The race to build the infrastructure powering artificial intelligence is accelerating at breakneck speed, but BlazeTV host Steve Deace warns that the public is being asked to accept sweeping changes without meaningful scrutiny.

“There’s a real sense that this stuff has just kind of gone from zero to 60 like that,” he explains. “Like why do we have to do all this like right now, right? And you know, we’re all realizing now the aftermath of ‘we have to shut the country down right now. It’s the worst thing right now. You don’t want to kill Grandma right now.’”

“And now, you know, we’re seeing the evidence of how much of that was a lie from the very beginning. So anticipate moving forward that an instant crisis that needs to be solved right now that no one knew about 10 minutes ago is going to be met with wide swaths of suspicion,” he continues.

However, there is a nuanced discussion to be had on data centers.

“Two things can be true at once, right? We certainly shouldn’t be taking people’s land in order to put up a monstrosity that almost none of the people in that community will then ultimately get a job to work at. At the same token, we need data,” Deace says, noting that the government simply needs to “pause and listen to the people.”

“Hear what they have to say. Make your case to the people. I would not just pause. I would pause for a purpose. And it would be a purpose of we’re going to have a national conversation about this,” he adds.

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​Artificial intelligence, Crisis, Infrastructure, Steve deace, Government, Data centers, Blazetv show 

Iconic movie star Tim Curry died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 80, according to his longtime publicist.

Curry is best known for his flamboyant performance in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” from 1975.

‘I like playing the more curious corners of the human mind and human behavior.’

He also gained fame for his humorous role as the butler in the movie version of the board game “Clue” from 1985 and as the evil clown in the first television series version of Steven King’s “It.”

Timothy James Curry was born on April 19, 1946, in the rural village of Grappenhall in Cheshire, Britain.

After graduating from the University of Birmingham with a dual degree in English and drama, he met Richard O’Brien while performing on a tour of “Hair.”

Curry played the lead role in O’Brien’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show” play, a musical spoof of horror and science-fiction films. The play was developed into a movie after being brought to Los Angeles, California.

The movie version of the play was initially a flop when it was released, but has since skyrocketed into cult-film status. Fans developed an audience participation guide for the movie, and it continues to be screened at midnight showings on Halloween throughout the country.

RELATED: Dolly Parton is dead at age 80

Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage/Getty Images

“‘Rocky Horror,’ wrote Los Angeles Times writer Danny Sullivan, “is more a performance than a movie, because during screenings, art imitates art.”

Curry released rock music records and became known for numerous roles in television shows and movies. He was nominated twice for the Laurence Olivier Award and was nominated three times for a Broadway Tony Award. In 1991 he won a daytime Emmy Award for his role in the animated show “Peter Pan & the Pirates.”

Curry had recently curbed his public appearances after suffering a debilitating stroke in 2012 that left him wheelchair-bound.

He continued to work as a voice actor until his death.

“I like playing the more curious corners of the human mind and human behavior,” he said, “partly because they’re a tad more interesting.”

He never married and had no children.

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​Los angeles, Celebrity deaths, Hollywood, Human interest 

A Rutgers University research dean has been accused of filming “upskirt” videos, according to authorities.

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport and the Division of Criminal Justice on Tuesday announced that 51-year-old Joshua Kohut of Cranbury was arrested for “allegedly recording ‘upskirt’ videos while working at Rutgers University.”

‘An invasion of privacy like this is not just disturbing, it is also a criminal act.’

Kohut, who is employed as the dean of research at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, was charged with fourth-degree invasion of privacy.

A fourth-degree invasion of privacy conviction has a maximum prison sentence of up to 18 months and a fine of up to $10,000.

The Daily Mail reported that Kohut was released on bail.

The attorney general said a search warrant was executed Monday following an investigation.

Law enforcement seized five devices belonging to Kohut, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The DA’s statement indicated that “one of the seized devices was found to contain ‘upskirt’ videos of another individual’s undergarment-clad intimate parts.”

“The defendant is alleged to have used his mobile phone to record ‘upskirt’ videos without his victim’s knowledge,” Davenport stated. “An invasion of privacy like this is not just disturbing, it is also a criminal act. We will prosecute accordingly.”

Officials did not say if the victim is involved with Rutgers, NJ.com reported.

The New York Post noted, “However, the criminal complaint indicates that Kohut and the victim may have known each other in some capacity.”

The criminal complaint stated that an incident occurred in New Brunswick, home to Rutgers University’s New Brunswick regional campus, where the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences is located.

Rutgers told the New York Post that Kohut has been placed on paid administrative leave after being informed of the “extremely disturbing charges.”

