Category: blaze media

As the war with Iran drags on into its seventh month, uncertainties over oil prices have even stymied the experts charged with predicting futures. This week, J.P. Morgan officially abandoned any attempts to anticipate the outcome, claiming that analysts don’t know how to model the end of the war fueling the chaotic gas price surge.

This stunning admission came down from the head of global commodities research at J.P. Morgan, Natasha Kaneva. According to CNBC, she released a client note Thursday stating, “For the first time since the start of the Iran conflict, we don’t have a baseline view” of the oil market.

’This will be a brief and temporary interruption.’

Kaneva followed that with, “We simply don’t know how to model the endgame.”

These fears are largely exacerbated by the continued struggle over the Strait of Hormuz. Despite President Donald Trump’s insistence that the United States “powerfully” controls the strait, Iran claims the opposite, saying that the vital shipping path is closed until Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are removed from power.

According to Reuters, some commercial vessels are still permitted to pass, though the daily number has dropped dramatically from 125 vessels per day before the war to just four to 10 per day this past week. With oil tankers unable to move through as freely as before, oil supplies dwindle, and prices go up.

RELATED: ‘Clean energy’ isn’t telling the whole story

Florian Gaertner/Photothek/Getty Images

Until recently, analysts remained hopeful that three approaching redlines would force Trump to make a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by June. These included:

oil prices exceeding $100 a barrel;the 10-year Treasury climbing to 5%; andthe gasoline national average reaching $5.

The first two redlines were already crossed, with the third teetering on the edge as the national gas price average creeps up to $4.47 and counting, according to AAA. Halfway through September, there’s still no deal in sight, and analysts have all but given up on trying to predict the outcome.

Adding insult to injury, the East-West Crude Oil Pipeline in Saudi Arabia was struck by an Iraqi drone on September 11, further contributing to oil disruptions and growing gas prices. Yet despite mounting uncertainty, the Trump administration insists that the situation is under control.

“This will be a brief and temporary interruption,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said after the incident. “It will be measured in days.”

The Associated Press reports that full restoration could take weeks. All of that remains to be seen.

For now, gas prices continue to rise across the nation, with the West Coast already exceeding $5 per gallon, while California nears $6 per gallon. The midterm elections also loom on the horizon.

Wright pledged on Wednesday that “diesel prices, gasoline prices, all of them will be coming back down.”

Editor’s note: This article has been corrected after publication to note that the redline is the 10-year Treasury climbing to 5%, not 10%.

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​Chris wright, Gas prices, Jp morgan, Oil prices, Strait of hormuz, Trump administration, Politics, Donald trump 

Regrets, Shaggy has a few.

Actor Matthew Lillard just took a stand in classic Hollywood fashion: years after doing so might have cost him something.

John Leguizamo works and works, and in between, he whines about Hollywood’s woke deficit.

The “Scream” and “Scooby-Doo” alum says he now regrets staying silent when actress Melissa Barrera lost her gig for her extreme pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel views.

Better late than brave?

Barrera’s comments, made shortly after the October 7 attacks, alarmed people in the industry. She was subsequently fired from the “Scream” franchise.

Lillard kept his head down.

Now, with pro-Palestinian activism commonplace in La-La Land and Hollywood stars rallying around Macklemore after he got bounced from Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour, Lillard is ready to speak truth to power.

It’s really f**king bulls**t and really hard, and she’s on the right side of history. When they start coming after your job, sometimes things are worth it. … When that happened to Melissa, the whole world didn’t pipe up. But she was a year early on what the f**k’s going on. But the whole world should have popped up and said, “She’s right.” And they didn’t. And that’s brutal.

The cultural winds have shifted. What might once have put an actor’s career at risk now earns applause from plenty of his peers. And Lillard has finally found his voice.

Remember his impassioned public condemnation of the Oct. 7 attacks? His demands that Hamas release its hostages?

Neither do we.

Being forgotten fears Chuck Norris

They couldn’t beat him in life, but in death it’s easier. A little.

Action movie legend Chuck Norris died earlier this year. A huge part of his decades-long career was his starring role in CBS’ “Walker, Texas Ranger.” The series lasted for nine seasons, no small feat, bringing the iconic actor to the small screen.

So how did the Emmys honor his passing? By ignoring him.

This week’s Emmys telecast featured a segment remembering the TV stars who passed over the last year, much like the one that haunts the annual Oscars gala. And like the Academy Awards segment, the Emmys left out several notable stars.

Including Norris.

Accidental? On purpose? Do we even have to ask? It’s Hollywood …

RELATED: MACKLE-MORON: Backstabbing B-lister turns on Ed Sheeran after getting booted from tour for pro-Palestinian rant

Ethan Miller/Getty Images/iHeartMedia

Grin and bare it

USA Today is a far cry from Blaze News, but every once in a while, the liberal rag lets a right-leaning opinion sneak out. This time, it’s a columnist who said what everyone should acknowledge about the latest Sydney Sweeney non-troversy.

It’s all about politics, even though the “Housemaid” starlet isn’t political. Wait … what?

The liberal news outlet published an op-ed debunking the most recent attacks on Sweeney for baring (mostly) all on behalf of a sports betting platform.

Yes, it’s easy to argue that we’ve seen other attractive stars and athletes get nekkid for ad campaigns. It’s nothing new at all.

Yet what Ingrid Jacques argues is more important. Sweeney has a target on her back because people assume she’s pro MAGA. Even if she never wore a red hat in her life.

She’s a registered Republican in Florida, but she doesn’t weigh in on politics. Ever. It’s not her style, and that’s her choice. She keeps telling interviewers that she wants to keep her political views private.

For that, she must be punished, even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Even USA Today sees the scam …

Mad hombre

An actor who spends way too much time complaining is getting another plum gig.

John Leguizamo works and works, and in between, he whines about Hollywood’s woke deficit.

Really.

Leguizamo has blasted James Franco for taking the role of Fidel Castro in an upcoming project. He’s not Cuban, the actor cried. He also shrieked over Chris Pratt taking on the title role in the “Super Mario Bros. Movie.”

He’s not Italian!

Leguizamo also said the movie industry doesn’t accept Latinos. That same industry cast the star in “The Odyssey,” one of the biggest movie projects in recent years. Now, he’ll play the main villain in the upcoming “Miami Vice” reboot with Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler. That’s one of nine projects he has lined up, according to IMDB.com.

If he ever stopped complaining about Hollywood for just a minute, he might land even more roles …

​Chuck norris, Culture, Ed sheeran, Emmys, Entertainment, Hollywood, John leguizamo, Macklemore, Maga, Miami vice, Scream, Sydney sweeney, Usa today, Celebrities, Toto recall 

Sophie Cunningham is comfortable saying she doesn’t know Sydney Sweeney, but she does understand her.

Sweeney has faced backlash for a recent “gambling” ad, enduring seemingly unending criticism from female athletes across the globe, but Cunningham has one simple question: “Why are girls mad?”

‘It’s just so unauthentic.’

Cunningham said her phone blew up with people looking for her take on Sweeney’s recent ad for Novig that had the actress posing nude, save for conveniently placed sports equipment covering her private areas.

The ad was immediately characterized as a black eye for women in sports by female athletes who said it was not how they want to be portrayed. Although many athletes were put on blast as hypocrites after being reminded of their own questionable (and self-promoted) content, Cunningham seemingly saw both sides of the matter.

On “No Hesitation with Sophie Cunningham & Drew Hanlen” earlier this week, the WNBA star started with the hilarious question: Does Sweeney “even gamble on sports?”

“It’s just so unauthentic,” Cunningham continued. “You know what I mean? Like, am I surprised of how she represented the brand? No.”

The basketball player then started a back-and-forth of insult followed by praise.

“That’s what she’s made her whole career off is. And hey, don’t get me wrong, I like her. Everyone knows she is beautiful. She is hot. She clearly has my chest,” Cunningham joked.

Then the 30-year-old offered Sweeney “props” but admitted she did not like the ad.

“I think it’s like, I mean, like, what? Like, what are we doing? But again, I’m not surprised.”

Cunningham wasn’t done though, and she put the complaining athletes into her crosshairs, asking them what it is they are getting so upset about:

“But why are girls mad?”

RELATED: Travis Kelce duped by Indian illegal immigrant in massive Ponzi scheme

“That is literally what she does,” Cunningham went on. “Why is anyone mad?”

Then things went back the other way for a moment, with the baller saying, “Again, do I agree with it? Uh, morally, I think it’s kind of weird, but, like, to each their own. Go do your thing, sis.”

But then Cunningham pushed back in the other direction again and praised women for standing up for themselves and being proud of their tall bodies, “broad shoulders,” and thighs that touch.

