Francesca Hong was one of only six Wisconsin Democrats to vote against a law making grooming a felony.

Assembly bill 677 aimed to make “grooming a child for sexual activity” a felony in Wisconsin. The bill was introduced in 2025 after public school teacher Christian Enwright got away with mere disorderly conduct charges despite apparently conducting “a months-long grooming relationship with a 14-year-old student.”

‘I will never vote for legislation that institutes hate speech, and that is recognized hate speech.’

“No person may engage in a course of conduct, pattern of behavior, or series of acts with the intention to condition, seduce, solicit, lure, or entice a child for the purpose of engaging in sexual intercourse or sexual contact or for the purpose of producing, distributing, or possessing depictions of the child engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” the bill read.

The Wisconsin Assembly passed the bill 93-6 in January. Hong and three of the other no votes form the Assembly’s Socialist Caucus, which unanimously rejected the new child protections. Democrat Gov. Tony Evers signed the bill into law in March.

Currently the front-runner in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor, Hong has offered no public explanation for her vote. Her campaign did not respond to requests for comment as to why she opposed creating a felony for the patterned sexual grooming of children.

Four of the bill’s opponents have endorsed Hong’s gubernatorial bid.

“The term ‘groomer’ has been increasingly used as a slur to imply that LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly educators, are threats to children,” said an explainer circulated by fellow bill opponent state Rep. Angelina Cruz (D).

RELATED: Hasan Piker is the anti-Charlie Kirk

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

“I will never vote for legislation that institutes hate speech, and that is recognized hate speech,” Cruz told the Racine County Eye in January. “This is not about protecting children. It’s about advancing a political agenda.”

Cruz is a public school teacher and former president of the Racine Education Uniserv Council labor organization.

Socialist Caucus member Rep. Christian Phelps (D) claimed the bill was not a “good-faith effort,” according to the Wisconsin Examiner. Phelps is also vice chair of the Assembly’s LGBTQ+ Caucus.

Even the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, which oversees public education and libraries, supported the bill.

At the time of Enwright’s conviction, no specific Wisconsin statute criminalized grooming. Prosecutors could charge him only with misdemeanor disorderly conduct, allowing Enwright to avoid the sex offender registry.

Enwright pled guilty and was sentenced to over a year in prison plus probation, according to Fox 6.

Assembly Bill 677 became 2025 Wisconsin Act 88 after Evers signed it into law. Prosecutors began charging suspects under the new statute just over a week after it took effect.

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​Francesca hong, Pride, Politics, Grooming 

For a brief period last week, Telegram disappeared from Apple’s App Store. That is no small thing. Telegram has more than a billion users worldwide, and for anyone who tried to install Telegram on an iPhone, Apple had temporarily cut off the normal route to getting the app. Apple said it removed Telegram after finding child sexual abuse material on the service. Telegram deleted the material, banned the offending user, and Apple restored the app the same day. Existing users were able to keep using Telegram while it was unavailable for download.

That alone would have been a noteworthy story, but Telegram founder Pavel Durov later offered a much stranger explanation for what happened. According to Durov, the material was not simply posted by some random criminal. He claims it was deliberately planted by what he called a “takedown extortionist,” someone who threatens online communities with removal unless their owners pay up.

It’s a much stranger security problem than most people are used to thinking about.

In Durov’s telling, the attacker found an old message in an active public Telegram group, edited it to contain AI-modified illegal material, and then reported the offending content directly to Apple. Because the edited message was buried in the group’s history, ordinary Telegram users were unlikely to stumble across it and report it themselves. The Verge subsequently reported Durov’s account of the alleged scheme.

Apple has confirmed the illegal content and the reason it removed Telegram, but it has not independently confirmed Durov’s story about the extortion scheme. That distinction matters. The claim that an extortionist deliberately planted the material, that AI was used to modify it, and that the old message was selected specifically to evade Telegram’s own moderation all come from Durov.

Still, if his account is accurate, the incident offers a glimpse of where cyberattacks may be headed. The alleged attacker did not have to hack Telegram’s servers, compromise Apple, steal anyone’s password, or discover some exotic zero day vulnerability. He simply figured out how to manipulate Apple’s enforcement system into attacking Telegram for him.

Hack the referee

That may sound like an entirely new category of attack, but the basic idea has been around for years. Social media companies have dealt with organized mass reporting campaigns in which activists, dissidents, competitors, and political opponents are buried under bogus complaints in hopes that an automated moderation system will suspend them.

Meta disclosed in 2021 that it had broken up a network in Vietnam that used real, duplicate, and fake accounts to submit hundreds and sometimes thousands of false reports against activists and critics of the Vietnamese government.

YouTube has had similar problems with fraudulent copyright complaints. Google reported that more than 6% of videos targeted through YouTube’s public copyright removal process in 2025 were subject to abusive removal requests.

The reason the Telegram case is more interesting is that artificial intelligence is changing the economics of these attacks. A human being has always been capable of lying, filing false reports, forging evidence, or pretending to be someone else. AI makes it possible to do those things at enormous scale and with much less time and effort.

RELATED: Infamous cyberattackers claim their next shocking victim — using a decades-old trick

Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The FBI has already warned that criminals are using generative AI to create fake identification documents, fictitious social media profiles, synthetic photographs, cloned voices, and fraudulent videos for impersonation and fraud. The FBI has separately warned that criminals are using AI-altered images and videos to create explicit material for extortion.

