When it comes to artificial intelligence, the Trump administration has made its position clear: America will not choke innovation with red tape.

That instinct is understandable and, in many ways, correct. AI is moving fast, and heavy-handed regulation could do real damage. If the United States cripples its own companies, China will gladly take the advantage. And no one on the right wants blue-state politicians using AI rules to smuggle “woke” ideology into the next generation of powerful models.

The goal should be straightforward: Build an American AI future in which freedom is embedded from the start, and constitutional guardrails shape the systems that will increasingly shape us.

As White House AI adviser David Sacks recently put it, “We don’t like seeing blue states trying to insert their woke ideology in AI models, and we really want to try and stop that.”

Fair enough.

But what happens when resistance to bad regulation hardens into resistance to any regulation at all?

That question is now surfacing in Utah, where the White House is reportedly opposing a Republican-sponsored AI transparency bill. The fight may sound parochial, but it raises a much larger question: Do conservatives have the discipline to protect constitutional liberty in the AI age?

Utah isn’t California

The Utah proposal is not a European-style crackdown. It would not impose speech codes, mandate ideological compliance, or try to centrally plan the AI economy.

At its core, the bill focuses on transparency and accountability. It would require frontier AI companies to disclose serious risks, plan for safety in advance, report major problems, and protect whistleblowers who raise alarms.

That’s far from radical.

If the administration’s AI strategy is to stop progressive states from embedding political orthodoxy into algorithms, Utah’s bill does not belong in that category. The measure is about making sure the companies building extraordinarily powerful systems acknowledge the risks up front and take responsibility when things go wrong.

Treating that effort as if it were blue-state social engineering confuses two very different problems. There is a real difference between using AI regulation to enforce ideology and asking powerful firms to level with the public about systems that could reshape society.

The myth of an ‘unregulated’ AI market

Another uncomfortable truth lurks beneath this debate: AI is not operating in anything like a free-market vacuum.

The European Union has already enacted its sweeping AI Act. That regulatory regime will not stop at Europe’s borders. American companies that operate globally will feel its force, and American users will feel the downstream effects.

If the United States adopts a posture of total federal non-engagement, it will not preserve a neutral market. It will hand the regulatory initiative to Brussels.

That would be a serious mistake. Europe does not regulate with American constitutional principles in mind. It regulates through a bureaucratic worldview that prizes centralized control over freedom. If Washington refuses to establish clear guardrails rooted in our own constitutional tradition, foreign regulators and multinational firms will fill the void.

Power without constitutional guardrails

AI is quickly becoming part of the infrastructure of modern life. These systems increasingly shape how information flows, how public opinion forms, and how daily choices get nudged.

That is power.

We have already watched major corporations use private power to shape public life. Social-media companies moderated, suppressed, and curated speech in ways that tilted public debate. Large firms adopted ESG frameworks that embedded political priorities into lending, hiring, and investment. In both cases, powerful institutions pushed ideological outcomes without a vote being cast or a law being passed.

Nothing suggests AI will escape those pressures.

RELATED: If AI isn’t built for freedom, it will be programmed for control

gorodenkoff / Getty Images

The companies building frontier systems carry their own assumptions, incentives, and cultural biases. If those assumptions get baked into foundational models — and those models then get integrated into education, finance, media, hiring, and governance — ideological influence will move from the margins to the infrastructure of society.

Yes, clumsy central planning would hurt innovation and weaken America’s position against China. But the answer cannot be blind faith that market incentives alone will protect liberty. That asks a great deal of institutions that have already shown a willingness to steer political and cultural outcomes in their preferred direction.

The real challenge is making sure extraordinary technological power develops inside a framework that respects constitutional rights, individual liberty, and personal autonomy.

A pro-liberty AI framework

The Trump administration is right to resist ideological manipulation in AI models and to oppose sweeping regimes that would handicap American innovation while China races ahead.

But someone will shape the boundaries of this technology. The only real question is whether those boundaries reflect American constitutional principles or the preferences of foreign regulators and corporate boards.

Red states such as Utah should be treated as allies in that effort, not obstacles. They can serve as proving ground for approaches that protect transparency, due process, free expression, and individual autonomy without strangling innovation.

Artificial intelligence will shape the next century more than any single statute. Total non-engagement may sound pro-growth, but in practice it leaves the foundational rules of the AI era to someone else.

