Imagine being accused of a crime because a camera spotted your car near the scene. The camera wasn’t wrong. Your car really was there. But you didn’t commit the crime.

The police, however, are so confident in their technology that they seem to be treating your guilt as an open-and-shut case.

Isaacs said she was home asleep when troopers arrived at 4:45 in the morning and told her she had killed three people.

Chrisanna Elser doesn’t have to imagine it.

Camera shy

Elser was accused of stealing a package after doorbell footage captured a woman taking it from a home. Police then searched Flock camera records for vehicles in the area around the time of the theft. They found Elser’s Rivian and concluded that she was the woman in the doorbell video.

They had the wrong woman. Elser really had driven through the area that day, but she was there for a noon appointment with her tailor, more than a quarter-mile from the house where the package was stolen. Her Rivian’s cameras showed her driving through without stopping.

She spent days assembling her own evidence — including location information and video from her vehicle — to show what she had actually been doing. The summons was eventually voided.

In Elser’s case, the Flock camera hadn’t failed. It had identified her vehicle in the area. The technology supplied one piece of the puzzle. The mistake was treating that piece, along with the doorbell video, as enough to identify the person who committed the crime.

That’s an important limitation of license plate readers. They can tell police that a particular vehicle was photographed in a particular place. They can’t tell them who was driving it, why it was there, or what the person inside was doing.

But what happens when the information going into the system is wrong?

False flagged

Automotive journalist Tim Esterdahl found out while driving a Range Rover Sport press vehicle in Nebraska. A Flock alert identified the vehicle as stolen, and police pulled him over. Esterdahl doesn’t fault the officer, who was responding exactly as he should have to an alert for a potentially stolen vehicle.

It apparently started with a Jaguar Land Rover manufacturer license plate that had gone missing during a film production in California. Only one specific New Jersey fleet plate had been reported missing. But somewhere between that report and the Flock system, Esterdahl wrote, the information appears to have been broadened to include multiple manufacturer plates sharing the same beginning and ending characters.

Esterdahl’s Range Rover had a different plate. It was flagged anyway.

Things got worse from there. Because the Range Rover was a manufacturer-owned press vehicle that had never been sold or titled through a state DMV, its VIN didn’t appear in the law-enforcement database the officer was using. Esterdahl had insurance paperwork, ownership documents and authorization to drive the SUV, but sorting everything out still took about 90 minutes.

Esterdahl wasn’t even the first automotive journalist stopped over the same Jaguar Land Rover fleet-plate issue.

Whether the data is accurate and someone draws the wrong conclusion from it, or bad information makes its way into the system in the first place, the result can be the same: An innocent person has to untangle the mistake.

TATTLETALE EXPRESS: School buses may soon become America’s largest mobile surveillance network

VIEW Press/Getty Images

Behind bars

And it doesn’t stop at inconvenience. Just ask Lindsey Isaacs.

In October 2025, a hit-and-run crash on I-4 in Florida killed three people. A Flock camera three miles away had recorded Isaacs’ black Dodge Durango just two minutes before the crash.

But other evidence pointed elsewhere. Witnesses had given conflicting descriptions of the Durango, including a maroon one with a partial plate that didn’t match Isaacs’ plate. Investigators later found maroon paint transfer on one of the vehicles struck in the crash. Isaacs’ Durango was black, only two months old, and showed none of the significant damage investigators said the vehicle involved in the crash should have sustained.

Isaacs said she was home asleep when troopers arrived at 4:45 in the morning and told her she had killed three people. Her Durango was impounded. Months later, she was arrested on eight felony charges and spent 13 days in jail.

Her attorney eventually showed prosecutors photographs of the undamaged SUV, and an inspection found it in essentially showroom condition. The charges were dropped in May. Authorities later arrested another woman driving a maroon Durango.

Think about the chain of events. A Flock camera accurately recorded Isaacs’ vehicle three miles from the scene two minutes before the crash. Investigators took that data point and built a case around it despite evidence pointing to a different vehicle. Months later, Isaacs was in jail.

A license-plate reader doesn’t know who committed a crime. It knows that a vehicle passed a camera. The danger comes when the certainty of the technology gets transferred to conclusions the technology itself can’t support.

