A historic lawsuit spanning the United States and its territories ended abruptly this week, and its terms will make major changes to how children use social media.

The lawsuit brought forth by 29 states accused Mark Zuckerberg's Meta platforms of knowingly being addictive and harmful to young users.

'This framework will only work if all our peers join us.'

The case has been in trial since August 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and it only took about a week for Zuckerberg and co. to come to an agreement with the accusing parties.

On Wednesday morning, a settlement was announced that will have Meta paying up to $18 billion over 10 years, while implementing new child safety protocols on its platforms, Variety reported.

Social media overhaul

New rules include a "hard cap" on daily time limits for children, totaling a combined two-hour daily limit across Instagram and Facebook, with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use.

Children will be blocked from accessing Meta platforms from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m., in addition to limited school-time access, with push notifications blocked for children between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. during the school year on weekdays.

Age "assurance" measures were described as being "robust," while Meta promised more parental control, safeguards against bullying, and limitations on harmful content.

The catch — and it's a big one — is that the usage limits are planned for just five years. At the same time, Meta said that it will drop its allowed usage to only 60 minutes for 10 years if Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms.

The settlement payments also depend on other social platforms adopting similar policies. About 70% of the money will be allocated to participating states over the 10-year period, but the remaining 30% will only be released if YouTube and TikTok implement a one-hour daily limit, the night mode policy, and age assurance measures.

As well, YouTube and TikTok must each pay an amount that matches the 30% sum figure, Variety reported.

RELATED: Federal agents wanted to search his phone — now they say the trick he used to stop them is a crime

David GRAY/AFP/Getty Images

The lawsuit was led by California AG Rob Bonta, with the settlement garnering his state between $1.5 and $2.1 billion, if approved.

Let the spin begin

"Today, we have secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of a difference for children and their families," Bonta said in a statement. "Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms — and will do it within months."

According to Reuters, Meta denied wrongdoing in the settlement, which absolves it of accusations that its platforms are designed to have addictive features and knowingly exposed children to mental harms, among other claims.

Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney said publicly that the new framework "will empower parents to easily manage how their children access our platforms."

"This framework will only work if all our peers join us," Mahoney added.

"Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to implement this new framework, right away. As a parent, I'm proud of both the work Meta has done to protect kids historically, and of this new groundbreaking agreement. But its success depends on all other social media platforms following Meta's lead," he concluded.

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Enrico Fabian/The Washington Post/Getty Images

In a statement provided to Blaze News, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said that the settlement is "one step [in] Big Tech's reckoning" for the harms it has enabled against children.

Executive Director Haley McNamara said the settlement is "a crucial step to hold Meta accountable for protecting children, and we commend the state attorneys general for carrying these cases forward."

"Attention must now turn to Congress to establish a foundation for Big Tech companies like Meta to follow when it comes to protecting children online," McNamara added.

Meta expects to accrue around $10 billion in legal expenses its third quarter of 2026.

As noted by Georgia's Office of the Attorney General, the case included 52 attorneys generals across 47 states (excluding Florida, New Mexico, and Texas) and the jurisdictions of Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

There's a catch

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier explained in a post on X why his state did not join the settlement. Uthmeier called the payouts "peanuts" that are inequal to the "profound harms" Meta's features have inflicted on kids.

"A slap on the wrist for a trillion-dollar corp that'll pay more to lawyers than to the states. We'll see them at trial," the Florida AG said.

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Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) amped up his rhetoric against President Donald Trump and his White House ballroom in a speech at a national monument.

Krasner, who won office thanks to a massive donation by left-wing financier George Soros, called the president a "pain in the ass" on Tuesday and vowed to blow up the ballroom.

'The man himself is the embodiment of hate. He is the embodiment of ignorance. He is the embodiment of depriving people of their vote and their education.'

The DA was speaking at the 24th annual Commiseration at the President's House, a National Park monument and the site of a bitter feud between the city and Trump over an exhibit on slavery.

"There is a beautiful time coming. This memorial will be here!" said Krasner.

"But let me tell you what will not be here. There will not be a ballroom. There will not be a ballroom."

He also claimed that Trump would not prevail on putting his name onto the Kennedy Center for the Arts.

"In about 10 or 15 years, we are all going to be sitting here with smiles on our faces," he continued.

"And I'm going to have a paperweight sitting on my desk. And do you know what that paperweight's going to be? It's going to be a piece of the ballroom after we all blow it up, that's what it's gonna be."

He went on to say pieces of the Trump's White House ballroom would be sold to the public in order to pay for the demolition.

Krasner also referred to the president as a "pain in the ass" before an audience member called Trump the devil.

"The man himself is the embodiment of hate. He is the embodiment of ignorance. He is the embodiment of depriving people of their vote and their education. That’s who he is."

Krasner also agreed that there was "some evidence" that the president is the devil.

RELATED: Philly DA warns Trump on election poll watchers: 'Break the law... I've got something for you.'

The dispute over a slavery exhibit at the national monument led to a court feud between city officials and the Trump administration. A federal court sided with the president in June, but activists have said they will continue the legal fight.

Soros donated nearly $1.7 million to Krasner's campaign coffers in 2017, and the liberal DA's actions in office have spurred condemnation and anger.

In January Krasner vowed to "hunt down" Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who break the law, and when a mass shooting took the lives of three people in his city, he blamed the National Rifle Association.

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Target is once again at the center of a culture-war firestorm after apologizing for a children's Halloween clown costume that resembles blackface and 19-century minstrel shows.

While Target immediately pulled their “Kids’ Glows Under Blacklight Circus Clown Halloween Costume,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock isn’t convinced that it wasn’t an inside job.

“Who’s that outfit for? Who’s wearing that outfit? Is there any demand? Would anybody even know what they’re looking at?” Whitlock asks.

“Someone within Target wants DEI to return. So it’s not the CEO. It’s not the board. Or maybe it is a board member, who knows, but someone high up in Target wants DEI to return. Trust me, they have some LGBTQ soldiers and some BLM soldiers within Target high up who are irate,” he continues.

“Someone is orchestrating a hoax against Target from within Target,” he adds.

However, Dre Baldwin disagrees with Whitlock.

“I think that’s too much of an extrapolation,” he argues.

“I think this is just a Halloween costume. Somebody saw it. Someone within the racial grievance industry saw it. They found that picture to compare it to and said, ‘Hey, here’s racism.’ ... People who work in the racial grievance industry, as I call them, race hustlers, they go looking around for stuff like this because it gets a certain group of people excited,” he explains.

“It can lead to job offers, opportunities, etc. ... but I don’t think this was manufactured from within Target. I think it’s just a costume,” he continues, adding, “Somebody decided to see something in it that wasn’t there.”

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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President Donald Trump threw his weight behind Mike Mazzei in Oklahoma's GOP gubernatorial primary runoff, which evidently helped the former state senator over the finish line on Tuesday.

While the president's backing certainly had much to do with the politics and character of Mazzei — whom former Oklahoma U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, now Trump's Department of Homeland Security secretary, and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders had also endorsed — it appears to have also had much to do with the politics and character of Mazzei's unsuccessful opponent, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond.

'This is what Drummond, and his equally Liberal wife, Wendy, supported at levels that are shameful.'

A week ahead of the runoff primary election, the president explained his issues with Drummond. Trump called him a "FAKE Republican, who donated to SLEEPY Joe Biden, and the totally corrupt and anti-American 'Lincoln Project,' which is now in shambles because of their views on Open Borders, Men playing in Women’s Sports, and Transgender Mutilization of your Children."

