A Massachusetts father has been convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing a teen girl aboard a JetBlue flight — while he was on the plane with his wife and four kids, according to federal prosecutors.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts announced in a statement that 48-year-old Jonathan Alan Lefman, following a three-day jury trial, was convicted Oct. 16 of one count of abusive sexual contact within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States.

‘The defendant repeatedly sexually abused a minor who was simply trying to travel safely aboard a commercial flight.’

The charge is punishable by up to two years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and five years to life of supervised release.

On Aug. 30, 2024, Lefman was a passenger aboard a JetBlue flight — along with his wife and four children — that was flying from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Boston, Massachusetts.

The arrest affidavit says Lefman was sitting next to his 16-year-old son and directly behind the 17-year-old victim during the time of misconduct.

“On multiple occasions during the flight and while on the ground waiting to deplane in Boston, Lefman engaged in abusive sexual contact with the minor victim,” the statement said.

“Specifically, Lefman worked his hand in between the area between the back and bottom of the seat directly in front of him, where the minor victim was seated, and touched the minor victim’s buttocks without her permission,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts stated.

The victim said she saw “Lefman’s reflection leaning between the seats in the seatback monitor in front of her” when he attempted to touch her on one occasion, authorities said.

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Video screenshots showing Jonathan Lefman reaching between the seats of a JetBlue flight.Image source: U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts

The victim told investigators that “a man touched me without my permission,” the affidavit stated.

The affidavit added that Lefman also touched the backs of the victim’s feet with his feet, under the seat.

“At first I thought he was stretching because we all get tired,” the victim said. But later she “started to realize that he was really touching” her and “kept moving forward and side to side” to avoid being touched, according to the affidavit.

The statement read, “On the last occasion when he touched or attempted to touch her buttocks, the minor victim was able to use her cellphone camera to take a video of Lefman’s fingers protruding between the back and bottom of the minor victim’s seat.”

Authorities said the teenager took a video of Lefman exiting the aircraft.

An adult female family member of the victim, who was sitting in a different row of the airplane, confronted Lefman after the flight and reported his conduct to a JetBlue supervisor, according to the statement.

The female family member told authorities that Lefman apologized and claimed he was only stretching, the affidavit said.

The victim’s family member also told Lefman’s wife that “she should be concerned about the man’s behavior as she has children,” according to the affidavit.

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FBI Special Agent Jason D. Costello wrote in the arrest affidavit that Lefman “did knowingly engage in unwanted sexual contact with ‘Minor A’ by intentionally touching, through the clothing, the buttocks of Minor A with intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade Minor A or arouse or gratify his own sexual desire.”

Lefman was arrested and charged in February 2025 and indicted by a federal grand jury in March 2025.

United States Attorney Leah B. Foley said in a statement:

The defendant repeatedly sexually abused a minor who was simply trying to travel safely aboard a commercial flight. No one should have to fear being sexually assaulted, whether in the air or on the ground. Today’s verdict holds the defendant accountable for his disturbing conduct and sends a clear message that those who prey on vulnerable passengers will face justice.

Ted E. Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI, Boston Division, added:

This verdict delivers justice for a young teen who showed remarkable courage following an appalling act. No one should ever be subjected to such harmful and predatory conduct— least of all in a confined, public space where she was entitled to feel safe. The FBI is fully committed to protecting children and ensuring those who exploit or abuse them, like Mr. Lefman, are brought to justice.

Lefman is scheduled for sentencing on Jan. 12, 2027.

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​Sexual assault, Child sex crimes, Jetblue, Massachusetts, Fbi, Father, Family, Crime 

John Arnold has been busy since leaving Enron.

His money has fueled research into probation leniency decried as “pro-criminal.” In other states, Arnold backs nominally conservative energy groups prioritizing green energy and hostility to fossil fuels.

‘Billionaires like him should stop bastardizing our nonprofit laws foisting their leftist beliefs on the American people.’

“The Arnold Pipeline,” a new 28-page report from Power the Future, excavates the former trader’s labyrinthine network.

