Winter storms this year didn’t just freeze roads. They exposed a harder truth: Government can no longer reliably perform the most basic functions of a modern society.

Across the country, public systems failed under predictable stress. In New York, snowstorms everyone saw coming left streets impassable for weeks. In Nashville, an ice storm knocked out power and left more than 100,000 people in the dark for days. In Washington, D.C., officials are still scrambling to contain the largest wastewater spill in city history, with repairs expected to take months.

The resilience America needs will not come from another government task force. It will come from policies that empower Americans to secure their own energy future.

These are not isolated mishaps. They are recurring failures — signs of national decay.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Americans endured an average of 11 hours of power outages in 2024. Eleven hours in the dark in the wealthiest, most technologically advanced country on Earth. Reliability is slipping while electricity prices climb. Families pay more and get less, even as utility companies demand higher rates.

That path is unsustainable for families already stretched thin. It is dangerous for small businesses operating on razor-thin margins. And it is a strategic liability for a country competing with communist China in the AI race.

Artificial intelligence data centers consume electricity on a staggering scale. A single data center campus under construction in Texas is expected to use more power than the city of Chicago. If America intends to lead the world in AI — and defeat China in the defining competition of this century — it first must lead in energy production.

Yet Americans are asking an obvious question: If government can’t plow streets or keep a sewer system running, why should anyone trust it to keep the lights on?

The Trump administration is right to pursue an all-of-the-above energy strategy. We have no choice but to build nuclear, expand natural gas, and unleash domestic production across the board. But large power plants take years — sometimes decades — to come online.

America needs more energy now.

The fastest, cheapest way to add flexible capacity is battery storage.

Home batteries can be bought off the shelf and installed in days. They can be charged by rooftop solar, small-scale generators, or power from the local utility. They store energy when supply is strong and release it when demand spikes. They keep homes running when the grid fails. And when thousands of them are networked together, they can function like a virtual power plant — pushing electricity back onto the grid to stabilize it during emergencies.

RELATED: How Americans can prepare for the worst — before it’s too late

Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images

Instead of relying entirely on aging transmission lines and centralized monopoly utilities that repeatedly fail, Americans can build resilience at home and in their neighborhoods. Power generated and stored closer to where it is used means fewer cascading failures, less strain on fragile infrastructure, and a more reliable grid for everyone.

In other words, instead of waiting on distant bureaucracies, Americans can take ownership of their own energy security.

If government can no longer guarantee basic services, it should at least stop blocking the people who can help provide them. Regulators should remove barriers to battery deployment. Market rules that sideline distributed energy should be updated. And Big Tech companies demanding enormous new power loads should help fund home battery programs instead of shifting those costs onto working families.

The resilience America needs will not come from another government task force. It will come from policies that empower the people to secure their own energy future.

This winter delivered the warning. We cannot assume someone else will keep the lights on. But with the right policies, the American people can.

​Opinion & analysis, Power grid, Power outages, Infrastructure, Winter storm, Power plants, China, Artificial intelligence, Department of energy, Batteries, New york city, Data centers 

Most Americans don’t spend much time thinking about health care policy. They don’t have to. They feel it every year when premiums rise, deductibles climb, and another chunk of their paycheck disappears into a system that rarely seems to work in their favor.

American health care is expensive, confusing, and quietly disempowering. Money moves constantly — from workers to employers to insurers to administrators and eventually to providers — but too rarely stays with the people who earned it. When the bills arrive, families are told what they owe, not what they saved or controlled.

A system that won’t let people save for their own medical needs is not protecting them. It is protecting itself.

That should bother us.

Health savings accounts were designed to fix part of this imbalance by giving people something rare in modern health care: ownership. An HSA lets individuals set aside money for medical expenses, invest it if they choose, and carry it with them year after year. The money is theirs. It doesn’t expire. It isn’t reassigned. Institutions do not manage it on their behalf.

Ownership changes behavior. People who control their own money plan differently. They ask questions. They think long-term. They stop acting like passive participants in a system that treats them as cost centers instead of decision-makers.

Yet millions of Americans are barred from opening an HSA.

Not because they don’t need one or cannot afford health care. It’s simply because the law says they are not allowed.

