Category: blaze media

Senate Republicans were back at it this morning, grinding away at the massive backlog of White House nominations awaiting their approval — and facing the most obstinate Democrat resistance in modern nomination history. If it continues much longer, the majority will face a choice — and the Senate, a change in the rules.

Senators worked until 10 p.m. Thursday night, were back at it at 11 a.m. Friday, had multiple votes ready to proceed, but still had over 150 to go. Friday was also supposed to be the start of a planned recess. But as the bombastic Mike Davis, the Article III Project founder and former chief counsel for nominations to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), told me Thursday afternoon: “Recess is for children.”

The longer Republicans wait, the longer overwhelmingly Democratic career appointees run the government.

Chamber rules and traditions grant each member a great deal of deference, and individual senators wield impressive amounts of power when they want to, as we saw earlier this week when Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) derailed his own party’s non-controversial, bipartisan package delivering relief to American police. Without unanimous consent, debate can stretch out for as long as 30 hours per nominee, and bills can be debated for weeks.

Unanimous consent was the historic norm for all but the more controversial nominees: Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton received unanimous consent for 98% of their civilian nominations, according to statistics released by the majority leader’s office.

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama suffered lower numbers, as the two major parties continued to sort more into ideological camps than regional ones (conservatives and liberals, instead of Northerners and Southerners) and as the 24-hour news cycle turned up the heat and the rewards. But both presidents still enjoyed unanimous consent for 90% of their nominees.

Those numbers plummeted to 65% during President Donald Trump’s first term and continued to decline under President Joe Biden, hitting 57%. Today, in Trump’s second term, that number stands at zero.

This is the reality Republicans are facing. South Dakota Republican Sen. Majority Leader John Thune’s office is quick to point out they have hit a number of records, but dissatisfaction and frustration are growing rapidly. Thus far, for example, the Senate has not confirmed a single U.S. attorney, including for Washington, D.C., or the Southern District of Florida — the two districts where Russiagate-related prosecutions would play out.

Judge Jason Reding Quinones is up for the Florida job. He’s a former assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district, former adviser for the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and a former Air Force JAG officer. He was reported out of committee ready for a full-Senate vote on May 15 — 78 days ago.

Another embarrassing case is the president’s nominee to the Holy See. Brian Burch has languished for months in political turmoil, leading to the painful spectacle of the first American pope in history having no American ambassador.

The longer Republicans wait, the longer overwhelmingly Democratic career appointees run the government. And Democrats know this.

Meanwhile, Republicans are eager to get out of D.C. and start selling the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Frankly, it’s not easy caging up a bunch of powerful and independent-minded 70- and 80-year-olds who are used to getting into town late on Monday and hitting the road Thursday afternoon.

If the Democrats continue this course, Republicans can grind away slowly. Neither side wants to spend August in D.C., and when Democrats mounted similar opposition in 2017, members broke and consented just before the August recess they would have begun Friday.

If they refuse to consent, Thune has other options.

One is to adjourn the Senate for a full recess of at least 10 days. That hasn’t happened in decades. But if it did, President Trump could bypass Senate obstruction and make recess appointments lasting through the end of the current Senate term in January 2027.

That option remains remote — for now. It would require the House to return to Washington and vote to adjourn and a Senate majority to agree. Most senators aren’t eager to give up their power to advise and consent. They still want a say in who gets confirmed.

A more plausible route: Change the rules.

The Senate has a long history of rewriting its procedures when obstruction becomes the objective and arcane rules become, as one senior staffer put it, “unbelievable barriers.”

Ideas already under discussion include shortening debate time, bundling nominees into batches (as is done with military promotions), or scrapping Senate approval entirely for certain lower-level posts.

“If Democrats don’t give them anything, make ’em death-march into the weekend,” the staffer told the Beltway Brief. “Make them work 10 and 11 p.m. nights.”

Republicans, he added, “need to make a decision — and it can’t be to let Democrats use ‘norms’ as a weapon to sabotage an elected president’s administration.”

Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter
Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford’s newsletter.

​Opinion & analysis, Politics 

The National Institutes of Health told Blaze News on Friday that it updated its website to remove claims from the previous administration that dismissed the COVID-19 lab-leak theory.

‘The NIH has removed these factually incorrect positions from the last administration.’

As of Thursday, an NIH webpage stated:

Unfortunately, because the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 have not yet been identified, misleading and false allegations have been made about NIAID-supported research on naturally occurring bat coronaviruses. Specifically, these allegations have targeted research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, funded through a subaward from NIAID grantee EcoHealth Alliance. The naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied through this subaward were significantly, genetically different from SARS-CoV-2 and, therefore, could not have caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blaze News contacted the NIH, inquiring whether it was aware of the webpage — which was last reviewed in March 2022 — and if it had plans to update its website to remove statements that the lab-leak theory was a hoax.

The NIH responded on Friday, stating that it had recently updated the website.

Department of Health and Human Services communications director Andrew Nixon stated, “The Biden era NIH position on origin of the COVID pandemic — that the lab-leak theory is a ‘conspiracy theory’ — is out of line with the considerable scientific and forensic evidence to the contrary. The NIH has removed these factually incorrect positions from the last administration.”

RELATED: COVID lab-leak denial lingers on NIH’s website: ‘Misleading and false’

Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images

Blaze News confirmed that as of Friday afternoon, the NIH had taken down the webpage. It now reads, “You are not authorized to access this page.”

Nixon added that the “true origin” of the virus could be found on the White House’s website, which states that COVID-19 “possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature” and that the data supports that cases stemmed from “a single introduction into humans.” The website further notes the Wuhan lab’s “history of conducting gain-of-function research … at inadequate biosafety levels.”

RELATED: BlazeTV’s ‘The Coverup’ exposes how the censorship industrial complex silenced Americans during COVID

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya was one of the prominent voices during the COVID era insisting that there was a cover-up regarding the origins of the virus.

Bhattacharya told Politico in May that he is “convinced” the research experiments in Wuhan, China, “led to this pandemic through a lab leak.”

RELATED: Damning new episode of BlazeTV’s ‘The Coverup’ blows lid off Biden’s 10-year pardon for Fauci

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​News, National institutes of health, Nih, Jay bhattacharya, Trump admin, Trump administration, Trump, Donald trump, Biden, Joe biden, Biden administration, Biden admin, Wuhan, Covid, Covid-19, Department of health and human services, Hhs, Lab leak, Lab leak theory, Politics 

QUITO, Ecuador — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Blaze Media on the last day of her South American tour that Ecuador’s president said he would consider accepting Venezuelans who are in the United States illegally.

Noem visited and signed deals with her counterparts this week in Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador to continue ensuring cooperation in the region to prevent illegal immigrants and hardened criminals from reaching North America. The idea of sending Venezuelans to a third country was presented to President Daniel Noboa by Noem during her hours-long meeting with him and other ministers at the Carondelet Palace.

“We are very close to signing a safe third country agreement with [Noboa]. … He has a program here where he is letting law-abiding Venezuelans come in, and he’s training them, giving them jobs, giving them visas for two years. And so I said, ‘Would you take some of ours because we have up to a million Venezuelans in the United States that are there illegally,’ and so he said he would consider it,” Noem explained.

“Those are discussions that happen when you are here that make it possible to speed up our efforts” for mass deportations, she added.

‘We were thinking out of the box in ways that we can help them … fight these cartels so that [cocaine] never reaches the United States.’

Should a third-country agreement be solidified with Noboa, it would be a big win for the Trump administration domestically as well as regionally since it would then put pressure on other Latin American countries, like Brazil and Colombia, to play ball.

“The more we’re building these relationships with other countries surrounding them and on their borders, the more pressure it puts on them. So those conversations are still ongoing,” Noem said, noting that Colombian President Gustavo Petro “has not been helpful” on cracking down on drug trafficking in his country.

