An Olympic gold medalist who failed gender testing has returned to competition for the first time.

Not to be confused with Algerian Olympic champion Imane Khelif — whose gender is confirmed to be male — Taiwan’s Lin Yu‑ting also brutalized women at the Paris 2024 Olympics under tough scrutiny.

‘Pan Yan-fei’s coach threw in the towel.’

The boxer dominated the women’s 57kg division last summer, despite having been disqualified by the International Boxing Association in 2023. That March, Lin was denied a bronze medal after failing to meet gender eligibility requirements. The IBA also disqualified Khelif from the same event, and the Algerian was later exposed as a male in three other reports.

Lin had not been seen in competition for over a year until his recent appearance at the Taiwan National Games. Reduxx reported that the competition does not have any known sex testing protocols in place, so the 30-year-old was allowed to compete in the women’s 60kg category.

It did not take long for Lin to overwhelm an opponent, defeating 19-year-old female Pan Yan-fei in just one minute and 34 seconds. After repeated punches to the head, Pan’s coach threw in the towel.

Pan was, “a little breathless because of being hit on the head,” Taiwanese outlet CNA reported. “Then Pan Yan-fei’s coach threw in the towel and gave up the game.”

If Lin wins the tournament, that would make six consecutive national titles for the controversial boxer.

The Trump Olympic ban

The controversy around Lin’s gender is parallel to Khelif’s, as the latter was proven by a multitude of sources to be, in fact, a male. However, less is known about Lin specifically, although it was discussed internally at the Olympics that the boxer had failed gender testing.

RELATED: Trump wins: US Olympic Committee bans men from women’s sports

Photo by MOHD RASFAN/AFP via Getty Images

The Guardian reported at the time that the International Olympic Committee had prior knowledge that Lin was “stripped of her bronze medal after failing to meet eligibility requirements based on the results of a biochemical test,” and noted such in its internal system.

This came after IBA president Umar Krevlev told Russian outlet TASS that both Lin and Khelif had “XY chromosomes.”

While the IBA has faced criticism over its credibility, it was proven to be right about Khelif.

Still, neither boxer is likely to see the ring at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. New IOC president Kirsty Coventry and President Donald Trump have made it clear that males will not be beating up females in the United States.

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee announced a rules update in July that stated it would “ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201.”

Executive Order 14201, Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports, bans males from participating in “all-female athletic opportunities” or entering “all-female locker rooms.”

After their Olympic performances, Lin and Khelif were not permitted to box in other competitions until Lin’s latest appearance.

Khelif, though, has vowed to compete in the 2028 Olympics and even submitted an appeal to World Boxing after being booted from a Dutch event in June. The boxer asked to be declared “eligible to participate in the 2025 World Boxing Championships from 4 to 14 September,” without having to submit to a genetic test.

The ban stood. Lin was also not permitted to compete at the world championships.

RELATED: New Olympic president strikes huge blow to transgender athletes ahead of 2028 games in LA

Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images

Lin’s latest opponent

Lin’s opponent, Pan, was a young boxer who was making her first appearance at the senior national games after winning a national high school title in 2023.

She previously competed in Taiwan’s under-22 category at 54-57kg.

Despite the brutal loss, event officials reportedly examined her after the fight, and she did not suffer any serious injuries. She was able to walk unaided and was described as stable.

Lin reportedly declined to be interviewed after the fight.

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​Fearless, Boxing, Women’s sports, Transgenderism, Woke, Olympics, Taiwan, Sports 

As some of you may know, I am counsel to the plaintiffs, together with my co-counsel Ron Coleman, in the case 4chan Community Support LLC and Lolcow LLC dba Kiwi Farms v. the UK Office of Communications aka Ofcom.

That case concerns the question of whether the U.K. can enforce its domestic censorship laws within the United States. I am quite unable to talk about the legal aspects of the case, and I also do not discuss English law. This article is about general principles regarding cross-border enforcement of censorship codes, in particular EU law, as I observe a change of mindset among European lawyers as they start to ask hard questions about the offshore enforceability of their censorship laws.

This article also sets out a new doctrine for transatlantic free speech defense, a doctrine that can be used to beat inbound censorship and will eventually become more widely recognized in the U.S. and European legal communities, which I can sum up in one line: “The law of the server is the law of the (web)site.”

Or, for the more classically minded among you: Lex loci machinae.

