Actors from the Sam Altman biographical movie are not surprised.

Amazon said in June that the Altman biopic would be better served by going to another studio after dropping the film on mysterious grounds.

‘I’m shocked they picked it up in the first place.’

Drop it like its hot

Amazon parted ways with the film, “Artificial,” saying it had the “utmost respect and admiration” for director Luca Guadagnino, despite no longer distributing the film.

“We believe that ‘Artificial’ will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home,” the company added.

Little was known about the split, despite obvious theories made about the Big Tech connections between Altman and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos. Now, stars of the film have gone on the record about the movie, with actor Cooper Hoffman offering the most intriguing take.

Son of deceased actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, the 23-year-old was asked by a reporter if it caught him off guard when the movie left Amazon.

“Were you surprised?” Variety’s Marc Malkin asked Hoffman.

“That it got dropped? No!” the actor replied emphatically. “I’m shocked they picked it up in the first place.”

Hoffman continued, “I was like, this feels like you all are in, like, I don’t know — I don’t know who’s running everything,” the young star went on, seemingly stopping his train of thought.

“When they dropped it, I was kinda like, ‘Oh, yeah, that actually kinda, I guess, makes sense,” he added.

RELATED: Amazon drops Sam Altman biopic — and everyone wants to know why

Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images

Neon dreams

Andrew Garfield, who plays Altman, told the reporter, “I was and I wasn’t [surprised].”

“I think there are certain things that fit certain places and don’t fit other places and they [Amazon] were nothing but supportive and nothing but encouraging while we were making the film,” the former “Amazing Spider-Man” actor explained.

Garfield added that he was grateful to Amazon for helping the film find new distribution.

That new company is Neon, the New York-based distributor behind films like Stephen King’s “The Monkey” and “Ferrari” from 2023.

Hoffman said he “couldn’t be more happy” about working with the company.

RELATED: OpenAI wants to make its losses public property

Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Too close to call

Critics have pointed to Altman’s appearance at Bezos’ wedding last year as evidence of a possible relationship responsible for the movie not fitting in at Amazon.

Meanwhile, actor Ike Barinholtz — who plays Elon Musk in the film — added fuel to the Big-Tech fire last year when he was asked if he had considered meeting Musk before portraying him.

“I’m OK,” Barinholtz said, adding that Musk is “famous enough that you get it.”

The “MADtv” alumnus added, “All I hope is that if he puts me into a gulag, it’s one with all of my friends. That way we can have a party.”

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​Sam altman, Andrew garfield, Elon musk, Cooper hoffman, Amazon, Jeff bezos, Entertainment 

Anthony Fauci spent years commanding Americans to “trust the science.” But when faced with real questions about his approach to the pandemic, the longtime public health bureaucrat had almost nothing to say.

The health “expert” accused Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) of having an “obsession” with calling for his prosecution, before going on to invoke the Fifth Amendment a whopping 111 times.

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” Fauci said.

But BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere believes Paul’s obsession is actually the right kind of obsession to have.

“That’s not an obsession that’s unhealthy,” Stu says. “Being obsessed with fitness is not unhealthy. Being obsessed with eating right is not unhealthy. Being obsessed with making sure we hold people accountable for horrible things that occurred to the people of this country is not an unhealthy obsession.”

Stu also calls Fauci’s refusal to answer questions “unbelievable” and disrespectful.

“You have no respect for the legislative branch of government. The whole point — your entire career — is a long series of decisions made as essentially a technocrat without responsibility to the legislative branch,” he says.

Even when Fauci was asked simply whether or not there was a folder in front of him, he pleaded the Fifth.

“Even in mob hearings, they’ll answer some stuff,” co-host Dave Landau adds. “Yeah, he’s so guilty he’s not going to answer anything,”

Senator Josh Hawley also had a chance to go after Fauci — and he did not waste it.

“Let’s just get one thing straight. You don’t have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you’ve been pardoned, as you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more,” Hawley said, as Fauci looked on in silence.

Hawley pointed out that Fauci’s lawyers were sitting behind him “shifting nervously in their chairs” after he brought up his pardon.

“This isn’t about the Constitution. This isn’t about the law. This is about contempt. Contempt for this body and contempt for the American people. But I think I know why you’re doing it,” he said.