While the athlete explained that she certainly understands how Sweeney’s ad could “deflate women” and overshadow their accomplishments, she finally settled on her previously discussed idea that even despite her moral disagreements with it, “Let that girl go do her thing.”

RELATED: Charles Barkley defends WNBA, but says ‘race’ and ‘sexuality’ are behind Sophie Cunningham clashes

Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Co-host Hanlen took on more of a believe-all-women mentality, approaching the topic as being not “black and white,” and thus impossible to truly take sides.

“They knew that they were going to spike up a lot of traffic from women being disappointed with the ad and putting her down,” Hanlen said about Novig.

Hanlen’s feminist approach concluded with him saying that criticisms should be replaced by “celebrating women in sport” and giving confidence to “student athletes that don’t feel like they fit in.”

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​Wnba, Sophie cunningham, Sydney sweeney, Gambling, Sports 

Democratic Texas Senate nominee James Talarico has made his stance on LGBTQ issues clear in the past, but in a desperate attempt to rebrand himself for Texas voters — he’s now walking it all back.

“He’s nuts. He is not Texan in any way, shape, or form,” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck says, noting that his attempt to rebrand isn’t going so well as he recently was caught telling a fan who his favorite drag queen is.

“Mr. Talarico, so nice to meet you,” the fan began.

“I was there when you defended the drags. Who’s your favorite drag queen?”

“Oh my gosh. Probably Alyssa Edwards,” Talarico responded without skipping a beat.

“No hesitation,” Glenn comments.

But in a recent interview on Fox News, Talarico claimed that his views have changed.

“Would you vote in favor of a national ban for transgender surgeries when it comes to minors?” Talarico was asked in the interview.

“Absolutely,” he answered. “And in fact, in the legislature, I voted for an amendment that would have restricted the bill in question to a ban on surgeries for minors.”

“That’s a plot twist,” Glenn says.

In the same interview, Talarico claimed that his prior belief that there were “six biological sexes” was a mistake.

“I’ve missed the mark on some of my past statements. I will be the first to admit it. What I meant is that there are two sexes and then there’s a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities,” Talarico said.

“I obviously didn’t say it correctly. There are not six sexes. There are two,” he added.

“Does anybody believe this?” Glenn asks. “You can’t say there’s six genders and then say, ‘No, there’s two sexes.’”

“You can’t name your favorite drag queen and then say that,” he adds.

But not even the Texas Democratic Party manager believes that Talarico has changed his tune. In a hidden camera video captured by the Daily Wire, she admitted it was simply to cater to Republicans.

In the video, the manager is asked by an undercover reporter why Talarico would “walk it back.”

“I would say that right now he’s trying to target a wider net, which unfortunately means being more palatable to Republicans here in Texas,” she answered.

“And I think that from the character that he’s shown us, it seems like he does believe the things that he said before. But at this point in time, it just seems like, from my perspective, yeah, he really needs to win those Texans over,” she continued.

“His support for trans children has not changed though?” the reporter asked.

“Yeah,” she answered.

“In his heart, he still supports,” the reporter said.

“Yeah. I think it’s, you talk to some Republicans, and they’re very Republican, especially here in Texas. Very, very to the right,” she answered.

“Who doesn’t know this?” Glenn asks. “Really. Texas, you’re going to get what you deserve if you let this guy win.”

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.

​Daily wire, Drag queen, James talarico, Lgbtq, Texas, Two sexes, Lgbtq issues, Glenn beck, Blazetv show 

Fraud continues to plague the state of Minnesota, extending even to a program created to offset the economic impact of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Hennepin County.

Back in March, Hennepin County commissioners approved $2 million for the program meant to help small businesses that had been affected by Operation Metro Surge, which began in December and ended in February.

‘Clearly, fraud and people who want to commit it are still very active, as they do not fear the penalty.’

Three hundred applications were submitted to the Hennepin County relief program, each requesting a portion of the $2 million fund. However, after a “rigorous review,” the county has now ended the program, Hennepin County chief public relations officer Carolyn Marinan said in a statement to Fox 9.

Only about 80 applications had been approved, receiving a total of about $500,000. More than 200 applications were flagged for possible fraud, Fox 9 reported.

Hennepin County Commissioner Jeffrey Lunde claimed that despite the flood of allegedly fraudulent applications, no money was actually lost to fraudsters. “We caught the fraud before we spent any money,” he said, according to CBS Minnesota.

RELATED: Minnesota police crack down on anti-ICE protesters, multiple arrests outside hotel

Madison Thorn/Anadolu/Getty Images

It appears officials found many applications suspicious almost immediately, as the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office claimed it was asked to open an investigation into “potential criminal activity” back in June, according to CBS Minnesota. The sheriff’s office said it requested “pertinent documents” related to the case a month later, and once it receives all of those documents, it will open an investigation.

“Clearly, fraud and people who want to commit it are still very active, as they do not fear the penalty. Thanks to county staff and our partner, we were able [to] thwart these efforts by devoting more time and effort to tighter oversight, in-person inspections, and increased scrutiny,” Lunde said in a statement to FOX 9.

“As the fraudsters continue their efforts, we need to ramp up our game as well. This is the new normal for all levels of government in Minnesota.”

CBS Minnesota reported that $1 million in unused funds is still available for area small businesses, while another $500,000 will be used “to provide consulting and promotional support for businesses.”

County PR officer Marinan said, “We’ve moved beyond the urgent need for immediate grant relief and are focusing our efforts on strategies that support the long-term vitality and sustainability of businesses.”

Of note, anti-ICE agitators also surged to Hennepin County during Operation Metro Surge. One hotel alone sustained thousands of dollars in damage during a violent anti-ICE riot in downtown Minneapolis in early January, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

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​Fraud, Hennepin county, Immigration and customs enforcement, Minnesota, Politics 

The internet goes down, the cellphone towers are shot, and you need to get in contact with someone in an emergency.

What do you do?

‘The network operates independently of the internet.’

The answer actually looks somewhat like mid-2000s two-way texting technology, but with a frightening twist.

When Paris Hilton, the Backstreet Boys, and Blink 182 were hocking the T-Mobile Sidekick on red carpets, text messaging looked a lot simpler. So simple, in fact, that Americans were impressed by the ability to type messages without having to press the same button over and over to cycle through letters.

Now, a simple alternative to reliance on Wi-Fi and cellphone networks is popping up from an unlikely source.

Readers have been excited by the low-tech appeal of the Flipper One, an “off-grid radio messenger.”

In a video posted to X, the Flipper One sends a public message relayed by repeater nodes, the same simple technology that relays radio signals for emergency-service communications, for example.

The Long Range technology sent messages almost 100 miles in tests that took place in the U.K.

There’s only one catch: It exists on a network typically used by hackers.

On its website, Flipper One calls itself “a community-driven project that aims to develop a portable Linux multi-tool for hackers.”

Flipper One, a working prototype that’s not yet on the market, is the successor to the Flipper Zero, a commercially available device that gained popularity online for its ability to hack RFID and infrared signals, which resulted in countless videos of people hacking key fobs and department store networks.

RELATED: Poll: Most think AI could do this to humanity — but don’t agree on what to do about it

Flipper One is designed as an upgrade that can get into Wi-Fi and 5G networks and comes equipped with a satellite modem. The (scary) possibilities are endless.

“The network operates independently of the internet, requires no radio transmission licence, and is free to use. A good option for keeping text messaging available when the internet goes down,” Flipper R&D wrote on X.

Using the MeshCore network — developed for off-grid communication specifically — the Flipper One requires no internet connect or cellphone service, can encrypt messages, and can broadcast its location if necessary.

Operating on radio frequencies means the signals are detectable, but messages to another person on a private channel on the network can be protected using a randomly generated key-code.

RELATED: We now have killer weapons in space, says the military in a shocking new disclosure

So while the thought of simplistic texting has reminded readers of Motorolas and the era of the midriff, the device is indeed a venture into a mostly unknown world for the general population.

There are apps to use the MeshCore system and access the messaging services on other platforms.

Similar messaging technology is also available using the Meshstatic network, which is incompatible with MeshCore, and operates by using user devices for relaying, as opposed to MeshCore, which uses dedicated infrastructure as relay nodes.

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​Meshcore, Flipper one, Flipper zero, Meshstatic, Tech 

President Trump’s call for a $5,000 “dividend” payment to all adult U.S. citizens is being widely criticized as fiscally unsound, grossly irresponsible, a cynical vote-buying scheme, and another political promise that will never come to fruition.

