In 1979, as crowds gathered in the streets of Iran to topple the shah, the New York Times ran an editorial describing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as an “enigma.” Bernard Lewis was then America’s leading scholar on the Islamic world. He had read Khomeini’s works, many of which had been translated into English and were easily accessible.

Far from an “enigma,” Lewis concluded that Khomeini possessed the virtue of candor (to put it mildly) and that in every respect he was a perfect lunatic. But Lewis had been largely discredited as a “racist,” so his offer to write a piece for the Times fell on deaf ears. An editor at the paper said that Lewis was merely a Zionist agent spreading disinformation.

‘Khomeini’s ambitions extended beyond Shiism. He wanted to be accepted as the leader of the Muslim world, period.’

Among other things, Khomeini had written that girls should be married off before puberty (“Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house”). His own father — who was stabbed to death when Khomeini was a baby — married his mother when she was just 9 years old. Khomeini himself took his wife when she was 10 years old and had her pregnant by the age of 11. Khomeini blamed poverty in Iran on foreigners and Jews and argued that the idea of nationalism and nation-states was nothing but a Western plot to weaken Islam.

At the heart of Khomeini’s program was conquest. In the words of Vali Nasr, one of the world’s leading authorities on Shia Islam:

Khomeini’s ambitions extended beyond Shiism. He wanted to be accepted as the leader of the Muslim world, period. At its core, his drive for power was yet another Shia challenge for leadership of the Islamic world. He saw the Islamic Republic of Iran as the base for a global Islamic movement, in much the same way that Lenin and Trotsky had seen Russia as the springboard country of what was meant to be a global communist revolution.

No price was too high to pay in the jihadist drive to create a Shiite caliphate. During the blood-soaked Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, an ayatollah named Mehdi Haeri Yazdi approached Khomeini, his mentor, while he was sitting alone on a rug in his garden facing a pool. The hopeless war was consuming hundreds of thousands of young lives, Yazdi said. Was there no way to stop the slaughter?

Khomeini replied reproachfully, “Do you also criticize God when he sends an earthquake?”

The economic costs of creating a caliphate were a secondary concern for Khomeini as well. He famously cried that “economics is for donkeys” and “the revolution was not about the price of watermelons.”

Khomeini’s ideology lives on

This ideology continued long after Khomeini’s death in 1989. In 2021, a former senior Syrian official named Firas Tlass told an interviewer, “The Iranians have an authoritative plan to take control over the entire region.”

Their strategy was as brilliant as it was simple. They went to any country that had Muslims and a political vacuum. There they set up a school system in which they indoctrinated children with their vision of violent, expansionist, radical Shiite Islam. Twelve short years later, they had legions of young fighters eager to do their bidding. The strategy was implemented in an arc of ruin that extended from Lebanon through the Levant and down to Yemen.

The Iranians even attempted to gain a toehold on the European continent in the 1990s, in Kosovo. Tlass added that in the mid-2000s, former Iranian President Muhammad Khatami predicted, in a private conversation between the two, that in 20 years Iran would be the counterweight to the United States.

This prophecy would be realized almost exactly 20 years later during the Gaza War, when the world got its first taste of the radical Shiite coalition. Tehran mobilized its multi-tenacle proxy army. Though Israel ultimately triumphed, as we have seen, the world got its first taste of the dangers of the would-be Shiite caliphate.

RELATED: Only Trump had the guts to do what every president has promised

Photo by BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP via Getty Images

There was unprecedented shelling by Hezbollah, which rendered an entire region of Northern Israel uninhabitable. There was disruption of international shipping by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. And at the very moment that Iraq’s prime minister was in Washington hoping to negotiate a much-needed economic package, a Shiite militia in his country joined Iran’s April 13, 2024, assault that launched hundreds of rockets into Israel. A senior member of Iraq’s security forces named Abdul Aziz al-Mohammedawi made no secret of his allegiance to Iran and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A fundamental misunderstanding

In the face of this challenge, American allies in the region, and particularly the Saudis, were dumbfounded by Washington’s foolishness. Under the banner of “human rights,” the Biden administration undermined Saudi Arabia’s war against the Iranian-backed Houthis of Yemen. As a senior Saudi journalist put it, “You wouldn’t let us fight the Houthis, so now you have to.”

Biden administration envoy Amos Hochstein reportedly offered Hezbollah an aid package to rebuild Southern Lebanon after the war, if the terror group agreed to stop firing into Israel. The administration should have slapped punishing sanctions on Lebanon’s battered economy the minute Hezbollah launched its first rocket.

Even over 130 attacks on U.S. troops by Iranian proxies drew little or no response. On January 28, 2024, Iranian-backed militias killed three American troops stationed in Jordan. The Biden administration carried out a measured response in Iraq and Syria but left Iran out of the fray, even lifting sanctions to permit Tehran to raise oil exports from 300,000 barrels a day to 2 million.

