Category: blaze media

An upcoming documentary on comedian Dane Cook revisits a disturbing chapter from the height of his fame two decades ago.

Cook was one of the first comedians to figure out how to turn the internet into a path to stardom. In the early 2000s, when most entertainers still regarded online file sharing as piracy to be stamped out, Cook embraced it, putting his stand-up on services such as Napster, LimeWire, and Kazaa while cultivating fans through his website and later MySpace.

‘How does this end?’

Secret ingredient

Fans passed his routines around as audio-only clips, and Cook painstakingly cultivated that audience online. By 2005, his second album, “Retaliation,” debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 — the highest-charting comedy album in nearly three decades — as Cook graduated to sold-out arenas and increasingly prominent television and movie roles.

But while Cook was becoming one of the defining comedians of the early internet era, someone close to him was quietly siphoning away the fortune that came with it.

Cook’s own half-brother, Darryl McCauley, was secretly stashing away millions of dollars from the comedian and hiding it like a mobster. A trailer for the upcoming documentary “Funny Money: The Dane Cook Story” reveals a wall safe packed to the brim with Cook’s cash.

Not only that, but there were “bricks of $100s” hidden inside pasta sauce. The video depicts bags stuffed with cash submerged in plastic containers of tomato sauce, all to the tune of $12 million.

RELATED: ‘BURN IT ALL DOWN’: Firebrand feminist filmmaker calls for violent revolution

Michael Schwartz/WireImage/NARAS

Jarring discovery

McCauley handled Cook’s finances as his manager from the late 1990s until 2008, with the theft reportedly beginning in 2004 when he began diverting funds to his own accounts from Cook’s.

First, the sums were in lower amounts, but receipts shown in the documentary still included a $22,000 transfer in September 2004. Before long, those amounts increased to $50,000 and then $100,000.

Cook wasn’t even aware.

“I was starting to feel something that I couldn’t really identify,” Cook says in the trailer. “Was he hiding it in different places, stockpiling this money?”

That’s where the sauce technique came in.

McCauley had an accomplice, too. According to an NBC Philadelphia report from 2010, McCauley’s wife was involved in his plot and received between two and three years in prison time.

McCauley himself pled guilty to seven counts of larceny over $250, three counts of forgery and embezzlement, and other charges. This garnered between five and six years in prison. He was 45 at the time, and Cook was 38.

RELATED: Rosie O’Donnell continues run at worst TV return ever with insane comments about ‘Nazis’

M. Caulfield/WireImage/LIONSGATE

O brother where art thou?

Even though both brothers wanted to become comedians, McCauley ended up becoming a corrections officer, with Cook describing him as “a person that spent so much time pretending to be something he wasn’t.”

Much of the focus of the new doc appears to be centered around Cook finding out what happened to his brother after his prison stint, when he seemingly disappeared.

“Where is he? What has he done? How does this end?” Cook narrates.

The comedian said that he still believes more money is out there and that other accomplices are likely involved.

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​Stand-up comedy, Dane cook, Embezzlement, Entertainment 

The U.S. national debt stood at roughly $85.06 billion at the turn of the 20th century, adjusted for inflation. At the turn of the 21st century, America’s outstanding debt was $5.67 trillion — the equivalent of roughly $10.99 trillion today.

According to the Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s Fiscal Data dashboard, America’s total public debt outstanding as of Tuesday was $40,047,425,768,420.22. That’s roughly $116,832 per person.

‘The amount is significantly greater than US annual GDP.’

Of the over $40 trillion, $32.26 trillion is Treasury securities held by the public, including the Federal Reserve, state and local governments, domestic private investors, and foreign holders. The other $7.78 trillion is the total of intra-governmental debt holdings.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters on Thursday, “Remember, we did not get here in a day. We were left with a mess. The Biden administration had the highest deficit-to-GDP in history when we weren’t at war or weren’t in a recession. For 2025, we brought it down by more than a percent.”

Former President Barack Obama added $8.44 trillion to the national debt during his two terms. During the Biden presidency, the debt increased by $8.4 trillion. During President Donald Trump’s time in office, the debt has risen by $11.6 trillion — including $3.8 trillion in the time since his return to power in January 2025, reported Reuters.

After the debt cracked $40 trillion, Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, noted, “The gross national debt has doubled in the last 10 years; in less than 20 years, it has quadrupled. And today, we have confirmation that the debt has reached a new milestone of $40 trillion. It is staggering how predictable the fiscal decline of a global power can become.”

RELATED: It’s the economy, stupid — again

Alex Wong/Getty Images

MacGuineas highlighted that it took two centuries for America’s gross debt to reach $1 trillion — a milestone reached in 1981.

At the time, President Ronald Reagan stated, “This is a figure that’s literally beyond our comprehension.”

Blaze Media contributor Carol Roth told Blaze News, “Instead of celebrating America’s 250th, we are lamenting accumulating $40 trillion in debt. The scope of the debt is shocking, but there are two important related factors.”

“One is the rapid growth of the debt. I remember when we crossed $20 trillion in 2017, which was less than 10 years ago. We have doubled that with another $20 trillion in less than 10 years,” said Roth. “The second factor is how much it costs us to finance the debt, which I have been warning about for nearly two decades. Right now, we spend more to pay the interest costs of our debt than we do on the defense of the nation. At the rate we are going, it will soon become the U.S.’ largest expenditure category.”

“You cannot have a healthy, vibrant nation when you spend more to pay for your debt than anything else,” continued Roth. “The blame for this lands squarely at the feet of Congress, where both parties, who take in more than $5 trillion a year now, find a way to spend an incremental $2 trillion. And it is the fault of all in government that won’t address the rampant fraud, waste, and abuse in the system.”

The Wall Street Journal suggested that reaching the $40 trillion threshold “carries symbolic weight, but isn’t, by itself, economically significant.” It suggested, however, that it is prudent to keep an eye on the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio.

“The amount is significantly greater than U.S. annual GDP. That means even if all U.S. income went toward paying down the debt for a full year — rather than to things like salaries, corporate profits, and investment — the federal government would still owe trillions, by this measure,” said the journal.

The Congressional Budget Office projected in a February report that “deficits are large by historical standards. The deficit totals $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2026 and grows to $3.1 trillion in 2036. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit is 5.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2026 and increases to 6.7% in 2036. Deficits averaged 3.8% of GDP over the last 50 years.”

The CBO projected further that debt held by the public will rise from 101% of GDP this year to 120% in 2036.

The CBO noted that its projections changed since January 2025 primarily because of three major policy developments: “The 2025 reconciliation act increased deficits by an estimated $4.7 trillion; higher tariffs reduced deficits by an estimated $3.0 trillion; and administrative actions related to immigration increased deficits by an estimated $0.5 trillion.”

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​National debt, Economy, Debt, Department of the treasury, Scott bessent, Donald trump, Barack obama, Joe biden, Politics 

Josh Howerton, BlazeTV host and pastor of Lakepointe Church in Dallas, Texas, regularly receives emails from Christians in the DFW metroplex asking if they should try to legally stop mosques from being built in their city.

Data shows that Texas ranks third in the country for number of mosques and has seen significant growth in recent decades. Is aiming to stop or slow this growth a genuine Christian mission — or is it politics dressed up as a holy crusade?

On this episode of “Live Free,” Howerton responds to this inquiry by looking at both Scripture and the current law.

Howerton acknowledges the ideological divide among Christians regarding the issue of Islam. Some will point to the religious liberty granted by the First Amendment and Christianity being “the religion of invitation” and say “of course not” to organizing around mosque prevention. Others, he says, will strongly advocate for it on the grounds that Islam is “demon worship” that aims to “[overtake] cities” where their families live.

This division was on full display at a recent city council meeting in McKinney, Texas, where the council heard arguments surrounding the McKinney Islamic Association’s mosque expansion site plan, which the council still unanimously approved. The arguments were so contentious that the story made national news.

There were several Christians who advocated against the mosque’s expansion, some of whom did “not [display] team Jesus character,” says Howerton. He shares this reminder: “We are commanded in the book of Second Timothy to ‘correct opponents with gentleness and respect and to be people who conduct ourselves with a spirit of power and of love and of self-control.”’

But conduct aside, was their advocacy biblical?

Howerton acknowledges the complexity of the issue. It is true, he argues, that Christianity treats all opposing religions as “demon worship” (1 Corinthians 10:20). In the Old Testament, God harshly judged the kings who “allowed the construction of things that facilitated the worship of false gods in the nation,” he points out.

However, under the current American legal system that interprets the First Amendment to mean “radical pluralism,” the government is not allowed to treat one religion differently from another — even though our founders wanted religious tolerance for all but religious preference for Christianity, Howerton notes.

It’s right for Christians to want to stop the spread of the demon religion of Islam, he argues, but it’s a guaranteed lost battle with the modern interpretation of the First Amendment.

So where does that leave Christians who want to be “salt of the earth” in the public square?

The solution, says Howerton, is to fight Islam legally — opposing mosque building projects on zoning grounds or via existing legal restrictions on certain organizations.

In Texas, there are two ways to legally oppose the construction or expansion of a mosque.

The first, Howerton explains, is called a formal property owners protest. It lets nearby landowners who control at least 20% of the land next to the project to formally challenge the zoning change, which then forces the city council to get a larger majority of votes before it can approve it.

