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It began in the crucible of a world at war. The word cybernetics was coined in 1948 by the MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener, a man wrestling with the urgent problem of how to make a machine shoot down another machine. He reached back to the ancient Greek for kubernétes, the steersman, the one who guides and corrects. Plato had used it as a metaphor for governing a polis. Wiener used it to describe a new science of self-governing systems, of control and communication in the animal and the machine. The core idea was feedback, a circular flow of information that allows a system to sense its own performance and steer itself toward a goal.

The idea was not about mechanics but about behavior. The focus shifted from what things are to what they do. A thermostat maintaining the temperature of a room, a human body maintaining homeostasis, a pilot correcting the flight path of an airplane; all were, in this new light, functionally the same. They were all steersmen. The conciseness of the concept was seductive, its implications unsettling. It suggested a universal logic humming beneath the surface of both wired circuits and living tissue, blurring the line between the made and the born.

You shape the algorithm, and the algorithm shapes you.

The primordial cybernetic device was James Watt’s centrifugal governor, that elegant pirouette of spinning weights that tamed the steam engine in 1788. As the engine raced, the rotating balls swung wide, closing a valve to slow it; as the engine slowed, they fell, opening the valve again. It was a perfect, self-contained conversation.

But it was the Second World War that gave birth to the theory. Human reflexes were no longer fast enough for the new calculus of aerial combat. Wiener and his colleagues were tasked with solving the “air defense problem,” which was really a problem of prediction. They treated the enemy pilot, the gun, and the radar as a single, closed-loop system, each reacting to the other in a lethal dance. By the war’s end, as one analyst starkly put it, autonomous machines were shooting down other autonomous machines in the “first battle of the robots.”

In the Cold War that followed, cybernetics became a tool of ideological contest. In the West, it was the logic of the military-industrial complex, of corporate automation and the game theory of nuclear deterrence humming away in the computers at Project RAND. It promised optimization and control.

Yet the idea proved too fluid to be contained. While men in uniform were designing command-and-control networks, Stewart Brand was on the West Coast, publishing the Whole Earth Catalog. He filled its pages with cybernetic theory, reimagining it not as a tool for top-down control but for bottom-up, self-regulating communities. The catalog itself was a feedback loop, constantly updated by its readers. For a generation of commune-dwellers and future Silicon Valley pioneers, cybernetics was the grammar of personal liberation and ecological harmony. Computers, Brand wrote in Rolling Stone, were “coming to the people.”

RELATED: ‘They want to spy on you’: Military tech CEO explains why AI companies don’t want you going offline

Photo by Matt Cardy

The Soviets, meanwhile, followed a more jagged path. Initially denouncing cybernetics as a “bourgeois pseudoscience,” they performed a complete reversal after Stalin’s death. Here was a science, they realized, that could perfect the planned economy. Visionaries like Anatoly Kitov and Victor Glushkov dreamed of a vast, nationwide computer network called OGAS, an electronic nervous system that would link every factory to a central hub in Moscow. It was an ambitious plan for “electronic socialism,” a rational, data-driven alternative to the brute-force dictates of the past. The system, they hoped, would offer a technocratic antidote to personal tyranny. OGAS was never fully built, stalled by bureaucracy and technical limits, but the dream itself was telling. Both superpowers saw in the feedback loop a reflection of their own ambitions: one for market efficiency, the other for state perfection.

Perhaps the most popular incarnation of the cybernetic dream was Project Cybersyn in Salvador Allende’s Chile. From 1971 to 1973, the British cybernetician Stafford Beer designed a nerve center for the Chilean economy. In a futuristic operations room that looked like a set from “Star Trek,” managers sat in molded white chairs, surrounded by screens displaying real-time production data fed from factories across the country via a network of telex machines. It was an attempt to steer a national economy in real-time, to keep it in a “dynamic equilibrium” against the shocks of strikes and embargoes. Cybersyn was a short-lived project, ending with the 1973 coup, but it remains a powerful symbol of the cybernetic ideal: a society as a single, responsive, controllable system.