The goal should be straightforward: Build an American AI future in which freedom is embedded from the start, and constitutional guardrails shape the systems that will increasingly shape us.

​Ai, China, Usa, Liberty, Ai regulations, Artificial intelligence, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Utah, Legislation, Woke ai, Leftism, Red states, Blue states, Brussels, European union, Free speech, Censorship, David sacks, Free market, Transparency 

Jared Hudson is a former Navy Seal, a devoted Christian, a current Republican candidate running for the U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, and the founder of Covenant Rescue Group, a nonprofit dedicated to combatting human trafficking and child exploitation through law enforcement training; operations to rescue victims and arrest perpetrators; and advocacy.

On a recent episode of “Strange Encounters,” Hudson joined Rick Burgess to dive into today’s darkest headlines — Epstein, child exploitation, cultural depravity, and political corruption — and ultimately connect them to the bigger reality of spiritual warfare.

During their conversation, however, Hudson told Rick something that genuinely shocked the BlazeTV host: After years of infiltrating the child exploitation industry, there’s an even darker underworld operating in the United States.

Since Covenant Rescue Group kicked off in 2019, Hudson and his team have seen things most of us can’t even begin to imagine.

“I mean, we’ve seen guys having sex with 18-month old babies — their own children,” he says.

And yet, Hudson says his work in D.C. politics has shockingly exposed him to even deeper levels of depravity.

“I feel [depravity] more now in the politics side that I’ve gotten involved in running for U.S. Senate than I do in the child exploitation side,” he told Rick, who was taken aback by this declaration.

“You just said that you have sensed demonic activity [in politics] more … than you’ve even seen in Covenant Rescue with human trafficking and child exploitation. So, why would that be?” he asks.

Hudson explains that dealing with child exploitation, while undeniably monstrous, is in some ways easier because it’s still “taboo” and widely opposed.

“Look at the outcry from both sides of the aisle on this Epstein stuff, right?” he says.

Even though there are fringe groups that want to destigmatize pedophilia by pushing it “into a sexual orientation,” by and large, “we are, as a society, not past protecting children,” he explains.

Hudson compares that to the D.C. swamp, which runs on “partiality.”

“Everybody within politics, even if they disagree with exploitation or whatever, they show partiality,” Hudson says.

And where partiality thrives, so does depravity, he explains, citing James 3:16-17: “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”

“Career politicians, even if they claim to be Christians, they sell access … and they’re partial to donors,” Hudson says, arguing that these politicians disregard those who “can’t write [them] a max donation check,” “support a super PAC,” or “put [them] on a platform that’s going to reach a 100,000 people.”

“They’re partial to their club as opposed to the people they’re elected to represent. And you have a bureaucracy that’s in place, and you have these elitists that are in place that think that they can buy … your position, buy you, buy access to you … and own [you],” he explains.

This kind of systemic corruption isn’t occasional or confined to certain groups — it’s baked into the structures and normalized at every level.

“It’s across the board for everything — congressmen, even the president,” Hudson says.

“Everything’s for sale,” Rick echoes.

To hear more, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

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​Strange encounters, Strange encounters with rick burgess, Blazetv, Blaze media, Rick burgess, Jared hudson, Dc corruption, Spiritual warfare 

Affordability has become a problem for nearly every American. Inflation and the rising cost of living keep chewing through paychecks, and the old markers of the American dream — home ownership, small-business ownership, a secure retirement — feel farther out of reach than they have in years.

Some people respond by demanding more government involvement in daily life. President Trump has taken the opposite view: The government should step back.

Success will not come only from repealing rules. It will come when regulators stop seeing entrepreneurs as problems to manage and start seeing them as partners in growth.

Within days of returning to office, Trump signed two major executive orders aimed at saving money for business owners and taxpayers alike: Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation and the much-discussed DOGE initiative. Their core principle was simple: For every new federal regulation, agencies should eliminate 10 old ones.

One year later, the results are real.

I have spent that year on the front lines of the fight against unnecessary regulation as a regional advocate in the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy. Congress established the office in 1976, but it has taken on renewed life under the current administration.

My team and I have spent the past year meeting with small-business owners — many still trying to recover from the economic damage of the COVID lockdown era — to identify ways the federal government can serve as a partner instead of a roadblock.