RELATED: Tren de Aragua in crosshairs as Noem signs deal with Chile to help prevent foreign gangs from entering US

Tren de Aragua in crosshairs as Noem signs deal with Chile to help prevent foreign gangs from entering US Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images

Since much of the cocaine made in Colombia is then trafficked through Ecuador in order to reach the United States, Noem said the United States will help Ecuador fortify its border: “We were thinking out of the box in ways that we can help them harden their northern border and help fight these cartels so that it never reaches the United States.”

During the South American tour, the Department of Homeland Security launched its renewed recruitment drive for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement now that it has been given a large budget to support more personnel and higher pay.

— (@)

Noem revealed DHS has made job offers to 1,000 applicants to join ICE, with some of those offers being sent to former officers who left ICE during the Biden-Harris administration out of frustration.

While in Ecuador, Noem signed an agreement to station an Ecuadorian police liaison at the Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center to streamline data-sharing between the two countries.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Politics 

A new investigation into the prison surveillance video from the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s controversial death found inconsistencies in the government’s report regarding the convicted pedophile, according to CBS News. One of the more intriguing revelations from the report is that there was an “orange shape” spotted moving up the stairs leading to the tier housing Epstein.

Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors. Epstein was found dead inside his prison cell of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center on Aug. 10, 2019. Six days later, the New York City medical examiner ruled Epstein’s cause of death a suicide via hanging — which ignited a firestorm of conspiracy theories.

CBS News reported that a third unidentified individual was seen in the unit on video that the feds never mentioned.

In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice released nearly 11 hours of surveillance video.

Citing “experts,” tech blog Wired recently reported that the “raw” file shows “clear signs of having been processed using an Adobe product, most likely Premiere, based on metadata that specifically references file extensions used by the video editing software.” The report claimed that using Adobe software often “leaves traces in exported files, often embedding metadata that logs which assets were used and what actions were taken during editing.”

“In this case, the metadata indicates the file was saved at least four times over a period of several hours on May 23, 2025, by a Windows user account called ‘MJCOLE~1,'” Wired stated. “The metadata does not show whether the footage was modified before each time it was saved.”

According to Wired‘s analysis, “one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release.”

RELATED: Elon Musk sets Twitter ablaze by asking a curious question about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, the media, and the DOJ

This week, CBS News published an analysis of the surveillance footage from the night of Epstein’s death.

The analysis noted that there was an “orange shape” moving up the stairs to Epstein’s tier around 10:40 p.m. on the night of the convicted pedophile’s death.

The 2023 report on Epstein’s death released by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General identified the “orange shape” as a corrections officer carrying linen or inmate clothing.

The video forensic experts expressed to CBS News that they were “skeptical about that interpretation and suggested that the shape could be a person dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit climbing the stairs.”

The Department of Justice said five days after Epstein’s death, the FBI seized the prison’s digital video recorder system, which contained the “raw footage” of the prison near his cell.

However, the experts told CBS News that the “presence of a cursor and onscreen menu raise questions” that the video is “raw footage.”

The video forensic experts said the prison footage was most likely a “screen recording rather than an export directly from a DVR system.”

“They said it was unlikely to have been an export of the raw footage and that instead, it appears to be two separate video segments that were stitched together,” CBS News reported.

RELATED: Bill Clinton went to Jeffrey Epstein’s island with ‘young girls,’ witness says in unsealed court docs

CBS News also noted that the video feed “jumps forward a minute just before midnight and the aspect ratio changes, again calling into question the assertion the video released was the raw footage.”

The inspector general’s report stated that only two staff members entered the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center after midnight. The report identified the staff as the “morning watch operations lieutenant” and a correctional officer identified as “CO3.”

However, CBS News reported that a third unidentified individual was seen in the unit on the video that the feds never mentioned.

Citing video forensic experts, CBS News reported that the detailed video review raises suspicions regarding the federal government’s assertion that Epstein committed suicide in his prison cell.

“The CBS News review found the video does little to provide evidence to support claims that were later made by federal officials,” the news outlet stated. “Additionally, CBS News has identified multiple inconsistencies between that report and the video that raise serious questions about the accuracy of witness statements and the thoroughness of the government’s investigation.”

CBS News conceded that the video review “doesn’t refute the conclusion that Epstein died by suicide,” but actually “raises questions about the strength and credibility of the government’s investigation, which appears to have drawn conclusions from the video that are not readily observable.”

RELATED: Jeffrey Epstein threatened to expose Bill Gates’ affair with Russian bridge player: Report

High-ranking federal government officials have declared that Epstein committed suicide, despite suspicions by many.

In November 2019, then-Attorney General William Barr told the Associated Press, “I can understand people who immediately, whose minds went to sort of the worst-case scenario because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups.”

As Blaze News reported in May 2025, FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino claimed that Epstein died by suicide.

Patel said of people doubting that Epstein killed himself, “They have a right to their opinion, but as someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor who’s been in that prison system, who’s been in the metropolitan detention center, who’s been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one, and that’s what that was.”

“He killed himself,” Bongino declared. “Again, I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.”

Bongino proclaimed, “There’s video clear as day — he’s the only person in there and the only person coming out.”

The Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General refuted the theories presented by CBS News.

“Our comprehensive assessment of the circumstances over the weeks, days, and hours before Epstein’s death included the effects of the longstanding, chronic staffing crisis in the [Bureau of Prisons] and the BOP’s failure to provide and maintain quality camera coverage within its facilities,” the inspector general’s office told CBS News. “As CBS notes, nothing in its analysis changed or modified the OIG’s conclusions or recommendations.”

The FBI and the DOJ declined to offer a comment on the report by CBS News.

RELATED: ‘Say hi to Snow White’: Jeffrey Epstein offered ‘Disney princesses’ to top JPMorgan exec, trafficking victims paid over $1 million from accounts at megabank, unsealed docs say

RELATED: Ex-cop, who shared cell with Jeffrey Epstein when he attempted suicide, convicted of ‘gangland-style’ murders of 4 people

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Jeffrey epstein, Fbi, Epstein death, Deep state, True crime, Epstein scandal, Epstein coverup, Suicide or murder, Epstein murder, Epstein didn’t kill himself, News 

The fallout from federal defunding hit the Corporation for Public Broadcasting so hard that it is shutting down, according to a statement from the CPB.

After years of Republican grousing about federal funding for public broadcasting, President Donald Trump took action and ended funding for the CPB and National Public Radio.

‘Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations.’

“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced today that it will begin an orderly wind-down of its operations following the passage of a federal rescissions package and the release of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s FY 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-H) appropriations bill, which excludes funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades,” the statement read.

The nonprofit private corporation was established by Congress in 1967 to funnel money to public radio and television stations across the country. The CPB said in its statement that its purpose was to support “educational content, locally relevant journalism, emergency communications, cultural programming, and essential services” through public broadcasting.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” said Patricia Harrison, the president and CEO of the CPB. “CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care.”

RELATED: After decades of promises, GOP finally defunds PBS and NPR

Photo by Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Critics of public broadcasting funding have pointed to numerous examples of left-wing bias in reporting to justify pulling back support taken from the taxpayer.

Many on the left have reacted with unhinged outrage and proclamations that Trump is plunging America into fascism.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Corporation for public broadcasting, War on public broadcasting, Politics, Cpb shuts down, Trump ends cpb funding 

According to filmmaker Matt Landman, geoengineering programs are spraying toxic chemicals like aluminum into our skies — and while it’s been documented that what’s in the air is hurting the bee population, it’s not just the bees that we should be concerned about.

“The number one cause of death in the United Kingdom, number one cause of death is dementia — dementia and Alzheimer’s from aluminum toxicity in the brain,” Landman tells BlazeTV host Pat Gray and producer Keith Malinak on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“A lot of people don’t know that fluoride is just a byproduct of melting aluminum. So fluoride and aluminum want to bond back together,” he explains.

“There’s these attacks from every angle, but at the end of the day, you should consider it complimentary because, like, why is everything out to get us? Because they are terrified of us realizing what’s going on. So they want to dumb us down to the best of their ability,” he adds.

Landman explains that this is why cholesterol is demonized — because it’s a “fatty layer of protection” for your brain.

