get direction.

The umpire made it clear that the coach had to remain in his seat and that she could not approach him, but Raducanu said it was too hard to hear because of the arena’s music.

“Then he needs to speak louder,” the umpire explained.

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On Monday, Texas Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) announced that the Texas Dept. of Public Safety had set up a dedicated tip line for information on the whereabouts of the runaway Democrat House members.

According to Burrows, DPS had “special agents” deployed in every region of Texas and dozens of officers deputized by the House staking out lawmakers’ homes.

The agents were knocking on doors and making repeated phone calls to force a quorum.

And it appears to have worked.

Texas House Democrats have reportedly confirmed that they will be returning to their state after attempting to halt legislative proceedings.

News of their cowardly return to the state came on the day that Texas Senate Republicans were able to get the new congressional maps approved. Those new maps now must be passed in the House before Gov. Greg Abbott (R) can sign them into law.

BlazeTV Host Sara Gonzales believes there should be grave consequences.

“This has to end with these people being held fully accountable for their actions, because this can never happen again. Vacate the seats. Texas Supreme Court. Let’s get people in there who actually care about their duty to their constituents. and let’s keep the ball rolling because we’ve got stuff that actually needs addressing,” she says.

“Hello property tax relief, I’d love it if you guys could address that. You guys are killing us, crippling us. Nobody ever truly owns their home. That’s communism,” she continues.

“So,” she adds, “buckle up, guys, because there’s a lot of work that remains to be done.”

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Texas House Democrats appear desperate to spin their imminent return to the Lone Star State as a victory march. It’s clear, however, that their weeks-long effort to thwart the will of the people and to prevent Republicans from passing new congressional lines was in vain.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) stressed to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on Wednesday that Republicans will ultimately prevail.

— (@)

Quick background

Texas Democrats fled to Illinois and other blue states earlier this month to block the passage of a redistricting plan that would help the GOP gain five more congressional pickup opportunities ahead of the midterm elections.

Following the Democrat lawmakers’ departure, Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) signed arrest warrants for the absentee legislators, Abbott ordered their arrests by the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the FBI agreed to collaborate on the hunt.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Ken Paxton opened investigations into a George Soros-funded political action committee and a group organized by failed gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, which are both suspected of helping fund the Democrats’ abrupt exit.

Paxton also readied a court request to remove the absentee legislators from office.

In the face of significant heat from Texas and the prospect of a chilly winter in exile, the absentee legislators have reportedly decided to return.

Trying to save face, Texas House Democrats said in a release that they have “killed this corrupt special session on behalf of Texas families — exactly what we said we’d do when we left the state.”

Gov. Abbott announced on Tuesday, however, that he will immediately call another special session to get the matter resolved — much simpler after the Texas Senate voted 19-2 on Tuesday to pass the new congressional lines.

‘They’re going to pass’

Abbott suggested to Beck that Democrats realized after his Tuesday announcement of another special session that “they were going to have to take up permanent residency in Illinois or California or wherever.”

‘There’s so many things wrong with that.’

“So the word on the street and the word in the news is that they are coming back, and they will be part of the special session that begins either on Friday of this week or Saturday of this week,” said the governor. “But again, we’ll see when and if they show up.”

Abbott noted that regardless of whether the Democratic legislators show up to work, “these congressional district maps — they’re going to pass as well as the other items on the agenda. They are going to pass.”

RELATED: The cold civil war is real — and only one side is fighting to win

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

When asked about whether Republicans have enough votes in the state House to pass the maps, the governor noted that all that is needed is a majority, and the GOP controls nearly two-thirds of the chamber.

Newsom finger-waves at a gunfight

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) indirectly threatened Abbott in a Monday letter to President Donald Trump, noting that if Texas Republicans do not surrender on this issue, he “will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states.”

— (@)

When asked to respond to Newsom, Abbott said, “Oh, my God,” then broke out into laughter.

RELATED: Democrats ‘defend democracy’ by ditching it

Photo (left): Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images; Photo (right): Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

“There’s so many things wrong with that,” said the governor. “In Texas, for us to redraw congressional lines and make sure that people in Texas are going to have the ability to vote for the Republican candidate of their choice in these congressional seats, all it requires is for the governor to call a special session on it and for a majority of the Texas House and Senate to vote on it.”

Abbott noted that for redistricting California, Democrats must alternatively “go through this complex constitutional process.”