Trump’s plan, as he presented it in just a couple of throwaway sentences at the Republican Midterm National Convention in Dallas last week, is indeed all those things. It amounts to a Keynesian-style attempt to stimulate the economy temporarily by making people feel richer than they are, to be followed by the usual consequences of such fiscal monkeyshines: violent inflation and a subsequent grinding recession.

An unprecedented economic boom or dramatic revenue surge cannot be assumed in advance.

Trump, however, is a habitual dealmaker. What if congressional leaders were to respond to the president’s idea as a starting point for negotiations?

My suggestion: Agree with the president to pass a one-time tax cut of $5,000 for the 2027 fiscal year, paired with a permanent spending cap set at the 2019, pre-COVID-19 level and mandatory 2% additional reductions in the spending cap each year through 2040.

The tax cut would be payable immediately upon enactment and designated as refundable to all U.S. households that file a personal income tax return (whether they pay any income tax or not), thus fulfilling Trump’s promise.

Republicans would make a simple deal with the American people: $5,000 today for every adult citizen, in exchange for serious, desperately needed cuts in federal spending beginning in the next fiscal year and continuing through the next decade. Any congressional Democrats who want to do the right thing will be welcome to vote for it as well, of course.

For practical reasons, the spending cuts would need to begin with the 2028 fiscal year in October 2027, but the 2% annual spending cuts thereafter would easily offset the extra interest costs on the additional federal debt that the delay would create.

To implement the cuts, Congress would convert the federal portion of spending on Medicaid, SNAP, housing programs, higher education, and the like into block grants to the states, with the expenditures scaled down to the 2019 level. The legislation would institute 5% annual reductions in those block grants for subsequent years through 2040, essentially phasing them out of the federal fisc.

The move to block grants with annual downsizing would steadily transfer responsibility for welfare spending to the states, where it belongs. Federal redistribution programs are not explicitly permitted under the Constitution, and the Supreme Court should never have allowed Congress to establish those programs.

These welfare programs account for about 24% of the $7 trillion-plus federal budget, around $1.7 trillion. In 2019, they composed about $1 trillion. A return to that number would pay off a $1.3 trillion refundable one-year tax cut in less than two years, with a dozen years of much lower federal spending on the way.

RELATED: Free money wins elections — and that’s why America’s debt will keep growing

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

If a 40% cut in spending on federal welfare programs sounds draconian and cruel, remember that the 2019 spending level was far from stingy. We needed cuts then, and we need them much more urgently now, even without Trump’s dividend payments. Investigations during President Trump’s current term suggest that elimination of entitlement fraud could lead to even greater cuts than what this plan would call for.

Congress should also consider cutting defense spending to provide further spending reductions.

In short, this would be a temporary tax cut and permanent spending cuts — the very opposite of the way things are ordinarily done in Washington D.C. The key element, and the unique opportunity here, is the political goodwill and appealing trade-off the $5,000 dividend checks would provide.

The only way to reverse the spending cuts would be through legislation signed by the president or a veto override. Trump would have every reason to refuse any attempt by Congress to restore the spending, especially given his track record of trying to implement limits on entitlement programs through executive orders. The same would be true for any Republican successors.

Moreover, the transfer of welfare responsibility to the states would eliminate congressional spending junkies’ ability to use these programs as a slush fund for buying votes. In addition, the money simply will not be there, given the rising cost of Social Security and Medicare.

This plan would allow Congress fiscal breathing space to develop a plan to transition Social Security and Medicare into private taxpayer accounts and transfer future responsibilities for those programs to the states. Social Security and Medicare are just as unconstitutional as the other entitlements, with the important difference that these were funded by people’s paychecks with the direct promise of repayment, a pledge the government must keep for current and prospective retirees.

Americans would be relieved to know that major Social Security cuts are off the table.

The plan should also make permanent all of Trump’s executive orders that have reduced federal regulations — and add further regulatory relief.

RELATED: Trump’s interest-rate fantasy runs into debt gravity

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The large, one-year tax cut would spark an economic boom of possibly unprecedented proportions. Economic growth would cause federal revenues to rise dramatically in subsequent years, which would enable the government to begin paying down the existing federal debt.

The spending cuts would push down interest rates by greatly reducing the federal deficit and thereby raising the assurance that the federal government will be able to pay its debts, thus increasing the value of Treasury bonds and lowering interest costs.

This would reduce interest rates for all Americans, including for mortgages. That would help relieve the housing affordability problem.

The entitlement cuts would also put able-bodied people back to work and make them taxpayers instead of tax takers, raising revenues and cutting costs further. That would spur even more economic growth.

These would be impressive achievements. A political party that instituted this plan could create a permanent majority despite the inevitable mistreatment by the media and the opposition party, while returning the nation to constitutional rule. Most people dislike the current overspending, and people recognize that far too much of it goes to cheaters, grifters, and government cronies.

For the good of the American people, Trump and the congressional Republicans should prepare legislation to implement this full plan in the lame-duck session, immediately after the election, regardless of whether they win House and Senate majorities this fall. They would be giving the American people a great gift of economic prosperity and better government, and Democrats would not be able to reverse any of it, with a Republican president holding veto power.

​Inflation, Recession, Taxes, Spending cuts, Deficit, Donald trump, Interest rates, Economy, Dividend, Congress, Trillion, Opinion & analysis 

In what BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales calls a “fluff piece” from Politico, major Democrat donor Reid Hoffman has warned Kamala Harris to stay out of the presidential race.

“We just talked about Gavin Newsom saying, ‘Yeah, I mean, sure, I’ve thought about running for president, but if Kamala runs, I’m out. I’m out. She can just have it,’” Gonzales begins.

“And now we hear that this big Democrat, you know, shadow puppeteer and megadonor Reid Hoffman … he’s like, ‘OK, I’m going to choose my fighter.’ And it’s not Kamala,” she continues, explaining that he did show favor for AOC.

But Hoffman, Gonzales notes, isn’t just the founder of Linkedin.

“There’s a lot of fishy stuff about him in the Epstein files that I’m going to share, and then you can draw your own conclusions,” she says.

In 2013, Hoffman sent Epstein an email that read: “Also: when will you be @ your island? Chatting with Joi about setting up a joint visit.”

“By the way, we know that he went to the island, based off of other files, too. There’s an entire itinerary of how he was flown in for the visit,” Gonzales says.

“Now, Reid Hoffman has said, ‘Yes, I went to the island, but I didn’t know anything about the girls, and I didn’t do anything with the girls,’” she continues.

“He also said he didn’t know about Epstein’s criminal history or allegations of any wrongdoing,” she adds.

However, she’s “not buying that.”

“I’m not buying that he didn’t know about Epstein’s criminal history or allegations of any wrongdoing when this email from 2015 exists where he is trying to help him with bad press,” she says.

In the email, Epstein writes: “is the metal sculpture yours?”

Hoffman responds: “my gift to you. … been giving a bit of thought to how I can help with recent press fu. Mostly looking for help on the on-line front.”

In another strange email, Hoffman writes that he sent “two gifts” to Epstein.

“1 – Ice cream. If you have any interest, you should try – else for=the girls. 2 – something that may strike your funny bone for the island,” he wrote.

“I’m just wondering who are the girls? What is the island gift? What do you mean ‘ice cream’?” Gonzales asks, pointing out that sending ice cream “doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“So being that Reid Hoffman has this weird history with Jeffrey Epstein … it bothers me that the media is giving any kind of legitimacy to the guy who was this close with Jeffrey Epstein,” she continues.

“And yet Donald Trump is orange man bad because he was in a grainy picture with him in 2000,” 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.

​Gavin newsom, Kamala harris, Jeffrey epstein, Donald trump, Reid hoffman, Epstein files, Emails, Blazetv show 

Throughout the Biden administration, Google was locked in two antitrust cases — one over its search engine dominance and another for its digital advertising business. For remedies, Google was at risk of divesting some of its most prized products, including Chrome and Google Ads. However, a new decision will let Google keep its toys in the end.

To understand the scope of this story, we have to go back to October 2020 when the first complaint was filed by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The document accused Google of a Sherman Act violation — the bill that bans monopolistic practices — and ultimately aimed to bring action against the tech giant for “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States.”

Google risked divesting several of its major products and services.

The case would ultimately go to trial in late 2023 with Obama-appointed District Judge Amit Mehta presiding, but not before a second antitrust case tried to bring Google to its knees once more.

In early 2023, another complaint was filed, this time aimed directly at Google’s online ad business. It claimed that the company:

Monopolized the ad server market, which is the software that website publishers use to manage the ads on their websites.Monopolized or attempted to monopolize the ad exchange market, which is a digital auction where publishers sell ad space to advertisers.Monopolized the advertiser ad network market, which is a system that gathers up available ad space from multiple publishers to sell to advertisers.Was complicit in unlawful tying, where a company uses its dominance with one product to coerce users to adopt another product under the guise that their pairing is necessary to make the system of platform work as intended.Brought monetary damages upon the United States.