“It’s because you don’t want to answer questions. It’s because you did all kinds of terrible things. It’s because during the pandemic, you got rich, didn’t you? You got rich while people were dying — hundreds of thousands of Americans, over a million in the end. And you were getting rich,” he continued.

“And not only were you doing that,” he added, “you were using federal employees with taxpayer money to apply for and solicit cash prizes for you personally. Cash prizes totaling over a million dollars. You did all of that during the pandemic, didn’t you?”

Fauci then, unsurprisingly, invoked the Fifth Amendment again.

“I mean, look,” Stu says, “if he answers them, he’s going to lie anyway. But he knows that he’s going to lie. He’s not going to tell the truth. And if he does that, then he opens himself up for even more.”

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​Anthony fauci, Fifth amendment, Rand paul, Trust the science, Stu burguiere, Josh hawley, Covid-19, Vaccine, Pandemic, Blazetv show 

Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats failed in 2024 to heed political strategist James Carville’s warning about repelling potential male voters with “too many preachy females.” Their resultant unpopularity among red-blooded American men helped lose them both the White House and the U.S. Senate.

Last year, cash-strapped Democrats blew tens of millions of dollars in hopes of figuring out how to attract male voters, especially young men who shifted to the right by 15 points between 2020 and 2024, providing Republicans with a 56-42 edge.

‘55% of men said the party had gone too far to the left.’

Democrats’ efforts appear to have been in vain.

According to a Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters published on Wednesday, 67% of all respondents expressed disapproval for the job that Democrats are doing in Congress. Only 23% signaled approval.

By way of comparison, 63% of respondents expressed disapproval for the job done by congressional Republicans, and 29% signaled approval.

RELATED: Broke and desperate DNC gambles its HQ after getting email-scammed

Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The responses broken down by sex reveal that while unpopular across the board — even with 38% of registered Democrats — congressional Democrats are hugely unpopular with men.

Seventy-one percent of male voters said that they disapproved of the Democratic Party, and only 20% signaled approval. Disapproval for the Democrats among women was still high at 62%.

When asked whether the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left, too far to the right, or hasn’t moved too far in either direction, 55% of men said the party had gone too far to the left. Only 37% of women said the same.

“Looking good,” responded conservative commentator Scott Jennings.

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​Congress, Midterms, Democratic party, Republican party, Politics 

A WNBA team co-owner who berated and cursed at two teen girls showing support for Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham will be fined and suspended by the league for her behavior.

At the Fever-Storm game in Seattle on Tuesday, the girls wore shirts for the XX-XY brand, which opposes biological males in women’s sports, and held up signs thanking Cunningham for speaking out on the issue.

‘Truly embarrassing of the co-owner. Unfortunately shows the type of leader she is.’

A woman later identified as Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton confronted the pair and cursed at them, according to the teens’ account of the incident. They said other fans also harassed them and even tried to trip them.

On Thursday, the WNBA confirmed to Yahoo Sports that Keaton would be punished for her actions by being suspended for five games and assessed a fine, though the Yahoo Sports report did not reveal the amount of the fine.

The team’s majority owner already quickly apologized after getting backlash online from fans and others who were outraged at the treatment of the teens.

“We are aware one of our co-owners made comments to two fans in attendance at last night’s game,” Ginny Gilder said in a statement. “We apologize that this happened. Everyone who attends a Storm game deserves to feel welcome, and we remain committed to creating an inclusive environment where every fan is treated with respect.”

Cunningham also addressed the controversy in a post on social media.

“I truly believe there is a safe space and love for EVERYBODY. Biological girls, biological boys, trans women, and trans men. Everyone is welcome at my table! You can disagree and still be kind,” she wrote.

“Bravo to those girls for standing up for what they believe. You’ll be hearing from me soon,” she added with a heart emoji. “Yay for gifts.”

RELATED: Caitlin Clark puts black lesbians at risk of death, USA Today writer suggests — and cites Emmett Till lynching

She added, “Truly embarrassing of the co-owner. Unfortunately shows the type of leader she is.”

Some on social media criticized Cunningham’s statement for what they saw as a capitulation to the transgender agenda.

The Indiana Fever defeated the Seattle Storm, 105 to 95.