We Americans already know that emailed demands from European speech and data protection regulators are not legally binding in the United States.

This article is prompted by a knowledge update published by London law firm Taylor Wessing about the 4chan litigation. TW correctly identifies the general legal point that, if Americans can obtain confirmation from U.S. courts that European notices sent by email are not legally binding, it’s not just the Online Safety Act that will become difficult to enforce — it’s the Digital Services Act and the EU General Data Protection Regulation too.

This is in contrast to other takes in the London legal market, such as this piece written by the London office of Katten — titled “A (Byrne &) Storm Is Brewing,” in reference to my law firm — warning Americans to not “ignore the Online Safety Act’s international reach.”

Respectfully, the United States, not Ofcom or the European Commission, sets the rules on what orders Americans may safely ignore in the United States. Although the Europeans may not know this, we Americans already know that emailed demands from European speech and data protection regulators are not legally binding in the United States. They’re also almost certainly unenforceable here even if validly served.

Although a new precedent would be nice, as a practical matter, we don’t especially need one — these points are largely settled law in the United States, and indeed there’s a recent example from February of earlier this year that, because it involved a couple of conservative social media websites, went largely unnoticed. Foreign censorship mandates are just something the U.S. judicial system hardly ever sees, because European censorship colonialism was fairly uncommon until this year. More on that below.

But back to the firm’s article, Taylor Wessing writes:

Scope creep: If the challenge is successful, it has potential implications for a range of other extra-territorial effect UK and EU laws subject to the wording of the judgment and the wording of the legislation in question. It may impact both how to enforce (ie whether it can be done by email or whether the Treaty procedure has to be followed), and whether enforcement is even recognised under US law. The Trump administration is already pushing back on what it sees as foreign interference with US companies as a result of recent EU and (to a lesser extent) UK digital legislation, so this challenge, if successful, could impact more than just the OSA.

As a general rule, laws are contained by sovereign boundaries: Legal notices issued in or by one country are not legally binding on persons or entities in any other country. This is an ancient principle of international comity, practically as old as the Westphalian system itself.

This can present some coordination problems among countries that share significant links, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, or the United States and many of the member states of the European Union. For this reason, the United States has executed treaties with these countries, either reciprocal treaties such as Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties for criminal proceedings or the Hague Service Convention for civil proceedings, to deal with the issue of what happens when a legal process in one country needs to have legal consequences in another.

RELATED: Britain’s Big Brother ID law is the globalist dream for America

Photo by SOPA Images / Contributor via Getty Images

Taylor Wessing observes that Ofcom, under the OSA, has the power to serve via email. The firm points out that in many European countries, “emails are routinely used to exchange official correspondence.”

“Official correspondence” here means legal orders. America does not, as a rule, use email to communicate legally binding orders, because the U.S. Constitution imposes due-process requirements that require judicial supervision of any process that would deprive Americans of their constitutional rights or compel the disclosure of information or the seizure of property.

Ergo, as I said to the BBC about the 4chan case a month ago, having chosen my words extremely carefully, “Americans do not surrender our constitutional rights just because Ofcom sends us an email.”

I’m sure a lot of lawyers in London read that and thought I was firing off a snarky quote as bluster and/or in lieu of a coarser retort to the U.K., to which I would remind them that Americans are, despite our reputation, quite capable of subtlety. In fact, I was communicating to European politicians that, to get an American to do something, you cannot simply send them a message. You must send them process. That process must comport with American due-process requirements, and in the case of a foreign order, that means utilizing the relevant treaty.

This brings us to the subject of the European Union.

As the EU seeks to export its regulatory schemes to American shores, practitioners would do well to remember that, where U.S. law is concerned, the rule that we will wind up applying here after enough litigation works its way through the courts is simple: The law of server is the law of the site.

The ruling on a motion for a TRO by the plaintiffs in Trump Media and Technology Group v. De Moraes — which held, while denying the TRO, that the service of the Brazilian censorship orders outside of a treaty procedure is of no force and effect in the U.S. — is the first time a component of this principle has won in our courts. There will be more such wins as the Europeans try to enforce their rules here.

