The Trump administration has unveiled a broad action plan for AI (America’s AI Action Plan). The general vibe is one of treating AI like a business, aiming to sell the AI stack worldwide and generate a lock-in for American technology. “Winning,” in this context, is primarily economic. The plan also includes the sorely needed idea of modernizing the electrical grid, a growing concern due to rising electricity demands from data centers. While any extra business is welcome in a heavily indebted nation, the section on the political objectivity of AI is both too brief and misunderstands the root cause of political bias in AI and its role in the culture war.

The plan uses the term “objective” and implies that a lack of objectivity is entirely the fault of the developer, for example:

Update Federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model (LLM) developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.

The fear that AIs might tip the scales of the culture war away from traditional values and toward leftism is real. Try asking ChatGPT, Claude, or even DeepSeek about climate change, where COVID came from, or USAID.

Training data is heavily skewed toward being generated during the ‘woke tyranny’ era of the internet.

This desire for objectivity of AI may come from a good place, but it fundamentally misconstrues how AIs are built. AI in general and LLMs in particular are a combination of data and algorithms, which further break down into network architecture and training methods. Network architecture is frequently based on stacking transformer or attention layers, though it can be modified with concepts like “mixture of experts.” Training methods are varied and include pre-training, data cleaning, weight initialization, tokenization, and techniques for altering the learning rate. They also include post-training methods, where the base model is modified to conform to a metric other than the accuracy of predicting the next token.

Many have complained that post-training methods like Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback introduce political bias into models at the cost of accuracy, causing them to avoid controversial topics or spout opinions approved by the companies — opinions usually farther to the left than those of the average user. “Jailbreaking” models to avoid such restrictions was once a common pastime, but it is becoming harder, as corporate safety measures, sometimes as complex as entirely new models, scan both the input to and output from the underlying base model.

As a result of this battle between RLHF and jailbreakers, an idea has emerged that these post-training methods and safety features are how liberal bias gets into the models. The belief is that if we simply removed these, the models would display their true objective nature. Unfortunately for both the Trump administration and the future of America, this is only partially correct. Developers can indeed make a model less objective and more biased in a leftward direction under the guise of safety. However, it is very hard to make models that are more objective.

The problem is data

According to Google AI Mode vs. Traditional Search & Other LLMs, the top domains cited in LLMs are: Reddit (40%), YouTube (26%), Wikipedia (23%), Google (23%), Yelp (21%), Facebook (20%), and Amazon (19%).

This seems to imply a lot of the outside-fact data in AIs comes from Reddit. Spending trillions of dollars to create an “eternal Redditor” isn’t going to cure cancer. At best, it might create a “cure cancer cheerleader” who hypes up every advance and forgets about it two weeks later. One can only do so much in the algorithm layer to counteract the frame of mind of the average Redditor. In this sense, the political slant of LLMs is less due to the biases of developers and corporations (although they do exist) and more due to the biases of the training data, which is heavily skewed toward being generated during the “woke tyranny” era of the internet.

In this way, the AI bias problem is not about removing bias to reveal a magic objective base layer. Rather, it is about creating a human-generated and curated set of true facts that can then be used by LLMs. Using legislation to remove the methods by which left-leaning developers push AIs into their political corner is a great idea, but it is far from sufficient. Getting humans to generate truthful data is extremely important.

The pipeline to create truthful data likely needs at least four steps.

1. Raw data generation of detailed tables and statistics (usually done by agencies or large enterprises).

2. Mathematically informed analysis of this data (usually done by scientists).

3. Distillation of scientific studies for educated non-experts (in theory done by journalists, but in practice rarely done at all).

4. Social distribution via either permanent (wiki) or temporary (X) channels.

This problem of truthful data plus commentary for AI training is a government, philanthropic, and business problem.

RELATED: Threads is now bigger than X, and that’s terrible for free speech

Photo by Lionel BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images

I can imagine an idealized scenario in which all these problems are solved by harmonious action in all three directions. The government can help the first portion by forcing agencies to be more transparent with their data, putting it into both human-readable and computer-friendly formats. That means more CSVs, plain text, and hyperlinks and fewer citations, PDFs, and fancy graphics with hard-to-find data. FBI crime statistics, immigration statistics, breakdowns of government spending, the outputs of government-conducted research, minute-by-minute election data, and GDP statistics are fundamentally pillars of truth and are almost always politically helpful to the broader right.

In an ideal world, the distillation of raw data into causal models would be done by a team of highly paid scientists via a nonprofit or a government contract. This work is too complex to be left to the crowd, and its benefits are too distributed to be easily captured by the market.

The journalistic portion of combining papers into an elite consensus could be done similarly to today: with high-quality, subscription-based magazines. While such businesses can be profitable, for this content to integrate with AI, the AI companies themselves need to properly license the data and share revenue.