The school added, “The research dean is also banned from campus pending the outcome of an investigation.”

RELATED: VIDEO: ‘Heroic’ teen girl fights off sex predator just after he used twisted ruse in assault of 66-year-old woman, police say

Rutgers University appointed Kohut to the position of School of Environmental and Biological Sciences Dean of Research/New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station Director of Research on Jan. 1, 2025.

Laura Lawson, executive dean and executive director, SEBS/NJAES, said in the January 2025 announcement: “Josh came to Rutgers more than 27 years ago as a graduate student and has experienced the university in many capacities: student, staff, faculty, and administrator.”

The statement continued, “His teaching responsibilities include contributing to first-year courses for students interested in Marine and Coastal Science research through the Oceanography House learning community and a research focused class that is currently undertaking an undergraduate student-led project to conduct the first circumnavigation of an autonomous underwater robot around the world.”

The official Rutgers University website says of Kohut: “His research explores the use of ocean observing technologies — radar, sensors, gliders, etc. — to model ocean systems, enabling multidisciplinary process studies of the dynamics of the coastal ocean.”

Kohut’s biography on the official Rutgers University website states, “I am involved in many research and education programs that range in scope from storm intensity, offshore wind, and local water quality monitoring off the NJ coast; regional fisheries along the U.S. east coast; and environmental studies of polar ecosystems in the coastal waters surrounding Antarctica.”

Open Payrolls — a nationwide public salary database — stated of Kohut: “One of the most recent records in 2025 lists a job of Sr Assoc Dir-Njaes/Dir Coop Re and a pay of $196,533.91.”

The Daily Mail said Kohut’s wife, Courtney Kohut — an assistant director at Princeton University — declined to comment on the charges against her husband.

The attorney general’s office urged anyone who may have been a victim of Kohut to contact Lt. Jon Norcia at the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety at 609-780-5449.

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​Upskirt videos, Rutgers university, Invasion of privacy, Arrest, New jersey, Dean, Crime 

Target is once again at the center of a culture-war firestorm after apologizing for a children’s Halloween clown costume that resembles blackface and 19-century minstrel shows.

While Target immediately pulled their “Kids’ Glows Under Blacklight Circus Clown Halloween Costume,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock isn’t convinced that it wasn’t an inside job.

“Who’s that outfit for? Who’s wearing that outfit? Is there any demand? Would anybody even know what they’re looking at?” Whitlock asks.

“Someone within Target wants DEI to return. So it’s not the CEO. It’s not the board. Or maybe it is a board member, who knows, but someone high up in Target wants DEI to return. Trust me, they have some LGBTQ soldiers and some BLM soldiers within Target high up who are irate,” he continues.

“Someone is orchestrating a hoax against Target from within Target,” he adds.

However, Dre Baldwin disagrees with Whitlock.

“I think that’s too much of an extrapolation,” he argues.

“I think this is just a Halloween costume. Somebody saw it. Someone within the racial grievance industry saw it. They found that picture to compare it to and said, ‘Hey, here’s racism.’ … People who work in the racial grievance industry, as I call them, race hustlers, they go looking around for stuff like this because it gets a certain group of people excited,” he explains.

“It can lead to job offers, opportunities, etc. … but I don’t think this was manufactured from within Target. I think it’s just a costume,” he continues, adding, “Somebody decided to see something in it that wasn’t there.”

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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​Blackface, Costume, Dre baldwin, Hoax, Jason whitlock, Target, Racism, Dei, Blazetv show 

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) amped up his rhetoric against President Donald Trump and his White House ballroom in a speech at a national monument.

Krasner, who won office thanks to a massive donation by left-wing financier George Soros, called the president a “pain in the ass” on Tuesday and vowed to blow up the ballroom.

‘The man himself is the embodiment of hate. He is the embodiment of ignorance. He is the embodiment of depriving people of their vote and their education.’

The DA was speaking at the 24th annual Commiseration at the President’s House, a National Park monument and the site of a bitter feud between the city and Trump over an exhibit on slavery.

“There is a beautiful time coming. This memorial will be here!” said Krasner.

“But let me tell you what will not be here. There will not be a ballroom. There will not be a ballroom.”

He also claimed that Trump would not prevail on putting his name onto the Kennedy Center for the Arts.

“In about 10 or 15 years, we are all going to be sitting here with smiles on our faces,” he continued.

“And I’m going to have a paperweight sitting on my desk. And do you know what that paperweight’s going to be? It’s going to be a piece of the ballroom after we all blow it up, that’s what it’s gonna be.”

He went on to say pieces of the Trump’s White House ballroom would be sold to the public in order to pay for the demolition.