In addition to suggesting Newsom’s threat is easier said than done, Abbott noted it’s virtually meaningless given how gerrymandered California — like Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts — is in the first place.

“[Newsom] is kind of like someone who shows up to a gunfight but forgot to bring the bullets because he doesn’t have any bullets to shoot in this fight,” said Abbott. “Whereas Texas has plenty of bullets to shoot — to make sure that we will maintain a congressional district in Texas that’s going to be more Republican, more representative of the values and votes in our state.”

— (@)

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The FDA has lifted a pause on administering vaccines for the chikungunya virus, which is a mosquito-borne illness currently spreading from China.

lxchiq is a single-dose vaccine and was approved for at-risk adults 18 and up in 2023. However, administrations of the shot to adults ages 60 and older were paused earlier this year after reports of 17 side effects following vaccination — including two deaths.

“Now they’ve decided that they’re just going to go ahead and push it forward,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says, disturbed.

Unlike COVID, the virus isn’t transmitted from person to person. However, like COVID, people are now being quarantined in China.

“I’m like, ‘Oh boy, that feels eerily familiar,’” Gonzales says.

Matt Kibbe of “Kibbe on Liberty” couldn’t agree more.

“Even if we expose all the bad actors of that time, we need to understand that that infrastructure is still in place and they’re itching for a new crisis because that’s what they feed on. They feed on the power of that,” Kibbe says.

“The difference, I think, is that there’s plenty of us, and I think a lot of Americans have come along with us early skeptics of this nonsense. We’re not going to buy it the second time, and they’re going to have to really scare the crap out of us if they want us to fall in line again,” he continues.

“You have to wonder how much of this is still the deep-staters,” Gonzales agrees, “who, as you said, Matt Kibbe, as you said, they just want a big fearmongering epidemic so that they can grab more control. They’re still there.”

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Every parent braces for certain awkward but necessary conversations. The “birds and the bees” talk has long been the gold standard — a dreaded rite of passage. You put it off, swallow hard, and finally sit down to answer your kid’s questions without squirming too much. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also sacred. That talk belongs to parents — not to culture, not to corporations, and certainly not to a marketing executive at Ulta Beauty.

But thanks to Ulta, I had a different conversation recently — one I never saw coming, and definitely not before we’d covered the birds and the bees.

It’s time to remind corporations: You may sell products, but you don’t get to sell souls — especially not our children’s.

I was watching news coverage of Ulta’s latest ad campaign when my preteen daughter walked into the room. She’s just developing an interest in makeup and skin care, so she stopped to watch. Excited interest turned to confusion.

“Daddy,” she asked, “why is that man in a dress?”

That moment was not in my parenting playbook. It didn’t come from a question at church, a talk with her mom, or an overheard comment from an older sibling. It came from a cosmetics company that used to focus on blush and lip gloss but now pushes gender ideology.

What made it worse was her age. My daughter is 10 — right on the edge of girlhood and young womanhood. As I look forward to teaching my sons to shave one day, my wife cherishes the bond of teaching our daughter to apply a little makeup like Mommy: a touch of lip gloss, a dab of blush. It’s about dignity, not performance. Self-care, not spectacle. Those moments have been quiet lessons in self-respect.

Then Ulta barged in with a campaign that turned that rite of passage into a political statement. The timing, the tone, and the topic were no longer mine to decide. That’s the heart of the issue.

The left mocks parents who warn they’re “coming for our kids.” But they’ve already arrived — and they’re bypassing us entirely.

Ulta is just the latest brand to treat womanhood as a marketing gimmick. The company has joined Bud Light, Target, and far too many others in pushing gender ideology not just as an option but as a virtue to be celebrated. Now it’s stunning and brave for a man to dress as a woman to sell eyeliner to our daughters.

For generations, makeup helped women embrace femininity, express beauty, and boost confidence. Ulta didn’t just hijack that tradition — it erased it. The company replaced women with men in costumes, turning the beauty aisle into a battleground for ideological performance art.

Worse, Ulta disrupted the slow, intentional process parents follow to teach their daughters about dignity, modesty, and authentic femininity. Being a woman is not a costume or an act — it’s inherent, worthy, and profoundly meaningful.

In our home, makeup is a subtle tool, not a mask. It’s meant to refine, not transform. I want my daughter to understand that true beauty starts within and that femininity is strong, graceful, and rooted in truth.