The last step seems to be mostly working today, as it would be done by influencers paid via ad revenue shares or similar engagement-based metrics. Creating permanent, rather than disappearing, data (à la Wikipedia) is a time-intensive and thankless task that will likely need paid editors in the future to keep the quality bar high.

Freedom doesn’t always boost truth

However, we do not live in an ideal world. The epistemic landscape has vastly improved since Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. At the very least, truth-seeking accounts don’t have to deal with as much arbitrary censorship. Even other media have made token statements claiming they will censor less, even as some AI “safety” features are ramped up to a much higher setting than social media censorship ever was.

The challenge with X and other media is that tech companies generally favor technocratic solutions over direct payment for pro-social content. There seems to be a widespread belief in a marketplace of ideas: the idea that without censorship (or with only some person’s favorite censorship), truthful ideas will win over false ones. This likely contains an element of truth, but the peculiarities of each algorithm may favor only certain types of truthful content.

“X is the new media” is a commonly spoken refrain. Yet both anonymous and public accounts on X are implicitly burdened with tasks as varied and complex as gathering election data, creating long think pieces, and the consistent repetition of slogans reinforcing a key message. All for a chance of a few Elon bucks. They are doing this while competing with stolen-valor thirst traps from overseas accounts. Obviously, most are not that motivated and stick to pithy and simple content rather than intellectually grounded think pieces. The broader “right” is still needlessly ceding intellectual and data-creation ground to the left, despite occasional victories in defunding anti-civilizational NGOs and taking control of key platforms.

The other issue experienced by data creators across the political spectrum is the reliance on unpaid volunteers. As the economic belt inevitably tightens and productive people have less spare time, the supply of quality free data will worsen. It will also worsen as both platforms and users feel rightful indignation at their data being “stolen” by AI companies making huge profits, thus moving content into gatekept platforms like Discord. While X is unlikely to go back to the “left,” its quality can certainly fall farther.

Even Redditors and Wikipedia contributors provide fairly complex, if generally biased, data that powers the entire AI ecosystem. Also for free. A community of unpaid volunteers working to spread useful information sounds lovely in principle. However, in addition to the decay in quality, these kinds of “business models” are generally very easy to disrupt with minor infusions of outside money, if it just means paying a full-time person to post. If you are not paying to generate politically powerful content, someone else is always happy to.

The other dream of tech companies is to use AI to “re-create” the entirety of the pipeline. We have heard so much drivel about “solving cancer” and “solving science.” While speeding up human progress by automating simple tasks is certainly going to work and is already working, the dream of full replacement will remain a dream, largely because of “model collapse,” the situation where AIs degrade in quality when they are trained on data generated by themselves. Companies occasionally hype up “no data/zero-knowledge/synthetic data” training, but a big example from 10 years ago, “RL from random play,” which worked for chess and Go, went nowhere in games as complex as Starcraft.

So where does truth come from?

This brings us to the recent example of Grokipedia. Perusing it gives one a sense that we have taken a step in the right direction, with an improved ability to summarize key historical events and medical controversies. However, a number of articles are lifted directly from Wikipedia, which risks drawing the wrong lesson. Grokipedia can’t “replace” Wikipedia in the long term because Grok’s own summarization is dependent on it.

Like many of Elon Musk’s ventures, Grokipedia is two steps forward, one step back. The forward steps are a customer-facing Wikipedia that seems to be of higher quality and a good example of AI-generated long-form content that is not mere slop, achieved by automating the tedious, formulaic steps of summarization. The backward step is a lack of understanding of what the ecosystem looks like without Wikipedia. Many of Grokipedia’s articles are lifted directly from Wikipedia, suggesting that if Wikipedia disappears, it will be very hard to keep neutral articles properly updated.

Even the current version suffers from a “chicken and egg” source-of-truth problem. If no AI has the real facts about the COVID vaccine and categorically rejects data about its safety or lack thereof, then Grokipedia will not be accurate on this topic unless a fairly highly paid editor researches and writes the true story. As mentioned, model collapse is likely to result from feeding too much of Grokipedia to Grok itself (and other AIs), leading to degradation of quality and truthfulness. Relying on unpaid volunteers to suggest edits creates a very easy vector for paid NGOs to influence the encyclopedia.

The simple conclusion is that to be good training data for future AIs, the next source of truth must be written by people. If we want to scale this process and employ a number of trustworthy researchers, Grokipedia by itself is very unlikely to make money and will probably forever be a money-losing business. It would likely be both a better business and a better source of truth if, instead of being written by AI to be read by people, it was written by people to be read by AI.

Eventually, the domain of truth needs to be carefully managed, curated, and updated by a legitimate organization that, while not technically part of the government, would be endorsed by it. Perhaps a nonprofit NGO — except good and actually helping humanity. The idea of “the Foundation” or “Antiversity,” is not new, but our over-reliance on AI to do the heavy lifting is. Such an institution, or a series of them, would need to be bootstrapped by people willing to invest in our epistemic future for the very long term.