And then there was the Iran nuclear deal. Experts still debate how long it would have delayed Iran obtaining a bomb — the deal, by its very terms, only placed restrictions on Iran for 15 years — but all agree that it gave Tehran access to over $100 billion. To this President Obama said, “Our best analysts expect the bulk of this revenue to go into spending that improves the economy and benefits the lives of the Iranian people.” This statement showed a fundamental misunderstanding of Iranian priorities — a mistake the current Trump administration seems determined not to repeat.

Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from Uri Kaufman’s latest book, “American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War, and the New Antisemitism.”

​Opinion & analysis, Book excerpts, Iran, Donald trump, Jimmy carter, Ronald reagan, George h.w. bush, Bill clinton, George w. bush, Barack obama, Joe biden, Iran nuclear deal, Pallets of cash, Sanctions, Uranium, Fordow, Bunker buster, Air strikes, Israel, Saudi arabia, Yemen, Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah, Terrorism, Islamism, Fundamentalism 

Dean Cain’s father gave his son valuable advice at the dawn of his Hollywood career.

“Don’t tell too much about yourself in interviews. Let them watch you on screen,” Cain recalls his father, veteran director Christopher Cain (“Young Guns,” “Pure Country”), sharing with him at the start of his Hollywood career.

‘My closest friends are teammates from Princeton,’ he says. ‘I know what they’re made of. … You learn so much about people by being teammates with them.’

Dean Cain heeded Dad’s wisdom … to a point.

Cain learned firsthand the inequities of the nation’s divorce laws while fighting for joint custody of his then-young son. Later, he traveled the globe and gained perspective on his home country’s woes.

It’s why he started speaking up on important issues and sharing his right-leaning views. It also explains his pivot to independent film projects over the past decade.

“I’m sure it affected my career,” Cain tells Align of his political views. It’s a risk he was willing to take. “Not speaking up is crazy to me. … If you have something to say, speak the truth and hopefully make the world a better place.”

From Superman to soccer coach

Cain continues to work steadily on film and TV projects, from faith-kissed stories (“God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust”) to his latest feature, an underdog sports story he wrote and directed.

“Little Angels” opened nationwide earlier this month and continues to expand to new theaters — thanks to a feature on its website allowing users to request a screening in their area.

The movie finds Cain playing a disgraced football coach forced to oversee a girls’ soccer team. It’s the ultimate indignity for his character until he sets his mind to turning this ragtag bunch of athletes into winners.

Cain’s fans may find his foray into screenwriting surprising, but he’s been telling stories ever since he was a boy. The “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” alum recalls his father nudging him to tap his creative side.

A writer at heart

“My dad started me as a writer,” Cain recalls, and he warmed to the task. “We’d go on vacation at our ranch house, and when it was raining, instead of watching TV I’d make up stories about our family.”

He later wrote episodes of “Lois & Clark,” but his bustling acting career took precedence. “The demands on my time were intense,” he recalls.

“Little Angels” allowed him to tap into that skill set, and along the way he leaned on the classic writing maxim.

Write what you know.

Pinnacle Peak Pictures

Team player

Cain was a first-team All-American and two-time first-team All-Ivy for Princeton in the late 1980s and had a brief NFL career with the Buffalo Bills before a knee injury ended his gridiron dreams. He also ran track at Princeton and was its volleyball captain.

He assembled his youthful cast amid pandemic restrictions, forcing him to skip chemistry reads and trust his instincts. The young girls bonded on the set, becoming faux teammates and real friends along the way.

Cain knows the feeling.

“My closest friends are teammates from Princeton,” he says. “I know what they’re made of, what they’re like in stressful situations. I know what their characters are like. You learn so much about people by being teammates with them.”

“It’s akin to what happens in the movie. They learn to stick up for each other,” he adds.

‘Truth, justice, and the American way’

Cain’s “Superman” days remain an indelible part of his legacy, and he remains invested in the character. He’s hoping James Gunn’s “Superman,” opening July 11, captures the Man of Steel he modeled his own performance on — the “aw, shucks” Christopher Reeve version seen in four films.

RELATED: No Donald Trump ever called him ‘Latinx’

Lou Perez

“He’s my Superman,” he says of the late actor, who captured the essence of the DC Comics superhero, a fictional character who means plenty to Cain. “He is truth and justice and the American way. That is really important. Hard work. Dedication. Being honorable. … I know it’s cynical now, but it still plays and resonates with many.”

“Little Angels” marks Cain’s feature-length directorial debut, but he’s been soaking up information from film sets for decades.

“I watched [my dad] go through his process as a director. He’d have to make his movies on a shoestring budget,” he says, adding that family members helped flesh out scenes along the way. He recalls his uncle holding a boom mic to make some scenes possible.

“I’ve always been around it,” he says of the filmmaking craft. Now, he can’t wait to do it again.

“I’m hooked. I want to keep doing it,” he says. “I like the process. It didn’t feel much like work.”

