A 12-year-old girl – who was among eight family members gunned down in a Montana massacre by a relative – has been hailed as a “hero” for trying to save her loved ones.

A man shot and killed eight family members, including four children, as they gathered for dinner Sunday at a home near Billings, Montana. The mass shooting occurred weeks after his parents reportedly asked him to move out of their house.

‘There were many red flags, and many people spoke out. No one listened.’

Police said the suspect killed his grandmother, his parents, his younger sister, and four children.

NBC News reported that the gunman shot and killed the homeowners: 73-year-old Dana Smith and 72-year-old Barbara Smith.

Also killed in the mass shooting were their daughter, 39-year-old Megan Ireland-Ghekiere, as well as her two children and two stepchildren, 15-year-old Landon Ghekiere, 12-year-old Charlotte Ghekiere, 13-year-old Owen Ireland, and 7-year-old Chloe Ireland, according to authorities.

Evelyn Smith – who was Dana’s 92-year-old mother and described as the “family matriarch” by interim Yellowstone County Sheriff Kent O’Donnell — did not live at the house but was in attendance for the Sunday dinner and was among the victims killed.

Brad Ireland — the ex-husband of Megan Ireland-Ghekiere — told the Associated Press that the suspected shooter was 44-year-old Alan Smith.

Police confirmed that Smith was the older brother of Megan Ireland-Ghekiere.

Ireland said that Smith had lived in his parents’ home for years.

Ireland described Alan Smith as a “hermit,” and added, “No one knew what he did in there 24/7.”

Ireland noted that Smith’s parents asked him to move out a couple of weeks ago, but he returned to the home on Sunday and went on a shooting spree.

Police said Smith arrived at the home at approximately 5:49 p.m., just 11 minutes before neighbors reported hearing what they believed were fireworks.

At 6:02 p.m., police dispatchers received a call from a “female” inside the house, and deputies from the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the crime scene around 6:10 p.m., NBC News reported.

When law enforcement arrived at the home, they “confronted the suspect in the front yard, where he retreated into the house,” O’Donnell stated.

The Associated Press reported that officers arrived “just before the house was completely engulfed in flames.”

O’Donnell said more “gunshots were heard within the household” before the suspected shooter went to the rear of the property.

At about 6:13 p.m., a deputy “heard a final shot, which was broken away from the rest of the shots,” O’Donnell noted.

At around 6:22 p.m., officers “made entrance into the backyard,” where they discovered a male with a gunshot wound and began lifesaving measures on him, O’Donnell added.

“At this time, it wasn’t known that he was actually the suspect of all this,” O’Donnell continued. “He was just a person down, and law enforcement did what they’re trained to do. They got him out of the hot zone and provided what first aid they could.”

Police said the suspect was transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. Investigators confirmed that the suspect had suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Billings Fire Department Chief Matt Hoppel said firefighters battled the blaze until around 1 a.m. on Monday.

Authorities noted that it took so long to extinguish the fire because the house is located outside Billings city limits on county land, where fire hydrants are not mandatory.

O’Donnell said, “They had to haul in truckloads of water, set up a temporary tank and pump out of that tank. So the fire suppression portion of this was very, very difficult.”

Jeff Stovall, a spokesperson for the Billings Police Department, told the Associated Press that investigators also faced challenges due to the structural instability of the home, which had burned down to its foundation.

RELATED: ‘Evil feels unleashed’: Gut-wrenching reactions to horrific Michigan church shooting

Adam Ghekiere, the widower of Megan Ireland-Ghekiere, was not at the home during the attack but learned about the active shooting over a dispatch radio.

The Associated Press reported that Ghekiere called each family member before he “raced across town to the Smith home.”

The Smith house was on fire when Ghekiere arrived, according to the AP.

The Associated Press reported that two hours after arriving at the crime scene, Ghekiere learned his wife, two children, and two stepchildren had been killed.

Ghekiere said of his brother-in-law, “Monster isn’t even enough to describe what he did.”

Ghekiere stated that police later confirmed his daughter, Charlotte, made the 911 call from inside the residence.

Jennifer Mercer, a neighbor and family friend, told NBC News, “Charlotte was the hero that dialed 911. She tried to save her family.”

Mercer added, “She lived by her favorite quote, ‘I love you more.'”

According to CBS News, Brad Ireland said of Alan Smith, “There were many red flags, and many people spoke out. No one listened.”

O’Donnell said the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office “had not been called to this residence before, and we had not had any prior contact with the suspect.”