​Trump, Elon musk, Ai, Ai bubble, Tech 

Cracker Barrel has lost one of its board members responsible for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

After a marketing disaster involving a change to its iconic logo and unique in-store designs, the company quickly apologized and reverted back to its original look. It has since looked to regain consumer trust and is finally making moves in its boardroom.

‘Gilbert helped oversee the formation of our strategic plan.’

Now, an independent director and board member who shouldered at least some of the blame for the rebrand is stepping down.

Cracker Barrel announced Gilbert Dávila’s resignation on Thursday morning, following a shareholder vote on the company’s board of directors. Shareholders elected nine of the company’s 10 recommended director nominees, including CEO Julie Masino, who has taken the brunt of the public bashing for the marketing failure.

Cracker Barrel thanked Dávila for being a valued member of the board during his five years.

The company added, “Over that time, Gilbert helped oversee the formation of our strategic plan and led our Compensation Committee with skill and dedication. We are grateful for his many contributions.”

RELATED: Cracker Barrel desperately rewrites ‘inclusion’ and DEI web page after backlash

Just a couple weeks earlier, two of Cracker Barrel’s largest proxy advisory firms, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, were reportedly pressuring shareholders to drop Dávila over his role in the marketing fiasco that tarnished the company’s public image.

“Dávila is highlighted in board materials as one of two marketing specialists among the independent directors. He is also a member of a standing board committee whose purview is to assess social and political risks to the company’s business,” ISS said, the New York Post reported.

At the same time, the group reportedly said that while removing CEO Masino would create too much chaos, her responsibility for the botched logo “is no less than Dávila’s.”

Both ISS and Glass Lewis agreed, however, that change was sorely needed at the company, adding that Dávila’s marketing expertise was “faulty.”

In a recent interview, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck pressed Masino and company senior vice president of store operations Doug Hisel about DEI and other woke marketing strategies, demanding to know: “Had the company embraced DEI as a culture?”

“Don’t preach to me on that,” he added, speaking for many consumers tired of political messaging from major corporations.

“I’m here to eat your meal. Can we just not have that thrown in our face?”

RELATED: Exclusive interview TOMORROW: Cracker Barrel CEO answers Glenn Beck’s brutal question — ‘Why weren’t you fired?’

— (@)

Under Dávila’s watch, Cracker Barrel’s diversity-laden marketing initiatives had spiraled out of control, with the company webpage dedicated to values frequently changing.

In fact, Cracker Barrel’s “culture and belonging” page has shifted gears so many times that internet archivists saved dozens of changes over the last two years alone.

The page had previously been labeled “culture and inclusion” and mentioned terms like “unconscious bias,” a form of inadvertent, subliminal racism allegedly exhibited by all.

Back in 2024, the page was called “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging” at Cracker Barrel. It celebrated “Diversity in Our Decor,” “Diversity in Our Leadership & Development,” and even spoke of achievements on the Human Rights Campaign “equality index.”

It additionally included mention of company programs like “Be Bold,” a mission to develop “black leaders”; the “LGBTQ+ Alliance,” which had the purpose of “strengthening Cracker Barrel’s relationship to the LGBTQ+ community”; and “HOLA,” a program to “promote Hispanic and Latino culture through hiring, developing, and retaining talent within Cracker Barrel.”

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​News, Cracker barrel, Diversity, Dei, Americana, Executives, United states, Politics 

Florida Rep. Cory Mills (R) evaded another censure effort Wednesday night, but not without some heated criticism from a Republican colleague.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina forced a censure vote on Mills Wednesday over “alleged stolen valor, arms deals he’s under investigation for and alleged abuses toward women.” Mace also went after Mills after a handful of Republicans blocked the censure of Democrat Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands, who colluded with Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing.

‘The more we learn about this guy and his purported activities, the worse it is.’

Mace alleged that Plaskett’s censure failed because Mills cut a “backroom deal” to suppress his own censure. Similar allegations were made toward Mills back in September when he was the deciding vote to protect Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s censure for the insensitive comments she made following Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

“Another backroom deal so Cory Mills can’t get censored [sic] for Stolen Valor,” Mace said in a post on X. “I have the General who ‘recommended’ him for the Bronze Star on record saying he never wrote it, never read it and never personally signed it. This. Is. Washington.”

RELATED: ‘Backroom deal’: Nancy Mace to force a vote on Cory Mills after Republicans shield Epstein-texting Democrat

hoto by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The two Republicans reportedly had a heated exchange on the House floor Wednesday night, with Mace calling Mills a “disgrace” and mouthing the words, “You’re a piece of s**t.”

Mace later addressed these outbursts in a post on X, saying the real scandal is Mills’ track record.

