Actress Pam Grier revealed to the ladies of “The View” that as a child, she witnessed a lynched body hanging from a tree in Columbus, Ohio.

“My mom would go, ‘Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look,’ and she’d pull us away because there was someone hanging from a tree,” Grier explained as the audience gasped. “And they have a memorial for it now where you can see where people were and left. And it triggers me today to see that a voice can be silenced and if a white family supported a black, they’re going to get burned down or killed or lynched as well.”

And Grier isn’t the only one talking about lynching in 2026.

“Honestly, they about to outlaw the idea of white supremacy and white hate. Like, they are about to be like, ‘Oh, that’s not a thing.’ Forget the fact that you’re talking about getting rid of, like, the classification for nooses in a time in which we have seen these random black bodies be strung up down south,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said in a recent video.

She went on to claim that Trump is emboldening white people to “take off their hoods.”

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock isn’t surprised, but he is a little disturbed.

“There’s the audience gasping. … The truth is irrelevant. Everything is emotional. Everything’s just, say whatever you want, and we’ve got to live with your delusion,” Whitlock says.

“I think Pam Grier is 76 years old. That means she was born around 1950. The last documented lynching, I believe, in Ohio, was 1911. Lynching just hasn’t been a thing since the 1920s or ’30s,” he continues.

“And this will be real controversial … but I’m standing on this and saying that this whole lynching thing — completely exaggerated. Completely exaggerated. Just like police shootings, completely exaggerated,” he adds.

Whitlock points out that while many black people now fear the police, they’re far more likely to be killed by someone who is also black than by a police officer.

“There’s been so much propaganda around it, but when you’re black, when we black people in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s — they weren’t sitting around living in fear. ‘Oh, the KKK is coming, and they’re going to kill me,’” Whitlock says.

“Did it happen occasionally? Yes. No different than very occasionally the police kill someone in the black community unfairly, but if you’re going to die violently in any community, it’s going to be someone that lives in your community that does it,” he explains.

“If I had been in that audience when Pam Grier said that, I would have shouted out, ‘That’s a lie.’ I literally would have shouted out, ‘That’s a lie,’” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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

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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican widely expected to make another bid for the White House in 2028, was reportedly caught on tape tarring Vice President JD Vance with the same brush he uses on Tucker Carlson and criticizing President Donald Trump’s tariff policies.

Unlike politicos keen to fault Vance for his enduring friendship with Carlson, Cruz has avoided publicly broadening his critique of the podcaster to the vice president. Behind closed doors, however, Cruz has apparently exercised no such restraint.

‘JD is Tucker’s protégé, and they are one and the same.’

In secret recordings provided to Axios by an unnamed Republican source, which were apparently taken during a pair of private meetings with donors last year, Cruz allegedly characterized the vice president as a non-interventionist puppet of Carlson.

“Tucker created JD,” Cruz reportedly says in the recordings. “JD is Tucker’s protégé, and they are one and the same.”

Cruz and Carlson have long appeared at odds on matters both foreign and domestic. Carlson, for instance, castigated the senator in 2022 for calling the Jan. 6, 2021, melee a “violent terrorist attack.”

The enmity between them reached an apparent high, however, in June, when the two clashed on Carlson’s show over whether the U.S. should militarily back Israeli actions against Iran.

In the immediate wake of the combative interview, Cruz accused the host of engaging in “gotcha” journalism, attacking Trump, defending terrorists, demonizing Israel, and “running interference” for the Iranian regime.

RELATED: Which way after Trump? ‘Strong Gods’ may offer the solution.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

While both men have traded barbs in the months since, Cruz appears increasingly fixated on Carlson, accusing him of being anti-Semitic, an Islamist, and — in response to Carlson’s criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — “#AmericaLast.”

In the recordings, Cruz also allegedly accused Vance of working with Carlson to oust former national security adviser Mike Waltz over his support for U.S. strikes on Iran.

Waltz “supported being vigorous against Iran and bombing Iran — and Tucker and JD took Mike out,” Cruz allegedly told donors.

While Waltz’s hawkish stance on Iran and alleged behind-the-scenes coordination with Netanyahu reportedly angered Trump, the straw that broke the camel’s back may have been Waltz’s accidental invitation of an anti-Trump polemicist to a private high-level group chat on Signal where senior administration officials were discussing sensitive military plans.

On the recordings, Cruz allegedly also claimed that Vance worked in concert with Carlson to help Daniel Davis, an Army veteran critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza, secure a senior national intelligence position — a post that Davis was ultimately denied.

Carlson told Axios that he “didn’t have anything to do” with the ousting of Waltz or attempted onboarding of Davis.

The Texas senator appears in recent months to have been laying the groundwork for a 2028 bid in which he would run as the kind of Republican Trump crushed in the 2016 and 2024 Republican primaries. According to Axios, this has involved courting powerful pro-Israel donors and “positioning himself as a traditional free-trade, pro-interventionist Republican.”