“So, the same thing that’s happening to the humans, which is the aluminium buildup in the brain. And imagine you get aluminum buildup in the brain, and then they are ramping up these EMF frequencies. … It’s just like putting aluminum in the microwave, but it’s your brain,” he continues.

“This is why people are having neurological disorders and what have you. So, the same things are happening to the bees. There’s this bee die-off, and biologists and whatnot are dissecting bees, and they have increased aluminum in their brain,” he adds.

With the increase of aluminum in the bees’ brains and EMF frequencies nearby, the bees can’t even find their way back to the hive.

“So, the bees are dying off from the aluminum especially, right? And then Monsanto has come out with an aluminum-resistant gene. Worth mentioning is Monsanto had to hide their name, and they don’t even exist anymore,” Landman says.

He explains that Monsanto has done this because once aluminum is killing all the crops, only their aluminum-resistant seeds will grow.

“They also have a ‘Frankenbee,’ like Frankenstein bee, where the bee is Monsanto-produced, and it can live in a glyphosate, aluminum, like, toxic pesticide/herbicide environment where all the other insects are dying,” he says.

“They like to confuse us. ‘Oh, that’s pretty advanced, genetically modified, whatever, and I’m not a scientist or whatever.’ But it’s actually very simple. They’re spraying poisons on your food that would make the food shrivel up and die,” he continues, explaining that it doesn’t shrivel up and die only because it’s genetically modified.

“And then we wonder why so many people have dementia, Alzheimer’s, so many kids have autism,” he says, adding, “I mean, we’re looking at the wrong source.”

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Upload, Video, Free, Camera phone, Video phone, Sharing, Youtube.com, Pat gray unleashed, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Matt landman, Bee population, Geoengineering, Alzheimers, Autism, Dementia, Monsanto, Food poisoning, Aluminum, Fluoride 

Sean Curran, the director of the Secret Service, who was on duty during the deadly assassination attempt in Butler a year ago, almost certainly knew that his agency was planning to restore former Director Kimberly Cheatle’s security clearance when it abruptly reversed course, Blaze News has learned.

On Friday, Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics revealed that the USSS had quietly begun the process of restoring Cheatle’s security clearance. However, when RCP contacted the agency and revealed that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) vehemently opposed the restoration, the agency suddenly decided that Cheatle’s security clearance would not be renewed.

Johnson spokeswoman Avery Selby told RCP that the senator’s office learned that her security clearance would not be renewed on the same day that RCP contacted the USSS about Johnson’s concerns.

Sources told Crabtree that there is no way that Curran did not know about the pending restoration of Cheatle’s security clearance.

Johnson seems grateful for the about-face. “Following the security debacle in Butler, the former director of USSS made the right decision to resign,” he said in a statement, according to RCP. “I see no reason for her security clearance to be reinstated.”

Cheatle, who was at the helm at the time of the Butler shooting, resigned in disgrace less than two weeks later after a disastrous appearance before the House Oversight Committee, where she refused to answer certain questions and even infamously blamed a major security breach on a sloped roof.

RELATED: Secret Service director resigns in disgrace 1 day after refusing accountability for worst agency failure in 4 decades

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Blaze News has since learned that current Director Curran, one of the Secret Service agents who bravely whisked Trump off the stage to safety that fateful day, most likely knew that a restoration of his predecessor’s security clearance was in the works.

Sources told Crabtree that there is no way that Curran did not know about the pending restoration of Cheatle’s security clearance, Crabtree told Blaze News.

“Renewing Cheatle’s security clearance provides no benefit to U.S. national security of the American taxpayers but would help her land another lucrative security job at a Fortune 500 company or elsewhere,” Crabtree told Blaze News.

“It’s not a good look for Sean Curran, to say the least. If Sean Curran knew that her security clearance was up for renewal and was allowing it — it would be news and concerning if he didn’t know — than it shows he was willing to continue the status quo during a period that requires significant agency reform to continue to safeguard President Trump’s life and our continuity of government.”

Blaze News reached out to the USSS for clarification on what Director Curran knew and when, but received only the same statement given to RCP that makes no direct mention of Cheatle.

The U.S. Secret Service sponsors security clearances for all the former directors for their knowledge of operational and national security matters. The purpose for this was so the agency could maintain formal and protected communication including potentially sensitive and classified matters with former officials. Since appointed, Director Curran has been building a dynamic team of knowledgeable advisers that will help implement his vision for the agency. Additionally, Director Curran has been modernizing the intelligence apparatus within the agency. During that process, he has determined that not all former directors will have their clearances renewed.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Secret service, Usss, Sean curran, Kimberly cheatle, Butler shooting, Sloped roof, Security clearance, Politics 

The mother of a Cincinnati mob attack suspect told WLWT-TV that her 34-year-old son is an “honor roll” student and is “not the thug that they put out in there to be.”

The station interviewed Clarissa Merriweather outside of court Wednesday, and she defended her son, Montianez Merriweather, who’s charged with felonious assault and aggravated riot in connection with last weekend’s street beatdown caught on video.

Montianez Merriweather was ‘identified on video punching [the] victim while co-defendants are stomping the victim in the head.’

“It wasn’t like they thugs,” Clarissa Merriweather told WLWT. “My child is in school, he has five kids, he’s on the B honor roll in school.”

You can check out her interview with the station in the video below:

RELATED: US senator shares grisly photos of woman’s bruised, battered face after Cincinnati mob attack

As it happens, Montianez Merriweather was “identified on video punching [the] victim while co-defendants are stomping the victim in the head,” WXIX-TV reported, citing criminal complaints. He was arrested Tuesday.

But Merriweather has been in trouble with the law before.

In fact, Merriweather was indicted July 10 on four felony charges after investigators said he was found in possession of a stolen firearm, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. Court records indicate he was charged with carrying concealed weapons, receiving stolen property, improper handling of firearms in a vehicle, and weapons under disability, the paper noted. The weapons under disability charge stems from a 2009 felony conviction for aggravated robbery, the Enquirer added, citing documents.

But after his July 10 indictment, Merriweather was released upon posting 10% of a $4,000 bond, the paper said.

“He never should have been out,” Ken Kober, Cincinnati police union president, told the Enquirer.

Merriweather’s bond in connection with his mob attack charges was set at $500,000, the Enquirer reported. He remained behind bars Friday afternoon, according to jail records.

What’s more, a Cincinnati police detective alleged that Merriweather prior to the mob attack whispered to a “co-defendant” and then started “arguing with the victim,” WLWT said in a separate story.

The detective called Merriweather the “catalyst” for what was described as a “coordinated attack,” the station said, adding that the detective alleged Merriweather came up behind the victim and hit the victim in the side of the face — “kind of like an ambush.”

Police also noted in court that they have video from a camera mounted on a building in the area that allegedly shows Merriweather and co-defendant Jermaine Matthews, 39, chasing the victim before hitting the victim, WLWT reported.

Defense attorneys for Merriweather and Matthews insist they were struck first by the man they are accused of beating, WXIX reported in a separate story.

You can view cellphone videos of the mob attack here, here, here, here, and here.

Dekyra Vernon, 24, also was charged with felonious assault and aggravated riot in connection with the mob attack. She is alleged to have “struck [the] victim in the face with a closed fist prior to the victim becoming unconscious from the attack,” WXIX reported, citing criminal complaints. Vernon’s bond was set at $200,000, and she remained behind bars Friday afternoon, according to jail records.

All their cases go before a grand jury for indictment on Aug. 8, WXIX said.

RELATED: ‘Despicable human being!!’ Cincinnati official triggers venomous reactions to her comment about mob attack victims

(L to R) Jermaine Matthews, Dekyra Vernon, Montianez MerriweatherImage source: Hamilton County (Ohio) Sheriff

Matthews bonded out of jail after more charges were filed against him Thursday, WXIX-TV reported. Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge Michael Peck set Matthews’ bond at $100,000 during his arraignment Wednesday, the station said, adding that he returned to court Thursday on two new counts of felonious assault and one for misdemeanor assault, and the new bonds increased the total to $270,000. WXIX noted that Matthews must wear an ankle monitor and will be on house arrest.