The important thing is not merely that AI can make a convincing fake photograph. It is that one person can now manufacture photographs, voices, accounts, documents, messages, and identities faster and cheaper than ever before.

The attack surface is getting bigger

That becomes especially dangerous as more institutions hand decisions over to automated systems. Banks use software to decide whether a transaction looks fraudulent. Email providers decide whether a message is spam. Social networks decide whether a photograph violates their rules. App stores determine whether software is safe enough to distribute. Advertising platforms decide which businesses are legitimate. Payment processors determine which merchants are too risky to serve.

In every case, the system has to take some collection of inputs and make a judgment about them. An attacker does not necessarily have to defeat those systems in the traditional sense. He only has to learn which inputs produce the result he wants.

That is a much stranger security problem than the one most people are used to thinking about. For decades, the stereotypical cyberattack involved a hacker trying to break through a locked door. He stole a password, exploited an unpatched vulnerability, installed malware, encrypted a hard drive, or broke into a database.

Those attacks are not going anywhere, and AI is making them more sophisticated as well. But increasingly, attackers may be able to accomplish their goal without ever breaking through the door. If they can persuade the security guard that the owner of the building is a criminal, the guard may do the damage for them.

Apple’s power is part of the problem

That is essentially what Durov claims happened to Telegram, and it exposes another uncomfortable part of the story.

Apple obviously cannot ignore child sexual abuse material. Nobody is arguing that it should. But that does not automatically answer the much larger question of what Apple should do when a single user uploads prohibited material to an application serving more than a billion people.

Is Apple responsible for policing every photograph, message, and file that passes through every app it distributes? More importantly, should Apple have the authority to punish every user of an application because one user violated the rules?

Apple’s own App Store guidelines do not require developers to somehow guarantee that objectionable material will never appear. Apps containing user generated content are required to have systems for filtering objectionable material, reporting it, blocking abusive users, and providing contact information so complaints can be addressed.

Apple’s guidelines also describe a remediation process in which the company may contact a developer, ask that offending material be removed, and request a plan for preventing similar violations. The guidelines reserve immediate removal for more serious circumstances, including egregious or repeated behavior.

That raises an obvious question if Durov’s account is accurate. Why did Apple remove Telegram before contacting the company instead of first giving Telegram an opportunity to remove the content and address the offending account?

RELATED: Surveillance pricing is here — and this surprising state is saying NO

mathisworks/Getty Images

There may be additional considerations involving child sexual abuse material that are not fully spelled out in Apple’s general App Store guidelines, so it would be too strong to say Apple clearly violated its own policy. But the discrepancy is worth asking about.

Telegram says this entire episode stemmed from the actions of a single user. Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn criticized Apple for disrupting access to the app over one user’s actions, while Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney questioned how any large messaging service could realistically guarantee that none of its users would ever upload prohibited material.

That gets to the larger issue. No communications platform with hundreds of millions or billions of users can promise that no individual user will ever do something criminal. The meaningful question is how quickly and effectively the platform responds when that happens.

Yet Apple possesses the power to remove an entire application from the primary software marketplace for more than a billion iPhone users.

That is an extraordinary amount of authority for one private company to exercise over communications software.

It also makes the alleged extortion scheme possible in the first place. The attacker’s leverage did not come merely from his ability to plant prohibited material. It came from knowing that Apple possessed both the power and the willingness to punish an entire application in response.

If Durov’s story is accurate, the extortionist was exploiting Apple just as surely as he was exploiting Telegram.

Who decides who gets to stay?

There is also reason to question how consistently Apple exercises that authority.

The Verge reported Friday that Apple took a different approach toward X and Grok during controversy over sexualized AI-generated images. Apple reportedly contacted X and sought moderation changes rather than immediately removing the apps.

Durov, by contrast, says Telegram was removed before Apple contacted the company.

That does not prove Apple acted improperly in either case, and the underlying facts were not identical. But it does expose how much discretion Apple possesses. Apple worked with one platform while another was removed before contact, according to Durov.

That should make even people who have little sympathy for Telegram uncomfortable. The question is not whether Apple should tolerate illegal material. It is whether a company that controls one of the two dominant mobile operating systems should also serve as judge, jury, and executioner for applications containing the speech of billions of third-party users.

Seen that way, the Telegram affair is not merely a warning about AI-powered cyberattacks. It is also a warning about centralized gatekeepers.

The more power we give a handful of companies to decide who may communicate, transact, advertise, publish, or distribute software, the more valuable those companies become as targets for manipulation.

Why bother silencing a billion users yourself when you can trick Apple into doing it for you?

AI is getting better at old-fashioned hacking too

AI makes these manipulation attacks easier, but the machines themselves are also becoming much better at traditional hacking.

OpenAI recently disclosed an internal cybersecurity evaluation in which advanced models escaped the constrained environment researchers had built for them after discovering and exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability. The models gained internet access, escalated privileges, moved laterally through systems, and ultimately exploited vulnerabilities in Hugging Face’s real production infrastructure while pursuing the objective of the test.

There are important caveats. This was a deliberately aggressive cybersecurity evaluation. OpenAI had reduced or disabled some of the safeguards that would ordinarily restrict such behavior, and the prerelease model involved was an internal research prototype rather than a product released to the public.

