A motorist traveling over 100 miles per hour on New Year’s Eve apparently used a tactic you just don’t see every day to avoid identification — and while giving law enforcement the slip.

The California Highway Patrol in Dublin indicated that around 8:20 a.m. the driver of a black Chevrolet Camaro evaded a CHP officer on the westbound lanes of Interstate 580, west of Interstate 680. Dublin is about 40 minutes southeast of San Francisco.

‘Looks like y’all need faster cars.’

The officer observed the car “traveling at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour,” the CHP said, adding that it had a license plate that was “black with yellow or white writing.”

But the most eye-popping detail would seem to be the CHP’s assertion that “the driver was able to ‘black out’ or ‘turn off’ the plate.”

“Please, if you saw this and have information that will help us track down this vehicle, we would appreciate it!” the CHP implored readers.

RELATED: ‘Just crazy’: Thug throws frozen water balloon through car windshield, hits driver in face while he travels down highway

The Auto Wire had the following to say about the vehicular oddity:

The unusual tactic has raised questions about how the plates were altered. Authorities have not confirmed whether the Camaro was equipped with a digital license plate or a custom modification designed to obscure identification. Either possibility presents concerns for law enforcement, particularly if such technology or modifications are being used to avoid accountability during traffic violations or more serious crimes.

About 8,000 comments and counting have appeared under the CHP’s Facebook post about the unorthodox incident — and let’s just say law enforcement has not escaped a thorough roasting:

“Looks like y’all need faster cars,” one commenter wrote.”If you got gapped, you can just say that, bro,” another user offered before adding, “no shame here.””Props to the driver that got away,” another commenter noted while adding a laughing emoji.”He escaped because he was a better driver in a faster car at higher speeds than whatever random cop went after him,” another user said. “If by some miracle you do catch him, offer that guy a job.”

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​California highway patrol, Speeding, License plate, Weird news, Dublin, Disappearing license plate, License plate turned off, Driver at large, Crime 

Antitrust regulators claim to protect competition. Their decision to block Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot did the opposite. It helped drive an American robotics pioneer into bankruptcy last December and pushed it into the arms of a Chinese creditor.

Antitrust law is supposed to defend consumers and prevent monopoly abuse. In this case, regulators killed a deal that could have kept iRobot alive, preserved American jobs, and strengthened a U.S. company facing brutal Chinese competition. Instead, the collapse of the acquisition forced iRobot into a court-supervised restructuring in which Shenzhen Picea Robotics — its largest Chinese creditor and key supplier — will take the company’s equity and cancel roughly $264 million in debt.

Ultimately, the acquisition’s collapse pushed iRobot into a deal with its largest Chinese creditor.

iRobot began in 1990, founded by roboticists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company built military and space exploration products before it introduced the Roomba in 2002, the device that turned home robotics into a household category. For years, iRobot stood as a rare American success story in consumer robotics.

Then the market shifted. Chinese manufacturers poured in with cheaper models, tighter supply chains, and rapid iteration. iRobot’s share price peaked in 2021, then slid hard over the next year. The company sought a lifeline and found one in Amazon, which agreed to acquire iRobot for roughly $1.7 billion.

That deal made strategic sense. iRobot needed capital, scale, and distribution power to compete against Chinese rivals such as Roborock, Ecovacs, Dreame, and Xiaomi. Amazon could have provided all three. Consumers likely would have seen faster innovation, deeper device integration, and lower prices, while iRobot kept more of its footprint and engineering talent intact.

Regulators saw a different story. The European Commission objected on antitrust grounds and signaled it would block the acquisition. The commission argued the deal could restrict competition in robot vacuum cleaners by allowing Amazon to disadvantage rival products on its marketplace. American critics piled on, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who framed the acquisition as an attempt to buy out competition, along with privacy fears about Roomba’s mapping technology.

Facing regulatory opposition, Amazon and iRobot terminated the agreement in January 2024. Amazon’s general counsel, David Zapolsky, warned that the decision would deny consumers faster innovation and more competitive prices, while leaving iRobot weaker against foreign rivals operating under very different regulatory constraints.

The warnings proved accurate. After the deal collapsed, iRobot announced deep cost-cutting, including a 31% workforce reduction. The company shifted more production to Vietnam to compete on cost. Chinese brands continued to eat the market.

By December 2025, iRobot filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced a restructuring deal that hands control to Shenzhen Picea Robotics. According to iRobot’s own announcement, Picea will acquire the equity of the reorganized company through the court process and cancel about $264 million in debt.