Per the Court’s ruling in Trump Media:

The Court finds that the pronouncements and directives purportedly issued by Defendant Moraes, (Dkts. 16-1, 16-2, 16-3, 16-4, and 16-5), were not served upon Plaintiffs in compliance with the Hague Convention, to which the United States and Brazil are both signatories, nor were they served pursuant to the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between the United States and Brazil. The documents were not otherwise properly served on Plaintiffs. Additionally, the Court is aware of no action taken by Defendant or the Brazilian government to domesticate the “orders” or pronouncements pursuant to established protocols.

For these reasons, under well-established law, Plaintiffs are not obligated to comply with the directives and pronouncements, and no one is authorized or obligated to assist in their enforcement against Plaintiffs or their interests here in the United States. Finally, it appears no action has been taken to enforce Defendant Moraes’s orders by the Brazilian government, the United States government, or any other relevant actor.

Lex loci machinae holds that an American company engaged in constitutionally protected conduct through the operation of a website must comply with the legal rules where it actually operates, not the legal rules of a much wider world in relation to which it has no connection, save that its American servers may merely be accessed from there remotely via the Internet.

European speech rules don’t govern American metal, American communications, and American conduct on American soil.

The United States has fought multiple wars to settle that issue. The case law is out there, too, if you want to look it up. When speech or the hosting of speech is lawful in the U.S. and the hosting and editorial acts occur here, no foreign regulator may compel acts on U.S. soil or export penalties into the U.S. by email. They must use the treaty and clear U.S. constitutional review.

An American site is only obliged to obey American law, and any purported foreign attempt to the contrary — to be properly served — must also comply with American law, namely the applicable treaty. For that demand to then be enforced, it must comply too with the rest of our laws, including the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.

Sending an email that demands unconstitutional censorship, data disclosure, or self-incrimination — for example — doesn’t comply with any of that. This has not stopped Europe from sending America a great many emails, or from planning to send a great many more. Nor has it stopped Americans, for the most part, from obeying those emails, even when they don’t have to.

The failure of lawyers on two continents to notice or do very much to stop Europe’s failure to adhere to our due-process requirements has occurred, in my view, for two principal reasons:

First, because international law firms have, historically, largely refused to represent U.S. companies who were targets of global censorship efforts and therefore have no experience in this area; andSecond, because the Big Tech companies those law firms represented have, historically, been willing to comply with European rules as they have domestic European establishments, meaning that it doesn’t make a lot of business sense for them to consider their U.S. constitutional defenses.

To give you some idea of how thin Big Law’s bench is in this area, until Ofcom tried to extract a fine from 4chan, as far as I am aware, the only time a U.S. company has refused a European censorship fine — ever — was when the most long-standing of the European online censorship laws, the German “Network Enforcement Act,” known also as the “NetzDG,” purported to enforce a fine on U.S. social media company Gab, which operates a strict moderation policy that explicitly follows the U.S. First Amendment. Accordingly, for nearly a decade, Gab has been targeted for destruction by politicians and activist groups alike.

That particular German case was, again to my knowledge, also the only time that a U.S. MLAT procedure has ever been knowingly and intentionally utilized by a foreign government to try to restrain constitutionally protected speech and conduct. (The German Federal Office of Justice also fined Telegram in 2022, but Telegram is a BVI company with operations in the UAE and no operations in the U.S., hence not entitled to American constitutional protection.) This happened under the first Trump administration and later the Biden administration. I had a word with a couple of Hill staffers about it earlier in the year, and the notices from Germany have since ceased, presumably because they are now being blocked by the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Justice.

When contacted by Der Spiegel to explain its refusal, Gab replied plainly that “Germany lost the chance to regulate American free speech in 1945.” Gab was also one of Ofcom’s American social media targets, all four of whom I represent against the agency, and all four of whom, lawfully exercising their constitutional rights, refused Ofcom’s orders. I note for the record that, despite eight years of attempts, the Germans have not been able to enforce the NetzDG on American soil.

Because they can’t.

It is therefore unsurprising that there are few direct precedents in this area. It’s also entirely expected that it never occurred to anyone working at big law firms — with one notable exception, chiefly, counsel for the plaintiffs in Trump Media from Boies Schiller and DLA Piper — that funneling an EU regulatory demand through a treaty, where it would presumably go no further or expose itself to U.S. judicial or executive branch scrutiny, was a viable option. This is why law firms, particularly European law firms, are only starting to write public-facing notes about this now and — judging from the hedging in those notes — still haven’t wrapped their heads around the applicable law.