Even with those caveats, the result was remarkable. The models found ways around barriers that researchers had not expected them to overcome.

RELATED: They had their life savings drained online in an instant. So who’s next?

Velishchuk/Getty Images

Then on Friday, OpenAI disclosed another development that shows how quickly these capabilities are progressing. The company said testing of its upcoming Astra model had advanced far enough that it could no longer rule out what OpenAI classifies as “critical” cybersecurity capability.

That is the highest category in OpenAI’s cybersecurity framework. At that level, according to OpenAI’s description, a model could potentially discover functional zero-day exploits against hardened real-world systems without human assistance or independently plan and execute complex novel attacks from a high-level objective.

OpenAI has not said Astra definitely possesses those capabilities. It has said the possibility is serious enough that the company has tightened security controls around the model while testing continues.

We have reached the stage where one of the companies building the world’s most advanced AI systems considers autonomous attacks against hardened real-world targets plausible enough to build safeguards around.

Cybersecurity is becoming a fight over reality

Put these developments together, and the future of cybercrime starts to look much more complicated than simply giving hackers better tools.

On one side, AI systems are becoming increasingly capable of probing networks, discovering vulnerabilities, writing exploits, and carrying out technical work that once required highly skilled human operators. On the other side, far less sophisticated AI can already generate fake identities, doctored evidence, fraudulent complaints, cloned voices, and synthetic content that can be used to manipulate the institutions surrounding a target.

You can imagine where that leads without getting too far into science fiction. A criminal might not need to break into a company’s bank account if he can generate enough convincing evidence to persuade the bank’s fraud system to freeze it. He might not need to hack a competitor’s website if he can convince its hosting company that the site contains illegal material. He might not need to compromise an executive’s email if he can clone the executive’s voice and video closely enough to fool an employee. An attacker targeting a social media account might simply generate and test thousands of variations of malicious content until he discovers one that reliably triggers the platform’s moderation system.

The institutions involved cannot simply stop enforcing their rules. Banks cannot stop looking for fraud. Email providers cannot stop filtering spam. Social networks cannot simply abandon moderation. Apple cannot simply shrug when illegal material appears inside an app.

But neither should we treat every decision made by those systems, or by the companies controlling them, as automatically legitimate simply because the underlying problem is serious.

Every system that makes judgments can also be studied, manipulated, and eventually exploited.

That is what makes the Telegram incident worth paying attention to, even if Durov’s account ultimately proves incomplete. Apple has removed Telegram over child sexual abuse material before, in 2018, and Telegram has faced years of criticism and regulatory pressure over illegal activity on the platform. Durov is hardly a disinterested observer.

But the broader vulnerability he describes is real whether or not every detail of this particular incident turns out exactly as he says.

For most of the history of cybersecurity, defenders worried about attackers taking control of their computers. The next phase may be stranger. Attackers may not need to take control of your computer at all.

They may only need to convince everyone else’s computers to turn against you.

​Tech, Cybersecurity, Cyberattack, Telegram, Apple 

A German airport that serves as a logistics hub was seemingly targeted as part of a plot carried out by enemies of the West.

How they did it is a wake-up call about the vulnerability of air travel worldwide.

‘All of this does not point to an amateurish approach.’

Leipzig/Halle Airport in eastern Germany almost became the site of disaster, but whether it was luck or poor execution, a mass causality event was barely avoided.

The airport is used by German military and its NATO allies for military transport, the BBC reported, but at the same time, it serves as a base for Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines.

Ukrainian aerial cargo was the apparent target when a drone was spotted carrying an explosive device near the Antonov planes.

The drone was fitted with military-grade explosives including Semtex and Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN). Fortunately, the detonator on the drone apparently malfunctioned, rendering the explosives useless, the Financial Times said, per German police.

A bomb-defusing robot was deployed to remove the detonator from the device, and police later carried out a controlled explosion to dispose of the material.

Moreover, a second unidentified object actually made contact with a cargo aircraft near the same airport, but the plane seemingly absorbed the blow and later landed in Hanover, Germany, with minor damage.

RELATED: America is winning the air war and losing the information war

NEWS5/AFP/Getty Images

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said that the incidents showed “a new level of threat” but warned the job was complex and professional, not a slapped-together device.

“All of this does not point to an amateurish approach. We are talking about a professional, hybrid threat scenario that we will continue to address.”

Without naming names, Dobrindt said that the attack “may also involve foreign powers.”

The claim comes as Polish authorities have alleged that U.S. intelligence forwarded them warnings that Russia could soon be looking to carry out an attack on NATO allies.

RELATED: Putin’s spies have been hiding in plain sight in Japan — now the US is helping clean house

John MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

According to LBC, Warsaw recently received intelligence from Washington that Russia could be planning an armed provocation (drone or missile strikes) on Polish soil, with the aim of escalating tensions among the West, which would lead to the suspension of support for Ukraine.

The warning included the possibility of an attack on what was described as critical Polish infrastructure, which could involve Russian or Belarusian troops crossing into NATO territory.

The United States “systematically informs Poland about ever-new Russian plans for a conventional attack on NATO’s eastern flank, from which Poland is by no means excluded,” a source close to the Polish president told LBC.