Fooled by tools

I’m not arguing that police shouldn’t use license plate readers. They can be useful investigative tools. But there is an enormous difference between using a camera hit as a lead and treating it as proof that the registered owner committed a crime.

On August 26, Sen. Josh Hawley launched a Senate investigation into Flock Safety, seeking information about its data collection, retention, access, accuracy, and sharing practices. The investigation cited a network of more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states processing more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month.

That’s a lot of information about where Americans’ cars are going.

Most of the drivers of these cars aren’t involved in crimes. They’re going to work, taking kids to school, stopping at stores, and coming home. If government agencies are going to have access to a network this large, the public should know how the information is being used.

How long is it kept? Who can search it? Which agencies can see it? What safeguards are in place when a plate is misread, a database contains bad information, or investigators draw the wrong conclusion from an accurate camera hit?

And don’t make this solely about Flock. Replace Flock with another vendor tomorrow, and the questions remain the same.

Follow the money

If taxpayers are told these systems make communities safer, show them the contracts. Show them the pricing, retention policies, access rules, and accountability provisions. If a private company provides technology that becomes part of government enforcement, there needs to be a clear answer about who is responsible when its information contributes to a false accusation.

I’m not against police using technology. I’m against treating technology as infallible.

A camera is a tool, not a judge. A database is a tool, not a verdict. And a license plate identifies a vehicle, not necessarily the person behind the wheel.

Sometimes bad information makes its way into the system. Sometimes the camera gets everything right but investigators draw the wrong conclusion from what it shows.

When that happens, the person on the receiving end can spend 90 minutes on the side of the road, days trying to clear her name or, in the worst case, nearly two weeks in jail.

Show me the evidence. Show me the accountability. And if the system gets it wrong, show me who pays.

​License plate readers, Surveillance, Flock safety, Auto industry, Lifestyle, Law, Traffic stop, Ai, Automotive 

James Talarico, the Democrat nominee hoping to succeed Republican John Cornyn in the U.S. Senate, is a part-time Presbyterian seminarian who has emphasized, “My politics grows out of my faith.”

That faith was apparently greatly shaped by Jim Rigby, the pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. Talarico previously cited Rigby as one of “the biggest influences on [him] as a Christian, as a human being.”

‘It’s mixed with myth.’

Hidden-camera footage exclusively obtained by Blaze News appears to show Talarico’s pastor rejecting one of the fundamental precepts of Christianity: the virgin birth.

In the video, Rigby is asked by a person off-camera, “Do you really believe, like, a virgin had a child?”

“I don’t,” the pastor responds, according to the video.

RELATED: Exclusive: Hidden-camera footage captures Talarico’s pastor saying evangelical Christians are ‘not smart’ and comparing Trump to Hitler

“The virgin birth stuff, you see it like in Hinduism … and it’s more like, it’s more like all human beings were born out of the transcendent,” Rigby claims in the video.

“There’s a cosmic process, there’s animals and stuff, so when the Christmas story is told, all of that’s in there.”

“I think the virgin birth came off of Plato,” Rigby continues, according to the video. “‘Only begotten one’ and kind of stuff like that — that’s in the writings of Plato. It’s about humanity and the cosmos.”

After the person off-camera poses the question of whether Jesus is reducible to an “allegory,” Rigby appears to state, “I think there probably was a Jesus, but I don’t think we can get back to that. I mean, I don’t think there’s — ‘cause the stuff is so legendary, and it’s mixed with myth and stuff.”

Rigby both claimed that “there’s no way you can know what happened with Jesus or any of the people from a long time ago” and appeared to suggest that Christ or Christianity was simply trying to convey that “you’re a child of the stars,” according to the video.

In a separate undercover video obtained and published by Blaze Media, Rigby was asked whether a newcomer to St. Andrew’s has to profess belief “that God became a baby and that a virgin had a baby.” Rigby responds, according to the video, “We all got in by lying.”

RELATED: Talarico’s pivot from ‘God is nonbinary’ is all just an act, admits minister at his church

Blaze News did not receive responses from the Talarico campaign or Rigby.

In addition to rejecting the virgin birth, Rigby has expressed disbelief in Christ’s Resurrection. He also has expressed contempt for belief in the supernatural and belittled evangelical Christians.

Rigby previously expressed hope that Talarico would one day succeed him as pastor, and Talarico has delivered various woke sermons at St. Andrew’s church.