Federal Election Commission records show that a $1,000 donation was made in Drummond's name to the Biden for President committee in August 2020. Matthew Parker, the chairman of the state AG's doomed gubernatorial campaign, claimed, however, that the contribution was made by Drummond's wife, Wendy, the Frontier reported.

According to a Sept. 4, 2020, email obtained by the Frontier, Wendy Drummond requested that ActBlue change the name on the contribution to hers. The Biden committee reportedly refunded Gentner Drummond the full amount four days later.

In a previous statement to Blaze News, Parker said: "The Biden contribution lie has been debunked repeatedly. Gentner Drummond gave nothing to Joe Biden. In fact, Gentner was one of President Trump’s largest Oklahoma donors. Repeating a lie doesn’t make it true."

RELATED: GOP Oklahoma governor candidate wants to stop voter ID and invites Dems to help — campaign says the clips are deceptive

Win McNamee/Getty Images

In September 2020, Wendy Drummond also donated $1,000 to the Lincoln Project, a group founded by George Conway, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson to "stem the damage [Trump] and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution, and the American character."

The Lincoln Project staged a white supremacy rally, bankrolled efforts to torpedo Trump-aligned Republicans, and churned out pro-Kamala Harris content, including the "Be a Man, Vote for a Woman" ad. The group largely imploded after its co-founder John Weaver was accused by over 20 young men of predatory sexual misconduct.

Trump noted further in his takedown, "This is what Drummond, and his equally Liberal wife, Wendy, supported at levels that are shameful and, frankly, that makes them both Radical Left Dumocrats."

In addition to faulting Drummond for blocking a proposed aluminum plant in Oklahoma, Trump noted that Drummond "stated publicly he had 'no opinion'" on Trump's 2021 impeachment and that Drummond "even SUED to BLOCK a religious based charter school strongly supported by my Administration — Very troubling for Educational Freedom, and an outright attack on Christianity!"

While it was clear from the post that Trump already had ample cause to champion Mazzei over Drummond in the Republican runoff, audio recording of Drummond's commentary about voter ID may have helped convince those still uncertain about his real political outlook.

In the audio recording, Drummond can be heard calling on Democrats and independents to help kill a pair of ballot questions that showed up on the Aug. 25 ballot. One of those questions would "require proof of identity to vote in any election authorized by law and conducted by a county election board or the State Election Board."

"We have to vote 'no' on both state questions," Drummond said in the recording.

Parker previously told Blaze News that the clips had been "stripped of context and selectively edited to manufacture a false narrative."

Drummond noted on Tuesday that the runoff "election comes down to trust," but evidently, not enough trust was on his side. With 99% of the ballots counted, Mazzei had 50.3% of the vote and Drummond had 49.7%.

The voter ID question also passed.

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Last week, a major Silicon Valley company placed a bet on the future looking unrecognizable.

Stripe announced that it had agreed to acquire OpenRouter, a platform that gives developers one interface for accessing more than 400 AI models from more than 80 providers. OpenRouter can route requests based on price, speed, reliability, and the complexity of the task. Instead of tying everything to one AI provider, developers can pick the model that makes the most sense for the job.

Humanity has not handed civilization over to a superintelligence.

The online payments giant has grown fast. Reuters reported that OpenRouter now serves more than 10 million developers and companies and processes more than 10 trillion tokens per day.

And Stripe is, apparently, paying a fortune for it. Neither company disclosed the purchase price. Axios reported that the deal was worth more than $8 billion, mostly in stock, while Reuters cited a source who also put it at just over $8 billion. So $8 billion is not an official number, but Stripe has clearly agreed to make a multibillion-dollar bet on the plumbing that connects businesses to AI models.

Why the enormous outlay? Not just because of the usual calculations of expected income and revenue. Stripe is gambling on a whole new world.

Rolling the dice

The company told investors that the beginning of this year marked the “singularity,” according to an investor letter obtained by Axios.

Stripe is not using the loaded term exactly the way science fiction writers traditionally have. Theirs is not a claim that some superintelligent machine woke up on New Year’s Day and left humanity in the dust. Stripe means something closer to an economic turning point, a moment when "thinking" machines have started changing old patterns fast enough that businesses need to operate differently going forward.

CEO Patrick Collison had already been talking this way months before the investor letter surfaced. At Stripe Sessions on April 29, Collison opened his keynote by calling it “day 119 of the singularity.” The next day, during a conversation with investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Collison explicitly put the starting date at January 1.

Stripe thinks it can see the change in its own numbers. The company says it powers more than 5 million businesses, and businesses running on Stripe generated $1.9 trillion in total payment volume in 2025, up 34% from the previous year. It also has plenty of exposure to the AI boom. Stripe says 88% of the 2026 Forbes AI 50 use its infrastructure.

According to the investor letter reported by Axios, Stripe revenue grew 41% year over year during the first half of 2026, while free cash flow increased 43%. And now Stripe is putting serious money behind its theory.

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Jorm Sangsorn/Getty Images

The bet fits neatly with Stripe’s existing business. Stripe already sits between businesses and money, helping companies process payments, fight fraud, improve authorization rates, bill customers, and figure out how money should move. OpenRouter does something similar with AI usage.

AI companies may send millions of requests to different models, each with different capabilities, speeds, and prices. Using an expensive model for every task can burn cash. Using a cheap model for everything can produce lousy results. OpenRouter helps decide where those requests should go.

“Tokens are the central currency for companies building with AI,” Collison said in Stripe’s acquisition announcement. Currency is doing a little work there. Tokens are units of data processed by AI models, not actual money. But model usage can be one of the biggest expenses for a company building an AI product, and picking the right model for each request can directly affect whether the thing makes money.

Stripe wants to be in the middle of that too.

The ultimate hedge?

The deal also assumes there will not be one AI model that wins everything. OpenRouter is built for a world where businesses use several models and switch among them depending on the job. One may be better at coding. Another may be cheaper. Another may be faster. Another may handle a particular kind of reasoning better. If companies really do end up juggling models that way, routing all that traffic becomes a pretty good business.

None of this means the technological singularity has arrived in the traditional sense. Humanity has not handed civilization over to a superintelligence, and January 1 did not feel like some obvious dividing line for most people. Stripe’s claim is less dramatic than the name. It thinks AI has crossed from interesting new technology into something that is starting to change how businesses are created, how they operate, what they spend money on, and how they make money.

Maybe calling that “the" singularity is another instance of Silicon Valley getting carried away with itself. But Stripe has now agreed to spend somewhere around $8 billion, betting that the change underneath the hype is real. And when they bet, few expect them to miss.

A Florida female allegedly tried breaking into a Leesburg home before dawn Tuesday, and the homeowner warned her that he was armed — and even fired a shot through his door — but the homeowner told police she just wouldn't go away.

Police responded to the residence in the 1600 block of Crest Avenue after reports of a female trying to break into a home, WESH-TV reported.

The female then reached through the broken window in an attempt to open the door from the inside, the station said.

The homeowner told police he repeatedly ordered the woman to leave the property and warned her that he was armed, the station said.

Police told WESH that the female continued trying to gain entry, and the homeowner fired a shot from his handgun through the door, which shattered a window in the door.

The female then reached through the broken window in an attempt to open the door from the inside, the station said.

With that, the homeowner fired a second time, striking the female, police told WESH, adding that she was pronounced dead at the scene.

The station said the shooting took place shortly before 5 a.m.

RELATED: Florida crook accused of ditching stolen car, hiding from cops in home's garage. But homeowner has a gun.

According to WOFL-TV, details about the relationship between the homeowner and the female have not yet been released, and officials have also not shared the female's name or age.

