Category: blaze media

In the fiercely competitive race for New Jersey governor, just one point separates the Democratic and Republican candidates, a new poll shows.

Mikie Sherrill (D), a current U.S. representative, held a narrow lead against Jack Ciattarelli (R), a former New Jersey state representative, in an October 27 co/efficient poll. Males, individuals ages 55 and older, and those with no party affiliation preferred Ciattarelli, while females and those ages 18 to 54 favored Sherrill, according to the recent survey.

‘Why would anyone vote for New Jersey and Virginia Gubernatorial Candidates, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, when they want transgender for everybody, men playing in women’s sports, High Crime, and the most expensive Energy prices almost anywhere in the World?’

Separate poll results from Emerson College, dated September 25, gave Ciattarelli the best odds, showing the two candidates tied.

All other polls gave Sherrill a more substantial lead over Ciattarelli, ranging from one to seven points, with the RealClearPolitics poll average showing her 3.8 points ahead of her Republican rival.

By Sunday, roughly 90,500 New Jersey residents had returned their early-voter ballots, according to Newsweek. Of those turned in, 38,039 were from registered Democrats, 35,512 were from Republicans, and another 16,895 ballots belonged to those with other party affiliations.

Only New Jersey and Virginia are holding gubernatorial races this year.

RELATED: Trump DOJ to monitor polling sites in 2 blue states in response to concerns about voter fraud, ‘irregularities’

Mikie Sherrill. Photo by Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images

President Donald Trump has weighed in on these races, stating Sunday in a post on Truth Social, “Why would anyone vote for New Jersey and Virginia Gubernatorial Candidates, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, when they want transgender for everybody, men playing in women’s sports, High Crime, and the most expensive Energy prices almost anywhere in the World? VOTE REPUBLICAN for massive Energy Cost reductions, large scale Tax Cuts, and basic Common Sense!”

Trump endorsed Ciattarelli in May, calling him “a terrific America First Candidate.”

While New Jersey has traditionally been a blue stronghold, Ciattarelli has grabbed at least eight endorsements from local Democrats, according to the New York Post.

RELATED: Pressure mounts for New Jersey Democrat gubernatorial candidate as past catches up to her

Jack Ciattarelli. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

On Saturday, New Era Democrats President Celia Iervasi stated, “We are proud to endorse Jack Ciattarelli for Governor of New Jersey.”

“As life continues to become unaffordable for the working class and New Jersey continues to be one of the highest taxed states in the country, Jack is the right person that is needed to make life more affordable for the residents of the Garden State,” Iervasi said. “We look forward to joining a coalition of organizations that are supporting Jack in the upcoming election and know that he is the right person to lead New Jersey in the right direction.”

Other New Jersey Democrats to support Ciattarelli include North Bergen Mayor Nick Sacco, North Bergen Commissioner Allen Pascual, Dover Mayor Jim Dodd, Branchville Mayor Anthony Frato, Branchville Councilman Jeff Lewis, and former Hudson County Democratic Organization Chair Anthony Vainieri. Garfield Mayor Everett Garnto also endorsed Ciattarelli and, at the same time, announced he was leaving the Democratic Party to switch to the GOP.

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​News, New jersey, New era democrats, Donald trump, Trump, Mikie sherrill, Jack ciattarelli, Ciattarelli vs sherrill, Ciattarelli, Sherrill, Virginia, Politics 

A trio dressed in Halloween horror costumes were caught on doorbell video banging on the front door of a Northern Virginia home late at night and threatening those inside earlier this month.

“It’s either you coming out or we coming in!” one voice can be heard on the video, WUSA-TV reported, adding that another shouted, “Open the door!”

‘My heart dropped when they said that they were gonna take a chair and break down the door.’

A woman named Shayla — who told the station she was staying with her mother in her Alexandria home — added that “they kept, like, knocking on the door. The knocks would get harder and harder.”

Shayla told WUSA she called 911 and warned the group that police were on the way, but she said that didn’t deter them, and they continued shouting and trying to force their way in.

Worse still, Shayla told the station the trio “threatened to kill us.”

Plus, she added to WUSA that when they couldn’t get in through the front door, they moved to the back of the house.

“This whole thing they broke down, as you can tell,” Shayla explained to the station in the aftermath as she showed damage to the backyard fence.

“They hopped up on here and went through there,” she added to WUSA as she showed a now-damaged screen-in back porch.

Shayla also told the station that the intruders still ramped things up: “They were just hitting the window. My heart dropped when they said that they were gonna take a chair and break down the door. That is just too much.”

RELATED: NYPD vehicle trashed while cops respond to domestic violence call on Halloween: ‘Trick or treat, motherf**kers’

She added to WUSA that “they tried to enter into the home.” Shayla explained to the station that other factors made the ordeal worse, especially for her mother: “My dad recently just died, so it’s just, like, I’m just glad I was there. But now [my mother’s] in fear. She don’t wanna stay there by herself.”

Fortunately, the ordeal ended after 10 minutes, as she remarked what could have happened — to the intruders.

“It could have been bad,” Shayla told WUSA. “Our Second Amendment right was not used and could have been, like being very transparent.”

She added a message to the perps, the station said: “The time frame alone, 10 o’clock at night to knock on someone’s door in costume is never OK. Halloween, not Halloween, it’s never OK.”

By Oct. 17, police said they were investigating the case as an attempted burglary.

“This is a very serious matter,” Alexandria Police Chief Tarrick McGuire said in a news conference, WUSA noted in a follow-up story. “They began to make threatening and alarming comments to the family … specifically, they said, ‘If you do not come out, we will come in,’ and also threatened to do bodily harm, stating that they would ultimately kill them.”

Well, police eventually got to the bottom of it — and considering what could have happened, the revelations were disturbing to say the least.

It turns out relatives of the victims in the home were responsible and had been recording video of what they called a prank, WRC-TV reported.

McGuire in a Monday update told WRC that the prank “could have been deadly,” especially considering that one of the victims called her brother for help prior to calling police — and he arrived with a gun.

RELATED: Missouri town’s residents are finding creepy dolls everywhere, and police warn someone might get hurt

What’s more, McGuire added to the station that several officers dedicated over 100 hours to the investigation.

Several tips from the community led to the suspects — and a female relative confessed, saying that she, her two teenage sons, and a teen nephew approached the home as two adults and a child stood in the background recording video, McGuire noted to WRC.

In the end, the victims didn’t press charges, and neither will police, the chief added to the station — with the following caveat: “This will hopefully be a learning experience for this family.”

McGuire added to WRC that the adults were guilty of a “moral failure” since they “were engaging in this behavior but also encouraging this behavior.”

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​Prank, Alexandria, Virginia, Police, Family terrorized, Horror costumes, Halloween, Relatives, Burglary investigation, Crime 

Nearly a month into the shutdown, Senate Democrats have refused to reopen the government over a dozen times. Even still, Democrats are pointing the finger at Republicans.

Although Republicans hold a majority in both chambers of Congress, there’s been a hang-up in the Senate. Instead of a simple majority, the Senate actually needs 60 votes in order to pass the continuing resolution. Republicans do hold a 53-seat majority in the Senate, but they need the help of at least seven Democrats to reopen the government.

Senate Democrats have effectively voted to continue withholding paychecks from federal workers and critical benefits from the American people over a dozen times.

This is easier said than done. When the Senate voted on the GOP’s clean continuing resolution on September 30, only three Democrats crossed the aisle in an attempt to keep the government open: Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Angus King of Maine.