Arnold, a former Enron natural gas trader turned billionaire philanthropist, has built a policy machine that funnels research and advocacy for progressive priorities into red-state capitals. Despite his background in fossil fuels, Arnold’s money is aimed at weeding out those energy sources in favor of renewables.

Tracking IRS filings, grant records, and policy proposals across Ohio, Oklahoma, and Indiana, the report finds that Arnold isn’t looking to flip Republicans into Democrats. Instead, the billionaire trader just needs them to put a patriotic veneer on a liberal agenda.

Power the Future founder and executive director Dan Turner told Blaze News why his group looked into Arnold in the first place.

“Since our founding, Power the Future’s north star has been holding the environmental left to account,” Turner said. “As our efforts continued, we were surprised to learn about the role that John Arnold plays, not only as someone who used to work in the industry, but also as someone who holds himself out as a champion of common sense.”

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Eli Hartman/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Arnold Ventures calls itself evidence-based and bipartisan. Its stated mission is to “maximize opportunity and minimize injustice.”

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation ended 2024 with a whopping $4.77 billion in assets, according to its tax filing. Arnold’s charitable and advocacy arms gave out over $190 million in grants that same year.

Arnold Ventures’ advocacy arm, Action Now Initiative, says Arnold Ventures gives it “coordination, assistance, and support services.” Action Now is a separate nonprofit from the Arnold Foundation, but John Arnold is on both groups’ boards. Action Now reported nearly $10.9 million in grants in 2024.

The portfolio doesn’t stop with energy. Criminal justice was Arnold’s largest named funding category in 2024, constituting 31% of grant-making. Action Now spent $2.8 million on getting ranked-choice voting passed in Alaska, then doubled down to defend the system from a repeal effort.

Arnold Ventures’ November 2025 energy overview also calls for policies that “reduce emissions.”

“Amid a surging data center and AI boom, America needs more forms of energy period,” Turner told Blaze News. “It doesn’t need the eco extremists who are obsessed with sacrificing oil, natural gas, and coal at the green altar.”

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Grant records show more than $23.2 million going to environmental and clean-energy groups, according to Power the Future’s report. They include the Environmental Defense Fund, the Niskanen Center, and the Climate Leadership Council’s carbon-dividend campaign. In 2019, Arnold gave Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends its first grant: $500,000.

Arnold’s organization doesn’t always deal directly with Republican states. It also pushes money and influence through aligned organizations.

In Ohio, the Arnold pipeline flows through the Energy Foundation, a national clean-energy grant-maker that received roughly $4.2 million from Arnold between 2017 and 2020. Ohio is a pivotal state for energy production, situated atop the Utica Shale oil and gas play. It also hosts the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum, which benefited from a chain of grants that starts with Arnold money.

The U.S. Energy Foundation gave the Conservative Energy Network $2,027,500 in 2024, according to its tax filing. CEN then paid $210,361 to the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum and funded conservative-branded clean-energy groups in eight other states, including Indiana.

The forum’s executive director testified for House Bill 15, the sweeping 2025 energy law signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine. The law ended ratepayer subsidies for coal plants and backed solar projects at schools.

The Ohio Conservative Energy Forum called it a “win.”

RELATED: Why is deep-red Oklahoma paving the way for Biden’s Green New Deal?

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

In Oklahoma, there is no middleman.

Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) and Arnold Ventures announced a formal partnership on March 26, 2025. Arnold Ventures agreed to match state spending dollar-for-dollar, up to $10 million over four years, for as much as $20 million combined. The first programs cover tutoring, youth services, and adoption.

Stitt has a record of breaking with the right.

Blaze News reported in August that Stitt had established a National Governors Association immigration task force with Democratic governors and was pushing for state-issued work permits.

“Let’s actually have the governors issue workforce permits,” Stitt said.

Blaze News opinion columnist and podcast host Daniel Horowitz called Stitt’s energy policies into question back in 2024.

“He’s [Stitt’s]right. Oklahoma has enough oil and gas to fuel much of the world,” Horowitz wrote.

“The trouble is the memorandum he signed does not promote reliable energy. Instead, it prioritizes inefficient and heavily subsidized forms of energy.”

