Too many people scare themselves into silence by making courage more complicated than it is.

For years, women such as Jennifer Sey and Riley Gaines have carried the hopes, safety, and opportunities of girls on their shoulders. We applaud them, share their interviews, and call them brave. Then we tell ourselves that we could never do what they do.

The next voice does not have to be famous. It may have to be yours.

That’s easy. Speaking when the consequences belong to us is much harder.

Only four years ago, Gaines was a college swimmer preparing to graduate and attend dental school. She had no national platform, political résumé, or plan to become one of the country’s most recognizable advocates for women’s sports.

Hundreds of female swimmers were forced to compete against and share a locker room with Lia Thomas. Gaines became the name people remember because she decided that what happened required more than private disapproval.

Now we see the television appearances, speeches, photo shoots, merchandise, and crowds. We see a confident and articulate woman who has become exceptionally good at public advocacy.

What we forget is that she had to begin before she felt ready.

I know that temptation.

Nearly five years ago, at 18, I helped pass Iowa’s Save Girls Sports law, which bars male athletes from competing in women’s sports. I wrote articles, gave interviews, posted information online, and spoke at the state Capitol.

I also felt overwhelmed and badly underqualified. I was called a bigot and a transphobe. I received harassment and death threats. Being compared to a Nazi was not how I expected to spend my senior year of high school.

Over time, I learned to make peace with the insults. If someone cannot acknowledge the difference between a man and a woman, that person’s condemnation says more about his relationship to truth than it does about me.

But my 18-year-old self had not learned that yet.

During one of my first interviews, on BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey’s “Relatable” podcast, I admitted that something had to be done but insisted that plenty of people were better equipped to do it.

Stuckey answered with a sentence I have carried ever since: “God doesn’t call the equipped. He equips the called.”

That is what I love about Sophie Cunningham. The WNBA guard did not deliver a complicated manifesto when she defended women’s spaces. She stated a basic truth plainly.

“I think that I am here to extend love,” Cunningham said. “But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

When reporters pressed her, she did not retreat into qualifications or issue the ritual apology expected of public figures who violate progressive etiquette.

“I think I said what I said.”

That’s it. It’s that simple. And the answer resonated because it stripped away the excuses people use to stay silent.

RELATED: How the WNBA’s hottest star became the left’s newest headache

Michael Hickey/Getty Images

Men and women are different. Girls deserve privacy, safety, and fair competition. Saying so may provoke anger, but the argument itself is not difficult.

Cunningham’s example is more than a headline or slogan. It reminds ordinary people that public courage does not begin with a perfect résumé, a media strategy, or complete confidence.

It begins when someone decides that fear of criticism cannot carry more authority than the truth.

Games will end. Records will fall. Statistics will be forgotten. Cunningham’s willingness to speak when silence would have been safer may outlast all of them.

She was not obligated to speak because she is famous or because her platform is large. She was obligated because girls were being asked to surrender their rights to a lie.

The same obligation does not belong only to athletes, activists, or people with television audiences.

You do not have to be Riley Gaines, Jennifer Sey, or Sophie Cunningham. You do not have to consider yourself the smartest, bravest, or most articulate person in the room. You do not have to feel qualified.

You do have to stop using those doubts as permission to do nothing.

God does not ask for perfection. He asks for obedience. Again and again, He accomplishes more through willing people than they imagined themselves capable of doing.

Thank you, Sophie Cunningham, for showing how simple the first act of courage can be: Tell the truth, withstand the reaction, and refuse to take it back.

The next voice does not have to be famous. It may have to be yours.

​Activists, Advocacy, Ainsley erzen, Allie beth stuckey, Female athletes, Iowa, Riley gaines, Save girls sports, Sophie cunningham, Truth, Wbna, Women’s sports, Opinion & analysis 

Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D) recently held a town hall in Houston where he discussed what black voters would supposedly get in return for supporting him over Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in the Texas U.S. Senate race.