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​Sophie cunningham, Wnba, Xxxy brand, Transgender, Seattle, Politics 

A California behavioral clinician is facing multiple felony charges after she allegedly groomed and sexually assaulted a teenage boy, according to authorities.

The Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that 26-year-old Sofia Ann-Buitron Drotts of San Francisco is facing two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse, two counts of oral copulation of a person under 18 years of age, two counts of sending harmful matter to a minor, one count of sexual penetration by a foreign object, and one count of possession of child or youth pornography.

‘We trusted this professional with our son’s healing and well-being, and that trust was fundamentally shattered.’

The statement noted that Drotts was a behavioral health clinician at the John A. Davis Juvenile Detention Center in Martinez.

The district attorney’s office said Drotts was assigned as the alleged victim’s therapist.

“During the two years in which Doe was incarcerated at the juvenile hall, Drotts abused her position as his therapist to establish an inappropriate emotional connection with Doe, ‘grooming’ him with the objective of sexual abuse,” according to court papers the New York Post obtained.

SFGate reported that John Burris, who represents the boy’s family, claimed Drotts began grooming the teen in 2024 when he was 14 or 15 years old.

Drotts continued seeing the boy and his mother as a county therapist after he was released, according to the Post.

The statement said after the alleged victim was released from detention, Drotts engaged in a sexual relationship with him between April 1 and July 14 of this year.

Citing Burris, the Post reported that Drotts later “masqueraded as the teen’s girlfriend” and used a burner phone to stay in contact with him after he was released from custody.

Burris accused Drotts of meeting the teen in her car and in her apartment.

The Post, citing Burris, added that Drotts “schemed” to build trust with the teen’s mother through extended phone calls during which she assured the mom that her son was progressing well during his incarceration.

“Drotts would participate in these meetings with the mother, and she would speak in glorious details about how well he was doing, and at the same time she was having secret meetings with him,” Burris said.

Burris said Drotts encouraged the teenager to skip school and violate his curfew by spending the night with her.

“Turns out he was spending the night with this woman. The mother was duped,” Burris noted.

“The duplicitous nature of it is really outrageous,” Burris stated. “She’s engaged in this nefarious conduct, and she’s covering her tracks with different kinds of lies.”

A supervisor at the county’s probation department provided a tip about the alleged relationship to the Concord Police Department, according to the DA.

Following a “thorough investigation,” police arrested Drotts on July 14, the statement said.

RELATED: Former HS counselor arrested for allegedly ‘abusing her position’ to gain ‘inappropriate relationships’ with students

SFGate reported that the family has filed a claim against Contra Costa County.

The claim accuses Drotts of encouraging the boy to miss school and ignore his curfew “to rendezvous with Drotts in violation of his probation.”

The claim states that a “team of county agents and supervisors failed to identify the red flags or supervise Drotts, and so the sexual abuse continued.”

KNTV-TV reported, “The claim targets Contra Costa County, Contra Costa Health, Contra Costa County Juvenile Detention and Contra Costa County Juvenile Probation Department, among other agencies.”

The mother of the alleged victim said Drotts betrayed her family: “We trusted this professional with our son’s healing and well-being, and that trust was fundamentally shattered.”

A second report from the New York Post noted that the teen’s mother said the family had come forward to protect other potential victims of abuse.

“We are speaking out to ensure that no other family has to endure this pain, and to encourage anyone else who may have been harmed to find the strength to come forward,” the mother explained.

Burris added, “We hope the criminal process will go forward expeditiously, and we will go forward in our civil case.”

Contra Costa Health told KPIX-TV that it’s “aware of the claim filed against the county involving a former temporary employee and allegations involving a minor. Because this is an active legal and personnel matter, Contra Costa Health cannot provide additional comment at this time.”

Drotts has been released from jail, according to the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office.

The John A. Davis Juvenile Hall did not immediately respond to Blaze News‘ request for comment.

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​Grooming, California, Child sex abuse, Crime, Therapist, Teenage boy 

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has asked Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes to resign, KIRO-TV reported, citing sources.

The report comes days after a shooting at a city food festival in which three people were killed and four were wounded.

‘I have been here working as hard as I can for this city from the day I got here. Do you got that?’

