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A systems engineer prompted a slew of AI bots to take the Political Compass test online to determine where their answers landed on the political spectrum between the right and the left. To absolutely no one’s surprise, most of the bots fell onto the left side of the map with only one in the center, leaning right. Any guesses which one?The Political Compass is an exam comprising 62 propositions designed to reveal the political ideology of the person taking the test. Instead of people, though, a systems engineer based in Denmark who goes by the name Zapador had a whole host of AI bots take the test. Among the frontier candidates were ChatGPT by OpenAI, Claude by Anthropic, Gemini by Google, Grok by SpaceXAI, plus many more.AI platforms with political opinions will have an effect on the conclusions people draw and the opinions they form.To ensure that the results were as accurate as possible, Zapador had each bot take the test “at least five times” before plotting their average scores on a graph. The results are included below. AI Political Compass Test Results/aipolcom.netThe numbers don’t lieAs you can see, most of the AI bots fell well within the left libertarian category. In fact, only one AI bot differed significantly. The two gray dots on the center libertarian line and the single dot in the right libertarian section represent three versions of Grok — Grok 4.3 is most right-leaning, Grok 4.5 is next, and Grok 4.6 is closest to the line.Looking at the other side, Google Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite with no reasoning was the farthest left out of the mainstream options tested, followed by open-weight models Gemma 4 31B and GPT-OSS 120B.Needless to say, if you’re looking for an AI bot that takes a balanced-to-right-leaning approach to its responses, Grok’s latest models are the only options on the table.Unfortunately, when looking at global market share based on website traffic, Grok only accounts for 2.4% of the AI market. ChatGPT sits firmly in the lead at 53.9%, followed by Google Gemini at 27.9% and Anthropic Claude at 9.2%. That means most people use left-leaning AI bots in their daily lives, whether they trust it to gather information, complete tasks, or offer input on projects at work.RELATED: The next AI race isn't about smarter machines. It's about human experience. R.Satish Babu/Getty ImagesBiased by defaultIt’s no mystery how things ended this way. Most of the Big AI companies that control today’s leading AI platforms are leftist organizations with leftist employees. For example, Sam Altman made donations to Kamala Harris’ campaign leading up to her presidential run against Donald Trump, while Dario Amodei reportedly made donations to President Joe Biden, among other Democrats.It’s also not a coincidence that the one right-leaning chatbot, Grok, is owned by a center-to-right-leaning innovator, Elon Musk.The big question is whether or not AI chatbots’ political bias is intentional or a side effect of the source material — something we may never know for sure. Still, the implications of a left-aligned AI army that spurns right-leaning values could have significant implications on society, especially as AI sinks deeper into the fabric of the modern world.Consequences of biased AIA barrage of left-aligned AI platforms could impact people in dramatic, perhaps unexpected ways. “There is no question that in a society where people increasingly rely on AI for education and information — to tell them who to vote for and what opinions to have on a variety of topics — that AI platforms with political opinions will have an effect on the conclusions people draw and the opinions they form,” Perry Metzger, chairman of Alliance for the Future, told Blaze Media.This is true in several facets of life — as students increasingly use AI to mold their education, businesses rely on AI to influence their companies, and voters turn to AI for vital information before an election.Going further, Metzger expressed his concerns around Chinese-made open-source AI models, like DeepSeek and Kimi, moving in as cheap alternatives to American frontier models, both here in the States and in other nations around the world. Unlike American models that still offer information openly, he noted, Chinese models have their own opinions around topics that question the Chinese government, rightful territory, and more, skewing outputs in a way that could further “twist society.”As for what to do about it? More government isn’t the answer. Any well-intentioned guidance to improve the training data or minimize bias by the Trump administration could be weaponized by the next Democrat president. Stronger governance over AI outputs would also face constitutional hurdles.Ultimately, the best thing we can do right now, as a society, is to be aware that these models are biased toward the left and to engage with them with this information top of mind.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A custody dispute in Maine is quickly becoming a national religious liberty battle after the state’s highest court upheld a ruling preventing a mother from taking her daughter to church.Emily Bickford, who shares custody of her child with her former partner, Matthew Bradeen, argues the order violates her constitutional rights and sets a dangerous precedent for government interference in religious practice.Her attorneys at Liberty Counsel are now preparing an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, while BlazeTV host Pat Gray hopes the Supreme Court will hear her case, as it goes far beyond one family’s dispute.“Who are you to tell a mother she can’t take her kids to church?” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments.“How is that not a violation of the First Amendment?” Gray asks. “How is it not unconstitutional to make that ruling? It’s unbelievable.”“That has to go to the Supreme Court,” Fisher adds.“Yeah,” Gray agrees. “The U.S. Supreme Court has to rule on that. And she’s with one of those Liberty lawyers that are going to do that. So she’s got that going for her. And you would think, with a 6-3 edge in the U.S. Supreme Court, this would go the right way.”Want more from Pat Gray?To enjoy more of Pat's biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

The political establishment has carried the day in the Senate primary elections in New Hampshire.U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday to succeed three-term Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, while former Sen. John Sununu captured the Republican nomination, setting up an open-seat general election critical to both parties’ hopes of running the Senate.'I'm New Hampshire.'With nearly 88% of the expected vote counted, establishment favorite Pappas crushed socialist Karishma Manzur 65% to 33%, with the remaining Democrat vote split among David Jarvis, Maxwell Saal, and John Vail.Sununu faced a challenge from former Massachusetts senator and Trump administration alum Scott Brown, but ultimately beat him 68.5% to 26.7%. Several other Republicans finished in the distant single digits. New Hampshire has not elected a Republican senator since 2010, but August University of New Hampshire polling shows Sununu leading Pappas 45% to 43%. “We’re taking nothing for granted, this is a purple state,” Pappas told MS NOW. “We’ve got a path to victory. But it’s going to be a tough race.”Former Vice President Kamala Harris carried the Granite State by just three points in 2024, with all 10 counties shifting right since 2020. RELATED: Is the DSA about to scalp another establishment Democrat? Mel Musto/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesPappas has represented New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District since 2019 and served on the state’s Executive Council from 2013 to 2019. He is co-owner of his family’s Puritan Backroom restaurant. Pappas received endorsements from Sens. Shaheen and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Kamala Harris. Pappas raised over $15 million during the primary campaign, dwarfing Manzur’s $415,081. Manzur tacked far to Pappas’ left, repeatedly accusing him of being a pro-Israel stooge and corporate cut-out. “Chris Pappas’ hypocrisy is evident. He talks about getting big money out of politics, then turns around and takes bribes from special interests,” a Manzur campaign spokesperson previously told Blaze News. “He talks about standing up to Netanyahu, yet he has voted to send billions of our tax dollars to support Netanyahu’s war."On the Republican side, Sununu served in the House from 1997 to 2003 and the Senate from 2003 to 2009. His father and brother were both governors of New Hampshire. “I’m New Hampshire. I said in my campaign announcement that I’ll have one job: standing up for New Hampshire every single day,” Sununu told the Dartmouth when asked about his primary challenger Scott Brown. “I’m not focused on another office or currying favor with anyone outside this state.Brown previously served as senator from 2010 to 2013 after winning the special election prompted by the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). Brown supported Trump in 2016, netting him an ambassadorship to New Zealand and Samoa.Sununu received President Donald Trump’s endorsement despite authoring a 2024 op-ed titled “Donald Trump is a loser” in support of Nikki Haley’s 2024 presidential campaign. Sununu later walked back the barb by saying the publication Union Leader chose the headline. A UNH poll headed into Primary Election Day showed Sununu leading Brown 60% to 20%.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Incumbent New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte secured the Republican nomination for a second two-year term on Tuesday, beating two outsider candidates and teeing up a November battle against Democrat nominee Cinde Warmington. With about 84% of expected votes counted, Ayotte won 91.6% of the Republican vote, trouncing Shaun Fife’s 4.1% and Bob Wayne McClory’s 3.5%, according to NBC News. Warmington advanced to the general election automatically as the only Democrat on the ballot. 'No income tax, no sales tax. Not now, not EVER!'Ayotte previously served as U.S. senator from 2011 to 2017, losing her re-election bid to former Gov. Maggie Hassan in 2016 by about 1,000 votes. Ayotte defeated former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig in 2024 to become governor. Ayotte didn’t run as a culture warrior in 2024. New Hampshire went for then-Vice President Kamala Harris by three points but has kept a Republican trifecta in its state government since 2021. Republicans also control the state’s Executive Council, a unique governing body that shares executive power with the governor. University of New Hampshire polling conducted in August put Ayotte’s approval rating at 49%, with 42% disapproval. The incumbent’s campaign has focused on kitchen table issues, emphasizing public safety policy and low taxes. New Hampshire is one of the few states without its own income or sales tax, and Ayotte plans to keep it that way.RELATED: Deadlines are fast approaching on Trump's mail-in ballot initiatives as election season begins CJ Gunther/Getty Images"I've said it before, and I will say it again," Ayotte said in a March X post. "No income tax, no sales tax. Not now, not EVER!" She also promised to address rising housing costs through regulatory changes and collaboration with the Republican-controlled legislature.Those cost-of-living concerns are a top issue for Granite State voters, according to August UNH polling, as are housing affordability and property taxes. Ayotte has also touted her controversial keystone Education Freedom Accounts, which let parents spend the state’s per-pupil aid on homeschooling or private education rather than public school. Ayotte’s Republican opponents didn’t mount serious campaigns. Gilmanton farmer Shaun Fife, who took just 0.6% of the vote in the 2024 gubernatorial primary, refused donations and promoted alternative currencies and monetary systems. Bob Wayne McClory also finished with 0.6% of the vote in the 2024 primary. McClory did not fundraise or make public comments during the 2026 primary. Democrats, by contrast, closed ranks early.Though Warmington ran unopposed this cycle, she unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination in 2024. Warmington is a health care attorney and served as an executive councilor from 2021 to 2025. Warmington is campaigning against Ayotte’s Education Freedom Accounts, blaming them for driving up property taxes. She has also slammed ICE and promised to fight Donald Trump, though she notably agrees with Ayotte that New Hampshire should not enact a state income or sales tax.The health care attorney has drawn fire from both sides of the aisle for working with Purdue Pharma as an opioid lobbyist from 2001 to 2002.“What I did not know at the time was that Purdue Pharma was engaged in this massive criminal fraud, something that would be exposed only over years of litigation, that they convinced doctors that it was safer to prescribe Oxycontin under circumstances when it was not,” Warmington said in an August video. Warmington is supported by Planned Parenthood NH Action, Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, who is now running for Senate. Ayotte has been endorsed by the Professional Fire Fighters of New Hampshire and Turning Point Action. Multiple general-election polls conducted in August showed Ayotte leading Warmington roughly 49-39.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A new bombshell report has revealed shocking new details about Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao.Chao, 73, who married Sen. McConnell in 1993, may have closer ties to the Chinese Communist Party than previously believed.'Such a suggestion disregards her nearly five decades of faithful service to the United States and is both unfounded and deeply insulting, hurtful, and racist.'On Tuesday, the Daily Caller News Foundation published an exclusive report on Chao's alleged ties to the CCP, citing Chinese government and state media reports translated by the DCNF. Elaine Chao, whose Chinese name is reportedly Zhao Xiaolan, has worked in high-level positions in the United States government under two Republican administrations, most notably serving as President George W. Bush's secretary of labor and the Department of Transportation secretary during President Trump's first term in office.However, the DCNF claims Chao has also received at least four Chinese government positions since 2008, including within an influence and intelligence agency called the United Front Work Department. The extent to which she ever worked in these alleged roles is unclear. The DCNF claimed that the Chinese government and state media reports "describe Chao’s appointments in various ways, with some stating she had been 'hired' or had 'accepted an appointment letter,' while others simply note that she was then among those 'holding' a given title."According to a report published by the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, the UFWD is used to "gain access to advanced foreign technology" and is "one of the CCP's ways of building and wielding political power at home and abroad." RELATED: McConnell's latest health update raises new questions instead of settling them John Lamparski/Getty ImagesThe DCNF, citing Chinese government and state media reports, also reported that Chao's late sister, Angela Chao, and her father, James S.C. Chao, the founder of a large shipping firm called Foremost Group, also received positions in the Chinese government and UFWD positions. During the late 1980s, Elaine Chao served as the chair and commissioner of the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission, whose mission statement is to "ensure a competitive and reliable international ocean transportation supply system that supports the U.S. economy and protects the public from unfair and deceptive practices."A spokesman for Chao and Foremost Group, Patrick O'Connor, denied these reports concerning Chao, her father, and her sister. “She has never held a position with a foreign government or acted on behalf of one. We are not aware she has met with representatives from UFWD entities,” O’Connor said after being sent what the Caller claimed were "Chinese government and state media photos published between 2010 and 2026 showing Chao meeting with officials from the CCP and/or UFWD." “Such a suggestion disregards her nearly five decades of faithful service to the United States and is both unfounded and deeply insulting, hurtful and racist.”The DCNF pressed the spokesperson on how it is "racist" to investigate Chao's alleged ties to the Chinese government. “No one seems to care when most American business or political leaders hold meetings in China, so it’s suspicious when the Daily Caller makes insinuations about a former two-time cabinet secretary of Asian descent, especially based on photos, some of which are decades old,” O’Connor responded. “The secretary is a proud American who has devoted most of her professional life to serving the American people. To question her patriotism is a double standard, at best — racist, at worst.”Chao was born in Taiwan and obtained U.S. citizenship at the age of 19. The DCNF revealed that in February 2005, during her time as President George W. Bush's secretary of labor, Chao reportedly sent a handwritten reply and signed photo to the Jiading District Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese after receiving a Christmas card from the organization. These returned overseas Chinese organizations are guided by the UFWD.Questions about Elaine Chao have resurfaced after her husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell, had a health scare in June 2026. Questions have continued to swirl regarding his health and whereabouts, as he is expected to return to the Senate any day. Blaze News reached out to McConnell's office but did not immediately receive a response. McConnell's office declined a request for comment from the DCNF.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

In 2010, Lady Gaga arrived at the MTV Video Music Awards draped in 50 pounds of flank steak. The world gasped, and the vegans wept. The rest of us assumed we had hit peak absurdity. We were wrong.Sixteen years later, her tech-billionaire fiancé, Michael Polansky, decided the singer’s meat-centric aesthetic lacked a vital component: actual human tissue.Their explicit goal is to fundamentally redesign the human condition.Outer Bio, which Polansky co-founded, uses foreskins and discarded post-surgical skin to train machine-learning algorithms and develop new cosmetic ingredients. When the internet caught wind of this rather odd model, the backlash was immediate. Discontented Redditors raged, focusing heavily on Polansky's connection to Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that opened its first international office in Tel Aviv, to embed deeply within Israel's booming and sophisticated cybersecurity and intelligence industry. One particularly outraged comment has since been removed; the outrage one imagines still lingers.But financial backing misses the true horror. What matters more than profit is the philosophy driving the San Francisco startup. Silicon Valley exhausted its supply of digital text, public images, and behavioral metadata. The tech industry now craves fresh meat.This trajectory relies on a culture paralyzed by the prospect of aging. The anti-aging market is now worth more than $77 billion. By 2035, it will be worth almost twice that amount. Some 60% of Americans now regularly purchase anti-aging products.RELATED: This scandal-rocked tech company wants your attention on its product upgrades Getty Images The cultural pipeline moves with frightening momentum. A 30-something patient starts with Botox to freeze a forehead furrow. That gateway drug leads directly to synthetic facial fillers. Then comes the heroin-chic look of Ozempic face, followed by invasive surgical facelifts, daily regimens of questionable supplements, expensive longevity clinics, and finally, skin creams designed by AI. Outer Bio plans to license these algorithmic discoveries directly to beauty conglomerates and pharmaceutical giants, effectively turning the pursuit of youth into a high-margin supply chain.We built the digital world to make human labor easier. The engineering class shifted the goalposts somewhere along the line. Technologists no longer limit themselves to writing software that calculates tax returns or routes delivery trucks. Their explicit goal is to fundamentally redesign the human condition.Artificial intelligence operates far beyond the simple automation of workplace tasks. Silicon Valley sells a future where computational power extends life spans, modifies genetic code, replaces natural organ functions, and engineers customized medicines. Polansky’s company presents itself as a benign skin-care startup, but the underlying mechanics represent an opening salvo for transhumanism.Productizing human fleshThe process at work is a closed feedback loop. An algorithm predicts how specific chemical compounds will interact with skin tissue. Lab technicians test those predictions on discarded human cells grown in dishes. The biological results feed straight back into the computational model, refining the next run of predictions. The machine learns by experimenting on actual human material rather than lab rats.Medical research has historically relied on animal models to test chemicals and treatments. The scientific establishment increasingly seeks to replace mice with human-derived biological material. This is troubling. A culture that views the human body as just another biological input loses the ability to define why human life holds unique value.Consider the life cycle of a discarded surgical flap. A patient leaves a hospital operating room after a routine procedure, unaware that the facility owns his excised tissue. A biotech firm collects the discarded skin. An AI system parses the cellular data. The startup develops a patented cosmetic molecule. A multinational beauty corporation buys the license and sells a $500 jar of face cream back to the aging public.The patient whose body provided the initial cellular material receives nothing. Corporate entities claim absolute ownership over the biological information extracted from us. The human body becomes raw material, refined by machines and packaged for the very people who supplied the biomass in the first place.It sounds absurd, largely because it is. Yet this is the future that awaits us.A devil's bargain?To be fair, there are potential benefits. Research using human cells could lead to better drugs and new treatments and therapies for diseases that remain difficult or impossible to treat. If technology can create something that improves or even saves a life, it is hardly a development worth rejecting outright.But my concern lies elsewhere, specifically in treating the body as a leasehold property rather than a sacred vessel. Technologists view natural biological decline as an engineering flaw to be corrected in the next software update. They see the body as a collection of components to be optimized, with nonstop AI tuning and synthetic “upgrades.”We are watching the line between the organic and the artificial disappear. Silicon Valley built an empire by converting human attention into digital ad revenue. The next phase of commercial growth converts physical biology into proprietary intellectual property. The human body becomes just another cog in the corporate machine. In 2010, the vegans wept. Today, perhaps, we should all shed a tear.