A search of criminal records in Montana and Washington by the Associated Press found that Alan Smith had never been arrested or charged with a crime.

A GoFundMe campaign launched on behalf of Landon Ghekiere and Charlotte Ghekiere raised nearly $95,000 as of Friday morning.

The crowdfunding listing reads:

Landon was just 15 years old and preparing to begin his sophomore year at Senior High School. He was a loving, caring young man who was always willing to lend a hand to his family and neighbors. He was looking forward to getting his driver’s license this week and was a patient, protective, and loving big brother.

Charlotte was 12 and preparing to begin seventh grade. Funny, precocious, and adorable—with just the right amount of stubborn—Charlotte had an angelic smile and loved posing for pictures. She especially loved exploring the world around her, turning over rocks to look for bugs. Oh, how she loved her bugs!

A separate GoFundMe campaign to help support Adam Ghekiere has raised nearly $130,000.

Ghekiere said, “We are so grateful for the prayers, the love, the support that we’re getting from the nation.”

Authorities are still piecing together an official motive for the tragic mass shooting.

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​News, Mass shooting, Montana, Crime, Politics 

My mom wouldn’t let me watch Monty Python when I was growing up in the ’80s. The British comedy troupe was a little too crass for her taste.

So it wasn’t until later in life that I watched their 1983 feature “The Meaning of Life,” a collection of outrageous sketches lampooning everything from birth to death. One of the 1983 film’s most grotesque bits was “Live Organ Transplants.”

For decades, we have chipped away at the principle that every human being possesses inherent dignity regardless of age, health, consciousness, independence, or usefulness.

Two men in lab coats arrive at the home of an unsuspecting organ donor and ask for his liver. The man points out the obvious: He is still alive. In fact, he is using his liver.

No matter. He signed an organ donor card.

When he protests that the card applies only in the event of death, the response is pure Monty Python: Nobody who has had his liver removed by them has ever survived!

That joke isn’t funny anymore

The scene works because it’s absurd. No civilized society would harvest vital organs from a living person. More than four decades later, the sketch is considerably less funny.

Anthony Thomas “T.J.” Hoover II suffered a drug overdose and was taken to a Kentucky hospital in 2021. His family agreed to organ donation after believing he would not recover.

Then Hoover began showing signs of life.

According to subsequent reporting and federal investigations, Hoover cried, moved his body, and shook his head as preparations for organ procurement continued. Doctors ultimately refused to proceed, and Hoover survived.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began the process of decertifying Network for Hope, the organ procurement organization whose predecessor was involved in Hoover’s case.

Federal investigators reviewed 351 cases in which donations had been authorized but later canceled. They identified concerning features in 103. In 73 cases, patients exhibited neurological signs that should have made them ineligible for donation. Network for Hope disputes the findings and is appealing.

Dead certain

Kentucky lawmakers responded with House Bill 510, signed into law in April. It requires a “pause” in organ procurement when questions arise about a patient’s neurological status or other indications of life.

Think about that.

We’ve reached the point where state law must explicitly ensure that organ procurement stops when there is evidence the donor may not actually be dead.

Monty Python couldn’t have written it better.

Let’s be clear: I support organ donation. Donating organs after death can be a profoundly generous act that saves lives. Precisely because it is so noble, the public must have absolute confidence that a donor’s life is protected until death has actually occurred.

The deeper issue is how our culture views vulnerable human life.

Inherent dignity

For decades, we have chipped away at the principle that every human being possesses inherent dignity regardless of age, health, consciousness, independence, or usefulness.

Abortion tells us that the right to life can depend upon whether an unborn child is wanted.

Doctor-assisted suicide extends that mentality to the sick and disabled, where suffering can become not merely something to alleviate but a reason to help someone die.

Consider 26-year-old Australian Annaliese Holland, who suffers from autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy, a devastating illness that has left her in constant pain and dependent on intravenous nutrition. Holland has been approved for voluntary assisted dying and has chosen a date to end her life, though she has kept that date private.

Much of the coverage has treated Holland’s decision with solemn approval, framing her planned death as an understandable — even empowering — exercise of personal choice.

But Holland deserves compassion, not termination. That is precisely the point: When someone is suffering terribly, our response should be to surround that person with care — not offer death as the solution.

RELATED: ‘Threats will not stop us’: Lila Rose’s pro-life group tells radicals to pound sand after legal threat over calling abortion ‘killing’

L/R: Fotopress/Getty Images; Ian Waldie/Getty Images

What Teresa knew

Mother Teresa offered a radically different answer.