This isn’t about hating anyone or debating gender theory. It’s about parental autonomy — our God-given, biologically affirmed, and constitutionally protected right to decide when and how our children learn about adult topics. We expect to teach them about sex, life, and morality — not to have those lessons ambushed by a YouTube ad or a store display.

A decade ago, the hardest talk I expected was the birds and the bees — rooted in reality, biology, and responsibility. Now parents are forced to explain gender identity, cross-dressing, and surgery on minors before we’ve explained where babies come from. We’re no longer the gatekeepers of our children’s innocence — we’re cast as obstacles to their “authenticity.”

This isn’t progress. It’s cultural colonization.

RELATED: ‘Queer Eye’ star celebrates Ulta Beauty collab by making a mockery of women

Blaze News Illustration

And it’s everywhere — school curricula, library displays, streaming specials, toy aisles. Ten years ago, parents couldn’t imagine explaining “preferred pronouns” to a third-grader. Now, if we don’t, someone else will.

The woke mob cleverly rebranded indoctrination as inclusion. They tell us our kids need “exposure,” but they really mean submission. Refuse, and you risk social isolation, bullying, or being labeled a bigot — for believing men are men, women are women, and parents should shape their children’s moral formation.

I didn’t sign up for a cultural hostage situation. I signed up to be a dad — to shield my daughter’s innocence until she’s ready for the truth. These conversations are too important to be rushed by a marketing department chasing diversity quotas.

Ulta didn’t just sell mascara that day. Ulta sold out parents — and sold out women.

But here’s the unexpected part. After the awkwardness passed and the questions came, we talked about how some people struggle with who they are. We talked about a broken world and how people search for answers in the wrong places. We talked about compassion — not compromise. About loving people without lying to them. About truth delivered with grace.

Yes, Ulta forced a conversation I wasn’t ready to have. But it reminded me my daughter is watching — not just what I say, but how I say it. She’s watching me model manhood. She’s watching how I treat people, even those I disagree with. She’s watching how I protect her — and how I pray for the lost.

She deserves better than marketing masquerading as moral authority.

So does your daughter.

It’s time to remind corporations: You may sell products, but you don’t get to sell souls — especially not our children’s.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is taking a wrecking ball to the status quo in hopes of significantly improving American health.

In addition to holding ultra-processed food giants’ feet to the fire over harmful ingredients, Kennedy has given thousands of bureaucrats the boot; fired all of the Biden administration appointees on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; called out Big Pharma’s outsized influence in Congress; canceled mRNA development contracts; raised concerns about the harmful effects of popular herbicides; and set his sights on making it more difficult for pharmaceutical giants to push their products directly to patients.

‘Doctors are being paid to vaccinate, not to evaluate. They’re pressured to follow the money, not the science.’

On Friday, Kennedy delivered another crushing blow, announcing both the elimination of a “dangerous Biden-era provision in the [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] inpatient payment rule” and the imminent elimination of doctors’ “hidden incentives” to load American children with vaccines.

“Should doctors make decisions based upon what’s best for their patients? Or based upon what makes them the most money? It’s not a tough question, but we’ve inherited a health care system that constantly pushes doctors toward the latter,” said Kennedy. “It rewards certain treatments, not because they’re better for the patient but because someone profits.”

“Take what happened during COVID,” continued the health secretary. “Hospitals were paid to report staff vaccination rates. Those numbers were fed into the National Healthcare Safety Network, then published on the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] website to shame any hospital that refused to become an enforcer of federal vaccine mandates.”

The policy tied hospital reimbursement under the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program to staff vaccination reporting. Hospitals that failed to meet this program requirement were subject to a one-fourth reduction in their Annual Payment Update under the Inpatient Prospective Payment System.

RELATED: RFK Jr. pulls plug on mRNA jabs because they ‘pose more risks than benefits’

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

HHS under Kennedy has acknowledged that this incentive was “coercive and denied informed consent,” serving as a “tool for public shaming, not public health.”

In addition to removing this measure, the CMS is removing other reporting requirements from the program, including the “Hospital Commitment to Health Equity” measure, a DEI hoop hospitals had to jump through as a result of former President Joe Biden’s executive order “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.”

‘Medical decisions should be based upon one thing and one thing only: the well-being of the patient.’

This DEI measure assessed whether hospitals made equity a strategic priority; planned to use resources to achieve equity goals; collected racial data; and had leaders and staff demonstrate “routine and thorough attention to equity.”

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a statement, “Doctors and other providers should have the same autonomy to choose what’s right for their own individual health care needs as the patients for whom they care. Today’s announcement helps put that power back in their hands.”