Nationwide, our team has met with more than 12,000 businesses.

The full report is available publicly, but the top-line results from the past year are straightforward:

We flagged more than 300 regulatory issues for federal regulators.We helped influence changes to 23 federal regulations affecting millions of businesses.We saved small businesses nearly $110 billion in unnecessary regulatory costs.

That last number is significant, but it also shows the scale of the broader problem. Federal regulation costs the U.S. economy more than $3 trillion a year by some estimates — roughly 12% of GDP. Much of that burden falls hardest on smaller firms that cannot absorb legal and compliance costs the way large corporations can. Meanwhile, the Code of Federal Regulations has swollen from a few thousand pages decades ago to more than 180,000 pages today.

For small businesses, that kind of regulatory sprawl is not an abstraction. It is a threat.

Big companies can keep in-house counsel, compliance officers, and HR departments on payroll. A family business, a contractor, or a startup working out of a garage cannot. Excessive regulation tilts the playing field toward the largest players and against the very people most likely to create new jobs and local wealth.

For too long, federal rulemaking has treated small-business owners as an afterthought. We once heard that giant firms were “too big to fail.” Today, many small businesses face a different reality: they are becoming too small to succeed.

RELATED: Republicans and Democrats are in revolt — for very different reasons

Douglas Rissing/Getty Images

One of the most effective tools we have built to push back is the SBA’s Red Tape Hotline — 1-800-827-5722 — which allows small-business owners to speak directly with federal staff about regulatory burdens and offer suggestions for reform. Through that hotline, we have heard from thousands of people we could not have reached in person.

Our broader goal is to improve the regulatory climate for every business owner in the country. But even saving a mom-and-pop shop a few billable hours with an attorney can make a real difference.

In one especially memorable case, SBA staff helped a toy company in Mississippi clear a shipment through Customs and Border Protection in time for December — literally saving Christmas for that business.

The philosophy behind this work is the same one that guided me as mayor of Riverton, Utah, where I recently completed two terms. Riverton has grown because we kept taxes, fees, and regulations low enough for businesses to thrive. Companies came, jobs followed, and the city’s sales-tax revenue doubled during my time in office. Watching that same pro-growth approach work at the national level has been deeply rewarding.

Still, this is only a first down, not a touchdown.

Success will not come only from repealing rules. It will come when regulators stop seeing entrepreneurs as problems to manage and start seeing them as partners in growth. If we can make that shift, we can do more than trim costs. We can make the American dream attainable again.

​Government regulations, Red tape, Small businesses, Entrepreneurs, American dream, Affordability, Regulatory costs, Small business administration, Opinion & analysis 

A brawl broke out late last week after a police chief dressed in street clothes tried to arrest a high school girl who allegedly was causing trouble amid a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and now some residents in the southeastern Pennsylvania borough of Quakertown want the chief to resign.

The Bucks County Courier Times said a probable cause affidavit provides the first official police account of what led to the arrest of five Quakertown High School students.

‘Everybody was confused because nobody knew it was a policeman. He was in regular clothes. We were just like, “Why is the man attacking us?”‘

At least 35 students participated in the Friday walkout to protest ICE, the Courier Times said, citing the affidavit.

Quakertown police had been monitoring the protest “from a safe distance” and assisting with road closures after students left the high school campus and headed into the downtown business district, the paper said.

More from the Courier Times:

Early in the protest Friday police allege they noticed a large group of protesters move into the road in the 100 block of East Broad Street, and a girl kicked a white pickup truck on the passenger side several times and hit the side mirror with her hand, the affidavit said.

Protesters also threw “ice balls” at vehicles, stood on public benches, and police approached the group and requested they protest respectfully, and keep the sidewalk clear, the affidavit said.

In a statement issued Friday, Quakertown police alleged student protesters threw snowballs at vehicles, kicked cars, and “damaged property such as tearing a side mirror from a car.”

The police statement also said that additional officers were called to the scene when confrontations with students escalated “and some individuals assaulted officers.”

However, the paper said witnesses and protesters alleged that motorists followed the students and revved their engines, blew exhaust fumes at them, and yelled taunts at the students.

The Courier Times, citing the affidavit, said students who continued walking toward Front Street were yelling obscenities “at the officers and in general.”