KIRO said Seattle Police had no comment about the chief, and the mayor’s office had not yet responded to the station.

The station added that sources also confirmed that Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis — who’s been with the department since 1999 — will be the next appointment, but it’s not clear if that is an interim or permanent position.

The city of Seattle and its police department have come under scrutiny for waiting several hours Sunday before addressing the public or providing updates about the deadly shooting, KIRO said.

KIRO added that Barnes was out of town Sunday when the shooting took place — and was absent from the initial press conference held late Sunday night. He told reporters he was attending the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officers conference in Dallas, the station said.

RELATED: Deadly Seattle shooting: Arrested suspect is just 15 years old; cops say there were 2 other suspects — 1 killed, 1 unknown

Barnes was back in Seattle on Monday. KIRO said a local reporter during a news conference grilled Barnes about his travel schedule and splitting his time between Seattle and Chicago, where his family lives.

Then things got heated, with Barnes telling the reporter, “I don’t have to tell you where I go. … I have been here working as hard as I can for this city from the day I got here. Do you got that?”

Barnes defended his reaction at another news conference, saying he wouldn’t have described the exchange as “heated” but rather that his “passion” was on display while he defended his integrity, the Seattle Times reported.

More from KIRO:

KIRO 7 was set to interview Barnes on Wednesday to talk about his travel schedule, but it was rescheduled. According to other news outlets in the area, Barnes had several interviews scheduled for Wednesday, July 29, but they were all canceled or rescheduled.

KIRO 7’s interview was rescheduled for today, Thursday, July 30, but we have not heard whether Barnes will still be doing that interview.

A coalition of black community organizations in Seattle is coming together to support Barnes and oppose his apparent removal, the Seattle Medium reported.

The coalition includes the NAACP Seattle Branch, Community Passageways, the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, Seattle Clergy, Parents for Student Success, 100 Black Parents, Creative Black Brilliance Braintrust, the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Committee, and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the outlet added.

Barnes was sworn in on July 9, 2025, as the city’s 38th police chief, KIRO said, adding that he previously served as interim police chief starting in January 2025 following the departure of former Chief Adrian Diaz.

The Times said Barnes had been brought to the department as a “hard reset” following Diaz’s firing, adding that former Mayor Bruce Harrell let him go amid allegations that Diaz covered up an affair with a subordinate.

After Diaz, the city opened the police chief candidate pool to a nationwide search, KIRO noted.

The Times reported that after Wilson defeated Harrell by just over 2,000 votes last fall, Wilson announced in December that she was keeping Barnes as chief.

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​Deadly shooting, Resignation, Seattle, Chicago, Katie wilson, Shon barnes, Crime, Politics 

If you didn’t like Anthony Fauci before, his newly released diaries most likely won’t change your opinion. They paint a picture of a spotlight-hungry functionary who projected certainty where little existed and punished dissent when it proved inconvenient.

Meanwhile, the “In Fauci We Trust” set are crowing about a new study that claims conservatives are dying at significantly higher rates than liberals largely because they don’t trust doctors.

It’s a predictable, entirely rational counter-reaction to an establishment that completely torched its own credibility.

The narrative is less public health finding than moral vindication: Voting red is apparently a terminal diagnosis, and skepticism toward the medical establishment is a self-inflicted death sentence. It’s a beautifully smug theory, provided you don’t look too closely at how the physical universe actually works.

Old news

Let’s start with the most glaringly obvious flaw in this supposedly groundbreaking research. The authors act utterly baffled by a widening mortality gap between 2020 and 2022, noting with analytical horror that more “very conservative” respondents suffered fatal health failures than “very liberal” ones.

They claim they controlled for age, but anyone with a basic grasp of American demographics knows who populates these ideological buckets. The conservative base overwhelmingly skews older, grayer, and more rural. The “very liberal” cohort is heavily populated by 20-something urbanites whose greatest health risk is a poorly navigated electric scooter.

Shocking news, everyone: An aging population of grandparents in America’s heartland are dying of heart disease and stroke faster than a bunch of college-educated baristas in Brooklyn. You don’t need a multimillion-dollar grant to solve that mystery.