The Trump administration recently revealed it is drafting a proposal, championed by Vice President JD Vance, to change how the government distributes money already earmarked for child care. The plan would tap the roughly $12 billion Child Care and Development Fund and make some of that money available to married couples with a stay-at-home parent. No new appropriation is involved.After months of conservative outrage over fraud and abuse in child care programs, you might expect the right to welcome a proposal that gives families another option. Instead, establishment conservatives attacked Vance with the usual charge: socialism.The deeper fight is political. Many of the people attacking the proposal are fighting over what kind of Republican Party comes after Trump and whether Vance should lead it.The episode reminds us that nearly every policy fight on the right now includes a second argument about the future of the Republican Party. It also shows how quickly ideological slogans replace political judgment.The Child Care and Development Fund was created in the 1990s to help low-income parents pay for care while they work or attend school. As currently structured, it subsidizes commercial child care but not a married parent who stays home to raise children. The administration’s draft proposal would not increase the fund. It would broaden who can receive money from the existing pool.That distinction did little to calm critics. Meghan McCain and Dana Loesch blasted the idea as big-government conservatism. Their objection rests on a familiar premise: Conservatives should abolish subsidies, not redirect them.Fine. Abolish them.But Congress won't do that.For most of history, becoming a widow or single mother was an economic catastrophe. Women depended heavily on husbands, fathers, brothers, and extended families for material support and physical protection. Industrialization, modern medicine, and mass employment changed some of those realities. Progressive feminism then used the state to change many more.The United States built a vast network of welfare programs, employment rules, education preferences, and subsidies designed in part to reduce women’s dependence on men. Whatever the original justification, these policies altered incentives. The state increasingly assumed functions once performed by husbands and families.It would be better to dismantle much of that system. But in a democracy where Congress can barely pass basic legislation, there is no serious prospect of stripping low-income mothers of child care benefits. The relevant question is therefore not whether the program should exist. It should not. The question is what conservatives do with a program that political reality will not allow them to eliminate.RELATED: We need lawfare for white men Blaze Media IllustrationThis is where the outrage over Vance’s proposal becomes revealing.Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the United States has committed well over $100 billion in military and nonmilitary support. Washington also provides Israel with about $3.8 billion in military aid each year, apart from extraordinary spending connected to recent wars in the Middle East. Yet redirecting already appropriated child care money toward married parents who raise their own children somehow triggers cries of socialism.Why?Florida offers a useful analogy. Lawmakers there expanded school-choice programs so public education dollars can follow families into private schools and other approved alternatives. Conservatives could argue that education taxes should simply be abolished. Politically, that is not happening. So lawmakers took money the state was already collecting and made it available to parents who rejected the government’s default institution.The principle is simple: Do not let the perfect become the enemy of the good.The political mistake is confusing accepting a program's existence with endorsing the philosophy that created it. Conservatives do this constantly. They inherit institutions designed by progressives, refuse to use them because doing so feels ideologically impure, and then act surprised when those institutions continue producing progressive outcomes. Power left unused does not disappear. It remains in the hands of people who are perfectly willing to use it against you.The conservative reaction to Vance suggests that much of the movement still prefers ideological purity to attainable victories. McCain warns about government spending, although her father famously cast the decisive vote against the Republican Obamacare repeal effort while supporting an interventionist foreign policy. Loesch argues that Congress should simply eliminate the child care program and cut the taxes that fund it.That would be wonderful. It also won't happen.A Republican Congress that struggles to pass even broadly popular priorities is not about to abolish a federal benefit for low-income working mothers. Pretending otherwise is not principled conservatism. It is political cosplay.Worse, the existing subsidy contains its own ideological bias. It rewards mothers for entering the paid workforce and purchasing child care while offering nothing to a mother who stays home and provides that care herself. Full-time mothers generate enormous social capital, but because their work does not produce a paycheck, it barely registers in the economic statistics that dominate policy debates.RELATED: This is what existential politics looks like Blaze Media IllustrationThe most basic lesson of economics is that you get more of what you subsidize. If government subsidizes commercial child care only when mothers leave home for paid employment, it creates an incentive to do so. Expanding eligibility to stay-at-home parents reduces that distortion.You can oppose the entire program and still recognize that.The Vance proposal does not allocate an additional dollar for child care. It uses executive discretion to change how it distributes existing funds. Critics can reasonably argue about whether the administration has statutory authority to make the change, how eligibility should work, or whether the fund should exist at all. Those are real arguments.Screaming “socialism” is not.The deeper fight is political. Many of the people attacking the proposal are fighting over what kind of Republican Party comes after Trump and whether Vance should lead it.That’s why a modest change to an existing subsidy produces such hysterics. The old conservative movement would rather preserve ideological purity than use available power to produce a better outcome. Vance’s proposal exposes that instinct in miniature — and shows why the GOP still has a loser mentality.

California police are searching for a man in his 20s who allegedly beat an elderly woman with an aluminum baseball bat.The woman's family says that the 71-year-old had offered to let the young man stay at her home in Crestline in San Bernardino County.'If it weren't for the neighbors calling the police, my mother would have bled to death alone in her home.' Therese Garcia had met the man while she sat on her front porch, her daughter said to KNBC-TV.The 26-year-old man told Garcia that all of his belongings had been stolen while he was camping, and she offered him space at her home. After two weeks, the man started to take over her home, leading Garcia to ask him to leave.That's when the man got violent, according to Garcia's daughter."When she went to sleep that night, she just woke up to him beating her with a metal bat, and that went on for hours," said Abbie Garcia."She would lose consciousness and wake up a little bit," she added. "Every time she would wake up a little bit, he would come back and beat her again to the point where she finally lost consciousness fully."The man stole the woman's keys, phone, and e-bike before fleeing.Her daughter said that Garcia was found after the neighbors called for a wellness check from police. "If it weren't for the neighbors calling the police, my mother would have bled to death alone in her home," she said. RELATED: Shocking police footage shows man brutally beating victim with a baseball bat The victim suffered injuries that included broken bones, deep lacerations, and a traumatic brain injury, according to her daughter. The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office later identified the suspect as Erik Eduardo Navarro of Orange County."My mom didn't deserve this," Abbie Garcia added. "She was simply trying to help someone she believed was in need, something she has always done throughout her life. This time, her kindness was met with unimaginable violence."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Canada’s descent into madness just got worse.On September 2, a Canadian reporter from the state-subsidized Global News outlet asked U.S. Admiral Samuel Paparo at a military conference in Victoria, B.C., whether he would obey an order from President Trump to attack Canada.“I find that scenario to be absolutely and utterly preposterous,” Paparo retorted. "I follow the orders of the commander in chief, but that is a needlessly emotional question.”Even though he explicitly called Canada a “close ally” of the U.S., the reporter pressed him again, accusing Paparo of not answering the question.“I said I follow the orders of the president,” Paparo reiterated, comparing the reporter’s question to inquiring about “attack plans … for the Martians.”Glenn Beck agrees with Paparo that such a loaded question is utterly "preposterous." “He has to answer, ‘I follow the instructions of the commander of the United States.’ … He's in uniform. That's what he does,” he exclaims.“Now, a separate question: If the president called you up today and said, ‘Hey, I need you to launch missiles against Mark Carney,’ I would bet any admiral, every admiral, would go, ‘Mr. President, can I get your code again, please? That doesn't make any sense,”’ Glenn continues.But he knows such an order is utterly ludicrous and thus virtually impossible.“Those would be the orders of an absolute lunatic,” he says. “We're not at war. Mark Carney is the one who said we're at war. … [President Trump] has sent person after person after person to talk to the Canadians and say, ‘We're not in a war.”’If Global News’ attempt to bait a U.S. admiral into a Canada-invasion sound bite wasn’t bad enough, another state-subsidized news outlet then took the brief and awkward exchange and framed it as though Paparo had refused to answer the inquiry and would unquestionably follow any order from Trump.Glenn calls out the “Ottawa Citizen” for publishing a deceptive article titled “U.S. admiral dodges questions about attacking Canada but acknowledges he would follow Trump’s orders.”“That's not dodging. That's a stupid question. We are allies,” he says.The Global News reporter who targeted Paparo, Glenn says, “[needs] a medical checkup.”“And the good thing is there's room for you to see the doctor probably in June of 2028,” he jokes.Canada, Glenn explains, is so tied in knots about an imaginary war with Trump that it is ignoring a very real and ominous problem: It’s “cozying up” to anti-Western powers that might eventually put Canada at odds with the U.S.“You keep cozying up to China, you keep bringing China in. … [The U.S.] can't trade with you because China is a threat to the United States,” says Glenn, “and the closer you get to them, the more we have to build a wall, either literally or figuratively, between us.”He continues, “The more you get in bed with radicalized Islam to the point where you have 2,000 Canadian Jews going, ‘I've got to get out of here’ … the more we have to distance ourselves.”“You keep going down this road for 10 years, and you know what? There might be a battle plan on the table,” he warns.But Canada, says Glenn, is likely to become an “enemy of God” before it becomes an enemy of the U.S.“If you become more communist, more Marxist, more collectivist, you keep killing your people [via the Medical Assistance in Dying program] at the clip you're killing them at, in the name of ‘compassion,’ you're not an enemy of the United States; you're an enemy of mankind — you're an enemy of God,” he warns.“He's going to solve that problem long before the U.S. military will. You're going to collapse.”To hear more, watch the video above.Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Football is back. The first harbinger of fall is just around the corner, bringing game-day tailgates, late-night bonfires, and hope that this just might be your team’s year to win it all.Fueling this hope is a fresh round of hype videos getting folks excited for the season. For NFL and college football fans alike, these edits of last season’s highlights are just the thing to paper over last year’s disappointment and turn over a new leaf for the season ahead.The real strength of the conservative movement is not in the ivory tower or stone colonnade.One hype video broke out of the college football echo chamber with over 4.5 million views online. What about this video is so resonant? The message — and conservatives should take notice.The video opens in the Auburn Tigers' locker room, where coach Hugh Freeze is giving a pep talk. “Life is more about others than it is yourself,” he begins. “What buys long-lasting purpose is you understanding selflessness and it being about something bigger than yourself.”Hopefully every coach and every political movement understands teamwork relies on humility to achieve a larger goal.He continues, “Tonight, I submit to you that there’s some family that drove from I don’t know where, parked five miles away from this stadium, and they saved all ... year long, just to buy a ticket, to climb to the top of that stadium and watch your tail play!”As the music builds to a crescendo, Freeze screams the most potent line of the video: “YOU OWE THEM SOMETHING!”In sports, as in politics, conservatives must recommit to playing for the fans in the cheap seats.This does not mean rallying around the lowest common denominator or dumbing down conservative messaging. It means remembering why so many conservative advocates got into the trenches to begin with.How many of those players in the Auburn locker room started as kids in the cheap seats?How many conservative politicos began as local activists knocking doors, eating cold pizza, and making calls for something they really believed in? Conservatives need to recapture some of that grassroots energy and turn it into tangible victories for the people who put them in office.We owe them something.For those working in the professional conservative movement in D.C., that means less time on niche debates and more time delivering for average Americans who share conservative values and need a voice in the nation’s capital.In 2024, voters elected President Trump and a Republican Congress on clear promises to improve the country. They expect results, just like the family saving all year for one game expects the team to leave it all on the field.With the announcement that the House is canceling the final two weeks of session this month, it’s now or never. The House will have four days left to crystallize the case they’ll take home ahead of the November elections.There is no shortage of opportunities to create contrast.RELATED: Congress gets a clean vote on gender sanity Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty ImagesThe Chloe Cole Act from Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) or the Title IX Clarification Act from Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) would undermine the gender industrial complex in medicine and women’s sports.The southern border is secure in part because of President Trump’s executive orders; Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy’s Permanent Trump Secure Border Act would codify the administrative changes necessary to preserve national sovereignty if another open-borders Democrat came into office.House Republicans could take a major step forward toward a longtime conservative priority to close the Department of Education by passing the Less Bureaucracy, Better Education Package, codifying transfers of authority of duplicative education programs.Passing any of these measures would be a good step to demonstrate that conservatives in Washington are moving the ball down the field for those cheering fans.No one wants to cheer for a team calling it quits while there is still time on the clock.Those in D.C. tend to bristle at giving credit beyond their elite circles, but it is time to acknowledge the real strength of the conservative movement is not in the ivory tower or stone colonnade.It lies in every hardworking American chasing the American dream who still believes in the principles that have made America exceptional and votes to keep it that way.We owe them our best. Let’s give them a reason to show up.

The Nike sportswear company has lost so much value that it's getting tossed out of the S&P 100 stock index charting the top 100 U.S. businesses.The company was mocked by many on the right over its marketing campaigns featuring controversial quarterback Colin Kaepernick and transgender activist Dylan McDermott.'NIKE filled its executive positions with feminists and woke ideology advocates. ... Companies that embrace femicentric ideologies and DEI buls**t will always suffer.' Nike has lost about $200 billion in market valuation since reaching its highest value in 2021.The company's CEO, Elliott Hill, said that he was confident the company could reverse the downturn in a recent earnings call with investors."Overall, the results aren’t there yet," he admitted.Many on the right called for a boycott of Nike products after the company signed up Kaepernick to promote the brand while he continued to bash police and support the "Black Lives Matter" movement.The company also partnered with McDermott to push the transgender agenda."Well, Nike sure owned the floor. And busted right through it. Get woke, go broke," wrote Spencer Pratt about one of the company's ads. "Bye Bye Nike. Your WOKE arrogance caught up with you and you will not be missed. Please share the hard learned message with your NFL, NBA, MLB brethren and WNBA sisters," responded Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah). "NIKE filled its executive positions with feminists and woke ideology advocates. Its stock has been plummeting. Companies that embrace femicentric ideologies and DEI buls**t will always suffer," said another critic on X. "I've said many times: I will never buy another Nike product again in my lifetime after they shoved that anti-American a**hole Kaepernick in our faces," said one detractor. Nike had been included among the S&P 100 for 18 years.RELATED: Mike Rowe speaks out about Nike's Kaepernick ad, and it's powerful Others pin Nike's implosion on the shift in sales strategy to sell shoes directly to the consumer. That campaign was orchestrated by the previous CEO, John Donahoe.The company's stock has slid 53% since Hill took over after Donahoe.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