During the town hall, Talarico appeared to agree that convicting the person who murdered Austin Metcalf was a “tragedy.”

‘It’s a satanic strategy to deny truth in all aspects of life.’

“What is a tragedy is that James Talarico would rather side with dangerous criminals than keep Texas communities safe,” National Republican Senatorial Committee regional press secretary Samantha Cantrell told Blaze News.

Talarico — the Democratic Senate candidate and part-time Presbyterian seminarian who has attempted to use Scripture to justify abortion, fought to keep the Bible out of school, taken money from an associate of dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and championed keeping male athletes in women’s sports — fielded several questions during the recent town hall, including one from a black identitarian named Amanda Meredith.

Meredith, who said she is a Navy veteran, complained about perceived “over-policing” in black neighborhoods, claimed that police shut down her Juneteenth event prematurely, and suggested that the “craziness in this country has gotten worse” under the Trump administration.

“Our people getting killed left and right. Karmelo Anthony’s case is just a f**king tragedy,” Meredith said while Talarico nodded in apparent agreement.

At no point did Talarico challenge the identitarian speaker.

Karmelo Anthony, a black teen, savagely murdered Austin Metcalf, a white teen, at a high school track meet last year. In early June, Anthony was convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison. A month later, Anthony’s attorney filed an appeal and requested a new trial.

RELATED: Female attackers yelled ‘free Karmelo’ according to alleged assault victim; 3 suspects arrested

The identitarian whom Talarico nodded along with at his town hall said in a video shared to Instagram after Anthony’s sentencing, “To the mother of Karmelo Anthony, I’m so sorry that the system failed your boy.”

In the video, Meredith also accused local authorities, including police and prosecutors, of being “hateful”; claimed that Anthony was “simply defending himself” when he fatally stabbed his unarmed victim; suggested “we don’t get justice here”; and said that she was preparing to leave the U.S. with her son to avoid being “terrorized by the white people in this country.”

After Meredith concluded her rant at his town hall — in which she also suggested that her life in America is more traumatic than the time she spent in Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern nations — Talarico thanked her, apologized on behalf of law enforcement for supposedly shutting down her Juneteenth event an hour or two early, and criticized police.

“Thank you. Thank you for your question, and thank you for your service. This is unacceptable,” said Talarico.

“Too often, we see law enforcement weaponized against black and brown communities in this state,” said Talarico. “We have a deeply broken justice system. We have a deeply broken approach to policing.”

Neither the Talarico nor the Paxton campaign responded to requests for comment.

Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) was among the many critics puzzled by Talarico’s response to Meredith’s commentary, asking “why it was a tragedy for a black kid to go to jail for murdering a white kid?”

“There’s an incredible hostility to truth in a world this secular. It’s a satanic strategy to deny truth in all aspects of life. Men can be women and have babies. We have a Supreme Court justice who can’t define the word woman,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock told Blaze News. “When a teenager murders another teenager in front of multiple witnesses, the approved lie is to call the dead teenager the villain and the murderer the victim. Lying is a qualification for politics. Talarico clearly seeks a more important political office.”

Jeff Metcalf, the father of the murdered teen, told Whitlock in mid-June that he has been inundated with death threats and disgusting messages from the murderer’s supporters.

“Just the vile statements from everyone, and ones who are in denial of the truth. That’s the hardest part. It’s like now that the truth has been shown, all the facts have been presented. So all your lies have been debunked, but they still refuse to accept the verdict, the truth, and they’re all hanging their hat on this appeal,” said the bereaved father.

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​Austin metcalf, Brandon gill, James talarico, Jason whitlock, Karmelo anthony, Texas, Anti-white, Politics 

China has a dirty little habit of swiping tech that doesn’t belong to it and passing it off as its own. Why should AI be any different? Latest accusations claim that China stole intellectual property from American AI companies to use in its own platforms, and the Trump administration is poised to take swift retaliatory action.