Kennedy underscored that “we’re not stopping there.”

RELATED: Pandemic fallout: Study finds parents are increasingly taking a stand on vaccines

SementsovaLesia/Getty Images

“We’re scanning every corner of the health care system for hidden incentives that corrupt medical judgment,” said the health secretary. “What we’re finding is alarming. Doctors are being paid to vaccinate, not to evaluate. They’re pressured to follow the money, not the science.”

Jake Scott, a clinical associate professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University, recently indicated that whereas the childhood vaccine schedule contained around 11 doses protecting against seven diseases in 1986, the schedule now includes roughly 50 injections covering 16 diseases. Between 30 and 32 shots are typically required for kids to attend state schools.

Apparently doctors get a bonus for pushing these jabs on kids.

Kennedy revealed that HHS has discovered that over 36,000 doctors nationwide “had their Medicare reimbursements altered based upon childhood vaccination rates.”

“That’s not medicine. That’s coercion. It’s immoral,” said the health secretary. “It has no place in a constitutional democracy or in a system that claims to protect children. Medical decisions should be made based upon one thing and one thing only: the well-being of the patient — never on a financial bonus or a government mandate.”

HHS indicated that these policy repeals are part of a broader campaign to “restore medical autonomy in federally funded programs and root out financial and regulatory pressures that incentivize physicians towards pre-scripted medical decisions rather than individualized, evidence-based care.”

Blaze News has reached out to HHS for comment about other policy repeals.

— (@)

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Donald Trump on Monday invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control and deploying the National Guard to restore law and order. This move is long overdue.

D.C.’s crime problem has been spiraling for years as local authorities and Democratic leadership have abandoned the nation’s capital to the consequences of their own failed policies. The city’s murder rate is about three times higher than that of Islamabad, Pakistan, and 18 times higher than that of communist-led Havana, Cuba.

When DC is in chaos, it sends a message to the world that America is weak.

Theft, assaults, and carjackings have transformed many of its streets into war zones. D.C. saw a 32% increase in homicides from 2022 to 2023, marking the highest number in two decades and surpassing both New York and Los Angeles. Even if crime rates dropped to 2019 levels, that wouldn’t be good enough.

Local leaders have downplayed the crisis, manipulating crime stats to preserve their image. Felony assault, for example, is no longer considered a “violent crime” in their crime stats. Same with carjacking. But the reality on the streets is different. People in D.C. are living in constant fear.

Trump isn’t waiting for the crime rate to improve on its own. He’s taking action.

Broken windows theory in action

Trump’s takeover of D.C. puts the “broken windows theory” into action — the idea that ignoring minor crimes invites bigger ones. When authorities look the other way on turnstile-jumping or graffiti, they signal that lawbreaking carries no real consequence.

Rudy Giuliani used this approach in the 1990s to clean up New York, cracking down on small offenses before they escalated. Trump is doing the same in the capital, drawing a hard line and declaring enough is enough. Letting crime fester in Washington tells the world that the seat of American power tolerates lawlessness.

What Trump is doing for D.C. isn’t just about law enforcement — it’s about national identity. When D.C. is in chaos, it sends a message to the world that America is weak. The capital city represents the soul of the country. If we can’t even keep our own capital safe, how can we expect anyone to take us seriously?

RELATED: Trump to DC: Public safety isn’t optional

O2O Creative via iStock/Getty Images

Reversing the decline

Anyone who has visited D.C. regularly over the past several years has witnessed its rapid decline. Homeless people bathe in the fountains outside Union Station. People are tripping out in Dupont Circle. The left’s negligence is a disgrace, enabling drug use and homelessness to explode on our capital’s streets while depriving these individuals of desperately needed care and help.

Restoring law and order to D.C. is not about politics or scoring points. It’s about doing what’s right for the people. It’s about protecting communities, taking the vulnerable off the streets, and sending the message to both law-abiding and law-breaking citizens alike that the rule of law matters.

D.C. should be a lesson to the rest of America. If we want to take our cities back, we need leadership willing to take bold action. Trump is showing how to do it.

Now, it’s time for other cities to step up and follow his lead. We can restore law and order. We can make our cities something to be proud of again.