For years, television series have beat audiences over the head with progressive messaging. Many attempts to counter-produce alternatives with traditional and faith-centered themes either died before production or failed to break through.But that trend hasn’t reached Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing’s fantasy series “The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin” — an explicitly Christian adaptation of Stephen R. Lawhead’s novels about the origins of Merlin and early Arthurian legends.The series debuted on DailyWire+ in January and later became the No. 1 fantasy series in the U.K., Ireland, Spain, and Portugal after hitting Prime Video overseas; it arrived on Prime in the U.S. on September 1 and has continued to climb.Now Boreing joins Christopher Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman, co-hosts of “Rufo and Lomez,” to discuss why conservatives keep underperforming in entertainment — and how “Pendragon” successfully broke the pattern. “You've managed to do the impossible,” Keeperman tells Boreing, “which is make something that looks great, it's slick, it's professional, it's well acted, it's well written, it looks like a high production TV show ought to look, and you've done it within the conservative ecosystem.”“And moreover, it's a show that's not about politics, per se. It's just good storytelling,” he adds.He inquires about how Boreing was able to “pull this rabbit out the hat.”“The hard way, of course,” Boreing quips.“Art is very ambitious, and a show like ‘The Pendragon Cycle’ requires an awful lot of risk to be taken by an awful lot of people,” he continues, highlighting the Daily Wire, executive producer Dallas Sonnier, and “the cast and crew” as the primary risk-takers who saw the lofty project from idea to reality.As for the actors, Boreing praises them as “the greatest ensemble of relatively unknown actors maybe ever assembled.”“I'm so proud of this cast,” he adds, “but it's a risk for them to associate with what they feared would be a really political operation. Of course, it didn't turn out to be because that wasn't what we were chasing. We were chasing true entertainment and true art.”Entertainment, Boreing notes, is an area conservatives tend to underachieve.“We think that the audience will only accept a polemic, but that isn't true,” he says. “Our audience engages with entertainment and art just as much as any other audience.”The problem, he says, is that conservative audiences haven’t “had any instruction” on what “good art with [conservative] values” looks like because it’s “so rare.”“What we're left with is what I call the ‘want to want to’s’ ... movies that nobody actually wants to see, but ... they want to support it,” Boreing explains, noting that these conservatives usually end up “[watching] the exact same television as everyone else” despite progressive themes and values.This is deeply problematic, he argues, because as “Will and Grace” demonstrated with public attitudes toward homosexuality in the late 1990s and early 2000s, television can “actually [change] how an entire generation” views political issues.“That's the power of actual entertainment,” says Boreing. “[‘Will and Grace’] did that not leading with its politics; it did it by completely immersing an audience into the lives of a set of characters who had a particular point of view, and it drew you into that point of view, and we tried to do the same with 'Pendragon.'”To hear more about the series, watch the episode above.Want more from Rufo & Lomez?To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Various businesses are cutting ties with a brewery in Tacoma, Washington, after it was discovered that the owners made a donation to political action group opposed to liberal policies.The backlash against the E9 Brewing Co. & Taproom began after a socialist political activist outed the organizations that had backed the Let's Go Washington PAC.'After learning of their donation to Let’s Go Washington, we will no longer be carrying E9 beers.' The PAC raised money to oppose transgender athletes in women's sports and the millionaire's tax, as well as to support a parental bill of rights.The brewery owners, brothers John and Lucas Xitco, said that they had donated to the PAC to oppose the tax.Zev Cook, the activist who exposed the Xitcos' donations, had been a Tacoma City Council candidate and also a co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America in Tacoma. Cook also identifies as a transgender woman. Some of the restaurants are pledging to stop selling the brewery's offerings."We are an anti-fascist restaurant, we support trans kids, we believe in a progressive tax system. Therefore, after learning of their donation to Let’s Go Washington, we will no longer be carrying E9 beers," read a statement from Corbeau restaurant on Instagram. Dusty’s Hideaway said it would sell its remaining inventory of E9 beers and donate the proceeds to help a transgender employee receive top surgery.John Xitco vehemently denied that the donations had anything to do with the transgender issues and provided evidence supporting his claim to the Bellingham Herald."We supported the tax initiative. We didn’t even know about the other initiatives," he said. RELATED: Female wrestler alleging sex assault by trans-identifying male during match sues high school Xitco also posted a statement saying he would donate to LGBTQ+ centers in the wake of the outrage."We have long supported the LGBTQ+ community," he wrote. "Many of those affected by the recent posts are our friends, colleagues, employees, and customers. We are especially sorry that our employees were drawn into a matter with which they had absolutely no involvement."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The United States armed forces are often parodied or serve as the inspiration for many Hollywood films, but it's typically not the other way around.With the Space Force, for example, the entity saw a near-immediate parody after its founding in 2019, with actors like Steve Carell and John Malkovich tapped to do the deed.'It's afraid.'Verhoeven-coreFive months after President Donald Trump and his administration founded the Space Force in December 2019, Netflix launched a comedy series based on the new agency.Although "Space Force" portrayed members with their own unique dark-blue dress uniforms, this was a bit of creative license. In reality, Guardians have worn "modified Air Force uniform[s]" since the Space Force was established.That has been changing. The Space Force unveiled a prototype of its own service dress uniform in 2021 and spent the following years refining the design. In January, the service formally introduced the finished uniform and outlined plans for its rollout.Now Trump appears to have something else in mind.On Sunday, the president posted an image to Truth Social depicting a proposed “next generation” Space Force dress uniform.“Inspired by the discipline and functionality of the Starship Trooper uniform,” the image read, “modernized for the Guardians of the Space Domain.” Its colors were identified as Space Gray, Midnight Black, Silver Gray, and Satin Black.But the apparent inspiration for the design quickly attracted attention.The reference is to “Starship Troopers,” Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 science-fiction satire, whose futuristic military aesthetic deliberately borrowed from Nazi imagery. Verhoeven has said he intended the film to depict a fascist society whose inhabitants did not recognize themselves as fascists.Forbes was among the outlets to note the resemblance, calling the style "Sci-Fi Fascist."RELATED: Deceptive slop is now junking up our favorite map apps. Don't be fooled. Cult following"Starship Troopers" has developed a cult following, thanks in part to its bizarre humor, memorable lines, bloody action sequences, and hordes of giant alien bugs.The film takes place in a distant future in which Earth is controlled by a single government known as the Terran Federation. Full citizenship — including the right to vote — is reserved for those who complete a term of federal service, which for the film's main characters means joining the military.Citizenship also carries other privileges. At one point, a character says she wants to serve because it will make it easier for her to obtain a license to have children.The society is deliberately depicted as an outwardly prosperous and harmonious but deeply militaristic regime, complete with government propaganda, constant appeals to sacrifice, and an enemy — the alien “bugs” — against which humanity can unite.Director Paul Verhoeven told Interview magazine in 2017 that he “wanted these people to be like proto-Nazis, proto-Aryans.”A year later, Verhoeven told the Guardian that he had deliberately borrowed imagery from Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda films, including “Triumph of the Will,” while filming the movie's propaganda sequences.“I was using Riefenstahl to point out, or so I thought, that these heroes and heroines were straight out of Nazi propaganda,” Verhoeven said. “No one saw it at the time.”“I thought Neil Patrick Harris arriving on the set in an SS uniform might clear it up.”RELATED: Worse than Flock: Josh Hawley expands 'unprecedented national surveillance' investigation Clothes callDespite that satirical intent, the movie is perhaps best remembered by fans for its gleefully over-the-top propaganda sequences and endlessly quotable lines, including “I'm doing my part!” and “It's afraid!” For many, the film has become a beloved sci-fi action comedy whose militaristic excess is part of the joke.The Space Force, meanwhile, continues with its years-in-development uniform roll out. An Honor Guard version, featuring distinctive light-blue accents, made its public debut last month.It remains unclear where Trump's “Starship Troopers”-inspired design fits into those plans. While the president's post described it as a “next generation” uniform, it did not say when it would be introduced or whether it would replace the service dress uniform already being rolled out.“Our service dress uniform represents the unique identity of Guardians, blending heritage with a modern design that reflects our unity and mission,” then-Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said in January. “From the start, Guardian feedback shaped its design and fit. I know the force will wear it with pride.”

Democrat New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is under fire after a bizarre decision he made that many took as an insult to 9/11 victims.The Muslim mayor signed a 9/11 remembrance declaration on Friday, just ahead of the 25th anniversary of the horrific terror attacks that claimed 2,977 American lives.'The families who lost loved ones on 9/11 have every right to be outraged. On the 25th anniversary, City Hall should be honoring their sacrifice with dignity, not forcing those families to endure yet another insult.'While no one took issue with the declaration, many were offended when he handed a ceremonial pen to the NYPD commissioner to give to chief counsel Ramzi Kassem.Kassem had previously acted as legal counsel for Ahmed al-Darbi, a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist whose brother-in-law hijacked the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. New Yorkers and others expressed their anger on social media."I sincerely hope the rest of the country understands just how hard it is to be in New York City with this mayor, and especially as we’re approaching this most serious and solemn day for NYC: 9/11," responded Maria Danzilo, a former state Senate candidate."He’s laughing at every American patriot who lost someone that day. He’s pissing on everyone who went in to try to save people in the towers. He hates you all," replied one user on the X platform."Mamdani handed that guy that pen very f**kin intentionally," said another critic. "It wasn't an oversight or a gaffe, it was a totally intentional signal to the whole city that the worst event in its history doesn't matter to him. He doesn't give a f**k about survivors and he wants everyone to know it.""It shows exactly where his loyalties truly lie," said Republican Council Member Joann Ariola of the "breathtakingly tone-deaf and disrespectful" stunt."The families who lost loved ones on 9/11 have every right to be outraged," she added. "On the 25th anniversary, City Hall should be honoring their sacrifice with dignity, not forcing those families to endure yet another insult."RELATED: Prominent professor supported Mamdani's socialist scheme — until he became a target City Hall told Fox News Digital that Kassem was at the ceremony because his team drafted the declaration as Mamdani's legal counsel.Al-Darbi was sent to Guantanamo Bay on terror charges. He was convicted in 2017 and sent to Saudi Arabia a year later.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The trial of Lindsay Clancy has become a boiling point in the national debate over mental illness, motherhood, and criminal responsibility — and while BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey doesn’t dispute that the mother was struggling psychologically, she doesn’t agree that it should excuse such an alleged horrific crime.Especially considering almost no one who commits murder is mentally sound.“Jeffrey Dahmer, probably not super sane. Ted Bundy, probably not the most mentally composed guy,” Stuckey says.“If you are going on a[n] [alleged] killing rampage, especially one as relentless as this one, you probably are not firing on all cylinders mentally, of course,” she explains. “But if we were to dismiss every person who had some kind of mental illness as not being criminally liable, then most of our prisons would be empty, and that wouldn’t be a good thing.”The world, she notes, would “be a lot less safe.”“So this case is really not about whether Lindsay Clancy was suffering mentally. Nearly everyone agrees that she was. I agree that she was,” Stuckey says.“This case is not about our mental health system or how it treats women or what’s in the DSM5 and what’s not. That’s a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an important issue, but an issue that’s not on trial here,” prosecutor Jennifer Sprague said at the trial.However, none of this has stopped women from voicing their support for Clancy — which prompts Stuckey to address them with a question.“Would you show the same mercy to Lindsay if she had killed your children? Would you feel the same deep empathy for her mental struggles? Would you opt for keeping her out of prison because, well, she was having a hard time mentally and she had been taking pills on and off?” she asks.“Hopefully not,” she continues. “I’m just afraid that too many women left and right think justice is dictated by how deeply we can relate to the people involved. Because some of you can see yourself in Lindsay’s depression or anxiety and can’t relate to her children, you feel compelled to defend her.”But if these women ask themselves these questions and remain steadfast in their belief, Stuckey explains that’s “beyond” where she can reach them.“Empathy-based justice is not justice at all,” she says. “Again, it’s partiality, which God calls evil."“We don't make these decisions based on whether or not we can relate to someone,” she adds.Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

There's nothing more American than a comeback.It's been a long time since Branson, Missouri, has been the town to talk about, but that's where one comedian has been making people laugh for more than 30 years.'Beautiful, cold Russian eyes.'Comedy comradesBeloved formet-Soviet comic Yakov Smirnoff has had a quiet residency at Yakov's Theatre since the early 1990s, and now at 75 years young, he has been launched back into the spotlight for longtime fans and a new generation.Smirnoff appeared on Monday night's episode of "Kill Tony," cracking jokes alongside host Tony Hinchcliffe and Estonian comedian Ari Matti.The comedian told hilarious stories about his career status when the Soviet Union collapsed, sharing with the audience how he found himself on the outs in the entertainment industry. He referenced David Letterman making a Top 10 list of things that would change after the fall of the USSR; Smirnoff being out of work was No. 1.Smirnoff said he moved to Missouri because he was looking for a place that didn't know about the end of the Soviet Union and settled on Branson, where "they still don't know."The punchline master also recited a joke about a communist party leader asking a factory worker whether he could work after one glass of vodka, then two, then three.The worker replied, "I'm here aren't I?"RELATED: Masculinity is back — and it's coming from the most unlikely source No 'country' for young comicsWhile Smirnoff declined to deploy his signature line, "What a country," during the stand-up comedy podcast, that didn't stop resident wildcard Matti from deploying it on several occasions on his behalf.Matti yelled the phrase when an audience member came onto the stage to give a comedian his first kiss and did so again when he was purposely embarrassing another rookie comedian by getting uncomfortably close and wrapping his legs around him."What a country!" Matti yelled, to awkward applause.The show reached nearly one million views in 12 hours on YouTube, with Smirnoff and Matti connecting over the proximity of their home countries and a mutual hate between neighboring allies.One comedian who appeared on the show said he was adopted from Russia, with Smirnoff saying he could recognize his "beautiful, cold Russian eyes."The comedian was forced to take off his glasses and look at a camera, like a villain from "Die Hard."RELATED: When Labor Day meant 21 hours of anything-goes TV — and millions raised for charity Paul Slaughter /American Broadcasting Companies/Getty Images Bump and grindSmirnoff isn't the first comedian to get the "Kill Tony" boost after years on the sidelines.Former huge names like Roseanne, Pauly Shore, and Andrew Dice Clay have walked through the halls of Joe Rogan's Mothership comedy venue and received what is known as the "Kill Tony" bump, which equates to an immediate boost in popularity.Smirnoff is branching out from his Missouri residency and going on a countrywide tour, and things are likely to pick up even more after the appearance.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Fans of a popular Catholic superhero character were disappointed to learn that he is not returning to the "X-Men 97" animated series on the Disney Plus platform. Nightcrawler is a blue-skinned mutant who first appeared in the pages of the "X-Men" comic books in 1975 and quickly became a fan favorite. 'Wagner is extremely religious, and as a man of faith, he believes that sacrificing himself to save his sister's life is the most righteous thing a person could do, which fits his character perfectly.'The character, whose non-hero name is Kurt Wagner, is also deeply religious and would often refer to his Catholic faith in the comics and live-action adaptations of the superhero comics. In an emotional climax of the second season of the animated superhero series, the Nightcrawler character sacrifices his life to save that of another superhero. "I have faith" are his last words. While most comic-book deaths are not final, the executive producer of the show said that Nightcrawler's death would be permanent. Eric Lewald told the Direct at the MultiCon convention in Los Angeles that Nightcrawler would not return to the series. "The finale of Season 2 is very emotional, and it's earned," added Julia Lewald, another executive producer of the show. "It is earned because those are the characters that we've all spent 30 years marinating in and thinking of and loving."RELATED: 'X-Men' show has 'nonbinary' character turn into woman and confess love for Wolverine Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images The Direct entertainment writer Geraldo Amartey explains how the character's Catholic faith is pivotal to explaining his last act in the show. "It would have been great to see Nightcrawler return in future episodes, but he went out the right way. Wagner is extremely religious, and as a man of faith, he believes that sacrificing himself to save his sister's life is the most righteous thing a person could do, which fits his character perfectly. It is painful to watch Nightcrawler go, but bringing him back would undercut the gravity of his sacrifice and look like a cheap cop-out."The third season of "X-Men 97" is scheduled for release in 2027. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

I knew Charlie Kirk. He was my friend, and that friendship changed my life. When he was assassinated on September 10, 2025, I did what you do when your own words fail. I went back to his.“Charlie Kirk, in His Own Words” is the result. It gathers his social media posts, curated one by one from 2011 to the day he died, and weaves in never-before-seen photographs and testimonials from the people who loved him.Charlie Kirk understood that when speech is controlled, power concentrates and people learn to keep their real thoughts to themselves.I am not making a dollar from this book. All proceeds go to Carry the Torch, the nonprofit I founded in his honor. This book is a gift, my thank-you to a man who spent his life telling young people the truth.The selections are Charlie unfiltered, saying exactly what he believed and inviting anyone who disagreed to come and say so to his face.Freedom of speech and an invitation to debateFree speech was one of Charlie’s clearest instincts in public life. He treated the First Amendment as a safeguard for ordinary people — especially those without power, status, or institutional cover.He understood that when speech is protected, a country can argue, correct itself, and stay honest; when it is controlled, power concentrates and people learn to keep their real thoughts to themselves.He also understood how censorship spreads: It rarely begins with the average person. It begins with a claimed emergency, a claimed harm, a claimed moral cause — and then the boundaries tighten.Kirk liked the part of politics where you cannot hide — a microphone, a chair, a crowd, and a clock. Debate forced clarity: it made people define terms, defend claims, and sit with the consequences of their own logic.Campus debates mattered to him for another reason too — universities were supposed to be places of open dialogue, and he watched that promise shrink under administrators who treated disagreement as harm. But when students still showed up, argued back, and kept listening, he saw proof that the story wasn’t finished.His respect for debate was not limited to his own side. He wanted arguments in daylight. No censorship. No cowardice. No hiding.The quotes that follow show what that commitment sounded like in Charlie’s own words — on free speech, censorship, disagreement, and the obligation to make your case rather than silence the other side.RELATED: WaPo ordered to rehire anti-white radical fired over Charlie Kirk assassination comments ISABEL INFANTES/AFP/Getty ImagesFree speech as birthright5 million followers! Thank you all.And thank you @elonmusk for liberating this critical platform.After spending three days in England, I truly mean this with renewed importance: May we always protect free speech as one of our most sacred American birthrights.Government limited by rightsThe First Amendment was written precisely to hamstring the government!!They work for us. They serve us. We the People, the citizens, are the sovereign. Never forget that.Chapter by chapterThank you, President Trump, for acknowledging the amazing work our @TPUSA team is doing on thousands and thousands of college and high school chapters. There is a whole new generation of free speech warriors rising up, with more every passing year.Platform censorshipTwitter censored and banned the leader of the free world from its platform.We should never forget just how wildly absurd that really is.Questioning is essentialWhen you're not allowed to question something at the risk of being banned, censored, or “cancelled” — it’s not science, it’s propaganda.A double standardThe Packers and Eagles are scheduled to play this Friday in Brazil, where X has just been banned in a sweeping crackdown on free speech.So let me get this straight...The MLB took away the All-Star game from Atlanta because Georgia passed voting integrity laws.The NCAA boycotted North Carolina because it had a law to keep mentally ill men out of girls’ bathrooms.Thirty years ago, the NFL took the Super Bowl away from Arizona because voters didn’t vote to make MLK Day a paid holiday.Why is the NFL bringing its road show to Brazil while the country is at war against free speech?Young voters movedOur Prove Me Wrong campus debate clips were seen 2.1 billion times this semester on TikTok, IG, X and YouTube.The vast majority of those were viewed by 18-29-year-olds, and the Kamala campaign never knew how to counter.YOUNG PEOPLE SHOWED UP FOR TRUMPRefused to debate This election brought the realignment we didn't see coming. It was the Biden Basement Realignment.Does it make sense now why Democrats hid in basements? Why they refused to debate?Run on nothing, say nothing, debate nothing, just hide and harvest.RELATED: Randi Weingarten fought Texas to let teachers celebrate Charlie Kirk's murder. It didn't go her way. Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesNigeria’s futureDaniel Ogoloma (@Dcogoloma) was my debate partner at the Oxford Union, taking a stand against a large majority of the house as we took the negative position on the resolution "Trump Has Gone Too Far."Offstage, we spoke about the future of Nigeria. He is a very talented young man and Nigeria will be lucky to have him.Debate over censorshipToday I moderated a debate between Dave Smith and Josh Hammer on Israel. It was very fiery, fun, and mostly peaceful.Debate is the way forward, not name-calling or censorship. At the end agreement was found between both Dave and Josh on many important things.A chair caused ‘trauma’ The University of Arizona is offering "mental health services" because I sat in a chair and took questions for 2 hours yesterday on the campus quad.College administrators are more worried about conservatives expressing their views on campus than they are [about] Hamas supporters who want to kill Jews.America, circa 2023Editor’s note: This article is excerpted from “Charlie Kirk, in His Own Words,” compiled by Christy Edwards (Post Hill Press). Reprinted by permission.