Both Cortez Masto and King origianally voted against the bill on September 19 but flipped their votes ahead of the funding deadline. Notably, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has consistently voted with Democrats.

As a result, the government shut down and has remained closed ever since midnight of October 1.

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

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The Republicans’ funding bill is clean and entirely non-ideological, while the Democrats’ hyper-partisan alternative boasts a hefty $1.5 trillion price tag. Democrats have also insisted on renegotiating the Obamacare subsidies despite the fact that they won’t expire until the end of the year.

Now 28 days into the shutdown, Senate Democrats have effectively voted to continue withholding paychecks from federal workers and critical benefits from the American people over a dozen times. Here is a breakdown of every time Democrats voted to keep the government shut down.

RELATED: ‘These people are sick’: Trump admin slams top Dem for justifying shutdown suffering

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Friday, September 19, 2025, Roll Call No. 528 (44-48)Tuesday, September 30, 2025, Roll Call No. 535 (55-45)Wednesday, October 1, 2025, Roll Call No. 537 (55-45)Friday, October 3, 2025, Roll Call No. 543 (54-44)Monday, October 6, 2025, Roll Call No. 545 (52-42)Wednesday, October 8, 2025, Roll Call No. 551 (54-45)Thursday, October 9, 2025, Roll Call No. 558 (54-45)Tuesday, October 14, 2025, Roll Call No. 571 (49-45)Wednesday, October 15, 2025, Roll Call No. 572 (51-44)Thursday, October 16, 2025, Roll Call No. 573 (51-45)Monday, October 20, 2025, Roll Call No. 576 (50-43)Wednesday, October 22, 2025, Roll Call No. 581 (54-46)Tuesday, October 28, 2025, Roll Call No. 590 (54-45)

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​Government shutdown, Democrat shutdown, Schumer shutdown, Donald trump, Senate republicans, Senate democrats, John thune, Mike johnson, John fetterman, Angus king, Catherine cortez masto, Rand paul, Politics 

Lufthansa flight 431 from Chicago to Germany was forced to make an emergency landing in Boston on October 25 after an Indian national allegedly attacked multiple passengers.

The suspect reportedly stabbed two minors, both 17, with a metal fork and slapped a female passenger before being subdued by crew members. The condition of the victims is unclear, but the injuries do not appear to be serious.

He then allegedly ‘raised his hand, formed a gun with his fingers, put it in his mouth, and pulled an imaginary trigger.’

According to the Massachusetts District Attorney’s Office, the assailant is Praneeth Kumar Usiripalli, a 28-year-old Indian national who was previously admitted to the U.S. on a student visa and who enrolled in a master’s program in biblical studies. According to the DA, “Usiripalli presently does not have lawful status in the United States.”

The DA report stated that Usiripalli allegedly struck the first victim, who was sleeping, in the shoulder area, then lashed out and attacked the second victim in the back of the head. The crew attempted to subdue him, and he then allegedly “raised his hand, formed a gun with his fingers, put it in his mouth, and pulled an imaginary trigger.”

The DA stated that he allegedly managed to slap a female passenger and attempted to slap a crew member before being restrained.

RELATED: Mass shootings at, near 2 historically black colleges on their homecoming weekends raise concerns about possible deadly trend

Photo by Anadolu / Contributor via Getty Images

The flight was diverted to Boston Logan International Airport. Immediately upon landing, Usiripalli was taken into custody with the assistance of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel. He has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon while traveling on an aircraft with intent to do bodily harm.

An initial court date has yet to be announced. The incident took place in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, meaning Usiripalli could face 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, as well as deportation if convicted.

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​Stabbing, Fbi, Da, Indian national, Airline, Politics 

The House Oversight Committee published a damning 100-page report on Tuesday deeming invalid those executive actions and pardons issued without proper authorization and with machine-generated signatures in former President Joe Biden’s name.

In a corresponding letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) noted that the committee had found “President Biden’s aides coordinated a cover-up of the president’s diminishing faculties” and “that these same aides utilized an ad hoc, inconsistent, and ineffective process to obtain President Biden’s assent to certain key decisions, which raises significant questions about whether President Biden knew — let alone provided a decision regarding — the ‘decisions’ that, often through the use of an autopen, ultimately bore his signature.”

Comer asked Bondi to investigate all executive actions taken during Biden’s time in office “to ascertain whether they were duly authorized by the president of the United States.”

Hours after the publication of the report and the committee’s assertion that Biden’s executive actions are “NULL and VOID,” Bondi revealed on X that her “team has already initiated a review of the Biden administration’s reported use of autopen for pardons.”

President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum on June 4 directing the White House Counsel’s Office to investigate, in consultation with Bondi and the head of any other relevant agency, “whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the president.”

Trump specifically tasked the investigators with looking into the “circumstances surrounding Biden’s supposed execution of numerous executive actions” and reviewing the policy documents for which the autopen was used, including clemency grants and executive orders.

RELATED: House committee declares unauthorized Biden autopen pardons ‘void’ in damning new report

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

The Oversight Project, a government watchdog group, concluded in a Monday report that after reviewing approximately 1,597 enrolled copies of documents bearing Biden’s signature, 846 of 958 executive orders, pardons, commutations, and proclamations were signed with autopen.

Of the Biden-era documents analyzed, Oversight Project indicated that 75% of the pardons — including for Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the Biden clan, and former members of the House Jan. 6 select committee — and 51.8% of the commutations were signed with autopen.

‘The “Pardons” that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.’

Bondi noted that Comer’s “new information is extremely helpful, and his leadership on this issue is invaluable,” adding that the DOJ will continue working with the House Oversight Committee “to deliver accountability for the American people.”

Ed Martin, the DOJ’s pardon attorney who announced a similar investigation into the matter of Biden’s alleged pardons in May, responded to Bondi’s statement with emojis signifying police and the scales of justice. Martin also suggested that the Oversight Project’s statistics regarding autopen usage during the Biden administration warrant “closer review.”

A determination that some or all of the Biden-era pardons are invalid could prove consequential for many of the recipients, including Fauci, the fifth director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who received a “full and unconditional” pass for possible federal crimes going back to 2014, and for Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whom Trump has accused of committing “treason.”

However, Trump has made clear that he especially wishes to see consequence visited on the former members of the House Jan. 6 select committee.

Trump announced after the Oversight Project’s initial exposé about the liberal use of the presidential autopen during the Biden administration,

The “Pardons” that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level.

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​Fauci, Milley, Pam bondi, Donald trump, Pardon, Ed martin, Department of justice, Doj, Justice, Joe biden, Politics 

As the government heads into its fifth week of a shutdown, critical programs are beginning to unravel. The military is now being funded by private dollars; air traffic controllers will stop receiving paychecks tomorrow; and SNAP food stamp benefits are next on the chopping block.

Democrats may claim to be the party of the people, but it’s they who are preventing Congress from passing a continuing resolution, Glenn Beck says.

“The party that purports to represent the weakest among us, the ones who are like, ‘They want your children to starve in the middle of the street!’ … are going to take the food out of their mouth,” he says.

Horrible as it is, it gives the country an honest picture of who the Democratic Party really is at its core: not the party of the people.

“Their inaction is truly a choice. … After they have enslaved people on these government programs, they’re just yanking the carpet out,” Glenn says.

SNAP currently feeds roughly 42 million people a month. “That’s 12% of all of the people that live here in the United States in fiscal year 2024.”