RELATED: Google’s AI overhaul of Search will overfish the internet to extinction

bgblue/Getty Images

The collective charges from both cases resulted in multi-year trials, each with major repercussions mounting for the tech giant. At one point, Google risked divesting several of its major products and services, including the Google Chrome browser, the Android mobile operating system, and Google Ads. And somehow, bit by bit, Google clawed its way out of total calamity.

In September 2025, District Judge Mehta ruled that Google would not have to sell Chrome or Android. However, the company was still found guilty in that it “harmed Google’s publishing customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” according to a press release. To atone, Google was forced to:

End bundled contracts, where Google forced OEMs and partners to include Google apps on their devices in exchange for Google Play Store support.Disclose web search index data with rivals for a small fee, excluding trade secrets and intellectual property.Allow rivals to rent Google search results, maps, and other services on their websites with tapered plans that diminished over the next five years.Provide a five-year license to competitors to use Google’s search ad network.Submit to a five-member watchdog group to ensure all remedies were met for six years.

Things were looking up for Google, but it wasn’t out of the woods yet. The second case was still underway, and after Clinton-nominated District Judge Leonie Brinkema found the company guilty again, a new batch of devastating remedies were on the table. This time, Google risked having to:

Sell its Google Ads business, including Google AdX (aka: Google Ad Exchange) and Google DFP (aka: DoubleClick for Publishers), formerly known as Google Ads Manager.Discontinue tying practices for a minimum of 10 years.Put 50% of Google Ads (AdX and DFP) profits into a locked escrow account from April 17, 2025, until the Google Ads sale is complete.Refrain from using data collected through Google services — like YouTube, Gmail, Search, Chrome, or Android — to exclude competitors for a minimum of 10 years.Submit to two independent watchdog groups to ensure the sale is carried out properly and that all rules are met.

RELATED: How Google went from American innovation to tech stagnation

sesame/Getty Images

Fast-forward to September 2026, and now the final major repercussion is no longer in play. District Judge Brinkema ruled that Google will not have to sell its ad business after all, allowing the company to keep all of its main products and services intact.

That said, consequences still loom for the Big Tech giant. Like in the case before it, Google will have to make behavioral changes to its business model. The exact remedies are still sealed in District Judge Brinkema’s official opinion, which is expected to be released by the end of September.

Regardless of the information contained inside, one thing is clear: Google earned the ire of the courts, got itself slapped down with two back-to-back antitrust lawsuits, and even as it stumbled on the cusp of the biggest company breakup since AT&T, the tech giant still came out with all of its parts attached. Only time will tell if Google can keep its nose out of trouble.

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​Biden administration, Google play store, Google, Antitrust, Courts, Trial, Case, Tech 

On July 13, 2024, President Donald J. Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Since then, the threats and attacks on conservative activists, media personalities, and Trump himself have only escalated.

There have been three other incidents in which armed gunmen have gotten close to the president or his properties. In September 2024, Ryan Routh hid in the bushes outside the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach with the intent to shoot the president. In February 2026, an armed man was shot and killed after crossing a security perimeter at Mar-a-Lago. And in April, a gunman opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

‘I’ll kill you also Donald Trump.’

Then a gunman assassinated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk during an appearance at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.

In addition to these active threats and shootings, the Department of Justice has opened prosecutions in dozens of cases of individuals making online threats against politicians, including nearly 20 for threats against President Trump, since January 2025.

Those online threats against conservatives continue. Just this week, Jerusalem News Syndicate first made public the case of a Kansas man alleged to have made specific death threats against President Trump and conservative podcaster and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro.

Kansas Highway Patrol arrested Korby Aaren Strube, a 29-year-old resident of Horton, Kansas, last week, according to a Brown County sheriff’s employee with knowledge of the situation. He was taken into custody on a warrant from Palm Beach County, Florida. The warrant was for alleged threats Strube made against Shapiro, a resident of Palm Beach County, according to a probable cause affidavit reviewed by Blaze News.

RELATED: FAA contractor charged for allegedly threatening to ‘kill you — Donald John Trump’

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The affidavit describes an investigation into the matter that began on August 4 after a security firm that provides protection to Shapiro alerted the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office to a series of threats posted on X on August 1 by a user named “Kory” with the handle @Ksqcrzk. X has since suspended the account.

The affidavit goes on to quote the since-deleted alleged posts, which included threats like, “I’m going to kill ben [redacted] and he’s not going to be a-live.” In other alleged posts, the user cited anti-Semitism as the reason the user wanted to kill Shapiro and gave a countdown that culminated on the feast of Yom Kippur.

The threats against Shapiro also included threats against President Trump and former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama. According to the affidavit, the poster wrote, “I’m still killing [redacted] and I don’t expect to get away with that … I’ll kill you also Donald Trump.”

During the course of the investigation, the affidavit claims, a forensic analysis of the digital trail for the posts — including information gained from X Corp., Google, and Starlink through a series of requests and warrants — tied the accounts to Strube.

The affidavit also describes the first meeting law enforcement had with Strube in Kansas, when a Brown County undersheriff and Secret Service special agent went to Strube’s residence in connection with the alleged threats made against the president.

The affidavit states that a consensual interview with Strube took place at the dining room table of his residence with his parents present. It further claims that during this interview, Strube admitted to posting the threats against Trump and the Obamas.

The defendant also claimed during that interview that his accounts had been hacked, the affidavit says.

RELATED: Tyler Robinson finally headed for murder trial nearly a year after Charlie Kirk was assassinated

Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

In addition to Shapiro, Trump, and the Obamas, the affidavit claims another account allegedly controlled by Strube continued the countdown toward Yom Kippur with threats against other unnamed individuals. X has also suspended that account.

When contacted by Blaze News with the allegations in the affidavit, a Secret Service spokesman said, “We are aware of the threats made in this case but do not comment on matters of protective intelligence.”

“It’s no secret that threats against Ben have increased over the past several years, requiring security to be ramped up,” a spokesman for the Daily Wire told Blaze News. “It’s an unfortunate reality of the current state of American politics. We are grateful for everyone involved in keeping Ben safe and ensuring justice is served.”

Inquiries to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office, Brown County Sheriff’s Office, and the Kansas Highway Patrol to determine whether Strube has been extradited to Florida have not been answered as of publication of this article.

The White House and Department of Justice have not responded to requests for comment.

Blaze News attempted to reach the defendant via two email addresses outlined in the affidavit, but no response has been received.

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​Assassination attempt, Barack obama, Ben shapiro, Donald trump, Michelle obama, Politics 

The White House and Congress promise that data centers will not cost consumers a dime. That is like a husband pledging not to beat his wife as his fist draws blood.

The politicians who spent a year gaslighting the public about data centers’ power use now acknowledge the problem and promise to cover grid upgrades. But even as they propose legislation and tout a nonbinding industry pledge, data centers are already costing consumers. It is impossible for them not to.

The growing number and size of planned hyper-scale facilities will push electricity costs even higher.

This week, the House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act (H.R. 9340) by a 417-3 vote. The bill establishes a federal standard that state regulators must consider but need not adopt. It would require large-load customers to cover the “full, incremental cost” of new or accelerated grid upgrades — not a full share of the existing system’s embedded fixed costs. That limitation helps explain the industry’s support.

If adopted and enforced, the standard could protect ratepayers. But utilities and data center companies already bury infrastructure costs among a region’s general power needs. A serious proposal would resemble Oklahoma’s House Bill 3724, which stalled in committee this year. It requires a high-demand facility to fund all infrastructure upgrades and bars utilities from allocating any cost of serving it to other retail ratepayers. That language closes the loopholes Congress leaves open.

The costs are not theoretical. Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s independent market monitor, estimated that data center load accounted for $9.3 billion, or 63%, of the increase in revenues from the 2025/2026 capacity auction. It also found that data center load in the next two auctions increased customers’ bills by $13.8 billion. The monitor warns that the near-term impact will be even larger unless PJM addresses the problem.

PJM operates the nation’s largest competitive wholesale electricity market, serving about 67 million people across 13 states and the District of Columbia. Its data center costs reach far beyond the communities hosting the facilities.

A Union of Concerned Scientists report identified $4.4 billion in transmission projects approved in 2024 across seven PJM states. Utility filings do not separate data center connection costs from transmission costs spread among all customers. In practice, those costs are folded into higher electricity rates.