Trust fall

The study’s real target isn’t biology but the conservative psyche. The researchers discuss a trust deficit, lamenting that the right has developed a pathological aversion to medical authorities. They treat this skepticism like a bizarre, localized mental glitch, completely ignoring the fact that the medical establishment spent years earning every single ounce of that hostility.

Conservative mistrust of institutional science didn’t emerge from a vacuum, nor was it cooked up by unhinged lunatics on social media. It was forged in the absolute dumpster fire of the COVID-19 response.

For two years, the public was subjected to an unprecedented psychological experiment run by federal health bureaucrats who changed their official directives as often as they changed their socks. Remember when masks were useless, then mandatory, then so effective you needed to wear two at once, all based on “The Science” that conveniently shifted to match political pressures?

RELATED: Puppy love: Diary exposes Fauci’s crush on Julia Roberts

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Shot in the dark

Then came the vaccines, rolled out at warp speed with the solemn institutional promise that they would stop transmission dead in its tracks.

When that turned out to be completely false, the goalposts weren’t just moved — they were loaded onto a flatbed truck and driven across state lines. Instead of acknowledging the technology’s numerous limitations, the establishment doubled down, turning a pharmaceutical product into a loyalty oath.

If you want to know why a farmer in Ohio is hesitant to take blood pressure medication today, look no farther than the sheer cruelty of the mass lockdowns.

People watched their life savings evaporate as local authorities forced small, independent businesses to close while letting multibillion-dollar corporate retail giants stay open with zero restrictions.

Tens of thousands of workers were handed an ultimatum: Take an experimental shot or lose your livelihood. Those who refused were promptly unpersoned. They were banished from polite society, labeled domestic threats, and, in some of the most dystopian twists, de-banked and financially marooned by institutions that decided political compliance was a prerequisite for access to their own money.

Screen death

Worst of all was the profound, institutionalized inhumanity enforced at the hospital doors. Americans across the country were forced to watch their parents and spouses die through FaceTime screens because draconian hospital policies forbade them to hold loved ones’ hands in their final moments.

Meanwhile, health officials suddenly discovered that the virus was highly politically literate, giving a free pass to the massive BLM and George Floyd riots because they deemed the cause to be a higher priority than viral containment.

Apparently, the COVID-19 virus was deeply moved by the social justice movement and agreed to pause transmission for the summer, so long as you were burning down a local Wendy’s instead of trying to run your small business. The hypocrisy was loud, proud, and thoroughly televised.

Survival instinct

So when federal health policy undergoes a massive shake-up and movements like “Make America Healthy Again” gain real traction, it’s not an anti-science cult. Quite the opposite. It’s a predictable, entirely rational counter-reaction to an establishment that completely torched its own credibility. Trust is slowly earned and quickly lost, and institutions spent two years treating their remaining credibility like a game of Jenga.

Skepticism toward a medical system that got so much wrong, so destructively, is less a sign of ignorance than a basic survival instinct. If conservatives are looking at the medical establishment with a heavy dose of side-eye these days, it’s for good reason. The memories of being locked down, masked up, and lied to still burn like a bad rash.

​Anthony fauci, Conservative skepticism, Covid era, Covid19 response, Lockdowns, Small businesses, White house diaries, Vaccine rollout, Medicine, Make america healthy again 

After Ryan Clark was fired from ESPN, he used the opportunity to portray himself as someone who stood on principle and represented his community.

But BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock sees a different story and isn’t buying Clark’s latest teary appearance on “The Pivot Podcast.”

“What I’m dealing with is, in truth, a first-world problem,” Clark said, before explaining that he represented the black community and “wouldn’t change anything.”

“‘Cause that means the world to me,” he said through tears.

“First-world problem. His words. And then two minutes of tears,” Whitlock says, before playing more of Clark’s reaction to his firing.

“A company who’s going to have the Super Bowl this year, who truly wants to put their best foot forward to the entire world and have the best people talking about football, wouldn’t fire, in my opinion, and it seems to be the opinion of many others, the best football analyst in the world,” Clark said.

“The self-proclaimed best football analyst in the world could not decipher his own work situation,” Whitlock comments.

“ESPN paid Ryan Clark to do one thing: talk football. That is the contract. That is the whole job description. And he couldn’t stay in his lane,” he adds.

Clark also claimed in the interview that he knew that he “couldn’t be too black.”