What we are witnessing right now, Glenn says, is the Democrats “weaponizing hunger,” even though “the SNAP program traces all of its roots back to the Democrats.”

While Glenn loves a good government shutdown, as it shows the nation exactly which federal employees are nonessential, he draws the line at genuine hunger.

“Now we have a shutdown that threatens to pull the food out from American children. I say this kind of with glee because they’ve always said we want to harm children. … It is their choice to pull funding they say is absolutely necessary to feed children in America, and they’re okay with it,” he scoffs. “This is the party of social compassion, remember.”

“Democrats are now leading us into the longest shutdown in our history, and they are knowingly using hungry children and babies to do it.”

But the most important question is, why are they doing it? Glenn says there are two reasons.

Number one: “Chuck Schumer is doing it so he is not primaried by the left wing of his own party.”

Reason number two is as sinister as it gets. They want revolution.

Glenn explains that the loss of SNAP benefits means more than just hungry people. It also means stress will skyrocket. Suicide, sickness, and hospitalizations will increase. Food banks will be overrun. Theft and other crimes will surge. Public unrest will explode.

“Gee, now who would want that except all of those Democrats who are already sowing the seeds of revolution, pushing for chaos in the streets, and taking officers off the field while putting criminals back into the game?” Glenn asks.

“The seeds of desperation have been sown by this party. And what are they doing? They’re turning up the heat. And then what does this mean?” he continues.

“If the government doesn’t pay for it, that means the states have to pay for it, which will make all of our states more vulnerable because they’ll all have to dip into their rainy-day fund, which makes what? All of our states more vulnerable to collapse.”

Which is precisely the point: They want national collapse.

This is evident, Glenn says, in the fact that Democrats are trying to stop conservative billionaire Timothy Mellon from donating his personal money to help cover active-duty military pay during the ongoing government shutdown while simultaneously funding the No Kings protests to the tune of $300 million.

“You can’t rely on a party that refuses to pass a clean funding bill when they actually say out loud all the time that the ends justify the means,” Glenn says.

He then tells listeners how they can help struggling communities amid the shutdown and looming loss of food benefits. Watch the clip above for Glenn’s call to action.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Blazetv, Blaze media, Democrat party, Government shutdown, Snap, Snap benefits, Chuck schumer 

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates alleged in a 2021 work of climate alarmist agitprop that if humanity failed to eliminate so-called greenhouse gas emissions, “climate change will keep getting worse, and the impact on humans will in all likelihood be catastrophic.”

In addition to championing a radical upheaval of modern life — advocating for major changes to the way people travel, grow their food, and manufacture goods — in the interest of staving off some prophesied disaster, the billionaire backed the development of an aerosol technology that would dim the sun and trigger a global cooling effect.

‘Using more energy is a good thing.’

After spending years fear-mongering about the calamities that would supposedly visit humanity unless governments kneecapped certain industries, regulated into extinction certain behaviors, and redistributed wealth to the right places, Gates has acknowledged that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise.”

In a Monday memo titled “Three tough truths about climate,” Gates rejected the “doomsday view of climate change that goes like this: In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us — just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature.”

“Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong,” Gates wrote just weeks ahead of the 2025 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Brazil, where participants will enjoy easy access to the venue thanks to the government’s decision to flatten over 8 miles of rainforest.

Gates suggested that if the world takes “moderate action” to curb climate change — doing what it’s presently doing or just slightly more — the Earth’s average temperature 75 years from now will be only 2-3 degrees higher than it was in 1850.

RELATED: Al Gore wrong again: Study delivers good news for Arctic ice trends, bad news for climate hucksters

Photo by BAY ISMOYO/AFP via Getty Images

During a 2021 online Harvard Science Book Talk, Gates spoke of dying corals, acidifying oceans, forest fires, and disappearing beaches. He further claimed that unless various changes in global practices were undertaken, “It’s going to be essentially unlivable at the Equator by the end of the century.”

He has since adopted a more optimistic outlook, suggesting that warming might make Iowa eventually feel more like Texas, and Texas more like northern Mexico, and that life in countries near the equator may require governments “to invest in cooling centers and better early warning systems for extreme heat and weather events” — but that “people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”

In addition to admitting that climate doomsday isn’t coming and that the global temperature that radicals frequently cite as a metric for universal well-being “doesn’t tell us anything about the quality of people’s lives,” the billionaire stated that “using more energy is a good thing,” as “more energy use is a key part of prosperity.”

Gates indicated that his newfound optimism about so-called climate change is the result, in part, of recent policy changes, innovation-driven emission cuts, and corresponding readjustments in emissions projections, but his change in tune appears to primarily come down to priorities.

“The doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world,” Gates wrote, stressing later in the document that “the biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been.”

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​Climate change, Climate alarmism, Doomsday, Bill gates, Gates, Gates foundation, Environment, Planet, Temperature, Global warming, Lunacy, Leftism, Politics 

AI and LLMs appear to be in a bit of a slump, with the latest revelatory scandal coming out of a major study showing that large language models, the closest we’ve come yet to so-called artificial general intelligence, are degraded in their capacities when they are subjected to lo-fi, low-quality, and “junk” content.

The study, from a triad of college computer science departments including University of Texas, set out to determine relationships between data quality and performance in LLMs. The scientists trained their LLMs on viral X.com/Twitter data, emphasizing high-engagement posts, and observed more than 20% reduction in reasoning capacity, 30% falloffs in contextual memory tasks, and — perhaps most ominously, since the study tested for measurable personality traits like agreeableness, extraversion, etc.— the scientists saw a leap in output that can technically be characterized as narcissistic and psychopathic.

Sound familiar?

The paper analogizes the function of the LLM performance with human cognitive performance and refers to this degradation in both humans and LLMs as “brain rot,” a “shorthand for how endless, low-effort, engagement-bait content can dull human cognition — eroding focus, memory discipline, and social judgment through compulsive online consumption.”

The whole project reeks of hubris, reeks of avarice and power.

There is no great or agreed-upon utility in cognition-driven analogies made between human and computer performance. The temptation persists for computer scientists and builders to read in too much, making categorical errors with respect to cognitive capacities, definitions of intelligence, and so forth. The temptation is to imagine that our creative capacities ‘out there’ are somehow reliable mirrors of the totality of our beings ‘in here,’ within our experience as humans.

We’ve seen something similar this year with the prevalence of so-called LLM psychosis, which — in yet another example of confusing terminology applied to already confused problems — seeks to describe neither psychosis embedded into LLMs nor that measured in their “behavior,” but rather the severe mental illness reported by many people after applying themselves, their attention, and their belief into computer-contained AI “personages” such as Claude or Grok. Why do they need names anyways? LLM 12-V1, for example, would be fine …

The “brain rot” study rather proves, if anything, that the project of creating AI is getting a little discombobulated within the metaphysical hall of mirrors its creators, backers, and believers have, so far, barged their way into, heedless of old-school measures like maps, armor, transport, a genuine plan. The whole project reeks of hubris, reeks of avarice and power. Yet, on the other hand, the inevitability of the integration of AI into society, into the project of terraforming the living earth, isn’t really being approached by a politically, or even financially, authoritative and responsible body — one which might perform the machine-yoking, human-compassion measures required if we’re to imagine ourselves marching together into and through that hall of mirrors to a hyper-advanced, technologically stable, and human-populated civilization.