When Sean Duffy's daughter announced she wanted to attend Harvard University, the transportation secretary's reaction might have been torn apart by the left, but it couldn't have been more relatable to conservative parents across the country.In a clip from their series “The Great American Road Trip,” Duffy’s daughter Paloma tells the secretary that he “can’t say no" to Harvard.“Well, me and Mom can say no,” Duffy responded.Duffy and his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, went on to explain their reasoning.“Catholicism, to us, is everything. It’s the basis of our marriage; it’s the basis of our family. So I’m nervous about the idea of Paloma going to Harvard. We spend a lot of time nurturing and providing formation for our kids, giving them an environment where they are steeped in faith and values,” Campos-Duffy said.“And so the idea of dropping her off at a place that would undermine that or try to undo all those things makes me worried,” she added.“And again, I don’t want them to get one viewpoint. I want them to get a lot of different viewpoints, but I don’t want them fed only one viewpoint that’s contrary to the way my kids were raised,” Duffy chimed in.Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is all too familiar with their struggle, telling Duffy “congratulations” for putting his foot down.“I saw the look on your daughter’s face in that video … when you said, ‘Well, your mom and dad can say no,’ and that is so hard, and parents are dealing with this,” Glenn comments. “Why do you feel so strongly about this?”“I think American conservative families are having this conversation every single day because they know, whether it’s a family member or a friend or a neighbor who has sent their kid off to school, and ... they come back and they’re unrecognizable. We don’t know who these kids are,” Duffy tells Glenn.“They’ve been completely contorted and converted from these liberal institutions,” he adds.Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

New allegations are emerging about the illegal immigrant from El Salvador accused of killing a Virginia mother after she purportedly exposed their affair to his girlfriend.As Blaze News previously reported, 42-year-old Carmen Lizet Puch was found brutally stabbed to death around 6:45 a.m. on Aug. 17 at the parking lot of Difficult Run Park in Great Falls, Virginia. 'All very premeditated.'The Fairfax County Police announced in an August statement that 19-year-old Alexis Cedillos-Campos was arrested "in connection with the homicide" of Puch.At the same time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security identified Cedillos-Campos as an illegal alien who had been released into the United States under the Biden administration."The Biden administration hand-delivered Alexis Antonio Cedillos-Campos to the streets of Fairfax County," the DHS stated. "Cedillos-Campos is a criminal illegal alien from El Salvador who was arrested by CBP in 2024, after illegally crossing the Biden administration’s open border near El Paso, TX."The DHS said Cedillos-Campos was released into the "interior of our country" after his arrest. Cedillos-Campos knew Puch because they both worked at the Bitez restaurant in Herndon, sources told WRC-TV.The suspect and victim were reportedly in a love triangle. Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis stated last month, "There are other aspects of that intimate relationship that involve other people.""We have video footage of our suspect at the restaurant where he worked with our victim, arming himself with a fixed-blade knife, taking a pair of black latex gloves, taking a water bottle, and then off he goes with the intent to do harm and kill the victim," Davis said, according to the New York Post. Davis noted, "All very premeditated."Davis claimed Cedillos-Campos stabbed Puch multiple times and then attempted to burn the victim."No one deserves to be treated the way that our victim was treated," Davis said. "And she was stabbed repeatedly – repeatedly – by our 19-year-old killer.""He ended up syphoning gasoline from his motorcycle," Davis continued. "He filled the water bottle with gasoline after he dumped the water." Police said the suspect doused Puch with gasoline and tried to set her on fire, but was unsuccessful. Cedillos-Campos was taken into custody in Prince George’s County on Aug. 19, and he attempted to flee from officers when confronted by police, prosecutors said. WTTG-TV reported Cedillos-Campos was arrested in Maryland by officers with the Prince George's County Police Department and the U.S. Marshals Service and extradited to Virginia.Cedillos-Campos was charged with second-degree murder. WUSA-TV reported that Cedillos-Campos is being held without bond.RELATED: Brazilian au pair turns on former lover during murder trial, says he plotted wife's death by luring stranger from fetish site WRC-TV reported, "The night of the homicide, Cedillos-Campos left work early, upset that Puch 'sent screenshots of their affair' to Cedillos-Campos' girlfriend, according to the criminal complaint."The witness told authorities that he overheard a phone conversation between Cedillos-Campos and Puch in which they made plans to meet, according to the criminal complaint.A witness informed police that the suspect said he was going to kill Puch, court documents said.The criminal complaint said Cedillos-Campos allegedly called the witness to say "he did it" before hanging up — which the witness interpreted to mean he had killed Puch.WUSA reported, "Investigators say Cedillos-Campos confessed to a Fairfax County Police detective that he lured Puch to a Great Falls Park parking lot to kill her after she revealed their affair to his girlfriend."Puch was described by officials as a "loving mother of a 3-year-old girl," according to the New York Post. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Is your Virtual Private Network spying on your browser activity? According to a bombshell study by private email provider Proton, many VPNs installed in the U.S. are actually tracking users instead of helping them. Even worse, some of these offenders are registered to companies in China. Here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe.VPNs are meant to encrypt your web traffic so that third parties — like your internet service provider, digital marketers, and hackers — can’t see which websites you visit. In order for this to work, though, a user has to trust that the VPN installed on his device does what it claims to do, and the VPN provider then has to deliver on its promise to shield web activity from outside sources.Many Americans are being tracked by the VPN on their devices, and they don’t even know it.Proton says that many VPN providers are failing to fulfill their side of the bargain.In a statement published to its website, Proton says, “After a months-long survey of over 7,000 mobile VPN apps around the world, Proton has found that 85% of those downloaded in the U.S. contain trackers, and around a quarter of those actively track users’ physical location.”Many of the trackers were found to send data back to foreign nations, including China, Russia, Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Even more alarming, some of the tested VPNs were either outright owned by organizations based in China, or they were registered to shell companies intended to provide a facade of security.In other words, many Americans are being tracked by the VPN on their devices, and they don’t even know it.Unfortunately, Proton didn’t list all of the VPNs that are most likely to spy on users. The company also makes its own VPN service, which it’s trying to promote over competitors, regardless of their actual stance on user privacy. That said, if you use a VPN on your phone, tablet, or computer, it’s a good idea to understand how it works and whether or not you can trust it to shield your web activity from prying eyes.RELATED: How to escape the surveillance state: Use a VPN How to find a trustworthy VPNThere are several important factors to look for when shopping for a VPN you can trust.Free vs. paid VPNs: Some VPNs on the App Store and Google Play offer completely free options where users don’t have to pay a cent to get VPN protection. Don’t trust these apps. If you pay nothing, you are the product, and your data is the monetization mechanism. Always choose a paid option instead. Remember that real protection is never free.RAM only: Like a computer, VPNs can have two types of storage options. VPNs with hard disk drives can save data in perpetuity, while VPNs that run on RAM-only servers physically can’t collect long-term data. Instead, the data is wiped from the server every time it’s rebooted, ensuring that your information isn’t retained.Registered country: VPN providers must operate according to the laws and regulations of the country where they are registered. If that country is allowed to collect company data like China, or spy on user activity like Russia, your browsing activity is not safe or protected. On the flip side, Panama, Switzerland, and Spain have some of the best reputations for maintaining user privacy.Open source: Open source software generally means that the source code for an app or service is made public for the sake of transparency and sometimes for modification. When it comes to VPNs, open source options allow third-party security groups to look through the code and verify its ability to properly encrypt and protect user data. This way, you know unequivocally if a service lives up to its promises.Now that you know what to look for, you should have a good idea if the VPN on your device works as advertised. If for any reason you suspect your VPN is collecting, storing, or sharing your data, remove it from your device immediately. You’re better off not having a VPN at all than to trust one that’s actually compromising your safety, security, and privacy.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The Donald Trump administration is used to getting sued, but having a legal run-in with the makers of Tetris likely wasn't on anyone's bingo card.It has become par for the course for musicians to lash out at the White House over the use of their music in promotional videos, but a recent release from the administration brought new challenges.'Sort the school lunch to Make America Healthy Again.'Before the Labor Day weekend, the White House officially unveiled a new website and a new way to promote its most prized legislative pillars."ARCADE.GOV," the administration posted on X, linking to a new batch of point-and-click games released on the official government website.Among the five games was a parody of Flappy Bird and games about deportations and making America healthy again.At the same time, the White House launched the game Build the Wall, which the Tetris Company was not too happy about. As one could imagine, users build a wall along the southern border in a game that looks, allegedly, strikingly similar to a classic game of Tetris.Tetris posted on an image on social media on Friday that said, "At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them."A caption for the post added, "P.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of 'Build the Wall'. P.P.S. We take copyright infringement very seriously."At the time of this writing, Build the Wall no longer appeared on the White House arcade, but can still be seen in the administration's promotional video on YouTube.RELATED: EU regulators just slapped these top US companies with an invasive new ultimatum The remaining games included Flappy Bill, where gamers fly a bald eagle down the national mall.Rio Run has users policing the southern border, instructing them to "patrol the line along the river. Pick up every crosser in the lot [and] never double back over the line."Through either user error or the site not working, Blaze News could not get the controls to work; therefore, no one got deported.Supply Line has users "sort the school lunch to Make America Healthy Again."Punch seed oils, junk food, candy, artificial colors, and items that need to have their labels checked off the assembly line to save the children of the cafeteria.Lastly, Trump Savings Tycoon has users filling their kids' Trump accounts by catching gold bars and money with a net. The first turn saved $150,500. If only it were that easy in real life.RELATED: ‘Pendragon’ takes the long road to King Arthur — and makes it worth the journey While the website is not much more than a clever way to get people talking about the administration's core values — and there is a promise of more to come — the Trump White House may have more cease-and-desist letters coming in relation to the same project.The administration's X post features a startup video that many may recognize as being similar to that of Microsoft's Xbox.As well, the YouTube video features a similar boot-up to Sega's and the accompanying music of Sonic the Hedgehog. However, perhaps American Microsoft and Japan's Sega are a little less hostile toward the administration than the Russian creators of Tetris.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A 28-year-old man has been arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border after federal agents allegedly discovered more than half a million dollars' worth of illicit drugs.U.S. Customs and Border Protection told Blaze News that the arrest followed the inspection of a 2005 Chrysler Town and Country minivan on Thursday.'We are actively saving lives and dismantling the operations of criminal organizations.' The van was trying to enter into the U.S. at the Del Rio Port of Entry between Texas and the Mexican city of Ciudad Acuña, according to CBP.A CBP officer referred the vehicle to a secondary inspection, whereupon packages of alleged drugs were discovered through use of a nonintrusive inspection system and canine examination.The packages included 4.45 pounds of alleged methamphetamine, 8.81 pounds of alleged heroin, and 12.69 pounds of alleged fentanyl, CBP claimed.CBP estimated the street value of the alleged drugs to be about $557,589.Homeland Security Investigations special agents arrested the 28-year-old male driver and initiated an investigation, while CBP seized the suspected drugs.The driver is a U.S. citizen, CBP says.RELATED: MILLIONS worth of METH seized in leek shipment at US-Mexico border, CBP says "By stopping these hard narcotics before they can enter our country, we are actively saving lives and dismantling the operations of criminal organizations," said Del Rio Port Director Liliana Flores."We will continue to maintain a high state of readiness to address all threats attempting to enter the United States," she added.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

An elderly Florida woman carried a gun into a police station last week, and video recorded the scary moment when she opened fire inside the Port Orange Police Department lobby.Police told WPEC-TV the incident took place around 8:30 a.m. Thursday.'Sad situation ... but also, as a mother with a child in daycare down the street, I appreciate the swift response and keeping everyone safe!'Police told the station 71-year-old Linda Croteau entered the lobby with a handgun, pointed it at employees, and fired toward an evidence room where staff were present.A male is then heard ordering her to put the gun down, but video shows her shaking her head "no" back and forth. Croteau then exited the lobby with the gun and walked toward the parking lot, where civilians and responding officers were located, police noted to WPEC. It appears the male who ordered her to put the gun down was in communication with officers outside.Officers outside repeatedly ordered her to drop the gun, but Croteau continued advancing toward them, the station said."Drop it! Drop the gun! Drop it! Drop it! I'm gonna shoot you, drop the gun!" one officer yelled at her.Officers fired several rounds and stopped when Croteau dropped the gun, police told WPEC.Police said officers continued ordering her to surrender, the station noted, adding that video from the police department shows Croteau on the ground and reaching for the gun before officers fired again.RELATED: July 4 mob attack on female cops: 3 adults, 4 kids charged with possession of machine gun, theft of Taser, assault on policeOfficers provided medical aid, and Croteau was taken to a hospital, where she later died, WPEC said.Police said, "Earlier this morning, we learned that Linda Croteau passed away. Our thoughts are with our officers, employees, Ms. Croteau’s family, and everyone else affected by the shooting."More from the station:Police initially said there was no threat to the community and that all officers and employees were safe and accounted for. The department's lobby remained closed during the investigation.Port Orange police released video and audio from the incident in an effort to promote transparency and dispel misinformation.The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting, WPEC reported."Sad situation," one commenter wrote before adding "but also, as a mother with a child in daycare down the street, I appreciate the swift response and keeping everyone safe!"Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The debate surrounding Lindsay Clancy has become about far more than one criminal case. While prosecutors argue that Clancy intentionally killed her three children, many supporters have rallied around the Massachusetts mother as a victim of mental illness, postpartum struggles, and impossible expectations placed on women.While the supportive response from such a large number of women has confused Americans, Dre Baldwin believes he has the answer as to why it’s happening.“Lindsay Clancy is to overwhelmed mothers what O.J. Simpson was to the angry black person in 1995,” Baldwin tells BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock on "Fearless."“People didn’t identify with O.J. Simpson because they thought O.J. didn’t kill Nicole and Ron Goldman,” he explains. “They identified with O.J. Simpson because they were angry black people who felt like America as an institution and the police as an institution had been terrorizing black people.”Like Clancy has become a symbol for postpartum mothers, “O.J. was a symbol for some get-back for black Americans.”“That’s why people celebrated when he got found not guilty,” Baldwin says.“It’s the same thing that a lot of women, mothers who see themselves as overwhelmed housewives who are doing too much, and this is not the role that was supposed to be for them,” he continues. “And they just feel themselves being overwhelmed through all the challenges of motherhood and being a wife and taking care of a home.”While Baldwin doesn’t believe these moms would ever actually murder someone, let alone their children, he does believe that Clancy is being propped up as a “symbol of ‘somebody is finally seeing this.’”“And if it means a woman beating a murder charge, then so be it. The same way that people looked at people celebrating O.J. with incredulity back then, 30 years ago, is the same way that many people are looking at this Lindsay Clancy case and her supporters today,” he adds.Whitlock couldn’t agree more, commenting, “That’s a brilliant take.”Want more from Jason Whitlock?To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

The exciting return of college football turned tragic in Iowa City last weekend after a band member collapsed in the heat and suffered catastrophic brain injury.The hometown University of Iowa Hawkeyes were set to take on the Huskies of Northern Illinois on Saturday in the first matchup of the 2026 season for both teams.'Music was the language of his soul.'Temperatures reached a scorching 94 degrees, and the Hawkeye marching band announced that they would "forgo" the halftime performance on account of the heat. At about this time, Derek Phillips, a third-year student at Iowa and a member of the marching band, suddenly collapsed.In a post on Instagram, Phillips' family confirmed that he suffered "sudden cardiac arrest" that resulted in "severe" brain damage. As a result, the family "made the heartbreaking decision to remove life support."According to the Daily Iowan, life support was removed Monday.RELATED: 5 wounded, including 3 students, in shooting near University of Iowa; police release photos of persons of interest Matthew Holst/Getty Images"Derek brought so much light, humor, and kindness into this world," the family statement said. "He was a phenomenal musician — whether he was playing jazz, singing his heart out, or marching under the lights, music was the language of his soul."The statement added that Phillips is "comfortable, surrounded by family, and enveloped in the music he loved so much."The family requested users who knew Phillips to post memories of their time with him, and many friends and former bandmates responded graciously."He made me laugh so much, definitely an unforgettable person," wrote one user."Derek was one of the kindest individuals I have ever met. I am going to miss you so much man," said another."Derek was one of the first people that I talked to during auditions, and being able to joke with him throughout the season were some of the highlights of my summer," wrote yet another user.The Hawkeyes, who were favored by 31.5 points, ultimately trounced the Huskies, 40-0.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The New York Times’ reporting on AI is like its reporting in general: partisan, erroneous, sensationalist, and misleading in the extreme. The tone is apocalyptic, characterizing AI as an imminent threat, much like the Times’ characterization of Iraq’s alleged WMDs. Worse still is the wokeness of it all, the politicization of AI, in which everything — including the survival of the United States — depends on the wisdom and selflessness of the anointed. Consumer protection, monopoly, economic opportunity, enforcement of existing law, the Constitution — about these things, the Times is silent.Call it a sign of the times, or a sign that the Times is in decline, because when the supposed newspaper of record soft-pedals the work of rationalists and effective altruists, the result is propaganda with a corporate caption.That the Times not only “skews left” but skews its coverage in favor of specific policies, that it champions export controls on technology, and that it portrays Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei as a champion of AI safety are reasons the paper reads like a rag with a games section.Safety is the watchword of the Times’ emphasis on control. All other issues, such as liberty, opportunity, privacy, and democracy, are irrelevant. Or so the Times would have us believe. But first we must believe that AI is a doomsday device, that it is more destructive than the hydrogen bomb and cleaner than the neutron bomb, that it can end mankind not with a bang but a whimper. Such is the reasoning of rationalists and effective altruists, whose views the Times legitimates.Whatever else these views are, they are not politically neutral. But because the Times puts “safety” first, and thus sacrifices liberty on the altar of security, there is no room for criticism. Consumer protection, monopoly, economic opportunity, enforcement of existing law, the Constitution — about these things, the Times is silent. So is Anthropic, which is no accident.The two, the Times and Anthropic, would use export controls to stifle competition, not promote it. The two would restrict the sale of Nvidia chips to China. Never mind that China continues to buy these chips through intermediaries or on the gray market. Put aside, too, the fact that export controls only serve to goad China into subsidizing the manufacture of its own chips. Or that companies like DeepSeek and Huawei have their own chip ambitions.RELATED: How to renew American scientific research BSIP/UIG/Getty ImagesChatham House similarly concludes that hardware export controls alone will not stop China’s advancements in AI. If the controls were effective, policymakers would not have to continually redraw them: banning this or that chip, policing third-country affiliates, responding to smuggling networks, only to authorize new sales anyway. The result is not a technological blockade but a prolonged game of whack-a-mole, which encourages China to be more self-reliant at our expense.Consider, too, the expense of having the Bureau of Industry and Security involved in this issue in the first place. Like most government agencies, BIS has a reputation for dysfunction, little productivity, and low morale. Perhaps the New York Times should do a series of stories on BIS instead. Or maybe the paper should stop printing nonsense about “AI safety,” as the term is a catchall for more regulation and higher prices.A newspaper committed to rigorous journalism would interrogate the interests served by these narratives, confront the failures and contradictions embedded in them, and give serious attention to workers, consumers, civil liberties, democratic accountability, and America’s capacity to out-innovate its rivals. Instead the Times too frequently amplifies the assumptions of the powerful leftist institutions and woke agendas it should be challenging.