RELATED: Praise rolls in for high school suspending hundreds of students over anti-ICE walkout: ‘Adults are taking charge’

Police said a 15-year-old female protester was seen “numerous times” walking in the road, including in front of moving vehicles and blocking traffic, and she was warned to stay on the sidewalk, the paper reported.

An officer allegedly ordered the girl to come across the street to be detained, and when she started to walk away from him, the officer grabbed her arm, the Courier Times said, citing the affidavit.

With that, other teen protesters confronted the officer and pulled the girl away, which allowed her to slip into the crowd, the paper said, citing the affidavit.

The officer radioed for assistance, the affidavit said, after which Quakertown Police Chief Scott McElree, 72, and a sergeant arrived at the scene. The officer pointed to the girl he was trying to detain, and McElree allegedly attempted to arrest her — but a boy was pulling her away, the affidavit added.

More from the Courier Times:

After McElree grabbed the boy, he pulled away and struck the chief in the head with his cell phone multiple times, the affidavit said.

The boy was eventually taken to the ground and placed in custody after he intervened again attempting to keep McElree away from the 15-year-old girl, according to the document.

Multiple teens encircled McElree and began to punch and hit him including the 15-year-old girl that police were originally attempting to detain, the affidavit said.

The paper, citing the affidavit, added that a sergeant saw another teen boy dressed in black come up behind McElree and hit him three times on the right side of his face and rib area. With that, the sergeant grabbed the teen, took him down, and placed him in handcuffs, the Courier Times said.

RELATED: Juvenile hit by car at student anti-ICE protest in Florida

Another police officer saw a girl hit McElree in the head with her backpack while the chief was on the ground grappling with a female protester, the paper said, citing the affidavit.

What’s more, a detective who responded to the scene allegedly saw a girl punch McElree in the head, after which the detective caught the girl and placed her on the sidewalk, where she allegedly kicked him several times while being handcuffed, the Courier Times said.

The girl whom police originally wanted to detain was taken into custody, the paper said, adding that her attorney, Ettore “Ed” Angelo, on Tuesday denied his client had any physical contact with McElree.

In all, five students were arrested and taken to juvenile detention.

Three of them were released Tuesday, the Courier Times said, adding that the status of the remaining two is unknown, and the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office has released no information as of Tuesday. The DA’s office on Thursday did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ question regarding how many students have been released.

Authorities have not released their names, ages, and charges since they’re juveniles, but the paper said it confirmed that at least two of the students face felony aggravated assault charges.

RELATED: Video shows brawl after high school walkout protester allegedly hit pro-ICE man — and the man is charged with child abuse

The Courier Times, citing the affidavit, said McElree was treated at a hospital for nonspecific injuries. The paper added that his face was covered in blood as he left the scene; however, in a cellphone video posted to social media he’s heard telling an officer that he was “fine.”

Since the melee, McElree has been facing increasing backlash, including calls for him to resign. One of the issues is that the chief was not in uniform and allegedly did not identify himself as a police officer, the Courier Times said.

Ashley Orellana, a Quakertown High School senior and friend of one of the arrested students, told WPVI-TV that “everybody was confused because nobody knew it was a policeman. He was in regular clothes. We were just like, ‘Why is the man attacking us?'”

Orellana attended a hearing Tuesday to support one of the defendants, the station said, adding that Robert McMillion, who witnessed his younger sister’s arrest, also was in attendance.

“The chief, the unmarked man, he just started attacking us first, and something should be happening to him instead of the kids,” McMillion told WPVI.

At a borough council meeting Monday night, parents and community members called for McElree to resign or be fired, the station said.

RELATED: Girl says she fought ‘old,’ ‘racist’ man with MAGA hat at ICE protest — and excuses fellow teen brawlers

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania alleged that McElree violated his commitment to “serve and protect” his community amid the incident, WHYY-TV reported.

“By all accounts, including abundant video evidence, there were no issues at the demonstration until Quakertown police arrived and incited violence,” Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, told the station in a statement.

Walczak added to WHYY that “the police should have been there to facilitate the demonstration, ensuring that the students could safely exercise their rights to assemble and speak out freely as guaranteed by our Constitution. They failed. In abandoning his job and his mission on Friday afternoon, Chief McElree effectively was acting as a counter-protester, albeit one with the ability to arrest people. Quakertown deserves better.”