The feedback loop was not confined to the physical world. It began to shape our fictions, which in turn shaped our reality. William Gibson, who knew famously little about computers, coined the word “cyberspace” in his 1984 novel “Neuromancer.” The vision was so compelling it seemed to will itself into existence, providing the language and the imaginative blueprint for a generation of technologists building the early internet and virtual reality. Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel “Snow Crash” gave us the “metaverse” and the “avatar,” terms that have since migrated from fiction to corporate strategy. Cyberpunk literature provided the prototypes for the world we now inhabit.

Today, the word “cybernetics” feels archaic, a relic of a retro-futurist past. Yet its principles are more deeply embedded in our lives than Wiener could have imagined. We are all entangled in cybernetic loops. The social media algorithms that monitor our clicks to refine their feeds, which in turn shape our behavior, are feedback systems of astonishing power and intimacy. You shape the algorithm, and the algorithm shapes you. A self-driving car navigating city traffic is a cybernetic organism, constantly sensing, processing, and acting. Our smart homes and wearable devices are nodes in a network of perpetual, low-grade feedback.

We have built a world of steersmen, of systems that regulate themselves. The question that lingers is the one Wiener implicitly asked from the beginning. In a world of automated, self-correcting systems, who, or what, is charting the course?

​Tech, Cybernetics 

The Trump administration performed strikes in international waters in the eastern Pacific on Monday to stop several boats carrying illegal narcotics, according to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

‘We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.’

He announced on Tuesday the results of “three lethal kinetic strikes on four vessels,” claiming that they were operated by “Designated Terrorist Organizations.”

In January, President Donald Trump designated international cartels as foreign terrorist organizations for flooding the U.S. with “deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.”

Monday’s strikes killed 14 narco-terrorists, Hegseth said. No U.S. forces were harmed.

“Eight male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessels during the first strike. Four male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the second strike. Three male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the third strike,” he explained. “The Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own. These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same. We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”

Hegseth noted that there was one survivor.

“Regarding the survivor, USSOUTHCOM immediately initiated Search and Rescue (SAR) standard protocols; Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue,” he added.

RELATED: ‘We will stop you cold’: Trump announces successful strike against ‘narcoterrorist’ vessel

Pete Hegseth. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday condemned the most recent strikes.

“We do not agree with these attacks, with how they are carried out,” Sheinbaum stated. “We want all international treaties to be complied with.”

RELATED: Trump’s Caribbean ‘drug wars’ are forging a new Monroe Doctrine

Photographer: Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A separate strike was carried out at President Donald Trump’s direction in the Caribbean Sea last week against a vessel reportedly operated by Tren de Aragua.

“The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth stated on Friday. “Six male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters — and was the first strike at night. All six terrorists were killed, and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”

The U.S. has performed more than a dozen strikes since September. At least 57 people have been killed, according to the Associated Press.

— (@)

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​News, Donald trump, Trump, Trump administration, Trump admin, Pete hegseth, Department of war, Department of defense, Dod, Defense department, War department, Claudia sheinbaum, Drug trafficking, Narcotics, Drugs, Terrorist, Politics 

An 8 ½-minute FBI video on the Jan. 6 pipe bombs, released last week, omits key new evidence, relies on likely manipulated, low-quality footage, and excludes crucial hours of security video that could clarify the most persistent questions that surround the languishing investigation.

The bureau released the video to revive public interest in a case that has gone unsolved for nearly five years. Its timing comes just two weeks after a video sleuth briefed congressional investigators, alleging serious flaws in the FBI’s account of the pipe bombs. Despite those claims — including apparent video manipulation and ignored public tips — the bureau has stuck to its original story.

‘You releasing that info made it impossible for them to even float that excuse.’

The new footage also offers no hint that the FBI considered publicly acknowledging another theory: that the pipe bombs were part of a poorly timed training exercise. FBI sources told Blaze News weeks ago about rumors the bureau had been preparing to report that several federal agencies took part in a training exercise that diverted police resources from the Capitol as thousands of protesters breached its barricades at 12:53 p.m.