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There is a quiet moment that precedes a sea change, the moment before a long-held secret becomes common knowledge. In the early 2020s, the most advanced artificial intelligence felt like a private language spoken only within the glass walls of a few corporate citadels. It was a kind of digital Latin, its syntax guarded by a technological priesthood. We, the public, were given translations through polished interfaces, clean API calls that delivered answers like pronouncements from an oracle, their inner workings a mystery. There was power in the control of access.

Now, the walls are being dismantled, not by force but by a deliberate act. The source code of many new AI models, along with the weights that define their functioning, are being posted on the internet for anyone to download. Power once consolidated is being atomized, shifted from the hushed cathedral of proprietary knowledge to the noisy and chaotic bazaar of open access. The central question is no longer what these models can do, but who gets to control them now.

What these open models offer is not just access but agency.

This change did not begin in a vacuum. The impulse is a familiar one in the history of knowledge. It echoes the 17th-century pivot to open science, when the Royal Society championed the sharing of discoveries over the alchemist’s secrecy, arguing that progress accelerates when methods are laid bare for verification and extension. It carries the DNA of the open-source software movement, which proved that a sprawling, decentralized community of volunteers could build something as robust and essential as Linux, an operating system that quietly came to run the world’s servers, eclipsing the proprietary systems of its time. AI may now be approaching a “Linux moment,” the inflection point where open, collaborative development overtakes the closed, top-down model.

Consider the artifacts of this new age. In August 2025, OpenAI, a name once synonymous with the most advanced and secretive models, released two of its own, fully open. One, a 117-billion-parameter model called gpt-oss-120b, was engineered with such efficiency that it could run on a single high-end GPU, hardware one might find in a design studio or a gamer’s bedroom. Suddenly, a lone developer standing at his desk could run sophisticated, near-frontier-level tasks, untethered from the cloud. The oracle could now live at home. The second, a 21-billion parameter model called gpt-oss-20b, could run on a high-end MacBook, easily carried around in one hand. This was a deliberate distribution of power, an acknowledgment that centralized control had already begun to fray.

It was a necessary acknowledgment, because others were already forging ahead. A lean startup called DeepSeek, for a fraction of the cost of its corporate rivals, released a model in May 2025 that could rival the giants on mathematical and coding benchmarks. A university lab, previously priced out of using top-tier AI for its research, could now download a tool that approached the reasoning power of a GPT-4, fine-tune it on its own private data, and scrutinize its every logical step. The model’s “chain of thought,” kept secret in proprietary models, was now just text on a screen, visible for analysis.

RELATED: How AI is silently undermining Christianity from within

Photo by Nurphoto/Getty Images

From China, the technology giant Alibaba released its top-tier Qwen3 open-weight models in July 2025. A European hospital, wary of sending sensitive patient data to American servers, could deploy a powerful AI assistant entirely on its own premises, customizing it with local medical jargon. The fact that a Chinese open model could be used by Westerners to declare their independence from American tech companies scrambles the usual narrative of geopolitical competition.

What these open models offer is not just access but agency. To run a model locally is to be able to audit it, to probe its biases, to understand its failure modes. When researchers download an open model and find it produces an undesired behavior, they can often trace the behavior back to the data it was trained on. The model becomes a window into the vast, messy archive of human text it ingested, and we are all invited to look. A closed model is a mirror with a sheet over it: We see only the polished reflection the company wishes to present. The desire for transparency reflects a distrust of black boxes, whether they are dictating credit scores, prison sentences, or the news we read.

Of course, this distribution of power is not without its own anxieties. When a tool is available to everyone, responsibility becomes diffuse, a collective burden. The old defense of the cathedral was safety, the idea that only the priestly class could be trusted with such magic. The argument of the bazaar is that true safety comes from collective scrutiny, from a balance of power where the many can check the ambitions of the few. It is a bet on the self-correcting nature of a community over the presumed benevolence of a corporation.

We are at the beginning of a tectonic shift in our relationship with knowledge and creation. These models, built from the public commons of the internet, are being returned to it. The boundaries between the human creator and the machine collaborator are blurring, as individuals are now free to mold and fine-tune their own private muses, their own specialized assistants. The very meaning of intellectual labor is up for negotiation. The new vernacular of AI is being written, not by a single authority, but by a global, uncoordinated, and ceaseless collaboration. The results will be remarkable, unsettling, and more distinctly our own.

​Tech, Culture 

After building a reputation for cutting federal jobs in Washington, D.C., the Department of Government Efficiency is now tied to an expansion of federal authority.

