For years, we were warned that artificial intelligence would eventually eliminate the need for writers. In mere seconds, it would be able to crank out essays, articles, reports, blog posts, you name it, rendering flesh-and-blood writers obsolete.

Well, those days are here. AI writing floods our inboxes, social media feeds, and web pages every single day.

But it’s not quite the product we were pitched. While bots can indeed string coherent sentences together, the end result is mediocre at best. Its flat, em-dash heavy, idiosyncrasy-free, polite prose is easily recognizable to average readers, most of whom are disenchanted by the lack of human touch.

It turns out AI — beholden to algorithms and formulas — cannot counterfeit the voices of the deeply complicated, unique creatures that are human beings.

Christopher Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman, BlazeTV hosts of “Rufo & Lomez,” believe that AI writing may actually make writers more valuable — but just the ones with genuine talent.

AI is undeniably eliminating the massive class of mediocre writers. The kind of text AI produces is quickly becoming “the default sound or voice of people who don’t have talent, who can’t do things on their own. … It’s becoming the default voice of stupidity,” says Keeperman.

On the flip side, “Anybody who can write at a level above [AI] now has more value.”

The pervasiveness of AI copy seems to suggest that those genuine talents are few and far between.

“I am seeing [AI writing] everywhere. I am seeing it in published books. … Tons of ad copy even for really prominent companies that obviously have huge marketing departments [are] leaning on these sort of tripartite adjectival phrases. … There’s all these sort of syntactical signals that are giveaways,” says Keeperman, “but it’s also making me attuned to people who can write really well, and I find myself gravitating towards those people.”

But that doesn’t mean writers can’t use AI to their advantage. It is an excellent tool for “research,” “aggregating a lot of information,” “analysis,” and “brainstorming,” Keeperman adds.

Rufo agrees. “Terrible writing, [but] it’s good for discovery. … I think for certain tasks, it’s better than a Google search or a search engine search.”

For someone like him, who conducts large-scale research, AI can expedite the process of sifting through hundreds of pages of PDFs, but it’s not fail-proof.

AI is “maybe comparable to an undergraduate research assistant but … an unreliable [one],” says Rufo.

“You double-check the work, and you realize that the AI makes up 30% of the things that it’s telling you.”

“It seems like something that has huge potential, but I just see it slowing down in its improvement. I see it still having some fundamental flaws that would prevent it from being a trustworthy object of delegation,” he says.

“I remain extremely skeptical of the AI doomers or AI fatalists who think that this is going to take over the world and the machines are going to be controlling everything. It’s like it can’t even format citations. I think we’re a long ways away from the AI taking over the world.”

To hear more, watch the episode above

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​Rufo & lomez, Chris rufo, Jonathan keeperman, Blazetv, Blaze media, Ai, Artificial intelligence, Ai writing, Ai killing jobs, Writers, Good writing 

Women have been fighting back for a long time now when confronted by crime, and the year 2025 was no exception.

In one instance, a woman was shopping in a store and used her Second Amendment rights against a male who reportedly was groping other customers and even pulled out a gun and threatened their lives … then we have a story about a mother who hid in a closet with her baby after a man broke into her home, and she permanently ended the threat … and then there was a tale that might make you smile about a woman who faced down a crook and took care of business with her bare hands, to the amazement of her husband.

Here are our top-five moments of 2025 when women decided to take matters into their own hands when facing down criminals:

Video: Woman pulls male intruder out of her car, throws him to the ground with ease — while her amazed husband watches

Astonishing surveillance video from a Hollywood gas station shows the moment when a woman pulled a male intruder out of her car and threw him to the ground with ease.

The woman, Star Carter, was sitting in the driver’s seat of her red Alfa Romeo at the gas station Nov. 4 when a male stranger walked up and tried to open her passenger door, KCBS-TV reported.

Her husband, Michael Carter, was pumping gas at the time and was on the other side of car — and initially thought he successfully told the guy to get lost.

But after Michael got back in the passenger seat, the crook sneaked back and opened the driver-side rear door closest to the gas pump and actually got into the back seat, video shows.

“I’m wrestling with him inside the car,” Michael told the station, “and I’m kinda pushing him and pushing him, and all I know is he just disappeared.”

With that, Star’s husband smiled and told KCBS that “I’m looking over the back, and I said, ‘Oh … ohhh!'”

Michael’s, shall we say, starstruck reaction was due to the fact that his wife got out of her driver’s seat, got to the back door, ripped the intruder right out the car, and tossed him to the ground.

“I don’t condone violence, but I do condone self-defense,” Star told KCBS in the aftermath.