Those same sources said that once word of this alleged new theory leaked, the FBI abandoned it. The latest video reflects that retreat, repeating the same facts and framing first presented in 2021.

RELATED: FBI sent 55 agents to the Capitol Jan. 6, none for ‘crowd control,’ former Chief Steven Sund says

“The 7th floor guys were pissed at you for going public with the ‘undisclosed training event’ scenario as a potential cover-up,” a source close to the FBI Washington Field Office told Blaze News. “I’m told you releasing that info made it impossible for them to even float that excuse after you picked it apart.”

Another FBI source previously told Blaze News that the bureau floated the idea that several federal agencies were involved in the pipe-bomb plot and cover-up. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

New low-quality video

The FBI released snippets of new video of the alleged pipe-bomb suspect from the night of Jan. 5, 2021. That footage, of similar low quality as previously released video evidence, is edited in such a way that it excludes showing a U.S. Capitol Police squad SUV pull up directly across the street from where the suspect stood at 8:15 p.m.

The omissions come despite an independent video investigator telling Blaze News he has been feeding his findings to an FBI special agent at the Washington Field Office since late March. It is not clear what, if anything, the FBI has done with the extensive research done by an individual known on X as Armitas. He has asked Blaze News not to use his real name for security reasons.

Armitas’ report to Congress says video footage released by the FBI of the hoodie-wearing suspect was digitally altered. Software was used to crop the image area and reduce the video frame rate, he said.

RELATED: FBI Jan. 6 report sets off a firestorm: Why did it take 56 months to disclose 274 agents at Capitol?

Some of the video of the alleged Jan. 6 pipe bomber released by the FBI was low quality. FBI

The FBI says an individual of unknown sex wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, jeans, black gloves, and rare Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers planted pipe bombs at the Democratic National Committee and a short time later along the rear wall of the Capitol Hill Club not far from the Republican National Committee building.

The FBI and the Metropolitan Police Department continue to offer a $500,000 reward for evidence that leads to an arrest in the case.

Aside from some short segments of new footage, the FBI update video is nearly identical to one released Jan. 2, 2021. It comes after Armitas submitted 26 pages of findings to the new House Select Subcommittee to Investigate the Remaining Questions Surrounding Jan. 6 — and months after he said he began sharing those details with an FBI special agent.

Sources told Blaze News that reducing the frame rate on video makes it very difficult to perform a forensic analysis of the bomber’s gait, or manner of walking. Gait-analysis could help narrow the list of suspects or lead investigators toward a person of interest.

Congressional Black Caucus a target?

The FBI video’s animated map of the suspect’s travels glosses over an apparent stop the person made at a bush on the north side of the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, 413 New Jersey Ave. Southeast. It appears, based on the bomber’s behavior, that the CBCI was the original target of the first pipe bomb, Armitas said.

The FBI video said the suspect “pauses near the corner of D Street,” but it failed to mention anything about the suspect seemingly attempting to place the device under the bush at the CBCI.

Video from Capitol Police CCTV Camera 795 showed the suspect walking north on New Jersey Avenue, then turning left into an alley next to the Black Caucus Institute building at about 7:47 p.m. The suspect spent more than a minute near the bush — first bent over and then sitting down in front of the shrub, video shows. The individual appeared to lean into the bush while seated, then got up and continued west down the alley.

A short time later, the alleged bomber came back up the alley past the bush toward New Jersey Avenue, then raced back into the alley as if he or she forgot something. The suspect then returned to New Jersey Avenue at 7:50 p.m. and walked south for a block before turning right onto Ivy Street Southeast toward the DNC, video showed.

Armitas posited that a piece of the pipe bomb broke off while the suspect was attempting to plant it at the CBCI. A construction worker appeared to notice the broken component at 1 p.m. on Jan. 6. The worker can be seen pausing to peer under the bush and then continuing down the alley.