The attorney for Lindsay Clancy is begging the most powerful man on the planet to intercede on behalf of his client.On Friday, Judge William Sullivan of Plymouth Superior Court in Massachusetts declared a mistrial in Clancy's case after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict about whether to hold her criminally responsible in the deaths of her three children. Her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, did not deny that she strangled the three children but argued that she acted out of postpartum psychosis and overmedication rather than criminal malice.'Mr. President, I would hope that you would consider this young lady, the type of person she is, what she's been through.'The case has captivated the nation, and even President Donald Trump weighed in on it. "She did a horrible, horrible thing. Can't be worse," he said shortly after the mistrial was declared, adding that there will be a "price to pay.""It's going to be mental institution or jail or something."During the trial, Reddington described Clancy as "one heck of a mother" who "loved her children." Outside of court, he claimed that "she's very concerned about women's rights" and "the fact that women are pretty much marginalized."Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz has not yet announced whether the case will be retried.RELATED: Gloria Steinem is gone. Lindsay Clancy is still here. On Tuesday, Reddington appeared with George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning America" and indicated that he might be willing to entertain a plea deal:I'm willing to listen to Tim. I've known Tim for 30 years. He's a very hard-charging prosecutor, a conservative gentleman. I hope, however, after sitting through this trial and seeing the evidence that was presented from the government as well as from the defense that he would revisit that issue and hopefully would be able to work something out that would be acceptable to both sides.Reddington also called upon Trump to step in and "pardon" Lindsay Clancy:I'd like to say that perhaps Donald Trump, who felt compelled to speak out about this case, may very well, Mr. President, I would hope that you would consider this young lady, the type of person she is, what she's been through, and consider a pardon.It is unclear how Trump might be able to pardon Clancy, even if she is convicted.The Commonwealth of Massachusetts charged Clancy, not the federal government. If Cruz decides to retry the case or reach a plea deal, it will still be a state case and not a federal one, so all pardoning powers will rest with the governor of Massachusetts.Blaze News reached out to the White House and to the office of Gov. Maura Healey (D) for comment.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Apple Maps has come a long way since it replaced Google Maps on iOS in 2012. Detailed roads, precise directions, and a visually pleasing interface are just some of the perks you can expect. Unfortunately, Apple decided that its navigation app needed the worst feature found in Google Maps, and there’s no way to turn it off.When Apple ditched Google Maps for its own app on iOS 6 (yes, 6, which launched in 2012), it was a complete mess. Roads were missing, directions were inaccurate, and the satellite view showed jagged and misshapen spans of highway. Ditching Google for its own map service was one of the worst decisions executed under Tim Cook’s new leadership.'Mobile ads suck.'However, instead of throwing in the towel, the company spent years improving the mess it made. The result was a surprisingly complete navigation system that addressed all previous issues and turned Maps into a reliable road companion that works as you’d expect. In fact, once the bugs were stomped out, Apple Maps became a cleaner and prettier alternative to Google Maps, just as Apple envisioned.Unfortunately, that’s all about to change.Although Google is known for many things, its core business is all about ads. It’s an ad company, with more than half of its annual revenue attributed to this category. Google ads show up everywhere — in online searches, webpages, and even in some of its apps, like Google Maps.Apple, on the other hand, is a hardware company that has since dipped its toes into services to expand its bottom line. It is not an ad company, but that hasn’t stopped Apple from taking the plunge into Google’s arena. Apple Maps Ads/AppleMuch to users’ chagrin, Apple has brought ads to the Apple Maps experience for the first time. Now, when you search for a place — like a fast-food restaurant or a grocery store — Maps will offer up the expected list of locations, plus new paid options. These show up as “Suggested Places,” making them sound more like friendly recommendations, but don’t be fooled. These are paid placements added by companies trying to get your attention and your money.On the bright side, ads don’t show up with every search in Apple Maps — just the ones where Apple has a relevant paying partner. Still, it’s sad to see Apple inject ads into its services for a bit of extra revenue, where the high prices of its devices once sufficed.RELATED: New hack poses biggest iPhone threat in 19 years: What you can do Xaume Olleros/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesThe late Steve Jobs likely would’ve disapproved. He even once went on record to proclaim that “mobile ads suck,” largely because they disrupted the user experience. Apple’s most recent former CEO, Tim Cook, believed differently. According to Mark Gurman, Cook said “digital advertising is not a bad thing. What is not good is vacuuming up people’s data when they’re not doing so in an informed basis. We try to put the user in the driver seat there to own their data.”As for what new CEO John Ternus believes, we don’t know yet. He just took the reins of the company at the start of September, and he has a lot of work ahead. That said, ads in Apple Maps just launched, so unless Ternus is adamant about their removal, they’re not likely to go away anytime soon.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration has cultivated a network of social media influencers to amplify his policies online, and BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is warning that it follows a pattern seen in failing socialist movements throughout history.“I regret to inform you ... that the Muslim commie mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, has been rolling out his next phase of this communist takeover plan. And you now, I’m just going to predict it’s not going to go well,” Gonzales says.Mamdani has begun implementing his city-run grocery stores, which Gonzales notes will “effectively run real grocery stores out of business.”“He’s like, ‘We’re pricing everything lower.’ Real grocery stores can’t do that. It’s only the government. It’s only the government that when they’re playing with someone else’s money, when they’re playing with your money, they can do things like that,” she says.“And then once you’ve got that, once you’ve got that government control, well, a real communist wants to control the way that people think. And so as we’ve seen time and time again in all these other communist countries, they have to control the airwaves,” she continues.And Mamdani, Gonzales says, “has done this quite masterfully.”“He’s turning up the communist propaganda machine,” she explains, noting that the Columbia Journalist Review first exposed Mamdani for recruiting “a bunch of TikTokers and social media influencers to get his message out.”“They created this Signal group, and the Signal group gets all the talking points from the socialist overlords,” she says.The group receives talking points and clips they’re instructed to use in their posts.“America is fighting for its life right now. Meanwhile, New York City is just living in Zohran Mamdani’s Disney Channel movie, 'Mayor of Uncontrollable Joy.' I’m not like jealous or anything though,” one TikTok influencer said in a video.“Luckily Republicans are freaking out because there are mini-Mamdani’s popping up all over the country,” she said.“You deserve hope-core everywhere, not just New York,” she added.“These people are getting paid for it,” Gonzales says.And according to an expose from the New York Post, it’s getting funded by the taxpayers.“The taxpayers are paying for good messaging and PR for their mayor. Now, money is always bad to these communists. You hear about all this dark money: 'dark money, evil billionaires, evil trillionaire, Elon Musk.' It’s always bad unless you can use other people's cash to push your communist agenda,” Gonzales says.“And by the way, this is not like a small amount of money that we’re talking about. Some of these people are getting paid up to $20,000 to do this,” she adds.Want more from Sara Gonzales?To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

When Dolly Parton came to Nashville in 1964, finding a husband was the last thing on her mind. She was 18 years old, newly arrived from the mountains of East Tennessee, and clear about what she had come to do: “I was here to become a star.”Then a young man with sky-blue eyes drove past the Wishy Washy Laundromat.Reading about Parton and Dean makes you suspect we've forgotten how to disagree inside a marriage.Parton was outside waiting for her clothes when 21-year-old Carl Dean spotted her, called something out the window, circled the block, and came back. She talked to him because he was “drop-dead handsome,” but she was also surprised that he looked at her face while they talked — “a rare thing for me,” she joked in her 1994 autobiography, “Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business.” More seriously, she remembered that Dean “seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”Dean came back every day for a week. When Parton finally had a day free for a real date, he took her to his parents' house, where his mother was putting supper on the table.“Fix this girl a plate,” Dean announced. “She's the one I'm going to marry.”'In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)'This was news to Parton, since Dean hadn't yet told her he loved her. But two years later, on Memorial Day 1966, they married in Ringgold, Georgia. The marriage lasted until Dean's death in March 2025, just shy of 59 years.By then, the penniless girl doing her laundry at the Wishy Washy had become one of the most famous women in the world, while Dean had spent most of those years avoiding the public attention that followed his wife everywhere. Parton liked crowds, travel, and attention; Dean liked cars, tractors, and staying home. She became so famous that strangers took tour buses past their house; he was so private that some fans suspected she had invented him.Their marriage is particularly interesting at a time when we're accustomed to hearing divorce described in the language of personal liberation. Celebrity divorce announcements that once might have contained at least a trace of embarrassment now tend to read like graduation speeches: Two people have decided to “choose themselves,” embark on “new chapters,” and continue their respective “journeys.” Whatever else has happened, we're assured that tremendous personal growth is underway.Parton would have been an excellent candidate for this kind of liberation. She was financially independent, professionally ambitious, frequently away from home, surrounded by attractive men, and married to someone whose personality and interests were almost comically different from hers. They had no children, and by the time divorce became commonplace, she certainly didn't need a husband to support her.'Just the Way I Am'Yet there is remarkably little sense in Parton's accounts of her marriage that staying with Dean required surrendering some essential part of herself. Few entertainers have constructed a public identity as singular or pursued a career as independently as Dolly Parton did. She managed it while remaining married to the man she met outside a laundromat at 18.The potential conflict between marriage and career appeared before the wedding. Fred Foster, the head of Parton's record label, asked her to postpone getting married because her career was beginning to move, and he worried that a husband might hurt her appeal to male record buyers. Parton told him she would wait, then she and Dean secretly drove to Ringgold to get married anyway.Her mother went with them, having made Dolly a white eyelet dress and veil and wrapped a little white Bible in lace and field flowers for her to carry. At the courthouse, an official offered to marry them on the spot, but Parton balked. “I want to get married in a church,” she told him.That presented a problem: They would have to wait until Monday and couldn't afford a motel for the weekend. So they drove back to Nashville, returned three days later, and were married at Ringgold Baptist Church. Their honeymoon lasted about two hours: Dean had to work the next morning, while Parton had to get up at 3 a.m. for a television appearance.The competing demands of Carl and career didn't go away after the wedding, but the couple arrived at an arrangement that would probably horrify anyone who thinks a healthy marriage requires sharing all one's interests. Dean eventually owned an asphalt-paving company and wanted almost nothing to do with show business. According to Parton, he saw her perform only once.'I Will Always Love You'“My marriage is separate,” she once explained. “I have my life on the road and my life with Carl. He has seen me perform, once. But we have our own life at home — without music people.”Their differences extended to ordinary domestic life. Parton was spontaneous; Dean liked routine. She spent money; he was frugal. She wanted more physical affection than he naturally gave. She traveled constantly while he preferred staying home. None of this prevented Parton from describing the arrangement with considerable satisfaction.“It works out well between me and Carl,” she wrote. “We both get what we really want. We both have the freedom to come and go and do as we please.”As she also put it in her autobiography, “Carl is the only man I could live with all of the time, because I don't.”Freedom comes up repeatedly when Parton talks about her marriage, but not in the way the word is usually used in discussions of unhappy marriages. She and Dean weren't free from each other. They seem to have felt remarkably free with each other.That required trust. Parton spent much of her professional life around men, and rumors about her love life were inevitable. Sometimes friends or relatives actually approached Dean to tell him his wife was involved with somebody else.“Well, I would think less of any man that didn't fall in love with her,” Dean would respond.Parton believed he could take the rumors in stride. “He knows that I will always come home,” she wrote.RELATED: Dolly Parton is dead at age 80 Rich Fury/Getty Images for The Recording Academy'Mommie, Ain't That Daddy?'This wasn't a marriage without jealousy or hurt. Dean was badly shaken early in their relationship when he learned that Parton had been sexually involved with another man before him, an experience that helped inspire her 1968 song “Just Because I'm a Woman.” A few years later, a pretty bank teller began paying so much attention to Dean that he developed a newfound enthusiasm for trips to the bank. Parton poured her jealousy into writing “Jolene.”Jealousy may have been an inevitable byproduct of the mystery each retained for the other. “They say that opposites attract, and it’s true,” Parton told People in 2015. “We’re completely opposite, but that’s what makes it fun. I never know what he’s gonna say or do. He’s always surprising me.”She had said much the same thing more than 20 years earlier. “I am still learning about him to this day,” she wrote. “I think that's the way a relationship should be.”Reading about Parton and Dean makes you suspect we've forgotten how to disagree inside a marriage. He didn't like show business; she built her life around it. He liked routine; she liked spontaneity. She spent; he saved. She wanted more affection than he naturally gave. Yet neither seems to have taken every difference as evidence of incompatibility — or proof that the other was preventing some truer self from emerging.Carl didn't ask Dolly to give up the career she wanted, and Dolly didn't demand that Carl become part of the Dolly Parton enterprise. He didn't have to learn to love awards shows, and she didn't have to stop touring. They seem to have understood something increasingly unfashionable: You can be profoundly different from the person you married without having married the wrong person.Dean also believed in Parton's ambitions before there was much evidence that he should. When money was still tight, the couple bought 75 acres in Brentwood, Tennessee. Parton told him they needed the land for privacy because someday tour buses would drive past their house.“He accepted that notion without question, showing that he had faith in my dream too,” she recalled. “This made me love him even more.”'Here You Come Again'The tour buses eventually came, but Dean never showed much interest in joining the attraction. In her autobiography, Parton recalled a visit he made to the set of “Nine to Five,” where Jane Fonda met him without initially realizing that the handsome stranger was Dolly's husband. Fonda later told Parton that she had praised Dolly to him, saying how sweet she was and how much she enjoyed working with her.“Well, she's an angel,” Dean said.Fonda agreed.“No, you don't get it. She's a real angel.”Parton was touched when Fonda repeated the conversation. “It's just like him to say it to somebody else, figuring I'll never hear about it.”Dean had known her before the rest of the world did, meeting her on the day she arrived in Nashville with a load of laundry and the certainty that she was going to become a star. Almost 50 years later, Parton credited their meeting to something more than luck. “God has been good to me,” she said in 2014. “He gave me Carl Dean. And that was the perfect man that I needed.”They renewed their vows for their 50th anniversary in 2016. Dean rarely spoke publicly about their marriage, but for the occasion offered his own assessment: “I wouldn't trade the last 50 years for nothing on this earth.”Dean died in March 2025 at 82 after a long illness. Parton later said she had neglected her own health while “watching over Carl.” Shortly after his death, she released “If You Hadn't Been There,” thanking the husband who, as she put it, “made me dream more than I dared.”Parton hardly sacrificed herself to marriage. She became rich, famous, independent, and unmistakably Dolly Parton. She just never seems to have thought that becoming herself required getting rid of Carl Dean.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) put his hesitation about the Clarity Act into one theory: "Crypto is not going to be loaning any money for small businesses."He is exactly right. And that is why his objection misses the point entirely.Washington's biggest financial institutions are blocking competition under the pretense of protecting the community banks while simultaneously outpacing them on technology.A regulated stablecoin cannot lend. Federal law requires the issuer to hold a dollar of Treasury bills and cash for every digital dollar in circulation. That makes a stablecoin a payment instrument, a faster wire, not a bank. Lending, the hard local work of judging character, collateral, and cash flow, stays exactly where it has always lived: with bankers.The digital dollar moves the money. The community banker still decides who deserves the credit. Those are different businesses, and the Clarity Act keeps them different on purpose.If stablecoins were draining the deposits that fund small business loans, the damage would show up in the numbers. It does not. The FDIC has recorded seven consecutive quarters of domestic deposit growth, through the fastest stablecoin expansion in history. When the White House Council of Economic Advisers modeled the disputed yield provision this spring, it found a lending effect of two hundredths of one percent, largely because nearly nine of every 10 stablecoin dollars sits in Treasury bills that recirculate into the banking system as deposits.The money is not leaving the system. It is running a lap and coming home.Community banks are not waiting to be told any of this. Several are already live on stablecoin services through their digital banking providers, with early adopters reaching about 1,670 banks and credit unions nationally. A consortium model has been built specifically so that when money goes digital, the community bank keeps the deposit rather than surrendering it to an outside issuer. State banking associations across the country have backed this infrastructure for their members. The institutions closest to the small business customer are not running from this technology. They are installing it.The institutions running from it, loudly, sit on Wall Street. And they are only running in public. Privately, the biggest banks are spending tens of billions of dollars a year building token networks of their own while their lobby campaigns work to keep everyone else out of the field. When the largest player in an industry warns that a new tool will hurt the small player, the useful move is to check what the large player is quietly building while it talks.Washington's biggest financial institutions are blocking competition under the pretense of protecting the community banks while simultaneously outpacing them on technology. The cost falls on the small institutions the objection claims to protect.Sen. Cornyn has spent a quarter-century on the unglamorous machinery that makes American law work: courts, procedure, institutions, the rules of the road. The Clarity Act is that kind of work. It draws jurisdictional lines between regulators, sets disclosure duties, and writes the market rules that let a community bank adopt a payment technology without betting the charter on a lawsuit.RELATED: China is building power. America is still debating it. Yuan Hongyan/VCG/Getty ImagesHis own objection contains the answer: because crypto does not lend, it does not threaten the lenders. It threatens the wire transfer, the correspondent fee, and the three-day settlement delay, luxuries no American small business will miss.The real threat to community banking is four decades of consolidation, compliance costs that fall hardest on the smallest charters, and a technology gap against Wall Street's $10 billion and $20 billion annual technology budgets. Killing the Clarity Act treats none of that. It keeps America's small banks in the waiting room while the biggest institutions operate on themselves.American small business does not need Washington to ban a payment rail. It needs its hometown banks free to use one. September 15 is the vote that decides which it gets.