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​Drones, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Nato, Poland, Tech 

At Blaze Media, we strive to consistently bring you the best conservative talent on the market. Today, we’re excited to announce that pastor and podcaster Josh Howerton has joined our lineup.

As senior pastor of Lakepointe Church in Dallas, Texas, and host of one of the fastest-growing shows in the faith and culture space, “Live Free,” Howerton brings a large and loyal audience of faithful churchgoers and cultural observers who value his clear, biblically grounded perspective on the issues of our day.

Howerton told us he’s excited about joining the Blaze Media team because it allows him to accomplish the two things he’s “most passionate” about: “Telling everybody everywhere the good news of Jesus Christ” and applying “the whole word of God to the issues of the whole world.”

“This partnership advances both, so we’re in and excited about it,” he said.

We share in that excitement.

“Josh has built something rare: a podcast with genuine chart momentum and a growing audience that’s actively looking for clarity on faith and culture,” said Tyler Cardon, CEO of Blaze Media. “’Live Free’ fits naturally into our lineup, and we think our distribution can help Josh reach even more people hungry for the truth.”

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

“Live Free with Josh Howerton” is currently ranked #2 in Apple Podcasts’ religion and spirituality category and #39 overall. It has also surpassed one million YouTube subscribers, with an audience that spans committed churchgoers, conservatives, and cultural observers alike. Josh is building something special, and we’re honored to come alongside him and his team to support and amplify the great work that he’s doing.

When you subscribe to BlazeTV+, you’re helping us bring more voices like Josh Howerton to Blaze Media, voices willing to speak clearly about faith, culture, and the issues shaping our country.

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

​Christianity, Culture, Josh howerton, Podcast, Blazetv show 

It’s now dawning on some liberals that there’s nothing funny about the clowns taking over the Democratic circus.

MS NOW talking head Joe Scarborough, for instance, was left momentarily speechless on Monday after sharing a video in which Megan Romer, the national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, not only blames Israel for its attack by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, but notes that she would have stood in solidarity with Hamas in the immediate aftermath of the massacres.

‘I really don’t want to hear from the DSA anymore.’

In an interview with the New Yorker’s David Remnick released Friday, Romer detailed the DSA’s platform, including its views on Israel. Romer condemned Israel and expressed support for a “one-state solution”: a “free Palestine with the capital in Jerusalem.”

Remnick noted that Darializa Avila Chevalier — the Islamic anti-police, anti-Israel, anti-border socialist now poised to win a congressional seat in New York as a Democrat — attended the pro-Hamas rally held in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023, which featured signs justifying the terror attacks and was organized by radical groups, including Al-Awda New York.

When asked whether she supports Chevalier attending the rally, Romer said, “Yeah, I do,” and noted that she too would have attended the rally had she been able.

“One day after the slaughter of 1,200 people and taking of over 200 hostages, you would’ve come and rallied behind Hamas?” asked Remnick.

“I think that October 7 was largely inevitable,” answered Romer. “If you put people in an open-air concentration camp, and you deprive them of rights, of dignity, of food, of the ability to live in safety, you have to expect that they are going to not take that for that long.”

“You cannot put people in a cage and expect them not to revolt,” added the socialist.

RELATED: Mike Rowe nukes DSA commies, then takes a moment to bask in the fallout

Spencer Platt/Getty Images (R)

After playing a clip of the exchange on “Morning Joe” on Monday, Scarborough appeared stunned.

He broke the silence to state, “The co-chair of the DSA supported going to a pro-Hamas rally the day after Hamas gleefully slaughtered more Jews on October 7 than any day the Jews were slaughtered since the Holocaust. Women raped. Young children shot in front of their parents. Parents shot in front of young children. The DSA co-chair, which means the DSA, supports that.”

‘This is about the Democrats once again fumbling the football on the 2-yard line.’

“I really don’t want to hear from the DSA anymore,” added the liberal host, “that they’re about economic justice or health care. This would be like going to a pro-Al-Qaeda rally on September 12, which I’m sure many people in the DSA would say, ‘Well, that would be perfectly fine because look at the U.S. policies throughout the years.'”

The talking head who officially left the GOP in October 2017 — for supposedly abandoning its fiscal principles — implored the Democratic Party to reject the DSA ahead of the primary elections on Tuesday in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

In Wisconsin, Francesca Hong — a card-carrying DSA member who has expressed a desire to abolish the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Senate — is likely to win the Democratic Party’s nomination in the state’s gubernatorial race.

In Minnesota, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan — who does not identify as a socialist but is nevertheless a leftist similarly extreme in her views — is up against establishment Democratic Rep. Angie Craig in the Gopher State’s Democratic Senate primary.

“There’s nothing wrong with the Democrats supporting economic justice. There’s nothing wrong with the Democrats supporting, you know, cutting taxes, or getting rid of the Trump taxes and making billionaires pay more in taxes,” said Scarborough. “That’s a legitimate mainstream debate for people to have.”

He suggested, however, “I don’t need people telling me, ‘Oh, you have to just turn a blind eye to people saying that women getting raped on October 7 didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.’ Americans aren’t going to support that.”

“This is about the Democrats once again fumbling the football on the two-yard line when they have the chance to make great gains but being … too woke to call out the obvious,” said Scarborough.