Police are investigating the incident and working with the State Attorney's Office to determine if any criminal charges are appropriate, WESH said.

A spokesperson with the State Attorney's Office told WESH the review could take a few weeks or a few months, depending on evidence and information available.

Those with information about the incident are encouraged to contact police at 352-787-2121, WESH added.

Leesburg is about 50 minutes northwest of Orlando.

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A first-of-its-kind legal challenge seeking to block New York City Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s city-run grocery-store initiative has been filed by a coalition representing hundreds of immigrant-owned bodegas and grocers.

The Multicultural Business Coalition filed two separate lawsuits Monday in New York State Supreme Court seeking to derail Mamdani’s plan for five city-run grocery stores, which the group argues would place small, minority-owned markets at an unfair competitive disadvantage.

'Many minority members of the MBC cannot compete with the municipal grocery stores, and therefore, will be put out of business.'

The legal action comes after weeks of attempts to resolve the dispute outside court and follows the city’s announcement that the city-run grocery stores would sell items — including fresh produce, meat, seafood, and “20 other essential items like cheese, milk, and bread” — at 30% below market rates.

The first lawsuit, a class-action civil rights complaint, alleges the program violates New York Civil Rights Laws and the Equal Protection Clause of the New York State Constitution. The MBC contends the city has “unduly discriminated against” minority-owned grocers by subsidizing grocery stores that can offer discounts private businesses cannot match, thereby denying them equal protection.

The second lawsuit seeks to block the stores from operating unless the city conducts what the coalition says are necessary studies and analyses of their economic impact. The MBC claims there is “no existing evidence” that officials undertook “any studies and/or any serious analysis” of how the competition would affect existing businesses.

RELATED: Immigrant business owners revolt against Mamdani's 'Soviet'-style grocery plan

In the filing, the coalition asserts that “many minority members of the MBC cannot compete with the municipal grocery stores, and therefore, will be put out of business.”

“The respondents’ running of five municipal grocery stores is arbitrary and capricious, in bad faith, and exceeds the scope of municipal authority,” the MBC added.

Mark Jaffe, the group’s general counsel and president of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, argued the city is setting small grocers up to fail by forcing them to compete against the city-run stores.

“You cannot expect hardworking small business owners to compete with a supermarket that isn’t going to pay rent, won’t have to pay an electric bill, and won’t have to buy their products at full price,” Jaffe told CNN. “They cannot possibly compete because no one will be subsidizing them.”

When asked about the lawsuits during an unrelated press conference in Queens on Monday, Mamdani said he was “confident both in the legality of this, that it will stand up in court, and in the importance of delivering it.”

“We are talking about a reflection of a cost-of-living crisis that has seen grocery prices increase by about 30% over the last few years, and we’re also talking about delivering five city-run grocery stores in a city of 8.5 million people that has more than a thousand grocery stores," the mayor responded.

Mamdani also pointed to Essex Street Market and Moore Street Market, two existing public markets directly administered by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, arguing that the model has not had a negative impact on surrounding businesses. They have been in operation since the 1940s, along with La Marqueta starting earlier, and were established under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

RELATED: Socialist Mamdani says city-run grocery stores will undercut supermarkets by 30%

Adam Gray/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Founded earlier this year, the MBC represents roughly 65 business organizations, with strong representation in the New York-New Jersey region, spanning Hispanic, Asian, Caribbean, African, Middle Eastern, Jewish, and South Asian communities.

To address concerns that the initiative could undercut privately owned stores in neighboring areas, Mamdani said the city-run grocery stores would not sell cigarettes, alcohol, lottery tickets, or hot food — items that typically generate some of the highest profit margins for bodegas and convenience stores.

“My grandfather opened up one of the first bodegas in the late 1960s when East Harlem was burning and the A&Ps and Waldbaums were leaving,” said MBC Chairman Frank Garcia.

“He established the first Latino Grocery Association to protect the rights of immigrant store owners. I am proud to be following up in his tradition because what Mayor Mamdani is doing is disgracing his memory.”

As currently filed, the MBC itself is the only named plaintiff in the lawsuits, though the coalition has said it plans to add individual grocery store owners as plaintiffs later this week.

The first of the five publicly owned grocery stores is anticipated to open in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx by the end of 2027, with the remaining four storefronts slated to be operational by the end of Mamdani’s four-year term, including one in East Harlem.

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The WNBA's Chicago Sky is taking Enes Kanter Freedom to task while once again avoiding the actual issue on everyone's mind.

Freedom wore a T-shirt that read "WOMAN noun. adult human female" to the Chicago Sky vs. Indiana Fever game on Sunday, causing a stir that seemingly agitated one of the Sky players.

'Most importantly, he took a step towards the court.'

After a whistle in the third quarter, 34-year-old point guard Natasha Cloud began yelling at Freedom, who stood up and raised his arms in the air while taking a step toward the court.

Cloud was irate as teammates ushered her away from the area, while Freedom was surrounded by security and subsequently ejected from the building.

According to Sky principal owner Michael Alter, Freedom's presence near the court wasn't just a form of protest; it was tantamount to a threat.

"[Kanter Freedom] has demonstrated to us unequivocally that he has the potential to be a threat," Alter said while speaking to local Chicago media.

"That he is not able to control himself to the extent where we can be comfortable that he may [not] step towards the court again and towards the players."

Alter continued, saying the team has decided to ban him from Wintrust Arena in Chicago indefinitely.

"So that is the basis for which we will not permit him into the building until such time as he can prove otherwise."

RELATED: WNBA star has mid-game meltdown at former NBA player wearing pro-women shirt: 'I think it triggered her'

Michael Reaves/Getty Images

The 6'-10" former NBA player had told Fox News that the he had exchanged text messages with Chicago general manager Jeff Pagliocca before the game to give him a heads-up that he planned to attend.

Freedom said he told the GM he had no plans to disrupt the event and received the reply, "Enjoy the game."

Alter called Freedom's framing of that exchange into question, ESPN reported, telling media members that Pagliocca only said, "Appreciate the text," and did not tell Freedom to enjoy the game or otherwise insinuate that the team was happy to have him.

"It was pretty clear to us that his purpose of coming here was trying to be provocative and just see how much attention he could get and stir up," Alter said.

Alter went on to repeatedly suggest that Freedom is a potential security threat that was quelled by security.

"That all changed when he made a decision to stand up from his seat again, on the court, put his arms out, point a finger at the player on the court, Natasha Cloud," the owner said. "And most importantly, he took a step towards the court. That changed everything, and he went from being a fan ... to being a potential threat. And that is why the security acted as quickly and swiftly, very smoothly, as they did."

RELATED: Former congressman sends warning to WNBA over blocking male player: Get ready for court

Michael Reaves/Getty Images

Alter, a commercial real estate developer, rejected Freedom's recent assertion that because he "did not step over the baseline," he was not breaking any rules.

As if "that's some magical threshold," Alter said. "One reason he didn't cross the baseline was because he was prevented from doing so. But regardless of that, the security people's job is not to wait until a threat intensifies. It's to avoid the threat from happening when [a] perceived threat occurs, and that's exactly what they did."

The owner further boasted that security "didn't wait" to see how far Freedom got.

Freedom has not made public comment since the ban was announced on Tuesday night.

Freedom and the Chicago Sky did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

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A group of Los Angeles residents are taking a stand against the latest effort in California to erase Christianity from public spaces.

A nearly century-old, hand-carved 10-foot cross stands within a stone's throw of the birthplace of Los Angeles. While every year, over 2 million visitors pass the historic cross in El Pueblo, a self-identified "freedom of expression activist" unilaterally decided that the sight of the Christian symbol was too much to bear.