“Nobody asked him to be the racial conscience of Bristol, Connecticut. His bosses didn’t commission it. The audience didn’t demand it. He appointed himself. And then he was surprised when the people writing the checks didn’t appreciate the self-appointment,” Whitlock says.

Despite claiming that it was never about the money, Clark went on to complain that he had a life of “excess” taken away from him, which he was using to help his family.

“No accountability, no self-awareness, just the excesses, the parents, the nieces, the nephews, the lifestyle they’re accustomed to. Threw it all away,” Whitlock says.

“The man who told you it was never about the money, then spent four minutes explaining in precise detail exactly what the money was for, exactly who depended on it, exactly what changes now that it’s gone,” he continues.

“He chose the community over his family,” he says, adding, “He thought that made him noble.”

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​Black community, Espn, Jason whitlock, Ryan clark, Super bowl, Blazetv show 

The president has threatened to pull the nomination for attorney general as Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina continue to demand guarantees that the “anti-weaponization fund” is dead.

President Donald Trump said on social media that he may pull Todd Blanche’s nomination and then resubmit it after Cornyn’s and Tillis’ terms end in January.

‘POTUS is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis.’

“Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it! He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

“However, John Cornyn, of Texas, and Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, both of whom I refused to Endorse, and whose political careers have been ended by my action, are refusing to vote for this Great Nominee, who will remain, in any event, as Acting,” he added.

Tillis responded by noting that if Democrats are able to seize control of Congress in the midterms, it will be far harder to push Trump’s nominations through.

“He’s perfectly entitled to do that, he just needs to game out what the numbers look like in the next Congress versus a willing group of people who wants to confirm him now if they do nothing more than follow up on what we all thought was true, that [the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund] is inoperative,” he said to a reporter.

Cornyn is demanding that the administration guarantee in writing that the fund is dead, as Blanche has already indicated when speaking to Congress.

“We are not moving forward with the fund. Period,” Blanche said during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in June.

Blanche’s comment has been used by the administration to deflect demands for greater guarantees that it will not seek the fund, but judges and the two Republican senators say the promise needs to be in writing.

Cornyn reiterated the point on social media.

“POTUS is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis,” he wrote.

RELATED: Newsom signs 100% tax on any Californian who benefits from Trump ‘slush fund’

Tillis said he agrees with Cornyn on the issue.

“We were told that the policy was effectively moot and inoperative. This makes me wonder whether or not — not Blanche, I think he was being sincere — but somebody in the White House or somebody who advises the president isn’t,” the senator said.

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​John cornyn, Thom tillis, Donald trump, Anti weaponization fund, Todd blanche, Politics 

A 26-year-old man found out the hard way that Apple’s Hide My Email feature didn’t conceal his identity when he threatened the girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel in February.

Apparently, that anti-anonymous loophole doesn’t just work for federal officials. New information suggests that Apple’s Hide My Email doesn’t hide anyone’s identity, even from websites and marketers as it was originally intended.

Your real address and name may be visible.

So what went wrong?

Hide My Email’s privacy problem

Apple unveiled Hide My Email in 2021 as part of its extended iCloud+ paid subscription. During its WWDC keynote event, then-VP of Apple Cloud Services, Mike Abbott, said, “We’ve all had moments where we’ve thought twice about sharing our personal email address, like when we’re filling out a form on the web. With Hide My Email, you can share a unique random address that forwards messages to your personal inbox, and it’s built right into Mail, Safari, and iCloud settings. So it’s easy to set up as many addresses as you need and delete them at any time, keeping you in control.”

This statement was made during a keynote segment dedicated to “another part of our ecosystem that puts your privacy first,” according to Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi. Apparently, that was just marketing fluff.

As reported by 404 Media, Tyler Murphy, co-founder of a personal data removal service EasyOptOuts, unearthed Hide My Email’s one glaring privacy flaw. He made the harsh claim that, “Apple Hide My Email is leaking email addresses that are supposed to be hidden. We reported the issue and replication instructions to Apple over a year ago. We don’t know why it hasn’t been fixed, but we don’t feel comfortable waiting any longer. Hide My Email users deserve to know that it may be possible for attackers to discover their hidden email addresses.” He concluded with a warning, “Free, publicly accessible people-search sites make it easy to link an email address to other personal details, so people relying on Hide My Email for safety may be at risk.”