​Dean cain, Culture, Hollywood, Superman, The new adventures of lois and clark, God’s not dead, Little angels, Movie industry, Interview, Align interview 

Beloved member of “the Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has reignited the impeachment discussion that President Donald Trump has been embroiled in since his first term as president for launching a military strike on Iran without congressional authorization.

“The President’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media, charging that Trump “has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment.”

Trump, appearing unscathed, then went scorched-earth on AOC on Truth Social.

“Stupid AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the ‘dumbest’ people in Congress, is now calling for my Impeachment, despite the fact that the Crooked and Corrupt Democrats have already done that twice before. The reason for her ‘rantings’ is all of the Victories that the U.S.A. has had under the Trump Administration,” Trump wrote on the app.

“The Democrats aren’t used to WINNING, and she can’t stand the concept of our Country being successful again. When we examine her Test Scores, we will find out that she is NOT qualified for office but, nevertheless, far more qualified than Crockett, who is a seriously Low IQ individual, or Ilhan Omar, who does nothing but complain about our Country,” he continued.

Trump then took it even farther, adding that “AOC should be forced to take the Cognitive Test that I just completed at Walter Reed Medical Center, as part of my Physical.”

“I think the one thing we’ve learned from Truth Social is that there’s no character limit,” comedian Derek Richards laughs on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“That is perfection, though,” BlazeTV contributor Matthew Marsden chimes in. “He slammed everyone.”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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

​Free, Upload, Video phone, Sharing, Camera phone, Video, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Matthew marsden, Derek richards, Aoc, Ilhan omar, Jasmine crockett, President trump, Alexandria ocasio-cortez 

Some images linger like bad philosophy. One such image: a masked individual standing triumphantly on a vandalized car, waving a giant Mexican flag, at a protest against mass deportations. It’s not a political cartoon. It’s the radical left’s icon. And it perfectly captures the confused moral universe behind the Los Angeles riots and the so-called “indigenous land” movement.

— (@)

As a professor at a secular university, I can assure you this isn’t fringe lunacy. It’s the tip of the philosophical iceberg. Beneath that smoldering car is a massive ideological structure that has been meticulously constructed over decades — paid for, ironically, by federal and state tax dollars.

These rioters don’t actually want to return the land. They want the luxury of moral superiority minus the inconvenience of coherent thought.

If it were possible, I’d love to survey the people flipping cars and heaving concrete blocks at police cruisers. I strongly suspect many of the ringleaders hold degrees in the liberal arts — more specifically, degrees in identity activism. You know the type: gender studies, black studies, Latinx studies, queer theory, or some intersectional combination thereof.

Don’t worry — they went to college

If you visit the department websites of these programs at any given university, you’ll often find “activist” listed as the No. 1 career path. No need to wonder what you can do with a $120,000 degree — you can become the ideological arsonist who trains the next generation to believe the United States is irredeemably Christian, unjust, and colonial — and maybe even get in some looting of the capitalist luxury stores.

So when you see a rioter in Los Angeles shouting on CNN about how the land was “stolen from Mexico,” just know: That’s the university curriculum talking. In one now-viral clip, a young woman (yes, I just assumed her gender) yells at a police officer, “As long as you feel OK with capitalism, racist, imperialist state.” Asked if she even knows what she’s saying, her reply is priceless: “Yes, b***h, I’m in college.”

Exactly.

These students have never been taught about the establishment of land ownership in world history or even the basic historical facts of the American Southwest. They don’t know that Mexico owned it for only 27 years, yet they think it is their ancestral homeland. If anything, Spain should be in the mix, asking for it back from Mexico.

And remember: We’re all paying for that education through state funding — drawn from taxes paid by … wait for it … capitalists. No gratitude. No irony. Just tuition-funded tantrums.

RELATED: The lie that launched a thousand riots

Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

A modest glance at history will remind you that the United States conquered large parts of Mexico in 1848. But here’s the twist: The U.S. didn’t just grab the land and walk away whistling. No, it gave back a substantial portion, paid Mexico $15 million (a princely sum at the time) for the remaining territory — including what is now California — and forgave the Mexican government’s outstanding debts.

But the student activists aren’t interested in political history. And they don’t really want to live in Mexico. Even if they did, Mexico’s immigration laws are strict, its economy is difficult, and it most certainly doesn’t tolerate foreigners burning down public property in the name of “revolution against the government.”

Marxism underwritten by capitalists

These rioters don’t actually want to return the land. They want the luxury of moral superiority minus the inconvenience of coherent thought. They want their air conditioning, DoorDash, TikTok, and virtue signaling … on stolen land. Any one of them could sell the assets they acquired within the capitalist system and donate the proceeds to an indigenous cause. But they want to make other people do this with their money.

At their campus protests and university-sponsored events, they perform ritualized “land acknowledgments,” reciting that their college stands on “unceded indigenous territory,” as if confessing to a metaphysical sin. But the penance never includes selling their house and giving it to a tribe. And why?