Under federal rules written more than two decades ago, HSA eligibility is tied to a narrow category of insurance plans. As a result, more than 140 million Americans — including many with traditional employer coverage and rising out-of-pocket costs — are blocked from saving for health care the way they save for retirement or education.

In no other area of American life do we accept a rule that says: You may pay continually, but you may not save.

No one is barred from opening a retirement account because of the kind of pension an employer offers. No one is blocked from saving for college because of where a child goes to school. Yet in health care — often the largest and most unpredictable expense a family faces — ownership remains conditional.

That is no accident. It’s the predictable result of a system built around institutions rather than individuals. Complexity gets rewarded. Intermediaries profit from it. Ordinary people are expected to navigate the maze without meaningful control over the dollars they contribute.

Prices often remain opaque until after care is delivered, which means families learn what something costs only when the bill arrives — too late to make an informed choice.

RELATED: Would you want AI making decisions for your doctor while you are under the knife in the operating room?

PhonlamaiPhoto via iStock/Getty Images

The result is a system where spending rises, trust erodes, and prevention gets talked about far more than it gets practiced.

Expanding access to health savings accounts would not solve every problem in health care. But it would address one of the most basic ones: the absence of real personal agency.

The fix is not complicated. It requires trusting people with their own money.

Every American should be able to open an HSA, regardless of insurance type.

This is not a call for a new entitlement or government program. HSAs are privately owned accounts. They rely on responsibility, not mandates. They rest on a simple belief: When people have control, most will use it wisely.

That assumption may feel unfashionable in modern policymaking. It still reflects how Americans live. People save for retirement. They save for education. They save for emergencies. Health care should not be the lone exception — especially when the costs are so high and the stakes so personal.

A system that won’t let people save for their own medical needs is not protecting them. It is protecting itself.

If we want health care that costs less and works better, the answer is not more management. It is more ownership.

The real question is not whether Americans can be trusted with their health care savings. It is why we have spent so long pretending they can’t.

​Opinion & analysis, Health savings account, Healthcare, Congress, Regulations, Freedom, Money, Hospitals, Health insurance, Planning, Bills, Insurance premiums 

Britain’s media no longer tells the public what matters — it tells them what is safe to be angry about. A single word can dominate headlines for weeks, while violent crimes that challenge elite dogma quietly fade from view.

That imbalance was exposed recently after petrochemicals billionaire and Manchester United chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe came under heavy criticism for saying Britain has been “colonized by immigrants.”

After following her home, he stabbed her 23 times, later celebrating with other asylum seekers using a government-issued debit card.

Ratcliffe was not referring to a specific crime. He was making a broad claim about mass immigration and national cohesion. Yet the media response to his phrasing was immediate and intense — especially when contrasted with the muted coverage of serious crimes committed by illegal migrants around the same time.

Defining issue

Mass migration is the defining issue in British public life. It has accelerated demographic change, worsened the housing crisis, fueled sectarianism, and introduced de facto blasphemy norms shielding Islam from criticism. More troubling still, it has coincided with the arrival of violent criminals and sexual predators, often housed at public expense in struggling communities.

One recent example is Ahmad Mulakhil, an Afghan asylum seeker convicted of abducting and raping a 12-year-old girl. The crime was horrific. The coverage was fleeting. It barely registered in the national conversation.

That silence makes the backlash against Ratcliffe revealing.

In a Sky News interview, Ratcliffe gave voice to a concern widely shared but rarely permitted: that housing tens of thousands of young men from the developing world — often with minimal scrutiny — has placed women and girls at greater risk.

Rather than debate that claim, the media fixated on his language — his use of the word “colonized.”

Hysterical reaction

Ratcliffe was branded racist, greedy, and offensive. The BBC treated his remark as a national emergency. Prime Minister Keir Starmer demanded an apology. There was no serious engagement with the substance of his argument — only tone policing and moral posturing.

Some critics accused Ratcliffe of hypocrisy because Manchester United employs foreign players. The argument is so stupid it barely needs rebutting. Bruno Fernandes did not arrive illegally via people smugglers. He entered Britain lawfully to perform a skilled role at the highest level. Conflating elite athletes with illegal migrants crossing the Channel is deliberate obfuscation.