RELATED: Why Trump must block Netflix’s Warner Bros. takeover

Photo by Mandel NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

That outcome should haunt every regulator who claimed to defend competition. Regulators blocked an American acquisition and ended up delivering a storied American company to a Chinese creditor. They did not preserve a competitor. They helped bury it.

The iRobot collapse exposes a central problem with modern antitrust enforcement: Officials often substitute fear-driven hypotheticals for real-world consequences. They imagine a future in which Amazon squeezes competitors and consumers pay more. They ignore the present in which Chinese firms gain market power, American companies lose ground, and U.S. workers pay the price.

Markets discipline failure quickly. Regulators rarely pay for their mistakes. They can block a deal, watch a company fall apart, and declare victory because they prevented a theoretical harm.

This case produced the opposite of the intended result. Regulators killed a merger that could have strengthened an American company against Chinese competition. They weakened competition in the robot vacuum market by removing one of the few U.S.-based pioneers from the field. They also shrank the number of meaningful paths forward for iRobot until only one remained: a takeover by the company’s Chinese lender and supplier.

Policymakers should learn the right lesson. Antitrust action should not operate as a reflex against size or success. Regulators should measure outcomes, not slogans. If officials claim they protect competition, they should not celebrate decisions that end in bankruptcy and foreign control.

​Irobot, Antitrust, China, Amazon, Regulations, Opinion & analysis, Roomba, Elizabeth warren, Competition 

Appearing at the “Zoom Ahead: AI for Tomorrow’s Leaders” virtual event from the White House on Friday, Melania Trump addressed the rapid advancement of AI technology, highlighting both its current capabilities and the potential risks and opportunities it may present in the future.

Thanking Zoom founder Eric Yuan for hosting the event, the first lady praised the company’s leadership in the tech space and connected the discussion to what she described as her broader “mission.”

Mrs. Trump said AI has expanded access to creative tools in ways that were previously unimaginable, allowing young people to explore fields such as film, fashion, art, and music.

“Your support directly advances my mission to prepare America’s next generation to use AI to enhance their education and ultimately their careers,” Mrs. Trump said.

She told the audience they were “fortunate” to be living in what she repeatedly described as “the age of imagination,” a new era shaped by artificial intelligence.

“The age of imagination is a new era, powered by artificial intelligence, where one’s curiosity can be satisfied almost magically in seconds,” she said.

RELATED: AI isn’t killing writers — it’s killing mediocre writing

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Mrs. Trump said AI has expanded access to creative tools in ways that were previously unimaginable, allowing young people to explore fields such as film, fashion, art, and music from their own homes.

“For the first time in history, the young girl dreaming of becoming a fashion designer and the young boy who wants to stand up his school animated superhero series can do so from their own home,” Trump said.

She emphasized that curiosity has always been central to human progress, pointing to writers, scientists, architects, and artists who challenged unanswered questions and the status quo.

“Every giant at some point in time questions the status quo,” she said. “Their singular vision pushes humanity in a new direction.”

She noted, however, that the power of the technology actually lies in the human “imagination.”

“Artificial intelligence provides all the tools needed to implement your creative vision today,” she said.

“But what do you need to start? You need to harness your imagination.”

She encouraged students and creators to focus on developing the ability to ask meaningful questions and to think critically beyond the information AI can provide.

RELATED: Can artificial intelligence help us want better, not just more?

Brooks Kraft/Getty Images

The first lady stressed that while AI can generate content, it cannot replace human purpose.

“Although artificial intelligence can generate images and information, only humans can generate meaning and purpose,” she said.

She concluded by urging the audience to treat AI as a tool rather than a shortcut, encouraging intellectual honesty and personal responsibility in how the technology is used.

“Use AI as a tool, but do not let it replace your personal intelligence,” Mrs. Trump said.

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​Politics, Melania trump, Trump, Ai, Artificial intelligence, Technology, Zoom 

From allegedly false claims about Stephen A. Smith’s basketball background to what Jason Whitlock calls a lack of basic sports knowledge and writing ability, the BlazeTV host argues Smith’s success isn’t accidental.

Rather, it’s the result of a system that rewards obedience over independent thinking, particularly among black men.

“Stephen A. Smith, as I have exposed to you all on this show — his background, his narrative, his story: It’s all a fabrication. He wasn’t a college basketball player at Winston-Salem State. He didn’t knock down 17 straight three-pointers and earn a scholarship at Winston-Salem State,” Whitlock begins.

“You’ve seen me expose all of that. You saw Stephen A. Smith get triggered by me exposing all of that. You saw this man snap and put on a 45-minute profanity-laced tirade because I explained to you all — I read his book. We’ve done the research. We’ve gone through all these different lies,” he continues.