The whole hubbub started over the prevalence of open-source AI models originating from China. As the costs of major platforms, including Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok, continue to rise in the States, U.S. companies that have already integrated AI into their workforce, or that plan to add AI in the future, are looking for new ways to cut costs without sacrificing capabilities. One solution is to fall back on Chinese-made open-source AI, like DeepSeek and Kimi.

‘We have the ability to sanction them because of this theft.’

Open-source AI is more appealing than closed-source platforms for several reasons: It’s publicly available with fewer or no licensing fees. It’s customizable to fit a wider range of applications. It can work on local hardware (laptop, desktop, or servers) without the need to pay for cloud compute. Its local capabilities make it much cheaper and more private. Lastly, although these models are usually slightly less sophisticated than closed models, their open nature gives third-party developers the power to adjust the code themselves and bring it on par with closed offerings.

In other words, open-source models are more affordable and adaptable, and if widely adopted, they could put a financial strain on the frontier AI market or even put it out of business.

Where does Chinese open-source AI come from?

So far, China has been a major proponent of open-source AI, largely for the threat it poses to America’s AI dominance, while platforms in the States have leaned harder into closed-model options.

Here’s the kicker, though. Most of China’s AI models were built on the backs of American AI companies. DeepSeek, for instance, reportedly used OpenAI’s ChatGPT (and other unnamed models) as the basis for its platform through a process called distilling, where answers from larger platforms are reverse-engineered to design smaller, more efficient models that mimic the original. Meanwhile, the newly more capable Kimi K3 was distilled from Claude Fable 5 by Anthropic.

Essentially, Chinese AI platform makers took a shortcut by training off of American frontier AI models and are now trying to flip the script so that American companies rely on their Chinese “innovations” instead of the original platforms that created these AI advancements in the first place.

RELATED: Tired of password hell? Do this now

Rawf8/Getty Images

Why open-source Chinese AI is a problem

This is an issue for American companies and American security for several reasons:

Theft: Although distillation operates in an ambiguous gray area of legality, what China’s platforms have done equates to theft directly from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and SpaceXAI (formerly xAI).Regulation: Open-source makes AI harder to regulate. Especially now that some advanced AI models can hack into legacy systems without any trouble at all, open-source versions of these would make them dangerously accessible to bad actors.Leadership: Companies that pay for AI platforms essentially fund their future development, ensuring that AI platforms are sustainable as America leads the AI race. Without this funding, American-made AI development slows down, stalls, or flatlines entirely, surrendering the lead to China.Security: Anyone can tamper with open-source code, potentially making companies that use these platforms more vulnerable to sneak attacks, hacks, and malicious code injections.

What’s next?

Reports on what to do about the alleged IP theft are mixed. Axios says that President Trump may ban companies from using Chinese-developed open-source AI models wholesale, immediately cutting off the potential threat these models pose to the nation. However, United States Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent proposed another way, stating, “We’ve seen a lot of talk about open-source models coming and threatening the large language models in the U.S. This administration supports open-source models, but what we do not support is IP theft. If we see, especially, that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them because of this theft.”

Sanctions appear to be the answer to get China to back off. Whether or not it will work, though, remains to be seen. So far, China is pushing back with the Ministry of Commerce holding firm: “These actions lack factual basis and legal support and constitute double standards in practice, representing typical acts of AI hegemony. China will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests against any actions that substantially harm China’s interests.”

A tug-of-war over AI sovereignty will no doubt ensue in the coming weeks.

​Open-source ai, Tech 

A father who shot a man suspected of raping his 11-year-old daughter was arrested and charged with felonious assault and weapon under disability charges.

Grove City police said they were called to the apartment on July 15 over the report of a sexual assault on an 11-year-old girl.

‘I can see why he went after him. I’m not saying it’s right, but that at least makes some sense.’

The mother of the girl called police after allegedly seeing a video of a sexual assault at their home on her daughter’s phone.

