The Florida Department of Transportation has ordered all Flock cameras and other license plate readers to be shut down by law enforcement agencies.

A release from the department said that the “recent exponential increase” in plate-reading devices forced the agency to intervene in order to preserve Floridians’ “sovereignty and quality of life.”

‘It’s really none of the government’s damn business if you’re doing that.’

A nationwide campaign has arisen by citizens accusing Flock cameras of violating their privacy rights by tracking their movements.

Supporters of the camera network say the data is invaluable to law enforcement investigations and privacy concerns are overwrought.

Among those opposed to the cameras is Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who recently criticized the technology over privacy concerns.

“They claim that the companies aren’t going to misuse it, but no one’s watching that,” the governor said in Jacksonville on Monday. “And I know you can make some money selling cameras, but you really can make a lot of money if you can sell people’s data, and that’s what the legislature is going to need to address.”

He cited some examples in which the tech was abused and residents’ privacy was violated.

“We know there was an officer in Florida who was using the LPR data to track, like, an ex-girlfriend or something like that,” he added. “I don’t think we had really strong penalties at all for that type of misuse.”

The Hernando County Sheriff’s Office indicated in a statement responding to the order that it was already in the process of dismantling the cameras.

RELATED: FIVE police officers FIRED and charged after allegedly abusing Flock system

“Prior to this state directive, the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office had already proactively initiated the removal of Flock ALPR cameras previously located along county-maintained rights-of-way,” read the sheriff’s office statement.

The removal did not apply to “approximately 20 privately owned and operated ALPR cameras” in the county, the statement added.

“You know, you want to get in your car, and you want to go to down to Buc-ee’s in Saint Augustine,” said DeSantis. “It’s really none of the government’s damn business if you’re doing that.”

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​Flock cameras, Florida, Law enforcement agencies, License plate readers, Privacy rights, Ron desantis, Politics 

Jelly rolls are meant to make people happy, not spout political messaging.

This might be why platinum-selling singer Jason DeFord, aka Jelly Roll, did not handle the backlash to his partisan jokes very well.

‘The American dream should be for everybody.’

Tears of a clown

Jelly Roll finished his week as the guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Thursday, with a near-20-minute monologue addressing the blowback from his jokes about President Donald Trump’s weight.

While DeFord’s jokes did not approach the realm of egregious — although he remarked that the president likely couldn’t see his penis — he was seemingly unprepared for the responses a spot on the obviously liberal talk show would garner.

Jelly Roll spent most of his time trying to convince the audience he is neither liberal nor conservative.

“Just because I watched a fight on TV doesn’t mean I support everything this administration does,” he said, referring to the UFC event at the White House. “Just like hosting Jimmy Kimmel’s show doesn’t mean I have all of Jimmy Kimmel’s politics. Sure, I lean left on some things, but like most folks, I’m pretty down the middle. I am a Christian. I am a country music singer. I’m a farmer. I’m a bow hunter.”

Then DeFord made fun of the comrades on staff at Kimmel, describing them as “communist Antifa friends” and the most talented group of “Chihuahua-hugging, oat-milk latte-loving lefties on God’s green Earth.”

It was from there that the 41-year-old made an impassioned and tear-filled speech about loving thy neighbor, with the message that dignity and compassion are not partisan issues. However, Jelly Roll’s bottom line came across as supportive of illegal immigration.

“Pain and healing knows no partisanship,” Jelly Roll said. “Hurting hearts are more important than poll numbers, and there are no boundaries or borders for broken families.”

After claiming “the American dream should be for everybody,” the singer appealed to Jesus’ teachings for how to treat a “neighbor.”

“There wasn’t an asterisk after neighbor. There wasn’t a political party exemption. It did not require us to know what country you were born in. There wasn’t a sentence afterward that said, ‘Unless you’re afraid of them.’ It just said, ‘Love your neighbor.'”

RELATED: Jimmy Kimmel has a plan to get Stephen Colbert back on late-night TV

Fair shake

In front of an awfully partisan audience, Jelly Roll felt the need to explain away the handshake he exchanged with the president at a UFC event in 2024.

The musician said he would “always” shake the POTUS’ hand when asked, noting that his father would have been “disappointed” had he not.

“I’m proud that I was able to shake the president of the United States’ hand. I’m also proud that I live in a country where I can make jokes about him,” the country artist added.

But Jelly Roll made sure to reiterate to Kimmel’s studio audience that he disagrees with the president more often than he agrees.

“Taking a picture with a political figure or anybody else for that matter doesn’t mean you agree or disagree with their policies or politics. More often than not I f**king don’t.”