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​Christianity, James talarico, Jesus, Us senate, Politics, Texas 

Calls at 9 p.m. from an unknown number annoy everyone, even government officials.

In fact, the massive fraud being perpetuated against Americans daily is enough to pay for their commute, groceries, or even the very cell phone bill they are being scammed through.

‘Twenty-five percent of the younger age group said they have been scammed more than once.’

In response to the billions being stolen every year, the Federal Communications Commission is issuing guidance.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has been a divisive figure over the past year, but in a move that is likely to garner bipartisan appeal, he has directed his federal agency to produce guidelines on how to fight spam calls and texts.

“As part of our ongoing efforts to crack down on illegal robocalls and text, the FCC has published step-by-step guides that enable consumers to turn on blocking and filtering tools,” Carr wrote on X.

What followed was a set of government guides for learning how to block numbers, filter spam, and control who can contact a person’s iPhone or Android. The guidance is also broken down into providers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

While these instructions may seem simple and targeted toward elderly folk, it’s actually younger adults who are more susceptible to fraud campaigns.

According to the Public Interest Network’s 2024 report on spam and scam, young adults ages 18 to 44 are three times as likely to be successfully targeted than those over 55 years old. Moreover, 25% of the younger age group said they have been scammed more than once.

The report stated that the reason older Americans are less likely to be victims of phone scams is because they simply aren’t picking up the phone or answering a text if they don’t recognize the sender.

“Fifty-seven percent have signed up for services like ‘Do No Call’ registry versus 30% in younger age groups (18-64 yrs),” the study explained. “Twenty-one percent of older adults have also downloaded a caller ID app or have caller ID on their landline compared to 14% in younger age groups.”

RELATED: Hackers are trying to steal money from X users — don’t be one of them

Notably, males are more likely to be victims of scam calls with 79% of men admitting to such over a 12-month period versus 68% of women. Women were also more likely to ignore spam calls/texts (65%) than men are (54%), despite women receiving about 5% more spam calls than men overall and per month.

These scams reportedly effect 21% of the adult population of the United States, with an annual average loss of $450 per person and $25 billion in losses nationwide.

Location matters too. A robocall study by outlet WhistleOut revealed that robocalling frequency changes depending on the state.

Since 2020, Louisiana has seen the biggest increase in robocalls by far at 792%, which is more than a skip and a jump ahead of Mississippi’s 117% increase.

Alaska, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kansas have all seen a 50%+ increase since 2020.

Utah has seen the biggest drop at -34%, while Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, New Jersey, Wyoming, Rhode Island, California, Colorado, and Connecticut saw decreases as well.

RELATED: Gmail is about to fill your inbox with political spam. Here’s how to skip it.

ROMAIN COSTASECA/Hans Lucas/AFP/Getty Images

The FCC publishes guidance that warns of over a dozen types of scams, including collect call scams, cell phone fraud, and something called “The One Ring” scam.

The FCC also provides resources to tell Americans the laws around spam and solicitation.

The calls do not appear to be stopping either. There were about 52 billion robocalls in the United States in 2025, with that number estimated to increase to 58 billion in 2028 if current trajectories hold up.

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​Spam, Robocall, Fcc, Brendan carr, Tech 

President Donald Trump has made the decision to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from White House access, and he predictably upset the left in the process.

BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere points out that Trump is understandably “sick” of their biased coverage, which has included a lot of Nazi references over the years.

“He had a long statement about how, well, they shouldn’t be able to make up fake news. I don’t want them here anymore,” he adds.

“Well, they do kick you out of the pool after you repeatedly pee in it,” co-host Dave Landau says.

“Of course you don’t want those people around,” Stu agrees. “The question is, of course, does the president have a different standard here that he should be hitting when it comes to the annoyance factor.”

“You’re the president of the United States,” he says, asking, “How much of this stuff do you have to put up with? How much of it is just part of the gig? And how much do you have to deal with?”

Ana Navarro is among those frustrated by Trump’s decision, explaining to the panel on “The View” that the president is behaving like a communist dictator.

“I fled communism. And this is what communist dictators exactly do in places like North Korea and Cuba and Nicaragua and Venezuela. They censor and shut down the free press because their little, thin skin cannot take any criticism,” Navarro said.