“While Rep. Cory Mills is worried about my ‘mean’ words on the Floor last night — I’m worried about our national security and what sort of arms deals he or his companies have with foreign countries. I’m worried about how court records show he abuses women and had to have a restraining order set against him for it. I’m worried about how stealing the stories of other soldiers constitutes STOLEN VALOR and spits in the faces of veterans who gave it all Hold your tongue and sit this one out Mr. Mills.”

The censure vote ultimately failed 310-103, with 204 Republicans and 106 Democrats defending Mills.

Only eight Republicans — Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Kat Cammack of Florida, Joe Wilson of South Carolina, and Mace — voted to advance the censure measure.

Although the censure failed, Mace still called the effort a win.

RELATED: ‘Swamp protects itself’: Republicans shield Epstein-texting Democrat — allegedly to save Cory Mills’ hide

Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

“Last night was a win with either outcome of the vote,” Mace said in a post on X. “Now the Left can’t do any more backroom deals with Mills or use Mills as a bargaining chip whenever a Republican moves to censure another. And his investigation has been formally referred to an Ethics Subcommittee.”

“However, I pray leadership will remove Mills from his committees until Ethics is done with Mills. The more we learn about this guy and his purported activities, the worse it is.”

Blaze News reached out to Mills’ office for comment.

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​Nancy mace, Cory mills, Censure, Backroom deal, Ilhan omar, House republicans, House democrats, Stacey plaskett, Jeffrey epstein, Epstein files, Anna paulina luna, Lauren boebert, Marjorie taylor greene, Harriet hageman, Tim burchett, Kat cammack, Joe wilson, Politics 

Just weeks after the scandal in Celina ISD dropped where a coach was revealed to not only have had a past relationship with a high school student but was also videotaping middle school players in the locker room, another Texas football coach has been accused of abuse.

But he’s not the only one. A myriad of abusers have been exposed in Texas — all who have been tasked with guiding young students.

One woman, a teacher’s aide named Andrea Rodriquez, admitted to an “intimate relationship” with her student at Runge ISD in South Texas. A Mount Pleasant teacher named JaQuaven Rogers, a special education teacher’s aide at Wallace Middle School, has been accused of sex crimes against a student. And a Mesquite Academy teacher has been jailed for possessing child sex abuse material.

And all of this has been uncovered just this November.

Now, Robert Vela High School’s head football coach Ernie Alonzo is being sued by Robert Rocha, the father of an Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District student, after Alonzo ordered Rocha’s son to “perform strenuous physical exercises completely nude.”

According to Rocha, when his son “attempted to preserve any shred of dignity by covering himself with underwear,” Alonzo forced him to remain nude by threatening him.

The coach reportedly sought Rocha’s son out while he was in the shower and forced him out of the shower to perform the exercises for him. Following the act, “The coach secluded himself for unknown and suspicious reasons.”

The lawsuit also alleges that there were multiple victims who Alonzo targeted.

“I know I say this every time,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says on “Come and Take It.” “But I really, I feel like I must hammer home, if this ever was my son, I would be in jail for homicide.”

“Think about the arrogance an adult must have to commit such a crime, like such a gross violation … the arrogance to think this is not going to come out eventually, like a boy isn’t going to understand inherently that his coach pulling him out of the shower and forcing him to exercise in front of him naked and then suspiciously taking a few moments to himself is entirely messed up,” she continues.

And like the Celina ISD case, Alonzo was hired despite having a shady history at another school – McAllen ISD. He was given the job despite his inappropriate behavior because of his “deep ties to the powerful political machine in Edinburg” and “the patronage of a high-level athletics administrator, Oscar Salinas.”

“Just like so many of these cases, the schools are passing the trash to other schools. … They’re allowing these people who they know have a track record of being inappropriate.” Gonzales comments.

“They don’t care. They care about everything except the children. They care about their pay. They care about covering for their own. They care about football. They care about your taxpayer dollars lining their pocketbooks, building new football stadiums,” she continues.

While those involved in the lawsuit have admitted that what Alonzo did was wrong, they’re now claiming “governmental immunity” from being sued.

“You might as well claim governmental immunity for sleeping with your students,” Gonzales scoffs.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Upload, Sharing, Free, Camera phone, Video, Video phone, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Celina isd, Ernie alonzo, Robert vela high school, Child abuse, Sexual predators, Oscar salinas 

After more than a month’s delay due to the government shutdown, the government has released a new jobs report from September. The report defied expectations and proved President Trump is getting the economy back on track.

On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the long-awaited jobs report. The numbers blew many estimates out of the water.

‘This strong report is more proof that President Trump’s pro-growth, America First agenda is already making great progress, and it will continue to deliver positive results for American families and businesses.’

According to data obtained from the BLS, the U.S. added 119,000 jobs in September, marking an increase compared to previous months. The estimate, according to Fox News, was 50,000 new jobs.

RELATED: Trump orders Labor Statistics chief to be fired over revisions in weak jobs report

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“The economy is booming under President Trump! His commitment to bringing jobs back to the United States and putting America First has turned this country around and set us on the right track!” Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters said on X.