Apple is reportedly investigating the claim, and despite recent software patches for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, the problem has not been fixed.

A privacy-first facade

It’s important to note that this issue is different from the story we covered earlier this year involving Kash Patel’s girlfriend (Alexis Wilkins) and the FBI. In this case, the FBI requested that Apple provide the primary email address and name of the person who was sending threats to Wilkins to charge him for a crime. Although this wasn’t known at the time, Hide My Email addresses are not concealed within Apple’s servers, giving them the ability to link alias accounts to their original creators. (So much for privacy first, huh, Craig?)

RELATED: Is Google tweaking Android to listen in on you all the time?

Yuliia Kaveshnikova/Getty Images

Third-party websites and hackers, on the other hand, don’t have access to Apple’s servers and shouldn’t have the power to draw the same correlations. Yet, this is Murphy’s claim: That all Hide My Email aliases can be traced to their creators and the service actually doesn’t do anything at all.

What should you do?

If you’re a Hide My Email user and you’re relying on it for some sense of anonymity on the web, think again. Your real address and name may be visible. Since Apple has failed to fix the problem, it’s best to refrain from using the service for now. There are potential alternative options available through third-party email providers, but if we’re being honest, nothing on the internet is completely anonymous or private, so it’s hard to recommend those either.

If you think this whole thing has class-action lawsuit written all over it, you’re right! A case has already emerged. Filed by Anthony Alvarez, the suit goes after Apple on several counts, including negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract, and fraud.

The suit notes that the vulnerability was originally brought to Apple’s attention in June 2025, an entire year before the problem was revealed to the public by Murphy. Adding insult to injury, the suit claims that Apple reported a fix for the issue in March 2026, yet the problem still remained an active threat, at which point Apple covered up the flaw again.

Only time will tell if Apple gets into any real legal trouble over the Hide My Email debacle. In the meantime, it’s best to stay away from it entirely.

​Apple, Privacy, Security, Identity, Tech 

Anti-woke comedian and writer John Cleese has come out swinging in support of Rupert Lowe, the Restore Britain leader who has become a magnet for leftist abuse over his criticism of mass migration and systemic anti-white racism.

On Sunday, an X user who goes by “The English Crusader” shared an image of Rupert Lowe captioned, “What is the first word that comes into your mind?”

‘I am not a racist. I am a culturalist.’

Cleese, a former supporter of the Liberal Democrats, responded, “I trust this man more than any of the other leaders.”

Lowe is a member of the British Parliament who departed Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. party early last year on bad terms. He then founded Restore Britain in February as a party “for those who believe that our nation has been hollowed out by weak leadership, broken institutions, and a political class that no longer serves the people.”

Although presently nowhere close to having the numbers or the support sufficient to displace Reform or one of the legacy parties in Westminster, Lowe and his party have nevertheless made a significant splash in British politics. According to YouGov, Lowe is the third-most popular public figure in the United Kingdom.

Cleese appears to support Lowe and his party chiefly for its proposed approach to immigration — overwhelmingly the most important issue for Restore Britain voters, recent polling shows.

RELATED: ‘I don’t care’: Meet the man building Britain’s new populist, anti-immigration right

Clemens Bilan/Getty Images

While appreciated by Lowe, Cleese’s recent political advocacy has ruffled quite a few feathers across the Atlantic.

Alastair Campbell, a political strategist who served as a spokesman for former Prime Minister Tony Blair as well as for the Labour Party, was among those prickled by Cleese’s comments, accusing the comedian of having “totally lost the plot.”

So-called immigration policy expert Zoe Gardner attributed Cleese’s support for Lowe to “brain worms.”

Deluged with similar reactions online, Cleese silly-walked over his critics’ hurt feelings, noting, “I see I am being ritually insulted for my support of this man. The uneducated call me a racist. I am not a racist. I am a culturalist. I believe that some cultures are better than others.”

Cleese added that he prefers cultures that “do not advocate stoning, pederasty, wife beating, female genital mutilation, and beheading opponents.”

Again, Cleese’s critics seethed, but this time the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, weighed in, stating, “John Cleese has (all too rare) common sense.”