“She says a communist dictator would do this, right?” Dave asks. “A communist dictator would have them lined up and shot against a wall, which is legitimately what would happen. She’s getting paid six figures to sit on TV and call him a dictator.”

But Navarro isn’t the only one concerned about censorship, as JD Vance was pressed by a reporter how the move was not an attack on free speech.

“Well, they can still report on the Trump White House. They can still get the public reports. They can still, of course, talk to people in the administration and outside the administration. What the president has said is we’re not going to give you special access inside the White House,” Vance said.

Vance went on to point out that under Biden and Obama, Breitbart wasn’t given special access to the White House either.

“The Biden administration revoked press passes in 2023 because questions were disruptive,” Dave explains.

“I hate those disruptive questions,” Stu adds.

Want more from Stu and Dave?

To enjoy more of Stu and Dave’s lethal blend of wit, humor, and insightful commentary subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Censorship, Cnn, Communism, Dave landau, Donald trump, Fake news, Jd vance, Ms now, Politico, Stu burguiere, Blazetv show 

A federal judge has delivered a trio of liberal media outlets a win in their battle with the president over access to the White House grounds.

While the networks and their lawyer appear excited over the outcome, President Donald Trump has made clear this is but a battle in a war he means to win.

‘Plaintiffs have engaged in a number of reporting incidents that have threatened national security.’

How it started

Trump announced Friday that he was barring CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS,” stressing that “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America.”

Following the president’s proclamation, White House television pool members — including Fox News — circled the wagons and agreed to end pooled coverage in protest.

Meanwhile, the three banned networks sued Trump, two of Trump’s staffers, and U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran, claiming that “this ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.”

Alleging that the ban violated the First Amendment and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, the media networks asked for the restoration of their White House hard passes and access as well as for a declaration that the ban was unconstitutional.

RELATED: Trump picked the wrong way to fight fake news

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The White House argued that:

the government has a “compelling interest in awarding hard passes to journalists satisfying minimum standards” and that the three networks did not meet those standards;the “Plaintiffs have engaged in a number of reporting incidents that have threatened national security”; and the networks are mistaken in their conclusion “that there is a special property or legal interest in access to the White House.”

How it’s going

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly did not buy what the White House was selling.

Early on Thursday, the Trump-appointed judge granted the liberal networks a 14-day restraining order and ordered the White House to reinstate White House hard pass press credentials to employees of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.

Kelly said in his order that the plaintiffs had “shown a likelihood of success, at least on their Fifth Amendment procedural due process claim.”

The judge noted further that “none of Defendants’ arguments convince the Court that Plaintiffs are not likely to succeed on their due process claim.”

Kelly rejected the White House’s argument that the ban was motivated by national security concerns, writing, “Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was ‘banning’ Plaintiffs from the White House — instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs’ reporting.”

“Defendants offer no declarations or other support — classified or unclassified — explaining how any of the reporting they identified in their letters to Plaintiffs damaged the national security.”

Trump, apparently anticipating this turn of events, noted on Monday, “As usual, we’ll go for appeal because Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown ‘sources,’ shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World.”

Ted Boutrous, the lawyer representing the liberal outlets, said in a statement, “This is a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process, and the rule of law. We greatly appreciate the court’s swift action.”

The White House did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

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​Cnn, Politico, Fox news, Fake news, Ms now, White house, Donald trump, First amendment, Politics 

Over the last few decades, many industries discovered they could grow their customer base and profits by selling a cheaper, inferior version of their product while degrading the experience for everyone. Air travel and theme parks are obvious examples. Both learned that the advantages of scale could outweigh the obligation to deliver a high-quality experience.

That philosophy did not remain in the realm of economics. It spread slowly but surely into American public life. The United States government increasingly treats the country the same way: expand the customer base, maximize throughput, then sell people a tiered version of the American experience as the baseline crumbles.

An America designed for everyone eventually becomes an America belonging to no one in particular.

The old theme-park model was simple. You paid one admission price and had roughly the same access to rides and attractions as everyone else. The problem was capacity. If too many people entered, everyone spent the day standing in line.

The solution was brilliant. Sell more tickets, let the lines grow, then charge customers extra to escape the congestion the company created. Premium passes make the park tolerable for people willing to pay, but they do not fix crowded restaurants, bathrooms, sidewalks, or parking lots. The park serves more customers, earns more money, and becomes less pleasant.