I would expect that the U.K.’s blitzkrieg global rollout of the OSA was enough of a shock that larger U.S. companies are starting to review their global compliance posture and are beginning to figure this out for themselves.

Popular U.S.-based image-sharing site Imgur certainly appears to have gotten the memo. The company, in response to a threatened U.K. regulatory fine, pulled out of the U.K., invoked the Constitution, and told British regulators to go to hell — a move that is being referred to as the “4chan maneuver” online.

Taylor Wessing’s note correctly identifies that practically all European tech regulation, including the EU DSA and the EU GDPR, is potentially vulnerable if U.S. companies decide to force European speech and data protection regulators to behave like any other European state or non-state actor, and render service through the treaties — service which may not be waved through (in the case of MLAT) or, if it gets through one way or another, becomes vulnerable to constitutional attack the moment it is properly served, if not sooner.

It is difficult to see how the EU’s tech regulations will be effective at carrying out their objectives at all if U.S. lawyers begin to challenge them, through our actions and in our courts.

It would be nice for the U.S. Congress to enact a law like the SPEECH Act that created more robust defenses for American companies and American internet users. In the meantime, American lawyers have plenty of procedural machinery available to us to bring foreign censorship to a grinding halt at our shores.

Europe will be able to do very little in the face of mass refusal of its orders and daring them to utilize a treaty procedure, and U.S. litigation, to attempt to enforce them in U.S. courts.

I doubt the Europeans have the stomach for that.

​Tech, Censorship, Uk, Eu 

Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon is gunning for a record-breaking filibuster in hopes of blocking President Donald Trump’s “attempts to trample on the Constitution.”

Merkley began his filibuster Tuesday night in order to prevent Trump’s “authoritarianism” in the form of a clean, nonpartisan continuing resolution that Democrats have blocked nearly a dozen times. As of early Wednesday afternoon, over 18 hours into his Senate floor spectacle, Merkley appears to be aiming to beat New Jersey Democrat Sen. Cory Booker’s record-breaking 25-hour filibuster back in April.

Democrats’ $1.5 trillion funding bill aims to undo every policy implemented by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Addressing an empty chamber, Merkley railed against Trump’s efforts to address crime in Portland after an appeals court ruled in favor of the administration deploying the National Guard.

“Portlanders have responded in a very interesting way,” Merkley said. “They are demonstrating with joy and whimsy.”

RELATED: Trump administration mocks outrage of ‘unhinged leftists’ as construction of ballroom begins at White House

Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images

The whimsical response from Portland residents included a horde of naked cyclists temporarily blocking an ICE facility’s driveway to protest the crime crackdown. Several arrests were later made after some protesters became rowdy, refusing to move out of the driveway.

“They want to make it clear to the world that what Trump is saying about there being violent protests or a rebellion in Portland,” Merkley said, “it’s just not true.”

RELATED: Appeals court rules Trump can lawfully order National Guard troops to Portland

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Due to Merkley’s drawn-out floor speech, the Senate has not been able to schedule another vote to reopen the government as the shutdown approaches its fourth week.

Democrats originally shut down the government after they blocked the Republican-led funding bill, allowing the September 30 deadline to lapse. Despite Democrat posturing, the GOP’s bill remains a clean continuing resolution with no partisan anomalies.

In contrast, the Democrats’ $1.5 trillion funding bill aims to undo every policy implemented by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Democrats are also insisting on addressing Obamacare subsidies even though they expire at the end of the year.

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​Jeff merkley, Senate democrats, Filibuster, Cory booker, Government shutdown, Donald trump, Schumer shutdown, Portland, Crime crackdown, National guard, Politics 

Graham Platner, a Maine-based oyster farmer, announced in August that he was running as a Democrat to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins, quickly securing the endorsement of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.).

While the entry of Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) into the race last week was undoubtedly bad news for Platner, competition from a geriatric fellow traveler is hardly the greatest threat now facing his campaign.

‘Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff.’

Last week, a number of damning posts Platner previously made on Reddit came to light — including posts where he apparently identified as a communist, branded rural white Americans as racists, suggested service members worried about being raped should buy “Kevlar underwear,” and smeared all police officers as “bastards.”

Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told CNN that Platner’s posts were not disqualifying.

California Rep. Ro Khanna (D), who previously endorsed Platner, also rushed to defend the Democratic candidate, stating, “I respect Platner’s journey & the man he is today,” adding, “I stand by my endorsement. I won’t cower to the establishment.”