Matthews apparently is no stranger to law enforcement, either. More from WXIX:

Matthews is a convicted felon who pleaded guilty in 2009 to two counts of cocaine possession and a single count of cocaine trafficking, court records show.

He was sentenced to three years in prison.

During each of his two separate arrests in those cases — in December 2008 and February 2009 — police said Matthews tried to swallow a bag of crack cocaine but spit it out after being shocked with a Taser stun gun.

The FBI on Monday opened an investigation into the mob attack, WXIX reported. Fox News said the incident is under investigation as a potential hate crime.

While three suspects have been arrested, a total of five have been charged — which leaves two other suspects charged in connection with the mob attack still on the loose.

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock this week blasted Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge for how she’s handling the violence:

RELATED: Cincinnati Music Festival brawl exposes the ‘DEMONIC spirit’ of anti-white racism

Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio late Wednesday shared grisly images of a woman’s face in an X post after she was beaten up and apparently knocked out cold during the mob attack.

Cincinnati council member Victoria Parks said in a Facebook comment that “they begged for that beat down!“

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Cincinnati, Mob attack, Suspect, Mother, Repeat offender, Montianez merriweather, Clarissa merriweather, Arrest, Convicted felon, Crime 

The Environmental Protection Agency has just set off what may be the most consequential policy shift in the auto industry in over a decade.

On Tuesday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a proposal to rescind the controversial 2009 Endangerment Finding, the legal foundation that has been used for 16 years to justify greenhouse gas emissions regulations impacting every car, truck, and bus sold in the U.S.

If you’re concerned about start-stop technology, EV mandates, or the regulatory costs built into the price of your next vehicle, now is the time to speak up.

If finalized, this proposal would dismantle more than $1 trillion in regulatory mandates, including President Biden’s aggressive electric vehicle requirements, and restore consumer choice to a market long constrained by unelected bureaucrats. It would also put the brakes on unpopular mandates like engine start-stop systems and costly EV infrastructure requirements that automakers say have driven up vehicle prices.

Why this proposal is so significant

The Endangerment Finding gave the EPA unprecedented power to regulate six greenhouse gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. It asserted that these gases — carbon dioxide among them — posed a threat to public health and welfare, opening the door for sweeping emissions mandates on the auto industry.

Since then, the EPA has used the finding to justify a series of regulations designed to force automakers toward electric vehicles and away from gasoline-powered cars. Biden’s 2024 standards, for example, require automakers to cut tailpipe emissions in half by 2032 and predict that between 35% and 56% of all new vehicles sold will be electric within the next decade.

California and 11 other states have piggybacked on these standards with even stricter rules, including outright bans on gasoline-only cars by 2035.

Critics say these mandates amount to a de facto EV requirement that Congress never approved. They also argue that the Endangerment Finding was based on flawed legal reasoning and exaggerated climate risk assumptions.

Under Obama and Biden, the EPA “twisted the law, ignored precedent, and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year,” Zeldin said at the announcement, which was held at a truck dealership in Indiana.

$1 trillion at stake

According to EPA estimates, rescinding the Endangerment Finding would roll back regulations totaling more than $1 trillion in compliance costs. Automakers have spent years re-engineering vehicles to meet complex emissions targets, often passing those costs on to consumers.

The American Trucking Associations estimates that Biden’s electric truck mandate alone would have “crippled our supply chain, disrupted deliveries, and raised prices for American families and businesses.” ATA President and CEO Chris Spear welcomed the EPA’s move.

Indiana Governor Mike Braun (R), who joined Zeldin at the event, echoed that sentiment: “We can protect our environment and support American jobs at the same time.”

Legal foundations and next steps

The EPA argues that recent Supreme Court rulings — including West Virginia v. EPA and Loper Bright v. Raimondo — make it clear that major regulatory decisions of this scale must come from Congress, not federal agencies. These decisions limit the ability of the executive branch to unilaterally impose sweeping economic mandates without explicit legislative approval.

Here’s what happens next.

Public comment period: The proposal is now open for public comment until September 21, 2025. Americans, automakers, environmental groups, and industry stakeholders can weigh in via regulations.gov (Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194).

Final rulemaking: After reviewing comments, the EPA will finalize the rule. This process must also pass through the White House Office of Management and Budget for approval.

Legal challenges: Environmental groups and states like California are expected to sue, arguing that rescinding the Endangerment Finding violates the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which affirmed the agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

It’s likely the issue could end up before the Supreme Court again, prolonging uncertainty for automakers and consumers.

RELATED: $8 gas: The real cost of the EV agenda

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

What this means for you

If the proposal is finalized and withstands legal challenges, it would reshape the entire automotive landscape.

The end of Biden’s EV mandate: Automakers would no longer be forced to prioritize EV production at the expense of gasoline-powered vehicles.

Lower vehicle costs: With fewer costly compliance requirements, manufacturers could pass savings on to consumers.

Restored consumer choice: Drivers could decide for themselves whether they want to buy EVs, hybrids, or gasoline-powered vehicles.

The end of California’s outsized influence: The EPA could revoke California’s ability to set stricter emissions rules than federal standards, affecting 11 other states that follow California’s lead.

However, the process will take time. Automakers must plan years in advance, and environmental groups and states are are expected to fight every step of the way.

How to make your voice heard

The public comment period gives everyday Americans a rare chance to influence federal policy. If you’re concerned about start-stop technology, EV mandates, or the regulatory costs built into the price of your next vehicle, now is the time to speak up.

You can submit your comments directly through the Federal eRulemaking Portal by searching for Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194. Comments must be received by September 21, 2025.

The EPA will also hold a virtual public hearing on August 19 and 20, with an additional session on August 21 if needed. Details are available on the agency’s website.

The bigger picture

This isn’t just about EVs. The Endangerment Finding has been the legal backbone for every major greenhouse gas rule in the last 16 years. Rolling it back would not only upend Biden’s climate agenda but also shift power back to Congress and the states.

Supporters of the rescission say it’s about restoring accountability. Opponents, however, argue that eliminating these regulations would stall progress on climate change and undermine the transition to cleaner technologies. They vow to fight the proposal in court.

This move by the EPA could fundamentally change the future of the auto industry and the vehicles available to American drivers. Whether you support or oppose it, this proposal deserves your attention. Over the next 45 days, the agency is accepting feedback from the public — and your input can help determine whether these costly and controversial mandates remain in place or are rolled back for good.

You have a voice in this process. Make sure it’s heard.

For more information and to view supporting documents, visit the EPA’s official docket page.

​Ev mandate, Lee zeldin, Lifestyle, Auto industry, Donald trump, Cars, Align cars 

Cincinnati Councilwoman Victoria Parks has ignited outrage after posting a comment suggesting the two white victims of the Cincinnati brawl that took place last weekend deserved the brutal beating they received at the hands of a predominantly African American mob.

“They begged for that beatdown! I am grateful for the whole story,” she posted on Facebook.

“In her mind, the whole story justifies the beatdown of the man and the woman,” says BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock, who displays grisly images of the female victim following the attack. One of her eyes is a deep purple color and completely swollen shut, while her lips are puffy and bruised. The rest of her face is a sickly greenish yellow from severe bruising.

Jason calls out the glaring racism – “Black people love to say we can’t be racist [because] we have no power.”

“[Parks] is a part of the political structure of Cincinnati. She has some power,” he says, pointing out that America has also had a black president and currently has black mayors and governors all over the country.

“Fearless” contributor Shemeka Michelle agrees, “This council[woman] clearly is putting her race, her skin color, over logic and over good because how does she feel like this woman deserved that?”

The female victim, who’s been identified as Holly, was a bystander who attempted to assist a man being attacked when she was punched in the face and knocked unconscious by one of the men in the mob.

As for the man who was savagely attacked, Shemeka says she “would not be complaining” if the fight were one-on-one.

“If he had gotten a beatdown from only one guy, then hey, you just lost the fight. But when it comes to multiple people stomping you and stomping on your head, I don’t think anybody deserves that,” she says.

