The Supreme Court opened its new term Monday with one of the most consequential climate cases in years. The justices do not have to decide whether climate change is real or whether carbon dioxide warms the planet. They face a more basic question: Who pays the tab?

In Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, Boulder County and the city of Boulder want ExxonMobil and Suncor to pay under Colorado law for local costs they attribute to global warming, while also alleging deceptive marketing. The Colorado Supreme Court allowed the claims to proceed.

A Colorado jury cannot set national climate policy, but a patchwork of state tort verdicts could begin to approximate one.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether federal law precludes them and whether it has jurisdiction to decide that question at this stage. The Trump administration is backing the companies.

This is not simply about two oil companies and one county. Boulder’s alleged injuries trace to greenhouse gases accumulated in a single global atmosphere over generations, from energy used in every state and nearly every country. Yet Colorado tort law would determine liability for selected companies.

Now multiply that. California could have one theory of damages, New York another, Hawaii a third. Nearly 60 state and local governments have brought similar cases. Different juries could impose different costs for alleged harms arising from the same global emissions pool. If every jurisdiction can pursue its own theory, climate tort begins to look less like compensation for a local injury and more like carbon pricing by litigation.

Boulder says it is applying ordinary state tort law, not regulating emissions. But whatever label courts use, large judgments against energy producers will not remain confined to the courthouse.

Then there is China. According to the Global Carbon Project, China accounts for roughly 32% of global fossil carbon dioxide emissions, compared with about 13% for the United States. A Colorado court cannot impose comparable liability on Chinese state-owned producers for emissions in China. That asymmetry is hard to ignore.

New York offers a warning. Its Climate Change Superfund Act sought $75 billion from fossil fuel companies for historical emissions. One federal judge struck it down on August 31; another did the same on September 23. Both relied on the Clean Air Act and the federal government’s authority over foreign affairs. Those cases involved a state statute rather than tort claims, but they show that the federalism problem is not theoretical.

RELATED: Finally! EPA poised to repeal some climate hysteria over carbon emissions

Iiievgeniy/Getty Images

The lawsuits also leave out the other side of the ledger. Fossil fuels underpin synthetic nitrogen fertilizer that supports food production for roughly half the world, along with medical plastics, sterile packaging, transportation, and dispatchable power. A tort case can price alleged harms without pricing those benefits. Successful climate lawsuits would still raise costs somewhere in the system.

Nor did weather disasters begin with today’s carbon dioxide levels. The 1900 Galveston hurricane killed an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people. In 1871, after a summer of drought, the Peshtigo fire burned more than a million acres and killed between 1,200 and 2,400 people. The Dust Bowl followed in the 1930s.

None of that settles the science. It shows something narrower: Disaster causation is not binary. A court asked to assign one company a share of a particular drought, fire, or flood must separate baseline risk from any incremental climate effect and then apportion responsibility across global emissions.

RELATED: Your new house comes with a green surcharge

Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Then comes the question of who pays. Energy demand is relatively inelastic in the short run. To the extent that judgments raise costs for American suppliers, some of those costs will be passed through at the pump, on heating and electricity bills, and in the price of goods. Lower-income households spend a larger share of their budgets on energy, so they feel increases most.

Congress can write national climate law. The EPA can regulate within the authority Congress gives it. Voters can hold both accountable. A Colorado jury cannot set national climate policy, but a patchwork of state tort verdicts could begin to approximate one.

The justices do not have to settle climate science. They have to decide whether state courts, one lawsuit at a time, may impose liability for a global emissions problem.

The answer should be no.

​Carbon dioxide, Climate hysteria, Exxonmobil, Federal law, Food production, Global warming, Greenhouse gases, Supreme court, Trump administration, Oil companies, Global carbon project, Cleanr air act, Opinion & analysis 

The mayor of Cocoa in Florida is asking for prayers and support for a mother in his community who suffered a horrific loss on Wednesday.

The mother called 911 after going to pick up her children, ages 5 and 7 years old, at their father’s home because it was her turn to have custody, according to the Cocoa Police Department.

‘The children’s mother, Olivia, tells me she wants everybody to know how much she loved these babies and how amazing they are.’

She found the two children and the father dead.

“The door was partially ajar, and she went inside and found all three deceased,” said Cocoa Police Chief Evander Collier IV.