Scarborough underscored that it’s prudent for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to call out the extremism of the DSA and those socialists making inroads in the Democratic Party — or to, at the very least, call pro-terrorist rape apologetics “despicable.”

“It’s crazy that we’re even having this conversation!” he shouted.

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​Joe scarborough, Ms now, Democratic socialists of america, Megan romer, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Politics 

“What is a reverse ATM?”

This question has been asked ad nauseum for the last few years, and the answer is somewhere between an unnecessary step and a cashless society.

‘Hardly-user friendly.’

Money walks

An early August post asked, “What in the Davos,” referring to the home base of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where undoubtedly the most controversial world figures come together to coordinate, undoubtedly, the most controversial policies.

The “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” meme apparently extends to physical money, as well, as one X user’s photo read, “reverse ATMs are available throughout the concourse for your convenience.”

According to BluePoint ATM Solutions, a “Reverse ATM” is a cash-to-card kiosk that allows users to convert physical cash into a prepaid card.

The kiosks are everywhere now, especially in New York, where they are seen at venues like MVP Arena and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. In Texas, the San Antonio Zoo says a cashless experience ensures that guests “spend less time in line.”

If there is any question as to whether or not the kiosks are connected to the WEF-prescribed future, there are a plethora of horror stories floating around online that confirm the theory.

RELATED: Elderly Air Force veteran assaulted, robbed after withdrawing cash from ATM; video shows juvenile taking victim’s wallet

Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Peasant problems

One traveler to Brussels — the home of European Parliament — panicked when she realized she was nearly out of gas and zero locations in the area “employed an actual human attendant.”

Her credit cards didn’t work anywhere, but her payments weren’t being declined, either. Instead, she realized the pumps operate through reverse ATMs: insert cash, get a ticket, scan the ticket at the pump to get gas.

Turns out this was the case in France, too, Ashley Smith wrote. The blogger noted that in many EU states, paying with a credit card forces a €120 deposit, which refunds the difference depending on gas consumption. At the same time, this is disincentivized given that a signature is required for purchases over €100.

With no humans in sight, it’s back to the reverse ATM for the peasantry.

Fintech Finance News reported in 2024 that the reverse ATMs are “hardly-user friendly,” and one New York location provided no receipt, the card was not reloadable, and users must go through a “time-consuming process” to reclaim any remaining balances.

Similar experiences have been widely discussed online.

RELATED: Violent punks caught on video ganging up on, brutally beating elderly man by Baltimore 7-Eleven — while wielding rifle, sword

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Card sharks

One Reddit post discussed an ice cream shop in Philadelphia that refused a $10 bill, opting for a reverse ATM payment instead. The card didn’t work, and an employee told the customer it wasn’t his fault before gifting him the treat anyway.

On another thread, users discussed how much money is left unclaimed on the ATM cards. One user said he left $9 on a card at an amusement park because “everything in the park” costs more than that.

Another said the New York MTA had made $100 from his unused cards in just one year.

Detractors say to use the card elsewhere, as it is likely a prepaid VISA or Mastercard. Companies will say it prevents cash theft and reduces labor. This is of course for the business, not the customer, who has to whip out cash at a less secure location and then take extra steps simply to spare the establishment a few minutes of work.

“Minimize pathogen concerns associated with cash,” BluePoint ATM says on its website.

Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve says there is no federal statute mandating that a private business, person, or organization “must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services.”

Instead, citizens must rely on bylaws, like that of Philadelphia, where under the city’s cashless retail prohibition, establishments “may not refuse to accept cash.”

It is unclear whether that extends to the ice cream experience, though.

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​Reverse atm, Davos, World economic forum, European union, Cashless, Lifestyle 

A homeowner in Richmond, New York, noticed something on his home security system Sunday night that prompted him to call 911 — and also to grab his shotgun and confront the disturbance himself.

“He was receiving live surveillance footage of two individuals entering a property that he owns,” Undersheriff Michael Rago of the Ontario County Sheriff’s Office told WHAM-TV. “He lives close by, and while he remained on the phone with the 911 center, he responded to the location.”

‘We actually received a 911 call from one of the occupants in the residence.’

The homeowner arrived to find a suspicious vehicle parked discreetly on the property and lights flickering inside the home, Rago added to the station.

With that, the homeowner called out to those inside his property and shot out the vehicle’s tires, WHAM said.

“At that time, we actually received a 911 call from one of the occupants in the residence, stating that they were in there and that they were going to cooperatively exit with their hands up,” Rago added to the station.

When deputies arrived, they took 19-year-old Alexandria Mosher and 22-year-old Dominick Wood, both of Lima, into custody, WHAM reported.

Deputies found Mosher and Wood in possession of items from inside the home, the sheriff’s office told the station, adding that the pair were charged with second-degree burglary before being released after their arraignment.

RELATED: Homeowner opens fire on burglar who was on parole for previous burglary conviction, cops say. There won’t be future offenses.

The homeowner has not been charged, the station said.

“A word to the wise is to understand … when you can and can’t use deadly physical force,” Rago noted to WHAM. “This wouldn’t be considered deadly physical force. …”

The undersheriff also offered the following advice, according to the station: “At the end of the day, you know … we don’t need more victims. We don’t need victims injured. We don’t need suspects or defendants, you know, injured. … I come back to being a being a good witness for law enforcement.”