Because the first tribes are lost to history — conquered by later tribes, who were themselves conquered, until eventually the Spanish brought law and order to warring tribes. The cycle of conquest is not new; it is one of the oldest stories in human civilization. What’s different now is the selective outrage.

Here lies the real problem: Modern activist ideology seeks to appeal to justice but lacks a standard by which to define it. This is why all of this activist nonsense we are paying gender studies professors to teach is so empty. It appeals to justice without any standard by which to adjudicate the question.

If the land was stolen, then: Who stole it? From whom? And what court now has jurisdiction?

Even if you could answer the first two — and in most cases, you can’t — the third is impossible under their belief system. If you begin playing “we were here firsties,” you have to go all the way back.

Theirs is a godless appeal to justice, and godless justice is just another word for mob rule. It is ultimately just mob rule stirred up by malcontents to motivate masses of discontents — which is why they are simply called Marxists. Not because they’ve read “Das Kapital” but because they’re looking for a framework that legitimizes their rage and offers power without accountability. And in Marx, they find a convenient excuse to tear down everything that came before — especially anything remotely Christian.

All of their disappointment in life is aimed at the outward object called “the United States.” No reflection on their own condition — just rage against the machine.

God has the last word

But for those who believe that God is the final judge, the phrase “Let God judge between us” is not a cliché. It’s a fearful thing. It means a moral order lies beyond human manipulation. It means that even if we don’t see civil justice now, true justice is ontological, everlasting, and inescapable.

Marxist rioters cannot make this appeal. They live in a world of only immanent causes and material grievances. No final judge and no moral standard above power awaits to hold their actions accountable — therefore, no peace. They rage because they must. Their rage is at existence itself. And when they finish one protest, they must invent another. Their revolution has no eschaton — only exhaustion.

So they flip over cars and set fires. Some loot — not just because they’re angry at injustice or need a new pair of shoes, but because they have no vision of the good, only a fixation on the bad. And in seeking a purely material form of justice, they have lost their souls.

They complained about the one who supposedly stole land while forgetting about the one who can cast their soul into hell. The prospect of God’s justice should make all of us repent.

It is time to stop funding this madness. It is time to restore an education grounded in truth — not truth as a tool of power but truth that judges us all.

Until then, don’t be surprised when your car is flipped by someone with a $100,000 degree in “decolonial eco-poetics.” And don’t be shocked when they scream “justice!” without the ability to define what it is.

After all, they went to college.

​Opinion & analysis, Los angeles, Riots, Immigration and customs enforcement, Protests, Ice, Mass deportations, Stolen land, Land acknowledgement, Critical theory, Marxism, Leftists, Mexico, California, Media bias, College, Higher education, Hamas, Mecha 

President Donald Trump’s opponents failed to stop him at the ballot box, so now they are attempting to neutralize his presidency in the courts.

U.S. district court judges have proven more than willing to help out in this regard, slapping the government with more nationwide injunctions in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term than were entered throughout the whole of the 20th century.

As of Wednesday, the New York Times indicated that 199 or more of the court rulings against the president’s executive actions so far this year have at least temporarily halted the Trump administration’s initiatives.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has intervened in a number of cases to reaffirm the president’s Article II powers and his exercise thereof, it’s abundantly clear that the Trump administration is tiring of what White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has repeatedly called a “judicial coup.”

The Department of Justice turned the tables on Wednesday, filing a lawsuit against the U.S. District Court of Maryland and all 16 of its judges — including its 10 authorized judges, all but one of whom were appointed by former Presidents Joe Biden or Barack Obama.

The lawsuit takes aim at an order handed down last month that automatically blocks the deportation of illegal aliens in the state whose detention is challenged by immigration attorneys.

RELATED: Clinton judge blocked workforce cuts — yet Rubio just proved with USAID that where there’s a will, there’s a way

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

If a petition for writ of habeas corpus is filed on behalf of an illegal alien detainee in or said to be in the District of Maryland, the Trump administration is automatically enjoined and restrained from removing the alien from the country or altering the alien’s legal status for at least two days.

The district court’s Chief Judge George Russell III, an Obama appointee, claimed that the May 28 amended standing order was necessary because the recent flood of illegal alien detention and removal challenges “that have been filed after normal court hours and on weekends and holidays has created scheduling difficulties and resulted in hurried and frustrating hearings.”

Chad Mizelle, DOJ chief of staff, stressed that “this obviously illegal practice cannot stand. To stop it, the Department of Justice has no choice but to sue the Maryland federal district court — and its judges — to ensure that they stop overstepping their authority in this critical area.”

Lawyers for the government noted in the lawsuit that the district court’s automatic injunction does “precisely what the Supreme Court has forbidden: make equitable relief a ‘matter of right’ in the District of Maryland.”

‘This pattern of judicial overreach undermines the democratic process and cannot be allowed to stand.’

“Defendants’ automatic injunction issues whether or not the alien needs or seeks emergency relief, whether or not the court has jurisdiction over the alien’s claims, and no matter how frivolous the alien’s claims may be,” said the lawsuit.