The second way, says Howerton, is to prove that a mosque or Islamic center’s construction or expansion is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood or Council on American-Islamic Relations (or their affiliates). Under Texas law, those groups are restricted from owning land, which gives protesters a legal basis to challenge the project.

“A significant number of potential mosque developments are connected in some way to one of the two organizations,” he explains.

“You file a public records request on the potential development’s paperwork, nonprofit status, and any connection to CAIR or the Muslim Brotherhood, and if you establish it … then you file that complaint with the Texas AG’s office, and it’s done.”

Howerton warns that the time for Christians to sit back and not take a stand on the issue of Islam’s growth in the United States is over.

“If you’re a Christian, whether you like it or not, you are going to have to learn to think about things like this in the next 20 years. You are no longer afforded the luxury of not having an answer to this question.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

“Live Free with Josh Howerton” is on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.

Join BlazeTV+ and start watching Josh today at blazetv.com/JOSH. Use promo code JOSH40 to get $40 off your subscription.

​First amendment, Josh howerton, Religious liberty, Islam, Mosque, Blazetv show, Texas 

A Florida mother has been arrested after allegedly posting videos showing her igniting a fire in her kitchen and pouring hot wax on her young daughters, according to authorities.

Meliza Campos-Sanchez, 26, was arrested on Monday and charged with first-degree arson, child abuse, and child neglect, according to records from the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department.

‘In one video, Campos-Sanchez can allegedly be seen dancing in a silver mask and lighting a pile of clothing on fire.’

Jail records show Campos-Sanchez is being held without bond at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center and has an immigration hold.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and sheriff’s deputies went to Campos-Sanchez’s home in Miami regarding a dwelling fire on Sunday, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Law&Crime.

Law&Crime reported, “Upon arriving, first responders found damage to the center of the tiled kitchen floor, along with a silver mask, a red wand lighter, and a clear plastic condiment bottle believed to have held rubbing alcohol.”

The affidavit stated that the fire had been started intentionally “by an open flame held to ignitable liquids and combustible materials.”

Police interviewed Campos-Sanchez’s 6-year-old daughter, who said she and her younger sister had been in the laundry room next to the kitchen when they saw their mother start the fire and throw a glass mug on the floor while dancing, according to the affidavit.

The fire was extinguished when Campos-Sanchez used a bowl of water to put out the flames, according to the affidavit.

Court documents said Campos-Sanchez allegedly poured hot wax on her daughters after the fire was put out.

“Afterwards, [the 6-year-old] stated that her mother brought her and her sister into the kitchen and began pouring what she describes as ‘HOT WATER OR AGUA’ from the lit candles (melted candle wax) on herself, [the 6-year-old], and her sister,” police wrote in the affidavit.

RELATED: Florida mom accused of vile child porn crimes against her daughter — could face death penalty for sexual battery charges

BrianAJackson/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Investigators discovered the Instagram account of Campos-Sanchez that has nearly 65,000 followers.

Authorities found two Instagram videos on her account, including one involving her children, ages 3 and 6.

True Crime reported, “In one video, Campos-Sanchez can allegedly be seen dancing in a silver mask and lighting a pile of clothing on fire, and in another, she is allegedly seen pouring hot wax onto herself and onto her daughters’ hands.”

The affidavit said, “One video shows the defendant in the kitchen of her home, using lit candles to pour hot melted candle wax on her own leg, and then in the hands of her two daughters.”

As of Thursday afternoon, those videos remain posted on the verified Instagram account “melizacsanchez.”

Campos-Sanchez was arrested on Monday and taken to a hospital. Police said she was placed under a Baker Act hold for a temporary mental health evaluation. Deputies took Campos-Sanchez into custody after she was cleared for discharge from the hospital.

Citing the affidavit, People magazine reported that Campos-Sanchez’s husband, Yusniel Cue, informed investigators that he and his wife had been dealing with marital issues. He stated that he had spent the week before the alleged incident staying with his parents while Campos-Sanchez remained at the home with their daughters.

The affidavit further states that Cue told law enforcement that Campos-Sanchez had previously attempted suicide and that he had contacted the sheriff’s office the preceding week over concerns for their children, People reported.

WTVJ-TV reported Cue told authorities that Campos-Sanchez had previously tied a rope in the rafters in a suicide attempt.

The New York Post reported that there were “alarming warnings of her behavior,” including “a series of images on Aug. 6 showing her posing with a handgun in her mouth, which she claimed in the caption was just a toy.”

Cue took custody of his daughters following the alleged incident.

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​Florida, Florida woman, Social media, Instagram, Viral videos, Child abuse, Crime 

A series of recent displays from Sophie Cunningham supporters has put the WNBA’s biggest problem right at their doorstep.

Even as the league admits to some missteps, actually addressing the issue has been left to female supporters at league games.

‘Women should not be responsible for validating men’s trans identities.’

When a mother and daughter recently went to a high-profile game between the Atlanta Dream and Indiana Fever on Sunday, they silently supported Cunningham’s pro-woman stance by wearing pro-women apparel. The result was the pair being asked by WNBA security officials to cover up their clothing.

The Dream subsequently put the onus on the WNBA for the incident, saying, “WNBA security took actions that fell short” of their standard.

“At no point was Dream personnel involved in the decisions made by WNBA security,” the team added.

This forced the WNBA to acknowledge the “interactions” and say, “This should not have happened.”

By not addressing the actual issue, the league’s statements are meaningless, says Kasey Thomason, the mother who dared to wear “XX-XY” clothing at the Dream-Fever game.

Thomason told Blaze News, “The statements just pass the blame so they mean nothing.”

The mother added, “No one has reached out to us about the incident,” despite the high-profile nature of the event.

RELATED: WNBA team co-owner FINED and SUSPENDED for cursing out teen fans of Sophie Cunningham at Seattle game

When Cunningham and the Fever went on the road to Canada to face the Toronto Tempo on Tuesday, supporters again came out, this time in droves.

Jennifer Arnold showed up with her group, Women & Girls Alberta, with a poster of Cunningham and a message that men do not belong in women’s sports.

Arnold relayed to Blaze News that about 200 people took photos with the poster, and overall it garnered a “very positive reception.”

Detractors allegedly totaled about six “young” protesters, and Arnold says that conversations with them revealed a general misconception about what her group actually believes.

“They falsely stated that people in favor of female-only sporting categories want to ban all people who identify as trans from sports altogether,” Arnold recalled. “We explained that is not true, and there are already biological women who identify as trans in women’s sports, and no one has an issue as they are female and therefore do not have a male performance advantage.”

The organizer also revealed that one of the counter-demonstrators, who was holding a “protect trans kids” sign, became agitated and appeared to grab a reporter’s phone.

RELATED: Cover up or ‘leave’? Mother and daughter say they were confronted at WNBA game over pro-women shirts

Kasey Thomason

Arnold concluded, “Women should not be responsible for validating men’s trans identities by giving up fairness on the court and privacy in the locker room.”

The hope from these fans turned activists is that the WNBA issues a female-only policy, akin to other women’s leagues. The WNBA already does, in theory, prohibit men. Article XIII, Section 1 of the WNBA’s 2026 collective-bargaining agreement says that “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.”

However, the league has refused to provide a definition for what they consider a woman to be, despite meeting to discuss the very issue earlier in August.

The league’s conclusion was: “There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA.”

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​Wnba, Women’s sports, Sophie cunningham, Basketball, Sports 

Crowds of excited Buc-ee’s fans arrived at the first location in Arkansas at 4:30 a.m. on Monday in anticipation of the opening celebration.

Some of the attendees decked themselves out in Buc-ee’s-branded clothing and waited for hours to be the first to enter the Benton location and have a taste of a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich or a brisket taco.

‘I’m starting to realize life’s too short to build in places that people don’t appreciate what you’re bringing.’

During the opening ceremony, which included Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the famed convenience store brand’s co-founder said that they were planning far more locations in Arkansas.

Arch “Beaver” Aplin III is the president and CEO of Buc-ee’s in addition to being a co-founder.

“We have a lot of opportunities. We’re growing. We’re building in a lot of places, but when you find a conservative, business-friendly state with a phenomenal workforce, it makes a difference,” he said to the crowd.

“And I’m starting to realize life’s too short to try to build in places that people don’t appreciate what you’re bringing versus a place like this, where people do appreciate what you’re building,” he added.

“So that leadership, that concept, that idea of conservative, business-friendly, family-oriented concept works so much better if it trickles down from the very leadership,” Aplin said, “from the very top at the governor’s office, at the congressman, at the senator, at the mayor, the representatives.”

Huckabee Sanders posted the video on her Facebook page and added her endorsement of his comments.

“That’s why red states like Arkansas are surging and people and businesses are fleeing blue state [sic],” she wrote.

The Buc-ee’s location in Benton includes 120 gas pumps and encompasses a 74,000-square foot building.

RELATED: Fear the beaver: How a gas station became a cult (and why you should consider joining)

“In the world of economic development, a project of this size — with more than 200 jobs, nearly 75,000 square feet — can usually take years to develop,” Huckabee Sanders said at the grand opening. “But having spent time with Beaver, I know he’s not the type of guy to stand around and let something drag on, and neither is Saline County.”