Wages are also up 0.2% to $36.67 in September, BLS said. According to the data, hourly earnings have increased 3.8% over the last 12 months.

In a statement obtained by Blaze News, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “The September jobs report more than doubled market expectations — adding 119,000 new jobs to the American economy. In stark contrast to the disastrous Biden economy, almost all of these new jobs were in the private sector and went to American-born workers instead of illegal aliens. Wages for workers are continuing to rise, a reversal of the Biden years where private sector wages declined by about $3,000 because of the Democrats’ inflation crisis.”

“This strong report is more proof that President Trump’s pro-growth, America First agenda is already making great progress, and it will continue to deliver positive results for American families and businesses,” Leavitt added.

Citing the government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has said that it will not release full data for October. Instead, it will release partial data with the November jobs report, according to ABC News.

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​Politics, Jobs report, September jobs report, Economy, Karoline leavitt, Bls, Bureau of labor statistics, President trump, Maga 

In a video shared earlier in the week, six Democrat veterans in Congress urged members of the military and the intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders” from the Trump administration, though without specifying which orders were deemed illegal.

On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump posted a string of responses to the viral video.

‘SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!’

In a Truth Social post, Trump said, “It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand — We won’t have a Country anymore!!!”

RELATED: ‘Rebellion’? Democrat lawmakers urge federal agents to resist Trump agenda in cringe video

Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.)Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“An example MUST BE SET,” he added in the same post.

In a second post, Trump reiterated his call for accountability: “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”

Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) delivered the incendiary message.

In the video, the Democrats urged military and intelligence members to resist the Trump administration, telling them “we have your back”: “Americans trust their military. But that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.”

“You MUST refuse illegal orders,” the video warned.

“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Trump said in another Truth Social post later on Thursday morning.

“It is insurrection — plainly, directly, without question. … It’s a general call for rebellion from the CIA and the armed services of the United States by Democrat lawmakers. … It shows what a dangerous moment we’re in,” White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller said on Wednesday.

The video posted by Senator Elissa Slotkin reached 12 million views by Thursday morning.

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​Trump, President trump, Rebellion, Democrats, Elissa slotkin, Mark kelly, Intelligence community, Seditious behavior, Stephen miller, Congress, Sedition, Politics 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) issued deposition subpoenas in August to failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton requiring their testimony “related to horrific crimes perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein.”

Comer made clear on Tuesday that the Clintons risk criminal exposure should they continue not to comply with the subpoenas — and that he is willing to make use of the precedent set in recent years by Democrats.

‘They’re the one group in this investigation that’s never had to answer questions … from attorneys or members of Congress.’

The chairman noted in his Aug. 5 letter to Bill Clinton that owing to the former president’s past relationships with Epstein and child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, the committee believed him to have information regarding their activities relevant to the investigation.

“By your own admission, you flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane four separate times in 2002 and 2003. During one of these trips, you were even pictured receiving a ‘massage’ from one of Mr. Epstein’s victims,” wrote Comer.

“It has also been claimed that you pressured Vanity Fair not to publish sex-trafficking allegations against your ‘good friend’ Mr. Epstein, and there are conflicting reports about whether you ever visited Mr. Epstein’s island,” continued the chairman. “You were also allegedly close to Ms. Ghislane Maxwell, an Epstein co-conspirator, and attended an intimate dinner with her in 2014, three years after public reports about her involvement in Mr. Epstein’s abuse of minors.”

RELATED: Epstein emails SHAME Obama/Clinton ally: Larry Summers quits public life amid calls for Harvard to cut ties

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Comer noted in his letter to Hillary Clinton that her testimony was of interest to the panel not only because of her husband’s relationship with the dead sex offender but because of her links to Maxwell, whose nephew worked for Hillary Clinton’s first failed presidential campaign, then later for the State Department while Clinton was secretary of state.

The Oversight Committee compelled Hillary Clinton to testify on Oct. 9, but she didn’t show up.

When Bill Clinton’s Oct. 14 deposition date came around, a committee spokesperson announced that it would be delayed as the panel was “having conversations with the Clintons’ attorney to accommodate their schedules.”

Republicans on the committee are apparently still trying to settle on a date with the Clintons’ attorneys, a source familiar with the matter told ABC News.

“We expect to hear from Bill and Hillary Clinton,” Comer told “Just the News, No Noise” on Tuesday. “Donald Trump answered questions for years about Jeffrey Epstein. Every day he gets asked questions about Epstein, and he answers them in front of the American people. We’ve subpoenaed Republicans and Democrats.”

“Other Democrats have sent letters saying they knew nothing about Epstein, which would hold in court if something ever comes out that they did know something, then they’ve committed perjury there,” continued the chairman.