President Trump announced Monday he would take over Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and deploy the National Guard — an unprecedented move that came less than a week after photos of a shirtless, bloodied 19-year-old former DOGE employee went viral. The president declared August 11 “Liberation Day” and vowed to end violent crime and homeless encampments in the nation’s capital.

Our nation’s capital should project security and order to the nation and the world. It must be made safe again.

Trump’s detractors immediately pointed out that violent crime, including shootings and homicides, has been falling in the district. They’re right — on paper. Violent crime is down 26% this year, according to the city’s own numbers. But those figures are under scrutiny after accusations that officials manipulated the data.

Homicides, which are harder to fudge, are down 12%: 99 killings through August 11 compared to 112 during the same period in 2024.

Numbers alone, however, can’t capture the lived reality. Having spent the last year of my 15-year career in D.C. at the city’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention, I spoke with residents desperate for change. One man told me he and his pregnant wife dove to the floor when a bullet smashed through their window. Another woman worked with neighbors to demand more police patrols. Their frustrations highlight the fact that crime isn’t just a local issue but a hyperlocal one.

One activist I met has kept a memorial wall for homicide victims in his apartment since the 1990s. Some of the kids he mentored, he said, cherished the photos and videos because they were the only images they had of their fathers. In D.C., more than 60% of murders happen in just two of the city’s eight wards — far from tourist landmarks and high-end retail stores. Last August, a Democrat council member from one of those neighborhoods called for the National Guard himself after a wave of shootings.

Yet, those communities — overwhelmingly poor and black — rarely drive the political conversation about crime. Conservatives, like progressives, focus on the violence and vagrancy near their offices, homes, and favorite restaurants. That’s not a criticism; it’s human nature.

Everyone wants to feel safe where they live, work, and visit. But people from places where one murder makes front-page news can’t easily grasp how easy it is to grow numb to constant violence and disorder.

RELATED: Legacy media’s bogus defense of DC’s safe-streets narrative crumbles under scrutiny

Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

The left has its own contradictions. Leftists had no problem with the FBI combing through a NASCAR garage when they thought driver Bubba Wallace had been the target of a hate crime. More than 90% of D.C.’s homicide victims are black, yet racial inequality in violent crime barely registers among self-described antiracists.

Likewise, in 2021, commentator Roland Martin demanded a federal crackdown on “white domestic terrorism.” But he didn’t explain how many murder victims in D.C., Baltimore, St. Louis, Memphis, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New Orleans, or Chicago were killed by skinheads or neo-Nazis.

Whether the federal takeover will reduce crime remains to be seen. Conservatives frustrated by the government’s inability to produce the Epstein files might be overestimating how quickly crime can be cleaned up. Real change will require coordination across every level of government.

Still, my hope is simple: that whatever is done in D.C. will make it safer for residents, workers, and visitors alike. Our capital should project security and order to the nation and the world. It must be made safe again.

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Self-proclaimed “Cherokee” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is just one of the latest Democrats to prove their complete descent into socialist la-la land after an embarrassing appearance on CNBC.

“New York does not operate in a vacuum. It competes with other cities. And so, this idea of somehow raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers — who, by the way, I would point out pay roughly 15% of their income right now between city and state, that’s just local — raising taxes on them will simply drive them away,” CNBC host David Faber told Warren.

“Shouldn’t the focus of a mayor be on delivering services to the constituents of the city and doing that by raising the most revenue as possible without chasing businesses and the high-income taxpayers out of the city?” he asked.

“’Cause they can go to Austin, they can go to Dallas, they can go to Atlanta, they can go to Nashville. This is your issue. It’s a national issue, not a local issue,” he added.

“The issue is affordability. Do you know how many working families are chased out of New York City every day because they can’t afford housing? They can’t afford groceries. They can’t afford child care. What Zohran is saying is, ‘I want people to be able to afford to live in New York City,’” Warren responded.

“No one disagrees with that, Senator,” Faber fired back, “but raising taxes in order to do it, why is that the answer?”

Warren then took on a mocking tone, asking Faber if he was worried that “billionaires are going to go hungry.”

BlazeTV host Pat Gray is disturbed by Warren’s performance.

“This is straight-up class warfare. This is straight-up Marxism. Any time anybody brings up facts that are inconvenient for these Marxists and their policies, what do they do? They just disparage billionaires. They mock the question,” Gray says.

“The point is not whether or not billionaires can or cannot afford to pay more taxes. It’s about the fact that they already pay too much. We all do, not just billionaires,” he adds.

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