Buc-ee’s has also faced some backlash after the company has aggressively sued to stop any use of a cartoon beaver as a business mascot. One target is the corner store Beaver’s Mini Mart, which has been in operation for more than two decades in Beavercreek, a suburb of Dayton, Ohio.

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​Arkansas, Bucees, Conservative, Business, Politics 

Leftist streamer Hasan Piker uses his platform to deliver provocative, anti-American takes with little care for how they might be received. However, as conservatives resurface some of his most inflammatory remarks, Piker appears far less enthusiastic about the spotlight.

“What’s insane is apparently Hasan is threatening lawsuits because Scott Jennings allegedly used his clips on the radio, and Hasan is like crashing out. He’s like, ‘I might sue,'” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“Let’s work on this Scott Jennings situation first, and then I’ll see what to do about him too. It looks like the news cycle might be moving on. The article per day number is going down. Yeah, because they got their point across,” Piker said on his podcast.

“I’ll see … what I can do about them,” Gonzales mocks, before showing a clip of Piker “on his hatred of America and of the American flag.”

“They can do whatever the f**k they want with the American flag and the Israeli flag. I wipe my ass with the American flag,” Piker said.

Piker went on to explain that as a “communicator” he understands “the utter moral depravity of the average American.”

But that’s not the worst thing Piker has said.

“We’re going to keep bringing in immigrants in this country on purpose just so they can f**k your sister and then maybe even your daughter. We’re going to destroy the white race … that’s what we’re here to do,” he said on another episode of his podcast.

“That was the one that I had said that I reacted to. So I just think it’s kind of strange. It’s like, OK, I’m just using your words and your clips and I’m just playing the things that you said. I don’t know why you would want to sue?” Gonzales says.

“It’s like Libs of TikTok, right? It’s like you put it out there on the internet, you live streamed it, and I in all of my benevolence put it out there to way more people,” she continues.

“It’s like I’m just putting this in front of more eyeballs for you, and I don’t even get a thank you for that. I get a threat of a lawsuit,” she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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

​Conservatives, Hasan piker, Immigrants, Israeli flag, Libs of tiktok, Sara gonzales, Scott jennings, Lawsuit, American flag, Blazetv show 

The stereotype of the academically challenged athlete who gets away with skipping class is so overused it’s almost expected.

That’s why when a college football player recently revealed he was working at a golf course and not going to class, it seemed almost too ridiculous to be real.

‘Nine Houston student-athletes entered the season having already earned an undergraduate degree.’

This isn’t a trope, however. It’s a real-life scenario.

South Carolina quarterback LaNorris Sellers has no school this semester, unless he counts preparing for football games.

Sellers instead goes to a local golf course, where he is practicing “facility management” by “cutting grass and picking up balls,” Fox News reported.

Another example is recent NFL Draft pick Carson Beck from the University of Miami, who had six years of NCAA eligibility due to COVID-19, but he was blasted online back in January for saying he had “no class” and had actually graduated two years earlier.

As easy as it is to believe that colleges are giving students who can barely read a passing grade — like Hank of “King of the Hill” — the class-less college football star of today is more likely to be an athlete who previously put in the work, at least in the more popularized stories.

Sellers is living lavishly on the greens because that is the final internship work he needs to graduate with a degree in sports and entertainment in December. Beck had “no class” in the lead-up to the National Championship game in January because he graduated from Georgia in 2024 and then transferred to Miami as a graduate student.

In fact, college teams having a sizable chunk of their roster earning their degrees ahead of time is nothing new.

In 2017, the University of Houston had nine.

RELATED: Former NFL player deported after allegedly threatening an Uber driver with hatchet

David Jensen/Getty Images

“Nine Houston student-athletes entered the season having already earned an undergraduate degree,” a 2017 Hawaii Bowl guide touted. And Houston ranked only No. 17 nationally that year in terms of players having earned degrees prior to the start of the season.

For 2025, the leading schools, Northwestern and Virginia, both had 34 players enter the season having already earned their degrees. Tennessee Tech had 32.

This is part of a growing trend that has nearly quadrupled in volume since 2017, according to the National Football Foundation. The same year, Houston had what appeared to be shocking numbers; 971 students from 213 schools were playing college football after having graduated.

That number exploded to 3,695 students in 304 schools in 2025.

RELATED: Arkansas football player discovers would-be assassin hiding in the unlikeliest of places

Tim Warner/Getty Images

Still, the precedent was set decades ago.

Mississippi State’s Justin Senior won an award for Mississippi’s most outstanding collegiate offensive lineman in 2016 after earning his degree ahead of time.

Going back to 2007, ASU’s Zach Krula earned his degree before his senior year, while in 2003 Georgia Tech punter Hal Higgins was noted for having earned his degree ahead of time after battling Hodgkin’s disease. He then pursued an MBA while still playing college football.

This all means that the next time a story comes around about an athlete who isn’t going to class, it is more likely a circumstance that is not just condoned by the school, but rather championed and promoted.

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​Football, Ncaa, College athletes, Sports 

President Donald Trump is right to challenge the leftist politicization of the Smithsonian, because what starts in a museum can ultimately end up as accepted fact or commonly held wisdom.

That is precisely what has happened in Canada, where national museums began packaging leftist ideas about history as diversity, equity and inclusion — whoops, that’s DEI, isn’t it?

There is now an active and increasingly organized campaign in Canada to criminalize ‘residential school denialism.’

What is truly bizarre is that those objecting to Trump’s intervention are accusing him of rewriting history! The Smithsonian has been doing just that for years. In Canada, as we shall see, it is even worse.

Trust fall

On July 24, Trump issued an executive order titled “Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution,” following a months-long White House review of the Smithsonian and its National Museum of American History.

The review, released July 4 as “Saving America’s Story,” accused the museum of abandoning its traditional role as a repository of America’s shared inheritance in favor of using history as a tool for “social justice” and political transformation.

Trump’s order directs federal officials to use their authority to encourage changes at the museum and even calls for temporary signs outside it warning visitors about the findings of the White House review and directing them toward other sources of historical information.

The order follows Trump’s March 2025 directive instructing Vice President JD Vance, in his role as a Smithsonian regent, to work to “remove improper ideology” from the institution and prohibiting federal spending on exhibits that “degrade shared American values” or divide Americans by race.

The response has been predictable: Trump is interfering with history.

But what if history has already been interfered with? Canada offers a useful warning.

Dustbin of history

Canada’s flagship museums in Ottawa have long since followed the path the Smithsonian is now taking. During this writer’s lifetime, institutions created to celebrate and explain Canada’s history have changed so drastically in substance and political tone that it can feel as though the old museums were wiped from the urban landscape and replaced by counterfeit structures.

At least in Canada, the museums admit what they’re doing.

The Canadian Museum of History’s own equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility strategy says the institution will “allocate resources strategically to bridge gaps” in its collections and exhibitions in order to “ensure better representation of equity-deserving groups.”

This isn’t merely an effort to recover neglected history. It explicitly establishes representation and equity as principles determining what the museum collects and presents.

And it isn’t limited to Ottawa.

‘A profoundly evil space’

Calgary’s Glenbow Museum now greets visitors with the Blackfoot phrase Siksikaissksahkoyi Kiitaowahsinnooni — “Blackfoot land, your territory” — as part of a land acknowledgment that explains the museum’s location in terms of indigenous territorial claims and treaty responsibilities.

One of the most beautiful museums in Canada was undoubtedly the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. But there was just too much material telling the story of the European settlers who came to Canada’s West Coast and built a prosperous province out of wilderness.

As National Post columnist Tristin Hopper has noted, much of the old museum disappeared during its ideological transformation.

“The coal mine, sawmill, homestead and First Peoples gallery are all gone,” Hopper wrote of the diminished museum. “And for everything left, there are placards everywhere to lecture visitors that they are moving through a profoundly evil space.”

The museum itself has described its transformation in the language of “inclusivity,” community engagement and the “co-creation” of exhibits.

What is the larger consequence of rewriting a country’s history this way?

Arguably, it helps create a cultural elite and mainstream media prepared to accept almost any story that fits the established narrative of oppressor and oppressed. After all, isn’t that what the museums have been teaching them?

Grave distortion

Consider what happened at Kamloops.

In May 2021, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir announced what the First Nation described as the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.

The announcement exploded around the world. Canada’s flags were lowered. Politicians apologized. Catholic churches were vandalized and burned. Other First Nations began announcing possible graves at former residential school sites across Canada.

Lost in all the outrage was one crucial fact: No bodies had actually been exhumed. Anomalies that could be human remains had been discovered by ground-penetrating radar.

When GPR specialist Sarah Beaulieu publicly presented her findings two months later, the original number of 215 had already been reduced to 200 “targets of interest.” She described them as “probable burials,” while emphasizing that only forensic excavation could conclusively determine what was underground.

Five years later, no excavation has taken place at Kamloops and no human remains have been recovered there.

Unanswered questions

There are also legitimate questions about what the radar detected. Historical evidence shows that a septic field containing underground trenches was installed in the surveyed area in the 1920s, and critics of the Kamloops narrative have argued that some of those disturbances could account for the radar findings.

That theory has not been proven either. And that is precisely the point: without excavation, nobody can say with certainty what lies beneath those patches of ground.

The federal government initially provided Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc $7.9 million for field work, records searches, and securing the residential school grounds. That funding was subsequently increased, according to government records obtained by reporters, to more than $12 million.