Krasner also referred to the president as a “pain in the ass” before an audience member called Trump the devil.

“The man himself is the embodiment of hate. He is the embodiment of ignorance. He is the embodiment of depriving people of their vote and their education. That’s who he is.”

Krasner also agreed that there was “some evidence” that the president is the devil.

RELATED: Philly DA warns Trump on election poll watchers: ‘Break the law… I’ve got something for you.’

The dispute over a slavery exhibit at the national monument led to a court feud between city officials and the Trump administration. A federal court sided with the president in June, but activists have said they will continue the legal fight.

Soros donated nearly $1.7 million to Krasner’s campaign coffers in 2017, and the liberal DA’s actions in office have spurred condemnation and anger.

In January Krasner vowed to “hunt down” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who break the law, and when a mass shooting took the lives of three people in his city, he blamed the National Rifle Association.

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​George soros, White house ballroom, Larry krasner, Donald trump, Politics 

A historic lawsuit spanning the United States and its territories ended abruptly this week, and its terms will make major changes to how children use social media.

The lawsuit brought forth by 29 states accused Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta platforms of knowingly being addictive and harmful to young users.

‘This framework will only work if all our peers join us.’

The case has been in trial since August 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and it only took about a week for Zuckerberg and co. to come to an agreement with the accusing parties.

On Wednesday morning, a settlement was announced that will have Meta paying up to $18 billion over 10 years, while implementing new child safety protocols on its platforms, Variety reported.

Social media overhaul

New rules include a “hard cap” on daily time limits for children, totaling a combined two-hour daily limit across Instagram and Facebook, with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use.

Children will be blocked from accessing Meta platforms from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m., in addition to limited school-time access, with push notifications blocked for children between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. during the school year on weekdays.

Age “assurance” measures were described as being “robust,” while Meta promised more parental control, safeguards against bullying, and limitations on harmful content.

The catch — and it’s a big one — is that the usage limits are planned for just five years. At the same time, Meta said that it will drop its allowed usage to only 60 minutes for 10 years if Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms.

The settlement payments also depend on other social platforms adopting similar policies. About 70% of the money will be allocated to participating states over the 10-year period, but the remaining 30% will only be released if YouTube and TikTok implement a one-hour daily limit, the night mode policy, and age assurance measures.

As well, YouTube and TikTok must each pay an amount that matches the 30% sum figure, Variety reported.

RELATED: Federal agents wanted to search his phone — now they say the trick he used to stop them is a crime

David GRAY/AFP/Getty Images

The lawsuit was led by California AG Rob Bonta, with the settlement garnering his state between $1.5 and $2.1 billion, if approved.

Let the spin begin

“Today, we have secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of a difference for children and their families,” Bonta said in a statement. “Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms — and will do it within months.”

According to Reuters, Meta denied wrongdoing in the settlement, which absolves it of accusations that its platforms are designed to have addictive features and knowingly exposed children to mental harms, among other claims.

Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney said publicly that the new framework “will empower parents to easily manage how their children access our platforms.”

“This framework will only work if all our peers join us,” Mahoney added.

“Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to implement this new framework, right away. As a parent, I’m proud of both the work Meta has done to protect kids historically, and of this new groundbreaking agreement. But its success depends on all other social media platforms following Meta’s lead,” he concluded.

RELATED: RIP your nostalgia — the top owner of kids’ TV shows is giving its characters a high-tech makeover

Enrico Fabian/The Washington Post/Getty Images

In a statement provided to Blaze News, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said that the settlement is “one step [in] Big Tech’s reckoning” for the harms it has enabled against children.

Executive Director Haley McNamara said the settlement is “a crucial step to hold Meta accountable for protecting children, and we commend the state attorneys general for carrying these cases forward.”

“Attention must now turn to Congress to establish a foundation for Big Tech companies like Meta to follow when it comes to protecting children online,” McNamara added.

Meta expects to accrue around $10 billion in legal expenses its third quarter of 2026.

As noted by Georgia’s Office of the Attorney General, the case included 52 attorneys generals across 47 states (excluding Florida, New Mexico, and Texas) and the jurisdictions of Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

There’s a catch

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier explained in a post on X why his state did not join the settlement. Uthmeier called the payouts “peanuts” that are inequal to the “profound harms” Meta’s features have inflicted on kids.

“A slap on the wrist for a trillion-dollar corp that’ll pay more to lawyers than to the states. We’ll see them at trial,” the Florida AG said.

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​Social media, Mark zuckerberg, Facebook, Instagram, Meta, Tiktok, Snapchat, Youtube, Tech 

Last week, a major Silicon Valley company placed a bet on the future looking unrecognizable.