RELATED: Will the Supreme Court rein in rogue judges — or rubber-stamp them?

designer491 via iStock/Getty Images

The complaint notes further that the standing orders:

“violate congressional limits on district courts’ jurisdiction over immigration matters”;”disregard the procedural and substantive requirements for issuing what amounts to a local rule”;”are fundamentally inconsistent with the judicial role to resolve only concrete and discrete ‘cases’ and ‘controversies'”;rob Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations of any opportunity to contest the alien’s assertion of being “located in the District of Maryland” at the time of a habeas filing; and”can also adversely impact the operational planning necessary to coordinate a removal, especially a removal of an alien to a country that is recalcitrant about accepting the alien.”

The DOJ characterized the Maryland District Court’s automatic injunctions as “a particularly egregious example of judicial overreach interfering with Executive Branch prerogatives — and thus undermining the democratic process.”

“President Trump’s executive authority has been undermined since the first hours of his presidency by an endless barrage of injunctions designed to halt his agenda,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “The American people elected President Trump to carry out his policy agenda: this pattern of judicial overreach undermines the democratic process and cannot be allowed to stand.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Department of justice, Doj, Justice department, Donald trump, Trump, Pam bondi, Pamela bondi, Maryland, Deportation, Illegal aliens, Illegal alien, Illegal immigration, Immigration, Deport, Border, Politics 

Last week, two independent nonprofits, the Midas Project and the Tech Oversight Project, released after a year’s worth of investigation a massive file that collects and presents evidence for a panoply of deeply suspect actions, mainly on the part of Altman but also attributable to OpenAI as a corporate entity.

It’s damning stuff — so much so that, if you’re only acquainted with the hype and rumors surrounding the company or perhaps its ChatGPT product, the time has come for you to take a deeper dive.

Sam Altman and/or OpenAI have been the subject of no less than eight serious, high-stakes lawsuits.

Most recently, iyO Audio alleged OpenAI made attempts at wholesale design theft and outright trademark infringement. A quick look at other recent headlines suggests an alarming pattern:

Altman is said to have claimed no equity in OpenAI despite backdoor investments through Y Combinator, among others;Altman owns 7.5% of Reddit, which, after its still-expanding partnership with OpenAI, shot Altman’s net worth up $50 million;OpenAI is reportedly restructuring its corporate form yet again — with a 7% stake, Altman stands to be $20 billion dollars richer under the new structure;Former OpenAI executives, including Muri Murati, the Amodei siblings, and Ilya Sutskever, all confirm pathological levels of mistreatment and behavioral malfeasance on the part of Altman.

The list goes on. Many other serious transgressions are cataloged in the OpenAI Files excoriation. At the time of this writing, Sam Altman and/or OpenAI have been the subject of no less than eight serious, high-stakes lawsuits. Accusations include everything from incestual sexual abuse to racketeering, breach of contract, and copyright infringement.

None of these accusations, including heinous crimes of a sexual nature, have done much of anything to dent the OpenAI brand or its ongoing upward valuation.

Tech’s game of thrones

The company’s trajectory has outlined a Silicon Valley game of thrones unlike any seen elsewhere. Since its 2016 inception — when Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and Greg Brockman convened to found OpenAI — the Janus-faced organization has been a tier-one player in the AI sphere. In addition to cutting-edge tech, it’s also generated near-constant turmoil. The company churns out rumors, upsets, expulsions, shady reversals, and controversy at about the same rate as it advances AI research, innovation, and products.

RELATED: Mark Zuckerberg’s multibillion-dollar midlife crisis

Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images

Back in 2016, Amazon, Peter Thiel, and other investors pledged the company $1 billion up front, but the money was late to arrive. Right away, Altman and Musk clashed over the ultimate direction of the organization. By 2017, Elon was out — an exit which spiked investor uncertainty and required another fast shot of capital.

New investors, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn fame among them, stepped up — and OpenAI rode on. Under the full direction of Sam Altman, the company pushed its reinforcement learning products, OpenAI Gym and Universe, to market.

To many at the time, including Musk, OpenAI was lagging behind Google in the race to AI dominance — a problem for the likes of Musk, who had originally conceived the organization as a serious counterweight against what many experts and laypeople saw as an extinction-level threat arising out of the centralized, “closed” development and implementation of AI to the point of dominance across all of society.

That’s why OpenAI began as a nonprofit, ostensibly human-based, decentralized, and open-source. In Silicon Valley’s heady (if degenerate) years prior to the COVID panic, there was a sense that AI was simply going to happen — it was inevitable, and it would be preferable that decent, smart people, perhaps not so eager to align themselves with the military industrial complex or simply the sheer and absolute logic of capital, be in charge of steering the outcome.

But by 2019, OpenAI had altered its corporate structure from nonprofit to something called a “capped-profit model.” Money was tight. Microsoft invested $1 billion, and early versions of the LLM GPT-2 were released to substantial fanfare and fawning appreciation from the experts.