The comedian has shown no signs of stopping when it comes to sharing posts supportive of Lowe and Restore Britain.

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​United kingdom, Rupert lowe, Restore britain, John cleese, Monty python, Politics 

On July 25, Abdul Ballout — a 21-year-old German citizen with ties to ISIS — carried out an Islamist terror attack by driving a van into a crowd at Berlin’s Pride celebrations and then attacking people with a machete, killing one woman and injuring 29 others. Police shot him dead the following day when he charged at them with a sharp object.

Some LGBTQ+ activists have used the tragedy to point the finger not at Islamists who have consistently been the perpetrators of recent terror attacks in Europe but at white Christians.

At the public vigil held for victims of the attack, Berlin-based performer and LGBTQ+ activist Yannicka Riebensahm lamented that Ballout didn’t fit the profile of her preferred villain: a “white Christian person.”

A pink-haired LGBTQ+ activist reacted with similar sentiments. In a video, she said, “So the suspect is an Islamic extremist. … That’s what I read, OK? I’m not going to say anything about the rest of the Muslim population because of actions of this one person, but what I can say is the people who were celebrating about this were all white men — young white men with crosses on their profiles.”

Glenn Beck is stunned by the glaring racism embedded in her anti-racism spiel.

“Why are you willing to lump all white men into one category, but you will only look at the action of one Islamist and say that doesn’t speak for all Islamists?” he asks.

But there’s an even deeper and darker reality behind the words of these LGBTQ+ activists who support Islam: They’re cheering the very people who will discard or destroy them the moment the alliance is no longer useful.

The LGBTQ crowd’s support for an ideology hostile to homosexuality may look bizarre, but Glenn sees exactly how the strange coalition was built: through deliberate concealment and double messaging.

He points to congressional candidate Melissa Chaudhry as a clear example of the double game. She admitted many Muslims don’t support LGBTQ rights, hence why the issue was missing from her website. But progressives attacked her for “causing chaos between two oppressed demographics” rather than for hiding it.

“The problem is not the voter,” says Glenn. “The problem is the candidate who carries one set of beliefs into the mosque and a different set into the fundraiser and then calls you the hater if you point at the seam and go, ‘Wait, what are you stitching together here?’”

He also recalls how Barack Obama publicly claimed in 2008 that marriage was between a man and a woman, only for his strategist David Axelrod to later admit Obama had supported same-sex marriage all along and hid it to secure votes from the black church.

This kind of political “choreography” may win elections in the short term, Glenn warns, but it leaves people unprepared for reality.

Earlier this month, an Atlantis Events LGBTQ cruise ship had to be rerouted not once but twice because Turkey and Egypt both refused to allow the boat to dock because the passengers’ conduct was considered incompatible with the culture and beliefs of the two nations.

“These are the moderate countries, OK? In roughly a dozen jurisdictions from Iran to Afghanistan to northern Nigeria, the penalty on the books for homosexuality or anything LGBTQ is death,” says Glenn.

And yet in America and Europe, politicians are deceptively concealing the diametric opposition between these two groups.

“When a party is assembling a coalition by telling one wing something it does not tell the other, that’s not clever. That has a history, and the history is very specific,” Glenn warns.

In 1931, German communists were ordered by Moscow to join Nazis in a campaign to dissolve Prussia’s democratic government, even though they had previously called it a fascist plot. Their leaders sold the alliance as temporary and controllable — yet less than two years later, communists were among the first prisoners sent to Dachau.

“The lesson is not about the partner; the lesson is about the leadership,” says Glenn. “Rank-and-file communists didn’t choose that alliance. Their leaders chose it for them, sold it as strategy, and they were confident they could manage the people they had climbed into bed with, but they couldn’t.”

“The junior partner in a coalition built on concealment never gets to renegotiate later. When the two wings finally collide, the party sides with the larger number of votes or the ones that are more committed to your death every time,” he adds.

In the alliance between today’s LGBTQ+ community and Islam, there’s no question about who’s the “junior partner.”

“I beg you, wake up. You’re going to be eaten, and it’s not going to be a pleasant moment,” Glenn pleads.

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​Glenn beck, Berlin, Islam, White christians, Blazetv show, Lgbt