RELATED: ‘Cracks in the Schumer armor’: White House adviser says government shutdown may be ending soon

Rep. Rohit Khanna. Photo by PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images

Within days of Platner issuing an apology for his past remarks on Reddit and Khanna’s defense, the Collins challenger found himself once again having to address poor decisions from his past.

Footage recently went viral showing Platner lip-syncing to a Miley Cyrus song with his shirt off. Astute observers noticed in the newly resurfaced video that Platner had a “totenkopf” tattoo on his chest.

Totenkopf, which is German for “death’s head,” is a skull image popularized by Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel elite guard and adopted as the symbol of the SS-Totenkopfverbande, the branch that guarded the concentration camps.

“It was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol,” Platner said in a statement to Politico on Tuesday. “I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that — and to insinuate that I did is disgusting. I am already planning to get this removed.”

Genevieve McDonald, who resigned as the political director of Platner’s campaign last week over the Reddit posts, noted in a Facebook post that “Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”

McDonald suggested that Platner’s campaign released the footage “to try to get ahead of it.”

Blaze News has reached out to Sen. Collins’ office for comment.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee was among the groups that made hay of the tattoo, sharing a screenshot from the video and referring to the totenkopf image as a “Nazi tattoo.”

“This tattoo appears to be a ‘death’s head’ symbol used by the SS, the organization most responsible for the genocidal murder of 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during WWII,” Zach Schwartz, director of the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s Jewish Community Relations Council, said in a statement. “We hope that Mr. Platner would condemn, in no uncertain terms, the meaning behind this tattoo and everything it stands for.”

On the Monday episode of the podcast “Pod Save America,” Platner said, “I’m not a secret Nazi.”

“I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and anti-Semitism and racism in general,” added Platner, whose comment history on Reddit also hints at an affinity for Antifa.

Sanders has underscored his continued support for Platner’s campaign, suggesting to Politico that Platner got the Nazi tattoo while inebriated and is “not the only one in America who has gone through a dark period.”

“People go through that, he has apologized for the stupid remarks, the hurtful remarks that he made, and I’m confident that he’s going to run a great campaign and that he’s going to win,” added Sanders.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) told Semafor on Tuesday that he too continues to support Platner, stating, “The Democratic Party needs to be big enough to accept people who have hard lives, who have made mistakes and have actually owned up to those mistakes. And that’s what he’s done.”

Heinrich, who has reportedly directed money from his leadership PAC to Platner, suggested that while he does not like some of the Maine candidate’s past remarks, he likes “what he’s campaigning on and the way he’s connecting to working-class voters.”

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​Graham platner, Platner, Bernie sanders, Ro khanna, Dnc, Senate, Susan collins, Leftism, Radical, Nazi, Totenkopf, Radicalism, Maine, Politis 

New details emerged Wednesday morning after a driver crashed a vehicle into a Secret Service barricade close to the White House.

On Tuesday night, a driver drove his vehicle into a Secret Service gate on 17th and E St, NW in Washington, D.C., at approximately 10:37 p.m. local time, a United States Secret Service spokesperson told Blaze News.

‘Charges for Unlawful Entry and Destruction of Government Property are currently pending.’

The suspect “was immediately arrested and transported to an area hospital for a mental health evaluation,” the spokesman added in an update to Blaze News Wednesday morning.

The Secret Service spokesperson said that “charges for Unlawful Entry and Destruction of Government Property are currently pending.”

RELATED: Suspect arrested after crashing vehicle into barricade near White House

Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images

“We appreciate the swift actions of our Uniformed Division officers and are grateful for the Metropolitan Police Department for their prompt response,” the spokesperson concluded in the statement.

Blaze News contacted U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro’s office for comment on the pending charges.

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​Politics, White house, Secret service, Secret service spokesperson, Mental health evaluation, Unlawful entry, Destruction of government property, Jeanine pirro, Criminal charges, Us attorney jeanine pirro 

Like you, I take my phone everywhere. I check my email, I scroll X, I call my wife and ask her if there’s anything she needs me to pick up on my way home.

And I take photos and videos. Of everything. The lake, the gulls, the mountains, the houses, the flowers, the woods, my son, my daughter, my wife, my life. Every video in my phone is less than 30 seconds, and most aren’t more than 10.