Police believe the father killed the two children and then committed suicide.

The man was identified as 37-year-old Joseph Kyle Dingwall, and the two children were identified as Aria Dingwall and Remy Dingwall.

The man was captured on surveillance video pacing around, according to police.

Police also indicated that they had been called out to the home in 11 previous incidents.

A neighbor who lives across the street from the home told WESH-TV that he heard two gunshots the previous night but that he neglected to call police.

“Two gunshots. Two clear gunshots, and it was 12.20 a.m., midnight,” Marcos Garcia said.

WESH reported that it was unclear whether the gunshot noises came from the house.

The children’s mother spoke to WESH reporter Gail Paschall-Brown on Thursday.

RELATED: 6 people found dead in New York home, including 4 children — handwritten note points to grandmother, police say

“The children’s mother, Olivia, tells me she wants everybody to know how much she loved these babies and how amazing they are,” Paschall-Brown said.

“We ask that you continue to hold them up in prayer, show support and love because tough times don’t always last; tough people do,” Mayor Michael C. Blake said about the woman’s family.

WESH said it was the fourth apparent murder-suicide incident in southern Florida in the past few days.

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​Florida, Murder suicide, Child murder, Custody battle, Crime 

If you don’t buy it, they’re not selling it.

I say this all the time: Consumers have more power over the auto industry than they realize.

For many drivers, CarPlay isn’t an exciting feature anymore. It’s plumbing. You connect the phone and expect your stuff to appear.

Automakers can announce grand plans for the future. Engineers can decide they’ve come up with something better. Executives can explain why the technology they want to give us is really what we wanted all along. But eventually somebody has to walk into a dealership and buy the vehicle.

If it ain’t broke …

The best example of this at the moment is what’s going on with General Motors.

The company recently unveiled the completely redesigned user interface that will debut in the 2027 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra — GM’s highest-volume vehicles. There are new displays, Google Gemini, Google Maps, over-the-air updates, and plenty of other technology.

There’s also Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. And GM says it has integrated both of them more deeply than ever before in its light-duty pickups. CarPlay or Android Auto can occupy a large portion of the screen alongside native truck functions, such as trailering information and vehicle status.

Why is this notable? Because for the past several years, GM has been preparing drivers for a future without Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, making the case that its own built-in software could do the job better.

Best laid plans

In 2023, GM laid out an ambitious plan to move away from Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in favor of its own deeply integrated software, beginning with its new electric vehicles.

There were legitimate engineering reasons for the decision. A native system can communicate more directly with the vehicle, incorporating charging, range calculations, route planning, and other functions that aren’t simply being projected from a phone.

Then GM did something automakers don’t always do particularly well: It asked customers what they actually wanted.

The result was a dose of reality. GM took a sweeping software strategy and adjusted it to the way people actually use their cars.

Button pushing

GM says the development process for the new Silverado and Sierra interface included customer clinics and ongoing usability testing.

According to Sebastian Bauer, GM’s executive director of human interface design, drivers complained about “hunting for controls,” taking too many steps to accomplish basic tasks, and encountering interfaces that behaved inconsistently.

So GM simplified things.

Frequently used functions, such as climate controls and camera views, were made easier to reach. Key vehicle settings are one tap away. And — an increasingly welcome sentence in any new-car announcement — GM says physical controls remain available for customers who prefer tactile feedback.

And GM had another realization: Most drivers don’t want a new digital ecosystem. They’re perfectly happy with the one already on their phones.

“People really like CarPlay and Android Auto because they’re so user-centric,” GM product executive Mike Wahlstrom said.

That sounds obvious. Apparently it took some customer research to rediscover.

GM says drivers wanted the simplicity of the phone interfaces without losing fast access to the things the truck itself does. So the new system lets both co-exist instead of forcing drivers to bounce completely between one world and the other.

RELATED: What happened to the $20,000 used car?

Universal History Archive/Getty Images

Phone fans

Automakers increasingly think of cars as software platforms, and modern vehicles certainly need a lot of software. Cameras, driver-assistance systems, navigation, entertainment, climate controls, towing functions — all of it has to work together.

But there’s also money in controlling the dashboard.

Software creates opportunities for connected services, subscriptions, and a continuing relationship with the customer long after the vehicle leaves the dealership.