The effects of Virginia’s data center boom are acutely felt in Maryland and West Virginia. Maryland’s Office of People’s Counsel says data centers — mostly outside the state — caused about $9.3 billion of a $12.5 billion capacity-cost increase in one estimate. PJM’s capacity price jumped from $28.92 per megawatt-day for 2024-2025 to $269.92 for 2025-2026 — more than 800% — and has since reached about $333.

RELATED: Big AI broke the internet. Now it wants everyone else to fix it.

Joe Lamberti/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The growing number and size of planned hyper-scale facilities will push electricity costs even higher. It is far from clear that their products can justify trillions of dollars in capital spending while covering the full cost of their power. If the economics depend on shifting costs to the public, the industry’s pledge is worthless.

The bill and pledge also ignore the use of eminent domain to take property or easements for transmission lines serving data centers. NextEra Energy estimates its portion of the 500-kilovolt Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link will cost $960 million. The project would cross parts of four states on its way to Northern Virginia’s data center corridor. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis estimates that West Virginia ratepayers could pay more than $570 million over the line’s 40-year life.

Meanwhile, hyper-scalers enjoy favorable federal tax treatment and lavish state and local abatements. Corporate income-tax receipts fell 25% during the first 11 months of fiscal year 2026, partly because the 2025 reconciliation law expanded deductions for business investment. Those provisions were not written exclusively for AI, but this capital-intensive industry is well positioned to use them. The boom is not purely a market phenomenon. Government favors are helping fuel it.

The first step in fixing a problem is admitting that you caused it. Until industry leaders and their allies in Washington confront the real cost of centralized AI, their promises about protecting consumers deserve no credibility.

​Data centers, Eminent domain, Legislation, Opinion & analysis, Artificial intelligence, Congress, Big tech 

Freedom of speech is still the law of the land in the United States, but on college campuses, that is apparently up for interpretation.

Look no further than the University of California and its sprawling system of 10 campuses across the state. One set of policies and standards governs all of its campuses, and with it comes a ban on “misgendering” and adhering to biological reality.

‘UC’s policy goes too far in restricting protected speech.’

Under UC’s “Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment” policy — which is available in four different languages — sexual harassment is described as including conduct like “acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility based on gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex- or gender-stereotyping, or sexual orientation.”

In its FAQ section of the same document, “intentional and repeated use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s gender identity (i.e., misgendering)” is also considered harassment. The policy even extends its harassment definition to include the use of a person’s “dead name,” which in many cases means one’s legal name.

So long as the conduct is “unwelcome,” students or faculty who violate the policy are subject to discipline, including dismissal, aka expulsion.

Fortunately, a federal judge has stepped in and entered a preliminary injunction that bars UC from enforcing its policy for the time being, following a lawsuit from Defending Education.

In court documents, the Central District of California Southern Division’s decision included an example of what UC considers to be harassment.

The school said that harassment based on gender identity includes “when a transgender man is intentionally and repeatedly called by his dead name (i.e., refers to a name that a transgender person was given at birth but that they no longer use), or intentionally and repeatedly referred to by ‘Miss’ or ‘Ms.,’ by a professor in an intentionally mocking manner.”

RELATED: CALIFORNIA IDLE: Iconic reality show ditches Hollywood after 24 seasons

Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images

The court also made its decision based on precedent, citing two recent cases that establish “UC’s policy goes too far in restricting protected speech.”

In Bates v. Pakseresht, the court noted that adoptive parents being forced into “affirming” a child’s sexual orientation and gender identity (including preferred pronouns) “quite clearly restrict[ed] and compel[led] speech based on both content and viewpoint.”

Furthermore, in Defending Education v. Olentangy, the court explained, a school district was prevented from enforcing a similar policy against Defending Education’s members.

The court documents from the latest Defending Education lawsuit also pointed to training that “UC students must also complete,” described as sexual violence and harassment, anti-discrimination, prevention, and education training, or SHAPE.

The lawsuit said the training formerly included the following scenario as an example of a hostile environment:

My name is Mona, and I am transgender. My classmate Jane continues to call me James, which was my name before I transitioned. Jane refers to me as a man and complains when I use the restroom. I asked her to stop, but she does not. I feel very disrespected and want this to stop.

The lawsuit notes, however, that “UC declares that this example is no longer included in the SHAPE training.”

RELATED: Campus free speech is alive — barely

Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

To the court, all of this evidence was sufficient enough to grant the injunction.

Nicole Neily, president and founder of Defending Education, told Blaze News in a statement that her organization is grateful for the district court’s decision against “the University of California system’s coercive speech policy against our members.”

Neily also called it “unconstitutional” for public universities to compel student speech.

“We will continue to defend this principle in California and other schools across the country as needed,” she added.

UC did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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​University of california, Transgenderism, Defending education, Freedom of speech, Politics 

I quite like to sit down. Sometimes you will find me folded into an armchair with a bowl of cereal, reading about Mongol savages, convinced this is the absolute pinnacle of human civilization.

The medical establishment considers this exact activity a suicidal ritual akin to swallowing rat poison. Somewhere around 2010, academic researchers decided that resting your gluteal muscles against a soft cushion carries the same lethality as huffing two packs of unfiltered Lucky Strikes before breakfast.

The true goal of the anti-sitting crusade, I suggest, is to eliminate guilt-free leisure.

Chair scare

The “sitting is the new smoking” campaign remains one of the most absurd public health exaggerations of the modern era. Tobacco smoke deposits thousands of chemical compounds directly into pulmonary tissue. It paralyzes cilia and mutates cellular structures until tumors bloom like bad weeds.

Chair usage, by contrast, involves resting your skeleton on furniture so your knee joints don’t turn into sawdust. Equating a plush sofa to a habit that systematically destroys internal organs requires a complete detachment from objective reality.

Wellness brand PR teams latched onto this ridiculous metaphor with ruthless efficiency. Fear sells foam rollers. It sells treadmill desks and squatty potties. The human brain panics when it thinks a routine daily comfort threatens to shut it down completely. And panic prevents us from seeing things clearly.

In 1953, British epidemiologist Jerry Morris published a famous study comparing London bus drivers to bus conductors, noting drivers suffered more heart attacks. The medical industry extracted a single hysterical conclusion from that data, completely overlooking the fact that drivers dealt with heavy traffic and nasty fumes all day long. Yes, conductors moved more, but they also faced far fewer physical and psychological stressors.

Same old sit

This modern panic relies entirely on the illusion that our ancestors lived lives of continuous, unrelenting activity. My grandfather spent decades farming in Ireland, a vocation urban health gurus idealize as the gold standard of natural human movement. But after a long morning of plowing fields, he also sat in his rocking chair and didn’t move a muscle for hours on end. Medieval peasants sat on dirt floors for hours mending nets, weaving wool, and waiting out brutal European winters. The historical record is clear: Humans have always taken advantage of the opportunity to park their posteriors on the nearest stable surface.

In 1880, industrial factory workers put in 14-hour shifts standing on wooden planks. They suffered massive joint degradation and chronic physical exhaustion. Only the most deluded back then claimed standing was a magical fountain of youth. Rest was considered a hard-earned luxury that kept the body from breaking down prematurely. The modern obsession with perpetual motion recasts a basic act of recovery as a moral failing.

Panic peddlers act as if the human frame dissolves into liquid sludge the moment butt meets bench. They publish studies claiming that six hours of daily sedentary behavior will trigger a catastrophic metabolic meltdown while conveniently ignoring the bigger picture. A person who sits for a few hours at a time, eats actual vegetables, and lifts heavy objects three times a week possesses a very different cardiovascular profile than someone who inhales fried dough while playing video games for hours on end.

RELATED: ‘Trust the science’ or die: Is being MAHA hazardous to your health?

Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images

Rebranding rest

The proposed solutions to this imaginary crisis are far more punishing than the supposed ailment. Corporate wellness managers continue to install standing desks in offices, forcing countless poor souls to endure varicose veins and lower back pain. Standing perfectly still on a concrete floor for eight hours, day in and day out, doesn’t sound very appealing, and for good reason. It damages the lumbar spine and pools blood in the ankles.

Sellers of high-tech ergonomic gear profit handsomely from this artificially generated terror. They pitch thousand-dollar mesh office chairs guaranteed to align your vertebrae to micro-millimeter precision, as if a standard dining room chair is a torture device. Consultants charge massive hourly fees to adjust monitor heights by two inches, promising these micro-adjustments will save you from an early grave. It’s an elaborate commercial ecosystem built on top of a completely fabricated health crisis.

Fixing the physical stiffness of a long afternoon takes remarkably little effort. Walking to the kitchen to fetch water every 60 minutes gets your blood flowing and helps reset your circulation. Taking a 10-minute stroll around the block after dinner clears blood glucose far more effectively than standing like a statue in front of a screen for five straight hours. The body is remarkably resilient.