Under the Arnold deal, Oklahoma isn’t the only one deciding which programs receive funding.

The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy helps identify applicable programs. Its president, Jon Baron, was Arnold Ventures’ vice president of evidence-based policy from 2015 to 2021.

“The government needs help from the private sector,” Stitt said regarding the partnership in March.

In Indiana, the former head of an Arnold-funded group now runs the state’s health policy.

The Arnold Foundation gave the Employers’ Forum of Indiana $474,222 in 2022 to build an online dashboard comparing what hospitals charge private insurers with Medicare rates. Arnold Ventures later called the group “an AV grantee.”

Former Employers’ Forum of Indiana CEO Gloria Sachdev is now Indiana’s secretary of health and family services. Gov. Mike Braun’s December 2024 announcement of her appointment highlighted the same hospital-price work Arnold helped fund.

Her agency is now openly using Medicaid payments to throttle private hospitals.

“We’re using our financial authority in the Medicaid market to influence the commercial market,” said Mitch Roob, secretary of the Family and Social Services Administration, Indiana’s Medicaid agency.

RELATED: Trump-hating Republican governors conspire with Democrats to smuggle in even more migrants

Natalie Behring/Getty Images

Republicans weighing proposals without knowing who bankrolled the research and the ultimate aims of those patrons are being deprived of crucial context, the report argues.

“Conservative officials and officeholders should know that most anything connected to Arnold’s financial web runs counter to their ideological worldview and policy agenda,” Turner told Blaze News.

Turner told Blaze News that Arnold keeps a low profile on purpose.

“The reason that Arnold disguises his motivations and intent is because he knows selling the priorities of extreme left-wing environmentalists in places like Indiana, Ohio, and Oklahoma would be an absolute nonstarter if the public knew,” Turner said. “That’s exactly what we’re trying to do with this report: raise public awareness.”

Asked what reform should look like, Turner pointed to Congress.

“Passing H.R. 8330, the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026, would be a good place to start,” he said.

Introduced April 16 by Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), the bill would ban climate lawfare against oil, gas, and coal companies in federal and state courts. It would also void pending cases.

“The climate change movement in America is a big business, and lawsuits are how they make money,” Turner said. “The courts are weaponized against one industry, driving up costs for every American while enriching some and bankrolling the campaigns of others.”

“Billionaires like him should stop bastardizing our nonprofit laws foisting their leftist beliefs on the American people,” Turner told Blaze News.

Arnold Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.

Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office, Gov. Mike Braun’s office, the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, the Energy Foundation, the Conservative Energy Network, the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, and Sen. Jim Banks’ office did not respond to Blaze News’ requests for comment.

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​Common sense, Indiana, Ohio, Power the future, Red states, Politics 

The subscription options on X have evolved a lot since they launched in late 2022, then under the Twitter Blue name. Originally, they gave users longer posts and boosted their algorithmic reach, among other perks. Today, however, X’s paid plans have way more features powered by AI, and you can upgrade today for the same price or better.

When paid subscriptions launched on X, they came in three different tiers:

These plans offer far more capabilities than the old plans for the same price, and you may even save money.

Basic let users write longer posts, edit their posts after they were published, and upload longer videos.

Premium included everything in Basic, plus the coveted check mark for verification, higher algorithmic priority, higher usage limits on Grok, and access to the creator program that let users earn money for their posts.

Premium+ came with everything above, in addition to zero ads on X, reply priority boosts, and even higher limits on Grok.

A lot has changed, though, since Musk and company launched the first version of X’s paid subscriptions. Grok is a lot smarter, X is now part of SpaceXSI (formerly SpaceXAI and SpaceX before that), and Musk even acquired a hugely popular agentic AI coding platform called Cursor. With so much change, it only made sense that X’s paid options should change too, and they’re even better than they were before.

RELATED: Most of the internet is suddenly melting down, and there’s only one fix

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Customers used to pay separately for X Premium, SuperGrok, and Cursor Pro, costing anywhere between $10 and $100 per month. Not anymore. As of mid-October, X brought X Premium, Grok, and Cursor together under one single subscription plan simply called the X Subscription.