The fast-pass system is especially revealing because the premium product is not really a new attraction. It is relief from the congestion created by admitting more customers. The company first degrades the common experience and then monetizes the escape hatch. That is the genius of the model. The wealthy do not merely buy more; they buy protection from the consequences of scale. Everyone else gets longer lines and is told that broader access represents progress.

Air travel followed a similar path. Flying was once expensive enough that many Americans rarely did it, but the experience was more comfortable and predictable. Low-cost carriers expanded the market by packing more seats into cabins and turning ordinary features into add-ons. Legacy airlines copied the model. More people could fly, but the customer experience became a maze of fees, cramped cabins, crowded airports, security lines, and delays.

This democratization was celebrated as progress, and in one obvious sense it was. Schoolteachers and retail workers could travel more cheaply and more often. But scale always has costs. When capacity expands faster than the infrastructure supporting it, abundance in one measure can produce scarcity in another.

RELATED: Free money wins elections — and that’s why America’s debt will keep growing

Blaze Media Illustration

The United States has applied the same logic to immigration. For decades, political and business leaders treated population growth as an economic good in itself. Illegal immigration and expansive legal immigration increased the supply of workers and consumers. Employers gained labor, investors gained demand, and headline economic measures such as GDP benefited from a larger economy. But a larger economy is not automatically a better country for the people already living in it.

Housing, roads, hospitals, schools, water systems, and power grids do not expand automatically with population. In places where growth outruns capacity, prices rise and service deteriorates.

Housing is the clearest example. The National Association of Realtors reported the median first-time buyer reached age 40 in 2025, though other estimates put the figure lower. Whatever the exact number, Americans are buying homes later, delaying marriage and children, and paying more for less space.

Labor markets create another conflict. Immigration can lower costs for employers and raise overall output while imposing concentrated costs on particular workers. Those effects are especially visible in lower-wage industries but also appear in sectors such as technology, where companies have long used and abused visa programs to expand the labor pool.

The costs are not purely economic. Large and rapid immigration can slow assimilation, especially when newcomers settle in concentrated communities large enough to reproduce the language, institutions, and customs of the countries they left. The result is not always conflict, but it can weaken the expectation that immigrants adapt to a common national culture.

The same sorting mechanism appears geographically. Families with enough money move away from crowded schools, failing services, and disorder, while people without that option absorb the consequences. Political leaders can then point to aggregate growth while the public realm fractures into radically different experiences depending on zip code and income.

The national statistics improve even as ordinary life becomes more expensive, more crowded, and less coherent. The public system remains available to everyone, but equality of access increasingly conceals inequality in the actual experience. That leaves Americans with a familiar arrangement: The baseline experience declines, while affluent people purchase private substitutes.

RELATED: This is what existential politics looks like

Blaze Media Illustration

Want a quiet neighborhood? Buy into a gated community. Want orderly schools? Pay private-school tuition. Want safety? Hire private security. Want enough space to raise a family? Move farther from the economic centers where you work. The things that once arrived as part of ordinary middle-class American life increasingly become premium upgrades.

The university completes the joke. It teaches students the moral case for ever-greater replacement migration while providing the credentials needed to earn enough money to avoid many of its consequences.

Other countries already show where this can lead. Brazil has wealthy neighborhoods, excellent private schools, luxury shopping, and first-world amenities alongside dangerous and dirty favelas. People with money can buy back pieces of civilization through walls, guards, private education, and exclusive enclaves.

That is not the American dream.

The American ideal was never perfect equality, but it did promise a broadly shared public world: safe streets, functional schools, attainable homes, reliable infrastructure, and a national culture recognizable to the people who inherited it. A nation cannot maximize scale forever without asking what, exactly, it is scaling. GDP is not a civilization. A labor market is not a people. A proper country cannot be reduced to an economic zone whose success is measured by how many workers and consumers it can process.

An America designed for everyone eventually becomes an America belonging to no one in particular. If we want the country to remain a nation rather than a marketplace, we will have to value continuity, capacity, assimilation, and the welfare of existing citizens more than endless growth.