She spent her life among those the world found easiest to overlook: the abandoned, diseased, disabled, and dying.

In her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, she described taking in a man found dying in the street, his body partly eaten by maggots. After being washed and cared for, he told her that he had lived like an animal in the street but was going to die “like an angel,” loved and cared for.

That was Mother Teresa’s answer to suffering.

She didn’t calculate whether someone’s life was still worth living. She was convinced that the person before her possessed infinite worth simply because he was human.

The saintly nun understood an essential distinction modern medicine must never lose: There is a vast moral difference between allowing a person to die naturally and deliberately causing that person’s death.

Once human dignity becomes conditional — dependent upon health, independence, consciousness, or perceived quality of life — the boundaries protecting all of us begin to erode.

A culture that accepts ending a human life because that life is judged no longer worth living should not be surprised when other calculations about the value and usefulness of human beings creep into medicine.

Human dignity is inherent. Life is valuable precisely because it is human. Our Creator has granted that dignity, and we have no authority to withdraw it.

Monty Python once imagined the unthinkable for laughs.

When reality begins catching up with satire, it is time to ask whether we still believe every human life is worth protecting.

Thanks for the life lesson, Mom.

​Assisted suicide, Lifestyle, Monty python, Mother teresa, Organ donation, Organ transplants, Human dignity, Pro life, Medical ethics, Culture, Abortion, Faith 

Authorities in Hamilton, Ontario, a city on the western tip of what is now being called Lake America, are desperate to prevent Canadian nationalists and international remigration activists from holding a conference.

Despite the ongoing public-private campaign to shut them up and drive them out of town, the Dominion Society of Canada is holding its ground and remains committed to holding its sold-out DomCon 2026 on Saturday.

‘They could not stop us.’

The weeks-long “anti-hate” campaign to prevent the conference from happening largely relies on claims from a report issued by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, a leftist organization chaired by Sue Gardner. Gardner is a liberal who previously served as executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation and as head of Canadian state media’s English-language website.

CAHN — which plays the Southern Poverty Law Center’s game of painting critics of mass migration, gender ideology, and LGBT extremism with the same brush as bona fide neo-Nazis — characterizes the DSC as a “white nationalist organization that uses propaganda and political campaigning to promote mass deportations on the basis of race, ethnicity, and religion.”

The DSC alternatively refers to itself as a “nonpartisan advocacy group dedicated to promoting Canadian identity, heritage, and nationalism.”

The organization is critical of multiculturalism and contends that “a Canadian is not anyone who simply arrives, fills out a form, and collects benefits.” Instead, the group states that “Canadians are descendants of the brave pioneers who built this country” and that “Canada was uniquely forged through cooperation with our First Nations peoples.”

RELATED: Diversity is our strength? Britain has to remind migrants: Don’t rape kids

DAVID BOILY/AFP/Getty Image

The group has drawn the ire of leftists for raising concerns about “replacement migration” and advocating for a total moratorium on immigration as well as mass deportations.

Daniel Tyrie, the founder and chairman of the DSC, told Blaze News, “Demographic change is the most pressing issue facing Canada and the Western world and yet our politicians and media refuse to address it. We built the Dominion Society and are hosting DOMCON26 to raise awareness and discuss the most important policy solution of our lifetimes: remigration.”

At the beginning of the month, the taxpayer-funded Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Center issued a guide for local businesses aimed at shutting down events held by so-called extremist groups.

The center, which noted that the DSC was planning to hold its conference in the area, called on “residents, businesses, institutions, and elected leaders to stand together in rejecting hate.”

B’nai Brith Canada was among the groups that joined the censorship campaign, calling on federal officials to block “foreign extremists from entering the country to attend” the conference. The conference originally had Martin Sellner, the Austrian founder of the Remigration Institute, and Charlie Downes, a spokesman for Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, scheduled to speak.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the freedoms of conscience, religion, thought, expression, various media of communication, peaceful assembly, and association, but police and political officials have proven more than willing to help shut down the DSC and its event.

“There is no place for hate and white supremacy in Hamilton,” Pakistani-born Aslam Rana, the member of parliament for Hamilton Center, said in an official release. “This conference, and the organization hosting it, represent a racist and extremist ideology masquerading as a nationalist movement. I unequivocally condemn this event and the hateful ideology behind it.”

Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath, the socialist who unsuccessfully ran for premier of Ontario four times, said in a statement to Blaze News, “I stand firmly and reject hateful, hurtful rhetoric and racist and discriminatory activities of all kinds. The City of Hamilton will not allow this conference to be held in any of our facilities and will continue to encourage privately owned and operated venues to do the same.”

Horwath, who sent concern-mongering letters about the event to local businesses, added that she has shared her concerns about the event with the Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Center and Hamilton Police Service.

The Hamilton Police Service, which did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment, stated online, “The messaging associated with DomCon is divisive and exclusionary and can negatively impact the sense of safety and belonging within our community. We have heard those concerns from members of the community and take them seriously.”

The police made no secret that it has encouraged “venues to consider the impact this event and its messaging may have on the broader community when making decisions about hosting it.”

After noting that a previous DSC booking had been canceled on Thursday, police implored residents to call their snitch line with any information regarding a potential alternate venue booking.

When Jason Willett of Wiretap Media called the snitch line and pressed Hamilton police about whether they were infringing upon Charter freedoms, an officer responded, “We’re not infringing, we’re not telling venues that they’re not to book. We’re just making venues aware of who they are booking with.”

RELATED: ‘No American flags’: Calls for remigration intensify after latest Muslim demonstration in Dearborn, Michigan

Remigration protest in Toronto, Canada. Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty Images.

Canadian-based lawyer Eva Chipiuk noted, “If citizens are lawfully gathering, talking to one another, expressing political views, and engaging with their fellow citizens, that is not something for the police to be ‘policing.’ And when police solicit tips from the public about citizens engaged in otherwise lawful political expression and peaceful gathering, we should be asking some very serious questions.”

“A free society requires citizens who are free to speak, gather, disagree, and participate without being treated like suspects for doing so.”

Josh Dehaas, interim litigation director with the Canadian Constitution Foundation, noted, “Charter rights belong to all Canadians, not just those whose speech or ideas the police or mayor agree with.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s office did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Andrew Lawton, a Conservative member of the House of Commons, spoke out, however, stating, “I have significant issues with the Dominion Society but I am unaware of any criminal allegations against them or any credible suspicion their conference would be illegal. It is not for police to target venues who may wish to rent space out to a group who is breaking no laws.”

“The establishment is doing everything they can to stop this event, because they know if people learn about our ideas they will catch on like wildfire,” DSC Chairman Daniel Tyrie told Blaze News. “Local politicians and government-funded NGOs have smeared us. The mainstream media has published hit piece after hit piece. … We have committed no crimes but now the police are going door to door pressing venues to cancel on us or refuse our booking in what can only be described as mafia-style intimidation tactics.”

“But they failed!” continued Tyrie. “Despite their best efforts, they could not stop us. DOMCON26 will proceed as planned. It will be a pivotal moment in Canada’s future.”

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​Remigration, Canada, Nazis, Politics 

A study of puberty blockers has finally seen the light of day, despite the best efforts of the activist physician behind it.

The former medical director of what was long the nation’s biggest child sex-rejection clinic suppressed the results of a taxpayer-funded study following 95 children who were given puberty blockers, expressing fear that the results might be used against her craft and ideology.

‘Every taxpayer should be furious that this research was encouraged and funded.’

The study, which was obtained by the Oversight Project and published on Thursday by the Daily Signal, is every bit as injurious to the gender ideologue’s preferred narrative as she apparently suspected.

Suppression

Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health, has made no secret of her radicalism.

This former medical director of the gender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles — a clinic that conducted medical procedures on minors and provided confused children with puberty blockers that could affect their future fertility — has, for instance, publicly argued against mandatory psychological assessments prior to sex-rejection mutilations; compared teen girls cutting off their healthy breasts to taking the SATs; and allegedly provided sex-rejection hormones to kids as young as 12 and referred little girls as young as 13 for double mastectomies.

A year prior to her clinic’s closure in July 2025 — the result of a crackdown by President Donald Trump and his administration — Olson-Kennedy revealed that she and her team had suppressed the results of the years-long study funded by the National Institutes of Health regarding “long-term outcomes of medical treatment for transgender youth.”

When asked why she was refusing to publish the data for which taxpayers paid at least $9.6 million, Olson-Kennedy “said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court,” reported the New York Times.

RELATED: ‘Our results shocked us’: HHS report confirms your darkest suspicions about trans ideology

Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images

“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” said Olson-Kennedy. “It has to be exactly on point, clear, and concise. And that takes time.”