The alleged Jan. 6 pipe bomber (left) stops and sits down at a bush next to the Congressional Black Caucus Institute the night of Jan. 5, 2021. A Capitol Police countersurveillance officer (right) peers at something under the same bush just minutes before he discovered the pipe bomb at the nearby Democratic National Committee on Jan. 6. U.S. Capitol Police CCTV

A two-man team of U.S. Capitol Police countersurveillance agents walked west up the alley at 1:02 p.m., stopped to chat for about 30 seconds, then returned down the alley. One of the officers noticed something under the bush, then leaned in for a closer look just before 1:03 p.m. The officers walked back to the nearby DNC, where one of them discovered the pipe bomb under a bush next to a park bench at 1:05 p.m.

Two buildings were constructed immediately north of the Congressional Black Caucus Institute building in the nearly five years since Jan. 6, so the alley and the bush are no longer there, according to street view images from Google Maps and Apple Maps.

Congressional dormitory, police lights

One of the new video clips released by the FBI shows the suspect walking east along C Street about 8:15 p.m. The video cuts off just before the suspect stops in the front garden of the C Street Center, 133 C St. Southeast. The building has long served as a dormitory or rooming house for members of Congress and staff.

Armitas said it appears the suspect was attempting to place the pipe bomb in the bushes in front of 133 C Street but may have been interrupted by a Capitol Police squad car that turned onto C Street from the east with its emergency lights on.

The squad car pulled over a dark-colored Jeep that minutes earlier had driven down C Street, turned left onto First, made a U-turn, and then drove down D Street, turned left onto Second and left again onto C Street. It appears the squad engaged its emergency lights just as the Jeep turned onto C Street, video showed.

There is no mention in any of the FBI materials across 58 months of a Capitol Police squad car parking directly across C Street from where the alleged would-be bomber stood at 8:15 p.m.

RELATED: GOP-run Jan. 6 subcommittee goes after trove of data deleted by Pelosi-appointed Jan. 6 committee

The pipe bomb suspect (above left) walking west on C Street toward Rumsey Court, stopping in front of a congressional rooming house (upper right), possibly looking to place a pipe bomb on Jan. 5, 2021. Capitol Police squad cars (below) with lights engaged were across the street as the suspect walked down the court to plant the bomb. FBI/@Armitas/U.S. Capitol Police CCTV

The bright blue-and-red emergency lights from the squad car reflected off of the suspect’s gray sweatshirt as he or she walked down into Rumsey Court from C Street, Capitol Police CCTV video shows.

Interestingly, the Capitol Police squad car was the same one the suspect appeared to wave to minutes earlier as the police vehicle drove south on First Street and the suspect walked north past the front of the Capitol Hill Club.

A second Capitol Police car turned onto C Street from the west at 8:18 p.m., did a Y-turn and pulled in behind the first squad. Both officers approached the Jeep with flashlights on. They wrapped up the traffic stop at 8:30. The suspect by then had escaped Rumsey Court and apparently disappeared.

Escape through hidden gate

Armitas said he tracked the suspect’s exit from Rumsey Court through a garden on the property of St. Peter’s Church on Capitol Hill and onto Second Street Southeast. The FBI’s video does not include this detail, stating instead that the suspect was “last seen” at 8:18 p.m. heading east on Rumsey Court.

The fence between Rumsey Court and the St. Peter’s garden did not have an obvious gate. It appeared as a contiguous fence across the property, Armitas said. So the suspect would have had to know how and where the hidden gate could be unlatched to access the St. Peter’s garden and make the escape onto Second Street, he said.

Blaze News has twice inspected the gate. Without familiarity with the property, it is nearly impossible to recognize the existence of the gate or find a hidden latch.

Bomb retrieval, missing video

Armitas theorized that the DNC bomb assembly was broken by the suspect during the attempt to drop the device next to the CBCI building. So the device the suspect set at the base of a park bench next to the DNC could have needed repair, he said.