Misdirected outrage

Ratcliffe’s comments came amid a series of crimes that underscore the stakes of Britain’s immigration failures. Deng Chol Majek, a Sudanese national who entered the U.K. illegally while posing as a teenager, was sentenced to 29 years for the murder of Rhiannon Whyte. Majek lived in a taxpayer-funded hotel where Whyte worked. After following her home, he stabbed her 23 times, later celebrating with other asylum seekers using a government-issued debit card.

As someone who lives in Britain, I can attest that Ratcliffe’s description reflects visible demographic change. In parts of Birmingham, white British population has fallen into the low single digits in terms of percentage, reflecting how sharply local demographics have shifted. According to the 2021 Census, London’s white British population has fallen to 36.8%, with most boroughs now majority non-white British — a dramatic shift from 1961, when it stood at 98%. Similar patterns exist in Leicester, Luton, and Slough. Projections suggest white British people will become a national minority by 2063.

RELATED: The Great Replacement is real — and happening to Ireland

Paul Faith/Getty Images

‘Colonize them for life’

Against this backdrop, outrage over vocabulary feels grotesquely misplaced.

Since the turn of the millennium, Britain has welcomed millions from the developing world, often driven by what can only be described as suicidal empathy. The consequences have been deadly. The past decade alone has seen Islamist terrorists and the children of recent migrants murder British soldiers, concert-goers, schoolchildren, and a sitting member of parliament.

Yet we are told the real scandal is a word.

The reaction to Ratcliffe’s remark exposes a familiar hypocrisy. Colonization appears regularly on protest signs, in activist poetry, and even on the London Underground. Immigrants themselves use it freely. As one French-Algerian man told Rebel News, “They’ve colonized us for 132 years, and now we’re going to colonize them for life.”

As the meme puts it: It’s cool when they do it.

Ratcliffe had every right to speak plainly about his country’s decline. The fixation on his phrasing is not a sign of moral seriousness but of moral evasion — and it allows those in power to avoid confronting the real and growing costs of their own policies.

​Uk, Britian, Mass migration, Colonizer, Crime, Migrant crime, Uk demographics, Lifestyle, The rape of europa, Keir starmer 

Federal officials said they rescued a 13-year-old girl from sexual and physical assault from a man who groomed her online and lured her to a California motel.

Eighteen-year-old Matthew Edward Pysher of Bangor, Pennsylvania, traveled by plane to Los Angeles on Feb. 20 to meet the victim near her home and take her to a motel in Castaic, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release.

In the motel room, investigators found condoms, a knife, lubricant, razor blades, bloody tissues, and a boarding pass.

Pysher had been grooming the girl for several months after meeting her in a chat room on the Discord app for people suffering from mental illness, according to prosecutors.

The girl’s mother contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Feb. 10 because she believed her daughter was being coerced into harming herself by a man named Matthew.

A suicide note from the girl was found by her family, according to the criminal complaint.

Investigators were able to trace Pysher to the motel room, where they found the teenager hiding in the bathroom. She allegedly told them that Pysher had used a knife to repeatedly cut her and that they had engaged in sexual conduct.

In the motel room, investigators found condoms, a knife, lubricant, razor blades, bloody tissues, and a boarding pass. They also found near the girl’s cell phone a Faraday bag, which is used to block electric transmissions.

The girl said he told her they were going to commit suicide together by jumping off the top of a hotel.

Investigators said Pysher had groomed the girl to send him material of herself committing sexual acts and also images of herself committing self-harm in the months before flying out to meet her. The criminal complaint had screenshots of texts he allegedly sent her where he explicitly discussed cutting instructions.

Pysher was charged with travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.

RELATED: ‘Pure evil’: Feds charge alleged leader of ‘unthinkably depraved,’ violent group involved in child sextortion

Investigators determined that Pysher was a part of a “nihilistic violent extremist” ideology that sought to manipulate vulnerable young people into self-harm. Members of an NVE group called 764 have coerced victims into hurting others and even committing suicide.

First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said the case should serve as a warning to parents with children on the internet.

“If your children have access to use the internet, sadistic predators may have access to your kids,” he said. “Law enforcement will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute those who seek to harm children. We advise parents to keep their kids offline.”