Whitlock believes that Smith is nothing more than a “fraud” who is “unqualified for all the things he’s been given.”

“They take someone with very limited talent, give them positions and jobs and a platform that they can’t do on their own,” he says, noting that even as a sportswriter, Smith “wrote at like an eighth-grade level” and “doesn’t know or follow sports in a real way.”

“Claims to be a New York Knicks fan, doesn’t know who’s on the roster, thinks you can kick a field goal on third down — and if you miss it, you can re-kick it on fourth down. That’s who has been installed at the top of the sports media landscape,” Whitlock explains.

“This is all intentional,” he continues. “Black men who can think for themselves, who have some sort of intellectual evolution, need not apply for the clown show that is being run.”

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​Upload, Sharing, Camera phone, Video, Video phone, Free, Youtube.com, Fearless with jason whitlock, Fearless, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Stephen a smith, Winston salem state, Stephen a smith lies, Stephen a smith book, Jason whitlock vs stephen a smith 

Former Vice President Kamala Harris spent years fearmongering about so-called climate change. Her recent seaside acquisition suggests she may not have been as serious about the supposed threat as she previously let on.

During her first failed presidential campaign where she proposed the U.S. blow $10 trillion on tackling the professed problem, Harris wrote, “Our oceans are warming. Sea levels are rising. Pollution is threatening our air and water. Droughts are hurting our crops. Fires are burning our forests. Extreme weather is destroying our communities. We are poisoning the planet.”

‘To live in a coastal community is to live on the front lines of the climate crisis.’

Harris previously pushed legislation that would annually award $50 million in grants to various entities for the purposes of “carrying out climate-resilient living shoreline projects” and, in her words, “mitigat[ing] against sea level rise.”

When announcing in 2023 that the Biden-Harris administration was recommending $562 million in funding to make communities and the economy more resilient to the alleged climate change, Harris told a crowd at the University of Miami, “To live in a coastal community is to live on the front lines of the climate crisis.”

The Washington Free Beacon highlighted that the Biden-Harris administration also pushed a study the same year that claimed that “24%-75% of California’s beaches may become completely eroded” due to sea-level rises.

Despite Harris’ participation in the rising-sea hysteria that proved fellow Democrat Al Gore a poor prognosticator, she has reportedly purchased an $8.15 million oceanside mansion in Malibu, California.

RELATED: Al Gore wrong again: Study delivers good news for Arctic ice trends, bad news for climate hucksters

Photo by Roxanne McCann/Getty Images.

A Zillow listing for the 4,000 square foot, four-bedroom home indicates that the property has a pool, a hot tub, a sauna, a cold plunge, a professional gym, a landscaped water feature, a “private putting and chipping green with a bunker,” a guest house, and “breathtaking ocean, island, and city views.”

The property, which sold on Dec. 2, is located in Point Dume, an affluent neighborhood with private, gated beaches. According to the New York Post, the community is populated by Hollywood and Silicon Valley elites.

Harris, who is reportedly contemplating a third White House bid, did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Fortunately for Harris and contrary to her past claims about rising sea levels, a study published last year in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering indicated that the average sea level rise in 2020 was roughly 0.059 inches a year, which works out to about 6 inches per century.

One of the paper’s co-authors told the Post in September, “This is significantly lower than the 3 to 4 mm/year often reported by climate scientists in scientific literature and the media.”

Such a rate might explain why Al Gore’s 2006 prediction of a 20-foot rise in the global sea level “in the near future” has yet to manifest.

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​Climate, Climate change, Sea level rising, Climate alarmist, Alarmism, Sea level, California, Kamala, Kamala harris, Democrat, Radical, Marxist, Enviromarxist, Malibu 

At some point, Google went from “don’t be evil” to “never mind.” The evidence is in its latest, duplicitous, and deceptive set of control mechanisms over online commerce.

Google’s vision involves a Universal Commerce Protocol, which allows its AI to access retailer client histories on its customers (all without human acknowledgment or accountability). The Universal Commerce Protocol leverages its shopper data to monitor and cross-reference between retailers the habits of individuals and adjust prices based on the AI bot’s understanding/projection of the shopper’s financial, personal, and psychological situation.

What seems to be happening is that online retailers have taken the AI bait. They’ve been sold on the purchase, implementation, and reliance upon so-called AI agents, which are designed to handle all possible aspects of internet commerce. It feels inevitable even though it isn’t. Either way, it’s happening. Our internet experience, even now, is being massively overwritten to effect the least-human outcomes possible.