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​New york, 2nd amendment, Guns, Gun rights, Defending property, Homeowner shoots, Burglary, Crime 

Automotive safety technology was supposed to help you keep your eyes on the road. Increasingly, it is keeping its eyes on you.

More new vehicles are equipped with cameras pointed directly at the driver, tracking where you look, whether your eyes are open, and whether the computer thinks you’re paying enough attention. Look down at the touch screen too long and you may hear a warning. Turn your head away from the windshield and the steering wheel may vibrate.

There is a major difference between a sensor detecting that you’re drifting out of your lane and a camera continuously observing your face.

This technology is no longer simply an optional gadget dreamed up by automakers. In Europe, regulators now require new vehicles to include systems capable of detecting driver distraction.

On a recent episode of “The Drive,” co-host Karl Brauer and I spoke with longtime automotive journalist Michael Harley of Forbes about where this technology is heading.

The stated purpose is safety, and there are good reasons for that. But once a camera is installed inside your car, watching you every second you’re behind the wheel, another question becomes unavoidable: Who else eventually gets to watch?

Stay focused

Subaru provides a good example of how quickly driver monitoring has moved into ordinary cars.

Its DriverFocus system uses a near-infrared camera aimed at the driver’s eyes and head. Subaru says the system can identify signs of distraction or drowsiness and warn the driver accordingly. Because the camera is infrared, it can continue monitoring the driver even when the cabin is dark.

The intention is easy to understand. Distracted driving kills people, and so does falling asleep behind the wheel.

There is also evidence that many drivers appreciate the technology. An Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study of nearly 3,500 Subaru owners found that 87% used DriverFocus most or every time they drove, while about 70% said they would want the system on their next vehicle.

But that same research identified the downside. Drivers reported false alarms, and some said the warnings came too frequently. Annoyance was one of the main reasons owners switched the system off.

Karl and I have each experienced this ourselves in new vehicles. Modern cars increasingly offer automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane-centering systems, and other technology specifically designed to compensate when a driver makes a mistake. Yet some of those same cars are becoming more aggressive about policing exactly where the driver is looking.

RELATED: Lucid makes one of the best EVs in America. That may not be enough to save it.

Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images

Nanny cam

This isn’t only about automakers deciding what features customers might like.

Europe is turning driver monitoring into regulation.

Under the European Union’s General Safety Regulation, all newly sold vehicles have been required since July 2024 to include technology warning drivers about drowsiness. Beginning in July 2026, additional rules require advanced systems designed to detect driver distraction as well.

The EU doesn’t explicitly say every manufacturer must put an infrared camera in your face. The regulation is based on what the system must accomplish rather than specifying one particular piece of hardware.

In practice, however, camera-based systems are an obvious way to meet those requirements, and they’re already becoming common.

Once these systems become mandatory in a market as enormous as Europe, automakers have another incentive to design them into vehicles everywhere rather than engineer completely different cars for different countries. That’s why American drivers should pay attention.

Close quarters

Here is where I become uncomfortable.

There is a major difference between a sensor detecting that you’re drifting out of your lane and a camera continuously observing your face.

Michael explained just how capable these systems already are:

“They’re [infrared] cameras … watching every single thing in real time inside the car, and it’s triggering verbal, audible and/or haptic alarms,” he said.

“And you cannot defeat it. Some of them you can turn off, but the second you restart the car, it starts all over again. … It’s just a memory chip … away from being able to record the telemetry.”

Today’s camera may simply analyze the information inside the vehicle and generate an alert. Technologically, however, there isn’t an enormous distance between a camera that sees what you’re doing and a system that stores or transmits what it sees.

Modern cars are already rolling computers connected to manufacturer servers through cellular networks. Automakers have collected driving data and shared information with third parties, while insurance companies increasingly offer policies based on telematics.

Cars can already record enormous amounts of information about speed, location, braking, acceleration, and crashes. Add an interior camera, and the vehicle potentially knows not only where you went and how you drove, but what you were doing while you drove there.

Were you looking at the road or at your phone? Were you yawning? Did you appear sleepy? Who else was inside the vehicle?

Manufacturers will tell us these systems have privacy safeguards, and many of them do. But privacy policies can change. So can software, regulations, and the circumstances under which information can be demanded by law enforcement or other third parties.

The hardware remains pointed at you.

Eyes have it

This is usually how intrusive technology arrives: not through some grand announcement that everybody will now be monitored, but through a series of individually reasonable steps.

It’s there to detect drowsiness. It’s there to make sure you’re paying attention. It’s there to prevent crashes.

Each argument has merit. I don’t want a sleepy driver drifting across the center line any more than anyone else does. Consumers should nevertheless ask where the boundary lies.

A seatbelt protects me without needing to know where I’m looking. An airbag doesn’t watch my face. Anti-lock brakes don’t care who is sitting beside me.

Driver-monitoring cameras are different because they introduce something automobiles never historically required: a machine observing the occupants of the car in real time.

Governments are now beginning to require the systems capable of doing that.

New normal

There is one more irony.

Cars are becoming more capable of assisting the driver at precisely the moment manufacturers and regulators are becoming more insistent about monitoring the human being behind the wheel.

Your vehicle can steer, brake, maintain its distance from the car ahead, and in some cases even change lanes and navigate highway interchanges. But glance away for a little too long, and the same car starts scolding you.