The true goal of the anti-sitting crusade, I suggest, is to eliminate guilt-free leisure. A society obsessed with relentless, measurable productivity views an unmoving human body as an economic failure.

Rest must be rebranded as a perilous path toward an early grave so people feel compelled to buy walking pads and smartwatches that alert local authorities whenever they come within 100 meters of a chair.

You are allowed to enjoy a book, finish a film, or eat a meal without calculating your immediate mortality risk. So please, sit down, stay still for an hour, or two, or three, and ignore the health prophets who profit from your panic.

​Lifestyle, Sitting is the new smoking, Health, Wellness, Culture, Standing desks, Make america healthy again 

Flock cameras are having a hard time identifying some objects and mistaking them for license plates.

But as the devices may be struggling to accomplish their most critical task, they seem to be identifying something else: people.

‘The detector cropped an American flag patch on the rider’s saddlebag as if it were a plate.’

Hackers recently ripped down a Flock license-plate reader camera that sat above a road, opened it up, and copied the data inside before giving the information to tech outlets.

What the data allegedly revealed is that software running on the device “explicitly detects people” as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles.

A joint report from Wired and 404 Media explained that through several weeks’ worth of logs, the Flock camera generated more than a million images.

Using a processor similar to that of a “midrange smartphone,” around 20 built-in apps on the camera’s processor handle a range of tasks like motion detection, taking pictures, uploading data, and receiving updates.

The outlets say that the device’s code showed approximately 28-100 photos are taken when something moves into view, but the camera uses different exposures to capture the license and the expanded environment before scanning the image and cropping what it believes to be the pertinent information. The data is then sent to Flock through the local cell phone network.

The camera itself allegedly does not identify the plate number, vehicle, model, etc.; those tasks allegedly take place on Flock’s servers.

At the same time, the current software allegedly “explicitly detects people” and records where they appear in the image and how confident it is that it is a person.

RELATED: Flock doesn’t care if you’re innocent

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Wired’s analysis said that the camera’s logs had about 21 days of activity, during which it photographed more than 50,000 vehicles and generated 1.6 million images. This worked out to between 3,300 and 4,500 vehicles per day.

Problems arose with the camera’s inability to process its huge storage requests on-device, with the logs reportedly showing a massive 27,000 instances of “no space left on device” errors that show up when trying to save full-resolution images.

Tens of thousands of other related errors were noted as well, which came with crashes and reboots.

Perhaps disturbingly, the device’s code runs an operational check every two minutes to see if the camera is still running and logs the message “Who’s a good boy?!”

This was seen more than 12,000 times.

Other issues were reported with mistaken identification with bumper stickers, dealership frames, and other graphics that were recorded as license plates and cropped out of images for saving.

“In one video of a passing motorcycle, the detector cropped an American flag patch on the rider’s saddlebag as if it were a plate,” Wired wrote.

RELATED: Worse than Flock: Josh Hawley expands ‘unprecedented national surveillance’ investigation

Jean-François FORT/Hans Lucas/AFP/Getty Images

As for the hackers/vandals/vigilantes, they answered as to why they didn’t simply destroy the camera: “Why just destroy them when we can reverse-engineer them and find the secrets of those spying on us?”

The hacker collective, which calls itself stegan0gram, also said it “liberated hardware in the field, disarmed them, and proceeded with reverse engineering of the cameras and associated solar equipment.”

Flock responded to the report by saying “the unauthorized removal and tampering of a Flock camera is illegal.”

“Flock takes security seriously and maintains a public Vulnerability Disclosure Policy for security researchers to report potential vulnerabilities directly to us. We received no report through that process, and based on the limited information provided, we do not have enough detail to assess the claims being made. If the individuals identified legitimate vulnerabilities, we encourage them to submit their technical findings through our vulnerability reporting process so our security team can review them and take any appropriate action,” the company added.

One hacker replied to this message by saying, “Being investigated is a legit concern and something we are trying to avoid. I’m sure our actions have attracted some attention as it is, but we are careful and try to keep a low profile.”

Flock did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Wired and 404 Media also noted they found no evidence of facial-recognition capabilities in the Flock camera software beyond what is included in the Android operation system.

According to DeFlock, there are currently more than 140,000 license plate readers in the United States; 81% are run by Flock, 5% by Motorola.

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​Flock, Android, Automated license plate recognition cameras, Tech 

We graduated from Davidson College in 1982 and 2025, respectively. Connie serves on the board of Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse, an alumni group that supports free inquiry and sponsors student organizations including Young Americans for Freedom and Turning Point USA. Hannah interned with DFTD during her senior year, where we met. Although she majored in biology, her work with DFTD and other campus groups led her to the Oversight Project in Washington, D.C.

Our experiences, separated by four decades, have produced the same concern: Higher education is failing to prepare too many students for demanding careers and responsible citizenship.

The answer is not to replace progressive indoctrination with conservative indoctrination. It is to restore the conditions under which education can do its job.

Connie began seeing the change in 2015. For nearly 40 years, her career has involved preparing, interviewing, and placing college graduates in their first jobs. She saw a growing share of seniors arrive less engaged and less prepared. By 2020, retention among some of her placements had fallen sharply. One employer told her that of five Davidson graduates it had hired, two had been fired within 18 months and a third was on probation. She also found fewer students eager to test themselves at the start of their careers.

At Davidson, a DFTD review of public voter registration records found that 3.17% of faculty were registered Republicans, compared with 46.03% registered Democrats. Party registration is not a complete measure of ideology, of course, but the imbalance is hard to dismiss. When one outlook dominates, students receive fewer opportunities to challenge assumptions and defend unpopular conclusions. Davidson is hardly alone. Connie also serves on the board of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, a national network of alumni groups confronting similar problems.

Open inquiry is vital because employers value people who can think critically, absorb disagreement, and defend a position under pressure. Hannah saw the opposite at Davidson. One professor offered to help students find abortion services but did not mention prenatal or parenting resources. Another dismissed the possibility that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory. Several of Hannah’s professors canceled class after Donald Trump won the 2024 election. Those episodes sent a clear message about which views were welcome.

Professors also control grades, giving students another reason to keep dissenting opinions to themselves. Conservative students learn to calculate the social and academic cost of speaking. Students who echo the campus consensus rarely face the same test.

RELATED: Campus free speech is alive — barely

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Administrators shape the climate beyond the classroom. They approve speakers, recognize student groups, enforce conduct rules, and decide whether controversial events can proceed. Conservative groups at Davidson have repeatedly encountered restrictions that pushed events off campus, according to our work with DFTD. The point is not that every administrative decision is ideological. It is that vague rules and uneven enforcement teach students that permission matters more than argument.

DEI policy offers one example. President Trump’s January 2025 executive order directed federal agencies to end illegal race- and sex-based preferences and enforce civil rights law; it did not simply “ban DEI” in every college classroom.

The harder question is whether universities that formally changed policies continue embedding DEI concepts in curricula. In July 2025, the Oversight Project requested syllabi and course materials from more than 70 UNC-Chapel Hill classes. Faculty resisted the breadth of the request, and documents later surfaced through other channels. Months later, UNC System President Peter Hans adopted a systemwide policy treating syllabi as public records and requiring a searchable database.

Transparency will not settle every curriculum dispute, but it gives students, parents, and taxpayers a chance to see what public universities teach.

Anonymous bias-reporting systems raise a related concern. Maxient has said its platform receives about 7,000 reports a day across roughly 1,300 institutions, but that figure covers many kinds of campus cases — not 7,000 anonymous bias complaints. Bias portals are only one use. Even so, FIRE has documented hundreds of campus bias-response systems that invite reports about protected expression. Whatever administrators intend, systems that allow anonymous complaints about speech can make students hesitate before challenging campus orthodoxy.

Academic standards deserve scrutiny too. Davidson’s Class of 2025 profile shows that roughly three-quarters of seniors had GPAs at or above 3.5, the college’s threshold for cum laude. Harvard’s faculty has now voted to limit flat A grades to 20% of a course, plus four additional students, beginning in fall 2027. The policy came after flat As reached two-thirds of Harvard College grades. Elite institutions do not adopt measures like that unless grade compression has become impossible to ignore.

Meanwhile, national academic performance is moving the wrong way. On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 35% of 12th-graders scored at or above Proficient in reading and 22% in math. Nearly half fell below Basic in math. Yet the National Center for Education Statistics projects colleges will award about 2.04 million bachelor’s degrees in 2025-26, roughly twice the 1989-90 total. More degrees are not a problem by themselves. The problem is expanding credentials while the preparation beneath them weakens.