Wisely, the intruder ran off after Star introduced him to the concrete. But she also had some parting advice for him: “I just said, ‘Don’t you ever do no stupid [word redacted in KCBS video] like this again!'”

The station said the Carters actually continued their night out, going to a comedy show at the Hollywood Improv. In the end, her husband was grateful that Star stood up to the crook.

“She is indeed my hero,” Michael noted to KCBS with a laugh in the aftermath. “Thank you, Star!”

Creep with violent past allegedly gropes store customer, threatens to kill others — so woman in store shoots him dead instead

A 42-year-old man followed another customer into the Pink Beauty Supply store in Compton, California, on Oct. 19 and “groped her once inside” the store, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lieut. DeJong told KCBS-TV.

When employees told him to leave, the man allegedly refused and began to verbally assault them and some customers before he started throwing objects inside the store, KCBS added.

Employees and customers noted that the male had an object in his hand that they believed was a knife, the sheriff’s department said, adding that the male made verbal threats that he was going to kill and harm everyone in the store.

With that, one of the customers — not the one he allegedly groped — pulled out a gun, KCBS said.

Fearing for the store employees, herself, and other customers, the sheriff’s department said she fired a warning shot at the male. But the male turned toward her, officials said — and fearing she was going to be attacked, she fired a second shot, striking the male.

DeJong noted to KCBS that “he went down.” The sheriff’s department said the male was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators noted to KCBS that the woman who pulled the trigger was a customer at the store, and she remained at the scene to cooperate with officials. Detectives added to the station that parking lot surveillance video indicates the man was loitering in the area and drinking alcohol.

“He alleged he was a gang member, and LASD says it appears he was a gang member; unknown if still active,” DeJong told KCBS while adding that the male had a lengthy criminal history that included assaults, robberies, thefts, and disturbing the peace.

KNBC-TV said the woman is in her 50s, that she surrendered the gun, and that no one was arrested.

Mother hid from home invader in closet with her baby — then shot thug in the head, police say

A man with a long criminal record faced the ultimate penalty for breaking into the wrong home after discovering an armed mother, according to Illinois police.

The Joliet Police Department said they responded to a residence on Hadrian Drive on the far west side of Joliet around 10:30 p.m. Aug. 15.

Police said they saw signs of forced entry at the home and found an unresponsive man on the second floor with gunshot wounds. Paramedics pronounced the man dead at the scene.

They also found a woman at the home with her baby. She told them she hid in a closet in her bedroom with her child after she heard the break in. She also had a handgun with her, and when the man entered the bedroom, she shot him in the head.

Police said they found a screwdriver in the man’s possession and noted he was wearing gloves at the time of the shooting.

The Will County Coroner’s Office identified the man as 36-year-old Shelby Hurd of Chicago. Hurd had been convicted of burglaries in 2022 and 2023 as well as identity theft and burglary in another county. He had been paroled on Feb. 24.

Stalker shows up at woman’s workplace, begins punching her, cops say. But victim has a gun — and she uses it.

A stalker showed up at a woman’s workplace in Pensacola, Florida, on the morning of Feb. 10 and began punching her, police said.

But the victim had a gun on her and shot the male once in the leg in self-defense, police added.

Marquise James, 35, was arrested in connection with the 11:30 a.m. incident at the Downtown Pensacola Holiday Inn, WEAR-TV reported.

Records show James was in the Escambia County Jail on charges of stalking, battery, smuggle contraband, possession of cocaine, possession of marijuana, resisting an officer, and simple assault. His bond is set at $26,500.

Pensacola Police Officer Mike Wood told WEAR that the stalking “has been going on for quite some time” and that “this male individual has been … using social media, using phones” to do so.

Wood added to the station that “he’s come to her place of employment before, and she told him to leave, and he did. But this time when he came, he saw her in the laundry room, he approached her and began punching her.”

With that, Wood told WEAR that the victim “drew a handgun that she had legally and shot him once in the leg.”

“He’s much larger than she is, and she did what she had to do,” Wood noted to the station, adding that “she did nothing wrong. She was protecting herself like she should have done.”

Police told WEAR that no charges are being filed against the woman.

Wood added to the station that when James “was at the hospital, he kicked one of our officers.” Wood also told WEAR that James “had cocaine and marijuana on him.”

Thug allegedly recorded himself raping woman at gunpoint — before she shot him

A woman said she was sexually assaulted at gunpoint before she was able to retrieve her own gun and shoot the accused rapist, according to Indiana police.