The reason her findings were politically sensitive is because the study apparently showed that the so-called “gender-affirming care” promoted at the L.A. clinic and elsewhere was not all it was cracked up to be.

Amy Tishelman, a psychologist at Boston College who was one of the study’s original researchers, noted at the time, “I understand the fear about it being weaponized, but it’s really important to get the science out there.”

Tishelman acknowledged that the study had found that kids given puberty blockers — drugs that have long been used to chemically castrate sex offenders — did not see psychological improvements but suggested that “no change isn’t necessarily a negative finding.”

Despite the interest expressed by Tishelman and others in releasing the study, it remained under wraps.

Exposure

According to the newly released report of Olson-Kennedy’s study, titled “The Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth,” two years of puberty blockers didn’t make much of a difference for the mental health of the test subjects, one-quarter of whom went in reportedly having thoughts about suicide and 8% of whom previously attempted to kill themselves.

Activists and so-called experts previously claimed that puberty blockers amount to a “lifesaving option” and that “withholding puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria will very likely have serious adverse effects on the health and well-being of young people.” The Mayo Clinic still suggests on its website that puberty blockers might “improve mental well-being.”

Rather than “improve” the kids’ mental health, the study merely said of puberty blockers:

Over 2 years of medical intervention that started with blockers, mental health remained relatively stable and was on par with the population at large. These youth showed no worsening of their mental or emotional health and suicidality decreased from baseline to 24 months. Mean scores on mental health measures remain stable in a clinically non-significant range over two years.

In a previous progress report, Olson-Kennedy hypothesized to the National Institutes of Health that kids taking puberty blockers for two years would show “decreased symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms, self-injury, and suicidality, and increased body esteem and quality of life over time,” reported the Times.

Neal Cornett, the Oversight Project’s director of state litigation, said in a statement to Blaze News, “The final report confirms what anyone sensible would know — treating troubled youth with puberty blockers and hormone treatments does nothing to improve their mental health. What it does do is support a medical-industrial complex that must provide lifelong medical care to those who suffered from its harmful medical interventions. Every taxpayer should be furious that this research was encouraged and funded for the decade the country lost its collective mind.”

Cornett added, “Dr. Olson-Kennedy was no doubt concerned that the final report would call into question the rationale behind her research. That isn’t weaponization. It’s justifiable scrutiny of a practice the majority of Americans rightly oppose.”

While Olson-Kennedy’s study is undoubtedly a gut-punch for gender activists, major studies released in the U.S. and the U.K. have already made clear that puberty blockers are not worth the risk.

The Cass Review, an independent investigation into sex-rejection drugs and procedures that was commissioned by NHS England and published in 2024, concluded that:

the quality of previous studies suggesting that puberty blockers are beneficial in reducing mental distress and improving the well-being of gender-dysphoric youth is “poor”;the alternatively high-quality “University of York systematic review found no evidence that puberty blockers improve body image or dysphoria”;puberty blockers “may reduce psychological functioning”;most kids’ gender dysphoria appears to be “resolved by puberty”; and”brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by the use of puberty blockers.”

The Department of Health and Human Services’ exhaustive peer-reviewed 2025 report on pediatric treatments for “gender dysphoria” also highlighted numerous physical risks associated with puberty blockers including reduced bone mineral density, compromised skeletal development, infertility, and sexual dysfunction.

Olson-Kennedy could not immediately be reached for comment.

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​Johanna olson-kennedy, Transgender, Puberty blockers, Science, Study, National institutes of health, Donald trump, Politics 

Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley is not sympathetic to the surveillance state.

With evidence that would frighten any American, Hawley made an announcement on Wednesday that will affect thousands of U.S. neighborhoods.

‘The American people want to know who has access to their personal data and how.’

As license plate reading cameras spy from seemingly every corner of the United States, with some even hiding in traffic cones and barrels, Senator Hawley stated on Wednesday that Americans’ privacy rights do not stop when they get in their cars.

“Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church,” Hawley wrote on X.

With that, Hawley said he is opening an investigation into Flock, the manufacturer behind over an alleged 120,000 cameras across 49 states, a number consistent with license plate camera tracker DeFlock.

“Americans deserve answers,” Hawley added.

In letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley, Hawley demanded answers surrounding Flock’s safeguards for Americans’ data.

Noting that the company conducts “more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month,” Hawley said that “the overwhelming majority of the Americans captured in those records did nothing wrong.”

Then, Hawley listed some recent horrifying examples of abuse using Flock systems.