Stripe announced that it had agreed to acquire OpenRouter, a platform that gives developers one interface for accessing more than 400 AI models from more than 80 providers. OpenRouter can route requests based on price, speed, reliability, and the complexity of the task. Instead of tying everything to one AI provider, developers can pick the model that makes the most sense for the job.

Humanity has not handed civilization over to a superintelligence.

The online payments giant has grown fast. Reuters reported that OpenRouter now serves more than 10 million developers and companies and processes more than 10 trillion tokens per day.

And Stripe is, apparently, paying a fortune for it. Neither company disclosed the purchase price. Axios reported that the deal was worth more than $8 billion, mostly in stock, while Reuters cited a source who also put it at just over $8 billion. So $8 billion is not an official number, but Stripe has clearly agreed to make a multibillion-dollar bet on the plumbing that connects businesses to AI models.

Why the enormous outlay? Not just because of the usual calculations of expected income and revenue. Stripe is gambling on a whole new world.

Rolling the dice

The company told investors that the beginning of this year marked the “singularity,” according to an investor letter obtained by Axios.

Stripe is not using the loaded term exactly the way science fiction writers traditionally have. Theirs is not a claim that some superintelligent machine woke up on New Year’s Day and left humanity in the dust. Stripe means something closer to an economic turning point, a moment when “thinking” machines have started changing old patterns fast enough that businesses need to operate differently going forward.

CEO Patrick Collison had already been talking this way months before the investor letter surfaced. At Stripe Sessions on April 29, Collison opened his keynote by calling it “day 119 of the singularity.” The next day, during a conversation with investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Collison explicitly put the starting date at January 1.

Stripe thinks it can see the change in its own numbers. The company says it powers more than 5 million businesses, and businesses running on Stripe generated $1.9 trillion in total payment volume in 2025, up 34% from the previous year. It also has plenty of exposure to the AI boom. Stripe says 88% of the 2026 Forbes AI 50 use its infrastructure.

According to the investor letter reported by Axios, Stripe revenue grew 41% year over year during the first half of 2026, while free cash flow increased 43%. And now Stripe is putting serious money behind its theory.

RELATED: Is this shadowy startup to blame for Silicon Valley’s scariest cyberattacks?

Jorm Sangsorn/Getty Images

The bet fits neatly with Stripe’s existing business. Stripe already sits between businesses and money, helping companies process payments, fight fraud, improve authorization rates, bill customers, and figure out how money should move. OpenRouter does something similar with AI usage.

AI companies may send millions of requests to different models, each with different capabilities, speeds, and prices. Using an expensive model for every task can burn cash. Using a cheap model for everything can produce lousy results. OpenRouter helps decide where those requests should go.

“Tokens are the central currency for companies building with AI,” Collison said in Stripe’s acquisition announcement. Currency is doing a little work there. Tokens are units of data processed by AI models, not actual money. But model usage can be one of the biggest expenses for a company building an AI product, and picking the right model for each request can directly affect whether the thing makes money.

Stripe wants to be in the middle of that too.

The ultimate hedge?

The deal also assumes there will not be one AI model that wins everything. OpenRouter is built for a world where businesses use several models and switch among them depending on the job. One may be better at coding. Another may be cheaper. Another may be faster. Another may handle a particular kind of reasoning better. If companies really do end up juggling models that way, routing all that traffic becomes a pretty good business.

None of this means the technological singularity has arrived in the traditional sense. Humanity has not handed civilization over to a superintelligence, and January 1 did not feel like some obvious dividing line for most people. Stripe’s claim is less dramatic than the name. It thinks AI has crossed from interesting new technology into something that is starting to change how businesses are created, how they operate, what they spend money on, and how they make money.

Maybe calling that “the” singularity is another instance of Silicon Valley getting carried away with itself. But Stripe has now agreed to spend somewhere around $8 billion, betting that the change underneath the hype is real. And when they bet, few expect them to miss.

​Artificial intelligence, Tech 

President Donald Trump threw his weight behind Mike Mazzei in Oklahoma’s GOP gubernatorial primary runoff, which evidently helped the former state senator over the finish line on Tuesday.

While the president’s backing certainly had much to do with the politics and character of Mazzei — whom former Oklahoma U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, now Trump’s Department of Homeland Security secretary, and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders had also endorsed — it appears to have also had much to do with the politics and character of Mazzei’s unsuccessful opponent, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond.

‘This is what Drummond, and his equally Liberal wife, Wendy, supported at levels that are shameful.’