“I can’t understand how anybody is putting [race] over character and integrity, morals, and values. It’s just such simplemindedness. But this is where we are, and then we wonder why people are constantly bringing up the IQ of black people,” she adds.

“This is why I talk about racial idolatry so much. … Part of my mission is trying to open people’s minds to: If you interpret the world through a racial lens, it’s going to lead you to illogic,” Jason says.

“When I see a city council person who’s supposed to be the best and brightest, and she’s on the wrong side of this out of her race loyalty, I just shake my head.”

To hear more of the conversation and see footage and images from the brawl and its aftermath, watch the episode above.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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

​Jason whitlock, Jason whitlock fearless, Blazetv, Blaze media, Cincinnati brawl, Mob attack, Racial idolatry, Racism, Jason whitlock harmony 

Funny how you never hear anyone say, “I really wish I spent more time on my phone.”

In a world that requires us to spend an increasing amount of time in front of screens, we’re all looking for ways to unplug. Products and services claiming to help us do this have become their own rapidly expanding market.

Faraday bags have many uses: protection against EMP attacks, eavesdropping, GPS tracking, and meddling NSA operatives.

There are more apps dedicated to this endeavor than can possibly be categorized, but they all have one thing in common: They all live on the very device you’re hoping to escape.

Apps can be helpful, of course — provided you have sufficient willpower. I don’t, which is why I’ve started to employ a simple, low-tech solution to keep me off my phone: a Faraday bag.

Secure the bag

What is a Faraday bag? Put simply, it’s a bag that prevents any electromagnetic fields from going in or out. That’s really it. Not only will it prevent all calls, texts, and emails from reaching your device, it will disable its GPS and bluetooth. In other words, total lockdown.

Once you retrieve your phone from its prison, everything you missed pops up just as if you’d turned it on after leaving it off for a while. Which raises the question: Why not just turn your phone off and save yourself the money?

Well, the bag has the advantage of not making you wait for your phone to boot up again before you can use it, and it also has the psychological advantage of keeping the phone out of sight. In my experience, staying off social media for an evening is much easier when the phone isn’t sitting on my desk, calling to me like Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin mask.

‘Coward! We have a new world to conquer!” (Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)

Slipping my phone and laptop into the bag and sealing it shut have really helped with the mental side of minimizing distractions. “Out of sight, out of mind,” as the saying goes.

Set it and forget it

Faraday bags have many uses: protection against EMP attacks, eavesdropping, GPS tracking, and meddling NSA operatives, for example. I don’t doubt that they are quite useful in that world, but I’ve found that simply using them to mentally unplug for a while has been worth the investment.

Speaking of investment, you’re probably wondering about the price tag on one of these bags. You can pick one up from MOS Equipment for $23, or $90 if you want it to fit your laptop as well. The other brand I’ve used is GoDark. Their bags go for $55 if you just want to stow your phone, or $130 for the laptop size. GoDark products, though more expensive, have the benefit of some waterproofing, more premium materials, and more convenient closures. Having used both brands, I haven’t noticed any difference in actual EMF blocking.

RELATED: The real spyware threat could be in your pocket

Moor Studio via iStock/Getty Images

A one-time investment

I have been warned to avoid cheap bags off of Amazon or other generic sellers. If you want a bag that will work reliably, it’s best to stick with established brands. The cost is certainly something to consider, but for many folks, a one-time purchase that will consistently help them to focus and save time is probably worth the investment.

Are you working on a bit of writing and can’t seem to focus? Put the phone in the bag, leave it under the desk, and lock in for a couple hours. Having trouble sleeping? Putting the screens away for 30 minutes before turning in has been shown to improve sleep quality. My preferred method is to put my devices into the bag before starting the bedtime routine. How will you set your alarm? Clocks are easy to find, quite cheap, and come in all shapes and sizes.

Try it for a week, and thank me later. Having tried different screen-time apps and digital timers, I’ve found that the best solution is to go as low-tech and simple as possible. Plus, if you do find yourself on the run from the NSA, the Faraday bag you’ve already got gives you a head start on gearing up for life off the grid.

​Faraday bags, Go dark bags, Mos equipment, Emp, Unplug, Lifestyle, Return, Tech 

Tensions have continued to rise between President Trump and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell since Trump’s visit to the bloated construction project at the Fed’s headquarters last week. Trump’s criticism of Powell’s leadership and refusal to lower interest rates has led to some heated exchanges between the two leaders.

On Friday morning, Trump posted two messages directly calling out the chairman of the Federal Reserve: “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell, a stubborn MORON, must substantially lower interest rates, NOW. IF HE CONTINUES TO REFUSE, THE BOARD SHOULD ASSUME CONTROL, AND DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE!”

‘I believe that the wait and see approach is overly cautious, and, in my opinion, does not properly balance the risks to the outlook and could lead to policy falling behind the curve.’

In another Truth Social post, Trump lashed out again: “Too Little, Too Late. Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell is a disaster. DROP THE RATE! The good news is that Tariffs are bringing Billions of Dollars into the USA!”

A Wednesday press release recounted a vote on monetary policy. While nine members of the committee voted to “maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 4-1/4 to 4-1/2 percent,” this decision was not unanimous. Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller dissented from this action, preferring to lower the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage point. This, however, is still far below the rate cuts that Trump is aiming for.

RELATED: Jerome Powell’s luxury Fed is failing the American people

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

On Friday, Board member Waller explained his dissent from the majority “wait and see” approach, calling it “overly cautious” and claiming it “does not properly balance the risks to the outlook and could lead to policy falling behind the curve.”

Bowman, likewise, gave a statement on Friday explaining her dissent: “I see the risk that a delay in taking action could result in a deterioration in the labor market and a further slowing in economic growth.”

Trump’s aggressive tariffs have stimulated the economy and have secured many trade deals. However, Powell has reportedly said that this short-term success is not indicative of long-term stability. “We’ve learned that the process will probably be slower than expected,” Powell said. “We think we have a long way to go to really understand exactly how” the tariffs will affect inflation and the economy.

The Federal Reserve Board declined Blaze News’ request for comment.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Politics, Trump, Jerome powell, Jerome powell vs trump, Federal reserve, Christopher waller, Michelle bowman, Tariffs, Interest rates 

Citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data accessed through the Federal Reserve Economic Data system, Snopes indicated that under former President Joe Biden, native-born Americans’ share of job gains from January 2024 to June 2024 was 51.7%. While native-born Americans picked up roughly 1.09 million jobs, foreign-born individuals grabbed 1.02 million jobs.

Under President Donald Trump a year later, native-born Americans accounted for 100% of non-seasonally adjusted job gains from January to June.

The U.S. Department of Labor revealed on Friday that this trend continued into last month, stating, “Wages are up, investments are pouring into our nation, and native-born workers have accounted for ALL job gains since January!

‘That’s a result of our strong immigration policy.’

According to the latest jobs numbers from the BLS, the employment of American-born workers was up roughly 383,000 last month. Meanwhile, foreign-born worker numbers plunged by 467,000.

Bloomberg noted that the imported workforce — a mix of legal and illegal migrants — is down roughly 1.7 million jobs since March.

RELATED: Blaze Media’s Julio Rosas embeds with Noem’s DHS as it slams shut South America’s illegal migration pipeline

Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, noted that “despite [a] disappointing headline, this jobs report was best [July] ever for employment among native-born Americans, up 2 million Y/Y and annual growth 2.2 million faster than among foreign-born workers; native-born American employment is now 1.8 million above pre-pandemic level.”

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

Stephen Miran, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CNN that “since the president took office, he [has] created about 2.5 million jobs for Americans, whereas we’ve eliminated about a million jobs for foreign-born workers. That’s a result of our strong immigration policy, of our strong border policy keeping America safe.”

“Eventually the outflow of foreign workers in these data were bound to show up in the establishment surveys, as they finally did this morning,” added Miran.

The jobs report indicated further that in July, 73,000 new jobs were added; the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.2%; the labor force participation rate was 62.2%; and the “federal government continued to lose jobs.”