Yet the central question that shook Canada in 2021 remains unanswered.

Nor have excavations elsewhere always vindicated the initial radar findings. At the former Pine Creek Residential School in Manitoba, for example, investigators excavated 14 anomalies detected beneath a church. No human remains were found.

None of this means children did not die in Canada’s residential schools. They unquestionably did, often from disease in an era of appalling mortality, and there are known cemeteries associated with the schools.

It does mean that a soil anomaly is not a body, a possible burial is not a confirmed grave, and a claim repeated thousands of times by politicians and journalists does not become more scientifically certain through repetition.

RELATED: Canadian state media backs secret plot to trap and humiliate Indian mass-grave skeptics

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Skepticism or ‘denialism’?

Yet there is now an active and increasingly organized campaign in Canada to criminalize “residential school denialism.”

In July, the Assembly of First Nations passed an emergency resolution calling on the federal government to either amend its recently passed hate-crimes legislation or introduce a new law criminalizing the public “condoning, denial, justification, or minimization” of residential school abuses as a form of hate speech against First Nations. At a news conference during the assembly, Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee said Canada’s failure to criminalize residential school denialism amounted to a failure to protect First Nations from hate crimes.

The Senate had already rejected an attempt to add such a provision to the government’s Combating Hate Act, Bill C-9. The Justice Minister’s office said residential school denialism was a “serious and distinct issue” that warranted separate parliamentary study rather than inclusion in that legislation.

But the effort is hardly dead. NDP MP Leah Gazan’s private member’s bill, introduced last fall, would criminalize certain forms of residential school denialism and is still awaiting second reading in the House of Commons.

Settee also rejected demands that First Nations excavate suspected graves to establish that bodies are actually there, arguing that exhumation can violate indigenous cultural practices.

“I don’t think we should have to prove to anybody what happened to these people, because they are there. And they send us messages telling us they’re there,” Settee said.

Recalling a visit to the Kamloops site with Casimir, Settee continued: “You can tell they’re there, right? Feel the power and the energy.”

Settee said outsiders may not understand the cultural significance of such experiences and argued that First Nations should be allowed to leave suspected graves undisturbed: “We just don’t go into any cemetery and start digging up graves just to prove that someone died. It is disrespectful to our culture.”

Money pit

Since 2021, meanwhile, the federal government has spent $285.5 million funding 166 indigenous-led projects through the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund.

This is where the question of museums and historical institutions stops being academic.

When institutions teach citizens that history should be understood primarily through political categories of oppression and identity, they don’t merely reinterpret the past. They can change the standards by which claims about the past are evaluated in the present.

Evidence becomes secondary to narrative; skepticism becomes hostility. And eventually questioning an officially favored interpretation can itself become evidence of moral guilt.

So when Trump demands balance and historical accuracy from the Smithsonian, remember the Canadian example.

Once ideological activists gain control of a country’s history, they don’t necessarily stop at demanding that you hear their interpretation — eventually, they may demand that you believe it.

​Kamloops, Smithsonian museum, Donald trump, Woke, Museums, Culture, Canada, Indian residential schools, Mass graves, Catholic church, First nations, Letter from canada 

President Donald Trump’s longest-serving director of legislative affairs is departing this White House in the coming weeks, wrapping up nearly 600 wild, white-knuckle days of managing relations between the 47th president and the Congress.

While Trump’s massive 2024 electoral victory created powerful momentum in the early days of the administration, hard battles were quick to follow. The White House relied on knife’s-edge majorities in both chambers, as well as a number of senior senators in particular who carried no love for the president — and no sure loyalty to his priorities.

‘James has played a critical role in our many accomplishments with Congress.’

Just a week after Trump trounced Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris by 2,284,967 votes and 86 electoral points, former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave a speech to the neoconservative think tank AEI in which he promised to devote his remaining days in office to frustrating the incoming Republican administration.

While less strident than their leader, Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) promised similarly tough approaches. Both Collins and Murkowski backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for president, though her campaign only ever won Washington, D.C., and all three of them had voted to impeach at the end of Trump’s first term.

Despite formidable obstacles from the entire Democrat coalition and parts of the Grand Old Party itself, James Braid and his team were able to accomplish sweeping legislation on taxes, energy, the border, and spending in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act; send $70 billion to immigration and border enforcement with the Secure America Act, even after the ICE-involved Minneapolis shootings scattered Senate support; create a regulatory framework for stablecoin cryptocurrency with the Genius Act; claw back $9 billion in overspending with a Rescissions Act; and crack down on deadly fentanyl trafficking and revenge porn with the Halt and Take It Down acts.

Even while the president, the Congress, and the parties all duked it out, the legislative affairs team was able to notch a number of major bipartisan victories. Early on, the Laken Riley Act won Democrat votes to create new tools for states to detain criminal illegal aliens and, possibly more importantly, give states legal remedies when the federal government refused its responsibility to protect states being swamped by illegal immigration, as many experienced during the Biden administration.

Braid and his team were also instrumental in helping to form coalitions and grease tracks for the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. The bill was perhaps Washington’s most populist reform of the past two years, working to lower housing prices and protect American families by taking on powerful, entrenched private equity interests that had been busily buying up entry-level homes in fast-growing markets, paying cash, and converting starter neighborhoods into permanent rental communities. While the vote ended up passing nearly unanimously, it was a battle to see it out of committees run by corporate-friendly Republicans and others unwilling to work with liberal Democrats.

Aside from legislative victories, Braid and his team successfully shepherded a number of deeply contentious nomination fights through an often hostile Senate, winning votes for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chairman of the Federal Reserve Kevin Warsh, and Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Blanche’s confirmation was successful even after Trump targeted two of the Republican senators on the committee in their primary campaigns. While former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) withdrew their nominations, this administration has never lost a confirmation vote.

“James has played a critical role in our many accomplishments with Congress, including the ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL, beating the Democrats in two shutdown showdowns, passing the GENIUS Act, defeating a record number of War Powers resolutions, and in the confirmation of my Cabinet at the fastest rate in decades,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday morning.

Braid has long worked on Capitol Hill and joined the campaign as the legislative director for JD Vance, then a fast-moving and combative freshman senator. “James Braid had one of the toughest jobs in the entire Administration as White House Legislative Director and delivered for President Trump at every turn,” Vance wrote Thursday morning. “He played a critical role in all of the administration’s achievements in Congress: largest tax cut ever, resources to carry out President Trump’s historic immigration agenda and finish the border wall, defeating two Democratic shutdowns, a landmark first crypto bill, the fastest confirmation of the cabinet in decades and much more.”

“I am profoundly grateful to President Trump and Vice President Vance for the opportunity to be a part of this extraordinary team and to serve in an administration that has worked with the Congress to deliver the largest tax relief in American history, the resources necessary to secure the border and build the wall across two reconciliation bills, the fastest confirmation of the Cabinet in 20 years, and defeating two Democratic shutdowns,” said Braid in a statement.

​Congress, Donald j trump, Housing, Immigration, Laken riley act, One big beautiful bill, Senate, White house, Politics 

The FBI raided Eric Swalwell’s home in the national capital on Sunday as part of an ongoing investigation into sexual assault allegations against the former Democratic congressman from California, sources familiar with the probe told CNN.

The previous day, federal agents reportedly confronted Swalwell at the San Francisco International Airport and confiscated his electronic devices.

‘End the scourge of domestic violence and sexual assault.’

When asked for comment, a spokesman for the Justice Department told Blaze News, “We don’t comment on the existence of investigations or lack thereof.”

The FBI declined to comment.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported in early April than a former congressional staffer had accused Swalwell of sexually assaulting her twice while she was allegedly too intoxicated to consent. The woman also alleged that the Democrat sent her an image of his penis via Snapchat.

Three other women accused Swalwell of various forms of sexual misconduct. One of the accusers, a woman named Ally Sammarco, alleged to CNN that Swalwell sent her unsolicited nude images.

Swalwell responded in a video statement claiming that “these allegations are flat false.”

RELATED: California Democrat probed over alleged ‘inappropriate sexual conduct’ with a staffer

Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

“I’ve certainly made mistakes in judgment in my past, but those mistakes are between me and my wife,” said the Democrat.

Despite his protest and denials, the damage was done.

Swalwell — shown in newly declassified FBI documents to have allegedly admitted to having sex with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang — ultimately ended his gubernatorial campaign in California and resigned from Congress in April.

In the wake of the damning reports, both the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office launched investigations into possible wrongdoing on Swalwell’s part.

In L.A., Swalwell is accused of allegedly drugging and raping a woman named Lonna Drewes in 2018.

Swalwell is also alleged to have sexually assaulted a former staffer in a New York City hotel room in April 2024.

Swalwell’s attorney did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Swalwell is apparently being held to his own standard. After all, he noted in March 2021, “There’s nothing political or partisan about acting decisively to end the scourge of domestic violence and sexual assault.”

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​Eric swalwell, Sexual assault, Democrat, California, New york, Los angeles, San francisco, Politics 

Britain is among the Western nations whose liberal elites embraced the cult of multiculturalism and repeated the mantra “diversity is our strength” while welcoming unassimilable hordes from the third world. The fallout of this toxic empathy has been severe and far-reaching.