A week ahead of the runoff primary election, the president explained his issues with Drummond. Trump called him a “FAKE Republican, who donated to SLEEPY Joe Biden, and the totally corrupt and anti-American ‘Lincoln Project,’ which is now in shambles because of their views on Open Borders, Men playing in Women’s Sports, and Transgender Mutilization of your Children.”

Federal Election Commission records show that a $1,000 donation was made in Drummond’s name to the Biden for President committee in August 2020. Matthew Parker, the chairman of the state AG’s doomed gubernatorial campaign, claimed, however, that the contribution was made by Drummond’s wife, Wendy, the Frontier reported.

According to a Sept. 4, 2020, email obtained by the Frontier, Wendy Drummond requested that ActBlue change the name on the contribution to hers. The Biden committee reportedly refunded Gentner Drummond the full amount four days later.

In a previous statement to Blaze News, Parker said: “The Biden contribution lie has been debunked repeatedly. Gentner Drummond gave nothing to Joe Biden. In fact, Gentner was one of President Trump’s largest Oklahoma donors. Repeating a lie doesn’t make it true.”

RELATED: GOP Oklahoma governor candidate wants to stop voter ID and invites Dems to help — campaign says the clips are deceptive

Win McNamee/Getty Images

In September 2020, Wendy Drummond also donated $1,000 to the Lincoln Project, a group founded by George Conway, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson to “stem the damage [Trump] and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution, and the American character.”

The Lincoln Project staged a white supremacy rally, bankrolled efforts to torpedo Trump-aligned Republicans, and churned out pro-Kamala Harris content, including the “Be a Man, Vote for a Woman” ad. The group largely imploded after its co-founder John Weaver was accused by over 20 young men of predatory sexual misconduct.

Trump noted further in his takedown, “This is what Drummond, and his equally Liberal wife, Wendy, supported at levels that are shameful and, frankly, that makes them both Radical Left Dumocrats.”

In addition to faulting Drummond for blocking a proposed aluminum plant in Oklahoma, Trump noted that Drummond “stated publicly he had ‘no opinion'” on Trump’s 2021 impeachment and that Drummond “even SUED to BLOCK a religious based charter school strongly supported by my Administration — Very troubling for Educational Freedom, and an outright attack on Christianity!”

While it was clear from the post that Trump already had ample cause to champion Mazzei over Drummond in the Republican runoff, audio recording of Drummond’s commentary about voter ID may have helped convince those still uncertain about his real political outlook.

In the audio recording, Drummond can be heard calling on Democrats and independents to help kill a pair of ballot questions that showed up on the Aug. 25 ballot. One of those questions would “require proof of identity to vote in any election authorized by law and conducted by a county election board or the State Election Board.”

“We have to vote ‘no’ on both state questions,” Drummond said in the recording.

Parker previously told Blaze News that the clips had been “stripped of context and selectively edited to manufacture a false narrative.”

Drummond noted on Tuesday that the runoff “election comes down to trust,” but evidently, not enough trust was on his side. With 99% of the ballots counted, Mazzei had 50.3% of the vote and Drummond had 49.7%.

The voter ID question also passed.

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​Gentner drummond, Lincoln project, Mike mazzei, Oklahoma, Federal election commission, Donald trump, Politics 

The WNBA’s Chicago Sky is taking Enes Kanter Freedom to task while once again avoiding the actual issue on everyone’s mind.

Freedom wore a T-shirt that read “WOMAN noun. adult human female” to the Chicago Sky vs. Indiana Fever game on Sunday, causing a stir that seemingly agitated one of the Sky players.

‘Most importantly, he took a step towards the court.’

After a whistle in the third quarter, 34-year-old point guard Natasha Cloud began yelling at Freedom, who stood up and raised his arms in the air while taking a step toward the court.

Cloud was irate as teammates ushered her away from the area, while Freedom was surrounded by security and subsequently ejected from the building.

According to Sky principal owner Michael Alter, Freedom’s presence near the court wasn’t just a form of protest; it was tantamount to a threat.

“[Kanter Freedom] has demonstrated to us unequivocally that he has the potential to be a threat,” Alter said while speaking to local Chicago media.

“That he is not able to control himself to the extent where we can be comfortable that he may [not] step towards the court again and towards the players.”

Alter continued, saying the team has decided to ban him from Wintrust Arena in Chicago indefinitely.

“So that is the basis for which we will not permit him into the building until such time as he can prove otherwise.”

RELATED: WNBA star has mid-game meltdown at former NBA player wearing pro-women shirt: ‘I think it triggered her’

Michael Reaves/Getty Images

The 6′-10″ former NBA player had told Fox News that the he had exchanged text messages with Chicago general manager Jeff Pagliocca before the game to give him a heads-up that he planned to attend.