Who would have thought that the iPhone would essentially eliminate what we used to call ‘home movies’?

A little clip of a deer behind the house. A shot of a kid cracking a wiffle ball or running the bases. My phone is full of these short little bursts.

That’s something different about our era. My parents didn’t take hundreds of five-second clips of my brother, sister, and me. They took long, 10-minute videos with a camcorder. Remember those?

Focus on the family

They’d record these long videos at birthday parties, in the car on family trips, or at my uncle’s cabin. A whole inning of Little League, the soft lull of conversation between Mom and Dad in the background. My mom would ask us questions, interviewing us kids like little adults for what felt like eternity, the zoom moving in and out as we reluctantly answered her questions.

Those old family videos feel so much slower and so much less frantic. I don’t know what it is exactly, but in the short ones on our iPhones, it feels like life is happening in a disjointed fashion. Or like people are performing. Or like everything is sped up 20%. I suppose it’s because we don’t get a sense for the scene or the place. We have no context. All we have is an eight-second clip and a question, years later, about where that was.

On the old videos, mom and dad would narrate in a kind of family documentarian way, as if curating historical footage for future reference. “So it’s August 17, 1996, and we are visiting Grandma at the cabin. It’s about 85 degrees, and this is the last trip of the summer. How’s everybody doing? What did you think, kids? Are you having fun?” Stuff like that.

Mom and dad would walk around the house with the camera, coming upon a kid in the bedroom reading or playing, film the kid from a distance, zooming in on fingers or eyes, the camera shaking.

They’d find my grandparents at the table and joke about a few things. My dad would zoom in on my mom getting dinner ready in the kitchen, the soft hum of the tape heard on the mic. My mom would frame a long shot of my dad, outside, smoking his pipe, reading.

Video vérité

Those long shots on the camcorders were slices of life as it really was. Watching the videos, you feel the time and place and even the real — or more real — behaviors of the people on the screen. Walking slowly with Mom or Dad around the house stirs memories of bedrooms, bathrooms, hallways, and living rooms in ways the short little iPhone clips can’t.

Realizing this, I bought an old camcorder. I found a Sony Handycam DCR-SR62 on eBay for 50 bucks and a battery on Amazon for 12.

It’s old-school but not too old-school. The most annoying thing about the old camcorders was the hassle of bringing analog footage into the digital age. If you want to transfer tape onto computer, it takes a long time. If you have a two-hour video, it takes two hours to get it on the computer.

What’s nice about the Sony Handycam model I bought is that there are no tapes or disks. All video is stored on an internal hard drive, which can then be transferred to your computer just as easily as you transfer photos from any digital camera. Essentially, you get the best of both worlds: digital transfer speed and long-form family video.

RELATED: Forget streaming — I just want my Blockbuster Video back

James Laynse/Getty Images

Real to reels

In theory, we should be able to record 10-minute slice-of-life videos on our iPhones. But we don’t. The format of the technology pushes us in a different direction. Consuming reels on Instagram nudges our tastes toward short-form portrait and away from long-form landscape.

The technology we use shapes the way we live. That’s obvious, of course, but it’s a realization that seems to be continually rediscovered, or revealed, in ways that we never could have anticipated. Who would have thought that the iPhone would essentially eliminate what we used to call “home movies”?

I took my Sony Handycam to the beach at the end of the summer. I filmed my kids eating string cheese and sharing a can of sparkling water. I zoomed in on sailboats in the distance, walked up and down the beach recording the kids running in front of me, and interviewed them just like my mom interviewed us.

“So it’s September 30, 2025, and we are at beach. How’s the food? Can you believe we are swimming in September? Did you guys jump in the water? What do we think, was it cold? What was your favorite thing we did this summer?”

​Men’s style, Lifestyle, The root of the matter, Sony handycam, Home movies, Iphones, Instagram, Family, Tech 

Prosecutors said Lawrence Davison forced his way into a Chicago woman’s home in the 2800 block of North Milwaukee Avenue around 11:30 p.m. Oct. 8, pointed a gun at her temple and mouth, threatened to kill her if she made any noise, and sexually assaulted her twice before running off with her belongings, CWB Chicago reported.

But Davison allegedly made a serious error.

CWB Chicago said state officials revoked Davison’s parole following this latest arrest.