It has gotten so bad, in fact, that the British Home Office evidently saw cause to remind migrants on Wednesday not to rape or mutilate children.

‘The Home Office should instead deport them.’

The government’s new booklet, titled “Understanding behaviours and expectations in the U.K.: A guide for asylum seekers,” states at the outset, “We understand that coming to a new country can be difficult, and that laws and customs here may be different from your home country. In the U.K., there are laws that protect everyone’s safety, dignity, and rights. It is important that you understand them.”

The booklet points out, for instance, that women in the United Kingdom are actually allowed to “work and earn their own money; study and go to school or university; travel freely; choose who they marry, or choose not to marry; [and] make their own decisions about their lives.”

The Home Office underscored that even husbands, fathers, and brothers cannot make decisions for an adult female without her consent.

RELATED: ‘Beyond evil’: Nightmarish report reveals full scale of mass Islamic rapes of ‘250,000’ white British girls

Illegal aliens trying to sail into the English Channel. Tom Nicholson/Getty Images.

In the section on sex and consent, the Home Office informed newcomers that unlike whatever backwaters they may hail from, “In the U.K., the law is clear and strict: Both people must agree to sex or sexual contact of any kind.”

“If someone is asleep, drunk, or unable to respond, they cannot consent,” added the booklet, published just days after an Eritrean migrant, 33-year-old Bruke Desalagne, was found guilty of raping an intoxicated elderly man for 20 minutes outside a church in North London.

After telling asylum seekers that they are expected not to threaten people into having sex with them, the Home Office’s booklet emphasized that statutory rape is indeed a crime.

“The legal age of consent in the U.K. is 16. This means that anyone under the age of 16 is considered a child and cannot legally agree to have sex,” said the document. “There are no exceptions to this rule. Even if they say yes, it is still illegal. You could go to prison, lose your support and accommodation, and it will affect your asylum claim.”

Of course, the United Kingdom won’t deport all foreign child rapists.

For example, the victims of 73-year-old child rapist Shabir Ahmed were informed in June that the criminally convicted leader of a Pakistani grooming gang — which police said victimized as many as 50 girls — was being released from prison and could not be deported due to provisions under the Immigration Act of 1971.

RELATED: What is anarcho-tyranny? Modern Britain gives a disturbing glimpse of our future.

Stuart Brock/Anadolu/Getty Images

Besides reminding migrants that women have rights and that it’s wrong to have sex with children, the Home Office guide noted that asylum seekers are expected to refrain from making sexual comments to strangers, making kissing noises at passersby, stalking individuals in public or blocking their paths, and verbally abusing people because of their religion, sex, or appearance.

The booklet concludes by informing asylum seekers that it is a crime to “take sexual images of someone without their consent” and to “share sexual images of someone without their consent.”

On Wednesday, the Home Office also released a leaflet titled “Keeping children safe in the U.K.,” again reminding asylum seekers that “what is allowed in some countries may be illegal here.”

In addition to reminding foreigners that sex with children is a crime and that children shouldn’t be beaten with “objects like belts or sticks,” the leaflet notes that “female genital mutilation (FGM) and forcing a child to marry are serious crimes in the U.K.”

UK Home Office

Just in case asylum seekers manage to miss these materials, the Home Office apparently has produced posters stating that sex with children “will affect your asylum claim.”

“The Home Office has spent your money to produce these posters for illegal migrants,” tweeted Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. “Why are we letting these people into our country?”

Chris Philp, the Conservative member of parliament serving as shadow home secretary, wrote, “The Home Office has just issued a booklet to illegal immigrants advising them not to commit rape and sexual assault, including of children[.] This tells us all we need to know about the kind of people illegally entering our country.”

“Illegal and legal immigrants are coming from places and societies where attitudes towards women are completely incompatible with Western society,” continued Philp. “It seems like every day there is another report of an illegal immigrant raping or assaulting women and young girls here. Instead of trying to train these mainly young, male illegal immigrants to behave in a civilised way towards women, the Home Office should instead deport them.”

According to data obtained from the U.K. Ministry of Justice by the Telegraph, foreign nationals were responsible for over 25% of sexual assaults on women that were successfully prosecuted in 2024. The Telegraph noted that another 8% of sexual assaults on women were committed by offenders of “unknown” national origins, meaning the overall proportion of convicted foreign-born rapists is likely much higher.

It appears Britons are tiring of all this diversity.

A poll released in November by the National Center for Social Research found that whereas 64% of American respondents said that diversity strengthens society, only 49% of British respondents agreed. Forty percent of Britons said that white people declining as a share of the population was bad for society.

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​Asylum seekers, Britain, Diversity, Multiculturalism, Nigel farage, Rape, Immigration, Politics 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a busy woman. When she’s not posting thirst traps on social media, she’s apparently planning a 2028 presidential run.

And she has no intention of letting anything derail her ambitions, least of all a dirty diaper.

A woman giving birth to her first child at age 42 faces the reality of attending high school graduation at age 60.

The 36-year-old’s recent decision to freeze her eggs, coming shortly after her split from ex-fiancé Riley Roberts, has only heightened speculation. Left-leaning commentators quickly hailed the move as a triumphant act of personal autonomy, a source of inspiration for career-minded women trying to balance climbing the ladder with the inconvenient realities of human biology.

But while Ocasio-Cortez has been canny about harnessing the attention her decision has generated, dismissing her Instagram announcement as an isolated stunt would be a mistake.

Across America, thousands of young women are making the exact same play, putting motherhood on ice to prioritize graduate credentials and promotions.

On ice

Now, a man — and a “privileged” white man in particular — critiquing women’s reproductive choices inevitably invites comparisons to a hyper-liberal female columnist lecturing men on the finer points of masculinity. But there is a crucial difference. While woke gender commentary relies entirely on ideological grievance, hard biological and demographic data back up every single one of the following points.

A single egg-retrieval cycle costs anywhere between $12,000 and $20,000, with annual cryogenic storage fees adding another $1,000 or more just to keep the deep freeze running. Add in injectable hormone regimens that rack up thousands more per round, and the invoice quickly resembles a down payment on a house.

The financial gamble becomes outright predatory when weighed against the clinical evidence.

Eggs retrieved after age 35 have live-birth rates below 20% per batch. Recent studies show that 94% of women who freeze their eggs never even end up using them. In other words, many women put having a child on a mental to-do list right below traveling the world, making partner, or running for office, assuming medical technology will hold the door open indefinitely. They treat cryogenic storage as a biological safety net, paying thousands in annual storage fees for an insurance policy they will likely abandon. By the time they realize the safety net is largely psychological, the biological window has closed, leaving them with an empty nursery, a mountain of storage receipts, and a harsh lesson in the limits of corporate empowerment.

Time’s up

Human biology runs on a clock, and no amount of liquid nitrogen can stop it. The medical risks associated with late-in-life pregnancies expand rapidly with every passing year. The probability of chromosomal abnormalities, including Down syndrome, rises from 1 in 1,250 for a mother at age 25 to 1 in 100 by age 40, spiking to 1 in 30 by age 45. Modern obstetrics performs modern-day miracles, but older pregnancies still carry significantly elevated rates of preeclampsia and premature deliveries.

The physiological tax continues long after leaving the delivery room. For parents entering their 50s, keeping up with energetic ankle-biters can be a torturous affair. A woman giving birth to her first child at age 42 faces the reality of attending high school graduation at age 60, rapidly approaching retirement age while simultaneously taking on university tuition bills. The prospect of ever seeing a grandchild reach adulthood becomes a statistical long shot.

National demographic stability relies on baseline replacement fertility. Specifically, it requires an average of 2.1 births per woman to maintain a functional society. In 2025, the total fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to an all-time low of 1.62 births per woman. By 2034, it is expected to fall to 1.6.

Normalizing the deferral of motherhood into a woman’s late 30s drives birth rates off a demographic cliff. Converting childbearing from a foundational milestone of young adulthood into an afterthought for middle-aged professionals is a slow-motion recipe for economic and cultural suicide.

RELATED: Allie Beth Stuckey responds to AOC blaming ‘hysteria’ for women having kids young

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Double burden

For those wondering how we got here, one needn’t have an advanced degree in sociology to connect the dots. Modern feminism dismisses family life as little more than a foolish career setback. It sells women the lie that a cubicle, a stronger CV, and a performance review are inherently more fulfilling than creating a family. This same careless disregard extends to the political ideology that drove it.

During a recent interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Ocasio-Cortez said, “Woke 1 was crazy,” punctuating the remark with a dismissive chuckle. She may find that era of radical activism amusing in retrospect, but the consequences were anything but funny. Innocent people lost their lives due to defunded police forces. Livelihoods vanished. Reputations were ruined. Social trust was completely incinerated. Yet now that the political winds have shifted, she stands atop the wreckage and simply laughs it off.

Just as that ideological crusade upended social norms, the cultural elevation of cryopreservation now seeks to upend basic human biology. When childbearing is delayed by 15 years, the generational bridge that historically sustained extended families begins to crumble. Grandparents who would otherwise provide vital child care and daily support in their 50s and 60s are instead in their 80s, requiring intensive care themselves just as their adult children are attempting to navigate the demands of newborn parenting.

This dynamic transforms what was once a natural, thriving family support network into a brutal double burden. Exhausted middle-aged parents in the “sandwich generation” are left caught between aging elders who need care and young children who also need care.