​American dream, Illegal immigration, Legal immigration, Population growth, Private security, Labor market, United states, Equality, Opinion & analysis 

Over the past decade or so, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have transformed America beyond recognition, effectively replacing performance-based standards with identity-based quotas. Workplace hires, college admissions, and corporate promotions swapped personal achievement for group membership. Thankfully, commentators like Piers Morgan say those days are behind us. Woke, we’re told, is dead and buried.

It isn’t. DEI not only refuses to die but appears stronger than ever.

Administrators are writing their preferred political rules into machine intelligence.

A recent report by Defending Education, a grassroots organization dedicated to protecting American children from harmful ideologies, shows how universities are embedding DEI ideas directly into the AI systems that will shape how Americans learn and work.

Perhaps the most troubling part of this report is how ordinary the process can look. DEI can be built into the lessons used to teach children what AI is, the tests used to judge whether AI is “fair,” and the rules universities recommend for how AI should behave. The old social contract rewarded individual effort, clear competence, and the ability to tell fact from fiction. The new digital contract ranks software output based on ideological alignment.

Behind the academic curtain

MIT, for example, is developing AI lessons for K-12 students that teach kids to think about “algorithmic bias” and identify when an AI system produces unequal results. An algorithm that flags a high-risk loan applicant based on credit history fails this test if certain demographic ratios look uneven. UC Berkeley goes further, describing AI as something that can reinforce racial, gender, and other inequalities. Its researchers are developing tools to measure whether AI produces supposedly “equitable” results for different groups. Computer programmers used to debug code to fix technical errors. Today, researchers rewrite code to ensure equal outcomes across groups.

Columbia is developing tests for whether chatbots work properly for LGBTQ communities and has studied how prompts can produce better responses for “queer BIPOC youth.” A mathematical tool designed to process human language is being reprogrammed to act like a pink-haired guidance counselor with a radically leftist agenda. Other universities run programs that bring ideas about “equity” and AI directly to K-12 students and teachers and publish research that examines AI through Marxist ideas.

RELATED: Parents weren’t asked. Many still don’t know. Inside the new school surveillance nightmare.

gorodenkoff/Getty Images

A snowball effect is forming. Universities are helping write the rules for how AI will be taught and judged.

A century ago, political activists seized physical infrastructure like telegraph offices and train stations to control public life. Modern ideologues target software compilers and language models instead. Control the training data, and you control every answer the machine gives to the public.

Automating indoctrination

That creates a pipeline: First, a university develops a curriculum. Teachers receive it. Students learn from it. Then, AI companies adopt these standards to avoid lawsuits. Policymakers use university research when writing regulatory rules. Before long, ideas that began inside academia become part of the technology tens of millions of Americans use every day.

Engineers built computers to give accurate answers based on hard data. The current academic push forces these machines to censor objective reality whenever uncomfortable truths conflict with social theories. Ask a neutered AI model simple historical questions, and it will distort facts to avoid offending academic sensibilities. Ask it to evaluate job applications, and it will prioritize demographic targets over verifiable skills. Ask it about the perpetrators of crime in certain cities across America, and it will do everything but provide accurate information. White readers, particularly straight white men, routinely described as society’s most “privileged” group, should be especially concerned.

DEI on its own is dangerous enough, but merged with arguably the most powerful technology ever created, it is a recipe for disaster.

The end result is AI that lies to its users by design. When air traffic control systems, medical diagnostic tools, and financial software rely on algorithms trained to prioritize equity over accuracy, real-world performance drops and real lives are at risk.

Enforced mediocrity

The original social contract built American prosperity on a simple promise: Work hard, master a trade, deliver superior results, and you climb the ladder. The bureaucratic class spent decades dismantling that promise inside taxpayer-funded institutions. Now, those same administrators are writing their preferred political rules into machine intelligence. Human bias can be challenged, debated, and defeated in public debate. Software code hidden inside a proprietary algorithm operates without public oversight.

If left unchecked, this rather diabolical system will embed identity-based quotas into the permanent digital infrastructure of everyday life. Citizens will interact with technology that enforces destructive doctrines while presenting them as non-negotiable facts. The death of merit was bad enough when enforced by university deans and corporate HR departments. Machine-enforced mediocrity could make those bureaucrats look like absolute amateurs.

All is not lost, however. Now that the public can see what universities are doing, they can be challenged. The Trump administration has already ordered universities to abandon DEI. It now needs to recognize where DEI is taking root next and respond accordingly.