RELATED: Want to think fearlessly like Charlie Kirk? Take the 28 free courses that shaped him.

Hillsdale College

Employers see the consequences. In a 2024 survey commissioned by Intelligent.com, 79% of companies that hired recent graduates said they had placed at least some underperforming hires on performance improvement plans, and 60% said they had fired at least some. The survey has limits, but the signal matches what Connie has heard from employers: Too many graduates need basic workplace habits taught after graduation.

Weak preparation, inflated grades, and narrow intellectual environments also leave many graduates in jobs that do not require their degrees. A 2024 report from the Strada Institute for the Future of Work and the Burning Glass Institute found that 52% of graduates were underemployed one year after college and 45% remained so a decade later. That is not evidence that college causes underemployment, and the figure varies greatly by major and internship experience. It is evidence that a diploma alone no longer guarantees a college-level start.

New York’s 13th Congressional District shows the civic stakes. In June, democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary. Chevalier attended Columbia and helped organize the pro-Palestinian movement on campus. She was involved in launching Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which seeks the “total eradication of Western civilization.”

Chevalier’s success cannot be blamed on the university alone, but campuses that teach students to regard their country primarily through oppression, grievance, and ideological conformity should not be surprised when some graduates carry those habits into politics.

This is why the problem is larger than a few offensive syllabi or one-sided classroom discussions. Colleges are supposed to prepare students to enter institutions they did not design, work alongside people who disagree with them, accept criticism, recover from failure, and distinguish argument from injury. Grade inflation, ideological conformity, administrative overprotection, and weak career preparation all work against those goals.

The answer is not to replace progressive indoctrination with conservative indoctrination. It is to restore the conditions under which education can do its job: serious academic standards, genuine intellectual diversity, transparent curricula, freedom to argue, and a campus culture that expects students to become adults.

Parents spend enormous sums on college, and students devote four formative years to earning their degrees. They deserve more than a credential and shelter from challenging ideas. They deserve an education that prepares them for work, citizenship, disagreement, responsibility, and life beyond the campus gates.

​Campus culture, College graduates, Education, Grade inflation, Higher education, Public universities, Western civilization, Intellectual conformity, Universities, Republicans, Democrats, Covid, Trump, Dei, Bias, Liberal faculty, Opinion & analysis 

Americans should pay close attention to a new artificial intelligence proposal from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a democratic socialist, and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas).

Sanders and Casar recently announced plans to introduce the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. Their proposal is designed to prevent the creation of artificial intelligence systems that become more intelligent than human beings or develop capabilities that could threaten humanity.

Overseeing frontier AI would be more difficult than running a railroad or postal network.

The dangers they identify deserve to be taken seriously. But their proposed solution would also place extraordinary power over one of the most consequential technologies in human history in the hands of the federal government.

According to a summary released by Sanders’ office, the proposal would permanently prohibit the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence, including systems that surpass human intelligence, threaten governments, or evade human control. It would also pause advanced AI development until a new federal regulator establishes safety rules and a process for reviewing models.

That is only the beginning. Sanders and Casar want to establish a new Cabinet-level agency responsible for regulating advanced artificial intelligence. The agency would monitor frontier AI systems throughout their development, oversee the removal of capabilities deemed dangerous, and supervise the destruction of prohibited artificial-superintelligence systems.

The proposal also contemplates severe penalties. People who violate or circumvent its restrictions could face up to 20 years in prison. Companies could face what Sanders’ office calls the “corporate death penalty.” The United States would also pursue international agreements, export controls, and allied coordination intended to prevent artificial superintelligence from being developed elsewhere.

Without a doubt, advanced AI could pose serious threats to human freedom and security. A system capable of evading human control, conducting sophisticated cyberattacks, helping develop biological weapons, or manipulating critical infrastructure would present risks unlike almost anything governments have confronted. Sanders’ office cites reported incidents involving advanced AI systems as evidence that the technology is becoming increasingly difficult to control.

The key question is whether giving Washington sweeping regulatory authority would solve more problems than it causes. The federal government does not exactly have an impeccable record managing complicated institutions.

RELATED: Anthropic entrusts its AI oversight to globalist cronies — prioritizing the world over you

Rudall30/Getty Images

The Postal Service reported a $9 billion net loss in fiscal year 2025. Amtrak, despite record ridership and revenue, reported a $598.4 million adjusted operating loss for the same fiscal year. The federal government had accumulated a $2 trillion deficit through the first 11 months of fiscal 2026.

Those comparisons do not prove that a federal AI regulator would fail. Running a railroad or postal network is obviously different from regulating artificial intelligence. If anything, overseeing frontier AI would be more difficult. But the government’s record raises a legitimate institutional question: How confident should Americans be that Washington can successfully oversee technology that even its developers acknowledge can be difficult to understand and control?

Another danger deserves even more attention: politicization.

Under the Sanders-Casar proposal, a Cabinet-level agency would determine which advanced AI systems may proceed, establish safety rules, review models, monitor their capabilities, require developers to remove features deemed dangerous, and supervise the destruction of systems that cross the government’s line.

Those are immense powers. Government officials could use them to limit lawful activity, favor politically connected companies, or advance particular ideological causes and special interests.

Artificial intelligence will increasingly shape how Americans receive information, communicate, work, conduct research, educate their children, and participate in the economy. A regulatory structure powerful enough to determine which advanced AI models may exist could therefore exercise tremendous influence over American life.

There is also a serious federalism debate that should not be overlooked. Congress possesses substantial constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, while states retain broad traditional regulatory powers. AI regulation could therefore involve authority at both levels of government rather than belonging exclusively to either one.

A state-centered model offers an important structural advantage: It disperses power.

States can adopt different approaches, experiment with different safety standards, and correct mistakes without necessarily imposing the consequences of those mistakes on the entire country. Regulatory capture can occur in state governments, too, but capturing one state regulator is different from capturing a single federal agency controlling advanced AI nationwide.

RELATED: Silicon Valley is building a god in its own image

Gremlin/Getty Images

Supporters of federal regulation can reasonably respond that a patchwork of 50 state systems would create serious compliance problems for technology that routinely crosses state boundaries. A national regulator could also impose consistent rules on developers whose products operate throughout the country.

That is a serious argument. But so is the danger of allowing one centralized authority to micromanage breakthroughs in AI. A mistake, political abuse, or act of regulatory capture at the federal level could affect the entire country at once.

The proposal has been announced but not yet formally introduced, so its precise statutory language remains unknown. Based on the summary released by Sanders’ office, however, it would create a Cabinet agency capable of stopping AI development, ordering systems destroyed, imposing potentially existential penalties on companies, and sending people to prison for decades.

Before Congress considers such an extraordinary framework, Americans should decide how much authority any single government agency should possess over the development of artificial intelligence — and what safeguards would prevent that authority from being abused.

​Agency, Americans, Artificial intelligence, Cyberattacks, Deficit, Federal government, Politicization, Postal service, Sanders, Technology, Washington, Infrastructure, Ai, Opinion & analysis 

On September 13 at a campaign rally at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico was asked who his favorite drag queen was.

The radical progressive immediately answered “Alyssa Edwards” — a “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alum and Texas dance-studio owner who has publicly described himself as “a drag performer that works with children.”

Pat Gray, BlazeTV host of “Pat Gray Unleashed,” is repulsed — not only because Talarico is a drag-, transgender-, and abortion-supporting Democrat, but because as of right now, he’s polling even with or slightly ahead of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in a state that has long been a red stronghold.

“The drag queen fan James Talarico now has a Polymarket odds of winning at 56%,” says co-host Keith Malinak.

“He’s up three on Ken Paxton. This is a guy who can immediately name his favorite Texas drag queen!” exclaims Pat in disgust.

But it’s not just an affinity for drag queens that creeps Pat out. It’s also Talarico’s long record of odd public comments — including comparing the world to a kindergarten class.

In a 2020 video recorded as a state representative for high school graduates in his district, Talarico asked: “What if we ran our world like we run a kindergarten classroom? Because at the end of the day, aren’t we all just really big kindergarteners?”

“No. No we’re not,” says Pat bluntly.

“But that’s how Democrats look at us — as little children that need shepherding and need control,” adds Malinak.

“This guy is maybe the most bizarre candidate we’ve ever seen in a major race … and he’s three points ahead in Texas. I can’t, I just can’t,” sighs Pat.

Jeffy, however, isn’t as worried. “I don’t believe Texas is going to vote for him in the general election.”

To hear more of the panel’s commentary and analysis, watch the episode above.