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Frida Baby, a top-selling baby and postpartum care brand, came under significant public criticism and backlash early this month for its use of sexual innuendos in its marketing.

The controversy erupted in early February 2026 when a now-deleted social media post promoting Frida Baby’s rectal thermometer with the caption, “This is the closest your husband’s gonna get to a threesome,” sparked intense backlash, prompting the rapid resurfacing and viral spread of other old advertisements, posts, and packaging with similar suggestive phrases on platforms like X and TikTok.

“This story is extremely disappointing to me because I and every other mom I know has used the Frida Baby products,” says BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie breaks down the controversy, exposing what’s really fueling Frida Baby’s “sick campaign.”

“You just have to wonder what is going through the mind of someone that is, like, creating the packaging and marketing for something that, you know, detects a fever in your child and thinks threesome,” Allie says of the social media post that triggered the controversy.

She also displays other resurfaced controversial Frida Baby marketing examples, including packaging for a touchless thermometer that reads “How about a quickie?”; humidifier instructions titled “I get turned on easily”; and a nasal aspirator box featuring the phrase “I’m a [power] sucker.”

But the advertisement Allie finds most “disturbing” comes from an Instagram post promoting the brand’s nose sucker. The since-deleted post features a baby with snot on his/her face with the caption, “What happens when you pull out too early.”

“People kind of dug up who their marketing team was. … It’s men and women on this team, but it did seem like it was a male team that was in charge of marketing, which I just think is odd,” says Allie. “Like this is obviously a female brand. I’m not saying that you can’t hire men at all, but why would men know what attracts a woman to a particular product?”

Frida Baby responded to the backlash, but “they certainly didn’t apologize,” she adds.

“I just don’t understand when it became acceptable to use kids as fodder for sexual jokes — like publicly, commercially. … There are just perverts out there who love this kind of stuff, and it just ends up like infesting people’s brains, and it changes how we talk about children and how we think about this stuff,” Allie laments.

“I really just think it’s glossing over one of the biggest evils in the world, which is the sexualization [and] objectification of children.”

Christians for the last 2,000 years, Allie says, have been the ones to call out child exploitation for the evil that it is, and she encourages current believers to continue this tradition.

“We still have a responsibility to do that,” she urges.

“We really shouldn’t have any level of tolerance of this kind of stuff, which is really a bummer because some of [Frida Baby’s] products are super effective, and it just wasn’t necessary. I think they could have been very successful without this, and unfortunately they’ve normalized something really wicked.”

To learn more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Relatable, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Allie beth stuckey, Fridababy, Frida, Sexualizing children, Blazetv, Blaze media 

The president told Americans that their electricity prices will drop if they live near Big Tech data centers.

During his State of the Union address, President Trump spoke on the electrical bills of Americans who live near hubs where tech companies are quickly building AI infrastructure that require massive amounts of energy.

‘They’re going to produce their own electricity.’

Over the last two years, companies like Amazon, Apple, and Meta have all announced plans to build sprawling campuses that will require dedicated power sources or risk overwhelming local grids. In some cases, states have begun planning small modular nuclear reactors to supplement power and therefore attract tech companies (like Amazon). Where these reactors aren’t built, the consumer will pay downstream.

During the State of the Union, Trump explained surging energy costs from heightened demand is a big concern for Americans in those areas, and he plans to do something about it.

“Tonight, I’m pleased to announce that I have negotiated the new rate payer protection pledge,” Trump began.

“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs.”

“They can build their own power plants as part of their factory so that no one’s prices will go up, and in many cases, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially down,” the president continued. “This is a unique strategy never used in this country before.”

RELATED: Melania’s bold AI message to America’s youth: ‘Use AI as a tool, but do not let it replace your personal intelligence’

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

“I’m telling them, they can build their own plant,” Trump added after saying the current electrical grids could never handle the power that is needed.

“They’re going to produce their own electricity. It will ensure the company’s ability to get electricity, while at the same time, lowering prices of electricity for you.”

Two weeks prior, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) announced the Guaranteeing Rate Insulation from Data Centers Act, aimed at preventing price increases for Americans via data centers.

According to Hawley’s website, the act will “guarantee consumers [are] first priority” on the grid, ensuring new data centers get their power from separate sources, while establishing new transparency measures around data center utility usage.