Freedom said he told the GM he had no plans to disrupt the event and received the reply, “Enjoy the game.”

Alter called Freedom’s framing of that exchange into question, ESPN reported, telling media members that Pagliocca only said, “Appreciate the text,” and did not tell Freedom to enjoy the game or otherwise insinuate that the team was happy to have him.

“It was pretty clear to us that his purpose of coming here was trying to be provocative and just see how much attention he could get and stir up,” Alter said.

Alter went on to repeatedly suggest that Freedom is a potential security threat that was quelled by security.

“That all changed when he made a decision to stand up from his seat again, on the court, put his arms out, point a finger at the player on the court, Natasha Cloud,” the owner said. “And most importantly, he took a step towards the court. That changed everything, and he went from being a fan … to being a potential threat. And that is why the security acted as quickly and swiftly, very smoothly, as they did.”

RELATED: Former congressman sends warning to WNBA over blocking male player: Get ready for court

Michael Reaves/Getty Images

Alter, a commercial real estate developer, rejected Freedom’s recent assertion that because he “did not step over the baseline,” he was not breaking any rules.

As if “that’s some magical threshold,” Alter said. “One reason he didn’t cross the baseline was because he was prevented from doing so. But regardless of that, the security people’s job is not to wait until a threat intensifies. It’s to avoid the threat from happening when [a] perceived threat occurs, and that’s exactly what they did.”

The owner further boasted that security “didn’t wait” to see how far Freedom got.

Freedom has not made public comment since the ban was announced on Tuesday night.

Freedom and the Chicago Sky did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

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​Wnba, Basketball, Enes kanter freedom, Chicago sky, Sports 

A first-of-its-kind legal challenge seeking to block New York City Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s city-run grocery-store initiative has been filed by a coalition representing hundreds of immigrant-owned bodegas and grocers.

The Multicultural Business Coalition filed two separate lawsuits Monday in New York State Supreme Court seeking to derail Mamdani’s plan for five city-run grocery stores, which the group argues would place small, minority-owned markets at an unfair competitive disadvantage.

‘Many minority members of the MBC cannot compete with the municipal grocery stores, and therefore, will be put out of business.’

The legal action comes after weeks of attempts to resolve the dispute outside court and follows the city’s announcement that the city-run grocery stores would sell items — including fresh produce, meat, seafood, and “20 other essential items like cheese, milk, and bread” — at 30% below market rates.

The first lawsuit, a class-action civil rights complaint, alleges the program violates New York Civil Rights Laws and the Equal Protection Clause of the New York State Constitution. The MBC contends the city has “unduly discriminated against” minority-owned grocers by subsidizing grocery stores that can offer discounts private businesses cannot match, thereby denying them equal protection.

The second lawsuit seeks to block the stores from operating unless the city conducts what the coalition says are necessary studies and analyses of their economic impact. The MBC claims there is “no existing evidence” that officials undertook “any studies and/or any serious analysis” of how the competition would affect existing businesses.

RELATED: Immigrant business owners revolt against Mamdani’s ‘Soviet’-style grocery plan

In the filing, the coalition asserts that “many minority members of the MBC cannot compete with the municipal grocery stores, and therefore, will be put out of business.”

“The respondents’ running of five municipal grocery stores is arbitrary and capricious, in bad faith, and exceeds the scope of municipal authority,” the MBC added.

Mark Jaffe, the group’s general counsel and president of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, argued the city is setting small grocers up to fail by forcing them to compete against the city-run stores.

“You cannot expect hardworking small business owners to compete with a supermarket that isn’t going to pay rent, won’t have to pay an electric bill, and won’t have to buy their products at full price,” Jaffe told CNN. “They cannot possibly compete because no one will be subsidizing them.”

When asked about the lawsuits during an unrelated press conference in Queens on Monday, Mamdani said he was “confident both in the legality of this, that it will stand up in court, and in the importance of delivering it.”

“We are talking about a reflection of a cost-of-living crisis that has seen grocery prices increase by about 30% over the last few years, and we’re also talking about delivering five city-run grocery stores in a city of 8.5 million people that has more than a thousand grocery stores,” the mayor responded.

Mamdani also pointed to Essex Street Market and Moore Street Market, two existing public markets directly administered by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, arguing that the model has not had a negative impact on surrounding businesses. They have been in operation since the 1940s, along with La Marqueta starting earlier, and were established under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

RELATED: Socialist Mamdani says city-run grocery stores will undercut supermarkets by 30%

Adam Gray/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Founded earlier this year, the MBC represents roughly 65 business organizations, with strong representation in the New York-New Jersey region, spanning Hispanic, Asian, Caribbean, African, Middle Eastern, Jewish, and South Asian communities.