Maybe these systems will save lives. I hope they do.

Before Americans normalize cameras watching drivers in every new automobile, however, we deserve clear answers about what those systems collect, whether any information leaves the vehicle, how long it can be retained, and who can obtain it.

Once the camera becomes standard equipment, the question is no longer whether the car can watch you. It’s who gets access to what it sees.

​Driver assistance technology, Driver distraction detection, Infrared camera, Vehicle monitoring systems, Subaru driverfocus, Big tech, Auto industry, European union, Privacy, Lifestyle, Automotive 

I have watched more of Charlie Kirk since his death than I ever did while he was alive. I do not say that proudly.

While Kirk traveled from campus to campus inviting hostile students to challenge him, I was only vaguely aware of what he was building. In the months since his assassination, I have watched hours of those encounters and wished I had paid closer attention.

Charlie Kirk offered a vision of adulthood built upon duty, sacrifice, personal responsibility, and devotion to something worth defending. Hasan Piker offers a different vision.

As Hasan Piker’s influence has expanded across the American left, I have begun to see him as a kind of anti-Charlie Kirk.

That requires some explanation.

Piker publicly condemned Kirk’s assassination and called it horrific. Nor am I suggesting that Piker avoids debate. He and Kirk debated in 2018 and were scheduled to meet again at Dartmouth College on September 25, 2025.

Charlie Kirk was assassinated 15 days before that debate.

The difference between the two men lies less in whether they were willing to argue than in how they exercised influence, the lives they presented, and what their methods taught young people to do with disagreement.

Charlie Kirk’s signature gesture was to share the microphone.

Hasan Piker’s is to control it.

Kirk went where he was disliked. On campuses where much of the student body opposed nearly everything he believed, he invited students to tell him why he was wrong.

He could be abrasive, overly confident, and eager for the devastating clip. But he entered the arena and allowed his opponents to enter with him. They stood a few feet away and spoke in their own voices. Kirk had to listen, think, and respond in real time.

The person disagreeing with him remained visibly a person.

Piker has mastered the internet’s preferred form of political communication: the reaction. From his studio, he watches clips, interrupts them, mocks them, and turns opponents into material for an audience already disposed to applaud. He selects the clip, stops it when he wishes, interprets the opponent’s motives, and delivers the verdict.

RELATED: The internet makes monsters and saints before the body is cold

PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP/Getty Images

The opponent is present, but only as content.

Media does more than transmit ideas. It trains habits.

Kirk’s format taught his audience that an opponent should receive a microphone, finish a question, and expect an answer. Piker’s format more often teaches an audience to classify, ridicule, and dismiss.

Kirk tried to win converts. Piker identifies enemies.

There is another difference, and it has less to do with politics than with adulthood.

Piker is not publicly known to be married, and his private relationships are his business. It would be unfair to speculate about what we do not know. The relevant distinction is not his marital status but the vision of life he presents publicly.

Charlie Kirk made no mystery of his.

He spoke openly about his wife, Erika, his children, his Christian faith, and the joys and responsibilities of building a family. He did not merely tell young people how to vote. He urged them to marry, have children, accept responsibility, and build something durable.

Kirk offered a vision of adulthood built upon duty, sacrifice, personal responsibility, and devotion to something worth defending.

Piker offers a different vision. His public rhetoric is saturated with rage, profanity, grievance, and the promise that political power can remedy injustice, real or perceived. Speaking to the College Democrats this summer, he described himself as “an outsider currently pushing for an insurgency.” After condemning Democrats he considers collaborators, he declared, “We don’t need those Democrats anymore.”

Kirk called young people to govern themselves. Piker calls them to join a political insurgency against those he blames.

Rage, once summoned, does not always respect political boundaries.

Nearly a year after Kirk’s murder, Piker is alive, broadcasting, and shaping the politics of a generation. That is how a free country is supposed to work. Conservatives should criticize him, answer his arguments, and oppose the candidates he supports.

They must also defend his right to keep talking.

RELATED: The Democrat civil war is real — and it is happening in Wisconsin

Joshua Lott/Getty Images

The harder question is whether the political culture gathering around Piker would extend that protection to people such as Charlie Kirk.

A culture can make violence more plausible long before anyone commits it. It begins by stripping opponents of their individuality and treating their presence as a threat.

A person becomes a category. A category becomes an enemy. An enemy becomes an obstacle.

Eventually, someone decides the obstacle should be removed.

Charlie Kirk’s importance was not that he was always right. It was that he kept showing up where people believed he was wrong. He asked for the next question. He believed opponents could be confronted without being erased.

Then, he went home to the wife and children he loved.

Kirk and Piker were supposed to meet on a stage at Dartmouth. We will never know what Charlie would have said that night.

But as the anniversary of his murder approaches, we should remember what he had already said through the manner of his life: Bring your argument. Take the microphone. Prove me wrong. Then, go home and build something worth defending.

Just leave the rifle behind.

​Assassination, Charlie kirk, Debate, Hasan piker, Opinion & analysis, Democratic socialists of america, Turning point usa 

Michigan Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar’s political career took a major hit when voters rejected him in favor of a democratic socialist — but it’s not a loss that was hard to see coming.

In a campaign video posted to social media by Shri himself, he’s standing in downtown Detroit wearing bright red sneakers, shorts, and a black shirt with a photo of himself on it with red laser eyes.