“Data centers never sleep,” said James Poulos, editorial director of Return. “They eat energy to run the computers, and they drink water to cool the computers.”

The more the public uses AI services and apps, he explained, “The more energy they require.”

“Trump is moving to make assurances that, whatever your relationship to AI, you won’t be priced as a consumer out of local energy markets wherever data centers appear.”

A Department of War contractor told Return that Trump’s plan could turn what is a potential strain on the grid into a “long-term advantage” if handled correctly.

“Instead of massive AI data centers pulling huge amounts of electricity from an already aging system and driving up costs for everyday customers, requiring major tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to build and supply their own power forces them to take responsibility for the energy they consume,” explained Tyler Saltsman, CEO of EdgeRunner AI.

Saltsman added, “That means private money, not taxpayer dollars, would fund new power plants, whether natural gas, nuclear, or large-scale renewables, which could ease pressure on the public grid and even add extra supply in some regions.”

RELATED: Watch the State of the Union tonight on BlazeTV’s YouTube Channel

The Trump administration has been incredibly open about its pursuits in artificial intelligence in the president’s second term.

Last November, the Department of Energy launched Genesis Mission as a “national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing challenges.”

Then in December, the federal government launched the Tech Force and asked for the public to apply for 1,000 advanced roles. The job listings procured a whopping 25,000 applications.

This has all transpired as the administration has partnered with different American AI companies — including Elon Musk’s xAI — to help with the handling of government operations as well as the aforementioned goal of American AI supremacy.

The latter has been of particular focus for government agencies like the Department of War, which has been focused on getting ahead of the Chinese communist government, which has appeared to have made leaps and bounds in AI over the last year.

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​Return, State of the union, Ai, Artificial intelligence, Tech companies, Small nuclear reactors, Smrs, Tech 

In President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union speech of his second term in office, his tariff policies were sure to be mentioned. And, as President Trump noted, February has been a significant month for tariffs, with many new developments occurring just days before the anticipated speech.

On Tuesday night, President Trump explained his plan for tariffs in the future and explained his critique of the recent Supreme Court decision striking down a particular use of a particular type of IEEPA tariffs.

‘Congressional action will not be necessary; it’s already time-tested and approved.’

Trump began by recounting the overall success of his administration’s tariff policies since the beginning of his second term, noting that the United States is “making a lot of money”: “The big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly and 22 Nobel Prize winners and economists didn’t. They got it totally wrong. They got it really wrong.”

However, these policies faced a challenge from the Supreme Court last week, as Trump lamented in his speech: “And then just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court. It just came down. Very unfortunate ruling.”

RELATED: Trump finally gets his answer on legality of tariffs in new SCOTUS decision

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Despite this potential setback, Trump offered his assurances that many companies wish to “keep the deal that they already made … knowing that the legal power that I, as president, have to make a new deal could be far worse for them, and therefore they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement.”

Last Friday, the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump ruled that Trump’s tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were not within the president’s authority. As a result, Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs seemed doomed less than a year after they were announced.

Trump emphasized on Friday that despite his disagreement with the court over the IEEPA tariffs, the ruling had in fact clarified and strengthened the president’s authority under other statutes, including the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the Trade Act of 1974, and the Tariff Act of 1930. On Tuesday night, he said:

So despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful, country-saving … peace-protecting — many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs … will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes. And they have been tested for a long time. They’re a little more complex, but they’re actually probably better, leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before. Congressional action will not be necessary; it’s already time-tested and approved.

On top of that, Trump signed a proclamation ordering the initiation of a temporary 10% global tariff, which he announced on Saturday would be raised to 15%. The 10% import surcharge will be effective for 150 days to “address fundamental payments problems.”

However, as of Tuesday, the BBC reported that the additional tariff rate was only instated at the previously established 10%, citing a U.S. Customs and Border Protection document published Monday.

RELATED: Watch the State of the Union tonight on BlazeTV’s YouTube channel

Concluding his remarks on tariffs, Trump said, “And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.”

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During President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night, he highlighted his administration’s successful immigration enforcement efforts as the Department of Homeland Security shutdown entered its 11th day.