'Los Angeles shouldn’t have to erase its own history every time someone takes offense.'

Jack Gerritsen — a resident of Bell, California, who was convicted decades ago for interfering with police radio transmissions — sued the city last year, claiming that the cross and the nativity traditionally displayed in the Old Plaza during the Christmas season violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Gerritsen said that the nativity "offends [him] and makes [him] feel excluded as a non-believer," and the cross constitutes a "Christian endorsement on public land."

Offended by the religious nature of the displays, Gerritsen — who appears to be behind a Facebook account that has demeaned Christianity, idolized the anti-Christian Marxist-Leninist Che Guvera, and made excuses for terrorists — joined Henry Frederick Ramey Jr., with whom he previously sued multiple regional authorities, in asking a federal court to order the removal of the cross and prohibit the city from ever again putting up the nativity. The two are also seeking $5 million in damages.

The district court rejected their request.

Citing the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in American Legion v. American Humanist Association, the lower court noted that because the cross was erected nearly a century ago, it met the "presumption of constitutionality" as "established" and "longstanding." The court also noted that there was no evidence to suggest that the cross was "maintained with discriminatory intent" or that it conveys deliberate disrespect on the basis of religion.

While the court did not find that the nativity display was similarly "established," it recognized it as "part of a broader national tradition," "a central piece of a longstanding local cultural practice," and "consistent with this country's history." Therefore, the court determined, it does not violate the Establishment Clause.

RELATED: The anti-Christian myth of First Amendment 'neutrality'

Courtesy of Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

The plaintiffs kept the legal battle alive by appealing the ruling. Gerritsen did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday to permit a group of local merchants to join the case and defend the historic displays.

"For generations, the merchants of Olvera Street have kept the neighborhood‘s rich Mexican-American heritage alive," Andrea Butler, counsel at Becket and lead attorney for the merchants, said in a statement. "Now one observer wants to take down the parts of that heritage that include religion."

"Thankfully, the First Amendment doesn’t include a third-party veto over history and culture merely because it acknowledges religion," added Butler.

The Olvera Street Merchants Association Foundation is a nonprofit organization formed to protect and promote the traditional, historical, and cultural events in the area, whose members have a "significant protectable interest in the historical and cultural preservation of Olvera Street," Becket said in its motion. For starters, the foundation's board of directors "comprises merchants whose families have been part of the Olvera Street merchant community since its inception in 1930."

Becket noted in its proposed intervenor-defendant's brief that "El Pueblo has been preserved as a State Historic Park and a National Historic District specifically to protect its historic and cultural heritage, dating back to the founding of Los Angeles itself. ... The displays at issue here are a key part of that heritage."

"Los Angeles shouldn’t have to erase its own history every time someone takes offense," stated Butler. "The cross and nativity are woven into the fabric of El Pueblo. Nothing in the Constitution requires those traditions to be torn away. The city should be free to keep its full history, including the parts that happen to be religious."

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It's going to be harder for parents to say no to and even differentiate between AI and real life when it comes to entertaining their children.

Toddlers and kindergarteners are unlikely to hop onto an AI chatbot and ask about the weather or for the latest sports scores, but they are now more likely than ever to be driven into interactions with AI-driven content.

AI can enable 'more continuous interaction between fans and brands.'

Thanks to a new entertainment-meets-tech deal, the slow walk to AI teaching the West's children has quickened its pace.

WildBrain, the Canadian company known for having possibly the largest library of children's television programming, has bought a tech company specializing in creating AI personalities.

That means that some of the most famous characters kids know and love will now be interacting with children in ways previously unimaginable. WildBrain, formerly DHX Media, bought the rights to "Teletubbies" back in 2013. It also owns characters like Strawberry Shortcake, Inspector Gadget, and the show "In the Night Garden."

Personality AI is just a year-old company and focuses on creating interactive characters using generative AI and has already developed content for Amazon.

Under Amazon in 2025, Personality AI created "Hey Peppa Pig," an interactive voice experience for kids that allowed them to speak with the character on Amazon's Fire Kids Tablets, the Hollywood Reporter noted.

RELATED: Federal agents wanted to search his phone — now they say the trick he used to stop them is a crime

John Keeble/Getty Images

WildBrain and Personality AI will reportedly create interactive experiences with toys, apps, and different platforms using licensing agreements with different intellectual property owners.

In an attempt to address concerns over child interactions with artificial intelligence, Personality AI told the Hollywood Reporter that its AI products are not open-ended platforms and are tested to ensure safe interactions.

The deal itself is lucrative, with WildBrain paying roughly $11 million in cash along with one million shares, Variety reported.

There are also further incentives that can push the deal to upwards of almost $70 million.

RELATED: The $1 trillion social media addiction trial has begun — is the disorder real?

BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images

Personality AI will receive $2 million on the first anniversary of the deal's closing and up to $56 million in cash based on meeting performance markers in the first three years of the deal, up to 2029.

WildBrain's CEO Josh Scherba said that Personality AI can enable "more continuous interaction between fans and brands," which would strengthen the company's ability to "deliver end-to-end franchise solutions to partners."

WildBrain did have a 41% stake in the "Peanuts" franchise but sold it in December 2025 to Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment Japan for $460 million.

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Caregiving has taught me to ask a simple question before making a consequential decision: “Is this healthy?” Will this solve today’s problem by consuming what we may need tomorrow? Does it respect the resources entrusted to me?

After 40 years as a caregiver, I have learned that money, time, strength, and even goodwill are finite. Wanting something does not make it wise, and good intentions do not eliminate consequences. A caregiver who confuses desire with capacity can hurt the very person he is trying to help.

We are financing today’s promises with tomorrow’s labor, then congratulating ourselves for our generosity.

Caring describes an intention. Stewardship requires an accounting. By that standard, Washington has failed spectacularly.

The United States has now crossed $40 trillion in national debt. The figure barely communicates anything. Forty trillion sounds like something a third-grader says when trying to name the biggest number in the world.

The national debt is what Washington has accumulated through borrowing. The annual deficit is how much more it spends than it collects each year. The debt is the hole. The deficit is how much deeper we dig it.

The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion federal deficit for fiscal year 2026. Congress has looked into a $40 trillion hole and concluded that what it needs is more digging.

Democrats invoke compassion to justify spending money the government does not have. Republicans campaign on fiscal restraint, win office, and then discover that their preferred spending somehow does not count. One party calls it caring. The other calls it necessary. Both send the bill to our children.

Each party points furiously at the other while passing the national credit card back and forth. Both help start the fire, then pass the collection plate while arguing over who bought the gasoline.

Now we enter election season, when, as Lloyd Christmas might say, the promises flow like the salmon of Capistrano. Candidates will tell us how deeply they care about families, seniors, veterans, national defense, and taxpayers. They will demonstrate their concern for one group by promising it money borrowed from all the others. A politician can always appear compassionate by promising benefits with other people’s money.

RELATED: It took 200 years to reach $1 trillion in national debt. 2026 said, ‘Hold my beer.’

Mandel NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Stewardship asks harder questions: How much will this cost? Who will pay for it? What has the existing program accomplished? What happens if your projections are wrong? If this is worth doing, why must we borrow the money?

Those are not cruel questions. They are the responsible ones.

Government cannot create resources by attaching the word “federal” to them. There is no government money. Government either collects money from today’s citizens or borrows against tomorrow’s taxpayers.

We are financing today’s promises with tomorrow’s labor, then congratulating ourselves for our generosity. There is nothing generous about giving away the money of someone not yet born. That is taxation without representation on a generational scale.