Whereas early pulling suggests that Vance is poised to sweep the GOP 2028 primary, Cruz presently has a 2% chance of becoming the 2028 GOP nominee, according to Polymarket, and proved unable to capture 1% in an October poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire.

Blaze News has reached out for comment to the offices of Vance and Cruz.

A spokesperson for Cruz told Axios that the senator is “the president’s greatest ally in the Senate and battles every day in the trenches to advance his agenda” and that “those battles include fights over staffers who try to enter the administration despite disagreeing with the president and seeking to undermine his foreign policy.”

The spokesperson added, “Sen. Cruz is proud of those fights, his accomplishments, and his close relationship with the president. These attempts at sowing division are pathetic and getting boring.”

‘They will be terminated on the spot.’

The Texas senator allegedly also attacked Trump’s tariff policy on the recordings from his private meetings with donors.

Cruz allegedly regaled donors with the tale of a call that he and other senators made to Trump that “did not go well” after the president introduced his Liberation Day tariffs.

“Trump was in a bad mood,” Cruz allegedly told the donors. “I’ve been in conversations where he was very happy. This was not one of them.”

“Mr. President, if we get to November of [2026] and people’s 401(k)s are down 30% and prices are up 10%-20% at the supermarket, we’re going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath,” Cruz allegedly recalled telling Trump. “You’re going to lose the House, you’re going to lose the Senate, you’re going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week.”

Cruz allegedly told donors that Trump’s response was, “F**k you, Ted.”

At the mention of “Liberation Day” in reference to the tariffs, Cruz allegedly joked with donors in the meeting, “I’ve told my team if anyone uses those words, they will be terminated on the spot. That is not language we use.”

Blaze News has reached out to the White House for comment.

According to the Texas Politics Project, Cruz’s job approval rating is presently 35% overall and 69% among Republicans.

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And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

Man’s relationship with animals has been complicated for thousands of years. From the beginning of time, they have been ours to rule over — for better or worse. Their care has been a sacred responsibility.

What once would have warranted a CPS call is now accepted, even encouraged. Young children crawl where animal feces and urine collect.

Our ancestors offered the best animals as burnt sacrifices. Those who forgot God worshipped the animals instead. We worked alongside them, traveled with them, and fought wars on their backs. We domesticated them for food and clothing. The decent among us treated them kindly and with gratitude.

We have loved animals. We have also misused them for our own needs and amusement.

Friend-zoned

Animals have long been man’s companions. But the idea that an animal is “man’s best friend” did not emerge until the 18th century — and even then, those loyal hunting companions only loosely resembled the modern leashed house pet.

There has always been a role for animals alongside the impaired, the grieving, the lonely, or the emotionally suffering. But such arrangements were not the norm. Animals lived near men because they were valuable. Children played with them outdoors. Sometimes barns were attached to houses. But no decent family would have subjected their children to living in the same space as animals — except in rare cases when an animal was sick and required special care.

What once would have warranted a CPS call is now accepted, even encouraged. Young children crawl where animal feces and urine collect, and no one blinks. Disabilities are suddenly ubiquitous, and everyone feels entitled to an emotional-support companion, regardless of whether it is good for the animal — or their children.

Bred for comfort

These animals we call man’s “best friends” are hardly recognizable as anything God created. We have bred them to suit our desires. We have domesticated wild creatures and enslaved them. They depend on us completely, even as we use them to satisfy our own emotional needs. We have fashioned a kind of Frankenstein for our own comfort, without counting the cost: the animals we have tampered with and overbred, now wandering the streets, feral and forgotten.

As Christians called to be good stewards of all God has given us, we must ask whether we have gone too far. Have we taken advantage of animals under the guise of love?

We excuse this abuse with self-serving justifications. They like it, we say of pets locked inside, barking or scratching at doors—as if anything enjoys being caged, leashed, or confined for another’s benefit. Sometimes we hoard them and claim it is love. We argue, My pet teaches me responsibility and routine. But pets for the sake of learning responsibility are for children. Adults should turn to prayer for discipline. We say, My pet is the only thing that loves me unconditionally.

RELATED: Beloved elderly fire department member mauled to death by pack of pit bull-mix dogs; owner charged with murder, animal abuse

Image source: Davidson County (N.C.) Sheriff’s Office

Tied down

Pet ownership is a sign of mental illness. Instead of seeking help, we entrap animals.

We claim pets make us responsible adults, yet they prevent us from serving others. We cannot travel, volunteer, or do missionary work because of them. They keep us from weddings, baby showers, and funerals. They make us less generous, less available, less free.

The gospel goes unpreached for the sake of man’s best friend.

But what has been done cannot easily be undone. We cannot simply turn pets loose. If taking them was a mistake, abandoning them would be another.

This is not the first time humanity has abused its authority over animals. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors domesticated pigeons — first for food, then as messengers. When technology made them unnecessary, those loyal companions became pests. What we created, we came to despise once it no longer served us.