“I’m meeting people asking them to make sure they vote on August 4 in the primary election. I’m asking for your vote so I can continue fighting the Trump administration, continue fighting their corruption and their lawlessness,” Thanedar said in his thick accent.

“He is not a real person,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“He’s like, ‘What do the people in downtown Detroit wear?’ And he’s like, ‘I know,’ except the shirt is just him with laser beams coming out of his eyes, and it says ‘Shri,’ which I just don’t think is relatable,” she adds.

And interviews that have surfaced of Shri didn’t help his case.

“What are the five Grosse Pointe cities?” an interviewer asked Shri.

“Look, I’m not here to answer a quiz. I’m here to say that I’m going to fight for the people of Detroit,” he said, before the interviewer rattled off the five cities.

The interviewer then called Shri out for abandoning beagles and leaving them “to die in their cages at your pharmaceutical testing.”

“I love animals,” Shri responded.

“I mean, some of them died under my neglect, but other than the ones that I killed, I love animals,” Gonzales mocks.

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.

​Congress, Democratic socialist, Donald trump, Michigan, Sara gonzales, Shri thanedar, Blazetv show 

President Donald Trump has decided that the U.S. should no longer be a “global outlier” in how many jabs it foists on kids, and medical establishmentarians are not happy about it.

Dropping a few jabs

When Trump took office for the second time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all American children get vaccines for 18 diseases, sticking them with more than twice as many doses as their European counterparts were receiving.

‘What this does is it restores … autonomy of families and parents.’

In December, the president tasked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and then-acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill with reviewing the best practices from other first-world countries for core childhood vaccination recommendations along with scientific evidence that informs those practices.

After conducting a comprehensive scientific assessment and concluding that the U.S. was indeed a global outlier, the CDC reduced its list to 11 diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis (whooping cough), Haemophilus influenzae type B, pneumococcal conjugate, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, human papillomavirus, and chickenpox.

RELATED: STUNNING admission about vaccine found in newly released Fauci text — while he told public it was safe

JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Images

The agency recommended numerous other vaccines either for “high-risk groups” or on an individual basis.

Trump stated after the embrace of the new vaccine schedule on Jan. 5, “Effective today, America will no longer require 72 ‘jabs’ for our beautiful, healthy children.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups, which had sued the administration in July 2025 over its termination of COVID vaccine recommendations for healthy kids and pregnant women, amended their complaint in January to incorporate a legal challenge to the immunization schedule updates.

On March 16, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy — a Boston-area Biden appointee who previously barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting illegal aliens — obliged the plaintiffs and blocked the administration’s revision of the CDC’s vaccine.

Litigation in the case is ongoing.

The order

On Monday, Trump issued an executive order reaffirming that “it is the policy of the United States that the core childhood vaccine recommendations should be aligned with scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries while preserving access to vaccines currently available to Americans.”

The order:

reinforces the vaccination recommendations adopted by the CDC earlier this year; recommends splitting up the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine into three separate single-disease shots once such vaccines are domestically available; advises states and territories to update their relevant laws and regulations pertaining to immunization requirements — especially for school enrollment and attendance — where necessary; andrecommends that “all childhood immunizations should be administered at separate medical visits.”

Trump’s order also tasks Attorney General Todd Blanche with challenging state laws that conflict with state and federal statutory obligations “related to parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under the law.”

RELATED: Fauci is yesterday’s fight. Medical freedom is today’s.

Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

HHS Secretary Kennedy lauded Trump for taking this step and pledged at the signing ceremony, “We will preserve access to vaccines, strengthen safety monitoring, expand research, give doctors and parents better information, and restore informed consent and parental choice to their rightful place in American medicine.”

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, said, “What this does is it restores … autonomy of families and parents to make good decisions for their kids. It allows and continues to emphasize the importance of science in the recommendations about vaccines, and fundamentally restores a sort of healthy relationship between public health and parents.”

Outrage from the usual suspects

Andrew Racine, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was among those who lashed out over Trump’s executive order.

‘Vaccines DO NOT cause autism.’

“Today’s executive order on vaccines is not only disheartening but dangerous,” said Racine Monday. “Instead of ensuring every family can access life-saving vaccines for measles, influenza, RSV and more, federal leaders are once again spreading misleading claims.”

After claiming that there “is not new evidence to justify significant changes to childhood immunization guidance,” Racine downplayed the possibility of a link between vaccines and autism, and he expressed concern that some people may now “doubt the importance of vaccines.”

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said in a statement obtained by WTOP News, “If it wasn’t such a serious affront to the health of Americans and their children, it would be laughable.”

Benjamin claimed that breaking up immunizations into individual visits as opposed to loading kids with multiple vaccines all at once “creates more of a burden for parents, and more discomfort for kids.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the anti-Trump Louisiana Republican who lost his re-election bid but who still chairs the Senate Health Committee, joined the chorus of concern-mongers, stating, “I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The President does not have the expertise to make these changes. Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism.”

“Breaking up vaccines will mean children have to get more shots to get the same protection, not fewer shots. It will increase hesitancy and make children less safe,” added Cassidy.

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​Donald trump, Joe biden, Centers for disease control and prevention, Health and human services, Robert f kennedy jr, Vaccination, Politics