Trump called the past year “a turnaround for the ages” in the United States after the prior administration allowed “11,888 murderers” to enter the U.S.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

“After four years in which millions and millions of illegal aliens poured across our borders, totally unvetted and unchecked,” Trump stated, “we now have the strongest and most secure border in American history by far. In the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States. But we will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”

ICE has hired 12,000 additional officers and agents. During Trump’s first year back in office, his administration has removed an estimated 3 million illegal aliens, including 2.2 million self-deportations and 675,000 deportations.

Trump was joined at the SOTU address by the parents of Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old National Guard soldier who was fatally shot in Washington, D.C., allegedly by an Afghan man allowed into the country during former President Joe Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal.

Dalilah Coleman, a child who was left with critical and life-altering injuries at 5 years old as a result of a multi-car wreck caused by an illegal alien truck driver, also attended the event. Trump called on Congress to pass Dalilah’s Law, which would bar any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.

RELATED: Exclusive: ‘Best of the best’: DHS torches leftist media myths about ICE training

Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Trump slammed Democrats for the ongoing DHS shutdown, which prompted the agency to implement emergency measures to conserve resources, including halting all Federal Emergency Management Agency non-disaster-related response efforts, Global Entry, and airport police escorts for members of Congress.

“As we speak, Democrats in this chamber have cut off all funding for the Department of Homeland Security. … Now they have closed the agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorists and murderers. Tonight, I am demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the border security, Homeland Security of the United States,” Trump said.

The president urged lawmakers to demonstrate their commitment to prioritizing the protection of American citizens.

“If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” Trump told lawmakers.

Republican lawmakers stood up in response, while most Democrats remained seated.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Trump told Democrats who refused to stand. He also called on lawmakers to “end deadly sanctuary cities” and pass the SAVE America Act, which aims to keep noncitizens from voting in federal elections.

RELATED: Watch the State of the Union tonight on BlazeTV’s YouTube channel

Photo by DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

The DHS previously criticized Democratic lawmakers for causing three shutdowns that have impacted the agency.

“This is the third time that Democrat politicians have shut down this department during the 119th Congress,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stated Sunday. “Shutdowns have real-world consequences, not just for the men and women of DHS and their families who go without a paycheck, but it endangers our national security.”

Negotiations to end the shutdown appear to be stalled, with Democrats demanding ICE reforms.

“It is our view that immigration enforcement in this country should be fair, it should be just, and it should be humane,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) stated last week.

“That’s not what’s happening now in the United States of America, and that’s why ICE needs to be reformed in a dramatic, bold, meaningful, and transformational manner,” Jeffries continued. “And if that doesn’t happen, the DHS funding bill will not move forward.”

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​News, Donald trump, Trump, Trump administration, Trump admin, State of the union 2026, State of the union, Sotu, Immigration crisis, Illegal immigration crisis, Immigration, Illegal immigration, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Deportation, Deportations, Immigration enforcement, Dhs shutdown, Government shutdown, Politics 

Partap Singh, an Indian national who illegally stole into the United States in 2022, reportedly managed to obtain a commercial driver’s license from California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom’s Department of Motor Vehicles.

On June 20, 2024, Singh allegedly caused a multicar pileup that left numerous Americans grievously injured, including then-5-year-old Dalilah Coleman.

‘Against all odds, she is now in the first grade, learning to walk.’

During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, President Donald Trump recognized Dalilah and her struggle for a normal life after the horrific incident, adding that legislation is in the works that would hopefully spare future Americans from a similar fate.

“Doctors said Dalilah would never be able to walk or talk have a good life,” said the president.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Dalilah suffered a broken femur and skull fractures in the accident; was left in a coma for three weeks; and has since been diagnosed with both diplegic cerebral palsy and global developmental delay for which she will require lifelong therapy.

“But against all odds, she is now in the first grade, learning to walk — and she’s here this evening with her dad, Marcus — a fantastic man.”

Trump added that Dalilah is a “great inspiration.”

Dalilah, lifted and kissed by her father, smiled and waved to the president and officials below.

RELATED: Watch the State of the Union tonight on BlazeTV’s YouTube Channel

Department of Homeland Security

“Dalilah Coleman’s life was forever changed when an illegal alien driving an 18-wheeler slammed into her and her family. This tragedy was entirely preventable,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in September.