Life after Elon

In 2020, the now for-limited-profit company dropped its API, which allowed developers to access GPT-3. Their image generator, DALL-E, was released in 2021, a move that has since seemed to define, to some limited but significant extent, the direction that OpenAI wants to progress. The spirit of cooperation and sharing, if not enshrined at the company, was at least in the air, and by 2022 ChatGPT had garnered millions of users, well on the way to becoming a household name. The company’s valuation rose to the ballpark of $1 billion.

After Musk’s dissatisfied departure — he now publicly lambastes “ClosedAI” and “Scam Altman” — its restructuring with ideologically diffuse investors solidified a new model: Build a sort of ecosystem of products which are intended to be dovetailed or interfaced with other companies and software. (Palantir has taken a somewhat similar, though much more focused, approach to the problem of capturing AI.) The thinking here seems to be: Attack the problem from all directions, converge on “intelligence,” and get paid along the way.

And so, at present, in addition to the aforementioned products, OpenAI now offers — deep breath — CLIP for image research, Jukebox for music generation, Shap-E for 3D object generation, Sora for generating video content, Operator for automating workflows with AI agents, Canvas for AI-assisted content generation, and a smattering of similar, almost modular, products. It’s striking how many of these are aimed at creative industries — an approach capped off most recently by the sensational hire of Apple’s former chief design officer Jony Ive, whose IO deal with the company is the target of iyO’s litigation.

But we shouldn’t give short shrift to the “o series” (o1 through o4) of products, which are said to be reasoning models. Reasoning, of course, is the crown jewel of AI. These products are curious, because while they don’t make up a hardcore package of premium-grade plug-and-play tools for industrial and military efficiency (the Palantir approach), they suggest a very clever approach into the heart of the technical problems involved in “solving” for “artificial reasoning.” (Assuming the contested point that such a thing can ever really exist.) Is part of the OpenAI ethos, even if only by default, to approach the crown jewel of “reasoning” by way of the creative, intuitive, and generative — as opposed to tracing a line of pure efficiency as others in the field have done?

Gut check time

Wrapped up in the latest OpenAI controversy is a warning that’s impossible to ignore: Perhaps humans just can’t be trusted to build or wield “real” AI of the sort Altman wants — the kind he can prompt to decide for itself what to do with all his money and all his computers.

Ask yourself: Does any of the human behavior evidenced along the way in the OpenAI saga seem, shall we say, stable — much less morally well-informed enough that Americans or any peoples would rest easy about putting the future in the hands of Altman and company? Are these individuals worth the $20 million to $100 million a year they command on the hot AI market?

Or are we — as a people, a society, a civilization — in danger of becoming strung out, hitting a wall of self-delusion and frenzied acquisitiveness? What do we have to show so far for the power, money, and special privileges thrown at Altman for promising a world remade? And he’s just getting started. Who among us feels prepared for what’s next?

​Sam altman, Tech, Midas project, Openai, Chatgpt, Ai, Silicon valley, Elon musk, Return 

A shocking plot from 10- and 11-year-old girls to murder a boy and then stage his death as a suicide was thwarted when another student overheard them, police say.

Details of the plot from the group of girls at the Legacy Traditional School’s West Surprise campus in Surprise, Arizona, were released in a police report.

The girl who overheard the plot said she heard one girl say, ‘Just end him.’

Police said the four girls planned the plot during a lunch and recess on Oct. 1, 2024. The student who overheard them reported the conversation to school officials.

The plot had a role for each of the girls. One was supposed to have forged the suicide note to make it appear that the boy had committed suicide. Another girl was tasked with bringing the knife to school. Another girl was supposed to act like a lookout while the last girl would commit the stabbing.

The girl who overheard the plot said she heard one girl say, “Just end him.”

RELATED: 2 teenagers accused of shooting homeless man to death took photos of themselves with a gun, police say

Police said the girls might have been motivated to kill the boy after an alleged breakup and cheating incident.

The police report said two of the girls were aged 10 years old, while the other two were 11 years old.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office confirmed that the students had been charged as juveniles, and police had said they were suspended, pending expulsion.

The Surprise Police Dept. said they did not plan to release any more details about the incident.

Family members of the four children did not respond to requests for comment from KTVK-TV.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​5th grade girl plot, Grade school murder plot, Girls plot to murder boy, Surprise az murder plot, Crime 

It only took 25 years for New York City to go from the resilient, flag-waving pride following the 9/11 attacks to a political fever dream. To quote Michael Malice, “I’m old enough to remember when New Yorkers endured 9/11 instead of voting for it.”

Malice is talking about Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist assemblyman from Queens now eyeing the mayor’s office. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state representative emerging from relative political obscurity, is now receiving substantial funding for his mayoral campaign from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR has a long and concerning history, including being born out of the Muslim Brotherhood and named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case. Why would the group have dropped $100,000 into a PAC backing Mamdani’s campaign?

Mamdani blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone.