RELATED: Intelligence agency funding research to merge AI with human brain cells

Photo by VCG / Contributor via Getty Images

So, when it’s observed here that AI seems to be in a bit of a slump — perhaps even a feedback loop of idiocy, greed, and uncertainty coupled, literally wired-in now, with the immediate survival demands of the human species — it’s not a thing we just ignore. A signal suggesting as much erupted last week from a broad coalition of high-profile media, business, faith, and arts voices brought under the aegis of the Statement on Superintelligence, which called for “a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is 1. broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and 2. strong public buy-in.”

There’s a balance, there are competing interests, and we’re all still living under a veil of commercial and mediated fifth-generation warfare. There’s a sort of adults-in-the-room quality we are desperately lacking at the moment. But the way the generational influences lay on the timeline isn’t helping. With boomers largely tech-illiterate but still hanging on, with Xers tech-literate but stuck in the middle (as ever), with huge populations of highly tech-saturated Millennials, Zoomers, and so-called generation Alpha waiting for their promised piece of the social contract, the friction heat is gathering. We would do well to recognize the stakes and thus honor the input of those future humans who shouldn’t have to be born into or navigate a hall of mirrors their predecessors failed to escape.

​Tech, Superintelligence, Ai, Artificial intelligence, Brain rot, Llm, Large language models 

President Donald Trump’s legal team has filed an appeal to reverse his New York criminal conviction, in which he was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), involved accusations that Trump improperly marked payments he made to his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen as legal expenses in an effort to conceal a $130,000 settlement payment that Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.

‘This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction.’

Trump secured a new legal team, attorneys with the Manhattan-based firm Sullivan & Cromwell, in January following his inauguration. He was previously represented in the case by Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom he has since appointed as U.S. deputy attorney general and U.S. principal deputy associate attorney general, respectively.

Judge Juan Merchan sentenced the then-president elect just days before Inauguration Day with an “unconditional discharge,” which allowed Trump to avoid jail time, fines, and probation supervision. While the sentence did not interfere with Trump’s ability to return to the White House, it did brand him with a felony criminal conviction.

On Monday, Trump’s legal team filed a 96-page appeal, writing, “This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction.”

RELATED: Trump’s new lawyers move to appeal New York criminal conviction over ‘misuse’ of law

Juan Merchan. Marc A. Hermann for New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

“The DA, a Democrat, brought those charges in the middle of a contentious presidential election in which President Trump was the leading Republican candidate,” the court filing read.

The president’s attorneys claimed Bragg “concocted a purported felony by stacking time-barred misdemeanors under a convoluted legal theory.”

RELATED: Trump presses SCOTUS for 11th-hour intervention ahead of criminal sentencing in New York hush-money case

Alvin Bragg. Photo by YUKI IWAMURA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Trump’s legal team told Fox News Digital, “President Trump’s legal team filed a powerhouse appeal in the Manhattan DA’s Witch Hunt, as the president continues his fight to put an end to the Radical Democrat Lawfare once and for all.”

“The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately overturned and dismissed,” the spokesperson said. “President Trump will keep defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn as he [focuses] on his singular mission to Make America Great Again.”

Blaze News reached out to Bragg’s office for comment.

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​News, Alvin bragg, Donald trump, Trump, Trump adminstration, Trump admin, Trump court cases, Trump tracking, Trump court case, Trump cases, New york, Juan merchan, Michael cohen, Stormy daniels, Emil bove, Todd blanche, Politics 

The Department of Homeland Security appears to be shifting tactics in order to drastically increase the number of daily arrests of illegal aliens by changing leadership at field offices across the country.

First reported by the Washington Examiner, DHS is set to replace directors at field offices that are normally staffed with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with U.S. Border Patrol agents. While both agencies fall under DHS and carry out similar immigration enforcement duties, they have been employing different tactics to target illegal aliens.

Because of the shock-and-awe tactics … the White House favors Border Patrol to lead operations.

As previously reported by Blaze News during a ride-along near Miami, ICE agents mainly do targeted enforcement of illegal aliens who have gone on to commit more crimes while in the United States. Intelligence is gathered to determine a target’s behavior before making arrests. If they have the ability to take in other illegal aliens near the target or targets, agents can do so now under the Trump administration.

Border Patrol, on the other hand, has been let loose by the Trump administration to conduct sweeps in sanctuary cities across the country, employing daytime raids to arrest illegal aliens and to send a message that things are different than they were under the Biden-Harris administration. Border Patrol agents are eager to do missions in the interior after being forced to allow illegal immigrants into the United States during the Biden border crisis.

Border Patrol’s random sweeps at job sites worked by illegal immigrants have resulted in the arrest of people with serious criminal backgrounds.

RELATED: Border Patrol arrest at Home Depot punches hole in Democrats’ narrative

Julio Rosas/Blaze Media

Because of the shock-and-awe tactics, which have increasingly resulted in mobs forming to attack the agents, the White House favors Border Patrol to lead operations in order to get more illegal aliens out of the country.

DHS posted video on Tuesday showing an anti-Border Patrol crowd in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago attacking agents. Tear gas had to be used after some in the angry crowd threw objects at agents.

Fox News reporter Bill Melugin said the leadership changes are happening in cities such as:

Los AngelesPhoenixPhiladelphiaDenverEl PasoSan DiegoSeattlePortlandNew Orleans

The different tactics have reportedly caused tensions between the two agencies and their allies in the White House and DHS. One DHS official told Melugin the department has “lost” its way trying to solely focus on increasing arrests, while a Border Patrol official reportedly said, “What did everyone think mass deportations meant? Only the worst? Tom Homan has said it himself, anyone in the U.S. illegally is on the table.”

Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said on X that the DHS has “no personnel changes to announce right now.”

Addressing tensions between the two sides, McLaughlin noted, “This is one team, one fight. President Trump has a brilliant, tenacious team led by [Secretary Kristi Noem] to deliver on the American people’s mandate to remove criminal illegal aliens from this country.”

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​Politics 

Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and spam phone calls.

Robocalls are on the rise these days with an estimated 2.5 billion calls targeted at U.S. residents per month. Instead of letting your phone ring off the hook, try out these free spam-blocking tools for Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, and Google Pixel.

It’s easier than ever to block calls with the latest anti-spam features built directly into your phone.

How to block spam calls on Apple iPhones

To use Apple’s new call-blocking features, you’ll need to download the latest iOS 26 update. If you don’t like the way it looks, don’t worry; here are some quick tips to make it a little easier on the eyes. Once you’re ready, open the Settings app on your phone, scroll down to Apps, then tap Phone. Scroll down again and find the Screen Unknown Callers section. Now choose from one of the three options:

Never: allows spam callers to continue to bother you, unabated.Ask Reason for Calling: will prevent your phone from ringing when an unknown number tries to reach you. Using AI, your iPhone will send the caller a message, asking them why they’re calling. You will then receive a notification with their response. If the call is legitimate, you can pick it up and speak to the person on the line, or if it’s spam, you can simply ignore it. Most of the time, scammers will hear the call screen message and hang up on their own, leaving you in peace.Silence: prevents your phone from ringing when an unknown number calls.

Beneath this section, you’ll also find Call Filtering. This setting lets you completely silence missed calls and voicemails from unknown numbers. This is especially useful if you get a lot of unknown calls and you simply don’t want to be bothered.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw

How to block spam calls on Samsung Galaxy Android phones

Built with the anti-spam service Hiya, Samsung’s Smart Call feature is baked directly into Samsung Galaxy phones starting with the S8 and newer. You can enable it by opening the Phone app on your Galaxy phone, tap on the three dots in the top right corner, tap Settings, and then flip on the Caller ID and spam protection toggle. Tap on this section one more time to go a bit deeper, and choose whether you’d like to block high-risk calls or spam calls altogether.