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​Pat gray, James talarico, Texas senate race, Drag queens, Blazetv show 

An 11-year-old cheerleader from Utah was “very medicated” by a cocktail of prescription medications before being murdered by her “severely depressed” mom, who then killed herself inside a Las Vegas hotel room, according to newly released coroner’s reports.

As Blaze News previously reported, officers with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department found 34-year-old Tawnia McGeehan and her 11-year-old daughter Addilyn “Addi” Smith dead from an apparent murder-suicide Feb. 15 at the Rio Hotel & Casino.

‘The decedent’s family reported a history of severe depression with previous prescribed depression medication.’

McGeehan and Smith were found dead in a bed inside a hotel room.

Police stated in February, “Based on the preliminary evidence at the scene, detectives were able to determine the mother shot her daughter before shooting herself.”

Coroner’s reports released this week reveal chilling new details about the murder-suicide.

KTVX-TV on Wednesday obtained the Clark County Coroner’s investigative, toxicology, and autopsy reports.

The station said a chair was inside, right in front of the hotel room door, with a note on it that read, “Call 911 before walking in 2 dead bodies one is an 11-year-old.”

According to the investigative report the New York Post obtained, first responders found the 11-year-old girl wearing pajamas, and a pillow with a bullet hole through it was lying on top of her head.

The report added that McGeehan was mostly undressed, and a semi-automatic pistol was found on top of her chest.

Police said they located three shell casings in the room, and a magazine with live cartridges was found on the nightstand.

Handwritten notes penned by McGeehan said her daughter’s cell phone intentionally was left open so photos and videos could be easily seen, according to the report.

RELATED: 4 children found dead. Now, toxicology report reveals what mom and grandmother allegedly drugged them with in murder-suicide.

Another New York Post report said the girl’s stuffed animals were found sitting on the other bed inside the hotel room, among luggage, a food bag, multiple prescription bottles bearing McGeehan’s name, an “opened package” of THC gummies, multiple broken or empty gabapentin capsules, and a clear cup with white residue in it.

Citing the toxicology report, KTVX said McGeehan tested positive for cannabinoids, caffeine, eszopiclone/zopiclone (sedative drug), quetiapine, diphenhydramine (Benadryl), citalopram/escitalopram (an SSRI/antidepressant), desmethylloperamide, gabapentin (anticonvulsant used for pain relief), and lorazepam (depressant used for sedation).

McGeehan wrote in a note that her daughter was “very medicated” before she was murdered and “she slept cuddled with” her mom, the report said.

Smith had caffeine, quetiapine, diphenhydramine, gabapentin, and lorazepam in her system, the report said.

No prescription drugs in Smith’s name were found at the crime scene, KSL-TV reported.

Autopsy reports concluded that the mother and daughter died from gunshot wounds to the head; Smith’s death was ruled a homicide, and McGeehan’s death was ruled a suicide.

The mother and daughter drove to Las Vegas on Feb. 13 so that Addilyn could attend a cheer competition, according to police.

After the mother and daughter missed a Feb. 15 competition and Smith’s father could not contact them, he called law enforcement for a welfare check.

The report said McGeehan had been “severely depressed over breakups and [an] ongoing custody battle with her ex-husband.”

“The decedent’s family reported a history of severe depression with previous prescribed depression medication. They were aware of past suicidal ideations but denied knowledge of past attempts,” the coroner’s report stated, according to KSL.

McGeehan and her ex-husband had been in a custody dispute for about nine years after they divorced in 2015, according to court records.

Addilyn was a cheerleader for Utah Xtreme Cheer, which was “heartbroken” over the “devastating news.”

Utah Xtreme Cheer released a statement in February:

With the heaviest hearts, we share the devastating news that our sweet athlete Addi has passed away. We are completely heartbroken. No words do the situation justice. She was so beyond loved, and she will always be a part of the UXC family. Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers and continue to send them love as they navigate this unimaginable loss. We ask that you respect their privacy during this time. Addi, we love you tremendously.

Lt. Robert Price with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department previously stated, “This is a sad and tragic incident, and our hearts go out to the family.”

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​Murder suicide, Mother and daughter, Las vegas, Cheerleader, Crime 

What started as one father’s decision to walk out of a concert has exploded into something much bigger.

It all began when the man took his daughters and wife to MetLife Stadium for an Ed Sheeran concert, where Macklemore was set to open. And when he did, he tried to turn it into a political rally.

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck has been following the story and calls Macklemore a “giant weenie.”

“He takes the stage and he’s facing all of the people who spent their money and took the night off to come hear music and enjoy their night, and he bombards them with this rant demanding we ‘free Palestine,’ and he fills the stadium with screens and images of the war and sang a literal propaganda song,” he explains.

“Now, he would have normally gotten away with that if it weren’t for a regular dad who is at the concert and then posted this.” Glenn reads: “‘I brought my wife and daughters to MetLife Friday because they were huge fans of yours,’” Glenn reads, noting that he’s referring to Sheeran, not Macklemore.

“’We arrived early,’” the father continued. “’Spent $180 on sweatshirts. Watch the first two opening acts. We were having a great time. Then Macklemore decides to turn your concert into his political rally. Then he started chanting “Free Palestine” and pushing his clearly uneducated version of the Israel-Gaza conflict.’”

“’My daughters looked at me completely confused. I had brought them to your concert, not to have an opening act lecture me about Middle Eastern politics,’” he added.

That’s when the dad decided to research Macklemore’s history.

“’What I found included his repeated use of anti-Semitic tropes; made the whole thing even worse. So I took my family. We walked alongside hundreds of your other fans. And as we were walking in, even the MetLife security guards were rolling their eyes at what was happening on stage. We waited until Macklemore was finished before returning to our seats,’” he said.

However, while the dad hoped that Macklemore’s performance had caught Sheeran off guard, Sheeran allowed him to repeat it the next night.

“’Friday night might have been Macklemore’s decision. Saturday was yours. You have a lot of Jewish fans who love your music, buy your albums and your merchandise, and bring their kids to your concerts,’” he continued. “’Tonight, you lost four of them. And I suspect plenty more.’”

Glenn is grateful for the father’s courage, saying, “That’s all it took.”

“One dad saying, ‘You know what? I’m sick of this. I’m done with this.’ Just that one guy giving you permission and others permission to say, ‘Yeah, me too.’”

Following the father’s post, multiple owners of stadiums where Sheeran and Macklemore were set to perform said “you’re not using our venue for that.”

“Then the singer Pink, who agrees with me on probably almost nothing, came out to support the owners. And now Macklemore is off the tour,” Glenn says.

“This may be the first time the Free Palestine crowd has gotten their much-needed reality check,” he adds.

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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.

​Ed sheeran, Free palestine, Glenn beck, Macklemore, Political rally, Blazetv show 

Longtime Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell has returned to the U.S. Senate after nearly three months away following a June fall and a lengthy recovery that was accompanied by almost complete silence.

While the 84-year-old admits he’s “not quite back to 100%,” it would appear the reality is much worse than simply being shy of operating at full capacity.

“Today, I’ll cast my first Senate vote since I took a bad fall back in June. I’m really looking forward to being back on the Senate floor and seeing my colleagues,” McConnell wrote in a post on X.

“My recovery has been a long and often frustrating process, and the lingering effects of childhood polio haven’t made it any easier. I’m still not quite back to 100%, but I’ve assured Leader Thune that, as I continue with physical therapy on the advice of my doctors, I will do my best to be present for tough votes when our Conference needs me,” he added.

“The fact that we have a guy who’s basically leadership in the Senate — he’s still very powerful there — talking about how he had polio as a kid, I mean,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere says, “it’s incredible.”

“He still has that residual cough from bubonic plague; it’s really something,” co-host Dave Landau jokes.

In a video from his return to the Senate, McConnell is shown staring blankly ahead at the back of a seat in a van. When reporters ask how he’s feeling, he continues to stare straight ahead, mouth slightly agape, without answering.

“He does not look good, man. This sucks,” Stu says.

“He looks like he’s about to play the piano with the band at Chuck E. Cheese,” Dave agrees. “There’s not a good way for this to end. Nothing says I’m going to do a competent vote like I took a bad fall in June and you haven’t seen me in three months.”

While the situation is notably strange, Stu points out that “mocking old people is not what [he’s] trying to do here.”

“This sucks, it sucks to get old, it sucks to go through this. The guy fell down. He’s out of commission for months and months and months and months. Quite clearly is out of it,” he says.

“But this is not a new story, Dave,” he continues. “The guy froze in front of cameras multiple times years ago. And at that point, even when he was in Senate leadership … I said at the time he should step down, and I think most sane people did.”

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​Mitch mcconnell, Us senate, Polio, Stu burguiere, Kentucky, Republican, Dave landau, Blazetv show