The next day, the alleged victim’s father lured the rape suspect back to the home by pretending to be his daughter on the TikTok app.

Police were called back to the residence to find Diego Montoya Gonzalez shot twice.

The father told police that he intended only to beat up Gonzalez and then call police but that the suspect reached for a gun and precipitated the shooting.

A neighbor named Terrie Shirkey described the father as visibly upset after finding out about the allegations.

“[He] had checked the phone, and he saw texts,” Shirkey said to WSYX-TV. “Whatever he saw on the phone, he just couldn’t calm down. He just kept pacing, pacing.”

Investigators allegedly found several videos of child abuse on Gonzalez’s phone, including one involving an infant or toddler.

“I can see why he went after him,” Shirkey added. “I’m not saying it’s right, but that at least makes some sense. It wasn’t a senseless thing. If it’s not, that means we’ve got a predator, and that scares the crap out of me.”

RELATED: ‘Depraved’ serial child molester barricaded himself in bathroom with 1-year-old and tried to commit suicide

Gonzalez was later arrested and charged with rape, pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor, and obstructing official business.

On Monday, he pleaded not guilty in a Franklin County Common Pleas Court. He was given a $20,000 recognizance bond as well as a $50,000 cash/surety bond.

If released, he was ordered to stay off the internet except for work and restricted from contacting the alleged victim’s family.

WSYX also reported that the father had previously been charged with strangling his girlfriend, but that was dismissed. He also was convicted for misdemeanor attempted breaking and entering. He is being held on a $100,000 bond.

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​Child rape, Online predators, Tiktok, Shooting, Pedophile, Crime 

Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and Andrew Jackson have little in common beyond one striking fact: Young Americans are revisiting reputations that schools, media, and popular culture once treated as settled.

The trend is not a wholesale endorsement of every decision these men made. It is a rebellion against inherited verdicts.

TMZ may fret that McCarthyism is returning. It isn’t. Institutional deference, however, may be gone for good.

As democratic socialists such as Francesca Hong and Zohran Mamdani have gained traction with voters, some young conservatives have revived interest in McCarthy’s campaign against communist influence in the United States. The slogan “Joseph McCarthy was right” has circulated online alongside renewed discussion of Soviet espionage and foreign political influence from countries such as Cuba and China.

McCarthy’s record remains contested, and the abuses associated with his name should not be waved away. But younger critics are increasingly unwilling to accept the textbook version in which he appears only as a paranoid bully who invented a threat that did not exist. One widely used history resource, for example, describes his methods as bullying tactics that created a climate of fear.

McCarthy is not alone.

Richard Nixon became a viral figure this summer through “Nixon-maxxing,” an online fascination that mixes irony and style with a serious effort to reconsider his foreign-policy record and political downfall. George W. Bush, once a permanent punch line for late-night comedy, now appears in nostalgic images as a cowboy from a more confident American era. Andrew Jackson has also returned to online debate as younger people reassess his nationalism and tariff policy.

None deserves automatic vindication. McCarthy, Nixon, Bush, and Jackson were consequential men with real failures, bitter controversies, and legacies that remain open to dispute.

But their reputations were shaped by institutions that many members of Gen Z no longer trust.

Black Lives Matter activists tried to tear down Jackson’s statue in Washington. Legacy outlets treated Nixon’s name as shorthand for betrayal and corruption. Late-night television and “Saturday Night Live” spent years reducing Bush to a caricature.

When those same institutions lose credibility, their historical judgments lose authority with them.

That loss of trust is measurable. Confidence in higher education fell from 57% in 2015 to 36% in 2024. Gen Z reports the highest levels of mistrust toward colleges of any generation, and 59% of students say they fear expressing “right-wing” political opinions in class.

RELATED: The once and future Nixon

Photo courtesy of the Richard Nixon Foundation

Young people therefore approach official narratives with a suspicion earlier generations reserved for propaganda. If they want the truth, they need to uncover it themselves.