Once that’s complete, all incoming phone calls will run through Hiya’s robust spam detection database. If you only choose to block high-risk numbers, a message will pop up on your screen to identify other potential spammers, scammers, or fraudsters as they come in, and you’ll have the option to report or block them. If you choose to block all spam calls, suspected spammers will be silenced entirely, restoring a modicum of peace to your digital life.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw

How to block spam calls on Google Pixel Android phones

Built exclusively for Google Pixel phones, Call Screen uses AI to identify suspicious phone numbers. When a call comes in, Google Assistant can answer on your behalf, ask the caller why they’re trying to contact you, and provide a live transcription of their answer so that you can decide if you’d like to pick up. Call Screen can also automatically decline calls from spammers without alerts or notifications, leaving you blissfully unbothered.

To enable Call Screen and other useful spam-blocking features, open the Phone app on your Google Pixel and tap the hamburger menu in the top left corner. Under Call Assist, enable Caller ID & Spam to identify spam numbers. You may want to check Spam Detection next, which will alert you, in real-time, if a caller is trying to scam you during an active conversation. Finally, enable Call Screen to automatically review your incoming calls and manage them based on one of these three settings:

Maximum Protection screens all unknown numbers and declines spam.Medium Protection only screens suspicious numbers and declines spamBasic Protection only declines spam, leaving you open to the widest range of unknown callers.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw

One last word of warning

While most spam-blocking tools will silence robocalls, scammers can still use call screening to trick you. Thanks to AI, scammers can leave messages that sound like your friends and family, begging for help, money, or worse. To make sure you’re always talking to the real person, set up a verbal password — something random, like “platypus” or the number “18” — that your friends and family can use to verify their identities, especially if they call from an unknown number.

RELATED: Thin is NOT in: Why nobody is buying the new Apple and Samsung phones

Photo by NurPhoto / Contributor via Getty Images

In most cases, robocalls are trivial at best, and it’s easier than ever to block them with the latest anti-spam features built directly into Apple iPhones, Samsung Galaxy devices, and Google Pixels.

Simply turn them on and enjoy that much-needed peace and quiet from those forever-unknown callers.

​Tech, Spam 

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for the arrest of federal ICE agents for doing their jobs — and it did not go unnoticed by the Trump administration.

Rep. Pelosi (D-Calif.) claimed in a statement earlier this week that local police could “arrest federal agents if they break California law.”

“Our state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law, and if they are convicted, the president cannot pardon them,” Pelosi said in a statement on October 23.

Pelosi also wrote in a post on X: “A mass deployment of federal agents in the Bay Area is an appalling abuse of law enforcement power. The people of San Francisco stand with our patriotic immigrants who are the constant reinvigoration of America. We will not be intimidated by politically motivated fear tactics.”

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey’s father and BlazeTV contributor Ron Simmons could not be more thrilled with the response her comments inspired.

“That statement is so inappropriate and, in some ways, factually incorrect that it’s just appalling,” Simmons says, noting that Attorney General Pam Bondi did not let Pelosi’s comments slide.

Bondi responded to Pelosi’s nonsensical statements on Fox News, explaining that “Pelosi got a letter today from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. So did Brooke Jenkins, that DA in San Francisco.”

“We told them, ‘Preserve your emails. Preserve everything you have on this topic because if you are telling people to arrest our ICE officers, our federal agents, you cannot do that. You’re impeding an investigation. And we will charge them. If they think I won’t, they have not met me, because we will charge them if they are violating the law,” she added.

Simmons couldn’t be happier with Bondi’s response.

“I say hooray. Thank goodness. Thank goodness that they’re willing to do that,” he says, pointing out that Blanche went on in his letter to write, “Any attempts to arrest or interfere with federal agents is illegal and futile.”

“So, I hope that they’ll enforce that to the fullest extent of the law. All these men and women are trying to do is carry out their responsibilities that are passed down from the leaders of the executive branch,” Simmons says.

“And again, they’re not deporting U.S. citizens, and they’re focusing primarily on those that have committed crimes here in the U.S. or at home,” he continues.

“So … it’s just sickening,” he says, adding, “and almost, in my opinion, what some of these people are trying to do is on the border of treasonous. When you’re trying to impede federal law being upheld, I don’t know what else there could be. I mean, you become almost an enemy of the state.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Camera phone, Sharing, Upload, Video, Video phone, Free, Youtube.com, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Attorney general pam bondi, Pam bondi, President trump, The trump administration, Ron simmons, Ice, Nancy pelosi, Nancy pelosi ice agents, Todd blanche 

With only a week left before the election in the contentious New York City mayoral race, socialist Zohran Mamdani is facing criticism for a photo with a Ugandan lawmaker who supported legislation restricting LGBTQ behavior.

The criticism stems from his July visit to Uganda, where he was born. During his visit, he met with Rebecca Kadaga, a well-known Ugandan lawmaker who served as speaker of the Parliament of Uganda from 2011 to 2021. She has been the first deputy prime minister since 2021, according to the New York Post.

Mamdani appeared at a ‘Gays for Zohran’ event, posing with two drag queens.

Mamdani and Kadaga appeared in a photo together during his return to Uganda.

“Delighted to meet with Zohran Mamdhani [sic] incoming Mayor of New York City. Good luck in the next phase of elections,” Kadaga said in a post on X at the end of July.

RELATED: Stop calling Zohran Mamdani a communist — he’s something worse

Photo by Mustafa Ciftci/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014 features a variety of punishments for homosexual behavior, including seven years in prison for a variety of acts. A more recent expansion on the law includes the death penalty.

“Ugandans want that law as a Christmas gift. They have asked for it, and we’ll give them that gift,” Kadaga told Reuters in 2012, prior to the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

However, Mamdani has strongly advocated for LGBTQ issues.

One X user pointed out Mamdani appeared at a “Gays for Zohran” event, posing with two drag queens. According to one source, Mamdani joined the event for National Coming Out Day on October 11.

“Zohran Mamdani ran into the First Deputy Minister while he was at Entebbe airport waiting to board his flight back to New York City. She asked to take a photo,” Mamdani campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec told the Post about the photo with Kadaga.

“If he was aware she was the architect of this horrific attack on queer Ugandans, he would not have done so,” Pekec continued. “Zohran’s belief in universal human rights extends to all people, and he has put forward the most comprehensive plan of any candidate to protect LGBTQ+ New Yorkers.”

In July, Zohran Mamdani posted a video on X announcing that he would be heading to Uganda to celebrate his marriage to wife Rama Duwaji with family and friends. The video mocks the “thousands of messages” telling him to “go back to Africa.”

In late June, Kadaga extended her congratulations and greetings from Uganda after he won the Democratic nomination in the mayoral race.

Blaze News reached out to Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for comment but did not receive a response.

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​Politics, Uganda, Rebecca kadaga, Zohran mamdani, New york city, New york city mayor, Mayoral race, Lgbtq, National coming out day 

A little more than a month after President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced an official statement suggesting a link between Tylenol and autism, drug manufacturers are facing some heat.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue for allegedly concealing the link between prenatal use of acetaminophen and autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Acetaminophen is the active ingredient in Tylenol.