RELATED: This state’s citizens now oppose Flock cameras — despite agreeing they help police

Just days before Hawley sent the letter, a Missouri man was found to have engaged in “egregious misuse” of Flock’s “data system” by using it for personal reasons.

Two weeks prior, prosecutors charged a police officer in Milwaukee for allegedly searching the Flock system for his girlfriend’s license plate 124 times, along with her former boyfriend’s plate 55 times. He reportedly entered “investigation” as his justification each time.

Other examples cited by Hawley included a Florida woman spending 13 days in jail over eight possible felony counts after she was arrested through a Flock network search.

The charges were eventually dismissed when it was concluded that she was the wrong person.

Moreover, a California police department found that Flock misread license plates in 71% of its issued alerts, leading to the LAPD dropping its contract with the company.

RELATED: What the Flock? Knoxville mayor explains the dark truth about Flock cameras: ‘Not your grandma’s license plate readers’

Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Senator Hawley also said there was “uncertainty” around whether or not Flock can sell or use customer data.

“Flock’s $8.3 billion valuation comes with enormous pressure to find new commercial applications. Americans demand a full accounting for how their driver data is stored or sold.”

Hawley also said, “These camera networks harness artificial intelligence to pool what they capture into a national database that customers can search.”

“The American people want to know who has access to their personal data and how. This investigation will seek those answers,” the letter concluded.

As Blaze Media previously reported, there are also growing concerns about how the license plate readers can be enhanced to to capture any “unique signals” emitted from devices in cars.

The SignalTrace upgrade captures unique identifiers from cell phones, smart watches, Bluetooth devices, earbuds, and Wi-Fi signals and ultimately gives the ability to create a dossier on the driver and all his smart devices.

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​Flock camera, Josh hawley, Tech, Surveillance 

Some people in the public eye simply can’t help themselves.

Such is the case with veteran NFL play-by-play commentator Al Michaels, who took a moment to mock the president on Thursday night.

‘We think it is still called Lake Erie.’

Michaels was commentating for the Cleveland Browns vs. New England Patriots game on “Thursday Night Football,” a preseason broadcast for Amazon Prime, when he made a brief comment that ruffled some feathers.

Less than four minutes into the game, the broadcast was showing off the Cleveland skyline before a kickoff when Michaels commented on President Trump’s recent name change of Lake Ontario to Lake America.

“That is Lake Erie. We think it is still called Lake Erie,” Michaels remarked.

“We’re not quite sure at this point. But we’ll be by Lake ‘Something Like Ontario’ or whatever it’s going to be called by the time we get to Buffalo. Anyway, you know what I’m talking about,” Michaels chuckled.

“Some of us do,” replied co-commentator Kirk Herbstreit.

“Right! Read the news,” Michaels concluded.

RELATED: WNBA team bans Enes Kanter Freedom from arena with yet another insane claim: ‘That changed everything’

Fans seemed split on whether the remarks were necessary, with some getting in on the trolling nature of the name change.

“It’s Lake America, losers. Get it right,” one viewer wrote on X.

Another compared the 81-year-old broadcaster to President Joe Biden: “Al Michaels is only one step ahead of Joe Biden in the brain department.”

Others supported the veteran NFL voice, writing comments like, “Al Michaels comeback season. Top of his game!” and “Love it! Al Michaels calls it as he sees it.”

Some comments were more in the middle, with one X user quoting a post of the video to claim, “God I love broadcasting. You can say whatever you want!”

While Michaels is known for cracking jokes, he does not have a history of going rogue with political opinions.

RELATED: MAGA-haters mock Giants quarterback for getting laid out by massive hit

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

His most notable foray into such topics was during the kneeling fiasco of 2017 where Michaels, along with broadcasters Cris Collinsworth and Mike Tirico, began NBC’s “Football Night in America” broadcast with a discussion about Trump’s remarks on the subject, which included saying kneeling players should be fired.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired,'” Trump said at the time.

Michaels said that through his remarks, Trump had “galvanized” the league.

“People were beginning to listen to each other. It was calming down a little bit, and then a match got thrown into the gas tank,” Michaels claimed. “It’s inadvertently created a new level of unity.”

The Browns won on Thursday, 37-13.

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​Nfl, Football, Al michaels, President trump, Lake america, Sports 

Comedian Druski has NFL players fuming after a viral sketch portrayed a concussion-riddled football star spiraling.