RELATED: HEAD CASE: Kathy Griffin whines she’s real ‘victim’ of tacky Trump decapitation stunt

Randy Holmes/Disney/Getty Images

Both sides now

The emotional diatribe culminated in the Tennessee native describing his appreciation for free speech and, despite making his liberal leanings obvious, his disdain for both political parties.

“[I support] the same freedom of speech that both sides of the aisle claim they want until they hear something they don’t want to hear,” he added.

He then placed blame on “politicians and algorithms” for convincing the public that the “person across the street” is the reason life is hard, before adding:

“Our leaders on both sides of the aisle are doing an absolute s**t job of trying to bring us together, y’all.”

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​Jelly roll, Donald trump, Jimmy kimmel, Immigration, Entertainment 

“The End of Oak Street” — the sci-fi thriller starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor that follows a 1982 suburban family as their neighborhood is ripped through a wormhole into a dinosaur-filled prehistoric landscape — is garnering mixed reactions. While critics have been overwhelmingly positive in their feedback, audiences are conflicted, with some praising the spectacle as a fun, surprising throwback and others complaining about plot holes and pacing issues.

BlazeTV host Steve Deace falls into the critical camp, but his complaints have less to do with narrative gaps and uneven pacing and more to do with the “worldview” the film promotes.

On this episode of the “Steve Deace Show,” Deace gives his brutally honest review — spoilers included!

“We have got to talk about the worldview of this film, and since this is not, you know, some cinematic brilliance, I’m fine spoiling it,” says Deace.

His primary issue is the characters.

McGregor plays Greg Platt, a struggling suburban dad who’s secretly working as a pizza delivery driver. Hathaway, who plays his discontented wife, Denise, also has her secrets. Unbeknownst to everyone save her embittered widowed neighbor, she’s been writing a book — but it’s not just any book. It’s a semi-autobiographical novel about a woman who wants to leave her family.

Their daughter is Audry, a cosmology-obsessed lesbian who dreams of going to Cornell to study under Carl Sagan, who famously wrote, “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”

Deace finds this ironic since “[Sagan’s declaration] turned out to be, according to modern science, completely total science fiction.”

“Modern conventional science doesn’t believe that anymore [but] believes the universe actually had a beginning and has an end,” he notes.

The family’s younger son Brian has his own coming-of-age subplot. He has a crush on the new kid in the neighborhood — a black Catholic girl named Jeanette who, much to his dismay, has a crush on his sister, Audry.

“Can you see some of the seeds getting planted here?” Deace smirks.

When the dinosaurs come out and wreak havoc on the neighborhood, the family’s happy facade begins to crumble.

“Here’s what you find out. The dad actually lost his job, OK? But he is so emotionally bullied by the wife that he doesn’t have the balls to tell her he lost his job because he doesn’t want to take it from her anymore, so he’s day-drinking in the garage and delivering pizzas at night to help pay the bills,” says Deace.

Greg, he explains, sneaks into the basement one day and finds his wife’s secret book.

“It’s basically her feminist manifesto: Nobody understands me. I’m taken for granted as a woman. I give give give give give. The kids are ungrateful. The husband doesn’t love me and cherish me the way that I should. I’m a desperate housewife here, and I want to leave my family and go and find my inner child and discover myself,” Deace summarizes.

Add to that the overlapping crushes between Audry, Brian, and Jeanette, and it’s clear what the film is trying to say, he argues: “Everything in the suburbs is a lie.”

“Your Reagan ’80s thing is a lie. The past you want to go back to that you think was taken away from you never was there,” Deace continues.

“Underneath the surface, these women were taken advantage of and wanted to be freed by feminism, and the men were a bunch of wussies and wouldn’t provide or do their jobs … and you’re raising sons to be creepers, and the daughters want to expand to their lesbian fortunes, and they’re being also inhibited by the strident tyrannical standards of the suburbs.”

But eventually this undercurrent shifts.

“It’s girlbosses against dinosaurs until they go up against the Tyrannosaurus rex,” laughs Deace.

“Guess who leaps in to save them? … The dad! The dad that they all betrayed, they all looked down on, they all thought they were better than, that they all emasculated,” he answers.

“And in the process, he gets bitten in half by the Tyrannosaurus rex and sacrifices himself … and it’s at that moment now the family realizes what douchebags they’ve really been this entire time, and they just explode in appreciation and tragic sadness for the loss of the dad.”

The film concludes idyllically, with the Platts going back in time through the wormhole to save Greg and the rest of the slaughtered victims.

“The idyllic ending they all get to at the end is the very nuclear family they spent the entirety of the film deconstructing on the way there,” scoffs Deace. “What does this all mean? I have no idea.”

To hear more of his analysis and commentary, watch the video above.

Want more from Steve Deace?

To enjoy more of Steve’s take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Anne hathaway, Steve deace, Nuclear family, Movie review, Blazetv show