‘By holding Big Pharma accountable for poisoning our people, we will help Make America Healthy Again.’

Dated October 27, the lawsuit lodges two main complaints against Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries Kenvue Inc. and Kenvue Brands LLC.

First, the lawsuit alleges that “defendants have paid no heed to the scientific facts” by downplaying or concealing the known link between acetaminophen and ADS and ADHD. If the defendants had been more forthcoming on their labels, pregnant mothers may have chosen to avoid the drug, the lawsuit posits.

RELATED: Trump administration claims link between autism and Tylenol, greenlights remedy

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

It cites 26 epidemiological studies that showed “positive associations” between prenatal use of acetaminophen and ASD and ADHD. Other studies showed a dose-response relationship, according to the lawsuit.

The second part of the lawsuit alleges that Johnson & Johnson, aware of the legal risk of its product, attempted to “shed its liability” by transferring its liabilities associated with Tylenol to Kenvue without transferring the necessary assets to the subsidiary company.

Asked about the lawsuit, a Johnson & Johnson spokesperson told Blaze News, “Johnson & Johnson divested its consumer health business years ago, and all rights and liabilities associated with the sale of its over-the-counter products, including Tylenol (acetaminophen), are owned by Kenvue.”

“Big Pharma betrayed America by profiting off of pain and pushing pills regardless of the risks. These corporations lied for decades, knowingly endangering millions to line their pockets,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a news release. “Additionally, seeing that the day of reckoning was coming, Johnson & Johnson attempted to escape responsibility by illegally offloading their liability onto a different company. By holding Big Pharma accountable for poisoning our people, we will help Make America Healthy Again.”

On its website, Kenvue issued the following statement regarding the supposed link between acetaminophen and autism: “Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of the people who use our products. We believe independent, sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism. We strongly disagree with allegations that it does and are deeply concerned about the health risks and confusion this poses for expecting mothers and parents.”

“We will vigorously defend ourselves against these claims and respond per the legal process. We stand firmly with the global medical community that acknowledges the safety of acetaminophen and believe we will continue to be successful in litigation as these claims lack legal merit and scientific support,” a Kenvue spokesperson told Blaze News.

Blaze News contacted Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office for comment but did not receive a response.

Editor’s note: This article was edited after publication to include a comment from Kenvue.

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​Politics, Ken paxton, Johnson and johnson, J&j, Tylenol, Autism, Tylenol autism, Big pharma, Kenvue, Adhd, Trump, Rfk jr, Maha 

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas made a claim so egregious about the ongoing East Wing renovations at the White House that even CNN had to fact-check the lawmaker.

Crockett was accusing President Donald Trump of neglecting Americans during the government shutdown, falsely claiming that the construction of the new East Wing ballroom was his “main priority.” Crockett was quickly corrected by CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, who clarified the original context of press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s response.

Crockett is not the only high-profile Democrat who has misled about the White House ballroom.

“I have no idea,” Crockett said in response to Collins. “I mean, you started off talking about how the president is in Japan. The president has time to do everything but what he needs to focus on.”

“In fact, we heard the press secretary say that his main priority is the ballroom,” Crockett added. “The ballroom that no one asked for. The ballroom that requires him to destroy historic pieces of the White House.”

RELATED: White House trolls Democrats with highlights of prior administrations’ scandals amid liberal furor over East Wing renovation

Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images

Collins responded to Crockett’s wildly out-of-context claim, noting that Leavitt was responding to a question about additional White House renovations and not about the president’s general list of priorities.

“That context of the comment from Karoline Leavitt, she was asked if the president was working on any other renovations when it came to the White House, and she was saying his focus was the ballroom,” Collins replied.

RELATED: ‘These people are sick’: Trump admin slams top Dem for justifying shutdown suffering

Photo by Eric Lee/Getty Images

Crockett is not the only high-profile Democrat who has misled about the White House ballroom. Former vice presidential candidate and current Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) also echoed the claim that the ballroom is Trump’s top priority, insinuating that the project is taxpayer-funded.

As Leavitt pointed out the week prior, Trump’s ballroom is entirely funded by private donors, with the president himself even pitching in to finance the project.

“He’s a builder at heart, clearly,” Leavitt replied when asked if Trump was weighing any additional construction projects. “His heart and his mind is always churning about how to improve things here on the White House grounds. But at this moment in time, of course, the ballroom really is the president’s main priority.”

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​Jasmine crocket, Cnn, Kaitlan collins, Donald trump, Tim walz, Karoline leavitt, Trump administration, White house, East wing, East wing ballroom, White house ballroom, Ballroom hoax, Democrat hoax, Fake news media, Legacy media, Politics 

Justin Bieber’s latest album ends with the pop star delivering an almost eight-minute, spoken-word retelling of the first three chapters of the book of Genesis.

Now the 31-year-old singer has opened up about his own Christian faith on a recent livestream, a clip of which was shared on YouTube. In it, the Canadian-born heartthrob sits over fast-food takeout with some of his crew, discussing the Bible, God, and what it means to be a man.

‘Now we get to live free and rather than focus on sin, now we can focus on Jesus, the wonderful savior.’

Many of Bieber’s comments revolve around the responsibility he feels he has to others and to God and how he is doing his best not to judge life based on perceived outcomes.

“It rains on the just and the unjust,” Bieber says, going on to stress that:

Bad s**t happens to everybody, you know? Bad s**t happens to good people, good s**t happens to bad people. … Everyone’s on the same equal playing ground, and that’s hard for people to really comprehend or want to digest because I think it’s makes us feel better to be like, ‘Well, I’m better than this guy.’

He adds, “I don’t want to think I’m better than anybody ’cause you don’t know what someone’s born into.”

‘It’s the same thing’

The conversation also turns to matters of morality, with Bieber speaking about taking “ownership” as a man and avoiding the sin of adultery:

“If you even think of a woman with lust it’s the same thing as actually doing it; committing adultery or whatever,” he says, clearly referring to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 5:28. “It’s the same thing. So if it even just crosses your mind for one second, if you treat a man with anger or something, it’s the same as killing a man, scripture says.”

RELATED: Why the Bible is suddenly flying off shelves across America

– YouTube

Am I worthy?

The singer seems to touch on his own mental battles when he speaks of God’s mercy.

“Someone’s probably struggling with their own self-image of like, ‘You know, am I worthy of love?’ And God says you are. You know what I mean? I don’t make the rules. But Jesus says that, and I really believe Him.”

“I believe He loved us so much,” Bieber passionately continues.

He put on skin and bones and came onto this Earth as a person, as a human. Lived a sinless life so that we don’t have to be focusing on sin because none of us can do the right thing all the time. And then He literally went to the cross, was lashed, whipped, made fun of, then he rose on the third day defeating death, Hell, and the grave. Now we get to live free and rather than focus on sin, now we can focus on Jesus, the wonderful savior. And I really think He’s the king of the world, bro. He’s the king of Hollywood. He’s the king of L.A., bro. He’s the king.

— (@)

Transaction reaction

The men further discuss how and when scripture makes its way into their daily lives, with Bieber revealing that at this point in his career, he does not want to work with people for transactional purposes.

“That’s what, like, business is these days,” he says. “It’s just like, ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine.’ And you guys, it’s not based on love.”

RELATED: LA Dodgers pitcher Blake Treinen puts Christian faith front and center ahead of World Series: ‘Make heaven crowded’

When asked how he learned about his faith and if it simply comes from reading the Bible, Bieber responds by saying much of it has stuck with him after his mother rewarded him for memorizing passages as a child.