The trouble is that drivers already have their own way of doing all this — using the phone in their pocket.

Our contacts, music, podcasts, messages, maps, and apps already live there. For many drivers, CarPlay isn’t an exciting feature anymore. It’s plumbing. You connect the phone and expect your stuff to appear.

That makes replacing it a lot harder than simply designing a technically superior dashboard.

Consumer win

Not that GM is giving up on its native software. The new Silverado and Sierra use Google built-in alongside CarPlay and Android Auto. The same underlying interface architecture is designed to expand across electric, gasoline, and diesel vehicles, and GM plans to keep adding capabilities through software updates.

But look at what happened when GM designed the system for the trucks that sell in enormous numbers.

Drivers said they were tired of digging through menus. GM reduced the number of steps. Some wanted real controls. GM kept them. And customers liked Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. GM made them work better with the vehicle rather than asking buyers to choose.

GM can call that whatever it likes. I call it listening to the customer.

​Android auto, Apple carplay, Auto industry, Dashboard control, General motors, Lifestyle, Technology, Trucks, Automotive 

In a day where the New Age has wormed its way into the mainstream at unprecedented levels, many Christians find it difficult to discern between common cultural fads and spiritually dangerous practices. On this episode of “Live Free with Josh Howerton,” pastor and co-host Carlos Erazo joins fellow pastor Jonathan Pokluda to outline eight ways Christians unknowingly open the door to demonic forces.

The duo begin by discussing a “toy” that is extremely popular, especially around Halloween: Ouija boards.

On the surface, a Ouija board is just a board game where participants ask questions and receive answers, supposedly from the supernatural. The idea is that a spirit is spelling the message, but scientific skeptics argue that the answers are really just tiny, unnoticed muscle movements made by the players that steer the pointer toward letters the players already expected.

But even though Ouija boards are so mainstream they can be purchased off a Walmart shelf, Pokluda warns they are more spiritually dangerous than people realize.

“Ouija boards can work. I mean, you know, they can show you the name of some dead person. Saul consulted the witch of Endor and talked to Samuel or some demon pretending to be Samuel,” he says.

But it’s not just Satan worshippers and people with dark proclivities who try to contact the spirit realm, he notes. More often than not, it’s normal people seeking comfort.

“People will do weird stuff in grief. And so, they miss their father or their mother or their loved ones so badly, they’ll go to this medium to talk to them, and you’re talking to a demon pretending to be your loved one,” Pokluda warns.

“You’ve got to be careful because Satan is a legalist. He’s just looking for a legal right to mess with you. Demons are legalists. They’re looking for a legal right,” he continues. “They say, ‘All right, now I got you. Now I have the right to mess with you. Now I have the right to your children.’”

But Ouija boards are just the beginning of the long list of New Age pitfalls that can ensnare Christians.

“Crystals, manifesting, tarot cards, horoscopes, like none of that stuff is spiritually neutral. … The enemy will use any of that for permission to mess with you,” Pokluda says.

Erazo shares a personal story to illustrate the veracity of Pokluda’s warning. A couple of years ago when he and his wife were traveling in El Salvador, they started watching a performance at the beach resort where they were staying. Not long into the show, they both began noticing “elements of spirituality” in the dance choreography.

But even though both of them experienced “conviction” to stop watching, they lingered, hoping the spiritual nature of the performance would “calm down.”

“After a while we said, ‘Hey, this is too much; we’re leaving,’ but we felt the conviction that we should have left sooner,” Erazo shares.

“That night, my wife had a very vivid dream of being stabbed. … That same night, I had a dream of a sniper shooting at me,” he continues.

They both learned a valuable lesson that night: “Do not give the enemy a little space.”

To hear about more spiritual traps Christians fall into, watch the episode above.

“Live Free with Josh Howerton” launches today on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms. Join BlazeTV+ and start watching Josh today at blazetv.com/JOSH. Use promo code JOSH to get $20 off your subscription.

​Josh howerton, New age, Halloween, Blazetv show 

Brigitte Gabriel doesn’t speak about Islamic extremism as an observer. She speaks as someone who lived through it.

“I was born in what used to be the only majority Christian country in the Middle East: Lebanon. We are a republic exactly like the United States of America,” Gabriel tells BlazeTV host Nick Freitas.