“How many more innocent people must become victims before Gavin Newsom stops playing games with American lives? DHS is working around the clock to remove dangerous aliens — like Singh — who have no right to be in the U.S.,” added Noem.

After noting that many of the illegal aliens who have taken to American roads “do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger, or location,” Trump called on congressional lawmakers to “pass what we will call the Dalilah Law, barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.”

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Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas briefly interrupted the State of the Union address Tuesday and was quickly kicked out of the U.S. House of Representatives chamber.

The Democrat was ushered out of the chamber, and one Republican grabbed at the sign on his way out.

The president later said that he did not see the video before it was posted.

Green held up a banner reading, “Black people aren’t apes,” in an apparent reference to a video depicting former President Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes that was posted to the president’s Truth Social account.

“These people are crazy! I am telling you, they’re crazy!” the president later said in the address while pointing to Democrats.

Green interrupted the president’s address last year before Congress and was escorted out at that time as well.

“You have no mandate!” he yelled at one point, while shaking his cane at the president.

Many Democratic members of Congress later joined Republicans in a vote to censure him for the incident. The resolution passed 224-198.

Republicans and Democrats both condemned the anti-Obama video, including Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. The president later said that he did not see the video before it was posted and blamed a staffer for the incident.

RELATED: Rep. Al Green of Texas releases statement on sexual assault allegations from 2008

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Green blamed racism for his ejection after the interruption last year.

“There is invidious discrimination in the House of Representatives. I’m a son of the segregated South. The rights that the Constitution recognized for me — my friends and neighbors deny it. I had to sit in the back of the bus, the balcony of the movie, drink from a colored water fountain,” he said in an interview.

“When the speaker decided that I would be removed and then there was this motion,” he added, “this resolution to censure me, it became obvious to me that I was not being treated as others were, and candidly speaking, it is invidious discrimination.”

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During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Donald Trump referred to some of the historic peace deals that he has brokered between warring nations, then turned his attention to Iran and its “sinister ambitions.”

The president suggested that Iranians want to make a deal but have yet to say “those secret words: We will never have a nuclear weapon.”

“My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy,” said the president, “but one thing is certain: I will never allow the world’s number-one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can’t let that happen — and no nation should ever doubt America’s resolve.”

Trump noted further, “I will make peace wherever I can, but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must.”

Recent polling indicates that American voters are not particularly keen on getting embroiled in another Middle Eastern conflict. Their elected representatives, on the other hand, appeared receptive to the president’s discussion of possible military actions against the Shiite country.

In recent weeks, Trump has assembled the greatest U.S. military air presence in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq invasion.

‘It will be something easily won.’

Negotiators from Tehran and the U.S. are scheduled to convene in Geneva on Thursday for what some suspect might be the last attempt at a deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

A regional source familiar with the talks told CNN, “This Thursday will decide everything — a war or a deal.”

A potential sticking point might be whether the Iranians are willing to commit to putting off uranium enrichment entirely.

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Abbas Araghchi, the country’s foreign minister, recently suggested that is a nonstarter, as the county has invested heavily in the technology and its progress to date is supposedly a matter of national pride.

Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, noted last week, “The Americans say, ‘Let’s negotiate over your nuclear energy, and the result of the negotiation is supposed to be that you do not have this energy!'”

“If that’s the case, there is no room for negotiation,” continued Khamenei.

Trump has reportedly received several briefings on military options, including decapitation strikes on Iran’s political and military leaders with the goal of regime change and/or strikes on nuclear and ballistic-missile facilities.

Multiple reports have alleged that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine and other military leaders warned the president and top officials in such briefings that a military campaign against Tehran carries significant risks, including another protracted conflict.

Trump noted in a Truth Social post on Monday, however, that “if a decision is made on going against Iran at a Military level, it is [Caine’s] opinion that it will be something easily won.”

“Everything that has been written about a potential War with Iran has been written incorrectly, and purposefully so,” wrote Trump.

The president added, “I am the one that makes the decision, I would rather have a Deal than not but, if we don’t make a Deal, it will be a very bad day for that Country and, very sadly, its people, because they are great and wonderful, and something like this should never have happened to them.”

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