Perhaps CAIR has a vested interest in Mamdani’s call to “globalize the intifada.” That’s not a call for peaceful protest. Intifada refers to historic uprisings of Muslims against what they call the “Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Suicide bombings and street violence are part of the playbook. So when Mamdani says he wants to “globalize” that, who exactly is the enemy in this global scenario? Because it sure sounds like he’s saying America is the new Israel, and anyone who supports Western democracy is the new Zionist.

Mamdani tried to clean up his language by citing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which once used “intifada” in an Arabic-language article to describe the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. So now he’s comparing Palestinians to Jewish victims of the Nazis? If that doesn’t twist your stomach into knots, you’re not paying attention.

If you’re “globalizing” an intifada, and positioning Israel — and now America — as the Nazis, that’s not a cry for human rights. That’s a call for chaos and violence.

Rising Islamism

But hey, this is New York. Faculty members at Columbia University — where Mamdani’s own father once worked — signed a letter defending students who supported Hamas after October 7. They also contributed to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. And his father? He blamed Ronald Reagan and the religious right for inspiring Islamic terrorism, as if the roots of 9/11 grew in Washington, not the caves of Tora Bora.

RELATED: Socialist Zohran Mamdani upsets Andrew Cuomo in Democratic primary election for NYC mayor race

Photo by Madison Swart via Getty Images

This isn’t about Islam as a faith. We should distinguish between Islam and Islamism. Islam is a religion followed peacefully by millions. Islamism is something entirely different — an ideology that seeks to merge mosque and state, impose Sharia law, and destroy secular liberal democracies from within. Islamism isn’t about prayer and fasting. It’s about power.

Criticizing Islamism is not Islamophobia. It is not an attack on peaceful Muslims. In fact, Muslims are often its first victims.

Islamism is misogynistic, theocratic, violent, and supremacist. It’s hostile to free speech, religious pluralism, gay rights, secularism — even to moderate Muslims. Yet somehow, the progressive left — the same left that claims to fight for feminism, LGBTQ rights, and free expression — finds itself defending candidates like Mamdani. You can’t make this stuff up.

Blending the worst ideologies

And if that weren’t enough, Mamdani also identifies as a Democratic Socialist. He blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone. But don’t worry, New York. I’m sure this time socialism will totally work. Just like it always didn’t.

If you’re a business owner, a parent, a person who’s saved anything, or just someone who values sanity: Get out. I’m serious. If Mamdani becomes mayor, as seems likely, then New York City will become a case study in what happens when you marry ideological extremism with political power. And it won’t be pretty.

This is about more than one mayoral race. It’s about the future of Western liberalism. It’s about drawing a bright line between faith and fanaticism, between healthy pluralism and authoritarian dogma.

Call out radicalism

We must call out political Islam the same way we call out white nationalism or any other supremacist ideology. When someone chants “globalize the intifada,” that should send a chill down your spine — whether you’re Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, or anything in between.

The left may try to shame you into silence with words like “Islamophobia,” but the record is worn out. The grooves are shallow. The American people see what’s happening. And we’re not buying it.

Want more from Glenn Beck? Get Glenn’s FREE email newsletter with his latest insights, top stories, show prep, and more delivered to your inbox.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Glenn beck, Glenn, Zohran mamdani, Nyc, New york city, New york mayoral race, Global intifada, Antisemitism, Andrew cuomo, Cair, Council on american islamic relations, Intifada, Columbia university, Hamas 

The influencer known as “Liver King” initially fell from grace after lying about his insanely muscular physique — which he claimed was steroid-free — and now appears to have fallen further.

The YouTuber, whose real name is Brian Johnson, was arrested in Texas after challenging Joe Rogan to fight him in unhinged social media footage where he appears to be holding two guns at times. He was charged with making a terroristic threat — though it’s not clear if his arrest was directly connected to the threats.

In the social media footage, the 47-year-old was shown shirtless and wearing a fur headdress while challenging Rogan to an “honorable” fight.

“Joe Rogan, I’m calling you out. My name’s Liver King. Man to man, I’m picking a fight with you,” he said. “I have no training in jiujitsu. You’re a black belt; you should dismantle me. But I’m picking a fight with you. Your rules. I’ll come to you whenever you’re ready.”

“You never come across something like this. Willing to die, hoping that you’ll choke me out because that’s a dream come true,” Johnson continued, not even stopping his rant as cuffs were placed on his wrists.

Johnson also complained about not being allowed enough time to “s**t,” which appears to be something he enjoys talking about, as in another one of Johnson’s threat-laced rants, he claims to “take s**ts on the ground.”

“Liver King is crashing out,” BlazeTV host Alex Stein comments on “Prime Time with Alex Stein.”

“He’s cracked out,” Stein says in disbelief. “I don’t know what’s going on with you. You’re obviously on some sort of barbiturate or some sort of pharmaceutical thing that’s making you out of touch with reality.”

“It’s a sad fall from grace for the once most popular guy on social media,” he adds.