In the skit, he plays an NFL player named Ray Price who gets a horrific concussion on the field, becomes violent, and even evades the cop in a O.J. Simpson-inspired chase — but this time it’s in a gold Ferrari.

“First off, people try to say Druski is not funny, and I find that ridiculous,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock comments. “Druski is hilarious.”

“I also find it uncomfortable that I find this so funny and I’m laughing at really inappropriate jokes, but the thing is hilarious,” he adds.

“He kind of nailed it,” Steve Kim agrees. “I think a lot of these comedic skits, if you’re really good at it, it’s a commentary on reality. Like parody is a lot to do with reality and you overblow it just to make an overall point.”

However, ex-NFL player T.J. Ward was among those who did not find it funny.

“In that skit … it was a couple funny moments, but overall, I’m going to put my sensitivity cap on like everyone else seems to do when it’s affecting them,” Ward said in response to the skit.

“These are life and death situations. And at the end of the day, it’s a life-taking disease. And I think CTE universally is the only disease that’s allowed to be made fun of, which is crazy. You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with cancer. You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with dementia. You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with AIDS,” he continued.

“You wouldn’t make fun of anyone with these diseases that are taking lives,” he added.

“I’m going to put my insensitivity cap on and just call that cap,” Whitlock comments.

“It’s a programming that he has accepted and that many people have accepted that everybody’s looking to be a victim,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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Flock Safety spent years selling license plate cameras faster than local officials could ask questions. Now cities are shutting them off. On Wednesday, Tempe, Arizona, shut off all 33 of its Flock license plate readers and announced that it would end its contract. The city won’t hire another company to replace them.

That wasn’t always the plan. On March 26, the Tempe City Council approved a trial of Axon’s Outpost plate readers. The free, 60-day pilot included three fixed cameras and was described at the time as a test of an alternative to Flock. Wednesday’s announcement went further. Councilman Bobby Nichols said Tempe needed to “stop looking for other ALPR providers.”

‘These cameras need to be deactivated immediately.’

So Tempe isn’t merely changing the logo on the pole. At least for now, it’s walking away from fixed plate readers altogether.

Tempe Mayor Corey Woods (D) acknowledged that the cameras helped police but said the potential for abuse was too great. “For Tempe, that means taking these cameras down,” Woods said.

That same day, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) launched a Senate investigation into Flock, demanding records from CEO Garrett Langley about data access, camera placement, retention, and sharing. Hawley gave the company until September 8 to respond.

“Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church,” Hawley wrote.

Hawley wasn’t alone. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the same day that he would soon introduce legislation to “stop Flock and AI mass surveillance.” Sanders warned that the network was pushing the country toward a surveillance state run for the profit of “AI oligarchs.”

Flock sold local police departments roadside cameras and connected them to a nationwide system capable of reconstructing where ordinary Americans drive. Most of the people entered into that system aren’t suspects. They’re going to work, church, school, the gun store, the doctor, or wherever else free people go without asking the government for permission.

Knox County may be next

In Tennessee, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office has operated Flock cameras since 2020 and now has 143 of them, according to reporting by the Knoxville News Sentinel. The department planned to install another 270 with state grant money.

County officials then started asking basic questions. Is there a valid contract? Who approved it? Where are the cameras? Who can search the data?

Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs (R) says the original agreement expired in 2024 and that there’s no valid service contract governing the current cameras. Records reviewed by county officials also showed the sheriff’s office repeatedly purchasing Flock equipment in batches priced just below the threshold that would have triggered mayoral review.

RELATED: When did we agree to be watched?

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“These cameras need to be deactivated immediately,” Commissioner Kim Frazier said during an August 24 meeting. “You don’t have an active agreement.”

Jacobs has told Flock that the county will not renew the deal even if the company maintains that it is valid. Existing cameras remain active for now, but installation of new ones has stopped. The County Commission is scheduled to vote August 31 on an ordinance regulating the cameras. A proposed amendment would order Flock’s equipment removed within 30 days, though its sponsor says final passage would require a second reading in September.

Knox County hasn’t pulled the plug. Yet. But the county installed 143 cameras before commissioners could get straight answers about whether the contract was valid, where the cameras had been placed, or who inside the sheriff’s office controlled them. That should bother even people who like the cameras.

The cancellations are piling up

By mid-August, the Associated Press reported that more than 50 agencies or jurisdictions had canceled, suspended, rejected, or deactivated a Flock system since the beginning of the year, according to a tracker maintained by the anti-Flock group DeFlock.