For years, Dr. Debra Soh viewed pornography as little more than harmless entertainment for consenting adults. Today, the neuroscientist and sex researcher sees it very differently.“I used to write for a very well-known men’s magazine that features nude women. I was a regular columnist for that magazine,” Soh tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey, noting that her views have changed “a lot” since then.“Millennials, we grew up with internet porn. I don’t think we were as negatively affected as Gen Z, say, but I do think there are some effects there,” she says.Soh explains that literature shows that “early exposure to pornography” can lead to “negative outcomes like hypersexuality [and] greater propensity for risky sex.”“So that means having sex with many people, having unprotected sex, being under the influence of drugs and alcohol when having sex,” she says, noting that it also changes the way men and women view the opposite sex.“Even if it’s not in a sexual interaction, just how men potentially view women more generally. And that sounds like such a cliche, but at the same time, I don’t see how that would not be the case because what we consume is going to affect the way we view ourselves and the way we view other people,” she continues.And viewing porn, Soh points out, “tends to be associated with boredom, lack of meaning in life, anxiety. So these are issues that need to be addressed, as opposed to society telling people, ‘Oh, you can watch as much porn as you want and it’s not unhealthy.’”And pairing society's obsession with technology, increased amount of doomscrolling, and neutral attitude toward pornography, more and more kids are being exposed to pornography at younger ages.“I’m concerned that their exposure to this at such a young age is actually going to increase the likelihood that they’re going to find these bizarre things sexually arousing or these acts enjoyable because they’re pairing it with early sexual development,” Soh says.“The average age that kids see porn now is 12. And that age is getting younger and younger,” she adds.Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

We should all be for vision and ambition.Few have demonstrated the power of both better than Elon Musk. SpaceX has transformed the economics of space launch, while Starlink has shown that low-Earth-orbit satellites can deliver broadband connectivity on a remarkable scale. There is plenty to admire.Starlink says it has a new ambition: not simply to fill coverage gaps, but to become a ubiquitous communications platform — potentially offering broadband, mobile service, handsets, and even operating systems.This audacious vision runs headlong into the forces that have constrained telecommunications for decades: the laws of physics, economics, and regulation.The laws of physics don’t bend to stock prices. The laws of economics don’t care about hype. And regulators don’t care how disruptive the pitch sounds.The first reality check is physics.Starlink’s strength of remote area coverage to fill gaps becomes a limitation in cities. Terrestrial networks divide coverage into thousands of cells, enabling repeated spectrum reuse and capacity scaling. Satellite beams cannot match this granular spectrum efficiency.The next challenge is buildings. Satellite signals do not penetrate shopping malls, offices, apartment blocks, or underground space. People spend much of their time indoors, places that require terrestrial networks, small cells, Wi-Fi, fiber, and other ground-based infrastructure.This is not a satellite model failure; it just demonstrates that no single network can do it all. Different networks have strengths and weaknesses: The ability to fill coverage gaps is not the same as providing reliable, nationwide capacity. SpaceX says it plans to build a terrestrial component. This will likely strengthen its network, but it does not make satellites a substitute for terrestrial networks.Then comes the law of economics.Telecom has an elusive holy grail: the fourth operator. Regulators and competition authorities routinely argue that markets need four or five mobile networks. Yet mobile markets around the world are consolidating toward three, and sometimes two, operators — including sophisticated markets such as India and China. Why? Because mobile networks have enormous fixed costs.Operators must acquire spectrum, obtain permits, build sites, and continually upgrade networks as traffic grows — all while consumers expect more data for less money. Starlink is not immune to this reality. It has added demand surcharges for some customers, pushing broadband prices as high as $1,500 per month in some markets.The fourth-operator dream has another inconvenient history. Starlink acquired 65 MHz of spectrum from EchoStar for $19.6 billion. That spectrum came from DISH Network, which spent years trying to make itself the fourth nationwide U.S. mobile operator but could not get the economics to workStarlink has advantages DISH did not, including its satellite network, capital, and global customer base. But it still must overcome the conundrum of continuously absorbing more traffic while keeping customer prices low.RELATED: Big Tech gets the network. You get the bill. Baona/iStock/Getty ImagesThen there is the law of regulation.Telecommunications is not a “move fast and break things” industry. Spectrum is governed by complex national, technical, and international rules. Deployment requires coordination with other spectrum users, permitting, environmental reviews, zoning, rights-of-way, and state public utility commissions.SpaceX has already experienced this reality. When California regulators objected to aspects of SpaceX's launch plans, the company moved activity to Texas. Internationally, governments can be even more consequential. Turkey, for example, has not allowed Starlink to operate within its borders.Spectrum creates another obligation. Public spectrum is not an ordinary asset. It is allocated according to set conditions, often including build-out or use requirements.Finally, there is the law of the market.Investors love news: big ambitions, disruptive narratives, barbs, and vibes. SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell said on the company’s first earnings call that she expected Starlink to win “quite a few” customers from AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile and that SpaceX “definitely” intends to build a terrestrial component. The comments rattled some telecom investors. Such statements are catnip for traders: the market can trade on the story long before the network exists. It is a familiar asymmetry: incumbents must respond to the threat today, while Starlink can promise to deliver the network tomorrow — or never.Starlink deserves both praise and scrutiny. Its satellite network is extraordinary, and direct-to-device connectivity will fill coverage gaps. But disrupting the mobile market is not the same as replacing mobile carriers, just as owning spectrum is not the same as building a nationwide network.The laws of physics don’t bend to stock prices. The laws of economics don’t care about hype. And regulators don’t care how disruptive the pitch sounds. The markets may react to the statement, but seriously competing for customers at scale will require a robust terrestrial network. Starlink has already shown that hard things are possible. It has not yet shown how it can do this.

Why are things the way they are? Why does it feel like things were better before? Having a society of people walking through life in a drab stupor will, believe it or not, have strange impacts on the way the world goes.No, that’s not exactly right. Everything — emphasis on thing — wasn’t better before. Well, maybe it’s the people then. Yes, that’s it — the people. Why does it seem like people were better before? No, that’s not it either. Not quite. People weren’t better before. There have always been the wicked and the evil and the lazy and the annoying. The world has always had problems.Well, what is it then? What is it that I am feeling, you are feeling, and we all are feeling? Why does everything feel “off” for lack of a better word?There’s a lot of answers, and a lot of them are pretty good. Answering questions this big is like looking at an object at a table from different directions. There are multiple correct descriptions of what is sitting in front of everyone, and all the answers help paint a clearer picture. Ostinato of apathyBut is there an answer, a detail, a fact, or an X factor that sits under all the other things and runs like an ostinato through seemingly unrelated domains connecting the dots in a strangely unifying way? Perhaps. And if I were to try to list a single X factor that weaves like a thread through all the various forms and domains of decline, descent, malaise, and dysfunction, I might conclude that the fact that connects all these problems is something insurance covers, doctors prescribe, and we are all supposed to nod along with.SSRIs and other forms of antidepressant medication.I saw a video recently of an extended family. In a self-satisfied, joke-y sort of way, they all listed the medications they were on. It wasn’t a real joke, it was clear they were all actually on these things, but the video was joking about how funny it is, or something. Like many things TikTok, the tone was a plain, mundane, nihilistic, uncapitalized “lol.”Of course, TikTok isn’t real life. But it isn’t exactly fake life either. This family of drug-dependents might be a bit of an exaggeration, though not necessarily a fabrication. Spiritually, the video is correct. More people are on these drugs than ever before, and that’s an undeniable fact of reality.Drugs not hugsThis kind of thing didn’t exist when I was young. Drugs existed, both legal and illegal ones. Prescription drugs to help you be less depressed existed too. There were jokes and themes about Prozac in the 1990s, and before my time, in the midcentury, they were juicing disturbed people up on all sorts of stuff too. But the prevalence of them, overuse of them, and unabashedly flippant taking of them was nowhere near what we see today. When I was young, the only people who were on this stuff were people who were decidedly “messed up.” Those who had genuinely tried to commit suicide or were really on the brink. And it wasn’t a good thing, and it wasn’t used flippantly. It was serious stuff. Somewhere in the last few decades, this attitude changed. SSRIs and other antidepressants are the X factor under so much of the general malaise and dysfunction in our perplexing and seemingly decaying culture. At first, it doesn’t really make sense, or it just seems like a bit of a stretch because people think these drugs just “make people happier,” but that’s not exactly what happens. Even if they do seemingly “make people happier,” or at least less depressed, that isn’t the only thing they do. RELATED: Want to be a man of action? Start a family Ian Tyas/Getty ImagesDead insideListen to people who have been on these drugs describe how they make you feel. The picture isn’t exactly a rosy one. It’s better than suicide, but it isn’t normal. A very common observation you hear from people is that they make you feel dead or like you don’t care about anything. They also lower libido and what might be described as general drive. These drugs don’t only impact one’s happiness. They bleed out and into all these other things, and when you have people taking them at the scale we do in the U.S., the culture shifts in ways that are unintelligible and confusing to those of us not on anything. Having a society of people walking through life in a drab stupor will, believe it or not, have strange impacts on the way the world goes.Because of all this, our society is more full of de facto zombies than ever before. No wonder young people feel listless. No wonder achievement and striving for greatness seem naive or corny. No wonder people aren’t partying. No wonder the birthrate is in the tank. No wonder the Democratic Party has become what it is when so many of its voters exhibit depression and anxiety.No wonder everyone dresses like slobs. No wonder there is a general apathy that bleeds through everything we see and hear. No wonder the interior design is bland and factory-like. No wonder everyone feels like tomorrow is going to be worse than today. No wonder — to answer our first question — things are the way they are.

You can have very low interest rates, and you can have debt-driven inflation. You just can’t have both at the same time. That is the reality President Trump refuses to recognize.At the core of the president’s half-baked plan to resuscitate the economy is a return to the good old days of near-zero interest rates.The Federal Reserve can set the short-term rates as low as it wants, but the bond markets will continue to rebel and reflect reality.“We should have the lowest interest rates anywhere in the world,” Trump said last week in response to a reporter’s question in the Oval Office. “In the old days … if we announced good numbers, interest rates went down. Now, if you announce good numbers, interest rates go up because they’re so afraid of inflation.”It’s hard to make sense of that statement, but it reflects a grievance Trump has voiced consistently. He wants endless spending for his projects, he doesn’t want the inflation it causes, and he wants to pay near-zero interest on the resulting record debt. Don’t we all?Perhaps in another lifetime, God will create such an innovative world. In this one, when you have protracted inflation and must sell endless Treasuries to service the debt, you cannot offer near-zero interest to buyers of that debt — especially at a rate below inflation.We had multiple periods of near-zero interest rates this century, including during COVID. We also spent trillions of dollars we did not have during Trump’s first term and Biden’s presidency. That helped fuel the inflation surge of 2021-22. Prices have continued rising even as the inflation rate slowed, while the debt keeps exploding. Year-over-year inflation has now remained above the Fed’s 2% target for 65 consecutive months, with most months above 3%.Far from being “artificially high,” as Trump contends, rates have been held artificially low. After the federal funds rate peaked at 5.5% during the inflation fight — a historically unremarkable level — the Fed cut rates six times beginning in 2024. The effective rate now stands at 3.63%, below the long-run average.So what did the bond market do? The 10-year Treasury yield is roughly as high as it was when the federal funds rate peaked in 2024, and the 30-year yield is at levels not seen since 2007.The Federal Reserve can set short-term rates as low as it wants, but the bond market will still reflect fiscal reality. There is no way around crushing debt other than cutting spending.RELATED: The government would like to discuss your allowance Love Employee/iStock/Getty ImagesThat was on vivid display late last month when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent instituted a “twist” operation: The government bought back more long-dated Treasuries while relying more heavily on cheaper short-term bills and notes to finance the deficit and the purchases themselves. The goal was to reduce the supply of long-duration debt, support bond prices, lower long-term yields, and exploit the fact that short-term rates remain below 10- and 30-year yields.The response from the bond market?After a few hours of lower yields, by the next morning they were back near their pre-announcement baseline.The 10-year yield is now around 4.75%, higher than at any point since April 2007. Back then, the effective federal funds rate was 5.25% — 162 basis points above today’s rate. The bond market is telling us that long-term rates are not high because the Fed forgot how to cut. They are high because investors demand compensation for inflation, deficits, and debt risk.There is a simple reason the Fed can no longer wave a magic wand, return rates to near zero, and service the debt on the cheap as it did from the post-9/11 recession through COVID. On September 11, 2001, gross federal debt was about $5.77 trillion, roughly 55% of GDP. In April 2007, before the financial crisis, it was about $8.84 trillion, or 63% of GDP. Today it exceeds $40 trillion and is roughly 123% of GDP.RELATED: Democrats want amnesia on inflation wildpixel/iStock/Getty ImagesThe long-term trajectory is even worse, because faster debt growth creates a vicious cycle: Treasury needs more buyers, inflation and fiscal risk force yields higher, and more existing debt rolls over at those higher rates.After an election fought in part against Bidenflation, nearly $4 trillion in new debt has been added since January 2025. Across Trump’s two terms, roughly $11.7 trillion of gross federal debt has accumulated. There are still more than two years left in his term, and there is no serious plan to bend the trajectory.Naturally, all this new debt is being accumulated at higher interest rates. But the sheer magnitude of the debt also makes Trump’s dream of permanently cheap money impossible.We all share Trump’s desire to service the debt on the cheap. He probably should have thought harder about that desire when he pressured Republicans in March 2020 to shut down the country and then pass trillions in new spending. Unfortunately for him and his delayed second term, what goes around in debt comes back around as inflation and higher interest rates.

What does it actually mean to be an American? This question sits at the center of the right and left’s diametric opposition on matters of immigration and citizenship. But the divide wasn’t always this sharp. For decades, says BlazeTV host Nick Freitas, the idea of an “American” was essentially “creedal.”“It's the idea that ‘well, if you kind of believe in the general idea of what America is, well, then you too can be every bit as much an American as anyone else,’” he explains. But as the country becomes increasingly ideologically divided on national identity, the question of “what is an American?” demands a real answer. On this episode of “Making the Argument,” Freitas provides exactly that by outlining the three things that decide who is an American — and how that differs from a true countryman.“This is going to be controversial,” he warns. Freitas highlights JD Vance’s recent speech, in which he argued that a creedal definition (i.e. “agreeing with the principles, let's say, of the Declaration of Independence”) is an insufficient standard because it’s both “over-inclusive and under-inclusive.” Freitas agrees. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) doesn’t share the founding principles of the Declaration, he points out, and the Democratic Socialists of America aim to “overthrow the United States Constitution as it currently exists,” but that doesn’t mean their candidates and voters are not technically Americans. At the same time, there are foreigners who genuinely support America’s creed, but that also does not make them Americans.So what does? Freitas highlights three determining tests.1. “Legally, you're an American if you have U.S. citizenship.” 2. “Historically, you're an American if you've actually been in this country for any period of time and you can actually draw roots back to it, which actually signifies some sort of continuity within the same place and the same traditions.”3. “Creedally or culturally, you're an American if you actually appreciate the various social, political, economic, and theological underpinnings of what created the United States and what has sustained it.” Combined, these standards, Freitas argues, determine if someone is “comprehensively American” — but it’s the third that ultimately determines who true “countrymen” are. “The people that I really see as my countrymen are the ones that have come to fully understand what it means to be an American, loves the principles and the philosophies and the traditions, and wants to advance them into the future,” he says. “That's my countryman — whether you came here yesterday or your family came here 250 years ago.” “Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK40 for $40 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