COVID taught us the hard way.

Most members of Gen Z were in high school, college, or the opening years of adulthood when governments closed schools, restricted work, separated friends, and imposed sweeping health rules. They were told that officials possessed reliable answers, then watched many claims change, collapse, or become subjects of bitter dispute.

The vaccine debate supplied one example. Research identified an increased risk of myocarditis after some COVID vaccinations, particularly among adolescent and young adult males. That finding did not prove every warning about vaccination correct, but it complicated the insistence that skepticism itself was irresponsible or morally wrong.

The release of Anthony Fauci’s diary reinforced the belief among many young Americans that officials presented more certainty in public than they privately possessed.

The result was not merely disagreement over masks, vaccines, distancing, or school closures. It was a broader lesson in institutional fallibility.

Young Americans learned that credentials do not eliminate self-interest, consensus does not guarantee truth, and a confident official narrative may later require substantial revision.

That lesson now shapes how they view both contemporary politics and American history.

Donald Trump’s return to the presidency after Russiagate, two impeachments, criminal prosecutions, and years of predictions that his movement would collapse reinforced the idea that establishment condemnation can increase rather than settle public doubt. Young men voted for him heavily in 2024 and extended the same instinct to figures such as JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The same appetite has helped independent journalists like Nick Shirley build audiences by pursuing stories local governments and established newsrooms neglected.

RELATED: Two Americas, under Fauci, with liberty and justice for none

Alex WROBLEWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

This impulse can go wrong sometimes. Contrarianism is not the same as truth, and a historical figure does not become virtuous merely because liberal institutions despised him.

But the refusal to inherit conclusions without question is healthy.

Gen Z is treating history less like a museum exhibit and more like a cold case. It wants the documents, the motives, the context, and the arguments omitted from the standard account.

That approach will not vindicate every accused man. It may confirm some old judgments and overturn others.

The larger significance lies in who now claims the authority to decide.

Schools, television networks, universities, and political movements once expected younger Americans to accept their moral rankings of the past. A growing number of young people now insist on reopening the file themselves.

TMZ may fret that McCarthyism is making a comeback. It isn’t. Institutional deference, however, may be gone for good.

​Black lives matter, Covid, Democratic socialists, Donald trump, Francesca hong, Gen z, George w bush, Joseph mccarthy, Marco rubio, Richard nixon, Right wing, Zohran mamdani, Opinion & analysis 

Opponents of the SAVE America Act have reached for the oldest smear in the election-law playbook: racism.

Sunny Hostin of “The View” recently said she opposed the bill because it would “disproportionately affect African-American voters.” She compared proof-of-citizenship requirements to Jim Crow devices such as literacy tests and jelly bean counting.

Election reform cannot proceed honestly while racial demagoguery substitutes for argument.

The comparison is historically illiterate.

Poll taxes, literacy tests, and arbitrary guessing games were designed to keep black Americans from voting. Requiring voters to prove identity and citizenship applies a neutral rule to everyone.

The SAVE America Act would require applicants for federal voter registration to provide documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport, a REAL ID indicating citizenship, or qualifying military records. Related provisions would require photo identification at the polls.

Those are not instruments of racial exclusion. They are ordinary safeguards meant to ensure that only eligible citizens participate in federal elections.

Democratic politicians and media figures have spent years describing voter-identification laws as “Jim Crow 2.0.” Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, and others have portrayed routine verification as a deliberate attack on minority voters.

The claim insults the people it supposedly defends.

Polls consistently show broad support for voter identification, often above 80% overall, with strong majorities among black and Hispanic voters. Millions of minority Americans already use driver’s licenses, state identification cards, and other government-issued documents because modern life requires them.

Americans need identification to board a commercial flight, open a bank account, cash a check, buy alcohol or tobacco, rent a car, enter many offices and government buildings, collect some prescriptions, and check into a hotel.