The day before Tempe’s announcement, the Asheville City Council voted 5-2 to terminate its Flock contract, remove the hardware, and stop employees from accessing or sharing the data.

In Missouri, the St. Charles County Police Department discontinued Flock and began terminating its contract after an audit found that a civilian employee had searched the system for a personal, non-law-enforcement purpose. The employee resigned after receiving notice of termination.

Arizona has become a particularly bad market for the company:

Chandler ended its Flock partnership after an audit found an unexplained anomaly in how an employee used the system.Cave Creek terminated its contract and removed its cameras after officials concluded that local privacy rules could not control a system designed for data sharing between agencies.Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple said the county won’t renew its contract when it expires in September because he has “serious Fourth Amendment concerns” about the technology.

The Josephine County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon canceled its contract and deactivated 10 cameras after residents objected on Fourth Amendment grounds. The sheriff’s office said the technology had helped solve crimes but conceded that much of the county was not willing to accept it.

In Massachusetts, Salem declined to renew its contract, citing insufficient protections for locally generated data. Salem plans to replace Flock with a system that keeps the data under local control, which is an improvement but hardly the end of automated plate tracking.

Stoughton, Wisconsin, shut the whole thing down. Its council unanimously terminated a two-year contract only months after the cameras were installed. The resolution called for shutting down and removing the cameras, deleting collected data, and barring the city from buying a replacement without a new public oversight process.

RELATED: Student accused of destroying Flock cameras — his community comes out to defend him

L-R: Monongalia County Sheriff’s Office press release; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Redmond, Washington, canceled its contract in a unanimous July vote and ended the city’s plate-reader program after deactivating the cameras months earlier. The LAPD stopped using Flock when its agreement expired, pending stronger terms for data ownership, privacy, security, and sharing. Officials left open the possibility of a new contract. Denver and Colorado’s Douglas County are replacing Flock with Axon.

Flock’s loss may be Axon’s gain

Axon has noticed the opportunity. CEO Rick Smith told investors that the company was seeing “a significant number of agencies” switch from other plate-reader systems to Axon. While Knox County is debating getting rid of its 143 Flock cameras, in January, the Knoxville City Council approved a $9.4 million expansion of the police department’s Axon contract. The package included plate readers along with additional body cameras, in-car cameras, and drones. The Knoxville Police Department now says it operates 19 fixed Axon plate readers and 30 mobile readers built into police dashcams. It keeps plate data for 30 days. Searches must be tied to an incident report number and are logged for auditing.

Those controls are better than a free-for-all. They don’t make the cameras stop recording innocent drivers.

Axon’s fixed Outpost cameras combine plate reading, vehicle identification, and live video. In July, the company also began rolling out cross-agency ALPR sharing. Axon’s version isn’t identical to Flock’s national network. Sharing is off by default, initiated by the agency that owns the data, and subject to offense categories and audit logs. But an agency can still let another department search its plate records.

Flock built the network first and the guardrails later

Flock now says it operates more than 120,000 cameras across roughly 6,000 communities. Together, they produce about 20 billion vehicle scans every month.

A Washington Post investigation found at least 50 officers who had been charged with or accused of misusing automated plate-reader systems, often to track current or former romantic partners.

One former Georgia police chief allegedly searched for his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter roughly 600 times. In Wisconsin, an officer allegedly searched plates connected to his ex-girlfriend and her partner 179 times, including checking whether she had visited an abortion clinic.

Flock’s CEO has said human misuse is inevitable and that the company’s job is to provide tools that catch it. In August, the company announced new safeguards that will make several previously optional controls mandatory by January 1. Law-enforcement customers will have to tie searches to case numbers, use software intended to flag abnormal search behavior, and review emergency overrides. Flock also shortened its standard retention period from 30 days to seven, though customers may configure it differently under their own laws and policies. The Associated Press has a useful summary of the changes.

Any check on abuse is better than none. But Flock added these rules only after its network was recording billions of vehicle movements every month. Local officials were sold a crime-fighting tool. What they got was access to a national location-search system. Its limits depended on company policy and department rules, plus the honesty of every employee handed a login.

There isn’t a clean partisan story here. Hawley and Sanders agree on very little, but both are now calling for federal action against Flock. Asheville, Tempe, and county sheriffs in Arizona and Oregon have reached similar conclusions for different reasons. A government camera network that records everyone by default and sorts out abuse afterward has the presumption backward.

Most of these towns never had a real debate until the cameras were already watching them. They should have.

​Tech, Flock, Surveillance, Privacy