Turns out that among the items the 36-year-old reportedly stole from the victim were her keys — and they had an Apple AirTag attached to them, police told the outlet.

And wouldn’t you know the AirTag led them straight to Davison, who police said was walking on the South Side hours after the attack, CWB Chicago noted.

When officers stopped him in the 400 block of West 77th Street, they also found a black Ruger .22 handgun and the victim’s ID while searching his black bag for the AirTag, the outlet said, citing a police report.

RELATED: Thugs on parole, probation thrown behind bars after allegedly repeating same crimes that got them in trouble previously

Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune

Judge Luciano Panici Jr. ordered Davison detained on charges of home invasion while armed with a firearm, committing a sex offense during a home invasion, two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault while armed with a firearm, and being a felon in possession of a weapon, CWB Chicago reported.

More from the outlet:

At the time of the attack, Davison was on parole for another violent home invasion, according to state records.

In April 2015, he broke into a 40-year-old woman’s home in the 9500 block of South Wentworth Avenue and struck her in the head with a baseball bat after she caught him burglarizing the residence, a CPD report said.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for charges including home invasion causing great bodily harm and was paroled in November 2023 after serving about 85% of the term.

CWB Chicago said state officials revoked Davison’s parole following this latest arrest and returned him to prison to serve the rest of his 10-year sentence, which is scheduled to end in November 2026.

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​Air tag, Chicago, Arrest, Repeat offender, Home invasion with a firearm charge, Home invasion with sex offense charge, Aggravated criminal sexual assault with a firearm charge, Felon in possession of a weapon charge, Dumb crook, Stupid criminal, Crime 

My high school history teacher, back in 1989, asked our class to name the single biggest problem facing the United States. We wrote our answers anonymously, and he tallied the results. When he read mine aloud — “the federal government’s debt” — he rolled his eyes, as if I’d said something idiotic.

I didn’t name debt nearly 40 years ago just because I think borrowing is bad. I named it because elected officials were already pretending deficit spending wasn’t a problem — and because no one seemed willing to hold the government accountable for it.

The more the Fed prints, the weaker the dollar becomes. The weaker the dollar becomes, the more the world doubts it.

Almost four decades on, nothing has changed. The problem has only grown — as every neglected problem does.

In 1989, the budget deficit was $153 billion. The total national debt stood at $2.86 trillion.

By 2024, the annual deficit had exploded to $1.8 trillion, and the total debt hit $35 trillion. Interest payments now consume 3% of GDP, and they’re still climbing. Meanwhile, the country faces $210 trillion in unfunded liabilities, mostly Social Security and Medicare.

The United States is broke. And Americans act as if it doesn’t matter.

Washington pretends everything’s fine

The federal government has been shut down for three weeks. Republicans want to keep spending at ruinous levels. Democrats want to spend even more ruinously. Both sides ignore the obvious: We’re bankrupt. And nobody in America seems to care.

Congress hasn’t passed a real budget since 1996. For nearly 30 years, lawmakers have funded everything through “continuing resolutions,” which automatically renew old spending and add new layers on top. Every “temporary” increase becomes permanent.

The 2009 “one-time” $831 billion stimulus? Still baked in. The $4.6 trillion COVID “relief” binge? Never rolled back. Dozens of other “emergency” expenditures have quietly become fixtures of federal spending.

Year after year, Washington keeps the faucet open — and the debt grows.

By 2024, U.S. GDP was $29.2 trillion. Federal debt was $35 trillion. That’s a debt-to-GDP ratio of 123%. And Washington keeps spending as if it can print reality.

No one in America seems to care.

The world is awakening

The rest of the world is starting to notice.

To fund its deficits, the U.S. Treasury sells bonds — IOUs that investors buy with the promise of repayment plus interest. Lately, those auctions have gone poorly. The world’s appetite for American debt is fading.

As one financial analysis put it: “Given the poor state of the American fiscal situation, auctions will likely remain large for the foreseeable future. The risk that markets will push back is rising.”

Another report warned that persistent $2 trillion deficits during peacetime raise “important questions about what might happen during a recession or war.”

When investors balk, the Federal Reserve steps in, printing money to buy the debt. That fuels inflation — the same inflation that has already stripped 87% of the dollar’s value since we abandoned the gold standard in 1971.

The more the Fed prints, the weaker the dollar becomes. The weaker the dollar becomes, the more the world doubts it.