Stewardship does not require government to spend nothing or never incur debt. Families and nations face genuine emergencies. Caregivers understand that. Medical catastrophes rarely consult the household budget before arriving.

But caregivers often do without. Congress seems far more comfortable assigning sacrifice than accepting any. I have also learned that an emergency cannot become a permanent governing philosophy.

At my kitchen table, I cannot promise everything, spend without limit, blame someone else when the bills arrive, and then congratulate myself for caring. Yet Washington does just that.

RELATED: Scott Bessent is the secret weapon for Trump’s economic plan

Ludovic MARIN/AFP/Getty Images

Over the next few months, commercials filled with flags, farms, hard hats, classrooms, and concerned expressions will flood the airwaves. Recorded voices will warn that civilization depends upon our response before midnight.

As the onslaught escalates, keep asking one question: Is this candidate a good steward? Not only of public money, but of public trust, constitutional authority, and the extraordinary inheritance of self-government.

To our national shame, we may not be able to answer yes about many of them. That does not excuse us from voting. It makes our responsibility more sobering.

Ronald Reagan popularized “trust, but verify” when dealing with the Soviet Union. Washington has now given us $40 trillion reasons to apply it to our own government. We must choose the better steward and then hold that person accountable.

Campaign season is when politicians sell. Election Day is when we buy. Tax Day reminds us what we paid. Better hang on to the receipt.

After April 15, we begin to learn whether they can manage what they were so eager to sell.

Around my kitchen table, math eventually gets the final vote. At $40 trillion in debt, one wonders whether math even applies in the halls of Congress.

In 2019, I moved back to Portland, my hometown, to help with a family health situation.

I rented an apartment near where I grew up. I began doing my food shopping at the local Fred Meyer supermarket, which I remembered from when I was a kid.

When I saw the sign and the locked gate, it felt like an assault. It was another closing door. Another innocent pleasure snatched away.

It was fun to go back to “Freddy’s." It was in a quiet, affluent neighborhood, so the store was always neat and clean.

They hired local high school kids to work there. As part of their job, they would always greet you, or ask if you needed help finding anything.

I found this incredibly charming. After living in Brooklyn and Los Angeles for many years, to have these nice young people smiling and asking how my day was going ... well, once I got over the shock, I came to appreciate it.

Toilet paper

A year into living there, COVID began. At first, the only real problem this created was a toilet paper shortage. But being sane, reasonable Oregonians, my neighbors and I restrained ourselves. No one was panic-buying Charmin Ultra-Soft at Fred Meyer.

But soon after, the pandemic got serious. The government announced “two weeks to stop the spread.” Everything closed. People stayed in their homes. Supermarkets were one of the only places you could go.

At Freddy’s, the teenagers quickly disappeared. The grown-up workers who remained suddenly looked nervous and scared.

As the pandemic dragged on, Fred Meyer was forced to advertise for new employees. The company offered generous bonuses. Soon there were retirees working there and borderline homeless people.

The tone of the place changed. Customers would hurry in and out. People would freak out if you stood too close to them. Everyone was suspicious of each other. It had become the exact opposite of what it had been before.

The mask wars

Then masks became a thing. First, they made people feel safer. Then they became a new source of division and conflict.

Fred Meyer was now in survival mode. Store hours were cut. The store limped along with reduced staff. There began to be rows of empty shelves. I think they actually did run out of toilet paper at one point.

That summer, the George Floyd protests began and became a nightly occurrence in downtown Portland.

At Fred Meyer, you’d occasionally see young protesters and members of Antifa on their way home to their parents’ houses in the suburbs — after a night of throwing rocks at the police.

One night, I encountered two young kids in black bloc. With great excitement and fervor, they told me about being tear-gassed by the “fascist police.”

They might have been the same kids who had been bagging groceries the year before.

Vibe shift

When the worst of COVID had passed, Fred Meyer recovered somewhat. It reinstated its original hours. It seemed to have steady employees again, though I noticed the kindly people who worked there in 2019 had been replaced in 2022 by sullen, silent workers with neck tattoos.

There were no bright-faced teenagers. Nobody said "hi" to you. The place was not as clean as it once was. Shelves continued to be empty. You couldn’t count on certain items being available. You had to adopt a “buy it when you see it” shopping strategy.

Soon after, Freddy’s began instituting new security measures. The company put in gates you had to pass through going in and out. You could see yourself in a video monitor as you entered. Plainclothes security people sometimes stood guard at the exits.

It was obvious why. Unsavory characters had begun to appear at the store, especially at night, though there was no reason for them to be in that neighborhood.

You’d see broken-down cars in the parking lot with strange people sitting inside them. Were they doing drugs? Or maybe sleeping there overnight?

Early one morning, a car was set on fire in Freddy’s back parking lot. The suburban fire department came and put it out. It made the local news. There was no word on what happened or why.

To its credit, Fred Meyer still doesn’t have armed guards on site. But it’s coming. I’m sure.

RELATED: Is this a new era of conservative filmmaking?

Jean-Louis Atlan/Getty Images

The nursery

One last thing: Fred Meyer has a large open-air nursery attached to the grocery store. It’s full of flowers, houseplants, and gardening supplies.

It’s a first sign of spring when it opens in April and marks the beginning of winter when it closes in October.

But just this week — mid-August — staff began locking the outside gates. Now the nursery is only accessible through the front entrance. Were people stealing the flowers?

When those gates were open, I often entered the store via a stroll through the cheerful nursery. It was a highlight of shopping there.

Closing doors

When I saw the sign and the locked gate, it felt like an assault. On me personally and on the entire community. It was another closing door. Another innocent pleasure snatched away.

And who exactly could you blame for this? The government, the store, the social democrats, the understaffed police?

Back in 2019, when those smiling high school kids asked me how I was doing, I always said, “Great.” Because I was great. Because Freddy’s was great. Because America was great.

It’s probably good they aren’t there any more. I don’t know what I would say to them.

Canada often enjoys a reputation as America's friendly neighbor, but Vice President JD Vance says the relationship has been anything but fair for U.S. workers and farmers.

In a recent speech on cross-border trade, Vance went in on Canada for imposing steep tariffs on American products while benefiting from the security and economic advantages provided by the United States.

The recent tariffs include 250% on Maine dairy while providing a free pass for Chinese goods through the back door and zero reciprocity.

“First of all, I’d say we’re very mindful of the fact that Maine is a border state with Canada. There’s a lot of cross-border transactions between Maine and Canada. And what we’re trying to do here is just make sure that Maine actually gets a fair deal,” Vance began.

He went on to say that not just Canada but China have “been the two worst countries when it comes to trade policy anywhere in the world.”

“Canada is a country that has underinvested in its military that quite literally would get invaded by a foreign country were it not for the umbrella of protection provided by the United States of America,” he said, asking, “And so how does Canada actually respond to that? By treating the people of Maine fairly?”

“No, they apply ridiculous tariffs and other nontariff duties on Maine products coming into Canada and they don’t expect Maine or anybody else to fight back,” he answered.

“We’re sick of that. We are actually going to fight back against unfair trade practices whether it’s coming from China or Canada,” he added.

“Good. And that is true. He’s absolutely right about that,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments.

“And by the way, it’s not just Maine products. It’s all U.S. products,” he adds.

Vance continued to explain that while you buy “dairy, cheese, butter, milk that comes from Canada into Maine, you probably are buying a product that has 0% tariffs on it.”

However, he went on, “If a Maine farmer sends dairy products into Canada, they could be paying as much as a 250% tariff.”