This new option features four simple tiers with scaling capabilities:

Free offers basic X features, like sending posts, replying to other users, and following friends, along with limited AI access.

Plus adds a premium check mark, reduces ads on X, and unlocks broader access to Grok Chat for text-based AI queries, Grok Voice for live speech conversations, Grok Imagine to generate images and videos, and Grok Build for agentic coding. This plan is available for $8 per month.

Premium adds Grok Bot, the new agentic AI service powered by Cursor, unlocks access to the latest frontier Grok models, and provides faster performance. With four times the available AI usage capacity found in Plus, this option is the most popular tier at $30 per month.

Super unlocks the maximum power of the X Subscription, adding in 15 times more AI usage capacity and premier access to the most powerful Grok models during peak usage times of the day. This plan is available for $100 per month.

X.ai

By comparison, these plans offer far more capabilities than the old plans for the same price, and you may even save money if you previously subscribed to SuperGrok or Cursor. In this way, Grok’s more advanced features are easier to access, and you can do a lot more with the plan you pick than you could before the X Subscription rollout.

The brand-new Grok Bot is something that many will want to try. As a fully autonomous AI agent, it can do all sorts of things on your behalf, such as keep your calendar in order like a personal assistant, scan through emails to give you the latest updates on important matters, offer a daily brief with top news stories that you’ll appreciate, and tons more.

Musk even suggested you give Grok a photo of your credit card to let it shop for you online. I wouldn’t go that far, especially as the internet seemingly melts down over the newly discovered PHP vulnerabilities, but the fact that Grok Bot can do this is impressive.

New users can sign up for the X Subscription today. If you’re an existing X Premium or Cursor subscriber, your account will remain unchanged for now, unless you choose to upgrade to the X Subscription. Those who upgrade will have their old X Premium subscription canceled and may even receive a refund for unused time.

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​Artificial intelligence, Social media, Grok, Tech 

Is the goal of prosecuting political opponents to punish the people in power — or to scare everyone else away from serving them?

The latter is the disturbing implication in Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s comments about using lawfare to pursue members of the Trump administration — and BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre is surprised by how plainly she said it.

“Slotkin went out there and basically said that we need to just destroy all of these people in the Trump administration, sue them into the ground, put them all in jail, you know, put pressure on these cases so that no … conservative, young conservative who’s thinking about going into the Trump administration will ever do so,” MacIntyre tells guest News Fist.

“They’ll be so terrified that entire generations of conservatives will refuse to actually serve in the executive branch,” he continues.

“And of course, you know, this is what makes a presidential administration run,” he adds.

In the clip of Slotkin, she says, “I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him. I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds fun. I might get an opportunity.’”

“I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that. I want that deterrence message sent,” she added.

“So, we can see right here, exactly the plan,” MacIntyre says. “If you can force all of these people out of the administration, you put them in jail, you can, you know, bankrupt them. Remember, the process is the punishment.”

While this might not end in their imprisonment, MacIntyre notes that they could spend “millions of dollars defending themselves in the court of public opinion.”

“And the whole purpose, what she’s saying out loud here is just, the only reason I want to do this is I want to intimidate future conservatives into not serving. And she’s perfectly aware — as you know, remember Slotkin was a CIA analyst,” he says.

“She’s saying, ‘I’m going to use this to make sure the deep state destroys any possibility of anyone ever serving in a Republican administration again,’” he adds.

News Fist is shocked that “these are the same people that promote things like enabling civil society and democracy.”

“Like, what is democracy? Well, democracy is when we undertake an intimidation and smearing campaign on the entire opposition to starve them of any talent,” he says, pointing out that this “would actually play into the Groyper infiltration” of the Republican Party.

“Because what kind of people would not really care about having their name blackened? It’s exactly the people that are already beyond the pale. This is always the limitation with these kinds of tactics,” he says.

“If you throw enough people out of, you know, polite society, if you put enough people beyond the pale, as it were, they wind up making their own counter-elite, their own alternative society,” he adds.

Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist’s commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Elissa slotkin, Michigan, Lawfare, Donald trump, Blazetv show