The victim said she was assaulted on the afternoon of Sept. 16 at her home on Meadowlark Drive on the northeast side of Indianapolis, according to court documents.

She said that she was forced to have sex at gunpoint with the male, who was also recording the assault on his cell phone. When the man left the home, she got her gun and shot at him. She appeared to have shot the back window of a blue Toyota that was parked on an adjacent street.

A neighbor called police, and the victim identified the alleged attacker as 23-year-old Trevon Haynes.

About an hour later, a police officer noticed a car with its hazard lights flashing and saw that the driver had been shot in the leg. Haynes was arrested, and police said they found a firearm in the car.

He was charged with rape, intimidation, and burglary, while being armed with a deadly weapon.

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​2025, 2nd amend., Crime, Fighting back, Women 

Millions of Americans fled deep-blue states like California and New York because they believed the rules were different elsewhere. They moved to places like Alabama to escape lockdowns, mandates, and ideological capture of public institutions. They believed red states meant red lines.

That belief is proving dangerously naïve.

If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.

Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country. It has a Republican supermajority and some of the strongest parental rights laws on the books: bans on gender-transition procedures for minors, curriculum transparency requirements, legal definitions of male and female, protections for girls’ sports, and a rare requirement that parents must opt in before schools provide any mental health services, including discussions of suicide or bullying.

And yet those protections are now being quietly hollowed out — not by legislators, but by bureaucratic subversion.

The footnote loophole

The Alabama State Department of Education is undermining parental consent by inserting exceptions into the fine print of a required opt-in form distributed after a new parental consent law took effect Oct. 1.

The law itself is unambiguous. Parents must provide prior written consent before schools offer mental health services, including discussions related to suicide or bullying. But the department claims in the footnotes that mental health-related conversations may still occur “as appropriate” in other school settings — and that these interactions do not require parental permission.

The ALSDE has stated that “instruction, advisement, and occasional interventions are not subject to opt-in requirements, as these are regular duties of school counselors and other educators.”

That language does more than stretch the statute. It appears designed to bypass it entirely. When schools engage minors in discussions with clear psychological or therapeutic implications — trauma, gender identity, suicidal ideation — without parental consent, they move into legally and constitutionally questionable territory.

Same playbook, new label

Parents have seen this before. During COVID, mandates were imposed first and justified later. Dissent was sidelined. Authority flowed downward, not outward.

Now the same model is being applied to school-based mental health. Whether embedded in social-emotional learning, “student wellness,” or character education, the result is the same: psychological interventions delivered by school employees, not licensed physicians, without parental oversight.

This is not a gray area. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed parents’ fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children. When school systems create end runs around opt-in requirements — especially on matters involving suicide or gender ideology — they invite serious legal and civil rights challenges.

No state is immune

This is not an Alabama anomaly.

Illinois now mandates mental health screenings for public school students, with no opt-in. Mississippi is rolling out a statewide “youth wellness platform.” Tennessee is placing mental health clinicians in every public school through a $250 million trust fund. Ohio is expanding school-based health centers that embed mental health treatment directly on campus.

These programs erase the line between education and health care. They normalize a system in which children’s emotions are monitored, recorded, and interpreted by the state without parental consent. That is state-sponsored emotional profiling.

Who decides what helps?

This debate is not about whether children need support. It is about who decides what support looks like — and who has the authority to provide it.

Parents possess a fundamental right to make decisions about their children’s mental and physical health. The Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor reaffirmed that when schools impose ideologically loaded services or content without notice or opt-out, they burden parental rights and religious liberty.

RELATED: ‘Incredible victory’: Federal judge prohibits trans-related grooming efforts in California schools

Photo by Luis Soto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Alabama’s counseling framework includes DEI-driven language encouraging students to “identify individual differences” and “describe and respect differences among individuals.” In practice, that language provides a vehicle for embedding gender ideology and values-based content into guidance lessons.

When that content is paired with school-based interventions, the issue is no longer education. It is ideological formation funded by taxpayers and imposed without consent.

Alabama’s warning

If this can happen in Alabama — arguably the most pro-parental-rights state in the country — then no state is safe.

Agencies should not be allowed to bury statutes in footnotes, reinterpret laws by memo, or use therapeutic language to bypass parental authority. These are not technical disagreements. They are unconstitutional and demand legal pushback.

If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.

Strong laws matter, but enforcement matters more. Parents must demand both.

​Opinion & analysis, Education, Administrative state, Public schools, Alabama, Parental consent, Parental rights, Mental health, Counseling, Student wellness, Red states, Blue states, Bullying, Loophole