If you use an Android phone, your device could be in line to get a privacy upgrade. Google’s bringing a new web standard to its mobile operating system to protect your web traffic from potential spies. However, only a small number of devices will have access to it at launch, and there is a caveat that could slow down the rollout indefinitely.Unless you have a trusted VPN installed on your device, your web traffic is openly visible to a number of third-party groups, namely your internet service provider and your network administrator (if you’re using a public network). On top of that, every website you visit can see your IP address, device type, browser type, and more.Google’s new tools are meant to make your phone and your apps safer, more secure, and private.Even as websites have adopted HTTPS encryption to protect the data exchanged within your favorite sites, your ISP still knows every online spot you visit in a given day, month, or year. This allows outside sources to track your activity, both for innocuous and nefarious reasons.Google’s new privacy upgrade aims to change that.The new standard, dubbed Encrypted Client Hello, hides your web traffic from outside sources by encrypting destination websites, thus obscuring your browsing habits and making them harder to track. It’s not just the web either. ECH can also protect web traffic within your favorite apps. Furthermore, apps will be subject to Local Network Protection, another new feature that blocks the apps on your phone from scanning your Wi-Fi network for other connected devices without your permission.Together, Google’s new tools are meant to make your phone and your apps safer, more secure, and private, but how do you enable it? To get ECH up and running on your Android phone, there are several things you’ll need before you’re protected.First, ECH is only available on devices that run Android 17, which is a relatively small pool of candidates at the time this was published. Users that own a Google Pixel 6 and newer, or a Samsung Galaxy S23 and newer, either already have Android 17 or will get access very soon. To check the Android version on your device, open the Settings app, find the “About phone” section, and you’ll see your Android version under “device details” on Pixel or “Software information” on Galaxy.RELATED: New malware is crippling Android phones, but not yours if you do this Jutharat Pinpan/Getty ImagesSecond – and this one is the big caveat – many of those same groups that can currently track your web activity have to enable ECH before it will work. That means websites, app developers, and internet service providers all have to implement ECH, otherwise your traffic will remain visible, just as it is today. Even worse, these same groups can actively opt out of supporting ECH, rendering the new standard completely useless.For what it’s worth, Google claims that it’s lobbying “industry leaders, service providers, and app developers to accelerate ECH adoption,” but it faces a difficult road ahead. Since the standard isn’t mandatory, plenty of groups will likely ignore Google’s attempts to make ECH a mainstream part of Android. In truth, the groups that implement it will be the ones that had no interest in tracking users’ browser activity in the first place, while the groups that are monitoring activity will simply ignore ECH altogether. In this way, ECH is unlikely to offer much privacy to users in the Android ecosystem, at least not anytime soon. If you really want to protect your internet traffic, you’re better off with a trusted VPN instead.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

As thousands of women continue their support of Lindsay Clancy, and after Luigi Mangione’s guilty plea failed to stop female supporters from romanticizing him as a hero, Conservateur editor Bethany Miller has one question: “What is the state of American women today?”This was the central question that underpinned her recent article “Lindsay Clancy, Luigi Mangione, and the State of American Women.”On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Miller joined the Blaze Media co-founder to unpack her theory about what’s causing a growing number of women to support confessed killers. Miller explains that women’s disturbing advocacy surrounding people who have admitted to killing innocents is multifaceted and long-simmering.“From the Millennial movement of the #MeToo and the therapeutic culture and ‘my truth is the only truth’ — this has been brewing for some time,” she tells Glenn.These movements, Miller says, are the result of the divinely fashioned female psyche — with its bend toward empathy and relationality — being “weaponized” by “secular politics.”“The left is capitalizing on [female instincts], manipulating women's lenses of empathy and of relation and using that to get them to respond empathetically in a weaponized empathy to what's happening with Lindsay Clancy,” she says.“So instead of going, ‘Hey, what's black and white here? This woman killed her children, therefore justice must be served,’ they're saying, ‘Hey, actually, she struggled with postpartum depression, and she was anxious, and so let's blame the man,’ or, ‘I can see myself in her; therefore me condemning her is condemning myself.”’Glenn was particularly struck by Miller’s argument in her article that women have been conditioned to allow their instinctual empathy to lead them to dark outcomes. In the piece, she wrote, “I see her becomes I understand her. I understand her becomes I cannot judge her.”“The blurring of that line, I mean, that's what has ... women holding newborns and posting “Same, Lindsay” or pushing a stroller outside of her trial, chanting that she's innocent,” he sighs.People must be able to tell the difference between understanding someone’s pain and agreeing with how they handle it, Glenn urges.“Mental illness is real, and I can understand [Clancy] because my mother went through really bad mental illness ... but that doesn't mean I agree with her,” he says. “Luigi Mangione — that is terrifying to me that they're practically throwing themselves at this [alleged] murderer because they're like, ‘Yeah, well, he's been abused by the system, and I've been abused by the system.’”Another factor playing into this issue, says Miller, is women’s obsession with true crime and fantasy.“This is the type of entertainment and narratives that they inherit and consume on a daily basis and that we've seen ... weaponize the way that they're thinking about these things,” she says.Add to that social media and the dawning of the AI age, where what’s real is quickly becoming impossible to know, and it’s no wonder, says Miller, so many young people especially are struggling to differentiate between genuine reality and “digital reality.”“Beyond just the gender wars, discernment is something we're losing as the American public,” she warns.To hear more, watch the video above.Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

In 1976, Frank Sinatra walked on stage with a couple of folded pieces of paper and handed them to Jerry Lewis.They were both checks. Lewis thank Sinatra with a comical kiss on the cheek, causing the singer to joke: "You do that one more time, we're gonna buy the furniture."But there was another surprise.'You'll never walk alone.'The annual Labor Day Telethon hosted by Lewis started in 1966 and lasted all the way until 2010. From age 40 until his mid-80s, Lewis performed, joked, and raised millions for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. It was a charitable tradition that often attracted unexpected celebrities.That 1976 iteration was not special just because it featured Sinatra, but because Sinatra had a special guest. After 20 years and a very public professional breakup, Dean Martin walked onto center stage and embraced Lewis.This was billed as the first public appearance by "Martin and Lewis" since their 10-year run from 1946 to 1956, and they picked up right where they left off. They sang, tripped over each other, and made Jewish-Italian jokes that couldn't air today. This was just one of many star-studded moments on the program.Year after year, Lewis racked donation numbers on the big board that remain impressive, even when adjusted for inflation. A board in 1980 touted over $31 million in donations that came from entertained Americans who had called in, having their heartstrings pulled by a message from one of Jerry's Kids — the children with muscular dystrophy featured on the broadcast.RELATED: Jerry Lewis: Curious, risk-taking craftsman In 1987, $39 million more poured in as special guest Sammy Davis Jr. made one of his many appearances.Other appearances included the likes of John Lennon (1972), the Jackson 5 (1974), Aretha Franklin (1980), and Elton John (2004). Yes, the audience didn't know how good they had it. Or perhaps they did.As the years flew by, the telethon lost some steam, but still broke records in 2008 with a monstrous $65 million in donations.This was not enough to keep Lewis on the airwaves, though.Behind the scenes, Lewis and the MDA butted heads butted heads over the show's content and lengthWhen the Muscular Dystrophy Association announced plans to slash the marathon broadcast from 21.5 hours to a pre-recorded six-hour Sunday special, Lewis initially agreed to host the shortened 2011 event one last time. However, a fierce clash over control soon followed. Lewis insisted his final sign-off be entirely live, while the MDA demanded a pre-taped segment. Combined with Lewis' public criticism of modern reality TV shows, this battle over the broadcast's format pushed the relationship past its breaking point. Just weeks before the broadcast, the MDA abruptly ousted the 85-year-old entertainment icon, forcing him to step down as national chairman and making his 2010 appearance — in which he cried as he sang the signature classic "You'll Never Walk Alone" — his unexpected final telethon.After the 2014 telethon, the MDA announced it was pulling the plug on the nearly 60-year-old tradition. RELATED: Jimmy Kimmel: It's not 'my job' to make you laugh The end came after decades of Lewis parrying criticisms that he was too mean in his approach and used too much "pity" to garner donations.In 2007, he caught heat for making a joke using the words "illiterate fag."Even one of Jerry's Kids eventually wrote that he felt demeaned by the whole focus of the show in the 1960s, when he and his sister were featured.Through it all, the fundraiser managed to raise an estimated $2 billion. Lewis died August 20, 2017, at age 91 in Las Vegas, Nevada.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Vice President JD Vance recently drew criticism for questioning the benefits of the dollar’s reserve currency status. In a 2023 interview, he argued that it encourages Americans to consume too much, describing it as a “resource curse.”If you’ve followed Vance during his time in Congress, these comments are not particularly surprising. He has been one of the biggest proponents of rebalancing America’s relationship with the global economy through targeted industrial policy, much to the chagrin of the GOP establishment.Sufficient industrial capacity gives a nation options in a crisis; dependence on foreign powers — especially China, our main adversary — is a path to decline and ruin.Naturally, the response from Vance’s free-trade critics was immediate and severe. They argued that cheap imports increase consumers’ purchasing power, while an economy organized around offering high-value services is not necessarily a sign of economic weakness. In their eyes, what Vance proposed amounts to a command-and-control economy, snuffing out economic opportunity and raising prices at a time when families can least afford it.Contrary to his critics, Vance had the right general diagnosis, even if his prescription risks creating problems of its own.The dollar’s reserve-currency status means that every country on earth wants to hold dollars, mainly to facilitate international commerce and to buy Treasury bonds as a safe place to store its money. That demand keeps the dollar’s value higher than it would be otherwise. A stronger dollar, in turn, means cheaper imported goods for Americans, but it makes U.S.-made goods less competitive, both at home and abroad. This is one of the major reasons America stopped making so many things.it’s also why Donald Trump’s long-standing emphasis on targeted tariffs and reindustrialization remains crucial today. An economy too dependent on foreign products can threaten national security and a country’s long-term health.As demonstrated by the vehemence of Vance’s critics, the Trump administration’s economic refocus has elicited strong pushback. Libertarian dogma has dominated the Republican Party since the Reagan era, elevating consumer choice and being “free to choose” as the highest economic goods. The dominant theory before Trump’s 2016 presidential candidacy was that greater economic freedom broadly spreads prosperity and raises living standards.But that view captures only part of what an economy is supposed to accomplish. Economic freedom ultimately depends on the prudent use of national power. A nation that lacks the capacity to build ships, aircraft, energy infrastructure, and advanced technology — a nation that can easily have its supply chains interrupted, as we saw during COVID — cannot maintain freedom for itself or adequately protect its allies.Sufficient industrial capacity gives a nation options in a crisis; dependence on foreign powers — especially China, our main adversary — is a path to decline and ruin.History shows this to be the case.For almost 200 years, Great Britain protected its shipping and textile industries before becoming one of the world’s leading advocates of free trade. It dropped its own tariffs in 1846 only after it became the most powerful industrial and naval power on earth. By then, British manufacturers were in a far stronger position to compete in an increasingly global market.The United States followed the same path. In his "Report on Manufactures," Alexander Hamilton pushed the nation to industrialize rapidly rather than remain dependent on European powers for goods. Had the country followed Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a more agrarian-based economy, America would likely have become a vassal state of a far stronger country for the foreseeable future.For nearly two centuries after the founding, tariffs were a key component of America’s industrial growth, alongside plentiful natural resources, geographic advantages, hemispheric hegemony, and a rapidly expanding population. Only after two world wars left American factories standing while much of the rest of the world lay in ruins did Washington establish the framework for a global free-market economy, backed by a military and an industrial base nobody else could match.RELATED: Trump’s next tax cut should make Americans owners Jim WATSON/AFP/Getty ImagesFree trade became a key Cold War strategy. Lower trade barriers let the U.S. pull more nations into its orbit than the Soviet Union ever managed. But Washington paid a price, accepting a hit to its own industrial base to win the fight against communism.A persistently strong dollar tends to make foreign goods cheaper for Americans to buy while making American exports more expensive for everyone else. Following that playbook for four decades, even after the Soviet Union’s defeat, led to exactly the economic problem that Trump and Vance now have to contend with: the decline of domestic manufacturing and the hollowing out of the American heartland. The result is a service-based economy heavily dependent on consumption, with a much-diminished industrial capacity and a working class that has borne the brunt of American economic statecraft.The consequences are clear in shipbuilding, as the United States produces fewer than a dozen commercial ships a year while China turns out more than a thousand. China controls around 60% of the world’s shipbuilding market, with a total capacity more than 200 times ours.China isn’t the second-most powerful country in the world because it practices free trade. It has rapidly developed industries that strengthen its national power while taking advantage of the United States’ determination that more open trade would encourage political liberalization in Beijing. China is a blatant currency manipulator, artificially lowering the price of its exports while maintaining state control over its economy. For these reasons, the Trump administration was right in principle to begin imposing tariffs on China to counter its blatant abuses while reinvigorating U.S. domestic manufacturing.The United States must maintain demand for our $40 trillion in debt, and there is no reason to risk that demand drying up, forcing us to pay higher interest rates or, in the worst-case scenario, default.But America should take the core of JD Vance’s prescription seriously. Invest deliberately in building real, finished goods again. Use targeted tariffs to encourage that rebuilding. And yes, let the dollar’s value come down some as a result.Editor's note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.

There is a certain kind of person, at a certain kind of barbecue, who announces, with the flat authority of Scripture, that white is not to be worn after Labor Day. No one has ever produced this law. It's enforced like a grudge: the offense long forgotten, the point being the enforcement.That, it turns out, is the whole personality of the holiday: a house built on a foundation nobody can locate, in honor of a man history can no longer confidently name.Labor Day has spent a century accumulating quirky social rules no legislature passed but nearly everyone obeys anyway.The first Labor Day — not yet official, just an idea a union decided to act on — took place on September 5, 1882, in New York City. Someone willed it into being. Who, exactly, that person was is where the record gives out.Credit for organizing it sits between Peter McGuire, a carpenter and the co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, and Matthew Maguire, a machinist and secretary of the Central Labor Union. While their unions were rivals, their surnames were just one letter apart, as if fate couldn't be bothered to keep them straight.A former U.S. Department of Labor historian admitted in 2011 that she still couldn't say which one deserved the credit.What is known is that it cost something. Workers reportedly forfeited about $75,000 in lost wages to march that day — the Central Labor Union even fined anyone who skipped it. Roughly 10,000 walked from City Hall to Union Square.Even while most of the world marks the labor holiday on May 1, the U.S. wanted no part of it. A Haymarket Square rally in Chicago that began on May 1, 1886, ended in a deadly bombing three days later, turning May Day into a symbol of radicalism.In 1894, President Grover Cleveland specifically pushed September into law instead so the holiday wouldn't become a memorial to the Haymarket radicals.From that origin — sacrifice, spectacle, and a little deliberate amnesia — Labor Day has spent a century accumulating quirky social rules no legislature passed but nearly everyone obeys anyway.RELATED: The 'tradition' behind Nathan's hot-dog eating contest is a fake news PR stunt Aladdin Color Inc./Getty ImagesFor one, the white clothes were never really a rule so much as a gatekeeping test, likely invented by old-money New Yorkers of the Gilded Age terrified of being confused with the flanks of the industrial nouveau riche nipping at their heels.Fashion historians trace it to Newport summers, where white linen signaled you had servants to launder it and no hard labor to dirty it.After Labor Day, pools close with the solemnity of a curfew, though the reason behind that practice — the school calendar — is rather dull. Roughly a third of the country's 309,000 public pools face shortages each year since so many lifeguards are teenagers who vanish the moment the school bell rings.Mattresses also tend to go on sale at this time, but mostly because someone once noticed a day off is a day to shop — 30% to 50% across major brands.And repetition, given enough years, effectively becomes law.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