Also, the suspect appeared to place the pipe bomb with the short end — where a 60-minute kitchen timer was attached — sticking out toward the sidewalk. When the pipe bomb was discovered at 1:05 p.m. on Jan. 6, the long end was sticking out with the egg timer pointed into the bushes, he said. Both facts would indicate the device was removed and later replaced, Armitas said.

RELATED: Bobby Powell gave his last breath working to expose Jan. 6 corruption

The pipe-bomb suspect places the device in the bushes outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters at 7:54 p.m. Jan. 5, 2021, the FBI says. FBI

Those assertions and others could be proven or disproven if the FBI would release the DNC security video for Jan. 6. Several key Capitol Police security cameras were turned away from the DNC at crucial times on Jan. 6.

So the DNC’s security cameras appear to have the only footage that can answer questions about the Secret Service’s security sweep of the DNC building the morning of Jan. 6. They also hold the answer to whether the bomb was present while bomb-sniffing dogs did a sweep of parts of the building exterior.

Depending what the DNC video shows, the pipe bomb was either missed by the Secret Service and still sitting under the bench as Vice President-elect Kamala Harris pulled into the DNC garage around 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 6, or the bomb was re-placed under the bench while Harris was inside the building.

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​Analysis, J6 

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the stage at a rally for NYC mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani with a thunderous speech.

“We are not the crazy ones, New York City. We are not the outlandish ones, New York City. They want us to think we are crazy. We are sane,” AOC boomed.

“Jews escaping Holocaust, black Americans fleeing slavery and Jim Crow, Latinos seeking a better life, native people standing for themselves, Asian-Americans coming together in Queens, in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, in Manhattan, in Staten Island, in this country,” she yelled.

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales can’t help but laugh, though she is well aware of the disaster that looms in New York City.

“There’s no way that anyone else gets elected as the mayor of New York City, and this guy is going out there telling fake stories about his aunt. So, we’re supposed to believe, what, that it was the Muslims that we really actually should feel sorry for after 9/11?” Gonzales says, referring to Mamdani’s recent statement that his hijab-wearing aunt was a victim in the aftermath of 9/11.

BlazeTV contributor Matthew Marsden is also concerned, saying that we not only have a “communist infiltration in the United States,” but an Islamic one.

And Mamdani is using the term “Islamaphobic” against those who recognize what’s happening.

“It really has been fascinating to watch him try to use this Islamophobia term. I would say, I will agree with him in part. I do agree. I am actually very scared of Islam,” Gonzales says.

“I just don’t agree that it is unreasonable, which would be the phobia part. … I am afraid. I just don’t think that it’s some sort irrational fear, is the thing,” 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.

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At a packed rally in Queens on Sunday, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani reinforced his far-left vision for remaking America’s largest city.

Among his proposals: government-run grocery stores, free public transportation, 200,000 government-built apartments, universal childcare, and a rent freeze for the city’s one million rent-stabilized apartments.

Only a socialist could argue that taking away people’s property rights and centralizing power enhances individual freedom.

The price tag for Mamdani’s most ambitious ideas comes to nearly $7 billion a year — more than the city’s entire police budget.

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, shared the stage with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), two of the country’s best-known socialist stars. Both praised Mamdani as the future of progressive politics.

Like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani claims he can fund his agenda by taxing the rich and targeting corporations. He wants to raise the top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5% and increase the city’s income tax by two percentage points for anyone earning $1 million or more.

Those ideas have energized his base and helped him surge in the polls. Yet his lead is not secure. Critics from both parties warn that Mamdani’s high-tax, high-spending platform would drive wealthy residents and businesses out of New York, worsening the city’s economic and fiscal problems.

But Mamdani’s biggest obstacle isn’t fiscal — it’s philosophical.

Even in deep-blue New York, voters hesitate to hand power to a democratic socialist. Socialism’s record is clear: It limits freedom, crushes economies, and breeds instability.