“But the Clintons have never responded. They’re the one group in this investigation that’s never had to answer questions in front of a credible reporter, and they’ve never certainly answered questions from attorneys or members of Congress,” added Comer.

Comer, evidently tired of the Clintons’ avoidance, added, “So we expect the Clintons to come in, or I expect the Clintons to be met with the same fate that Bannon and [Peter] Navarro were met with when the Democrats were in control.”

Democrats would likely condemn the Clintons’ visitation by legal consequence over their refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas — but such criticism would amount to rocks thrown from a glass house.

Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general, was held in contempt of Congress in a decisive 255-67 vote in 2012 for refusing to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal.

The Obama Justice Department rewarded Holder for keeping the Democratic president’s documents from the American people’s elected representatives by refusing to prosecute.

House Republicans voted last year to hold former Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas for audio recordings of former President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

The Biden Department of Justice revealed on June 14, 2024, that it would not bother prosecuting Garland.

Although keen to shield their own from consequence, Democrats held Republicans to a different standard.

The Democrat-controlled House voted 229-202 in 2021 to hold former Trump adviser and “War Room” host Stephen Bannon in contempt for defying a subpoena issued by the Jan. 6 committee.

Whereas the Biden DOJ would later let Garland off the hook for the same charge, the same outfit energetically prosecuted Bannon, securing a conviction and recommending that he serve at least six months in prison and pay a $200,000 fine. Bannon ended up languishing in prison for four months.

The president’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, received similar treatment for not complying with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee. Navarro, who figured he was bound by executive privilege when he defied the subpoena, served a four-month prison sentence.

Navarro noted in a speech last year at the Republican National Convention, “I got a very simple message for you: If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful. They will come for you.”

Comer’s apparent threat came a week after President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department and the FBI on Friday to “investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton” and others, and “determine what was going on with them, and him.”

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​Bill clinton, Hillary clinton, Clinton, Jeffrey epstein, Pedophile, Elite, Cult, Sex offender, Child sex offender, Rapist, Politics 

On November 4, 2025, Democrats didn’t just win Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City — they crushed them. In Virginia, Democrats swept the statewide offices in a clean blue trifecta: Abigail Spanberger as governor, Ghazala Hashmi as lieutenant governor, and Jay Jones as attorney general. New Jersey followed suit, with the gubernatorial race called for Democrat Mikie Sherrill shortly after polling closed. And in New York City, Muslim Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race.

Mark Levin is disturbed by Republicans’ apathy. “We gotta fight like hell, every single time, in every election, at every level of government. That’s the bottom line!”

Virginia, he says, was once “a red southern state” until the “locusts” — “government bureaucrats” looking to evade blue-state taxes and regulations – moved in and “screwed up everything.”

“Now the state of Virginia — the Commonwealth — has the largest number of federal bureaucrats of any state in the country, even more than Maryland. Wow. Go figure,” says Levin. “Plus, on top of that, we’ve had years and years of illegal immigration and legal immigration without assimilation, particularly under the Democrats.”

Add to that the fact that “Republicans are depopulating the state” and Soros and CAIR funding install people like Hashmi — a Muslim progressive Democrat who is now teed up to be Virginia’s next governor — and it’s clear that the state is on a one-way track to destruction.

New Jersey is much the same, although it doesn’t have the red history of Virginia. Blue voters, despite the already crushing taxes and regulations, voted in the same Democrat machine with Sherrill, who Levin says will simply sit at a desk and use a rubber “YES” stamp on every radical blue bill that crosses her desk. She’s nothing more than “a placeholder,” he scoffs.

Levin calls out Republican pundits on television and radio who ignorantly believe they can use these recent Democrat victories, especially Zohran Mamdani’s in New York City, as red campaign fuel in the future.

“They’re organizing at the local level like we’ve never seen before,” he warns. ”They’ve got more billions flooding in like we’ve never seen before. They’re already twisting the minds of our youth in our colleges and universities.”

To those pushing the idea that these blue victories will only help Republicans in the midterms and the 2028 election, he says, “Are you out of your mind?! … Get out of the way and let the serious people deal with this!”

To hear more of Levin’s commentary, watch the clip above.

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It’s my favorite time of year. When it gets cold, I fuel up four or five of the dozens of antique kerosene lamps I own. I use these to heat and light my house in winter; the charm and warmth make the cold and dark more bearable.

In past columns I’ve tried to convince you to abandon new, low-quality appliances and buy old workhorses. This time I want to persuade you to go even lower-tech and give flame light a try. You want to gather around the lamp with good people. You’ll find yourself staring into the flame, noticing the warmth it radiates (literal and metaphorical).

My center drafts have saved me during electricity outages in winter, giving enough light to work by as well as heat.

No electric lamps will make you feel this way. Some are very beautiful, of course, and the most charming use the original Edison-style incandescent filament bulbs. But they’re almost gone.