God, Who rested on the seventh day "from all His work which He had done," commanded that man should do likewise.As part of their de-Christianization campaign, the French revolutionaries over 230 years ago rebuffed this divine commandment. Instead, they determined that anyone who managed to survive their historic bloodletting would have to rest on the final day of a 10-day cycle marked on a new calendar no longer commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.'An almost identical anti-clerical measure was applied nearly a century and a half later by Stalin.'Fortunately for those who labor today, this calendar, like the bloodthirsty republic that invented it, is no more.The National Convention, the assembly that governed France from 1792 to 1795, decreed in late 1793 that "the vulgar era" of marking time was "abolished for civil usage" and that the era of the French Republic began on September 22, 1792, "at 9:18:30 in the morning."The leftist regime that guillotined an estimated 17,000 people during the Reign of Terror determined that moving forward, every year would be divided into 12 equal months each comprising 30 days. These 12 months would then be followed by five days that didn't belong to any month.Each month was divided in three equal parts, which the leftists referred to as decades because they had 10 days: Primidi, Duodi, Tridi, Quartidi, Quintidi, Sextidi, Septidi, Octidi, Nonidi, and Décadi.RELATED: 'Against the Machine' offers playbook for battling leftist lies Arterra/Universal Images Group/Getty ImagesGilbert Romme, the Montagnard politician who oversaw the short-lived calendar's development, noted in 1793:The vulgar era was born among an ignorant and credulous people amidst the troubles that were precursor to the fall of the Roman Empire. For eighteen centuries it served to fix within duration the progress of fanaticism, the degradation of nations; the scandalous triumph of pride, vice, and stupidity; and the persecutions and disgust that virtue, talent, and philosophy suffered under cruel despots who allowed this to be done in their name.While the supposedly enlightened leftists' new week had extra days, it didn't have additional days of mandated rest. Romme noted that only the 10th day was the "day of Repose."In addition to having more workdays between days of rest, the new week disrupted church attendance — by design.Sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel noted that:aside from the immediate symbolic significance of doing away with one of the most sacred elements within the Christian tradition, the introduction of the ten-day rhythm of social life played a major role in disrupting church-attending practices, since it presented both practical and cognitive difficulties in keeping up with the traditional, sacred seven-day cycle. It is interesting to note that an almost identical anti-clerical measure was applied nearly a century and a half later by Stalin.The new calendar also stripped common folk of all the holy days, including Christmas, that filled up their rejected Christian calendar. They were instead allotted the five days that didn't fit into any particular month to celebrate select values of the revolutionaries, including revolution and industry.Unsurprisingly, the French people resented the new calendar, reported Radio France Internationale.While coming between working people and their weekends was far down the list of the things the French revolutionaries got wrong, the Anno Domini of that particular failure is nevertheless worth marking.Although it made an 18-day reappearance in May 1871, the French Republican calendar was abolished in 1806 by the republican turned dictator Napoleon Bonaparte.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The towering figure of Anna Klobuchar Clemenc has returned to the streets of Calumet, Michigan, 70 years after she died.Standing at 6'2" tall, the woman known as "Big Annie" became the face of the copper miners' strike in Copper Country, the northwestern counties of Michigan's Upper Peninsula where copper mines sprang up in the middle of the 19th century.On Christmas Eve 1913, the plight of the strikers turned unthinkably tragic.The conditions in the mines were brutal. With shafts reaching more than a mile underground, the darkness was deep and thick, and the cost of miners' equipment, including the candles for their hats, was deducted from their wages.Shifts sometimes lasted 10 or 12 hours, six days a week, and almost always involved back-breaking physical labor. According to one report, nearly one out of every three miners suffered serious injury and one out of 200 was killed on the job.Below are photos taken from inside Quincy Mine, located about 11 miles south of Calumet. The Quincy copper mine operated more or less continuously from 1846 until 1945, and a private organization now offers tours. Photos taken by Blaze News By 1913, the development of a new drill had changed the pay structure at the mines to compensate for time rather than productivity, resulting in a dramatic reduction in miner pay, according to the Daily Press. On July 23 of that year, nearly 9,000 copper miners in the region went on strike.Big Annie, of course, was not one of them. However, she often led the way in their daily parades, carrying a giant American flag and demanding an eight-hour workday, higher wages, and better conditions.Then the wife of a miner and the foundress of the Western Federation of Miners' Women's Auxiliary no. 15, Big Annie was eventually dubbed the "Heroine of the Copper Country Strike" and even an "American Joan of Arc." She was arrested multiple times and served time in jail.During one particularly contentious run-in with law enforcement, Big Annie reportedly shouted: "Kill me. Run your bayonets and sabres through this flag and kill me, but I won’t move. If this flag will not protect me, then I will die with it."The strike was at best minimally effective. The governor sent in the Michigan National Guard almost immediately, a notorious strike-breaking firm from New York arrived as well, and while the strike did disrupt operations, so-called scabs and imported foreign labor kept the copper mines going to some extent.Then on Christmas Eve 1913, the plight of the strikers turned unthinkably tragic.Big Annie and the rest of the Women's Auxiliary hosted a Christmas party in the Italian Hall in Calumet for the striking miners and their families. The event was festive and even featured Santa and some gifts donated by union members and other businesses.But at around 4:40 p.m., a man suddenly interrupted the revelry by shouting, "Fire! Fire!" His cries prompted a stampede downstairs for one exit, and 73 people were trampled to death in the stairwell, 59 of them children.There was never any fire, and the alarmist was never identified. Folk singer Woody Guthrie memorialized the deadly incident in his song "1913 Massacre."Afterward, the strike limped along for another four months but officially ended without formal resolution on April 13, 1914.Mining companies in the area did eventually implement an eight-hour workday and boosted wages, though some scholars argue that those changes were part of a larger labor reform movement throughout the country rather than the result of the strike.Big Annie moved to Chicago shortly after the strike ended and died there in 1956 at the age of 68. While there's no doubt she brought spirit and resolve to the strikers and their families, her legacy is a bit mixed.Two of her three marriages ended in divorce. She divorced her first husband, miner Joseph Clemenc, just after the end of the strike and then married Frank Shaws, an editor of a socialist Slovenian newspaper.Like Shaws, Big Annie was also a socialist. The Michigan Women's Hall of Fame characterizes her as:devoted to the active participation of women outside the traditional confines of the home. Having graduated from eighth grade, she was a relatively well-educated woman at that time. Clemenc was an avid follower of Eugene Debs, Mother Mary Harris Jones, and the tenets of socialism. It was her independent nature and strong-willed character that inspired many men and women to take a stand for justice.Still, WLUC-TV recently described her as "a symbol of persistence and the mining history that built Calumet," and residents there have never forgotten their native daughter.On August 22, they unveiled a life-size bronze statue of Big Annie, complete with a base made of Calumet street bricks dating back to 1913. A parade celebrating the occasion drew large crowds and included the pep band from nearby Michigan Technological University.RELATED: First rule for surviving Michigan winter? A daily walk with my kids Courtesy of Visit KeweenawThe statue project was a labor of love all its own. Locals spent years and raised over $150,000 to honor Big Annie, who was inducted into Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1996 and Labor’s International Hall of Fame in 2013."If it wasn’t for people like Annie, who were so strong, I would have a hard time being a union member myself," Bricklayers Union Member Adam Saari told WLUC-TV, "because the labor standards would not be the same.""I helped work on the statue, and I’m also someone who works in the mines," said Bryan Latto, according to WLUC. "Our unique Upper Peninsula history is something that only we can preserve, so it’s something that we’ve got to do ourselves, otherwise nobody else is going to do it for us." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

President Donald Trump announced on Aug. 12 that one of his "most trusted aides, Karoline Leavitt," was departing the role of White House press secretary after 19 months so that "she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family." Leavitt, who gave birth to her second child on May 1, noted, "Serving as the White House Press Secretary over the past year and a half has been the honor and adventure of a lifetime."'You’re a left-wing hack. You’re not a reporter. You're posing in this room as a journalist.'Unlike with her lesbian predecessor, Americans may soon come to miss Leavitt. After all, the unflappable Republican was responsible for a number of memorable moments. Three in particular stand out. 1. 'They are criminals'Just days after Trump retook office, a reporter noted Immigration and Customs Enforcement had already made roughly 3,500 arrests, then asked, "How many have a criminal record versus those who are just in the country illegally?"Leavitt signaled right away that she wasn't going to join the liberal media in downplaying the crime of stealing into the United States."All of them," said Leavitt, "because they illegally broke our nation’s laws, and therefore they are criminals as far as this administration goes."The former press secretary acknowledged that after four years of the Biden administration, "It's a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal, but that's exactly what they are." 2. 'Left-wing hack'A year later, Niall Stanage, a White House columnist from The Hill, quoted then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as saying that ICE was doing "everything correctly." After noting that some Americans have been arrested by ICE and invoking the name of Renee Good — an anti-ICE radical who was fatally shot while driving her SUV into an ICE agent — Stanage asked, "How does that equate to them doing everything correctly?"RELATED: Karoline Leavitt rips into WaPo for 'BS story' about Trump and Hegseth Jim WATSON/AFP/Getty ImagesIt didn't take long for Leavitt to suss out Stanage."Why was Renee Good unfortunately and tragically killed?" asked Leavitt.Stanage replied, "Because an ICE agent reacted recklessly and killed her unjustifiably."Leavitt delivered her diagnosis: "OK, so you’re a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion. ... You’re a left-wing hack. You’re not a reporter. You're posing in this room as a journalist, and it’s so clear by the premise of your question.""You shouldn’t even be sitting in that seat," added Leavitt.The former press secretary continued to castigate Stanage, suggesting that he had a blind spot for the Americans killed by the very illegal aliens whom ICE works to detain and deport. 3. Maternal selectionPresident Trump revealed in October 2025 that he was planning to hold a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, Hungary, "to see if we can bring this 'inglorious' War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end."The Huffington Post's S.V. Dáte pressed the White House on why the capital of a friendly NATO country that's a three-hour flight away from Moscow had been chosen as the destination for the meeting, writing, "Is the president aware of the significance of Budapest? In 1994, Russia promised, in Budapest, not to invade Ukraine if it gave up the nuclear weapons it inherited when the Soviet Union dissolved. Does he not see why Ukraine might object to that site? Who suggested Budapest?"The tone of the query clearly rubbed Leavitt the wrong way. She answered, "Your mom did.""Is this funny to you?" said Dáte, evidently unaware that it would soon be funny to a great many Americans.Leavitt later noted, "For context, S.V. Dáte of the Huffington Post is not a journalist interested in the facts. He is a left-wing hack who has consistently attacked President Trump for years and constantly bombards my phone with Democrat talking points." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The battle for the soul of the Republican Party and the America First coalition is already under way. The midterm convention in Dallas this week gives anxious voters a chance to see what the party thinks it is fighting for now — and what comes next.Democrats are building a case around what might be called Republican DEI: data centers, Epstein, and the Iran war. The examples differ, but the attack line is the same. Republicans, Democrats say, are beholden to special interests and major corporations, indifferent to the struggles of ordinary Americans and increasingly consumed by self-dealing and vanity projects.Republicans have a chance to get their groove back before the midterms — the last federal election cycle that will shape Trump’s presidency.Politics is a contact sport, and the Democratic Socialists of America are ascendant. Their critique will not be answered by dismissing it or by pursuing policies that seem to validate it.The accusation is simple: Republicans protect the people who finance them. They will do unpopular things if donors want them done and avoid popular things if donors object. That critique has worked before — remember Mitt Romney’s collapse — and it can work again.The Dallas convention is an opportunity to reconnect the Republican Party with the insurgency Donald Trump launched in 2015: opposition to a special-interest-dominated GOP, a focus on the economic and cultural condition of forgotten Americans, and resistance to mass migration that intensified those pressures.Somewhere along the way, that focus shifted — in policy and in tone. Consider President Trump’s post last week on Truth Social, touting data centers: “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.”That sounds uncomfortably close to Barack Obama’s notorious quip about struggling small-town Pennsylvanians who “cling to guns or religion” because their communities had been left behind. Obama’s mistake was not noticing the economic pain. It was treating the people living through it with contempt. Republicans should not repeat it.RELATED: The left uses primaries. The right wastes them. id-work/iStock/Getty ImagesData centers are polling disastrously across party lines. Candidates are flipping positions and racing to oppose them. Put aside the merits of any individual project. The political signal is obvious: Americans do not trust the political and economic system to protect them from another massive technological transformation.Their anxiety is not a messaging problem. It reflects lived conditions. Many Americans have watched factories close, wages stagnate, housing costs soar, communities deteriorate, and successive technological revolutions enrich people somewhere else. When they hear promises that AI infrastructure will make everyone richer, they remember how often “everyone” turned out not to include them.That is why the socialist critique has traction. Too many Republicans reinforce it by behaving like the government-relations arm of Fortune 100 companies. Americans who feel abandoned by institutions will rage against the machine — and increasingly, against the machines themselves.So Dallas arrives at the right time. To borrow an underrated movie title, Republicans have a chance to get their groove back before the midterms — the last federal election cycle that will shape Trump’s presidency. The convention should answer a basic question: What and whom does the Republican Party stand for?RELATED: Republicans keep losing because they won’t take hostages Win McNamee/Getty ImagesThe answer does not require a new slogan. It requires remembering the old promises. Trump’s rise was built on reindustrialization, immigration enforcement, hostility to corrupt special interests, and a conviction that government should pay more attention to the people who live in hollowed-out towns than to the institutions that profited from hollowing them out.That agenda should again be squarely focused on working Americans whose finances have worsened, whose communities have been transformed, and whose confidence in the country’s institutions has collapsed. Reindustrialize. Enforce the border and remove the millions of people who have no lawful right to remain. Break the grip of special interests over the political class.The midterm convention is an opportunity to assure voters that the Republican program is still about getting their country back — not telling them they are backward or poor for objecting to what Washington and corporate America have planned for them.

For more than a year, Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) has survived one revelation after another.Questions about his marriage. Questions about his military record. Questions about the stories he told about being wounded in Iraq. Allegations involving the abuse and blackmail of women. Questions surrounding his businesses and finances. A House Ethics Committee investigation.Was the story Cory Mills told about Cory Mills true?Through all of it, the Florida congressman remained defiant.Stories were dismissed as attacks while reporters were accused of spreading falsehoods. When Blaze News began asking questions about his marriage and religious history, Mills became combative and raised the prospect of litigation. When we later assembled 10 of the most significant contradictions in his public record, his spokeswoman offered a two-word response: “All gossip.”On Tuesday night, the voters of Florida’s 7th Congressional District rendered a different verdict.Mills lost the Republican primary to former television anchor Ryan Elijah, who took roughly 47% of the vote to Mills’ 34%. A two-term Republican congressman who once appeared to have a promising future in the party will now leave Congress in humiliating fashion.The result cannot be credited to any single news organization or investigation. Mills faced scrutiny from law enforcement, congressional investigators, political opponents, local and national journalists, and ultimately members of his own party.But long before his political support collapsed, Blaze News had begun asking a simple question: Was the story Cory Mills told about Cory Mills true?What followed became one of the most extensive investigations Blaze News has ever undertaken.Our reporters interviewed former soldiers and military contractors who had served alongside Mills. We tracked down records. We spoke with former girlfriends, business associates, political figures, and people who had known Mills before he entered Congress. We confronted Mills directly with what we found and gave him repeated opportunities to explain himself.Again and again, the answers produced more questions.Here is what we reported.The marriage certificateThe investigation began after a February 2025 domestic disturbance call involving Mills, which drew attention to a fact that surprised even some people around him: Mills was still legally married and going through a divorce.That led Blaze News to a 2014 Virginia marriage record. We obtained and verified the certificate. It showed that Mills and Rana Al Saadi had been married by Mohammed Al-Hanooti, a radical Islamic cleric who had been identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas financing case and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot.Mills confirmed the marriage to Blaze News in an interview. He denied converting to Islam and said he had not known about Al-Hanooti’s background. However, the questions did not end there. Five former associates subsequently told Blaze News that Mills had told them he converted to Islam. Mills continued to deny that account.The story also opened another avenue of inquiry: Mills and Al Saadi had gone into the international arms business together after their marriage, eventually building the company PACEM into a substantial defense interest. That raised questions about Mills’ relationship with the company after he entered Congress and about his financial disclosures, matters already attracting scrutiny from congressional ethics investigators.RELATED: GOP Rep. Cory Mills explains why he was married by a radical Islamic cleric Getty ImagesThe soldiers who remembered a different Cory MillsMills had built much of his political identity around his military and defense contracting experience. He presented himself as a battle-tested veteran and private military operative. His campaign told voters that he had been “WOUNDED TWICE WHILE DEPLOYED.” He repeatedly described himself as having been “blown up twice” in Iraq.Several former colleagues disputed important portions of Mills’ account, including descriptions of his military qualifications and what happened during two roadside-bomb incidents in Iraq.That is how investigative journalism is supposed to work.Scott Kempkins, who was actually wounded in one of the attacks Mills referred to, told Blaze News that Mills could not have been wounded in that explosion because Mills’ vehicle was already about 50 yards away. Chase Nash, who was riding in Mills’ vehicle, likewise told Blaze News: “Cory was not wounded.”That distinction would become enormously important.RELATED: Stolen valor? Veterans dispute Cory Mills’ record: ‘He fooled a lot of us’ Anadolu/Contributor/Getty ImagesMills blows up his own ‘wounded twice’ storyEventually, Mills himself provided perhaps the most damaging evidence against one of his signature biographical claims. His 2022 campaign advertisement had declared in enormous letters that Mills was “WOUNDED TWICE WHILE DEPLOYED.”Blaze News pressed him on both incidents.Mills said that during the first explosion, he hit his head inside an armored vehicle. He described suffering a concussion and being evaluated before returning to work roughly three days later. When Blaze News asked whether he had actually suffered a traumatic brain injury, Mills said he had been examined and was told to monitor himself. Then came the second explosion. Mills acknowledged that he wasn't inside the vehicle that was struck.Blaze News asked the obvious question: Was he wounded?“No, I wasn’t wounded on that,” Mills answered.It was an extraordinary admission because Mills wasn't contradicting some hostile characterization invented by a political opponent. He seemed to contradict the words in his own campaign advertisement.The allegations from Miss United StatesThen the investigation took a much darker turn.Lindsey Langston, then the reigning Miss United States and a Republican official in Florida, told Blaze News in July 2025 that she had been romantically involved with Mills. After the relationship ended, Langston accused Mills of threatening to distribute intimate videos of her to men she might date.Her allegations resulted in an investigation by the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement also becoming involved. A Florida judge even eventually granted Langston a restraining order against Mills.Langston also made allegations about Mills’ finances. She described people arriving at the home they shared with what she characterized as bags of cash and another incident involving money after a dinner. RELATED: Miss United States accuses Rep. Cory Mills of sextortion, accepting ‘money bags’ Photos courtesy of Lake City ReporterThe political walls come downWith the 2026 midterms on the horizon, Mills appeared capable of surviving all of it. He was a Republican incumbent in a red district. He had built a national profile, and President Donald Trump endorsed him earlier this year. But political support began to disappear as the controversies accumulated.Mills entered the primary under an active House Ethics Committee investigation, while prominent Florida Republicans, like Anna Paulina Luna, began abandoning him and backing his opponent. Trump, despite his earlier endorsement, conspicuously omitted Mills when he issued a new slate of Florida endorsements shortly before the Republican primary.Then came Tuesday.Our readers deserved better. So did Mills’ constituents.Ryan Elijah defeated him decisively. It would be easy for a newsroom to take a victory lap after an election result like that. That would miss the point. Journalists do not get to remove members of Congress. Our job was never to defeat Cory Mills.Our job was to find out whether what he told voters was true.That required months of work that was often considerably less glamorous than the final headlines. Our reporters tracked down people who had worked with Mills decades earlier. We compared recollections against records. We went back to sources. And when evidence contradicted something we had been told, they kept digging.A congressman who had constructed much of his political appeal around an extraordinary personal biography increasingly found that biography subjected to ordinary scrutiny.Mills had every opportunity to answer. Sometimes his explanations became part of our stories. Sometimes he denied the allegations, and his representatives attacked the reporting. And sometimes, as with the claim that he had been wounded twice, his answers created problems larger than the original question.That is how investigative journalism is supposed to work.Not by beginning with a verdict and searching for evidence to support it, but by refusing to stop asking questions because the subject is powerful, popular, politically useful, or on your own side.Cory Mills is not a Democrat being investigated by a conservative news organization. He is a Republican congressman, a Trump-backed candidate, a fixture of conservative television, and a politician whose public positions often aligned with those of Blaze News’ audience.None of that made the questions less important. It made them more important.Our readers deserved better. So did Mills’ constituents. He was a rising star who reached the heights of political fame, power, and wealth in an extraordinarily short period of time. Unfortunately, it seems he never could escape his demons. On Tuesday, those constituents got the final word.Cory Mills spent years building a remarkable story about himself. Blaze News spent more than a year checking it. What was uncovered was a man with a serial allergy to the truth. In the end, the truth proved harder to outrun than any political opponent.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!