To ease those fears, Mamdani’s campaign has begun to reframe socialism as a path to freedom rather than its enemy. At his rally over the weekend, he told the crowd: “No New Yorker should ever be priced out of anything they need to survive. … It is government’s job to deliver that dignity.” Then he added, “Dignity, my friends, is another way of saying freedom.”

In Mamdani’s view, freedom comes from the state guaranteeing life’s essentials — food, housing, transportation, childcare. To provide those things, government must seize and redistribute private wealth. Mamdani calls this process “delivering dignity,” which he equates with liberty itself.

That logic turns freedom on its head. Only a socialist could argue that taking away people’s property rights and centralizing power enhances individual freedom.

This rhetorical sleight of hand is not new. It’s straight from the socialist and communist propaganda of the 20th century.

Article 39 of the 1936 Soviet Constitution claimed that socialism “ensures enlargement of the rights and freedoms of citizens.” Fidel Castro’s 1976 Cuban Constitution promised “the freedom and full dignity of man” through a state guarantee of social services.

Even Joseph Stalin cloaked authoritarianism in the language of freedom. In a 1936 interview, he insisted that socialism was built “for the sake of real personal liberty,” arguing that “real liberty can exist only where there is no unemployment and poverty.”

Intentionally or not, Mamdani’s speeches echo those same lines. And he’s far from the first democratic socialist to do so. Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Olof Palme in Sweden, and Aneurin Bevan in Britain all used similar arguments to justify state expansion in the name of “freedom.”

RELATED: Why Zohran Mamdani will be ‘one of the most catastrophic mayors ever’

Photo by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images via Getty Images

That’s no coincidence. Mamdani is a student of socialist history, and his rhetoric mirrors the Marxist premise that true liberty requires the abolition of private property. In his 1844 essay “Private Property and Communism,” Karl Marx wrote, “The abolition of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities.”

Every socialist movement since has repeated that creed, always promising “real freedom” while consolidating control over wealth, work, and speech.

History shows what those promises yield: less freedom, not more. The more government collectivizes decision-making, the less room individuals have to think, speak, or prosper.

New York City has enormous problems, but reviving the century’s old, failed ideas of socialism won’t solve them. If anything, they’ll accelerate decline.

The city’s revival depends on the principles that built it into a global capital in the first place — limited government, free markets, low taxes, and the liberty to rise through one’s own effort.

If Mamdani truly wants to bring dignity and freedom to New Yorkers, he should reject the hollow slogans of socialism and embrace the real promise of liberty that made America — and New York — great.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Zohran, Zohran mamdani, Mamdani, Mamdani is communist, Mamdani vs cuomo, Socialist, Communist, Soviet union, Redistribution of wealth, Joseph stalin, Alexandria ocasio-cortez, Bernie sanders, New york city mayoral race, Big apple 

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently alluded to running for president in 2028, telling Robert Costa on “CBS Sunday Morning” that he’d be “lying” if he said he wasn’t planning to run and that he “can’t” tell a lie.

Of course, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales can’t let him get away with acting as though he can’t tell a lie — as it’s exactly what he’s been doing for years.

Most recently, Newsom told some childhood tall tales on the “All the Smoke” podcast about being raised by a mom who “came from no money and just hustled” with “two and a half jobs” to make ends meet.

“It was also about paying the bills, man. It was just, like, hustling, and so I was out there kind of raising myself, turning on the TV, started just getting obsessed, sitting there with the Wonder Bread,” he said while the host laughed.

“Come on, the macaroni and cheese!” he exclaimed. “This is how I grew up, bro. Every day in the backyard just bouncing the basketball, throwing the ball against the wall until the ball is just like fraying, man.”

“The problem with that is that it turns out that his dad worked for the billionaire heir Gordon Getty,” Gonzales comments, before pulling up a 1991 feature in the San Francisco Chronicle called “Children of the Rich.”

In one photo for the “Children of the Rich” feature, Newsom posed with several other young rich men.

“So, he was super poor, living off of Wonder Bread and mac and cheese, but he was also posing for ‘Children of the Rich’ articles in 1991,” Gonzales says. “Make that make sense.”