Following the release of the latest jobs report, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) stated, “Unlike during the Biden administration, when taxpayers were forced to pay for millions of new bureaucrats while watching their grocery and gas bills skyrocket, President Trump’s economy is freeing the private sector to create new jobs with more financial security for American families.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Bls, Bureau of labor statistics, Labor, Jobs, Immigrants, Deportations, White house, Bureau of labor, Labor department, Winning, Migration, Workers, America first, Politics 

Seed oils.

You’ve probably heard they’re really bad, but I bet you don’t know why. If you do, or think you do, I bet it’s because of the disgusting way they’re produced — you may have seen that stomach-turning video of canola oil being made — and the fact that they’re a totally novel form of fat humans have no real history of consuming.

Yet here we are guzzling huge quantities of them in pretty much every kind of processed food you can think of.

Forefather knows best

Seed oils are everywhere now, in large part because they’re cheap to make, but also because we’ve been told, wrongly, that they’re actually much better for us than the fats our ancestors ate since the dawn of time, especially animal fats.

The logic behind that claim — we’ve been eating the wrong fats for 200,000 years until corporations came along and magically gave us the right kind — doesn’t pass a basic sniff test, but there’s also a growing body of scientific research to back up our sensible prejudice.

Everything about this olive oil is authentic, down to the local village men and women who harvest the olives and press and bottle the liquid.

Last week, I talked about the book I consider to be the best book ever written on diet and nutrition, Weston A. Price’s “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.”

Price makes a simple argument: The transition to modern industrial diets has been a disaster for human health. He was making this argument in 1939, when the very first factory foods like refined-wheat products and canned goods were becoming widespread, many decades before supermarket shelves were filled with the kind of ultra-processed slop we’re familiar with today, like Twinkies and Froot Loops and microwave pizza and Hot Pockets.

A worthless byproduct

Seed oils were one of the first true industrial foodstuffs. Whenever modern humans have eaten seeds, they’ve eaten very small quantities of seed oils, but it required modern machines and chemistry to extract them in large quantities and produce horrible oceans of the stuff: high-pressure mechanical pressing, neutralizing, bleaching, deodorizing, and so on.

One of the first commercial seed oils was crystallized cottonseed oil, which you almost certainly know as Crisco. Oil was extracted at high pressure from cottonseeds and then hydrogenated using a metal catalyst to produce a solid seed-based alternative to animal shortening.

Cotton producers loved this new process, because it made a worthless byproduct of cotton manufacturing into a valuable commodity. What was once fit only to thin paint and lubricate machinery (if not just thrown away) became something people would stick in their mouths and eat.

When I put it like that, it sounds kind of evil, and I suppose it is. We really shouldn’t be eating this stuff.

Soy-faced

I won’t bore you too much with the science of seed oils. You can look it up, if you want to: why polyunsaturated fats — the main constituent of seed oils, and especially so-called omega-6s — are toxic and how the manufacturing process makes these fats even more so; the way seed oils interfere with the metabolism and make us put on weight, as well as their tendency to have estrogenic effects.

RELATED: Bear Grylls ditches vegan diet, explains why he now embraces carnivore lifestyle: ‘The biggest game-changer’

Delbert Shoopman/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

I’ll mention one set of findings, though, before I move on. A 2020 study of soybean oil (the most widely consumed seed oil in America) showed that not only did it make mice fat, it also disrupted the same region of the brain — and in a similar fashion — as Alzheimer’s disease.

Soybean oil also interfered with the production of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” which governs social interaction and bonding. I recently suggested on X that maybe the reason everyone in America is so tense these days is because they eat a thousand times more soybean oil than they did a century ago. I wasn’t joking.

Crushing it

So what about olive oil? I often get asked this. Is olive oil a seed oil? No, it isn’t. Olive oil is a fruit oil, actually. And while it contains some polyunsaturated fatty acids like seed oils, it mostly contains monounsaturated fatty acids, which are different in important ways, most notably their stability.

The extraction process is simple and non-toxic — literally, you just crush olives. What’s more, olive oil contains a wonderful array of unique plant compounds with some pretty miraculous effects.

Maybe the simplest way to understand what’s so good about olive oil, beyond its delicious taste, is to note that it’s been consumed for thousands of years, and those people who consume lots of it, like the Italians, display remarkable longevity, vim, and lust for life.

When it comes to beneficial health effects, science is showing there’s virtually nothing olive oil can’t do. Here’s one study that shows olive oil helps your body produce more testosterone, by allowing the testes to absorb more cholesterol. Here’s another that shows consuming three tablespoons of olive oil a day slows physical aging. And here’s one that shows how a compound in olive oil called hydroxytyrosol helps you to lose weight. Magic.

The good stuff

One of the main problems with supermarket olive oils is quality. You get what you pay for, and the bargains are often adulterated: cut, like cheap drugs, with inferior substances. That means seed oils. This is a problem you get with other oils too, perhaps most notably the hipster and keto dieter’s favorite, avocado oil. A study from a few years back showed that 82% of avocado oil sold in the US was rancid or adulterated.

Here’s a solution: Accept that you’re going to have to pay if you want a good product, and then go straight to the source.

Selo Olive

I go to Croatia for my olive oil. Not literally, but you know what I mean. My friend Martin Erlic founded Selo Olive on his family plantation in Dalmatia during the pandemic. Everything about this olive oil is authentic, down to the local village men and women who harvest the olives and press and bottle the liquid while they sing their local songs and laugh and joke in that inimitable Mediterranean way. “Selo” means “community” or “village” in Croatian, and it takes a community to make Selo’s olive oil.

When I got my first bottle of Selo, I couldn’t believe the difference from every other olive oil I had ever tried.

The color, the aroma, the consistency — and of course the taste. This is the real deal. I don’t think I could ever glug anything else on a Greek salad or grilled sardines or make a delicious olive-oil bulletproof coffee with an inferior brand that hadn’t been hand-picked by grizzled babushkas.

Once you visit the Selo, you won’t ever want to leave.

​Olive oil, Lifestyle, Seed oil, Maha, Health, Croatia, Selo olive, Provisions 

Proving conservatives right again, a newly released study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that California experienced massive job loss since enacting a $20 minimum wage across the state.

AB 1228 was passed by the California assembly in September 2023, establishing the state’s “Fast Food Council” to set and change the minimum wage — which was previously $16 an hour. The bill was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom (D) in April 2024.

“Who could have guessed that this would have happened?” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.” “The fast-food industry, by the way, actually lost 18,000 jobs since the minimum wage hike in April 2024.”

This represents a 3.2% decline in that sector compared to others in different states.

“When you decide they all have to make $20 an hour, you remind the employer that those people are now no longer needed,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere says, adding, “And this is before we even get into robot chefs, which are obviously not far away.”

“I mean, who could have suspected the employers were not going to pay $20 an hour to flip burgers, right?” Gonzales mocks.

“It’s a terrible policy, whichever way you slice it, but you may, I don’t know, feel sympathy or something for the person who was driven out of a job, the 18,000 people who were driven out of fast-food jobs, if I ever felt like I was getting good service from any of these places. But to Stu’s point, it’s like I would probably rather have the app or the thing where I do it myself, because … any time I go to the restaurant industry these days, it’s like people are rude,” she continues.

“I don’t think you should have been making $20 an hour to be rude and get my order wrong,” she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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

​Sharing, Video, Upload, Camera phone, Video phone, Free, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Minimum wage raise, 20 dollar an hour minimum wage, Fast food workers, Fast food minimum wage 

Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan issued a lengthy explanation Thursday after she skipped key Israel votes to make an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s show.

Slotkin missed several votes on Wednesday, including two resolutions that would have blocked additional military aid to Israel. Rather than joining her colleagues for the vote, Slotkin spent Wednesday afternoon in New York to tape her appearance for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” which sparked outrage among American voters.

In an attempt to address the disappointment and disapproval felt by her constituents, Slotkin clarified her position on the vote and explained away her absence.

‘I owe it to my state to make clear where I stand.’