So for those who applaud Ocasio-Cortez, it’s worth asking what happens to America if more young women follow her lead. The uncomfortable reality is that many already are. She may yet become a mother in her 40s, but there is no guarantee she will — and many of the women now freezing their eggs may never become mothers either.

​Alexandria ocasio-cortez, Aoc, Childbearing, Cryopreservation, Culture, Egg freezing, Family life, Fertility, Men and woman, Replacement fertility, Woke, Lifestyle, Men and women 

Barack Obama once delivered the line Republicans never let him forget: “You didn’t build that.”

Today, the Democratic Party could say something similar to him. Barack Obama didn’t build Barack Obama alone.

The transformation Obama promised in 2008 is still under way, and he is content to let others finish it.

The talent, intelligence, and ambition were his. But the stage belonged to the Democratic Party. Its donors supplied the money, its convention supplied the audience, and its voters supplied the office that transformed a little-known Illinois politician into a global figure.

Now the institution that helped build Obama is struggling to decide what it believes.

Obama turned 65 this month. He is four years younger than Donald Trump was when Trump descended the escalator and began remaking the Republican Party.

Whatever one thinks of Trump, the Republican Party did not build him. He arrived with his own fortune, celebrity, audience, and brand, then captured the party despite the resistance of much of its establishment.

Obama’s path was nearly the reverse. In 2000, he couldn’t even obtain a floor credential at the Democratic National Convention. Four years later, Democrats put him behind the convention lectern. Four years after that, he was their nominee for president.

The Democratic Party didn’t merely nominate Barack Obama. It introduced him to America.

For more than a decade, opposition to Trump supplied Democrats with something resembling a governing philosophy. Rage generated money, turnout, and unity.

But rage is fuel, not a destination. And Democrats are discovering that when Trump is removed from the sentence, they have difficulty completing it.

The party’s ascendant left has now captured Michigan’s Democratic Senate nomination through Abdul El-Sayed, backed by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Hasan Piker. After El-Sayed’s victory, Obama called him for what the candidate described as a “really warm” conversation.

RELATED: El-Sayed aide says Rogers ad with vintage truck and US flags is like a ‘KKK cross burning’

Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

That call raises a question Obama has so far avoided: Does the party’s left represent an unruly faction, or is it becoming the party’s center of gravity?

Democrats talk endlessly about the virtues of a big tent. But a big tent without a center pole is just a tarp.

Obama remains the one Democrat with enough stature to supply that center.

He has not disappeared. He endorses candidates, gives speeches, and meets privately with lawmakers. Those appearances may help individual candidates. They do not provide direction for a party that increasingly seems unsure where it wants to go.

Obama once possessed the power to name a destination. “Hope and change” invited millions of Americans to imagine a country beyond the politics they knew.

Where is he asking his party to go now?

He could tell Democrats what liberalism must preserve, what progressivism must not replace, and what conduct the party will not tolerate.

Unless, of course, the ascendant left is the destination.

What are Democrats for when they are not against Donald Trump?

Endorsing candidates spends celebrity. Leadership spends political capital.

Democrats describe Trump as an existential threat who may destroy American democracy. Yet Obama confines himself largely to endorsements, private conversations, and measured speeches.

Either the danger is as grave as Democrats insist, in which case Obama’s restraint is difficult to defend, or the rhetoric is exaggerated, in which case his restraint helps expose it.

And if the party’s left threatens traditional liberalism, why won’t he confront it? If it represents the party’s future, why won’t he say so?

His warm reception of El-Sayed suggests a third possibility: The transformation Obama promised in 2008 is still under way, and he is content to let others finish it.

RELATED: Woke 2.0 is coming … and it will be worse

Sarah Rice/Getty Images

Perhaps Obama believes his duty is done. Perhaps the party has moved somewhere he does not wish to follow. Perhaps he wants influence without ownership of the consequences.

Or perhaps the Democratic Party was always more useful to Barack Obama than Barack Obama intended to remain useful to the Democratic Party.

He once reminded successful Americans that they had benefited from institutions they did not create.

He was right about at least one American.

The Democratic Party helped build Barack Obama. Now the Democratic Party needs rebuilding.

Kennedy pointed to the moon. Reagan pointed to a certain wall he wanted torn down. Trump descended an escalator pointing toward a wall he wanted built.

Where is Barack Obama pointing the Democratic Party?

​Barack obama, Bernie sanders, Democratic party, Donald trump, Hasan piker, Republican party, Progressivism, Abdul el-sayed, 2026 midterms, Opinion & analysis 

You would think that growing up under an abusive, personality-disordered mother would immunize a writer like me from shock at women’s bad behavior. That’s what I always thought at least.

Then I witnessed the extraordinary outpouring of female sympathy for Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother who killed her three children in 2023.

Some Clancy girls now claim Lindsay’s poor husband, Patrick, actually killed the kids and framed her. How do they know this? Astrology of course.

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, is now on trial for murder. Her children were Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months old.

There is no dispute about who killed them. Clancy’s defense admits she strangled all three children with exercise bands in the basement of the family’s home while her husband, Patrick, was out picking up medicine and takeout. The question for the jury is whether she was criminally responsible when she did it.

Her lawyers say she wasn’t. They argue that Clancy suffered from postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder and that psychiatric medications worsened her condition. Prosecutors say she deliberately arranged to get her husband out of the house and knew exactly what she was doing.

Clancy girls

I don’t know what the jury will decide. What I do know is what thousands of women have decided already.

Across social media, a group of women I’ll call “Clancy girls” have turned Lindsay Clancy into an object of identification and affection. They see her as a poor, unsupported, overwhelmed mother who begged for help and was failed by everyone.

Does this shock you? I hope it does. It is real, and it is deadly serious.

We have a dire, immediate, society-wide problem of women identifying with evil, sympathizing with evil, and financially supporting evil.

It should be socially unthinkable for anyone, let alone thousands of women, to openly weep for a woman who killed her three children by strangling them with exercise bands. Even 20 years ago, this moral derangement would have made a woman a pariah if she dared to speak it out loud.

Not anymore. In fact, the Clancy girls are going out of their way to exonerate this modern Medea.

‘Wonderful mom’

Take the Musgrove Family Fund. It has raised almost a million dollars for Clancy’s parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove, who have relocated from Connecticut to Massachusetts and incurred substantial expenses while remaining close to their daughter throughout the criminal proceedings. The organizers are careful to say that donating does not require taking Lindsay’s side: “Nothing about this fund asks anyone to share their view of Lindsay or the criminal case.”

Yet judging from the comments, many of the female donors are more than happy to offer Lindsay absolution:

Strong support and hugs for Lindsay and her supportive parents. My sister was also an RN when she went through PPD+PPS. It was so hard to watch her go through it.

We stand beside and behind you Lindsay and family. I struggled with PPD and PPA and many times it felt like I was asking for help, reaching up only to grab air. I am sending lots of love and virtual hugs.

I know it feels like it now, but you’re not alone Lindsay. Your emotion and love for your babies is felt through the screen. From one mom who’s been through psychosis to another — I just want to wrap my arms around you and shower you with love and support. You ARE a wonderful mom. It wasn’t you that day. It may have been your body, but it certainly wasn’t your mind or thoughts. — from a Kentucky mom

Love and “virtual hugs” for this “wonderful mom.” Personal emotional identification with a woman who committed a crime so depraved it forms one of the darkest psychological archetypes in Western mythology.

In the stars

For what it’s worth, I don’t believe Lindsay Clancy had a psychotic break. I don’t believe she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. I don’t believe that “too many psychiatric drugs” caused her to hallucinate and lose her mind. It’s hard to see how that’s possible when the evidence shows Clancy didn’t even take the recommended dosage of the drugs, or took them for a few days and stopped after that.

I believe Clancy shows the signs of narcissistic personality disorder and that she’s lying about having hallucinations to cover up the fact that she wanted her children dead because they interfered with the lifestyle and attention she believed she was entitled to. I think she killed them because their existence on earth meant that everything couldn’t be about Lindsay all the time.

It gets worse. Some Clancy girls now claim Lindsay’s poor husband, Patrick, actually killed the kids and framed her. How do they know this? Astrology of course.

Whatever the truth may be, it doesn’t ameliorate the shocking, reflexive sympathy countless women are displaying. Instead of being stunned by a diabolical, almost unthinkable murder, women across social media (and in hair salons, according to reports from my friends overhearing chitchat) see the mother who killed her children as the real victim.

This is moral depravity at a scale nigh unbelievable.

RELATED: ‘Carrie’ and the monster who raised me

Sunset Boulevard/Getty Images

The patriarchy did it

No one would make these excuses for a male family annihilator, which is what Lindsay Clancy is. Almost no one popped up to defend Chris Watts. No one wanted to “start a conversation about the pressure fathers are under” to deflect from the fact that he murdered his family.

No one makes mental health excuses for men who exterminate their children. It’s only women who get this sympathy.

Why?

Since the 1960s, Americans have been under a delusional spell called “feminism.” This magical spell managed to convince an entire country that women in the richest country in the world were unbearably oppressed. All of a sudden, all traditions were overturned. Motherhood became a burden. Children became a ball and chain forced on women by patriarchal men.