On his own show, while interviewing the late Charlie Kirk, Newsom also claimed that he had never used the term “Latinx.”

“We have the receipts because not only has your office talked about it, you yourself have tweeted using the term ‘Latinx,’ talking about ‘COVID-19 disproportionately impacts the Latinx community,’ ‘children in poverty — 31% Latinx,’” Gonzales says.

“That isn’t a thing. It’s not an actual term. It’s just made up because white people want to convince the Latin community that they are somehow oppressed with their language,” she continues.

But the lies don’t end there.

Newsom claimed that President Trump never called him before sending the National Guard to Los Angeles.

“There was no call. Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to,” Newsom wrote in a post on X.

President Trump then released a screenshot showing a 16-minute call with Newsom.

“The crazy thing is, why lie about something we clearly have receipts for?” Gonzales asks. “You know that these call logs will exist. Why lie about it?”

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New York City voters may be on a different page than the rest of the state.

Despite Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani maintaining a significant advantage in the polls ahead of the NYC mayoral election, one Republican is looking to flip the state red next year.

For example, 60% of registered voters in New York … either strongly support or somewhat support returning to the pre-2019 bail laws.

RealClearPolitics has Mamdani boasting a 15-point lead average across the last six polls in October. With around 46 points, Mamdani’s lead has only widened since July.

In new numbers from the Manhattan Institute, the Democratic socialist and alleged communist maintains that lead over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a former Democrat now representing the Fight and Deliver Party.

Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa is third, 24 points behind Mamdani and nine points behind Cuomo.

At the same time, however, pollsters asked respondents how they would vote if the 2026 N.Y. gubernatorial election were held today.

Shockingly, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) held a slim margin over Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul. Stefanik’s lead was just one point, 43% to 42%, while “someone else” had 9% support, and “not sure” was at 7%.

RELATED: LGBTQ champion Zohran Mamdani faces backlash over photo with ‘anti-homosexuality’ Ugandan lawmaker

Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images

Stefanik’s team responded to the news:

“In a heavily Democrat-leaning state, an independent poll that is heavily weighted toward registered Democrat voters shows Republican Elise Stefanik leading Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul in a head-to-head matchup,” Stefanik’s spokesperson Bernadette Breslin said in a press release.

Breslin said it was the first time in decades that any Republican candidate for governor of New York has polled ahead of a Democrat incumbent.

The remarks continued, “In a decision that she will come to regret, Kathy Hochul lives up to her title as the worst governor in America when she chose to bend the knee and put New Yorkers LAST by desperately endorsing the defund the police, tax-hiking, raging anti-Semite socialist Zohran Mamdani who will destroy New York.”

Though rumors have swirled for months that Stefanik intends to run for governor, she has not formally announced her candidacy. Reports indicate that she will announce sometime after the November 4 election.

RELATED: Cuomo narrows gap in new poll

Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images

While Mamdani maintains a strong lead in the city, some of his progressive policy positions range from somewhat unpopular to widely unpopular in updated polling.

For example, 60% of registered voters in New York, including 49% of Democrats, either strongly support or somewhat support returning to the pre-2019 bail laws. This pertains to allowing individuals to be “released until trial rather than being held.”

Mamdani has said he wants to reduce the jail population, specifically at Rikers Island.

One of Mamdani’s biggest promises, free bus services, saw 58% of New York City respondents oppose the idea. This figure included 48% of Democrats. Meanwhile, 42% of Democrats agreed with the idea that eliminating fares would make public transit more affordable and efficient for working New Yorkers while reducing conflicts between riders and operators.

Other topics — like New York’s gifted and talented programs, corporate taxation, and fare evasion — were covered in polling conducted with 600 likely voters in the NYC mayoral election and 300 registered voters across New York state between October 22 and 26. The poll was weighted to reflect the electorate.

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​Polls, News, New york, New york city, Democrat, Socialist, Hochul, Cuomo, Mamdani, New york state, Republican, Stefanik, Politics 

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.

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​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