Want more from Alex Stein?

To enjoy more of Alex’s culture jamming, comedic monologues, skits, and street segments, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Video phone, Video, Free, Sharing, Camera phone, Upload, Youtube.com, Prime time with alex stein, Alex stein, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Joe rogan, Liver king, Liver king steroids, Liver king arrest, Brian johnson 

President Donald Trump made clear from the start: A nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable. But until just recently, few paid attention. In March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified that while Iran had enriched a suspicious amount of uranium, it lacked a viable weapons program — let alone a bomb.

At the same time, left-wing agitators tried to spread immigration riots from Los Angeles to the rest of the country. Trump stayed focused on the domestic agenda his voters demanded. Israel’s sudden strike on Iran threatened to drag the United States into another foreign war — and derail Trump’s progress at home.

Trump knows his voters support a strong defense — but they’re tired of wasting American blood and treasure to fight foreign wars while their country falls apart at home.

Now that the U.S. has carried out a precision strike and set back Iran’s nuclear program, it’s time for Trump to return his full attention to rescuing America from Joe Biden’s open-border catastrophe.

Every presidency races against time, political capital, and public attention. Trump understood from the outset how easily foreign entanglements — especially in the Middle East — can swallow an administration.

That’s one reason the MAGA base remains loyal: Trump prioritizes domestic issues most presidents ignore while playing global policeman. Even while negotiating with Iran, Trump kept his focus on immigration. He battled leftist protesters and rogue judges at home, while keeping one eye on foreign threats.

But nearly two years after the terrorist attacks on October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw the window for war with Iran closing. Israel launched initial strikes on June 13 without American approval. Supporters insisted Israel could finish the job alone.

That was welcome news to Trump’s base, which feared any new conflict in the Middle East would derail his domestic policy blitz. But then the neoconservatives started moving the goalposts. Suddenly, it wasn’t just about airstrikes — it was about regime change.

Trump approved the use of U.S. bunker-buster bombs, believing them essential to destroy uranium enrichment sites buried deep in Iran’s mountains. U.S. forces entered and exited Iranian airspace without incident, delivering their payloads. Both sides issued conflicting reports about the strike’s effectiveness. But Trump clearly saw the operation as a means to reduce foreign policy pressure and pivot back to domestic priorities.

That pivot didn’t go as quickly as planned.

Israel and its allies quickly shifted from nuclear disarmament to full-blown regime change. Iran fired retaliatory missiles at a U.S. base in Qatar. While those strikes appeared calibrated to avoid casualties, tensions escalated.

Trump announced a ceasefire he had brokered between Iran and Israel. Both nations violated it within hours.

Netanyahu even defied Trump directly, ordering another strike while the president live-tweeted his demand for Israeli jets to turn back. They dropped their payloads anyway.

Frustrated, Trump told reporters Tuesday morning he was fed up with both countries. Israel, a close ally, had no interest in honoring its commitments. “Truth is, they have been fighting so long and so hard they don’t know what the f**k they’re doing. Do you understand that?” he said.

RELATED: It’s not a riot, it’s an invasion

Blaze Media Illustration

American and Israeli interests were never fully aligned. Israel wants regime change. It lacks the capability to do it alone. Americans don’t want a nuclear Iran, either, but they have no appetite for another long war.

Trump’s airstrike may have succeeded, but that won’t satisfy Netanyahu. He clearly hopes to drag Trump into a broader conflict.

Israel’s refusal to respect a ceasefire negotiated by its primary benefactor makes the next step obvious: walk away.

On Tuesday, Trump issued a flurry of social media posts calling for mass deportations. He got what he wanted in Iran. Now, he’s ready to exit.

Would Israel continue its push for regime change without U.S. support? Maybe. It’s time to find out. The U.S. shouldn’t fight another unpopular Middle East war for an ally that won’t keep its word.

In his farewell address after his first term, Trump listed avoiding war as one of his proudest achievements. He knows his voters support a strong defense — but they’re tired of wasting American blood and treasure to fight foreign wars while their country falls apart at home.

Republicans always promise domestic wins. They spend their political capital overseas. Trump’s first hundred days this term have been different. He’s delivered rapid-fire domestic victories. That’s where the focus belongs.

Americans don’t want more war in the Middle East — especially one waged on behalf of an ally that does not respect their president. Biden’s open-border nightmare still haunts the nation. Crime, poverty, trafficking, and collapsing infrastructure all stem from the ongoing invasion of illegal immigrants.

Whatever nuclear threat existed in Iran has been neutralized.

Now Trump must do the job he was elected to do — the job he wants to do.

Deport illegal aliens, finish the wall, and put America first.

​Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Iran, Benjamin netanyahu, Israel, Iran nuclear program, Fordow, Bunker buster, Nuclear weapons, National security, America first, Leftists, Riots, Mass deportations, Border crisis, Open borders, Border wall, Middle east, Forever wars, Maga, Anti-war, Ceasefire, Crime, Poverty, National debt