Feminism took over everyone’s mind, left, right, and center. Men and women. It has long been accepted as fact that women were always and ever subjugated by men. That having children was a prison sentence imposed on women. That being married and raising a family deprived women of making their mark in the world.

Feminism is a lie, and it is a tool of the narcissistic, resentful mind. It has pitted women against men and against their own children. It has convinced millions of women in the freest and most wealthy country in world history that they are “unsupported” and “exploited.”

Shock and despair

It would be hysterically funny if the consequences weren’t so egregious.

But they are. Lindsay Clancy stands a decent chance of being let off under the insanity plea because we refuse to acknowledge a fundamental aspect of human nature that everyone knew until the mid-20th century: Women have the capacity to do evil.

I put my abusive, narcissistic, psychopathic mother out of my life permanently 10 years ago. That’s long enough to be over the initial shock and despair of discovering that the one person I was supposed to be able to trust tried to destroy me. It doesn’t keep me awake nights any longer.

But I’m sleepless this week after discovering a new horror: If my mother had succeeded in killing me, my sister, or my brother, our names would be forgotten. Our mother would be seen as a tragic victim, a single mother “failed” by everyone.

At least she’d get hugs.

​Crime, Lindsay clancy, Filicide, Culture, Postpartum depression, First person, Motherhood, Feminism, Intervention 

The battle for censorship online has been raging on social media for more than a decade.

Netizens have clamored for unfettered free speech, while their detractors say that some things are better left not said. Somewhere in the middle, though, exists a new app that is going viral for one line: “Jesus is watching you!”

‘Half of the songs nowadays have no clean version.’

A post seen by more than 1 million people on X alluded to a Big Brother-style app that monitors the listening habits of music lovers. However, one chat with the app’s founder is likely to put that idea to bed.

The app is called Verso, and while on its face it is indeed an app designed to help censor music, the application’s stated intent is to fill in the gap of parental control settings on streaming services by acting as an intentional filter between the service and the listener.

Citing that around 92% of today’s top streaming songs are explicit, Verso says it wants to put parents and families in control of what they hear.

Co-founder Jonathan Bernal told Blaze News directly that he left his former job with the Google Gemini AI team because he wanted to use his skills to develop technology that supports the family unit, unlike most tech out there.

“Kids hear everything,” Verso says in its video. Bernal backs that up.

“Half a billion families are listening to music, and half of the songs nowadays have no clean version,” he said. “Parents are constantly reaching for the mute or skip button.”

In order ensure a listening experience in which parents don’t have to worry about blasting out adult content, the app syncs with music streaming services and filters out profanity or certain themes entirely. The system is akin to a time when content moderation on television could be trusted.

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To avoid a one-size-fits-all application, Bernal said it was important for the app to be able to make any song instantly “customizable.”

“You can make it family-friendly; you can make any song align with your values,” Bernal said.

This comes through the settings, where users can filter out sexual innuendo, profanity, sacrilegious messages, or anything they consider to be unpalatable. All of those options can be applied globally, but the fun part comes in the individual settings.

Any song specifically can be changed, and users are free to customize how the music gets censored. Bernal noted how many videos have gone viral of parents on TikTok using duck sounds for when their kids are in the car.

RELATED: Wi-Fi. Microwaves. Electromagnetism. It’s all connected — and so is the damage.

Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto/Getty Images

For clarification, the entrepreneur said yes, the viral image of the app asking users to repent is real.

Bernal said he is a Christian man and hopes to continue the app’s success so he can help promote the family unit.

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​Censorship, Streaming, Tech 

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle evidently weren’t cut out for the land of the free. After braving a few years of luxury in Los Angeles, they’re now planning to pull up stakes and retreat to Britain.

Royal flush

After British taxpayers were squeezed for roughly $3 million to refurbish the couple’s 18th-century home on the grounds of Windsor Castle estate, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced in January 2020 their decision to “carve out a progressive new role within this institution” and “step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family.”

‘I can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back.’

They dawdled around Canada for a time, then moved to the United States in 2020 to purportedly pursue a “more peaceful,” private life free of royal duties.

In February 2021, Buckingham Palace announced that Queen Elizabeth had informed the duke and duchess that:

in stepping away from the work of the Royal Family it is not possible to continue with the responsibilities and duties that come with a life of public service. The honorary military appointments and Royal patronages held by the Duke and Duchess will therefore be returned to Her Majesty, before being redistributed among working members of the Royal Family.

Liberated from the responsibilities and honors bequeathed to the prince by his forefathers, the duo has spent recent years chasing the limelight.

The DEI duchess — who upon settling in California suggested on multiple occasions that Britain is racist and that she and Prince Harry left because of supposed bigotry in the House of Windsor — has not, however, enjoyed the kind of media success for which she apparently pined.

RELATED: INGRATE BRITAIN: ‘Good Place’ star Jameela Jamil calls fellow Brits ‘evil,’ likens them to Marvel villain

Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

Netflix announced in July 2021 that Markle’s animated feminist series “Pearl” was going into production. The project was flushed the following summer.

‘F**king grifters.’

While the couple’s 2024 Netflix docuseries “Polo” — dubbed an “unintentional comedy” by the Guardian — actually made it to air, it was a total flop.

Earlier this year, Netflix divested from Markle’s lifestyle brand As Ever and decided not to renew her cooking show “With Love, Meghan.”

The couple had a lucrative deal with Spotify valued at roughly $20 million, but that collapsed in 2023 after the duke and duchess failed to produce more than one series and a holiday special. At the time, a Spotify executive branded them “f**king grifters.”

The couple’s latest flop, a documentary called “Cookie Queens” that they executive-produced, had made less than $600,000 as of Aug. 18, according to reported box-office figures.

Retreat

The couple has decided to move back to Britain sometime this month, according to an exclusive report from the Telegraph.

King Charles was reportedly informed of the couple’s decision on Sunday.

Their children, 7-year-old Prince Archie and 5-year-old Princess Lilibet, have been enrolled to start school in the U.K., a part of the world that Prince Harry once complained “has been created by white people for white people.”

The Telegraph noted that the couple plans to keep their homes in Montecito, California, and Portugal, and that Markle will run her lifestyle brand from the United Kingdom.

When asked about what motivated the return, a source close to the couple told CNN only that they enjoyed their family visit to Britain in July.

On the question of security for the duke and duchess, a Home Office spokesman told the Guardian, “The U.K. government’s protective security system is rigorous and proportionate,” adding that “it is our longstanding policy not to provide detailed information on those arrangements, as doing so could compromise their integrity and affect individuals’ security.”

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said, “We wish them well in the move that they’re making.”

The royals’ decision to return comes one year after Prince Harry stated that despite missing his homeland, “I can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the U.K. at this point.”

Blaze News did not immediately receive comment from Buckingham Palace or the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

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​Meghan markle, Prince harry, Duke of sussex, Royal family, House of windsor, Britain, Netflix, Politics 

A Wisconsin man allegedly stabbed his father in the neck after asking him for a hug, then chased him when he tried to flee, police said.

The Racine Police Department said in a statement that officers responded to a report of a stabbing at a residence around 1 a.m. on Aug. 12.

‘As they went to hug, Joseph quickly presented a knife and stabbed [the victim] in the neck.’

Citing the arrest affidavit, Law&Crime reported that officers found a man with a stab wound who was “covered in blood and holding pressure on his neck.”

The man told police that his son, Joseph Michael Niemiec, stabbed him and then fled.

The father claimed to officers that he heard a noise coming from the back door, which he believed could be an intruder, but realized it was his son.

According to the arrest affidavit, Niemiec asked his father if they could talk because he was having a “rough go at life” and had attempted suicide several times and didn’t know what to do.

Police said Niemiec stepped away to use the bathroom, and when he came back, he asked his dad for a hug.

“As they went to hug, Joseph quickly presented a knife and stabbed [the victim] in the neck,” the affidavit said, according to Law&Crime.

The father said he “felt a punch to his throat and immediately placed his hand over it as he stumbled backwards.”

Law&Crime reported, “Niemiec allegedly came at his dad a second time, but the victim disarmed him and pushed him away. The victim ran away with his son in pursuit, cops said.”

According to the outlet, the father ran to a neighbor’s house, where he called 911.

Meanwhile, his son allegedly fled in a Chevrolet Malibu.

RELATED: Fatally stabbed elderly man found with his heart cut out; victim’s daughter charged with murder

Approximately 10 hours after the alleged stabbing, troopers with the Nebraska State Patrol spotted the Chevrolet Malibu on Interstate 80, roughly 650 miles from the crime scene.

Niemiec was arrested and hit with a charge of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, WITI-TV reported.

Jail records show that Niemiec was booked into the Hall County Jail, where he was being held pending extradition proceedings.

WITI added that the extradition hearing is scheduled for Sept. 15 in Nebraska.

Niemiec appears to be smirking in his mug shot.

The Racine Police Department said the father was treated at Froedtert Hospital and is expected to make a full recovery.

Tracy Kiesler, a neighbor, told WITI: “Oh my gosh, this is right down the road. What the heck is going on? So close to home, it makes you wonder what was going on that someone would do that.”

Kiesler added that the suspect only being 18 years old is “sad and scary.”

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​Nebraska, Wisconsin, Stabbing, Crime 

There is something almost touching about the astonishment with which American universities are discovering that racial discrimination is illegal.