​Artificial intelligence, Tech 

The shooting death of a 15-year-old boy in Oklahoma was initially blamed on an intruder, but police arrested his 11-year-old sister after an investigation.

The teenager was found fatally shot in the head at his home in Edmond on Sept. 9.

They also said she was jealous of the attention he would get from the parents.

Initially his sister told police an intruder wearing a black hoodie broke in through a window and killed her brother before running out of the front door.

But police noticed that there were no signs of a break-in and instead saw evidence that the site was staged.

The parents of the children then told police that four security cameras had been turned off at the home before the shooting. When the daughter was asked about the cameras, she denied knowing anything about it.

Parents also said that their daughter was embarrassed by her brother, who was disabled. They also said she was jealous of the attention he would get from the parents.

The girl later admitted to shooting her brother with a small-caliber handgun, according to an affidavit.

Police seized an Apple iPhone, an Apple iPad, and a Samsung Digital Tablet from the home after obtaining a search warrant. They believe the devices may have evidence related to the motivation and the shooting.

A day after the shooting, the girl was booked into a juvenile detention facility on a second-degree murder charge, according to the Edmond Police Department.

RELATED: 16-year-old arrested for lethally shooting 15-year-old girl and her 9-year-old brother, cops say

Defense attorney Irven Box told KWTV-DT that the alleged comments from the parents were a strong motivation for the case against the girl.

“I think there’s a lot of evidence that she’s got some definite, very serious psychological problems,” he said.

However, she will likely not face charges as an adult, he added.

“She’s not going to serve any time in a state penitentiary; she’s going to be in some juvenile facility or some sort of treatment until she reaches majority,” Box said. “Until she reaches 18, so she’s got a long ways to go.”

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​Oklahoma, Special needs child, Family shooting, Crime 

On Tuesday, Iowa House Republicans were shown polling that should scare the hell out of them.

The warning, as it was relayed to me, was stark: If you represent a district Trump carried by 15 points, you may still be within the margin of error. If you represent a Trump +10 district, you may already be under water.

We need to save our own country before we save anybody else. America first cannot become America eventually.

And this environment could end up being worse than the “thumping” of 2006.

I slept on whether to share this publicly because I do not want to black-pill people six weeks before a critical election. But there is still time to do something about it, and pretending the problem does not exist will not make it go away.

If the environment is this bad in Iowa — where Donald Trump has been the most popular political figure of the last decade — I shudder to think what it looks like elsewhere.

Iran has become a massive political albatross on par with the COVID lockdowns of 2020.

Whatever you want to call it — war, not-quite-war, prolonged military operation, strategic pressure campaign — voters are experiencing the consequences as another expensive Middle East entanglement with no clearly defined victory. Fuel prices are hurting. The public is frustrated bordering on furious. Republicans are beginning to distance themselves from the policy.

We are risking what remains of the Trump presidency on this.

If Democrats take control of Congress in January, much of the domestic agenda voters elected Trump to pursue will stop cold. Some of it will be reversed. Some of it will be tied up in investigations and appropriations fights. Add what the courts are already doing, and the remaining two years could become an exercise in siege warfare.

The damage would not stop in D.C.

RELATED: The mass-deportation promise is disappearing

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States like Iowa have spent the last 20 years moving dramatically to the right, with Trump accelerating that transformation. A national collapse would spill down the ballot and put those gains at risk.

That is why this half-war, quasi-war, whatever-we-are-calling-it has become such a catastrophic misuse of political capital.

Many of us never thought it was worth the cost. Increasingly, the voters seem to agree.

We need to save our own country before we save anybody else.

If a plane is in trouble, you put on your own oxygen mask first. Not because everybody else is unimportant, but because you are useless to them if you pass out.

America first cannot become America eventually.

I desperately want this presidency to succeed. I want it to fulfill the promise voters saw in 2024. But whatever this is right now, it isn’t working. And Republicans do not have to sit here and take the loss.

There is still time. There is still plenty of ammunition. Democrats have given Republicans more than enough material to run against. But the president needs to get on the stump now.

The messaging needs to get much sharper and much more aggressive.

RELATED: The Christian counterculture is already here

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Stop wasting money on stupid ads about how often some Democrat missed a committee vote. Tell voters what Democrats are actually voting for. Put the cultural, economic, and constitutional stakes in plain English.