Even New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an opponent of voter-identification requirements, recently announced that his taxpayer-funded grocery stores would require identification for entry.

RELATED: Mamdani rejects voter ID, but his grocery stores may ask shoppers for proof

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The country accepts identity verification for countless transactions carrying far lower stakes than choosing its leaders. The idea that voting alone must remain exempt from basic verification makes no sense.

Critics next argue that noncitizen voting is rare and therefore unworthy of concern. Recent examples show why prevention remains vital.

In New Jersey, Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) disclosed last month that a software error at the Motor Vehicle Commission improperly registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens between June 2023 and June 2024. About 400 of them cast ballots. The Trump administration believes the number may be much higher.

In North Carolina, authorities previously charged 19 foreign nationals with voting unlawfully in the 2016 elections. In Philadelphia, an illegal immigrant was arrested after allegedly voting in several federal elections.

None of those cases proves that noncitizen voting determines every election. They do prove, at a minimum, that registration systems make mistakes and that ineligible people sometimes vote. One can only imagine the depth of election fraud a DOGE-style investigation into all 50 states’ practices would uncover.

The most revealing feature of the opposition is its refusal to separate legitimate access concerns from the basic question of eligibility. Lawmakers can provide free identification, mobile enrollment services, and reasonable procedures for citizens who lack standard documents while still requiring proof that applicants are citizens.

That would expand lawful access and protect lawful votes at the same time.

Instead, critics invoke the ugliest chapters of American history to shut down discussion. They treat any identity or citizenship requirement as presumptively racist and imply that minority voters are uniquely incapable of complying with ordinary rules.

Americans of every race deserve elections in which every lawful vote counts and every unlawful vote is excluded. Proof of identity and citizenship is not an attack on democracy. It is the minimum a democracy owes its citizens.

Election reform cannot proceed honestly while racial demagoguery substitutes for argument. The people using Jim Crow as a shield against neutral safeguards should be shunned, not indulged.

​Election fraud, Election reform, Jim crow, Kamala harris, Noncitizen voting, Philadelphia, Save america act, Stacey abrams, Zohran mamdani, Opinion & analysis 

In a recent appearance on Michelle Obama’s podcast, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson explained that she refuses to do anything that might appear biased.

“When I get invitations to do things, I always have them screened by the legal office, the public information office, just to make sure that there are no ethical conflicts, that it’s not a fundraiser. You know, there are lots of limits on what judges can do,” Jackson told Obama.

“And I try to be very, very mindful and scrupulous with respect to that because, as you say, our obligation is to be unbiased in our approach. And so, you have to then navigate all the sources that could make for an appearance of partiality, which you want to avoid,” she continued.

“So, there are lots of things that I end up not accepting for that reason,” she added.

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales can’t help but point out the glaring issue with her statement.

“It’s just that you’re on Michelle Obama’s podcast,” Gonzales comments.

“I’m just going to say, nothing says impartial and unbiased like appearing on Michelle Obama’s podcast. Like what?” Gonzales asks.

But Jackson isn’t the only one Gonzales is tired of hearing from, as Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) recently made a “wild claim about DEI.”

“When they decided to go after quote, unquote ‘DEI,’ black women, the most educated demographic in this country, somehow ended up the most unemployed out of everyone,” Crockett said.

“So, black women are the most educated demographic in this country,” Gonzales comments. “I think we need a fact check here.”

According to the Emerald Pages, 56.7% of Asian women hold bachelor’s degrees, making them the most educated in the country. Following closely behind them are white women at 52.9%.

Meanwhile, only 29.3% of black women have bachelor’s degrees.

“I don’t know where you’re getting your information,” Gonzales says. “Once again, I’m very uncomfortable with the way they keep passing out these law degrees like candy to all of these people who seem to be dumber than a box of rocks.”

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​Jasmine crockett, Kentaji brown jackson, Michelle obama, Sara gonzales, Supreme court, Black women, Dei, Blazetv show