“Unfortunately, we imported people into our country who did not share our values. And when they would say, ‘We hate you. We want to kill you. We want to transform your country,’ we didn’t believe them, because we thought, ‘We are the Paris of the Middle East, we’re the banking capital of the Middle East. No one can touch us,’” she says.

“Unfortunately, they were able to destroy the country using our democracy to topple our democracy, our open-mindedness, our fairness, our tolerance, our multiculturalism.”

In what she calls her 9/11, Islamists then blew up her home.

“I ended up in a hospital for two and a half months and later ended up living in a bomb shelter in an 8×10 room without electricity, without water, and very little food. And that’s where I lived, Nick, for the next seven years of my life,” she explains.

When she had to get water, she would “crawl under sniper’s bullets” because they were surrounded by Islamic snipers.

“I remember when I was 13 years old, a friend of ours stopped by, and he said, ‘Brigitte, I just want you to know we heard a lot of chatter on the radios, and we believe our town is going to be attacked tonight.’ And he said, ‘If I don’t see you tomorrow, I wish you a merciful death.’ And he left,” she recalls.

“And I remember, Nick, at the age of 13 years old, dressing in my Sunday best, my Easter dress, because I wanted to look pretty when I am dead, knowing that when they come to slaughter me, there would be no one to bury me,” she continues.

“And my parents said to me, they said, ‘When they come to slaughter us tonight, we will create a distraction. You’re a young child. We’re old people. We’ve lived a long life. We’ll create a distraction, and we just want you to run towards Israel and don’t look back,’” she adds.

However, her parents’ plan would never come to fruition, as Israel came to them instead.

“That’s the night when Israel came in physically, into Lebanon, and established the security zone and set up artillery bases around our towns to stop the Palestinians and Islamists from coming into our town,” she tells Freitas.

“And that’s how we stayed alive until 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, working with the Christians, helping the Christians take back their democracy and kicking out the Palestinians,” she continues.

“And that’s how I came out of the bomb shelter and [rebuilt] our lives,” she adds.

Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK for $20 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

​Islam, Extremists, Middle east, Lebanon, Israel, Nick freitas, Blazetv show, Brigitte gabriel 

A man shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Thursday in the Bronx cannot be deported unless officials obtain a court order, a judge ruled Friday.

Protests erupted after the man, later identified as a 28-year-old Dominican national, was shot during a traffic stop in New York City.

‘Our officers, using their training and believing that their life and the life of the partners and the general public were in danger, used their training and fired weapons.’

Oscar Belgal was shot after refusing to comply with lawful orders from ICE officers who were trying to arrest him, according to the Department of Homeland Security. He was hospitalized for treatment and later released.

U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken said in a two-page order that Belgal could not be deported without a court order while he challenged his detention.

He also said Belgal could not be transferred outside of the Southern or Eastern Districts of New York or the District of New Jersey without a court order.

Officers had tried to box in Belgal with their vehicles during the operation, but the man accelerated the car before one officer shot at him.

“Our officers, using their training and believing that their life and the life of the partners and the general public were in danger, used their training and fired weapons,” senior ICE official Marcos Charles said.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) has been condemning ICE in numerous statements since the shooting.

“I am angry tonight,” he wrote on social media. “Because today ICE shot a New Yorker. They shot a New Yorker while his five year old child was in the car. ICE makes this city less safe. We want them out. Now.”

RELATED: Man shot by ICE in the Bronx — Mamdani demands Trump end all operations in NYC

DHS said the migrant had been previously arrested for assault, robbery, drug possession, and weapons possession. He also had been convicted of grand larceny.

Anti-ICE critics were outraged to learn that there was a 5-year-old boy in the vehicle during the shooting. He was unharmed.

“Regardless of whether or not someone has a criminal history, it is not lawful and it is not OK to shoot a father in an afternoon with his son in the back seat,” said immigration attorney Harold Solis of Make the Road New York to reporters on Friday. “That is not how we resolve legal disputes in this country. We resolve them in buildings like these, in courtrooms.”

Oetken was appointed to the court by former President Barack Obama.

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​Immigration and customs enforcement, New york city mayor, Ice shooting, Obama judge, Politics