Thanks to meddling safetyist government, we live under the ghastly glow of LEDs. Before that, it was compact fluorescents. And before that, it was the sickening, flickering off-green morgue illumination of the overhead fluorescent tube, the appropriate furnishing for the inhuman Brutalist aesthetic that has infected 90% of commercial office space in the U.S. since the 1960s.

We weren’t made to live this way or light this way. We did not evolve under unnatural artificial light stripped of whole swaths of the color spectrum, drained of infrared.

We evolved by the campfire. For most of human history, the communal fire was the only source of “artificial” illumination at night. Firelight is a first cousin to sunlight, the original illumination that gave rise to all life on earth.

I’m going to give you basic tips on buying and running lamps, from simple to more complex. There’s a kind of kerosene lamp for everyone.

Sensible safety

Use common sense. You’re working with fire, and larger lamps put out a lot of heat, so be mindful that there’s plenty of clearance between the top of the chimney and the ceiling.

Keep charged fire extinguishers (you should anyway).

Yes, of course it’s possible to tip over a lamp, but in practice, it rarely happens unless you’re careless. They’re weighted to be fairly stable.

People also ask if my cats knock over the lamps. The answer is no, but you must use your own judgment because you know your animals and the layout of your house. My cats love to sleep near them for warmth and will walk on a table to get to them. But they don’t bump them. Again, you must exercise your own judgment.

Shredder the cat dozes by a center-draft lamp. Josh Slocum

No, you’re not in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. Do you have a gas cookstove? Did you ever worry that you would get carbon monoxide poisoning from having your gas cookstove running? If you’re not afraid of your gas stove giving you carbon monoxide poisoning, there’s no physics-based reason to fear it if the flame comes from a kerosene lamp instead.

Carbon monoxide results from incomplete combustion. No combustion is 100% complete, but these lamps are burning close to it. I have been running kerosene lamps for about 15 years. They’ve never even blipped my smoke or carbon monoxide detectors.

No, the lamps won’t “suck up all the oxygen.” Your house is not hermetically sealed. The air is changing over all the time, even with your windows closed. You’re not in a pressurized submarine hull.

But “fumes,” you say. Every time you burn your favorite scented candles, you’re doing the same thing at a small scale, but no one is afraid of “fumes.” I think “fumes” is just miasma theory of disease, like how people used to falsely believe that bad odors from graveyards could transmit sickness to the living.

The only “fumes” you’re going to get with a lamp using clean kerosene are a bit of kero smell on lighting and on extinguishing. If it bothers you, take the lamp outside to light and extinguish. Remember that your ancestors right here in America all lit their homes this way, rich or poor. People weren’t dying of “fumes” or “lack of oxygen.”

The right stuff

Burn only clear, undyed kerosene. Not “lamp oil.” Not “lamp fuel.” These lamps want one thing only: the specific chemical we call kerosene. It’s a petroleum distillate similar to (but much less stinky than) diesel. Kerosene is not explosive like gasoline; don’t fear an explosion.

If you’ve experienced stinky oil lamps, it’s almost certainly because someone was burning “lamp oil,” which is liquid paraffin wax. This stuff clogs up wicks, it burns half as brightly as kerosene, it can smoke, and it smells awful. Stick with clear kerosene labeled “K1” or “1K,” found in your hardware store, Tractor Supply, Walmart, and similar stores.

Level I: Flat-wick lamps

Let’s introduce you to lamps. I categorize as Level I, Level II, and Level III. We’re going to go from simplest and least expensive to more high-powered lamps. If you’re new to lamps, start with Level I, the flat-wick lamps.

Everyone knows these lamps. These are what come to mind when you hear the phrase “oil lamp.” You remember lamps just like this from “Little House on the Prairie” on television.

These are called flat-wick lamps because, you may have guessed, their wicks are flat. This is my “sewing lamp,” so called because it’s tall enough to sit on a table by you for handwork.

Josh Slocum

Consider a wall-mounted flat-wick lamp, too. These can fit in beautiful wrought-iron brackets. Mount them to a stud in the wall and enjoy the character they add to your room. Below is one of my Victorian wall-mount lamps with a mercury reflector.

Josh Slocum

Level II: Center-draft lamps

So-called “center-draft” lamps are my personal favorite, and I recommend that you get at least one of them. They draw air from a central tube in the middle of the burner. Unlike flat-wick lamps, center-draft lamps have a round wick. They’re larger than most flat-wick lamps, so they put out about three times the light and heat of a basic lamp.

One center-draft lamp is enough to heat a medium-sized room, and you can cook over it in a pinch by rigging up a trivet. My center-draft lamps have saved me during electricity outages in winter, giving enough light to work by as well as heat. They’re essential equipment for anyone who is into prepping for emergencies. Plastic electronic LED lights with fancy solar panels can’t hold a candle to the rugged practicality and versatility of these.

Here’s my favorite, the “New Juno” model, made from 1886 to about 1915.