And most important, explain the mission in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. What does victory look like? What ends the operation? What are Americans being asked to pay, and for how long?

Because from the cheap seats, this increasingly looks like another Middle East quagmire in which ordinary Americans pay twice — once at the pump and again through their taxes.

If there is a compelling answer to that, the administration needs to give it. Soon.

Republicans are not out of ammunition. They are almost out of time.

And while we are at it, somebody please make sure Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are getting the finest health care in America.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally on X.

​Fuel prices, Health care, Iowa, Midterms, Republicans, Democrats, Covid lockdowns, America first, Trump, Economy, Iran war, Polls, Opinion & analysis 

As the midterm elections approach, democratic socialism is attracting renewed attention as an alternative to America’s constitutional order. Recently elected officials in Seattle, Colorado, and New York City, along with dozens of others, identify as democratic socialists. Membership in the Democratic Socialists of America has surged, and a recent CNN poll found that a third of Democrats now identify with the movement’s political program.

The goals of the DSA and the promises made in campaign rallies should be understood by all Americans for exactly its aim: a complete overhaul of the U.S. Constitution and the governing laws that have ensured our freedoms for the last 250 years.

A ‘new society’ that eradicates the right to religious liberty is a familiar step down an extremely dark path.

This is not an esoteric challenge to our economic system. It’s a threat to our entire republic.

At the core of all socialist movements, historically and contemporarily, is the supremacy of the collective over the individual, where the state assumes the role of controlling guardian to determine what is “best for society,” squelching individual liberties, all in submission to this ideological monopoly.

As such, the one thing totalitarian governments will never allow is an appeal to a higher authority than the government. There can be no authority higher than the state. That is why socialist-controlled governments have always viewed religious liberty as a threat and target it as one of the first freedoms to dismantle.

That’s why Virginia Democrat Senator Tim Kaine’s remarks during a 2025 hearing deserve attention. The former Democratic Party vice presidential nominee said he found “extremely troubling” “the notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator.”

The American founding says otherwise.

The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That formulation is not ornamental. It establishes a limit on government.

If government grants your rights, government can redefine them or take them away. If rights exist before government, then government is bound to respect them.

That’s why religious liberty is the first right protected in the Bill of Rights. Without the right of conscience, all other liberty disappears.

Members of the DSA counter this assessment by pointing to its Religion and Socialism Working Group outreach to the faith communities. In their own words, “DSA’s Religion and Socialism group is open to DSA members of all faiths whose socialism is in some way inspired by their spiritual identity.” In other words, religion is welcomed and approved only if it agrees with the DSA’s socialist ideology, which in essence, then, is a state-endorsed church. All opposing religious viewpoints need not apply.

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In the old Soviet Union, state regulations defined how religious organizations could function, what they could say, and when they could meet. Eventually, church doors were closed, sectarian schools were closed, and religious leaders were incarcerated, all because socialist regimes cannot allow organizations or the populace to appeal to a higher authority than the government.

The commonly repeated pattern with all socialist movements begins with ideological propaganda denouncing all viewpoints that don’t fall in lockstep with its platform. In the case of the DSA, that means throwing out the old and fundamentally changing the very foundations of our government, including religious liberty.

But that’s just the start. In the DSA’s program for the current year, the objective is quite clear: “Our goal is to put workers in charge of the government through a new democratic constitution …” and “Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”

This “new society” would eliminate the three co-equal branches of government that provide essential checks and balances. Gone are the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights that protect the rights of all Americans.

Religious liberty is foundational to a country that values individual freedoms. It defines the relationship between citizens and government by limiting the government’s power and protects freedom of conscience. It is inseparably linked to broad civil liberties including free speech, parental rights, academic freedom, and freedom of assembly.

None of these rights can exist without the foundation of the right of conscience: religious liberty. A “new society” that eradicates this most important right is a familiar step down an extremely dark path. What we need instead is a recommitment to a society that understands and cherishes the liberties protected in our founding documents that have defined us as the “land of the free.”

​Bill of rights, Declaration of independence, Democratic socialism, Democratic socialists of america, Religious liberty, Soviet union, Midterm elections, Democrats, American founding, Dsa, Opinion & analysis