“Last night I unfortunately missed a vote series on two Joint Resolutions of Disapproval regarding the sale of weapons to Israel,” Slotkin said in a statement on X. “I have struggled with this Joint Resolution of Disapproval more than any previous votes in the nearly two years since Hamas initiated the attacks on October 7. I represent a state with a large Arab and Muslim population and a large Jewish population. And over these last two years, few issues have been as raw as this one.”

RELATED: Democratic senator appears on Colbert show after missing key Israel votes

Photo by Paul Sancya – Pool/Getty Images

“I have therefore worked very hard to call balls and strikes based on my experience and the facts on the ground, even as most people fall firmly into one side or another, and are often reluctant to consider new information. I owe it to my state to make clear where I stand: Had I made it back for the vote yesterday, I would have voted yes to block offensive weapons to Israel based on my concerns over lack of food and medicine getting to civilians in Gaza.”

RELATED: Cory Booker lashes out against colleagues during Senate floor freak-out: ‘It’s time for Democrats to have backbone’

Photo by JACQUELYN MARTIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Slotkin reaffirmed her support for the state of Israel, but she also criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for behaving as if “there are no limits to what they can do while receiving U.S. support.”

“I believe a message has to be sent,” Slotkin said. “Should similar votes on offensive weapons come up in the future, I will take them on a case-by-case basis, with the hope of important humanitarian course corrections. I continue to support the U.S.-Israel security relationship and sale of defensive weapons such as the Iron Dome.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Elissa slotkin, Stephen colbert, The late show with stephen colbert, Senate democrats, Bibi netanyahu, Benjamin netanyahu, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Donald trump, Trump administration, Foreign aid, Israel aid, Politics 

The topic of marriage is a contentious one, as the stat that 50% of marriages end in divorce is commonly repeated, leaving those looking to pursue one of life’s greatest adventures with a question mark seared into their minds.

However, times are changing, and divorce rates are going down.

“The good news about all of this is that that stat is ancient and it doesn’t really apply to society any more. This is a really good thing,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere says, before pulling up a chart that shows that divorce rates have steadily gone down since their peak in the 1970s.

“The only decade where marriages have stayed together at a better rate than the 2010s is the 1950s,” Stu says.

“Consider the culture around us and all the negatives that we talk about on a day-to-day basis. That’s a really positive development. And there are some of those in our society that we shouldn’t just look past,” he adds.

Married-parent families also steadily dropped since the 1970s, but the trend reversed in 2012, going from 64% to 66%.

“Now, that’s just a slight uptick. It’s not a massive one, but the fact that the falling has stopped is really positive. And a little bit of an upturn makes you think, ‘Hey, maybe there’s something positive going on there as well,’” Stu says.

“When you have a kid who was raised in a two-parent family instead of a one-parent family, they’re much less likely to commit crimes. They’re much more likely to finish high school. They’re much more likely to get through college. They’re much more likely to hold down a job. They’re much more likely to get married,” he continues.

“All these outcomes wind up being positive for society,” he adds.

Want more from Stu?

To enjoy more of Stu’s lethal wit, wisdom, and mockery, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Blaze media, Blaze tv, Blazetv, Blazetv+, Camera phone, Conservative commentary, Conservative news, Conservative talk show, Current events show, Daily news show, Entertainment, Free, Glenn beck, Humor, Opinion show, Pat gray, Political humor, Political podcast, Pop culture, Sharing, Stu burgear, Stu burguiere, Stu does america, Studoesamerica, The blaze, Theblaze, Upload, Us news and politics, Video, Video phone, Youtube.com 

Pizza delivered in five minutes through underground tunnels by 100mph robots. It sounds like bad science fiction. It’s not. It’s happening in Austin this September.

Pipedream Labs just announced the city’s first “thing pipe” network — 24-inch underground tunnels filled with autonomous robots called “Otters” that carry 40-pound payloads at highway speeds for 25 cents per delivery. CEO Garrett Scott calls it “hyperlogistics.” The rest of us should call it inevitable.

If Pipedream delivers on its promises, Austin will become the first city where physical goods move at internet speeds.

A series of tubes

The system sounds deceptively simple. Rapid Fulfillment Centers connect to unmanned Portal kiosks through underground pneumatic networks. Customers order through an app. Robots grab items from inventory. Compressed air shoots them through tubes faster than most cars travel. Products arrive at neighborhood kiosks in minutes, not hours

The economics are brutal for traditional delivery. Uber Eats charges restaurants a commission of up to 30% plus delivery fees. Pipedream charges 25 cents total. A single human driver earning minimum wage costs more per hour than hundreds of robot deliveries. The math isn’t close.

Austin makes perfect sense as a testing ground. The city’s explosive growth has created permanent traffic gridlock. Delivery trucks clog narrow streets built for horses, not commerce. Construction projects multiply delays. Weather shuts down traditional delivery entirely. Underground networks bypass every surface-level problem.

The new pneumatic

The technology exists today. Pneumatic tube systems have moved documents through buildings for decades. Amazon’s fulfillment centers already use robots for inventory management. Compressed air propulsion powers factory automation worldwide. Pipedream isn’t inventing new physics. It’s combining proven technologies in revolutionary ways.

The infrastructure requirements seem daunting until you examine the details. Twenty-four-inch pipes require smaller excavation than water mains or subway tunnels. Modern boring machines dig faster and cheaper than ever. Austin’s limestone geology simplifies construction compared to cities with bedrock or water table issues.

Forty miles of pipe and 100 Portal nodes represent a massive initial investment. But the payoff timeline is measured in months, not decades. Every successful delivery generates immediate revenue. The network becomes more valuable as it expands. Each new Portal increases utility for existing users.

Rental-based economies

The business model transcends simple delivery. Rental-based economies become practical when items arrive in minutes. Need a power drill for an hour? Order one, use it, return it to the same Portal. The economics shift from ownership to access. Physical goods behave like digital subscriptions.

RELATED: USPS celebrates 250 years as it hemorrhages billions — are taxpayers on the hook?

Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Local businesses gain massive advantages. Small restaurants compete directly with chain delivery times. Neighborhood pharmacies match Amazon’s convenience. Independent retailers access instant fulfillment without warehouse investments. The network levels playing fields tilted toward corporate giants.

Delivery goes underground

The implications for urban planning are staggering. Delivery trucks disappear from residential streets. Parking requirements shrink when fewer people need cars for errands. Commercial real estate transforms when location matters less than network access. Zoning laws written for truck-based logistics become obsolete.

Residential architecture adapts accordingly. New homes include built-in delivery drawers connected to building-level Portal access. Apartment complexes install central receiving stations. The mailbox evolves into a two-way logistics portal. Physical goods flow in and out like email.

Underground networks operate regardless of weather. Reduced packaging needs less cardboard and plastic. Consolidated deliveries eliminate thousands of individual trips.

Swift and brutal

The social changes run deeper than convenience. Elderly residents access fresh groceries without leaving home. Disabled individuals gain independence through instant delivery. Rural areas connect to urban logistics networks. Geographic inequality diminishes when distance becomes irrelevant.

The competitive response will be swift and brutal. Amazon’s drone program suddenly looks outdated. FedEx and UPS face existential threats. Traditional retailers must adapt or die. The logistics industry transforms overnight when atoms move like bits.

Regulatory challenges loom large. City governments must approve underground construction. Safety regulations need updating for high-speed robot networks. Zoning laws require revision. But economic pressure overwhelms bureaucratic resistance. Cities that delay lose competitive advantage.

The scalability question remains open. Austin’s relatively flat terrain and cooperative local government provide ideal conditions. Dense urban areas with complex underground infrastructure face bigger challenges. But success in Austin proves the concept for nationwide expansion.

The security implications deserve consideration. Underground networks resist natural disasters and terrorist attacks better than surface infrastructure. But they create new vulnerabilities. Cyber attacks on automated systems could shut down entire cities. Physical access to tunnels enables sabotage.

Aggressive timeline

The labor displacement is undeniable. Thousands of delivery drivers lose their jobs immediately. Warehouse workers face increasing automation pressure. Trucking companies shrink. However, new jobs will likely arise in network maintenance, portal management, and robot programming. The transition creates both winners and losers.