To address concerns that the initiative could undercut privately owned stores in neighboring areas, Mamdani said the city-run grocery stores would not sell cigarettes, alcohol, lottery tickets, or hot food — items that typically generate some of the highest profit margins for bodegas and convenience stores.

“My grandfather opened up one of the first bodegas in the late 1960s when East Harlem was burning and the A&Ps and Waldbaums were leaving,” said MBC Chairman Frank Garcia.

“He established the first Latino Grocery Association to protect the rights of immigrant store owners. I am proud to be following up in his tradition because what Mayor Mamdani is doing is disgracing his memory.”

As currently filed, the MBC itself is the only named plaintiff in the lawsuits, though the coalition has said it plans to add individual grocery store owners as plaintiffs later this week.

The first of the five publicly owned grocery stores is anticipated to open in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx by the end of 2027, with the remaining four storefronts slated to be operational by the end of Mamdani’s four-year term, including one in East Harlem.

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​Bronx, Grocery prices, Mayor zohran mamdani, New york city, Politics 

A Florida female allegedly tried breaking into a Leesburg home before dawn Tuesday, and the homeowner warned her that he was armed — and even fired a shot through his door — but the homeowner told police she just wouldn’t go away.

Police responded to the residence in the 1600 block of Crest Avenue after reports of a female trying to break into a home, WESH-TV reported.

The female then reached through the broken window in an attempt to open the door from the inside, the station said.

The homeowner told police he repeatedly ordered the woman to leave the property and warned her that he was armed, the station said.

Police told WESH that the female continued trying to gain entry, and the homeowner fired a shot from his handgun through the door, which shattered a window in the door.

The female then reached through the broken window in an attempt to open the door from the inside, the station said.

With that, the homeowner fired a second time, striking the female, police told WESH, adding that she was pronounced dead at the scene.

The station said the shooting took place shortly before 5 a.m.

RELATED: Florida crook accused of ditching stolen car, hiding from cops in home’s garage. But homeowner has a gun.

According to WOFL-TV, details about the relationship between the homeowner and the female have not yet been released, and officials have also not shared the female’s name or age.

Police are investigating the incident and working with the State Attorney’s Office to determine if any criminal charges are appropriate, WESH said.

A spokesperson with the State Attorney’s Office told WESH the review could take a few weeks or a few months, depending on evidence and information available.

Those with information about the incident are encouraged to contact police at 352-787-2121, WESH added.

Leesburg is about 50 minutes northwest of Orlando.

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​Home invasion, Florida, Fatal shooting, Homeowner shoots intruder, Self-defense, Guns, Gun rights, Crime, Second amendment 

Caregiving has taught me to ask a simple question before making a consequential decision: “Is this healthy?” Will this solve today’s problem by consuming what we may need tomorrow? Does it respect the resources entrusted to me?

After 40 years as a caregiver, I have learned that money, time, strength, and even goodwill are finite. Wanting something does not make it wise, and good intentions do not eliminate consequences. A caregiver who confuses desire with capacity can hurt the very person he is trying to help.

We are financing today’s promises with tomorrow’s labor, then congratulating ourselves for our generosity.

Caring describes an intention. Stewardship requires an accounting. By that standard, Washington has failed spectacularly.

The United States has now crossed $40 trillion in national debt. The figure barely communicates anything. Forty trillion sounds like something a third-grader says when trying to name the biggest number in the world.

The national debt is what Washington has accumulated through borrowing. The annual deficit is how much more it spends than it collects each year. The debt is the hole. The deficit is how much deeper we dig it.

The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion federal deficit for fiscal year 2026. Congress has looked into a $40 trillion hole and concluded that what it needs is more digging.

Democrats invoke compassion to justify spending money the government does not have. Republicans campaign on fiscal restraint, win office, and then discover that their preferred spending somehow does not count. One party calls it caring. The other calls it necessary. Both send the bill to our children.

Each party points furiously at the other while passing the national credit card back and forth. Both help start the fire, then pass the collection plate while arguing over who bought the gasoline.

Now we enter election season, when, as Lloyd Christmas might say, the promises flow like the salmon of Capistrano. Candidates will tell us how deeply they care about families, seniors, veterans, national defense, and taxpayers. They will demonstrate their concern for one group by promising it money borrowed from all the others. A politician can always appear compassionate by promising benefits with other people’s money.

RELATED: It took 200 years to reach $1 trillion in national debt. 2026 said, ‘Hold my beer.’

Mandel NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Stewardship asks harder questions: How much will this cost? Who will pay for it? What has the existing program accomplished? What happens if your projections are wrong? If this is worth doing, why must we borrow the money?