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​Ice, Ice protest, Pennsylvania, Quakertown, High school students, Police chief, Fight, Arrests, Property damage, Quakertown high school, Kicking cars, Blocking traffic, Harassment, Bucks county district attorney, Crime, Aggravated assault charges, Immigration and customs enforcement, Scott mcelree, Politics 

A Columbia University student and online influencer was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday but was released by the end of the day through the machinations of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The mayor posted on his social media account that he had secured the release of Elmina “Ellie” Aghayeva after speaking to President Donald Trump via phone call.

‘He has just informed me that she will be released imminently.’

“Just got off the phone with President Trump,” the mayor wrote. “In our meeting earlier, I shared my concerns about Columbia student Elmina Aghayeva, who was detained by ICE this morning. He has just informed me that she will be released imminently.”

Aghayeva is originally from Azerbaijan and has grown a large following on Instagram by documenting her life as a student.

The student’s attorney claimed that the ICE agents were able to detain her after pretending to be looking for a missing person in order to gain access to the Columbia campus. The Department of Homeland Security disputes the allegation.

Earlier in the day, Mamdani had met with the president at the White House to pitch a proposal to ease the housing crisis.

“Hi guys. I am so grateful for everyone of you. I just got out a little while ago. I am safe and okay,” Aghayeva wrote on Instagram after her release.

“I am so sorry, but I am in complete shock over what happened and my phone is blowing up with calls from reporters,” she added. “I need a bit of time to process everything. I will come back soon but please don’t worry.”

RELATED: Viral video shows alleged arson attack on rumored ICE facility in Kansas City — mayor expresses his outrage against ICE

A Blaze News request for comment from the White House was not immediately answered.

A DHS spokesperson said her student visa had been terminated in 2016 after she failed to attend classes.

Aghayeva lists her preferred pronouns as she/her on Instagram. She is majoring in neuroscience and political science.

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​Mamdani and trump, Ellie aghayeva detained, Ice detainments, Columbia university student detained, Politics 

President Trump’s State of the Union address has been championed by conservatives everywhere, but BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey took issue with one part of his address: his promotion of IVF.

During the address, Trump lauded his new pharmaceutical website, Trump RX, by introducing Catherine Rayner, “the very first customer ever” to get a discount on IVF drugs.

“For five years, she and her husband have struggled with infertility, and they turned to IVF. One drug has been costing Catherine $4,000 to purchase. But a few weeks ago, she logged onto the Trump RX website and got that same drug that cost $4,000, got it for under $500,” Trump said proudly.

“Catherine, we are all praying for you, and you’re going to be a great mom,” he added.

“I think that Trump’s heart is in the right place here. He probably has not grappled with the ethics of IVF. The vast majority of people, Christians and non-Christians, have not grappled with the ethics of IVF. And so he’s thinking, more babies the better,” Stuckey comments.

While Stuckey admits that infertility is a real struggle, she doesn’t believe that IVF is an ethical solution.

“The problem with in vitro fertilization is that it’s not good for the woman’s body, and it almost always creates embryos that are eugenically tested in a lab and then discarded, or they’re indefinitely frozen. We have over a million embryos on ice right now that have been abandoned that might be adopted one day by strangers and that’s a more redemptive option,” she explains.

But that won’t save all the embryos that will just be thrown in the trash — especially those that might be flagged for potential abnormalities.

“And as you guys know, it’s possible when you go through IVF to choose the gender that you want to give birth to, it’s possible to get them tested for abnormalities like Down syndrome, discard the ones that are not graded highly enough,” Stuckey says.

“The only way to be able to procreate without any ethical quandaries whatsoever is within the context of marriage between one man and one woman through sex. Adoption is a beautifully redemptive option. But surrogacy, egg-selling, sperm-selling, IVF, which basically asks the child to sacrifice its own well-being, its own health, in some cases its own life on behalf of adult desires. That is disordered,” she continues.

“And so, that was the one part of the speech that I can think of that I really did not agree with,” she says.

“And in fact, if Congress is trying to pass a law that would have us fund IVF, I will be calling my representatives, my senators, and I will be encouraging you to do the same because I don’t want to fund more slaughter of babies.”

“More embryos, unborn lives are killed through the IVF industry than through the abortion industry every year. That really matters,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Ivf, Sotu, Trump, Relatable with allie beth stuckey