“Now, how is it fair to the farmers of Maine that they pay 250% when the Canadian farmers pay nothing? That unfairness is something that we just have to fix,” he added.

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.

Exactly one year ago, Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed publicly rejected calls for peace and said, "We take them to the mud and choke them out."

While the mainstream media regularly promotes every story that portrays those on the right as the main source of political violence, there are plenty of examples available of left-wing calls for political violence.

'Their ongoing bloodlust for President Trump and those they disagree with is reckless and unhinged.'

Here are just 14 of those instances.

1. El-Sayed inverted Michelle Obama's famous advice to "go high" when her political opponents "go low," before his call for violence. "When they go low, we don’t go high," he said.
2. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said of Republicans during a podcast interview from Aug. 2025: "We're going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth!"
3. "He is not only unfit, he is destructive to our democracy, and he has be eliminated," Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York said of President Donald Trump in Nov. 2023.
4. In a speech from Aug. 2025, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said that Democrats would "beat" down Republicans: "They expect Democrats to kind of be the nice guys that we are. They expect us to take the punch and say, 'Thank you.' Well, I am here to tell you, not only are we going to punch back, but we about to beat you down!"
5. In 2018, Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York hinted at using the Second Amendment to stop Trump: "This is where the Second Amendment comes in, quite frankly, because you know, what if the president was to ignore the courts? What would you do? What would we do?"
6. During his failed 2026 campaign, Ohio Democratic attorney general candidate Elliot Forhan promised to "kill Donald Trump" by prosecuting the president and obtaining a conviction with a capital punishment sentence.
7. Disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), once thought to be a possible presidential contender, said of his political opponents in August 2025: "When they go low, we‘re going to bury them below the Capitol. That‘s what we‘re going to do, because this is about protecting democracy."
8. Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey screamed at supporters at a February 2025 rally that "we are at war" with Trump and Elon Musk and that "we will not take this s**t" from them.
9. In January, the normally civil Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said that "heads need to roll" in the Trump administration.
10. Openly lesbian Texas state Rep. Jolanda Jones (D) specifically rejected Michelle Obama's call for peace and made a throat-slashing gesture to accompany her rhetoric in Oct. 2025: "If you hit me in my face, I'm not going to punch you back in your face. I'm going to go across your neck!"
11. In March 2024, Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas compared Hispanic Trump supporters to Jews supporting Adolf Hitler.
12. In private texts leaked to the press, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones (D) once fantasized about shooting "two bullets" into the head of a Republican opponent and about the death of the Republican's children.
13. In an MSNBC interview from June 2023, Democratic Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands stumbled over her words and tried to correct herself after calling for the assassination of Trump: "He needs to be shot — stopped."
14. In resurfaced comments from 2020, failed Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong used a euphemism for murder: "I'd say it's about f**king time we 86 Trump."

RELATED: Democrat gov. tries to gaslight Americans on liberal violence — gets hit with fierce backlash

Special mention goes to Hasan Piker, the far-left terrorist-defending online influencer who has called numerous times for political violence in addition to saying America "deserved" the terror attacks of 9/11. Piker has campaigned for El-Sayed and other Democrats.

Republican National Committee national press secretary Natalie Baldassarre slammed Democrats in a statement to Blaze News.

"Democrats have always been the party of violence dressed up as virtue. Their rhetoric is like a bat signal for violent extremists to commit political violence and further divide our country."

"It’s utterly unacceptable, and their ongoing bloodlust for President Trump and those they disagree with is reckless and unhinged," she concluded.

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The runoff for the Republican nomination for governor in Oklahoma was about as close as it gets, but in the end, the candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump prevailed.

On Tuesday, former state Sen. Mike Mazzei faced off against state Attorney General Gentner Drummond for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Trump tossed his support behind Mazzei and referred to Drummond as a "fake Republican, who donated to SLEEPY Joe Biden."

'We won tonight! Now we finish the job in November.'

The race was practically dead even from the moment results started coming in, but with 99% of the expected votes tabulated, Mazzei ultimately won by about 2,000 votes, 50.3% to 49.7%.

Late Tuesday night, Mazzei claimed victory and thanked his supporters.

"This campaign has always been about something bigger than one election. It’s about reclaiming Oklahoma’s potential, protecting our values, cutting taxes, strengthening our schools, defending our land, and building a state our children and grandchildren will be proud to call home," Mazzei posted on X.

"We won tonight! Now we finish the job in November."

Drummond likewise conceded defeat. "It was not the outcome that we wanted, and it sure was not the outcome we worked for," he told a crowd of supporters, "but ... I believe deeply in the right of the people to choose their leaders. So tonight I respect their decisions."

Oklahoma law has no automatic recount, so while Drummond could have requested a recount, he would have had to pay for it. He would have been reimbursed by the state only if the recount changed the results.

RELATED: GOP Oklahoma governor candidate wants to stop voter ID and invites Dems to help — campaign says the clips are deceptive

Trump supporters standing outside the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June 2020.Win McNamee/Getty Images

Drummond has been at odds with Trump and the MAGA movement as recently as this month. At a government employee summit reportedly held on August 3, he invited Democrats and independents to kill a ballot question that would "require proof of identity to vote in any election authorized by law and conducted by a county election board or the State Election Board."

"We have to vote 'no,'" Drummond said, according to leaked audio clips.

"Just don't tell any legislator I said that, OK? Every Democrat, every libertarian, every independent needs to show up at the poll."

About the audio clips, Drummond campaign chairman Matthew Parker previously told Blaze News, "These clips are a few seconds long, stripped of context, and selectively edited to manufacture a false narrative. We’re not going to pretend that spliced snippets on X are a serious representation of Gentner Drummond’s views."

As in the runoff, Drummond did not get his desired result regarding the voter ID ballot question. With over 75% of precincts reporting, it "was coasting to an easy victory with more than 56% of the vote," the Oklahoman reported.

Mazzei represented Tulsa in the Oklahoma Senate from 2004 until 2016, when he was term-limited. He also spent about a year and a half as the secretary of budget under current Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt.

Mazzei will face Democrat state Rep. Cyndi Munson in November.

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I walked into my first DSA meeting looking for an answer to a very specific question: How do modern Marxists reckon with communism’s long history of atrocities?

In recent weeks, clips of Democratic Socialists of America leaders praising countries such as Cuba and China have gone viral. Other prominent socialists, including Hasan Piker, openly admire Lenin and Stalin and post pictures of themselves reading “What Is to Be Done?” while wearing Cartier.

Power is not only money or property. It is also the power to decide which history gets remembered and which gets reduced to a footnote.

Communist regimes killed tens of millions of people in the 20th century. So when I sat down for a DSA 101 lecture and was greeted as a comrade, I wanted to hear how the organization taught that history.

The answer was one of the more impressive acts of historical revisionism I have ever heard.

The DSA has built a coalition around oppression. Transgender people, racial minorities, immigrants, women, and people angry about the cost of health insurance are presented as members of classes exploited by a capitalist ruling order. In the room, confidence in the American dream was scarce. Resentment of the capitalist class was not.

That framework extends abroad. As the leader of my DSA 101 session put it, “A socialist approach is built on international solidarity and support. Socialists are internationalists.” Hence the fixation on Cuba, Venezuela, Gaza and the West Bank, and other places cast as victims of American power.

The problem is that several regimes the DSA treats sympathetically were devastated by Marxist rule itself.

Take the Soviet Union. During the Great Terror, roughly 700,000 people were executed. Millions more died through forced resettlement, the gulag, famine, and other state policies. One widely cited estimate puts the Soviet communist death toll at about 20 million.