The Justice Department announced Monday that it is investigating the College of William & Mary over scholarships and student benefits that allegedly discriminate according to race. The Civil Rights Division says it is examining whether those programs violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination by recipients of federal funding.

Universities spent years teaching America that racial discrimination could cure racial discrimination. They may now receive an expensive lesson in return.

One might have supposed that this was not a particularly difficult statute for universities to understand. These are, after all, institutions populated by people who pride themselves on detecting racism in places where ordinary mortals see friendship and community.

And yet when discrimination appears in their own programs, their racial acuity suddenly fails them. Universities have spent years building programs around concepts such as “whiteness,” “decolonizing,” privilege, and equity. The problem is not that administrators forgot the Civil Rights Act. It is that many convinced themselves they had discovered a morally superior exception to its basic rule.

The old civil-rights principle was admirably simple: Do not discriminate on the basis of race.

The newer DEI principle often works differently: Unequal treatment may be justified if it is meant to correct an earlier inequality.

The distinction is the whole game.

Under the older understanding, the injustice consisted in treating an individual differently because of his race. If a university told an applicant, “You cannot have this opportunity because you are black,” we knew what to call it. If it told another applicant, “You cannot have this opportunity because you are white,” we also knew what to call it.

The genius of DEI was to make the second sentence sound morally different from the first.

This required an impressive amount of academic labor. Entire vocabularies were constructed to explain why unequal treatment could become virtuous when practiced by the right institutions, against the right groups, for the right reasons. We learned about privilege, power, positionality, systemic racism, dominant identities, marginalized identities, intersectionality, and the rest of the lexicon.

RELATED: Trump’s Justice Department is shining a light on woke universities — finally

Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

The result was an ethical system of remarkable convenience. It condemned racial discrimination while supplying a vocabulary for practicing it.

The trick was accomplished by shifting the unit of moral judgment from the individual to the group.

Once people are sorted into historical categories of oppressor and oppressed, equal treatment begins to look suspicious. If Group A has enjoyed advantages and Group B has suffered disadvantages, treating individual members of A and B according to the same rules can be recast as perpetuating injustice. “Equity” then becomes a justification for unequal treatment today in the name of unequal treatment yesterday.

There is only one troublesome detail: The person standing before you today is an individual human being, not an installment payment on a historical debt.

A white 18-year-old applying for a scholarship did not write the Jim Crow laws. An Asian student applying to medical school did not build the transcontinental railroad with exploited labor. A black student is not the personal embodiment of several centuries of American suffering.

The civil rights tradition understood this. That is why the law speaks in the language of persons rather than assigning inherited moral credits and debits to racial castes.

The DEI worldview has spent years trying to reverse that achievement.

And now comes the awkward part.

The law is still there.

The Civil Rights Act does not contain an asterisk reading, “Discrimination permitted when performed in the service of social justice.” Title VI does not say recipients of federal money may discriminate according to race provided that a diversity consultant has explained why it is virtuous.

Last year, the Justice Department expressly warned recipients of federal funding that antidiscrimination laws apply regardless of whether discriminatory practices are packaged under the label of DEI. Now William & Mary is discovering what that warning means.

Nor is William & Mary alone. The Justice Department has been examining race-conscious practices across higher education. My own university, Arizona State, is under investigation. The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions should already have alerted universities that the legal ground beneath racial preferences had shifted dramatically.

But something deeper than law is involved here. Universities are supposed to teach students how to reason. So let us try an elementary syllogism.

Racial discrimination is wrong. Denying someone a benefit because of his race is racial discrimination. Therefore, denying someone a benefit because of his race is wrong.

You don’t need a doctorate in critical theory to follow the argument. Indeed, a doctorate in critical theory may be an impediment.

RELATED: Warning: This college course may be bad for your brain

Andi Purnomo/Getty Images

The great moral achievement of the civil rights movement was not to rearrange the racial hierarchy so different people could enjoy their turn at discrimination. It was to attack the hierarchy itself. The principle was equality before the law — not equality before the law except when our preferred theory of historical oppression recommends otherwise.

There is a useful lesson here for universities accustomed to believing that noble intentions confer immunity from ordinary moral rules.

They do not.

You may call discrimination “equity.” You may put it in a strategic plan. You may hire a vice president to administer it. You may surround it with the soothing language of “belonging” and “inclusion.” You may even persuade yourself that treating students differently according to ancestry is the latest advance in American civil rights.

But eventually somebody will ask the embarrassingly primitive question: Did you treat this person differently because of his race?

If the answer is yes, all the fashionable vocabulary in the world cannot make the question go away.

Universities spent years teaching America that racial discrimination could cure racial discrimination. They may now receive an expensive lesson in return.

The Civil Rights Act never learned DEI.

And the next shoe may be even more expensive: lawsuits from students who say they were denied scholarships, admissions advantages, or other benefits because of race. Once universities concede that race determined access to an opportunity, the legal question becomes much harder to explain away with the language of equity.

​American universities, Critical theory, Federal funding, Justice department, Racial discrimination, Social justice, Racial preferences, Dei, Civil rights act, Arizona state university, Opinion & analysis 

I don’t recall when I applied to become a checker at a grocery store. In fact, I’m fairly certain I am a writer by trade and have never worked in a grocery store, honorable work though it may be.

And yet it seems most stores I wander into to make a purchase have enlisted me to check out my groceries.

Well, I QUIT this unsought job I’ve been shanghaied into.

The self-checkout machine has been around longer than you might think.

I had that thought once again recently, standing beneath the cold fluorescent lights of a large American retailer, attempting to make my purchase — avocados, paper towels, toothpaste, and a package of hamburger — from a machine that clearly regarded me as a criminal. It beeped red and sounded an alert as if a thief were attempting to steal the Mona Lisa. After what seemed like an eternity, a bored, obese woman with four-inch nails ambled over to look me up and down and punch numbers into the screen.

No, I thought. Your look of annoyance notwithstanding, no — I’m not a grocery store checker, and I have no clue how your machine works.

Last year, the day before Thanksgiving, I found myself in an unsurprisingly packed grocery store with only one lane open. I guessed the implication was that everyone with full carts needed to scan them themselves. I watched the cattle plod their way to automated slaughter. How long can we continue this way and remain Americans?

The machines never work. There’s a never-ending requirement for some person to come unlock them (because you didn’t scan the Coke correctly). Half the time, they don’t even provide bags to put your food in. Never mind if you make the mistake of trying to buy fruits or vegetables; you have to scroll through screens to find what you want to buy. Guess what: those organic apples? I’m scanning them as regular old Galas. Oh, is that not right? Maybe you should have someone working here then.

When did we decide that companies could just jettison their workforce and have their customers fill in the slack? Are we going to start waiting and bussing our own tables? Well, there’s actually an entire genre of “restaurants” doing just that. Maybe we can save money by performing our own surgeries? Actually, let’s not give them any ideas.

The rot runs deep

The self-checkout machine has been around longer than you might think. One of the earliest recognizable systems appeared in a Kroger outside Atlanta in 1986. The idea was simple enough. Barcode technology had already transformed the supermarket. If a machine could read the barcode, why did an employee have to hold the box of Cheerios over the scanner?

For retailers, the appeal was obvious. Of course, they never asked customers how they felt about this.

Grocery stores are enormous businesses built on small margins. Labor is expensive, and checkout labor is particularly irritating from a management perspective because demand comes in waves. A store might need a small army of cashiers at 5:30 on a Friday afternoon and only a handful two hours later. Hire enough people for the rush, and you are paying workers to stand around during slow periods. Staff for the slow periods, and customers abandon carts when the lines stretch halfway down the cereal aisle.

RELATED: A huge pagan statue just went up in Texas. Is this the Western civilization we should be cheering?

Darko Mlinarevic/Getty Images

Here’s the thing: That’s a faceless corporation’s problem. I want to avoid becoming a team member at Kroger just to buy my groceries. A normal checkout lane required a human being. Eight lanes required eight human beings. Human beings are expensive and troublesome creatures. They need wages. They take lunch. They get sick. They quit. Some even expect health insurance. So, as with almost every bit of technology in our lives, it made our lives worse by outsourcing it to ourselves. All those low-level jobs, I’m guessing, were very important to those employees sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed.

The human element

There was another function, harder to place on a corporate spreadsheet.

The cashier was a person.

For most people, that hardly mattered. The interaction might consist of nothing more than “How are you?” and “Have a good one.” But those tiny exchanges accumulated into something that once characterized ordinary American life. The butcher knew what cut you liked. The bartender remembered your drink. The hardware-store clerk knew which screw you needed. The grocery cashier asked about your kids.

Commerce involved people because life involved people.

The self-checkout machine represents a different vision. It is efficient, anonymous, and frictionless when everything works. The ideal transaction requires no conversation at all. Enter the store, locate the product, scan it, tap the screen, and leave. God forbid you have to talk to another human being. For years now, chains have known that error rates are high, shoplifting is up, and popularity is in the tank. Apparently, companies are considering scaling them back. Schadenfreude, I say. But will they ever go away? Or will the America we love disappear first?

Consider this, then, my two weeks’ notice. I refuse to scan my own products any more. From now on, even if it means I have to harass a manager to open a lane, I’m deciding to check out of doing unpaid labor. I choose the humans over the machines.

​Tech, Lifestyle