“I would get a gold star. So I would just memorize it,” he recalls enthusiastically.

Bieber admits he often doesn’t know where a particular passage comes from in the Bible — just that God brings it to the front of his mind.

“The scripture says, ‘I will remind you the things that I’ve told you’ and He just reminds me,” Bieber concludes. “Because He knows what I want. He knows that I want this for other people. So I think He puts it to my brain.”

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​Faith, Entertainment, Justin bieber, God, Christianity, Music, Canada, Scripture, Religion 

A modern marvel of worship is close to completion in a small mountain town in Wyoming.

A group of Carmelite monks have used advanced techniques and built off a love for historical design to accomplish the unthinkable: a 145,000 square-foot French Gothic-style monastery.

‘This will be a miracle when it’s accomplished.’

The plans go back more than a decade when the monastery was but a simple drawing as the monks worked to resolve objections from neighboring ranchers in Park County, Wyoming. The area of approximately 30,000 residents had concerns of unwanted sightseers, water supplies, and possible effects on wildlife and ranching operations. Eventually, those concerns were rescinded, and Park County commissioners said the monks could move forward and build their epic house of worship on a 2,500-acre cattle ranch; about seven miles from its nearest neighbor.

In October, word of the nearly completed monastery rapidly spread as photos were shared online showing the construction. In a matter of days, new photos emerged of the project nearing completion, until images of the near-finished project eventually showed the monks going over plans on the interior.

The monks have surprisingly used state-of-the-art technology like Computer Numerical Control machines to build the ancient-looking building. According to X account Culture Explorer, the monks taught themselves how to carve the stone with the diamond-tipped CNC machines and learned the complex engineering techniques without any formal training.

This reportedly included creating depictions of angels, gargoyles, and more, carved out of 4,000-pound stones.

RELATED: Christians are refusing to compromise — and it’s terrifying all the right people

The forward thinking monks have previewed their work on a YouTube channel; they showcased the process of stone carving along with some designs mapped out on digital computer programs.

The group described the architecture as having the guiding principles of “maximum height and maximum light, brought together with an intricate and delicate aesthetic.”

This was coupled with seven key architectural elements, as described by the monks themselves: “pointed arches, large stained glass windows, rib vaults, flying buttresses, pinnacles and spires, elaborate entry portals, and ornate decoration.”

The Carmelite Monks of Wyoming say they are a contemplative community within the Diocese of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

“The Carmelite Monks live the fullness of the Carmelite Rule in the solitude of the mountains,” they wrote. “They pray the entire divine office in common, have a daily sung mass chanted in Latin, do two hours of mental prayer, manual labor, and the daily common rosary.”

RELATED: Notre Dame’s reopening calls for celebration — and reflection

The massive work of architectural art sits on a remote, private road called Meeteetse Creek Road. The group of monks plan on operating a commercial coffee-roasting facility in order to fund their operation, which consists of living quarters and an eventual nun’s convent, according to the channel Purely Catholic.

During a public 2010 hearing, the Billings Gazette reported that Brother Simon Mary vowed that “everything” about the monastery was “for the worship of God” and “oriented toward that end.”

Mary added, “This will be a miracle when it’s accomplished.”

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​Return, Monastery, Stone carving, Gothic, Monks, Wyoming, Tech 

Senate Democrats have brushed off pressure from the nation’s largest union of federal workers after the organization put pressure on lawmakers to end the ongoing government shutdown.

‘It’s time for our leaders to start focusing on how to solve problems for the American people, rather than on who is going to get the blame for a shutdown that Americans dislike.’

As the shutdown enters its fifth week, the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800,000 workers, called on both parties to abandon “partisan spin” and instead take action to ensure federal employees do not miss another paycheck.

“Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight,” Everett Kelley, president of the AFGE, stated. “It’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship.”

Republicans previously proposed a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government until November 21, but Democrats repeatedly blocked it.

“When the folks who serve this country are standing in line for food banks after missing a second paycheck because of this shutdown, they aren’t looking for partisan spin,” Kelley continued. “They’re looking for the wages they earned. The fact that they’re being cheated out of it is a national disgrace.”

“It’s time for our leaders to start focusing on how to solve problems for the American people, rather than on who is going to get the blame for a shutdown that Americans dislike,” he added.

RELATED: Capitol Police officers are forced to take out loans to pay their bills because of government shutdown, union boss says

Photo by Moriah Ratner for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Yet CNN reported that Democratic lawmakers “appeared to be unmoved” by the AFGE’s demands, despite more than one million federal workers going unpaid.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) stated that the AFGE’s comments had “a lot of impact,” noting that the union has “been our friends and we’ve worked with them over the years.” However, he told CNN, “I’m not seeing any change in position at this time.”

RELATED: Trump admin blames Senate Democrats for SNAP debacle: ‘The well has run dry’

Sen. Richard Durbin. Photo by Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said, “I work very closely with [the AFGE]. That matters to me. But the issue that I’ve always been focused on, that I’ve shared with y’all is, is a deal, a deal? And the AFGE would not want us to cut a deal and then have Trump fire a bunch of people next week. If we cut a deal and then he did that, they would come to us and say, ‘What the hell were you guys thinking?’”

The AFGE filed a lawsuit in September against the Trump administration to block any efforts to fire federal workers furloughed amid the shutdown.

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​News, Shutdown, Government shutdown, American federation of government employees, Afge, Federal workers, Federal employees, Everett kelley, Dick durbin, Tim kaine, Politics 

The House Oversight Committee released a nearly 100-page report on Tuesday deeming invalid those executive actions and pardons issued without proper authorization and with machine-generated signatures in former President Joe Biden’s name.

“Barring evidence of executive actions taken during the Biden presidency showing that President Biden indeed took a particular executive action, the Committee deems those actions taken through use of the autopen as void,” said the report.

‘Hold those who orchestrated this coup d’etat accountable.’

In hopes that real consequence might be dished out following their damning report — a report that suggests the country was effectively run in recent years by unelected Biden staffers — the Republican-led committee has also asked the Department of Justice to both review the validity of every executive action taken during the previous administration and to “determine whether legal action is necessary to ameliorate consequences of any illegitimate pardons granted, or executive actions implemented, throughout the Biden Autopen Presidency.”

The Oversight Project got the ball rolling in March by revealing that Biden’s signature on numerous executive orders, pardons, and other documents of national consequence was machine generated.

While other presidents have made extensive use of the so-called autopen, there is cause besides Biden’s mental deterioration to doubt the validity of many of the documents issued in his name.

For starters, there are reports of staffers and family members making decisions on his behalf; Biden allegedly admitted to having no memory of signing a greatly impactful order that bore an autopen signature; Biden’s signature appeared on documents while he was absent and in at least one case on vacation; and internal emails from the Justice Department show that there was a high-level understanding in the Biden administration that many of the commutations autopenned in the former president’s name were legally flawed.

Following a review of approximately 1,597 enrolled copies of documents bearing Biden’s signature — including pardon warrants and executive orders — the Oversight Project concluded in a Monday report that 846 of 958 executive orders, pardons, commutations, and proclamations were signed with autopen.