Yet during the entire two-hour DSA course, the Soviet Union came up only once. The instructor praised it: “Socialists can be proud of our history. Some of the very first, most striking work [for feminist rights] occurred just after the October Revolution in the Soviet Union.”

That was it. The mass killing disappeared. Progressive feminism remained.

China received similar treatment. While discussing planned economies, the instructor praised the Chinese system for combining planning and markets in service of human need. Missing from that account was Mao Zedong’s rule, under which historians have estimated that as many as 70 million people died, many during famines ushered in through Marxist policies.

Cuba got the same reframing. The instructor blamed blockades, embargoes, and sanctions for depriving Cubans of “the chance to live in prosperity and dignity,” while praising the government for resisting America’s “oppressive” economic influence. Castro’s regime, according to historian R.J. Rummel, was responsible for as many as 141,000 deaths.

RELATED: Hasan Piker is the anti-Charlie Kirk

Blaze Media Illustration

The pattern became hard to miss. Marxist countries were not presented as failures so much as unfinished projects. Their progressive achievements were foregrounded; their victims were backgrounded. When socialist systems failed, capitalism, American imperialism, or the political class usually entered the explanation.

“The general attitude of socialism, which goes back to Marx and Lenin,” the instructor said, “is that when we are assigning blame … [it] is with the political class.” He spoke at length about the Pentagon and American power as sources of death and destruction. The deaths caused by Marxist governments? Nothing to see there.

If you let your opponent talk long enough, he will often tell you his strategy. That’s why I went.

The DSA did not exactly deny the horrors of 20th-century communism. It did something more useful: It barely taught them. The history was filtered through a moral framework in which socialists remain the champions of the oppressed and capitalism remains the prime suspect.

“It is the intention of the DSA to take power and wealth away from the capitalist class and put it in the hands of the working class,” the instructor said.

Power is not only money or property. It is also the power to decide which history gets remembered and which gets reduced to a footnote.

If young people learn about communist regimes chiefly through their promised ideals and progressive “wins,” while the bodies disappear from the lesson plan, they are not being taught communism’s history. They are being taught how to forget it.

On Friday night, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney ordered his negotiators to walk away from a trade agreement with President Donald Trump, less than an hour before a new round of American tariffs was set to take effect.

To hear Carney tell it, the reason was simple: It was a “bad deal.”

Carney increasingly looks like a prime minister in China's pocket.

“We take this step confident that it is in the best interests of Canada,” Carney said Saturday. “And that, by rejecting a bad deal, standing up for Canada, and focusing on what we can control, we are building a Canada strong for all.”

On Tuesday, his government announced retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on $27.6 billion in U.S. goods, effective September 8.

“When the United States of America asked too much and offered too little, we made a choice,” Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said. “We chose Canada.” Does anyone really believe that?

'War' cry

Carney walked away not because the deal was necessarily bad for Canada, but because confrontation with the United States serves his politics. He is prepared to endure 50% American tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian exports because he is frankly ecstatic to be “at war” with the United States — it cements his appeal with an anti-American base that thrives on Canadian martyrdom.

“You're at war when you're attacked, and we got attacked,” Carney said.

Just as Carney vilified the U.S. and Trump in his last “elbows up” federal election campaign, he is again playing the victim card in his latest attempt to cast Trump as the unreasonable aggressor. Carney certainly appears to have planned for this rejection, and politically he is enjoying it — just as his Liberal Party has long galvanized its supporters with anti-American rhetoric.

Carney has provided few details to Canadians about just exactly why the trade deal was so “bad,” except to make outrageous suggestions that the U.S. was trying to strip Canada of its official bilingualism — which would be a wonderful phenomenon — and erode its French-language culture.

He has also claimed that Trump was demanding restrictions on trade deals Canada could make with other countries.

Playing around

But this is clearly a smoke screen. Carney hardly behaved as though securing a trade deal was urgent when he went on vacation to Italy just 10 days before the tariff deadline. He returned to Canada with the tariffs about to take effect but managed to gain a three-day moratorium as negotiations continued.

He wasn't serious about preserving the old economic relationship with the United States then, and he isn't now.

If Carney had been serious about preserving Canada's economic relationship with the United States, he would not have spent years arguing for a world economy less dependent on American economic power.

As early as 2009, while serving as governor of the Bank of Canada, Carney declared that “globalized product, capital, and labour markets lie at the heart of the New World Order to which we should aspire.”

A decade later, as governor of the Bank of England, Carney was explicitly discussing the growing international importance of China's currency, the renminbi, or yuan. In his 2019 Jackson Hole speech, he noted that “the greater use of the renminbi in international trade is also leading to its growing use in international finance” and discussed the possibility of it becoming “a truly global currency.”

Carney argued that the dollar-dominated international monetary system was becoming unsustainable and proposed a new “synthetic hegemonic currency” that would reduce the world's dependence on the U.S. dollar.

New order

Now, as prime minister, Carney has gone considerably farther in embracing Beijing.

During his January visit to China, where he forged a new strategic partnership with Beijing, Carney told Chinese Premier Li Qiang that the progress in their relationship “sets us up well for the new world order.”

Days later at Davos, Carney spoke of a “rupture in the world order” and argued that middle powers such as Canada should seize the opportunity to build a new order. He pointedly noted that Canada had concluded strategic partnerships with China and Qatar in the past few days.

Carney increasingly looks like a prime minister in China's pocket. Rather than retreat from Beijing in response to American concerns, he has been accelerating Canada's economic embrace of it.

But what, exactly, was the “bad deal” that Carney rejected?

In an interview with the New York Times, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer revealed previously undisclosed details of the American offer.

“The United States had offered to reduce its tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos, and eliminate a recently imposed tariff on Canadian lumber,” the Times reported, adding that Greer said the measures “would have given Canada the most preferential treatment of any trading partner.”

There were, of course, sticking points. One involved Chinese goods entering the United States through Canada.

According to an August 2026 White House report, “The Great Transshipment Scam,” Canada is among the countries the Trump administration identifies as “Tier 1” conduits for illegal transshipment — the practice of routing goods through third countries to evade American tariffs:

In plain terms, illegal transshipment is smuggling disguised as trade — fraud cloaked in paperwork — and, in truth, nothing new. For centuries, traders have routed goods through third countries to exploit tariff gaps, dodge imperial duties, skirt embargoes, and take advantage of preferential access offered by certain ports.

Washington wants its trading partners to crack down on Chinese transshipment. Mexico did — and got a trade deal.

Milking it

Then there's Carney's fealty to Canada's powerful dairy cartel.

Carney has pledged that he is “loyal” to Canada's supply-management policies, especially as they apply to dairy products. The system protects Canadian dairy, poultry, and egg producers from foreign competition and keeps prices artificially high.

Trump has repeatedly eviscerated this economic policy and demanded greater access for American farmers.

The dairy cartel is exceedingly powerful in Canada and played an important role in the 2017 Conservative Party leadership race, when Maxime Bernier, a former foreign affairs minister who campaigned against supply management, was narrowly defeated by Andrew Scheer, who supported it.

Bernier recently told me that Carney's refusal to put supply management on the negotiating table amounted to sabotaging the discussion with Washington.

He specifically blamed Canada's protected dairy, poultry, and egg producers for standing in the way of a better agreement.

“We must put on the table the cartel in supply management, the cartel in dairy, poultry, and eggs,” Bernier said.

“If you put that on the table, we will be able, I believe so, to have a deal with President Trump.”

And Bernier was blunt about where he believes Canada's political leaders stand: “Carney and Poilievre are on the side of the cartel. They are not on the side of Canadian consumers.”