Those are not cruel questions. They are the responsible ones.

Government cannot create resources by attaching the word “federal” to them. There is no government money. Government either collects money from today’s citizens or borrows against tomorrow’s taxpayers.

We are financing today’s promises with tomorrow’s labor, then congratulating ourselves for our generosity. There is nothing generous about giving away the money of someone not yet born. That is taxation without representation on a generational scale.

Stewardship does not require government to spend nothing or never incur debt. Families and nations face genuine emergencies. Caregivers understand that. Medical catastrophes rarely consult the household budget before arriving.

But caregivers often do without. Congress seems far more comfortable assigning sacrifice than accepting any. I have also learned that an emergency cannot become a permanent governing philosophy.

At my kitchen table, I cannot promise everything, spend without limit, blame someone else when the bills arrive, and then congratulate myself for caring. Yet Washington does just that.

RELATED: Scott Bessent is the secret weapon for Trump’s economic plan

Ludovic MARIN/AFP/Getty Images

Over the next few months, commercials filled with flags, farms, hard hats, classrooms, and concerned expressions will flood the airwaves. Recorded voices will warn that civilization depends upon our response before midnight.

As the onslaught escalates, keep asking one question: Is this candidate a good steward? Not only of public money, but of public trust, constitutional authority, and the extraordinary inheritance of self-government.

To our national shame, we may not be able to answer yes about many of them. That does not excuse us from voting. It makes our responsibility more sobering.

Ronald Reagan popularized “trust, but verify” when dealing with the Soviet Union. Washington has now given us $40 trillion reasons to apply it to our own government. We must choose the better steward and then hold that person accountable.

Campaign season is when politicians sell. Election Day is when we buy. Tax Day reminds us what we paid. Better hang on to the receipt.

After April 15, we begin to learn whether they can manage what they were so eager to sell.

Around my kitchen table, math eventually gets the final vote. At $40 trillion in debt, one wonders whether math even applies in the halls of Congress.

​National debt, 40 trillion, Washington, United states, Republicans, Fiscal conservatives, Government, Caregiving, Ronald reagan, Tax day, Congresss, Opinion & analysis 

It’s going to be harder for parents to say no to and even differentiate between AI and real life when it comes to entertaining their children.

Toddlers and kindergarteners are unlikely to hop onto an AI chatbot and ask about the weather or for the latest sports scores, but they are now more likely than ever to be driven into interactions with AI-driven content.

AI can enable ‘more continuous interaction between fans and brands.’

Thanks to a new entertainment-meets-tech deal, the slow walk to AI teaching the West’s children has quickened its pace.

WildBrain, the Canadian company known for having possibly the largest library of children’s television programming, has bought a tech company specializing in creating AI personalities.

That means that some of the most famous characters kids know and love will now be interacting with children in ways previously unimaginable. WildBrain, formerly DHX Media, bought the rights to “Teletubbies” back in 2013. It also owns characters like Strawberry Shortcake, Inspector Gadget, and the show “In the Night Garden.”

Personality AI is just a year-old company and focuses on creating interactive characters using generative AI and has already developed content for Amazon.

Under Amazon in 2025, Personality AI created “Hey Peppa Pig,” an interactive voice experience for kids that allowed them to speak with the character on Amazon’s Fire Kids Tablets, the Hollywood Reporter noted.

RELATED: Federal agents wanted to search his phone — now they say the trick he used to stop them is a crime

John Keeble/Getty Images

WildBrain and Personality AI will reportedly create interactive experiences with toys, apps, and different platforms using licensing agreements with different intellectual property owners.

In an attempt to address concerns over child interactions with artificial intelligence, Personality AI told the Hollywood Reporter that its AI products are not open-ended platforms and are tested to ensure safe interactions.

The deal itself is lucrative, with WildBrain paying roughly $11 million in cash along with one million shares, Variety reported.

There are also further incentives that can push the deal to upwards of almost $70 million.

RELATED: The $1 trillion social media addiction trial has begun — is the disorder real?

BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images

Personality AI will receive $2 million on the first anniversary of the deal’s closing and up to $56 million in cash based on meeting performance markers in the first three years of the deal, up to 2029.

WildBrain’s CEO Josh Scherba said that Personality AI can enable “more continuous interaction between fans and brands,” which would strengthen the company’s ability to “deliver end-to-end franchise solutions to partners.”

WildBrain did have a 41% stake in the “Peanuts” franchise but sold it in December 2025 to Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment Japan for $460 million.

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​Artificial intelligence, Teletubbies, Tablet, Tech, Kids