Its grabbing up of data is cloaked, misdirected, or buried under mountains of legalese or made intentionally difficult to ascertain.

The truth is there’s been negligible-to-nonexistent customer service for most big corporations for almost a decade. Lose a box with Fed Ex and try to get an English-speaking human on the phone if you doubt this assertion. The differences in the now-unfolding AI era are mainly going to come down to the fact that whereas once a human was involved somewhere in the online experience, the new era will be almost entirely bot-derived, bot-managed, and bot-determined.

According to Lindsay Owens, who breaks all this down in a viral X post, “As one Google exec explained, it allows retailers to ‘offer custom deals to specific shoppers.’ If you’ve granted consent or the agent identifies you via identity linking, Direct Offers uses your conversation to trigger specific offers. At first it might recognize you as a ‘high value’ customer and show you a 30% coupon instead of 10%, without having to extend the same thing to everybody. But Google says the plan is to use the agent’s persuasive power to encourage shoppers to ‘prioritize value over price.’ Put simply, not only does it want you to spend more, it targets you specifically as someone likely to agree to it.”

RELATED: Google has had access to your docs longer than you realize. Here’s how to kick it out.

Photo by Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images

For Google, which despite making everyone angry and churning out increasingly less impressive products for the last decade, the move from not evil to blithely diabolical is proved out insofar as all of its grabbing up of data is cloaked, misdirected, or buried under mountains of legalese or made intentionally difficult to ascertain. Legerdemain involving layering, shunting, enveloping, winding, and overly technical language is everywhere in the description of its Universal Protocol, and levels of fleecing the client heretofore unimaginable are now standard in the era of no responsibility or accountability corporate AI.

Owens, the executive director of Groundwork, a Washington, D.C.-based organization build to “change economic policy and narrative in order to build public power, break up concentrations of private power, and deliver true opportunity,” finishes her epic X thread with a stark conclusion. “By bundling Google ad targeting and conversational data with retailer history and third-party broker profiles, the Agent creates a perfect surveillance feedback loop. And Google isn’t the only one building wallet-seeking chatbot missiles.”

The ruthless logic of “line go up” has been coded into the machines we have come to depend upon, and resale of the data ensures the obliteration of privacy. Of course, we were warned innumerable times about this inevitability, but the shocking facts point to our complicity, or docility, with respect to even caring about the obliteration.

​Tech, Google, Online shopping 

The shooting death of Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has quickly become a rallying point in the broader political battle over immigration enforcement under the Trump administration.

It should also be a lesson for the rest of us to wait for all the facts before making judgments and especially to beware of media narratives that try to simplify complicated events.

When journalists and commentators repeat an unverified transcription as fact, they do more than simplify a complex event. They create a moral narrative that can endanger real people.

Videos of the shooting, which took place on January 7, have been widely circulated, including one taken by Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who fired the fatal shot. You would think that since the shooting, or the circumstances surrounding it, are on video, it would be easy to determine responsibility for Good’s death.

But instead, we have evidence once again that eyewitnesses — in this case all of us who have watched the videos — cannot be depended upon to get the story straight.

I am talking in particular about the near-universally repeated narrative that Good’s wife, Becca, shouted, “Drive, baby, drive!” in the split second before Good was killed. The phrase appears to have traveled with early write-ups of the Alpha News-distributed agent-perspective video, then hardened into “fact” as larger outlets repeated it. That goes for everyone from right-wing Just the News (“Drive, baby! Drive, drive!”) to left-wing CNN (the more common “Drive, baby, drive!”).

From the time I first read this representation, I began publicly questioning the interpretation by posting comments online. I’ve listened to the audio hundreds of times by now, and there is no way I can hear those words. Instead, I watch Becca Good hear an officer shout, “Get out of the f**king car” at her wife, try the passenger door handle and realize it is locked, and then recognize that Renee is preparing to accelerate. At that point, she screams either “Do not drive!” or more likely “Don’t drive!”

Not only do the words fit the audio pattern better, but they also make more sense as a response to the circumstances. Yet throughout the media, everyone repeats the “drive, baby, drive” narrative without any hesitation. I later heard commentator Megyn Kelly argue that Becca Good should be arrested — even suggesting felony liability — based on the assumption that she urged her wife to flee.

Kelly went so far as to say that Becca Good should be in custody now, but that claim depends entirely on a transcription that may not be accurate. What if the wife never even said, “drive, baby, drive” at all? What if it was all just a media invention?

It’s not like that has never happened before. Do you remember “hands up, don’t shoot”?