Politics as usual?

Bernier knows something about the political power of supply management. Recalling his own Conservative leadership defeat, he said dairy interests “decided to buy membership cards for the Conservative Party of Canada ... to be able to beat me at the leadership contest.”

“They know what happened to me when I did fight against the cartel,” Bernier said.

So was this really a bad deal for Canada, or just the usual machinations of a prime minister who deeply comprehends the political advantages of being “at war” with the U.S.?

Carney has effectively placed his political future in the hands of the dairy cartel and his wager on China, even though Canada's economic and military future remains inextricably tied to the United States, its largest trading partner and defense ally.

Some might call this insanity. But it's really just politics as usual for Mark Carney.

Millions of dollars' worth of counterfeit Rolex and Louis Vuitton items were seized from the Republic of Korea on their way to Georgia, says U.S. Customs and Border Protection to Blaze News.

CBP officers found the alleged counterfeit items secreted inside a shipment passing through the port of Louisville in Kentucky on Aug. 18, after pulling a parcel for inspection.

'The distribution of counterfeit goods defrauds US consumers and has a significant adverse impact on businesses.'

The seizure included 152 counterfeit watches with suspected Rolex and Louis Vuitton trademarks and 32 pairs of knockoff shoes with suspected Gucci trademarks, according to CBP.

The agency's Centers of Excellence and Expertise determined the items to be counterfeit and seized them.

CBP estimated that if the items were real, they would be worth a total of over $9.3 million.

"The distribution of counterfeit goods defrauds U.S. consumers and has a significant adverse impact on businesses by robbing our country of jobs and tax revenues," said Philip Onken, the port director at Louisville.

"CBP is the first line of defense, and our officers intercepted this threat before these fake items were introduced into the commerce and reached consumers, which provides economic security for our nation," he added.

Officials said consumers should purchase items directly from the trademark holder or from authorized retailers to avoid poorly made knockoffs.

In a similar instance from Dec. 2025, CBP seized about $425,125 worth of counterfeit watches, shoes, handbags and jewelry at the port of entry in Rochester, New York.

RELATED: 1,000 pounds of METH seized from shipment of detergent from Mexico, CBP says

"Counterfeit versions of popular brands are regularly sold in online marketplaces and flea markets," read a statement from CBP.

"Not only are counterfeit goods produced in unregulated and potentially exploitative environments in foreign countries," the agency added, "but the profits from their sales provide a funding stream for organized crime."

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A clip of CNN’s Dana Bash interviewing former Vice President Mike Pence is making the rounds. Watch it. It embodies just about everything that failed in the last generation of conservative politics.

First, Pence is in Ukraine. As if he weren’t irrelevant enough already.

Almost anything has to be better than whatever the heck this is.

Second, his “nicer than Jesus” desire for affirmation from Bash and the trans activists is nothing short of a confession: When he was in power and had an opportunity to confront the gender-bending madness poisoning our children, he chose instead to accommodate it with his signature brand of self-important piety.

Third, his thanking Bash because “we’ve been friends for a long time” is like tipping your cap to Tokyo Rose. That’s not a flex. It’s a cry for help.

Fourth, you know who else thinks quoting “do unto others” from Scripture means affirming people in their sin? James Talarico, that’s who.

So if you want to know why young men are reading about Franco fighting the communists in the Spanish Civil War as bedtime stories, it’s because the way of life and cost of living previous generations enjoyed are no longer available to them — because the Mike Pences of the world sold them out with a “conservatism” made for the bedroom eyes of CNN and nowhere else.

Or maybe Pence is working for the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce now and has some wives and jobs lined up over there for America’s angry young men. What a guy.

Virtually every political primary I’ve gotten involved in — or chosen not to get involved in — over the last 20 years has come down to the same thing: trying to stop another era of what Mike Pence fecklessly represents “in the name of the Lord.” When Jesus offered difficult teachings and people walked away from Him or even picked up stones, He did not stop and plead for “common decency” the way Pence did with Bash.

There is no accommodation to be made with evil. Which is why, in the face of rejection, Jesus simply turned to His disciples and asked whether they were going to leave Him too.

RELATED: Christian retreat is becoming political defeat

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That is the firm moral foundation that built Western civilization. Pence’s version is how civilizations die. His so-called desire for decency is a suicide pact we are depositing into our children’s cultural 401(k). I mean, what the hell is that guy even doing in Ukraine?

There’s a great scene in “Young Washington” where a British general looks at the future founding father and says, “This isn’t my home.” Washington replies: “See, that’s the difference between you and me. It’s mine.”

Which raises the question: What is Mike Pence’s home? I mean, really? Whom does he serve? What is his bottom line? I fear there are no good answers.

His concern for “common decency” is a con. What, after all, is decent about a Savior beaten and tortured beyond recognition, then paraded through the streets carrying the cross on which He will die for sins not His own? And if that cross — and its defeat in the Resurrection — is the essence of our faith, how can Pence’s perpetual-kindness doctrine be anything but a distraction from true faith at best and a blaspheming of it at worst?

RELATED: The right has a blind spot about young women

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So is there any point to highlighting the choice of revival or bust, as I often do on my show, if Pence remains the poster child for so much of our Christian leadership — in the church and in politics? Because with him, no such choice actually exists. It’s just bust. Guaranteed. Perhaps intentionally. Too many bright, shiny idols to resist, I guess.

Too harsh? Go watch that Pence video again. He sounded like Dana Bash had given him one of the best days of his life by offering him a forum to affirm obvious sin in the name of being nice above all. That is a very big problem, and I’m not sure where we go from here until that impulse is excommunicated from us as a people.

Let’s start here: Maybe the Boomer and Gen X crowd of men can put down the shovel and start acting under the banner of biblical headship again before younger generations of men declare war on absolutely everything — because almost anything has to be better than whatever the heck this is.

Most consumers assume that beef is one of the simplest foods on their plate. But what happens before cattle reach the dinner table might be more complex — and worse than you think.

“Even with seemingly healthy foods, they actually can be tainted in a way that could have severe health impacts on us. Like say, take beef,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says.

“Beef is good for you,” she continues, “But then you start thinking about cows and all the hormones that get pumped into the cows that then get passed onto us when we eat beef.”

“And apparently these hormones are having such an adverse effect on these cows that I mean, I guess you could say it in a way that it’s turning some of them trans,” she adds.

In a study from West Texas A&M University, just over 20,000 finished cattle originating from 33 feed lots were examined. Among native steers, 14.55% were lactating. Among dairy cross steers, 19.66% were lactating.

And while those doing the research don’t agree with her, regenerative farmer Mollie Englehart believes that this may have to do with the hormones being pumped into the cows.

“I first need to say that the researchers do not agree with my theory,” she tells Gonzales, explaining that Dr. Ty Lawrence, who oversaw the study, believes that it’s “that basically the cattle are just so fat that ... the fat itself is becoming an estrogen-producing organ and then signaling the pituitary gland, and there’s a cascade that makes the males lactate.”

However, it is explained in the Merck Veterinary Manual that estradiol, which Englehart says is the “first ingredient in most of these hormone implants that they put in cows' ears,” has a list of adverse events that involve teat development in both heifers and steers.

“In the '80s, we tried to decide if we could possibly not have dairy cows have babies and just make milk. And estradiol was used in that study to induce lactation,” she says.

Englehart also points to a claim a British university made previously that transgender women’s milk is just as nutritious as a woman’s milk. They also used estradiol to induce lactation in those men who wanted to breastfeed children.

“So estradiol is a common thing across the whole spectrum,” she adds.

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