No easy answers

Rather than continuing this cycle of domesticating and discarding animals, we should pause and ask what we are doing. Are we abusing our God-given authority? How can we make amends without causing further harm? I have no easy answers — only a denunciation of the modern pet industry.

In the meantime, we should not condone animal hoarding. We should reach out to the lonely in our communities instead of outsourcing compassion to pets. And those with unruly animals should make them tolerable, rather than subjecting the rest of us to their filth, noise, and danger. Just as a young man becomes obnoxious without purpose, so do animals confined without work.

We must find a humane way to let pets return to being animals. It would be better for them — and for us.

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Well? Do you trust Sam Altman with your kids’ online safety?

Of course you don’t. It is a category error, like asking the fox to draft the henhouse bylaws. Nevertheless, the question is now quietly circulating in Sacramento, Silicon Valley, and soon, if history is any indicator, the rest of the nation.

The world’s most powerful AI company is no longer keeping itself to the building of machines. Now it is helping to write the rules that govern them. That alone should give any serious observer pause. When the referee starts co-authoring the rule book, something has gone wrong long before the first whistle blows. And these machines, of course, are like none other in human history.

California has long served as the Democrats’ preferred testing ground.

OpenAI has announced a partnership with Common Sense Media, a prominent children’s online safety group — founded by Jim Steyer, brother of Tom, the billionaire environmentalist and Democrat candidate for California covernor. OpenAI and CSM were previously at odds, each backing rival ballot initiatives to regulate how children interact with AI chatbots. Now? They’ve joined forces.

The result is a single proposal that could soon land on the California ballot — and, crucially, be marketed as a model for national standards.

California has long served as the Democrats’ preferred testing ground. Auto emissions standards were piloted there, then imposed nationwide. Data privacy followed the same path. So did labor rules, energy mandates, and environmental regulations that radically reshaped entire industries far beyond the state’s borders. Speaking of machines, this one has proven remarkably efficient. First comes the pilot. Then the precedent. Then the pressure. Boom — the heart of national policy is taken over from the fringe.

Once embedded, predictably, the rules harden. Especially when written into ballot initiatives, state constitutions, or dense compliance regimes that only the largest players can afford to navigate. Revision becomes politically radioactive. Repeal is painted as dangerous. Dissent is portrayed as moral failure, opposition as risky and reckless.

The stated purpose, to be sure, is unimpeachable. Protect children. Limit data collection. Add safeguards. Require age verification. Who could object? That’s precisely the point. The moral framing does the work before the policy ever does.

RELATED: Murder victim’s heirs file lawsuit against OpenAI

Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images

By the time questions about power, enforcement, and unintended consequences arise, the argument has already been won. After all, if you hesitate, what exactly are you saying? That children should be less safe?

But politics, especially California politics, is not about intentions. It has always been about incentives. And this arrangement raises an obvious, uncomfortable question: Why would the most dominant AI firm want to help draft the very regulations meant to restrain it?

Regulation, when shaped correctly, isn’t a burden on the powerful. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s a moat. Compliance costs rise. Audits multiply. Smaller firms buckle. New entrants hesitate. The giants absorb the expense, hire the lawyers, tick the boxes, and continue unimpeded. In public, this is called responsibility. In practice, it’s market control with better manners.

There is also the question of timing. OpenAI and its peers are facing mounting criticism over how young people interact with AI systems. Lawsuits loom. Legislators grow restless. Parents are alarmed. Aligning with a trusted children’s advocacy group offers something priceless: moral cover. It reframes the company not as a defendant, but as a protector, a source of safety against irresponsible risk.

That shift matters.

Once a firm is cast as part of the solution rather than a leading source of the problem, scrutiny softens. Critics sound shrill, concerns are waved away as the ravings of cranks, and the company secures a seat at the table where future rules are written.

Far more mundane — and troubling — than a cloakroom conspiracy, this is regulatory capture conducted in broad daylight, wrapped up with a bow in the language of care. And you do care, don’t you?

Once California moves, the story writes itself. Headlines will hail “the strongest protections in the country.” Governors elsewhere will be asked why their states lag behind. Congress will be told a ready-made framework already exists. Why reinvent the wheel? Why delay?

And just like that, a system designed with the input of the industry it governs becomes the national baseline.

This is how power consolidates in the modern age. Forget force and secrecy. Who needs skullduggery when you have slickly deployed partnerships, press releases, and the careful use of children as moral ballast?

None of this is to deny that children need protection online. They do. The digital world is unforgiving, full of predators and rabbit holes that lead nowhere good. No serious person disputes that. However, safeguards crafted in haste — or worse, convenience — rarely age well.

In a brutal irony, though, a process meant to protect the young can instead shape a future where oversight is ossified, competition is stifled, and the most influential technology of our era answers primarily to itself.

California is once again the laboratory. The rest of the country is expected to follow.

So the opening question bears repeating. Do you trust Sam Altman, and companies like his, to help decide what your children are allowed to say, read, ask, or imagine? The question answers itself. What remains unanswered is whether the rest of the country will be given a choice.

​Tech