RELATED: Biden freed killers with a pen he didn’t even hold

Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

Broken down further by category, the Oversight Project indicated that of the Biden-era documents reviewed, 59.2% of the executive orders; 96.3% of the presidential proclamations; 75% of the pardons, including the pardons for Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the Biden clan, and former members of the House Jan. 6 select committee; and 51.8% of the commutations were signed with autopen.

Biden apparently signed all but one bill into law by hand.

“We, as a nation, operated for years without a functioning president and instead ceded executive power to a politburo of unelected bureaucrats who exercised presidential power via autopen,” the watchdog group stated. “These statistics are alarming. The time is now for the administration and Congress to hold those who orchestrated this coup d’etat accountable.”

The Oversight Project’s bombshell exposé earlier this year paved the way for additional investigations into the legitimacy of autopen-signed Biden-era documents, namely those launched by DOJ pardon attorney Ed Martin, the Trump White House Counsel, and the House Oversight Committee.

The Oversight Committee’s Tuesday report, the product of a five-month probe, indicates that Biden aides made liberal use of the autopen to carry out official actions without evidence of the former president’s approval.

The committee — echoing a finding of the Oversight Project — found, for instance, that 32 of 51 clemency warrants were signed with digital copies of Biden’s signature but without any contemporaneous paperwork linking Biden to the decisions.

Former Idaho Solicitor General Theo Wold testified during a U.S. Senate hearing in June that with regard to the clemency warrants, the “president actually has to make the decision — that cannot be delegated to a staffer or an adviser,” but there was no indication “that anyone other than staff were making these decisions.”

In addition to highlighting apparent evidence that senior Biden White House aides exercised the authority of the former president, the committee asked the DOJ to investigate three top Biden White House aides who previously refused to testify to the committee: Biden White House physician Kevin O’Connor and aides Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini.

Blaze News has reached out to the DOJ for comment.

Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement obtained by CNN, “Our report reveals how key aides colluded to mislead the public and the extraordinary measures they took to sustain the appearance of presidential authority as Biden’s capacity to function independently diminished. Executive actions performed by Biden White House staff and signed by autopen are null and void.”

A Biden spokesperson stated, “This investigation into baseless claims has confirmed what has been clear from the start: President Biden made the decisions of his presidency.”

“There was no conspiracy, no cover-up, and no wrongdoing. Congressional Republicans should stop focusing on political retribution and instead work to end the government shutdown,” added the spokesperson.

Biden told news outlets in June, “I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations.”

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​Autopen, Oversight committee, James comer, Comer, Oversight project, Pardon, Biden pardons, Commutation, President, Biden administration, Scandal, Politics 

Shocking text messages allegedly have revealed a sinister plan by a Nebraska high school teacher and her boyfriend to groom and sex traffic her 16-year-old student.

Police said 36-year-old Elizabeth Jamie Love and her boyfriend, 42-year-old Jarid “Jack” Krause, were arrested Friday.

‘It’s a huge risk. We might not find the right girl for us.’

The Phelps County Attorney’s Office charged both suspects with one count of sex trafficking of a minor (a Class IB Felony). Love also was hit with a charge of sexual grooming by a school employee (a Class IV Felony).

If convicted, Love and Krause face up to life in prison and a lifetime on the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry.

Love and Krause were booked into the Phelps County Jail and held on bonds of $250,000 cash each, police stated.

Police noted that Love had been a transition coordinator and educator in the Educational Service Unit No. 11 for several years, during which she traveled to as many as 15 schools in the south-central part of Nebraska.

The Holdrege Police Department said in a statement, “The investigation into Ms. Love and Mr. Krause began after a current high school student, whom Ms. Love was instructing through her employment as a transition coordinator and teacher in ESU-11, reported inappropriate interactions with the couple over the past few weeks.”

RELATED: Ex-middle school teacher — guilty of 21 counts of sex crimes against daughter’s underage babysitter — learns her fate

Police said the investigation began Oct. 14 after reports of possible sex abuse of a 16-year-old student.

Authorities said Love communicated with the teen through text messages, Facebook Messenger, and non-school email addresses.

Citing the arrest affidavit, People magazine reported that the alleged victim is a girl who told investigators she and Love “developed a close relationship, which has evolved into talking about things going on in [her] life beyond the normal scope of a speech therapist/educator.”

The alleged victim said she had worked with Love since she was in seventh grade, according to the affidavit.

Court documents said the teen told investigators she considered moving into Love’s home in Holdrege on weekdays so she could attend a school in another district.

The student said she was in Love’s car in August when Love had a phone conversation with Krause, the affidavit stated.

During the phone call, Krause said he wanted to have sex with Love, and Love later told the student she “would be willing to share” Krause, according to the arrest affidavit.

The student said she was supposed to attend the state fair with Love that day, but the conversation made her so “uncomfortable” that she called her aunt to pick her up, court documents said.

During an alleged incident on Oct. 11, Love picked up the teen from her home and took her to Love’s house, court documents said.

People magazine reported, “The student alleged that while she was there, Krause led her to an upstairs bedroom and made a request she believed was for sex.”

‘We’ll find the girl that appreciates us for what we are and provide. Someone who sees the value of our family and one that loves us both more than anything.’

The outlet added that the alleged victim declined Krause’s advances and asked to leave.

The affidavit said the student left the house and began walking home until Love picked up the teen in a car and drove the alleged victim home.

Nebraska-TV reported, “The affidavit said the girl told investigators Love apologized to her, told her not to tell anyone, and gave her $100 in $20 increments.”

When police later interviewed Love, the educator insisted the payments were not intended as “hush money” but rather a gift to help the girl purchase a new cell phone, according to court documents.

Citing text messages revealed in the affidavit, People magazine reported that Love and Krause “spoke about the student as early as April, before seemingly planning to proposition the student for sex in August” and to determine “if she’s not feeling it.”

The affidavit also said the couple discussed developing a “code phrase” to use that would “help [Love] know if she’s interested or not.”

Another text message revealed in the affidavit indicated Love told Krause she hoped the proposition “works out” and added that “if she doesn’t want to, then I’ll keep looking.”

Krause messaged Love about “[finding] our person,” according to the affidavit.

“We’ll find the girl that appreciates us for what we are and provide. Someone who sees the value of our family and one that loves us both more than anything,” Krause wrote to Love, according to court documents.

The affidavit claimed Love then asked Krause if they should “start the paperwork for foster care.”

According to court documents, Krause replied, “Do you think it’s time for that? It’s a huge risk. We might not find the right girl for us.”

The arrest affidavit said Love responded, “I know. But I also don’t have to take them all. Even though I want to. Haha.”

ESU-11 administrator John Poppert told Blaze News that Love was placed on administrative leave “as soon as the ESU learned of the allegations.”

“The ESU has cooperated fully with the Holdrege Police Department investigation,” Poppert noted. “The administration also contacted the ESU’s attorney. We will continue to work closely with law enforcement, and we thank them for their efforts in this matter.”

During the investigation, the Holdrege Police Department received assistance from the Phelps County Sheriff’s Department, Kearney Police Department, Minden Police Department, the Nebraska State Patrol, and the Nebraska Department of Justice.

Police said investigators have yet to find any evidence that Love had inappropriate interactions with other current or former students.

The investigation is ongoing.

Anyone with information about this case is urged to contact the Holdrege Police Department at 308-995-4407.

The Holdrege Police Department and the Phelps County Sheriff’s Department did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

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​Bad teacher, Teacher arrested, Teacher sex scandal, Teacher student sex scandal, Nebraska, Sex trafficking, Child sex crimes, Elizabeth love, Crime