I reached out to CEO Garrett Scott for comment on these implications. None was offered. Perhaps he’s too busy building the future to explain it.

The timeline feels impossibly aggressive. September launch for a completely new infrastructure category? Most city projects take years to approve, let alone complete. But Austin’s tech-friendly culture and streamlined permitting process make rapid deployment possible.

The physics are sound. The economics are compelling. The technology exists. The only question is execution speed. If Pipedream delivers on its promises, Austin will become the first city where physical goods move at internet speeds.

Underground robot networks sound insane until you examine the alternatives. Traffic gridlock worsens daily. Delivery costs skyrocket. Traditional logistics systems break under growth pressure. Pipedream’s solution suddenly seems inevitable rather than impossible.

The future of logistics just went subterranean. The only surprise is that it took this long.

​Pipedream, Start-up, Austin, Delivery, Amazon, Pneumatic tubes, Lifestyle, Tech, A series of tubes 

Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) tried his best on Thursday to paint President Donald Trump as a hypocrite. Unlike other false Democratic narratives, Schumer’s latest didn’t last very long.

The New York Democrat told reporters during a press conference on the president’s August 1 deadline for trade deals, “Just now, the White House announced construction of a $200 million White House ballroom that will begin in September.”

“A $200 million ballroom!” continued Schumer, who was found in a recent Economist/YouGov poll to have a favorability rating of 23%. “Where did this money come from? Did Congress appropriate? I don’t think so.”

While Schumer clearly lacked critical information about the newly announced ballroom — an initiative he deemed “confounding” — he proved more than willing to rush to conclusions.

“It’s almost like DOGE was never about waste at all. It was about cutting services to help Trump and his billionaire buddies. It seems that DOGE was all about making cuts on Americans to fund their ballroom. Was that what DOGE was all about?” said Schumer, adding that the purpose of the new White House ballroom was so that Trump “can eat his cheeseburgers in there in luxury.”

Contrary to Schumer’s suggestion — which helped draw attention to the initiative — the new ballroom will not be a cost to the American people but rather a gift.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted on Thursday that “for 150 years, presidents, administrations, and White House staff have longed for a large event space on the White House complex that can hold substantially more guests than currently allowed. President Trump has expressed his commitment to solving this problem on behalf of future administrations.”

RELATED: Leftists rage over Trump’s latest patriotic installment at the White House

Rendering of planned White House ballroom by McCrery Architects. White House.

Leavitt indicated that the 90,000 square-foot addition will be designed by McCrery Architects — a Washington, D.C.-based firm specializing in civic, religious, and institutional projects — and made large enough to seat 650 people. The East Room of the White House currently seats only 200 people.

‘I was always a great real estate developer, and I know how to do that.’

Work on the project will be overseen by Clark Construction and commence in September. The new structure will stand on the site where the East Wing presently sits.

“President Trump and other donors have generously committed to donating the funds necessary to build this approximately $200 million structure,” said Leavitt.

Rendering of planned White House ballroom by McCrery Architects. White House.

Trump said in a recent interview with NBC News that the project would be “his gift to the country.”

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles stated, “President Trump is a builder at heart and has an extraordinary eye for detail. The president and the Trump White House are fully committed to working with the appropriate organizations to preserve the special history of the White House while building a beautiful ballroom that can be enjoyed by future administrations and generations of Americans to come.”

“I was always a great real estate developer, and I know how to do that,” said Trump.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​President, Donald trump, Ballroom, Chuck schumer, Schumer, Democrats, Politics 

Harvard University and the American Association of University Professors want a federal court to stop the government from canceling $2.5 billion in research funding.

At first glance, it’s easy to scoff. Harvard’s endowment rivals the GDP of some small countries. But this fight isn’t just about Harvard. It’s about all of us.

Harvard seems to think it’s entitled to its billions regardless of behavior, like a moody teenager who thinks rent is a form of oppression.

Sure, it’s satisfying to watch the crowned kings of academia scramble like undergrads who forgot their term paper was due. But a deeper question sits beneath the schadenfreude: Do universities have a constitutional right to taxpayer money?

Harvard seems to think so. Alongside the AAUP, the university now argues that the First Amendment guarantees not just academic freedom — but a government check to fund it. Far from a defense of liberty, that’s a tenured aristocracy demanding tribute.

How to ask for billions without blushing

Let’s unpack Harvard’s argument, delivered in the tone of someone explaining basic arithmetic to a particularly dim goat.

First, the school declares: “We have academic freedom! We have free speech! We can study whatever we want!” No argument here. Harvard’s academics are absolutely free to study whatever they like — whether it’s training lions to walk on treadmills or teaching Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly. (Yes, those are real grant-funded projects.) I’ll defend their right to pursue this nonsense on their own dime. But not with mine. And I’ll laugh at the absurdity while I do it.

Then comes the second move: “Our research helps society! Public health, military innovation, science, the arts — we deserve this funding because we’re helping you.” That’s when the argument starts to stink like a dorm fridge in May.

Here’s the reality: The Trump administration didn’t yank Harvard’s funding on a whim. The government pulled the plug because Harvard refused to address well-documented anti-Semitism on campus. Federal officials raised the alarm. Harvard responded with a shrug and a memo.

Now the university’s shocked — shocked! — that the spigot might be turned off.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Harvard is willing to pay up to $500 million to settle with the federal government — similar to Columbia’s deal. The final sticking point? Whether Harvard will agree to ongoing oversight for accountability, as Columbia did, or claim such monitoring violates its sacred “academic freedom.” That’s the scam again: invoking freedom while demanding taxpayer cash.

You don’t get to be elitist and entitled

Harvard runs on a $6 billion annual budget. Its endowment tops $50 billion. When ordinary people need money, they eat leftovers and cancel Netflix. Harvard, richer than many nations, sues the federal government to argue that taxpayers owe it funding for what it calls “scientific progress.”

That “progress” now includes climate grief workshops and studies on the emotional burdens of white women named Karen.

No one is saying universities can’t pursue intellectual flights of fancy. The question is whether they’re entitled to do it with your money — and without accountability.

At this point, “federally funded research” needs an asterisk. It used to mean real science. Now you have to squint: Is this about curing cancer or building better weapons — or is it just another DEI hustle dressed in a lab coat?

This is what happens when academia stops serving truth and starts serving itself.

Consequences for all!

Now, as any professor who has read a syllabus knows, consequences are real. They show up in bold print next to the plagiarism policy. And it turns out that federal grant contracts contain cancellation clauses — the equivalent of the government saying, “If you breach the terms or act unethically, we reserve the right to cut you off.”

Apparently, “repeated and unaddressed anti-Semitism” qualifies. As it should.

This is not oppression. This is not censorship. This is accountability — a word that causes visible hives in most faculty lounges.

RELATED: Redistribution comes for Harvard — and it’s glorious

Photo by Bloomberg/Getty Images

Leftist academics are ready to refuse federal money to any Christian college that believes marriage is a union between a man and a woman. It would be defunded before you could say “diversity audit.” But Harvard seems to think it’s entitled to its billions regardless of behavior, like a moody teenager who thinks rent is a form of oppression.

Earn back our trust

As a professor who still believes that the university should be a place for the pursuit of wisdom and virtue (quaint, I know), I’ll be watching this case with great interest. If the court rules that Harvard is entitled to public money regardless of conduct, we’ll have affirmed the rise of a new aristocracy — one not of nobility by blood but of arrogance by credential.

But if the court affirms that funding comes with responsibility, that anti-Semitism cannot be tolerated, and that ideological corruption of science disqualifies one from public support, then it’s possible we’ve found the beginning of reform.

Until then, if Harvard wants to study whether male prostitutes in Vietnam are self-actualizing through tourism, the school can absolutely do that. Just not with my tax dollars. In fact, Harvard might be paying back $500 million. That’s a lot of zeroes.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Harvard, Harvard university, Harvard trump suit, Trump harvard, Donald trump, Presidenti trump, Trump