That was the media narrative to describe the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, policeman in 2014. The progressive left picked up the battle cry and accused Officer Darren Wilson of killing the teenager while he was in the act of surrender.

It wasn’t true, but it took weeks for the truth to come out — that Brown had approached Wilson in his patrol car and tried to wrestle the officer’s gun away from him. Shooting Brown was the only way for Wilson to protect himself and others. Yet because of the media narrative, Wilson was put in danger of arrest and of worse — as angry mobs in Ferguson sought justice based on a fairy tale.

Now, 12 years later, another shorthand narrative was out of control. Unable to find any outlet that had questioned the transcription as I had, I turned to an AI-based audio analysis tool, ChatGPT, to examine the clip more rigorously than the human ear alone allows.

Using slowed playback and spectrogram analysis, it reported its results. Bottom line (short answer):

The audio does not support “drive baby drive.”It is far more consistent with “don’t drive” (or “do not drive”) spoken urgently.I would rate confidence moderate to high, given the recording quality.

Asked why “drive, baby, drive” does not fit the sound signature on the audio, ChatGPT responded:

I isolated the quoted moment from the clearest clip available to me and examined it as a time-frequency spectrogram (a standard way to visualize speech). The widely repeated phrase “drive baby drive” doesn’t match what’s in the recording. The utterance is too short for three words, and the audio lacks the distinct consonant bursts you would expect for “baby” (two clear “b” onsets). The sound pattern is more consistent with a prohibitive command such as “don’t drive” or “do not drive,” delivered urgently.

RELATED: Renee Good had 4 gunshot wounds, including in the head, new report shows

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

I’m not asking anyone to treat AI as an oracle — only to notice what happens when the slowed audio and the spectrogram don’t match the confident captioning. Perhaps ChatGPT and I are both wrong. But I don’t think so. After repeated playback, I could not hear anything resembling the word “baby.” And if the argument is that the audio portion of the video recording is too ambiguous for a definitive conclusion, then that point should have been made to the hundreds of media outlets that ran with the “drive, baby, drive” narrative — not with me for questioning it.

Deciding whether Officer Ross was justified in shooting Renee Good does not hinge on what Becca Good said in a moment of panic. But public judgment — and calls for criminal punishment — clearly have. When journalists and commentators repeat an unverified transcription as fact, they do more than simplify a complex event. They create a moral narrative that can endanger real people.

If the audio is ambiguous, that ambiguity should have been reported as such from the beginning. If it is not, then the words attributed to Becca Good deserve correction. Even if I’m wrong about the exact words, the larger point stands: If the audio is ambiguous, it should never have been presented as a definitive quote — and certainly not used to justify calls for prosecution.

In cases like this, restraint is not just appropriate. It is the responsibility that journalists owe their readers. And readers should demand the same restraint from those who claim to inform them.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Ice, Minneapolis, Renee good, Hands up don’t shoot, Media narrative, Ice shooting, Opinion & analysis, Media myths, Media bias, Immigration and customs enforcement, Mass deportations, Law and order 

Mattel released a Barbie doll this past week that has sparked an important discussion about what representation looks like in doll form — and why a pretty girl wearing headphones and a cute outfit might not be representative of a severe autism diagnosis, or why we shouldn’t be celebrating something we can try to understand and prevent.

“President Trump ended DEI in the government, and I was really, really, glad about that, but it appears there was more work to be done. We need to end the DEI in toys,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

In Mattel’s press release on the new Barbie doll, it writes, “The autistic Barbie doll features elbow and wrist articulation, enabling stimming, hand flapping, and other hand gestures that some members of the autistic community use to process sensory information or express excitement.”

It also writes that her eyes are “shifted slightly to the side, which reflects how some members of the autistic community may avoid direct eye contact.”

“I’m not making fun of people with autism. I actually think it’s terrible. And I’ve done a lot to try to help get us to the place where we can figure out what is causing autism, but we are at this weird place where the left is like, ‘Actually it’s great if people are autistic. Actually I love that my family member’s autistic. I hope we get more autistic people,’” Gonzales comments.

“I want to solve what’s happening to people. I want to solve why so many people are being diagnosed with autism, why so many people can’t make direct eye contact, why so many people need noise-canceling headphones,” she continues.

“It’s absurd. It’s absolutely absurd,” she adds.

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​Video phone, Sharing, Camera phone, Free, Video, Upload, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Autism epidemic, Autism, The autism spectrum, On the spectrum, Tylenol autism, Vaccines cause autism, Vaccination, Childhood vaccine schedule, Barbie, Autism barbie