The emperor’s new clothes

The only thing still propping up the dollar is its role as the world’s reserve currency — the global default for trade and central bank holdings since 1944. That status lets America keep spending money it doesn’t have. But the illusion can’t last forever.

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wenjin chen via iStock/Getty Images

The BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — are challenging the dollar’s dominance. They’ve added members such as Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer, has been invited to join. At least 40 other nations are lining up.

As Business Insider put it, “BRICS is consolidating its global power and influence. This should be a key cause of concern for the U.S., as new members could amplify de-dollarization.”

So what has Washington done? Cut spending? Tighten the money supply? Restore fiscal sanity? Of course not.

Instead, the government rattles sabers. President Donald Trump recently threatened a 100% tariff on the BRICS bloc countries if they move to undermine the dollar — as if bluster could paper over decades of reckless spending.

The United States is broke but still pretending otherwise. Washington spends like a drunk who keeps ordering drinks on a canceled credit card. The world is beginning to call the bluff.

And the American people? They’re still sleepwalking — as they have been for decades.

​Opinion & analysis, National debt, Insolvency, Debt ceiling, Debt crisis, Dollar, Reserve currency, Economy, Economic collapse, Brics, Tariffs, Deficit, Central banks, Interest rates, Debt to gdp ratio, Recession, War, China, Credit, Budget deal, Government shutdown, Donald trump 

An all-female video game tournament was turned on its head when it allowed a male to compete and win an enormous cash prize.

A Fortnite gaming tournament called the Milk Cup says that it was created to provide women with more opportunities to succeed in video game competitions.

“It’s a space designed for women to compete at the highest level, for serious money,” the company says. However, it took just one year since the tournament’s inception for it to become dominated by a male.

‘It felt crazy to lift that trophy.’

The 2025 Milk Cup in San Diego, California, boasted a $300,000 prize pool and alleged $78,000 first-place prize. This year’s top prize was award to a duo of gamers going by “XSet” Nina Fernandez and allegedly transgender gamer Vader, a male who believes he is female. The pair placed second in 2024.

Vader celebrated the win on his X page, exclaiming, “1st ($78,000) at [Milk Cup] LAN WE F**KING DID IT.”

Nina and the tournament organizers similarly celebrated the victory online.

Vader’s X profile seemingly lists him as “18” years old, with a transgender flag next to the age. A gamer ranking website also lists him as born in July 2007. His Twitch profile describes him as using “she/her pronouns.”

“[Our win at Milk Cup] shows you can be your true self and not be apologetic about it,” Vader said on a post-match press panel, per ESports Insider. “There are spaces for everybody, so never give up.”

“It felt crazy to lift that trophy,” Vader added, saying he wanted to “prove people wrong.”

“Anybody can participate in esports. Don’t let people stop you. Don’t let comments get to your head. Believe in yourself.”

While online communities often cater to such delusions, it may come as a surprise that the tournament itself is backed by a nonprofit organization that operates under the United States Department of Agriculture.

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The website “Gonna Need Milk,” representing the organization behind the tournament, claims that “in a world where male athletes take center stage,” the organization is “redirecting the spotlight to women.”

The company further explains it is making an effort to, perhaps ironically, “drive awareness to gender inequality in sport.”

The bottom of the page denotes that the website is maintained and funded by MilkPEP, the Milk Processor Education Program, which came into existence after the creation of the Fluid Milk Promotion Act of 1990. The USDA’s National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board sponsors both MilkPEP and Gonna Need Milk.

At the same time, MilkPEP boasts that the tournament is run by a collaboration of all-female teams and that its program is “funded by the nation’s milk companies.”

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Dan Wheldon celebrates his winning of the 89th Indianapolis 500 by drinking milk. Photo by Donald Miralle/Getty Images

Blaze News reached out to MilkPEP and Gonna Need Milk to see if they took issue with a male gamer winning the all-female tournament; neither entity responded.

The USDA was also asked if the inclusion of the male violated federal orders. A representative for the USDA said the agency could not provide a response to the question within a reasonable time frame due to “the ongoing government shutdown.”

Gamers Vader and Nina were also asked to comment on what the determining factors should be regarding allowing a male in the female category and whether they had a response to the backlash; neither responded.

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​Return, Gaming, Video games, Fortnite, Transgenderism, Women’s sports, Equality, Usda, Government, Ngo, Tech