Josh Slocum

Any center-draft lamp is a good buy as long as it has all the parts necessary for operation (be sure it has a flame spreader). At the end of this article, I’ll link to businesses that specialize in advice and replacement parts. Do a little bit of reading, and you’ll learn everything you need to know before you buy.

Level III: The magical Aladdin lamp

Technology becomes as fun as it will ever get when one tech is declining as another rises. The old tech has to compete with the new, so the old tech gets refined to its highest potential just before it becomes obsolete.

That’s the Aladdin lamp. “Aladdin” is a brand name, not a generic type. These lamps are the zenith of kerosene technology that was competing with new electric light. These are mantle lamps. What does that mean? Bring to mind the Coleman lanterns you remember from camping. The ones that hiss and put out a very bright light. Those are mantle lamps too.

Aladdin lamps are mantle lamps, but instead of burning compressed gas, they burn kerosene.

In mantle lamps, the light does not come from the flame. The flame is used to heat the incandescent mantle. This is a thin, delicate mesh impregnated with rare-earths and mineral salts. These elements glow white-hot under heat. This is how the Aladdin lamp can produce a light that matches modern electric bulb output.

They are wonderful devices, and I have a few, but they are more finicky. They need a mantle, and you have to be very careful to keep the wick absolutely level, or you’ll get flame spikes that leave black carbon deposits on your mantle. The solution is to turn the flame low and burn off the carbon slowly.

Here’s my 1936 Aladdin Model B in green Corinthian glass:

Josh Slocum

Hopefully this has tempted you to get your first kerosene lamp. There are some dependable businesses run by people who love these lamps and know everything about them. Most breakable and replaceable parts like the glass chimneys and the wicks are still made and readily available from these purveyors and others.

Nobody knows more about lamps, and nobody has a wider selection of wicks, chimneys, diagrams, and how-to articles, than Miles Stair on the West Coast of the U.S. Go to his site first whenever you have a question.

Woody Kirkman of Kirkman Lanterns manufactures and sells quality reproduction lamps and replacement parts for antiques. You have likely seen his work in period films and at Disney parks and like. He is often hired to supply kerosene and gas lighting fixtures for movies and TV and for theme parks.

Gather those you love around you, and light your lamp.

​Lifestyle, Home, Heating, Kerosene lamps, Provisions, Antiques, Oil lamps, Little house on the prairie, Aladdin lamps, Intervention 

Police in Jacksonville, Florida, said they responded to a home around 12:41 p.m. Tuesday after a report that a person was shot, First Coast News said.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said a man believed to be in his 70s living in the home on Arlex Drive, off Merrill Road, reportedly told police that a male armed with a gun broke through a window in the back of the home, the outlet reported.

‘Just glad to have another one, another one of these guys off the streets.’

The victim said he was ordered into a back bedroom and forced to hand over his car keys and other valuables, the outlet added, citing the sheriff’s office.

But the elderly victim fought back.

The sheriff’s office said the homeowner was able to grab a gun and managed to shoot the suspect once in the shoulder, the outlet reported.

The wounded suspect reportedly fled the home and drove off in the victim’s car, First Coast News said.

However, the sheriff’s office said police found the suspect inside the vehicle about 30 minutes later and took him into custody on Fort Caroline Road, near Jacksonville University — just a few miles from the scene of the home invasion, the outlet noted.

Brandon Meredith, who was driving along University Boulevard, told First Coast News he witnessed the suspect’s capture.

“Everyone had their tasers drawn,” Meredith told the outlet. “They’re moving up in a special kind of formation on the back of the car, heard a pop, they grabbed him and pulled him out, put him on the ground, and EMS was tending to him, and they had the intersection shut down for about two hours while this whole thing unfolded.”

RELATED: Elderly Texas homeowner armed with hunting rifle spots burglar who broke through back door. It doesn’t end well for intruder.

The suspect, who has not yet been publicly identified, was taken to a hospital for the gunshot wound, the sheriff’s office told First Coast News, and was in police custody.

Meredith added to the outlet that he’s happy with the way things ended up: “Just glad to have another one, another one of these guys off the streets.”

First Coast News said those with information about the incident that could help in the investigation can contact the sheriff’s office at 904-630-0500. The outlet added that anonymous tips are also welcome through Crime Stoppers.

Commenters on WJAX’s Facebook post about the incident expressed a variety of opinions about the outcome. The following are but a few of them:

“‘In custody’ means the homeowner needs some range time,” one commenter asserted.”Dang, people still dare to break in other houses in open carry state,” another user opined.”He’s a hero,” another commenter declared.”The only problem I see is the homeowner needs some shooting lessons,” another user wrote, adding “shoot for center mass, and this potentially eliminates the issue.””In blue states and cities, this poor homeowner would have to face trial and have his life financially ruined (at best), or spend the rest of his life in prison,” another commenter observed.

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